The idea of cooking a turkey upside down is that the fat from the fattier bits of the bird (the legs etc) runs down into the breast. As a crown has none of these bits, there's no point in cooking it upside down.

By all means butter and bacon it though - turkey breast is very lean so needs all the fat it can get to keep it moist, so use good fatty bacon.

Take it out of the fridge a good hour before you cook it, preheat the oven to 180C, and cook for 20 mins per pound (454g) + 20 mins. Baste regularly, but be aware that every time you open the oven door the heat drops dramatically, so don't be overzealous - once every 20 minutes should be ok. Then let it rest for half an hour, on a warm plate, under foil. This will help with juiciness.


Does brown rice or white rice expand more when cooked?

I'd say the answer will depend a lot on the exact type of rice, as well as cooking method, and how much you might "fluff" it afterward.  I've seen internet sources that claim brown rice expands more, and other internet sources that say white rice expands more.

For a more precise measurement, I went to the USDA food composition database.  There you can find measurements of nutrients by volume for cooked and raw rice.  Although volume measurements are difficult for things like cooked rice, I figure if there's any resource that attempted consistency in measurement, it's probably something like this.

Anyhow, what I did was compare the calories listed for 1 cup raw vs. 1 cup cooked rice in various instances from the USDA nutrient list.  I assume there aren't a lot of calories randomly lost during cooking (or at least any minimal loss is at similar rates).  Note that the standard USDA preparation seems to be to cook until all water is absorbed (for example, in data sheet here), rather than methods like boiling in excess water and draining, which could result in more nutrient loss.

So, by comparing the calories per cup in raw vs. cooked, we can get a sense of the relative expansion of each variety of rice.  Here's the data for calories per 1 cup portions, along with my calculated expansion ratio.

Brown rice

Long-grain: raw 679, cooked 248 = ratio 2.74
Medium-grain: raw 688, cooked 218 = ratio 3.16

White rice

Long-grain: raw 675, cooked 205 = ratio 3.29
Medium-grain: raw 702, cooked 242 = ratio 2.90
Short-grain: raw 716, cooked 266 = ratio 2.69
Glutinous: raw 684, cooked 169 = ratio 4.05

Bottom line is that the shape and type of rice grain seems to matter just as much as whether it's brown vs. white.  Again, there are bound to be inaccuracies here, so I'd only take these figures as estimates.  But there doesn't seem to be a significant trend that brown rice always expands more or less than white.


How can brown stains be removed from pots and pans?

Bar Keeper's Friend in powdered form and some elbow grease will solve this problem. The first time you tackle it, it can be a real pain to get the pan cleaned up, but if you keep up with it regularly after that, it's not to bad. Great cleaning supply.


It's not the mushrooms that are important, it's the "crowding" -- basically, you don't want so much food in the pan at once that the bits are packed tightly, or in more than one layer.

This is especially important for items that give off a lot of water as they cook (like mushrooms), or that you're trying to get to crisp up, as you want to leave space for the moisture to evaporate and escape without causing the food to steam.


Can I use less sugar for making this bread?

You can make a bread following this recipe, but reducing or omitting the sugar. Your bread will rise just fine, as the yeast can feed on sugars in the flour, as you suggest. The same is true for the butter and milk. Lots of tradititional 'simple' bread recipes use only flour, water, salt and yeast. You might have to slightly change timing and kneading procedure to get a good result.

That said, you will alter the flavour (and probably texture) of the bread. Whether you will like the result as much as the original recipe you can only find out by trying.


Cooking on the stove: what is "too hot" for a pan?

Flick water on the pan.  If it just sits there, it's not hot enough.   If it combines into balls and skates around on the pan, it's either too hot or just right for a wok or blackening something.  If it sizzles and evaporates within a couple of seconds, it should be good for a normal sautee or sweat.


What to do when too much butter added to my puff pastry dough?

Try slicing the butter more thinly and adding it in more layers. I use a handheld cheese slicer for a nice, thin cut. Alternatively, try freezing the butter and grating it, then sprinkling it on in a thin layer when instructed to apply it to the recipe.


If it looks clean and it's been sitting in a box I would just run it through my regular washing routine.  Unless it was stored dirty or with some hazardous materials there is no reason to do anything more.


Substituting buttermilk powder for buttermilk

Cakes are chemically leavened with baking powder or baking soda. They have a narrow pH range in which they work.

Pineapple juice is very acidic. It probably reacted with your leavening and deactivated it.

You can use buttermilk powder for the cake, but you have to mix it with water, not fruit juice. Then it will work as usual.


How can I prepare Jack fruit to simulate the texture of pork?

I believe you, as I've had "pulled pork" jackfruit before at a restaurant.  I haven't made it myself, but here's a recipe.

The essentials seem to be to use canned, brined jackfruit, rinsed clean and squeezed free of water, then slow cooked for about an hour.  This recipe calls for "pulling" the jackfruit apart with a couple of forks, but this may be different from the texture you experienced in that stew--perhaps you'll get this texture that way, or perhaps you'll need to slow cook it for longer without pulling?


(from what I can see on the internets)
Just continue what you are doing.
Just before using:
Softly brush off dirt and debris and rinse for a couple of seconds under running water.


Ceramic crock pot - No cracks, but looks like coating is spotted. Can I fix it?

I found this question asked and answered in... ahem a different forum. The gist is that they recommend letting it soak in white vinegar and warm water before scrubbing and it should come right off. A couple other posters recommended a product called Bar Keepers Friend for cleaning.


I don’t think it is possible to perfectly preserve both crisp crust and moist crumb. There is always going to be a degree of equalisation of moisture between crust and crumb.

The only way to have the experience of fresh baked bread every day is to bake it every day. That said, one of the joys of sourdough is its characteristic ageing. It’s perfect with butter on day one, by day two it’s good for sandwiches and by day three it’s perfect for toasting.

My preferred method for storing is wrapped in a cotton cloth and kept in a metal breadbin.


How can I alter this high-protein brownie recipe?

Your goals here contradict each other. The reason that a brownie has a brownie-like texture is that it is made out of brownie batter. When you start leaving out some ingredients and pushing different ingredients into the batter, the texture of the resulting product changes. And when you add more protein, you end up with something that's drier than a brownie, because protein produces baked goods with a dry mouthfeel.

To make the whole thing more brownie-like, you will have to add fat and some sugar. Flour is not needed, as it will increase the airiness. Maybe start by replacing the cocoa powder by dark chocolate which you melt over a water bath and add butter into it to melt. Also reduce the liquid (the almond milk - if you wish, add soy milk instead, it is the water content that is problematic here), and add more syrup, or better, dissolve some sugar in the liquid. Also, using powdered cream is likely to give you better results than powdered whey, and you won't need the chocolate flavoring from the whey mixture anyway when you are working with real chocolate. The mixture should be suitable for baking in the oven.

Once you have gotten something reasonably brownie-like that way, you can try to start sneaking protein back in in increments, but pay attention to the texture. It will start going more in the direction of commercial protein bars with too much extra processed protein. You may get away with a bit more by adding more egg yolks, but do not increase the egg whites or you will get the texture further away from a brownie.


Shortening substitute that can prevent gluten growth?

Every fat prevents gluten formation as much as any other fat. At least, if there are any differences, they are not noticeable by somebody eating a finished product.
When substituting fats, "how much it inhibits gluten" is not a criterion. Just pick whatever fits your recipe.


What methods make tomato chopping less messy?

You need a sharper knife. With a dull knife, you'll have trouble getting through the skin, and end up tearing and smashing, releasing a lot of juice. With a sharp knife, you'll get through the skin cleanly and leave the tomatoes much more intact.

Serrated knives are another common option: they get through the skin very easily. A dull serrated knife will tear the flesh up a lot, though, so you still do need a reasonably sharp blade, and while a cheap bread knife or steak knife might be better than nothing, it's not ideal. The best ones are probably the ones actually marketed as tomato knives: they're sharp, not too thick, and have a serration pattern that's meant for this.

If you're forced to make do with an inadequate knife, you can break the skin with the tip, then extend that with the blade and slice from there. If the knife is so dull that it still makes a mess, you might be out of luck. This is pretty time-consuming, though, so I wouldn't suggest it as an everyday method for a lot of slices.

Freezing, as you suggested, doesn't sound like a great idea. If you freeze tomatoes thoroughly enough to make them firmer and easier to chop, then you'll have formed a lot of ice, and once they thaw, they'll tend to disintegrate and release all that juice. It won't affect the flavor, but it's kind of pointless, since if you're willing to mess up the texture that much, you might as well just hack it up whatever messy way you like.


I also emailed KAF my question. They think ferment time is culprit. I will have to give it a try.

  Could it also maybe be combo of time + yeast? Bread is still tasty; I
  am still experimenting.

  stephen

Here is reply from KAF:

  Hello Stephen,

  Thank you for contacting us here at King Arthur Flour.

  The vinegar-ish smell you describe is from the acids of your fermented
  dough. If it bothers you, you might try fermenting your dough in a
  slightly cooler room, or for a shorter time. This should help.

  Please let us know if we can be of further assistance or if you have
  additional questions. If you need immediate assistance, feel free to
  contact us directly at 800-827-6836.

  Thank you again and have a great day!

  Sincerely,

  Jaydl

  King Arthur Flour  800-827-6836


Can I re-process homemade applesauce canned in a boiling water canner that is too thick and pasty?

The simple answer is yes you can re-process. Follow standard processing procedure for applesauce once you get your applesauce to the taste and consistency you want. (Personally I like very thick applesauce.)

You said Maybe I didn't heat it hot enough before canning, since it was so thick. Did you bring it to boiling before putting it in the jars? If it was not hot at the time of packing you could possibly have a safety issue, depending on how long the jars were in the water bath.
The applesauce being thick is only a canning/safety issue if there are large trapped air bubbles in the jar.

