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27796 | Color change in duck meat!
I roasted a duck some days ago, and while eating, the meat on the carcass slowly turned a sharp red, much like an apple turns brown.
I can't find any information on this anywhere, as all questions equal "is duck meat red meat?", so my question is: what happened? I've never seen this before.
I have seen the same phenomena with cooked hamburgers and steaks. My research led me back to part of your question having to do with duck meat being characterized as red meat.
What differentiates red meat from white meat is the amount of myoglobin in the meat which absorbs oxygen from the air. All red meat, when exposed to air, will turn bright red. I have only observed this with raw or relatively rare cooked red meat so if your duck was not cooked beyond medium, that could be the answer. Like you, however, I did not find any material that cited the exact scenario you described.
Here are my links to the articles on myoglobin in red meat:
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1859
http://m.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-white-meat-and-dark-meat.htm
When you talk about myoglobin absorbing iron from the air, I think you mean to say that the iron atom of the myoglobin binds onto some oxygen from the air. Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking says that myoglobin has three states: iron not bound to anything (purple), bound to oxygen (red), or bound to a water molecule (brown). "Generally, fresh red meat with active enzyme systems will be red on the surface, where oxygen is abundant."
I've edited your answer to include the correction pointed out by @PeterTaylor.
for the record, this does not answer the question although it describes other phenomena.
@Abe, what part of this paragraph does not answer the question? Do you have more useful info that will help the OP and our community? "What differentiates red meat from white meat is the amount of myoglobin in the meat which absorbs oxygen from the air. All red meat, when exposed to air, will turn bright red. I have only observed this with raw or relatively rare cooked red meat so if your duck was not cooked beyond medium, that could be the answer. Like you, however, I did not find any material that cited the exact scenario you described."
@KristinaLopez my point was that the question is unanswered. The fact that neither you nor I can find information to answer the question does not change this point. I made the point because upvoted and selected answers often discourage new answers. But I also started a bounty to encourage additional contributions.
@abe, good luck with that. There was much useful, cited and relevent information in that answer. I linked the answer, not as an answer to your question, but as a resource and a courtesy to you. This community is friendly and generous that way. Better info is always welcome, of course.
So there is likely a few different things going on here. One, the method of cooking is important in answering this question because when roasting, especially something like a full duck carcass the innermost areas are going to obviously take the longest to reach a desired temperature. We have to also remember that the density of the bones mean they are likely to withhold heat much longer than the meat that was cut from it. Knowing what we know about myoglobin, it is likely that after the meat was carved from the carcass the remaining meat was then being initially exposed to oxygen and due to the continued carry-over heat of the bones was increasing in temperature and continuing to manipulate the color of the meat. Also, the PH of the meat has a lot to do with the color of meat so the seasonings and acidity of your cooking may have something to do with it as well.
http://www.safespectrum.com/pdfs/meatcolor.pdf
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37757 | Why do salt flakes start building up in a bottle of mineral water after it was first opened?
I noticed that mineral water with high mineralization doesn't have salt flakes floating on the bottom of the bottle on store shelves, but when I open one, after some time they start accumulating. Does it have something to do with decarbonation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solubility
Salt solubility decreases with decreasing pressure.
It could be gases (oxygen or carbon dioxide) from the air, competing as solvents with the salts. I know the reverse effect: adding salt tends to drive out gases.
I'm not sure whether this gas explanation is more significant than the pressure explanation.
But, you could do an experiment: briefly let the pressure out and then retighten the cap without letting fresh air enter, and see if the crystals still form.
They do, since the pressure falls.
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50109 | How many minutes in the oven per pound: stuffed turkey
My mom is asking. Not sure if she's brining the turkey, but probably. Also, she probably knows the answer but is just testing me.
Per Food Network, plan on 20 minutes per pound at 350F (177C), up to 30 minutes more for a stuffed turkey. Whatever you do, don't count on that silly pop-up thermometer thing, use a real thermometer. The thickest part of the thigh and the stuffing should register 165F (74C). Don't forget to let it rest for at least 30 minutes.
For what it's worth, stuffing a turkey is criminal. Check out what Serious Eats has to say.
Should've said EVIL for Alton Brown quote bonus points.
The answer is going to vary greatly, depending on (1) size of bird, (2) oven roasting temperature, and (3) desired final temperature.
The USDA provides helpful tables here for both stuffed and unstuffed turkeys of various sizes, roasted at what the USDA considers the minimum safe roasting temperature for turkeys (325F), arriving at what the USDA considered the minimum safe final temperature of 165F. (Other chefs or safety organizations may recommend different temperatures here.) The "X minutes per pound" rules generally don't work very well, because cooking time does not increase linearly with size of bird.
As Jolenealaska said, use a thermometer. Don't rely on things like "X minutes per pound" rules or on color of the flesh or on the color of the juices -- all of these can be inaccurate, and they will not tell you whether your stuffing has reached a safe temperature. Use a thermometer to check both the thickest part of the thigh and the center of the stuffing to be sure the turkey has reached your desired temperature. (The USDA would also tell you to check the bottom of the wing and the thickest part of the breast. These are particularly important for large turkeys, if your bird may not have been completely defrosted, or if the stuffing causes uneven cooking.)
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91609 | How to serve a fish filet: skin up or down?
I've seen filets served both ways. I personally feel that fish - especially trout - should be served skin down. I want to use a fork to pick the flesh away unimpeded.
But I've seen Jaime Oliver and one of my favorite restaurants in DC (Le Diplomat) serve trout skin side up.
Is there a best practice here?
I think it depends on which fish, and the way it's cooked. If it's steamed,poached, or en papillote, fish skin can be quite unappealing to some diners, and, as you say, the conventional way to eat the fish would be to lift the flesh from the skin, especially if at the same time you are parting the flesh from the bones.
But if it's an oilier or meatier fish, pan-fried or grilled, the skin can be deliberately crisped, in which case it's intended to be eaten. (This, again, is much easier to eat if the fish has been filleted from the bone before cooking.) In that case, it is sometimes more attractive, and keeps the skin crisper, to serve it skin-side up.
when the skin in unappealing, it it usually removed before plating.
@Max, not always. It is not that uncommon to leave the skin to keep the fillet together. In the US at least is seems more common to remove unless it is intended to be eaten or at least a reasonable option, but that is far from universal.
In a restaurant setting:
I think the best practice is that if the skin is nicely crispy and meant to be eaten, then it should be plated to show it.
If the skin is not meant to be eaten, then it should be removed before plating.
If the skin is unappealing, then it should be removed before plating
At home, do whatever you want to do.
Hehe.. maybe the restaurants you enjoy the most have more 'finesse' than the restaurants I enjoy the most.. the perfection I relish is very simple. Often, the fatty layer just beneath the skin of a fish can make a significant contribution to its flavor, even if the skin itself is not eaten. So long as that's not removed with the skin, I'm with you. And if fish is served on the bone, then the skin can help hold the flesh together, while filleting on the plate?
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58130 | Should I refrigerate hot sauce?
I am an avid hot sauce collector. I own about 2 dozen bottles in various states of completion, some of which are a couple years old. They are currently in my refrigerator. Is that where they should be?
Frank's FAQ says yes.
This article on Chow.com says no.
What do the hot sauce experts say?
Frank's FAQ recommends refrigeration (after opening) for only two specific varieties. It says the others don't have to be, but that they will be fresher for longer. It's not exactly an emphatic yes.
Refrigerating is a good idea, even though it's not necessary for safety in most cases it will slow the breakdown of flavor components.
I mostly agree with GdD's answer, but I'll add a couple more comments.
This may be an obvious answer, but I'd generally follow the recommendation on the specific bottle. Some sauces will clearly state "refrigerate after opening," and others won't. The Frank's FAQ linked in the question is an example of these sorts of instructions: two specific products recommend refrigeration, but in other cases for Frank's hot sauces it isn't required ("but doing so will keep the product fresher for a longer period of time"). I've also seen an occasional product that said refrigeration "recommended" or something on the package. I'd generally assume that if a manufacturer bothers to say something about refrigeration, it's a good idea to do it. Sometimes it may be for food safety, but in other cases it may just be a product with ingredients that will lose flavor or degrade rapidly at room temperature.
Most hot sauces won't degrade noticeably at room temperature even over a period of several months, and many will be stable for a couple years. Others will change flavors slowly over time at room temperature, but not necessarily in a negative way. (Some sauces are deliberately "aged" or fermented at room temperature for periods from a week to several years, and sometimes these processes will continue to change the product even after it is bottled. Some sauces will undergo natural browning reactions at room temperature as well, which can alter flavor. I know some people who actually prefer hot sauce this way, though I'm personally skeptical.) If there's a "best before" date on your sauce and no instruction to refrigerate, you can probably assume the sauce is supposed to maintain quality at least that long without refrigeration. However, that doesn't guarantee that it will stay exactly the same over that period. As GdD said, refrigeration will almost always keep the sauce more stable.
Most hot sauces are pretty inhospitable to foodborne illnesses, and can safely stay in the cupboard rather than the refrigerator. Nevertheless, the flavors in the sauces will break down over time, storing them in the fridge as opposed to room temperature will slow deterioration and keep the sauces fresher longer. If you use your sauces quickly enough then you probably won't notice a difference, but if you like to keep them around for awhile it's worth the fridge space.
There is an argument that making hot sauce cold will dull the flavor, and this is true. However, given how small the amounts used are they will come up to temperature very quickly, a dash of cold sauce on hot food will be warm by the time you get it to your mouth, so it's not a good reason to keep hot sauces in the cupboard.
The only time I would store a hot sauce at room temperature is if it will thicken up too much to come out of the bottle easily (presuming it does not say it requires refrigeration of course). Then I will keep it in the cupboard (not exposed to sunlight).
Great answer. Really tough to accept any single one, but I think @athanasius' response is a little more detailed. Someone should get the rep!
Your typical hot sauce is vinegar based, and loaded with sugar and salt. These are all agents that inhibit foodborne pathogens, so there should be no issue with keeping them at room temperature. Perhaps if it were nothing more than pureed hot peppers, you would need to refrigerate, but not a hot sauce that is essentially pickled.
Personally, I do refrigerate my hot sauces, but that is only because I live in a very humid climate, and I have had mold start growing in my hot sauce bottles fairly rapidly.
I have a couple jars of pepper jelly (cranberry-pepper, pineapple-pepper, etc.) where the jars specifically say not to refrigerate after opening. The vinegar in the jelly will make the sugar crystalize when refrigerated. While it might not be harmful, it's unpleasant to look at and probably unpleasant to eat crystalized jelly. Based on this, I would say that it depends on the vinegar to sugar ratio in the hot sauces. The ones that say you can refrigerate after opening probably have a lower sugar content, whereas the ones that say don't refrigerate most likely have a higher sugar content.
Unless it is recommended, I don't refrigerate hot sauces. As Gary said, it dulls the flavor. If someone in my house puts the hot sauce in the fridge, I throw it away.
Gary's answer says nothing about dulling the flavor.
Throw it away? Have you ever bothered to just let it get back up to room temp? (like we'd be allowed to do with cheese if it wasn't for the 'food danger zone' people?)
Putting even fermented sauce in the fridge will NOT kill the "culture". It will continue to ferment, just at a slower rate.
*If you put your hot sauce in the fridge it will ruin it by killing the culture that makes the hot sauce.......It will turn to a very thin liquid and it will be no good
*
What? I know there are some fermented hot sauces, but they definitely aren't all cultured.
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17106 | How do I make liquid glucose from powdered glucose
I recently decided to make something that required liquid glucose, 140g of it. No problem in general, but for some reason none of my usual suppliers had stock (even tried pharmacies). The closest I found was glucose powder.
Unfortunately, having no clue how to "re-hydrate" the powder to a liquid form, I experimented. :-)
I can safely say that 100g glucose powder was way to much as a substitute for 140g of liquid glucose (which I expected).
However, I was wondering if any of you had a convenient method of turning powdered glucose into the wonderfully thick and sticky liquid glucose, in case I ever find myself in that position.
Chemically speaking, saying "liquid glucose" is inaccurate. To explain, at normal temperatures, glucose is a solid; depending on the isomer/chiral form, melts at ~150°C, and is a liquid above that temperature when not under pressure. ...What you want is a solution (syrup) with water. Glucose also dissolves in nonpolar solvents for other 'liquid' solutions.
Well, the answer is "it depends." This is pretty much the same as asking, "I have sugar, and I want sugar syrup. How much water do I add?" It depends on the concentration you're looking for. If you're looking for a 24% solution, it's 24 grams of glucose in 76 grams of water. A 30% solution is 30 grams of glucose in 70 grams of water, etc, etc.
Unless you have some chemical reason to avoid dextrin, you can just substitute corn syrup. The only reason they use glucose in Europe is because they don't have our superabundance of corn.
I live in South Africa, and unfortunately corn syrup is not generally available. We base most of our syrups and sugars off sugar cane.
Sorry, forgot to ask. What is considered a standard concentration when recipes say "140g liquid glucose"? I assume from your examples it would be between 20% and 30%, or am I drawing too many premature conclusions? )
@brianb: Yea, in Europe, I think it's mostly derived from grapes? You could try using honey, though honey has more water. If I were trying to re-create it, I'd keep adding powder until the mixture was a thick syrup, and go with that.
I had the same problem yesterday and asked a chemist friend and he told me that the solubility ratio of glucose powder to water to make liquid glucose is 91gm powder to 100ml water. I mixed the powder into the water and zapped it in the mw for about 2 mins and it was fine.
Recipe worked a dream!
I tried lower and higher concentrations and both failed for me. I ran out of powdered glucose and managed to find liquid again, so haven't needed to experiment anymore. However, I will definitely try again with that ratio just in case I ever find myself stuck again. Thanks :)
Glucose syrups contain 70-91% w/v solids, with at least 20% dextrose. If you're mixing glucose powder and water only, use 70g-91g glucose for every 30g (30mL) water, and heat the mixture in a double boiler (or carefully in a saucepan) until all sugar is completely dissolved.
It will be thick!
Take care not to heat the solution for too long or you will lose too much water to evaporation. If you know the weight of your top pot/saucepan you can weigh the glucose mixture in it while working to check how much water remains and whether you should consider replacing lost water.
Be sure to dry the bottom of your top pot before weighing if you do this, and be careful moving about pans containing hot liquids.
Keep in mind that any additives or alternative sugars count towards the solids weight fraction and may require more or less water to dissolve than glucose alone.
It's much easier to make a 75% glucose syrup than a 90% glucose syrup as you are less likely to have problems with poor supersaturation (dissolving of sugar) or re-crystallization during cooling if you use a lower concentration. It will work just fine in your recipe, either way.
I've a got a simple recipe for all of you. Just take 2 cups of sugar, 1/4 cup of water, 1/2 tsp. lemon juice, pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp. of baking soda. Add all of the ingredients to a sauce pan, cook for about 5 minutes and your glucose syrup is ready to use.
I assumed you were referring to baking soda. Your cooking instructions could use a little more depth. Cook at what temperature? Do they stir the ingredients once they are added to the sauce pan?
Why add both some amount of acid and base?
@NickT likely for fun
I tried making my own glucose syrup, as there were no speciality baking shops in my vicinity.
I did it mixing:
35 g (2.5 tbsp) of water with
2 tsp fine sugar
1 tsp cornflour
You can adjust the amount of water used, by using a little more or a little less of it.
This is not glucose syrup, it is sugar syrup. It won't act as glucose syrup, specifically it won't prevent crystallization in candy making.
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75239 | When should one ice christmas fruit cakes
It's that time of year again, where Christmas fruit cake have been baked and are being topped up with your favourite dark spirit. My favourite (and most successful) recipe suggested topping up with brandy weekly (without getting the cake too moist).
However, no suggestions were provided as to when is the right time to stop adding your spirits, and therefore to ice the cake.
I usually marzipan and ice the cake a few days before I want to gift it (and/or eat it), but I was wondering if there is an optimal time in this process to do so, and if so, why?
It's not unknown for me to keep a slice until April (well wrapped so it doesn't dry out). All that happens is that the icing gets a bit hard. I use fondant icing, and it takes at least a couple of months to get as hard as royal icing does almost immediately. This is with bought marzipan; if you make your own I don't know how well it would keep.
From this I'd say there's no such thing as too late except setting time, and too early would have to be over a month in advance. I also allow a day between marzipan and icing. This is mainly as a drier marzipan surface is easier to ice onto than when it's freshly applied.
Some of the early feeds (I use sherry) can be from the top if it's not iced. You take away this possibility by icing early. You probably shouldn't feed it from the top just before covering as it may still be damp. You can still feed from underneath after icing.
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17577 | Why don't the single serve coffee cream cups need to be refrigerated?
It seems to me that it would be subject to the same bacterial/spoiling processes that the larger containers are.
And if it's that opening a container exposes the cream to contamiants (which I believe), then why do the larger containers have "sell by" and expiration dates whereas the little packets do not?
Those single serving 'creamers' have been manufactured using Ultra High Temperature (UHT) processing. According to wikipedia (the most reliable information source in the multiverse!), milk treated by UHT has an unopened shelf life of 6 to 9 months.
The reason there is no 'best before' date is that they are purchased in bulk by the merchant, the container for a bunch of them (which the retail buyer will rarely see) would have the best before date on it.
Just as a little extra info, if you look on the shelves of your local grocer, you will find large containers of UHT milk that is shelf stable. Here in Canada, it is normally stored in one litre tetra packs. That being said, it tastes like ass (although, I can't say that for sure, it was just the best analogy I could think up on the fly).
The first time I saw UHT milk on the shelves was in Aruba, where electricity is extremely expensive and refrigeration (and AC) is sparcly found.
With some concern, I purchased a box of such milk, cooled it in a refrigerator and much to my surprise it was just as tasty and refreshing as regular pasturized milk. It turns out that nothing is added to the milk, it simply is pasturized at a higher temperature for a shorter period of time than regular milk.
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44584 | What determines if a juice is clear or opaque?
I've always wondered why some juices are usually clear (can be seen through, look like tinted water) and some are non-transparent.
Examples of clear juices are: Apple*, Cherry, Pomegranate, Cranberry, Pineapple*.
*Some Apple juices can be seen opaque. Portion of Pineapple juice can be opaque.
Examples of opaque juices: Orange, Tomato, Carrot.
I figured that most juices are basically mashed fruits and vegetables, so it would be natural for all of them to be opaque, but some of them are clear, and still have a taste. Is it because some juices can't be filtered or because (like with apple juice) the manufacturers have found that customers prefer clear/opaque version of a juice?
Can tomato, carrot and other vegetable juices be filtered clear and still retain their taste? What effects would that cause?
It's just the particulate matter in the solution, right? What isn't dissolved floats around, adding a cloudy appearance. EDIT: oh! The question is WHY are some juices served clear and others are not. Sorry.
That being said, you may want to consider editing the title to your question to more closely match your intent. Maybe something like "Why are some fruit juices sold with pulp and others without?" or similar.
@PrestonFitzgerald I'm also interested in the source of taste, and if some juices just can't be filtered because they would become tastless, so renaming the question to that would probably hurt my chances to get all the answers
Visible cloudiness is a result of suspended particles of about 1 micrometer (micron) or larger in size. Technically, just about any juice could in theory be filtered to remove those particles. But there are a couple things going on here.
First, any filtering, clarification, etc. does cause some modification of flavor. Flavor compounds can be much smaller than 1 micron, but how they're perceived can be modified by larger particles that contribute to mouthfeel and by their relative concentrations. If you're measuring against the raw food, any change subtly modifies how it tastes. A raw tomato tastes slightly different from tomato juice, which in turn tastes different than tomato water. This can have an especially strong impact on subtle flavors like vegetable juices.
Second, 1 micron is pretty small. The average pore size for your standard drip coffee filter is about 10-15 microns, meaning you have to go a full order of magnitude smaller in order to remove visible cloudiness. Besides physical filtration, there are other ways to do this like gelatin clarification, but those may also remove things like suspended oils or specific flavor compounds. That might be okay if you mostly care about sweetness and you can add artificial flavors back later (as with mass-produced juice blends) but could be a problem if you're going for a very "natural" flavor. In general, more filtering means more processing and more associated flavor change.
Third, you're right that there is a marketing aspect here. Consumers have grown used to certain types of juice being clear (like apple juice) and others being totally opaque (like orange juice). A certain subset might also actually prefer clouded juices, seeing them as less processed (which they generally are) and therefore more "healthy", regardless of whether that's actually true.
In short, you could filter just about any liquid clear through some means or another, but it will taste different, and will likely affect how much people will pay you for the result.
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100939 | Is it okay to keep opened loose leaf tea packages in the freezer?
I've bought approximately 10 kilograms worth of tea and it's taking up a lot of space in the fridge. Family isn't happy about the sudden lack of fridge space, and so I'm thinking of stashing 80% of each packet and leaving the remaining 20% on the shelf for frequent access. The question is, where to put the big packs.
With Japanese green teas which come vacuum sealed and with a special packet of oxygen remover, I've found that if left out in the open, they tend to go bad much much faster than if I keep them in the fridge. And then if I also keep a big portion of it always closed in a glass jar with a tight lid in the fridge, and only use some small portion of it and refill only every once in a while, the big jar doesn't get oxydized and stale as fast as when I use just that one big jar. So with this experience I was thinking of doing the same with this tea, but there's just too much of it to keep it all in the general fridge space.
Does tea get ruined or lose flavor or otherwise becomes worse if kept in the freezer instead of the fridge?
This time it's a lot of black teas with all kinds of flavorings and some fruit/herb mixes, so it shouldn't be as oxydizable as green, but I'd like to learn more about storing all sorts, if possible.
There's a lot of disagreement on this question online, much of it uninformed. There are also a lot of assumptions that seem to go along with the question of freezing.
First of all, despite warnings on many tea websites, let's be clear that tea producers and shippers frequently keep tea refrigerated or frozen for long-term storage. It's true that in those cases, we're talking about vacuum-sealed containers often with nitrogen gas or some other way of lowering moisture. Moisture is an enemy of loose-leaf tea. So the question is not whether or not you can store teas in a freezer: obviously, major tea sellers do sometimes. The question is how to do it properly.
Some would claim it's impossible. Some reasons:
freezing will harm the cell structure and damage the tea
you'll get too much condensation, which will degrade the tea
you'll get freezer burn from freeze/thaw cycles
odors from the freezer will permeate your tea
The first thing is a bit true, which is why major Asian tea producers (to my knowledge) tend to go with storage around 5C or so. But the trade-off (as with much frozen food) is that you get the tea to last a lot longer in the freezer than at room temperature or in the fridge. So yes, keeping tea in the freezer is probably not as good as serving it fresh from the package in the first few weeks or even few months. But for longer-term storage, the freezer will keep the quality higher than storage at higher temperatures.
As for the other concerns, most of them have to do with poor storage containers and methods, not freezing itself. You will want to store tea in a container with as much air removed as possible. So some sort of sealing bag that can conform to the amount of tea is probably better than a rigid container. On the other hand, you need a completely sealed container to keep odors, etc. out, so if necessary, you might try a sealed bag inside of a more rigid sealed container for an extra layer of protection (if you're not confident in the seal of the bag you're using). Freezer burn is unique to freezing, but it can be mitigated by the same precautions, as well as storing tea deeper in the freezer where it is not as likely to experience freeze/thaw cycles (as opposed to on the door).
For obvious reasons related to the above, you shouldn't store tea intended for daily use in the freezer. Pulling the container in and out of the freezer will expose the tea repeatedly to warm, humid air, which will lead to degradation. Your plan to keep the long-term bulk storage in the freezer, while keeping smaller quantities at higher temperature is good one.
Nevertheless, most sites assume you'll store your tea improperly, in which case freezing is probably not a good option. But you don't need to go to extremes with commercial packaging to make freezing viable. Here's a page with some actual experimental data about storing green teas at various temperatures, and they didn't use nitrogen/low oxygen/special low moisture packaging for freezing or anything. They found freezing green tea was best for long storage, refrigeration was also good but changed the tea a bit, and room temperature tea degraded most over time. (In several searches, I was unable to find any similar experiment that showed significant problems with freezing, as long as packaging was sufficient.)
Also keep in mind the guidelines listed there (and elsewhere) for warming up frozen tea. If you pull a container out of the freezer and open it up, moisture will rush in along with the humid air and condense on the tea leaves, which can cause them to degrade. Instead, it's best to wait a day or so (depending on size of bulk container) for tea to come up to room temperature, then use the tea. Ideally, it would be best to perhaps store frozen tea in individual packages with the amount you would want to thaw each time. (Even individual airtight bags inside a larger even more airtight container could work.)
If you don't want to go to that trouble, you'll have to play off the advantages/disadvantages of how to remove the tea from the bulk container. If you open it up without letting the whole bulk package thaw, the moist air each time will contribute to problems. But if you do let it completely thaw, the tea will undergo more freeze/thaw cycles, which will also harm it over time. If you're relatively quick with removing tea and are sure to get as much air out as possible before returning to the freezer, I'd probably go with the former method (not thawing the whole package), rather than make the tea undergo more temperature fluctuations.
However, with all this in mind, I'd probably start by following the procedure you tend to use with your refrigerated tea that you're currently happy with.
Oh, lastly regarding oxidation: although I couldn't find any good sources on this quickly, my guess is that black teas compared to other teas will be more stable if stored in the freezer, just as they are at room temperature. With greens, oxidation will be a lot slower in the freezer than at room temperature (or even in the fridge). As long as you avoid freeze/thaw cycles as much as possible, as well as keep excess air/moisture out, it should allow your tea to stay fresh much longer.
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39578 | Tea taste changes if watered down after steeping
Why does the taste of tea change after watering it down after it's ready for drinking?
If you use 100% of water to make a cup of tea and then add 50% more water, the taste is not the same as when you make a cup of tea with 150% of water from the start. Why does this happen?
It doesn't happen to granulated coffee, but it does happen with bagged or free-leaf teas. I'm not a big fan of ground coffee, so I can't say anything about it.
I also know that nobody recommends watering ready tea down, but I haven't heard why yet. What causes the change of taste?
Water extracts flavor and color compounds from the tea leaves. Water can only hold so much of these compounds before it reaches the saturation point, where it cannot hold any more. Any flavors left in the tea leaves are unable to be extracted by the water.
If you only add 50% of the water required to extract all the flavor and color from the tea you leave much of the flavor behind in the leaves, and the tea will taste strongest of the compounds that are extracted fastest. When you then add the other 50% of the water the tea will be weaker and taste different than tea that has been steeped in 100% of the water needed to extract all the flavor and color.
While this sounds reasonable, and probably true, for completeness you should show that tea is a saturated solution (or near that).
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53745 | What can I make a baking form from?
I'm looking for a way to make a precise form for baking bread in it. I have a gas-powered oven at home and I'd like to find an easy to shape material that could be used to make a complex form or parts of it that can be assembled and will not deform from heat or the pressure of dough. I don't think I can manage precisely shaping something as hard as metal pans, but perhaps wooded planks with some preparation could work?
What sort of shapes are you trying to make? Rectangular? Curves? Complex details? Metal isn't that difficult to deal with, as you can get aluminum flashing that's thing enough to bend easily, but curves are usses, and it's so thing that I don't know well it'll take to working it to add extra details.
I'm looking at a whole lot of small details, at least 3mm wide, long prisms with side dimensions approximately 3×3×5mm, slightly convex round elements… I could use the secret object of the target shape to make a clay form by taking imprints from all sides and put the parts together instead of reproducing it myself.
3mm x 3mm x 5mm? That's tiny. That's more texture than shape. It might be small enough that you could stamp it into the metal, but that's not one of my areas of expertise.
A popular way of producing custom molds is to make your own silicone. For that, you buy a bottle of silicone sealant, and knead it in a bowl of cornstarch until it gets a workable consistency. It handles much like pasta dough at that point.
Use a standard rolling pin to roll out a sheet of it, and press details into it using whatever tools you can think of. If you need many repetitions of the same shape, it is best to first make a positive of the shape from something sufficiently firm, and then press it into the sheet multiple times, to produce something like the silicone molds for cake decoration pieces.
If you don't want just dimples in a flat sheet, but a loaflike shape, you can line a bowl or pan of roughly your desired shape with it, and make the surface details on the inner surface.
After you have finished forming, let it cure at room temperature for 2-3 days before using. As an upside, it is very easy to release food from it.
Make sure to use food grade silicone, not just a random one from the hardware store.
With such tiny details, wood will give you trouble - even with very careful seasoning and greasing you will probably not be able to get the cake to release properly and without ripping the details apart.
My first suggestion would be stoneware / clay:
You can easily shape it including details and after being glazed and burned it will be ready to use. Either find a potter do do it for you (even modeling it off a positive shape you supply) or do it yourself, you just have to find a kiln you can use.
Shaped stoneware molds have been in use for centuries, here are two random examples showing rather fine details:
Or find someone who can make it in metal, but your sheets must be a) thick enough to allow for thinning at the imprints and b) made to resist warping - that's definetively a job for a professional.
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29402 | Why does dark chocolate turn white after being in cold for some time?
Why does dark chocolate turn white (and not so tasty any more) after staying in cold for some time? Usually this effect can be seen after storing chocolate in fridge.
Its called chocolate blooming.
There are two types:
Fat blooming - cause is not known for certain, but probably the type VI chocolate crystals are more thermodynamically favored, so spontaneous conversion (and exit from the surface of the solid solution constituting the chocolate body) may be possible.
Sugar blooming - the sugar in the chocolate is dissolved by humidity, and the precipitates on the surface.
Fortunately, there are no safety problems with bloomed chocolate, and it can be remelted with no inherent loss of quality. So bloomed chocolate is perfectly useful in recipes where it will be melted; or it can be melted and re-tempered if desired.
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39391 | How to carbonate a drink?
How do I carbonate a drink that originally isn't carbonated without altering its taste or the process taking more than a few hours? I've seen some methods that use yeast, but that requires about two days and the taste changes, so that won't do.
What country are you in? In some countries, "soda flasks" are a dime a dozen, and when you get a refilled CO2 cartridge, it's apparent that the cartridge has been around longer than you have. In other countries, you have to buy a fancy-schmancy machine with a fancy-schmancy brand name, because nobody else makes anything of the sort.
I'm in Russia, and it's likely that I'll have to make both the machine and the flask by myself :p
Russia? Really? Eastern bloc countries all had thriving soda cartridge exchanges back in the day; are you sure you can't find a soda flask in the dusty back corner of your local hardware/household goods store?
I would advise against making the machine yourself. There are safety issues involved, a malfunctioning machine can explode with enough force to take off your fingers. Carbonating machines were available in Eastern Europe even before the wall fell, so you will probably be able to buy one today too.
What I've heard from my grandparents, the devices from back in the days caused way too many serious injuries, and two people I know in the neighborhood lost an eye to that stuff. I'm sure if I look for them, I'll find these devices, but I'd like to learn some less dangerous methods.
Amazon doesn't sell SodaStream machines in Russia?
Wilds of Russia?
If you have dry ice, just adding pieces of it (chopped small) to your drink will work to some extent. Here's a vid: How To Make Soda With Dry Ice Be aware that not all dry ice is food grade.
If no dry ice, you can get by with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and vinegar (acetic acid), or some other acid.
Just mix the two chemicals, and bubble the resulting gas through your drink.
Here's an Instructable, w video: Carbonating: The Cheap and Easy Way. It'd be easy to improve on the kid's method, for example by adding a bubbler stone, but the general principles are sound.
Either method will cause some change in your liquid's taste, as you're lowering the pH by generating carbonic acid, but that's true of any carbonation scheme.
How to do it - practical advice
You need a machine for carbonation. There are different brands. You buy cartridges with gas for them, put the bottle with the drink in the machine with the loaded cartridge, and press a button a few times. The drink is then carbonated.
I there are also combined whippers/carbonators which can alternatively take a nitrous oxide cartridge to make foams. This is too complicated and unnecessary if all you need are carbonated drinks. If you are like most people out there, you want the simple system which just carbonates.
Update: Some more words on what forms of carbonation are available
Carbonation is a process in which you get CO2 bubbles dissolved in a liquid. The gas doesn't stay dissolved for a long time, it starts "seeping out" of the liquid, forming tiny bubbles, which rise through the liquid, giving a prickly feeling on your tongue when they reach it.
You can get the gas into the liquid by three general classes of
methods: add an organism which produces CO2 (biological method), add
a compound which reacts to produce CO2 (chemical method), or add the
gas directly (physical method).
Adding yeast is a biological method. Yeast metabolizes parts of
the drink, and releases CO2 as a byproduct. This needs time for the
yeast to live enough to produce enough waste gases, and it indeed
changes the taste, as the yeast eats up some nutrients itself, and
releases other byproducts beside CO2. These disadvantages are common
to all biological methods, no matter which kind of microorganism you
choose.
You could also use a chemical method. It also changes the taste,
as compounds within the drink are used up in chemical reactions, and
there are also products beside the CO2, which have a taste of their
own. A further problem is that you can't get much gas produced that
way, and what you produce dissipates very quickly. So, it is not
advisable to carbonate drinks using chemical methods.
