How can I increase the amount of gravy I can make from one roast?

If you want more gravy you need to add more liquids and natural flavours.

Better if you have bone but . . . no bone:
Before you roast your beef sear it, so it has good colour when it comes out, deglaze the pan/baking tray with water/red wine/white wine or Madeira one of me faves and put that to one side. (in the gravy stock pot)
Add onions, carrots and parsnips in with the beef, and touch of water, olive oil and salt. Don't go mad with the water you're not poaching the beef!! Just enough to stop the veg burning - 5mm in the bottom (top up if needed).
 When the beef is ready (55C internal temp = medium rare more here) take it out of the tray, put the root veg to one side and and add the remains to your gravy stock pot.
Sear the bottom of the roast with a little oil (it'll be a bit soggy from sitting in the veg) then put it aside to rest (5-10 mins if you're in a hurry 15-30 for 3kg will come out lush!) deglaze again adding the resulting jus to your stock pot, which now had a wealth of flavour.

Use that stock pot to create a beast of a gravy! Make it in the usual manner, if you keep the onions in they'll make it thicker and tastier - a stick blender with give you a smoother texture if that's what you like!


How to properly sauté mushrooms so that they don't release water?

There's a great experiment on Cooking Issues that deals with this very problem. The general advice is to not crowd the pan because of the concomitant release of water; however, the guys found that doing this is actually beneficial because, although a lot of water is initially released, by the time the liquid has eventually evaporated the mushrooms have collapsed and cook far better in the oil that's left. Here's the full explanation:

To make the test really severe, I decided to cook the soaked mushrooms in one batch in an extremely crowded pan, and the dry mushrooms in 3 batches with plenty of room. We weighed out identical amounts of salt and oil (this is the crucial part) and began cooking.
As we expected, the soaked crowded mushrooms formed a soupy mess in the pan. The dry mushrooms didn’t stew and cooked quickly. Here is where it got weird. The dry mushrooms ended up absorbing all the oil. In fact, I had underestimated the amount of oil they needed. They wanted more. I couldn’t add any more oil, however, because it would have ruined the experiment. When the soaked and crowded mushrooms had finally evaporated all their extra water and stated to sauté, they didn’t absorb all the oil. When they were finished, a significant amount of oil was left in the pan. They looked as good and tasted better and less oily than their dry cousins –by a lot.
Our explanation: While the mushrooms are boiling off their water, they aren’t absorbing oil. By the time the boiling stops they have already collapsed, so they aren’t as porous as a raw mushroom and don’t want to absorb oil. The dry mushrooms start absorbing oil from the get-go.

What I do now is this:

Add the all the chopped mushrooms to a pan over a medium heat with some salt
and water and cover.

The mushrooms steam and release and ton of their own water: allow to cook
for a good 5-10 minutes.

Drain the mushrooms - reserving the released mushroom water -  and
dry the pan before returning it to a high heat.

When the pan is very hot, add  a few tablespoons of oil (depending on
the volume of cooked mushrooms) and throw in the mushrooms.

When they are nicely browned, deglaze the pan with the mushroom water

The reason for the two stage process is that I found if you wait for the water to evaporate naturally the residue from the dissolved solids in the water can stick to the pan and burn while the mushrooms are frying. By covering the pan initially, the water doesn't evaporate and can be siphoned off with any dissolved solids (that now can't get stuck to the bottom of the pan) and then reintroduced right at the end. As the pan is so hot it only takes a minute or two for all the water to evaporate and any new fond created by actually sauteeing the mushrooms gets used as well.


The trick is to not use a wok at all. A wok works by concentrating a lot of heat on the bottom, more heat than you can achieve with a home stove. "Stir frying" moves the food from the cool sides of the wok, through the intense heat at the bottom, then out.

Rather, use a wide skillet. A home stove can't generate the intense, focused heat of a restaurant stove, but it can generate a lot of heat over a wider area. Put your skillet on the burner, add some oil, get it good and hot, then add your vegetables. The intense heat will defrost them and cook them quickly.

You have to work in smallish batches, probably no more than half a bag. And if you want to stir-fry meat with the vegetables, you may need to temporarily transfer the one out to make room for the other.

As for defrosting... the idea is that you don't need to: thinly sliced vegetables will quickly go from frozen to thawed to cooked when given direct access to very hot oil, and all surface moisture will quickly evaporate. Defrosting them will just give them time to get mushy.

I'll be honest, I'm not entirely convinced that that's better than defrosting them and allowing the water to drain. But I have observed that when these vegetables come out of the bag, they look nice and clear and perky, and when they're defrosted they look kinda sad. So, maybe there's something to it.

Anyway, that's my advice: use a wide pan, over high heat, with a fair bit of oil, and work in small batches.


From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotisserie:

  Rotisserie is a style of roasting where meat is skewered on a spit – a long solid rod used to hold food while it is being cooked over a fire in a fireplace or over a campfire, or roasted in an oven.

A spit is a long solid rod :) (as confirmed by http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spit#Noun)


What kind of vegetable oil should I use for baking?

The kind of oil you use in baking is mostly a matter of personal preference.  Any neutral oil (no strong flavor) will do.