The color of the applesauce is not an indication of a problem. If you used tart apples they just didn't oxidize much. If you want to change the color you could add a bit of cinnamon. (it is possible it will darken up a little on it's own over time)


Oven does not have a temperature notification sound

Oven temperatures vary depending on insulation and, the big, how often you open the door. I would recommend using the described 'remote' thermometer or an oven thermometer positioned where it can be read through the glass in the door (assuming that would be possible). Set you oven to it's highest setting and time how long it takes to reach that temperature. Once you know how long it takes to reach 'max' use a timer that will give you the audible cue you are seeking at that length of time, regardless of what temperature you may be using at that time. If you want your oven a 325°F and it takes 10 minutes to get to 500°F...it will 'safely' be at 325°F in 10 minutes, once you test it, trust it. Baking rarely requires such an exact temperature control that the variance created would be problematic.

Extending the pre-heat time for your oven is not a bad thing, indeed it helps with the recovery time that it takes to return to the set temp after being opened and closed.


I haven't done a side-by-side comparison, but I find that once an avocado's ripe, I can keep it there for a few days by putting it in the fridge.

It doesn't halt the process of getting brown spots inside, but it seems to slow it down some.


Any low-oxygen low-acid environment with sufficient moisture can lead to the growth of botulism (see page 6 of this USDA guide to canning). Botulism spores are present throughout your kitchen, not just on garlic. To can low-acid foods safely, you need to use a pressure canner for a sufficiently long processing time.
Refrigeration slows down the growth of botulism. The CDC recommends storing garlic or herb infused oils in the fridge for at most 4 days. You should be at least this cautious with your oil-packed fish.


Just a little bit of expectation management: stevia has a naturally bitter aftertaste, and depending on the amount and type of extract, it can be very bitter. You might also be over using stevia if you're just substituting it without balancing your recipe.

When using sweeteners to replace sugar:

Make sure to buy a sweetener that is already balanced to replace sugar on a 1:1 ratio so you don't overuse it and also don't lose the bulk of solid that sugar provides
If the recipe allows you to add sugar to taste (since this is the case) because it doesn't rely on the sugar for bulk, texture or for balancing liquids, add it to taste and if possible, make it a tad undersweet. Less is more when we're talking about sugar and salt


What qualities should one look for when choosing Egg cooking gear?

Modern non-stick pans should not have problems with coatings flaking off. Spend $50 on a non-stick pan and it will last you for a very long time. Coatings on good pans should hold up to any non-metallic utensils. Very expensive pans suggest that you can hit them with a hammer and not hurt the surface.


Is there a different fruit very similar to oranges?

There are hundreds of varieties of citrus fruits, in a great variety of colors, sizes (and very occasionally, even different shapes).  There is really no fundamental difference between the various citrus fruits--they all cross breed and hybridize extremely readily.

It is possible if you post a photo that someone might recognize the cultivar, but other than that all that can really be said is that you have a citrus fruit.


How can I use self made cream of celery as a replacement for mushrooms in green bean casserole?

After reading your original question, the revisions, and the comments, I have what may be an option for you. As noted in comments, you can use just about any vegetable you want.

To keep the flavor profile the same, make the creamy sauce as you usually do and then strain it well through a colander to remove the mushrooms. (You can also do this with celery.) By doing this you will have the flavor of mushrooms, celery, or whatever vegetable you choose in your dish.

The other option would be to purée your sauce.

Then, if you want a vegetable (of your choice) to add for texture, sautée them in a very small amount of butter to your desired consistency and add to your casserole.

If you don't feel the need for adding another vegetable, simply don't add any.


Can you make caramel with evaporated milk?

Milk contains lactose naturally, so there will always be a minimum amount of sugar that any condensed milk will contain.

Having said the above, the recipe for making lowest-possible-sugar condensed milk, is evaporated milk (which still contains all of the lactose), so that's still sweet as well, but not overpoweringly so like condensed milk.

If evaporated milk is not sweet enough to your taste, keep adding vanilla sugar to it while heating gently and tasting frequently till it reaches the exact taste you want!

Actually, condensed milk and evaporated milk are synonyms semantically. What you're really talking about is "condensed sweetened milk" ;-)


How do I control the temperature of water for an extended period of time?

You can try to set up my at-home on-the-cheap monkey-at-the-controls sous-vide machine.  I take a nearly full 22 quart stock pot with an analog instant read thermometer to monitor the temperature and watch the temperature and adjust the dial accordingly.

With this only needing 30 minutes you probably just want to get the water to exactly 72 degrees C and then immerse the potatoes without adding any heat.  The amount of energy in 20 quarts of water is phenomenal and you won't lose a lot of heat to the air.

Alternatively you could get 72 degree water and a beer cooler and try that way for the extra insulation.


Your problem is probably between steps 3 and 4. When the oil is rippling, it is developing ridges and troughs of varying thicknesses of oil. The troughs, or thin spots are the most likely culprit for sticking.

After the oil has started to ripple, turn the heat down and tilt the pan so the ridges and troughs in the oil start to even out, then add the potstickers. Wait for a minute or two before turning the heat back up.


How to prevent fat splashes when I fry a burger?

To make a perfect burger in the kitchen, a hot cast-iron skillet is your best friend.

To keep from making a mess, use one of these:

That's a splatter screen. It allows air to move freely, but keeps grease in the pan and off of your walls.

EDIT: In comments, Cindy Askew recommended the above plus using the cheapest available aluminum foil to protect surrounding areas from the grease and noted that the aluminum foil used in that way can continue to be useful as a disposable spoon/utensil rest. In a sense, this answer being accepted encompasses that comment as a part of this answer.


You are better off making the crumpets in advance and then reheating them. The rising agent in crumpets is usually bicarbonate of soda or baking powder, and so the batter can't be 'held' in the fridge like a yeasted batter - it would be very dense if you left it too long.

So, make the crumpets, then reheat them. I'd suggest using the toaster - this is how crumpets are sold and prepared in the UK. Make sure you have plenty of salted butter on hand too!


I've made pancetta many times.  When rolling, I just tie with a string. Traditionally, it is just tied off.  Personally, I prefer the results when I just hang it without rolling...poke a hole, loop a string, hang...but that is just personal preference.  The only downside I can see to the cheese cloth, is that it might slightly slow the drying process.  Other than that, as long as you are working clean, I can't see a problem with it, but I am not sure it really helps you in any significant way.  Perhaps you could get a tighter roll with a sheet of cheesecloth?


Best meat replacements for a vegetarian/vegan?

Pardon my rampant vegerianism, but the trick is not to substitue meat at all.

I generally get my nutrition from other sources, without using meat substitutes at all.
Unless I really feel like a certain recipe that I used to like back in my meat-eating days.

Use beans, lentils and whole grains for protein.
Use nuts, seeds and avocadoes (or any other fatty fruits and vegetables) for B-vitamins.
Use beans (again) and leafy greens for iron and calcium.

So, it turns out my answer is a bit Zen.  Sorry.


What are the costs to consider when making jam?

Costs to consider when making jam:

One-Time Costs

Pressure canner
Water-bath canner
Large pot for making jam in
Strainer (can use a colander-type item or something like a Squeez-o)
Jar rack that goes inside the canner
Jar lifter
Funnel
Jars
Freezer-safe containers
Jar rings

Recurring Costs

Jar lids
Fruit (you can often get pretty cheap fruit in bulk from an orchard)
Pectin
Sugar
Spices
Energy usage (stove)

Compare costs for freezer jam (no canner required), pressure-canned jam (pressure canners are expensive), and water-bath canned jam. Also compare for recipes that do vs do not contain pectin.

If you can get a lot of the one-time cost items free (from grandma's attic, most likely), and if you can get the recurring cost items on sale (or from your own garden), then you can probably come close to commercially priced jam.

Personally, here's what I look at:
A) The cost of the item I would normally buy at the store - generic, cheap brand. Let's call that price X.
B) The cost of the item I wish I could buy at the store - the really good stuff. That price is usually about 2x to 3x.
Then, my goal is to be cheaper than 2x.

Another Cost Consideration
If you give homemade jam as holiday gifts, spending less than you otherwise would on a gift, there's additional savings for you.


This is the same user who asked if vegetable juices could stop bread from rising.  Dude...yes.  I'll try to break this down again...There's probably a combination of things happening: your veggie slurry pH is not condusive for yeast function, the enzymes in the vegetable matrix are being unleashed and working(because you juiced them, and exposed them to light and heat)--thereby producing chemicals that are toxic to the yeast, and lastly if that wasn't stopping the yeast...the beans may be so dense that the yeast organisms can't make bubbles that stay in your dough.  Try using a brominated bread flour, letting the bread rise, then fold in fat shredded veg pieces.  Pretend you're kind of making a zucchini bread. If you are really bent on success with this, it seems that more if the vegetable cell walls need to be intact once it comes in contact with the dough(inact cell walls = less enzyme activity/bioactive compound release, and maybe even pH buffer Bonus!). I cited at least 4 NCBI articles stating why the above reasons may be occuring. I can provide more reading material to supplement if those were not sufficient.

I am still a bit confused as to why you chose the green vegetables + other legumes you did, and treated them in that manner for use in bread.  Like, really confused. I can't comment yet, but if I could...I would, if nothing else than to tailor my response to you.  If nutrient-density was the goal, why remove the fiber, and place the bioactive compounds in jeapordy? I do hope that point is clear, your processing choice for the vegetables will be compromising their nutritional impact/effectiveness.

Here's why:

Many of the molecular components that make those vegetables useful for human health degrade in the presence of heat, pH, light, and exposure to air (degraded bioactive molecules are not realy physiologically useful, and just excreted...so what's the point?).  You expose those awesome vegetables to extremes in all of those cases. I would be curious to know(if you could get this to work) if there were any biologically relevant compounds left in the finished product...aside from the general macronutrients(carbs, fat,protein, fiber, etc ...they are biologically relevant too, just not what the focus seems to be for this application)

Remember, when vegetables/fruit/whatever are consumed without being overprocessed, the food matrix(even chewed up) provides a barrier from your stomach acid and other endougenous enzymes, and helps naturally preserve some of nutrients until they get to the intestines (where they are actually absorbed). Take away the matrix, your super-charged molecules lose their nutritionally active shape more easily, before they can even be utilized by your body.  The remaining food matrix has important funtions health functions too, which I won't elaborate on here.  Again, I am happy to provide peer-reviewed sources for this info, should you be interested (but if the other post tells me anything...it is that you possibly don't care).  Look yourself anyway, go be curious.  Try a pubmed search for bioavailability and the author Gibson to start, the review articles he writes are rather approachable.  I would like to mention that there are some processing and pairing techinques can enhance the bioavailibility and bioefficacy of certain nutrients(meat factor & non-heme iron sources, limited thermal proccessing on hard veggies like carrots) and that the extent of nutrient degradation can vary greatly depending on the type of processing(boiling vs microwave vs oven vs freezing vs low-temp vs fermentation...etc).