The third way is the physical method. You don't produce CO2, but
add existing CO2 into the drink. Normally, if you just bring a drink
and CO2 gas together, the gas won't dissolve. What you need to make
this work is to release CO2 into the liquid under pressure. The
instrument which does this is a soda-making machine; it gets a
cartridge of CO2 under pressure. When you push the button, the
cartridge is opened, and the pressurized gas escapes from the
cartridge into the drink, where it gets dissolved. This is the
easiest method of the three, and has no disadvantages beyond the
investment in a machine and cartridges. There are inexpensive
machines for home use, so it is what I advise you to use.
Manufacturers sometimes combine machines which can expel CO2 from cartridges with machines which can expel NO from cartridges. Expelling NO is used for whipping foams, e.g. creating whipped cream. The whipped cream spray bottles in the supermarket are a simplified version of such machines, which cannot be reloaded.
While the construction of CO2 expelling machines and NO expelling machines is similar enough that it makes sense to combine them in a single body, the use cases for CO2 use and NO use are very different. If you only want to carbonate, a CO2 machine is sufficient.
I guess I'm after the simplest form of carbonation, but please do tell of other methods.
I think I wasn't clear. The other thing I mentioned doesn't give you a differnt form of carbonation, it is a machine which can both carbonate drinks and whip cream. I warned you that you probably don't want that, so an overzealous salesman doesn't saddle you with an expensive system which has more functions than you need. These other functions are not for carbonation.
I have to disagree: I think the simplest form of carbonation is one of those flasks that takes a cartridge. The fact that it can take a cartridge with different gasses shouldn't make any difference. However, rumtscho is right in that if you can find a flask that only takes CO2 cartridges, it's likely to be the absolute simplest method possible.
@marti I find the idea of "carbonation flask" interesting, but haven't seen one. Can you post a link to a description? It sounds like it could be the whole mechanism of the bigger machine contained in a single bottlecap or similar.
Here's a typical one - the cartridge goes in the part sticking out to the top right. http://p2.vatera.hu/photos/31/04/4bc6_1_big.jpg
I think the other answers already covered most of what we need to know, but I'm going to add some additional perspective with mine.
All you need to do is get carbonic acid in the water somehow (which can happen when carbon dioxide is being released by such as the biological, chemical, or physical methods outlined in rumtscho's answer). This can be enhanced by pressure. Maintaining pressure (enclosing the container) while some of this is going on can increase the carbonation (but it can also be dangerous and cause explosions, and if you're using dry ice, it can be illegal if it explodes and/or is meant to explode). That's why people burp ferments, or use airlocks on their ferments (so they don't explode). However, the increased pressure should often lead to increased carbonation. If there's no carbonation in a ferment, there probably wasn't enough pressure with the CO2 build-up. But, I digress, as fermentation is a slow process.
Here's a fast and easy chemical method (and while it actually does change the taste a bit, I think in this particular case, the taste is an improvement, which is why I deign to mention it--since I think that's in keeping with the spirit of your question):
Take some cold Great Value orange juice. (I've only ever used the calcium fortified kind for this purpose, so far.)
Add baking soda (maybe add about a half a teaspoon, or less, for a quart of OJ).
Stir thoroughly for thirty seconds to a minute.
Enjoy. It's carbonated, and it tastes great. Seriously. See the notes below.
Oranges are already kind of bitter (even if you don't notice it); bitterness of the baking soda isn't noticeable unless you add more baking soda than is required to carbonate it (but even if you add too much, it just tastes like particularly bitter citrus tastes). If you add a desirable amount of baking soda, the orange juice doesn't taste more bitter: It makes it taste creamier instead.
I imagine if you contained the beverage to build up some pressure while you were mixing in the baking soda, then it might carbonate even more. But, it's sufficiently carbonated as is, in my opinion.
You can expect some orange juice to foam a bit after about 45 seconds of stirring. Not all orange juice will foam. Foam isn't necessary for carbonation.
To make club soda (via the same chemical method), you can do this:
Ingredients:
Cold water
Citric acid (ascorbic acid works, too, and it spits more, but I think citric acid makes a tastier soda that feels better on my system); add enough citric acid to make the water resemble restaurant lemonade in taste potency
Baking soda (about the same amount as with OJ)
I think it tastes better, and less bitter, than store-bought club soda (and more carbonated than most I've tried). You can make it as carbonated as you want, pretty much, depending on how much citric acid and baking soda you add. Getting the right ratio of citric acid and baking soda is important (if all of it is involved in the reaction, it should be less bitter than if there's some left-over baking soda that didn't react). If it's too bitter, you might try adding more citric acid (or less baking soda next time).
Of course, you could switch out water with pretty much any beverage (but depending on what the beverage is, it might get an unpleasant taste). So, you need to use the right kinds of juices or what-have-you, if you want to avoid the flavor concern. Yes, you could add additional citric acid to orange juice, if you want to get more carbonation.
Citric acid and baking soda produce a fine carbonation (the bubbles are smaller, but they're still there, and they still make the tongue and throat tingle, and promote burping; it doesn't make me burp quite as much as store-bought soda, per amount of carbonation, but it does make me burp, and it does make the tongue/throat tingle just as much).
I've only ever consumed these chemically-created soft drinks directly after creation. I can't say whether they remain carbonated after long periods in the refrigerator (maybe if you put them in a soda bottle with a tight lid).
Keep in mind that baking soda (sodium bicarobate) contains sodium, although it is less sodium than table salt (sodium chloride) contains.
I imagine you could use potassium bicarbonate instead of sodium bicarbonate (but I haven't tried or tasted that).
Anyway, so my answer doesn't work with all beverages, but it is a fast way to make delicious soft drinks out of some beverages.
Note that baking soda is alkaline and will raise the pH of orange juice.
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39561 | Why are most juices sold for the same price?
Surely, it can't be equally difficult to obtain juice from different fruits, but surprisingly, they usually cost the same at the store. One exception may be cranberry juice, which is sometimes a little more expensive than the other juices of the same brand (for various reasons, I suppose).
Does the price become the same for most juices of a single brand because of store pricing policy? Do manufacturers set equal price for them? Or is it really almost equally as hard to make the different juices, so the price is basically the same?
There are so many regions, so many form factors, and so many brands I am not sure on what basis you can say that they all cost the same.
Compare ingredients. Juices you might expect to be more expensive are often actually blends (apple juice is a common juice to be mixed in). Other juices sometimes contain sugar water to "stretch" expensive juices.
Truthfully, this is more of an 'economics' question than a culinary question. The 'market price' for anything (yes, anything) is established by what the market is willing to pay for that item. The cost to manufacture, package and distribute that item vs. market price determines if doing so 'is profitable'.
This question appears to be off-topic because it is about economics, not about cooking or food-handling.
I just assumed it was because most of 'em were actually apple juice for the most part. ('100% juice' doesn't mean it's only juice from the fruit on the label).
I didn't say anything about 100%-ness of the juices. Just the trend of same price for all (or almost all) flavors/juices/mixes of the same brand. So It's also a question of how they are mixed or watered down to achieve the same cost, given that initially the juices don't cost the same.
In retail stores everything is "priced" to what the targeted consumer will pay. There is little relevance to production cost to final price
The cost of most food goods is not for "growing", but the energy for fertilisers, tractors, picking, processing, storage, shipping etc. Your finally price is mostly the cost of energy used (directly or indirectly)
For fruit juice you are paying mostly for picking (fuel), processing (electricity for water pumping and cleaning, electricity to running machines), storage (electricity), and shipping (fuel)
Cranberry juice is significantly more expensive to grow and pick, so this does show as a different price
e.g. Apple Juice. Concentrate purchased at US$1,500 to US$2,000 per ton. Reconstituted 1:5 to 1:7. So one litre of apple juice costs US$0.21 at best case. Yet you buy it for US$2+ per litre!
There are some 'growing' costs, which has to do more about how much you get per acre. (and acerage has costs in terms of property taxes)
@Joe yes there are lots of other costs, but they are very small compared to the main energy costs. Also land costs are energy related. Land close to markets or shipping lanes is more expensive than land in the middle of nowhere
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28482 | What cut of beef do most restaurants use for carving roasts
I love the roast beef at cafeteria's such as Furr's
& Picadilly.. What cut of beef
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28004 | What causes tea to be bitter, and how can I avoid that bitterness?
How does tea become bitter between the moment it is packaged and the moment I drink it? Are there any chemical processes that take place when tea is stored or brewed that I can control to prevent making a cup of bitter tea?
If the causes of bitterness vary between different types of tea, I'd like to know that as well.
Is tea bitter? So is coffee or cocoa. I think some people find fresh parsley or cilantro chutney bitter. I am sure carrots and apples drained off all their sugar and then dried would be bitter too.
@BlessedGeek If brewed properly, no. If brewed improperly, then yes, it's bitter. I actually asked this question because I had written the answer in response to another question that was then edited to be about something else entirely...if you think the question needs to be clarified, please go ahead and edit it.
@Laura I suspect that (like me) you just don't like the bitter tannin taste of black tea. Maybe try different herbal teas. My personal favourite is green tea with jasmine. (Note an answer below that points out different brewing temperatures, it makes a real difference)
Vanilla extract cuts bitterness.
Storing Tea
You tea should never become bitter due to your storage methods. The only thing that should happen to tea as a result of how you store it is general loss of flavor or loss of the complexity of flavor (in a green tea, you might lose any honey or fruit notes of a tea that has been improperly stored, but it'll still taste like green tea).
There are a couple of factors at play when storing tea. The first is light. Exposure to light will degrade the quality of tea, stripping it of both color and flavor. Light also sets off a chain of reactions that destroys the antioxidants found in tea. So, you should store your tea in a light-blocking container (like a typical metal tea tin).
The next factor is air. Tea needs to be stored in a place that does not have any strong-smelling other foods or chemicals because it absorbs other odors very easily. In addition, tea absorbs moisture from the air, so it needs to be stored in a dry place. Moisture can cause several different problems with your tea: it could start binding to the tannins and make your tea taste bitter when you eventually brew it, and excess moisture could provide breeding grounds for bacteria or fungus, which would make your tea unfit for brewing at all. So, store your tea in an airtight container that blocks moisture and any other nearby odors. Vacuum sealing is not necessary, unless you want to keep a batch of tea for a long time without using it at all.
I haven't found any evidence supports claims of oxidation affecting taste more than moisture or light. Different types of tea are created by oxidizing tea leaves (white teas are the least oxidized, black teas the most, and greens and oolongs are somewhere in between), so oxidation is not inherently bad for tea.
To sum it up: Protect your tea from the harmful effects of light, moisture, ambient odors, and air by storing it in an airtight container in a cool, dark place. If stored properly, most kinds of tea leaves should retain most of their flavor for about two years, though fresher is always better. (Some teas, like Japanese green teas, are traditionally only stored for about 3 months.)
Brewing Tea
In order to achieve the best taste, brew tea according to the processor's instructions (at least to start with - once you become more familiar with tea and what you like, you can adjust according to taste). The tea manufacturer's want their tea to taste good, and they are experts, so you can rely on them to provide decent instructions. I've never bought tea that didn't have instructions for brewing right on the package, but in case you find some that don't have instructions, here are some general guidelines. I've taken this from Upton Tea's Brief Guide to Tea, and it corresponds to my own experience with making tea and chatting with tea importers / shop owners, too.
Whole Leaf Teas
black teas: boiling (212°F / 100°C) water, steep for 3-4 minutes; if serving with milk or lemon, steep 4-5 minutes
green teas: slightly less than boiling (180°F / 82°C), steep 2-3 minutes
oolong teas: lighter oolongs use warm (180°F / 82°C) water, steep for 2-3 minutes
white teas: less than boiling (180°F / 82°C) water, steep for 2-3 minutes
herbal tisanes: boiling (212°F / 100°C) water, steep for 5-8 minutes
Fanning, Crushed Leaves, or Powder
This is what most pre-bagged teas are, and since they have been processed to be finer, they require a shorter brewing time. (Finer leaves means more surface area, so you get more tannins per second when brewing, compared to tea leaves in larger pieces.)
Use guidelines above, but brew for 1-1.5 minutes less than whole leaf teas
The bitter taste comes from tannins. There are two ways for tea to become unpleasantly bitter: steeping at too high a temperature, or steeping for too long. (It's also possible that if your water is heavily chlorinated or otherwise impure that it could be making your tea taste bad, but that's far less likely than improper brewing.) If you're making tea from loose tea leaves, using too many leaves could also make your tea bitter; a good rule of thumb is 1 teaspoon of tea per 8 oz of water, though this can vary depending on the type of tea you're making.
Generally speaking, the longer you brew tea, the more tannins will be released and the bitterer the tea will be. If you use the times above as a starting point, you shouldn't get any overly bitter tea, but remember: each batch of tea is unique, and each tea drinker's taste is different. Experiment until you find what you consider to be the perfect cup of tea.
Lastly, start with good quality tea. Some tea is poorly processed and the flavor is ruined before you've even opened the package. If you start with a high-quality tea, you're much more likely to get good results. :)
I recommend drinking cheap low quality tea once in a while, with slightly more than normal sugar and milk. If you're feeling adventurous add one or two slices of ginger. If you're really adventurous add cardamom, clove and cinnamon. It's what 90% of tea drinkers consider "tea"
The cheap black Ceylon stuff with pre-added cardamom is a nice switch sometimes, as is the addition of a teaspoon of orange-mint.
You mention too high of a temperature can lead to bitterness. Are there any rules of thumb for what temperature to steep at?
For the amateur, less efficient or less experienced tea brewer like myself (even though I've been drinking tea for 35+ years) if your tea is bitter look at the following:
water is too hot; I'm finding it's best not to boil the water (finer details are listed under Laura's response). I think that's why sun tea is so good, water is never exceedingly hot.
tea bags are left in hot kettle or cup too long; maintain the 2-3 minutes brewing time, more or less as desired. Sometimes I get lazy or think more of a good thing is good, and leave the bags in the pot, resulting in nose crinkling and/or eye popping bitterness, which is not cured by adding more ice cubes or thinning with water.
too many tea bags used in the brewing; the package would have me use twice as many as I usually prefer. One tea bag usually works for 2 cups/pint for me.
and as another person stated, do not squeeze the tea bags. I used to do this to extract every bit of goodness, then realized I was squeezing lots of bitter tannins into my cup.
a bit off topic, another tip I just learned in recent years: tea in a pitcher in the fridge should be consumed within a couple days as I've been told it will go bad, and a milky appearance does appear at the bottom of the container. I haven't researched this, so maybe producing fermented tea is desired by some, not that I've ever heard of that, just that fermenting foods and beverages seems to be all the rage of late. However, I've been told old tea can be bad for one's health.
BTW, I use tea bags, not loose tea, simply because I think the quality is still there, I'm not a "tea snob," not that there's anything wrong with that, and I lead a demanding life and loose leaf would only add to the challenges. It is fun on occasion to take the extra time and steps to enjoy loose leaf tea, if I can get my tea strainer or infuser back from my kids and get the Play-doh out. :)
Don't squish your tea bags to speed up the process, you will get bitter tea every time.
I learnt this trick when I was browsing the internet, but you add a little baking soda to your tea to make it smoother and less bitter.
The main culprit for bitterness or astringency is over-brewing. If you want stronger hair-raising and hearty tea, use a little more tea, and not brewing longer, to get the extra boldness of you like that. Or go to an extra hearty tea such as Assam, Scottish Breakfast, or either Irish or English Breakfast, in order of strength of tea flavor. Of course every brand can be different. I particularly enjoy purely Assam or a strong single estate tea in the mornings. If you love tea, do try some single estate teas. Subtle to stronger flavor differences in each and well worth the price and effort. Not super expensive but not Lipton tea-factory floor sweepings price either. I like Vahdam and Ghograjan estate teas.
Glengetti is a Welsh tea that is marvelous if you want strong tea. My first accidental stumbling on a Welsh tea and I loved it! It is a CTC loose tea, meaning it is cut, torn and rolled into little balls. Looks like a coarse instant tea but far from it. The only thing with it is using it in a very fine infuser or as I do, with Tea Sac I bleached filter paper empty bags to fill with your favorite tea and use to brew. Otherwise you will get a lot of “fallout” in bottom of pot or mug.
Storage isn't really a relevant factor when it comes to the bitterness of tea. Bad storage can result however in aroma loss. Here are my notes for a less bitter tea experience:
Water temperature: brew tea with less hot water, while compensating this with longer brewing times.
Leaf usage: use less leaves to reduce the amount of bitterness.
Type: some more oxidized teas such as Tieguanyin oolong are less bitter. This is because the fermentation process smoothens out the bitterness, making the tea more soft.
Aging: some teas such as pu erh and white tea are suitable for aging. Over time these teas become less bitter an develop more sweet flavours.
Don't brew it so long.
I use a French press, toss in the loose tea, add near boiling water, stir, wait three minutes, and push the press down, isolating the tea from the liquid.
Works Pretty well as long as I don't let the stuff sit half an hour or more.
I expect this answer is heresy, but don't care because I get consistently tasty tea out of it, every morning.
Tea Quality
To avoid bitter tea, buy higher-quality tea. Bitterness comes from tea leaves being broken, often because they are harvested by machine. Hand-harvested tea is more expensive, obviously, but probably won't have that tannic taste. Here is a good website with better information: https://sevencups.com/learn-about-tea/how-to-judge-tea/
Add lemon to tea to reduce tannins, which can chelate iron from your food.
All tea is at least somewhat bitter, so bitterness cannot be just from leaves being broken by clumsy machines.
Matcha is tea powder, literally tea leaves ground into powder. They can't be broken more than that, but some matcha is good, and some is bitter. It doesn't have to do with broken tea leaves.
And matcha is a more expensive tea. Exactly my point. Why has my answer has been downgraded? Really, there are too many factors to answer with one point. I merely stated one that had not been mentioned.
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20160 | How to make deep fried beer?
I remember reading about the 2010 Texas State Fair "Most Creative" deep-fried food winner, who made fried beer. The news stories I've read were all published around that time (August 2010), where Mark Zable (the fried beer inventor) said he had a super-secret patent-pending process for being able to fry beer.
I don't want to do any of my own experimenting to figure out the process - apparently Zable's first attempts resulted in exploding beer and oil - but I haven't seen any follow-up articles that describe his process. I can imagine that the two major problems would be a) keeping the beer actually inside an uncooked dough pocket and b) preventing the beer-filled dough from exploding in the fryer.
Has Zable's patent been approved and his process published? If so, where can I find it? Has anyone here successfully deep-fried beer and have a technique to share?
Indeed, Mr. Zable actually applied for a patent -- US application no. 0014320, filed Sept 13, 2010. (Of course, just because he applied doesn't mean the US Patent Office will issue a patent on it.)
His process is, in essence:
(1) gelling a liquid beverage; and
(2) wraping an aliquot of the gel in a raw "farinaceous dough", selected from the group of pretzel, pizza, bread, and pasta doughs.
The application says he used gelatin as his gelling agent, but the patent (if it issues) would not be limited to gelatin. Once wrapped, the raw snack could be fried immediately or frozen for later use.
Hmmm... gelatin means the beer liquidifies as it heats. I would be interested in using carrageenan or something similar, which would keep the gel stable under heat. (Khymos reports that Achatz makes (made?) a carrageenan-based beer gel.)
@ErikP. - great idea. It may be worth opening a couple beers and making a small batch with each of a few different gelling agents to see how they turn out!
Hmm...sounds similar to the way soup dumplings are made. Interesting...
@ErikP.: Carrageenan isn't that much more heat-stable than gelatin is. If you're really worried about that, you'd probably want to be looking more toward gellan gum or agar-agar, or even methylcellulose if it's going to be kept hot.
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19996 | Why does strata have to come to room temperature before baking?
I've made strata a few times before, usually for brunches where I have a number of guests coming over and don't want to spend all my time in the kitchen. I always follow instructions in the recipe; I assemble it the night before, refrigerate overnight, and then let it come to room temperature and bake it in the morning.
I've never had any problems, but I'm planning on making this for New Year's brunch that I'm hosting, and I got to thinking about why I need to let the strata come to room temperature before baking it. (Every recipe I've seen for strata says to let it sit on the counter for at least a half an hour.) I bake mine in a glass casserole dish, so I know that one reason for this is to avoid extreme temperature change that could cause the dish to shatter. However, is there any chemistry or physics reason for this - i.e., would baking it (in a disposable aluminum pan, for instance) straight out of the fridge impact the taste/texture?
My guess - and this is just a (somewhat educated) guess - is that it's just to promote more even cooking.
Since you're talking about a layered dish, some parts are definitely going to cook faster than others. If the entire dish starts from room temperature, as opposed to fridge temperature, then that means less time is required to cook it through. Less time and less heat required to cook means that all of the layers will be more likely to end up at similar internal temperatures - as opposed to having burned bread, liquefied cheese, or rubbery eggs (I'm not sure offhand which cooks the fastest).
Even if it's not an issue with the thermal capacities of your individual ingredients, you're also layering these each several times over, creating a very dense product, so there would still be a significant risk of the middle layers being undercooked, or the outer layers being overcooked.
You might be able to bake it straight out of the fridge; however, you would definitely have to increase the cooking time to account for the temperature difference, and there are a lot of variables that come into play which would affect how evenly it cooks: the intensity and location of your oven's heat source(s), the density of the casserole, the kind of baking dish you use - I probably wouldn't chance it, at least not when preparing this for other people.
You tend to see the same recommendation for anything particularly dense, such as a roast, or anything layered, such as a lasagna, and generally, you do want to follow those recommendations for the same reason. They cook rather poorly if you cook them from cold or frozen, leaving you with a charred surface and an only-mostly-cooked interior. It can still happen even if you start off at room temperature, but it's less likely and the effect tends to be less pronounced.
Speaking from experience, it doesn't.
A good way to cook strata out of the fridge in the morning:
Get up and put on your bathrobe.
Place strata in cold oven.
Turn oven up to desired cooking temperature.
Set alarm for normal cooking time of strata plus 10 to 15 minutes (depending on how fast your oven normally heats up).
Remove robe and go back to bed.
Wake up when alarm goes off. Wake your sweetie up too.
Remove strata from oven.
Eat.
This is how I make strata every time, and I've never had a problem with them cooking improperly. I'm not sure why cookbook instructions would stress the need for strata to come up to room temperature; I suspect it's simply something the recipe author was once told and never questioned.
Now, cooking frozen items is different from refrigerated ones. As Aaron points out, putting a frozen casserole directly in the oven can result in it being burnt on the outside and raw on the inside. But the difference in temperature between fridge and room is at most 35 degrees farenheit, and really doesn't affect cooking at all. Additionally, by placing the strata in a cold oven and having it there while the oven is heating, you allow it to gradually come up to temperature just in case there was a difference.
Also, putting a refrigerated pyrex casserole dish full of strata in a hot oven will not cause it to shatter unless it was at the end of its life anyway. The strata acts as a heat sink and prevents any thermal shock to the baking dish. I am also speaking from personal experience here.
Ahh, putting the strata from the fridge directly into the oven as you turn it on...I hadn't even considered that strategy! Genius!
Fridge temperature is just 4° C above freezer temperature, whereas it is around 16-21° C below room temperature. Although I suppose there could be somewhat of an issue around latent heat when dealing with frozen items, it's hard to imagine it accounting for such a significant difference. I will say that the cold oven makes a certain amount of sense; if it takes 15 minutes to preheat then most of the casserole is probably edging up to at least room temperature by then. The food does not, however, form a "heat sink" for a glass baking dish because glass has very low conductivity.
One obvious reason is that eggs are a leavening agent, and they rise better when they are not cold.It's the same reason you make a souffle with room-temperature eggs. Not essential, but better in terms of lightness.
This is unfortunately not true. Eggs are a leavening agent in only two manners: when egg whites are beaten to a foam (which is easier with warmer egg whites, but doesn't apply hear), or when the water in the eggs turns to steam and is trapped in other parts of the food thus providing leavening. The second may apply, but it would only be delayed if the eggs started out cooler.
I like Fuzzychefs idea for bring the strata up to temp. The recipes I have do say to let the strata sit for 30 minutes or more, but I always understood that to mean if you are not making it ahead of time to give the eggs and other liquids enough time to soak into the bread.
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25059 | Mixing liquid ingredients to "just combine" to dry ingredients for muffins
When baking muffins and adding the liquid ingredients to the "well" in the dry ingredients, the recipe says "to just combine". Does this mean not to add the whole liquid mixture, only enough to wet the dry ingredients?
Seems likely that it's a precaution against overmixing, to avoid toughening the finished product.
As Adele suggested in the comments, this is a common instruction to guard against overmixing. You mix everything in, and mix it until it's just barely combined. You just want to make sure there aren't any big pockets of dry ingredients; once all the wet and dry is combined, you're done.
If you're curious why you don't want to overmix, see a previous question: Over-stirring muffin mixtures.
It's because of the glutens in flour which develop when you stir or mix. It makes bread delicious but muffins not so much!
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25142 | Recreating a Mexican spice blend I have bought
I previous bought a pre-made spice blend from a health food store which I absolutely loved however its $5 per 30g which is pretty expensive so I was thinking I would try and recreate it.
The ingredients it contains are paprika, cumin, sea salt, smoked paprika, coriander seed, amchur, chili, cinnamon, coriander leaf (cilantro) and oregano.
The reason i am posting here is that when it comes to actually doing the ratio/quantities for the spices I am lost. Naturally it doesn't say how many grams of each spice there is in the packet. I thought asking here would be a good option since a lot of the people here seem to know there stuff.
I want to use this in a chili con carne sort of styled dish.
1kg Beef Mince
1 Large Onion
6 Garlic Cloves
1tsp Salt
1tsp Black Pepper
1 can Pureed Tomatoes
1 can Diced Tomatoes
2tbsp Spice Blend
I would put the tomatoes and spice mix in a slower cooker for 10 minutes while I browned the rest in a pan then I would add the meat into the slow cooker for 2 hours.
I am looking for something that isn't on the hot side since I am not the only one eating this and unfortunately the others don't appreciate hot food however when I made this with the spice blend it was very well received.
Any help with this would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Do you have a picture of the mix? Texture and color are always helpful in reverse engineering.
I used all mine up that I had at home but after googling I found 2 average images... http://www.gourmetshopper.com.au/shop/product.php?productid=9394 and http://cookeryb.e-web.com.au/Homewares/herbies/herbies-mexican-spice-blend-for-tacos-and-con-carne-30g
anyone else here feel that dried cilantro is no more than hay? (or am I missing out on a good freeze-dried version?)
Your mix is just a chili powder with a fruity flair.
As a rule of thumb, chili powder contains large amounts of chilis, cumin, and either garlic or onion. Other flavors come and go and appear in varying quantities. The ingredients in your mix that are not typical are the amchur, coriander, and cinnamon. Cinnamon with chili powder is not unheard of and results in familiar flavors but it isn't often included in standard recipes.
The amchur, dried and powdered unripe mango, and the coriander would impart fresh, fruity notes that are not typical but sound delightful!
AB's is a decent standard chili powder recipe:
3 ancho chiles, stemmed, seeded and sliced
3 cascabel chiles, stemmed, seeded and sliced
3 dried arbol chiles, stemmed, seeded and sliced
2 tablespoons whole cumin seeds
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
I was able to find a recipe that looked more similar to yours- that is with coriander and cinnamon:
5 dried Guajillo chilies
2 dried Chipotle chiles
4 Arbol chiles (or other thin red spicy chiles)
1 Tbs paprika
1 Tbs coriander seed
1 Tbs cumin seed
1 cinnamon stick
2 tsp Mexican oregano
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp black peppercorns
Start with this recipe and modify it to your taste. For example I would probably double the cumin and leave out the black pepper as I don't think it fits here. If the flavor of the mango was distinctive in your mix it could be added to taste without adversely affecting the mix. If you don't want your mix to be too spicy then you should stick with milder dried peppers. Many dried peppers are surprisingly mild and fruity. Don't just leave them out because they do make up a bulk of the flavor and the magic.
Notice that both recipes call for no salt. Commercial spice mixes include a lot of salt as cheap filler. You should salt your dish to taste and not add it in your spice mix.
By mixing this yourself you will also be able to use freshly toasted and ground spices which will taste much better.
Guajillos do have a slightly fruity flavor, so they're probably a good choice in this context.
Depending on what tickles your fancy about this spice blend, the amchur (dried, ground unripe mangos) may be the deciding factor here. It's a unique spice that will add a nice tart flavor, which is slightly unusual in Mexican spice blends.
The pictures you linked showed a pretty red blend, which means its probably heavy on the paprika and chili powder. These will be the "base" to your mix.
If I were trying to recreate this mix, I would start with this:
2 Tbsp paprika
1 Tbsp chili powder
1 Tbsp cumin
2 tsp coriander seed
2 tsp oregano
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp amchur
1 tsp dried cilantro
Then just tweak to your taste.
What criteria did you use for your measurements or is this just a guess?
An educated guess using: the ingredients list the OP provided, the color of the mix and a typical spice mix ratio.
I don't know if Australia follows the same rules as the US for ingredient lists printed on packages, but if it does, they'd be listed from greatest to least amount ... so there'd likely be less oregano and chili (which I'd assume would be just ground chilies, not chili powder), and more smoked paprika and salt.
@Joe Greatest to least amount by weight, right? So you'd expect oregano to move up in the list if you're sorting by volume. I agree about the rest, though, especially the salt - storebought spice blends are often pretty heavy on that.
I tried this out and it wasn't to bad, it will require a lot of tweaking but it worked well :) Thanks.
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25201 | How to avoid the rhubarb teeth effect?
I have a lovely rhubarb plant in the backyard. It grows like a weed, as rhubarb is wont to do.
On occasion, I like to slice off some stalks and bake myself up a nice rhubarb crisp, or a rhubarb cobbler, or some rhubarb turnovers. Delicious.
Inevitably, when I eat these, I end up with the gritty "rhubarb teeth" effect. I'm not sure if it's just me, or if my rhubarb weed plant just produces an unusually high concentration of oxalic acid, but it's annoying.
I understand that drinking milk can exacerbate the effect, but the only milk I tend to consume along with my rhubarb is in the recipe itself (usually in the form of butter). I quite strongly dislike using margarine in any of my recipes so I would prefer not to make that replacement if I can avoid it.
Are there any (other) methods or tricks I can use while cooking my rhubarb which will reduce the gritty teeth effect?
Peel the rhubarb before cooking - you can strip off the outer skin from the stalks quite easily. That helps.
EDIT: My wife told me to explain why.
In Yorkshire, the rhubarb capital of the world, you can buy "forced rhubarb", which has a tender pink skin because it is forced to grow up through dark tubes towards the light. Because "garden Rhubarb" is not forced, the "gritty teeth sensation" components accumulate in the skin, and an authority on the subject (my mother) told me many (>50) years ago that it was a good idea to peel it. She also taught me that it was a good way to divert children - show them how to pick a tender stem and dip it in sugar, then eat it raw -and that the sugar sticks to the stem easier if you peel the skin off first.
My grandmother had a lot of mysterious ways with rhubarb, including using it in ginger beer instead of the usual lemon. These are lost in time, but she always peeled it, whatever it was being used for, to avoid that sensation.
Rhubarb contains large amounts of oxalic acid. The leaves contain most, so much that they are poisonous. The stuff is so acidic, you can use it to clean metal.
Oxalic acid reacts with calcium forming insoluble calcium oxalate.
Probably it takes some calcium out of your teeth.
When I cook rhubarb, I always add a few powdered calcium tablets.
klypos provided a great explanation and solution, but if you still have the problem and still think the butter (dairy) in the recipe might be exacerbating it, maybe try coconut milk instead of cow's milk?
I haven't tried it with rhubarb specifically, but have used it in a few cooked dishes lately and it seems to work great. And that's from the perspective of someone who detests the taste of pretty much anything dairy after it's been heated up, melted, etc., (hence the attempts to use coconut milk).
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12432 | Advice on time for cooking potatoes au gratin?
So, I was following a recipe in an Amish cookbook that was pretty minimal on details:
Baked Pork Chops
Put a layer of thinly sliced potatoes
into a baking dish, and cover them
with shredded onions, salt and pepper.
Lay over this as many pork chops as
needed, seasoned well on both sides.
Add enough milk to moisten the
ingredients, then bake them at 400°
until done.
(note, the rest of the most of the other recipes have ingredient amounts, baking time, etc ... but this is kinda like one of those assembled church / military wives club / etc cookbooks where there's lots of different recipes and some are of a different style)
Now, I admit, I didn't realize until after the pork was cooked that I had set the oven to 350°F and not 400°F ... but as I had remembered problems in the past with cooking potato au gratin before, and it taking a really long time, I opted to use two dishes, so the layered potatoes weren't more than 2 cm (~3/4 inch) thick, and the second dish was au gratin, without the pork, and with cheese added between layers. (I broke out the mandolin, and had maybe 1mm thick slices).
