How can I remove surface rust from a cleaver and keep it off

For the rust you can try an oxalic acid cleaner like Barkeeper's Friend (try it on a small spot first!).  It's worked great for my bakeware's cooked-on spots, and should be useful for rust as well.  Using it will be a bit of trial-and-error, because leaving the metal exposed for too long will etch it, and not long enough won't clean much.

For rust prevention, just clean the cleaver after each use and thoroughly dry it.  I'm not sure what it's made of, but those steps should suffice to prevent rust formation.  If you're obsessive about this, or don't cleave often, you can coat it in petroleum jelly afterwards (I do this with my straight razor.  It's probably not feasible for a kitchen tool unless you're storing it away).


What can I do with whole wheat pastry dough?

You can make it into tart crust or biscuits and cookies. Of course, you need to know how much flour is in the dough and add the required other ingredients according to recipes.


How to make extremely dry pork more palatable?

I'd use it as barbecue. It should shred fairly easily; if not, I'd gently steam it until it does. If it's so dry that it can't be shredded, it probably can't be saved, though you might be able to get satisfactory results with chopping.

All it needs is to be warmed in the barbecue sauce, requiring no further cooking. Include some of the juices and fat that came off of the pork during the initial cooking. Serve on white bread or soft sandwich rolls.

The same procedure would work with many different sauce profiles. A Mexican-style sauce would make it a great burrito or enchilada filling. An Italian-flavored tomato sauce can be served atop pasta. Mix it with a curry sauce and serve on rice. In each case, it just requires shredding/chopping and heating in the sauce.


What is the charcoal snake method and how does it work?

This is the method I use to smoke meat in my Weber! The basics are exactly what you see in the photo, with one more step. Start about a dozen (or in a 22.5" grill like that one, maybe 18-24) briquettes in your charcoal starter (you have one of those right? if not, go get one, they're awesome). When the coals in your starter are glowing, carefully place them with tongs at one end of the snake.

This is a super low maintenance way to smoke meat. It keeps a small number of coals lit far enough away from your meat that you have indirect heat similar to an oven, and the smoke is metered because only a limited amount of wood catches. The coals at one end slowly light the remaining coals and you can cook this way for hours. The circle in your photo will probably burn for 4-6 hours. If you add more coals as you cook, you can keep this method going for very long cooks (I've done a brisket doing this cooking for something like 14-18 hours). You'll want to rotate your meat as you cook to keep it directly opposite (or maybe a bit closer to the lit end so you don't have to rotate as often).

This blog post for SA's blog has a bunch more information and some pictures of one of my cooks using this method.


Can you cook with a partially healed open wound?

According to the World Health Organization, it is technically possible to catch certain diseases by handling raw meat with cut or abraded skin. However, that example was a pig disease only occurring in a specific region.

I could find no references to similar disease transmission from chicken, and you definitely won't get food poisoning, which relies on long population multiplication times. As long as you practice basic handwashing, care for your cuts normally, and don't live in a region with notable chicken diseases, you'll be fine even in the case of an open cut.

Just try not to bleed in the food, please.


Is there any reason to use fake white chocolate chips instead of the good stuff?

Here we are, three months after the experiment, I'm finally getting around to writing it up! The fact is, the results are not very exciting.

Straight from the fridge, the three cookies (made with all Ghirardelli white chocolate, all fake white chocolate chips and a half and half mixture) were indistinguishable. At room temperature the all Ghirardelli cookie had a very minor negative. It slightly melted in the hand as you held it to eat, a vaguely unpleasant feeling. The other cookies did not melt in the hand, but tasted the same.

So, for simple no bake applications like this, there is no reason to spend the extra money for "real" white chocolate, the fake stuff is just as good and may even be slightly better.


Converting Pressure Cooker recipes for cookers with lower PSI

Here's a table that claims to give time equivalencies for cooking at different pressures.  (This is from a website dedicated to pressure cooking information, so it's pretty standard.)

It doesn't go down to 7 psi, declaring 8 psi to be the lowest acceptable pressure, but the time increase for 8 psi is listed as 47%.  Therefore, I'd try increasing the times by 50% or a little more than the recipe states.

Keep in mind that although this chart looks precise, it's really not.  Pressure cooking at lower temperatures will significantly change extraction rates for various flavor components in you stock, for example.  Some things will still cook out at roughly the same rate, while others will take a lot longer at the lower temperature.  I'd guess that increasing cooking times by about 50% is a good place to start, but you may find that's too little or too much, or even that the result in some recipes just isn't right.  (Sometimes boiling for too long alters flavors or textures in undesirable ways, so the fast cook in a high-pressure pot may be okay, but a slower longer cook may end up with just a boiled "overcooked" result.)


Substitution for egg to bind hamburger mince

Have you tried not adding egg? In my experiments, egg is needed when you add breadcrumbs, but if you just form some ground beef into a patty and fry it, it doesn't fall apart. Hm, let me clarify that. If you take a single blob of ground beef straight from the styrofoam and press it in a patty press, it doesn't fall apart. If you take two pieces and put them next to each other in the patty press, it does fall apart as you cook it. So when I need to add an extra bit, I add it on top. That works. So there is at least one way you can make a hamburger without adding egg. Now, if you wanted to mix spices into the beef, then you might have a problem. I'll admit that. Better than nothing, though.


I would assume yes.

you use 4tbsp flour and fat for what amount of liquid ?

if you double the liquid, you should double the roux.

If there's not enough roux, then your gravy will be too "liquid".

for reference this recipe :
http://www.chef-menus.com/large_quantity_recipes_gravy.html


Making your roux with clarified butter will certainly work, and work well. Clarifiying removes the milk solids, which add nutty flavor when browned. Without them, the roux would be far less likely to burn, particularly if you want a lighter roux. Whether you're going for white, blond, brown, or dark brown roux, using clarified butter should not present a problem.


Bottle of Cachaça 51 tasting like sour milk?

Further research on this revealed my own answer: Bagasse is the waste product from extracting juice of sugar cane, and if naturally fermented/decaying, smells like sour milk!

Depending on the grade of sugar cane juice (freshness of sugar cane itself, as well as heads vs tails of extraction), the juice can have some of the bad flavour from the bagasse, and it's sufficiently volatile to persist in the distillation process!


Slow-Carb or low-carb alternative to pita and similiar neutral tasting breads

In the US, a few national bakeries manufacture whole-wheat pitas that, while not as "neutral" as normal pitas, are more neutral than whole wheat bread.

Whole wheat bread can contain molasses or cane juice in order to mask bitterness, which can give it a strong flavor that's unwelcome. The whole-wheat pitas I've tried don't concern themselves overmuch with bitterness, and use ingredients like oatmeal flour and flax seed to give their product a more neutral taste.

I've got a package of "Joseph's Flax, Oat Bran and Whole Wheat Pitas" in my desk drawer as we speak - the texture is rougher and not as tender as a normal pita, and it's definitely more bitter, but when used as an accompaniment for soups, stews, hummus or grilled meat, it's more than acceptable. Each pita is 50cal, with 7g carbs, so definitely low-carb, but they are not slow-carb, as the main ingredients are wheat gluten and corn starch. The whole-wheat flour, flax seed and oat bran are used for flavor rather than as the main ingredients.


Induction cooker hot on inner circle only

Warping doesn't matter with induction, since you don't need the pan to touch the surface, unlike resistive electric technology.

I suspect that your unit is working as intended. I have personally never seen home units with a large coil, they typically have a 12 cm coil or less, and since most pans are larger, they only create direct heat in the middle of the pan. You can use larger pans on it because there is thermal conduction happening both within the pan metal and within the food in the pan. My guess is that the outer circle is an indication of what is the maximum suggested size of pan, presumably because the conduction will not be sufficient to produce good results. I have not seen units with an inner circle painted on, but it could be a guideline for the minimum size of pan that the unit accepts. This is very likely if the size of the inner circle is the same as the size of the coil (your burn mark).

And by the way, your burn mark and your warping both mean that you are using extremely high heat to cook. There are almost no foods which benefit from that. You may consider reducing to medium-high for most cooking - when I had induction, that typically meant using the first or second wattage setting on my unit (cooking for 1 person).


Can I replace milk with eggs in recipes?

No, you can not.

Milk is used as a liquid in cakes. Eggs add a little bit of liquid, but also have lots of other effects on your batter. You don't want these effects, or rather, you want them to happen in a certain degree, and the ratio of eggs to milk in existing recipes is calculated to give you the optimal degree. The effects are too many to explain in depth here, but they can include drying out, toughness, fatty feel, eggy taste (ever had a cake which tastes like an omelette?), and overleavening. You want to use a liquid which does not have these effects.

Cow milk is roughly 3% protein, 5% carbohydrates, 4% fat and 88% water. You could try to find something with similar proportions. Plant milks are fairly close. A shot in the dark (or rather twilight): if soy milk gums your cakes, try scalding it first. Soy protein has the ability to form film-like structures similar to gluten; once you denature it (with heat), it will have a harder time building them. If you prefer something else, pick a different liquid from the advice in the other answers, and adjust at least the solids-to-water ratio proportionally. Better yet, adjust the fat-to-nonfatsolids-to-water ratio. So I wouldn't use full-fat coconut milk (21% fat), but rather a lower-fat version. And I would add fat if using fruit juice (a bit more butter in the creaming step should do).


Do you need cheesecloth to wrap around a dry aged beef?

Cheesecloth is not 'required' for dry aging, but it is helpful. You can substitute a wrapping of paper towels. You want something to absorb the moisture that will be released during the aging process. For a good primer on home dry aging see Alton Brown's "Porterhouse Rules"


I store mine in the freezer. It keeps it hard and thaws without an issue.


How can I add flavor to meatballs which taste stale from being frozen too long?

Whenever I have freezer burnt or really old frozen meat, my go-to solution is to use my slow cooker. Find a recipe that sounds appetizing to you and has a long cooking time (6-9+ hours on Low), and go for it. For example, here's a Meatball and Vegetable Soup recipe (which I'm not endorsing, it's purely as a "this is the style you're looking for").


Creating a thanksgiving brine for a 7-8 lb Turkey?

