Proper kitchen temperature for doing "fermentation"

The proper temperature is the average temperature range of the type of room in which the fermentation was historically done by the culture which invented the specific fermentation dish.

I know this is not what a modern cook wants to hear, but there is no easier way to put it. Recipes were invented to work at a certain temperature, and because this was such a ubiquitous part of the whole thing, and historically so hard to change, that it does not appear in the recipe itself.

For example, if you are creating a sourdough starter, you can easily stay around 20 Celsius. The range is rather wide, but the exact smell of the starter will depend on the temperature you had, as you're likely to get slightly different bacteria at 25 Celsius than at 18 Celsius.

Other recipes will need another temperature. You seem to need well above 30 Celsius for dosa batter to ferment properly. Other cases, such as sauerkraut or wine, need a temperature more common in old European cellars, between 10 and 15 Celsius. Salami might fare best if you have a bit less than that. Yogurt needs to be quite warm, but depending on the temperature you choose within the "warm" range, you will get sharp vinegary bacteria or milder lactic bacteria. And so on.

If you have a modernized recipe which directs you to use room temperature, stay in the 20-25 Celsius range. But if you are not sure the recipe has been made with climatized rooms in mind, you might need to do some research.


Making Souk. When do I add these Moroccan spices?

I cannot seem to find references to a Moroccan dish named "Souk". Rather, souk is the Arabic word for bazaar or marketplace. Perhaps it refers to the sellers of your spice mix and not a dish to use it in? I will assume you have your hands on a typical Moroccan spice blend such as ras el hanout.

In any case, to get the best flavor out of your spices, you need to bloom them in oil. Heat oil until shimmering and fry any aromatics you are using. Add the spices, and cook for a few second. Recipes usually tell you to cook "until fragrant", but really, a few seconds should do. It is very easy to burn ground spices. Immediately add the beans and the cooking liquid, simmering until tender.

A good inspiration would be this recipe for spiced black-eyed peas. Although it uses Indian spices, the basic technique would be the same.


It is honeydew honey. It is not made from nectar, but from tree parasite secretions. It has a quite different taste from regular flower/nectar honey, and it is much darker. Sometimes it is also called forest honey.

Wikipedia has a paragraph on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Honeydew_honey

There is a slim possibility that it is not a real honey at all, but pine honey, which is actually a jelly made from pine flowers/leaves (it uses the fresh tips where the needles are very soft). It is used as a bee honey substitute, not a fruit jelly substitute, and the name also includes the word "honey", so there is a chance for miscommunication, especially if a language barrier is present. But I think you'd have described the taste differently. It is also a richer taste than normal honey, but a bit sharper, not caramel-like mellow, and the pine resin aroma is discernible.


UV lamp to disinfect raw sushi fish slices

That is an interesting idea, but I would not recommend it.

It is true that UV light is able to kill microorganisms, and it has been used to treat water for quite some time now. It has also been used to treat some types of juices, and is even used in the food industry (factories). It is an alternative to pasteurization, since it provides an alternative way to killing harmful bacteria without altering the food taste.

However, the uses of UV light in solid foods (and even liquids) do require extensive study about the food properties. This means that, in order to effectively use UV light to kill bacteria in fish, one would have to seriously study how it interacts with the specific type of fish you plan on using.

I am not sure if such study for fishes exists. So, it is best to avoid using this technique, since it could potentially make people sick.

A good read about this topic is this academic paper, entitled "Review: Advantages and Limitations on Processing Foods by UV Light".


Yes, yoghurt can be frozen - according to this Canadian government agency, freezing it extends its shelf life to 1-2 months past its sell by date. Note that they do not recommend freezing an opened container of yoghurt. However, considering that it keeps for quite a while in the refridgerator as well you may not need to. This answer point out a couple of issues with freezing yoghurt, namely that it can get separated - if you put it in a blender that may not be a huge issue, as you kinda mix it together again anyway.


What type of bread buns do premium burger restaurants use?

I don't think there is one answer to your question. Every restaurant makes a choice about what it thinks a high end bun is. I would personally say either a brioche bun or an onion roll.

I think the key is that the bread is fresh, it's different from a white bread bun, and it gets a little TLC itself.

I would choose one of the two buns I did, because there is an obvious taste/texture difference between them and a standard bun. Also, what I meant by TLC is that most places just treat the bun like something to keep the burger grease off your fingers.

You'd be surprise at how it changes the bun if you put a thin coat of butter on it and slap it on the grill/flat top to crisp up. Steaming the bun also really ramps it up in my opinion. We've started steaming our plain white hotdog and hamburger buns and they're awesome. Another technique that's pretty much exclusive to the flat top, unless you have an add-on for your grill, is cooking the patty and/or bun on top of a pile of chopped onions. The onions caramelize, but the onion juices that cook out, steam up and get inside the bun to a certain extent.

So I think the choice of bread is secondary to what you do with it to jazz it up, because to be honest, a high end hamburger is more about the person eating it's perception of it being high end. I've eaten high end hamburgers cheapo hamburgers. I don't taste enough of a difference in the actual meat and bread to make me wanna pay a high price. Typically, the difference is in any seasonings, sauces, or preparations they do with it.


What can I cook with noodles and soy sause only

Cook and drain the noodles with a stir fry over the top.   Do a sesame oil stir fry with the onions and ginger.  Add in more vegetables and or a protein like chicken or tofu.  I have low sodium diet so I don't do soy sauce but you could finish the stir by down with some soy sauce.


It depends on personal tastes (both aesthetic and flavour). Ceramic pots certainly retain heat longer which suits black tea as a pot can be on the go for a while. Clay is for the connoisseur and should be kept for one specific tea. These ideally need to be used regularly so don't suit most households (including me).

I'd personally have:

A western style ceramic pot  (or two, one small, one large) for black teas like Kenyan,
Ceylon or Assam based teas which I'd only rinse out (unless it got forgotten and grew mold! in which case it gets a good scrub)
A glass pot for strongly flavoured teas or heavy tannin tea like Lapsang Souchong
or chai (if i make it in a pot) which would be cleaned each time
An eastern style ceramic pot for green tea as they generally keep the larger leaves back.

The biggest difference I've found is that warming the pot is more significant when using ceramic or clay over glass as the material absorbs more heat.


Tamales with rendered turkey fat and clarified butter - No pork?

I recommend clarifying the butter first, and then using it for your tamales. Butter is about 16-18% water, which could significantly affect the fat content of the dish. If you do that, it should work fine from a mechanical perspective; the melting points and viscosity are similar enough. I think you may run the risk of being slightly distracted by the flavor. Maybe that's a good thing? I make butter/flour tortillas all the time and those are freaking delicious.

The safer bet, of course, would be to try and find some chicken fat. If you can't, I'd definitely use the clarified butter though. Who knows, it might be your new go-to secret ingredient for tamales!

::Columbo voice:: Just one more thing.
If this person is avoiding pork because she's eating kosher, using butter with meat is likely a no no as well!

Good luck!


People often marinate beef cuts like flank steak or skirt steak.

Dry brining (pre-salting) beef is pretty common, such as for prepping many steaks.

Wet brining is also pretty common -- corned beef is brined. Beef tongue is often pickled and brined as well.


What's the most appropriate way to thaw hamburger meat?

I like to put the meat in a largish ziplock bag and flatten it out so it occupies the whole flat area of the bag but is only a couple of cm think.  Then I press a chopstick into the meat lengthways both horizontally and vertically to create indents in the meat, as if I was making a naughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) grid.

Then I freeze it lay flat in the freezer.  Then when I want to use it I can 'snap' off squares of meat (along the indentation lines) to the amount that I need and I don't need to defrost the whole pack in a single go.

To defrost (I don't have a microwave) I leave the pieces on a metal tray for a little while, turning occasionally.  This usually defrosts them in an hour or so, depending on how many there are


In the US, carrots are normally sold topless too.

I do understand the desire to see those fresh green leaves on it, but in fact, they're not helping. Since they're still alive, they draw nutrients and water out of the root, decreasing what's left for you. This means they may actually be worse than ones that had the tops left on them, especially if they've been stored for a while. They'll have less flavor and won't be as crisp. If you do buy them with the tops still on, it's a good idea to at least trim them before storing.


Induction cooking pan bottom is concave - will this affect performance?

I don't think this should be an issue. The concave design is probably to reduce the amount of contact area between the cookware and the cook-top.

Having less contact area between the (hot) cookware and the cook-top keeps heat from flowing between the pan and the cook-top, resulting in:
- a cooler / safer cook top
- less wasted energy

For this very reason, those pans would not work well on a traditional electric stove where you want maximal heat flow (because the heat comes from the cook top, not the pan).


What is the best western/cheap substitute for banana leaf?

If you can find a local Asian or Mexican specialty food store, you'll be more likely to find them, though they may be in the frozen section. Part of the uniqueness of these leaves is that they impart a slight flavor to the food cooked in them.

  People in the tropics use these huge leaves to line cooking pits and to wrap everything from pigs to rice.  The leaves impart a subtle anise fragrance to food and protect it while it's cooking.  Frozen leaves--once thawed--work just fine.  Boil the leaves before using them to keep them from cracking.  Look for banana leaves among the frozen foods in Asian, Hispanic, or specialty markets.

If you absolutely can't find them there are several substitution options:

  aluminum foil (as food wrapper) OR parchment paper (as food wrapper) OR corn husks (as food wrapper or to cover imus) OR hoja santa leaves (as a food wrapper, also imparts an interesting anise flavor)

Personally, I'd go for other leaves before foil or parchment. Particularly with steaming, I find that parchment can get soggy and may collapse if you're making it into boats, so you might want to test it before going crazy. Foil can be problematic because it can be very easy to puncture unless you get super heavy-duty foil and then you'd potentially lose all of the sauce.

It looks like you can easily make this using small bowls like ramekins, rice bowls or small souffle molds or hollowed out coconut halves. See the video here. The host mentions using the coconut halves due to not being able to find many banana leaves. They may be more expensive to start but you can likely use them many times before needing to exchange them.


How would I make a Paleo yogurt-based frozen custard?