Now, it might've been that because I cut the potatoes so thin that testing for doneness with a knife just didn't work ... so I went and looked up recipes online to see if I could find a pattern between time/temperature/thickness of the potato slices/thickness of the assembled layer ... and I'm at a loss, as there are a lot of recipes that don't even mention what size baking dish to use, so they'd end up with different layered thicknesses, and some don't mention the thicknes of the slices to use.
Is there some formula to use? If there isn't, and I just have to go by sticking a knife in it 'til it comes out easily (or is that a bad test?), are there any tips so it doesn't take almost 2 hrs to cook?
My guess is that recipes are so hazy on details because different types of potatoes take different amounts of time to cook, the thinness of the slice makes a huge difference, and some people prefer them softer than others. Personally, I just steam them first, then throw 'em in for a half hour to get all the ingredients blended. With meat (pork chops) I'd probably steam them a little less and raise the time to 1 hour, and use a thermometer.
Microwave the potatoes before putting them in the oven for about 7 minutes(start with 5 minutes, add 30 seconds every time till done), covered with a little water (very little, couple of spoons full)(potatoes whole or sliced)
Make sure you're not using a 'heavy' oven dish, glass ones can taka a long time to heat up. Place the oven dish into the oven while heating and add a drop of oil. When you put in the potatoes you should hear a little 'hiss' indicating the termperature is right.
I was hoping for a way to estimate the cooking time, but the pre-cooking would take the guess work out of it, and keep me from lengthening the time every time I pull it out to check it.
Done when the cheese looks the way you like it :D. I usually keep a big slice around to check for doneness.
I find that soaking my sliced potato with the cream or milk or stock depending on the richness you desire with seasoning,melted butter helps. The pregnated potato seems to cook a lot quicker and I will generally cover with foil as the steaming process seems to help as well with time.
I still think the knife test is still generally the best as hot spots in the oven may undercook a section in your dish.
I don't think slice thickness matters except that thinner creates a better texture and finish appeal on the plate.
I cut slices of about 0.5 - 0.75 cm and I put them in the oven (with sauce of course) for about 45 - 60 min. If your slices are 2 cm I would try at 1.5 hour, but I have no notice of any formula.
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47170 | Is Japanese kasutera the same foodstuff as Korean kastera?
The Japanese term カステラ (kasutera) and the Korean term 카스테라 (kastera) are etymologically derived from the Portuguese "Pão de Castela". But does "kasutera" and "kastera" refer to the same foodstuff, or a different foodstuff?
KOREAN CASTELLA CAKE says:
I’ve come to the conclusion that Koreans use “kastera” to describe
almost every type of baked product that’s Western in origin.
Castella = Kastera = Kasutera says:
These baked products are a cheap, guilty indulgence -- they are good
-- but I don't consider them "genuine" Japanese kasutera, which I have come to understand is not as spongy and comes in a rectangular shape.
Are they the same foodstuff, or are they different foodstuffs? Would it be more logical to say "I prefer kastera over kasutera", or would "I prefer the way Koreans do kastera over the way Japanese people do it"?
I haven't a clue. I bring you this though.
There is a particular baked good called kastera in Korea, but they pretty much use the term as a generic name for any Western-style sweet cakes (source: my Korean mother-in-law). So the answer is yes and no. You will find a kastera equivalent to Japanese kasutera, but it is a subset of the kastera set.
The closest comparison I can think of would be the term "barbecue." It would very specifically mean slow-smoked meat in certain regions of the United States. In other regions, "barbecue" is a bigger tent, and includes, among other things, anything that is cooked on a grill.
Koreans like to use it as a generic name for a sponge cake with no fillings/toppings, perhaps. Castella is one of my favorite treats at Korean bakeries, and while they might have additional flavors (green tea, coffee, etc.) or different shapes or airier/denser cake... it's ultimately just like "barbecue" like you mention. I haven't seen that label being used for any other Western-style sweet cakes.
I'm just going by what the M-I-L said. I know better than to argue. :)
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24250 | Can I put a disposable aluminum pan directly over a burner?
If I need to melt margarine on the stove and have no pots or pans available, can I melt it in a thin disposable aluminum pan directly on the burner (on a low flame), or will the pan burn/melt?
Jiffy pop is made in a dispo aluminum pan on the stove: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiffy_Pop If you can heat oil to pop popcorn, you can certainly melt butter.
Butter melts at such a low temp that this would work. You would want as low a flame as you can.
I would not recommend it, however. If you forget it the metal is thin enough to burn through and at least make a mess- worst case it will ignite the butter, atomize the aluminum which will unverifiably hasten the onset of Alzheimer's, and burn your house to the ground.
Butter melts at 90-95F. You can just leave the butter in the sun for a few minutes.
Or melt it in the oven.
Or put it in a zip-loc bag in your pocket.
Aluminium and Alzheimer's is just myth
@TFD- yep. I totally agree. It is the worst case after all. What could be worse than finding a myth proven true on your brain?
Or put it in your arm pit for a minute or so :)
heat pan, turn off flame, add butter that is cut small, 5min
Or microwave it, I routinely melt butter in the microwave for when I just need "melted butter"; just microwave it in short bursts (10s or less) until it is almost melted, then give it a quick stir to melt the rest.
I wouldn't risk it. Aluminum melts at 660°C and a gas flame is much hotter than that. Of course, the heat dissipates rapidly when you go away from a small flame, but these disposable pans are awfully thin and can quickly heat a lot. They are meant for the oven, which practically never exceeds 300°C.
If you really have no pan to melt it in think of some other alternative vessel. You probably don't need much melted margarine at once. Consider using a cezve, or a ladle (you will have to hold the ladle over the flame). Or you can try an oven-safe porcelain mug, but you risk discoloring the mug's bottom. It is less likely that a porcelain mug will be damaged than a thin alu disposable pan, but I still wouldn't risk an expensive mug.
Or if OP has a microwave, put the mug in the microwave.
@derobert I don't have enough experience with microwaves - doesn't he risk frying the butter in there? But then, somebody with a kitchen small enough to not have enough pans for melting might not have a microwave either.
Well, in a microwave you use a low power and/or go a few seconds at a time. Its much quicker, definitely. That said, you'll need to boil it for a while before you actually drive out all the water, and you won't get the scorching you would in a saucepan (Also, I'd cover the cup in the microwave)
@rumtscho, I've melted butter in the microwave plenty of times. You just microwave for a couple seconds at a time and usually when there is only a tiny bit of solid butter, you can swirl the container around and the heat from the melted butter and the vessel is enough to finish melting the rest of the butter.
What about a disposable aluminum pan on an electric burner? How hot does an electric burner get at the middle setting?
@larry909 discussing the feasibility of melting in a disposable pan on an electric burner is a completely new question, too much to be answered in comments. You can ask it separately if you like. "How hot does an electric burner get at the middle setting" is yet another question, but one without an answer - akin to asking "how long is a piece of string".
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27195 | Why are my pomegranate seeds white?
I just seeded a pomegranate, and instead of red / deep pink seeds, the seeds are pale pink / white. What does this mean? Are they ok to eat?
A quick Google search for "white pomegranate" seems to show that the color depends on the specific pomegranate cultivar.
Some pomegranate varieties produce pink or white seeds so yours sounds perfectly normal. I have had white seeds and they are as delicious as the red ones. Go for it.
My tree has always made very nice red seeds. But over the past couple of years they have been getting lighter. Now they are clear white or slightly pink.
It has been very warm in the later months, and the leaves of the tree are staying on longer. I think the climate is the main factor. As with the person from AZ, they appear to get redder as the leaves fall from the chill.
Unfortunately the birds and other creatures are well trained to come to the tree by this time and feast.
They are tastie but not pretty and not as tart.
I wonder if it could be that the older the tree, the less red in the seeds?
I just opened one up from the tree in my yard. I was sad when I found white seeds on the inside. I was under the impression the seeds were red. The tree was here when I moved here so this fruit is a new experience for me. I tasted the white seeds and was surprised at the sweet flavor. Not tart in taste at all, that's what I was expecting from the google search I did. Only one of the pomegranates on the tree was split open so I am thinking I will watch carefully and give them a smidge longer, it's September and from what I read October is a good month for the fruit.
Apparently it's a different variety of pomegranate. They are good, but taste sweeter than the deep red seeds, which have a great tart flavor.
Got pomegranate with pale pink/white seed. I was surprised when i first opened it because i have been always getting the dark red seed varity. I thought i got a bad fruit. After I taste it, those pale pink/white seed taste sweeter and it is less tart than the drak red varity. It is also more juicy. I LOVED it!!
i am ali agricultur ellit from Iran as you know pomegranate is from Iran originaly. we had the same problem in Iran and my pomegranate s seeds
were pale pink and white and part of its are black
i think the reason of this problem was blend of fertilizing
and solar direct radation and clima alter but in iran we used biostimulant such as megafol from valagro co during the growth and use great fertilizing treatment for increase the quality
fingers crossed
Thats normal it is that colour Pale Pink white... depends which place on the pomegranate that particular seed is from...they are totally fine to eat, you just need know that they are a different type of pomegranate.
I don't think I'd call pale pink/white the normal color for pomegranates: https://www.google.com/search?q=pomegranate&tbm=isch but yes, all the other answers do say that there are varieties like this.
it depends on how much the field is riched by minerals such as Iron. you know as the Iron amount increase in field you have a more red element object you have and the pomegrenate's fruit is not an exception
The red color in pomegranate is from anthocyanins, which contains no iron.
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23313 | Can I let my bread dough rise in the mixer bowl?
When I bake bread, I often let the dough rise in the metal mixer bowl. I was wondering if this is a good idea, as the metal is probably colder than a regular bowl and may inhibit rising. Would it be better to transfer the dough to a glass or plastic bowl to rise instead?
(Note: I've done this often and my dough does rise, I just wondered if it might rise more if it wasn't in a metal bowl.)
Try it. If you like either one better than the other, then that's the way to go.
Your metal bowl sitting in your 70°F room is 70°F (at least, if its been sitting there for a bit). Your plastic bowl, or glass bowl, or ceramic bowl, or any other bowl sitting in the same room is also 70°F. They're all actually the same temperature.
Now, given, when you touch the metal bowl, it feels cooler than the plastic one. This is because your finger isn't 70°F, and your body heat is transferred away quicker by metal than (say) plastic.
If the dough is room temperature, it won't matter—heat isn't flowing out of it. The dough itself doesn't generate much heat. If your dough started above room temperature, it will cool a little quicker in a metal bowl. But, if you wanted to keep it from cooling, putting it in a warm place is much more effective.
A stainless steel bowl is fine. I'd avoid aluminum (and copper, if anyone makes a mixer with such a thing) due to them being reactive, especially if you're making sourdough.
Yeast is very sensitive to metal ions. Fifty years ago, it was common sense not to use a metal spoon to stir bread dough. The steel in kitchen utensils today is of sufficient quality not to react with the food, but I would distrust any metal beside stainless steel, not just alu or copper. (Although it is unlikely that you will find mixer bowls made from anything but SS, I just wanted to stress it).
@rumtscho: Interesting. What happens when the yeast reacts with metal?
@citizen it dies off and the bread doesn't rise. Like heavy metal poisoning in other organisms, just much quicker and triggered from much smaller quantities than with mammals.
@rumtscho I'm skeptical that it'd matter. It seems that if the metal is going to leach into the dough, it'd happen during the mixing & kneading, and that any leaching happening during the rise isn't going to effect more than the outer few mm of the dough. Also, KitchenAid dough hooks are aluminum, and kneading with them isn't a problem. I have some tinned baguette pans, dough rises fine in them. Maybe the problem is silver (e.g., silverware); silver ions are known for being antimicrobial, but no mixer bowl is made of silver.
Personally, I always use my stainless steel mixer bowl. Warmth, and in my experience, moisture, are the keys. Steps I add to any bread recipe I prepare:
I prewarm the mixer bowl in the oven for a few minutes while my yeast is blooming.
Once I am done kneading the dough I turn it out, wipe out the bowl, add oil, and turn the dough in it to make sure it and the bowl are both coated.
I then put the bowl in the oven along with a pan of hot water.
Turn the oven on "warm" and crack the door open. This creates a wonderful, moist womb for the dough to rise in.
I've never had this method fail me. Give it a shot :)
I do this too. But I don't call it a "moist womb".
It is just fine that you let your dough rise in your mixer bowl as long as you keep it in a dry, warm place so that it would rise faster.
While a fast rise is more convenient, a slow rise is actually more desirable as it allows for more flavour development.
@Elendil- What you said isn't wrong but sometimes more convenient is more desirable.
Sobachatina - after working in an artisan bakery for 5 years I can say that if you are baking bread from scratch convenience probably isn't a concern. It's far more convenient to buy bread from the store or a bakery. If you're trying to make good bread then ElendilTheTall is spot on.
@djmadscribbler- I definitely agree that longer rises are tastier- however- I don't have time for long proofs on weeknights, the grocery store is very far away, sandwich bread risen for only an hour is still worlds better than anything at the store. Convenience is a huge concern if you want to eat the bread as a staple.
Another alternative to transferring the dough to a second bowl and making a bigger mess is letting the dough rise in a white garbage bag. I've tried this a couple of times and it was super successful!
The steel bowl gives you a precise ability to heat or cool the dough as necessary. If you have an infra red thermometer you can just find places in the house that are warmer or cooler. Us the fridge or a warming mat if necessary.
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40811 | Is it ok to keep reusing a water bottle indefinitely?
I have a 1.5 liter plastic water bottle (the disposable kind) that I keep on a shelf by my bed. I fill it every night before bed, and generally nearly finish it by the morning and refill it when I wake up. I recently noticed that I've been using the same bottle for months... is there any issue with this? Any mold concerns, etc? Or can I keep using it indefinitely?
In some underdeveloped countries, I understand they fill the bottle with unhealthy water, lay it on its side in the sun 4 - 6 hours.
The dirt settles, UV from the sunlight kills germs, and they drink it. If left to long in the sun, things start to grow. Not a recommendation. Clean & sterilize regularly.
The general prescription for water bottles is to recycle them, not reuse them. According to a University of Virginia paper:
Reuse of polycarbonate plastic bottles is generally not recommended by
commercial bottled water manufacturers, as it may pose a health risk
from two perspectives. First, everyday wear and tear from repeated
washings and reuse can lead to physical breakdown of the plastic, such
as visible thinning or cracks. Bacteria can harbor in the cracks,
posing a health risk. Secondly, reuse of plastic water bottles can
lead to bacterial contamination unless washed regularly. If a consumer
wishes to reuse a plastic water bottle, it should be washed after each
use in mild detergent only and rinsed well (9). The plastic should not
be subjected to extreme, hot temperatures or harsh detergents, and
should be carefully inspected for physical breakdown prior to reuse.
Additionally, the narrow opening can make it difficult to clean and dry properly.
ok, doesn't sound like such a good idea then... guess I should buy the more heavy-duty reusable plastic type (we have some glass, but more prone to breakage, and can't be put in the freezer)
Take a look at some of the stainless steel water bottles made by Kleen Canteen, Sigg, Camelbak and others. They are durable, reusable, dishwasher safe, can be frozen (you should leave at least 10% of the volume empty because they won't expand like the thin plastic does), and they have wide mouths that allow easier cleaning and drying.
Another issue not addressed thus far is contamination by the breakdown of the plastic bottle itself. Here's a quote from the Environmental Working Group:
Hard plastic bottles (#7 plastic) can leach a harmful plastics chemical called bisphenol-A (BPA) into water. Carry stainless steel or other BPA-free bottles. Don’t reuse bottled water bottles. The plastic can harbor bacteria and break down to release plastics chemicals.
Interesting. I too expected to see BPA warnings all over this conversation. I'm with you, man. Welcome to Seasoned Advice!
If your water is hard, you'll get mineral buildup. I've found algae, green/orange, growing on those mineral deposits. Likely bacteria and fungus grow there too. I clean the container out with vinegar then detergent every month or so. That seems to keep the growies down to unnoticeable levels.
From a safety standpoint, you should probably autoclave your bottle every morning.
I'm pretty sure the bottle would melt. Perhaps a Plasma Sterilizer?
I'm thinking the autoclave comment was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.
You clean a disposable plastic bottle with detergent? Or are you talking about one of the metal or "hard plastic" water bottles?
@Aaronut Plastic, type 1-PETE. As long as you're not soaking for long periods you shouldn't get much detergent migration into the plastic.
Ew (and 11 more char)
@CareyGregory So was my response
There was a case in Italy where the death of the girl was blamed on the water bottle she always used. It was then proclaimed by experts on TV to NOT be safe, so I'm discarding them now after I while. I can't find the story on Internet now, but I saw it on TV there. You can do some more research if you want.
I also noticed my bottle I use for running acquired a bad taste and smell after a year, although being washed.
I don't think a single unattributed headline and "I saw it on TV" really qualifies as a reliable source. If you're going to post an answer like this, you should be the one to do the research - don't ask readers to do it themselves.
I did try to find it on the Internet - as I posted above. I could go to Rai Uno and ask for their footage archives, then ask them to release the copyright so I can publish it for you. If the archive is not Internet based, I'd have to go to Rome to search it, pretty expensive project just to satisfy some self proclaimed police. Is the information not information if it's released through TV? Lastly, why are we wasting people's reading time by this meta talk, if you have or have heard an opinion on plastic bottles you're welcome to post it just like anyone else.
TV might be a reliable source, if we even knew which "expert" or which broadcast it was. This simply states that something is dangerous and references an anonymous source that we can't possibly verify. It doesn't even offer an explanation of why it might be dangerous, how much time or how many uses are dangerous, under what conditions, etc... it just makes a blanket statement. That's not the way in which this type of subject should be approached. Answers about food safety should be based on verifiable facts.
It was as reliable as multiple experts confirming it on a court case, which was reported on TV and discussed there further. But OK, since I don't have transcripts, you win.
@Aaronut: Anyway I'm leaving the answer here not minding the infantile points race, as it might be way to important for someone.
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21221 | Can I freeze soup in a pot?
Can I freeze soup in a pot (I believe it's made of stainless steel)? Are there any health risks? Is there any risk of damage to the pot?
The possible risks I can think of are (1) the large thermal mass may mean that the soup cools off too slowly, leading to spoilage in the middle, and (2) freezer burn on the top of the soup, because there's no truly effective way to seal out air from a pot. In practice, (1) is unlikely unless you're talking about a 25-gallon pot or something, in which case it wouldn't fit in an ordinary freezer anyway. (2) on the other hand will be a problem, unless you're only freezing the soup for a short period.
The only risk to the pot is that it may not quite fit in the freezer comfortably, so as people take things out and put things in, they may shove the pot about and maybe break a handle or something.
thanks. it's only overnight, and we duct-taped the pot closed to minimize freezer burn
@clueless: why are you freezing for overnight storage?
@Marti: If you press plastic wrap to the surface of the soup, that'll keep most of the air out.
@derobert: most plastic wraps are very bad at preventing freezer burn even if you completely wrap something in it. The plastic itself is insufficiently impermeable, or something. You can do makeshift things like covering the plastic wrap with aluminum foil, but nothing is going to be as effective as just using a container designed for the freezer.
@Marti: Depends on what the plastic wrap is made of. LDPE ones (GladWrap, Saran Permium) are impermeable; PVC ones (Stretch-Tite, Freeze-Tite, Reynolds) are not. http://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment/results.asp?docid=18682 ... (sorry, paywall). You could also use freezer paper.
@derobert - just for transport. I was cooking up a soup that needed to be taken in a car for 2 1/2-3 hours, and then heated and served that night. So I froze it overnight to minimize spillage and spoilage :) (Other option would've been to separate into containers, freeze, and then bring the containers + the original pot along. This just seemed easier.)
There are no health safety risks with storing food in a stainless steel, or most other cooking pot metals for that mater
The pot should be fine, but there is always a risk with metal in a freezer in that bare skin contact may freeze to it. Also other products in freezer bags may even freeze to it
In general it's easier not to use metal containers in the freezer, unless enamelled or plastic coated
good point, thanks! I'll make sure nothing is touching it, and be careful when removing it
Water expands when it freezes. That has a small risk of damaging the pot (though, it'll likely expand upwards instead—do not fill to the top). E.g., this can cause glass jars to break. Metal is more flexible though (and you have a very wide "mouth" on the pot).
But I'm unsure why you'd ever want to do this.
Freezing in disposable hot-beverage cups (the non-styrofoam type that coffee is served in) is a much better option. First, its a single serving per cup, so you can easily pull one serving out of the freezer. Second, they're microwavable.
To freeze in disposable cup:
Ladle soup into cup
Once cooled to reasonable temperature (say, 140°F), place piece of plastic wrap over top, pressed down over soup to remove all air
Put lid on (which will hold down the plastic wrap).
Freeze
agreed. I cool in ice bath and transfer into a couple of my larger "tupperware" (rubbermaid) containers. this minimizes freezer burn and keeps the pot free. not sure it's worth the effort for overnight, for that I'd just refrigerate the pot.
If it's stainless, there should be no health or other problem. But you will lose your pot for the duration of the freezing.
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45577 | Ginger vs Ginger Root
Does anyone know if ginger root is the same as ginger?
I have a recipe with dried ginger but can only find dried ginger root.
Hopefully someone knows the answer
Ginger is a root. Ginger root is ginger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger
"Ginger or ginger root is the rhizome of the plant Zingiber officinale, consumed as a delicacy, medicine, or spice."
If you write ginger too many times it doesn't look like a word anymore.
haha.. thanks!
I assumed they were the same thing, but wasn't was certain :)
However, fresh ginger root is quite different from the dried powdered form, and I wouldn't advise directly substituting the two.
@logophobe definitely yes, dried vs. fresh spices/herbs have different strengths in flavour. However, OP mentions both are dried, so I didn't bother to mention it.
Re: the last sentence, http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/6170/is-there-a-word-or-phrase-for-the-feeling-you-get-after-looking-at-a-word-for-to
@MarchHo haha thanks, I quite like the sound of 'spelling dazzle'!
Ginger root is the root itself. Ginger is the spice derived from said root. Ginger, the spice, is just dried ginger root ground into a powder.
This, of course, is all just semantics. You'd not be wrong to call ginger root just "ginger".
I think this is a good answer, and probably gets at the OP's concern: if a recipe calls for ginger root it needs the whole root, while ginger might be calling for the powdered form (though it also may not be). Though the original question said dried ginger root which is a bit odd (could mean the whole root dried I guess?)
Yes, Ginger Root (fresh) and Ginger (dried/ground) are the same product, but different form and intensity.
Fresh Ginger Root is plucked from the dirt in the ground and is found in the Produce section of the grocery store. It is a knobby looking thing.
Ginger is the dried/ground form of fresh ginger root, just called ginger or ground ginger, and can be found bottled in the spice aisle of the grocery store. (I buy it online cheaper at Thrive Market and it comes in plastic bags, which I transfer to my ginger spice bottle.)
The ratio for substituting ground ginger for grated ginger root (according to Food.com) is 1/8 teaspoon ground ginger for 1 Tablespoon grated ginger root*.
*Please note that FRESH ginger root can have different intensities usually based on just how fresh it is. (And it doesn't have a long shelf life, so you can learn to freeze it.) A fresher ginger root has a shiny coat and will be a lot juicier and more potent than a not-so-fresh ginger root that has a duller coat and is a lot drier.
Ginger is a root. So ginger root is the same.
This is the same thing the other answer already said. It doesn't seem to add any value here.
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37345 | How to make my croissants to grow?
I tried to cook croissants following a recipe I found on internet, but although I used yeast they didn't grow at all once in the oven. Is there any secret to prepare the dough?
If you post the recipe, we would be able to identify specific steps where you may have gone astray.
The answer to this question is essentially the same as the question "how do you make croissants".
If you are making croissants du boulanger, the dough has yeast in it; if you are making croissants du pattissier, the dough does not have yeast in it.
The fact that croissants can be made without yeast shows that the yeast itself is not essential to the oven spring or rise. The yeast in croissants du boulanger is primarily for flavor development.
The actual rise in croissants, as in puff pastry, comes from the laminated nature of the dough. The dough consists of a series of layers of flour-water dough, interspersed with butter. When baked, the steam released from the dough causes the pastry to expand; the fat layers prevent the layers from staying glued together long enough for them to set separately before the butter melts.
To properly create the laminations, see for example in depth description. You may also wish to search for video's of the process such as this one by Andrew Meltzer.
In summary, a layer of solid butter is encased in solid dough. This is then folded over itself. It is then rolled thinner, and the folding repeated several times. Practically, during the several folds, the dough must be allowed to relax and chill.
Assuming you tried to follow this method, the likely problems that prevented the rise or flakiness from your dough are:
Dough was too warm when being worked, and the butter was worked into the flour layers instead of remaining separate. You want the dough about 68 F when working it for ideal plasticity of the butter.
The dough was simply overworked, again mashing the butter layers into the flour.
Doing too many folds, making the layers too thin, essentially again merging the butter layers into the flour.
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22309 | Are potatoes ever used in Mexican or Tex-Mex dishes?
In various Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants in the US, all of the dishes seem to be made from a limited selection of ingredients. Although potatoes originated America, I never see potatoes in any of the dishes.
Are there any Mexican or Tex-Mex dishes that call for potatoes?
Is there a reason why potatoes are seldom used with these dishes?
Potatoes are very popular in some parts of Mexico. When I lived in Guadalajara, potato tacos were common, usually deep-fried. Diced (and possibly pre-cooked) potatoes with some seasoning added to a soft taco shell, then the entire thing fried together until crispy. After frying, such tacos (whether with potatoes or other filling) were cracked open to add lettuce or salsa or whatever other toppings/fillings might be desired, or salsa might be poured over the top, and eaten with a fork.
One of my favorite local dishes was gorditas, which are basically a double-thick tortilla split at the middle (like pita bread) and stuffed with a filling of choice, and grilled. Diced and cooked potatoes were a common choice, often with beans or cheese as well.
Potatoes are also common in Mexico prepared much the same as they are in the U.S.: Baked, or as french fries, or the ever-popular potato chip. Always with a Mexican flair, usually in the form of extra spicy seasoning or sauces added.
I also had a "Breakfast taco" in Austin, Texas a couple months ago, which had potatoes. So there is some tex-mex food with potatoes, but I think this is probably not as common as it is in true Mexican cuisine. But then, Tex-Mex has never been a very close substitute for true Mexican food :)
My best guess as for why potatoes are not common in Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants in the U.S. is that potatoes are not considered an exotic/exciting enough food/flavor to be considered "special" by most people who frequent such places.
Mexico City is rather high and not too dry so, not surprisingly, ate Tacos con papas on the street.
They were basically a seasoned mash in corn tortillas. What I remember most was the pretty colorful mix of diced bell-peppers in a basket pushed towards me when I got my order. Funny how quiet it got when I loaded up and took the first bite: you guessed it -habenero! Delicious nonetheless even with the top of my scull blown off.
Chorizo and potato, I remember our local SoCal Mexicans enjoying at breakfast...
Do you know if potatoes were grown and eaten there before European colonization, or even if the potatoes you had were grown there? I suspect tacos de papa were created much more recently, and don't have much to do with the climate of Mexico City.
The climate is quite varied in the vicinity: snowy peaks and spring-time valleys. They grow broccoli on Popocatepetl but the valley heat means it blossoms the same day it is picked. I'll bet they grow spuds; might have had them pre-colombian...?
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24058 | Is it safe to overcook beef or other meat?
When making hamburgers, I prefer to grill the beef until it is very dark and the outside is entirely black. I know that it is dangerous to eat beef that not cooked enough, but is there any hazard in eating beef which is cooked too much?
There is the danger of the food police arresting you for mistreatment of good meat :)
It is safe, but the meat will turn out dry and rubbery.
Who says it is dangerous to eat beef that is not cooked enough? People eat beef raw (steak tartar). Now, pork or chicken might be another matter...
@Leo unless you've sterilized the surfaces (and ground beef is all surface) you run an e. coli risk. Mass market ground beef needs to be fully cooked to prevent it.
@Dan Neely: that does not mean that raw meat is dangerous. It can be, if not properly handled. Cooked meat left outside for two days can be dangerous too for that matter. You cannot really generalize (here tartare is very common and I never heard of anyone that got sick from it)
@nico the authorities have decided, based on millions of research they have funded, that eating raw meat is classified as dangerous. Of course, it is perfectly legal to do dangerous things to oneself. They may well be OK for one's personal preferred level of safety. For the publicly acceptable level of safety, they remain dangerous.
@rumtscho: I am speaking about restaurants where raw meat is served absolutely legally every day. Often with raw egg on top.
From a food safety point of view, no. There is no danger, because the meat contains no pathogens after overcooking.
From a "healthy living" point of view, it might be a problem, because you can have created carcinogens by charring. But we don't discuss such topics here, because nobody in the world knows how much eating charred meat contributes to the risk of developing cancer.
From a cook's point of view, you are doing it wrong. Well cooked meat is juicy and tasty. Overcooked meat is tough as shoe leather. You can continue doing it, if you want to, it is just irrational, like saying "I let my salad wilt for at least a week before eating it, I prefer it that way."
There is some scientific literature on the relation between charred meat and cancer. Just to pick some random papers: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21598178 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/45723 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3562295
Sure there is scientific literature. The problem with health topics is that there is so much contradicting evidence that not even specialists (who know all papers in their field) can make a general statement of the sort "you shouldn't eat X" with any credibility based on the finding of one study. But people who 1) don't know how many studies exist on the question and 2) don't know what the limitations of an epidemiological study are - they love to jump to conclusions. This is why we don't discuss such topics here - we don't feel qualified to do it correctly.
@rumstcho: sure, but still I think that saying charred meat is safe because there are no pathogens is a bit reductive... especially because of what you say after
There are several studies linking foods cooked at high temperatures, and especially charred foods, to an increased risk of cancer. So far these studies have only been conducted on animals, so there is no conclusive proof that it has the same effect on humans, but as humans are animals, it would seem at least possible.
The National Cancer Institute has a good summary, here.
On a different note, why?
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96195 | How to compensate for high altitude when baking bread in a bread machine?
I have heard that high altitude can create bad results when making bread in a bread machine. I live at 7,000 ft above sea level. If I bought a bread machine, is there some way to compensate for the altitude, so that the results are still good?
I suppose that the machine is electric so no matter how to get the required T. A change might be that the dough rises faster than at sea level as gas evolution it is easy at the reduced atmospheric pressure. On the other hand and for the same reason, yeast should breath with more difficulty. Not sure what effect is the predominant one.
This site claims that you should add some extra flour and liquids while reducing yeast and sugar, while increasing temperature and reducing time. I'm not sure that I accept their reasoning behind increasing the amount of liquids (supposedly to counteract dryer air), but at the same time increasing the amount of flour.
You probably can't adjust either time or temperature in your bread maker, though.
A lot of their reasoning is based on the air being dryer at altitude, but I would have thought that the breadmaker would be sealed enough to maintain a humid enough atmosphere inside.
That is based on 3500ft above sea-level , but you're twice as high. At your altitude water boils at 92°C, which means that the bread will expand faster in the oven, but before setting properly.
If you can't change any other parameters, I would try to reduce the amount of dough in each batch, to ensure that it heats through faster
A book called ''Bread baking for beginners'' says that you should reduce the yeast by one quarter, whilst slightly increasing the amount of water. Also, reducing the water temperature to slow the rise could also help. Lastly, it mentions lowering the oven temperature slightly to prevent over-baking. I hope this helps!
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100949 | How to add panko to chicken without frying the chicken?
I like to make chicken katsu and curry, but want to avoid eating fried food. Is there another healthier way to prepare the chicken, but that will still work with getting the panko breading to stick on the outside?
You could oven bake them.
You bread the chicken the same way you do when frying them but instead you put them on a baking sheet; cook and mid-way, gently flip them over.
It is a little bit like making Shake'n'Bake chicken.
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100023 | How to make homemade bread machine mixes for long-term store?
I bought a bread machine that makes delicious bread, but in the weekday, I rarely have time to put all of the ingredients together. I would like to prepare many batches for a whole month, all at once.
Many years ago, I could buy box mixes, for use in the machine, but the cost has gone up considerably. Would it be possible for me to measure out the ingredients for the bread, store them in zip-lock bags, to later be throwing into the machine?
Typical recipes include such ingredients as these:
- water
- butter
- honey
- salt
- bread flour
- nonfat dry milk
- yeast
- granola
- Italian seasoning
- mozzarella cheese
- sun-dried tomatoes
I suspect cheese, butter, water, and milk cannot be added, but can all other ingredients be added together, then stored in zip-lock backs, to later be poured in the machine? Will this result in less quality taste? How long can it be stored?
You can certainly mix together all of the dry ingredients out of the above, and store them. They should store for a few weeks in the fridge, and a few months in the freezer.
