Are baked recipes containing cream cheese safe at room temp?

Your question is not really answerable. Also, it is based on quite a few misconcceptions about how food safety works.

  remembered i've made cookies with cream cheese in them...

You seem to think that you can predict, based on an ingredient, whether the final product is shelf stable, or not. This is impossible. The final product is either shelf stable or it isn't, but this depends on its physical properties as a whole, not on the presence of a single ingredient, or on the shelf stability of the most perishable ingredient, or some such thing. Somebody with a laboratory, a degree in food technology, and some free time on their hands can tell you whether these things are safe when out of refrigeration, or not. Nobody else can, especially not from just looking at the recipe.

  cookies with cream cheese... cheesecakes ... danish's and such... Shouldn't this be the same thing

Related to the above. You cannot take a random recipe which is in some way similar to the one you are using, and predict shelf stability from it. There sometimes are classes of foods in which basically all members are shelf stable - for example, raw, dry rice is shelf stable, no matter if it's basmati or arborio - but outside of such special cases, each food has to be considered on its own.

  internet seems to be divided

There is no single definition of what "safe food" is. On our site, we interpret it as safety regulations created by a government agency, as this takes it out of the completely subjective area, but even in this case, the rules of different agencies differ. If you interpret it as "I don't worry when I eat it", then you get just people's gut feelings, and they are all over the place. So, the expectation is to get divided opinions.

  and I never got sick

This does not give us much information as to whether they were safe. Safe food is food which is virtually guaranteed to not make you sick. Unsafe food is food for which nobody knows the chance of making you sick, which is very different from food which always makes you sick.

  now im worrying that im going to get some foodbourne illness

This is also a nonanswerable question. Since the bars are not known to be safe, the chance of you getting sick is unknown. Even if we knew that they are unsafe, the risk would also be unknown (see above).

Bottom line: you are not going to find any more (reliable) information than you already have. Not even after time has passed and you know that you haven't (or have) gotten sick. You may want to read up more on how food safety works, for future cases, but for now, you have to live with uncertainty.


If you're making a sauce that isn't supposed to curdle, and it does, you throw it out and start over.


Does it matter how fast you crank up your blender?

I opened the first Vitamix manual that came up on an internet search, which is for the Vitamix 5200, available here. It says (on page 11):

Always start the machine with the left switch down in the Variable ( ) position and with the center Variable Speed Dial on 1. Slowly turn the Variable Speed Dial to the desired speed depending on the recipe used. If a recipe calls for processing on High ( ), slowly rotate the Variable Speed Dial to 10 and then push the High/Variable Switch up into the High ( ) position. Do not begin processing on Variable 10 or directly
on the High ( ) setting.

(The spaces in brackets here contain a triangle symbol in the manual).
It also warns not to use the machine for too long at a low setting as this increases the risk of overheating, and not to start on a speed above 1 with hot liquids to avoid the risk of burns.
To answer your questions:

Yes, you should start on a low setting and gradually increase to your desired speed.
No particular rate of progression is suggested.
I would speculate that the analogy with a car isn't quite accurate: for a car the issue is about torque (because the car is heavy and starts stationary) and metal fatigue, whereas for the blender the issue is risk of splattering hot liquid, and (I think) that starting to blend food requires more torque than blending food that is already partially blended. I imagine you could start an empty blender on high speed with no issues, but I don't have evidence to back up that claim.


Should I roast a rolled beef roast from room temperature?

It won't make a huge difference, and excellent chefs disagree on the subject (assuming you're only thinking of leaving the meat out for an hour or so, which actually wouldn't bring it to room temp, just slightly warmer than fridge temp). If you are serving people who prefer different levels of doneness, you can take the cold roast from the fridge and put it into a very hot oven, then immediately turn the oven temperature down to the temp you want for roasting. That will give the greatest variance in doneness of individual servings. A slightly warmer roast to start and a consistent roasting temperature (particularly a temperature on the low side) will more evenly cook the roast.

Don't forget to rest the meat before slicing! And don't forget, how much will depend upon the size of the roast, but its temperature will rise upon resting.


What techniques and tips do you have for keeping an organized, clean work area while you cook?

If you want one, simple technique -- put ingredients away as you use them.

When you start the recipe, take out all of the necessary ingredients, and put them on your counter (or somewhere nearby, if your kitchen is as tiny as the one in my first apartment).  This gives you a chance to make sure that you're not missing anything critical.

As you use them, put them away ... this helps you keep track of what's already gone into the recipe, so you don't end up with twice as much salt (or none at all).

I find it's most useful with baking (eg, when you'd have a large container of flour or baking powder that you only need a portion of vs. other cooking where you'd just pull out those three carrots or two onions you needed from the beginning).   It's also really useful when you have more than one person in the kitchen helping to cook a single dish (the most typical reason an ingredient gets doubled)

I actually don't like chopping everything in advance, as this means that I have to have place to put all of my prepared items (which means more bowls and dishes to clean afterwards).  I do make the exception for stir-fry, but I use a few plates and keep things that cook in a similar time together on the same plate; I won't dump in the whole plate at the same time, but if a carrot ends up getting hidden under the stems of the bok choy, it's not as big a deal as if it went in with the greens of the bok choy.

...

My only other recommendation is in cutting board selection -- I really don't like the heavy, thick butcher block ones, because they're difficult to carry one handed.  With a lighter board, I can pick the whole thing up, then use the back of my knife to push things into the pan, or into the trash as appropriate.

... and I guess one more recommendation, but this one's actually from America's Test Kitchen (I think it was in their Quick Tips book) -- when you're peeling carrots, potatoes or whatever ... put down a sheet of newspaper first, then after you're done, you can just fold it in on itself, and compost or trash as appropriate for your area.


If you have an instant read thermometer in your kitchen, that can be particularly useful for determining when all kinds of meats are done cooking. For chicken, I would insert the thermometer into the inner thigh of the chicken (try to avoid the bone) and check for a temperature of 165 degrees F. Once the thermometer reads that temperature, the chicken should be ready.


Carrots turning dark at heads, and on skin after chopping?

I ran a school tuckshop and also a college cafeteria for some years and I have seen this many times with new staff members.

The problem with discolouration is any damage to the skin. If preparing carrots in advance or in larger quantities ( sliced, grated, etc ) the skin needs to be thoroughly removed before storage. If any trace of skin is left they will get a brown discolouration.

The heads are a different matter. Carrots are root vegetables and, like potatoes, if any moisture is around the plant will make signs of growth. It's not harmful, they can be cut off a bit further down and any new fine roots which begin to grow can come off with peeling. When cutting down to tops you might see the green colouring further down in the centre. This isn't harmful, in fact nutritionally adds some chlorophyll and folate among others to the diet, but can taste bitter.

Hope this is helpful, good luck


As the previous answer says, there is an enormous difference between milk and cream.

However, it is possible to reach a rough substitute for milk by mixing your cream with an equal amount of water by volume - in your case, 3/4 cream and 3/4 cup water.

It won't be exactly the same (the fat content will still be substantially higher than it would be if you used milk, and if you do a taste test, comparing the flavor of whole milk to a 50/50 cream/water mix, you'll see that the flavor is also very different), but it should work.

However, there is a chance that the higher fat content will lead to the sauce breaking, so if you want to be 100% sure of success, go get some milk.  If you're willing to gamble a bit, try diluting the cream.


"Seasoning" on non-stick pans is quite different from seasoning on older frying pans made of things like cast iron or carbon steel.  For something like cast iron, you are trying to create a durable coating of polymerized oil, essentially a "non-stick layer" of burnt oil.  That process of seasoning can require a lot more effort and specific steps.

Your non-stick pan doesn't need that, since it already has such a coating that is resistant to sticking.  But you still can benefit from an occasional lubricant to smooth out any microscopic irregularities in the pan's surface and to serve as an additional chemical barrier between the surface and the food.

This New York Times article has a good summary of care for non-stick pans.  The author interviewed a number of manufacturers of non-stick pans.  To the relevant section:

  So this is what I should have known. I should have “preseasoned” the
  pan by rinsing and drying it and rubbing it with a paper towel with a
  little oil on it. Pretty much any type of oil will do.

  It’s a good idea to rub about a teaspoon of oil or butter on a cold
  pan each time you use it, Mr. Winter [director of research at Nordic
  Ware] said, because despite the name nonstick, most of the cookware
  needs some kind of lubricant.

  Just don’t pour oil or butter on the pan and then slosh it around (my
  method).

  “Then the oil is not adhering to the pan but being absorbed by the
  food,” he said. Not only will you have butter-soaked pancakes, but
  after a while they’ll start sticking because there’s no grease."

And later in the article:

  Although I don’t usually put my cookware in the dishwasher, I did as a
  last-ditch effort — another bad idea. Most experts I talked to said to
  hand-wash nonstick cookware, because the high heat and harsh
  detergents can ruin the coatings.

To answer your specific question: oiling periodically may or may not be required.  It depends on how you use the pan.  If you frequently cook with oil or butter and only handwash the pan, oiling may not be necessary at all.  If you rarely cook with oil or fat, you may find it helps to rub oil on the pan once in a while.

Using harsh detergents will be hard on the pan's surface, as the above quotation says about using dishwashers.  If you're handwashing, I'd just do it "as needed."  That is, if you notice your food sticking a bit, then wash the pan, dry thoroughly, and rub a tiny amount of oil on.  (Note that there's little benefit in leaving excess oil on the surface.)

I rarely use non-stick pans these days, but when I have, I never bothered with "seasoning."  As long as you handwash and cook with oil or fat, you may not need additional oiling at all.


What is this silvery spot at the bottom of my wok after first use?

