How to make glowing Jello without Tonic Water?

I've heard that you can extract oils from leafy greens and once concentrated will provide a reddish tint/glow under a black light. The problem is it may not be any more palatable over gelatin. Your best bet may be to go with mint, but I'm sure most aromatic herbs would work.

Start by blanching a couple of handfuls your chosen greens for a few minutes followed by an ice water bath. Once cooled dry the greens and blend with just barely enough light vegetable oil to make it bind. Think pesto. Keep blending, your goal here is to really break up the cell walls so that the greens will release their oils. Press and strain the mixture retaining the herb oil. Use as appropriate. Maybe mixed into a whipped cream topping for the jello.

It may also be possible to create a tincture of those herbs with a clear alcohol that will glow, but obviously you don't want to give that to the kids either.

Beyond that overripe bananas give off a slight blue glow, but probably not enough to be remarkable.


You can use any fat at all in a roux, including animal fats like suet and schmaltz. With a roux, all you're doing is toasting the flour to get rid of the raw flavor, and using the fat to make sure it doesn't clump up. The older, less sophisticated beurre manie technique involves kneading flour into cold butter, throwing knobs of it into your boiling liquid, and skimming any scum that floats up. The toastiness of roux is great, but as long as there's enough well-incorporated fat to keep the flour from clumping, your sauce will thicken just fine.

So which fat you use— dairy or meat avoidance aside— depends entirely on the flavor profile you're working with. If you use a butter substitute such as margarine, remember that like butter it contains a double-digit percentage of water: I was taught to let that cook off first or you'll end up with some early seizing, but it doesn't seem to affect the end-result too much. If you're not using a fat which contains water, you can use about 15% less fat than you would butter... but the results will be just fine if you want to use the same amount... your mixture will just have a little more fat.

Your other easy option is to use a cornstarch slurry as a thickener, but of course, that will change the texture.

As an aside, if you're not dead-set on having a bechamel, you might enjoy a veloute in its place. It would use any broth or stock in place of your almond milk. Nothing wrong with almond milk, but the broth/stock might add a little depth. A suet-roux beef stock veloute sounds like a pretty delicious sauce to me. Veloute made with fish stock is divine in the right context.

Happy cooking!


Ground almonds are one thing I've used in the past (usually in a yoghurt-based sauce, but not always).  They give a richness without overpowering the flavour.  Roughly the approach was:

Fry onions, meat or equivalent (I usually did this with Quorn), and spices/garlic/ginger.
Turn off and allow to cool a few minutes.
Stir in lots of yoghurt (any natural yoghurt) and return to the gentlest heat you've got.
Stir in ground almonds; don't be mean with them. Cook gently for a few minutes, with plenty of stirring, adjusting the texture with a little water if you like.

In a tomato-based sauce you don't need the cooling step; that's to avoid splitting the yoghurt.

Coconut flour or alternatively dried coconut milk. It's a significantly different curry because the flavour comes through, but adding either of these gives a good  thickening effect (more so for the flour) that's very compatible with curries.

A sauce base using onions as I mentioned in the comments: a base sauce made from boiled, blended onions (plus garlic/ginger/tomato and a little spice) is also a good way of adding richness.  This is rather time-consuming to prepare, and pungent, but freezes well.

Mango chutney is a good last-minute cheat addition, especially if you find a very sticky one and blend it first.  It adds flavour and has some thickening power.

I am also an amateur, and care more about enjoying my cooking and food than about authenticity!


garlic burns very easily and is very smelly when it does.

If you are just sauteing then you should cook at a relatively low temperature and take it off the heat as soon as it is translucent.

If you are toasting the garlic then leave it on and watch it closely. Stir often and take it off when it is just golden.

If it burnt very quickly then I would agree with you that your pan was too hot.


How can I avoid getting swindled? How can I detect polyphosphates in fish fillets?

Put the fish under a blacklight and dab a bit of 4',6-diamidino-2-phenylindole stain on it. If it changes glow from blue to green, its been treated with polyphosphate.

You can purchase DAPI stain here: http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/d9542?lang=en&region=US

I would suggest cutting a piece of the fish that you will not be eating, dabbing the stain on that piece and tossing it in the bin after.

Or lend it to your chemist cousin :)


How to balance the spiciness in any kind of dishes

First, where you can, use a recipe. This doesn't have to be from a book. If you like a particular dish that you often ate as a child, ask the person who made that dish how much salt, how much peppers, and so on, they used when making the usual amount. (But if you're only making 1/4 as much, make sure you reduce everything in the same factor.)

Second, again where you can, start by adding a little, then later tasting and adding more. There are a few dishes where this is not possible, but not many. For example salt is often added at the end of cooking: taste, add a little salt, taste again, add more if you need to. For some spices that must be cooked first, you can cook up the spicy sauce, but then decide towards the end how much of that sauce to add to the actual dish.

Third, learn how to counteract too much salt, too spicy a dish and so on. There are many questions and answers here about this - the specifics vary dish to dish so I won't try to summarize them here, but they generally involve adding something else to balance things out a bit.

Fourth, keep track of what you try. If you put 8 peppers into a stew and it's far too hot, make a note. Next time try 4 peppers. Over time you'll just remember these things instead of needing written notes, but when you're starting there's nothing wrong with writing things down.


You get mold (and less visibly, bacteria) growth after 4-5 days because your water (humidity) content left in the deyhdrated food is greater than 5%. Typically dried apples (and other types of fiberous dried fruit) have humidity levels closer to 20% when you don't dry them to a crisp. That means the treats you make aren't shelf stable, but luckily this can be fixed with some experimentation.

Each food has it's own requirements for preservation. Here are some quick guidelines to try out on apples. For yams and bananas, I would try dehydrating them a bit more closer to being crisps.

Steps:

Wash fruits thoroughly before dehydrating. I don't do this, but you could try using a "fruit wash" (product for washing fruit).
Dehydrating isn't sterilization - the dehydrator isn't hot enough to sterilize the food, so some of these 'nasties' are left on there and waiting for their chance to grow. Commercial-grade food is always sterilized. Because a dehydrater isn't sealed well, I suggest you nuke the treats in your oven for 5-10 minutes on high heat AFTER you dehydrate the stuff, experimenting to make sure you don't dry them out too much in the oven. Also, be careful because the sugar is concentrated in dehydrated fruit, so it will burn easily. Wrapping the fruit in tin-foil before placing it in your oven is a potential trick because this effectively sterilizes the fruit in a steam bath. If you use foil, you'll need to cook them longer - start with 15 minutes.
After the treats are dehydrated and sterilized, try storing them in air-tight containers and always away from light in a cool/dark place. They need 7-10 days to "equilize" the moisture between each dried piece of fruit. Make sure to shake the containers every once in a while so they don't all stick together.

BEYOND THIS, there are more advanced techniques that you can easily try - including conditioning the dried fruits and a number of fruit-baths that preserve the fruits with harmless chemical solutions, like Ascorbic Acid (vitamin C).  Try reading more on this link from UC Davis:

http://homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/8229.pdf

(Start Reading on Page 7).


What is the best marker for writing on glass?

You can also engrave on glass using a product from Joannns/Michaels called Amour Etch.  I've engraved 9x13 glassware with it, and given it as gifts.  Yes, it's washable.  Amour Etch is something that you have to use carefully.  Google it.

Here's a handy instructional video


What are differences between traditional whisked whipped cream and whipping syphon?

When you whip cream with a wisk, you can easily control the texture/consistency on a fairly fine scale, from liquid to butter.  With a whipper you have, essentially, one output, similar to the consistency of whipped cream that you can purchase in a can, ready to dispense.  Taste variation is influenced by other variables (raw product, flavorings). N2O does not interact with other flavorings, but they can easily be added to a whipper.  The only concern is anything solid that might get caught in the seal of the whipper.  Something as small as ground pepper could cause a problem here.


Since you are going to serve it as left overs either way, for flavor whether you carve it hot or cold does not matter very much at all.

On the other hand, when the meat is cold it sets much firmer, so it is actually much easier to carve when it is still warm.


Why does a brown paper bag speed ripening?

Placing fruit in a bag will help hasten the ripening for only a few fruits.  Most fruits will not ripen (ever) once they have been picked.  The only fruits that ripen once they're picked are bananas, avocados, pears, mango, and kiwifruit.  Ripeness in fruits is based on sugar content, not color, thus most tomatoes in grocery stores have no flavor because they were picked green and exposed to ethylene gas to induce color change.  Tomatoes are what are known as a "climacteric fruit" which means they'll change appearance based on climactic conditions but they don't ripen.  Yes, they continue to soften but that's simply the process of cell deterioration know as decomposition.

Some fruits such as peaches, plums, etc. will seem to develop more sweetness as they sit on the counter but that's because they're also losing moisture and the residual sugars are concentrating in the cell walls.

Placing fruit in a paper bag helps to concentrate the levels of ethylene gas which is what helps induce the ripening of the above mentioned fruits (bananas/avocados, etc.). In fact, avocados and pears must be picked in order to ripen.  Pears that are left on the tree will simply rot.   As mentioned previously...  brown paper bags used to be something everyone had around their house so it was a commmon item before the switch to plastic bags.

Have you ever noticed some people like red bell peppers and not green ones?  The reason is due to ripeness.


Did I poison myself by eating popcorn made in a steel pot with olive oil?

Olive oil has a notoriously low smoke point. If you're looking for something nutritious to pop corn with, try avocado oil.

While burned food tastes yucky, and there is (some) evidence that a steady diet consisting mainly of burnt olive oil may be (slightly) carcinogenic, it is highly unlikely you did anything worse than ruin your munchies.


Can I turn evaporated milk into unsweetened condensed milk?

Open the can, use it. That's what it is.