What are the differences between different types of onions, and when do you use them?

The choice of one onion over another is really going to come down to personal preference based on color and flavor.

Red and white onions are usually milder in flavor than yellow onions which is the reason they're often the choice for hamburgers and sandwiches.

Yellow (sometimes referred to as "Spanish") onions tend to have a more pungent flavor.

Sweet onions (Vidalia, Maui, Walla-Walla, Texas 1015) develop more sweetness and fewer sulfuric compounds due to the mineral content of the soil that they're grown in.  This is why you can have onion sets (small bulbs) from any of these varieties but they won't necessarily be sweet (or as sweet) because a lot of it has to do with the makeup of the soiling they're grown in.

Two years ago I hosted Jeanne Jones (syndicated writer of "Cook it Light" column for King Features syndicate and writer of over 33 cookbooks including "Canyon Ranch Spa Cookbook") for guest chef cooking classes.  If I recall correctly, she said she used primarily white onions because they have a lower sodium content than any other type.

Did that "mean black eyed pea salad" recipe happen to come from a certain "Low Country Cooking Class"?  If so, I used it for two reasons:  not everyone will have access to Vidalia onions and it provides additional color.


I know it sounds like a stupid question, but are you sure the oven wasn't in "broil" or "clean" mode? It seems unlikely that a regular shape of flammable would emerge from a fairly homogeneous mixture. It seems more likely that a heat source in the shape of the burn marks on the top of the cheesecake was radiating directly onto it. It could have been an intermittent malfunction with the oven, too.

Other than that, I'm lost. It's quite a mystery you have on your hands there.


Is there a specific thermometer to check soup temperature?

This is fine, albeit inconvenient
Don't make contact with the bottom of the pot, for the reasons described. Stirring can help make the temperature more uniform.
You could try a candy thermometer. But most soups aren't sensitive enough that you need to be super careful -- just poking it with a Thermapen or something similar every few minutes is probably more than enough. You can also get an oven-safe dial type thermometer and thread it through a binder clip or similar clamped to the pot, or an oven probe type thermometer (the kind with the probe on a cord).

For an overview of different thermometer types, see this USDA link.


Espresso machine has to warm up halfway through pulling a shot

Why do you stop in the middle ? Is there a drop in pressure ? does the coffee continue dripping down in the cup?

Let it finish.

I assume, if it is working like my machine, that the water is being re-heated for a next shot.

1st thing I would do is to clean the machine with a "descaler"; it should help with the water heating system and the pressure.

If that does not help, have the machine looked at.


What can I do to use Revere Ware copper bottom pots on a glass cooktop?

I'm somewhat confused by your question, as GE appears to recommend copper-bottom cookware. At least if I've grabbed the right manual, lacking a model number.

Note the word recommended right below "copper bottom". Though they do warn you that you have to be diligent cleaning any residues left and not allowing cookware to overheat. (Though, depending on the thickness of that copper bottom, you may find that stainless with an aluminum disc is actually better cookware, and fairly cheap.)


The simple answer is: You reduce a cream sauce the same way you reduce any other sauce, by simmering it until a certain amount of liquid is gone, just like the instructions said.  You have to be careful about temperature though, because milk (or cream) can burn at high temperatures, and then your sauce is ruined.  You should keep it to a low or at most medium simmer.

Cream sauces normally tend to thicken extremely fast, so the long cooking time is almost certainly due to watering it down.  I don't think the water was necessary at all; the chicken broth was probably for flavouring, and although "broth" is a somewhat nebulous term, one would normally expect a broth to contain at least some amount of gelatin, which will cause the sauce to thicken substantially when it cools if you reduce it a lot.  Water doesn't, so you've added no flavour and thinned out the sauce.

Basically, you (or your wife) added water for no other purpose than to try to evaporate it later.  Water generally doesn't go in a cream sauce.  If you don't have chicken broth or can't use it, I would either substitute more wine or just leave it out completely.  Usually the only time you substitute water for broth is if it's actually the base of your sauce.


While I can't say exactly what the issue is there are some possibilities:

Induction compatible doesn't mean ideal for induction. I've had pans which are compatible, as in they work, but they don't heat up well. Only ferrous metals will get heated by induction, many pans are a sandwich of metals with a ferrous base, how well the pans heat up depends in part how thick the base is, if it's too thin it won't be able to convert all the energy. You want something with a nice thick ferrous base, or even better cast iron
Your induction top may not be powerful enough. In the same way gas ranges are limited by the size of their burners induction is limited by the underlying electronics. A big pot full of oil is a lot of mass, the cooktop's electronics need to be able to create a large enough magnetic field to heat it


What is this fungus/lichen in my Garam Masala? (“Trifle”/truffle?)

It seems to be an edible lichen.  It looks very like one described online as (black) stone flower in English and dagad phool in Hindi, which seems to be a not uncommon ingredient in various spice mixes; e.g. on the left in this photo from an Indian food blog:

[Edit: photo removed as I’ve just realised the author of that blog specifically requests not redistributing their content.  It’s a nice photo + site, though, if you follow the link!]

Having found these names, it’s now not hard to find a lot of websites mentioning it, especially in blogs/forum threads; but I can’t find any site in English that gives much detailed information.  Even its purpose in the mix is a bit unclear: some blog commenters describe it as having a unique earthy, mushroom-y flavour; others, as being similar to star anise; Wikipedia even seems to suggest it might just be a bulking agent.  (I don’t get any particular scent off it, at least not dry.)

So I think this is probably the right identification; and I’m reassured that it’s not something wrong with the mix; but I’m still quite intrigued, and would love to hear more about this ingredient from someone who knows it better!


Welcome! Instead of searching for a turkey fryer burner, do a Google search for a propane wok burner. You will see that there are many to choose from and they are designed for just this purpose. Some even come with woks.

Not sure if cost is a factor for you but this is one of the cheapest I saw, $53 at target.com.

There are many types with different btu output and designs. Good luck with your search.


Can I substitute whole anchovies for anchovy paste?

You can easily make your own anchovy paste from canned anchovies.   This America's Test Kitchen video shows how:

Chop the anchovies fairly finely
Mash with a fork until smooth

Some sites recommend adding  a little oil for a smoother texture.

I have never tried it, but I don't see any reason this would not freeze exceptionally well, as neither whole anchovies nor the paste are used for their texture.


Clean fridge shelves which can't be removed?

You have to wash cleaners off, there's no other way to remove the dirt. The gunk is not going to magically evaporate, you will have to wipe. If your fridge is really dirty then I suggest a tub of soapy (dish soap) water, a sponge to clean and wipe, and a towel to dry. If it's not that bad then a kitchen safe spray cleaner and a sponge or paper towels will do fine. A pair of rubber kitchen gloves would be a good idea.


What causes the crown of the bread to crack during baking?

Disclaimer: I'm not too familiar with the english technical terms, but I'll try and explain what's happening without them.

Watch a shaped bread during the final rise:

Right after shaping, the interior is still dense because the co2 bubbles from the yeast haven't developed yet. The surface is firm and the shape round(-ish), if you poke gently with a finger, the indentation springs back instantly.
If you'd bake the bread now, it would be dense, heavy and probably a bit soggy. This is called "under-proofed". Your top will most likely not crack as the bread won't expand much in the oven, but the results are far from optimal.
After while, your bread will have risen, expanded and the interior texture is filled wit small bubbles. The surface has become a bit softer and the loaf might have flattened a bit in comparison to height. If you poke the loaf, the indentation slowly fills back until almost to the top. The yeast will still be active and could expand the loaf more if the loaf is left to rise.
If you bake the bread now, it has the potential for a maximum of "oven spring", which is an increase in volume during baking. Steam in the oven or baking in a dutch oven will allow your bread to do so even better. Your bread is basically guaranteed to crack unless you direct the expansion via controlled weaknesses in the outer layer, either by slashing the loaf or by having already (during final shaping) folded your loaf with a seam for ripping and then baking with the seam up.
If you continue to proof your bread, it will reach a point from which it will start do deflate again. If poked, the indentation remains. During baking, it will not rise (much) more and will tend to "flow" outwards and collapse. If you puncture or slash your over-proofed loaf, you will make this worse, rather like a punctured balloon.

If your goal is to get a non-cracked bread, you can put the loaf in the oven once it's fully proofed, just before over-proofed. This requires a lot of practise as you will basically have to monitor the bread towards the end of the final rising. You will also need to make sure that the loaf remains humid and pliable, you want as little of a dried skin as possible to allow for expansion without cracking. Poke the loaf all over with a chopstick or a paring knife to catch larger air bubbles that may cause the crown to burst locally and brush the bread with water before placing it in the oven.

Much easier is to bake at the second stage and plan for the expansion. There is a post here that discusses the influence of different cut patterns on the final shape and a bit more on the reasons for slashing here. Rule of thumb: the closer you are to "fully proofed" and the less oven spring you expect, the shallower your cuts should be. For a lot of oven spring, you need deeper cuts, usually made almost horizontally up to an inch in depth.

Should you be talking about a different kind of cracking, namely lots of small cracks that resemble the cracks on some glazed pottery and that appear during cooling: That is considered a sign of quality for some recipes.


How can I cook more flavorful Chicken through and through?

One option to consider to add flavour to a chicken is brining. I've personally never brined a chicken, but everytime I come across mention of it in a foodie blog, forum or elsewhere, it always seems to be considered a good way to impart additional flavour into the meat.

Since writing this answer I've followed Nigella Lawson's recipe for Spiced and Superjuicy Roast Turkey which has resulted in fantastically tasty and moist turkey at Christmas every year, to the point where I won't countenance turkey at Christmas without brining it now. If this translates as well to chicken (which I fully admit I should've tried by now!) then it's well worth the time and effort.