It looks very much like you've scraped off some of the non-stick coating.
Aside from the main peeled area there are other scratches that look like you were using metal utensils. You should be able to just feel the edges if that's the case, a very slight rise in the level between the 'silver' which looks to be aluminium & the 'dark' coating. It's very thin so may be hard to feel.
If indeed that's the case, it's time for a new wok.
I've blown up the photo to see a bit more clearly. The peeling could be from overheating, or just poor manufacturing. The scratches, however, are a separate issue, & look like heavy use of metal utensils, which 'old fashioned, regular teflon' just cannot take.
There are newer non-stick coatings which are much more scratch-, and indeed heat-resistant - but they tend to come at a price.
Late edit
As the subject of overheating teflon seems to always crop up in comments on this type of question, modern non-stick is quite often no longer described as 'teflon' or PTFE, but just as a rather secretive 'non-stick'.
My own wok is one of these - Masterclass - and has withstood all the heat I can throw at it for two years, without showing any sign of scratching, burning, evaporating or anything else detrimental to the surface. I treat it with little respect, though I only use wooden or plastic utensils for all my pans, & wash it in regular washing-up liquid (dish soap) with the same brush I use for everything else. The outside is scuffed & scratched, but the inside still looks as new.
And it only cost 30 quid [bucks/euros].


There is not one correct answer to your question.  I've seen recipes with, and have used, both.  So, it depends on the type of pasta. A recipe for capunti (a hand rolled pasta from Puglia) that I enjoy, uses 1/2 semolina and 1/2 durum...  while an extruded pasta noodle might use all semolina. You might be guided by identifying the type of pasta, and its region of origin, to see what is typical. However, I would have to assume that when a recipe calls for semolina flour it generally means the course grind version.


A lot of fruits denature gelatin so it doesnt set.

All of the citruses, papaya (that has an enzyme called "papain" that breaks proteins), pineapple ("bromelin") and a lot of others cannot be used with gelatin without being very thoroughly cooked, as in boiled for one hour or so.

If you just brought mandarin oranges to a boil for using, that could be it. Or it could be the sherbet.


When cooking in a slow cooker, you do not have to precook the leeks.  I made a potato leek soup not too long ago that called for throwing everything in the pot and it came out great.  The only thing I cooked before hand was the bacon, rendering out much of the fat and giving the nice golden brown and crispy bits to sprinkle on top.

You CAN precook anything to help reduce the cook time and I always sear meat, but unless you are going to caramelize the leeks, you will not notice any difference in flavor or texture.

As for the pureeing part, you want to be careful pureeing potatoes as they can turn into a nasty gluey mess.  Just keep it to a minimum or use a food mill and you should be fine.  I typically just use a potato masher and leave my soup a little on the chunky side.


How do I get a chewy crust from homemade pizza dough?

In general, you're going to be unable to reproduce pizzaria crust at home oven temperatures.  They are most likely baking their pizza at between 600F and 800F for only a few minutes, which produces a crust texture you can't achieve at 400F or even 500F.

This is the reason so many people are trying things like turning backyard grills into ad-hoc pizza ovens.

However, these general tips will help:

use a pizza stone and put the pizza on the stone directly
heat the oven to 500F for at least 1/2 hour, with the stone in it, before baking
roll your pizza dough very thin
don't put a lot of wet toppings on it

You also might want to consider cultivating a sourdough pizza crust, which will be chewier than one risen with commercial yeast.


Incomplete common sense answer (no idea about local regulations. If this should have been a comment, somebody tell me! :) People breathe in kitchens while there are open pots, and blowing is a form of breathing. Food is not ever considered completely sterile unless pressure cooked/canned, cold sterilized (chemically or by pickling in extremely harsh pickling solutions), or irradiated. Also, unless things are served straight after that, they will be rather thoroughly cooked in the depicted scenario - if there are germs in that breath, they are cooked to death; spores will not matter much with food immediately served; if there was poison the cook would be dead or ill too. Virii could be a problem too,


How could I cook industry like foie gras?

Foie Gras is fatty goose or duck liver. There is no machine or process to make it. It is harvested from the animals themselves. Restaurants have providers for their product. You will have to find one for yourself.

I know of no legitimate substitute for Foie Gras that anyone would not care about. People pay a lot of money for Foie Gras and would be quite displeased if they found they were being fed a cheap alternative.

If you are refering to paté made from Foie Gras then you could stretch the final product with the use of chicken livers. I'm uncertain how much cheaper this is though and once again be careful you aren't deceiving anyone.


According to the USDA:

  If packaging is accidentally cooked in a conventional oven, is the
  food safe to eat?

  Plastic packaging materials should not be used at all in conventional
  ovens. They may catch on fire or melt, causing chemical migration into
  foods. Sometimes these materials are inadvertently cooked with a
  product. For example, giblets may be accidentally cooked inside the
  turkey in their packaging or a beef roast may be cooked with the
  absorbent pad from the fresh meat packaging underneath.

  The giblet bag and the absorbent pad are clearly not intended to be
  cooked, however if this happens and the packaging materials remain
  unaltered (that is, do not melt or come apart) the cooked meat will
  not pose an imminent health hazard. If the packaging materials have
  melted or changed shape in some other way do not use the product.

Who are they kidding? Of course, they are altered. With deep regrets, I threw my roast away. (More info here.)


Physics to the rescue:

Contrary to popular belief you cannot see steam.

What you can see is tiny droplets of water that were steam (= gaseous form of water) before, but have condensed (= returned to liquid state) again on very small particles like dust motes. If the amount of droplets is big enough in a certain volume of air, they become visible. In other words, you have created a small cloud in your kitchen.

Now back to your pot:

If the pot is simmering, a lot of water will condense over or near the pot, especially if your kitchen is rather cool.
At a full boil, the steam disperses more, so when the condensation happens, the tiny droplets are spread out wider, making the "cloud" harder to see. Also, the air around the pot is likely to be a bit warmer, so that the gaseous H2O will likely condense at a greater distance from the source anyway.

This may lead to the assumption that a boiling pot emits less steam when actually the opposite is the case.

If you want to verify this, look for condensation away from the heat source, e.g. your cool kitchen windows. There, the different amounts should be very obvious.


Is deep-frying silicone oil safe for home use?

Not much is out there.

Food-grade silicone oil (dimethylpolysiloxane, for the chemists out there) is routinely used in medical and food-prep devices, and it has been approved by the US FDA Office of Food Additive Safety for use as a direct additive in diverse foods, like milk, dry gelatin dessert mix, canned pineapple juice, and even salt.  Of course, we're talking about minuscule amounts, in the range of 100 ppm; at high concentrations, it is a skin and eye irritant.  So what level is safe?  We can't assume that the FDA ever tested it, as the Office of Food Additive Safety is woefully underfunded.

An informal literature search yielded me only a handful of scientific articles looking at silicone oil in frying.  The most promising was by Bertrand Matthaus, Norbert Haase, and Klaus Vossman, "Factors affecting the concentration of acrylamide during deep fat frying of potatoes," Eur. J. Of Lipid Sci. & Tech., V.106(11), pp. 793-801 (Nov 2004) (fig. 3 specifically measures acrylamide concentration as a function of the amount of silicone oil).  Unfortunately, I don't have a subscription, so I can't tell what the bottom line was.

Myself, I don't see the benefit of using it at home.


How do you fat into meat when grilling or is there a better cooking method?

Fat comes out due to melting

The primary way that fat will leave a grilled meat is through melting. Animal fat isn't a pure or refined substance, so it doesn't have a set and exact melting point, the way that water does. In my experience, fat melting occurs in the 55 - 70 C range (130 - 160 F). You will see little fat gone at an internal temp of 55 C, but heavy melting at an internal temp above 70 C.

As an example, a rare steak at 52 C/125 F will still have most of its fat attached, although it will be softened (and delicious!). A pork butt cooked up to 90 C / 195 F will have almost all the fat melted; even if you left the thick fat-back on it. Therefore, fat retention is somewhat independent of the grilling method, it is all about the internal meat temperature. Cooking meat until "done" thus precludes leaving the fat in some cases. You don't want to serve your guests chicken or pork cooked only up to 55 C.

How to keep the fat in

If you want to keep fat in your meat even when cooked to high temperature, there are two solutions. First, you can leave a lot of fat on your meat in the first place. The second solution is to not let meats sit too long at high temperatures; after all just because fat is melted doesn't mean it immediately exits your steak, gravity has to pull it down and out.

An example of the first method is the aforementioned pork shoulder. The thick fat-back can be left up before cooking and, even over a 12 hour cook time, there will be plenty of fat left at the end. An example of the second method is a well marbled steak. The fat will start to melt, but the short cooking time at higher temperatures ensures that most of the fat stays where it is

On the other hand...

...maybe don't try to retain too much fat? Fat does add lots of flavors, but for items like chicken and certain cuts of pork, too much fat can be a bad thing. Also, an untrimmed steak can often include lots of connective tissue in the fat (depending on the cut) and that can make your steak gristly and unpalatable.

In general, I have never made any attempt to keep more fat in a grilled meat, of any cut. Much more often, I will trim to keep less fat. You need enough fat for flavor and juicy-ness, but too much often just ends up as a greasy meal.


See how it tastes without the garlic first.  The chili sauces often have garlic in themselves.

All of the other ingredients will obviously add more wetness, in their own separate ways.

To make the fries themselves wetter, use more oil while frying them, and/or leave them in the oil longer at a lower temperature. In this case absorbing more oil makes them "wetter", but I'm not sure if that is quite what you are going for?


Does it matter if I sauté onions for high liquid foods?

It makes a big difference. The heat you can impart to anything by boiling is limited to 100°C (212°F). This is too low for some of the flavor magic to happen, like maillard reactions, which start about 140°C. A pan's temperature can get much higher than boiling water, which is why you saute them first. If you try to make onion soup without sauteing them first they'll soften, but they'll never lose that raw onion flavor, and you won't get the sweetness or depth of flavor from the maillard reactions.


Ingredient substitute for sriracha hot sauce

the ingredient is only (mostly) for flavoring, just reduce the quantity; the recipe will still work and be less spicy.

If not wanting to be spicy at all, you could use a regular red bell pepper paste (blend/puree some red bell pepper with a little bit of olive oil (or no oil)), or maybe use a tablespoon of tomato paste.


What temperature should eggs be when I beat them?

Assuming you're talking about beating egg whites, the best results are obtained with fresh, cold eggs (as you noticed).

Warmer (or older) eggs will gain volume quicker, but the resulting foam will be less stable. Since nowadays everybody will likely beat the eggs using some form of mechanical mixer, the time factor is now irrelevant, while the foam stability appreciated.

The "baking rule" probably originated when refrigeration and mixers weren't around.