According to the Culinary Institute of America their basic formula for all Meat or Poutlry based stock would be:

8 lb/3.63 kg bones and trimmings
5 -6 qt/4.80 - 5.76 L water
1 lb/ 454 g Standard or White Mirepoix

You would not need any actual cut of meat for a stock according to them.  Those would be reserved for making a broth.  Their basic formula for broth doesn't specify a ratio between meat and bones just 10 lb. of meat or poultry including bones to 5 qt water.  If you are converting a stock into a broth they give the formula of 3 lbs meat to 5 qt stock.  Based on that a good starting point might be 7 lb bones and 3 lb meat to 5 qt water.

Just an FYI they make all their mother sauces using stocks, broth seem to be reserved for soups and other applications.


Is frozen crabmeat OK to use for crab cakes?

Most crabmeat is pasteurized, so the texture has already suffered a bit.  Crab cakes are basically a binder, crab meat, and seasoning.  The binder can add all sorts of interesting textures.  There are recipes with Panko, bread flour, flour, eggs, ...  If you are worried about it being dry, add mayo as @Darin suggested or increase the oil a bit.

Look at the packaging, the crab meat may be already cooked, so you may get away with cooking it less.


White things growing on my carrot ferment?

Throw it away and start again. How much of that liquid was bribe? Something went wrong.
It looks like you added too much liquid.  You only need enough to cover your vegetables. I would use 5% by weight of salt for this type of pickling. For example, if you use 100 pounds of carrots, then add 5 pounds of salt.

Don’t give up! Try again


Why does rice expand by more than the liquid volume it's cooked in?

Starch is composed of two polymers (linked chains) of glucose (sugar): Amylopectin and Amylose. Amylopectin is a branched and much larger molecule than Amylose.

Starch molecules in a grain of rice are actually arranged in a semi-crystalline state. The granules are about 2μm in size in rice (different plants have different granule sizes).

Starch becomes soluble in water when heated. The granules swell and burst, the semi-crystalline state is lost, and the smaller amylose molecules leach out and form a network that holds water. Although the network of molecules holds water, it will of course have a larger volume than the volume of neatly-aligned molecules plus water. This process is called gelatinization.

So you can imagine that in a dry rice grain, the strands of starch are like the fairly neatly stacked threads in my T-shirt, some shorter, some longer branched nets. As you heat it, the threads get moving and tangled up, absorbing the water, but also expanding even more in size like that big mess of lint in my clothes drier.

A similar process happens with popping corn, except the water is contained in the kernel of corn and not added. It's quite apparent to see how much larger the volume of a bowl of popped corn is compared to the small package of unpopped corn with water inside.


You can keep pasta in the fridge for up to 5 days, but it may well be beginning to go off at day 5. If it smells musty discard it. Another option would be to freeze it; you can drop it into boiling water straight from the freezer from what I've read.
I also found this earlier question here How long does cooked pasta last in the fridge? which is pretty much what you're asking


If the recipe you are referring to is this one or something quite similar, it appears that it is in essence a variation of a custard pie, but the baking time is unusually short.  It is likely that the boiling water is to bring up the temperature of the mix quickly, to shorten the necessary oven time.


In college, I would oil the pasta lightly after cooking (so it didn't turn into a giant lump), then would steam it 'til it was warm, and add it to hot sauce.  I was typically working with linguini or other strand pasta.  I'd start it in the steamer for a bit, then turn the mass over.  As it softened up, I'd lift it with a fork or tongs to re-distribute it, and try to break up any lumps.

These days, I'm more likely to use a microwave than steaming.

You can also portion it out into oven-safe containers w/ some sauce, maybe a cheese or breadcrumb topping, and reheat it in the oven.  This works well for any size/shape of pasta (although I admit I've never tried angel hair or similar size, as I hate cooking them).  Reheat covered at 300 to 350F, then once the middle is warm, uncover and brown under the broiler


Caramel sauce tastes too sugary what went wrong

By 'cream,' I am assuming you mean heavy whipping cream, which is normally used in caramel sauce, and not sweetened condensed cream, which some people use in place of sweetened condensed milk in certain recipes.
 The whipping cream in itself, is not sweet, so I'm not sure what the issue could be. Did you accidentally put too much sugar in? Or maybe next time try replacing the cream with butter, or try adding just a pinch of salt to the mixture to combat the sweetness.


How do you freeze fresh pineapple? Can you?

I usually cut the pineapple into bite size pieces before freezing them.

IF i'm at my mom's restaurant, I usually put it in the super chiller, and then into the freezer.
At home, I usually drain it, for 20 -30 minutes in a sieve and then put them in air tight freezer bags.


What's the difference between broccoli from China and broccoli from Australia?

I imagine that the following things make a vegetable more expensive:

quantity of supply (if a shop has more product to move in a limited time they make it cheaper)
quality of supply (eg organic)
distance to supply (if it costs more to move it from source to destination)
age of supply (products near expiration are cheaper because the shop needs to sell them)


How to properly vacuum seal and freeze food that may stick together

You can use waxed baking paper between the steaks, It will make them easily separable but without retaining air bubbles.


Selecting nuts for successful home oven-roasting

For raw, harder, and bulkier nuts like Almonds try a slightly lower temperature, say 180°C (350°F), and for a longer time

For re-roasting previously roasted nuts use a microwave oven (I know...). Same recipe, but just a few minutes on high. Watch them the first few times until you find the magic time limit before they start to burn

Commercially more and more people are using continuous microwave roasting machines, so using the microwave at home is so bad...

Personally, I like nuts aged in their shells before roasting


A quick inspection of common 'Cinnamon Bread' recipes suggests that what your recipe is say is 1 cup of Shortening OR Unsalted Butter; plus some melted butter ('some' being enough to baste/coat the bread with). Shortening and butter are often interchangeable in a recipe, at least 'functionally' (that is for the chemical properties) Butter will most often produce the 'tastier' result.

Edit: After you added the recipe you are using I am revisiting what I wrote earlier to say that while the way this recipe is worded the distinction between 'butter flavored shortening', 'shortening', and 'unsalted butter' is unclear as written but that by ratio (fat to flour) would be consistent with the idea that 'unsalted butter' is offered as an option to the shortening. I would have to second @Jefromi's suggestion: find a better (more well written) recipe.


How can I improve an asian sauté / stir fry?

A few tips:

Marinate the meat first (after chopping, before stir-frying);
Mix the sauce first - don't just dump the ingredients separately into the wok;
Add corn starch or tapioca flour to the sauce to thicken it.  I wouldn't even call it a sauce without any thickening agent.  About 1 tbsp per cup of sauce should be alright.  (Note: The sauce should be about 50-60% water, don't use a whole cup of soy sauce!)
Add some other savoury or flavour-enhancing ingredients to the sauce - i.e. toasted sesame oil, rice vinegar, brown sugar/honey.  And ditch the oregano.
Briefly steam the vegetables in the wok - add just a little bit of the sauce, then cover it for a few minutes.  This will make them much more tender after frying.  (Note that this only applies to hard vegetables like carrots, celery, broccoli, etc. - add the soft vegetables afterward)
Add minced garlic with the ginger.  The two go together like white on rice.


Has anyone solved this problem with braising (other than by sous vide)?

Hervé This has an interesting discussion on this problem in this book.

The process of losing juice when cooking a piece of meat is in big part mechanical. Meat is basically composed of muscle cells tied together by collagen, which is sensitive to heat. Quoting Hervé:

  When a temperature of 50°c (122°f) is reached in the outside layer, the collagen contracts, compressing the juices inside (although the degree of compressibility is small because the juices are mainly water) and expelling the juices of the periphery outward. The center of the roast, composed of liquids and largely incompressible solids, cannot receive these juices. Anyone who is not convinced of this has only to roast a few pieces of beef, weigh them, and determine their density before and after cooking.

Since heat is transferred from the outside towards the inside by convection, the core of the piece of meat is usually at lower temperatures and retain most of the juices which were not expelled by the contracting collagen in the outer layers. Thus the importance of resting the meat after cooking. Outside the heat, you lose this compressing force and the liquids concentrated at the core diffuse towards the outside and redistribute, giving an improved feeling of juiciness. Following your question, Hervé suggests:

  Given that the juiciness of the meat depends on the amount of juice it has, why not use a syringe to reinject the juices that have drained out from the roast during cooking?

From this simplified physical picture, I suppose cooking-sous vide for long temperatures and below 50 degrees (temperature at which the collagen contracts) will avoid this phenomenon of expelling juices.


The sugar is crystallising. Try replacing the corn syrup with glucose syrup, or adding a little cream of tartar, both of which prevent crystallisation.


My apple cider vinegar became infested with fruit flies and maggots. Can I wash the mother and use her again?

Yes, as far as personal use is concerned, but it would not be recommended by food safety professionals.
I'd suggest instead cutting out a small piece of the mother and making sure that it is completely clear of eggs, or you'll repeat the experience even with washing.
Vinegar is known to inhibit bacterial growth across a wide range of foodbourne bacteria (more scientific version here), so the insects are unlikely to have corrupted it unsalvageably.
Further if the vinegar mother is bacterially contaminated, the 3-week period of fermenting the new vinegar will show it well before you use the vinegar.  Just be very wary of any off smells or colors.
Note that if you were asking this in a food service context you absolutely would need to throw everything away.  The risk of contamination is small and not worse than many other things in home kitchens.  However, the standards for professional cooking are higher.


Should I throw away a jar of olives that fizzed and bubbled upon opening?

Short answer:
Yes, throw it away.

Long answer:
Bubbling, fizzing, pressure etc. indicates some kind of microbiological activity that is unwanted for properly canned food - canning should eliminate these organisms. Any behaviour like the one you described indicates that something went wrong, so you can not assume the contents of the jar or can to be safe.


How to recover jam that has set too hard?

The only way I know is by adding some more liquid and warming the mixture, It may or may not improve things...

For what its worth, the consistency of the jam after cooking, tends to be related to the amount of sugar added for a given fruit, with hard skinned fruit typically requiring a slightly different process to soft skinned fruit. It's also controlled by the amount of pectin added to the brew as well as the overall cooking time and temperature.