You can certainly cut meat on these, I have a large end-grain cutting board that is too large to wash conveniently in my sink.

There are a number of methods to clean them:

Soap and Water

Soap and hot water are best for regular cleaning. Just get a rag or brush and scrub it. Dish soap is just fine for this use. Make sure to rinse and dry it thoroughly.

Vinegar

If you don't mind the smell you can use undiluted white vinegar to clean and sanitize your surface. If you keep some in a spray bottle you can just spray it down and wipe it with a paper towel. If you have a big oily mess, I'd suggest starting with the soap & water method, and finishing up with vinegar.

Vinegar is apparently very effective at killing microbes, surprisingly more effective than harsher quaternary ammonium solutions.

Bleach

A little goes a long way with this. You only need a teaspoon or two for a quart of water. Just spray it down thoroughly, let stand 5 minutes. Finish with rinsing and drying. Like vinegar this is best as a followup to soap & water for a really messy board.

Lemon

If you have strong garlic, onion, fish, or other smells in your butcher block you can cut a lemon in half and rub the board down with the halves. Lemon juice is a weak antiseptic, so this should be used primarily for odor control and not as a sanitization substitute.

Note that regular cleaning also requires regular seasoning of your block surface. You should oil your board/block once a week, or more with frequent use.

See also:

http://whatscookingamerica.net/CuttingBoards/AllAbout.htm


How to harvest peppers and tomatoes for later use in sauces without harming taste

We've been freezing both vegetables for years, with no loss of flavor.
Tomatoes
Unless your tomatoes have very thin skins, I recommend that you skin them prior to freezing. If you don't remove the skins first, you may wind up with the leathery skins floating in your sauce, which isn't really appetizing. To easily skin a tomato, press the back of a sharp knife onto the tomato, press gently, then rub the fruit to loosen the peel. Next, just make a small cut and start peeling with the sharp side of the knife. We also remove all seeds at that time. Alternatively, use a food mill (not a food processor) to process the tomatoes.
We freeze the tomatoes in roughly one-quart amounts, which is what we generally use at any one time.
Peppers
As you noted, you'll cut the peppers in half and remove the seeds, but we've found with experience that the frozen peppers, when thawed, turn mushy; we get around this by using the peppers as soon as we remove them from the freezer. They even retain a little crunch!
We freeze our peppers by cutting them into edible-sized slices (after removing the seeds), laying them out on a cookie sheet, and then putting the entire sheet into the freezer for a couple/three hours. This helps the slices to freeze faster (which we assume helps keep them move flavorful, but that's an assumption only); it also keeps them from sticking together after we bag them. When the slices are frozen, we bag them. We then use only the number of slices we need for a dish, cutting them up immediately upon removal from the freezer bag and adding to the dish mostly frozen to avoid the yucky mushiness.
Given that thawed peppers are really not appetizing, I don't know if you'll like the end results after smoking them. They will definitely NOT hold any kind of crunch and may even somewhat disintegrate in your sauces. Well worth a try to do it, though, especially if you do only a small test batch first.


Milk in bread dough is an enriching agent.  Other typical enriching agents for bread include things like eggs, fats (butter, oil, etc.), and different types of sugar/sweetener.  They are used to add either fat or sugar or both.

Bread made without enriching agents is known as a lean dough, typically containing only flour, water, salt, and yeast.  Lean doughs are used to produce a lot of traditional European and American crusty breads, including everything from baguettes and crusty French bread to ciabatta.  Typically, they have a firm crust, along with an elastic, springy interior that often (though not always) can have large and irregular holes.

Substituting milk for water in bread will usually add both fat (from milkfat) and sugar (lactose).  Several changes can happen, including:

The crust will typically be softer
The crust will brown more quickly (due to sugar) and can darken more evenly before burning
The interior will be softer and usually less springy/elastic
The flavor will be richer (due to fat) and somewhat sweeter (due to sugar), though bread with milk but no added sugar will still not be noticeably sweet; nevertheless, the lactose will add a different flavor component
Enriching agents will disrupt larger gluten networks a bit, making it less likely to develop large holes in the interior
The added weight of the sugars and fats will decrease final loaf volume and oven spring a bit
Enriching agents often cause the bread to take longer before it begins to develop a "stale" flavor/texture


What are the factors that affect the chewiness, softness, moisture of bread based desserts like cinnamon rolls?

I'll try to be specific without getting into too much detail here:

The chewiness (AKA elasticity) - of dough is due to the formation of gluten.  This is affected by:

The amount of flour used (gluten is the result of water and various proteins in flour, specifically glutenin and gliadin);
Type of flour used (high-gluten flour such as bread flour gives means a chewier result);
Fat content (fat insulates the proteins from the water, slowing gluten formation);
Sugar content (in order for gluten to form, it must be dissolved; a high sugar content saturates the water and prevents dissolution of the proteins);
Baking time (up to a certain point, until all of the available proteins have been used up).

The crust (I assume this is what you're referring to by "softness") - is primarily the result of the Maillard reaction, which requires an amino acid and a sugar as well as heat.  The longer and more quickly the reaction carries on, the crispier and browner the crust will be.  The factors are:

Baking temperature (higher = crispier);
Baking time (longer = crispier);
Moisture (less = crispier).  This has an effect because the evaporation temperature of water (100° C / 212° F) is lower than that required for the Maillard reaction (154° C / 310° F), so the reaction can only take place once all water has evaporated or been converted to gluten.
Acidity (pH) also inhibits the Maillard reaction but this is not normally a concern in bread.

Finally, the moistness of the bread is essentially a combination of the first two:

Higher fat content means less gluten is formed and more of the moisture is preserved, as long as it doesn't evaporate.  The fat itself also adds a certain amount of moisture as far as mouth-feel is concerned.
Higher sugar content also preserves more of the moisture and using a wetter sugar (i.e. brown or muscovado) provides some moisture of its own - although the latter can easily evaporate with over-baking.
Longer baking times cause more of the water to evaporate, which reduces the final level of moisture in the finished bread.
Higher baking temperatures also cause more water to evaporate.  However, it's usually a trade-off between higher temperatures or longer baking.  A good recipe tends to be optimized to provide a slightly crispy crust without over-developing gluten or drying out the bread.

If your bread (or similar baked product) ended up too dry, it's probably because you over-baked it or baked at too high a temperature.  If it came out too chewy (glutinous), you might have used too strong a flour or not enough fat/sugar.


Should I use raw beets in my smoothie recipe?

It sounds like this a juice recipe, not a smoothie recipe. It may work if you put it in your blender, as I've seen recipes for smoothies with similar ingredients like this one but it will probably need some more liquid.

When you juice, you definitely use raw fruits and vegetables but you need to run it through a juicer which will remove most of the solids, which is why you generally don't see any liquids added to the recipe.

We use raw beets in our juices all the time and, while they sometimes have a very earthy flavor, they do add a lot of sweetness. I've found the earthiness can be balanced with a little lemon juice.

... Anyway, if you want to make a smoothie with these ingredients (though I can't see the entire recipe), you can certainly follow the one I linked to earlier, which very clearly states that you use raw beets.

If you do want to follow this recipe, I can tell you that it pretty much is guaranteed to be calling for raw beets, simply because it doesn't say to cook them. Canned beets are generally already trimmed and peeled, if not chopped, so these steps don't make much sense to list.

While I wouldn't want to eat a raw beet like an apple, you don't need to cook it to consume it in a liquid form.


If a cheese sold as pasta-cheese does not melt, is it "cheese"?

That's a processed cheese product. It may be allowed to be called cheese in some places, but that's a matter of product labelling regulations where you happen to be.

The melting is a different issue. I'd expect that product to melt, though possibly not if it has the texture of parmesan - parmesan doesn't really melt on its own though it melts into sauces. And parmesan is commonly served on pasta, so a non-melting (or not really melting) pasta cheese is a thing.


Some considerations:

Typical chicken brines range from 5 - 10% salinity.

The sea averages 3.5% salinity (there are variables such as region, distance from estuaries, and weather that also impact ocean salinity).  Further, sea water is not just salt and water, but has other dissolved minerals, not to mention potential pollutants.

Can you do it?  Sure, but what's your goal, and is the the way to achieve that goal?


Mild is the opposite of hot. Medium is in-between. If the sauce ends up too hot for your child, try a dollop of sour cream or plain yogurt.


Experiment more. I'm not a slavish recipe-follower, and while I have the occasional brick when I screw up badly, I have yet to make actually inedible bread in several decades of playing fast and loose with bread recipes. Loaves that were not what I wanted, which I avoided repeating, yes. So bad it went in the garbage rather than be eaten, no.

I would suggest staying a bit on the wet side to give the lower gluten the best odds.

Perhaps try 1/3 wheat, 2/3 barley and see how you like it. If that doesn't work for you, then 100% barley probably won't either. If it does, 100% might. Only costs a couple of loaves to make the experiments. If the 1/3 wheat does not work to your satisfaction, try half wheat next. Do report back.


What is the right use of bake and broil?

When you use an oven to bake, you can control it's temperature. When you use it to broil, it just turns on the element as high as it can go.

For baking or roasting, it is vitally important to control temperature, so don't ever broil.

When doing some veggies or meats (steaks, fish), you may want to broil. It cooks from the outside VERY quickly, so it is good for rare steak and partially cooked veg.


First of all, it is extremely rare for the yolk of an egg to become contaminated if the egg is reasonably fresh.  Contamination only tends to occur when the egg is quite old and the yolk membrane weakens. (Source)

Now, that said, egg yolks begin to set at a temperature of 62° C (144° F), and salmonella can be killed at temperatures as low as 59° C (138° F), so it actually is possible to "cook" the yolk sufficiently to kill any bacteria without letting it set, but you have a very small window to work with, so you need to be careful.  If the temperature is even 1° too low, you'll just be encouraging the spread of more bacteria, and if it's even 1° too high, you'll ruin your recipe because the yolk will set.

Nevertheless, if you have a reliable, uniform heat source, you could attempt to heat the egg to 60-61° C for about 1 minute.