I suggest you use an oil that you keep around for another purpose, which is not too expensive.

Some good candidates include:

Canola oil
Peanut oil (refined, except for those with peanut allergies)
Generic "vegetable" oil

Grapeseed oil is also excellent but tends to expensive.

Oils you would want to avoid due to the fact that they bring more flavor which may not be what you want in baked goods include:

Olive oil
Sesame oil
Unrefined oils of all sorts


I would only worry about this if the starter began producing off tasting/smelling bread. My starters have always smelled somewhat of alcohol though so I might worry if it stopped smelling at least a little like that.


Tomato sauce and paste are not the same thing.
Tomato paste is essentially a concentrated tomato with some water removed that is then preserved. It is generally only used as an ingredient.
Tomato sauce is immensely variable and usually has a variety of other ingredients added resulting in something to actually eat.


I was about to ask in a comment as to where in the world you were, as there are a few factors that can play into this. However I spied packages in the background and with a bit of sleuthing deduced that you bought Allinsons products, probably from Tesco and were hence likely in the UK, so high altitude isn't likely to be one of your problems.
I bake pretty much all my bread in a bread machine, mostly because I was living somewhere where bread was terrible in taste and texture, but have continued since moving away from there.
I find that bread machine recipes tend to be a little off how the recipes work. This might be something as simple as different flour brands used or the fact that tests are done in controlled conditions in labs with stable temperature and humidity.
The problems that cause bread to collapse like this generally fall into 4 categories

Too much water/too little flour
Additive missing
Too much yeast
Machine timing issues

1 and 3 are fairly self explanatory. My first guess would be water:flour ratio. Too much water (or too little flour) results in dough that is too wet and ends up in a more open texture. Your recipe has a hydration of 70% (280/400 *100). This is at the upper end of what you would want to use in a bread machine. For comparison, I use a recipe that has 300 ml water with 480 ml flour (62.5%). As a general rule you want 60-65% water for an all-purpose loaf.
Too much yeast will cause the bread to rise too fast and become too open, leading to collapse. Your recipe looks like the right amount.
I have come across a problem, in countries where the flour is not bleached, that you need to add some "bread improver", which is just some vitamin C and a bit of soy lecithin.  I surmise the following is happening, but have no certainty on this: Without the improver the dough tends to rise slowly once the yeast has used up the added/free sugars in the flour - so the second rise fails to work well, leaving the heating from the cooking expanding the few bubbles remaining after knock-down too much, so the bread then collapses. If you are buying "bread machine" specific yeast it may have added improver already (if the UK needs it). You can tell this is the case as it will look like a mix of flour-like substance (improver) with small cylindrical granules (yeast). Plain yeast is a just the granules.
I find that bread machines (at least my one) don't knock down the dough properly or have a long second rise, which results in the upper part of the loaf being more open than I would like. I think this is a function of the timing of the rises, with the second rise being too long (or the element heating too slowly), so the loaves tend to rise, then collapse as there are too many bubbles in the dough.


There are many "natural" or "clean label" ingredients that work as mold inhibitors. Most of them work by adding some acid and thereby creating a more inhospitable environment for mold. Some of the popular mold inhibitors (at least is some U.S. bakeries) are: cultured whey, vinegar, and raisin juice.

I think vinegar and raisin juice are good options for home use.

Vinegar

Works by adding Acetic acid. The white vinegar you buy in the grocery store is typically 5% acetic acid (at least in the U.S.).

To inhibit mold, the recommended amount is 0.5-2.0% of the flour weight of 5% acetic acid vinegar. Add with your other liquids.

Raisin Juice Concentrate

Raisin juice concentrate has been shown to be effective at retarding mold and bacteria growth in bread. It works by adding Propionic acid and Tartaric acid. Further, it seems that a home baker should be able to purchase this in reasonable quantities and at a reasonable price.

The recommended amount is 5-10% of flour weight, by weight. Add with your other liquids.

My personal experience is positive: I used to purchase a whole-wheat bread with raisin juice concentrate and it lasted forever.

This study from the Journal of Food Science, Application of raisin extracts as preservatives in liquid bread and bread systems, found very dramatic increase in shelf life.

  The mean mold-free shelf life of the bread containing 7.5% water extract [of raisins] was 18.1 +/- 3.3 d at room temperature while the negative control was mold free for 9.4 +/- 2.4 d. The antifungal efficacy of the extracts in bread was equivalent to 0.24% calcium propionate in 21 d of storage. Doubling the concentration of the extract did not improve the mold-retarding property in bread. The bread containing raisin paste, the percentage of which in dough was equivalent to 15% raisin extract, exhibited a stronger antifungal activity than did the extracts in bread.

Notes

Both of these can inhibit yeast activity which you may need to compensate for by increasing yeast or proofing time.

Sources: some personal experience, this really interesting article from Oklahoma State University, Clean Label Mold Inhibitors for Baking, and the study linked above.


Should I "bake" a pizza stone before the first use?

Generally that sort of treatment is to get rid of any moisture the stone may have taken on during storage/handling--if it weren't kept dry, there could be moisture deep in the stone that would not be an issue in normal home use. I would expect the instructions were also that you should put the stone in the cold oven then turn it on--that would be the safest way to do the whole process, avoiding thermal shock, etc.