Pressure Cooker suitable for traditional Indian dishes, available in Europe

I don't see anything "special" about that recipe that depends on the particular pressure cooker. I don't think you need anything fancier than an old-fashioned pressure cooker and a timer, assuming you know how to use an old-fashioned pressure cooker. If you already own one, why buy another?

Figure time on "high" to be time on 15 PSI (or 1 bar) steam, and cook away.

A brief glance at the link shows a thing that seeks to be everything (pressure cooker, rice cooker, yogurt maker, really should have Ron Popeil do ads for it on late night TV...) some of which would be more difficult in a regular pressure cooker, though (for instance) we had a spot on the stove over a pilot light that could make any pot into a yogurt-maker if you set it there full of milk and culture. And you can certainly make rice in a pressure cooker under pressure, rather than trying to mimic a "rice cooker" at atmospheric pressure.


Ceramic knives:

cut
get through metal detectors at night clubs

Steel knives:

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


How to Judge the Appropriate Feeding Schedule for Immature Sourdough Starter

This question involves a lot of sub-questions that don't have simple answers, so this response is a bit long.

From my experience producing dozens of starters from scratch over the years, I have to disagree with some of the details given in the other answer.  There are two goals in the early days of a starter:

Produce an environment hospitable to the growth of yeast and lactic acid bacteria, while discouraging growth of other nasty things that could take over your starter and cause it spoil.
Begin producing a "rhythm" of feeding that will encourage the natural cycle of yeast and bacteria growth.  Generally speaking, yeast will grow quickly after a feeding (the rising phase), but their waste products and other changes will allow bacteria to take over and start growing strongly afterward (the "sour" phase).  If the culture gets too sour before the yeast are well-established, and feeding schedules are infrequent, it can take weeks to establish a starter (if ever).  If a culture isn't sour enough, bad things may begin to grow and spoil your starter.  The trick is finding a middle way, and a feeding schedule is a major part of that.

(1) Feeding your starter more than once per day is, in my opinion, a useful tool for guaranteeing a high success rate in the first few days of a new starter.  At a minimum stirring at least a couple times per day will inhibit mold and other microorganisms from getting established on the surface before the culture becomes sour (i.e., acidic).  It is true that feeding too frequently may not allow appropriate levels of sourness to occur in the first few days, but this can be overcome by two methods.

One solution is to add artificial acidity.  After many, many trials, various forums online have discovered pineapple juice is a near-ideal addition to bring down pH and add acidity in the first 2-3 days of starter growth.  Use it instead of water.  (Note that this process can be done with feedings every 24 hours or more frequently.)

The other solution is to only add partial feedings for the first couple of days (for example, following a regimen like this one).  To explain this method in more detail, rather than doubling the starter with each feeding (and discarding half), you would add the same amount each time for the first few feedings without discarding anything.  Thus, the first feeding would double the quantity of starter, but the second would only add 50%, the third would add 33%, the fourth 25%.  Each addition will provide fresh food to encourage yeast growth, while simultaneously concentrating the acidity.

(2) The "float test" is good for mature starters, but I don't think it's good enough to assess when your starter may be ready for bread.  A very strong starter will take off and rise significantly within a few hours after feeding.  I would wait until this happens.

(3) First, there is no reason to be wasteful.  I have no idea why many starter recipes start with a cup of flour or whatever and waste pounds of flour in the first week.  I've often started with 10-20 grams of flour.  And then I follow a regimen like the second link above or something like suggested in the second page of discussion on the pineapple juice solution, where you only need a few tablespoons to get going and you don't need to discard anything for at least the first few days.  Working in small quantities won't delay the establishment of your starter, and if you're only using a tablespoon or two of flour for each feeding, it's not a lot to discard.

As for ratios for feeding, as I said, many prefer a solution that actually doesn't discard anything for the first few feedings to produce adequate acidity.  After you start seeing a yeast response with lots of rise (not just small bubbles which may be due to bacteria activity or the large surge in bubbles which usually happens in the first 48 hours, due to bad bacteria activity before the culture becomes sour), you can begin to discard and replenish.  Many people double the culture with each feeding at this point, but I've had better results doing a 1:1:1 feeding (1 part starter to 1 part flour to 1 part water by weight) at this stage, as long as the yeast are clearly showing some activity, even if they might be slower.

Once the starter is mature, you can be more aggressive with discarding and replenishing, or alternatively planning ahead and only saving small quantities of starter for the next batch, so you don't have to discard much at all.  I find the 1:1:1 feeding strikes a good balance (effectively equivalent to discarding 2/3 of the starter and replenishing the rest).  Saving smaller amounts of starter will tend to produce a more mild starter, while doing your method of discarding half can lead to a somewhat more sour product, which some people prefer.  Doing a 1:2:2 feeding or even using smaller quantities of starter at each feeding can also have benefits, but it requires a strong, mature starter.  (For some discussion of various opinions on feeding ratios, see here.  In general, the right ratio is what seems to work with your starter and to produce bread you think tastes good.)

(4) You can get away with a 24-hour period between feedings for the first few days, but as I said, I'd at least stir it every 12 hours or more frequently to avoid mold settling.  The pineapple juice links above recommend against feeding more frequently in the first couple days to avoid diluting the acid.  I agree with that advice if you were using water and discarding and doubling the starter with each feeding, since you wouldn't be allowing proper acid development.  But if you follow the juice method or the other method outlined in the links, the acidity will become concentrated with the initial feedings, rather than diluted, and more frequent feedings can allow the yeast to "catch on" quicker.

Once established (and the 12-hour rise-and-fall cycle is a good benchmark), I would definitely recommend a 12-hour feeding cycle when sourdough cultures are kept at room temperature, unless you prefer a more sour bread result (and potentially a weaker culture).  It really depends on your room temperature, your feeding proportions, and a number of other things -- sourdough can work with a lot of different conditions.  I tend to use my sourdough for a variety of breads, and I rarely actually use it to make very sour "sourdough" bread, so I like to keep it very mild-flavored for adaptability reasons.  Feeding every 12 hours at room temperature (or even every 8 hours in warm temperatures) will do that.  When I'm not baking for a while, I put the culture in the fridge and take it out to do at least one feeding before reviving.

Again, a little thought can avoid waste.  There is no reason to keep cups and cups of starter lying around, discarding half every time you feed it.  When I save culture in the fridge, I generally save about 1/9th of what I actually need for my average batch of bread (which may only be a couple tablespoons: I often keep my starter in a tiny jar left over from Dijon mustard or something).  Then I remove it the day before, do a 1:1:1 feeding, 12 hours later do a 1:1:1 feeding (not discarding anything, so it's now 9 times the original starter quantity), and I have a very mild and active starter ready to go.  If I haven't used it in a while, I'll do a 1:2:2 feeding or even higher ratio to dilute the excess acidity that tends to build up.

To answer the final question of how long it takes to develop a reliable starter: I'd say with a 12-hour feeding schedule following a regimen like the one in the second link above, I can have a somewhat reliable starter able to bake bread in about 3 days, assuming good quality rye flour.  Depending on conditions, it can sometimes take another day or two, but a couple more days of regular feeding regardless will ensure it's really strong.  I've done this method over a dozen times, and I've never had a failure.  Before that, using a 24-hour feeding cycle, I've had multiple failures (by which I mean mold or other things happened), and it would usually take at least a week to establish a culture.  I haven't actually used the pineapple juice method (only water), so perhaps it is more reliable using a 24-hour feeding cycle in the first few days.

(Note that the reason I say I've produced dozens of starters over the years is because I've found these methods so reliable and not wasteful that I often don't even bother reviving an old starter I've neglected for months -- it's almost as easy to make a new one.)

Rye flour, I've found, is really useful, even if you eventually plan to switch to wheat for normal feedings (which you can do once you get the rise and fall in a 12-hour window).  With whole-wheat flour, I've often had starters take much longer to get established.


Is my heavy cream not actually heavy cream?

You're comparing different quantities. A serving of cream (per your label) is a tablespoon. You're comparing that to 1 cup (or 16 tablespoons) of milk.

The percentage that you're seeing is not what percentage of your dairy product is fat, but the percentage of the recommended daily amount of that nutrient found in a single serving. % Daily Value is figured using 2000 total calories per person, per day.

From @Jefromi in comments: "And a tablespoon of cream is 15g, so with 5g of fat, that's indeed about 33%, right in the expected range. Similarly the milk is 8g of fat out of about 237g, or 3.4%, what you'd expect for whole milk."


My gut tells me that they are either under-done or need to be rinsed. Have you tried par boiling the  potato? I would try slicing the raw potato, boiling for a few minutes to draw out some of the starch - then rinsing them before adding to your recipe. Worth a try I think.

Good luck!


The tenderizing actions for all of the examples you've listed are different, and some are entirely debatable. Tenderizing isn't about specific ingredients; it covers a whole range of different techniques used to increase the perception of juiciness in the final meat, while reducing the perception of tough connective tissue. There are many different ways to accomplish this.

Tenderizing is very often coupled with attempts to add flavor to the meat, as in the classic and important marinade. Marinating does several things: it exposes the meat to salt, and to acid, and to other flavorful compounds. Since you're asking specifically about limiting flavor additions, let's discount that last and look at the other actions, which we can perform separately:

Brining: in general, this uses salt (and often sugar) to cause osmotic changes and denature proteins within the meat, which causes it to retain more moisture during cooking; hence it can seem more tender after cooking. A simple brine generally doesn't add a lot of flavor, but it does add plenty of salt (which can affect the perception of other flavors) and it takes time. This is the effect of pickle juice, which contains large amounts of salt.
Acid: exposure to acids denatures many proteins, to the point where some delicate proteins can be "cooked" entirely using acid, as in ceviche. However, longer exposure can unpleasantly break down meat into mush - there's such a thing as too tender. Acid adds a tangy flavor, and this flavor provides part of its "tenderizing" power; it triggers the release of enzyme-laden saliva that tenderizes as you eat.