Unfortunately, you won't be able to use the technique used in other recipes - such as Bavarian cream - of simply using the residual heat of the other wet ingredients to cook the yolk sufficiently for safety while not allowing sufficient time to set.  Dark chocolate is the most heat-resistant but will easily burn at temperatures significantly above 50° C (125° F).  Mixing the chocolate with cream may raise this temperature slightly, and I admit to not being certain of the exact amount, but I'm pretty sure it won't get you up to the required 59° C - and it really actually needs to be much higher than that because the temperature must stay that high for several seconds after adding the eggs.

So my advice to you is to either:

Pre-cook the yolks very carefully to a temperature just below 62° C (use a thermometer!); or
Use very fresh eggs from a reliable source; or
Don't eat mousse made with egg yolks, if you can't tolerate the (very low) risk.


What do the base ingredients in pancakes do?

The range of possibilities with a basic pancake recipe is not very broad. There are additional things you can add of course, but the basic recipe is really basic.

Eggs are mostly protein. When you cook an egg, it goes from liquid (basically) to solid. The egg blended into the pancake batter will do the same. Pancakes are generally cooked pretty quickly over a fairly hot fire, and that quick heating makes the egg proteins lock up and stiffen. Think of the difference between making a fried egg and scrambled eggs: fried eggs should cook fast, while scrambled eggs cook slowly to keep the eggs from being rubbery. (The other pancake ingredients counter that rubbery toughness of fast-cooked eggs.)

Flour is mostly starch. Starch absorbs moisture (from the egg and the liquid). People started making things like pancakes because flour is relatively cheap and keeps well, and one egg can make a lot of flour-based pancakes and feed a lot more people than the egg alone.

The liquid (milk in your recipe, but other stuff works) is necessary to thin out the batter; we're still stretching that egg out. Without a liquid addition, you'd have a lump of thick dough. By keeping the pancake batter thin, you ensure that the batter poured onto the hot griddle will remain loose enough to spread out into the familiar flat disc, providing a large surface area for the egg protein to solidify.

The salt is there so that the pancake doesn't taste bland. That's an easy one to test. Most American pancake recipes also include some sugar or another sweetener.

American pancakes without some additional fat — melted butter or vegetable oil, usually — would not be liked by most Americans. The added fat makes the pancakes softer and richer. Using table cream or something instead of plain milk can work too, as would adding an extra egg yolk.

Baking powder is a mix of dry sodium bicarbonate and one or more acidic salts. The blend is (usually) designed so that some amount of gas is produced as soon as the powder is mixed with liquid, and more produced when the batter is heated.

Finally, besides the bill of ingredients, the process used to combine the ingredients is also important. Wheat flour has gluten in it, and too much mixing in liquid will form gigantic protein mega-molecules in your batter and result in disturbingly chewy pancakes. You want gluten development for bread, but not pancakes, muffins, and other "fluffy" baked goods.

Generally, dry ingredients (except granulated sugar) are pre-mixed separately from wet ingredients. The two are combined as the last step before cooking.

You also want some air in the pancakes (for American pancakes at least), and that's of course what the baking powder does. You can get even more air in by separating the eggs, using the yolks as a "wet" ingredient, and then whipping the egg whites into a soft foam. The foamed whites are then blended in when the wet and dry ingredients are combined. (Note that you don't want air in crepes, and that's the purpose of letting the batter sit for a few hours before cooking: it lets bubbles escape, bubbles formed in the blender or via the whisk used to prepare the batter.)


Is it possible to get veal that is not incredibly fatty?

The nature of veal, being a milk fed calf, means that the meat is going to be extremely fatty.  It is the nature of the meat and not a function of poor butchering.  If you don't like the flavor I would suggest that almost anything that calls for veal can be made with pork chops or other lean cuts of pork, although you might see a rise in the toughness of the dish as a result.


What's the difference between Prosciutto, Jamon Serrano and Speck?

Differences are mainly a question of origin. Speck comes from Tyrol (it actually means "bacon" in german, which is misleading) and is prepared with a specific blend of spices, usually including juniper, Jamon Serrano from Spain (it means "mountain ham" in spanish) and is a dry-cured ham, and prosciutto just means "ham" in italian.

There are plenty of differences in flavor, consistency and aspect, depending on the difference of preparation: ripening, spices and herbs and so on.


choosing a red food color for red velvet cake

Originally, red chocolate cake did not have artificial coloring. The red (not nearly as red as we're used to now) came from natural (not Dutch processed) cocoa (acidic), plus another acidic ingredient (buttermilk or vinegar). The double-dose of acid  reacts with the anthocyanins (antioxidants that are red, even more so in the presence of acid) in the cocoa and the alkali baking soda to create a subtle reddish tone.

Try an old-style recipe, with natural cocoa and additional acid. Then if you must make your cake redder, it shouldn't take a bottle and a half of #40 red. Dutch processed cocoa will not give you the red effect, and it will cause your cake to be much darker. The flavor will be fine, but it won't be red and it will be difficult to dye red. Using dye to color a very dark brown (think Devil's Food) cake is going to require (as you have apparently seen), A LOT of dye. There comes a point that you're just going to cause anyone who eats the cake with their hands to have red fingers.

As far as your cake with a bottle and a half of food coloring? I'd quit trying to achieve a redder tone. You may or may not be able to taste the color in the cake, but you're going to see bright red tongues and possibly other weirdness.

This is an article about the chemistry of red chocolate and red velvet cakes: Chenected

Oh, and there is no such thing as too little artificial coloring for the sake of flavor, you can even skip it entirely. Your cake won't be as red, but it will taste just fine.

  The unrelated addition of “red” to a chocolate cake’s name initially arose due to the chemical reaction of acid in unsweetened bar chocolate and natural (non-alkalized) cocoa powder in conjunction with an acidic liquid (generally buttermilk or sour milk) with an alkali (baking soda), which reveals the red anthocyanin, a water-soluble vacuolar pigment. (In contrast, chocolate cakes made with baking powder and a non-acidic liquid turn out blackish in color.) Near the beginning of the 20th century, these chocolate cakes became known as “red cake,” “red regal cake,” “red feather [as in light-as-a-feather] cake,” “feather devil’s food cake,” and “red devil’s food cake.” However, their slightly reddish-dark brown hue was quite different from and much duller than food coloring-enhanced red velvet. - Tory Avey History of American cakes


As stated in the Wikipedia article about the salt, the pink color that sometimes occurs is due to iron oxide:

  Himalayan salt is predominantly sodium chloride (95-98%), contaminated with 2–3% polyhalite and small amounts of ten other minerals. The pink color is due to the presence of iron oxide.

As a source, the article references this page on HowStuffWorks.com. It gives a slightly broader list of chemicals that cause the color differences:

  Some pink salts, such as the salt harvested in the Himalayas, get their color from calcium, magnesium, potassium, copper and iron, Others contain carotene from salt-tolerant algae and are more peach-colored.


I'm assuming clean pan, no green die/residue, transfering to the egg whites. In which case green spots would consider mold/bacterial contamination based on this, in which case "DO NOT EAT".

However if the whites are cloudy or overall green tint would be safe caused by vitamin B2. If you are getting fresh high quality eggs, this would be more likely.

Sorry I couldn't locate any good images to help out here, Green Eggs and Ham is really messing up the image search.


Is cheese a condiment? (Burgers, sandwiches, etc)

I would have interpreted it to mean a sauce, chutney, or relish or similar item sold specifically as a condiment, in context it would mean mustard, ketchup or mayo, but not the cheese.

But probably as a server you would have been best positioned to ask exactly what the customer did want on their burger to prevent misunderstandings.


How do you raise your dough in cold seasons?

A non-exhaustive list of ways to get your bread to rise when it's cold includes:

Just let it rise slowly over a long period of time, which does give you good flavour but requires serious patience
Put it in the airing cupboard, assuming Australian houses have such things, but in the winter the hot water tank will keep it nice and warm
If it's still in the rising in the bowl phase rather than having been shaped, you can carefully put the bowl in a larger bowl of warm water (not too hot though or it'll go a bit mad)
Sometimes I can get away with putting the pan with the shaped bread ready for the oven over a large bowl or bucket of hot water
Put it in the oven with the pilot light on if your oven has a pilot light
Put it in the top oven with the door open while you're cooking something else in the bottom oven, if you have two ovens (careful though, this can get too hot depending on your oven)
Encourage the cat to sleep on it


Where to purchase sushi-grade ahi tuna in Arizona? (or purchase online overnight shipping)

If you mean sushi grade ahi tuna, you can’t buy it or consume it fresh, because of parasites in the flesh. All sushi grade fish is held frozen at 0°F for at least forty eight hours to kill the parasites.

If you don’t have a local source for sushi grade tuna, you can find a variety of reliable shippers on-line, although they can be a bit pricey.


Coffee Grounds and Gritty Butter Cream Icing

Instant coffee is "soluble solids of ground coffee" - ie, they made coffee, then they dried the result.

Actual ground coffee will never dissolve.

When you make 'real' coffee you run/pour/pass water through the ground coffee, then throw away the solids. There's no getting around the 'throwing away' part.


Peanut butter is just ground roasted peanuts essentially.  The american style peanut butter tends to be sweetened, as well as having extra oil and salt.  But they are only slight flavour/texture enhancers (not that I think sugar enhances it, UK peanut butter is unsweetened usually).

Satay sauces are essentially just peanut butter sauces, roast some peanuts, grind them, then add to some lightly fried shallots and garlic, with chilli, soy sauce, lemon juice, salt, sugar and if you want it authentic probably some nam pla (fish sauce), or blachan (shrimp paste), all of the above to taste.  Thin with water and reduce to the consistency you desire.


(How) can I store and cook leftover rice so it isn't soggy?

It seems that the secret to re-heating rice is to use a little bit of liquid during the re-heating process.  StillTasty suggests adding 2 tbsp. of liquid per cup of cooked rice, and about 1 minute on high for each cup in a microwave (5 minutes flat for stovetop re-heating).

Another thing it hints at, though doesn't outright state, is that cooked rice should be stored in an airtight container separate from the food it is meant to go with - this is likely where I went wrong, and why my rice is always soggy and unpalatable.

It also suggests that 2 hours is the maximum allowable time for cooked rice to be kept at room temperature, and that it can stay stored in the refrigerator between 4-6 days, or up to 6 months if frozen under ideal conditions.