Frozen yogurt made with full fat yogurt is very creamy and full flavored. You might find that the eggs are unnecessary.

If you do do the custard watch you temperature carefully as yogurt curdles easily when it is heated. If you have a lot of fat in the yogurt then it will be resistant to curdling otherwise you can take out some insurance by mixing in a little bit of corn starch- if that is allowed.

Honey is perfectly fine and many frozen yogurt recipes call for it.


Can you freeze bagna cauda? (cream basically)

You can freeze cream, but it will undergo some separation issues.  When you thaw it you can shake or mix it to reintegrate the milk solids that have separated. Unfortunately, it will not regain the same mouth feel as never frozen liquid dairy. Basically I never freeze dairy that I want to drink, only things I will be cooking with or baking with.

In the case of this dip, I assume it will be reheated when you want to eat it, so I would say that you can freeze it and when you reheat spend some time with a whisk to recombine fully.


Look at the combination of time and temperature, when you decide whether it is safe or not. Baldwin recommends a 135°F / 57°C water bath for at least 1 hour and 15 minutes to pasteurize a chicken egg. Therefore 63 degrees in two hours should be safe even though the egg is a little larger.


Grey mushroom cream sauce - why so dark?

You don't say how you prepare the sauce, and Alfredo does not contain mushrooms (or flour, or onions). But if you are simply pureeing button mushrooms, then no, there is no way to make it any other color. The mushrooms have black gills, and they will color the whole white sauce.

In theory, you could try removing the gills from button mushrooms before cooking a sauce. In practice, you will probably have enough pieces remaining to give the sauce a light greyish tint.

You can use a different type of mushroom, one without black gills. Porcini should work. Of course, you'll end up with a different taste, and porcini are not a staple in every supermarket. But if you insist on a white sauce, this is the way to go.

Another option is to just eat it as it is. Humans need some time to get accustomed to visual stimuli which are not expected in a given context. But a sauce made with mushrooms, onions and cream is super tasty. After you have eaten it a few times, you can learn to associate it with "good", not "unappetizing". But I guess the success of this method will vary between people.


Can I use southeast asian fish sauce as a marinade?

No, it's not unusual at all. See this page from Vietnamese-American cooks for examples where nuoc-mam is used to marinate chicken, or just type

  nuoc mam marinade

in Google :)

There are a lot of examples, including fish, chicken, beef, or even mango marinated (as well as dipped, of course) with nuoc-mam (and most of the time lemongrass), and a fair share of them are recipes by 'natives' from South-East Asia, not only fusion food addicts (even if you can be both!).
Some salads like goi tom or goi ga also involve nuoc mam marinade.


The actual minimum temperature which kills the roundworm Trichinella spiralis is 137F.

Therefore it is recommended that you sous-vide pork at a temperature of 138F or higher.  If you do not have a high quality immersion circulator with precise temperature control and your water bath temperature can vary by a few degrees, it is recommended to use at least 140F.

I use an industrial polyscience immersion circulator and I have found that cooking pork at 141F yields extremely tender meat that is both medium rare and safe.  I had whole marinated pork tenderloins that I cooked for 6 hours this way and they came out tender enough to cut with a fork.

I also put a quick sear on the pork with a hot cast iron pan immediately after taking it out of the bath for additional flavor from the Maillard reaction.

FWIW, marinating meat in a salty sauce (fish sauce / soy sauce) will draw water out of the muscle fibers and make the meat tougher -- this is especially true for thin cuts like your 1cm thick chops.

Try marinating in the spices and seasonings with a bit of oil minus the salt or salty sauces (at the very least, reduce the amount of salt in the marinade). If you have a chamber vacuum, you can marinate in the sous vide packaging under vacuum which will lead to more intense flavor using a lot less marinade. After sous vide cooking, apply a small amount of your salt or salty sauces when serving the pork.


As a rule of thumb- you can comfortably hold your finger in warm water.

100°F (38°C). Yeast wake up well at this temperature.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/bread/yeast_temp.html

This time of year my house is 80°F (27°C). but I heat my water a little past that (~120°F or 50°C) to compensate for cooler ingredients- you really want the dough to be around 80F.

This will apply to all yeast recipes that call for warm water.


What good substitutes for saffron exist?

As for flavor, there really isn't a substitute.

Infusing saffron strands in a warm acidic liquid such as white wine will help extract the maximum flavor.

Whole saffron while more expensive than ground is a better use of your money as you know you're getting only saffron.  Ground saffron, while not usually found in stores in the U.S. may be sold by mail order or overseas and is usually less expensive because it's being cut and blended with other spices such as turmeric but won't have the same flavor.


Infrared thermometer for oven temperatures

It will measure the temperature of the glass itself, but not necessarily in an accurate way. Most glass is largely opaque to IR, but will radiate IR of it's own based on temperature.

The trick with IR thermometers is that they are guessing the temperature of an object by making an assumption about how much IR (Infrared Radiation) that object will radiate when it is a certain temperature. Cheaper IR thermometers have what is called "fixed emissivity", which means that they always assume that the object you are measuring is radiating 95% of the radiation that it would theoretically emit if it were a perfect black-body object. An emissivity of 95% (or 0.95) is a good start for most household objects - cloth, painted surfaces, etc.

Where it breaks down is with things like shiny metal, glass, liquids, etc. For those objects, the amount of radiation released at a given temperature is more or less than the expected 0.95. Shiny metal pans, for instance, can be as low as 0.2, meaning the displayed temperature will be much lower than the actual temperature.

You can use tables of emissivity values to correct your temperature reading, like here:
http://www.tnp-instruments.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Infrared%20Thermometer%20and%20Emissivity.pdf (Note, for this table, use the 8-14 micron column).

That takes away most of the convenience of the thermometer, but it is a useful reference. The closer an object's emissivity is to 0.95, the more accurate your thermometer will be. You can improve accuracy by painting an area flat black, or even using a piece of masking tape stuck on the object to make a good "reading point". Fancier thermometers allow you to set the emissivity, and even fancier ones allow you to auto-calibrate with a contact-thermometer add-on.

To get back to the original question, glass has an emissivity of around 0.75-0.85, meaning the measured temperature will be a little lower than the actual temperature. Of course, even an accurate glass temperature doesn't tell you a lot about the actual oven temperature. My favorite surface for taking the measurement is my pizza stone, which is just about 0.95, perfect for accurate readings.


potential cereulide on plastic container, can it be washed off?

Chubbyemu keeps me up at a night too.

But remember, when you're looking up case studies and very rare stories and situations, they will always be as crazy as possible. If people do get sick from clean containers, they would have used that as the basis for the story, not eating 5 day old pasta. Remember, the point of both internet clickbait stories and chubbyemu stories is to take rare situations from billions of people, and use it to contrast how serious death is vs how "benign" his mistake was, which would be more pronounced if they could find this theoretical clean plastic container illness story. But if 5 day old pasta and chugging ridiculous amounts of soy sauce is the best he could do, then you're fine as you don't do anything equally as ridiculous, and even if you do a rediculous thing, you're still probably fine. As he mentioned at the end of the video, eating 5 day old pasta will not usually end like this in the vast vast majority of cases, and he only mentioned a handful of case studies afterwards. And even after noting the sickness, it was highly propagated by other ridiculous things like the stomach pills (It should be common knowledge that for any type of poisoning, your goal is vomiting as much as possible. It's on the back of every bleach or ammonia container). I mean, don't ever eat 5 day old pasta, but the container will certainly be fine.

To answer the question:

If the pasta was a dry pasta you can end right there because the toxin will only be inside the pasta anyway, not in any sauce that would spread over the container.

If it's a wet pasta, look here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12197882&ved=2ahUKEwjvu-21xJriAhXCmuAKHWuaCdUQFjABegQIBxAK&usg=AOvVaw36q0A0hxu_OK8sVUn_vFtl

So, it's lipophilic, ie, oil soluble. Soap will do just fine. Or if you're very scared just fill the container with oil and mix to dilute it, and then drain it out and wash with soap.

Similarly: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC127581/

The above discussing that B. Cereus is consumed in high quantities regularly without illness. Strains that are dangerous are exceedingly rare, we only know about them because of the incredible information exchange of the modern world in combination with the absurdly high 7 billion population.

Googling: "The CDC estimates that there are over 63,000 cases of Bacillus cereus illness each year in this country, and that 100% of the cases are caused by eating contaminated food."

Note the important deduction, 0% caused by eating washed containers.

At 6 million car accidents per year in the US, commiting to a strict no-car lifestyle will be hundreds of times more important to your safety than worrying about plastic containers.

Also, there are on average 0 deaths per year. See https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/ahfss/Animal_Health/PHR250/2007/25007BcerMH__2_.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiAz-DuwZriAhUQVN8KHesJAcgQFjAGegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw0FiJ9aLhm4a1t4H2isHES3

So, even if you get ill, you'll be fine within 3 days. 1 in 60000 odds at worst, not including the many unreported contracts of the illness that were too mild to be seen. Since googling describes getting sick as "mild and transient", it's probably only serious enough to be reported 1 in 10 times, so after you hit the very rare situation of getting ill, you're STILL 1 in 1 million to die from it (1 in 1 million is a bit handwavy as seen, but 1 in 100,000 is very certain as odds of death after getting sick).

At the miniscule but still but still much worse than B Cereus, total of 50 lightening strike fatalities per year in the US, you have more pressing fears, as being outside is millions of times more potent of a killer than the idea of eating out of washed containers, for which I cannot find any case studies for. Despite how case studies in the US can utilize situations that occur in 1 in 300 million people, where your average astrophysist can go on for days about how big that number is, they still involve gross negligence such as eating an entire bowl of pasta sitting at room temperature for 3 days that then smelt poorly.


When to add salt in sourdough bread mix?

The salt doesn't kill the yeast but slows it down. As well as lacto bacteria producing the acidity.

There's even a name for the conscious adding of salt to the sourdough in German: Monheimer Salzsauer-Verfahren (in English):

  The salt inhibits yeasts and acid formation. The maturation is delayed
  with intensification of the aromas. At the same time, the processing
  properties of the dough (influencing the proteins) improve. The bread
  gets a balanced taste with fine pores of the crumb .