However, by dry, I'm referring to the following out of the above:
Bread flour
Nonfat dry milk
Salt
Yeast
Granola
Sun dried tomatoes, if completely dried (not packed in oil or brine)
The other ingredients all contain some moisture and would be problematic to store in advance of making the bread, for several reasons:
The wet ingredients might ferment on their own or together with the dry ingredients;
The wet ingredients might cause clumping in ways the bread maker cannot break up;
Some of them don't freeze well;
Premixing them might cause the bread machine to not be able to mix properly.
Some explanation on the last: many bread machines instruct you in a specific order of adding wet and dry ingredients. This is because their mixing and kneading action is designed to work with that layering. So if you premix and store ingredients, you can't me sure that your bread machine will mix them properly. You can test this, of course, if you can afford a few failed batches.
This means that you need to create your mixes of only the dry ingredients, and add the wet ingredients the day you make bread.
More ideas and information along this line can be found in the following articles:
https://www.breadmakermachines.com/mastering-the-delayed-cycle-on-your-bread-machine/
https://www.thriftyandthriving.com/prep-a-months-worth-of-bread-machine-mixes-for-easy-bread-making-becoming-self-reliant-series/
https://www.joyfullythriving.com/homemade-bread-machine-mixes/
Bought bread mixes aren't normally stored in the fridge, and if you're going to do so you need to be very sure they're well sealed as the humidity varies a lot
Humidity is the specific reason I recommend storing in the fridge. Outside the fridge, humidity varies a lot.
It does vary out of the fridge, but in the fridge you get a sudden influx of warm most air when the food is cold, leading to condensation if not sealed. Would you store flour in a fridge (as an example of one ingredient)?
Chris: yes, I do store my flour in the fridge. It lasts much longer that way. Except specialty flours that I don't use very often ... those go in the freezer.
That explains it. You must have a very different climate to me (and a big fridge). Here flour keeps for months in a cupboard.
I don't have A/C, and it gets pretty warm in the house during the summer, which accelerates spoilage.
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32224 | Cutting marbled pork without it falling apart
I have a pork butt that is seared quickly then simmered on the stove in marinade for hours. I like to choose very marbled pork because it's just so much juicier. Anyway, the pork turns out real nice, melt-in-your-mouth texture, the problem is it's really hard to cut a slice without it crumbling to pieces because it's so soft. (Yes, I did wait until it cools down to room temp)
Is there a way to solve this?
You need a slicing knife - a very thin, very long, very sharp blade, with kullens. Thin (measured top to bottom), because you don't need the heft or maneuverability of a chef's knife, and the less metal in contact with the meat as you cut it, the better. Long, because you don't want to saw at the meat - the metal that is in contact will pull a small amount as you slice, and changing direction will pull tender meat apart. The less back-and-forth, the better, and that means longer strokes, which means a longer knife. Kullens, as they "release" the blade's hold on the meat as you slice: you're reducing the surface area of the knife in contact with the meat, essentially (tho how much they actually help is somewhat in debate.)
It may be instructive to google "slicing brisket" - as BBQ brisket is a similarly tender and delicate dish, and the very active BBQ community have experience with the various slicing options to keep the slices intact. There are a number of messageboard posts and videos on the subject.
"Kullens" is a shortening of kullenschliffs, maybe more commonly known in English as hollows - little hollowed out bits along the edge of the knife, like on this knife: http://www.messermeister.com/4.5-Inch-Kullenschliff-Steak-Knife/
Thanks, @RI! Great info! I am also curious if a commercial meat slicer would work.
To @Jerfromi's point I think it's also called Granton sometimes
It will probably be much more amenable to slicing at refrigerator temperatures, as the gelatin you have created from the long, slow braise is much more solid.
However, most people would consider fork-tender pork a positive outcome.
Thanks, so just to clarify, you recommend cooling it even more until the gelatin turns jello-like, which will hold the rest of the meat structure together better.
It will probably work, but what I personally recommend is shredding it with two forks and enjoying.
Agreed - you could almost call it 'pulling' the pork. I wonder if that will catch on...
@pixelfreak : if you cook it, chill it, slice it, and then reheat it, it'll hold its shape better ... if you're going to go this route, it might be better to cut it into more managable chunks rather than roasting a whole shoulder (so that you can cool it down easier).
@Joe, the problem with roasting it in chunks is, more surface is exposed to the heat directly, which will produce a dryer meat unless I am doing sous-vide. Also, from my experience cutting raw meat properly is harder than cutting a cooked one.
When you cut it, try propping it up a little on one side - say to maybe a 45 degree angle or so - so that the piece you are cutting off does not fall from the roast as you cut it. Depending on your situation, this may take some ingenuity to make it work right (without dumping the roast onto the floor... ;). As for the knife to use, try cutting it with a very sharp, thin but wide-bladed, long, non-serrated knife. You can use the wide blade to assist in transferring the cut of meat from the tilted roast to a plate when you complete your cut. Experiment with either making very long strokes as you cut, applying very little pressure and cutting on the forward stroke only, or by making very short strokes - again with very little pressure - maybe even cutting in both directions. One way may work better than the other as each technique will torque the meat in a different way. This is also situation dependent - depending on how each specific roast is marbled/etc.. The torque/twisting is what makes the meat fall apart, so you will have to keep a close watch on how your cuts are affecting the meat - and change your technique on the fly as you see fit.
If the wideness of the blade is still pulling too much as you make your cut, then try using a knife of the same style just mentioned, but with a narrow blade. Your cuts wont be as clean this way, but it may be necessary. Additionally, the narrow blade will also make it more more difficult to transfer the meat to a plate when you are done.
If the meat is so amazingly tender, it may also be necessary to place something behind the roast, where the blade exits, as you make your cuts. A small cutting board will work for this task. To better explain this, think of how an electric meat slicer at a deli supports the meat in two places. It supports the meat on the bottom, and it supports the meat very close to where the cutting wheel exits the meat. You want to duplicate this somehow.
If you are still having issues transferring the slice of meat from the "tilted" roast, after it is cut, try assisting your knife with a very thin and very wide metal flipper. To do this, gradually tilt the slice of meat up with your knife, and ease the flipper under it until you are supporting the entire slice of meat with the knife and the flipper - then transfer it to a plate.
There is a good chance that you may be able to successfully use this technique while the meat is still warm/hot (i.e. no prior cool down necessary).
This sounds so delicious you have to send me a slice!
Thanks! Great info! I am curious if a commercial meat slicer would do the job well. Although, as far as I know, meat slicer doesn't "catch" the meat, it just lets it fall and that might break it.
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32080 | Are the bubbles in the sourdough starter caused by yeast cultures?
I'm new to sourdough starter, so I'm a little confused regarding a statement I read recently which said that the yeast is formed AFTER you see bubbles forming in the starter. Yet, it makes sense to me that the yeast is the cause of the bubbles in the first place. Would someone please explain?
Thanks.
The answer is actually both! Yes, the bubbles are caused by the yeast, they are converting sugar to carbon dioxide, among other things. Its also an indicator that the yeast colony is multiplying. So, technically, there is (more) yeast forming.
And bacteria, not just yeast....
Yup, to put it in a vulgar but understandable way, the yeast eat sugar, burp carbon dioxide, and poop a small amount of alcohol. That's how beer and champagne are made!
I think the question could be referring to the idea (which comes out of some microbiology studies) that the normal yeast in sourdough often doesn't really get established for a week or more after the starter is first begun.
Healthy starters have lactic acid bacteria (which makes them sour) as well as yeast (which raises the bread). Both can make bubbles, though in a mature starter, most of the gas comes from the yeast.
When you make a new starter by just mixing flour and water together, bacteria growth is often more rapid than yeast growth for the first few days. Bacteria will also produce bubbles when they digest food, as well as producing various acids and alcohols.
After a couple days to a week, depending on your feeding schedule, all of that bacterial activity will make your starter very sour. So sour, in fact, that some of the bacteria that caused those initial bubbles can't grow anymore, since they don't like too much acid. Some of the only ones that will still grow are the lactic acid bacteria -- which is good, since they won't make you sick (and will make good flavored bread).
Essentially, those bubbles in the first few days are usually a sign that you're creating an environment that will only tend to grow yeast and the "good" bacteria. With proper feeding, the yeast now have room and food to grow in a sour starter, since the other "bad" bacteria can't.
In that sense, the first bubbles in your culture aren't necessarily (all) from yeast. They prepare the starter so that yeast can grow more freely. After the first week or two of feedings, most of the big bubbles you see when you feed your starter will then be produced from yeast.
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32438 | How to tell if stir fry lamb is done?
I am following this recipe to make stir fry lamb.
However, I always end up overcooking the lamb out of fear of serving raw food, resulting in tough pieces of meat.
How do I tell when the slices of lamb is done when stir/pan frying?
Don't be scared to serve undercooked lamb. It's as safe as any other meat cooked to temp, and in addition it's delicious!
When any meat is sliced thinly you know it is done when it is seared on the outside, that's really it. The 6 minutes in the recipe sounds like too long to me depending on how thinly you've sliced your lamb, I'd halve the time myself. 30 seconds with the lamb, then add the garlic, stir fry for 1 minute and thirty seconds, then add the herbs until wilted, then out.
That's assuming you've got a really hot burner which can do genuine wok cooking. If all you have is a wimpy medium-size burner then the 6 minutes is realistic. In that case I'd slice the lamb a bit thicker and add a bit of the reserved marinade and a bit of water to keep things moist after frying off the garlic for a minute.
+1, and remember that it'll cook a little more after you remove it from the pan, so you're actually looking to stop when it's almost done.
Cook the meat rare before slicing, in a pan or the oven. Steam the vegetables. Heat oil in the wok and add one plate worth of food (especially if it is a small wok over an electric range). It should only take a short amount of time to fry the already cooked ingredients, and one plate at a time is a nuisance, but it means the wok is sizzling hot for each plate.
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35590 | Chocolate: difference between "Cocoa Mass" and "Cacao"?
There isn't much diary products in my country. So cheese, double/heavy cream, baking chocolate etc are hard to find.
Some shops that specialize in baking sells this relatively expensive "72% cocoa mass" chocolate. While the supermarket has cheaper, baking chocolate that has "100% cacao". I don't remember the brand but it is something like this one.
How do i compare "100% cacao" to "72% cocoa mass"? Are they the same, and hence the 100% one has higher cocoa/cacao content?
Yep, cocoa and cacao are the same thing.
The 72% has sugar making up the rest of the mass. The description on amazon actually mentions that it's 27% sugar and 43.5% cocoa butter. The rest is cocoa solids, the chocolate-y stuff. As you say, that particular brand is pretty expensive; it's also pretty popular and well-regarded. Since it has plenty of sugar in it, you can use it for pretty much anything, including things like coatings, or even just eat some.
The 100% is unsweetened (there's no room for any sugar in there) so it's really only usable for things like baking, where you'll add some sugar. It's unlikely to be pleasant to eat on its own.
For what it's worth, usually in English you'll hear cacao only when referring to the overall cacao seeds and their use as a component of chocolate. It's not common in non-culinary contexts. For example, we'll say "cocoa powder" not "cacao powder".
As for the difference in labelling, there is no difference, as Jefromi already said. I could imagine some producers calling more-or-less raw liquor "cacao" and the processed product "cocoa mass", but this is not standard usage.
While there is no difference between the words, the product may still be very different. The problem is that cocoa mass with the butter removed is still called cocoa mass, just like skim milk is still called milk. Confections made with low-fat cocoa mass taste much worse than ones made with full-fat cocoa mass, but there is no way to determine what you have from the package. Valrhona is a pro brand and it does contain enough cocoa butter for great confections, but there are cheaper brands which sell full-fat too. You have to try the cheap one to see if the quality is good enough.
You also have to see what your recipe requires to decide which one to use. You need 100% for recipes calling for "bitter", "dark" or "cooking" chocolate. 72% is considered in the "semi-sweet" range in English books. In other cultures, it is different, with chocolates as low as 50% being called "bitter".
Cacao is actually the name of the tree. The beans in the Cacao pods are fermented and processed to make chocolate. Pure chocolate has two main components: cocoa solids and cocoa butter.
Cocoa mass listed on labels contains both cocoa butter and cocoa solids. Some manufacturers list the percentage as cocoa or cacao (as refered to in some non-english languages) which also typically refers to cocoa-mass.
The balance of the percentage listed (100-72 = 28%) usually is sugar but some manufacturers pull back the percentage of cocoa butter and add oils (e.g. palm oil) plus thickenning agents such as soy lecithin to end up with similar consistency. That'd be included in the 28%.
Unfortunately the name discrepancy isn't quite that clear-cut; you'll see "cocoa tree" and "cocoa beans" sometimes too.
@Jefromi cocoa beans is correct. less so for cocoa tree. It's one of those misnomers like common cinnamon which is actually cassia.
I'm not talking about correct (whatever that may mean), I'm talking about common usage, understanding things in practice. Even Wikipedia says "Theobroma cacao also cacao tree and cocoa tree ..."
In my country cacao refers to the cold pressed stuff where cocoa means the beans have been roasted. But it's different all over.
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40320 | What kind of bread crumbs is being used here? (picture and video)
I am trying to make Gordon Ramsay's Bloody Mary Linguine. The recipe here has a nice close up picture of the finished product. There are big pieces of white bread crumbs, fried to golden brown in a pan. In his video, he pours out a big fluffy pieces of white bread crumbs from a jar.
What kind of bread crumb is this? I went out and bought a bottle of "plain bread crumbs" but it turned out to be very fine, sand-like crumbs that looked like this. I understand that the color comes from the brown crust, but what about the texture?
Because the crumbs are too fine and sand-like, it seems pointless cooking them like what the recipe recommends. What kind of crumb would give me the same texture?
According to his book, he specifies just "white breadcrumbs".
If you're having trouble finding some, you could look for panko style bread crumbs. This is the brand that's available around here, but your mileage may vary. It's a larger Asian style breadcrumb made without the crusts. It gives it a lighter texture. I suspect that is a lot closer to what he's using in the video.
I suspect these are fresh breadcrumbs, made from processing bread which is stale or perhaps day old, but not completely dried out.
I guess he is using fresh, self-made breadcrumbs. But Panko breadcrumbs close to the look. Thanks!
I would be very surprised if he bought ready-made bread crumbs.
What would be normal in this part of the world (and indeed, what it looks like in the video) is to just get a normal white loaf (ie. sliced bread for making sandwiches) and whizz it in a food processor. This way also allows you to get whatever size crumb you desire.
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64894 | What is the white powder on sourdough bread?
I often see sourdough bread loaves with a white powder/dust on the crust.
What is this white powder?
Typically that would be whatever was used for dusting the loaves or the bannetons, either flour, starch or sometimes semolina.
It is done to prevent sticking and for decorative purposes - often both:
(Source)
I believe rice flour specifically is quite popular for dusting the bannetons.
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34138 | Lifetime of French press filter
I'm thinking about buying a French press for making coffee. I'm just not sure what is the lifetime of the filter? Can I use it for years or do I have to get a new filter from time to time?
Not all French Presses are created equal; some have the obnoxious habit of getting creases at the edge of the filter, which lead to grounds coming up the sides. Other filters deteriorate more quickly.
My experience is that a fine metal mesh filter tends to last longer than nylon filters, and that I am always going to be unlucky when it comes to the French Press.
Inevitably, things fall apart. Replacing the filter will be needed at some point, though good care can help prevent it from going bad. There are really two ways to look at the investment of the French Press:
You're buying a cheap one with the expectation that it'll last only 6 months to a year.
You spend a little more, and perhaps have to replace a part once in a while.
My suggestion is to buy a mid-priced Bodum press; replacement parts are available and relatively affordable, and their products are decent enough to be used in restaurants around the world. Either way, you're spending less than on a decent drip brewer, and getting a better cup of coffee for your efforts.
Most metal mesh filter French presses can have the filter and filter support piece unscrewed from the stem so they can be properly cleaned and dried. If this is done they will last many, many years. By a French press with a double walled stainless steel vessel instead of glass. Not as pretty but lasts a much longer, and keeps the coffee hot
We had a glass French press for over a year without having to replace the filter screens. But sadly the glass carafe cracked due to accidental drop and hit hard on the floor. So I could say that the lifespan of the filter screen could last the same as the unit. But if you need to replace it, the Bodum replacement filter screens are mostly compatible with other French press.
So we searched for a new French press and found here http://coffeemakerpicks.com/best-french-press and decided to purchase the Sterling pro double wall stainless steel. Even it is more expensive than glass carafes, it makes sense that in the long run we will save money since it's unbreakable. And a thermal pot has better insulation than glass, keeping the water temperature in range when brewing for around 4 minutes.
I want to point out as well that you'll be needing a burr grinder and I recommend the Baratza Virtouso.
The glass ones have a strong tendency to meet the floor at excessive velocity. When they do, save the fittings. Chances are they'll work in the replacement press.
How long a French press will last depends on how long you use it, and the quality of the one you buy. I've had mine well over 10 years and see no reason to replace it, but my previous one was cheap junk and lasted less than a year.
Of course treating it right will help it last. Keep it clean, dry the screen after washing so it doesn't rust out, and don't put your full weight on the plunger when pressing down the grounds and you won't have too much trouble.
Thanks a lot, this is the type of information I needed to know ;)
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56360 | Filling tart with beans/rice for baking
I've found a recipe for a lemon tart: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/380616/greggs-tangy-lemon-tart
Everything looks fine to me and I get what to do exactly, but I don't understand the part that says:
Line the tart with foil and fill with rice or dried beans. Bake for 10 mins, then discard the foil, and bake for another 20 mins until biscuity.
I have got two closely related questions:
What is the purpose of this step? What would happen if I omitted it and baked straight for 30 minutes?
What type of foil should I use? I suppose it's not the plastic one since it would not survive the baking temperature of 160C. Or would it?
The first question is pretty much a duplicate of http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/17020/what-is-blind-baking
Re. type of foil: parchment (might be called something like "baking paper" in your language) works, too. Some plasic foils are oven proof for lower temperatures, check the box. Personally, I don't like aluminum foil because it sometimes sticks and then tears when removing, whick means you have to pick beans or rice from the shell...
The rice/beans in this step act as a form of what are known as pie weights. They are used in order to maintain the shape of the crust as it is being baked. If you eliminate the weights during baking, you may encounter undesirable levels of puffing, curling and shrinking. If you'd rather brown the top of the bottom crust while baking, an alternative method often used is placing a second pie plate over the one containing the crust, and the metal should assist in browning the crust.
Use standard foil.
And "standard foil" is what? For me, it's the plastic thing. So is it?
@yo No. Foil means aluminum foil. I've never heard of anything plastic (plastic wrap?) being called foil before.
@Jefromi It's possible it's not called that way in English, but in Czech, it is, which confuses me. Thanks anyways.
@yo' Sorry. I made too many assumptions. In America we call rolled aluminum "aluminum/tin foil," and plastic wrap is called, well, "Plastic wrap," or cellophane. You'd want something metallic for the reason you've already mentioned — plastic will melt and leave your pie with a rather undesirable taste, and it would not aid in the browning the way metal would.
Just a little addition to the last comment. Cling film won't melt in the oven. In fact I often cling film my baking beans/rice in the shape of my pies and tarts. This way I can re-use then easily every time and there is less risk of filling my tart with grains of rice when attempting to remove. In regards to the metal plate. Usually you bake your cases until almost cooked (blind baking) then remove the beans for the last 5min to allow the base to dry and brown.
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18658 | How long can I keep sauteed onions in the fridge?
I'm a working mom, so I'm always trying to find ways to cut down on cooking time. My newest trick is to saute a huge batch of onions and keep it in a container in the fridge, so that I can skip the onion-frying step of recipes. How long can I store sauteed onions in the fridge? I want to freeze any onions that I won't be able to use within a safe period of time, so I'm wondering how long that is.
related: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/19557/8291
Stilltasty.com gives you 3-5 days on cooked onions in the fridge - after that, tightly wrapped and airtight into the freezer.
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15553 | How long will homemade salad dressing stay good in the fridge?
How long can I keep salad dressings that I made?
Since this is probably affected by what it's made up of, let's say we're talking about different salad dressings made from a combination of the following ingredients: mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, vinegar, sugar, garlic, oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice...
And are there any other ingredients that I should watch out for that could affect salad dressing shelf life? Any rules of thumb regarding storing salad dressings...?
There is no rule of thumb encompassing all salad dressings.
One "rule of thumb" which sometimes gets used is to look at the shelf life of the most perishable component. Frequently it works; sometimes, it is dangerously misleading. A mixture of the things you listed can have a longer or shorter shelf life of that of the most perishable component. An example of lengthened shelf life is mayo; it stays good for longer time than a cracked fresh egg, because the yolk gets pasteurized and the pH is lower. But there can be examples of the other thing happening. The classic is the homemade garlic oil: you can keep pure garlic and pure oil for months in the pantry, but once you combine them, you get a botulism risk.
I don't usually keep salad dressings in the fridge, but if I did, I would look at why the most problematic component has the shelf life it has, and decide whether mixing it will change the condition. For example, if I had a mixture of oil, vinegar and pure emulsifier: Oil keeps for months because it has no carbs, so nothing for bacteria to eat. Vinegar can have a few carbs, but not a lot, and it also has a very low pH, so bacteria die in it. The combination still won't have enough carbs for bacteria, and will still have a low pH. So the mixture will keep for very long time, just like pure vinegar or oil.
On the other hand, imagine mixing vinegar with honey and water. Honey doesn't go bad by itself, because the carbs are too concentrated for bacteria. The vinegar and water will dilute them, so this mechanism of bacteria prevention vanishes. The pH of the mixture will probably rise a lot too, because the vinegar gets diluted, so no protection on that front either. Thus, this mixture is apt to go bad much earlier than pure vinegar or pure honey.
This method requires that you make a new decision for each new dressing you make, and that you acquire enough knowledge to be able to make such decisions. If you feel this is too much effort or too risky, you can either start adding conservants to your homemade dressings, or just start preparing a fresh dressing for each batch of salad.
Excellent post, with one correction: although honey is high in carbs, it doesn't go bad because it actually KILLS bacteria. Honey is full of the natural antibiotic defensin-1, which bees excrete when producing it. Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100630111037.htm
@BobMcGee, thank you. I should have made my example with "concentrated sugar syrup" instead of honey, to make sure that it doesn't contain unaccounted for variables. But this situation shows very nicely why I stated that the approach can be seen as "too risky": It is easy to forget an important factor.
Yeah, I agree. It really is a complex process to figure out shelf life for things -- that's why food scientists do a lot of involved testing, and everyone else is pretty much stuck with the sniff/taste tests and rules of thumb. Honey is actually kind of an interesting rule-breaker because it won't completely kill the spores of C. Botulinum, so it's risky for infants to eat, and might contribute those spores to products containing it. However, it can be used to preserve sufficiently small pieces of raw meat from spoilage. In antiquity it was used to embalming for this reason.
The quickest and dirtiest rule of thumb is thus: "The more acidic it is, the longer it will last." Acid is very unfriendly to bacteria. Ketchup, vinagrette, fruit syrups, all fine. Yes, fruit syrup, even if it's just sugar and acid, will last quite a while (think fruit jelly, and fruit preserves.) Homemade pepper sauce. Anything with a bunch of alcohol in it.
Mayonnaise is scary for about a dozen reasons: it's not just the oil, or the eggs, or the sugar...It's all of them. Anything with dairy in it...That always comes with its own set of bacteria to jumpstart the process of decay. Anything with too many raw vegetables in it (pesto, for example).
Ketchup, fruit syrups, and fruit preserves aren't very sour, they're somewhere around pH 4 or slightly lower. There are lots of bacteria which live at that pH, including the dairy fermenting strains you mention (which don't spoil anything, and even prevent spoiling because they compete with other bacteria for food). Fruit preserves and syrups are safe because of their high sugar content, which dehydrates bacteria. The salt and sugar in ketchup dehydrates too. You need something really acidic, like vinegar or soft drinks, to inhibit bacteria growth sufficiently.
If you are using raw garlic, I'd recommend keeping it no more than a few days given the risk of botulism. This risk can be mitigated (although not completely avoided) by using dried garlic or garlic powder, heating the dressing (which is undesirable if you are using a fruity oil), or making the dressing very acidic (which is likely also undesirable).
The only other particularly perishable ingredient is the mayonnaise, especially if it is homemade. I'd say that, garlic aside, you should use any homemade mayonnaise-based dressing within six days or so.
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15517 | What is the best way to store carrots?
The carrots that I buy come in a sealed plastic bag. In the store they are not refrigerated. I've tried keeping them in the bag in the place where I keep things like onions, garlic, and potatoes (a cabinet with metal racks, and an air opening in the back - I keep the carrots on their own rack). I've tried keeping them in the bag, but I've found that one often rots, from moisture or something similar, and causes all the rest of the carrots to go bad. I've tried taking them out of the bag, but they all quickly shriveled up and went bad. The only thing I can think of still trying is to keep them in the fridge... What is the preferred way of storing carrots? How can I keep my carrots in good condition and prevent them from rotting?
Store them in the bag in your fridge. Also, if you take the greens off they will last longer. I keep mine in the drawer at the bottom.
Why does removing the tops make them last longer?
More specifically, removing the greens from the carrots prevents them drawing moisture out of the root itself.
@MichaelHoffman The greens--and the roots (the carrot itself)--are still alive. The continue to respire and metabolize, expending resources stored in the root since they are in the dark and without soil, so they are not photosynthesizing and producing new resources. Removing the greens will really cut down on the nutrient draw from the root.
When storing carrots or other root crops in a (usually wooden) container packed with damp sand, the whole assembly is traditionally called a clamp.
Store your carrots in the fridge, either in one of those special veggies containers that Bob described or in the veggies fridge compartment (usually a bottom drawer with undulated bottom to trap liquids) if you have one. (Notice the little slider that you slide to control moisture and air flow if you put veggies in there.) Only buy whole unpeeled carrots if you want them to last one or two months in the fridge being protected by their skin.
I personally keep whole, unpeeled carrots in their bag (to avoid loss of moisture), in the fridge. I never had spoilage issues, even after 6 weeks. They might look a little shriveled but will regain their moisture if cooked in liquid (making soups or using a slow cooker).
When you're saying that your carrots are not refrigerated in the store: veggies do not need doors (like frozen food) to keep them at fridge temperature. My store has a funny "storm sound" alarm (like rain is coming) just before spraying the veggies with icy water, regularly, to keep them cold. So you get your hand away for a few seconds otherwise you would get icy water on your arm (and clothes if you wear long sleeves), then (after the "storm" has passed) you can grab your carrots.
The idea of storing fruits/veggies at “room temperature” dates back to when people had basements with a constant low temperature under 60F (59F = 15C). My mother-in-law grew her own veggies and had an apple orchard; and also a huge cold basement with a lot of different rooms to store all of her fruits/veggies (separately) for months. But once you heat your house in the winter (or if you live in a hot region in the summer and have to use an AC) the “room temperature” will probably get too hot.
The best way I've found is a specialty tupperware container designed to keep produce fresh. They have little raised trays in the bottom, and a system of vents in the lid. The combination allows air to circulate and ripening gases to escape, retains moisture, but allows water to drip below the produce to prevent spoilage from sitting in a puddle.
Note that produce should be rinsed before putting in the container, to keep it moist, and should be rinsed every week or two to prevent drying out.
In one of the special containers, in the fridge, my carrots lasted at least a month, probably closer to a couple months. They were still fine when I tossed them, but it just didn't sit right to keep produce I didn't remember buying.
Manufacturers of special produce preserving containers:
Progressive International and Ruppermaid both make storage containers with these properties. I have the 4-container Rubbermaid set, and they seem slightly better designed (the tray is inside the container), but the sizes are very much not convenient. The largest size looks like it should hold a heat of lettuce... but just barely doesn't. It's excessively large for other stuff, although it WILL hold a lot of carrots. The smallest size is pretty much only useful for a piece of ginger or half an onion.
don't get yourself a root cellar then. Your carrots might last until early spring in one of those ;-)
It likely depends on what shape you want to store them in. I have good luck just putting the bag in the crisper in my fridge, assuming I use them within a few weeks. Of course, it helps to shop at a grocery store that has a good turnover, and they haven't already been sitting there for 2-3 weeks (or spent a week being shipped cross-country)
If you find that the carrots have gotten a little dehydrated from long storage, you can actually wrap 'em in a damp paper towel and leave them for a day or so, and they'll come back. You could likely also soak them in water ... my mom used to cut up carrots, and had a tupperware?rubbermaid? container with an insert in it so you could fill it with water, then lift things up out of the water ... and they'd stay good in there for a week or more (she kept 'em so as kids we'd have healthy things easy to snack on)
You want to avoid a lot of surface moisture as it can lead to spoilage. You can fill a container with clean sand and place the carrots in there. The container can go in the fridge or a cabinet if your house isn't too warm.
You've noticed that one always goes off, so you found the reason that they sell more carrots if they are supplied pre-washed and cleaned in plastic bags!
The washing and rumbling (the peeling process) takes away the natural protection against moulds, so there is only one answer - you have to prepare all the carrots, blanch them, and freeze the ones you are not going to use immediately.
LOL it is a scam, but people do prefer to buy pre-washed and scraped carrots.
where I live, not only the pre-peeled and washed "baby" carrots are in plastic bags, but so are whole, unpeeled, and generally unmolested carrots. These keep fine if left in their bag in the fridge, best in a drawer.
Checking the batch for damaged carrots (eg any that got punctured by something hard in the same shopping bag) before storing could also help...
i think the best way to keep them from not getting mouldy is to cut the tops off the carrot itself
Does this apply to carrots that don't have greens on them, so you'd be cutting a bit off the large/round end? (Carrots in bags almost never have the greens still on, at least in my experience.)
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17785 | Can I refreeze defrosted crumb topping?
I have a crumb topping (margarine + brown sugar + flour) that I usually make double or triple the recipe of and then freeze. Sometimes I don't divide it evenly and end up with extra dough when I defrost a section. Can I refreeze the dough or should I just toss it because it'll affect the taste? (What about cookie dough?)
Generally, freezing and re-freezing is not a big issue. Some things just shouldn't be frozen (certain fruits and veg), because when frozen the water contained in the cell structure expands and in turn bursts the containing structure, which causes mushiness. Meats can be refrozen with a slight moisture loss. From what I was taught by my old pastry chef, this whole notion of freezing and refreezing being dangerous was started when electric freezers were just coming into the market (first half of the 20th century), and the cold storage and ice companies were scared of the potential loss of their business (which absolutely happened). It was them that advertised that this refreezing could be detrimental to health. Truth is, refreezing just sends the item into a (mostly) inert state, where bacteria can't harm the item by propagating.
However, your question is about the taste and how refreezing pertains to cookie dough. It's not a matter of the refreezing that has an effect on the taste, rather how long things stay in your freezer. You can thaw, refreeze, thaw, refreeze as much as you want. Happens all the time in commercial kitchens and bakeries. The key is to not make so much that it stays in the freezer too long.
Here's and article I found, haven't looked for any others:
Safe food practices
Interesting, I've only ever heard the "refreezing is bad" cliche. Do you have sources that only the time spent frozen matters?
I think every layperson believes the refreezing thing. When you are involved in the industry, it is a given that everyone refreezes all the time. When I have some time later, I'll try and link some stuff up about the source of the misconceptions.
"there will usually be a noticeable loss of quality due to the moisture lost through defrosting" - I think this is reason enough agains refreezing from my point of view (quote from the site you linked). I agree that from a food safety point of view, it's only the cumulative time at dangerous temperatures that counts, but this source confirms that the refreezing cycle affects taste negatively.
Yes, but that's mostly in regards to meat (moisture loss). If you eat in restaurants, you have eaten refrozen food (guaranteed). It will definitely not have an effect on crumb topping or cookie dough. Try a bit and see.
Ultimately, it's best to use fresh at all times, no question. If you can afford the cash to be throwing out your streussel, that's fair enough. However, judging by your description of the ingredients in your topping (simply streussel), that there isn't even a perishable component (margarine, not butter or lard). There is no doubt this can be refrozen.
Freezing and re-freezing dry topping should be no problem at all.
Freezing disrupts the cell structure of things like meat, causing texture change. Repeated freezing/thawing will make this worse. There shouldn't be any effect on the taste, unless perhaps you're going to store it for some months whan you might get rancidity.
For foods suspectible to microbiological growth, there will be stages during the freezing/thawing processes where microbiological growth is possible, which will be repeated in every freeze/thawing cycle. I think this is the real reason for the official line that re-freezing is unacceptable.
Neither of these apply to dry crumb topping, but the microbiological aspects may be an issue for doughs containing water.
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12878 | Why is my lemon juice fizzing and smelling like yeast?
I have an open bottle of lemon juice that I've been keeping in the fridge. I just took it out to dress a salad and it fizzed like soda when I opened the bottle and smells like... took me a minute to place it... yeast. What's going on? Should I throw it out?