Alton Brown uses 1 cup kosher salt and 1/2 cup sugar for 2 gallons of liquid (1 gallon ice water, 1 gallon vegetable stock).

You can reduce the amount of liquid to whatever you need to immerse the turkey in liquid. So for 1 gallon of liquid you would use 1/2 cup salt and 1/4 cup sugar.

The answers in this question recommend a brine that is 5-10% salt by weight (comparing salt to liquid).


Low-sodium alternatives for Asian cooking sauces?

Unfortunately, the sodium chloride salt is a requirement for the fungus and brewing process which goes into making soy sauce. You are extremely unlikely to find a much lower-salt soy sauce; however, experiment with vietnamese cuisine which uses more chili and less soy.

If you can tolerate some sodium, this is the lowest sodium soy sauce I can find: Kikkoman less salt soy sauce. It has 3.4g sodium per 100ml, which gives 170mg per 5ml tsp, around 6% per tsp or 18% per 15ml tablespoon. (These percentages are based on the US and UK sodium recommendation of 2400mg per day, or 6000mg of salt.)


In place of cream of tartar to stabilize egg whites?

Your acid will work in place of potassium bitartrate, AKA cream of tartar.
Lemon juice, vinegar, or even baking powder will also work.
Six good substitutes: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cream-of-tartar-substitutes
Most common baking powders are a mix of sodium bicarbonate and cream of tartar. As per link, add 1.5 tsp baking powder in place of 1 tsp cream of tartar.


Blue potatoes dry enough?  Those could certainly fit with breakfast. (hash browns, home fries, etc)  Blue corn may also work in a corn pancake.


Acidity regulator E330 is citric acid. I found no indication that it's chemically instable at temperatures < 100°C and a study found it stable over a period of 5 months.

Additive E211 is sodium benzoate that's used to stop bacterial and fungal growth in acidic foods and drinks. A study found that over a period of 90 days 4 - 8% of sodium benzoate degrades. I'm no chemist and don't know what chemicals the result of this degradation are, but they could influence the taste of the soda and loose the ability to stop bacteria growth.

Another study found that in peach puree treated with sodium benzoate, the amount of sucrose (common sugar) decreased and the amount of glucose and fructose increased. Although all 3 are different types of sugars, there is a notable difference in taste.

Additive E202 is potassium sorbate, another food preservative and probably the culprit for the yellow color. Food Reviews International writes:

  However, in solutions and in foods, [potassium sorbate] undergoes autoxidation during storage, forming carbonyls and other compounds. Many factors (e.g., pH, temperature, packaging, water activity, and composition of food) influence its stability. Degradation of sorbic acid is associated with development of browning in foods. Acetaldehyde and /3‐carboxylacrolein have been reported to be the major degradation products of sorbic acid in aqueous solutions. β‐Carboxylacrolein is found to be responsible for sorbate‐induced browning in foods as it reacts with amino acids and proteins to form brown pigments.

Plastic bottles are known to let the carbonation of carbonated water escape over a long time. Carbonation means that carbonic acid is solved in water, which then forms little bubbles of carbon dioxite (CO2). As long as the carbonic acid is still dissolved in the soda, it adds a slightly tart flavor to it, which we are used to. Once most of it evaporated, the overall flavor of the soda changes to that of a stale soda (which it basicly is).

As to the "natural flavor", since it's not named, we cannot know for sure what it was. But there's a good chance that it also degenerated at least partially over time.

So, to answer your question: Yes, lemon sodas can go bad. That's why there is a "best before" date printed on them. As far as I understand the chemistry involved, your soda wasn't poisenous, but it was chemically altered enough to be considered "gone bad".


What brand of "green tea" are you drinking? What grade of "green tea" are you drinking? Do they come in a paper tea bag? Loose leaf? Green tea has such a large range. At the bottom end, you have generic tea bags that are simply labeled "green tea", these I find to be extremely harsh and taste like well, tea bags and maybe even "grass". Not to mention, if you're drinking green tea for health reasons, these green teas probably aren't really given you as much as you could be getting...

I drink a fair amount of tea (as well as coffee), and currently in my cupboard I have teas where they are naturally overwhelmingly sweet (nothing added), to a stronger "tea" flavour, to many others. The place I would start isn't with additives, or brewing methods, but I'd go to a proper "tea" shop, and get a good loose leaf tea. I don't know if your area has a good chinatown, but there's bound to be a good tea shop there somewhere. Otherwise, even a more European influenced tea shop, should have a wide variety of green teas. Regardless of the tea shop, make sure they let you smell (waft with your hands or the lid of the canister, some shops get grumpy if you stick your nose in) the tea. Does it smell grassy? Does it smell pleasant?

If your tea tastes grassy, the solution isn't to mask it. It's to find tea that doesn't taste like grass.

Edit: I should also add that to be careful of how you steep green tea. It's much more prone to oversteeping than a dark tea. It should be steep for less time and at a lower temperature. No hotter than around 90C for 2-4 minutes I'd say.


Can Lamb Shoulder Chops be treated the same way as a steak?

I confirm, I regularly grill lamb chops in a pan (or even better, on a barbecue) and it is delicious! Of course it won't be as soft as a piece of meat that you slow-cooked for hours, but it is not hard either. It should be cooked quickly, 3-4 minuts on each side, I imagine that it will get hard if you overcook them. You can indeed also marinate them before, which will make them more tender and tastier.


Oddly I have a coworker who bought a caramel apple and then left it in its plastic on his desk for about 4 years. We didn't photo document its decline but I should be able to recall.

After about a week the impalement point became quite unappealing. The area around the stick darkened and softened (it seemed, I didn't touch it). The rest of the skin looked fine.
After several years the caramel looked perfectly fine but misshapen and the apple had dried and shriveled inside of it.

Based on that, and my own experience, I would conclude that a refrigerated caramel apple would have about the same life as an uncarameled apple except for the core which would need to be avoided.

As for extending the life? Perhaps pour wax around the stick entry point to buy yourself a couple days?


From looking at that recipe, those cookies look like they are designed to not spread out.  Why do I say that?  There is a lot of structure in the beginning - the egg whites and butter are beaten together with the sugar and honey for a strong structure made by a hybrid of the creaming method (beating butter with sugar) and the foaming method (beating eggs with sugar) used in cake baking.  There are no egg yolks, and the fat content isn't that high.  Fat helps cookies spread.  So I'd say your cookies are quite possibly doing what they are intended to do.

What you want to do is learn how the various components of your cookie affect its texture - the amount of fat (butter and eggs), the amount of sugar, the method you use to create it, and the temperature all affect your cookies.  You can learn a lot about cookie texture through the questions and answers on this site.

This answer links to a Good Eats episode that talks about three different kinds of chocolate chip cookies, including a soft and thick one.
The question that sparked the above answer has two answers referencing a Cooks Illustrated recipe, their Thick and Chewy cookie.  To get a thick and chewy cookie they melt the butter, add an extra egg yolk, and up the sugar.  A softer, cakier cookie is made by using the creaming method (creaming about 70 degree F butter and sugar).
This answer points you to Michael Ruhlmann's book Ratio, which in the ratio for cookies discusses the varying effects of sugar and fat on your cookies
This question talks about what makes cookies hold their shape versus spread.  One answer suggests the book Bakewise for a comprehensive discussion of gluten content, fat, etc. and how they work in making baked goods.
This answer about how to make cookies without creaming them describes cookies made with melted butter as "pancake cookies" that spread everywhere

As a note, remember that there is also a difference between the temperature your butter is when you make the cookies (especially if you are trying the creaming method versus using melted butter) and the temperature it is at when you cook them.


Considerations for frying a Turkey in Arctic Weather

I'm assuming you are using a turkey deep fryer and your question is what are the considerations in doing so in extreme cold. You can fry a turkey in extreme cold temperatures,  you just need to crank up the burner to make up for the heat loss. Your oil temperature is going to be 350°F, if you were cooking it in +40°F you'd be adding heat to raise the temperature 310°F, in -40°F you need to raise the temperature 390°F instead, 390 is 125% of 310, so a rough approximation would be you need to add 25% more heat from the flame. It's the same principle in barbecuing, I've barbecued in -30°F and you just need more heat, and to get the food inside asap when you're done!

It would make sense to build in extra time if your equipment is going to be outside temperature as you will be handling things with gloves, and you have to heat up the pot more. If you can, keep the oil inside, or at least keep it above -10 so it doesn't gel.

Also, you need to be sheltered from the wind when you deep fry outside in any temperature as wind will blow the burner heat away and disrupt the flame, it's even more important when it's that cold as wind will make the heat gap even higher, possibly to the point your burner can't make it up.


Are there different grades or styles of bacon?

In the UK there are two main cuts of bacon.

There's "streaky bacon", which is cut from the pork belly.   This is mostly what you get in the US.

There's also "back bacon" which is cut from the pork loin.  This is generally more popular and is very much leaner than streaky bacon.  In the US you call it "Canadian bacon".

You can also get "middle bacon" which is cut from both, i.e. a contiguous cut from belly to loin - a piece of streaky bacon and back bacon combined.


How to bake bread and desserts without an oven?

From your list of 'electric stovetop, pots, and rice cooker' I would suggest constructing a double boiler by placing one pot inside another where the inner pot has a lid and the outer pot has a measure of water sufficient to support the inner pot (a steel bowl would be preferable, but you didn't mention that). Using a low heat (just enough to bring the water to a boil). Place your product inside and be prepared to wait. The double boiler will closely resemble oven like convection to evenly (albeit slowly) heat your food. It should brown well and you minimize the risk of burning. If you are making something like a small pizza, you should definitely add a small bit of oil/butter to the bottom of the inner pan.

Do you have access to a 'slow cooker' (crock pot)? These can be used to create a variety of 'baked' goods (breads, pizza, cakes...) But I am guessing not (because you didn't list it...) However, you do mention a 'rice cooker' which is not that different (depending on the brand/style) and I would be inclined to experiment with that.


What kind of fuel do I use for a Hario TCA/50A coffee syphon?

Ask them for Brennspiritus. You can get it in bigger drugstores like DM or Rossmann, I don't know who else will have it, but maybe home maintenance (?) stores (Baumärkte).