There might be some proprietary reason to do this also, but my vote goes to driving out deeply absorbed moisture.


How should I adjust oven temperature/time to have two dishes ready at the same time?

25ºF isn't such a big difference, so I'd just split the temperature in the middle: 335-340F.

Instead of 60', aim at 50' and check for doneness by sticking a pin in the loaf. If it comes out clean, it's done.

I'd leave the casserole at 30' and then check. If it's done, it's done. If not, you can keep the oven going some time more.


Using a large amounts of seeds will significantly influence the humidity of your dough and bread. Dry seeds will soak up quite a bit of water - either during resting time or afterwards. This is especially bad when this soaking happens after baking, as your bread will get very dry... Wholemeal tends to have the same effect.

The best way to counteract this effect is to

add more water and
add more time

This can be done either by

pre-soaking the seeds, which will then "bring" the required extra water to the dough or
letting a rather wet dough rest for a long time, preferably over night.

The first approach is easier, because the seeds take up the required water "automatically", the latter preferable taste-wise. Longer resting times allow for the development of complex flavors and need very little yeast or sourdough.

As for recipes, you should be able to find plenty on the internet.


How to make apple chunks in apple pie stay intact?

The only trick I know of is to use a different variety of apple-- some will turn to complete mush, while others stay firm.  Unfortunately, unlike potatoes, they don't tend to be marked at the super market as to which variety they are.

Now, I'm not familiar with Bramley, but from what I've found, it's compared to Granny Smith, which tends to hold up well in pies.

I'd recommend blind baking your crust, if you aren't already, so the filling isn't in there as long, and possibly going with a thicker slice of apple when you're cooking, in hopes they won't break down as quickly.

update : in checking CookWise, there's a comment in the apple pie recipe that "briefly sautéing and poaching apples softens them slighly before the sugar, which prevents cells falling apart and preserves texture, is added"


What are some effective tips for cooking bacon in the microwave?

You can cook bacon that is safe-to-eat using a microwave. The USDA even lists microwaving bacon as a safe way to cook it:

The three main ways to cook bacon are in a skillet or pan on the
stove, in a conventional oven, or in the microwave. The length of time
to cook bacon depends upon the type and thickness of the bacon, the
heat used, and the desired crispness.

That said, I wouldn't expect the same (or even similar) results as cooking bacon in an oven or on a stovetop. Microwaved bacon usually ends up rubbery instead of crispy and brown. You also can't collect the rendered fat and reuse it since you usually microwave bacon on a paper towel.
Serious Eats wrote a great piece on how to cook bacon and advised against microwaving bacon due to the texture, but try it for yourself! Microwaved bacon is perfectly safe to eat and, at the end of the day, only you can decide whether you like it or not :)


Is using chocolate instead of royal icing for a gingerbread house more difficult?

A light touch of melted chocolate on the roof never hurt anyone. I already tried and the house holds up very well!


At my house we use a butter knife. At the bottom of a walnut, there's always a small crack that we can slip the tip of the knife through, then twist the knife by the handle and the shells come apart. The little separator in the shell can also be easily removed with the butter knife.
But other than that, we sometimes opt to simply grab two walnuts, and with our two hands, crush the shells against each others, and one of the two walnut shells will Crack and give way. Disclaimer: this method can get messy.


How do I choose to avoid brown stringy fibres in avocado?

The brown stringy fibers form in the avocado flesh after it is bruised or the avocado is past ripe.

The way to avoid this is to plan ahead. Buy your avocados when they are green and very hard. Try to select ones that have not been abused (at least if you see one being knocked around, take a different one). When you get the avocados home, set them aside in a safe place for a couple/few days, & don't drop or manhandle them in the meantime. When they are ripe (yield slightly to gentle pressure, as they say) you have a couple days to use them. Putting them in the refrigerator can prolong their niceness a little bit if you are not quite ready to use them. Unless some mishap befell them before purchase, they should be beautiful and without those horrible stringy lesions.


Are there low-fat substitutes for shortening in baking?

what you are looking for does not exist.

  a way to make the food [low fat] for him without losing flavor

This is impossible. Fat is very important in baking for both taste and texture. Assuming that your husband's fat/salt/sugar diet means that the substitute has to contain less fat per unit of weight than shortening, you will be losing lots of flavor and texture. There is no way around it.
The next best thing is to continue baking, but use recipes designed with low fat and sugar content in mind. Altering recipes is a very hard thing to do in general, especially when you are removing a major ingredient.
If you are determined to try altering, here some general advice:

Some baked goods depend a lot on (solid) fat. You will not be able to make any of them in a fat-reduced version. These include pie crust, Danish, millefeuille, and other pastry doughs. They can be made with butter or coconut fat or lard in the same amounts, but the result will have just as much fat.
Batter-based baked goods can be made with reduced fat. The taste and texture will suffer, and also the shelf life (they will dry out earlier). It is especially tricky if you are reducing the sugar at the same time. You will never have the same quality as with a normal recipe, but most people find fat- and sugar-reduced recipes good enough for their taste. You need something to make up for the bulk lost, but also hold moisture and provide taste. Typical substitutes are fruit purees (especially from high-pectin fruits), dairy products (e.g. sour cream) and, if you feel adventurous, emulsions with a little fat, a lot of flavorful liquid and an emulsifier such as xanthan.