It sounds like fermentation to me. That's what you'd expect when you're making mead or hard apple cider.
I'd personally dispose of it ... partially because I can't think of a good use for alcoholic lemon juice, but also because you don't know exactly what the bug is doing the fermentation.
Or just let it keep going and see if you can make hard-lemon-cider-vinegar!
Yeah- ok. Just throw it out.
throw it out. There's far too much acid in the lemon juice for you to get a good fermentation.
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28161 | What vegetables should I add to a japanese curry?
I am preparing my first Japenese Curry (cheating incredibly by using the S&B Golden Curry Medium Hot box) and it suggests adding "vegetables" without actually indicating what veggies to add other than onions.
Assuming access to acceptable supermarkets (Asian and normal Australian) what vegetables (normal and/or exotic) make the best compliment to a curry like this?
The most common ones simmered along with curry are onions, carrots, and potatoes. You could even add some sliced apples. Root vegetables are frequently simmered with the curry, and you could consider using variants like sweet potato or squash, kabu, daikon, etc.
As a "topping", the sky is the limit; I've seen blanched okra, cooked renkon, roasted or simmered slices of kabocha squash, green beans, sweet potatoes, and cauliflower.
As non-vegetable toppings added after simmering, I've seen cheese, katsu-style tofu, tonkatsu or menchi katsu.
Edited to add: as Japanese curry is one of the easiest ways of encouraging our children to eat vegetables, my wife and I now both add anything from blanched spinach (near the end of cooking) to (typically canned) tomatoes; the younger one loves it when there are plenty of green peas or even corn in the mix. I like to add cauliflower.
In addition to the carrots and potatoes mentioned, I would recommend edamame.
You could also substitute lotus root for some or all of the potato.
And while you don't add this to the curry while cooking, you can top your curry with fukujinzuke for a nice cold crunchy contrast to the warm spicy curry.
Carrots and Potatoes at least.
Parsnip/Daikon Radish if you like those.
Frozen peas at the end are nice too.
In addition to everything already mentioned, I sometimes see these used:
Mushrooms
Broccoli
Tomato
Eggplants
Stating the obvious: I would recommend against sweet potato if you don't want your dish to taste sweet.
definite yes for occasional mushroom variants
Traditionally, for home curries, the 3 common veggies are onions, potatoes and carrots. You cut the onions in big 1-mouthful chunks (not finely diced - you want to be able to see them and eat them as a vegetable in the final dish), cube the potatoes to a biggish two-mouthful size, and cut the carrots into rough triangles - you do this by cutting the carrot as if you were thickly slicing it, but turning the carrot a quarter-turn before making each cut, resulting in even, chunky triangular bits. Video demo of ran-giri here:)
The cooking time should be timed carefully after you put in the potatoes (last, just before adding liquid) as they can quickly dissolve into nothing if cooked too long. Remember to serve with short/medium grained rice.
TIP: to make a richer tasting curry, add a small cube or two of dark chocolate after putting the roux in.
OTHER HOME VARIATIONS: My personal preference is to use onion and a variety of mushrooms. To make a milder, gentler curry for children, parents add a couple of tablespoons of honey, and a finely grated apple or two. 'Katsu-kare-' is placing a crunchy sliced hot schnitzel (like chicken or pork) on top of each serving of curry before serving...it's delicious, but this is a lot more work. Often curry is served with 'fukujin-zuke' red sweet veggie pickles on the side. There are loads of interesting variations that people come up with, so it's fun to just experiment with what you have, too.
It's an easy, no-fuss family dish...the equivalent of macaroni cheese, so using boxed roux isn't cheating; it's normal :)
You can make lots and eat it again the next day or two, as curry rice again, or on udon noodle soup (kare- udon). We often came home after school and ate it with toast for afternoon tea lol. You can't freeze it though, as the potatoes go very weird.
Depending on the day, I use a number of different methods and ingredients.
I make Japanese curry most days with S&B Medium Roux, but I also make it from scratch regularly as well which allows for the use of various curry powders.
We prefer either shrimp or chicken curry and the additions from what could be the standard Carrots, Potato and Onion include at times:
Shiitake mushrooms dehydrated and sauteed
Frozen peas
Yukon vs russet potatoes
Honey, Worchestershire sauce and soy sauce on occasion.
Dark chocolate sometimes
Grated apple (frequently)
Canned tomatoes
I have spent a total of 15 years of my life back and forth in Japan from the time I was a small child. We regularly had a variety of Japanese Curry, either in franchise restaurants, or made at home. It can be extremely versatile and all up to your taste. The best way to decide what to put in YOUR curry is to experiment.
Finally, it is obviously best served with JAPANESE type rice. Short or medium grain, but short grain, while expensive, is really the best.
Best presentation is formed rice on one side of a large, shallow soup/salad bowl and the curry then spooned into the other side to ring the edges of the rice. A good pinch of fukujinzuke along the edge or topping the rice makes the perfect dish!
Bon Appetit...and itadakimasu!
Added: This question started me thinking about dinner and it gave me an itch, so I made exactly what we're talking about! Included onions, Yukon Potatoes, carrots, celery, Shiitake mushrooms, frozen peas, grated apple, Worcestershire sauce, honey, and used S&B Medium Curry roux.
Small broccoli florets are nice as well (blanch them first, cut the stems short). The crowns will hold a lot of the curry in, which is a plus!
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14529 | What to do with Cocoa Pasta
I have recently bought, on a whim, a package of Cocoa Pasta ("barilotti al cacao"). Is it sweet? What sauce goes with it well?
Boil a piece in the microwave and taste it.
"What sauce goes with it well?" Whipped cream?
Could you add the brand and some listing of the ingredients; in particular, sugar content (to describe intended sweetness, especially if added), cacao/cocoa description (might explain the nature of the component as used), fats (might entail more chocolate bias). A description from the package (and pic?) might also go to some length to provide more insight into what you're asking and explaining why (assuming you are not just asking for a list of things that go with ingredient X).
Hi idober. Please take some time to familiarize yourself with our culinary uses guidelines. Your question in its current form does not meet any of the three criteria. Regarding your two questions, you can answer the first by simply tasting it. I daresay that would lead you to some ideas regarding sauces as well. If you can improve your question to fit within the acceptable guidelines of our site we can easily vote to reopen it. Thanks.
@hobodave, I am a real noob in cooking, and even if I tasted the pasta I would not know what sauce goes with it, or how to find a recipe for it. In any case, I will get familiarized with the FAQ. Thank you for the detailed comment:)
@idober: Well the good news is a question regarding flavor pairings with cocoa pasta is an appropriate question, as long as you provide some form of restriction such that it doesn't encourage a long list of equally valid answers.
I have bough pasta that contained cocoa, here in Italy, and it was not that sweet.
The pasta package suggested to use red pepper in the sauce (e.g. olive oil and red pepper).
Cocoa and pepper works surprisingly well together.
I also found pasta that contained cocoa and red pepper, in Italy. In both the cases, the pasta was made from an artisan company, and the pasta was not always found in the store I usually buy food.
On the one hand we might be bumping up against a language barrier, as there are times where Cacao and Cocoa can be use interchangeably (99% of the time), and there are time where they cannot. I am curious if you could provide more details on the pasta, by way of detailed ingredients or maybe a description (if extant) of how the pasta is made. Some use cacao interchangeably, since cocoa is from cacao; but as cacao has other uses and forms that would be like saying I am eating a Bhut Jolokia Belladonna.
Cacao, in raw, pod form is not going to present the same characteristics of cocoa powder (i.e. try a smoothie with cacao and one with cocoa, they're quite different). Yes it is still bitter and earthy, but there is a brightness and the eathiness is more "green" (sort of like grassy, less of the "roasted" flavor). That said, this gap may be bridged depending on processing. Getting the cacao into a pasta form, I am inclined to assume that the cacao will need to be ground to varying degree. As a paste it would still bear the marks of cacao. Per a thread on cheftalk, I am inclined to guess that if it is ground further and past a powder, possibly powdered with butter etc, it would be more akin to cocoa (bitter and unsweetened presumably, though this would change with process).
If it has the earthier components,
but not quite chocolate-y, from
processing, I would encourage you to
pursue light sauce and things pairing
with asparagus or that otherwise
border on "grassy" when over cooked.
Typically a good counterpoint for
cacao smoothies is banana (I mean,
bananas are a Swiss Army knife in
smoothies, anyway) as opposed to
berries. You might consider
plaintains and aleppo in some form.
Or to push in a different direction I
am inclined to think milder shellfish
would bear well.
You can just google results for
chocolate-y pasta if it is just
basically chocolate pasta.
As a tangent: Some people ascribe health and nutrient benefits to so-called "raw" cacao, if this is up your alley you would likely want to avoid high heat cooking/preparation. That said, after preserving and sitting, it's likely that the benefits are moot.
Cacao is the Italian word for cocoa; as the OP has written barilotti al cacao, he is surely writing that in Italian; the same phrase in Spanish would be different.
@Kiam I was so glad you were in this thread (re:ELU); as I mentioned I am interested in a bit more detail on the actual process to better understand what al cacao meant. Like I point to with the idea of a Habnero Nightshade, mix this with a dose of Americans' tendency to misappropriate others' language I would want to know more before necessarily assuming this is just a wide-open recipe request that can be googled
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14528 | What factors should I consider when buying kitchen tongs?
I consider kitchen tongs one of the most essential kitchen tools but due to a lot of moving around recently I no longer have a pair. Rather than just picking up a cheap pair at the corner store I figured I would ask the experts and get something worth holding onto this time. I'd like to know more about the following:
What material is best and why? I'm familiar with metal tongs but would there be any advantages to other materials such as wood?
I have some non-stick pans. If you recommend metal tongs, are there any available that have some kind of plastic on the tips or some other coating that would not damage the teflon? Cleaning would be a consideration. I don't want something that food is going to get stuck under.
What should I be looking for in a latching mechanism? I've seen types that you can just tip upside down and close which makes closing them very quick, but have also experienced faulty ones that won't open right (usually when you really need them and have only one hand free!)
Is there an ideal length? Obviously too long is going to be awkward and too short gets you too close to the heat, but what I'm wondering here is if I'm missing some advantages to having a certain length, for example, if shorter than X inches it's good for the stove top but dangerous for the oven.
Any comfort factors I should consider such as grips at the top or just go bare?
A negative example: I had wooden tongs which literally broke in my hand when I was holding something. They probably were cheap ones (I don't remember exactly), but still, if you want wood, you probably need to take more care with quality.
Good to know. The only wood seriously suggested so far for full size tongs has been bamboo (by a friend and @TFD). Strong stuff, but still wouldn't want to risk it with something really heavy.
Get good metal
A decent pair of 23 to 30 cm (9 to 12") stainless steel tongs should weigh around 125 to 150 g (4.5 to 5.5 oz); if it weighs less than this it is not going to be strong enough to be truly useful, and will probably bend and break in short order
Longer tongs, say around 35 to 40 cm (13.5 to 15.5") are great if you operate a very hot grill frequently
If it has a locking mechanism (recommended) it should only lock when the tongs are pointed up and squeezed close. It should unlock when pointed down and squeezed. This is normally achieved with a pin just below the hinge pin that is engaged when tipped up. Locks that require fiddling or two hands to operate are a pain, and often fail over time
Go for plain metal, the plastic bits never last very long or stay hygienic, and you will be adding to the rubbish pile before long
I have various tongs like this that have lasted 20 years and are still great
Cheap Chinese tongs are often just chrome plated crap steel. They are bad in so many ways: hygiene, longevity, easy of use, etc
Examples
Good tongs 23 cm with internal locking pin. Cannot bend steel with hands.
Bad tongs with silicone ends that wear out quickly. The two handed locking mechanism that jams or breaks easily
Good info. Any reason for metal over wood? And what do you recommend for teflon?
Most food needing tongs shouldn't need a Teflon pan. I sometimes cook eggs and fish in a Teflon pan and they don't need tongs, just a spatula. Considering that Teflon pans never last that long anyway, a few little scratches now and then shouldn't cause too many problems
Wood tongs are fine, but hard to find good ones that last and that can grab and lift any decent weight. I sometimes use bamboo self sprung tongs for "fiddly bits", they are hard to clean but at least they are compostable :-)
Counterexamples for "you will want tongs and a teflon pan": Fried noodle dishes with a lot of liquid (unless you are good at using cooking chopsticks). Thick sauces with a lot of whole spices that you want to collect out before serving.
I have five different sets of tongs in my kitchen drawer.
One is specifically for getting cooked spaghetti out of a pot:
I never use them but my husband likes them.
One is small (4" long) and I use it for turning bacon (more precise):
One is the classic "good tongs" in @TFDs answer. These are my go-to tongs for day to day work.
One is an awful pair I've had for decades and should throw out:
And one is specifically for getting pickles out of jars:
They were a gift, but I have to say there are times I am glad I own them.
I also have lots of chopsticks.
Assuming you don't want to build a "tong collection" I would say get one good metal pair and a pack of wooden chopsticks. For light weight stuff like picking up an almost-cooked piece of macaroni from the pot so you can taste it, or for working on a Teflon pan, you can easily use the chopsticks, which have the advantage of staying cool - you would burn your mouth on a metal tong when eating macaroni. For everything else (turning steaks or chicken breasts, getting all the roast potatoes out of the hot pan etc) use the good metal ones.
+1 for the chopsticks, I use them too :-) And some good info on tongs for more specific tasks.
Chop sticks are also the best for deep-frying in my experience (unless you've got a full-on fryer with a basket).
I've never tried chopsticks for deep-frying. Good tip.
Like those pickle tongs, must look out for some of those :-)
I think the metalurgy and material questions have been pretty well answered, and Kate went over a few of the different styles ...
As for other considerations:
Length : It's whatever you find comfortable for the most part. I find 12" long to be a good general use size for cooking, serving salad, etc, but I keep a longer pair when grilling (18"?), as it lets me to reach into places better and stay cooler during long grilling sessions.
My neighbor, however, has more shorter ones ... she's got kids, and they're easier for them to use. And there are also some practical reasons for short ones (eg, Kate's second image looks like ones for an ice bucket .. and for those times when I had an ice bucket, it's nice to be able to fit the tongs inside for storage, so you're not digging all over looking for them. I wouldn't get all short tongs, as if they're too short, you can't reach down into larger pots of boiling water to fish stuff out.
Locking : I think this one's personal opinion ... I mean, there's nothing worse than trying to grab tongs to keep something from burning, while your other hand's gunked up, and you can't manage to unlock the tongs one handed ... so making sure they'll unlock I find to be more an issue than how they lock. I personally like the Oxo brand ones, where there's something that specifically sticks out when it's locked, as I can just hit the back down against something (counter, myself, etc) to unlock them.
I know there are some people who don't like them to lock at all, but then you get into issues with storage. I think it was Alton Brown who recommended saving toilet paper tubes, as use can shove non-locking tongs in 'em, so they'll stay closed for storage. (or it could've been my mom ... she semed to use toilet paper tubes for just about anything ... keeping cords on appliances bundled up, etc)
Closing style : Yes, Kate touched on it ... you basically have two main styles ... normally sprung open vs. scissor like. I grew up with the scissor type ... and I hate them. (although, I've never seen the pickle jar ones). The scissor type are affected by where the pivot point is -- closer to the handles means it can open wider, but I find 'em harder to control (the amount of force applied to prevent slipping is a ratio of length of the pivot of the handles over the length from pivot to working end). Closer to the working end means you don't have to squeeze as hard to keep stuff from slipping, but your hand can get tired more quickly as you have to open it wider to grab stuff.
The sprung ones are effectively adjustable in closing force, as you can slide your hand towards the pivot to make them open wider, or closer to the working end to get more force.
Head style : I find the metal 'scalloped edge' head from Oxo is my most versaile ... but they don't make good ice tongs, as the ice cubes will slide around ... for those, you want the ones with almost teeth at the end. Some tongs don't have the agressive arch, which works well for turning sturdier items, but sometimes you want something flatter that's almost more spatula like at the tip (although, the 'pancake turner' ones I've seen advertized on late night tv, that's a spatula with a tong-like arm to come down to hold the pancake while you flip it seems a little odd to me).
And I can see the 'spaghetti tongs' that Kate mentioned being useful for grabbing more slippery things like pasta, and I've also seen them used to grabbing more delicate items like fish, as the larger contact area will make it less likely to leave half of the item in the pan.
Grips : I'm not going to get into the scissor style ones, as except of the pickle ones (where having something other than a class 3 lever makes sense), I'd advise generally avoiding them. But for the sprung ones, I like having a little bit of grip at the handle; it could be texture on the metal, or a rubberized insert, but something not just smooth metal, which are a little more slippery. If you don't have a dishwasher, you might not want to get the ones with a rubber / silicone / plastic/ whatever it is insert, as you're going to have crevices that you can't clean as easily. There's also wooden handled ones, that you often see in grilling/barbequeing sets .. I never much liked those; I have small hands, and they tend to require a much larger grip that I find uncomfortable over long periods.
Hanging : if you hang most of your utensils, having some sort of a loop on the end us quite useful (see TFD's 'bad tongs' example) Although, hanging often doesn't work for longer tongs, as some houses don't have that much under-cabinet space (once you add in the bar, hooks, etc.)
...
And sometimes you just need more than one set of tongs, like Kate mentioned ... they all serve different purposes; growing up, we had one set of wooden tongs that were just exclusively to pull toast out of the toaster oven. (although, I've never seen them for sale ... it's a shame, it'd probably save me from the occassional burn when there's something that looks just close enough to grab, but isn't)
They're like any tool; you might have a favorite knife, but sometimes the larger / smaller / different edge / whatever comes in handy.
+1 for hanging considerations, grips, and a lot of other useful factors to consider. Thanks!
Plain stainless is the best (see the first photo in TFD's answer). That's what all professional cooks use.
I don't like the ones with the locking mechanisms - all the ones I've ever used had problems, either they wouldn't lock, or they'd lock when you didn't want them to, or the lock broke.
Go to a restaurant supply store, and you should be able to get a pair for under 5 bucks. Beware of the cheap light-weight ones - if you can twist the metal with your fingers, it's no good. This is also why I'd prefer not to buy them on-line - from a picture, you have no way of telling how good the metal is, but when you're holding it in your hand, it should be obvious.
I've also had a lot of problems with locking mechanisms and am hoping to find one that unlocks reliably because it is a convenient feature.
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112537 | Dalgona Toffee Burns When Adding Baking Soda
I've tried this every way from Sunday. I've had some success using a bit of corn syrup but I don't get the rise and melt in your mouth Texture that I prefer.
So basically it's 4tbsp of white sugar,1tbsp wate, 1tsp of baking soda.
It seems to me that no matter how lightly I caramelise my sugar I end up with a very dark toffee brittle as the baking soda seems to darken it. I even end up with a lighter ring around the outside and the inside is a much darker crumb.
The texture is perfect, melt in your crumble that can be crumbled over a glass of milk and it's delicious, but it's an acquired taste and I'm struggling to get it to the perfect level of caramelised.
Any suggestions or anyone have experience with this style of puffed candy using baking soda?
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14502 | Dumplings - What happened?
I made chicken and dumplings today and after 20 minutes I checked my dumplings and they were done but disgustingly soft. I let them cook for 10 more minutes and still soft (but I do think they were "done"). After another 25 mintues they were still incredibly soft. What did I do wrong?
To make the dumplings I did the following
1 1/4 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 medium eggs
1/3 cup of almond milk
salt
mixed the dry ingredients, mixed wet ingredients, combined the wet into the dry and make a light dough (no kneading), and dropped the dough in the simmering broth (which was delicious :))
When cooking for for a crispy exterior you want to cook fast and hot. Most dumpling recipes I have seen call for similar ingredients and just about all of them say to boil for about 15 minutes in a broth or soup.
If you are already doing this try mixing up the different ratio of ingredients.
Cooking it longer will not make it harder with this cooking method.
I'll give this a shot. I wonder if they Almond Milk had something to do with it. I'll use cow's next time too.
Sounds to me like your dumpling "dough" did not set up--@cdbitesky is right that continuing to cook them won't help them set up.
Is the almond milk a substitution for cow's milk? My first thought would be that almond milk might not work right--it definitely doesn't have the same properties as regular milk, and that could be crucial in this case.
It could also be that your doughballs cooled your broth enough that the outer surface of the doughball couldn't get "set" fast enough and the flour began to mix with the broth. If that was the issue, I'd think hotter broth, a larger volume of hot broth, or smaller/fewer dumplings at once would help.
Finally, it's possible that your dough was just too wet, so the broth mixed in easier.
For some good suggestions on improving your dumpling dough, check here; they helped me with not only making them but getting better results
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25515 | Are there any scientific advantages to using a cork to stop a wine bottle?
Although I am by no means a connoisseur (I don't really even drink it) I have been investigating the various means by which wine bottles are stopped up.
This was prompted by a negative reaction by a more dipsomanic friend to a screw top wine that I had purchased from my local off licence. The impression I got from him was that a bottle with a cork was less... tacky. And that somehow a bottle with a screw top gave him the impression of teens in parks drinking Lambrini through straws.
I have read a few articles online here, and here which seem to show some benefits to screw top bottles (namely that they aren't affected by TCA and are easier to open).
I have not been able to find any resources which show an actual benefit to the wine that comes from using cork. The usual pros listed include the fact that it supports natural cork plantations (an ethical consideration) or that it just seems to be more sophisticated.
So, is there any reason (when only considering taste) that cork should be used over a screw top?
There have been some very informative answers to this question, and I realised after reading Scivitri's answer that I had made a fundamental error in my initial reasoning. Taste is so intrinsically linked with presentation that I think it's correct to say that cork could improve the taste in certain ways. However TFD's answer is sufficient to determine that there are few purely chemical benefits to cork.
klypos's answer has a good handle of the human element. The comparison of the record vs. CD is interesting too. Noticing records are still popular in certain circles, which has nothing to do with science, just to do with culture
It's more than that. The suppliers of cork cannot respond to the demand of the vintners, so it is sensible to use screwcap alternatives - but only cork is PROVEN to work for long periods of time, and we have to wait and see for the screwcaps and synthetic corks. That's why the top wine producers are still using corks. OTOH I once took the capsule from a bottle of Chateau Lascombes and found a dead maggot underneath that had crawled out of the cork - you don't get that with screwcaps.
Deep subject and very polarizing too. My experience with synthetic corks/caps/Tetra boxes have shown no real difference in the quality of the wine to my taste buds. That said, those wines were not of extreme high quality but of the low to mid price range. Producers of this range love the new sealing methods because they have much LESS spoilage as when they used natural cork. Lower cost wine means lower cost cork being used so you get more spoilage from defects in the cork. As far as high end wine goes, I don't dare say a word as I couldn't tell you if the cork makes a difference or not.
@klypos depends on you definition of "top wine producer" :-). Anyway, many top wine producers change corks every 25 years as insurance against cork failure. So we could say they are proven to last 25 years, which is less than aluminium screw caps!
If a wine maker loves their wine, and their customers, they will use screw caps. All the studies have come back positive for screw caps. See screw cap initiative for starters.
Some main points are:
Corks taint the wine
Corks, real or synthetic, have a very high failure rate. Screw caps are basically 100% effective (maybe too effective)
Wine ages better with a screw cap, as there is no chance of seal failure or tainting
Screw caps have been physically tested for over 30 years, and are designed to last longer than that
You can cellar wine bottles at any angle
The energy used in making a recyclable (aluminium) screw cap is significantly less than used in making a cork
Most corks aren't made in ethical plantations
No special tools are required to open and recap a bottle (cork knives can be a serious health hazard later in the evening).
Wines age more safely. Corks do not breathe, but they may shrink and let wine out (bottles stored on side). Good vineyards will re-cork cellared wine every 20 to 25 years, or when corks start failing. The wine is topped up to the correct level, and often the wine/cork gap is flooded with nitrogen to avoid oxygen contamination which will "soften" the wine.
All in all, some pretty convincing reasons to go with screw caps.
To you last point, the problem with recapping isn't so much with how to cover the hole, but with oxidation and giving acetobacter a chance to get a foothold.
Not too many people seem to have the will power not to finish a opened bottle, hence the "yeah right". This could lead to the discussion on why "wine grade" plastic bagged wine keeps better, and has a lower total energy footprint than bottled wine...
An oenologist (a wine expert), once told me that for young wines, artificial corks (and probably screw caps) are perfectly alright. Young wines should be consumed within a year or two.
However, for aged wines, he'd stick with natural cork, because cork lets the wine breathe, letting the wine mature further inside the bottle.
The debate around synthetic is due to the fact that synthetic cork completely blocks the air. Some wine experts believe that some air is beneficial to the maturation of the wine.
source: http://www.cellaraiders.com/NaturalCorkSyntheticCorkScrewCaps.php
Edit: The cork bottled wine benefits from a process called 'reductive aging'. According to WineMaker Magazine, some wines need a little extra oxygen that seeps through the cork over a long period of time.
Although cork-stoppered wines intentionally allow for miniscule amounts of oxygen to seep in over a long period of time, amounts beyond this can prevent the proper development of bottle bouquet, and proper varietal aromas can also be obscured or destroyed.
Some wines are more affected by oxygen than others (i.e., wines that are low in acidity, body, tannins, etc. -- those traits that allow a wine to age extensively). A key factor influencing the potential oxidation of a given wine is its pH level. As pH rises (i.e., or as acidity falls), the potential for a wine's oxidation increases. When pH rises the wine's phenols are in a state that fosters their reacting to each other and falling out as sediment and increasing the wine's potential for oxidation. Therefore, wines with a higher pH have lower potential for aging than wines with a lower pH.
According to Wikipedia, the benefits of screw caps in this aspect have yet to be proven.
The advent of alternative wine closures to cork, such as screw caps and synthetic corks have opened up recent discussions on the aging potential of wines sealed with these alternative closures. Currently there are no conclusive results and the topic is the subject of ongoing research.
This is similar in premise to another answer that was deleted; it immediately raises the question, why is some air beneficial, as opposed to harmful? Is there a scientific basis or could it simply be something that traditionalists have latched onto as being different from screw caps and therefore better? There's clearly evidence that some air exposure occurs, but why is that an advantage? The phrase "some wine experts" would definitely be flagged as weasel words on Wikipedia.
@Aaronut this isn't wikipedia, and for a good reason
@TFD some experts claim your statement makes sense
@Aaronut, I've extended the answer. I would have said "most wine experts"... :-)
Some science on this matter http://nzic.org.nz/CiNZ/articles/Limmer_69_3.pdf while there is a testable difference in some cases, this suggests it's a non issue and that screw caps can be changed anyway if this is all correct
This is an awkward question, because food is about so much more than chemical interplay on the tongue, and how molecules decay over time. If all we cared about was getting proper nutrition, we would swallow a handful of pills each day which contained the nutrients we need, washed down with a shake containing bulkier elements like proteins and carbs. If all we cared about was taste, we would construct artificial foods with perfectly synthesized flavor profiles. (I'm guessing we'd wrap our perfect mix of nutrients into beverages, if flavor was the goal. After all, we already do have a host of artificial flavored sodas and such out there.)
But food is about so much more than that. Presentation makes food look engaging. Textures and smells have a huge impact on whether you find a food enjoyable. Wine glasses clink (particularly when toasting) to engage your hearing. The ceremony around uncorking a bottle creates a definite atmosphere which will color your perception of a meal, even down to how dishes taste. So, as easy as it may be to find links to articles about bottle seals and preventing air exchange, that is by no means the sum of the flavor in a bottle of wine. And anyone with experience of different dining environments, who enjoys uncorking a bottle, will find much changed in the flavor by the change from a cork to a screw-top. Yes, it's psychological. But really "flavor" is about how chemical impulses from your senses are interpreted by the brain; all flavor is psychological. And all of your senses work together; it's never about a simple signal from one sense.
Now, all that said, if you are NOT steeped in wine tradition, you likely will enjoy a glass of wine from a screw-top bottle perfectly fine. The fluid will be preserved at least as well, and if the only thing which changed in your meal was the un-corking became an un-screwing, a non-connoisseur probably wouldn't even notice. (Except all your "wine snob" friends will have a new topic for the next 20 minutes.) In wines produced to be consumed within 5-10 years, I highly doubt there is any worthwhile difference between any sealing method. And I doubt any of the wine collectors have allowed screw-top bottles into their collections yet, so we're still hundreds of years shy of long-term storage data.
I'll add that I had heard the common idea that cork is a depleting resource. This is often mentioned as a reason for the shift from corks to other closures in wine. I tried to Google this, and found several discussions (on semi-public forums, so I'll leave research to the reader rather than provide links) about this being a myth, and the shift being caused by a desire to prevent contaminants from getting into wine. So, it seems bottlers feel cork is a poor choice for wine.
I realize that you're trying to make a point about presentation, but I think you're off-base in your first paragraph. No combination of pills is going to provide adequate nutrition, and we already have plenty of "artificial foods with perfectly synthesized flavor profiles" (pick up just about anything in the snack food aisle). Presentation certainly does play a role - one which clearly applies to wine - but that is a direct result of prior conditioning and is precisely the issue that the OP was trying to take out of the equation. And it's also why wine tastings are usually blind.
@MissesBrown laugh I wasn't particularly comfortable tacking on my personal opinions, but after several paragraphs, some form of "conclusion" felt proper. But it's easily removed, especially as I don't think it added anything to my answer.
@Aaronut The different perspectives I've seen from people about how wine should be stored, presented, served, etc. lend me to the conclusion there are at least as many viewpoints as there are wine drinkers. It's a massive discussion, which is impossible to distill into a few sparse paragraphs. I wanted to touch on enough of the other perspectives to help readers see some of the broader question. I do believe there is much more to food than the ingredients. I'm not particular to the "cork only" viewpoint, but I know lots of people who are.
Did you even read the question? "So, is there any reason (when only considering taste) that cork should be used over a screw top?"
So there's the science of aging wine, and then there's the neurology and psychology of drinking wine, and wines that we think are more expensive end up affecting our pleasure sensor more. In those cases, they told people what the cost of the wine was (well, lied about the cost).
Presentation matters with food. When people think they're being served something fancier, it affects their perception of it.
So ... if you're going to be serving the wine to someone by the glass, and they don't see you pour, the screw top is superior. If they see you open the bottle, and they're not familiar with the advantages of screw tops, cork is better.
I'm still waiting for someone to make a bottle that's corked + screw top. So you take off the better seal, but can still pull the cork out to impress those people that don't know better.
Oh ... and I should also mention that most people can't tell the difference in blind tastings of wine. If you enjoy your wine, you should do everything in your power to not become a wine connoisseur.
Your critical friend reminds of a scene in an old film where Fred Astaire, an American in Paris, complains that he's searched every local shop for a decent bottle of wine but can only find French stuff ...
Cork is the bark of an oak tree. A lot of the European supply comes from Catalunia, the region that is partly French and partly Spanish south of Perpignan. I've seen them taking the bark off there, they remove a large section around half the trunk, leave the tree alone for thirty years to grow more bark, then they take the other side off. This is not a crop that allows farmers to respond rapidly when demand increases. You have to plant trees for your grandchildren.
Decorative and insulative uses for cork, that were common 40 years ago, have disappeared - cheaper alternatives have been found. They may come back in the future, when new planting allows it. In the same way, the more enlightened wine producers have sought alternative closures for their short life wines, but they are still using corks on the top line wines.
The reason is that corks have a proven history of reliability as a closure, as long as the wine is in contact with the cork. A hundred year lifetime is not uncommon, if you have that much willpower. I have a record of Enrico Caruso that is over a hundred years old, it still plays. I have a CD of Paul Weller that is about twenty years old, but some of that doesn't play. OTOH I can drop a CD and most of the time it won't make a difference.
The demand for bottle closures increases and the cork supply is finite for the forseeable future. There is resistance to change, a lot of snobs don't like wine without a cork, especially in France and Germany where they have been accustomed to corks all their lives.
Cork doesn't improve the taste ...
The tree forms a thick, rugged bark containing high levels of suberin. Over time the cork cambium layer of bark can develop considerable thickness and can be harvested every 9 to 12 years to produce cork. source Wikipedia.
I'm repeating what I was told, regional variations and customs must apply - it is easy to see that you could take less bark at more frequent intervals, and the tree would grow better. If you like, I'll edit Wikipedia to say that - it is no big deal.
Have you seen the corks made from crumbs of cork re-constituted. That is what they do when you are desperate for cork material!
A lot of corks these days are constructed from pieces, especially champagne and sparkling wine corks. Makes you wonder what they use as glue.
The only part that attempts to answer the question is your last 'sentence' and it's a pretty pathetic answer
The question is "are there any scientific advantages to using a cork". The answer is that cork has been proven to work for many decades, the screw caps and synhetic corks have yet to be proved. Sorry if I put so much detail in that you couldn't work that out for yourself.
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25293 | Is it normal for ginger paste to spit violently in oil?