You can't use butane, that's a different fuel and obviously not suitable for your case. You should be able to use pure ethanol, but due to alcohol import laws, medicinal ethanol without dilutants is extremely expensive, and medicinal ethanol with dilutants might have dilutants which create something bad when burned. Brennspiritus is ethanol with dilutants which can be burned safely, while still making it undrinkable.

If everything else fails, you can start burning high-percentage drinking alcohol, my grandpa uses it sometimes on Spiritus burners. The problem (besides being more expensive) is that you need both a high ABV (something around 70% will be good) and a pure alcohol (vodka or obstwasser); alcohol types which you are likely to find at these percentages (such as rum) can leave layers of badly combusted gunk inside the burner.


What's the difference between carob powder, flour, and kibbled carob?

Almost 90% of the carob is pulp, and the rest is the seeds. From the seeds, you get Locust Bean Gum, or Carob Gum.

The pulp can be used either as:

Carob Powder/Carob Flour, which has sweet and chocolate-like taste.

Carob Kibble, which is basically much coarser pieces of the pulp.

Carob Syrup, if you extract the sugar from the pods, you get the syrup.


Right, I'm not a hands-on baking expert, but some of the reasons your gluten may be having trouble are that

the gluten-containing flour makes up a quite small proportion of the overall mixture,

you have other ingredients (namely: the oil, the fat in the peanut butter, and the wheat bran) that act to minimise your gluten development and

there's very little moisture in your mixture

Not much flour
This one's pretty straightforward; the less of your dry mass of ingredients is wheat flour, the less glutenin and gliadin (the precursors to gluten) you have in the mix, so the less gluten can be formed. It's possible that the amount of flour you have now is sufficient though, if its gluten development is not further sabotaged by the other factors. If you want, you might replace some of the ground rice, wheat bran, and ground peanuts with more regular flour, though I'd probably try that after I tried some of my other suggestions.
Anti-gluten ingredients
Fat has the effect of both lubricating the components of gluten against one another, making them more likely to slip and not form the tough, elastic mesh we know and love from our breads, and also of isolating the gluten from water, which it needs to form properly; there's a reason gluten doesn't form in a bag of flour sitting in your pantry and that reason is there's no water to activate it. The fat can coat your glutenous proteins and make it harder for the water to get in there and do its thing. Wheat bran, separately, has a bit of fat in it, but also has a lot of 'sharp edges' on a small scale, which can slice through gluten strands as they form and inhibit, again, the protein mesh from forming. Cutting back on these ingredients might help the gluten develop somewhat, though I'd still try that after my third suggestion, namely:
Add some water
As I said, gluten needs water to develop; bread doughs regularly have flour-to-water mass ratios of 2:1 or even 3:2, which would correspond to baker's hydration percentages of 50% or roughly 70% respectively. I don't think this recipe needs that much water, but right now the only ingredient in your list that I can see is adding any  free water at all is the peanut butter, and even that isn't much. I imagine your dough for your past experiments has been very 'tender' and crumbly, barely held together by the fat content, more than the water and gluten. Try adding water, maybe a half cup at first, and probably more, until you have something you can vaguely knead. It won't be anywhere close to as stretchy as normal bread dough, due to all the non-flour ingredients, but there should be some amount of stretch to it.


Reducing fat content in thick chicken stock

Gelatin and fat are different.  Chill your stock.  If a layer of fat solidifies at the surface, remove it.  If you see no layer of solidified fat, you've probably eliminated as much as possible.


Nope. Haha :)

Brining will give you a softer texture. I have brined duck for varying times (depending on how much of a rush I was in) and brining really does help with the texture.

You can sear it beforehand, some Maillard reaction will help in flavour development, but when I cook sous vide for more than 8 hours, I don't bother: the meat will go green/grey, which means I need to sear afterwards anyway. So I usually just sear at the end.

If your meat doesn't have that much fat, or anything to keep it moist, it can go dry. Adding some butter, or maybe rendered Wagyu fat in the case of your steak, might help.

As for bacteria, the longer you cook sous vide, the more you kill off the nasties.

It so happens that Douglas Baldwin has a short bit about flat iron steak: http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Beef

Hope that helps :)


Whether solid or liquid, when covering anything you are inhibiting water from evaporating. In this case this is because the air in the coffeepot shares some of the moisture of the coffee, removing the lid allows this moist air to escape and be replaced by dry air, in turn this dry air extracts more moisture from the coffee. Now, knowing that coffee mainly consist of minerals and water, you can conclude that on the surface of the coffee these minerals start to clutter, because less water is present in between them. This explains the visual aspect.
Also you could argue that when the lid is off the top layer of the coffee cools down more rapidly, due to this warm (moist) air escaping. And while the coffee may be hot, it is the outer layer that is cooler and has the typical opaque visuals of a cold coffee.
I am speculating here, but Im pretty sure this is whats happening. I couldnt find anything to reference my ideas but hope its a help anyway.


Is this coffee ratio calculation correct?

Yes. Strangely, a standard "cup" of coffee (at least in the US) is 6 ounces (177ml). That's especially weird since most of us drink huge mugs. Go figure. So according to Folgers, to make 8 "servings" (48 ounces, 1.4 liters) you should use 8 tablespoons of coffee (42 grams) and 6 cups (48 ounces, 1.4 liters) of water. See also: Is a "cup" on a coffee maker always 6 oz? Is this a standard in the US?


I did some more additional research on this question and what I found out was that in the US all raw seafood is frozen due to FDA recommendations. The FDA rules are only recommendations, but the restaurants nearly all follow them, because of legal liability. In other words, if somebody got sick and the restaurant did not follow FDA "recommendations" it could open them up to a law suit.

There are two basic types of freezing. In high-end restaurants they use nitrogen flash-freezing, although this style is becoming more common even among common purveyors. In lower end restaurants or supermarkets, the fish is frozen with dry ice down to -5 F or below and kept that way for at least a week. This will kill parasites such as anasikiasis.

Once the fish is deep frozen and sealed from sublimation, it will last essentially forever, so the sushi you are eating in a restaurant might actually be months or even years old. To thaw it, it is soaked in water. Once it is thawed, it has to be prepared immediately.

In Japan freezing is less common and the most high-end restaurants serve fresh fish. This does result in a significant number of cases of parasite problems in humans.


Your assumption that there is nothing living inside the package is incorrect. Food irradiation does not sterilise the food. It is very, but not totally effective. Therefore, given enough time, the meat will still spoil.

Irradiation does effect the quality of the food, so I imagine a balance needs to be struck between safety and quality.


Does cutting meat into pieces make it go bad faster?

Yes, as you said, the increased surface area makes it go bad faster.
Not only that, but bacteria on top of the meat can now go to the middle with little resistance.

Consider the expiration date of ground beef and whole beef slabs.

Pork tends to go bad faster than beef, and freshly butchered pig smells of feces (especially right beneath the skin), but they still go bad faster.


Can I use whole eggs instead of egg yolks in a lemon bundt cake?

In principle, you'd probably be able to find a recipe that uses ~2 eggs with a similar net volume, but it may not be so easy to retrofit your existing recipe, as it's reasonable to expect that the recipe is relying on some property of the yolk (emulsifying power, fat content, etc). You may find the result satisfying, but it is likely that you will produce a different texture than the recipe intended.

Given my experience with cake baking, I can say it's likely easier to substitute whole eggs for yolks than, for example, trying to use whole eggs in place of whites. Egg whites foamed into a meringue structure can be used to provide structure to a cake in place of leavening, for example, but whole eggs will not replicate that structure without being separated.

On the other hand, since an egg yolk does not generally provide structure as much as it does flavor, other than the extent which emulsifying power constitutes structure, it's fairly likely that you can get a pleasing cake that will perhaps be less dense than the egg yolk-only version.

Keep in mind that the egg white constitutes approximately 2/3 of the weight of an egg; the density should be similar, however. So it's quite possible you'll need only 4/3 eggs to provide similar volume of egg product; it's up to you whether you'd want to split the egg, round up to 2 eggs, or use one egg plus one yolk.

I should add, though, that there are plenty of ways to use up surplus egg whites if you make the recipe as written:

Angel food cakes typically use egg whites and no yolks.
Meringues, and variants such as marshmallows and French macarons (and American macaroons), use egg whites.
Traditional sours, cocktails with lemon or lime, liquor, & bitters, typically use one egg white per serving; when shaken, the egg white foam adds a pleasant froth.

You can freeze egg whites in ice cube trays if, like me, your best intentions to use up the surplus are likely to be delayed for whatever reason.


Does adding salt help water boil faster?

No. The amount of salt you would have to add to water to make an appreciable difference is enormous.

Salt is added to water for various reasons: to season whatever is being cooked in it; to maintain colour; to maintain structural integrity.


What kind of sausage could I use as a substitute for Cumberland sausage?

If you read the Wikipedia article you'll see that the main flavour is pepper, both black and white,and that the meat is coarser than in some other sausages.

As it's for a casserole where the flavours have time to come together, I suggest you get sausages without herbs in (which should be easy enough). If possible they'd also have a coarser texture but that probably isn't on the label - you might have to choose based on what you're familiar with. Then add plenty of pepper to the sauce, early in the cooking. My recollection is that the white pepper flavour comes through, but I use black pepper quite heavily so maybe I'm used to that.

The other spices (and herbs though they shouldn't dominate) vary. This recipe includes sage, which other sources (and I) say is wrong, but the nutmeg, mace and coriander all contribute to the classic flavour. While I haven't made it, the recipe I've linked should give some idea of the proportions of spice to meat,assuming your sausages are quite bland to start with.

Edit: I should probably have been clearer that I mean links. Sausage patties aren't really a thing here in the UK. I've seen them twice. Once was McDonald's, the other may have been good but I can't remember.


Will chocolate eggs inside a cupcake melt when baked in the oven?

Whether the chocolate melts will depend on which chocolate you use. One with more cocoa butter will melt, while one made with more soy lecithin will retail its shape. That is why most chocolate chips contain soy lecithin. You will need to choose your chocolate according to what you want it to do in the oven.


Does the oil smell anywhere near rancid ?  You sure you had it in the fridge, not the freezer ?