This type of substitution works for cakes and quick breads leavened with baking powder. You can use baking soda, but will have to adjust for the new acidity levels if you are using fruit purees or fermented dairy. Other leavening methods will be much harder to get to work. Especially the bisquits (in the Southern US meaning of the word) will probably be impossible to make without a solid fat.

Yeast doughs don't need a substitute. Just leave as much fat out as you want to. The texture will change drastically towards plain bread, but there is no way around it.
Cookies are a problematic topic. Many of them need both fat and sugar. Some types can work with less, but getting these to work and finding a proper substitute will be very hard. It is easier to search around for new recipes; the chance that you can alter the ones you already have to get satisfying results is very, very low.  See also:  What are some low fat butter substitutes for cookies?


Are you using canned pumpkin or are you using a fresh pumpkin after roasting it.  I believe you may need to add a half cup more buttermilk or regular milk to your recipe.


Crispy fried chicken goes limp: picnic disaster

Once fried chicken or any fried food for that matter is refrigerated it is going to lose it's crispiness.  This is due to the cruncy exterior coating absorbing moisture from inside the food combined with moisture being trapped inside the wrapping/storange container which then is absorbed by the food as well.  It happens even shortly after frying if the food item is placed on a flat surface where the inner steam can't escape and is trapped between the food and the surface under it.  This is why when frying large batches or holding fried food for any extended time, it's best to drain on a cooling rack that's upside down on a brown paper bag or paper towels.  Upside down so that it's close to the paper to absorb excess grease but still allows a small bit of airspace so that steam can escape and if keeping it in a warm oven, hot air can circulate.

You can re-crisp your chicken by placing it on a roasting/cooling rack on a baking tray and place in the oven to re-crisp the skin.  Be careful not to dry it out.


You're going to have to start over with new chocolate. I'm sorry to say it but there's no way to remove the salt from the chocolate.


I've used this palm sugar caramel recipe before without problems. It uses about 25% honey as well as the sugar.

17oz palm sugar
4.25 oz Honey
14 oz heavy cream

As soon as the sugars get to 320 ℉ (160 ℃), take the pan off the heat and deglaze it with the cream. If you let it sit on the heat any longer, it will burn. After adding the cream simply cook it again until it reaches 250 ℉ (122 ℃). Then, remove it from the heat, pour it into your prepared form, and let it cool to room temperature.


Can non-dairy creamer be used to make desserts like rice pudding?

I think it will work; you aren't really using any "fancy" properties of milk when you make rice pudding, it is mainly just serving as a liquid medium for the starch from the rice to thicken. Not saying it will taste great or be great for you, I think the soy milk, rice milk or almond milk would be more pleasant non-dairy choices, but I think it will work.


Martha's Vinyard Magazine suggests that the diamater of the stalks is not directly related to their age as one might suspect:

  Some might assume thinner spears are younger and therefore more
  tender. The diameter, however, has more to do with the age of the
  plant itself and the particular asparagus variety.

They go on to cite Cook's Illustrated, saying:

  [T]hin and
  thick spears as equally sweet, nutty, and grassy, but ...
  thicker spears have a slightly better, more tender texture. The reason
  is that the fiber is somewhat more concentrated in thinner spears.

You can peel asparagus if you choose to.   Personally, I peel the base of thicker stalks.  Mark Bittman recommends peeling from just under the flowers to the base of the stalk on the thicker stalks.

Thinner stalks may be easier to saute or grill, and thicker ones more suited to steaming, poaching, and so on, but this is more related to the time it takes them to cook through.

See also:

Mark Bittman writing in the New York Times
Better Homes and Gardens
Martha's Vinyard Magazine


You could cook it longer, in a shallow pan, to evaporate some of the water.


Traditionally paella is a poor man's food, so what went in depended on what you had. If the only meat you had was snails, you made your paella with snails. So you'll find some people today insisting that to be truly authentic, paella valenciana should have snails.

The "anything goes" mentality still persists to some extent: it's not easy to find two Valencians who agree 100% on the recipe. And in addition to valenciana you have paella de mariscos, de verduras, and mixta (and should arròs negre count?) On that basis the defining aspects would be the type of rice and the technique: a flat pan and a long cooking time to extract flavour from the ingredients before the rice goes in.


You will never fully cook away alcohol, only reduce the amount.  See Alcohol retention in food preparation, or for the quick table, see wikipedia.

They covered this on an episode of America's Test Kitchen, and concluded that surface area matters -- a wider vessel would cook off more alcohol; it wasn't just a function of time.


Chicken sticks to bottom of pan when I boil bones for soup

Don't boil it.

You want a bare simmer when trying to extract the flavor from the bones.  If you're boiling, you'll both run into the problems that you mention (sticking & burning), and you end up with a worse broth -- much of the flavor is in the smell of the soup, and boiling too hard will both destroy compounds you want and kick them into the air (and thus not in the broth/stock).