One of my favourite recipes calls for a 3cm piece of ginger peeled and grated. The recipe asks that I heat some vegetable oil in a hot wok, then fry the ginger for 30 seconds before adding the meat and, later, the rest of the ingredients.
I am, I'm sure, a fairly lazy chef. I don't tend to buy fresh ginger root and instead I buy this: Bart's Ginger in Sunflower Oil.
When I add the ginger to the oil it has will always, without fail, transform into a roiling, spitting, volcano of fury. Small pieces of extremely hot ginger/oil will fly all over my hob and land, more often than not, somewhere on my skin.
Is this normal, and how can I avoid it? I presume it is affected by the following factors:
The heat of the wok is too low/high
There is too much vegetable oil in the wok
The wok is not the right size (maybe uneven heat distribution?). Not confident about this.
However, it actually only occurred to me recently that the fact that the ginger I buy is in sunflower oil could be a contributing factor.
I call this the "storming a Medieval castle" experience for how you get splashed with hot oil. It's a good reason for telling other people to stand back when you're cooking with oil.
I have taken to using the wok lid as a makeshift shield. I am this close to purchasing gauntlets and a helmet.
This is more likely due to the other ingredients in the paste (sugar, citric acid, vinegar and salt; mainly the vinegar) hitting the hot oil. It's the same reason you never throw water on a frier fire. Oil and water/vinegar don't mix!
You can avoid it by not being lazy and using fresh ginger, which is much nicer anyway, or adding the ginger to the oil before it gets too hot.
You might also be able to avoid it by draining or squeezing the paste to get rid of some of the liquid before using it, at the cost of some of the flavor.
Yes, that sounds most likely. I will give fresh ginger a go next time.
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17566 | Keeping food warm: does cast iron make a suitable potluck vessel?
I'm making this hash recipe for a potluck at work tomorrow.
Tonight I did all my prep:
Peeled, diced, roasted the sweet potatoes
Diced the onion
Diced the apples (stored in water w/lemon juice)
Cut the bacon into lardons
Sliced the green onions
So tomorrow morning should be a strait-forward "pluck from the fridge, heat it all up" affair. I was initially going to do this in a big saute pan but am now considering using my lidded cast-iron fryer. Basically when the hash is near done, I could just put the whole lot into a bag (w/proper heat protection, of course) and head to work.
My questions are:
Will the reactive qualities of cast iron be undesirable for this type of "longer term" food storage/serving?
Will the hash actually stay warm for the 2.5-3 hours I'll need it to?
If anybody has better tips for keeping a hash-like dish warm long enough for a lunchtime potluck, I'll take em!
All the cast iron pans I've got came with instructions that read along the lines of "suitable for serving, but not storage of food".
I'm not sure what would suffer most though, your pan, or the food, or both, depending on length of time. My guess is that the length of time you actually can store food in a cast iron pan/pot safely somewhat depends on the ingredients used. For example, a tomato sauce would be less good to store in a cast iron pan than fried potatoes.
Regarding the temperature, I'd say it depends on how well insulated your "bag" is. Cast iron distributes temperature very nicely, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will cool less quickly than another type of pan (of same size/thickness) when taken off the heat.
Regarding keeping food warm, I did see insulated pots similar to a thermos flask you'd use for hot coffee or tea, which are made to store food. They have a big enough opening to be filled, and to be eaten from.
For the better solution, if you do enough potlucks, or even if you don't, but you need to get a baking dish, Pyrex has a line called 'Pyrex to Go' which come with a tight fitting lid, an insulated carrier, hot & cold packs.
For those times when I'll need to hold things for even longer, I'll put the whole thing (insulated container and all), into a soft-sided insulated cooler that I have that it just barely fits into. (and if I'm really paranoid, I pack the bottom w/ towels, and more on top for extra insulation).
...
Now, all of that being said .... the easiest way to handle these sorts of things are:
Plan a dish that doesn't need be served warm.
Find if there's some office that has an oven, hot plate, or microwave, and select container as appropriate. (strangely, I've actually worked in a place where there was an full stove w/ oven a couple floors above me, in where the executives had their offices ... why, I have no idea.)
Select containers with a good thermal density (in this case, the cast iron is great)
Select containers with a low surface to volume. (ie, more 'squat', not tall & skinny or low & thin)
Use heat packs ... something else to store & retain heat. (the reusable ones if you can, not the ones for emergency kits)
Ask your boss in advance if you can come in late ... your missing an hour or two of work is better than 1/2 the staff getting food poisoning.
If you're going to have electricity wherever you're storing it, consider a slow clooker / crock pot ... or, wrap the whole thing in an electric heating pad until serving.
If it's going to be in a well supervised place, the next alternative is a chafing disk that uses either sterno, or tea candles. They make electric ones, but I'd rather go with the heating pad, myself. (under a tray, so stuff doesn't drip on it)
...
And one problem with all of these solutions, except for finding an oven ... your food's going to steam the whole time as you'll have a covered container, which might not be all that great for a hash. And most places might look at you strangely if you brought in a blowtorch to dry out the top.
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15101 | How long can I keep a chicken carcass and still make stock from it?
I bought a whole chicken for dinner two days ago. Immediately after quartering it, I put it back into a zip-top bag and put it in the bottom of the fridge. So, roughly around 40 hours ago.
I'd like to make stock with it today. And insight on whether or not I should move forward?
possible duplicate of How long will uncooked chicken keep in the fridge?
Do you have any idea how fresh the chicken was? Expiring date or something?
If your quartering of the chicken was done quickly then you are just asking how long you can keep a chicken in the fridge.
How long will uncooked chicken keep in the fridge?
Your 40 hours is fine.
Don't forget that you can freeze a carcass too, which keeps until it starts to lose its moisture (4-6 months). I often wait until I have a few carcasses, extra veg, and an afternoon off to make my stocks.
There are two angles to this:
How long before it makes stock taste bad?
Smell is a good cue here, but I have made stock even with meat and bones that smell a bit "off." No bad flavor or smell was noticeable in the soup/stew.
How long before it is unsafe?
The long periods of high temperature involved in making stock will kill any germs. I have used old meat for this purpose and had no nausea or diarrhea afterwards (the usual signs of food poisoning). At high levels of decay where you notice a rotting or putrescent smell there may be some unhealthy compounds created that are not destroyed by cooking, but I am sure the smell taste will be so bad in that case, that it would be difficult even to swallow.
At normal refrigeration temperatures, it takes much much longer than 40 hours to reach either of these thresholds.
Obviously I agreed with your conclusions in this case but, on safety: 1- toxins produced by bacteria won't be broken down by boiling and 2- active toxin producing bacteria aren't always detectable by sight or smell.
Thanks for the clarification. This is something I would like to learn more about. Through unrefrigerated human history how did people judge meat safety? What drying/preserving/fermenting practices reliably make old meat safe to eat? What are the adaptations that allow other (ie nonhuman) carnivores to safely eat uncooked unrefrigerated meat?
J. Winchester- I'm not an expert of culinary anthropology but it might be useful to remember that people didn't always eat food safely. They died. A lot. And from what I have read raw meat is more dangerous now with industrialized farming.
Unfortunately it is difficult to judge historical rates and types of food poisoning. I imagine there was less chance of dying from undetectable killers like botulin and salmonella. I have heard for example food poisoning rates in Inuit traditional diets increased once they started sealing their fermenting meat in plastic vs burying in the tundra.
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15263 | Olive oil gets bitter in blender?
I read somewhere -- maybe a James Peterson cookbook? -- that putting olive oil in the blender for more than a few seconds will make it bitter. However, many recipes for hummus, aioli, and other things call for blending olive oil. At times I've felt that making hummus without the oil, and then stirring it in at the end gives a better flavor, but I can't say for sure.
Does anyone have any advice about this?
Well, this is a common confusion between "sour" and "bitter".
The better your olive oil is, the lower its acid value - extra virgin olive oil has the lowest acid value, it is pressed in ways that reduce contact with atmospheric oxygen. Contact with oxygen increases the acid value of olive oil.
Whizzing olive oil in a blender aerates it, and the resultant oxidation increases the acid value, ie it gets more acidic and tastes "sourer".
Lots of people can discern the change, but they don't use the right word to express it ...
Thank you, good explanation. Interesting that both the recipes I mentioned also typically include lemon juice, so a little sour flavor from the olive oil shouldn't be a problem.
@handsofaten - I think I have oversimplified in the answer - the things that oxidise to provide fatty acid products are aldehydic and other flavour components, so it is the removal of these that gives the flavour change. Whatever, to get a bitter flavour would require the production of basic products from oxidation, rather than acidic products, so to refer to the oil as becoming bitter is a misnomer in any case.
Hammering extra virgin olive oil in a blender or food processor allows astringent ("bitter") tasting polyphenol compounds to be detectable by the tongue.
Cook’s Illustrated explained it in their March & April 2009 issue, page 30:
Extra-virgin olive oil contains bitter tasting polyphenols coated by
fatty acids, which prevent them from dispersing. If the oil is
emulsified in a food processor, these polyphenols get squeezed out and
the liquid mix turns bitter.
And people pay good money for the bitter tasting compounds...weird
This is misinformation. Serious Eats even debunks it here: https://www.seriouseats.com/2018/06/does-blending-olive-oil-make-it-more-bitter.html
@Allison thanks for the link. Interesting that it's by the same website that convinced me the bitterness was due to the blender. I'm not convinced their latest findings are definitive, but it does cast doubt on my explanation. I know I personally have made the same mayo recipe (without garlic) where the only difference (that I knew of) was canola vs extra virgin olive oil. The canola mayo was excellent. The EVOO mayo was absolutely inedible. The only thing clear to me is that nobody has done a rigorous experiment the determine the real mechanism.
I've never had olive oil go bitter from blending (and I make an emulsified olive oil based pesto in a vitamix, the hammery-est of blenders, with cups and cups of polyphenol-filled greens at least once a week), but I always use fresh, high-quality olive oils and can smell rancid or near-rancid oil from a mile away. Sounds like rancid oil to me or, as another commenter pointed out, the inability to distinguish between bitterness and the increase in acidity from aeration. Another thing to consider is you weren't using real olive oil -- 70-80% of the olive oil market is saturated with cheap fakes.
@Allison my oil definitely wasn't rancid, and I can tell the difference between bitter and sour (acid). But maybe it was counterfeit oil? That would help explain why the phenomenon is so hard to pin down.
@Allison that Serious Eats article was updated after the author had several discussions with a person who works at an olive oil company. Read from where Leandro Ravetti is introduced. Basically the phenomenon is real, and is caused by certain polyphenols when they're vigorously blended into the aqueous phase of an emulsion. There is a lot of variation in polyphenol quantity amongst olive oils, and it doesn't correlate with oil quality. So you were on the right track, the answer lies in the brand/source of the olive oil itself. That's why some people never have an issue.
I'm not denying the existence of polyphenols in olives, but your answer still stretches the bounds of logic/science unless a person is creating a water-based emulsion (which something like mayonnaise certainly is not) because in a fat-based emulsion the fat encapsulates the water particles that the polyphenols might be attracted to and helps mask/balance bitter tastes.
You also still ignore that the (often bitter) greens used to make pestos are extremely high in polyphenols, and these bitter flavors in both greens and oils are always detectable and perceptible (unless one has a very poor palate); blending them might make them more perceptible depending on aeration, phenol type, and water content of your emulsion, but that's not the same as the initial claim you made in your answer (namely, that blending allows the tongue to detect olive polyphenols).
Perhaps you could share a link or two to support your opinion? The source you provided reversed their stance.
The Olive Centre suggests that; other factors can also affect the quality of your oil which include air, light, heat, water and too much sediment. Light speeds up the oxidation process which shortens the shelf life of the oil.
Also, there was research carried out which confirmed that dark glass (preferably browner) Antique Green was one of the best ways in which to miminise oxidation compared to other types of packaging.
For further reading here are come suggested links:
http://www.theolivecentre.com/Olive-Equipment-Menu/LA-OLIVE-OIL-STORAGE-SETTLING/ARTICLE-Oil-Storage-Settlling-for-Oil-Quality
Effect of Storage Containers on Olive Oil Quality: https://rirdc.infoservices.com.au/items/09-160
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22777 | What is the difference between pot roasting and braising?
I'm looking at this guide for cooking cuts of beef:
http://www.newworldfrontiersman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/1288720744352.jpg
and some are supposed to be braised, while others are supposed to be pot roasted. As far as I can tell, both are seared and then partially covered in simmering water. What is the difference between these cooking methods?
Interesting question. I've always understood "pot roasting" to be a type of braising. I find it odd that that table calls them out separately.
They definitively used be considered differently. But know they are pretty much considered the same. If I remember correctly it had to do with the liquid being added. The differences obviously didn't seem to be that big a deal to me to remember how exactly it was classified. But basically they are both a combination dry and wet cooking process.
come to think of it I think I remember what I was told the difference is. It doesn't have to do with the liquid at all. It is the cut. Full roast are pot roasted, steaks and similar cuts (short ribs) are braised, cubes and dices are stewed. Anyway, I am pretty sure that was one of the differences but again, not a big deal for me to use two terms.
Pot Roasting = Braising
This more recent document from the same association, Cattlemen's Beef Board and National Cattlemen's Beef, supports this by using them interchangeably: 3 Simple Steps For Braising/Pot Roasting Beef
I was trying to figure out what the document from your question may have been implying by the cuts the different cooking techniques were recommended for. And I'd guess, because Pot Roasting is applied to more connective heavy cuts, that braising would be a shorter cooking time. That's my best guess.
that alone doesn't mean that they are in fact the same thing. Some people do still consider them as different. An example is that rouxbe.com considers them different in their courses.
My Fanny Farmer recipe for pot roast does not submerge the roast in the liquid. So I would interpret the two words like this:
braised: cut into pieces (perhaps bite-sized, perhaps serving sized) and submerged in simmering liquid for a long time, probably with lid to prevent liquid loss
pot roasted: left whole and put into a lidded pot with an inch or so of liquid, held out of the liquid by a trivet or saucer or just a lot of vegetables at the bottom of the pot, simmered on the stove or in the oven
Both ways are moist heat, but there are differences.
I think this is more accurate than the accepted answer, but it should be noted that all of these definitions are very loose and open to interpretation. Pot roasts are not always held out of the liquid, but are always left whole. Braises are not always cut into pieces, but are always (if not submerged in) sitting in liquid. Lids are usual for both processes but not always...etc etc
pot roast and braising are the same method of cooking.the only difference is that for pot raost we use a whole piece of meat like chuck eye roast.on the other hand for braising we use 1 and 1/2 inch thick steaks like osso buco(cross cut shank).we cut osso buco this way I mean their thickness- in order to keep the steaks from breaking up during cooking.cause if they break up then they will be served as stew.therefor the differences between pot roast,braising and stew are the type of cuts we are going to cook and serve.
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23381 | If a recipe doesn't specify the type of vinegar, is there a standard type implied?
I occasionally come across recipes that call for vinegar, but don't specify which of the many varieties they mean. (A recent example is this recipe for a corn and pepper salad, which just says "2 tbsp. vinegar".)
While I recognize that sometimes this may just be that the recipe is badly written, I've encountered it often enough to wonder: is there a "standard" or implied type of vinegar that should be used when a recipe simply calls for vinegar? Or is it assumed that the chef will be familiar with the flavor profiles of the dish they are trying to make and will be able to choose an appropriate vinegar by their own knowledge and discretion?
I've been unable to find an authoritative answer to this: other forums provide conflicting answers with no documentation or reasoning for the answer put forth, or make it seem like your only options are white vinegar and cider vinegar.
I don't think there is any “standard” type of vinegar worlwide. In recipes for French dishes, an unspecified vinegar can be assumed to be a red wine vinegar. Mien seems to have a different opinion, so I'd say it's pretty much a cultural issue.
I'll agree here. For an American recipe, white vinegar; for French, white wine vinegar, for Greek, red wine vinegar; for British, malt vinegar.
Well, see, we already don't agree on the French standard :)
I would never assume any one kind would be appropriate for all dishes. Each vinaiger has its own flavor profile and would bring something unique to the party. By always using one type you'd potentially be adding an offputting flavor to a dish that needed a more sour or sweet vinaiger than the one you use.
If a recipe asks for "vinegar", a standard type is implied, namely white vinegar.
There certainly are more vinegars than just the white and the cider one (white wine or balsamic are also often used).
However, cultural differences can play a role. I've found on wikipedia that English people put malt vinegar on their fish 'n' chips. If you would see a recipe for fish 'n' chips that calls for "vinegar", my guess is that malt vinegar is meant. I'm sure there are other cultures which use other vinegars as standard. You can always ask some people in your environment. If they all agree, you can assume that's your standard vinegar.
You can't subsitute white for all vinegars -- they have different acidities, which is very important when you're pickling. The sweetness of some vinegars is important to the flavors, so if you replace balsamic or similar, you're going to need some sugar or honey to balance it out. See food subs for recommendations : http://www.foodsubs.com/Vinegars.html
@Joe, yes, you're right. I deleted that section.
Actually, at least in the US, most vinegars you purchase are standardized between 4-7% acidity no matter the type of vinegar. The only time you'll run into higher acidities is if you or someone you know produces it on their own.
I am not a chef, so for me it comes down to personal preference. I love using vinegar, but like regular wine you really should pare it with what you are cooking. Yes it could be a regional thing, but again for me it comes down to simple choices.
If you don’t want to add flavor you just want the punch or enhancing
other flavors - Plain white (I use rice wine vinegar in my Pot Roast)
If you want to add flavor;
Red, dark & heavy sauces – Red wine vinegar
Light & white sauces- Plain white, White wine, Sherry, Champaign etc.
Pasta and regular salads- Any of the above including Balsamic & Apple Cider
Fruit- Balsamic reduce with a little sugar added (Yummy!)
It is really important to pick a good brand for Pasta and Regular salads since they won’t cook out. If you don’t think there is a difference I challenge you to do a taste test. Start with the good one and compare to a cheap one. Also watch out for artificially flavored vinegars, the flavor does not cook down or blend at all. That is my two cents for ya.
The American Standard is White Vinegar when your recipe does not specify. That is the official word on it from a chef.
It's hard to be an official source when you're anonymous.
White Vinegar isn't a complete answer. Perhaps you mean White Distilled Vinegar? If so, I would agree that's the default.
When I was growing up in the 70’s, mom and grandma only had one kind of vinegar they cooked with, which was red wine vinegar. That was “vinegar” back in the dark days before new flavors from around the world started easing into our pantries. My guess, if it’s a recipe out of a family cookbook in the northeastern or Midwest US, that’s what they are talking about. And not knowing better, I will try balsamic in that case.
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15239 | How to tell when fish is done baking?
I've been told that the top should easily flake with a fork (this is when baking skin-side down). Is there any fish for which that is not the case? And what should the middle look like with which types of fish? Or would it be better to go by thermometer? In which case is it usually, "Once the middle hits 140F, it's done"?
I have a simple way to do this for all types of fish.
You simple find a chopstick and insert the chopstick in the middle of the fish toward to the fish head, which means it's usually thickest part of the fish.
If you can easily insert the chopstick through the fish, it is usually fully cooked. If you find it difficult to insert the chopstick or feel your chopstick is stuck when there bone is, it generally means uncooked. Otherwise, you can also feel the temp of the chopstick and it should be warm in the middle the part you insert into the fish.
Inserting the chopstick shouldn't damage your fish as the hole is small.
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39628 | What are some alternatives to xanthan gum for stabilizing mayonnaise?
Xanthan gum helps keep mayo emulsified through the jar being pasteurized, shipped, stored on the shelf for months, and kept in the refrigerator after opening. The diet of my customers does not allow for highly processed additives or anything made from grains or legumes. What alternatives are there to Xanthan gum, and in which amounts should I use? How do the alternatives compare? What is the best way to learn more about this topic? Additives that fit the diet include agar, acacia gum, and chicory root inulin.
Is there a reason why you can't use the tradition egg yolk?
The recipe does have egg yolk, but from what I understand, that is usually not enough by itself to stand up to heat/time/travel. The average commercial mayo both has eggs and xanthan gum. Do you think just adding more egg yolks would make up for the lack of xanthan gum?
It depends on your ratios of course, but I usually use only 1 egg yolk and I've had no issues.
Xanthan gum emulsifies by being a hydrocolloid, so agar and acacia have a chance of also working since they are also hydrocolloids. The amounts would have to be altered as agar sets much more solidly than xanthan gum, and gum acacia sets less solidly.
Lecithin is a commonly used emulsifier in mayonnaise (probably even more so than xanthan gum). It's normally obtained from soy, but sunflower lecithin is also available. Usually a fairly small amount is sufficient. My experience is with soy lecithin, but only a very small amount was needed: about a teaspoon to emulsify a quart of mayo.
Of course,t he most traditional emulsifier is simply egg yolks, which most homemade mayonnaise will already contain. Unless you need to keep it emulsified for really long periods of time, the yolks alone should suffice.
Even without the eggs, you can keep mayo emulsified for shorter periods of time using vegetables. Serious Eats did an article on it.
Thank you! So eggs have lecithin, and my recipe has eggs. I was thinking I need something stronger than lecithin, because commercial brands have both eggs and xanthan gum. Do you think I can just add more egg yolks to make up for the fact that I won't have xanthan gum? Or are agar/acacia more effective - are hydrocolloids better for stabilizing through heat/time/travel than phospholipids?
If you have a recipe that already calls for egg yolks, it should be fine as is. It's my understanding that hydrocolloids primarily emulsify by trapping the water in tiny droplets, which makes it harder for the water to collect back together and break the emulsion. Eggs should emulsify fine on their own for up to around a week in my experience, but the gums will help keep it emulsified for much longer periods.
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22557 | Ravioli filling to edge ratio
I made ravioli for the first time the other day. I used a mix of eggs and water to brush the eggroll wrappers I was using. I was fairly paranoid about my ravioli opening up during boiling, and as a result, my fork-pressed edges seemed bigger than might have been necessary.
What is the usual filling to edge ratio for ravioli?
Usually I look for an edge about 0.5cm (1/4 inch) wide, unless they are very large (9cm or more) ravioli, in which case I'll allow 1 to 1.5cm.
However, if you're using egg roll wrappers, rather than fresh dough you made yourself, you might want to allow more generous margin than that, as you did. Therefore the ratio depends on both the type of noodle dough used, as well as the size of the ravioli.
Other things which make ravioli pop open are:
not getting the edges wet or not pressing them enough
air trapped in the ravioli
filling or oil caught in the edge dough
overcooking
rough handling during or after cooking
a filling which is too wet (uncooked spinach, for example)
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74921 | Substitute for Robin Eggs malted milk candy
This summer, we made some great malted milk ice cream and mixed in some crushed Robin Eggs that we'd bought on sale after Easter. I'd love to make the same ice cream again, but the problem is: it's not Easter and I can't find Robin Eggs anywhere.
Are there other candy that I could use? I don't think regular milk balls would work as well since they don't have the same malted milk to chocolate ratio, and I'm more interested in the malted milk part than the chocolate part. The candy coating adds a nice crunch and color as well, but that's more of a bonus than requirement.
I know there are some online stores that sell them year round, but they tend to be pretty expensive.
I suggest Whoppers. There's no crunchy candy exterior and the chocolate is somewhat thinner (I think), but those seemed to be low on your list of requirements.
They are somewhat unusual to find in grocery stores, but you may be able to find fun-size packs easily in post-Halloween sales.
You could perhaps supplement the Whoppers with some regular crushed M&Ms, which will give you both the extra chocolate and the candy coating to tweak the ratios to your desire.
I think the idea was to not have too much chocolate.
Finally got around to making the ice cream and used Whoppers and it came out great! I don't think I miss the crunchy candy coating enough to bother with M&Ms next time either.
You could use malt ball 'centers,' which are not coated in chocolate. They're available online from a variety of sources, often those selling nuts or candy in bulk, such as Nuts.com. As @Megha suggests, the addition of a handful of chopped M&Ms would give you the candy coating crunch and a small amount of chocolate.
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20229 | Does it matter what type of wine is used to make mulled wine?
I had mulled wine at a French restaurant I went to for dinner last night, and it was a very dry wine - which was interesting, since there was definitely added sugar and the spices are typically something I think of as paired with sweeter flavors. It resulted in an odd (but not unpleasant) mixture of flavors.
I know that mulled wine / glühwein / glögg varies depending on region and culture, but is there a class of red wine that is typically used to make mulled wine? Or does it depend entirely on personal preference or what's available?
I'm leaving this question without an accepted answer because the two are polar opposite points of view, and I don't find one of them more compelling than the other.
Both opposites can be found in german Glühwein culture too - if you go to a german Weihnachtsmarkt, there will be booths with "Winzerglühwein" - "Vintner's mulled wine" that are made from a known wine type, and there will be a lot of cheap and deliciously nasty kinds - we wouldn't want to miss either of these - probably because we take some satisfaction at times in not wasting premium wine if we perfectly well know we want to get potted ;)
Speaking from personal experience mulling wine many times:
In general, you want a dry or semidry red, of innocuous flavor profile. You do not want anything with strong tannic, acidic, alcoholic, brett or sweet flavors; these will become concentrated while mulling and quite unpleasant. Your ideal mulling wine is an inexpensive, inoffensive, young merlot, burgundy, petite syrah, tempranillo, beaujolais, or other "middle-of-the-road" wine, maybe slightly on the sweet side. Cabernet sauvignon, chianti, rioja, and similar wines tend to be poor choices, although of course it depends on the individual wine. Also, look out for high-sulfite-added wine which also can develop off flavors.
I'll contradict Sarge here and say that you do not want a wine which is turning towards vinegar; you'll end up with a very sour crock pot full of mulled vinegar. However, mulling is an excellent thing to do with wines which have been oxidized (but not vinegared) and lost a lot of their flavor, either through being open too long or too long on the shelf. Certainly if you spend more than $9 a bottle in the USA for wine for mulling, you've made a mistake.
This is very similar to how you would choose a sangria wine. The main difference is that for sangria you want bright and acidic flavors, whereas for mulled wine you want heavier, darker flavors.
Traditionally, (and by that I mean Western tradition, mainly French), mulled wine was made to save wine that was close to or already had turn toword the vinegar. In one of my old cookbooks (a collection of recipes from the 13th though 17th century) the mulled wine is recommended to be made with the leavings of multiple bottles and bottom of the cask. As such, it doesn't really matter from that stand point.
However, chosing a wine that has a lot of bold flavors in it will allow you to use a more aggressive spice profile than one that doesn't. One of my favorite things to do when mulling wine is find a wine that I found to be "one-note" and add spices to contrast that. I also tend to mull wine that I otherwise dislike (Its a great way to get rid of those bottles that you get over the holidays where people chose on price and not on the bottle). I have also found that since you are heating it, dryer wines will devolp a lot of sweetness and sweet wines can become cloying, so I would steer clear of dessert wines. (Although I have a friend that makes a "sweet and spicy" mulled wine that is always great, so that rule might be ignorable.)
Really, I think adding spices that complement the wine you are using is the best way to proceed. If you taste it and you think "a little of X would make this perfect" it should be a prime canidate.
Judging by taste, this must certainly be true of most glühwein I've had at Christmas markets, but isn't something I'd want to replicate when making it myself.
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32296 | How can I make zucchini bread less moist?
I made zucchini bread, and it turned out very tasty but too moist. It was very dense and somewhat sticky - not in an underdone way, though. I actually baked it for 5-6 minutes longer than the recipe called for (and I know my oven temperature is accurate). It was moist but cooked through when I took it out of the oven (and when I ate a piece about 10-15 minutes later), but as it cooled, it sank in the middle and was much stickier and less bread-y.
If I make this again, how can I make the texture lighter and drier? I’m considering lessening the amount of zucchini used, but do I just add more flour in a 1:1 ratio for whatever zucchini I leave out? Or do I need to adjust the other ingredients, too?
This was the recipe I used, made in a single large loaf pan: http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2010/06/25/recipe-zucchini-bread/
How many loaves, and what size, did you make from that recipe?
was your zucchini fresh or frozen? and did you pat it dry before you baked with it?
Being organic, there can be a lot of variation in the moisture level of your zucchini. With that said though, one of the common the most common signs of an undercooked quick bread is that it falls in the middle and is sticky. How did you check that they were done? Usually, you would insert a toothpick in the center are lightly press the center to see if bounces back (muck like a cake)
@djmadscribbler There is not that much variation--its nearly all water in any case!
I made one loaf, I think my pan is 10x5x3"? My zucchini was fresh - I did pat it dry. I think it might need to be pressed/dried more, though. And yes, I inserted a toothpick, it came out clean, and it was springy.
@Laura That recipe's... eccentricities... to be generous, are most magnified if you make a single gigantic loaf. Your description indicates a badly underbaked loaf, due to the recipe being poorly written in my opinion. See my full answer below for more.... And I do recommend doing your testing on muffins, they are faster and easier to experiment with than large loaves.
@SAJ14SAJ I know that they are "nearly all water" but I've had them leach various amounts during shredding, and the easiest way to describe that is "some zucchini are drier than others" etc. I agree with you that the recipe is flawed. Reading through the comments on that site, I was struck by the numbers of people who were reporting completely opposite results ("too dry" or "too wet").
drier or wetter zucchini in a cake recipe usually falls within the range of workable -it's the turning to water in the middle of baking that can sink the boat- add all the recipe's salt to zucc first and let 'cry' before finishing batter and see if results improve (sugar accomplishes this as well but interferes with some recipes steps)
Comparing this recipe to other zucchini bread recipes, and other muffins/quick breads, it seems to specify:
Lower temperatures
More overall moisture
Shorter baking times
than might be expected. I suggest you find and try a different recipe to try. It is very disturbing how casual it is with pan sizing and baking times--and it gave you no test to know when the loaves are fully baked. It does not seem like a well tested, well written recipe.
If you really want to make this one work, I would go with muffins (I always go with muffins); I suspect you will get nearly three dozen from the recipe as written, assuming a standard sized muffin tin.
I would adjust as follows:
Preparation and Ingredients
Lightly squeeze the zucchini after shredding to reduce the moisture
Replace half the honey with sugar or brown sugar (again to reduce moisture, and lower moisture retention)
Consider replacing half of the whole wheat flour with regular all purpose for a less dense structure
Baking
Increase the temperature to at least 350, maybe even 375 or 400, you would have to experiment (see timing below)
Bake approximately 18 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out (nearly) clean and the tops are well browned; if this doesn't happen by the 22 minute mark, increase the temperature for the next batch
Keep notes so you know what will be successful.
The squeezing (or patting) could be key - you can really remove arbitrarily much water that way, since zucchini are mostly water to begin with. Larger ones have higher water content, too.
I agree--but I also think that was a terribly poorly written recipe. Zucchini is essentially 95% water in any case, so that is a lot of water in quick bread, where the recipe has relatively short baking times at low temperatures. Its quite odd.
Yeah, I normally make muffins, but felt like doing bread this time. I'll definitely look for another recipe, just wondering what the proper ratios would be for flour and fresh zucchini - or if I just need to do a better job squeezing water out of the zucchini before I use it.
Do you have a good source for what the "expected" temperatures and baking times would be for quickbread with fresh produce?
@laura Partly, I just googled "whole wheat zucchini bread" and compared the ratios of ingredents (the zucc counts as water, btw, for this purpose), and looked at their baking instructions. I also cross compared pumpkin muffins (my favorite--see my profile :-) And finally, its just experience because I love muffins. And cats. But my muffins never break my dishware.
Also, if you have a kitchen scale, I recommend using it. Each "cup" of zucchini should weigh no more than about 7.5 ounces or so. In recipes like this, the fruit (pumpkin, banana, zucchini, is pretty much all liquid in how it functions in the chemistry.
For starters, I'd give pressing the grated zucchini with paper towels a shot. You'd be surprised how much liquid you can get out of it.
I'll second this, or alternately press them through a sieve. In making ground beef kabob, I use grated onion, but too much moisture and the thing falls off the skewer, so by pressing it through the sieve, I greatly reduce the amount of liquid in the remaining grated onion mixture.
+1; Zucchini is 94.8% water by weight. I'm generally able to squeeze out enough water to reduce the weight in half.
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30674 | How to ensure that the chicken meat is not over cooked or under cooked?
I am cooking the chicken breast (together with bones and cut into 4 main pieces) in a soup.
(The soup was cooked with some other ingredients first and then the chicken was pieces was thrown after 1 hour of cooking the soup. The fire was removed after boiling the chicken for 15 minutes)
However, I notice that the chicken meat when taken out, some are rather uncooked (the outside of the meat is OK but the inside towards the bones is not. Some are rather overcooked as the meat is tough to chew (the outside layer was like plastic and the inside towards the bones are rather hard).
How do I maintain the consistency such that all the 4 pieces of meat are not under cooked and over cooked?
Overcooked chicken (if boiled) is not chewy.
It is fairly atypical to cook large, bone-on pieces of chicken—including breasts—directly in soup. After all, who wants to find bones in their soup? (Making stock is another story....)