  Especially for the hobby bakery, this type of guide is suitable to
  produce breads with a balanced, mild flavor and flavor, without
  complicated and time-consuming work processes (as in the classic
  three-step guidance ).


Some quick digging brought up a recipe for gluten-free jello that used a ratio of :

1TB gelatin
3-5TB granulated sugar
2c. fruit juice

There are lots of similar ones out there ... some call for more gelatin if they're planning on putting it in a mold (1TB/cup) or making squares you can hold (1.5TB/cup), and some replace part of the juice with a fruit puree.

The exact amount of sugar is going to depend on how sweet the flavoring is, so you might need to play with this one a bit to experiment.  And you may need some citric acid (or a citrus fruit powder) to balance out overly sweet flavorings.

I would also be careful about both how I stored and hydrated the mixture.  Sugar will absorb moisture out of the air, which might result in the mix clumping together before you can use it.  I'd try to put it into pre-measured containers that have little headroom, or where the air can be removed (eg, zip-top bags).

For hydrating, you'd want to mix it into maybe 1/8 of the total liquid and let it sit to hydrate.  If you see any powdery lumps, break those up before you add any hot water.  You could then add 3/8 of the water as boiling and stir to dissolve it completely, then add the remaining 1/2 as cold water to cool it down.

I'm sorry I couldn't be more specific about this.  My attempts at making gelatin used liquid flavorings.


Storing/transporting nut brittle in tins

Based on your answer, here's what I would do:

Line the tins with a bit of tissue paper, to cushion the brittle
Use rubber bands to keep the tins closed in transport
Wrap the tins in more tissue paper, again, to provide cushioning


Is soaking beans 24 hours unrefrigerated safe?

In fact, although the risk is low, the Penn State Extension does recommend soaking in the refrigerator, or using the quick soak method as opposed to an overnight room temperature soak:

  To be on the safe side, it would be advisable to use the quick soak method: Bring water and beans to a boil, cover and boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand 1 hour. Drain and further cook.

Similarly, the US Dry Bean Council recommends (emphasis added):

  A 12-hour soak in cold water before cooking helps hydrate the beans and considerably shortens cooking time. Ideally, beans should be put to soak the night before they are to be prepared and be kept in a cool place, or in the refrigerator, to avoid any fermentation taking place. Before soaking, wash them several times in cold water and remove any damaged or split beans. Discard any particles floating in the soaking water, such as small insects from the harvest, specks of dirt or other contaminants.


What are the best conditions for yeast to develop?

I don't find as much influence on flavor .vs. temperature as is generally claimed - I'd suggest running your own experiments on that front before assuming all that is written is utterly true. I do often drag out bread-making for days, but I don't find my "hurry-up and bake" loaves noticeably inferior, though they are somewhat different.

Once properly rehydrated (or improperly rehydrated, so long as it's not so improper as to kill it) dry yeast or wet makes no difference. My current version of "properly" is based IIRC on directions from Danstar for brewing yeast, but the baking yeast don't seem to mind - water (ideally boiled and cooled) at about 85-95F/30-35C sprinkle dry yeast on, don't disturb/stir/etc for 15 minutes, stir and wait 5 more minutes, introduce to food (flour) and try to avoid drastic temperature shocks. They will put up with much less ideal treatment, but if you exceed 120F/48C you may well finish them off.

I generally provide no sugar to baking yeast, following some book's advice to let them adapt to eating flour if that's what they are supposed to be doing. It works. I tend to delay adding sugar when making a sweet bread with this in mind. Yeast, flour and water should be all you need to get yeast growing. Salt inhibits yeast - some folks think it's vitally important, IME it's not.

When I need bread in a hurry I pull out all the cheats - I get all the liquid to roughly 100f/38c, I add sugar from the start, I knead the dough once (pretty throughly) when mixing and form it straight into pans, I put the pans in a warm (95F/35C) place to rise. It makes perfectly decent bread - try it sometime, you may be surprised. It's not my normal process mostly because it's more effort than my normal process and I'm often not in much of a hurry.

At the moment I have a batch going where I rehydrated the yeast in not particularly warm water which ws not boiled and cooled (and thus has chlorine in it being town water supply), forgot to get any flour to them before leaving the house for several hours, put some flour in when I got home, whatever yeast survived that managed to take off and multiply overnight, I baked part of it the next morning and added some more flour and water to what remained. It's been at 68F/20C more or less the whole time. Later I'll probably add a bunch of eggs, more flour and veer it towards something Stollen-like with some sugar, butter and fruit/nuts.

In my personal experience, yeast and yeast bread are remarkably adaptable and generally forgiving. "Best" really depends on what you want - a few days in the refrigerator is slow, but if it makes bread you like better and you have the time, it might be best. Most folks swear by that for pizza dough. Experiment.


Which oils or fats make the crispiest roast potatoes?

I think it's more about technique than what fat you use when you're looking for crispy outsides (I'm sure there is at least one question here already that has the technique answers).

About the only solid advice I would give is that you need to find a fat that tastes good to you, or is neutral if that's your preference, and make sure the one you use won't burn at the temperature you're using.

Beyond that, it's all about taste and technique.

edit: I looked for questions that might have solid technique answers, but didn't find any. So I looked out on the greater web and found some advice from Cook's Illustrated. Crisp Roasted Potatoes

It doesn't have the recipe for free, but the advice is good:
Parcook at a fast simmer, get a little rough with the parcooked potatoes to rough up the outside, choose the right potatoes (they liked Yukon Golds).


What is the "Chili sauce" ingredient in this recipe?

Heinz and some other companies sell a product that they call 'chili sauce', which might be what you're looking for.

It's a tomato-based sauce, with some spices and seasoning, but it's not particularly spicy.

If you have access to Dutch & German ingredients, you might replace it with one of the thicker shashlik sauces (aka 'curry ketchup').  If you have access to UK ingredients, you might try brown sauce.

If you wanted to make it yourself from scratch, see http://www.food.com/recipe/heinz-chili-sauce-copycat-457947


Wipe your hands with a cloth. If there are still traces of oil, wash your hands but  use dish soap.
Otherwise, get gloves while doing hands-on baking next time.


Slow Cooker: Recipe says Medium, mine has high and low only

If it's a wet recipe (casserole, pot roast) you're more likely to find the meat falling apart than tough.

Medium is non standard and there's actually quite a bit of variation between slow cookers. Medium on our current model is pretty much the same as high on our old one; high on the new one is a bit fierce for most recipes without adaptation.

I suggest that you cook it on high, but if you're around when it reaches the minimum cooking time, then turn it down to low (not warm) until you're ready for it.


Baked Red Potatoes cooked skin up or down (crisped results wanted)

I find that the side against the pan (for any ingredient in a roasting situation) tends to brown more readily.  So, if you want even browning, you'll have to turn your potatoes as the cook.  Beyond that, it's just personal preference.


Is the SS Stovetop Espresso Maker from CafeCoffeeDay a Moka pot?

Yes, It's a Moka Pot.
Despite the name, you can't prepare espresso coffee in that pot.

The coffee that you can prepare with the Moka pot is not even close to an Espresso. The pressure is key to extract the coffe aroma and to produce the cream. The Espresso requires 7 grams of coffee powder and high pressure 90°C water to produce 25ml coffe (cream included). There's no way to do such a thing with a Moka pot.

With a Moka pot, you will get a coffee, which is not Expresso but is also a coffe which is widely drink in Italy (at home, usually). It's different from Espresso but, in my opinion, good. It has it's own taste. The closest thing to an Espresso you can get, if you woUld like to go that way, is a small amount of coffee, but you won't get the same flavour, nor the density.


What are Cassava sticks (Tapioca sticks) used for in Thai cuisine, if at all?

Those seem to be Cassava stem cuttings. They're not meant to be eaten, but are instead meant to propagate new plants.
Cassava are able to grow in poor quality soil and can survive harsh dry seasons. They also do well in areas that do not have good irrigation. This makes them popular in Thailand, especially in poorer areas.

Note that Cassava is not considered a staple food in Thailand. You will see a few uses for it in Thai Cuisine, such as Sweetened Cassava, but more importantly Thais consider it a good cash crop to export.
Cassava require minimal care and cost and can be used for many purposes, such as:

Chips/Pellets to be used for animal feed
Flour for confectionery
Starch for infant food
Starch to be used in textile industries
Ethanol


How can I find out how to make clothbound cheddar cheese?

The quality of cheddar is largely dependant on the skill and effort shown in the aging process. This means providing a suitable environment for the lactose bacteria to flourish. Remember it is the bacteria that coverts the lactose into lactic acid that is the crux of the matter. That is the main source of flavour.

Somewhat cool and somewhat humid. I would aim for a coolish 10 - 15 degrees Celsius and a moderate amount of humidity.

Realise that making these types of artisan cheeses are a huge undertaking especially if you are interested in doing it well and on a large scale. Although I have seen 3 month old aged cheddar the true types would be aged at least six months if not a year.

You are going to have to have a large enough store room that can house all the wheels of cheese. Along with the atmospheric condition the room also needs to be clean and rodent free.

You also have to at least dialy check on your wheels to ensure there is no unwanted  mould growth. You would have to turn those wheels, check the humidity and temperature.

Ultimately there is no short cuts. The effort you put into the making of the cheese will directly influence the taste and ultimately the success of your endeavour.


Baker's Math Formula System - Why Isn't the Flour Mass in Corn Bread Formula 100%?

I decided to try to e-mail my question to the author, Peter Reinhart.  As it turns out, there is a typo in the book!

  "Together, the flour and cornmeal should equal 100%. It's the flour %
  that's listed wrong, not the cornmeal, because the total is 14 oz and
  the flour is listed as 8 oz. If you divide 8 by 14 you get 57.1%,
  which means the cornmeal is correctly listed at 42.9%  So change the
  flour percent -- that's a typo I can see can easily happen since 1 and
  7 are kind of similar looking and easily overlooked."


what is the ideal ratio to mix mustard powder with flour?