My normal procedure is:

With either a good cleaver, or poultry shears,can crack the longer leg and thigh bones.
Cover with cold water by an inch or so.
Add whatever scrap vegetables you have.  (whatever you have that's getting a bit sad looking in the fridge, but isn't to the point of being spoiled.  I also have a bag in my freezer of vegetables that were past their prime).
Heat the water 'til you see bubbling, then back off the heat to maintain a bare simmer.
Cook for 2 to 4 hours, checking on it every 30 min or so.  (Once you're more experienced, you may not need to check on it as often ... but you need to watch for the water evaporating too quickly or things starting to stick)
Strain out the bones & vegetables.
Cool down the broth if not serving that day, put into smaller containers, and put in the refrigerator.
On the day you're serving it, add in whatever diced vegetables and/or meat and heat through.  Adjust the salt & acidity if needed, and maybe add some herbs.
For something starchy like stuffing, heat it through separately and put a scoop in the bottom of the bowl, then pour the hot soup over it.  (to avoid it turning into complete mush)


My family always made these Chinese flatbread-like pancakes and we cooked them on a cast-iron pan (although it was more like a frying surface or something, it was flat, round, had a handle, but no conceivable border) without using any oil. Now it is true that a little bit of the flour kept sticking to the pan, but we also had a little broom made of spliced bamboo (I think) with which we just swept the excess flour off. This of course is rather messy, but we only had to clean the stove after the cooking was done.
I think this worked so well because the dough was not too wet (but also not too dry) and we covered the surface of every flatbread with a little bit of flour, which helps in making it less sticky.


Kids Lunch box - suggestion for fruit smoothie packaging

You could use a plastic syringe (without the needle obviously), which can usually be found at cake stores and such.

Where I come from there's a chocolate shop that sells plastic syringes filled with chocolate for kids.

On the other hand, the extended plunger may take up too much room. In that case, maybe a test-tube sort of thing with a plastic top to seal it. I've seen them around, but wouldn't know where to find them.


Please tell me what this kitchen tool is called and its use, specifically

Looks like a butter curler to me.

  A butter curler is a kitchen tool designed to produce decorative butter shapes for use in food decoration. It can also be used to make chocolate and wax shavings. In typical use, the material to be cut is chilled slightly while the curler is dipped into hot water to ease the cutting.

Here's an example of a more modern one and the results of using it:


My food doesn't have too much taste / taste allways the same?

I don't know where you are living or the quality of the food you can get your hands on, but these are (obvious) generalities that should be true:

Ingredient quality plays a lot, for example most tomatoes sold in supermarket are just reddish water bags without any taste. You can remedy this either by looking for better quality ones or by adding tomato paste or some kind of tomato concentration. Ground meat, depending on the fat concentration, freshness, etc., can range from fast food leather to deliciousness.
Preparation is something really complicated. Just for the onions there are more than a couple of options for the preparation, did you make your onion sweat? Did you sauté them? When you did add the tomatoes, did you let them reduce and form a sauce? Did add garlic at the very end - the garlic flavor is destroyed really quickly by heat - or if not, did you put enough for it to survive the whole cooking process?
It might just be that you are preparing things in the same "style", hence the impression things are more bland than they might be. Try truly different ones. It might help.
To get really tasty meals, salting is preponderant. However most people underestimate the quantity. By a factor ten or so. Salting at the end of the cooking in the plate is really not ideal too in most meals. You should taste and adjust salt at every step of the preparation. A rule of thumb I heard in kitchen is 10g of salt per kilogram (Measure it in a scale; that's a lot more than what you might think).
Or it is the reverse and it might just be cultural apparatus, used to eat meals heavy on sugar or salt you need time to adapt to the normal taste of things.

As you said the question is really broad, hence the answers are too. Try to understand where the issue comes from by following recipes and then experiment with each factor until you get it right.


Is there an open list comparing food gums and their viscosity/usages?

Most of the scientific papers I've found must be purchased, but this one is interesting:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3551143/


What can I add to Splenda solution to prevent spoilage?

The easiest and best solution for the problem is to not dissolve it into water in the first place. Powdered sweetener keeps indefinitely. Dissolved sweetener falls smack in the middle of FAT TOM, so you have converted a shelf stable food into an unstable one.

Assuming that you want to keep it at room temperature, there is not that much you can do. You can reduce the water, but I don't know enough about the solubility of sucralose, it is possible that it is still susceptible to mold at the saturation point, just like sugar.

You could try acidifying it sufficiently to stop the mold from growing. But then it will taste much less sweet, so you will have to add a much larger amount to your drink, several time the amount you normally use. Alternatively, you can acidify it less and use sodium benzoate as a preservative. It is normally used for industrially produced food, so I cannot suggest the correct ratios of acid to sucralose to sodium benzoate. But note that simply mixing them in any old way won't give you a safe product, you may need industrial recipes for correct usage.


Savory usually means spicy & salty.

If you wanted to cut the sharp salty taste of the mustard & capers you could have used a 'sweet mustard' preparation.

I'm not sure if the spinach in the 'tuna spinach wrap' was actually leaf spinach or one of those green 'wraps' like a tortilla?
Spinach has a bit of a metallic taste that some people find sharp.
Switch to a mild lettuce like Romaine or even ice berg to offset such strong flavors as tina, mustard, & capers.