Here's a list of things influencing max volume and stability:

Age: as eggs age, their pH increases: around 7.6 when laid, 9.2 after just three days. Lower pH is better for stability.

Temperature: temperature at the time of beating does not really make a difference, but if you refrigerate the eggs you'll delay protein denaturation, increasing stability. Heating the white to 58 °C for three minutes increases the foam formation ability, but over that protein denaturation will ruin everything.

pH: adding a bit of acid (citric, tartaric) will help both volume and stability. Citric acid can also help with keeping the foam white.

Water: adding water (up to 40% of weight) will yield a less dense, slightly less stable foam

Sugar: adding it will slow foam formation, and yield a denser, stabler foam.

Yolks and fats: Avoid. A single drop of yolk can reduce the final volume by two thirds.

Copper bowl: lengthens the time needed, but will yield a stabler foam.

Salt: shortens the time need, but will yield a less stable foam and increases syneresis (weeping).

On a side note, there also is a myth that older eggs are much better for macarons, but it has been debunked.


The low, constant temperature balanced the hydrolysis of collagen into gelatin with keeping the other meat proteins from over coagulating.

Based on a cursory search on the internet, hydrolysis of collagen into gelatin begins at roughly 140°F, although it really gets going at 160°-180°F.  Had the cook left the brisket in for longer, it probably would have become more tender, but some hydrolysis likely had taken place.  This hydrolysis might have been enhanced by the addition of acid that served as a catalyst to the hydrolysis.

Additionally, the meat was kept at 140°F, i.e. at medium.  This means that the cook kept the proteins in the beef from coagulating to the point that they squeezed water out of the meet.  Usually, stewed or slow cooked meats must be cooked longer and at higher temperatures (e.g. in a pot roast, a barbecue, or a braise) because not only does the cook need to hydrolyze the collagen to avoid toughness from the collagen, but also needs to hydrolyze additional collagen to make up for the dryness that results from the fact that most stewed and braised meats are, technically, overcooked.  The 140°F for four hours manages to hydrolyze some of the collagen, but it was probably enough because the meat was not overcooked.  Note, however, that leaving the meat in an immersion cooker for longer will hydrolyze more collagen but will not overcook the meat, meaning that it will be even more tender.

Then, the cook can further prevent toughness by cutting the meat very thin and across the grain.  This mean that any meat fibers that are tough won't be very long and can effectively be swallowed whole.


How can I maximize the caffeine content of my coffee?

Use lighter roast coffee: caffeine burns off as the roast darkens.  All other things equal, though, the stronger the cup of coffee, the more caffeine will be in it.  You aren't going to reach caffeine saturation just by brewing (even very) strong coffee.  So brew coffee with lighter roasted beans to your maximum desired strength.


Will skim milk powder go bad when mixed with peanut butter?

I would think that you'd be okay adding non-fat powdered milk to your energy balls. Powdered milk, when mixed with other ingredients, will last as long as the quickest expiring ingredient it is mixed with. http://www.eatbydate.com/dairy/milk/how-long-does-powdered-milk-last-shelf-life/
It doesn't sound as if there is enough liquid in your energy balls to reconstitute the milk. If you are really worried about it you might consider adding a whey protein powder to your energy balls instead of the powdered milk. Although those tend to be more expensive.


When to add noodle water to tomato sauce?

This is a technique used for sauces that are otherwise very thick, such as a well-reduced marinara or a cream sauce (which will thicken as it cools). You wouldn't add it to a sauce which is already at the right texture.

As you deduce, yes, it's the kind of thing you do just before serving. You boil the pasta, save some of the water, and stir it into the sauce. You might give it another minute of cooking to ensure that everything is well incorporated, then plate the dish. The starch in the water gives it a supple texture that simply thinning with plain water wouldn't achieve.

This is an old restaurant trick, and they do it a little differently. They'll end up using the same water over and over, maybe for the entire service, so it's very starchy and thick. Doing it at home is a little different, since you won't have as much starch, but it's still a ready source of hot water that can be used to perfect the texture of a thick sauce.

Cream sauces like alfredo are especially useful for this: the starch water doesn't change texture as much as the cream does during cooling, so the dish stays at the right level of thickness as the diner eats. This may not be quite as necessary at home, where it isn't necessarily part of a long dinner service (and where the dish won't ever have to wait at the pass for other dishes to finish). Still, it's a good tool to have in your toolbox.

So, if you've got a perfect tomato sauce, don't do anything to it except eat it. But if you've been cooking it all day, and you find it's more "ragu" than "sauce", the starchy pasta water is the right tool, right there.


What is a non-pork substitute for Italian sausage?

By "Italian Sausage" I think you mean the seasoned pork sausage available in many supermarkets throughout the US.

I've found that a 30-70 mix of beef and turkey/chicken works reasonably well as a substitute when pork is not available. Beef is too strong a flavor and turkey too weak in its own. Flavor-wise most italian sausage has red wine, fennel, and oregano.


Can I re-cook a ham that was left out overnight?

It's probably even safe to eat without cooking again; the refrigerator is likely only about 10 degrees colder, and that generally translates to accelerating rates of spoilage (mostly growth of pathogens) by a factor of 3-5 or so.  For example. at 10C (50F), E. coli only manages to divide once every 8 hours or so (see Ratkowsky et al., "Relationship Between Temperature and Growth Rate of Bacterial Cultures", J. Bacteriology, vol 169, p. 1 (1982) for a not-very-clear example of growth curves--I've seen these curves online, but unfortunately I tried and failed to find an easily accessible one this time).

It's almost certainly safe to eat with cooking (fully, to at least ~160 at the center), which would kill anything that managed to grow on the ham.  The only thing to worry about with well-cooked food is whether bacteria or fungi have managed to produce so many toxic chemicals that the food will make you ill--and in this case, it's been too cold.  (At those temperatures, not only is growth slow, but most anything is slow, including production of anything toxic.)

So I'd say--cook away, enjoy, and don't worry about it.

P.S. I have in practice eaten ham left out at warmer temperatures for longer.

Edit: In response to a comment about bacterial toxin production, I want to reiterate that colder temperatures slow down metabolism of just about everything, including toxin production.  This is because, at a basic physical level, reaction rates are governed by the Arrhenius equation which translates, for simple reactions, to a doubling of reaction rates for ~10C increase in temperature.  Of course, organisms like bacteria have more complex interactions, but this still gives an order of magnitude estimate.  Furthermore, research has been done on production of bacterial toxins.  For example, Skinner & Larkin (J. Food Protection vol 61 p. 1154 (1998)) wrote a paper called "Conservative Prediction of Time to Clostridium botulinum Toxin Formation for Use with Time-Temperature Indicators To Ensure the Safety of Foods", which gives, for food innoculated with the bacteria, a time-to-detection-of-toxin of 2-3 days at 10C.  In fact, they did the research because food storage at open-face refigerators in stores often allows products to get up to as high as 10C (at least as of 1998).

Similarly, in Bonventre and Kempe ("Physiology of Toxin Production by Clostridium botulinum Types A and B, III"), their 10-18C toxin line is flat for 24 hours at the baseline level before creeping up by a factor of 3 or so between 24 and 48 hours (figure 4).

These are just examples, but you find the same general trends everywhere because of the fundamental physical relationship between reaction rates and temperature.


Battle Of the Gums? (effects on Ice Cream)

This has long been an interest of mine as well...

I have never used Agar Agar in ice-creams, however I've tasted some having agar agar in it... I've found the texture suffered a lot, and the flavor release wasn't really good in a cold application.

Xanthan gum is my go-to thickener in many applications; you can achieve almost custardy consistencies with it... And you can to some extend use it as a stabilizer in ice-cream as well, as it prevents big ice crystals from forming.

Guar Gum is poor man's Locust Bean Gum (in a way). It's has similar (or even better) crystal preventing capabilities like Xanthan gum; and it's also a good thickener. You can also combine it with Xanthan gum to achieve stronger thickening properties.

Now, my all-time favorite, even though you haven't mentioned it...
Locust Bean Gum is the best ice-cream stabilizer on its own... It's really expensive compared to other thickeners, and yet it has the best preventing capability of all. It's also an excellent thickener. In combination with many other thickeners (like... Xanthan gum, Kappa Carrageenan) it can form gels.

I basically find, LBG and Invert Sugar delivering the best ice-cream stabilizing effect and a great aid to the texture of it.


Undercooked bread - does temperature over 165 mean it's food safe?

First off, there's not a lot in the ingredients you list that is likely to pose a hazard anyway.  (It is possible for flour to be contaminated with bacteria, and if the bacterial count is high enough, it could pose a risk in raw dough.)

However, pasteurization to safe levels at 160F doesn't take more than a few seconds in most foods, and it's likely the interior of your loaf was above 130F (where bacteria will gradually start dying off) for quite some time.

I'd definitely consider it safe to eat right after baking, though it may not be particularly pleasant.  However, underdone bread sometimes is prone to earlier spoilage, since it generally has a higher moisture content that might promote some mold, bacterial, and yeast growth after baking.  The chances of it becoming actually hazardous without noticeably spoiling are probably rather low, but it's possible, particularly if the moisture content is high enough.  It's much more likely that the bread would just spoil normally through the appearance of surface molds, etc., though.  If you wanted to be extra cautious, you could store leftover bread in the freezer or fridge.


How do I know the lentils have gone bad?

Dried lentils don't go bad as such if stored sensibly (i.e. dry), but they do go hard and take longer to cook.  It's always possible they were stored for some time before you cought them.  An overnight soak before cooking can help. Other tips include:

not adding salt/acid/sugar until they've softened,
avoiding hard water
making the water slightly alkaline with some baking soda (slightly at odds with the previous point, but I suspect calcium in hard water may have something to do with it given the use of calcium compounds as firming agents)

It's not definitive, so you need to apply common sense, but when pulses do spoil they smell terrible as soon as you open the container.  They'd also be slimy, because they have to be wet to spoil.


Why is my lemon curd metallic? How should I fix it?

From your Edit, it looks like you have narrowed the problem down to the egg yolks.