Bone on chicken breasts difficult to cook evenly, due to their shape. Some parts are thin, and will cook through rapidly, and other parts are thick and require a much longer time to cook. This makes it easy to have overcooked and undercooked areas. They are also a little unforgiving in soup if overcooked, as they tend to become tough or stringy in texture.
Normally, chicken would be pre-cooked via another method, and then cut up or shredded, and placed in the soup in the last few minutes in order to heat through for service. My favorite method of preparing chicken to use in soup or other recipes is to roast it, still skin on for flavor, but any method will do. The skin can be removed prior to adding the chicken to the soup, if you desire.
Note that this method will not add the flavor and gelatin (for that rich texture) from the bones to your soup. Instead, as cook chicken parts for other dishes, save the bones and other scraps in the freezer. When you have several pounds (a couple kilograms), you can use them to make chicken stock. Homemade chicken broth is a fantastic base for soup, and will help you achieve an excellent flavor.
If you absolutely want to cook chicken breast directly in your soup, I recommend that you de-bone it. Cut it into bite sized pieces. As one of the last finishing steps in preparing the soup, reduce the pot to a simmer rather than a full boil, and drop in the chicken pieces. This will permit the chicken pieces to poach gently in the broth. Your soup is ready for service. once they are cooked through—my guess is about 15 minutes, depending on the size of the pieces, but check them occasionally.
Best would be to cook the chicken using sous vide separately and only add it after the cooking/boiling of the soup.
If that is not possible, your should consider the following:
Try to make the chicken pieces the same size.
Start cooking the biggest pieces first so that they can cook longer.
Reduce the heat and cook longer, this will make the difference between over cooked and
under cooked less.
I don't think this poster is enough of a cooking nerd to be doing sous vide.
You don't mention the other ingredients, but assuming that they are vegetables, potatoes, etc., they will cook in much less time than the chicken.
You could try cooking the chicken first, and then adding the other ingredients.
Or you could try preparing the chicken in other ways, in a separate pan: for example, you could use smaller pieces of the chicken and fry them, and afterwards add it to the main cooking (in your case, a soup).
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20466 | Any methods to make prawns more "crunchy" (bite/tear off easily)
I notice that my prawns does not really get bite/tear off easily based on the way I prepare and cook my prawns - I tear off the shell, put them on a bowl. When ready to cook, I just thrown them together with some lean meat (cow / pig) and cook. After cooking, I put them into noodles/spaghetti and cook once more.
I suspect that there are 2 shells for prawns but I can't seems to get the prawns more "crunchy" such a way that they can be bitten / tear off easily without using oil and flour.
Appreciate any suggestions offer.
I'm not sure I understand. How are you cooking the meat? Are you then boiling it along with the pasta? (Why are you cooking it twice?) What do you mean that prawns have two shells? Are you eating their shells? And honestly, what do you mean by crunchy? (I've never had trouble biting through shrimp.)
Are you trying to get your prawns to be firm on the outside but easily tear-away from the tail once you bite through? Are your prawns tough and chewy?
@Jefromi, Hi Jefromi, please refer to Jacob who had described my situation.
@JacobG, Thanks for describing my situation. I believe that you also had such situation before. May I ask you to edit my question to improve it. Thanks, yes, my prawns are chewy and does not tear away easily.
Chewy or rubbery prawns are a good sign that you've overcooked them. As with other seafood, they don't take kindly to being overcooked. You should probably cook them separately, just enough, and then mix them into whatever you're eating them with.
You can use whatever cooking method you like; common ones include boiling, steaming, and stir-frying. Whatever you do, just make sure you don't do too much of it. Any cooking beyond done makes them worse.
Since you seem to prefer boiling: as soon as they're done, you should dump them into a colander and run cold water over them immediately afterward to stop them from cooking further. Cooking times vary depending on size; small shrimp take only a few minutes, while very large ones might take 5-10. They'll probably be pink and some will be starting to float; to tell for sure whether they're cooked you can cut one in half and make sure it's opaque all the way through.
This is probably the issue - shrimp takes far less time to cook than meat, even lean meat, so if you're cooking until the meat is done your shrimp will be overcooked and rubbery.
I think what you're asking about is that juicey snap you get with some prawns at seafood places. The secret is to take your peeled prawns and soak them for 30 minutes or so in salted ice water. Go for sea water like saltiness or slightly better. When you cook them up (don't over cook!) you'll notice a huge difference.
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20465 | Making vegetables (those with leaf) more "crunchy" (bite/tear off easily)
Are there any solution to make leafy vegetables more "crunchy"? (I usually boil my leafy vegetables in water but it seems that when I bite them, they usually does not tear off easily. They become quite "sticky" like pan pizza.)
Example of leafy vegetables: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O075MxiwT4U/TYNSsUyvxpI/AAAAAAAAAHo/ToW_w0Uel6I/s800/vegetable.jpg
Is there any particular reason you're boiling them? That's generally the cooking method that makes things the softest.
@Jefromi, Hi Jefromi, yes, boiling makes veg soft but it does not mean that when you bite them, they get tear off easily. Sometime, the stem become very hard at the outside even though it is soft in the inside. I am trying hard to make the veg soft and one can easily bite it off easily. I don't want to make my veg chewy.
That's what I mean. If you want crunch or crispness, boiling is bad; soft is your enemy.
+1 Yes Jefromi, you got it. Yes, boiling is bad but soft is my enemy. Unfortunately, I need to make the veg cooked and not raw so I end up meeting both my enemy - boiling and soft. Probably grill the veg will remove all my problem once and for all.
Leafy greens generally tear quite nicely when they are raw. If you apply any moist heat to them, they will wilt and no longer tear as nicely. In fact, certain leafy greens can become downright tough if you cook them to long.
If you'd still like to cook your greens, but retain a little of their crunch, you can always grill them.
No wonder my leafy greens are always so chewy. However, I prefer my leafy green to be cooked to remove most bacterias. I will try grilling them.
You might want to wait until you've actually tried grilling to accept an answer - especially since there are other answers. If you like grilling, you'd probably also like roasting/broiling in the oven, and you might also like a quick steaming or stir-frying.
If the only reason why you are boiling it is to remove bacteria then do a quick blanc of the vegetables in boiling water for a couple seconds then take them out and grill them. Although grilling them should remove the bacteria...
If you want to cook veggies without losing their crispiness, try to soak them in a cold water with ice cubes after boiling it. I've done this many times and it works wonders.
while this does make many vegetables better (e.g. broccoli), leafy ones become soft even if simply blanched (30 sec in roiling boil, then iced immediately).
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27926 | Are there other ways to extract juice from vegetable beside using a blender?
Usually to extract juice from vegetable, we throw the vegetable into the blender. So, are there other ways that we can extract juice?
What about a juicer?
@Jefromi, I have thought before a juicer but I notice that a juicer is much more harder to maintain because it have a secret chamber that keep those fiber and pulp. Also, if a juicer can only juice fruits or vegetables that are rich in water content. However, a juicer give me pure clean juice which the blender cannot provide me. Also, the juice from the blender require additional work such as using a filters to filter out the pulp and fiber. Wondering if there are devices or ways that I can do less work but get clear juice.
Well, there is Pectinex Ultra SP-L and a centrifuge, but I suspect that's a bit out of your price range. I've never tried it: it's out of my price range, too.
Wonder what the down vote for?
Is it that you don't have access to a blender, or you don't like other effects it has in the process of extracting juice? Pretty much any effective method is going to mangle the vegetables and not leave any better or worse an end product in the de-juiced vegetables.
Assuming it's lack of a blender: If they aren't soft and juicy enough to squeeze out juice, pulverizing them with a meat tenderizing hammer while they're in a freezer-strength baggie (strong enough to prevent vegetable shrapnel from flying all over your kitchen) would probably net you at least a few good gulps.
+1 for "vegetable shrapnel" - lol! Not a great answer though - there are other devices for juicing such as a citrus squeezer and a chinois strainer before having to resort to the meat tenderizer hammer! (still love the image of that, though!) :-)
@Kristina Lopez: Thanks for both. I guess I inferred from the question that the OP had no devices at all, hence the work-around request.
in retrospect I agree with you - I am leaning towards that assumption also. Still the only answer that made me laugh today!
Besides using a juicer, which seems to be the standard answer to other questions in regard to extracting juice (see here and here for examples) there is one method that involves minimal equipment and produces clear juice with a pure, pronounced flavor. It does take a good deal of time, and doesn't have great yield, but it's a shockingly effective method.
I first found this in Kevin Liu's Craft Cocktails at Home, which is sort of a Modernist Cuisine-esque take on cocktails and mixology. He refers to the method as "cryo-juicing", which I like for its very futuristic sound, even though it's dead simple. The basic concept is straightforward: freeze, thaw, and repeat.
Some Introductory Science:
Good old H2O is a very interesting substance. The nature of its hydrogen bonds produces a bond angle of 107.5 degrees and a number of other curious properties (such as polarity, which allows water to dissolve many other substances). Notably, this angle doesn't combine or pack well into regular solids. Where other materials will solidify (i.e. freeze) into regular crystal formations, water's bond angle won't let it pack neatly; as it freezes, the molecules stack into jagged, irregular structures, producing a lot of microscopic spikes and sharp edges. The difference looks a bit like this (even though this shows glass on the right side, the concept is the same):
In food, those irregular edges mean that when water crystals form, they damage and tear your food on a microscopic level from the inside-out. That's why vegetables with a low moisture content tend to do best in the freezer (as stated in this answer) and why meat tends to get mushy if frozen, thawed, and re-frozen (as stated here). It's also why most every food will tend to lose moisture when frozen: water crystals poke tiny holes in cell walls, causing moisture to leak out and evaporate in a dry environment like the inside of a freezer. Interestingly, it's also why ice floats in liquid water.
In Practice:
Cryo-juicing makes this effect work for you, by forming ice crystals to puncture tiny holes in your food and releasing its juice. A juicer or blender uses mechanical action to pulverize your food and destroy cell walls; this is a similar principle, but much subtler. The overall structure of the cell walls is kept intact, but there's just enough damage to extract much of the juice.
Here's what I've found to be the best method:
Thinly slice your fruit/vegetable; this exposes more of the cell walls and makes it easier to squeeze out juice from interior cells later.
Place the slices into a sealable plastic bag; squeeze out most of the air and seal. A tray or container to place the bag into is helpful.
Place the bag into the freezer and freeze until solid.
Remove the bag from the freezer and let it thaw completely, either in the refrigerator or at room temperature. I generally thaw on my countertop, because thawing takes longer in the fridge, but be careful not to let your food sit out too long; you don't want it spending time in the "danger zone". The fridge avoids this if you're concerned or inattentive.
Return the bag to the freezer and freeze until solid again. This forms a new set of water crystals, causing more cell damage and drastically increasing juice yield.
Remove the bag and let thaw once again. Twice is generally sufficient, but you can freeze and thaw repeatedly if you prefer and if you don't let the bag come all the way up to room temperature.
Open the bag just a bit and pour off the juice into a vessel. Gently squeeze the contents through the bag to extract more juice; if you only slightly open the seal, the bag should catch the solids. I generally use a fine-mesh strainer as well to catch any small particulates.
Keep the juice refrigerated in a sealed container; it will keep for around a week if stored properly, but it does spoil quickly if not cared for.
You can do this with just about any volume you want, but freezing/thawing will take longer with larger amounts. If you want to produce a large quantity of juice, you're best off using multiple smaller bags than a single large one.
Also, you don't have to toss the drained solids; depending on the fruit or vegetable, I'll often steep them with water in a pitcher to extract more flavor. This is particularly nice with cucumbers.
Advantages and Disadvantages:
One of the main things I like about this method is that it produces very clear juice with few suspended particles. This makes for a clean flavor and texture as compared to juice from a blender or juicer. Mechanical action produces tomato juice; cryo-juicing produces something closer to tomato water. And there's no special hardware required, other than inexpensive plastic bags, which unlike a juicer you don't have to clean.
This method does require a lot of time and patience. It can take several hours for each cycle of freezing and thawing, so this isn't something you can prepare quickly. As compared to mechanical juicing, it also has a relatively low yield. At best, you're going to get 50-75% of the volume that you would from mechanical juicing, depending on the food. As an example, a single large cucumber generally produces around 8 oz of cryo-juice, compared to around 12 oz when using a juicer.
Uses:
Cryo-juicing works best with relatively high-moisture fruits and vegetables with plenty of structural cell walls (i.e. nothing too soft). Moisture content means more water to freeze and puncture, and structure helps with squeezing and extracting juice. Ideal fruits include apples, pears, and melons; good vegetables include cucumber and tomato.
It's possible to cryo-juice softer, fleshy fruits like berries and stone fruits (peaches, plums, etc.) but these tend to break down into mush, and it can be difficult to filter out the juice. Use a fine-mesh strainer if you want to try.
Citrus fruits can also be cryo-juiced, but the results are similar to squeezed juice and squeezing is far more convenient.
Cryo-juicing doesn't work for hard, low-moisture vegetables like carrots, other root vegetables, or hard squash; these really require mechanical action to pulverize their cell walls in order to extract juice. Whether you'd actually want to drink squash juice is another question.
I use this method constantly and with great success. It's low-mess, highly effective, and delicious. I'm an enthusiastic home bartender and find that cryo-juice is an outstanding component in sodas, cocktails, and punches alike, as it brings a very clean flavor. It's also very useful in cooking for applications like poaching or in chilled soups. I won't be throwing out my juicer anytime soon, but I sure don't have to clean it as often.
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28579 | Does repeating freeze -> chill -> freeze -> chill spoil yogurt?
I brought a 3 KG yogurt store in a container. The container mention to store it at temperature between 2 degree to 7 degree.
So, I put my 3 KG yogurt in the freezer. When I want to eat, I put to chill and later consume it, then I put it back to the freezer. This process repeat until the 3 KG yogurt is finished.
So, I was wondering if the whole process of freeze, chill, freeze, chill, ... may or will cause some "damage" (or spoil ) the yogurt?
The freezing and thawing may make it a bit weepy, as the ice crystals form an melt, destroying some of the cross linked proteins that thicken the yogurt. For any other food, without an active culture, I would say as long as you keep it under 40 degrees and the total non-frozen time doesn't become unreasonable, it is safe to eat, but yoghurt has live cultures (or some of them do)--I don't know the science on that, although I suspect again it is a palatability issue, rather than a safety issue. I am making this a comment rather than an answer because I am not absolutely sure.
I hate yoghurt which has been frozen even once, as the emulsion separates and makes the texture totally wrong.
But if you don't see any problem with that, the only problem you are left with is food safety. After many cycles, you don't know how much time your food has spent thawed and how much time it has spent frozen. The solution is simple: put the yogurt into smaller containers, freeze them, and take out a single container for each use.
By the way, 3 kg of yogurt isn't that much, seeing that yogurt keeps for many weeks in a fridge. With a few yogurt-heavy recipes, you could get it finished without the need for freezing at all.
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12185 | Is it safe to eat sprouted onions?
I opened my onion rack lately to find onions that had sprouted several-inch-long green roots... It made me extremely queasy and I threw them out. But I was wondering - would it be safe to eat them / cook with them?
They are definitely safe but the flavour and consistency might be a little off. The onion spends its energy on the sprouts which will dry it out and make it less sweet. What you can do is chop the sprouts and use them like spring onions (scallions if you are American).
Similar question: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/7326/2001
Sure, but the rest of the onion gets mushy and unpalatable after they've grown for a bit. Some people eat the sprouts; they have a lot of protein, so they're popular with vegans and other protein challenged groups.
Absolutely! They can be quite strong though. I would recommend cutting them thinly. I just used some as a garnish on my miso soup. They add just enough onion flavor and it looks nice.
The roots aren't usually very green- they're white.
The part of the sprouts that is green is call... wait for it... Green onions.
You can just eat the sprouts and don't bother with the spent bulb.
The sprouts that are green are... wait for it... not green onions. Scallions are made from separate cultivars which lack a fully developed bulb.
@JeffAxelrod- Not always. Sometimes they are different cultivar. In some cases they are simply immature. Either way, the part that matters in this conversation, the sprout, is nearly identical.
@Sobachatina According to table of onion cultivars on Wikipedia, green onions (AKA "scallions") are from a different cultivar. You should update your answer to remove this error.
When I lived in Belarus in the '90's, all the women had an onion sitting on top of a jar that had green sprouts, or "green" onions, and they cut from them continually. What I can't remember is how much water there was. I am trying it myself today as I found an onion had sprouted.
I love onion sprouts. They do not have as wild of a taste as the onion. Sometimes I only use the bulb to make sprouts.
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12135 | How long does fresh parsley keep in the fridge?
How long does fresh parsley stay good if kept in a refrigerator?
related : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/9612/will-vegetables-and-fresh-herbs-last-longer-in-the-refrigerator-in-a-plastic-bag
You can also preserve herbs by wrapping them in damp paper towels (either completely or just around the stems) and then placing the bundle in an open plastic bag (or one with holes poked in) Replace or re-wet the towels when they get dry. It's the equivalent of a vase without the worry about it spilling.
If you stand it up in water like a flower, these guys say 7 to 10 days. I say 2 weeks, even.
That link has a freezing technique, but I think thawed parsley is worthless. Dehydrated is okay when you've no option, but it's very bland and too earthy, to me. Where I live, it's cheap, so I just stay stocked up on fresh stuff. Both parts of this advice goes for bundles of cilantro leaves as well.
That's a good idea. I'm going to go get some vases for cilantro.
There are a number of purpose-made options for this--we have the Prepara Herb Savor--that are more stable/sturdy/compact for use in the fridge. You don't have to buy one of these, of course, but they do work well.
I have been able to store large bunches of parsley for long periods by wrapping stems in wet paper towel then placing in a plastic bag in the crisper compartment . Never had to throw any away .
Parsley can last up to a week, if you keep the leaves dry and weed out any leaves that are starting to turn, and are not put off by the decaying parsley matter. Putting a dry paper towel around the leaves will keep the moisture level down, and cause the parsley to last longer, this also works for lettuce.
Usually, it can last about three days, or four if you're lucky.
This is for normal fridge temperatures (about 4 degrees C), and normal parsley.
If I'm not mistaken, the optimal temperature for leafy greens is about 12 degrees Celsius. That'll get you a few more days.
If you're worried about being able to tell when it's spoiled, it's quite simple. The leaves will become sort of gooey and discoloured. The other option, for different humidity situations, is that the parsley will dry out. Either way, it's obvious that the parsley is no longer fun to eat a lot before it becomes a problem, there's little danger of it passing its use-by date unnoticed, like with meat products.
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40860 | Baked apple that was left out overnight?
I made a baked apple recipe with a crumb stuffing (recipe here), and then accidentally left one of them out in the dish overnight. Is it safe to eat? (Checked stilltasty.com, my reference for such things, and couldn't find it)
I'm sure that somebody will come along and argue the point, but I wouldn't hesitate to eat or even serve that apple. There is nothing in that recipe that can't be left at room temperature for quite a bit longer than "overnight". Take apple pies for instance. A lot of people (including myself) never refrigerate them, they eat them over the course of a few days having never refrigerated them.
Yeah- since there is no dairy in the recipe, it should be fine.
While not an exact match, Still Tasty indicates up to 2 days for an apple pie at room temperature; one would expect the baked apple to have similar properties.
So yes, I would expect eating your baked apple the next day should be fine.
I would not hold them much longer than that, though, as the cooking helps bring out moisture which will foster growth of molds over time.
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44610 | How to know when to remove lemon squares from oven?
I'm making a lemon bars/squares recipe that I've made a few times before, and I keep having trouble deciding when to take it out of the oven. I don't want to overbake it, but I don't want to underbake it either as I won't be able to cut it properly into squares. The recipe says "until set, about 25-30 minutes". My lemon bars have been in the oven over half an hour; the top has gone light brown, but it still jiggles around like liquid when I move it. How do I know when it's "set"?
They are going to jiggle a bit, that's OK. If they are starting to brown, methinks you have taken them too far.
I actually finally took them out after over 45 minutes in, although it seemed a bit more jiggly than it should be, and let it cool hoping it would set... and just cut it to find it completely liquidy :-/ I put it back in the oven even though I know that rarely works, but I can't use it like this...
Hmmm. We need a recipe then.
@Jolenealaska - http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/luscious-lemon-squares/c01a5935-6f52-419c-af08-e8c267c1aaf7
What kind of shortening, lemon juice, etc are you using? Any substitutions? An hour should be wild overkill for these.
Your recipe doesn't say until set; it says "Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until no indentation remains when touched lightly in center. "
@yamikuronue: If he's cooked them double the time, and they're not set, something else is wrong.
@Satanicpuppy Agreed, I'm just wondering if that's actually the correct recipe since it doesn't match the question. My best guess is a bad recipe
Is there a point that simple custards like this become overcooked and watery?
@Jolenealaska: Depends on the custard. If you're making one that doesn't have a starchy binder, then sorta...It'll curdle and you'll end up with lumpy soup. For this sort of thing, you'll more likely get cracking if it overcooks.
What altitude are you baking at? You need to go lower and slower at high altitudes
Custard without any flour or starch should be baked to about 83 Celsius internal temperature. Below 80 is underbaked, above 90 it curdles, so you have a very small window of good texture. It may be even narrower, it depends a bit on the other stuff you have in there, sugar gives you wiggle room but acids (including lemon juice!) will make it harder to get right.
If you have starch or flour, you need to reach almost boiling temperatures. 95 Celsius should be OK.
If you want high confidence, you really need to measure the internal temperature. External signs are not reliable, and time even less so.
Custard is always sort of jiggly, even when it's "set"; furthermore, it's one of those dishes that sets properly only after you remove it from the heat of the oven. The link you gave in the comments mentions a thumbprint test for doneness:
Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until no indentation remains when touched lightly in center.
Next time try that, and see if it sets to the desired consistency when cooling. Browning is not usually desired for this type of dish, so I'd say 45mins is too long :)
Note: The part that still baffles me is that you mentioned it still being liquid when cut into. That's definitely not supposed to happen, and I'm not sure what went wrong there, so perhaps try a different recipe next time?
I'd put my money on the creaming/beating step (#4 in the recipe). If that's not being done sufficiently, or done too far in advance, then the mixture may be too dense for the heat to properly penetrate and set.
It can also be something related to the size of the dish. I always use an 8x8 Pyrex. I was at a friends house the other day and didn’t have one so I doubled the recipe, without thinking about the fact that 8x8 is (64square inches) and the dish i was using was maybe 9x12 (108square inches), so when I poured my mix into the pan I realized that they were much thicker than usual. Because of this they were nowhere near done in the usual baking time. I left them longer and the top turned a golden brown (which was ok, I scraped it off with a knife immediately and it basically peeled off like a giant band-aid) however the center was still liquid while everything else was done so I turned down the temperature and placed them back in the oven for another 10 minutes and they actually came out fine. Not perfect mind you, but they were definitely ok. Better than what you would find at a hotel or casino buffet.
If the middle of any baked good does not look done but sides are browned, I turn oven off and leave dish 19 minutes longer in turned off heat.
May I ask, why exactly 19 minutes? What kind of oven do you have? Is this amount of time accurate for all temperatures and all baked goods? Cookies/pies/cakes/etc?
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53580 | Is there a safety issue with freezing raw chicken with raw stuffing?
I was planning on making stuffed chicken capons and freezing them raw. This is with fresh raw chicken and raw stuffing (no eggs), and then freezing the chicken stuffed with stuffing and defrosting and cooking at a later point. I was told that it's a safety issue and I should instead half-cook the capons and then freeze. I don't see the logic in this and haven't been able to locate any proper source. Is there any reason why this would be unsafe?
Your method of stuffing and freezing raw should be safe. Assuming you are following safe food handling and freezing methods, you will be fine.
Just prep your chicken and get it into the freezer within the recommended window of two hours that it can safely be in the "danger zone" of 40-140 F.
As it pertains to bacteria, you can think of freezing as stopping time. You are essentially putting all those pesky microbes on pause, so they can't multiply and have a big ol' botulism party on your chicken. So if your food is clean and safe when it goes into the freezer, it should be clean and safe when it comes out.
I can't see any point to par-cooking your chicken, and as James points out, it seems to complicate the process unnecessarily.
Also check out the USDA guide on Freezing and Food Safety.
The freezer does indeed "stop time"... except with something as large as a chicken, if it goes in while it's still in the danger zone, it may take a while before the inside cools below the danger zone and time actually stops. This could be pretty relevant since the OP's stuffing is probably close to room temperature and the bird is probably cool but in the danger zone.
@Jefromi I believe OP is talking about stuffed capons, which are relatively small and should freeze readily, like these, for example. Not to be confused with a capon, which is like a rooster they seem to like in France. You are correct, though, that freezing a whole bird might pose more of a challenge.
Ohhhhhh that's fine then! And less surprising!
I don't think the problem is the freezing per-se, it's the likelihood of ending up with things not fully cooked, or of them being in the danger zone (between 40 and 140 degrees Farenheit) for too long. If the total cumulative time in the danger zone for any part of the bird or stuffing is within 60 minutes (some people say 120 minutes, but that may include time while it's cooking), you should be fine. When you want to cook them, you'll have to defrost them thoroughly in the refrigerator (probably for at least a day or two) and make sure when you cook them that the coldest part (usually the centermost part, but not always) is up to the recommended 165 degrees Fahrenheit. If you were to try to cook them directly from frozen it's likely that the outside would be burned while the inside would still be cold, or you would have to cook them at such a low temperature that they would spend too long in the danger zone. If you were to thaw them on the counter, they would certainly be in the danger zone too long (every minute at room temperature is a minute in the danger zone).
I think half-cooking them would only increase the likelihood of safety issues due to multiple warming/cooling cycles.
Of course, as with most food safety issues, there's a good chance you will be fine anyway, but no reputable professional would risk going outside the FDA guidelines without a good reason and probably a warning to the consumer as well.
The FDA provides online Food Safety Information describing the risks. You can also call them with questions.
Fresh poultry is generally kept at "safe" chilled (below 40f), but not frozen temps for extended periods. Keep the chickens or Capone refrigerated until your ready to stuff the get them back in the fridge or freezer as soon as possible. You may even want to chill the stuffing before use.
The safety issues with stuffed poultry generally come when thawed and then cooked-reheated. The meat and stuffing may thaw at different rates. If they are not completely thawed in the fridge, you run into the issue of either the bird must be left at room temp too long or a very long defrost time. If the chicken or capon is cooked frozen or still partially frozen. You'll get uneven cooking. By the time the stuffing hits 165 f the bird will be dry.
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40203 | Is it safe to eat fish that has been left out in the cold overnight?
It's snowing over here, and we had made a fish delivery that we assumed had been canceled. (The fish store didn't answer their phone yesterday and most schools and businesses were closed.) However, it seems that the fish was left at our door late last night. It was probably there around 9 hours...? Normally I would toss it, but it's really cold out there and the fish is cool to the touch. I live in an apt building, so it was not actually outside in the snow, but the temperature in the hallway outside our front door is nearly as cold as outside. I have no way of measuring the temperature out there. Is it safe to eat...? How cold does it have to be to consider it safe? (And yes, we will complain to the store.)
Refrigeration temperatures are below 40F. Did your fish stay out at that or lower?
It's really impossible to say if it's safe or not without knowing what temperature it was held at.
I hate throwing away food, for me (and I stress "for me") I would use the "Smell By" test and then make sure it is cooked really well through. Make a stew, curry or pasta source (something where it is cooked through and in small bits). BUT DO NOT sushi, light pan fry or similar of it.
If you are in doubt do not use it, you do not want a dose of something a week before holidays.
Other factors
Was the fish cleaned?
Was it in bag or one of those polystyrene (Styrofoam) boxes?
Was it in ice?
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39337 | Too much pepper in soup: any way to fix?
I added too much ground black pepper to my soup (was actually following a recipe for once, while I usually season to taste) - is there any way to rectify this other than diluting it? I think I vaguely remember hearing once that adding lemon juice "removes" some of the pepper...?
Counterpart (about capsicum): http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/45140
A little lemon juice plus a bit of sugar might help. That is a fairly well known folk-remedy. If you can squeeze in something starchy (some rice maybe, or noodles?) that might help too.
A technique that sometimes works for me is to skim off any oil that is on the top and discard it. Piperine (the "active ingredient" in pepper), like Capsaicin (the "active ingredient" in chillis) is oil soluble, and oil floats on water. There is generally a higher concentration of hot stuff in the oil, so removing it can sometimes reduce the heat. While this works a bit in things like curries and chili which contain plenty of fat to rise to the top your soup may not have enough oil to skim. There are other flavor compounds that are oil soluble so skimming the oil may remove some flavor that you'd rather keep in, but if it's just too hot it's worth a try.
Alternatively as you say you could add other strong flavors that can compete with it. Adding acidity will kick off some other taste buds and give your brain other flavors to process, as will sugar. Whether adding acidity, sugar, or other ingredients will work with your recipe is another story. If it tastes good otherwise maybe just live with it if skimming doesn't help.
When I added too much pepper to my soup, my fix was I used the water from boiling the noodles & added a can of petite diced tomatoes. It worked!
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12171 | How many cups of flour are there in a pound?
I have a recipe that calls for 5 pounds of flour, but I live in a country that sells their flour in 1-kg bags. So I put in 2 kg = 4.4 pounds... How many cups should I put in for the remaining .6 pound that I'm missing?
related : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/2915/standard-weight-conversions-for-converting-cups-of-flour-to-grams-of-flour ; http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/2321/cup-measurements-shake-or-scrape
The weight of flour varies immensely depending on how densely it's packed and the humidity. If you've started with a weight-based recipe, I'd try to find a scale.
If that's absolutely not an option, I tend to approximate 100g = 1 cup.
Be warned, I've found some recipes that are really sensitive to the amount of flour and the difference between a lightly sifted cup and a scooped cup can really throw off the results. You might do better to try to divide another kg package of flour evenly and use the approximation that 0.6 lb is about 0.25 kg (i.e. one quarter of the bag).
Agreed: as long as you know the weight you want, measure the weight. This will be even easier if you have something large with measuring marks - just measure the total volume of your 1kg bag.
100g is actually pretty low - most things I've seen say 4.5-5oz (127-142g).
According to Wolfram-Alpha, 1cup of flour weighs 137g. 0.6lb is 272g, so about 2 cups.
That said, I recommend you get a scale for these things. :)
You have to be really careful doing this - for example, for salt, it uses the density of sodium chloride, which I believe is for solid salt, i.e. a single chunk of it. That's a bit different from table salt.
Agreed, it is a bit too hardcore for practical cooking purposes... but how else would I be able to find out things like this: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=calories+in+1+cubic+light+year+of+fried+chicken ? :-p
it's actually even more complicated than that! different TYPES of flour weigh differently. a cup of all-purpose will weigh differently than a cup of bread flour, and both will weigh something different from a cup of unbleached white flour (and then there's wheat flour...). i tend to trust the weight per serving on the nutritional information panel, and calculate the weight per cup from that.
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77638 | How to recreate the sauce in McDonald's 1955 Burger?
For a few weeks, my local McDonalds was selling a burger called the "1955 Burger", which had a really delicious sauce with lots of other things mixed in. I tried buying various BBQ sauces in the stores, but none had a similar taste.
What kind of BBQ sauce can I buy that will be close to what McDonalds uses? What other ingredients did McDonalds mix into the BBQ sauce?
What does the sauce taste like? Is it sweet and/or vinegary? Does it taste of mustard or molasses? Any relation to the sauce they show in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcu4Bj3xEyI&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=McDonald%27sCanada ?
@derobert Did a search on the burger and the sauce was described as a smoky BBQ sauce.
@Cindy that's so common I don't think it really helps much. One other place I saw described it as more creamy than a normal BBQ sauce (what their normal is, who knows). Which makes me wonder if it isn't something like that sauce McDonald's has in the video, but maybe with smoked paprika. Of course, neither of us have tasted it... OP needs to tell us, since he/she has tasted it.
@derobert Agree, it's not much help. In the pictures I saw, it looked like a regular BBQ sauce. But it may be something totally foreign to us. Fast food (or food in general) in other countries can differ greatly from what we are familiar with.
@derobert I believe the BBQ sauce itself is similar to that distributed with chicken nugget meals. All I can say to describe it is it is much stronger in flavor that the BBQ sauces I have bought in the store and towards the sweet side. Every sauce I've bought in stores disappointed me, not coming anywhere close to the same flavor. But the 1995 Burger also had various vegetables mixed into the sauce.
The 1955 burger has a similar sauce to the one used in the Chicken Maharaja Mac burger served in India.
@Mike That's useful to know, but it would be more helpful to know how to duplicate the flavor profile (the OP may not be able to travel to India regularly to get that sauce, for example)
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91458 | How much juice can a mango yield if run through a juicer?
If I know the weight of a mango, or the weight of a bowl of mangoes, is there any way to reasonably estimate what volume of juice the mango, or bowl of mangoes, will yield if run through a juicer?