A bland cheese or mayonnaise can also help balance too much sharpness or 'tang' also.


Would it be alright to substitute white balsamic vinegar for wine in risotto?

Risotto generally refers to cooking short (or sometimes medium) grain rice, such as Arborio, in some kind of broth/stock until the base becomes creamy.  Anything after that is strictly whatever flavors you prefer.  There are classic additions past that - such as white wine, hard cheeses, mushrooms, etc - but the sky is the limit.

If it sounds good to you, take a small bit of the risotto base, mix a little of your desired ingredient in and the sample it.  If it tastes good, expand on it!  At worst you've messed up a small portion of the dish, at best you look like a culinary genius!

Would white balsamic vinegar taste good?  Sound good to me!


What can I use in place of Quinoa flour?

Rice is initially a seed, but once its husk has been removed, it is considered a grain. After that first stage of processing, you have 'brown rice'. Quinoa is technically a seed, but is only one stage of processing away from brown rice. Brown rice flour is the closest approximation in terms of fiber, caloric content, and binding behavior to quinoa flour that you will find, the major differences being that quinoa flour has approx. 1.5x the fat and 2x the protein found in BRF.


Sous Vide effectiveness of trapping residual air above water bath?

That bubble doesn't make any difference at all for cooking time. The air isn't touching the food. It's pretty much the same as if you had a tiny bag of air attached to a fully-sealed bag.

As you've already seen on other questions, vacuum sealing vs a good non-vacuum seal doesn't make any difference. The quote about excess air and oxidation was referring to storage and marination (presumably with the air in contact with the food) and mentions water displacement as a method that avoids those issues, so it does not apply here.

I suppose theoretically there could be a bacteria issue, but it wouldn't be contamination and wouldn't really be due to the air either. There can be bacteria in the bag with or without air - indeed, probably most of it is on the meat. The issue would be that the bag isn't fully immersed, and the part of the bag above the water isn't at the same temperature, so while you're cooking the meat at a safe temperature/time, bacteria might be able to grow in the lower temperature. But the solution there is just to make sure the bag is submerged, with or without a little bubble.

Cutting a hole to let the air escape doesn't really make much sense to me. If the hole is above the water level, the air isn't going to escape, you'll just have a slightly-open bag. If it's below the water level water will get in. If you really want to try to get more air out, just redo the water displacement method: open the top corner of the bag, pull it down to let the water push the air out the top, and close again.


As recipe writing is off-topic here, the starting point to reduce the parameters is to look for recipes containing "Sacramental bread recipe", "unleavened communion bread recipe", or even "edible paper recipe".

Just ensure to enclose the search items in-between double quotes (copy-paste the search terms above) and if you find a real church recipe, substitute the biblical grains like Spelt, Khorasan_wheat, ... by organic white flour without any additives if you cannot find the original easily and use a little less water.


How do I stop my flatbread from going hard like pizza crust?

Store-bought has had time to allow crust to soften.
The inside/surface moisture balances out especially when wrapped.

Mostly it's the other way around trying to hold onto crisp outside and still soft inside!

Don't overtake and after a short cooling down, wrap and wait.

Otherwise, adjust baking to hold more moisture by partially covering or introducing steam.


It could simply be that it's a gustatory illusion!  See my answer to this related question for more explanation.

Edit:

Here is a summary of the relevant information (if you don't want to follow the links):

Human taste receptors don't simply react to how much actual salt there is in a food or drink; our perceived tastes are a fusion of both our gustatory and olfactory senses.  In other words, the smell of a food or drink can affect how it tastes!

There are numerous studies that suggest foods with certain odors can be perceived as much saltier than they actually are.  Coffee has a good amount of oil, there's even more fat if you add cream, and other studies suggest that high fat foods can also increase perceived saltiness.


When they're still young, I grill them --

trim ends
cut into planks about 1/4" to 3/8" thick (~1cm)
toss in olive oil
sprinkle with salt
grill over direct heat
flip when you develop good char marks.
pull from the grill once the other side is slightly charred.

As they get older, the seed cavity starts developing -- you can cut the sides off, leaving the middle, but it's just not as sweet.


Most of your questions are a matter of personal taste!

1) What is the purpose of adding curry leaves?

  I'd say adding a nice taste to the meal (as long as you like it)

2) Does the taste of the curry change when you add curry leaves? Does it make it worse or make it better?

  yes it does. It will make your curry better... as long as you like the taste of it

3) Do any other country's recipes use curry leaves? If yes, which ones?

  I have seen curry leaves in many SE countries and cuisines.

4) Are there any health benefits of adding curry leaves?

  They are believed to have multiple benefits 1, 2, etc.

5) Is it better not to add curry leaves?

  Well, again, as long as you like it

6) Are curry leaves added to any other non-curry recipes?)

  I have seen them in many other meals than curry both in India and in SE Asia. Here is a primer for some recipes using them.


Frozen Asparagus after thawed became extremely soggy and wet, any way to salvage?

It probably won't be an appetizing texture to eat whole by itself no matter what you do to it at this point, though you can try draining and cooking - your tolerance for mushiness might be higher than mine!