Did anyone else taste your original batch of lemon curd? If you still have original batch, you may have a close friend or relative see if they can taste difference.  For years (side effect of medication) I would perceive either "off or metallic taste" which my husband or anyone else could not taste.  Pregnant women will also experience metallic taste (dysgeusia):

  https://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/symptoms-and-solutions/metallic-taste.aspx

Off taste from yolks are usually associated with "old eggs."  It is usually described as tasting like sulphur.

What chickens eat also affect the taste of the eggs:

  https://grist.org/urban-agriculture/2011-11-1-peebottle-farms-what-to-feed-your-chickens/
  archived at: http://archive.is/WccwR

  http://homesteadingguide.com/115/news/best-tasting-eggs-what-to-feed-your-chickens/
  archived at: http://archive.is/rt2RF

  The following post has made me shy away from any "natural feeds" which
  contain kelp:
  http://www.maryjanesfarm.org/snitz/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=64661   archived
  at: http://archive.is/EUac3


What is slow cooking and what it is good for?

Generally, slow-cooking means any food preparation method which relies on using low-heat for a long amount of time. Barbecues, smokers, luau pits, and low-heat ovens could all qualify.  The benefit of slow-cooking, generally, is that food becomes incredibly tender, as all of its connective tissues break down.  Also, flavor can infuse over time and provide deeper results than with virtually any other method.  Lastly, long-cooking times create a celebratory atmosphere where food is the focal point of a social gathering.

Specifically, slow-cooking refers to the 'slow-cooker' a counter-top set-up which has a large, electronically heated ceramic bowl and a glass lid.  It usually has only a few settings, such as 'low', 'medium', and 'high'.  The benefit of slow-cooking in a slow-cooker is mainly convenience.  These units are safe enough to turn on before work and return to before dinner, with fully-cooked, piping hot food ready to go.  The slow-cooker is geared towards 'one-pot' recipes, which means they require minimal food preparation.  You simply cut up the ingredients in fairly large chunks, add seasoning, and liquid, and that's it. They are a favorite of working parents, but increasingly, also a device for more advanced experimentation.


Is it safe to eat raw, soaked grains and seeds such as buckwheat?

It's not uncommon and quite safe, but then the ones I have soaked (and sprouted) are not the ones you have listed. I have sprouted black sesame, fenugreek and some lentils. I use a lot of information from sproutpeople. You could try them.


Is leaving eggs out of the fridge, prior to cooking them a direct cause as to how shell break?

Assuming your fridge temperature is around 4 C (39 F) and your room temperature is 22 C (72 F) then that's a difference of 18 C or 33 F. The two temperatures are not particularly polar so why should it crack differently to when it comes straight from the fridge? It won't be like if you threw hot water onto a frozen window where it would crack, the 2 temperatures here are a lot more polar, 1 below freezing point and 1 near boiling point.

The change in temperature would be fairly gradually (I don't have any Scientific evidence for this but I know from experience as when I take an egg out of the freezer and wait for it to reach room temperature -for culinary purposes- it takes around 45 minutes).

Also on a chemical level, an egg shell being mainly calcium carbonate there is no reason for such a gradual change in temperature to weaken its structure especially as it is in the form of a very stable and strong shape. So no is the answer, I don't think it makes any difference in the weakness of an egg or how it cracks!

Hope this helps!


What is on top of this and how do you make it?

Most often they are called tuiles and they can be made in a number of ways, in some cases they are biscuit based or they can be made by melting sugar on a non-stick surface. and then cutting while the sugar is still warm and pliable.

If you wanted to make a classic biscuity tuile there is a recipe here:

http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/classic-tuile-cookies.aspx

For a sugar only variety you could consider using some fine sugar and a blow torch, in a similar way to a creme brûlée topping and using a metal cookie cutter to get the desired shape.

The benefit of the classic tuile recipe is that it can be adjusted in order to add flavourings e.g. vanilla or even spices.

Parmesan under a grill can also form a tuile as long as the grill isn't set to too high a temperature (chocolate and cheese go pretty nicely together...)


Ciabatta is usually a fairly high hydration dough.  You probably won't be kneading as you are thinking.  You can use the "slap and fold" method to build the gluten network.  There are plenty of videos illustrating the technique, just google.  Basically, dump onto counter top.  With a hand on either side, lift and pull the dough toward you.  The end farthest away should stick to the counter.  Stretch but don't tear.  Quickly flip the side in your hands onto the dough, essentially folding it in half, and trapping air.  With both hands, lift the mass, flip it over, slap it back down, and repeat.


When I buy apples I also like to go for the most crispy ones.
To find these, what I do is I flick the apples with my finger and listen to the sound it makes. You will be looking for a clear, 'high pitch' sound. Try flicking different apples and you will notice the difference between the sounds. The ones that are more mushy make a soft, 'low pitch' sound.
Hope this helps!


Which other spices besides cloves will react with plastic?

I've had a good look and as far as I can see only cloves and allspice have this property. Most websites specify that it's due to an oil present in cloves however according to Wikipedia the main chemical components in clove oil (admittedly not cloves but fairly similar) are:

Bud oil is derived form the flower-buds of S. aromaticum. It consists of 60–90% eugenol, eugenyl acetate, caryophyllene and other minor constituents.
Leaf oil is derived from the leaves of S. aromaticum. It consists of 82–88% eugenol with little or no eugenyl acetate, and minor constituents.
Stem oil is derived from the twigs of S. aromaticum. It consists of 90–95% eugenol, with other minor constituents.

As neither eugenol, eugenyl acetate nor caryophyllene have this property the oil that does cause 'plastic clouding' must be fairly low.
Likewise the main chemical components of allspice oil according to Essential-oils.co.za are:

eugenol, menthyl eugenol, cineol, phellandrene and caryophyllene.

None of these chemicals have chemicals with that property. However many of the chemicals in allspice and clove are also present in nutmeg, black pepper and cinnamon.


When thawing meat in cold water, why must one change the water regularly?

The second one.

If you tried it, you'd see ... it becomes ice water


Question about consistency of homemade ice cream

It may freeze hard, that depends upon the sugar and salt content and any other ingredients, like alcohol, that don't freeze solidly. If it does freeze hard it should be like store-bought ice cream, not icy. Ice cream that seems like softserve before it goes into the freezer should not crystallize. If it does, that usually means that it wasn't packed properly. Be sure that you pack the ice cream in an airtight container, with as little air as possible in the container, and that it isn't allowed to melt before packing.


What can I substitute for flour in pancakes?

Oats can be a good substitute, just blend them and use as normal flower.

250-300g oats, two medium sized eggs, 300 ml milk and 1/2 portion bag of baking soda.

Normally I use a mix of flour and oats, so I have never tried it with oats alone but I guess if you do not have flour you can try.


What kind of rice is used in Chinese cooking?

Well in Chinese cooking we use a wide variety actually. Typically speaking...

Medium or Long Grain Rice

White Rice
Fried Rice

Sweet Rice or Glutinous Rice

Sticky Rice (You commonly see this at Dim Sum places in the sticky rice dishes wrapped in lotus leaves, among other places.)

There are others of course, but those are the common ones you'll find since you were asking about Chinese Takeout. The shorter the grain, the more "sticky" it will be. However, that doesn't mean that long grain rice should come out grainy either. I suppose different restaurants will do it differently, around here they generally use long grain rice for "white rice". This is how my mother taught me to make rice:

Wash Rice a few times till there isn't any more murkiness.
Add water till it reaches your first knuckle on your pointer finger when the tip is just barely touching the rice (should generally work for any amount of rice).
Bring to boil, turn to simmer (covered). Check back in 10 to 15 minutes If the water is mostly gone, and it isn't at the texture you like, you can always add a bit more water.
Let it sit for a few minutes after the heat is off.

In China, you'll find all different grains. I've seen both short and long grains, and have seen plain white, long grain rice served as well.


Yes, it will work. The induction interface disks are practically the same thing as a griddle.

Of course, both disks and griddles mean that the induction stove will behave like a resistive stove (slow heating, etc.) If you want to get your money's worth from the induction stove, replace your cookware. The combination with cast iron is great, as it gives you all the advantages of cast iron without the major disadvantage of glacially slow heating of thick pans. All other induction-capable materials will work better than alu on a griddle/disk too.


What is the best flour to use for pizza dough?

What do we look in a pizza dough?

There are many styles of pizza: Italian Vera Pizza Napoletana, Chicago style, ... All of them have something in common in their dough: it should be stretched without tearing, and shouldn't stretch back.

Also, some recipes call for long fermentation times: 6, 9 or more hours at room temperature. With this you get a more relaxed dough (it won't stretch back), and more flavour.

Which flour characteristics give us that dough?

Millers use a tool called Alveograph to check their flour's characteristics. One of the values given by Alveographs is the p/l value. l value is an index for extensibility: how much can the dough be stretched before breaking. p value shows how hard is to give the dough a shape. p/l gives an idea on how the dough holds the shape it's been given. Flours with p/l≈1 are said to give "equilibrate" doughs for bread, as they are easy enough to give a loaf shape, and they will keep that shape once given.

Pizza flours should have a p/l≈0.5, as it means the dough can be stretched to a big disc shape, it won't tear, and won't stretch back to a smaller disc.

For long fermentation time, a high W value is desireable: W=280, 300 or 320 are common values. W is not always related to p/l values, and it can be undesrtood (informally) as "how much gluten the flour has". As gluten in a dough gets degraded with time, a lot of it is desired initially in the dough to assure there will be enough at the end of fermentation, several hours (or days, if refrigerated) later.

Forget about those 00 in Italian flours. It really only means the finesse of grounding. For pizza making I try to use strong flours with a p/l value close to 0.5, albeit I've also used strong bread flour with good results.

How can I get flours with those characteristics?

There are some specific pizza flours. Some Italian makers (with no specific order) are:

Caputo
Spadoni

You can see how W value is related to their recomended fermentation time.
5 stagioni

If you check the p/l value you'll see it's 0.6: right for pizza stretching.

If you can't get specific pizza flour, you can also try with flour specific for croissants, as they will also be strong and stretchy.

I've never eaten nor seen Chicago style pizza, so I can't help with flours specific for them, but I guess the guidelines given above should help.


Oftentimes, semolina is spread on the peel so that the pizza will slide off (known as launching).  That could cause this phenomenon.


Is it safe to cook or braise with beer in cast iron?