There are other ways to accomplish similar results that introduce even less flavor:

Enzymatic action: a few fruits, notably pineapple and papaya, contain enzymes (bromelain and papain, respectively) that are particularly good at breaking down the proteins and connective tissues present in meat. This is similar to the breakdown that acids cause, and it has similar downsides; too much breakdown causes the meat to do from "tender" to "mushy". However, bromelain and papain powders are both available commercially, and they add much less flavor than acids do. There is some speculation that the onions in Chaliapin steak provide a similar enzymatic action, but evidence is mixed and there's a lot else going on in that dish besides.
Velveting: this is a cooking technique that uses a thin, largely flavorless coating on the outside of thinly sliced strips of meat to cook them more gently, reducing moisture loss and keeping them tender. Thin slices are important here too. The manga that you cite for the effect of honey does seem to imply that honey has an enzymatic action, but in a previous question that addressed it I concluded that the actual effect is one of velveting. As with onions, it's questionable whether honey contains the right enzymes for quick tenderizing.

Now, all of this so far has discussed chemical means of tenderizing meat. But it turns out there's an entire category of classic tenderization that adds no flavor whatsoever:

Mechanical action! For ages cooks have tenderized various tough cuts by breaking down their connective tissues with a variety of means. This can be as simple as slicing across the grain with specific cuts of meat, which shortens tougher meat fibers and produces a better result than slicing parallel to the grain. Meat can be pounded or sliced thin to break down connective tissue as well (and this is the main tenderizing effect with Chaliapin steak). Mechanical tenderization can use something as simple as a common spiked kitchen mallet or the back of a heavy pan, or a larger commercial device which uses spiked rollers or long needles to puncture the meat repeatedly and break connective tissues and fibers. If you're looking for a way to tenderize a cut of meat without affecting its flavor, this is the gold standard. It does tend to be immediately visible, and it's often thought of a "cheap" way to affect tenderization, but there's no denying the results or the ubiquity of this method across many different food cultures.


You can kind of knead them a little with your hand.  Just roll them on the board to break up the "fibers"


Does any blender also do up-down shaking movement?

Yes, that is completely normal while trying to blend solids. It's just that the vortex/space doesn't allow for the large chunks of veg to fall onto the blade. Try a food processor.


Best Practice at cutting butter and sugar in Peanut Butter balls

I like peanut butter, but the thing with using neat peanut butter in recipes is that it can be very cloying and weld your mouth shut. Mixing peanut butter with butter helps loosen it up a bit, the sugar is there to add flavor back and keep it sweet as butter is a savory, and not a sweet flavor. Peanut butter will roll in balls just fine without any extras, they are just there to improve the eating experience.

Having a big ball of peanut butter in the center of a cupcake is problematic because cupcake batter is fairly slack, however brownie batter is thicker so I it's less likely to run out the bottom.

Freezing the peanut butter is a good thought, however it is likely to keep the center from cooking - the outside of the brownie will be done but the center will be very underdone which is probably not what you are looking for. I'd suggest trying the balls at refrigerator temperature first.


What does sourdough starter REALLY need?

What it really needs is consistency. Whichever method you choose, make sure you stick with it. What you are doing is creating a colony of bacteria. You create a given environment, the microflora in it fights it out for some time, at the end one strain (or a handful of them) wins and takes over. If you change the conditions, another strain gets a chance and the war for ecological niches starts over.

As for what the exact "right" ratio and schedule is: there are many of them. This doesn't mean that any random combination will work - if you pull something out of thin air, you could get a colony of pathogens instead of good sourdough culture. Also, some methods might be easier to work with, producing more robust colonies, while others might be way to close to a bifurcation point.

So what you should do is follow a recipe. As always, there is a chance that you happen upon a bad recipe, or upon a recipe which is in principle good, but explained badly. You may prefer to use the more exact recipe from the book since the precision leaves less margin for error, or the more simple (but possibly less easy!) recipe from the videos, hoping that you will get it right despite the missing precision (or that it is so inherently robust that it never needed it in the first place). It is a personal preference for the method.

To make it even more complicated, you are also likely to end up with different taste profiles from different recipes. But you can't know for sure if and how they differ before having tried both. So unless you are in the mood for extensive experimentation, you cannot really use this as a criterion to which recipe you should pick. So you are back at just committing to one and see if it works for you.


I made bacon  Mixed together 2 tablespoons oil,  3 tbs soy sauce or tamari, 2 tbs nutritional yeast, 1 tbs woostershire, 1/2 tbs maple syrup, 3/4 tbs hot paprika in a bowl.  Mix in 3 cups loose Almond skins.  Bake 375 for approx 20 minutes on non stick surface until crispy.  BLT waiting to happen.  Or use as bacon bits on salad...


Can I use short rib bones alone to make beef stock?

A lot of the flavor comes from the marrow of the bone. Rib bones will need companion soup bones to help them. Alone, the flavor will seem weak or watered down.
Now, if you are willing to put in the time.... Bake them first at 325f for an hour, let them cool and hit them with a hammer to crack them. you might want to cover them with a towel as not to send splinters about. This will allow the flavor to come out more during the reduction phase of the stock.


How to store cooked / stir-fried egg noodle leftovers?

If they seem like they are kind of starchy, you might toss them with a litle toasted sesame oil. The flavor would be appropriate and that will keep them from sticking together. Other than that, just refrigerate like any other leftover. They should be good for about 4 days assuming your fridge is below 40 degrees F, as it should be. Of course they will never be as good as they were the day you made them. For reheating, my first choice would actually be the microwave. A minute at a time, tossing in between. You might need to add a tablespoon of water to help them loosen up.


Gelatin is naturally occurring in meat and poultry, it's broken down collagen, which is the material that distributes force throughout the muscle. You couldn't actually get rid of it easily even if you wanted to, so it isn't necessarily that you want it, but that it is there. Reducing the stock until it is gelatinous simply means that you've gotten rid of most of the water, concentrating the stock so it takes less space, which is generally desirable.

Gelatine and other thickeners increase a liquid's viscosity, making it coat things better, which is good for mouth feel. Most of the time that's what you want for a good dish.


Heating oatmilk basically works on the same principle as heating any other thing with starch like a roux or thickening soup/gravy with cornstarch.

To get less thickening, add less starch i.e. less oats content per liter of water. To compensate for lack of flavor blend it with any other type of plant based milk, like soymilk (protein-based) or cashew milk(protein+fat based), or anything which is not primarily starch based. It will add nutritional value, compensate for watered down flavors (due to less oats and more water) and will not thicken upon heating.

The only other way is to use chemical additives.


Multi cooker - with pressure cooker versus without

I switched from an old-style crock pot to a multicooker with pressure (Instant Pot, if you're curious), and I have no regrets. The pressure cooker is very convenient for things like stocks and braises, and since the inner pot is steel instead of stone it's more convenient to clean (it can go in the dishwasher). I was worried about the opaque lid, but I find I don't miss it. And there are now many more recipes to try, so there's that benefit as well.

I recommend the pressure cooker.


There certainly is such a thing as pork stock, it's made the same way as beef and chicken stock - by cooking down bones to extract the flavors. With beef you use beef bones, with pork you use pork bones.

Supermarkets stock the products that make economic sense, they don't carry items which won't move - especially if they have a very limited shelf life. Beef, chicken and vegetable stocks are the most widely used ones in many parts of the world, so they will carry those as they have a good chance to be sold. Pork, lamb, and fish stocks can be found in supermarkets in areas where enough of the customer base will buy it.

If you can't find it in your local supermarket then there may be specialty stores (online or bricks and mortar) which you could get it from. Butchers may carry it as well. If not then making stock is very simple, all you need is some bones, vegetables, a heat source and some time.


Can I prepare instant noodles in the microwave?

The Maggi noodles you link to are just average ramen noodles, so can be cooked in the microwave quite easily.

Boil a kettle of water
Place the noodles in a microwavable bowl. You may need to break the noodles into pieces, but if you're careful with the boiling water you can sometimes soften the noodles in the middle enough to fold the block to make it all fit without breaking
Pour the flavour sachet (and any other curry powder/herbs) onto the dry noodles
Pour the boiling water onto the noodles, enough to cover the noodles, and if desired, a bit more for a bit of a soup
Put into the microwave, you can cover with a loose lid if desired, and microwave for around 2 minutes
Stir the noodles, separating any stuck-together blocks of noodles
Put back into the microwave for another 2-3 minutes (depending on your microwave's power)

I usually cook these kind in the microwave, since if I'm eating them I'm not usually in the mood for a proper cooking session. They do (depending on the kind of noodle) sometimes turn out slightly different when done in the microwave, as compared to boiling on hob, but both are nice as a snack.


Why should I prefer tea dust over crumbled tea leaves at home?

You don't necessarily want tea dust. The reason commercial producers grind it so fine is to maximize the flavor output and steep speed with the least amount of tea, but and this is my opinion only, I think that makes an inferior tea.

Good tea just uses more leaf so it can reach the desired richness in less than 5 minutes.

Steeping for longer draws more tannins out of the leaf and woody bits and makes tea more astringent, and so does grinding the tea too finely.


Key ingredients for classic Sauce Bolognese (Ragù Bolognese)?

Italy is very protective of its food heritage and there are many examples of recipes being officially codified by various authorities, e.g, the EU designation, Traditional Speciality Guaranteed, was applied to pizza margherita in 2009 and strictly mandates the ingredients that may be used.

The recipe for Ragu alla Bolognese doesn't have the weight of the EU behind it but in 1982 the Bolognese chapter of the Accademia Italiana della Cucina did produce an official version and it is on their website, unfortunately only in Italian. Using Google translate you can see that the required ingredients are:

Lean minced beef, pancetta, carrot, onion, pureed or peeled tomato, dry white wine, whole milk, beef broth, olive oil or butter, salt, pepper, cream

I'll leave the translation of the instructions as an exercise for the reader lest I be accused of posting a recipe. ;-)


What does 'turn out' mean in bread baking?

All that is meant here by "turn out" is to take the mass that you have begun to mix in the bowl, and dump it all onto your (floured) counter to begin kneading.

Turn out just means to dump. To move.