Your challenge there is going to be (a) mango pits can vary in size relative to the size of the mango, and (b) some mangos are juicier than others. I'd suspect that you could do some kind of estimation by testing water displacement, but I have no idea what the measurements would be.
@FuzzyChef: That's not a comment! That's an answer! (As the answer is: It's impossible to estimate without trying out 50% of the mangoes Village has...) ping me after answering and I'll come back and upvote.
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91459 | Why does this Egg McMuffins recipe taste terrible?
I tried to recreate the taste of a McDonald Egg McMuffin at home.
I cut an English muffin in half and cooked it in the oven. I fried an egg in a pan. I added mayonnaise to the English muffin halves, then added the egg and a slice of American cheese.
The result tasted nothing like a real Egg McMuffin, and did not taste good at all. What can I do to make this more closely taste like a real Egg McMuffin?
For starters, you left off the slice of Canadian bacon. McDonald's cooks their egg more by steaming it in a round mold; they do not fry them in a pan
You might try going to the Serious Eats site and looking at Kenji's recipe for Egg McMuffin:
Pan toast muffin in butter, fry Canadian bacon in butter, crack egg in lid of wide-mouth mason jar to use as a mold, break yolk, pour water in the pan with egg in mold and put a cover on pan so the water turns to steam to cook egg, drain egg on paper towel, assemble {muffin half, bacon, egg, cheese other muffin half}. No mayo, other condiments or seasoning.
An Egg McMuffin is an incredibly simple dish composed of:
A plain English muffin (may be lightly toasted)
A plain, fried egg with a broken yolk (cooked in a ring)
A plain piece of Canadian bacon, straight from the package
A plain piece of American cheese, straight from the package
There are no dressings, sauces, butters, or anything else added to it. The bare minimum of work is done, as it is a fast food item that must be able to be prepared quickly in larger batches (an auto-toaster and a mass egg form are used).
It tasted wrong because you didn't use the right ingredients.
Source: Several years working at McDonald's in high school.
I don't think egg McMuffin contains mayonnaise at all. Try just English Muffin (not a high-quality sourdough-y fancy Thomas, etc. or other name-brand one either - no whole wheat or raisin either, obviously; use the most inexpensive you can find, maybe a supermarket store brand that might tend to be a teensy bit sweeter than the others), a little butter (or marg.); thoroughly fried egg (broken yolk); couple strips bacon, or a very thin Canadian bacon or ham slice; and yes, American cheese slice (that part you are spot-on). Don't know 100% McDonalds, but that's how Jack-in-the-Box made them (well, they used hamburger bun, I guess...) --- yum. My favorite thing from fast-food.
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49275 | How to make use of old apples?
I have many apples, but the insides are already brown. The outside is slightly soft, perhaps bruised. The inside appearance is the same as if you cut an apple and let it sit out for 1 hour, but this is the appearance immediately after cutting.
Can these still be used for apple sauce or apple pie or some other dish, with good results?
If the insides are already brown, I'd throw them (or compost them); maybe they could be used the same way bananas can be used when they turn brown ?
Its a bit involved but you should be able to use these for (hard) Cider.
You will need a lot of apples and a press (you can hire them here in the UK, or buy them second hand).
Example Recipe
The apples have shriveled slightly owing to dehydration. When the apples dry out air is admitted through the core then the fruit will oxidise from the inside out. I would not use these apples for eating.
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49276 | Why is some frozen breaded chicken pre-fried?
At the supermarket, I found some frozen breaded chicken. The package said it was already fried before frozen. Why would they fry the chicken before freezing it?
To simply facilitate the end-user cooking.
You get all the "benefit" of fried food without the hassle of having to actual fry the food (hot oil handling, odors, ... )
Most people do not have fryers at home and rely on par-fried food (for example oven fries).
and typically it's fully cooked, so you can just warm and eat ... so they have less chance of food poisoning from undercooked poultry.
Yes, you are right; Thanks for the clarifications.
Just be sure to check the package as most pre-cooked frozen foods (such as the fried chicken) still specify that the foods need to reach a certain internal temperature.
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49459 | Are countertop blenders with plastic jars dangerous?
At my local shopping center, I notice that all models of countertop blenders, even the most expensive ($500 USD), have plastic jars. I am concerned that if the blade inside comes loose or breaks while the power is on, that the blade will break through the glass. Are plastic blenders dangerous to use? Which material (e.g. glass, plexiglass) should I look for when choosing a model that will be used to blend fruits, meat, and vegetables?
Consider the liability a manufacturer would face if this scenario were even possible. I'm confident they go to great lengths to ensure it is not.
Here's a report about what happens if a bit of the blade comes off: http://consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/07/blender-blade-breaks-in-consumer-reports-tests/index.htm The concern is really that you'll get metal in your food, not that it'll break the blender jug.
The public is very sensitive in such cases. I'm sure that, had there been such a case (of a person injured by a breaking blender), there would have been a scandal easily findable on the web.
Looking at it from a materials-science standpoint rather than a physics standpoint, I agree that plastic is safer than glass.
The difference is in how they break. Glass is stronger than plastic, for any plastic that a blender jar is likely to be made out of, and is less likely to break from, for example, trying to blend a spoon you forgot to remove. However, glass is also brittle.
When a plastic jar breaks, the most likely break is a single crack running up one side. The rest of the jar will flex to absorb the energy of the break and then return to its original shape. The jar will remain in one piece, without exposing any sharp edges.
When a glass jar breaks, it can't flex the way plastic can. Instead, the jar will shatter into two or more pieces, and unless it was made from tempered glass (unlikely) or laminated glass (even more unlikely), those pieces will be sharp-edged, making for a dangerous mess to clean up.
Also: A given piece of glass is heavier (especially given how glass blender jars are very thick!), and thus can cause more damage flying at the same size and speed.
TL;DR: Plastic is better than Glass. It won't break (don't sue me if it does). If it does, you have about 0.0000518 seconds to get out of the way.
A blender I picked at random.
It has a powerful 750W motor.
A different blender that I saw with 35,000 rpm had a 1725W motor. This divides down to be ≈ 15,200 RPM.
The size: 40H x 18W x 18D
So the main box that the blade is in has size of 17W x 17H. The blade won't quite touch the edges, so let's say the diameter is 16cm. The circumference is therefore 16*3.14 ≈ 50.25
15,200 RPM means the tips are going 50.25 * 15,200 per minute, or ≈ 12,730 cm/s = 127.3 m/s The inner part of the blade will be going at ≈ 2,355 cm/s = 23.55 m/s (assuming a 6cm diameter hub).
The average of those two is ≈ 75.43 m/s. So let's say this sharpened stainless steel blade is going at 75 m/s when it breaks off.
If the blade is about 10g (12 - 13cm) then it has a force of about 5N per m2.
But this blade will hit a point ~ 1mm2, which is a force of 52,300,000N on that mm2 area. 523,000 = 523,000 pascals.
The force needed to break through glass is 33,000,000 pascals. The blade will not through. Acrylic, however, can be 2 or 3 times stronger. Therefore, a plastic blender may be better than a glass one, in terms of safety.
However, this was a 750W blender, if it was a 1500W blender, it could be up to 1,046,000 pascals hitting a piece of acrylic rated at 99,000,000 pascals. Stil not enough to get through. Enough to do some damage.
Important point: The blade won't break off. The implications of this are so severe, a blender is tested thoroughly before going onto the market. The biggest danger is finger slicing, not blade releasing.
I assumed the kitten presaged some discussion on the possible implications for kittenkind of contact with a blender. I'm relieved to be mistaken.
@Ben yes, the kitten survives! However, if the blender was made of glass and mittens was anywhere near by... :'(
23.55m/s = 84.78 km/h, and 127.3m/s = 458.28km/h for the lazy
So in between 53 and 285 m/h
I don't want to be the no-fun moderator, and I like kittens as much as the next guy, but since you partially rolled back my edit, I should explain: the reason I reduced the size is that it makes the answer take up more space and is just a distraction (and maybe clickbait), not even an on-topic joke. I would still personally prefer that space not to be used, or to be taken up by something addressing the OP's question.
@Jefromi, I have put it back to small! Thanks for explaining!
Anything hitting non-bulletproof glass at 450kph has a chance to SHATTER it and then have free way once the shattered pieces are falling away. Common sense proof: Can you swing a hammer at 450kph? Can you damage most glass items with one? Literally punching through is a different matter, yes. Don't forget that a BLADE (if the blender is not a blunt-blade design) is a component MEANT to offer a very very small contact area :)
As an aside, if you want the kitten to be an on-topic joke (as opposed to, as Jefromi said, an off-topic joke) you might note that plastic blender jars fare far better than glass when falling off of counter-tops (another source of damage, besides broken off and flying blades), which is a more realistic kitten vs blender interaction... they love knocking stuff off of counter-tops and sauntering away, tails a-twitching.
My Vita-Mix has a plastic jar, which after a few years of use is increasingly cloudy nearing the bottom. The force of blending has scratched the interior repeatedly, meaning my smoothies contain microplastics. No one mentions this. I am considering replacing my powerful blender with one that has a glass or metal pitcher. For me, microplastics are a safety issue.
Note that these are probably actually macroplastics, not microplastics
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46382 | How to extend the freshness of salsa?
I often make salsa containing tomato, onion, garlic salt, green pepper, red pepper, lemon, and salt. I store it in a Glasslock container in the refrigerator. By the second day, the taste is still reasonable. By the third day, though it starts to get a strange smell and has a strange appearance, sometimes with white dots, perhaps from mold.
Is there anything I can do so that the salsa stays fresh for at least three days?
Acid is your friend here. You have some lemon, and tomatoes are acidic, but apparently that isn't enough. You should get at least a good week out of fresh salsa (mine lasts longer than that). Try adding a good shot of plain, distilled vinegar. Many recipes for salsa (including my own) include vinegar; add as much as you can without negatively affecting the flavor.
A bit of salt wouldn't hurt either, again, just to the maximum for good flavor.
You might be able to get away with adding more cider vinegar vs. white vinegar. They're typically diluted to the same acidity, but the sweetness of the cider vinegar might let you add more before it's overpowering.
...but apparently that isn't enough. Tomato pH is around 4-5, perfect conditions for certain common bacteria. Lemon and vinegar are much lower (~2) so I think you are on the right track here.
dextrose and ascorbic acid, a.k.a. vitamin c, are both anti-microbials.
they can be found in commercial products like fruit fresh.
it's worked for me very well.
Dextrose is the wrong way to go here. It is a sugar, and is a food for bacteria in low concentrations. It only starts acting as preservative when there is enough of it - you'd have to make tomato marmalade, with at least 30% of dextrose, for it to start acting as a preservative.
Fruit Fresh is indeed dextrose and ascorbic acid. It'd be the acid that'd be anti-microbial, but I'm not actually sure if it's strong enough for that. The main purpose is just to prevent browning.
@rumtscho "Organic acids are used widely as antimicrobials in food products, e.g. lactic acid, citric acid, acetic acid, and their salts, either as ingredients, or as disinfectants" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial
Try replacing tomato with tomatillo, it will last for little more as it is more acid. Of course it will change the taste and color of your salsa but it is delicious. If your tomatillos are small you can have 2 per tomato, boil them in water. The idea behind salsa is that you make it before eating so it is fresh, that is how we do it in Mexico, you make the amount that you need as people won't appreciate not fresh/refrigerated salsa. Good luck.
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46876 | Is the lettuce inside the wilted outer leaves still good?
At the vegetable market, I noticed some sellers cutting away the wilted parts of lettuce, to sell much smaller, but green portions. I wonder if they are cheating me, or if that is normal procedure.
In some cases, the edges of the leaves were brown or had holes, and they trimmed the edges with scissors.
In other cases, the entire exterior leaves looked really bad, and they just removed the outside, to sell the inside which was still green.
Is it still okay to buy this lettuce? When I find that this has happened to the lettuce I bought, should I similarly cut away these portions and still eat the part inside that is still green?
Yes it is still good.
A lettuce that is kept outside (as in a farmer's market) will get wilted outer leaves, and the merchant will usually cut them off to make the heads nicer.
Depending on the resulting size; if they cut out too much compared to other lettuces, I might ask for a lower price if sold by the unit.
Personally, I will buy the lettuce with as much of the outer leaves as possible, even if I remove them at home, they will act as an outside protection against the elements.
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12875 | What does "spooned and leveled" mean?
I'm looking at a recipe that lists the following as an ingredient:
1 cup all-purpose flour (spooned and
leveled)
What exactly does this mean? Is this literal - i.e. spoon it into the measuring cup and level off? If so, why does it matter if it's "spooned" or not?
This is why you should weigh ingredients for baking :)
related: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/2321/cup-measurements-shake-or-scrape
The easiest way to measure a cup of flour is of course to take the measuring cup, plunge it into your bag of flour and just lift up a spoonful. The problem with that is that the plunging and lifting will compress the flour inside the cup and actually get you more flour than you wanted. If you spoon the flour into the measuring cup you minimize the compression and will get a more accurate measurement.
It's not necessarily more accurate if the recipe calls for some other measuring method; I'd say it's more consistent, and therefore can be more precise. Accuracy and precision are related, but not the same thing.
@Joe. Ok. I am not sure I understand what you are saying here. Obviously, if a recipe calls for "a pinch of salt", or "650 grams of lemon juice", the method I described would be pretty dumb.
Okay ... so spooning flour will give more consistent weights for the same volume, so it's more precise ... but if the person writing the recipe used dip-and-sweep or dip-and-shake as their measurement style, you're going to be consistently inaccurate. So I only had issue with your use of the term 'accurate' when it should've been 'precise'. (sorry, I work with a bunch of scientists ... it's an issue when they claim that they have +/- 0.0001 precision, yet they have no clue what the accuracy is, so it might be +/- 10)
Yeah, ok, I see what you mean. You are right, the only thing that the "spoon and level" method will actually do is make the measurement more precise/consistent. Anyway, volumetric measurements for dry ingredients should be permanently banned from all recipes. Weighing stuff is the way to go. :)
You're exactly right, it means to spoon the flour in and then level it off.
If you scoop the flour, meaning you dip the measuring cup into the canister and scoop a large amount out, the pressure compacts more flour into the measuring cup. When you spoon it into the measuring cup instead, the flour is less compact (so there is less of it in the same 1 cup measure). Subtle differences like this can mean a big difference in the end result when baking.
If you were to measure 1 sifted cup, 1 spooned cup, and 1 scooped cup on a food scale you would get three different results (from lightest to heaviest). This is why I'm a big fan of recipes which use weight measurements for the ingredients.
So the term spooned is used to tell you not to scoop - but there would be no difference if I "spooned" it in or "poured" it in?
Well @clueless, pouring it in is probably going to weigh down the flour as it impacts into what you're pouring it into. Unless you're pouring real slow and gentle-like.
I would recommend getting a gram accurate scale and using the weight listed on the side of your bag of flour. If you are baking then you really should be weighing your ingredients. If you aren't baking, then you can probably get by with the "scoop and sweep" approach since accuracy is actually not required.
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23801 | How can I clean my peeler?
I have a peeler that I've been using for a while. It's gotten quite rusty and dirty. Of course, I can toss it at this point and start with a new peeler... But is there any way to clean it? Anything I can soak it in that would remove the rust?
what kind of peeler is it?
With your next peeler, rinse it and dry it after every use and it will last a very long time.
Related: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/22107/how-can-i-sharpen-my-peeler
@nice - thanks. I rinse it, but I imagine it's the drying part that's the problem...
Soak in a mild borax solution. fill the sink and throw in gummed up juicers, colanders and tea-stained spoons as well.
If your kitchen is humid, a bit of an oil rub after thorough drying should slow down the rust.
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15392 | How much is a "scoop" of vanilla sugar?
I've seen a lot of recipes that call for a "scoop" of vanilla sugar. I know that this refers to the little scoop that comes with most vanilla sugar containers. However, I live in a country that sells vanilla sugar in little paper packets... How much is a "scoop" of vanilla sugar in tea- or tablespoons?
I ended up measuring the scoop spoon the next time I was in the US, and it turned out to be 1 Tablespoon.
I've lived in the US my whole life, in two very different states on opposite sides of the country, and never in my life have I encountered a creature I would characterize as a "vanilla sugar container" nor a "vanilla sugar scoop".
Some recipes will note 1 scoop of vanilla sugar is required and also somewhere else mention the measurement to be 1 serving size. So for example, 1 Serving of Vanilla sugar would generally be two Tablespoons as seen in the recipe below from here :
"...a little whole wheat flour, a scoop of vanilla sugar, a bit of baking powder, and a pinch of salt."
Pancakes
2 c whole wheat flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
2 T sugar (I put my vanilla pods in mine so it infuses the sugar, but regular granulated will work fine)
pinch of salt
1/4 c sour cream
1/4 c chai concentrate (Not a sweet one!)
1 egg
enough milk, coconut water or milk substitute until desired consistency
oil or butter for the pan
To Garnish
sliced strawberries (enough for pancakes and to garnish)
1/4 c sour cream + sugar (I used rose) to taste
brandy syrup (boil 1/2 c sugar, 1/2 c water until dissolved, add 1/2 c brandy, cook 5 min to cook out harsh alcohol flavor)
Although this may vary from one recipe to another, I would recommend if the measurement is not explicitly provided looking for other recipes for similar dishes which call for the same ingredient. Reasoning for this would be since it is not outlined, it is probably meant to be considered the common measurement of that ingredient.
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44307 | Can I make my crumble topping in a mixer?
I have a basic crumb topping that I use to top fruit crumbles. It consists of 1 cup brown sugar, 1 cup flour, and 1/2 cup margarine. I like to make it in big batches and freeze in individual bags in the freezer so that I can just pull it out and sprinkle it on top of the fruit whenever I need it. The trouble is that the recipe calls for it to be made by hand, and I really really dislike making it... My hands end up hurting badly for a while after, and it takes a long time to get the margarine off.
Can I make it in a stand mixer or would that affect the quality? I would probably use a cookie paddle to mix it.
You could use just about anything to mix that, a food processor, a mixer, a stand mixer (just about any attachment), even a blender would work in pulses. Freezing it too will work just fine. Just move fast because any of those methods will create heat, and heat will melt butter. As long as your ingredients are mixed and your butter (margarine) isn't melted, you're golden.
When using a blender, I add whole porridge oats which helps keep the mixture getting too sticky. I also bake the crumble topping separately spread on a tray so its super crunchy.
I use a pastry blender to make my white sugar / flour / butter crumble topping. Works like a charm and much easier on the hands. This is not an electrical device:
It helps to use a table knife to get hard butter out from between the tines from time to time (I don't poke between the tines, just run the knife around the inside curve then the outside curve.) It's neater and faster than entirely hand-mixing with your fingers, and less likely to melt the butter. It's also quicker to clean than your mixer.
You'll find that cleaning a hand pastry blender during and after use is very quick using a (new) 50mm paint brush.
Wire whisks also can be used in lieu of pastry blenders if mechanically stable enough (stomp, don't stir). Also, the standard whisks from a hand mixer tend to do crumbles quite well (in this case stir don't stomp - and do not overfill the mixing bowl, hand mixer whisks are good at propelling things very far if they can :). Recipe might have to be tuned in both cases. BTW, freezing the crumbles and applying them frozen straight before baking sounds like one of these occasions where freezing improves texture!
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34747 | How long does hot chocolate stay good?
My resource for food shelf life is usually stilltasty.com . However, I can't find hot chocolate on the list. I'm talking about a small pot of hot chocolate - milk, cocoa, sugar, water. Is the guideline the expiration date of the milk? Or will it last longer/shorter?
It is a common misconception that the shelf life of a cooked food (= mix of ingredients) is the same as the shelf life of the shortest-lived ingredient. I cannot stress enough how wrong this assumption is.
As with any cooked food, the shelf life of hot chocolate should be about 3 to 5 days in the fridge, with a cumulative stay in the danger zone of no longer than 2 hours.
An explanation of why the assumption is wrong: Food spoils when bacteria (or sometimes other organisms like mold) create a colony in it. For this to happen, the food has to offer all the conditions an organism needs for survival. Most cooked foods are nutritious enough to ensure the survival of simple organisms.
There are single ingredients which hold for longer. Bar chocolate is a good example. The reason for that is that they are not a complete medium. Chocolate does not have enough moisture for bacteria to grow in it. But as soon as you mix any ingredient with something else, you cannot know if the other ingredients have not added the factor the bacteria have been missing. So, if you mix for example water (practically indefinite shelf life because it has no calories) and flour (practically indefinite shelf life because it has no moisture), you get dough, which will have large bacterial colonies within 3 days.
Exceptions in the other direction (food that spoils sooner than 3 days) are foods which decompose on their own. For example fish - it goes bad quickly even at fridge temperature, but the reason is the fish's own enzymes, not bacteria. That's why it is normally held on ice, if not frozen outright.
As a side note, you cannot rely on the expiration date of milk anyway. It is OK for traditionally pasteurized milk. But the expiration date of ESL and UHT milk is only valid as long as the packaging has not been broken. Once you open it, it is again good for about 5 days.
Conclusion: For anything cooked, up to 5 days in the fridge is a good assumption. Make it less for food which is known for high risk of contamination (e.g. food containing raw eggs), but never longer, even if the expiration date of the ingredients is longer than that.
Where's you get the five days for milk as soon as it's opened from? I don't think I've heard that before. StillTasty says usually a week past the sell by date - obviously oversimplifying, but still. We also have a lot of vague answers here but if there's a consensus, it's probably that you should just smell/taste it.
@Jefromi As mentioned, she meant UHT milk, http://www.stilltasty.com/fooditems/index/17690
@Mien Oh, right. I was confused by the first part, saying you can't rely on the expiration date - in the US, UHT milk is much less common than in Europe, and you pretty much can rely on the date.
The only UHT dairy I can think of off hand here is those horrible little portion control creamers like fast food restaurants use.
Great answer. Really comprehensive with right amount of scientific reasoning so readers can re-apply the logic.
@jefromi I got this information for both UHT and ESL milk from a TV report, so I cannot link a written source. The report was of the trustworthy journalism type, and the person saying this was representing a professional association of milk producers, so I hope they knew what they were talking about. Besides, both ESL and UHT are thermal processes which work by killing the bacteria present in the milk, they don't make it poisonous to new bacteria. Once the milk gets exposed to new pathogens, they grow at their usual rate. So the 5 days make sense, even if we don't trust the source.
@rumtscho Yeah, sorry, I wasn't doubting you anymore - Mien resolved my complaint. It's just that in the US we don't really have UHT milk as far as I know, so the expiration dates work, and everyone just tests by smell/taste.
You can still use the prepared food rule (~4 days in fridge, 2hrs at room temp). You can go with expiry of the most perishable IF the other ingredients don't have a spoiling effect on it (in this case, the effect is not significant). So the question somewhat reduces to how long does previously warmed milk last?:
If it's left at room temperature (in the danger zone 40F-140F), then the answer to How do I know if food left at room temperature is still safe to eat? applies.
If it's in the fridge, then a few days (~4) is the guideline. Have a look at Expiration Date on Milk.
If it's pasteurized and unopened, the expiry date is the indicator (usually a couple of weeks depending on the type of filtration).
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12383 | What are the names of the three main parts of my metal spatula?
What are the names of the three main parts of my metal spatula?
Handle
Flat part that comes in contact with the food
The connecting metal which has rivets or pins attaching it to 1 and 2
I don't think there are any 'official' names, but I suggest:
Handle
Blade
Shaft
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12831 | How to remove smell from plastic lid?
A set of Ikea glass jars are used for home counter top food storage. One of them was temporarily used to store bars of soap. Now it is wanted back in the kitchen. The plastic in the lid is retaining the perfume smell of the soap. How can this smell be removed?
Mix baking soda and white vinegar together (it'll get all foamy) and lather it up pretty well with the mixture and leave sit for a few hours. Rinse and it should be clear of smells.
Vinegar by itself would probably do the trick too. Same technique. The baking soda is a useful addition when you're trying to scrub things, since the grit will help.
@Martha, I agree, when I save plastic containers from the store I fill them with a water/white vinegar mixture and just let them sit overnight; that seems to do the trick.
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72897 | How to cook bell peppers until they are VERY tender, but not broken down?
I had a curry dish on a restaurant, can't remember the name of the dish, but it was something in the lines of "vegetarian pepper curry".
It consisted almost entirely of loosely chopped (3cm pieces) bell peppers of various colours, in curry (coconut milk + spices) sauce.
Nothing special about the dish, except for the tenderness of the peppers. They were soft in a way you could spread them over bread, except for the skins holding them together. But in the curry, they held their shape perfectly.
Every time I cook peppers for any extended period of time, they separate from the skins and melt into the sauce (tomato/curry).
How can this soft texture be achieved without breaking up the peppers?
Is it just technique? (i.e. not stirring or something, maybe the timing of putting them in the curry)
If it were me, I'd roast them to the correct doneness, and stir it in just before serving. (although the flavors wouldn't meld then)
@Joe couldn't you roast some while also cooking others into the curry?
@thing : sure, but you might want to peel them first, just in case they turn to mush.
I had another thought -- cooking some vegetables in an acidic solution will prevent them from turning to mush as easily. I know it's true for onions & potatoes ... I don't know about peppers. ... and I suspect that's not how they'd to it for a coconut milk based curry. (a tomato curry, maybe).
@Joe and that's exactly where OP gets mush. But my first thought was also "acid". Alas, wrong here.
I'm not sure that this is how the restaurant did it, but perhaps that kind of texture could be achieved by blanching and freezing the pepper pieces, then reheating them in a microwave just prior to adding them to the sauce and serving. Blanching would ensure that they don't taste completely raw, and freezing would make them "mushier" without ruining the shape by extended cooking.
I haven't tried this myself, so no guarantees.
I'm leaning towards something like this. I'll try it and see if I can get similar results!
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14052 | Amount of Chocolate-chips in a Chocolate-chip cookie?
I've been making chocalote chip cookies for a while and I just can't decide how many chocolate chips to put in each cookie. So maybe once and for all I can get a good answer to the question:
What is the best percentage of chocolate-chips for a chocolate cookies? And what are the pros and cons for putting more or less chocolate chips?
I've always just mixed all the chips in with the batter and left it up to chance on how many a single cookie averages.
Ya, but how much chocolate chips per batter?
Surely this is a bit subjective... as long as you don't put in so many that the cookies can't hold together, it'll be fine. Besides, if you can't decide how many to put in, maybe that just means there's a range of equally good options for you!
I'm looking for a slightly more profound answer
I don't know if a profound answer exists for chocolate chip cookies. And there is also the factor of who your target audience is and what type of chocolate you are using (for sweeter blends, you may not need as many chips).
As long as you can taste the cookie next to the chocolate, keep adding chocolate :) Seriously, it's all down to personal taste. A very high chocolate concentration can make the cookies taste bitter, or make them fall apart. That'd be too much, obviously.
A much more interesting question is now how many chips, but how much butter?
While it depends on your taste and recipe, I can tell you what's my favorite amount.
I tend to chop chocolate to pretty big pieces (cubes approximately 2cm long). I tend to put as many chocolate chips as it takes so that some of them fall off when mixed with the dough. I then additionally push leftover chips in dough when forming cookies. I try to avoid chips that are too small and chocolate powder; somehow the cookies are better when chocolate powder is not mixed into dough. I suppose the contrast between the dough and chocolate chips is what makes them tasty.
Exactly 42 chocolate chips per 3/4 cup of batter.
which cup? The green one or the purple one :)
My mom and I love to bake chocolate chip cookies together and this is an issue we run into every time- how many chips are too many?
I like to pour in about half of a standard bag of Nestle morsels and spoon out my cookies, while my mom waits until I'm done, then adds the other half a bag of morsels to the other half of the dough, then adds pecans or walnuts and spoons out her batch.
Its all about personal preference and the likes and dislikes of your audience :)
12.27
The original Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe calls for two cups of chips or one 12-oz. bag of standard-size semi-sweet chocolate morsels. The recipe makes 60 (rounded tablespoon-sized) cookies. I have a 12 oz. bag of chocolate chips here that indicates in the "Nutrition Facts" box that one serving is equal to 32 chips. It says the bag contains 23 servings. That's 736 chocolate chips per bag. 736 divided by 60 equals an average of 12.27 chocolate chips per cookie.
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56006 | Live Tomato Zucchini Lasagna - what does live mean?
I was looking at the menu of Candle 79 - a vegan, organic restaurant in Manhattan. One of the items on the menu is titled:
Live Tomato Zucchini Lasagna - cashew cheese, marinated wild mushrooms, tomato sauce, basil, pine nut pesto.
What could the 'live' possibly imply? What might it mean?
Since the restaurant is vegan, nothing is actually alive in the traditional sense...
You'd be better off calling them and asking them :)
First off: yum. Second: perhaps live means uncooked or raw? Using raw tomatoes and zucchini in conjunction with cooked sauce to provide an al dental texture normally found in non vegan noodles?
... Vegans eat living things... plants are alive.
Or perhaps it's whipped up "live" at the table, in "dinner and a show" fashion.
Live might just mean exciting.
I'm pretty sure the word "live" means that it's raw and uncooked. I found a recipe for Raw Mushroom and Spinach Lasagna that's very similar to the menu item you describe. It uses zucchini "noodles", cashew "ricotta", along with marinated mushrooms, and tomato sauce to make a raw and meatless "lasagna". The only apparent difference is that the recipe calls for spinach pesto instead of pine nut pesto.
While Ross Ridge's answer of "raw" is pretty likely, an alternative possibility is that the food contains some "live" culture, something fermented and still active. A culture that is active is sometimes referred to as "live" - mostly like a yoghurt, or pickles, or fermented drink. The lasagna itself is not likely to be fermented, but it might contain an ingredient or two that is.
In this recipe, either the cashew cheese or the marinated mushrooms might have a live culture involved, since both cheeses and pickles can be fermented. Or even the tomato sauce, some of the old traditional sauce recipes were fermented, since it helped preserve the food.
Food with live cultures is becoming more common, as some people believe they contribute to health (think probiotics), and increasing technology gives people the tools to do so safely.
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34636 | How long can milk products be frozen before spoiling?
I made a sauce for macaroni and cheese about 6 months ago and froze the excess sauce. It is basically a bechamel sauce with a fair amount of cheese melted in.
I realize that if I thaw and re-heat this sauce there may be taste or texture differences - the cheese may seize, etc. But I'm mostly concerned with whether this will be safe to eat.
Is it possible for the sauce to have spoiled? If so, will reheating make it safe to eat or not?
The answer you're looking for is at the reference question—second paragraph. If you freeze it at 0 or below, it safe to eat forever (assuming it was safe to eat when you froze it). The rest of the answer should give you an idea of how much the quality may have declined.
Your sauce won't spoil when frozen, but the quality will decline. Not knowing how much time exactly there was between making it and it being totally frozen, there is a possibility that this is an issue. If it was chilled rather quickly, your sauce is safe to eat.
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13733 | Substitute for sesame oil (sesame allergy)
My family eats a lot of stir fries and sesame oil is a critical ingredient in many of them. Unfortunately, my wife is allergic to sesame so we need an alternative. Has anyone had success recreating the sesame oil flavor with a non-sesame-based food?
Sesame oil has such a distinctive flavour, I'm afraid there's nothing that will give you exactly the same taste. Many sites suggest peanut oil, but this is more or less tasteless in my experience.
I would suggest toasting some unsalted peanuts or cashews and adding them to the stir fry, to get that roasted, slightly smoky flavour. Just add them to a warm, dry pan and toss frequently to prevent burning.
If you're feeling really adventurous you might even try smoking some peanuts (you can do this in a wok with certain wood chips and a bamboo steamer, plenty of instructions online).
You can simply omit the sesame oil, and most recipes should work just fine. The sesame flavor is pleasant but not required.
You might also consider substituting a nut oil such as walnut oil for some of the rich flavor of sesame oil. Drizzle it on at the end of cooking, and stir it in.
I recommend roasted pumpkin seed oil, which has a number of similar qualities, but tends to be expensive and may require refrigeration after opening.
Maybe it would help to use a few drops of liquid smoke as well.
Sorry, but I'm afraid that posting a "me too" post won't help you any more. If the existing answers are not good enough, then nobody in the community knows more. And because we are not a discussion forum, we have different rules - this space is for solutions to the original problem only. If you want to keep track of answers to this question, you can star it as a favorite instead of adding a post.
Jolene noticed that there is one sentence in your answer which suggests a new way to solve the problem. Sorry that I missed that part; I undeleted your answer and she edited it to leave the actual answering part, wich fits with our guidelines.
I have this issue, as my son is very allergic to sesame, and also to peanuts and basically all tree nuts (precluding the nut-based suggestions above). When I make fried rice I like to use chopped-up pancetta at the appropriate point in the recipe (give it enough time to render much of its fat). No, it's not a match, but it seems to fill a somewhat comparable role in the flavor, perhaps because of the smokiness. You could probably substitute bacon if you lack pancetta.
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