If want to sell mustard, make mustard, not a stretched fake mustard. You would be cheating your customers and depending on your location the authorities might be after you, too.

The "sharpness" of a mustard is balanced by the ratios of different mustard seeds, white/yellow, brown or black and the temperatures used during preperation. Typically, vinager is added and sometimes other flavouring compounds like other herbs, spices or honey.


A sausage stuffer, perhaps?

Your standard food mill attachment type more typically seen in a home kitchen:

Unless you're seeing some product I've never met, I would not call that stuff "rolled in tubes" - I'd call it a tube (or log) of dough, and I expect the filling process is VERY like a (large, automated) sausage stuffer, and involves no rolling at all.

In making refrigerator cookies, one simply makes a log out of the dough, wraps it, and places it in the fridge to harden before slicing. The dough is not liquid to start with, so it does not pour, and can be shaped without a form. If your "dough" "pours" I'm dubious about your recipe or method.


Most cakes will freeze and keep fine if prepared properly - obviously they will not have the same "fresh baked" attributes that a freshly baked cake would bring to the party, but it should still taste nicely.

Wait for the cake(s) to be completely cooled before preparing them to be frozen.
Use one of the following methods/materials to wrap the room temperature cake before placing in the freezer:

greaseproof paper (wax paper, for example), wrapped thoroughly around the cake and taped shut
aluminum foil with plastic wrap/greaseproof paper underneath it, thoroughly secured
vacuum seal bag (caution: too much pressure may cause the cake to loose it's shape)

To thaw: Unwrap the cake, place it on a wire rack in your kitchen and let it sit for about two hours (more/less time depending on size of the cake) at normal room temperature. It is important that you do not microwave or reheat a frozen cake in any way, or you will ruin it.

More details are available here: http://www.wikihow.com/Freeze-Cakes


Is there any difference between a given cream and mix of different milks resulting in the same fat percentage?

What is the application?

For most uses, no, there would be little to no effective difference.

Dairy products are a mixture of water, sugars, minerals (which the dairy industry calls ash, because they are left as ash when burned in a calorimeter), proteins, and fat.

If the product is not homogonized, the fat globules will eventually rise to the surface (where they can be skimmed as cream, giving rise to the term skim milk for when the cream has been removed).  If the product is homogonized, the fat has been forced into much smaller globules which form a stable emulsion, and will not rise.

Whipping non-homogonized cream is much easier, but most of us (at least in the US) do not have easy access to such a product.

Additionally, most dairy products are pasteurized in one of the various methods, slow or fast, which can affect the flavor.

Other than these differences in flavor or whipability, you can mix them with little difference for most applications.

Note:  to your specific question, your mixture of smim milk and cream may actually be richer than commercial half and half, which is often about 12% milkfat, but it would function very similarly.

Of course, all the above only applies to fresh products--basic milk or cream of various fat percentages.  Fermented products like yogurt, creme fraiche, cottage cheese, buttermilk, and so forth have entirely different charactaristics.


Common term for "roughly-grind Semolina" (as used to make couscous)

The question seems to confuse some terminology.  Let's first clear some things up.

Bulgur is NOT a grind size.  It is a process.  "Bulgur wheat" (in English anyway) refers to whole or cracked or crushed wheat berries that are parboiled and then dried.  There are various sizes of bulgur sometimes available (e.g., coarse, medium, fine, etc., or sometimes numbers for different sizes).
Couscous is a pasta, not a flour grain size.  Couscous is typically made from semolina flour that is shaped into small pieces of pasta.  If the question is what size flour grind is used to make couscous, then the answer is typically a semolina-size grind.

Okay, now that that's clear, let's address the other issue in the question about size of grind for wheat flour.

Raw whole wheat berries are the largest pieces of wheat and are simply called wheat berries in English.  They refer to the raw, unmilled berries with bran and germ intact, only with the (inedible) husk removed.  They can sometimes be referred to as groats too, though that word is often reserved in English for whole oats.  But technically it means any whole, unmilled grain, including wheat berries.
The next stage down in English is referred to as cracked wheat (or sometimes cracked wheat berries).  This involves either cutting or crushing the wheat berries, but leaving large particles (which I suppose could be the size of bulgur or couscous).  Cracked wheat is sometimes labeled coarse, medium, or fine, etc. or sometimes with numbers to indicate the size.  Sometimes these can be referred to as cut groats too (sometimes also indicated with coarse, fine, etc.), though I don't know that name is commonly used with wheat.

It's important to note that names of the finer grinds of wheat beyond "fine cracked wheat" are dependent on the type of wheat and the extraction level (i.e., whether the bran and germ remain in the flour or not).  While semolina typically refers to a somewhat coarsely ground flour (usually made specifically with durum wheat), it does not typically contain the bran and germ that wheat berries and cracked wheat retain.  If you want a coarsely ground flour that contains the same ingredients as whole wheat berries, you might need to search for a coarsely ground wholemeal or whole-wheat or graham flour (each of which has somewhat different connotations in terms of how it is processed, the extraction rate, etc.).

Once we're in the range of normal flours (and out of the cracked wheat size), the names vary for different grind sizes and are pretty inconsistent.  For example, one flour company may use the term stone ground to specifically indicate a coarser grind, but another company may use the term differently.  Some mills allow a wider range of particle size for a given flour, but others may have a more narrow specification.


Does there exist a conversion between a sourdough and preferments recipes?

I would say no, because to me, it doesn't make sense for such a conversion to exist. You get conversion formulas when you can achieve the same result with different ingredients. Since you have no well-defined "same" here, you can't give a conversion either.

One function of sourdough is to leaven. You don't leaven with a preferment, so here you cannot have a conversion. Instead, you have to use yeast in the proper amount for your amount of flour and rising process. It doesn't matter that some of your flour will arrive as dry flour and some of it will be included in a preferment.

The other function of sourdough is to give you a specific taste (I am combining both flavor and texture in that word). For that, there is no specific amount of sourdough you have to add to the recipe - you can use more or less of it, depending on your taste (at least within a wide range, until you run into structural problems with the loaf). There is also no specific amount of preferment you have to add - you use as much or as little as you like, again such that you get a dough and not a glutenless paste or slurry.

You could say that you want an amount of preferment that makes your bread taste exactly the way it tasted with X percent sourdough, but that's not practicable. There are differences between one sourdough and the next, and between one preferment and the next, and if you are very exact, you can't achieve the same taste with a preferment that you can achieve with a sourdough anyway. Even for achieving something "similar", the variability is too high and you have to recreate the recipe for every specific case, there is no simple "plug it in" formula.

If all you want is a rough starting point, you can simply use the same baker's percentage of preferment as you used of sourdough and see how you like the result. I am suggesting this as a rule of thumb because it is the easiest to deal with, not because it is likely to produce the same taste though.


Interpreting a recipe from Mrs Beeton: "carbonate of soda"

There are many mentions of carbonate of soda in the Book of Household Management, and also two mentions of bicarbonate of soda (to preserve milk, and in a recipe for light buns). It has a specific section on the carbonate:

  CARBONATE OF SODA — Soda was called the mineral alkali, because it was originally dug up out of the ground in Africa and other countries: this state of carbonate of soda is called natron. But carbonate of soda is likewise procured from the combustion of marine plants, or such as grow on the sea-shore. Pure carbonate of soda is employed for making effervescing draughts, with lemon-juice, citric acid, or tartaric acid. The chief constituent of soda, the alkali, has been used in France from time immemorial in the manufacture of soap and glass, two chemical productions which employ and keep in circulation an immense amount of capital. A small pinch of carbonate of soda will give an extraordinary lightness to puff pastes; and, introduced into the teapot, will extract the full strength of the tea. But its qualities have a powerful effect upon delicate constitutions, and it is not to be used incautiously in any preparation.

It therefore seems likely that the recipe is intended to use carbonate rather than bicarbonate.


If you thaw raw meat at room temperature (> 5 celcius) you may get bacterial development.
With chicken, not only can you get bacteria to develop, there is also a risk of propagating salmonella onto the surface which you are thawing the meat of and it's likely to contaminate other food too. I always recommend to let the meat thaw in the fridge, where the temperature is less likely to allow bacteria development, on a plate covered with plastic wrap, just make sure that no meat juice can espace and that the meat does not comes into contact with anything else than the plate itself and the plastic wrap, do this with all of your frozen meat.

Of course, wash your hands and working surfaces after working with raw meat.


How to take care of a wooden mortar and pestle?

Note that a wooden mortar is first and foremost a wooden utensil and the same care instructions as for other wooden equipment apply.

So oiling it regularly with a food grade oil is a good idea. You can find Q/As on how to oil e.g. cutting boards here on the site.

For general cleaning, it depends on what you used it for.
Dry herbs and spices are easy: a quick wipe with a dry cloth should suffice in most cases. Wet preparations (think curry paste) are trickier, but a rinse with hot water is your first step. You will often find warnings about using dishwashing liquid and they have a point. Wood is prone to absorb whatever liquid it comes into contact with, and who wants the next preparation to taste like dishwater?

But your curry will also leave a taste. A common remedy for lingering smells is rice: grind it in your mortar and it should absorb it. Repeat until it remains neutral. Similar advice uses salt. And of course being diligent about oiling should reduce the absorption of liquids and flavors.

To be very honest, I would probably do two things:

Reserve it for dry ingredients or at least roughly the same flavor profile - prevents that touch of garlic in your dessert - and live with the fact that it will develop a patina of past preparations.
I might rarely even ignore the advice and use the tiniest bit of a non-scented dishwashing liquid for a very quick wipe followed by a good rinse off and probably oiling after it’s dry - but only if it’s absolutely necessary. Proceed at your own risk.

The absolute worst thing you could do is running it through your dishwasher or giving it a good long soak. Do “the opposite” and you should be fine.


What is a good technique for making a very small amount of caramel?