What is the proper way to cook a hamburger on a Pit Barrel Cooker that doesn't result in fast cooking taste?

There is no method because you cannot do it. Ground meats lose moisture rapidly when cooked as much of the fat is not contained within the meat itself, but mixed in. This mixed in fat melts rapidly and runs out. The fat that is marbled within the meat itself is lost faster as the ground strands have much more surface area. Therefore, if you cook a burger low and slow it will end up dry.

Slow cooking and long roasting is only good when a piece of meat has enough marbled fat so it will still be juicy when cooked, and a low surface area to slow moisture loss (ie it's fairly big). Burger cooking on the other hand is a race to get a good crust and to the right temperature before losing all moisture.

As for shrinking up this is normal for burgers and you cannot prevent the process from happening. You can, however, shape them flatter and thinner to compensate. I make a flat, thin-ish burger patty, then I use my palm to make the middle slightly thinner than the outside. The result is a burger that has the right shape after cooking. If you start with a thick burger patty you'll more often end up with a meatball shape at the end.


Can I refreeze gravlax made from previously frozen salmon

Yes, it's even recommended to use salmon that has been frozen for at least 24 hours to make gravadlax as a precaution against parasites, since the salmon isn't cooked. (Of course I'm assuming that you want some right away!)

Prepared gravadlax freezes very well. As Jenna says, wrap it individually in cling wrap, and freeze for up to a couple of months for best quality. Refrigerate it for a few hours to thaw before serving.


Probably not, plus it will get worse over time.

I've an old George Foreman with similar marking.
Neither oxygen nor chlorine bleach works - plus it smells.
The only thing that very slightly works is a good hard scrub with something quite aggressive, oven cleaner or barman's friend etc, which will eventually take all the paint off.

You'll just have to live with it.


The official guideline (in the US, at least) is no more than 2 hours, total, between 40°F (4°C) and 140°F (60°C). So, if your room is fairly cool, and all the ingredients were cold, at two hours in the off crock pot, you're just inside the guideline.

But the problem is, if you just turn the crock pot on, it will take at least another hour to get up to 140°F. That puts you firmly outside the guideline.

Instead, assuming this is chicken pieces (in a stew, soup, or similar) and not a whole chicken, I'd suggest you bring it up to at least 160°F (70°C) stove top over fairly high heat (this should only take a few minutes), then transfer that to the crock pot. You can then cook it in the crock pot on low.


I don't have any such cookbooks, but a google search turned up a lot of blogs with recipes. If you search, include Orissa and Oriya as well as Odisha.

I also found several English-language cookbooks through searching on Amazon.in (best search term was oriya cooking). Some of them are also available on their other sites. I have not seen or cooked from any of these cookbooks to give any personal recommendation.

Purba: Feasts from the East: Oriya Cuisine from Eastern India

Classic Cooking of Orissa

Healthy Oriya Cuisine


Is there an upper time limit when simmering stock?

You could implement a perpetual stock, where you keep it simmering indefinitely and renew it by adding fresh ingredients over time. The tradition of keeping a perpetual stew boiling for weeks or even months dates back centuries, and was a way to keep the ingredients from going bad in days before refrigeration.

https://alehorn.com/2016/01/07/is-medieval-perpetual-stew-for-you/

If you just want to simmer a single pot of stock indefinitely, you can do that safely by adding water on a regular basis in small quantities (small enough that the stock temperature does not drop below 140 degrees) but if you're not using some and replacing the ingredients, over time (several days) the stock will eventually acquire a sort of acrid taste (speaking from personal experience.)

I think the issue is that there's a limited amount of the aromatic compounds which produce the desired flavor, and over time, these tend to evaporate. Replenishing water doesn't replenish the flavor. The smell of stock simmering means those aromatic compounds are now in the air and no longer in the pot. Eventually, the amount of nice flavoring compounds leaving the broth to the air exceeds what you can extract from the remaining bones etc. Oxidation of the remnants leads to a less pleasant flavor. There is also the question of the pot itself adding metallic flavors if the stock is at all acidic.


My sourdough started hasn't yet risen! What am I doing wrong?

While feeding I take half cup measure of flour and then take the same
  cup measure of water and mix it in the starter.

And there is your problem to some extent. Always weigh your flour, water, starter and everything else when baking bread. Water weighs about 25% more than flour. This means you have about 25% too much water (or more).

Great bread recipes take into account humidity, temperature, ingredient weights and the fact that not everybody's measurements will be exactly the same size. Always weigh your ingredients.

So now take 4oz or 100 grams of your starter, add 4oz or 100 grams of water along with 4oz or 100 grams of flour, stir that all up and see what happens in 24 hours.

Then repeat the process again, twice a day, though you may notice great changes as soon as tomorrow. Report back as you do.

If 4oz is a bit much for your container, you can reduce it to 2oz. Making half of the flour wheat--and not just white--helps in the beginning along with a tablespoon of rye if you have it. (Yeah, I'm not picky about the tablespoon here.)


How can huge bubbles in pizza crust be prevented?

From Encyclopizza

  There’s a difference between bubbles
  formed from under-proofing versus
  over-proofing. Bubbles from
  under-proofing tend to be flat but
  large in diameter. If unpopped, they
  can blow up an entire pizza. This is
  the process by which pita or pocket
  bread is made. Bubbles from
  over-proofing tend to be high but
  smaller in diameter. They rise up like
  little ping-pong balls and eventually
  form a hole at the top, at which time
  they stop expanding. They almost
  always burn. Most pizza bubbling
  problems are of the under-proofed
  type.

  To resolve a bubbling problem, dough
  fermentation must be adjusted
  accordingly. To stop bubbling caused
  by under-proofed dough, increase the
  amount of fermentation. To stop
  bubbling caused by over-proofed dough,
  reduce the amount of fermentation.

  In addition to proper proofing, it has
  been found that reducing the amount of
  water in a dough formula can help with
  reducing bubbling when dealing with
  the under-proofed type. The reduction
  in moisture aids in creating the
  pinpoint holes in the cells walls.

In addition, you want to make sure you properly knead your dough. Some people poke tiny holes in the dough to prevent overly large bubbles. As a final resort you could observe your pizza in the oven and poke bubbles as they form.


Why do bread and butter pickle recipes call for onions, mustard seed, and celery seed?

Those are the flavorings.

Just like dill pickles have dill in them, those are what give the flavor profile that people expect from bread & butter pickles.


How should I alter a chocolate cake recipe to make plain/flavoured cake?

There are several aspects of the chemistry of the chocolate cake being converted to a white cake that are not covered in the existing answers.

Fat content of cocoa powder

You cannot simply replace the cocoa powder with flour, because it compared to flour, cocoa powder:

Contains more fat (about 10-12 percent by weight, for grocery store brands; more for some premium brands up to about 25%)
Is more acidic
Is far, far more flavorful (okay, that part is not desired in a white cake)

You should use slightly less flour than there was cocoa, to avoid adding flour by weight equivalent to the fat in the original recipe which would throw the balance off.  I would suggest a half cup plus 2 tbls of flour instead of 3/4 cup of cocoa as a starting point.

Flavor balance

With the astringency of the cocoa removed from the recipe, the flavor balance may be too sweet.  You might want to try reducing the sugar by about 1/4 cup - 1/2 cup.

Acid and Leavening

The original recipe contains both baking soda (which requires an additional acid from another ingredient) and baking powder as leavening.

When you remove the cocoa, you are removing the acid that the baking soda was intending to react with.

Therefore, you need to remove the baking soda, replacing it with baking powder which brings its own acid.  You might need a slightly larger amount, as part of the weight of baking powder is the acid, so there is less leaving per unit than with baking soda.  I would suggest an additional 1/2 teaspoon as a starting point.

Boiling water

The boiling water is specifically intended, I infer from experience with many chocolate cake recipes, to bloom the flavor in the cocoa.  When you remove the cocoa from the recipe, you remove the need to use boiling water to enhance the chocolate flavor.

Furthermore, the reason water is used rather than milk or another liquid is to interfere less with the perception of chocolate flavor.  Therefore, you may choose to use another liquid like milk or additional coconut milk which will enhance the flavor and tenderness of your final cake.

Vegetable Oil

Vegetable oil is chosen in this recipe to avoid interfering with the flavor from the cocoa.

You may continue to use it, or you may find that butter or even coconut oil give a more agreeable flavor for the final product you are creating.

Method

With all of the above changes, there will no doubt be some changes to the method.  Since you have only listed the ingredients, and not the actual steps, it is harder to be specific here.

However, what will be left is a fairly standard sponge cake, so should modify the steps to the standard creaming method:

Sift the dry ingredients together; combine the wet ingredients other than butter and sugar
Cream the butter and sugar(s) together
Add in the eggs one at a time, beating until smooth.
Add the dry mix alternating two or three times with the wet mix, beating each time for 30 seconds or so
Beat one or two minutes longer to develop structure

Flavorings

For coconut, using coconut oil in lieu of vegetable, and more coconut milk in lieu of water, and adding coconut extract should do the trick.  The recipe should also be able to carry a small amount of shredded coconut if you choose, although that will change the texture.

For vanilla, try butter and milk instead of oil and water.  Add vanilla extract.

For lemon, start as with vanilla, and add lemon zest to the batter (and maybe lemon extract), and possibly, should you choose, a touch of yellow food color.  I would not add lemon juice as it has a profound effect on the chemistry; instead I would make a nice lemon icing or glaze that has the tartness.

Conclusion

Despite all of the above, I would not try to convert a recipe that is specifically designed for chocolate to a white cake; too many aspects of the cake will change.  Instead, I suggest finding a truly outstanding white or yellow cake recipe to use.


I highly recommend using a steamer if you have access to one, but if you don't have it, you don't have it. The good news is that the process for making scrambled eggs on the stove is about the same no matter how many eggs you're making - add as much beaten eggs as you're comfortable stirring in the pan, cook over low heat stirring occasionally.