It really depends on the level of seasoning of your cast iron. If you see a really nice sheen all throughout your pan, I'd say you are good to go. The acidity of tomatoes, beer, wine, etc is problematic when the acid reacts directly with the iron. However, the seasoning on a well seasoned cast iron pan will act as a layer between the iron and the acid.

Another factor is the length of time the acidic food is being cooked in the cast iron. With a well seasoned pan, a 2 hour braise with an acidic liquid such as beer shouldn't be a problem. 4-8 hour cooks I would probably avoid.

One thing to consider is as your braise goes on, the pH of the liquid will rise (become less acidic) as the pH neutral water expelled from the meat mixes with the beer. This is to your advantage and will allow for longer cooks.

If your seasoning is not very good, you will end up with metallic tasting food which is obviously undesirable.

In summary, with a good seasoning you should be fine. It sounds to me like your pan might be seasoned well enough. If there is a sheen, I'd say your good to go.

Sources:

http://www.thekitchn.com/5-myths-of-cast-iron-cookware-206831
http://lifehacker.com/its-okay-to-cook-acidic-dishes-in-cast-iron-and-other-1772555109


What can I use in my own kitchen to fashion a panini press?

Assuming that you don't mind the bottom of your smaller pan getting dirty, you could put the sandwich in a heated larger pan and place the pre-heated smaller pan on top.  According to your question, you've got this this in own mental experiment.

The next step would just require you to borrow from mechanical engineering and some cheap root vegetables.

Mechanical designers use a widget called a standoff.  It just help create a gap between two surfaces.

Couldn't you use the same concept with carrots?  You could just surround the sandwich with equal length (maybe 1/4-1/2" shorter than the sandwich) cut carrot "columns" for a carrot "tripod" of sorts.  Bread will certainly cook faster than carrots and the used chunks could be edge-trimmed if they got blackened and consumed.


Your question doesn't indicate that you are using any fats when making your pancakes. Many people make the mistake of thinking that just because it's nonstick that you can get away with not greasing the griddle. This is just wrong.

I always run a stick of butter over the heated griddle a few times, then rub it in with a paper towel. You want a really thin layer of butter on your griddle. After cooking a few pancakes you will need to do this again.

I've used really cheap electric griddles just fine with this method, the problem you usually have with a cheap electric griddle is hot spots, not sticking.


Flour for sauce: In the broth or in the oil?

If you add the flour to the broth you don't have an opportunity to cook the flour separately.

Roux is described by its color. Even the lightest whites or blonds are cooked a bit to remove some of the raw "cereal-y" flavor of the flour. Toasting it just a little removes this and it's generally considered an unpleasant taste.

Darker preparations bring out a nutty quality that is sought after for dishes like gumbo.

You're basically making a slurry, which is a normal thickening technique (you mentioned the other two). Generally the starch is mixed with a small amount of cold liquid and then added to the sauce to thicken

If you don't notice the raw flour flavor in your sauces, I'd say your technique is a fine solution. Probably due to the relative amount of flour you are using. You may notice it's not ideal for a thicker sauce.


You might consider going with pasteurized eggs (if you can find them whole) or a pasteurized egg product (a common US brand is "Egg Beaters").

Pasteurized eggs are eggs that have been pasteurized in order to reduce the risk of food-borne illness in dishes that are not cooked or are only lightly cooked. They may be sold as liquid egg products or pasteurized in the shell.
The 2013 United States Food and Drug Administration Food Code defines regular shell eggs as a potentially hazardous food, i.e., “a food that requires time/temperature control for safety (TCS) to limit pathogenic microorganism growth or toxin formation.
Because of the risk of food-borne illness caused by Salmonella bacteria that may be present in raw eggs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires a safe-handling advisory statement on all packages of raw shell eggs that are not treated to destroy Salmonella as follows: "Safe Handling Instructions: To prevent illness from bacteria: Keep eggs refrigerated, cook eggs until yolks are firm, and cook foods containing eggs thoroughly."
The FDA Food Code exempts pasteurized shell eggs from the definition of "time/temperature control for safe food” requirement to carry a safe handling advisory statement.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture also states, “In-shell pasteurized eggs may be used safely without cooking.”

Your local grocer may sell in-shell pasteurized eggs but you'll probably find it easier to simply by them out of the shell in a carton like this:

Note that Egg Beaters brand is made without yolks, so it probably doesn't have the flavor you want, so be sure to read the packaging of the different brands... your best hope of duplicating the flavor without risking added chemicals is probably to find whole eggs.

All that being said, I don't think it would be a good idea for you to attempt to store this for any extended period of time, at longest, you should abide by the "sell by" date on the pasteurized egg packaging.


I don't think a pork sirloin roast will stand up to that kind of cooking very well.  That is a very lean piece of meat, which does not lend itself to long cooking times at low temperatures.  That type of cooking is best reserved for cuts of meat with lots of fat and/or connective tissue.  If you put a pork sirloin roast in your cooker for 8 hours on low, you're going to have one tough, dry piece of meat when you are through.

You would be better served by cooking it in the oven at higher heat, for a relatively short period of time, like 400F for an hour or so.  Bear in mind, you're not going to get to a fall-apart tender state with a sirloin roast.  This isn't a pork butt with which you're dealing, which you'd take up to an internal temperature of 195F or more.  Rather, you're going to want to target the safe temperature, and no higher.  You want the meat to be juicy.  Cut into thinner slices to achieve maximum tenderness.


As far as food safety is concerned you should be absolutely in the clear - frozen food lasts way longer than refrigerated.

But I see two points why the manufacturer might advise not to freeze the chicken:

Sometimes chicken is treated (aka infused) with water and spices which plumps up the meat. The excess water might increase the cell damage that is inevitable when freezing meat, leading to more water loss when thawing / cooking and ironically "drier" meat than untreated. This may or may not be the case. The manufacturer might just want to avoid the inevitable quality loss any meat faces when frozen. Especially as the "ready to cook" packages contain a lot of air, which may lead to freezer burn over time.
If the chicken is intended to be cooked in the bag, this means the bag is food-safe and heat-proof, but not necessarily freezer-proof. Plastic foils for freezing need special chemical / physical properties or they might become brittle at very low temperatures, causing them to develop small cracks or tears, which can favour freezer-burn or, in a later step, lead to a leaking package when preparing the chicken. You didn't post the instructions for cooking or roasting the chicken, just be aware of the fact that the package may leak a bit and use a tray below in the oven.

Note that some manufacturers / sellers give freezing instructions for their chicken packs:
Morrison supermarkets PLC writes

  Suitable for home freezing.
  Freeze on day of purchase and use within 1 month.
  Defrost in a refrigerator overnight.
  Once thawed do not refreeze.


Making two no-bake pies, double the recipe, or make the filling one at a time?

I would say that in that case, you can definitely scale the recipe without worrying.
Boil the apples with the other ingredients, and split the result once cooked to make two pies.

You can usually scale up or down a recipe. The rough idea is simply to multiply the quantity of the ingredients of your recipe by a factor. Doubling means multiplying by 2, making half, by 0.5.
There is some exceptions to the above rule :

When the recipe is dependent on the size of your cooking devices. For example, you can't scale a French omelette without scaling the size of the pan/your stove.
Some delicate recipes might be difficult to scale, like a soufflé. In that case, it is because it can be hard to fold a big quantity of whipped white eggs in the thick batter in a homogeneous manner.
Some ingredients are more tricky to scale : a recipe calling for 1 egg yolk might be difficult to scale down. Then, it is a matter of experience : if you are supposed to brush the egg over some pastry (to make it shiny and golden), then having 1 or ½ an egg does not make a big difference.

In general, savory recipe are easier to scale up or down. Just taste regularly what you are cooking, and adjust as you go. When it comes to pastry, this can be a bit more tricky, especially if you're planning to bake something delicate, but this is most of the time possible.
Final note: scaling is a lot easier when your recipe call for the ingredients in weight. I know this is not the case in some countries (USA, Sweden, to name a few), and to me, it makes scaling down those recipe a lot harder.


Mixing strengthens the gluten structure in recipes that use wheat flours.  In breads, for example, this is a good thing, as that structure is what allows gasses to be trapped inside, and provides the pleasant chew that we associate with a well-made loaf.  However, when making biscuits (or other baked goods where a softer, more crumbly texture is desired...pancakes also come to mind), it is advised to mix ingredients until just incorporated (or...don't over mix).  This is so that you don't develop the gluten structure in your dough.  So, just mix gently and minimally until the ingredients are well-dispersed.


Is there any food safety advantage in blanching meat prior to cooking sous-vide?

Pre-searing and post-searing are generally employed for crust formation on the final product.  In fact, when cooking something like a steak, a pre-sear, followed by sous vide, finished with a post-sear allows quicker final crust formation.  This reduces the possibility of over cooking your steak with the final sear. This works with poultry as well.

A quick blanch can be helpful when cooking meats at a low temperature, for a long time. This blanch eliminates lactobacillus, which is not harmful, but could cause off odors and bag inflation. For example when using a low temperature water bath (sous vide) to cook short ribs for, say, 48 hours...or something like oxtail, which I have done for as long as 100 hours, a quick blanch at the beginning drastically reduces any surface bacteria that might incubate and inflate the bag.  Searing will serve the same purpose, but sometimes, with irregular cuts, it is difficult to sear all sides.  Generally, I would suggest a very good sear, or a blanch when using low temperature, very-long duration (12 + hours) cooking situations.

Also, a quick blanch before cooking some vegetables will deactivate browning enzymes, and could be useful.


How much shelf life do oxygen absorbers add to food?

It's not clear that oxygen absorbers would help you preserve food at all.
First, the science on the effectiveness of oxygen absorbers is still young, and few national food regulatory agencies have offered any opinion as to whether they work or not (just that they're non-toxic). Most published "studies" are written by people with a direct interest in selling them.  Second, the oxygen absorbers you get from internet retail are unlikely to be the same kind that food manufacturers would use; based on a quick perusal of prepper websites, what many of them are selling aren't actually oxygen absorbers at all.
Most importantly, though, is that just putting an oxysorb in your jar of granola isn't sufficient.  There are multiple kinds of oxygen absorbers, including low temperature ones, high temp ones, ones that absorb moisture, ones that emit moisture, and even ones that emit alcohol.  The most serious independent studies I can find come from military forces, and they make it clear that it's necessary to match the correct oxygen absorber, packaging material, packaging method, and foodstuff.
Making effective use of oxygen absorbers, then, would require you to have an inventory of different kinds, and also invest in industrial-grade packaging equipment.  This does not seem cost-effective compared to buying replacement buckwheat flour every 9 months, or just buying a heavy duty countertop vacuum packing machine.