You make small amounts the same way you make large amounts: dry or wet, doesn't matter, take your preference.
The problems you have are related not to the method, but to the wrong vessel. For example, for the dry method, you have to have the sugar neither too thick, nor too thin. For small amounts of caramel, you have to go with a small pot, possibly go down to 12 or even 8 cm (at least that's what works for me; if by "tiny" you really mean something like a tablespoon of caramel sauce, you might have to use a tiny vessel, like a muffin tin or a single portion cezve). The other desired quality is to have a vessel which provides even, measured heating, so a thick heavy bottom is always preferable.
Also make sure to use the right temperature, "sugar gets burned while the rest is still dissolved" sounds like you might be using too high heat.


Effect of the type of oil on a vinaigrette's texture?

Add egg yolk or lecithin to your mixture and whisk it again.

Here is some theory:

To make an emulsion (consistent, not separating oil–water mixture), we rely on emulsifiers – long organic molecules that on one end bind with water, and another with oil. They play role of a glue that does not let molecules of water and oil separate.

The most common emulsifier is a lecithin – compound found in egg yolks.
There is a more complete list of them I found on this website:

Emulsifiers in food


How is beer classified into different types?

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/101/ has a vast amount of information on beer styles.

To answer your specific question, an ale is top-fermenting whereas a lager is bottom-fermenting. Lagers are generally fermented at lower temperatures than ales.

I believe that lambics would constitute a third category, since they are traditionally fermented by wild yeasts, but opinion may vary on this, I don't know.

There are dozens of styles of ales and lagers and a few different lambics, but the method of fermentation is the main distinguishing characteristic between the three types.


If you are talking about the sculptural elements, the icing used to create those is called fondant.

The name fondant comes from the french for melting.  It has a consistency somewhere between play dough and tootsie rolls.

Here is a good tutorial on making fondant.  It can also be purchased.  You can find millions of tutorials on how to work with fondant.  The tutorials tend to focus and what is being sculpted.  If you are looking for a very simple how-to for working with fondant this is a good tutorial


Should I season a Teflon-coated stainless steel frying pan

No. Neither plain stainless steel nor non-stick pans (which yours is as it's coated with Teflon) need to be seasoned. Not only is seasoning unnecessary, but it will only cause your pan to look dirty. It would do no good at all.

Seasoning is all about preventing rust and sealing "pores", making the surface more resistant to sticking. Neither of those things are an issue with stainless steel or Teflon, and it's unlikely that the seasoning would even stick to your pan. On your pan you can even use soap!

Some people (a distinct minority) do season stainless steel (Do I need to season a stainless steel saute pan?), but absolutely don't try to season Teflon.

EDIT: It is often recommended use a paper towel to wipe a small amount of oil on Teflon before use. Apparently some people do call that "seasoning", but it bears no resemblance to the seasoning of cast-iron. NY Times


I wash them and take off the outer skin part and cut off the roots, of course. I chop them into half inch pieces. Put them in a tupperware with a paper towel underneath.  Put the lid on and put them in the fridge. Keep it loose, don't stuff them in there.  I sprinkle them on everything I eat.  Change your paper towel if it gets moist.


Can I make shelf stable cocktail mixers by pressure canning?

I wouldn't pressure can most cocktail ingredients. The heat will ruin some of the aromatics of the ingredients (like how the citrus juices you get from the grocery store taste dead), and textures may change due to heating.

Depending on how far the friend is, one thing you might want to do is freeze the cocktail mixes, then send them over packed in dry ice. Then, they shove the thing in the freezer when they get the package, and thaw it out when needed.

Make sure to try freezing and thawing and preparing the cocktail before mailing it out.

Some cocktails will probably work better for this than others -- I suspect the cocktails designed to be made in big batches in Joy of Mixology by Gary Regan would be a good starting point.

Also, note that shipping the cocktails sans alcohol is likely to be quite expensive if you're sending a reasonable quantity (in either the canned variety, where glass bottles are pretty heavy, or the frozen variety in which case you have to use a styrofoam cooler and maybe some freezer bags, freezing the cocktail in sheets and packing accordingly).

Look at the costs involved, and you might find that buying your friend the tools necessary (if they don't have them), and sending a book of recipes may be a lot cheaper. You could also see if there is a grocery delivery service in the area which can send reasonable quantities of the required ingredients to your friend for a reasonable price.

If you pick the right cocktails, you won't need too many ingredients to ship.


If you cook it immediately on arriving, an hour is a safe period.  Remember the chicken will take a little time to heat up. Usually 2 hours is the limit for meat at room temperature.

On the other hand, there's no harm in playing it safe, with both spillage and spoilage.  I'd suggest you put the brine and chicken in a zip-seal bag, then put ANOTHER bag around that to protect against leaks, then throw the whole thing in a larger tupperware container with ice packed around it.

This way you're not going to worry about leaks, and if you get stuck in traffic for longer than expected, the chicken will still be fine to cook and eat.


Is Bami Goreng the same as the dish labelled as 'Singapore Noodles' in the United Kingdom

There is a high level of similarity between the two dishes, as they share an origin in the same Chinese dish. To answer your question, let's look at the differences:

Bami Goreng is an Indonesian / Malayan dish where the flavor is influenced heavily by the presence of Terasi in the spicing mix. This type of shrimp paste has a very unique taste that sets Indonesian cuisine apart from all other Asian traditions I have tasted.

Bami Goreng in the Indonesian kitchen is made from thick flat noodles made from wheat flour such as the ones shown here.

As far as I know the Singapore variety is always made with thinner rice noodles. A very important distinction as the two types of noodles have very different flavor and texture.

Where the taste/spicing of the two is concerned, the Indonesian version is mostly savory from the use of the Terasi, sambal and ketjap. What is typically served as the Singapore version is seasoned with Curry Powder and should therefore have a more spicy/sharp character.

In all honesty, all these distinctions rely on the correct naming of the separate dishes in the UK. They should be quite different, but in practice the same dish might be sold under both names.


Using a large pot/pan on a smaller burner

The pans will distribute the heat for you.  No burner that I've ever seen covers a 12" pan, but quality pans will still give you pretty even heat distribution.


Yes, the original recipes involved an enormous amount of trial and error. People baked, swapped recipes, and the good ones were desirable and became widespread, while the bad ones died out. The advanced knowledge of food chemistry wasn't even available at the time - Hannah Glasse published her cookbook more then 100 years before Mendeleev published the periodic table.

Luckily, you don't have to go through the same process if you want to invent a good recipe now. There are only a few basic ingredients in baking - eggs, sugar, flour, water - and you can be sure that all possible ways to combine them, as well as most secondary additions and substitutions, have been thoroughly explored. People have distilled the knowledge of this exploration in books, and you can use this basic knowledge to build new recipes which will function with a high probability.

Before you develop a baking recipe, there are four things you have to know.

Technique. If you want to create a cookie recipe, you will have to use creaming. If you want to make a new kind of eclair, you have to know how to prepare a basic pate a choux. There are cookbooks teaching these techniques, some of them are explained in questions here on SA.
Base ratio. For most baked goods, there are ratios which give you the best results. For example, for a crepe you want 1 part flour, two parts egg and two parts liquid. As long as you keep that, you can let your imagination run free by using different liquids, or adding spices, or even plopping pieces of fruit in the pan and pouring the batter over them. You can learn about this from Ruhlman's book Ratio, or use a known-good recipe for a plain variant of the good you are trying to make as your starting point.
Flavor combinations. You can add any ingredients you want, but there is no guarantee they will work well together. Choosing the right ones is a combination of talent (being able to imagine what a combination will taste like before you have had it) and experience. You should try to be more analytical about the flavors of things you eat - which tastes can you distinguish? Which aromas? What makes them go well together? Is it their similarity, or the contrast? - and when you have done that long enough, you will be able to predict the goodness of a combination. A book to help you along is The Flavor Bible, which describes good combinations. You can also take popular combinations and transfer them across types of food. For example, if you like apple-cinnamon pie, you can try to make cinnamon cookies glued in pairs with apple butter.
Ingredients' structure and their role in the baked good. This knowledge is maybe the least usual among home cooks. When you create new recipes, you will always dilute the base formula, or use substitutions. If you don't have this knowledge, it will be hit-or-miss whether your new recipe will work or not. It is a bit like rebuilding a house's interior without knowing which walls are load-bearing and which aren't. If you know what each ingredient does in a recipe, you will know when a substitution is possible and when it isn't. For example, many people will tell you that applesauce is a substitute for eggs. And you can indeed bake a cake with applesauce instead of eggs, but don't try to whip a mayonnaise with it. This is because eggs have a different role in cake and mayonnaise. Learning about these roles requires a lot of effort, and a curiosity
about these things. Most people will find it easier to just try
whatever they feel like, and live with the occasional failed
new-recipe attempt. If you would rather learn about them, I can
recommend two sources. One is Cooking for geeks by Jeff Potter, which is short
and doesn't go into the depth of things, but offers lots of useful
information and is easy to read, or the really exhaustive book
called On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, which runs to about 800
pages and goes into detail most people don't want to know about, but
is a must-read if you are fascinated by food science.

And, of course you can always just run into the kitchen and experiment. Don't forget to document along the way so you can reproduce your results! Basically, you can always have luck and hit a good new recipe, the knowledge I listed above (combined with some baking experience) helps you increase your first-try success rate from about 2-3% as a full amateur to somewhere about 80% or more. It is your decision how to divide your time between reading and baking, any combination can function, depending on your learning style.


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.


Am I missing out on something by not using parchment paper?

What you're missing out on is time to do other things.

Besides the time trying to get the cake to release without tearing itself apart, or cleaning a sheet pan, you can do things like speeding up your cookie baking if you have less than 6 sheet pans:

Cut some pieces of parchment to fit your sheet pans, and measure out your cookies on them.  Hold the pan at the edge of your counter, and slide the parchment w/ cookies onto it.  When they're baked, grab the edge of the parchment, and slide them all off at once.

6 assumes that you're working two pans in the oven at once (if you do, you need to make sure they're rotated so they have time on both the top and underneath the other pan).  You then either do two in the oven, two being prepped to go in, and two cooling.  Parchment lets you remove the two that are being prepped, as well as the two that are cooling -- because they go straight back into the hot oven, you don't have the problem of the cookies spreading as you're dropping on the cookies, so the first cookies dropped cook differently from the last cookies.