How can I modify my banana bread recipe to make cookies from it?

As DrRandy said in the comments, cookies are really far from banana bread. It's going to be pretty difficult. I would suggest instead looking for a banana cookie recipe. Even if you don't like the first one you find, you can use it as a starting point or find another, and you'll go through a lot fewer failed batches than you will if you try to start from your banana bread recipe.

If you do start from a banana cookie recipe, the things you'd most likely want to modify:

adding more chocolate chips - just do it
adding more chocolate flavor - replace a bit of flour with cocoa powder
adding more banana flavor - you can try adding additional banana puree and flour to compensate for the water, but it'll make the cookies more cakey and crumbly, less chewy. You can also just use banana extract.

If you do try to convert it into a bona fide cookie recipe, I'm pretty sure you'll discover fairly quickly that the idea doesn't make a lot of sense. In order to make a cookie recipe, you're going to take all the ingredients besides bananas and chocolate and completely change their ratios. To figure out how to do that, you'll use a cookie recipe - so you'll be converting a cookie recipe into a banana cookie. You'll have to reduce the amount of bananas , too, because a cookie can't hold that much liquid. No matter how you get there, all that'll be left of your banana bread recipe is the fact that what you baked contains bananas, chocolate chips, and cocoa powder.

So to try to answer your specific questions:

(how to convert) If I had to guess, I'd say the best starting point might be a chocolate chip cookie recipe that uses melted butter. You could replace half of the butter with bananas and see what happens. From there you could possibly add additional banana and flour, turning it into a cakier cookie with more banana flavor. And to get cocoa powder in, just replace a bit of flour with it. But why not instead start from an existing banana cookie recipe? It'll be much closer to what you want, much less trial and error. And I don't really see any way to think of this as modifying the banana bread recipe; you need a cookie base for your cookies.
(will they be like bread) Well, if you just tried to make cookies using your existing recipe, yes, they'll be like bread. If you use a cookie dough as the basis, they'll be more like cookies.
(temperature and time) No matter what you do, the time will be way shorter (smaller things cook through faster). You probably won't have to adjust the temperature that much, maybe 25 degrees either way depending on the kind of cookie you decide to make.
(is the consistency important) Totally subjective. If you want to make something that's obviously a cookie, well, the consistency is the big difference between a cookie and a quick bread. If you want it to be easier to keep (not crumbly, less moist so it won't mold) then again, that's all about consistency. If all you want is to make something that tastes good, it doesn't matter at all. You can spoon sufficiently thick quick bread/muffin batter onto a baking sheet and bake it, and you'll get basically muffin tops.


If you can’t get the marker to work, just add another bag around the old one.


Can frozen peaches be made into jam or other things?

You absolutely can make jam from frozen fruit.

Freezing is like "stopping time" (or at least slowing it down almost to a stop) for the frozen food. Freezing water breaks cell walls, that's why thawed fruit is mushy, but so does boiling when making jam, so no problem at all here. You can also freeze leftover fruit before it spoils and combine various fruits in your jam or make flavour pairings with fruits that are in season at different times.

You can either puree your fruit and freeze it in a ziplock bag or flat container or freeze chunks on a tray, then transfer to bags. Good wrapping is essential, as with all frozen foods.

Personally, I often freeze puree because a) it needs less freezer space and b) we prefer smooth jam. I pre-meassure one batch and cook the jam when I have time.
Freezing individual pieces, on the other hand, has the benefit that you can choose later how much fruit you need for a recipe. This is also good if you haven't decided about your recipe yet or love to combine flavours. These pieces are also usable for other dishes.

Storing your prepared fruit in the refrigerator is not without risk. Overripe fruit spoils quickly, even in the refrigerator and "later" quickly can become "too late". So unless you are absolutely sure that you will cook them tomorrow and they have no "dubious" (e.g. mushy, about to get moldy) spots, just freeze them.


The culture is everywhere in the yogurt, and you are not losing all of the whey anyway. If you'd managed to press out all of the moisture, you'd end up with yogurt powder.

Salt interferes with all kinds of microorganisms. It is much better to not add salt to culture.


This is called a crepe maker drum or an automatic crepe maker.

CMCRP makes one that retails for about $5000 and can produce as much as 80m  of crepes per hour (more than 1 mile / day). Probably worth it if you can afford it and need that many crepes. It is made by  and can be purchased from "PastaBiz.com"

You can see a video of it on YouTube.

Another model is the ANKO CR-200, a video can be found here, and you could contact ANKO to find a local distributor.

Good Luck!


There's a few things that could be happening here, you could have too much moisture in the batter, not enough leavening agent (unlikely in this case) but my money is the oven temperature - it seems low. I'd usually bake a cake at 350F.

When baking a cake you first get a rise from the action of the leavening agents and the expansion of air and water vapor due to heat, next a crystalline structure forms which holds that shape. If your oven is too low that crystalline structure won't form in time to hold the rise, the leavening agents will run out and the steam and air will escape, and your cake will collapse leaving it dense.

In addition to the oven being low the baking time might be too short, if the baking time is too short the batter won't have time to crystallize and it will collapse when taken out of the oven, again making it dense.

I'd try upping the temperature a bit and see how it goes. Also, the toothpick check isn't the most reliable, use a touch bounce test and a digital instant read thermometer. Most cakes are done when they read between 200-210F in the middle of the cake.


Does the accidental discoloring during seasoning impair my steel pan in any way?

A couple of points…
I wouldn't have expected a brand new pan to immediately warp, especially at only 180°. I don't use induction, but on gas I expect a frying pan to last at least a year before I have to stand in the middle of it to flatten it down. A good saucepan never warps, a good frying pan will a bit eventually, because it gets a lot of fierce heat.
I don't own any carbon steel frying pans (only a wok) for comparison, mine are aluminium or cast iron. Aluminium eventually warps; cast iron, of course, does not.
If you could see the oil moving to the edges due to the warp you had maybe 10 times as much oil as you should have used. Put some on a paper towel, wipe it on, then wipe off. Repetition using the tiniest amount of oil is the key. If you have a visible pool, then the pan will not season properly. If you leave it heated until all that oil eventually plasticises, you'll have one chunky layer that will drop off the first time you you fry anything wet, like tomatoes.
If your induction hob is heating unevenly, use the oven next time. Full-tilt, maximum temperature. You want the oil to smoke, not to cook. 180° is nowhere near hot enough. (Open windows, close doors.)
But to answer your actual question… no, a bit of discolouration is nothing to worry about. By the time you have it fully seasoned, it will be almost entirely black.


Papaya is a known tenderizer for octopus, squid, and other meats. Another option is papaya enzyme tablets found in the supplement section of drugstore. Either can be added to the recipe while marinating or cooking. The tablets have the advantage of imparting no flavor. I can't judge the amount without a recipe, but pretty hard to go wrong. Also squid and octopus must be flash grilled or cooked for a long time. Anything in between results in tough meat.


Your main sources of flavour in any Chinese-style noodle dish will be:

Garlic
Ginger
Chilli
Spring Onion/Scallion
Soy sauce
Oyster sauce
Rice wine / dry sherry
Sesame oil

Sesame oil has a very distinctive 'Chinese' flavour. It is very strong so you only need a little. You should not use it for frying - think of it more like a seasoning. Add a teaspoon or so at the end of cooking and stir through.


Is it different to add seasoning at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of cooking?

Yes it does make a difference when you add the seasoning. The taste varies depending on when the seasoning ingredients are added. As for as stir fries or any dry fries are concerned, it doesn't make much difference. But in water based dishes like sauces, curries, gravies, and soups it could impact a great deal. The water absorbs the spices added , making its flavor incorporate completely. Also the raw smell of the spices vanish to a great extent if they are added at the beginning.  Also in case of pepper in gravies and other dishes, the sooner it is added, the hotter the dish becomes after a considerable amount of time. It is due to the time taken for the spice to infuse the flavor/taste completely through the dish.
Dishes based with vegetables, the sooner you add salt, better the vegetables absorb . They could be bland if salt and spices are added last.
In India, in most of the curries masala (ground mix of spices, like cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, fennel ) is sprinkled at last to give the dish an extra flavor, though it is also added in the beginning during preparation.

Hence taste could vary depending upon the time you season the dish. There may be exceptions. But that is the general theory for most of the dishes.


I general any recipe that uses non precise words like a "handful", is either not a well tested recipe, or the author is suggesting to use the ingredient for taste, colour, and/or texture reasons. The amount (within reason) is not critical to the recipe

Just add the amount you would like in terms of a balanced meal, and what gives the taste, colour, and/or texture you like


Can I substitute regular dried lemon peel for sweetened dried lemon peel?

We made this recipe last night with Watkins Dried Lemon Peel, which we think was unsweetened. The bread did not come out well.


What biological factors affect a meat's taste?

The most significant factors are probably:

Muscle function and activity
Fat content and distribution
Diet of animal
Age

Basic muscle structure in most vertebrates is somewhat similar, so taxonomic relatedness is often not paramount in matching flavors.  (There appear to be some phylogenetic connections in flavor, particularly among many "beefy" animals, though.)

There's a reason that many people say lots of random meats taste like chicken.  Since muscle structure is often quite similar even in very unrelated animals, a lot of reptile and amphibian meat can "taste like chicken."  The texture is often different, because muscles may be used in different ways, but if you put the meat through a meat grinder, the flavor wouldn't be as varied.  (Thus alligator sausage is not as adventurous or odd tasting as you might think at first.)

What makes "light meat" vs. "dark meat" often has a lot to do with muscle function/activity, and if you try similarly colored meat from different animals, it often has similarities in flavor.  Ostrich meat tends to be dark and "beefy," while many parts of pigs are advertised as "white meat" which is presumably closer to birds.  I remember my first experience a number of years ago eating a smoked turkey leg -- it was smoked for a very long time and cooked slowly for many hours.  It tasted almost exactly like ham.  And it was like ham: a leg muscle from an animal with similar fat distribution in that area which was processed in the same way.