They also look like fenugreek seeds, and Irani Methi is fenugreek. Fenugreek has a very typical perfume when crushed and/or cooked, that would also help in identifying them


Is it possible to Pickle meat at room temperature?

Pickling meat and fish was done for millennia before the advent of refrigeration.
Pickling and smoking or drying/curing were the only reliable ways to preserve meat before freezing and canning were invented relatively recently.

The problem is that the term "pickling" is a bit ambiguous. It is a generic term that is used to describe preserving with salt. It can refer to curing or lactic acid fermentation depending on the salt concentration.

When meat or fish is pickled it is packed in salt or in a concentrated brine. The salt inhibits harmful bacteria. In very high concentrations the meat will be "cured" and be dry. In lower concentrations lactobacilli will still grow. The bacteria produce lactic acid which finishes the preserving of the meat.

Neither method requires refrigeration, of course, but modern home recipes generally call for refrigeration anyway to remove risk. Modern recipes sometimes also reduce the salt to a more gentle level which then does require refrigeration. Corned beef and ham are the canonical salt-cured meat recipes in the US.

It is rare to see home recipes that allow meat to ferment. I think we've lost the taste for it in most contexts. Fermenting meat is still often done commercially where the variables can be controlled better. Pepperoni and various Norwegian fish products are examples.

As a rule of thumb, only use food preservation recipes from trusted, modern sources. It is not uncommon to see antique recipes that are unnecessarily risky.

If you are interested in the history, chemistry, and politics of salt-cured meat, the book "Salt" by Mark Kurlansky is amazing.

As Stephie noted in her comment, you were right to throw away your meat. Your recipe did not seem to use enough salt to ensure prevention of harmful bacteria growth. Pickling brines generally call for enough salt that an egg floats.


Which containers to boil dulce de leche for 7 hours?

This is exactly what Mason Jars are for.  They're glass, so they can stand long periods of heat without leaching, and are designed to be boiled.  Unlike a can, I'd suggest leaving the lid secured loosely so that it can bleed off pressure.


Is it safe to keep reusing a portion of old dough?

This is how bread was made in my area just two generations before, not only flatbreads but every kind of dough. And the process wouldn't be started from scratch with new instant yeast, because it didn't exist yet.
I understand why you would say that a diluted piece of the old dough would remain after a month, but mind that fermentation is a metabolic process that converts molecules, and although actual atoms could be there, they were processed and rebuilt each time the dough ferments.
Compare that with any plant you eat; a part of this plant was a previous plant that was used as a fertilizer, maybe even passed through the animal metabolism. It's a cycle.


What sous vide parameters for entrecote?

I confess I'm not familiar with the term entrecôte, but looking it up, its pretty clear this is a already-tender cut. So you don't need to tenderize it.

In fact, you probably don't want to tenderize it—at some point, it'll go from tender to mushy. Unfortunately, from frozen, at least according to the Baldwin tables, you'd need over five hours. If you additionally want it pasteurized, that'd probably be over six hours, but he doesn't have a table for that. Either of those times is risking mushy, at least on the outside.

You can reduce the heating time substantially by thawing it in the fridge. This also gives you the opportunity to sear before bagging (killing any surface bacteria, and also improving flavor). You're probably looking at around 3–3½ hours this way (maybe up to 4 for pasteurization, depending on exact thickness).

Finally, once its thawed, you could split it in half, giving you two, 25mm steaks (split before searing, of course). Then you're looking at around an hour in the water bath, or two for pasteurization.

Even with a pre-sear, you'll want to sear after cooking as normal, too.

Your final option is to up the water-bath temperature a bit, and pull before the steak reaches thermal equilibrium. Basically, the last few degrees take forever—heat transfer is proportional to the difference in temperatures—so if you're OK with a doneness-gradient, as you'd find in traditionally-cooked steaks though not as extreme, you can do this. Problem is, I don't have a table for this, so I'm not sure what the time would be at, say, 59°C. You could attempt to rig it with a probe thermometer to find out, but beware cheap probes are not waterproofed where the wire enters, and will be break if water gets there. There are i-Device apps that will calculate these times for you (PolySci Sous Vide Toolbox, Sous Vide Dash) but I haven't used either (no Android versions...) [This is called the deltaT method]


substitute for shiso leaf in umeboshi makizushi

Shiso is in the mint family. Stick to that area and you'll be fine, even though nothing will be exactly right.

Peppermint leaves, lemon basil or Thai basil will all give a nice look and a pleasant flavor, even if it won't be quite the same. A combination of mint and and Thai or Holy basil might be your best bet. A tiny, tiny drop of toasted sesame oil will get you even a little bit closer.

I just read from a totally unknown (to me) source that lemon thyme hits a lot of the same notes, but obviously that would look completely different. Again, perhaps a combination will get you closest.


Where did the thin, smooth plastic spatulas go?

The old thin utensils were made of Nylon.

The reasons they are hard to find is that traditional Nylon is difficult to manufacture within food standard guidelines for PAA (Primary Aromatic Amines) migration, and does not bio-degrade or burn safely. For relevant references, your local government health department will have papers on PAA migration.

Given that, many utensil manufactures have moved on to other plastics, mostly silicone. Though some use PA66 (Nylon 6,6), which is that thick chunky black plastic stuff.

Try wooden spatulas. They are simple, clean, disposable, and you can get them in thin wedge shapes (e.g. at Asian supply shops).


How to make home made jam retain the fruity taste?

Most fresh fruits will lose their "sweet fresh flavor" when cooked. (*geeky stuff at end)  When making jams, jellies etc., a good amount of sugar is added. This is done for a couple of reasons, the first is to combine with acid and pectin for thickening, the second is for flavor.

When making jam, the proportion of sugar to fruit will be somewhere between 40-100% by weight. (Jaggery is not as sweet as granulated sugar and you would want to add 1/4 to 1/2 more if you were using it in a recipe that called for sugar) Your jam didn't have anywhere near enough sweetener.

What you can do to retain the fruity flavor:

For cooked jam, add more sweetener.
Make a fresh fruit (raw) jam that isn't cooked, which will not require a lot of added sweetener

Fruit generally contain all 3 sugar types, the majority often being fructose.

From Wikipedia Fructose

  The relative sweetness of fructose has been reported in the range of 1.2-1.8 times that of sucrose.[21][22][23][24] However, it is the 6-membered ring form of fructose that is sweeter; the 5-membered ring form tastes about the same as usual table sugar. Warming fructose leads to formation of the 5-membered ring form.[25] Therefore the relative sweetness decreases with increasing temperature.


Both may be preferable as they provide different garlic flavours.

Fresh garlic is sharp, and has bite. It tastes fresh, and works especially well with other bold flavours and fresh ingredients.
Granulated (roasted) garlic is garlicy, but nowhere near as sharp. It tastes more like the prepared garlic flavour we've all become accustomed to. It's a mellower, deeper flavour.
Roasted fresh garlic is garlicy, mellow, and deeper than either granulated or fresh garlic. It's brilliant in smooth things like soup or mashed potatoes, and is also a much deeper flavour on a pizza with other roasted things.

One of the coolest things about these different forms of garlic is that you can use them together to pack more punch. Not only can you combine them, but you can add them at different times in a preparation to layer the goodness in interesting ways.

"Preferable" is all about taste, your (and your guests') preferences, and depth.

When I make pizza, for example, I use both marinated garlic and chopped fresh garlic. Sometimes I'll even add roasted garlic over the sauce, especially if the pizza has sun dried tomatoes.


Baking or Cooking - why orange and not other sweet citrus fruit?

I don't claim that this is a canonical answer, but it seems to be a bit like the situation with apples. You have cooking apples and eating apples, which have been bred for different traits. Similarly you have juicing oranges, eating oranges, and bitter oranges (used for marmalade). The other citrus fruits which taste most like oranges (mandarins, clementines, tangarines) are more suited for division into segments, and you're more likely to see them used for decoration. You could juice them if you don't have a better option, but recipes will tend to use the most suitable commonly available option.

Grapefruit has a very different flavour, so you have to take that into account when substituting. It's also not necessarily sweet, and certainly I have never seen grapefruit sold as "sweet grapefruit" or "bitter grapefruit".


The magnets themselves don't dull them; they're not nearly strong enough to deform a blade.

But it is possible to damage your knives on those racks. It's very easy to drag the blade along the rack a bit as you pull it off, and easy for the magnet to snap it against the rack as you put it on.

Both are avoidable, though. When removing the knife, you twist it so that the sharp side leaves the magnet first. When putting it on the rack, you let the blunt side touch first, so when it snaps the rest of the way on, it's only the flat side against the rack, never the blade.

It also helps to get a version that's not just bare metal; there are plenty with the magnet underneath wood. It might not be ideal if you let the blade drag along it a lot, just as you probably don't want to drag it along your cutting board, but it's a lot better than metal. Also, since the knife isn't directly against the magnet, the force doesn't increase as sharply as you get to the rack, so there's less snap.

So, if you're worried that you (or guests in your kitchen) may not always be too careful, a bare metal magnetic knife rack is definitely not a good idea. But unless you're really protective of your knives, the wooden kind is probably fine.

Folks have also pointed out that in principle, long-term use of a magnetic rack could magnetize the blade, causing it to pick up tiny bits of metal, especially during sharpening, which would then wear and dull the blade. As far as I know, this is not a big deal: I've seen knives stored long-term on magnetic blocks without noticeable magnetization. You could always keep an eye out and demagnetize the blade if necessary.


I would suggest making a Mornay sauce (Béchamel sauce with cheese) which you should find will hold together well and provide an unctuous, rich, spreadable texture.