So it really comes down to a question of cost vs. time.  You know what your time is worth to you, so you have to decide if the parchment cost is worth it.  (I personally rarely use it ... in part because I have the silicone baking mats, but for large batch cookie baking, parchment is much better as it doesn't insulate the bottom of the cookies.  And then there are the other times when I kick myself for being too cheap/lazy and not using it as I sit there and scrub my sheet pans)


Do I always need to peel the avocado or I can just chop it?

I certainly wouldn't want to be chewing through avocado skin.  Unless you plan on throwing it in a blender and liquifying it, it'd be pretty nasty.


How do I tell bucatelli pasta size and thickness

See:  What's the numbering system for spaghetti and does it matter?

The number assigned to pastas is particular to individual manufacturers.   You would need their data sheet, if they offer one, to know the details based on their product numbers.

On the other hand, many pastas are packaged so that you can see product, and make comparisons.   If that is not the case, pasta is not terribly expensive--you could buy a couple of different ones and see which one you like.


Lardo is cured for longer, then it's hung.

I've used this recipe from the Belly to Bacon blog and it works well. Salting for 2 weeks is the minimum. The 30 days in the recipe makes it saltier, but the saltier it is, the longer it stays preserved. The instacure keeps the meat safe from botulism. Don't skip it.

One addition to the recipe: when you hang it to dry in step two, it should be in a curing chamber at 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit and 60 to 75 percent humidity.


Soup making - should I add extra water and boil off for flavour?

My experience and the recipes I read are to simmer.  Hard boil and simmer are the same temperature so cooking time should be the same.  A hard boil can break up contents.  Hard boil also dirties your stove top.  That said even with a simmer you can sometimes need to add liquid.

If your husband wants to hard boil there is not much harm.  He is cooking.


Why does lemon juice thicken condensed milk?

Lemon juice thickens condensed milk in the same way it would "thicken" regular milk, i.e., by curdling.

Basically, milk has two general types of proteins: casein and whey.  The casein is what forms the "curds" in "curds and whey."  Both proteins are somewhat unusual in that they don't tend to coagulate with heat (as eggs proteins do, for example).  Thus, they will survive largely intact even with the processing of condensed milk.

Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking explains what happens when they encounter acids, though:

  The casein family includes four different kinds of proteins that
  gather together into microscopic family units called micelles.  Each
  casein micelle contains a few thousand individual protein molecules. .
  . . Around a tenth of the volume of milk is taken up by casein
  micelles.  Much of the calcium in milk is in the micelles, where it
  acts as a kind of glue holding the protein molecules together.  One
  portion of calcium binds individual protein molecules together into
  small clusters of 15 to 25.  Another portion then helps pull several
  hundred of the clusters together to form the micelle. . . .

  One member of the casein family is especially influential in these
  gatherings.  That is kappa-casein which caps the micelles once they
  reach a certain size, prevents them from growing larger, and keeps
  them dispersed and separate.  One end of the capping-casein molecule
  extends from the micelle out into the surrounding liquid, and forms a
  "hairy layer" with a negative electrical charge that repels other
  micelles. . . .

  If [milk] gets acid enough to approach pH 5.5, the capping-casein's
  negative charge is neutralized, the micelles no longer repel each
  other, and they therefore gather in loose clusters.  At the same
  acidity, the calcium glue that holds the micelles together dissolves,
  the micelles begin to fall apart, and their individual proteins
  scatter.  Beginning around pH 4.7, the scattered casein proteins lose
  their negative charge, bond to each other again and form a continuous
  fine network: and the milk solidifies, or curdles.

Thus, if you add lemon juice to regular milk, it will curdle and thicken, just as milk does when it sours naturally or when it is fermented into yogurt, kefir, cultured buttermilk, etc. (which all involve bacteria that acidify the milk).  The same process happens if you add acid to condensed milk.


How do you dry homemade pasta so that it stays straight?

Hang-dry pasta on a pole will result in the most straight pastas.

the finer (smaller) diameter pole you can find will result in smaller curvature in the pasta where they bend on the pole.

I've seen people use a metallic cloth dryer or metallic coat hangers (hanging on a pole of some sort)


What do I do if my turkey is done way too early?

If possible I'd remove it from the oven and slice it up and put it in the fridge to cool it down as fast as possible to stop the cooking.

When closer to serving, just reheat the meat.

You can pour some of the juice on the carved slices to keep them as moist as possible.

For christmas, this is what we will do (more "extreme) and cook the turkey one day in advance.


Mince fine a large quantity of garlic in the food processor and freeze it in ice cube trays. When solid move the cubes to a freezer bag.

My Indian friends mince garlic and ginger together and freeze it this way.


How much cake batter to make two 6"x2" cakes?

It depends upon how thick you want it. A 6"x2" rectangular pan, filled 1" deep will obviously contain 12 cubic inches of batter. 12 cubic inches = .83 US cup. So, to fill both pans to a depth of 1 inch, you would need 1.66 cups. To fill both pans to a thickness of 1.5 inches, you would need 2.49 cups. To fill both pans to a depth of 2 inches, you would need 3.32 cups of batter.

That's a 6X2 inch rectangle, of indeterminate depth, which is how I interpreted your question. A round pan with a diameter of 6 inches would hold 28.3 cubic inches of batter for each inch of depth. 28.3 cubic inches equals 1.98 cups.

Here's a conversion site for cubic inches to cups.

A 6"x2" rectangle is an odd shape and size, so I included an answer to another possible interpretation of your question. Please comment, especially if you don't feel that I've fully answered your question.


Baba au Rhum: Why am I not getting a good rum flavor?

Mmmmmm- I loves me a good Rum Baba!
I'd personally go with Myer's dark rum. In my experiences I've found Myer's Dark to have the best/ most intense rum flavor out there (yes, it's a little expensive).
I think boiling the alcohol off would heat the rum to a point where you're going to alter the delicious rum-ness!
Heating the rum a little and then igniting the alcohol vapor would suffice to eliminate the alcohol without disturbing the other flavors. Just be careful and if things take a turn for the worst- stop, drop, and roll!


Regarding the last question:

  Do egg producers and/or chefs use dirty tricks to effect a yellow
  yolk? Dye? Food additives?

Yes, they do!

In fact scientists have experimented with food additives in order to control the color of the yolk. Interestingly enough the preferred color of the egg yolk differ between countries and even between regions within countries.

One study examined the red and yellow additives from marigold flowers and paprika fruit.
Note that artificial coloring additives are banned in the US, thus the interest for natural colorings.

Details can be found in: Egg Yolk Color as Affected
by Saponiﬁcation of Different
Natural Pigmenting Sources


How can I achieve the equivalent of "Slow Cook High" setting on my multicooker?

Looking at the table you've added, your "Low" is not far off a slow-cooker on high. It's just short of boiling but bubbles a bit from the hottest parts. You appear to be able to override the temperature upwards a little anyway.  Slow cookers are based on power input rather than temperature control and expect the ambient temperature to be that of a typical room.  I pointed my IR  thermometer at mine after a few hours of cooking; the outside of the crockpot a few minutes after I removed it from the outer unit was at around 90°C.  Unfortunately this was just out of curiosity and I didn't keep notes.

What's still not clear is where that temperature is measured -- if it's the temperature of the air surrounding an inner pot, the food will take a very long time to reach that temperature.  In that case you should probably start at a higher temperature for a little while.  The recipe book for your cooker may have more details.


why does doughnut powdered sugar seem cool?

Summary: Most types of sugar will absorb some heat as they dissolve.  Commercial baked goods often use a type of "snow sugar," which is designed to be used on warm, moist foods without dissolving.  It's likely that commercial doughnuts use a lot of dextrose in their "snow sugar," which requires four times as much heat to dissolve as the sucrose in normal powdered sugar, leading to a "cold" sensation when consumed.

I tried poking around a bit in various sources and can't find a definitive answer, and I personally can't recall experiencing this "cold" sensation.  But it seems to me the explanations really can only come down to two possibilities:

(1) The sensation is due to ingredients that stimulate nerves which feel "like cold."  The standard example for this is stuff like mint or eucalyptus, whose menthol and eucalyptol create a sensation of coolness even without drawing heat.  The problem with this explanation is that the list of chemicals that cause this sensation is limited, and I don't know why they'd include any of them in powdered sugar.  That said, snow sugar products, as mentioned in comments, can contain various organic compounds to keep them from melting/running on warm moist baked goods. I suppose it's possible -- though unlikely -- that some doughnut coverings contain something that would do this.

(2) The sensation is actual cold, i.e., the increased heat transfer from tongue to donut, resulting in a perceived temperature drop.  That would be due to "thermodynamic mumbo-jumbo" mentioned in the question, i.e., heat/enthalpy of solution/dissolution.  That's just a fancy term to say that it takes some energy to separate a crystalline solid (where molecules are bonded together in an organized lattice) into individually dissolved molecules in a solution.

The problem with the second explanation is that we consume food all the time and don't generally sense the quite tiny amount of heat transfer it takes to dissolve things.  But powdered sugars are somewhat unusual foods in that (1) they exist as a crystalline solid with a high solubility, and (2) they are ingested with a fine particle size that increases surface area significantly and therefore rate of dissolution.

It's likely that the mixture of chemical components used in some commercial sugar mixtures like snow sugar are engineered to have an increased enthalpy of solution (and thus don't appear to "melt"/dissolve or run on warm baked goods).  While a warm baked good may not have enough moisture and heat to dissolve them, our mouths do, and that increased heat necessary for dissolution is perceived as "cold."

What exactly could the specific chemical be?  Some comments have suggested dextrose (which indeed is the primary ingredient in the King Arthur version of snow sugar as well as in the French product Sucraneige).  Dextrose (the D-isomer of glucose, and its most common form) has a endothermic heat of solution that's about double that of sucrose.  That means that "snow sugar" needs to absorb about four times as much heat per weight as normal sucrose-based confectioners sugar when dissolving.  (I'm assuming that the other components of the snow sugar are relatively minor; they'll have significantly worse solubility.)