I'd personally blend it into a soup, so the texture isn't an issue. Things like cream of asparagus just need the flavor, which should still be okay.


What is the difference between "Mongolian Grill" and "Hibachi"?

Hibachi are technically a traditional Japanese device used for heating one's house.  They are a basic, heat-proof container that holds charcoal.

The cooking devices that many people refer to as "hibachi" are what the Japanese would call "shichirin":

I'm guessing that the term "hibachi" was popularized in North America because "shichirin" can be hard to pronounce for Anglophones.

Somewhere along the way, primarily in North America, the term "hibachi" also started to be used to refer to teppanyaki:

I'm not sure when or why this started; perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Banihana confusingly refers to their teppanyaki restaurants as "hibachi-style".

Among these, teppanyaki is most similar to Mongolian barbecue, in which meat is cooked on large, round, cast iron griddles:

(Images taken from Wikipedia.)

If you were to actually go to a Japanese restaurant and cook your own food over a shichirin, it would likely be referred to as "yakiniku", which is believed to have some origins in Korean barbecue.

Whereas teppanyaki has been a traditional Japanese cooking method for a long time, "Mongolian barbecue" was developed in the 1970s in Taipei, Taiwan.  During that time, Japanese Teppanyaki was very popular in Taiwan, so many people speculate that was actually the inspiration for Mongolian barbecue.  There are also some similarities between the Japanese dish "jingisukan" and Mongolian barbecue, however, jingisukan predates Mongolian barbecue.


What is the difference between Seed, Grain, Nut, Kernel, Pit, Bean?

Your assumptions and "hierarchy" are incorrect. "Seed" is the most basic term, the other terms are characterizations of seeds.  However, the use of any given term in a culinary settings may have little to do with the term's strict botanical definition.  For culinary purposes there are no definite rules for which things are called nuts, pits, beans, grains, etc.

For example, the term beans used to be exclusively used for broad beans (fava beans), but today we use the term to describe plants as biologically and geographically disparate as soy, garbanzo, coffee, legumes, castor, and cocoa.

Kernel does not only refer to the center part of a nut.  It is also regularly used to refer to the individual seeds of corn/maize, wheat, buckwheat, and barley.

Grains used to refer specifically to the seeds of grass food crops like wheat, barley, oats, and corn/maize.  Today it is also a catch-all term which is used for similar food crops that are not grass seeds such as amaranth, millet, quinoa, rice, buckwheat, and even soy.

As a culinary term, "nut" has also undergone an expansion of meaning from, as you put it, "a fruit composed of a hard shell and a seed, which is generally edible" to include basically any relatively large, oily kernels found within a shell and used in food. In fact, the majority of the "nuts" we commonly eat are not true nuts.


Can refractometers measure a banana's glucose content?

Iodine can be used reliably to measure starch content in bananas and it is correlated with sugar (soluble solids).

Summary. A starch staining technique using pictures to rate starch disappearance has been developed to determine banana pulp maturity. The disappearance of starch from the pulp shows linear correlation with peel color (r = 0.76) and soluble solids content (r = 0.81). Pulp pH shows a poor correlation with starch disappearance (r = 0.38). Staining banana pulp starch with an iodine solution is a quick and easy method for estimation of pulp maturity.

http://horttech.ashspublications.org/content/3/3/338.full.pdf


White ganache from cocoa butter won't set

What you're missing is solids. 17g of cream (especially when you consider the high percentage of fat in cream in relation to solids) is not going to be enough against 60g of cocoa butter. Where are you from? In the US, milk solids (in the form of dried milk powder) are cheap compared to cocoa butter. Many high quality white chocolate brands do not contain any kind of emulsifier, but all contain a significant volume of solids. Those solids are almost always milk, with the exception of a few specialized vegan varieties.

I'm wondering in what way you are trying to emulate dark chocolate, since the difference between dark chocolate and white chocolate is cocoa solids (the dark stuff)?


Can I marble two cakes that call for different cooking temperatures?

I have found that as long as the two recipes don't have a huge variation in baking temperature (and as far as I have found, 25 degrees is not that huge of a variation), as long as they bake for a similar amount of time, it turns out okay. What I usually do is set the oven at the lower temperature for the indicated bake time (in your case, 2o minutes), and then check them at that time to see if they are baked. Usually they are, or they are really close and only need 2-5 minutes more to be done perfectly.


How do I determine if my knife must be honed and/or sharpened?

That's a good knife. All knives need to be sharpened and honed: honed frequently, and sharpened occasionally. If neither has been done to the knife, it's likely that simply honing it will bring back the blade, but eventually it will require sharpening as well. A dull knife is dangerous and should not be used.

Be careful with electric sharpeners. There are decently good ones available, but bad ones (and the majority of electric sharpeners are bad) will damage the knife over time. Still, they're a lot more convenient than sharpening stones and require less practice. You might also consider a Tri-Angle Sharpmaker, which is somewhere between an electric sharpener and a sharpening stone in convenience and ease of use.


If you're worried about the sugar not dissolving, you can add golden syrup to the thawed sorbet. It will also make your sorbet softer. I've only tried making sorbet a couple of times but when I used golden syrup, its consistency was softer than when I used sugar.