The major tips/gotchas that I can think of:

Open all your egg cartons at once before you start cooking. The last thing you want to be doing is fighting with packaging material when you need eggs quickly
Low heat, be patient, stir frequently but not constantly. Once every couple minutes should be fine depending on the size of your pot - it shouldn't be hard to figure out if you need to be stirring more or less frequently. However, don't forget to stir. This is probably the biggest way for things to come out less than perfectly. If you get distracted and forget to stir the eggs for too long, the ones at the bottom of the pot can start to develop the same green off-color as overcooked hard boiled egg yolks. It's perfectly safe to eat but who wants to eat green eggs?
You mention butter but unless you're adding it for flavor it's honestly not necessary. When you're done there's going to be eggs stuck to the pan no matter what you do. Don't stress yourself out about it.
One tip - if your eggs are cooked more than you want them to be but not at the turning green stage, you have some wiggle room in whisking in uncooked beaten eggs into the overcooked eggs. The heat from the cooked eggs and further hot holding will cook the raw eggs and it will distract somewhat from the overcooked bits. It's not perfect but it's "good enough" and it can help you save a chafing dish of eggs that you'd otherwise have to throw out.

That's really all there is too it. If you have more eggs than you can comfortable fit in the pot, you'll have to do it in batches but all that means is "cook eggs, dump into chafing dish/hotel pan, start cooking more eggs."


Why wait for some hours before filling any food into a new freezer?

Most of the "cold" in a freezer isn't stored in the air.  It's stored in the contents of the freezer, and in the walls (air has a very low volumetric specific heat).  However, the thermostat controlling the compressor works off the air temperature.

If you start filling a freezer before it's had a chance to properly cool the walls down, the food is exposed to an effective temperature that is far higher than the freezer's setpoint: heat gets transferred from the walls to the food, warming it up to unsafe levels.  Only once the walls reach thermal equilibrium with the air is it safe to start filling the freezer.


How can I make cookies less dry and crumbly?

Welcome to the forum!
Your recipe for Vanilla Latte cookies looks really yummy! However, confectionery sugar does make cookies crumble. I have actually moved away from cookie recipes with butter and margarine in them and depending on the type of cookie you want to make, you can now substitute oil for margarine/butter and keep the chewy, moist texture you probably are looking for. I don't have a recipe for the cookies you posted but I have a great chocolate chip cookie recipe I can share that has oil in it. One of the tricks to keep cookies chewy and not crumbly and hard is to underbake them by a couple of minutes. Cookies will continue to bake after they come out of the oven. So take them out a couple minutes before the recipe tells you to. Maybe that will even work with your recipe. Good luck and let me know if you want the recipe above.


Preparing a fresh bag of spinach: To Stem or Not To Stem

In my experience, stems can be rather stringy even after cooking. Likely varies by time of year, age/size of leaves, soil type, cultivar etc.
Best adivice is probably to check a few stems (raw, steamed, whatever) and see.
I always cut stems off at the base of the leaf, and have yet to have a complaint about the stem bits within the leaves.


I think some sort of mechanical aid to macerate the food is necessary for your project. Depending on what dish you attempt, there are few options.

A ricer (or food mill, depending on who you buy from) is a manual device (non-electric) that you might run cooked potatoes or parsnips through. Many people do mashed potatoes this way. Depending how cooked your parsnips get, a hand blender (or immersion blender, stick blender) may work.

However, all of this requires you to shell out some cash for a device. I'm not sure, from your post, if that's an option. If you're going for  ultra-smooth texture for a bisque or other soup, it might be worth it to get one of the small-bowl food processors (just work in batches).

Good luck!


I think you're looking for shrimp with egg yolk sauce. Egg yolk sauce is simply a kind of thick mayonnaise which gets dropped on fried (or deep fried, or grilled) shrimp. The yolk sauce usually has some yellow food coloring in it to make it look more eggy. Using canola (rapeseed) oil helps with getting a nice color too.

It should be dead simple to do at home, you can make the yolk sauce ahead of time, then simply pan fry some shrimp and spoon it on the top. If you are going to bread the shrimp I'd suggest putting the sauce on the side so the shrimp stays nice and crispy.


Are sushi rice and arborio rice valid substitutes of each other?

I've done risotto with other short grain rices (which includes sushi rice), with good results.  I've even used medium grain rice in a pinch, and you'll have to stir more, but it'll come out.

I'd assume the same would be true in reverse -- that most short grain rices (incl. arborio) would make a decent sushi ... unless it's short grained brown rice, that'd likely less you up.

Basically, there's three main varieties of rice:  short, medium and long  (not including 'wild rice' or how it's treated (white vs. brown vs. parboiled).  So long as you stay within one group, you're usually fine, so long as you don't change the treatment or technique used to cook it.


How do I properly cut a chicken breast into strips or chunks?

Use a non serrated sharp knife.

I prefer using a chef knife, about 10in long.

Cut the breast length wise to make slices, and after that, cut each slice into strips.

If wanting to make "chunks", then cut each strip into cubes.

Depending on the recipe, you can vary the thickness of each slice/strip/cube.


Highest protein-dense, low fat, raw, plant-based ingredient?

I'd say young green peas are a good bet. They belong to the broader bean family, which is in itself very high protein. However, many beans can't be eaten raw, be it because they can't be digested  or are even a bit toxic when raw. Young green peas on the other hand have a good amount of protein while they still can be eaten raw, about 2.5-6g per 100g, depending on the variety, according to (German) Wikipedia (English Wikipedia gives 5.42g). They are low fat, too, but a bit higher in carbohydrates.

However, this is still not that much protein compared to the recommended 45-55g you need each day. You'd have to eat at least 1kg of green peas to get your daily recommended dosage of protein. So I'm not sure if it fits your needs.

That said, not knowing why you want them raw, I guess you could also have ripe, dried green peas (even higher in protein: ~25g per 100g) ground into a flour and mix it with water to create a mash (this would work with other kinds of beans as well, although I'm not sure which ones can and which ones shouldn't be eaten raw.) This would certainly qualify as high-protein, low fat, raw, and plant-based, but I'm not sure it would be a culinary bomb.


Knife for cutting steak slices from whole ribeye?

You will need a standard curved 10" butcher knife. You cannot cut a proper steak with a straight-bladed chef's knife, as the blade will not contact the cutting board at the proper angle. The knife needs to be sharp. A sharp knife is less likely to cut you than a dull one because the handler will not have to fight with it. Also, please observe all safety regulations and common sense when using a dangerous instrument like a butcher knife.

Here is an image of  standard curved 10" butcher knife:

(Source)


I would like to try grilling fruit - any suggestions?

Usually I cut a peach in half, put a bit of salt and honey on the non skinned end, and grill it (cavity down) for a minute or two then rotate it to get good grill marks. I then add a scoop of ice cream in the cavity and sprinkle with cut fresh mint.
Another fruit I like grilled are apricots, although really put them on for 20 seconds or so.

My rule of thumb is that, if it's a harder fruit then it can be grilled, and usually it can only be grilled on the non-skin side.


You'll sometimes hear television cooking show hosts describe what they're doing as "cooking out" the paste. What they're actually doing is altering the flavor of the chili itself, not manipulating the level of capsaicin that was introduced. If you take a typical chili paste which has been combined with garlic and other things and then saute it in a fat, you will lower the level of heat that's tasted (and possibly take some bitterness out, depending on the chili and what's in the paste), but not lower the level that's actually ingested.

If you literally want to cook it out, put some sliced chili with nothing else in a searing hot pan, but make sure no one else is home or going to be home for a while, and wear a respirator. The capsaicin has nowhere to go and vaporizes as it burns (seriously, don't do that, if you did that in my kitchen I'd throw a live crab at you).

Various kinds of fat bond well with the capsaicin, essentially creating a sort of encasement. To demonstrate how this works, grab some sriracha and some cream. Mix in about half a tablespoon of sriracha to about 300 ml of cream, taste it. Now, simmer the cream a bit (about 3 - 5 minutes), take it off the heat, let it rest a few minutes and taste it again. The level of sriracha didn't change, what happened is the cream got its hands on the capsaicin that it contained. It'll continue to get milder the longer it sits. That's why a glass of milk can rescue you from atomic hot wings and why water just broadens the pain as it makes sure your whole palate gets a chance to taste it :) Beer just makes you care less about it.

Now, sugar has the remarkable quality of helping to hide heat with its mighty right of first refusal when it comes to your palate. The heat from the chili shows up and your palate says "what? I'm too busy with this sweet, I can only listen to a little of you". To see how that works, repeat the experiment again, but this time throw a teaspoon or so of confectioner's (or castor) sugar into the cream with the sriracha, along with an additional squirt or two (around 10 ml) of sriracha. That's why coconut milk works so perfectly in a curry.

The best bet for your recipe is finding a way to get some kind of fat into it. That could be coconut milk, fatty bacon, or whatever makes sense based on how you want to serve it. Then, optionally, sweeten it up a bit (also remember that citrus helps offset sweet, handy to keep that in mind when you're 'fixing' a dish) - some raisins sound like they'd work rather well with what you're doing. Maybe go with coconut milk and raisins, and thin it out with a bit of chicken stock if needed?

I really try to encourage people to take an hour and just experiment with ways you can alter and sort of control chili, because it is a lovely thing to cook with. Just remember, whatever you put in the pan initially ends up being eaten, you're just hiding a bit of that as you cook.


A quick google return some scientific papers saying that the process is slowed down.

For example : "...Freezing resulted in a marked decrease in invertase activity...."

How does it affect candy storage? I don't know enough to help; you could try a batch.


Are you using an insulated piping bag with a disposable plastic piping bag inside?
Is the room hot?
Is the whipped cream over whipped?
To solve the heat problem, try folding a dissolved gelatin sheet into the whipped cream.
If the cream is over whipped it will start to look a bit grainy, as the fat starts to glob together as the fat turns to butter.


How do I plan a meal without a stove or oven?

Missing the stove and oven is tough. But it sounds like you might have almost everything else you could possibly need.