Pure fat in the fridge keep a long, long, time... but I suspect some turkey juice got into it... would be fat-coated and not exposed to oxidation though...


There are a lot of variables here:

Oven temperature: As you mention, this definitely can be plenty off, but honestly most newer ovens are all right and meat isn't the most sensitive thing to baking temperature. You'd probably have had other issue before if it were the cause here.
Meat weight/shape: Bigger means longer cooking times. The weight is a good first approximation, but the shape matters too: if the recipe was based on a flatter piece of meat, it'd have cooked faster.
The starting temperature: If the recipe was based on room temperature meat, but yours was chilled or previously frozen, it'll certainly take longer.

I'd guess your issue was more than just oven temperature, but it's hard to guess whether it's weight/shape or starting temperature or both.

In any case, as everyone seems to already be aware, the only real way to be sure is a meat thermometer. You're never really going to be able to find recipes that match your exact situation well enough to avoid this kind of thing otherwise.


What is the best way to build a kitchen knife collection?

Buy a decent quality steel and sharpen the knives you have.
Replace the ones that your are least comfortable / use the most first.

Essentials:
Chefs knife 8-10" blade pointy tip helps but not essential. (think mines about 8)
Pairing knife 3" pointy tip.
Knife w/ Serated edge. Think tomatoes, bread (big one for bread, little one for tomatoes/veg)

Next:
Filleting knife (ultra flexible, sharp skinning and filleting fish)
Boning knife (less flexible - almost stilleto like knife for dealing with carcass deboning - meat)

On:
Carving both meat and cured fish.


Anything that keeps the product off the bottom of the pan, and allows steam to circulate, can be used to steam vegetables.  In this case a picture would be helpful, because fry sieves come is all different shapes and sizes.  As you point out, the key will be keeping the steam in the pot and around the vegetables.  You might try rolling a kitchen towel, placing it around the rim of your pot, and then placing the lid on top of that.  Be careful that the flame, or burner, and the towel do not come into contact. Do this after water is boiling and when you can turn the burner down.  Keep an eye on it.  This can form a seal in a steaming situation, where the lid alone won't do the job.


Can you refrigerate unbaked quiche for baking the next morning?

The crust would get soggy.

If you want to make a quiche in advance, you can make the shell and blind bake it, if required.  Wrap the shell in plastic wrap and refrigerate it over night.

You can make the filling custard and have it in a bowl (I would actually use a sealable container).  Eggs and cream are highly perishable, so you want to refrigerate them right after mixing.

Then, to bake your quiche, all you need to do is pour the filling into the shell and bake.

The Kitchn and Fifteen Spatulas also say you can pre-bake your quiche and then reheat it the next day for service.  Fifteen Spatulas even claims the flavors meld and improve.


Is it generally better to cut chicken breast with or against the grain?

Alton Brown talked about this on an episode of Good Eats, and here's what I remember:

If you cut with the grain, you'll end up with long strands of protein, like this:

------------------------
------------------------
------------------------

From what I understand, this means that it'll be pretty chewy.  Your mouth has to work harder to break the strands up into smaller pieces to be more easily swallowed.

If you cut against the grain, you get strands like this:

||||||||||||||||||||||||
||||||||||||||||||||||||
||||||||||||||||||||||||

You can see that the strands are much shorter, which means the meat will fall apart more easily (each strand doesn't have as much surface area to connect to adjacent strands) and will therefore be more tender.


Why is it that drinks but not food can have 0 calories?

Drinks are mostly water. If besides that it's just flavorings and artificial sweeteners, there's nothing with calories in it. So zero-calorie drinks are a really obvious thing to make: just take some existing drink, replace any sugar with artificial sweeteners, replace any actual food content (e.g. fruit puree) with flavorings, and it'll be zero calorie.

To make zero-calorie food, you'd need a solid edible zero-calorie thing to provide the bulk, and there's not an obvious choice for that, certainly not something common like water. On top of that, if you want it to be anything like the food it's based on, it has to be a very specific substance.

That said, it's not impossible. There are indigestible carbohydrates (fiber, generally), and some foods like shirataki noodles made basically completely out of that so they end up low- or zero-calorie.

I'm sure with enough modern industrial food science, we could make a lot more things in that vein. But it's definitely not nearly so easy as with drinks. And you wouldn't want to eat massive quantities; the water that makes up virtually all of a zero-calorie drink is easy to get out of your body, but giant amounts of indigestible solids won't be as pleasant.


Cooking guide for individual ingredients (not full recipes)?

Older cook books were based on this principle.
I have my old school cookbook and my mother has the one she bought when she was just married.
Likely you can pick one up second hand, if you prefer paper over internet. These are all rather thick books and the entries for the different items will be rather short.
You will have to allow for a change in taste. The book my mother has cooks all veggies till they are soft, online sources will mostly keep quite a bit of bite to them. Depending on how things changed in your area, there might also be changes about preparing meat. Or a lot of the things now for sale may not be in.
I use mine mostly to work out how long the different parts of the meal take, so they are all done at the same time.
A very traditional, UK, book is mrs Beeton's.
Contains everything they could put their hands on back then, but it is quite a while ago.


Pastry not "sticking" to beef Wellington

I never find that the pastry actually "sticks" to the contents when making a wellington. The meat will shrink slightly as it cooks so the pastry you have wrapped around it will have a certain amount of space between it and the contents.

Try cutting thicker servings and making sure you have a well sharpened, long bladed knife to cut it with. Use the entire length of the blade with long strokes to get through the pastry and meat as smoothly as possible. This should stop the pastry breaking or falling away, then when you serve it will at least appear to be stuck on.

Hope that helps!


Mixing vegetables in a blender (e.g. for soup) - does the percentage of fiber decline?

You seem to be mixing up three things in your question: the total amount of fiber, the degree of mechanical change to the fiber, and the health effects of eating fiber which has been mechanically changed.

For the first, the answer is clear cut: there is no change at all in the total amount of fiber. Blending is not a chemical reaction, it won't turn inulin molecules into anything else any more than grinding lead will turn it into gold.

For the second, it is unlikely that there will be a single answer. First you have to define exactly what kind of mechanical change you are interested in, and for any of these changes, to live with the fact that all accompanying variables (what blender you have, how long you turn it on, what are the other ingredients in the recipe...) will change the answer quite a bit. And you yourself found a specialist saying that people don't seem to have studied that.

The third is simply off topic here. Any answer based on the health effects of mushrooms, either telling you something about them directly, or choosing how to answer the amount-related second question ("there are many types of mechanical change, but only type X is interesting from a health point of view, so we will tell you the amount for type X") is out of scope and will get deleted.


Cooking temperature and time adjustments for cooking several whole fish in a conventional oven?

That depends on how large your oven is.  I certainly couldn't do 6 whole fish in mine, but then I have a 24" wide oven.  If you have a 36", it would be completely possible (these are standard US sizes; no idea what the equivalent would be in other countries).

Your main adjustment will be dealing with the extra mass to be heated by the additional fish, which will cause the oven to take some additional time to reheat.  Again, this depends on how hot (BTU) your oven is; a hot oven would overcome the extra mass in a few minutes, but an underpowered (for this purpose, anyway) oven might take an additional 15 or more minutes, which would not be good for the texture of the fish.

So, It Depends.  If you have a fairly powerful, large, high-end stove, I'd be ready to flip them at 10 minutes.  Less powerful ovens will take longer.

Also, if the fish are individually closer together than 1", you'll have the issue that the edges of each fish will be soggy from the moisture of the fish next to it, and they won't get good texture.  If they're touching even slightly, they will stick together.  You'll also want to try to ensure some drainage in the pan, lest all of the liquid runoff collect under one fish and make it slimy.


Split the squash in half lengthwise, drizzle with olive oil, and place face-down on a foil-covered baking sheet. I usually roast for 45 min to an hour, depending on the size of the squash. The inside 'noodles' can then be scooped out with a fork for an awesome pasta substitution. Enjoy!


Yes, you can. Adjust the power to medium-high, pour the milk into a Pyrex measuring cup (or similar), and drop a wooden implement (a disposable chopstick is ideal) into the cup.

Keeping the heat lower than maximum will give you more time to react when the milk threatens to boil over. The chopstick will prevent the rare but possible occurrence of superheating.

Or, you can just do it in any microwave-safe container, throwing caution to the wind. To scald milk, you want to bring it to just below the boiling point (82C, 180F). Watch it carefully, milk loves to go from still to boiling over in a nanosecond. When it first starts to bubble, it's done.

The microwave is actually an excellent way to scald milk. It is much easier to burn it on the stove.


Is there a method to pour espresso shots without damaging the crema?

If you're drinking the espresso shot on its own, you could drink it straight from the shot glass - or, better yet, buy an espresso cup, which should be about the same height as your shot glass. (A double-walled espresso cup will help keep it warm.)

If you're pulling espresso shots to be used in other espresso-based drinks (i.e., if you're adding some sort of milk or water to it), you could try an espresso brew pitcher, which basically looks like the sort of small pitchers you'd use to serve cream; they're normally about 3 oz, small enough that it would probably fit under your espresso machine. You could brew the espresso into the pitcher, then pour into your mug; the spout/lip of the pitcher should help preserve the crema once you figure out what the optimum pouring speed is. It should work similarly to pouring steamed milk: pour too fast, and the foam and milk come tumbling out all at once and you ruin the foam, too slow and the foam gets stuck in the pitcher. But if you pour just right, you should be able to pour most of the liquid first, and wind up with just enough liquid left to slide out the foam so it lands on top of your drink.


can whole milk with corn starch be used to make caramel sauce?

@Brooke, I'm not sure you understand how caramel sauce is made. A mixture of sugar and water is cooked (much the way candy is cooked), basically till it reaches a thread stage - 110° to 112°C (230° to 234°F).  After it's finished cooking, the cream is stirred in.

I'm not discussing method but only giving a basic idea. If you were to thicken it with cornstarch, you might make something palatable to put on desserts but it wouldn't be caramel. It's important to cook the sugar till it caramelized.  There's no brown sugar in it. You didn't mention that but others reading this in the future might think it's needed.