Simply melt butter in a saucepan over a medium-low heat, whisk in an equal quantity of flour, cook it out a little, then add cold milk, whisking all the while, until you get a smooth sauce like consistency. Then dump in a load of grated parmesan, stir it through, decant to a bowl and cool.


How much chilli puree should I add to get 43 ppm pungency?

Unless the chili puree you are using is an industrial product that comes with a narrow and clear specification (in SHU or ppm capsaicin), OR unless you are capable of measuring the SHU or capsaicin content yourself, this is not possible to do with any degree of accuracy - if you are processing fresh or dried chili yourself, the actual content is very dependent on natural variation and your process.

Also, these scales (ASTA ppm vs SHU) only roughly translate because of weight vs volume vs dry mass vs ... issues, and because SHU itself is not considered a truly accurate measurement.

Naively calculated (this means: if you need a plausible and demonstrably calculated BS result because somebody needs some number on some piece of paper, here is how you get your BS result), 16.000.000 SHU would be a (non*)food consisting of 100% capsaicin, so 1000ppm would be equivalent to 16000 SHU, 1ppm to 16 SHU, 43ppm to 688 SHU. If your capsaicin-bearing ingredient has eg 6880 SHU (not unrealistic!), you would use 10%.

*nonfood indeed. Pure capsaicin, while perfectly safe when incorporated into food in sufficient dilution, would be very harmful to ingest on its own!


How can I easily get water to a desired temperature?

The method we use (for coffee) is pretty simple (though it requires some compatible equipment):

Fill kettle.
Shove probe thermometer through "whistle" hole in kettle spout.
Heat until desired temperature is reached.
Pour water into vessel.

If you don't have a kettle or your thermometer won't work, you can do the same thing with any pot and a thermometer that has a clip (so you don't have to hold it for 10 minutes while the water heats)... but be sure the thermometer is heat safe (candy thermometers are good for this if they have a high enough temp range).

You'll want to keep a couple of things in mind...

The temperature of your mug will cool the water when it makes contact. This is unlikely to make a huge difference but it's something to think about. If you really want to brew your tea at exactly 70 C, consider heating sufficient water to "warm" your cup (or teapot) by filling it part way and swishing the water around to heat up the cup first and then pour the water down the drain. Alternately, you can heat your water to a slightly higher temperature (72 C).

As to your other methods... I'm sure any of them would work just fine... they'd take longer, though, because you're waiting for something to boil and then you're waiting for it to cool off or you're futzing around with getting it back down to the "right" temperature by adding cool water or tossing it back and forth between cups.

Provided you have standard, municipal water that you're comfortable drinking from the tap (or filtered), I don't know why boiling it first would matter.

I'm also skeptical about the pickiness of tea being steeped at exactly 70 C. I have a feeling that there'd be little discernible difference (to the average consumer) were the water at 80 C or even 90 C... It'd be an interesting thing to test, I suppose.

As this relates to oxygen loss due to boiling, which has been mentioned in some of the answers. This related question actually discusses that already and the general consensus is that lower oxygen levels in the water is actually bad for the taste of the tea:

  Dissolved oxygen is reactive, and will most likely extract more substances from the tea leaf, than without it. If these are the good flavour parts of tea, I do not know?

And:

  This person found that increased oxygen in the water resulted in milder, less tannic tea.

So, it sounds as if not bringing your water to a full boil is actually preferable to the flavor of the tea (assuming you don't like the tannic flavors) because the oxygen is beneficial to the brewing process.


Dried herbs really do only last around six months, certainly no longer than a year. They're generally easy to get in small quantities, though.

Spices are trickier. They'll generally last rather longer, but the time will vary. If the spice is used for the colour and/or heat (e.g. turmeric, chilli) it will generally last much, much longer than one used for its smell and/or taste. Whole spices last much, much longer than pre-ground; I generally buy whole spices from asian stores, they sell them in much larger amounts for the same prices as supermarkets; and use a coffee mill to grind the right amount just before cooking (and keep a separate one for coffee!).

If kept in the dark, in a dry, clean, airtight glass container, spices and dried herbs will certainly not become health hazards, and should not pick up unpleasant tastes or odours. The strong-tasting / strong-smelling ones will, however, lose taste and smell, eventually almost completely; since that is the whole point of using them, you might as well not bother once they're off.


What is the difference between pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce?

Red pizza sauce is often (but not always) two things:

Thicker.  Thinner sauce will tend to run in the oven and also steam the pizza crust as it cooks - if loaded with toppings, otherwise thin is fine.  Depending on the crust, the heat of the oven, the toppings above sauce, and how watery it is, this may not be needed.  If you've just got some crushed tomatoes and a few bits of cheese in a super hot oven - the sauce should be fine without reducing beforehand.  If you've loaded up a bucket of sauce and a pound of cheese, precook and reduce the sauce.
It's often simpler.  Many pasta dishes like spaghetti highlight the sauce and hours of simmering happen for the sauce to bring it to perfection.  They're all about the sauce.  Pizza is really about the crust and what highlights it.  Many of the best pizzas are simply topped.  Crushed san marzano tomatoes (sometimes) reduced with a hint of salt is often all I do, and franky, it's enough. I'm not talking about the jarred varieties here, but what you might cook at home.  Jars in the store, the main difference is just how thick it is.


Can I heat and then cool Shiitake mushrooms, and eat cold one day later?

Shiitake mushrooms are certainly not poisonous, either raw, cooked or as you posit in your question, after being cooked, stored in the refrigerator and consumed later.

If you enjoy eating them cold, go for it. Just keep in mind that like any other cooked food, they can spoil if not stored properly (I have some leftover Chinese mustard greens stir-fried with shiitakes in my fridge right now, and have been eating them for days).

However:

There is a rare allergic reaction in some people called Shiitake Dermatitis which is brought on by eating uncooked or under-cooked Shiitakes. Note that this does not mean it is poisonous, it is a food allergy for all purposes like any other (think shellfish, wheat, soy etc.)

In addition to that,

If you look, you will probably find advice to cook all mushrooms before eating (this probably has more to do with digestibility than anything though).

Although I believe this is really aimed more at wild harvested mushrooms, in his wild mushroom identification book "All that the rain promises and more", David Arora can be quoted as saying:

  "With very few exceptions, mushrooms should not be eaten raw. They are
  safer, more digestible and more nutritious when cooked..."

Personally, I would not shy away from eating Shiitakes raw for any safety reason, but you then may be robbing yourself of some of the nutritional value.


Your technique is going to be critical here.  Leaning scones aren't necessarily indicative of improper technique, but flat ones are.

Keeping your ingredients cold is important when creating scones in every recipe I've read or tried.  Cook's Illustrated went so far as to grate the butter and then freeze the grated pieces and use a laminating technique to provide layers.  Many other recipes use cold butter (frozen or simply very cold out of the freezer) in chunks and a pastry blender to cut them in.  Your milk should also be cold, not room temperature.  You may also want to chill your work bowl and utensils.  You don't want your butter melting before those scones hit the oven.

When your scones hit the oven and the butter does begin to soften and melt, it will leave behind layers of air in your scone which will help it to rise.

You don't want to handle finished scone dough very much.  Use a light touch and minimal work.

I'd also check the date on your self-raising flour.  The ingredients will lose their activity over time, causing the flour not to rise as well any more.


substituting rosehip solution for lemon juice/citric acid

This is going to be difficult to boil down (excuse the pun) to an objective guideline, even a rule-of-thumb. The problem is the wide variation in the acid content of rosehips.

This academic paper (which looked at varieties grown in Poland, but is fairly representative of what I can find; for similar examples see abstracts available here, here, and here) found a wide range in the two major acidic compounds which contribute to the tartness of rosehips:

Citric acid: mean of 3.16 with a standard deviation of 1.12, minimum of 0.20 and maximum of 5.37
Ascorbic acid/Vitamin C: mean of 1.06 with a standard deviation of 0.58, minimum of 0.08 (!) and maximum of 2.67

(All values given here are in grams per 100 grams of dried rosehip matter)

This is a pretty wide variation, and it means that it's going to be difficult to predict exactly how much of either compound the particular rosehips you have contain. Rosehips at the higher end of acidity could easily contain twice or three times as much acid as rosehips at the lower end, meaning the amounts you extract (even given a precise temperature and time of extraction) could vary widely.

My recommendation is to simply adjust this subjectively; you can either make more rosehip extract than you need and modify the amount to add the desired amount of tartness, or vary your extraction process to concentrate the extract. I would stick with the first as it will be easier to adjust on the fly.

Keep in mind that you will need to repeat this whole practice if you're making more syrup in future, unless you're using the same source batch of rosehips each time.


Store them in a well ventilated place. Cool (15 degrees Celsius) and dark will probably do them good too. And buy green bananas.

Your bananas are alive. Seriously, they continue to live after they have been picked. Breathing, cell metabolism, hormone production, etc. goes on. You cannot stop this process, you can slow it a bit.

In many plants, fridge temperatures trigger their own growth slowing processes, because they are evolved to stop growing in winter months. But in tropical fruit, this doesn't work, because there are no cold months where they grow. Instead, it exposes their sensitive cells to an environment they are not meant for, and they change a lot. Bananas go black, tomatoes change their taste radically, and so on.

Still, keeping them coolish and dark may do them good, because it still gives them less energy to spend on ripening.

One of the mechanisms which controls ripening in fruit, including bananas, is ethylene gas. It is a positive feedback mechanism. Ripe fruit produces ethylene, and unripe fruit ripens faster when exposed to ethylene. People tend to stick green bananas in bags to make them ripe faster. If you can keep them well ventilated, the ripening will slow down.

Still, don't expect any wonders. Bananas will ripe after being plucked, no matter if on the tree or not. And they will overripen in few days, even when held far from ethylene. Starting with green bananas gives you more headroom, but you still have a few days only.


Freezing chocolate is not ideal, because when it defrosts it can 'bloom' - you may have seen this happen with chocolate that has been stored unwrapped in the fridge. It gets an unsightly white coating.

If you absolutely must freeze it, wrap it very well, and bring the temperature down slowly. First let it cool out of the fridge, then in the fridge for several hours, then in the freezer.