Particle size, as mentioned, is also an issue.  The Sucraneige mentioned above claims 10X fineness, but many powdered sugars at the grocery store will also be the same.  If you are comparing a 10X sugar to a coarser powdered sugar, that will also make a difference: smaller particles have more surface area and can dissolve faster.  If it dissolves faster, the reaction happens faster, thus absorbing heat more quickly (and feeling colder).

Still, this amount of heat transfer seems quite small.  But I suppose for those who notice it, it could explain the difference.  A quick search of some common commercial powdered sugar doughnut brands (like Hostess and Entenmann's) doesn't clarify the powder ingredients, but dextrose is listed quite high in the ingredients list, just after flour in one of them, seeming to hint at some form of "snow sugar."  Other non-powdered types of doughnuts seem to have dextrose listed far later (if at all).

Technical note: For those who are wondering, why four times the enthalpy?  The enthalpies that are given in the linked table are 5.4 kJ/mol for sucrose and 11 kJ/mol for glucose/dextrose.  But these are per mole, and the molecular weight of sucrose is roughly twice that of glucose.  Therefore, to get the same amount of glucose by weight, you'd need roughly twice as many moles of glucose.  Since glucose already has twice the enthalpy of solution, the same weight of glucose will have roughly four times the enthalpy of the equivalent weight of sucrose.  Also, it should be noted that perceived sweetness of dextrose/glucose is somewhat less than sucrose (roughly 70-75% as sweet), so more of it tends to be used.  I don't know that that's a major factor here though, where doughnuts are doused in lots of sugar either way.


How long can I soak gulab jamun before serving?

You can leave your Gulab Jamun in sugar syrup for minimum 30 minutes to maximum as long as you wish.

Before service you can bring Gulab Jamun to room temperature or you can even microwave and serve little warm.


Name of a greek spice that sounds like "bakari"

The spice you are looking for is called Allspice or Piment, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allspice.

The Greek name is μπαχάρι, pronounced bakhari.


what is the best method to coat biscuits in chocolate

Whenever I work with dipping chocolate, I put a sheet of baking paper on my working table and place a cooling rack over it.

This has two advantages:

Excess chocolate can dripp off easily, without pooling that can happen when when the cookies are placed directly on the paper.
The paper below makes cleanup very easy because the chocolate can be peeled off and reused if it contains no crumbs. (Admittedly I rarely reuse it because my children generously take care of the leftovers...)

Liquid ("tempered") chocolate will be too runny to be spread with a knife. If you let it cool down to a spreadable state, you will get a very uneven and streaky surface. If you have only a small amount of chocolate available, you can use a pastry brush (which may also leave streaks, but less), but usually dipping is the way to go: Melt enough chocolate that the height in your bowl is more than half of your cookies diameter. (Kind of obvious, but noted just for the sake of completeness.) Dip the cookie in, let excess chocolate drip back into your bowl, then lay it flat on the rack to cool. No need to prop them up or so. Leftover chocolate can be stored for your next batch or makes a good excuse for serving hot chocolate.

Some geometry:
Note that dipping half a cookie will also coat the underside because you hold the cookie's edge perpendicular to the chocolate. If you dip only the top, you won't get a straight line, but always a crescent-shaped undipped part. If, for some reason, you want a straight line and a chocolate-free bottom, you need the pastry brush again.


if you are planning on continuing to freeze, yet want to make single-serving portions, i would recommend a vacuum bag system, like this one, which is what i use: http://tinyurl.com/4ygotv9. it's a bit of an expense up front, but it will pay for itself in the long run easily. i now make batches of things, freeze them in portions, then seal them with this and they last AGES.

EDIT: i just realized that your question specified NON-plastic solutions, but i took it to mean you mean non-plastic storage containers. the bags used for these are quite food-safe, as far as i know. i apologize if it's not exactly what you are looking for. but it really works well, and avoids the dangers you read about with a canning solution.


Dry edges on sponge cake, nest 2 sheet pans for insulation?

There are a couple of things that can lead to uneven heating in an electric oven. Here a couple of things that can help.

Let the oven 'thoroughly' preheat. Are you putting the cake in before or just as the oven preheats? Let the oven sit for a good 5 minutes after it has reached the desired baking temp.
Keep the oven door closed until the expected baking time has been reached. Each time the door is open a significant amount of heat escapes, causing the elements to come back on for a longer period, this will cause the heat to circulate in an uneven pattern.
place either a pizza stone or another baking sheet on a rack above the cake (with enough room for the cake to rise). If the broiler element is coming on the direct heat might be causing the dry center (note: if you had a gas oven then I would put the stone a rack below the cake.)
finally, lower the temperature 25°F and extend the baking time.


Substitute glass jar for Mason jar in pressure cooker

Jars that are not made specifically for canning are not safe in a pressure cooker.   There are several manufacturers - "Mason" has become a generic term.

If you are preserving, you need a special lid with the rubber rim to correctly seal the jar.  Do not reuse jars from food bought at the store.


What is the correct way to make china grass ready for Falooda?

China Grass is intended to be used dissolved.  From (no endorsement intended)  Spices Of India :

China Grass is also known as Agar Agar, Faluda, Japanese Moss, Ceylon Moss and Bengal Isinglass.
It is obtained from various seaweeds, has no aroma and has a neutral taste. It is used to make jellies and, because of it's neutral taste, can be flavoured with any essence.
To use China Grass to make jelly, immerse broken strands of China Grass in boiling water to dissolve them. Add Flavouring/Essence and leave to cool and finally set in the refrigerator.
Alternatively, place Chine Grass in a pan of milk, bring to the boil (whilst stirring) and strain to remove any lumps. When cool, add flavourings of your choice (try Sugar, Cardamom Powder etc), pour into a dish and refrigerate until set. When ready to serve, cut into fancy shapes using a cooky cutter and decorate with Almonds or Pistachio Nuts.

So it seems that it is being used as a thickener for the dessert/drink you are making.  While looking at different recipes for Falooda/Faluda, I noticed that many recipes do use China Grass but many that had actual noodles in the dessert used vermicelli for the noodles.
So, you may want to try adding vermicelli or another type of noodles to your existing recipe or try another recipe that uses actual noodles.


How can I prevent a thick layer of tikka marinade on my chicken?

Use a higher chicken-to-marinade ratio, so a small amount of chicken isn't sitting in masses of marinade. If you see chicken tikka marinading in a restaurant, you'll note that is only lightly coated.
Failing 1., simply wipe off the excess marinade before cooking.


Can I substitute salted for unsalted butter in chocolate fudge?

Provided the butter is not too salty, it should not affect the consistency or setting, but it will add an extra flavour dimension to the fudge. I don't know what ratios you will be using, but salt and sometimes chilli is added to chocolate to add extra flavour. Personally, I would not find a little bit of salt to balance out the sweetness unpleasant, but that would very much depend on the amount in the butter. Too much would be overpowering.


How do i get rid of burnt smell from kheer?

Use a nonstick saucepan. While there can still be some caramelization, at least burnt stuff will not stick and get burnt further.

Also, consider using the oven if you have one: Preheat the oven to 110-120°C, while bringing the pot and kheer up to temperature on the stove. Place the hot pot in the oven - this will keep it at slow cooking temperature but make it impossible to reach sufficient temperature to quickly burn anything....


How to deal with an inaccurate oven thermostat

It sounds like the oven needs desperately to be looked at. Please have someone check it out before a fire starts!!!!

The thermometer placement isn't a huge concern. It should be near the middle for general use (top to bottom) and off to the side. Or if you prefer you can just hang the thing in the middle. As long as you can always safely see it it should be fine. If your coils are on the side and not top and bottom put it in the center (where the window would normally be)

Really though I can't stress it enough. If your setting it to 350 and sometimes it is temperature x and sometimes it is temperature x + 100 then you really need to have it looked at before it gets worse.


Should beef be cooked before adding to the pot for Stroganoff?

The recipe does not indicate that the beef should be browned before cooking and there is no need to. Per the instructions, all ingredients except the cream cheese go into the slow cooker together at the start. If it was intended for you to brown the beef first, that instruction would have been included.

The long, slow cooking should ensure that the meat will be tender and flavorful. Additionally, as in the picture of the dish, the beef cubes for stroganoff are on the small side. That should be additional insurance that your beef will be tender.


What is the simmering temperature in thermometer?

There is no exact temperature, but consensus is that the temperature needs to be below the boiling point of 100 °C / 212 °F and above the poaching temperature of 82 °C / 180 °F.


WearEver Cook & Strain Stainless Steel 1.5-Quart Saucepan

From Amazon Q/A:

  Question: Is this pan oven safe?
  Answer: Oven safe to 500ºF if handles are all stainless steel. Oven safe to 350 ºF if handles have any silicone or phenolic parts. The oven should be completely preheated before placing the pan in the oven to avoid thermal shock. Cookware should not be used in the microwave or on outdoor grills. (per the users manual)

Tramontina 3-Quart Sauce Pan, Stainless Steel

From the Walmart website:

  This saucepan is oven safe up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit

Note that the website shows an all-metal handle!

For recommended temperatures etc., see your various recipes for chicken or whatever you are planning to roast.


There are two main causes of chewiness in chicken when cooked this way:

Overcooking.   Overcooked chicken is chewy, possibly stringy, and dry.
Dried out on the outside.  Especially if the skin is removed, the outside may dry out (as well as overcook, even if the inside is not overcooked), leaving a leathery and unpleasant aspect to the chicken.

The solution for the first is not to overcook.  Use an instant read thermometer to know when chicken is done (approximately 155-160 F for white meat, 165 F - 180 F depending on your preference for dark meat).

The solution to the second is to cover, either with the sauce or braising liquid, or aluminum foil or similar so that it cannot dry out.


Why is my cake sinking after baking with a soggy-like line in the middle?