It's possible you could use evaporated milk instead of cream but there's no guarantee. I've not tried it. Yes, real caramel sauce is rich and sweet but that's the purpose of it and not a lot is meant to be eaten ...or often.


Is Bar Keeper's friend safe to use on cookware?

Yes it is completely safe. It is even recommended by the manufacturer.

  •  To get rid of stuck-on food or discoloration, and stains from using too high of a heat, we recommend cleaning your All-Clad with a product called Bar Keeper's Friend.

Bar Keeper's Friend even has a cookware specific cleanser, Bar Keeper's Friend Cookware.

I'm not sure of the difference between this and their regular cleanser, since they aren't required to list ingredients, but it is marketed specifically for cookware, and priced equivalently.

Other manufacturers recommend this product as well, as noted on the BKF Recommendations page.

You should also check out this question on how to remove brown stains. The accepted answer there is BKF. If you have something particularly terrible that BKF can't handle, you can always use gun cleaner, though I daresay your wife will say no to this. :-)


For the general case of cutting vegetables, I will always recommend a mandoline. Cutting with a mandoline vs. knife is like drawing a straight line with ruler vs. without - even though very experienced people can get good results both ways, using the mandoline is always quicker and more precise. And for anybody whose fine motoric skills are compromised, the mandoline adds even more value than for the average person.

But the main disadvantage of the mandoline is that it doesn't work so well with the "butt" of the vegetable. With a normal-sized mandoline, I usually start using the cap when the food is worn down enough to pass about 4-5 cm above the blade, and because the cap is fiddly when the food is too thin, I leave the last 1 cm unsliced. There is no problem with making paper-thin slices of something large like an apple; but I would be wary of slicing something smaller than a garden radish on the normal mandoline, and wouldn't attempt a single garlic clove.

The small garlic mandoline looks like it is designed to solve this problem, as a video of it shows that you can push it down inside a holding "cell" instead of having to rely on a nail to hold it in place as with traditional mandoline caps. But it might still lead to large butts (which you can of course process as per Kate Gregory's answer).

Another thing important about a mandoline is that it should stand on a surface by its own. Mine has a rotating frame in the back which lets it stand stable on the counter, like a tablet holder. I only have to move the vegetable while the mandoline remains stable. Some have holes in the bottom edge so they can be put on a bowl rim. I can't see such a mechanism in the one you linked. If it requires the use of both hands (hold it stable with one hand while slicing with the other), its usability will be diminished a lot, especially when you have trouble with muscle coordination. You should try to find a model which can stand stable on its own. The person in the video does not use such a mechanism, maybe you should write to the manufacturer and ask if it exists.


Will texture of fish cooked sous vide change, when cooking times increase?

Yes!  Cooking low temp absolutely degrades texture of fish.  I can't imagine that you would want a piece of salmon cooked for 10 hrs.  It would be mush....cooked, safe...but mush. Most fish...probably 20 minutes or so.  Any fish should just be cooked until done.   No more.  Otherwise texture is compromised and off putting.


Silicone does not dissolve in water.
The scum you see floating on the top looks very much like lime-scale. This is in your water supply. It will also give you an encrusted kettle & white/grey blobs stuck to the nozzle of the hot tap after some time.
You could try distilled water, or invest in some kind of hard water filtration system. As mentioned in comments, using cooled, boiled water may also help a little, as the boiling will drop some of the calcium out of the water… & stick it to your kettle element instead.
Many places in the world you can enquire with your local water company as to how hard your water supply is - how much calcium, basically - & they will advise on softening methods.


When seasoning a cast-iron pan, should you let the oil smoke?

You certainly should let the oil smoke - if you don't, you'll end up with a layer of oil, not a layer of seasoning.
Nothing special happens at 350 F. It is a fairly typical oven temperature, so if you have been looking at guides for oven seasoning, they probably suggest this temperature out of inertia.
I must admit that with my first iron pan, I started out like you, reading a ton of guides, trying to consolidate the information, combining it from knowledge from other sources, and feeling confused. Now, several years and pan purchases later, I would classify such behavior as clear overthinking. There is a wide range of methods (and temperatures) that work, but you do need a bit of hands-on experience to judge how it is going, and intervene if something is not right, and you can't replace it by reading. So just pick one(!) guide, follow it exactly, and use the pan. If the seasoning gets damaged, you will recognize it, and can strip and redo, until you have the skill.


Does sauteing onions produce alcohol or something similar to alcohol?

Some conditions can cause alcohol to be produced in the human body (look up auto-brewery syndrome). Sauteed onions are common enough that if they made people come up positive on alcohol tests, I bet we would all know it.


Is it safe to store oils, vinegars and other sauces in reused gourmet oil tins?

If the key issue is safety, I imagine the cans of the type you indicate are probably as safe as any others, assuming that you can clean them adequately.  Those corners at the top are out of the reach of a bottle brush.  They will have a lining to prevent them from being overly reactive.

Still, I would not use them as they are going to be very difficult to clean, and you cannot monitor the contents.

I would recommend getting an oil dispenser specifically for the purpose, such as this type:

They will let you see inside, and make it easy and clean to pour.  With a funnel, you should be able to fill them easily, and they don't have corners (at the top) out of reach of a bottle brush, making them easier to clean.

Still, this type of dispenser is not meant for long term or bulk storage, as many oils and condiments should not be exposed to light and air (although the dispenser minimizes air exposure, especially when it is below the fill line).  You would use them for working amounts that you would consume in a couple of weeks.

The containers tend to be made of glass, which you know is non-reactive.


How to "fill" a cake made from a cupcake recipe

A syringe (or baster, but a syringe will be better) A LOT of holes, and frosting to hide the holes (though they will be pretty small if you use a syringe.)

Given the comment that  "I don't want it to be like several filled donuts joined together where it's not consistent" in combination with a refusal to consider layering it, you need

a dense pattern of holes and
a measured amount of filling in each hole.

So, for a 9x13 pan, you might be looking at 8x12 = 96 holes an inch apart, starting 1/2 inch from the edge, each filled with 1/96th of your total amount of filling. Adjust as needed for other size cakes and how well an inch apart suits your idea of "consistent" - you could go to 17x25 holes 1/2 inch apart and 1/4 inch from the edge, but it's going to be rather tedious.

Or you could TRY a more cake-centric approach - half the batter, the filling, half the batter, bake. It might fail miserably, it might "work" for some value of "work," it might require changing the filling to get a better value of "work." Certainly marble cakes and pudding cakes do things of this nature at the batter stage before baking.


Chocolate pancakes using melted chocolate

Perhaps she could make "regular" pancakes and use the melted chocolate candy bar in place of traditional syrup?

Imagine, a stack of hot pancakes with melted chocolate poured over them... perhaps a fresh strawberry on the side.  oh my! I might have to make some for myself!


Edible? Absolutely yes.

Flavorful?  ....you should taste it and tell us.  Seriously, don't serve a meal to anyone, yourself included, until you've tasted it and it tastes at least decent.  (Not trying to be snarky here, that's literally the best cooking tip I was ever given)

Nutritious?  Probably somewhat--that chicken muscle is primarily protein after all.

Generally, soups are made with bones because bones can't be used for anything else, so it's more economical to get soup-flavor from bones (making the stock), then use meat for texture and to add variety to the liquid.  I was taught to put meat into soups in the last hour of cooking.  Many recipes I've seen call for taking out the whole pieces of meat and shredding it or pulling it before serving it in the soup.


Can self-raising flour be used in lieu of plain flour when making a roux for a bechamel?

Since you will only be using 1.5 tablespoon of flour for more than a cup of milk, it shouldn't impact the flavor. Also as there is no salt in the Sainsbury Self-raising flour, you will not need to adjust for salt. However, the alkalinity from the Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate as it heats and breaks down into Sodium Carbonate might impact the flavor. But, the acidity of the milk and butter should counter that, so it wouldn't be noticeable.


What's the best way to get a charcoal taste on a propane grill?

From what I see you have 2 options.

you can Add liquid smoke to your bbq sauce you use (if you use). Warning, a little bit is alot.
you could create a 'smoke packet' soak a handful of hickey wood chips, wrap in aluminum foil and poke some holes. Place this packet underneath the grill, once you get some smoke coming out, start cooking your meat


You can't bake bread to end up without crust, as it will always require high temperatures that will toast the outside (to varying degrees) without just dessicating the entire lump of dough.

For pure crustless bread, I would try to make something like a giant steamed dumpling.  There are a few examples (courtesy Jefromi and Jay's comments, respectively) of this in Chinese cooking: baozi, a filled dumpling using yeast dough; or the larger mantou, similar but without filling.

When steaming dough it will retain much more (nearly all) water, so a drier dough would be in order.  Generally in most bread-baking, the goal as Julio mentions is to get the inside to 200-210 °F, and by using steam at ~212 °F, you will get virtually no browning.

That said, crust can vary wildly, from very soft to very hard.  The softer crust breads I bake are usually done in pans at lower temperatures (325-375 °F) and often contain milk, eggs and or fat.  The more "crusty" breads are usually baked quickly at hot temperatures (>450 °F), but if done lower and slower it will change the crust significantly.


How can I make zucchini bread less moist?

For starters, I'd give pressing the grated zucchini with paper towels a shot.  You'd be surprised how much liquid you can get out of it.


Blender makes burning smell after liquid spilled on (maybe into) it

See if you can locate the source of the smell.  Blenders are generally designed so that a simple spill doesn't cause permanent damage, but if the connection between the cannister and the motor came partially apart when the seal broke, it is possible that the little doodad they use to interface was damaged.

I've had a burning smell before when using a cheap blender with a high-wattage motor; where the drive shaft connected to the canister was rubber or plastic and stripped, producing a burning smell and lots of little black pieces.

Edit: Burning smell common to Oster blenders

A casual Google search shows that a lot of the Oster blenders and immersion blenders will produce burnt-insulation smells in use, some from the first day.  In your case, it may be coincidence that it started when it did, or if there was ice in your smoothie that could have been enough strain to jiggle something out of alignment and start problems.

I'd start shopping for a new blender.  The burning smell generally means your blender's days are numbered; that smell is the motor or its insulation overheating, and death is soon to follow.  Repairing a burned-out motor will cost around the same amount as a new blender.