The "gaminess" of wild animal meats often has to do with (1) increased age, (2) different/more varied diet, and (3) more muscle activity than most domesticated animals get.  In my experience, for example, farm-raised venison is distinctly less gamey than wild venison.  Moreover, most of our farm-raised animals these days tend to be slaughtered rather young (generally as soon as mature), so as to maximize profits.  If you encounter older meat from old farm animals which are slaughtered late in life, it often has "gamier" or "deeper" flavors than the young animals we are now used to.  We also tend to breed domesticated animals to maximize muscle content in certain desirable areas of the animal (e.g., chicken breasts) which often tends to make them more "bland" and less gamey, because the animals don't generally need so much muscle in those areas and thus never use them much.

(It's notable that tastes have changed significantly over time.  Years ago, it was common to hang wild game for days or weeks until it began to rot in a process called mortification.  While it tenderized the meat, it also had the effect of heightening the "wild" gamey flavors of each individual meat, which was considered desirable by many.  In most industrialized cultures today, the trend is toward blander and blander meats, with young, lean animals the norm, and the boneless skinless chicken breast -- with the flavorful fatty skin and bones/connective tissue removed, produced from chickens which never exercise and eat uniform bland diets -- as one of the most common meat sources.)

Muscle texture and fat distribution can also create distinctions, even if flavors are not that different.  Most muscle tastes somewhat similar, so it's often the fat that makes the big difference, since the fat tends to store energy from whatever food sources the animal has.  As Harold McGee describes it in On Food and Cooking (p. 134):

  Fat: The Flavor of the Tribe  The machinery of the red and white muscle fiber is much the same no matter what the animal, because it
  has the specific job of generating movement.  Fat cells, on the other
  hand, are essentially storage tissue, and any sort of fat-soluble
  material can end up in them.  So the contents of fat tissue vary from
  species to species and are also affected by the animal's diet and
  resident gastrointestinal microbes.  It's largely the contents of the
  fat tissue that give beef, lamb, pork, and chicken their distinctive
  flavors, which are composites of many different kinds of aroma
  molecules.  The fat molecules themselves can be transformed by heat
  and oxygen into molecules that smell fruity or floral, nutty or
  "green," with the relative proportions depending on the nature of the
  fat.

Thus, wild or older animals are more likely to have different sources for fat (and more marbled fat mixed into muscle), which gives it a more distinctive ("gamey") flavor.  Fish meat tastes a lot different mostly due to fats/oils distributed throughout (instead of in pockets like most higher vertebrates), and the structure of the muscles tends to create a flaky texture due to different usage and less connective tissue.  There are also distinctive chemicals (particularly in the fat) that give fish its characteristic "fishy" flavor, but when you encounter very "mild" fish, it's the texture and fat distribution that makes it most different from another white meat.

One last thing I would mention is expectations.  Many, many studies have shown that pre-existing assumptions can have a great impact on our experience of flavor in food.  (Expensive food tends to be rated as "tasting better," for example, even if the same exact dish is sold at different prices.)  The combination of a "weird meat" expectation and a slightly different texture can often make the distinctions between meat flavor seem greater than they are.  If you put the various meats (of similar color) through a grinder and then prepare them the same way, you might be surprised at how small the differences are between various animals.


Out of Date Vine Leaves - are they safe to eat?

They may be safe but they are certainly not guaranteed to be safe. see How long can I store a food in the pantry, refrigerator, or freezer.

Besides safety they have likely lost all consistency and won't taste well. You're propensity to prevent food waste is admirable, in this case however, it's best to bin them or better yet, compost them in a flowerpot (if they're not in acid or something).


Baking and a rotten egg was cracked into mix :(

Yes, the whole batch is unusable. Baking doesn't change anything, food safety rules don't foresee turning unsafe food back into safe.


Why do you need to fry onions and garlic before adding other ingredients to a dish?

It's not so much the taste as the texture. If they haven't been sauted first, the onions stay relatively crunchy during the rest of the cooking. The same is true of the garlic, but you'd usually have cut the garlic into much smaller pieces so it doesn't take as long to soften up, hence kicking the onion off first and adding the garlic a bit later.


When making batter/dough, why is it really bad to clean your spoon by hitting it on the edge of the bowl a few times?

Oh, those cooking myths!

Whenever you think you have heard them all, there's a new one. In a yeasted dough, the yeast is perfectly fine with being tossed, beaten and generally mangled. The little yeast cells couldn't care less about what you do in the initial stage of mixing and kneading. (That's obviously different when you consider the dough after the bulk raise: You want to keep the existing bubbles, sometimes more - think baguette or ciabatta - sometimes less, when you punch out the larger ones for a smoother texture, but I digress.)

What is an issue, is the kind of air that didn't come from yeast digestion and is safely entrapped in a gluten network, but the air that was beaten into the batter mechanically. In the oliebollen recipe I have, you make a fairly liquid yeasted batter and finally add beaten egg whites. Now, thats a material that doesn't take well to being jostled around. Just consider how carefully the egg whites are usually incorporated: There's even a cooking term for the method, you fold them in, instead of stirring like crazy.

Many bakers will handle a batter with incorporated egg whites very carefully, because they don't want to burst those precious bubbles1. But unless I am working with something super delicate, a gentle tap of the filled pan can help too-large bubbles rise to the top (and subsequently be pierced) instead of creating unsightly cavities or worse, darkened patches on the surface.

The kitchen rule of "don't bang the spoon on the bowl" may well originate from there - but then the rule applies to all kinds of batter with stiff egg whites. You can be on the very safe side and desist, but I am quite sure that it won't really matter if you tap gently. On the other hand, wiping the spoon with your finger or a spatula means you get all batter in your bowl, and not in the sink, which the frugal me appreciates.

Not tapping the spoon will also prevent chipping the mixing bowl, which in the past was often made of clay or ceramics, and avoid splattering.

1 That's something that fires back in macaron making, where you have to purposefully destroy some of the bubbles...


I forgot to add brown sugar to my chocolate chip cookies......and didn't realize I forgot the brown sugar until it was done cooking

Well, you can't change the cookies themselves! You could frost them, though, and you can get as much sugar as you want in that way.

You could also try to integrate them into something else, possibly crumbled up. I could see them being good in/on ice cream, or maybe as a cheesecake topping or even crust, or in a parfait. In general, things that have sweetness on their own but could do with some texture would probably work.


Freezing

1) Wash and peel the ripened peaches. Peel them the same way you do tomatoes - boil water, drop the peaches in for 1 minute, then drop them into ice water. The skin should just slide right off.  Slice in half and remove pits. You can leave them in halves, quarter them, or slice them. I prefer slices.
2) Mix w/ sugar & ascorbic acid. Dissolve 1/4 tsp ascorbic acid (available in canning section at grocery store) in 3 TB cold water; mix this along with 2/3 cup sugar into each quart of peaches.
3) Pack into freezer containers or baggies, leaving headspace (room for expansion during freezing).

Canning

1) Same as step one above.
2) Fill hot, sterilized canning jars with fruit and hot water (or juice or syrup - syrup), leaving 1/2 inch headspace. You can make canning syrup for peaches by combining 6 1/2 cups water with 3/4 cup sugar.
3) Put on lids and process. You must use a pressure canner for peaches.
4) You'll want to check out this link for processing times, as the time and pressure depends on your altitude and the type of canning pot you use.


What grains and/or technique will result in a thin pancake with a artisan bread type structure?

I think you cannot have both thin and bread-like structure.

AFAIK, To have a bread-like structure the batter/dough needs to develop some gluten in it.

Usually pancakes do not have a bread texture, they are, erm, a pan cake.

The batter is just mixed, and most recipes say to not over mix the batter.

You can try buckwheat, it has a rustic quality to it that can be seen as "bread-like".


A very specific synonym for a potatoes au gratin type recipe

I think Potatoes Dauphinois maybe what you are looking for. Thin sliced potatoes seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic, covered in cream (often topped with cheese) then baked in a gratin dish.


Manufacrurers measure the rim, so I guess the recipe calls for a pan which is 20 cm across the rim.

It may seem counterintuitive that the recipe specifies such a small pan (that's less than 8 inch for you Americans). But it can have good reasons.

Most recipes aren't dependent on pan size (much). But if you make a small quantity of some sauces, you want it to be thick enough in the pan to heat evenly, instead of a thin smearing of stuff on the bottom of the pan which will overheat quickly. So if you suspect that this is the case, it makes sense to actually use a small pan.

For many other recipes, overcrowding the pan is not too good. If you say what you are trying to make, we could give you an indication whether the size is important in your case.


Any time you find a tomato based food item "too tomatoey" you're more than likely tasting the acidity of the tomato products. I always add a pinch of sweetener to any tomato based dish I make. And why you often hear of somebody's secret ingredient in a chili cook off to be something with sugar in it like peanut butter or chocolate or honey.
Start with a teaspoon of honey, sugar, brown sugar, agave nectar, etc, and go from there. Also, try using coconut milk as the cream butter chicken recipes call for, as that may also alter the taste to conform to what you are accustomed to.


Just add a dash of liquid honey: it's a complex sugar that doesn't need much to combat an acidic taste.  If you have no liquid honey and the pasta sauce is still hot enough, use solid honey. if you have neither, use molasses, then cane sugar and if you only have white refined sugar, use that instead.
In all cases, stir well before tasting as you'll end up with ketchup if you add too much!
;-)


Does cumin contain curcumin? If not, where does the name come from?

From the opening of the Wikipedia article on curcumin you presumably saw:

  Curcumin is a bright yellow chemical produced by some plants. It is the principal curcuminoid of turmeric (Curcuma longa), a member of the ginger family (Zingiberaceae).

(emphasis mine)

As for the Curcuma genus:

  The name comes from the Sanskrit kuṅkuma, referring to turmeric.

So, nothing to do with cumin - just a bit of a coincidence from turning "curcuma" into "curcumin".


I would probably go the sherbet route.  I think it would be more forgiving for you with the juice.  You don't really see that much citrus ice cream.  I think the juice coming from it would just be icy as you said.

Also, you could probably use the zest just fine, but I don't think the rest of the peel will work well.

I would start off by looking at an orange sherbet recipe and go from there.


Yes, nuts are very fatty, and they will eventually go rancid— if this is the case, they will taste very poor.  They can also dry out, or in more rare cases (especially if stored improperly) be infested with insects or molds.

Generally, they should be good for six months to a year at their best flavor, depending on the variety (in the shell).