Those cakes are underbaked, that line at the bottom is a clear sign that the batter hadn't crystallized when it was removed from the oven, so it could not support the cake above. There's a few things that could be happening:

You changed the recipe or ingredients: if you've made a substitution or changed the recipe you should look at changing it back
You aren't baking them long enough: changes in the starting temperature of the batter can change the baking time. In the winter your kitchen may be colder so your batter may be colder, or maybe you're pulling ingredients straight from the fridge, if your batter is colder than you need to lengthen the baking time
Your oven is cooler: it's possible your oven thermostat is mis-reading and your oven is cooler, or maybe you're cramming the oven with many cakes and your oven can't keep to temperature. Also, maybe you're opening the oven door lots and losing heat. Try using an oven thermometer to check the temperature

I would suggest you start testing your cakes for doneness before taking them out, it's not uncommon for ovens to fluctuate so you can't assume that a cake is going to be done at an exact time. Use the poke test and/or an instant read thermometer to check them.


Difference between conventional oven with fan assisted and convection with fan assisted?

They're the same thing - convection ovens are also known as fan-assist ovens (see for example wikipedia), since they're basically an oven with a fan. Maybe what you had previously was marketed as a fan-assisted oven, and threw out the phrase "conventional cooking" to emphasize that you can still do everything you conventionally could. But it sounds like you're just talking about two different convection ovens here.

More likely, the problems you're having are to do with either the convection being more efficient in your new oven, or the temperature control being off on one of the two. Ovens aren't always perfect, so likely your new oven is hotter when you set it to a given temperature than the old one. It might also have a more efficient fan. You can probably learn to adjust by trial and error - reduce temperatures, and check things frequently until you figure out you've gotten it right. It might also be helpful to grab a thermometer and see if your new oven is lying to you about the temperature.

(If you were previously using non-convection recipes in a convection oven, without adjustment, then your old oven was probably either too cool or its fan wasn't doing much. If you were adjusting recipes for convection previously, then maybe your new oven is hotter than it should be.)


No Shortening and No Refrigeration, Buttercream Frosting

There are several different types of icing that are referred to as buttercream, none of which require the use of shortening, including:

American Buttercream -- Butter, powdered sugar, perhaps some milk, and flavoring such as vanilla beaten together.   While some recipes call for shortening, using actual butter gives a better flavor.  See a sample recipe from Savory Sweet Life.
French Buttercream -- Egg yolks are beaten and cooked by adding hot sugar syrup (at the softball stage).  The yolk mixture is then beaten until it is cool, and butter and then butter and flavoring is beaten in.   See sample recipe from Chicago Tribune.
Italian Buttercream -- An Italian Meringue (egg whites beaten with hot sugar syrup) is prepared and then cooled, and butter and flavoring beaten in.  See sample recipe from Martha Stewart.

Any of these are stable at room temperature for a day or two, but like most perishable foods, should not be held indefinitely.

In addition to buttercreams, you may wish to consider other frostings which don't contain shortening, including ganache (chocolate melted with hot cream and cooled), whipped ganache (ganache that has been beaten until it is foamy), and Seven Minute Frosting (essentially a meringue frosting).


Please can someone help me identify this?

This is a Chaenomeles speciosa, commonly known as flowering or Chinese quince, sometimes also as Japanese quince (but not to be confused with the smaller shrub  C. japonica, also known as Maule's quince).

It is edible, but very sour (lots of vitamin C!), very hard and often slightly bitter. Culinary uses are similar to regular quinces (Cydonia oblonga), but due to the high pectin content they are especially suited alone or mixed with low-pectin fruit for jams and jellies.

The plant itself is - at least in the western world - typically planted for the showy flowers as ornamental hedge (C. japonica is smaller and often planted as solitaire), not primarily for fruit. In fact, many gardeners don't realize that chaenomeles are edible.

The fruit in your picture are far from ripe, they need at least another two months and will turn yellow and fragrant with dark kernels. They remain hard and if picked before the first frost and can be stored for months. Harvesting after the first frost gives you slightly softer fruit with shorter shelf life, but even better aroma as some of the bitter components are destroyed.


Getting a cast iron skillet surface smooth

You cannot expect to ever have cast iron perfectly smooth. Its surface is uneven due to the manufacturing process, what producers like to call "pebbly" in marketing materials.

The pan in your picture has not taken the seasoning in the best possible way, it could have been smoother without the thicker parts. But these are not the dreaded "flakes" of failing seasoning, just buildups which are strongly bound to the pan.

If you insist on perfection, you could strip the pan and reseason it from the beginning, but it's lots of work, and there is no guarantee that your second try will work better than the first, you typically need to go through more seasonings before you get a feel for the craft. I'd say use it as it is, there are no noticeable downsides in the prepared food.


Easy way to steam vegetables in opened steam-in-bag kind

Put the frozen vegetables in a microwave-safe bowl and place a wet paper towel (or two) over it. Microwave for about 1-1 1/2 minutes at a time (checking that the paper towel is still moist) until the vegetables are cooked to your liking.


Can we preserve garlic and ginger paste?

I've had success freezing it in an ice cube tray. The tray should then be sealed in a bag or box, and you won't want to use it for anything else afterwards - I've never found a way of getting rid of the smell.

If you always use it in larger quantities than one or two ice cubes, by all means freeze it in larger containers, but expect to defrost and use the entire container.


You can make pretty much any bread-like substance into french toast (slice the bread, dip or soak in eggs mixed with a little milk, then shallow-fry in your choice of fat) or bread pudding (cube the bread, if necessary spread it out to dry and/or toast it, pile it in a baking pan, cover in a milk + egg + sweetening mixture, bake). Heck, if you're feeling really decadent (or you can't make up your mind), you can make french toast bread pudding: fry the bread, then make it into bread pudding.


How to increase butter fat prior to browning?

The way to get more butter flavor is to use more butter.

The water's going to evaporate, and the solids are what brown.

So even if it's a high-moisture butter, you just need to cook it down 'til the water stops foaming (water evaporating), then brown it to the level you like.

Adding cream or something else in there is just going to make a mess.


What effect on flavor and/or cooking does rinsing grits have?

The warning you quoted is of course not a real warning. In the article's context it's read as a cooking advice:

  Finally, a tip from one of those gracious Southern cooks: "Do not rinse grits, ever!"

What's indeed missing is the reason. The "Because:". Had a southern cook forbidden me to rinse the grits, I would have guessed it's because of the starch. Just as you thought.

Rinsing cleans, moistens the food a bit and removes surface starch when such exists. And many times I've read suggestions against rinsing starchy pieces of food, because that surface starch is "invaluable" (that's the word I've read most).

When heated and then chilled, starch thickens. It thickens soups and sauces, and probably helps with the texture of the recipe that follows the warning: "Creamy-style stone-ground grits".

When I make a gratin or potatoes with cream, I too guard the surface starch. I've never done a blind taste test to see if non-rinsed potato slices indeed make a creamyer dish. But it sure doesn't hurt.

So I think this is the logic behind the "warning". It just turns out nicely when you don't rinse the grits. And that could be because of the starch. Hard to tell. Hard to tell if those "gracious Southern cooks" know the reason themselves, or if they just inherrited a law whose reason was known only to the guy who didn't make it to the Mayflower.

So rinse the grits or not. In the south they don't.


My best advice would be to adhere to the manufacturer's guidelines, and push them at your own risk. Cheese doesn't usually go bad "all at once" but you can definitely get sick from eating spoiled or moldy cheeses.

The most common notice I have been able to find for various brands available for ordering online reads something like this:

  Freshness is assured in unopened package until the date stamped on the front of the package.  Use within 3-5 days after opening or freeze up to 2 months.

Though, I have a bag of mozzarella in my freezer right now, which I purchased at the local supermarket, for which the manufacturer's note states it can be frozen up to 6 months.

Generally, the expected shelf-life of Mozzarella cheese depends on many factors, including:

How the cheese was produced. Some methods spoil faster than others. Typically low-mosture cheeses last much longer (some claiming 6 months or more).
The packaging. Some mozzarella (like other cheeses) comes in specially designed packaging that claims to prolong the life of the cheese.
The temperature of storage. Frozen cheese lasts significantly longer, around 6 times as long.


Why is my white bread with poolish dough very loose?

The protein content of your flour may have something to do with it, but it may also be the fermentation of your poolish. The more fermentation a dough goes through, the more the yeast turn starches into acid. Acids can denature gluten and gluten-forming proteins, leading to a less elastic dough. When you're adding your poolish to the rest of the ingredients, you're also adding its acid. The poolish is always going to be goopy and loose, so switching to bread flour for the poolish may not have the effect you desire.

Unfortunately, I'm more or less in the same boat. Like you mentioned, a higher protein content may help. That said (if I remember correctly), Forkish recommends AP flour for all of his recipes. Perhaps a shorter poolish ferment, or shorter bulk ferment.


Are glass jars from the supermarket oven safe?

Short answer: They're probably not safe.

Unlike "microwave safety", there isn't a safety risk in contaminating the food contents of the jars due to heating in an oven; in this case you just run the risk of the jars breaking.

I am not sure what the symbols on the bottom of your jar mean; (see edit below) from what I understand—unlike plastic resin identification codes—there isn't a standard set of symbols for glass.  Those symbols likely represent the manufacturer, production date, and patents.

Unless glass is processed in a special way, it is prone to breaking when it goes through rapid temperature changes.  Therefore, if your glass is run-of-the-mill soda-lime glass (which is extremely likely), and if you were to put it from room temperature directly into a 450°F oven, the shock of that rapid temperature change would likely crack it.  Furthermore, even if you were able to gradually heat it up to 450°F without it cracking, it would likely crack even as it naturally cools down.  In order to try and ensure that the glass doesn't crack you'd have to both gradually heat the jars up and then very gradually step the oven temperature back down to room temperature.

If you want to use glass, your best bet would be to use something like Pyrex.

Even Pyrex, which is explicitly designed to be oven safe, can't withstand the direct heat of a broiler, though.

Edit: I believe the symbol on the bottom of your jars reads "A.G.C." surrounded by the outline of the state of Arkansas.  This implies that your jars were made by the Arkansas Glass Container Company.  I believe the numbers indicate the model number, which appears to be this jar.  AGC unfortunately don't have anything on their website listing the oven safety of their glass.  If you're really interested, you could try contacting the manufacturer.