Exact proportions of sugar to water in sorbet

I don't have a recipe for a sorbet without any fruit contributing sugar, but I do have something very close: the lemon sorbet from The Perfect Scoop. It uses a cup of lemon juice, which contains only 6 g of sugar, along with 2.5 cups of water and 1 cup of sugar.

So 3.5 cups (828 mL) of water with 1 cup (200 g) of sugar should be good, or a ratio of 4:1 by weight.


Why do we boil whole spices when making masala tea?

Whole spices are suggested because they retain their flavor much longer, and thus tend to have richer flavors, even if they are not fully extracted.  The reason for this is that they have less surface area, so volatile flavor oils do not evaporate away as easily, and other parts of the taste do not get oxidized. They are also easier to strain out of the mixture, so they don't give an overpowering flavor or leave a gritty residue.

So, yes, you are wasting some of the flavor, but in exchange you get more of the subtle flavor compounds that ground spices tend to lose.  Note also that steeping in milk will extract considerably more of the flavor from whole spices, because a lot of the smell and taste comes from chemicals that are more soluble in fat than water.

As another option, instant chai blends dissolve completely, but tend to lack the more subtle flavors of the spices.


How many minutes in the oven per pound: stuffed turkey

Per Food Network, plan on 20 minutes per pound at 350F (177C), up to 30 minutes more for a stuffed turkey. Whatever you do, don't count on that silly pop-up thermometer thing, use a real thermometer. The thickest part of the thigh and the stuffing should register 165F (74C). Don't forget to let it rest for at least 30 minutes.

For what it's worth, stuffing a turkey is criminal. Check out what Serious Eats has to say.


Dry crispy skin on sourdough starter: is it mold?

I would guess it is just drying out.  I keep my covered.  If it is on the counter preparing to be used, it is in a jar with a loose lid.  If it is the refrigerator, for longer intervals between baking, it is in a sealed plastic pint container.


Can I keep mulled wine on the stove for longer

Yes, you absolutely can do it. This is how it is done at Christmas parties and commercial Christmas markets in Germany. Just keep it warm and it will be OK. You won't get much alcohol or taste loss.


Can I use low fat greek yogurt to substitute mayo in sauce that is going to be heated up (broiled)?

The yogurt will most likely separate and become watery under the broiler. Perhaps Mascarpone would be a good alternative. I use it whisked with a little half & half and a pinch of salt. It holds together better than mayo or other substitutes and doesn't overwhelm the flavor.


What are the downsides to "low and slow" when cooking meat?

The big downside, of course, is time. You don't always want to spend all day cooking something.

For relatively thin pieces of meat (a steak, a chicken breast, a fish fillet) there's just no need to take a long time making it. Worse, you risk making it so tender that it just falls apart. Pulled pork is a wonderful thing, but some days you want slices.

Other cooking methods can add more flavor. In addition to the Maillard reaction, flavorful fats in sautee can bring flavors of their own. Cooking on a grill introduces smoky flavors.

Low and slow maximizes tenderness, but there are other desirable textures. Frying brings crunchiness, which you can't get from low-and-slow. Baked fish takes on a firm texture. And so on.

Low and slow is a crucial tool to have in your arsenal, but it's not the only technique you should learn. Some days you just want to slap something in a pan.


IF you've made it with the correct amount of salt, it is likely fine.  Kimchi (all lacto-ferments) will continue to ferment.  It may get too funky for your liking, but it will not be a hospitable environment for anything that will make you sick. It will not "go bad", in the sense that it could make you sick.  If it was under salted, all bets are off.  If it gets slimy or is growing fuzzy mold, you probably want to discard.


What caused my homemade "Nutella" to go bad?

This is a basic fact of food safety. It doesn't matter how long each of the ingredients take to go bad separately. Prepared food will go bad soon unless you do something special to preserve it.

In your case, you had hazelnuts, which don't go bad because 1) they have too little water, and 2) bacteria cannot enter their tissue, which is made of intact cell walls. You also had chocolate, which doesn't go bad because it doesn't have enough water for bacteria to survive in it. Ditto for sugar. Then you mixed everything together and added water, the one thing which was missing in order to keep bacteria out. And you also pureed it, which destroyed the protective cell walls. Bacteria found your food and started multiplying in it.

To address your comment too: water by itself doesn't usually go bad, because it has all the water a bacteria needs, but not nearly enough food content. So, bacteria cannot survive in it, at least for a short time. Were you to leave out a mix of water and carbohydrates out, you'd notice vigorous bacterial activity - this is what fermentation is. But there are some classes of bacteria which can survive on the minimal amount of debris caught by a water reservoire sitting around for weeks, and one of them is indeed pathogenic, causing a dangerous form of pneumonia. So, water does deteriorate, just not as quickly as the usual types of wet food, which are hospitable to many more pathogens.

In general, all human food is great food for bacteria, often including pathogenic bacteria. You have to take something away to make it inedible for bacteria. Any mixture of two shelf stable foods can turn out to add exactly what the foods separately lacked, and make it a bacterial breeding ground again. So, never assume anything about food shelf life based on the shelf life of its ingredients!


Those are called "Eyes" by cheese makers. The appear when bacteria convert lactic acid into propionic acid and carbon dioxide, or metabolise citrate.

These bacteria occur in dairy products, though they can also be added to the curd to get the characteristic eyes. See for example Propionibacterium freudenreichii on Wikipedia.


I had to do some research1, but: yes, hop leaves are edible, e.g. as salad.

You might be better off with tender young leaves, but there are no critical ingredients that should deter you from giving them a try. Commonly one would expect the leaves to be used in a salad, but for older leaves I'd be tempted to add a heating step, like adding a handful in a stir-fry or omelette - think spinach or chard, for example.

As for the chemical compounds that influence the medicinal properties 2, the contents are extremely low in the leaves, so unlike for shots or flowers there is no limit to the amount you can safely consume.

1 Sources (in German, Endlish souces were less fruitful):

http://www.vivalranger.com/index.php/wissensdatenbank/essbare-pflanzen/126-hopfen-wilder-humulus-lupulus
http://selbstbewusstgesund.de/ernaehrung/essbare-wildkraeuter-3/

2 We explicitly do not discuss health and nutrition here, but some foods should be consumed in limited amounts nevertheless. For hops, that is mainly due to ingredients with calming and estrogen-like properties.


It could be sand, used to weight the handle. The weight is an important part of the design. I assume some manufacturers use sand instead of just thicker/heavier steel because it's cheaper and easier to manufacture.

For proof that at least some whisks are made like this, here's a whisk with Amazon reviews that mention sand and even a picture:

It's just inert weight. It's not going to come into contact with your food. I guess if you get a defective one and the handle comes open and dumps sand in your food, you'd have to throw it out, but otherwise it's not really anything to worry about.


When pureeing tomatoes for a fresh tomato sauce, should you throw out the juices or not?

I would not throw any part away.  There is flavor in all parts of the tomato, particularly the interior (see my comments under an alternate response below). Plus, if you are pureeing first, don't you think the flavors are being mixed, resulting in the loss of at least some flavor if you remove some part of the mixture? Simmering does indeed allow water to evaporate, but, in doing so, it concentrates flavor.  How much flavor is gained or lost?  I am sure this will depend on the variety, seasonality, and ripeness of your tomatoes.


The crystallising of honey depends on the amount of glucose (sugar) you have in the honey. Crystallisation occurs in solutions that are (like honey) oversaturated with sugars. Less saturation means less likelihood for crystallisation while water presence affects the distribution and size of crystals.

In terms of moisture you have two types of crystallisation:

If moisture exceeds ~14% large crystals form at the bottom of the container and the honey seems otherwise OK. That is indicative of moisture excess in the honey which is considered of inferior quality.
If moisture is less than that, the honey crystallises uniformly. That is a normal phenomenon.

Now aside from the way it crystallises, depending on the glucose content you have faster or slower times for its crystallisation. The lengths I quote refer to Mediterranean (Greek) climates. In Scotland, every honey I've ever brought from Greece apart from fir honey has crystallised within weeks. So in terms of glucose:

A high glycose content of ~40% would have the honey crystallise within 2 months from harvest
A moderately high glucose content of ~35% would take 6 months to a year to crystallise
A honey with normal glucose content of ~30% would take a couple of years, and
A honey with low glucose content <30% would not have enough sugars to crystallise (that's my fir honey and my honey of choice)

My reference is a website about honey (in Greek) cross-referenced with the answer I got from a producer when I had the same question.

So to answer your question, your honey doesn't have enough sugar to crystallise.

But even if it does, worry not. Bain-Marie (don't microwave!) it for 1/2 an hour and the sugar will melt its way back into its uniform honey goodness.


Some doughs melt when heated, esp high fat doughs which rely on eggs/protein hardening, starch drying/thickening, or similar effects, and not gluten for structure.

And once the dough is molten, anything significantly lighter per cubic cm than itself will rise, anything significantly heavier will sink.


GIving that alcoholic taste to yeast-leavened cakes (panettones)

Yeast naturally creates alcohol from the sugars (gluten) found in bread flour. However, this probably won't be enough to leave an 'alcohol' taste, depending on the amount of yeast used and the amount of time the dough is left to leaven. You'll find that sourdough bread has more of that alcohol taste (and is also a lot fluffier) than a quick 2-hour no-knead bread, for instance.

Traditionally, the dough for Panettone is cured for a couple of days, which results in the fermentation leaving that alcohol taste you're familiar with. However, some Christmas fruit cake recipes (especially the ones in South Africa) do ask for alcohol. Although Panettone doesn't contain alcohol traditionally, you could soak the fruit pieces in liqueur overnight. This is a lot quicker than curing the dough for a couple of days. Perhaps try this recipe and see if you like it more.