With the microwave, you can essentially steam and even boil. With the slow cooker, assuming you have it, you can simmer. With the barbecue (grill, for us Americans), you can essentially do one better than roasting - anything that normally bakes in the oven on high heat is probably doable. The panini grill can do smaller-scale things in the same vein, and in some cases even substitute for sauteeing.

The barbecue might be the real hero, though, especially if it's a good-sized one. You can grill/roast any kind of meat or vegetable, and you can even cook a pizza on it. If it's the kind with a top rack, you can cook things more gently too. As derobert rightly suggests in the comments, you can even toss a cast iron pan on it. Failing that, you can also do a lot with foil - wrap things up to cook a bit more gently and keep them from drying out, or put down a few layers, grease it, and throw food on top to get something closer to sauteeing.

So start planning the meal however you normally would - flipping through recipes, starting from an ingredient, whatever floats your boat - and restrict yourself to things that can be done with those cooking methods. Quite a lot of dishes will be just fine. For example, the microwave will cover a lot of simple vegetable dishes. The slow cooker can do a lot of soups and stews. The barbecue can do tons and tons of things. And of course, you can do absolutely anything that doesn't need heat - salads and other raw foods. Don't underestimate that; there are plenty of great cold dishes out there.

And of course, keep in mind that there's really nothing wrong with reheating for many dishes. I don't know how big the microwave is, but assuming it's a decent size, you can prep something at home - think casseroles, soups, vegetable dishes without very sensitive textures, or just think about what works well for you at home eating as leftovers. Or to give a more specific idea, freshly grilled/roasted meat or vegetables plus a nice sauce you made ahead of time at home can make a pretty impressive dish without much actual work at your office.


How to distinguish between different types of squash?

If you want to post a picture somewhere I can probably tell you.

You could do a cursory google image search and see if visually you can tell what they are. I have grown pumpkins most of my life and I have never manually pollinated them, I have never grown the "big ones" though so maybe that could be different.

Pumpkins in the southern US generally ripen closer to late september-to-mid-october and can hang on the vines for a bit. It sounds like you have some veriety of squash. If you do have pumpkins unless they are an off shoot hybrid they should be taking on their orange color by now, especially if you planted them in spring. Having said that if they did not get enough water or enough heat then their growth would be stunted. It could be your yellows have stunted and are shriveling but I would assume they look healthy.


Botulism is a concern when garlic (or shallot...or even fresh herbs) is stored in oil at room temperature. An acidic environment virtually eliminates the  risk, meaning that garlic, shallot, and herbs are safe in a vinaigrette (especially one that separates and has those ingredients mainly sitting in the vinegar layer), for example.  Refrigeration makes the whole thing even safer.  You might also take a look at this question.  In general, shallot should be treated the same as garlic when considering the risks of botulism.


Check this link clearly explained the chef style frenching.


Homemade yogurt & flavours - Keeping it thick

Creating the right environment for bacterial fermentation

Yogurt is made using a few different bacteria which excel at digesting the lactose in milk at warm temperatures. Each of those factors (culture, temperature, composition of milk,) is important in creating an ideal environment for bacterial fermentation.

You would not try fermenting yogurt using yeast or a bacterial culture different from yogurt starter, and you wouldn't expect the yogurt to ferment if you held it your refrigerator instead of a warm thermos. The composition of the milk is equally important. If you change a major component of the milk, such as by adding sugar, some fermentation may happen but the result will not be what you expect.

"Live active culture" vs. actively culturing

There is a difference between bacteria that is "alive" or "active" and bacteria that is currently doing something.

Imagine dry baking yeast in a canister. The yeast is alive, but inert. It's not in an environment where it can do anything. Add moisture and carbohydrates for it to act on, and it goes nuts. Put that dough in the refrigerator, and it slows way down. Until you cook the yeast it doesn't "die" or "deactivate" it just has various states of activity depending on its environment.

The yogurt culture is alive when you add it to the milk, alive when you're done incubating it, alive when you add sugar, and alive when you eat it, But it can't turn milk into yogurt unless you give it a very precise environment -- the right culture, the right temperature, the right environment in the milk, including the right amount of sugar.


What pan can be subsituted for a Paella pan?

You can use about any pan that you could cook rice in. I've made Paella in a stock pot, hotel pan, and a Dutch oven. Honestly, the paella in the Dutch oven turned out better than it usually does in a paella pan. The heavy bottom of the dutch oven allowed for a much better layer of toasted rice at the bottom.  For very large quantities a hotel pan is most convenient, but you may have better luck cooking the rice separately and tossing it together with the other ingredients at the end.


How long will cayenne peppers extend shelf life of cooked ground pork?

Opinion and learned knowledge without doing searches for citations to back it up to follow:

Spices, including peppers have a history of being used to extend the life of foods including meats.  This is a false reputation and representation of that history, IMO.  The spices in reality were used in large quantities to cover up poor quality proteins and produce and hide the deficiencies and early stages of spoilage.  It hid these qualities only, it did little to nothing to reverse or slow them.  Under poor storage conditions 100 years ago a bite of pork might have turned your stomach to taste it at two days, but spice it up enough with peppers or a stout curry sauce and at four days you still might not have noticed.  This does not mean it will still not end up with you locked in the loo for a few hours or worse.

With improved meat and produce quality and storage capabilities today in most of the world (yes, really, even as much as many of us complain), this is no longer necessary. We make things spicy because we are used to the taste and like it.  But stories and traditions of it being a preservative continue.  Salt for instance is a preservative, but only in the quantities used in curing and pickling and such, not in the quantities we use to spice food.  That is for flavor, not to kill bacteria or extend the useful life of the food.


It's probably safe, but I wouldn't want to eat it! You aren't facing starvation, so throw it away.


Sorry, I know that this is old, but I wanted to follow up with some related data.

Caveat: I'm not a scientist, but my dad was a biochemist who worked in the aquatic biology field for more than 50 years, and I picked up a few things.

In 2001, a multi-species study was done on several species of fish including two types of local salmonid trout - cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki) and kokanee (O. nerka) in a large freshwater lake in Washington State (Lake Whatcom). Both of these fish are morphologically similar to Steelhead Trout (O. mykiss) in its non-anadromous form (also known as rainbow trout).

What all this means is, these are good marker-species to use because they are a lot like steelhead.

In a nutshell - even though these fish were raised in the wild and ate whatever they could catch (insects, small crustaceans and the like), their mercury levels were lower than most commercially-caught fish.

The cutthroat trout showed a mean of 0.08mg/kg mercury and the kokanee showed a mean of 0.12mg/kg mercury. This is pretty low. The paper that I used for my research is here: Mercury in Sportfishes of Lake
Whatcom, Washington, Including a
Review of Potential Impacts to
Aquatic Resources and People

Farmed steelhead/rainbow trout from the Columbia River and Washington and British Columbia coastal waters are very environmentally sound, having earned a "Best Choice" rating from Seafood Watch (https://www.seafoodwatch.org/seafood-recommendations/groups/trout?method=farmed&q=Trout,%20Farmed&t=farmed%20steelhead%20trout&type=rainbow&location=domestic&o=1327878260).

There are two sub-cultivars of this species - those that are raised in pens which are truly anadromous (i.e., they smolt, and spend half their lives in freshwater and the other half in saltwater), and those that are raised in raceways on one of the coastal river systems such as the Columbia, which are not anadromous and would technically be called rainbow rather than steelhead.

It is arguable that their flavor is not as strong in a salmon-y, fishy way as wild-caught fish. Those that are raised in pens are closer to wild-caught, because pens do not restrict the passing of small crustaceans and other species and thus allow the pen-raised fish to have a diet much closer to their natural one.

While I do prefer wild-caught fish for their flavor, I have often purchased and prepared locally-farmed steelhead.

I fundamentally have a problem with invasive-species that are farmed here in the Pacific Northwest (such as, for example, Atlantic Salmon). I do not have any issues with farmed steelehad, because it is a local species anyway and it seems to be a sustainable food source.

Lastly, here's a picture of some smoked steelhead I made in December of last year:


Some tips I found useful while making the second batch of bao:

Start out by making small buns
Use a rolling pin to even out the dough (should be about 3-4 inches in diameter)
Add just a small amount of filling to the center
Gather up all 5 sides (not 4!!) and pinch them together in the middle
Generously spray oil in baking cups, and place buns in cups (this way the buns won't stick to the steamer or to the baking cups)
Steam for 15 mins, or freeze and steam at a later date for 20 mins


The problem is that there are different types of olive oil that are used for dramatically different purposes.

A high quality 'cold pressed extra virgin' oil often has fruity notes that are destroyed when you heat it, but is great for drizzling over things at the last minute, or cold applications such as salad dressings ... but note that the US labeling laws are lax, so something labeled as 'extra virgin' in the US may not qualify as such in Europe.
For most cooking, I use a good grade olive oil ('virgin', but not 'extra virgin') for cooking with, not the extremely expensive stuff.
For frying, there's 'extra light' olive oil which has a higher smoke point but little to no flavor on its own.  It's refined to such a point that you might be better off just going with any neutral flavored oil (canola/rape, soy, corn, etc.)

Price depends on a lot of things, and a lot of it's marketing and worthless -- if you can, I'd look for other signs of quality ... like if there's a packing date.  Older oil is more likely to have deteriorated, and in a worst case, have gone rancid.  (more likely if it's in a clear glass bottle ... if you're buying large amounts of oil, keep it out of sunlight, or even better, buy it in a can)  Note that packing dates can also be cheated -- they might press the oil, then hold it for months before it's actually bottled for sale.

Also beware of 'blended oils'.  This is when they cut olive oil with something less expensive, but still try to pass it off as 'olive oil'.

'Imported from Italy' is another suspect label, as it might be foreign olives that were sent to Italy before being imported.  (but there's nothing wrong with non-Italian olives ... the Greeks and Spanish make some great olive oils, and we're starting to see more American olive oils).

...

Also note that olive oil can be classified like wines -- some companies might press a single variety of olive (eg, Kalamata, Castelvetrano), which can have dramatically different flavors.  They might be fruity, grassy, buttery, or even peppery.  Regions can also have an impact, as some areas press olives while green, and others wait until they're black.