I steam vegetables in large batches (up to 3 lbs) in covered Pyrex bowls in our large microwave. The microwave is 1800W, and steams the vegetables well in 4-6 minutes (depending on the vegetable...about 5 minutes for broccoli, which is fibrous). Bringing approximately 2" of water in an 8qt stockpot (the amount you'll likely need to heat in order to have the entire batch remain over steam before evaporating all the water)to a boil, plus steaming 3 lbs of broccoli in a steamer insert will take about 6 minutes on my stove on the 12,000BTU/hr gas burner.

So, that's 1800W x 5 min vs 12,000BTU/hr x  6 min

1W = 3.41BTU/hr

Converting the BTU/hr to watts that becomes

1800W x 5 min vs 3517W x 6 min

Since 1 W = 1Joule/second, the two energy expenditures are:

-Microwave: 1800J/s x 300s = 540,000 joules

-Stove: 3517 x 1,266,120 joules, more than twice the cost.

Stoves send a great deal of energy up the sides of the pans and into the air, where it is lost. Microwaves send nearly all their energy into the food. This means that in nearly every case, steaming in the microwave is more energy efficient.


Powdered sugar is not an acceptable substitute to standard white (granulated) sugar.

During the creaming step, the hard sandy texture of granulated sugar creates small starter bubbles in the cookie dough.  These bubbles will expand during baking, and are integral to the finished cookie's texture.

Ideally, use the correct kind of sugar called for by the recipe.  Or, search for a recipe which specifically calls for powdered / confectioner's sugar instead of granulated sugar.


In Serious Eats, the author provides some insight on how to do this:

  The process was easy: onions browned and then removed, meat and water
  added and boiled, then the rest of the aromatics go in, skimmed
  occasionally and simmered for six hours. By the time the broth was
  finished it was incredibly phở-like—the cinnamon and anise came
  through beautifully and the stock was insanely meaty.

  The next day I took off the layer of fat and set about assembling the
  rest of the phở ingredients. I got my hands on lovely basil, bean
  sprouts, and some shabu-shabu beef.

Source: Serious Eats

Additionally, Viet World Kitchen provides some great basic techniques for building your pho broth:

  Pho Secrets?

  Roasting the bones.
  I've tried this and have not found that it's done
  much to the broth aside from making the broth dark, something that
  I've not found to be attractive. If you start with good bones, there's
  no need to roast, as the French would do for a veal stock, or
  demi-glace...
  Source: Viet World Kitchen, 2007

Viet World Kitchen has so many great articles about pho as well:

Advanced pho techniques
Beef Noodle Pho recipe

If you're looking for more resources loving pho has a great article about pho:

  There is no single perfect technique for creating good pho broth. The
  Vietnamese always say that the best pho you will ever taste is the one
  cooked by your own mother (plus maybe one or two favorite
  restaurants), and she will have her own ideas of how good pho broth is
  made. These ideas, in turn, are ones that have been handed down to her
  by her own mother. Thus, no two bowls of pho made in two separate
  kitchens will ever taste the same.

Source: LovingPho 2009


Where to look for Vintage Cookbooks in Spanish?

I collect vintage books (birding books, though) and I speak spanish; I usually find good results in ebay.es

I have checked for you on cocina books, and have found these:  http://www.ebay.es/sch/Otros-Libros-antiguos-/269/i.html?_nkw=cocina
the page is in spanish, so it conveniently filters books in spanish for you.

If you are interested in one of the books http://www.ebay.es/itm/DR-A-VANDER-COCINA-MODERNA-/230916243325?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_186&hash=item35c3ae3f7d
and want to proceed with a purchase, change the domain in the URL to ebay.com http://www.ebay.com/itm/DR-A-VANDER-COCINA-MODERNA-/230916243325?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_186&hash=item35c3ae3f7d and voilà!

other interesting sources,
http://www.uniliber.com/resultados.php?pc=cocina&orden=PA

http://www.iberlibro.com/libros/libros-cocina.shtml

iberlibro.com is the spanish version of abebooks.com
so you might get similar results searching there and filtering for cocina and a year range

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=cocina&yrh=1950&yrl=1930


I think tomato puree or passata might be something for you. It's thinner than tomato paste.
To know for sure whether it fits in your diet or not, you should check the label. Ingredients may vary from brand to brand, but normally, it's just tomatoes.


How long do meatballs in sauce need to be heated in a crock pot?

They're meatballs.  It's a crockpot.  Why bother refrigerating them or cooking them in the oven?  Just brown them in the oven under broil and then set the crockpot on low and cook them overnight in the sauce.  They'll be perfectly done, perfectly safe, and delicious in the morning.  A few extra hours won't hurt them at all and then you won't have to worry about time, temperature and food safety.


using vital wheat gluten instead of flour?

"High" gluten flour has, at most 15% gluten. "Indian" white flour, or maida has 7.5%.
If you manage to pull it off, you basically end up with what's essentially a pan fried slab of mock meat, rather than a bread - basically seitan.
You typically add gluten to flour to modify its characteristics - the only way you're going to be able to make naan that approximates a real naan in any way is, well, adding flour.


Can you safely use a cast-iron grill pan as a heat diffuser?

I see absolutely no reason not to do that. As you say, the very nature of diffusers is that they aren't smooth. Keep in mind that it's not just extreme heat that you want to avoid, but also extreme changes in temperature. So you want to heat the tagine with the implement that you are using as a diffuser.

Also, unglazed earthenware tagines are usually seasoned. Is your tagine glazed? Apparently that process can also be called "healing" and involve garlic, although the term is from a different culture. Is it necessary to "heal" clay pots?


All the other information presented here is correct and the main problem is liquor licenses. I use the salted variety often out of convenience and price, but it is a lower quality and well, heavily salted. Typically, if I'm using the wine, I'll just reduce salt elsewhere.

If you can't find an unsalted variety and really want something that works well, as an alternate suggestion you can use a dry sherry. It will usually be cheaper than a proper bottle of unsalted shaoxing wine. Note that sherry will also come in salted, cooking varieties and similarly you don't want those.

If you live in an area where the liquor licenses aren't a problem, I hear good things about the Pagoda brand.


I assume the crust floated and the curd displaced around it, rather than anything actually "flipping." Actual flipping would fall under the "other members of the household" comment.

Floating merely requires the shortbread crust to detach from the bottom of the pan (perhaps aided by being cool) and lemon curd to flow under it, slowly - it may have been doing this (but not broken the surface) before it was refrigerated, and continued in the refrigerator. Nothing needs to be overly fluid for this to happen - flow in thick/viscous  liquids just needs plenty of time.


Oxtail would be your most likely substitute, but you have indicated you cannot obtain it.

The next best choice (of those widely available) is probably chuck, which is the shoulder muscle, and is well worked and flavored.   It requires low and slow cooking for best results, much like shanks and tail do.

Some stores—even the chain grocery stores—will special order for you if you ask them to, so you might be able to get shank.  Depending on where you live, you may also try butchers at farmers' markets, Dutch markets, or similar.


Well, you'll never get the entire griddle evenly heated. But this griddle is pretty thick (3/16") so the results will not be too bad if you allow the griddle to preheat for a long time (at least 30 minutes). You'll still have hot spots and less-hot spots, but there won't be any 'cold' spots.

You're going to have to learn how the griddle performs and how to move the food to different zones to cook it the way that you want.

As a side note, even in commercial kitchens parts of the griddle are hotter than others. This is quite useful to cook two things at different temperatures, or to move something that is already cooked to a less-hot spot while another component of the dish finishes cooking in a hot spot.


The general cure for this is to add an egg and some breadcrumbs to your ground meat mixture. The eggs serve as a binding agent, and the breadcrumbs remove excess moisture.

If your recipe does not allow the use of these workarounds, there are still some things you can do to improve your result:

Increase the density of your mince: there is quite a lot of difference in how large or small the chunks of meat in your mince are when you buy it. A real craftsman butcher will allow you to buy finer mince by changing the setting on his mincer. The finer the mince, the denser and tighter the meatballs will be.
Work them! Many cooks tend to be a bit lazy when it comes to rolling meatballs, working on the "once it's round, it's done" principle. This means  that they do not bother to roll them longer and harder to improve the structural integrity of the balls.
Turn up the heat: Good hot oil/butter and plenty of it helps you to get a solid crust around the meatballs, which in turn lowers the chance of them falling apart.
Bigger is NOT better. Smaller balls have less tendency  to fall apart.

I hope this helps any in making the recipes more successful next time!


I have a similarly hairy hand/arm issue. I scrub my hands and arms quite roughly with soap, hot water and scouring pad prior to any prep. In an effort to remove any lose hairs before giving them a chance to get in any food. Suffice to say I've never noticed any hair in any of my food.

Gloves may help stop any hand hair's getting in there but I can't see how a long sleeved top would, all you'll end up with is dirty cuff's. If it really does get bad just clingfilm your arms ;-)


Cure for burns from hot peppers / capsicum oil?

Capsaicin is oil/fat-soluble so try washing your hands with a little whole milk, or rub with sour cream or vegetable oil and see if that helps.

Just as you can get it in your eyes if you rub them with your fingers, I'm sure you can easily transfer it to your baby.

I'm just surmising here, not speaking from experience so if you try any of these, be sure to let us know how they worked....or what you did instead.


This kind of pan is traditionally made of blue steel. The coating on it would be a homemade seasoning from oil.

I cannot tell it 100% from just the small picture, especially since there are manufacturers who sometimes imitate traditional looks while using different materials, but this is the likeliest guess for this pan.

If it is indeed a seasoned blue steel pan, then the seasoning can take any temperature at which food is cookable. If you take it so far that it burns off (which would take something around 500-600 Celsius, so unlikely to happen in a home kitchen) you can replace it yourself, although you might need a few tries until you get it right.


You can refrigerate your paste, however your quality will degrade and it won't last more than a few days in the fridge. When I make pastes I usually blend 4 times what I need and freeze the leftover in chunks, then they last for weeks, even months. You could use an ice cube tray to make measured quantities to use later.


heating ham at 200 degrees versus 325 degrees

Not knowing what kind of oven you have or what cut the ham is, bone in or bone out etc., I would recommend that you simply buy an inexpensive meat thermometer (less than $10 in most places) and check the ham's internal temperature every two hours or so.