It most likely will not work well to do that. Unfortunately, baking powder (in this case in your self-rising flour) starts the chemical reaction that gives cakes their lift as soon as the powder meets liquid. If the baking powder is single action, all of the bubbles are created when the water meets liquid and the heat of baking doesn't really play a role. If the baking powder is double action, some of the leavening reaction occurs when the batter is mixed, the rest of it happens while baking. So, if your self rising flour is made with single action baking soda, the cupcakes will fail if the batter is held overnight. If your self rising flour is made with double action baking powder the cupcakes will not have all of the lift they should, but may be OK. I have many times saved pancake batter for 24 hours and used it with no problem (flour, double action baking powder, baking soda, salt, buttermilk, eggs), but optimal lift isn't as crucial in a breakfast pancake as it would be for cupcakes.

That thought does present a possible "out of the box" solution to your problem. Could you cook your leftover batter on the stove while the cake is baking? I would try one in a skillet with a lot of butter, flip it when it's good and bubbly. I don't know where you are from or if pancakes are something with which you are familiar, but pancake batter and cake batter are very similar. They wouldn't be cupcakes, they would be something else entirely, but they could be very good.

If you decide to make cupcakes with day-old batter and your self rising flour is made with single action baking soda, or you're not sure, you should make your own "self rising flour" to give yourself the best odds. For 2 cups (`225 grams) of cake or pastry flour (soft, lower protein than all purpose) add 3 tsp double action baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt.

I'm assuming that you've considered cooking the cake and the cupcakes simultaneously in the oven and you have reason to not do that.

(Edited after Joe's comment about single vs double action baking powder)


The best way to clean a French Press coffee maker

I have a small sieve (like the one pictured) that I use for this purpose and it is very quick and easy. Slosh water in the press, pour through the sieve and dump grinds in the trash!


Why does boiling water make dough taste sweet?

Flour is mostly starch, and starches are long chains of sugar molecules. When you add hot water to starches they gelatinize and burst, and these gelatinized starches soften the dough. Gelatinization works faster at higher temperatures.
There are enzymes in the flour which break the starch down into sugars, and they work more efficiently at high than room temperature as well, say 65°C.
Both these processes work at lower temperatures, but they work faster a higher temperatures, which is why adding boiling water gave you that result. At room temperature gelatinization works faster than enzymes action breaking starch down into sugars, so letting the dough rest will soften the dough without making it much sweeter.


What is a stable frosting for a cake that will be in warm temperatures at an outside party?

Here is an interesting entry from King Arthur Flour, who should not have a major stake in the game.  They hit a bunch of varieties with a hair drier to see how they held up.  Their test though was only on holding up to the heat, not safety though.  One could suggest using pasteurized eggs as an option though to get around safety concerns.

Quick summary, they liked Italian Buttercream among the buttercreams they tested.  Shortening over butter helps, but I am in the group who really dislikes the taste of "buttercream" made with shortening over butter, but would go by taste on that.  Of the ones they tested though, cream cheese frosting held up the best, so if the cake is one that would match with cream cheese it might be a good choice.

Fondant is another option which may hold up well to heat though personally, I find it for looks only, not taste.


Macerating breaks down the fruit and extracts the juices. Especially when making jam, it can expedite the process, allowing you to prep the fruit a day in advance. While some recipes say to macerate for several hours, letting it sit overnight can produce better results, particularly when using dried fruits.


Do not EVER refrigerate a kombucha scoby, as this will weaken several of the bugs comprising it and make it more susceptible to mold.
You can actually just let it keep going past 10-14 days. The tea will continue to acidify and the scoby will be happy hanging out in it. Just leave it where it won't be disturbed, as always.
Here's an article
which talks about maintaining scobys in your "hotel" long-term.


Steaming oysters without shucking meat v. just shucked oyster meat?

As long as you make certain you keep the oyster whole and you keep water/liquor form the oysters, one way or the other is more or less equivalent.
The shell, at that point is just a small dish.
Lot of high end restaurants (L'atelier Robuchon for example) will shuck the oyster and prepare them separately and then plate the dishes by placing back the prepared oysters on the cleaned shells for presentation; this help them perfectly prepare the oyster.
Lot of restaurants will also shuck the oyster and just add some ingredients directly on the shell with the oyster before steaming (or broiling)


AFAIK, there are not herbs in ricotta, but there's nothing preventing you to add herb to it, I do it all the time when using it on toasts; and would be acceptable for a lasagna.


The primary difference between a cheap skillet and a more expensive one is going to be thickness, both of the sides and the bottom. Thick sides are not really critical, but a thick bottom can be very beneficial, promoting more even heat distribution (eliminating hot spots that can scorch food) and retaining heat. Typically an expensive skillet's bottom will be laminated with stainless steel on the outside and a really good heat conductor like aluminum or copper on the inside.

Heavier pans also resist warping, which is a common problem on thinner, cheaper pans.

Additional differences are things like better handles, ovenproof handles (not much of an issue with non-stick), and sturdier attachment of the handles. Non-stick coatings tend to be of a higher quality and more durable. Overall durability tends to be better, as a pan that is mostly stainless steel will just resist dents and dings better than one that's primarily aluminum.

And of course the more expensive ones generally look nicer, for what that's worth.

Ultimately, it comes down to whether the pan can do the things you want. If you're just scrambling eggs, a light pan will likely do you fine. If you're trying to sear a steak or brown chicken breasts, you may find your pan won't get the job done. Likewise, if you are trying to reduce a sauce in a thin pan, you may find that it boils unevenly and some parts are in danger of scorching while others haven't started to boil.

With all that said, it really is up to you to judge how much more you can spend and still feel it's "worth" the money. You can go through a lot of thin, light Safeway pans for the cost of one better one. I think it's a little wasteful, preferring to get items that will last a lifetime, but we all have our priorities. It's possible to get a pan that has many of the qualities of a $150 pan for substantially less money. A $75 pan is likely to be much nicer than the Safeway $35 special, and may be all the improvement you ever need. Your first couple of forays into pans may leave you wanting a better one each time, but you may stop upgrading long before reaching the $150 level. Going through this once with a do-all pan like a skillet is a nice way to figure out just how nice a pot you personally require before buying a whole set.


Is it safe to add garlic powder to sesame oil?

The concern with garlic in oil leading to botulism is about long-term storage, usually in the context of garlic oil as a 'shelf-stable' condiment; the botulism needs time to grow in the anaerobic environment provided by the oil. If you're making a marinade and using it within a few hours or a day or two, as marinades tend to be, and especially if you're keeping it in the fridge, as marinades tend to be, you should be fine.


Pre baked cake won't go dry just from being baked again, though it might be easy to overbake the new cupcake, as Joe mentioned, since the amount of batter is much less.

Cake doesn't change just from being overcooked (well, browning happens - but I mean not becoming tough or anything) - the drying out is purely mechanical, and reversible.  Many baked goods can be reconstituted from being dried or stale by the addition of heat and moisture - so if your cakes were dry to begin with, the re-baking should actually help.

So, the moist batter you surround your cake in will keep it cool and moist while the batter itself bakes, and also layer on top of the cake to prevent browning from direct heat.  The inner cake will only become dry if there's no moisture left in the batter - and moisture travels back and forth, once the batter is cooked, so both will be moist or dry to the same degree.  As long as the cupcake isn't itself overbaked, the inner cake will be just fine.

As for chocolate, that's kinda a different question altogether and you'll get better answers if you ask it separately - but in brief, the most important thing about keeping chocolate suspended in batter is the thickness of the batter, with the weight of the chocolate coming second.  A melting disk, should be thinner and lighter than a Hershey kiss (unless I'm recalling a different thing), and the wider and flatter shape should be easier to suspend in the batter - that is, if it drops through the batter to the bottom, the kiss would also have settled to the bottom.


Piping whipped cream icing vs buttercream

You could try adding a piping gel, such as the one found here, which contains no eggs or dairy.

Alternatively, the colder you keep the whipped cream icing, the better it will hold its shape. You could refrigerate the icing until immediately prior to serving which would help.


Why is gnocchi a dumpling and not a noodle?

The primary difference between a dumpling and a noodle, besides shape, is leavening.  Dumplings usually have either egg or baking powder to make them lighter.

There's considerable bleedover in terminology here. It's reminiscent of the difficulty of defining "chowder". You're always finding a counterexample. I wouldn't be surprised if someone came up with something called gnocchi, gnochs, gnocchetti, that has no leavening. I can think of two myself.

Gnocchetti alla romana are semolina "dumplings" sometimes leavened with egg, particularly when they contain spinach, but more often not. Gnocchetti sardi are dry pasta shapes that kind of look like thin potato gnocchi.


Can you bake or grill well done lamb chops that are also soft?

No, you absolutely cannot. "Well done" is primarily a description of texture, and that texture is not soft and juicy. When you bake meat (or any other protein), it goes through many different stages, depending on the temperature, and you stop when you have reached the desired texture. If you stop at the texture of "well done", you can never return back to the soft texture of "medium rare".


Kevin's answer is close: a slurry is best, but the mechanism and technique are different than starch based thickeners. With starches, the cells explode when heated, but xanthan gum simply needs to be hydrated, and it can be hydrated at any temperature.

Mix a smaller amount of xanthan gum in water in your metal cup, add water, and blend it with your immersion blender. For your slurry, you're looking for a consistency which is much thicker than your sauce, but still thin enough to be able to stir in fairly easily. Like you said, add too much and you'll end up with a pan of tomato snot. A one percent mixture (1 gram of xanthan gum per 100 grams of liquid, by weight) will be pretty thick, even if the starting liquid is water. A little dab will do ya!

Good luck!


Identifying a white crispy garnish to a pork dish

I haven't got time to make a real answer but here's a recipe http://m.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/pork-rinds-chicharron.html

The reason it's white is all to-do with light diffusion and the fact the brown 1mm thick crisp pork skin has just been stretched to over 1cm thick.

Think... blowing up a balloon, it get lighter in colour as it gets bigger.


What method should be used for caramelizing chopped lime?

Use a sharp knife that can chop the lime without squeezing and drawing any juice from it.

Sprinkle a tiny bit of honey or sugar if the lime decides it doesn't want to caramelize at all. It will balance the sourness of the lime as well.


What fish can be used for 'minced fish' in Chinese cooking?

I use a combination of Basa and what the shops mark as Spanish Mackerel (the basa usually being frozen in Australia) ... When fresh is available, I like to use Ling fillets.

I have had varied success with whiting fillets... Frozen whiting can sometimes have no flavor whatsoever.