I won't get into these, as that's more a matter of personal taste.


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

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

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


I make garlic paste quite often, using this technique I saw on Bobby Flay.

Put the whole clove on the board.
Lay knife flat, and smack it with your hand.
Remove paper and root.
Dice finely.
Sprinkle with the quantity of salt your recipe calls for.
With the knife relatively flat, grind the garlic into the salt with the knife.
Typically, I'll make a pass in one direction with the edge on the board, leading with the spine, and then come back with the spine on the board, leading with the edge.  You need a wide knife (at least a french chef's knife, cleaver or santuko) in order to keep your fingers out of danger. I apply the downward pressure with the top of my palm, with my fingers curled back.

Check this for a similar technique - http://www.howdini.com/howdini-video-6688064.html  (The mincing starts around 2:40
After 5 or 6 passes, you should have a nice fine paste.


Safe heating food in a chafing silver plated dish that is showing copper underneath?

If you are considering heating any food in it, I would say no.

Silver itself is not especially pleasant (wikipedia and a more detailed CDC study). So, if you have a dish that is losing its silver plating, it would be wise to be overly cautious than casual about using it for food again.

Is the base copper or brass? There is copper in brass anyway.

Copper has far worse toxicity potentially (wikipedia ) when exposed to acids. Cheese could contain some lactic acid though not in significant amounts.


Is the double boiling canning procedure really necessary?

These various boilings serve different purposes.

The jam mixture is boiled to reduce the liquid and bring the pectin to its gelling temperature.

The bottles and lids are boiled to sterilize them as you said.

The final water bath kills any bugs that were introduced while filling the jars. Additionally this boiling ensures a good seal on the bottles. In the time it takes to fill the bottles the jam will have cooled somewhat and you might not get a good seal.

Killing bugs with boiling is not an instantaneous process. It takes time at those high temperatures to kill a high percentage. If the bottles aren't pre-sterilized then you are putting yourself at a disadvantage as those bugs would be distributed through the hot, but no longer boiling, jam.

Of course, all of these boilings will do some sterilization and are somewhat redundant. It's all about reducing risk. You can bottle with clean but unsterilized bottles and if you work quickly you can skip the hot water bath. Doing so will greatly increase the chances that one or two bottles might not seal or that some bug might survive and spoil your stuff. Reliable sources indicate that if bottles are not presterilized that the bottles should be processed longer in the water bath.

Anecdotally speaking- I have in the past skipped the water bath when my jam was very hot and acidic. I would usually have one or two bottles out of 20 that wouldn't seal. I no longer skip the water bath and I almost never have any bottles that fail to seal.

I have never had jams go bad but this is more luck than proof.


If it's only been soaked briefly, these options might be for immediate eating even if they'd otherwise keep. They're necessarily fairly general solutions as I don't know what sort of fruit you've got.

Drain well and cover in dark chocolate. This works best for pieces that are 1-2 bites; smaller would be nice to eat but fiddly to make. Very good with cherries, damsons or sloes, but if the stones are still in, bite carefully.
Serve on top of ice cream, or as part of a sundae. If you're feeling fancy, use some of the vodka, thickened, add a sauce. I've done this with the blackcurrants from making creme de cassis, as well as with commercial cherries in spirits.
Drain well and bake into a fruit cake. You probably want to start with a recipe using fresh fruit (as opposed to dried).
Mix with apples in a pie/crumble (or even without the apples if you've got a lot).
Garnish hot chocolate, or even try blending and stirring in (an idea for an experiment, but a shot of fruit spirits is great in hot chocolate).


Summary:  Loosely, so the food doesn't steam.

Heat distribution

As your question implies, the heat distribution through a quality pan is not perfectly even.  It will be hottest directly over the hot spots of the flame or element.

Still, if your pan is well matched in size to the burner or heating element, and is of reasonable quality, that effect will be minimized, especially if you preheat the pan sufficiently long.  Even a poor a relatively poor heat conductor like cast iron will begin to heat up across its surface if given more time.

In practice, the heat distribution qualities of the pan are not something you worry about.

Coupling

In order to fry your food, the heat must conduct from the pan into the food item.   Air gaps, and water do not help very much with this.

Fat is used in frying, not just for the flavor that it imparts, but to provide a heat conductive coupling between the hot pan and the food item.   The heat is actually transferred to the oil or fat which is direct contact with the pan, and then from their into the food item.

Therefore, you need a reasonable amount of fat, to prevent their being air gaps between the food and the pan.

Fat is preferable to water, because although it has a lower specific heat, it can be heated to temperatures above the boiling point of water, which is one of the key elements in a good fry.

Steaming

As is well known, water evaporates at 212 F / 100 C.   It actually requires considerably more energy to launch a single water molecule into the air as steam than it does to get it up to the boiling point in the first place (this is called the enthalpy of evaporation).

Because of this effect, whenever food is steaming and giving off water, any excess energy above that needed to bring it to the boiling point goes into the ethalpy, vaporizing the water, and not into further increasing the temperature.

Therefore, you want your food to be as reasonably dry as possible.  If left packed together, the moist steam will surround the food, preventing it from getting as crispy and brown as desired.  Instead, fried foods should have a certain amount of gap, to allow the steam to escape into the general kitchen air, and to more rapidly allow the food to desiccate to the point where its temperature can rise above the boiling point, facilitating browning reactions which create flavor.

This is the controlling factor in how tightly food should be packed into the pan.

So the three example sausages should be distributed at least an inch or so (a couple of cm) from each other, if there is enough room, although this is not something you should use a ruler on, or obsess about in any case.

Overall, frying transfers energy to the food very quickly, and with basic good technique, you should get excellent results:

Pre-heat your pan (unless it is PTFE coated non-stick) long enough for it to get to temperature
Add enough fat to come up to at least the bottom of the food, depending on what type of frying you are doing
Don't crowd the pan with food items
Relax and enjoy; there is a lot of margin for error generally.  In fact the greatest danger is burning or scorching the food, so be patient.


How to make chicken absorb more salt when cooking a soup?

Speaking as pure theorist here, because I've never compared the saltiness of cooked chicken.

I think that there are two things you will have to think about. The first one is osmosis (water that gets soaked into the meat through cellular membranes), the second one is transport through porous media - like a sponge, the open ends of muscle fibres of your chicken soak up the liquid you put them in. What you want to do is to prevent osmosis into the chicken (because only pure water will go in through osmosis, concentrating the salt outside) and maximize absorption. I will assume that 0.9% saline is isotonic for a chicken, and I think this is a safe assumption, because veterinary saline isn't marked as species-specific. Seeing that your soup liquid is 0.27% saline, you can expect some osmosis to happen. *

Let's tackle the more interesting part first. You want more absorption to happen. The absorption is described by the Washburn formula,

and you want to maximize your L.

L improves with time. Luckily, a soup is meant to be cooked for a long time anyway. But when you wonder whether to give it some more time on the stove or not, more time is probably better. Keep the temperature lowish for less evaporation, and a lid on which will drip back evaporated water.
L improves with lesser viscosity. No way to influence it in your basic recipe, but in a real soup, avoid thickening. So don't use starchy ingredients, or at least, wash them before adding.
Surface tension should be kept high. Again, this is ingredient-specific. No way to influence it in the basic recipe, but it could turn out that some vegetables are reducing your surface tension a lot - I can't think of a soup vegetable or a herb or spice which is famous for a high saponine content, but it could happen. Also, you should give your pots a finishing wash with clean water if possible - detergent and dishwasher finishing liquid reduce surface tension a lot.
Pore size. My intuition says that this should have the biggest effect in the soup case, as you probably can't influence viscosity and surface tension too much. Obviously, the bigger your holes, the more water comes through. A good way to do that is to thoroughly denature your proteins. The first and most common way for that is prolonged cooking time. Second, brining in concentrated saline (6%) and/or acid before you cook will attack the meat surface, again denaturing proteins. However, I don't know how wise it is to use this option, because some of the brine will get absorbed into the chicken, which will leave less space for broth and will increase salt content as a whole. (This assumes that you salt the broth; Brian's idea of not adding salt to the cooking water after brining has merit). Third, you can use meat from the freezer (this is a very likely reason for the mixed results you saw until now). Freezing produces ice crystals, which rupture cell walls. When you use the thawed meat in a soup, there are more holes for water to flow in.
The Washburn formula is for a single capillary. But the more capillaries you have, the more absorption you get. So, what you want to do is to cut the chicken meat perpendicularly to the muscle fibres. And cut it into many small pieces instead of a few big ones.

Now we took care of the absorption, let's look into the osmosis. You can't change the salt content of the chicken's cytoplasm. But for osmosis, you have to separate the two solutions by a semipermeable membrane (the cell wall). Poke a hole in the wall, and the osmotic gradient vanishes when the liquids mix. So everything from the third point on absorption helps you reduce osmosis too.

As for your suggestions: 1. I see no reason why slow or quick heating will change absorption. I guess the products of a Maillard reaction could clog some pores, if you sear before cooking, but it won't happen during boiling. As I said, cook slow because of evaporation. 2. The chicken shouldn't absorb salt, but salty water, see the footnote. Although, if there is a hole in my theory, this is a likely place for it. 3. I doubt it, but if you wash it, you could free eventual clogged openings. 4. Certainly, cook longer.

To summarize: Cook meat which has been frozen, cut in small pieces perpendicularly to the grain, and stew it for a long time.

* I don't see a mechanism for the chicken absorbing a higher percentage of salt than what you have in the broth. I assume that in your "normal" cases, you are left with salt content near the initial 0.27%, and in bad cases, this gets concentrated.

Update As requested in the comments, I am providing an explanation about "cutting across the fibers". Short story, meat is made up of muscles, and a muscle is made up of fibers, or bundles of bundles of cells. You can easily see them in raw meat. You want to slice across them, so their ends are open, as opposed to along.

The good, long explanation with pictures can be found on Serious Eats