Five years is a little long.  I am not sure I would want to eat nuts that old.


difference between glucose syrup and sugar syrup?

Pure glucose is significantly thicker than a sugar syrup you would make on your own. It's even thicker than honey. At the previous restaurant I was at, we would use glucose in some limited applications when making certain kinds of caramel sauces (sorry, I didn't steal any recipes before I left), as (if I recall correctly) it has a higher tolerance for heat, and provides sweetness without caramelizing at the same temperatures as table sugar.


"Instant" leftover rice? Making leftover-like rice without the wait? (as in for fried rice)

It’s a funny thing, I’ve written 2 answers this week saying you should never refrigerate leftover rice, that refrigerating rice ruins it and that you should freeze it instead. Of course there is an exception to every rule, in this case that exception would be when you want leftover, refrigerated rice.

I do have a method to get that leftover refrigerated effect and have been using it to make fried rice for years, but I hadn’t answered this question because I couldn’t get it in under the 2 hour time limit, I’ve always kept it refrigerated on a cold sheet pan for at least 4 hours, 2 just isn’t long enough. Then I saw an answer to another question, and tried it: Rice gets burnt and watery Cooking the rice in the microwave as the poster suggested yielded rice that kind of felt like refrigerated, leftover rice to begin with. That gave me the idea to revisit this question. Several batches of rice (the ravens thank you) and a lot of tweaking later, I’ve got it. To buy an extra 20 minutes, I am choosing to interpret your question as reading “within 2 hours after the rice is cooked”.

I used American, plain, long grain white rice.

Before you start with the rice, place a sheet pan in the freezer. Thoroughly rinse 1 cup of rice in several batches of water. Rinse until the water runs completely clear. I don’t normally rinse American harvested rice, but here eliminating the outside starch helps achieve the effect we’re looking for. In a large microwave safe bowl mix the rice with 1.5 cups plus 2 Tbs water. Add salt if desired, I don't add salt to rice I plan to use for fried rice with soy sauce. Butter is also optional, I did not use it when I developed this method. Microwave on high for 14 minutes (YMMV*, my microwave is 1000 watts), don’t open the microwave, let the rice sit in there for 3 minutes.

--Time starts now!—

Pour 1 Tbs of neutral oil into a small bowl. Lightly dip the tip of a soft rubber spatula into the oil and spread the oil over the spatula head with your fingers. Using that spatula, gently fold the rice a few times. The object here is to rapidly cool the rice by folding, to not break up any individual grains, and to very lightly coat the rice in the oil. Repeat every minute for 5 minutes. Retrieve your now ice cold sheet pan from the freezer and dump the rice in it. Dip your fingertips into the remaining oil and using your lightly oiled fingertips, spread the rice over the sheetpan as thinly as possible, breaking up any clumps.

Put the sheetpan in the refrigerator. 1 hour and 55 minutes later, you’re ready to make fried rice!
I used the above method (complete with timer and no cheating) to make this fried rice:

As you can see from the path I cleared with the spatula, the rice didn’t stick at all and you can see the individual grains on the spatula. Unfortunately, you can’t taste it, but I can tell you that it is as good as any fried rice I have ever made, and fried rice was on the menu at my restaurant/lodge – I’ve made a lot of it. At the lodge I would refrigerate fresh rice on a cold sheet pan for at least 4, preferably 6 hours and then freeze it in individual baggies until fried rice was ordered. That worked well too, but no better than this method.

*YMMV is a common internet abbreviation, Your Mileage May Vary. It's shorthand for noting anything that might be a bit different for the reader, in this case microwave time or power level depending upon the power of the reader's microwave.


Chicken marinade with soy sauce - have I done something wrong?

Soy sauce is pretty salty. It sounds like a great deal of water diffused out of your chicken and into the marinade, which significantly changed the texture of the meat.

It's not uncommon to do something like this on purpose. When you make gravlax, for example, you cover a piece of salmon with quite a bit of salt and refrigerate it for a day or two. The salt draws out a lot of moisture, causing the fish to firm up considerably. Even though your soy sauce marinade was liquid, it still had a much higher salt concentration (or to think of it another way, a much lower water concentration) than the chicken, and would have had the same effect.


Why didn't the whey separate from the curds when I tried to make Shankgleesh cheese?

Yogurt is very sensitive and there are many possibilities here regarding why this recipe hasn't worked out, however the very main point that stands out for me is that you heated the yogurt to coagulate the protein.

This is not how it is done in traditional shanklish making. The yogurt is poured into an elongated container and gets covered and put on the floor. Then you need to sit on the floor and shake the container from front to back. Every ten minutes or so stop, uncovers the container and skims the butter which has formed on top. Continue doing so, until half of the butter is removed and the yogurt has become low in fat (partially skimmed). At this point you should be able to use the skimmed yogurt (known as shenineh) to heat it up and separate the curds from its water and make the cheese.


How much meat do I need to serve 26 adults?

Generally speaking, a 1/2 lb per person should be plenty assuming you have some food other than meat they will be eating, and it sounds like you do. I'd recommend buying 15 lbs total and you will definitely have enough.

Since you are going to have multiple meats, that makes it a bit more challenging because you have to guess which is going to be eaten more/less.

This article from The Kitchn would actually recommend a bit less than 15 lbs for you since the meat is not really a main dish on it's own in any of your dishes.

Go with 15 lbs to be safe, and just think through how much of each meat you will need.


Cooking kidney beans that just started to sprout a little

This is totally safe to eat as long as you cook them. The taste and the texture would be a little bit different than what you use to though.

Here is an article about the safety of eating sprouted beans.


Self-cooked chickpeas not as good as canned?

I have made chickpeas 2x recently and I was happy with them.  What I did:

1:  Rinse and then short soak - maybe 1 hour.

2:  Long cook, covered - more like 12 hours.  Chickpeas are little beasts.  They can take it.

3:  Salted cooking water, enough to cover chickpeas and not extra.  I think cooking in salty water gets the salt thru and thru the bean.  I topped up with extra water once during long cook (I got up at night to check them).  There was only a little water left when I was done and I kept it.  It sort of became jellyish presumably with broken down chickpea.  It was good. If you do that, salt your water to taste.

I would be nervous about scorching the bottom if cooking 12 hours on a stove top.  Try a slow cooker or a dutch oven inside the oven set to bake, as low as it will go.  Mine was actually in a foil tray covered with foil (1st time) and a dutch oven (second time) on my 2 burner gas grill with the peas over the cold burner and the other burner set to low.  Didn't want to heat up the house.

If you try, post how it turns out in the comments.


Seitan (aka. wheat gluten/vital wheat gluten/wheat meat/fu*) can be used to make chik'n nugget type chicken, but not as in breast or thigh, etc. Recipes abound on the internets.

The gist of using it involves bringing together compositional ingredients (basically the gluten) and flavoring, mixing to develop it into a rubbery mass, forming it into and using as a dough (i.e. making chik'n nugget cutouts).

*There are differences between these, but they are all basically the same beast.


What is the proper way to store steak at home?

The discolored surface is a product of oxidation, the same thing that happens when you leave apple slices in the open air. Oxigen is a highly reactive molecule and it binds to anything it can find, in this case your steak.

It is not rotten or unsafe to eat in any way, it just has an unpleasant color/texture when raw. Meat packaging is often filled with carbon dioxide, and since the oxygen is already binded to carbon it no longer reacts with the steak. The side effect of this is that your steak could have gone bad, but it still looks good. The pad just collects any fluid that might  drip off the steak, again for aesthetic purposes.

I'd suggest to remove the wax paper and shrinkwrap it, this will prevent it from oxidizing.


Does a mix of cocktail sauce and tartare sauce have a special name?

Barring the thickening with finely sieved hard-boiled egg/egg-yolk, this combination is heading in the direction of Thousand Island dressing. Given that recipe is so variable, you could just about get away with calling it that.


Potatoes of all kinds will blacken after peeling.  Try putting each potato in cold water while you peel the rest.  I do this with both whole and cut potatoes.  You can add some acid to the water if you like, but it's not really necessary.


Why do short pie bases require chilling before baking?

The Good Eats episode on pies suggested this too.  Alton Brown refrigerated the dough before forming, formed it, then re-refrigerated it.

He explained that taking it out of the fridge to form the base would be enough time for some of the butter in the dough to soften and potentially melt.  This would undo all the work put in previously to keep the butter intact within the dough.


Undercooking tofu causes a bad stomach. Is this true?

Firstly…  Do you think your girlfreinds may simply be worried about being gassy from eating beans?

It is a misnomer that tofu is ever technically “raw” because because all the ingredients for making tofu are cooked (brought to a simmer or boil) in the manufacturing process.

The soymilk is often cooked twice when making tofu: first when making soymilk from soybeans and second when making tofu from the soymilk. (However the process of making silken tofu from soymilk does not always involve a second step with high temperatures.)

Some possible reasons that tofu could cause a bad stomach:

tofu is past it’s expiration date.
tofu was not refrigerated properly.
tofu is somehow contaminated.
allergies to soy.
eating beans can cause gas.

If it's the gas, try fermented soy products (such as tempeh) which cause much less or no gas.

References:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/08/how-to-make-fresh-silken-tofu-from-home.html
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/08/fresh-silken-tofu-recipe.html
http://www.veggieboards.com/forum/21-general-food-discussions/14467-raw-tofu-safe-eat.html
https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/soy-alert/soy-carbohydrates-the-flatulence-factor/
https://therightplan.com/tofu-does-not-equal-eating-healthy/


How to get rid of boiled chicken breast smell?

There are a lot of simple hacks that you might try to get rid of the smell in the finished dish, which involves adding small amounts of herbs or spices etc. But of course, it needs to ensured that no-one will have any adverse effect with the additives.

Some ideas:

1) Add lemon juice (fresh squeezed is better) and some ground black pepper near the end of boiling. This is a classic combination.

2) Add Bay leaves and whole black peppers in water when you start boiling.

3) Add sage/thyme during the boiling.

Just keep in mind one thing: The smell and taste capability of many elders are diminished, and the plain boiled chicken might not smell too bad for them. and they might be more interested in avoiding anything that might upset their stomach than a better-smelling chicken.