Someone else suggested monkfish and butterfish.

Tuna made for an interesting meatball, and I used that with a Tom Yum preparation.

Addition of shell fish such as prawns also make a nice variation.


How do I know by taste, if ham is bad. I have had pre cooked ham cooking in a slow cooker on warm for 3 days

I fully endorse the "when in doubt, throw it out" doctrine, although I personally wouldn't consider a sweet taste to be doubt. As rfusca wisely points out, you can't taste or smell several kinds of contamination, and the ones that you can taste or smell, are usually sour, bitter, or generally pungent.

I suggest you have a look at the following question:

Is it bad to leave the crock pot on “warm” (not low) all day?

If your crock pot has really been on the whole time, then it might be perfectly safe. You need to ascertain what the "warm" temperature is. Assuming you still have it running, just stick a thermometer in and see for yourself.

Anecdotally, I've heard reports of crock pot "warm" temperatures ranging from 150° F all the way to 220° F. Very unlikely that newer crock pots are anywhere near that high end, but anything above 140° F is cooking temperature and will kill bacteria rather than allowing them to breed. So if your thermometer test reads higher than that, it's probably still safe even after all this time. I can't speak for the quality of something that's been cooking for 3 straight days, but there's no accounting for taste...

On the other hand, if your thermometer reads anything lower than 140° F, then you should throw out what you have and stop doing this from now on. A truly "warm" but not "hot" temperature like 100° F is practically a giant incubator, even worse than just leaving it at room temperature.

P.S. You should read the manual for your particular crock pot, because even though it might be safe for the food, I'm not sure if it's safe for your pot. Many of them come with recommendations not to use the warm setting for more than 4 hours, and don't really explain why. Possibly, they think the temperature might not be enough to guarantee food safety, although another (to me more likely) possibility is that it can stain, corrode, or weaken the pot.


Sounds like Daikon Radish to me. It is commonly found in Korean supermarkets and looks slightly like parsnip. Some can grow longer than 2 feet.

Another possibility is Parsley Root. These look very similar to Parsnips but are generally not as bulbous near the top, longer and more slender.


Add gelatin to soup as a replacement for stock?

I'm looking for the online reference, but I remember reading in Cook's Illustrated that they were able to substitute a bit of gelatin to mimic the mouth-feel of homemade stock. I did find a beef stew recipe that used gelatin.

Based on how you described your recipe, I would say that the long cooking of chicken bones is indeed what's missing. You might get a better result if you roast your chicken breasts and vegetables before cooking them in the broth.


How do I know a beaten egg has “set” while cooking stovetop rice pudding?

How hot is the pudding?
At or near boiling the egg will be set by the time you can stir it in, certainly by the time you can serve it.
One egg in a couple of pints of piping hot (semi) liquid will be at temperature almost immediately.


Difference between two cleavers - straight back vs curved

So, as I couldn't find anything online regarding this. I asked the butcher I work with.

He also can't give a definite answer, he does however have a collection, including a cleaver similar to the Curved Front. He recons as the front rarely takes a pounding like the main flat section, it's almost always sharper. As a result if for example he is cleaning the meat off Beef Ribs for mincing. He'd use the front part for slicing down the bone then the main section to chop any bone for other uses (Gravy etc). He does point out it's rare he would do this as he almost always has a boning knife to hand so just uses that, but if in a rush to do something for a customer it's just handy.

Again this is what he uses the front for, not necessarily the intended purpose. A reviewer for that particular knife seems to use the front for cutting pizza... hmm. (here)


Any relatively firm-fleshed fish can be cured with salt & sugar, including by the speed method Chef John describes.  This would include "snapper" (usually actually rockfish in the USA), swordfish, mahi-mahi, striped bass, or halibut.  It would not include sole, flounder, trout, or perch, all of which are too delicate to slice small or brine.  Cod could theoretically be handled this way, but I don't think you'd appreciate the result; there's a reason you never see cod sushi on a menu.

However, fish other than salmon doesn't really need to be brined at all to be used in sushi.  Salmon is generally brined because it can otherwise carry parasites that infect humans and can survive freezing.  Most ocean-going fish do not.  So you could just slice, rice, and eat.


What's the best way to cut strawberries to consistent thinness, for dehydrator?

Use an egg slicer to cut your strawberries. Google "buy egg slicer" for a vast selection to choose from


In order to store yeast for that period of time it has to be make inactive, and the process to do that yourself is challenging, time consuming, and you'd need specialist equipment. It would be prohibitive in both time and cost, far above just buying yeast.

You can of course make a starter by mixing equal amounts of flour and water plus some yeast, this will keep the yeast alive by feeding it, and you can keep it alive indefinitely by feeding it once per week. You add some of the starter to your bread and it supplies active yeast.


Blueberries are generally low-pectin fruits, so many jam recipes and jam making guides specifically call for adding pectin. That said, some do not - but these use the whole pureed fruit. When you filter out the seeds and skin, you remove much of what pectin there is in blueberries naturally, leaving you with runny jam.

The solution, then, is to add pectin or some other fruit that contains some.

As a note, unripe fruit, including blueberries, often has more pectin than ripe, but if you're using frozen blueberries, they're likely to be picked at their peak and rather low in pectin.


What are the 3 vents / weights on this Chinese pressure canner?

Which valve is which?
See labels below:

When to use the auto valve?
According to user manual Page 6, Section 5.7, you are supposed to move the handle on the auto valve at least twice a week to make sure it doesn't get stuck. Other than that, just leave it alone and let it do its thing. It will automatically maintain your pressure and temperature. I guess the auto valve is a calibrated device and they don't want you to touch it too often which would wear out the spring, so they give you the manual valve for routine pressure release.
Additionally, if you see pressure rises to 0.175MPa but no steam comes out of the auto valve, then it's considered a malfunction and you should have the auto valve checked and repaired(5.6, Page 6).

When to use the manual valve?
Page 4, Section 4.3 and 4.4 says you are supposed to bend the tube down and slide it into the slot on the pot. And you should let the manual valve open until 1 minute after steam comes out of it, to purge the air. This is why you can not use the auto valve for this job: it doesn't have the tube so can not efficiently purge air from the bottom of the pot.
Page 5, Section 4.7 recommends you don't open the manual valve until 2 minutes after pressure fully drops to avoid shooting hot water out of it. Also, rapid change in pressure and temperature can cause damage to the contents in the pot. However, if you don't want to wait, you can release the pressure immediately after cutting the power, just be careful(4.6, Page 5).

When to use the safety valve?
The manual didn't mention anything except you should have it checked every 6 months. So just leave it alone and hope you never have to activate it.

(This thing is actually a medical sterilizer. As is any electric medical devices the user manual actually includes a full EMC test standards(GB/T 17626) and results).


I'm from Denmark but I've lived in so many other places. Here's a list of things that usually go well:

leverpostej, similar to foie gras, tastes very good on rye bread.
marineret sild, marinated herring, also very good on rye bread.
flæskesvær, crunchy salty pig skin :-) people say it tastes a lot better than it sounds, and though I personally disagree, my foreign colleagues like it.
"proper" (strong) liquorice like Haribo's Super Piratos or Leaf's Lakrisal - because anything with less than 6% ammonium chloride is for wusses!
various kinds of cheese and bread, as has been said already.
wienerbrød, Danish pastry, especially kringle and spandauer are delicious.
makrel i tomat, canned mackerel (fish) in tomato juice, yet another delicious treat on rye bread.


What is the layer of grey stuff on the bottom of salmon?

It is coagulated albumin leaked from the flesh of the fish.  Not terribly inviting, but not harmful either.


What are the best type of skewers to use for ground meat kebabs?

Easy!  You want fairly broad, flat skewers, which will prevent the meat from rotating around the axis, like these:

Quite appropriately, I've seen these referred to as "Persian-style" skewers.  Not having a decent Middle Eastern grocery nearby, I instead use flattened bamboo skewers that I can find at my local Asian market, which look similar but smaller, like so:

As with any other wooden skewer, you'll want to soak these first so that they don't burn.

The main thing is that the skewers be significantly flat.  Stainless steel versions like this which are quite thin look nice, but they don't grip any better than a round model does.

Alternatively, you can find double skewers which do pretty much the same thing, like these:

If, like me, you bought a massive pack of cheap, round bamboo skewers before you figured this out, you can approximate by using two of them running parallel.  This is basically the same concept as the double skewer without them actually being connected.  The only disadvantage here is that you can find up with twisting if you're not careful, and they're a bit more finicky to use.

It goes without saying that any of these options work very well with just about anything else that you care to skewer and toss on the grill.


Oops left baby back ribs on warm instead of low for 7 hrs

You have essentially incubated the food for 7 hours, positively encouraging growth from any existing fauna or pathogens.   You should definitely discard.


Why does coconut milk separate in coffee?

Regular milk is an emulsion - a liquid [fat] suspended in another liquid [water], in its simplest terms.

Coconut milk is a suspension - a solid suspended in a liquid.

Mixing an emulsion into another similar liquid base tends to remain emulsified.

Mixing a suspension into another liquid, there is a distinct possibility that the two will re-separate, due to the heat-shock, & form clumps.

Perhaps if you pre-heated the coconut milk, it may tend to mitigate that, though your tests would seem to say otherwise.
I'd hesitate to say add a thickener first, such as cornflower, & preheat - this would bind it, but I'm not sure the result would be pleasant.


Good question! Yes, if you use a 50/50 mix to feed your starter then your approach will give you the same balance and you will get the same hydration, providing you use the same flour blend as when you feed your starter. If you use a different ratio to feed your starter then stick to whatever ratio that is.
This approach will slow down your proofing for sure, maybe more than you intend. It's not linear, as in you want to slow down your proofing by 2/3 so you remove 2/3 of your starter,  so do this when you have lots of time to study it. Take detailed notes and see how you get.
Another approach to slowing fermentation is to control for temperature, i.e. to put it in the refrigerator. I'd prefer this approach to reducing the starter as I'll be starting with a good batch of yeasts and giving them more time to work. Reducing the yeast at the start will mean it takes longer to get going, but also a lot longer to see the benefits of that culture.