UK versus US expiration dates on diet sodas

First of all, sweeteners like Aspartame lose their sweetening property over time, as you have noticed yourself. This is very strongly tied to the pH level they are in.

US and UK/EU coke (or any country) is different, but you usually only notice the difference if you have them available for direct comparison. Coca Cola issues licenses and the plant managers produce the coke, but they do have a certain bandwidth they can operate in - usually to cater to local issues, like component availability, price, water quality. You can even taste differences in different batches of the same production plant, if you have them available for direct comparison and if you have a trained taste.

So, the deviation of the pH level in the different products results in different best before dates. The US coke pH level deviates more from the optimal level for Aspartame than the UK coke, so the US coke has a shorter best before date.

Whether the different pH level is on purpose or a necessity: no idea.


Quinoa is cooked much like rice- in fact it can be cooked nicely in a rice cooker.

The 2/1 ratio is correct. As with rice, the goal is to steam the grain. You should be cooking on low heat after it boils and is covered and you shouldn't be frequently opening the pot while it cooks.

I haven't had success adding water later in the cooking. It doesn't get a chance to turn to steam and instead just boils the grain to mush.

As with rice, some of the quinoa might stick to the pan, especially if it was cooked a little too hot or with uneven heating. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. With rice and quinoa I like the crispy bits.

Adding oil late in the cooking probably won't help you achieve the desired fluffiness.


Help making multigrain bread for first time

Is correct the assumption that in my recipe plain flour should be just white flour?

It's tough to know without context, but given that "flour" is contrasted in your recipe with "strong whole wheat bread flour" and "graham flour," it's reasonable to assume that "flour" likely just means a standard white flour.

If that is the case I would like to replace it if possible since to the best of my understanding white flour is not very good for health.

Nutrition is off-topic here.  I would merely note that it's probably more accurate to say that whole-grain flours tend to have a larger amount of beneficial nutrients and fiber.  What may be "healthy" for you is a matter for you and your doctor.

Is a good idea to replace it by the "type 75" wheat flour I got (the actual name written on the product (in french) is: "Farine de froment 75%")? Or maybe another alternative is better ?

I'm assuming the numbers here are referring to the French system, which measures ash content in the flour.  Type 75 flour in that case is still a somewhat "white flour," though that latter term can mean different things in different countries and to different people.  To some, "white flour" implies bleaching.  A Type 75 flour will be unbleached and therefore not quite as white as a very "white flour," and it will typically have a higher extraction rate (meaning some bran/germ is retained compared to typical white flour).  But for your purposes, a Type 75 flour is probably also better than standard "white flour" because it will have a higher protein content, which will likely allow a heavy multigrain bread to rise better.

So yes, you can use your Type 75 flour as a substitute, though you might need to add a bit more liquid to the dough as it may absorb more than a standard white flour would.  If you want to move toward even greater whole grain, you could use a higher number wheat flour, but likely at the expense of lightness in your bread loaf.  A completely whole-grain bread will typically be a bit denser.

I'd also note that the question specifies "multigrain" bread, but all the flours listed are wheat.  Should we assume that the recipe also includes other grains?  [EDIT: OP added complete recipe to clarify, and it does.] If so, the regular (white) flour is likely there partly to provide loft and to lighten the flavor from the various (whole) grains.  A Type 75 flour seems a good substitute if there are other added grains too, and you want to produce a bread that is not very heavy and dense.  (If you don't mind heavy and dense, perhaps try more whole wheat in the mix.)

What is the best replacement for the Graham flour that seems to be difficult to find in Belgium ?

Graham flour means different things to different companies these days.  Traditionally, it would have been a whole-grain wheat flour (sort of like your Type 150 flour), perhaps ground a bit more coarsely.  In the U.S., graham flour is often separated into bran, germ, and endosperm (as white flour would be), some or all of the germ may be removed (to allow a longer shelf life) and the bran and some germ will be added back to the milled white flour to create graham flour.  But the process and exact composition may vary.

Anyhow, I'd probably just use some more of your Type 150 flour in place of the graham flour.  (I'm honestly not certain why the recipe would request those two separate types of whole-wheat flours in the first place, as they are alike enough that it doesn't seem to make much difference, and the specific differences that do exist are unlikely to be that consistent even between different mills.  I'm guessing that the graham flour is meant to give a bit more coarseness from its coarser grind, resulting in a more rustic texture.)


How can I keep my jam from overcooking while I process it?

If it's getting cooked too much, well, stop cooking it. You can cover it to prevent water loss. If it's too hot sitting on the same burner (on an electric stove), move the pot. It sounds like your cast-iron pot might be part of the problem, too - if it's still staying too hot, you could pour it into something else. Finally, if you do still have significant water loss, I believe you should be able to add a little water (careful not to add too much) and stir and reheat.

P.S. you could also just get a lighter pot. (I know that's not ideal.)


How can I make hazelnut essence, or some strongly hazelnut-flavoured liquid, without using sugar or alcohol?

I would say you are out of luck, unless your requirements are less strict than they appear to me.

There are three main solvents in cooking: water, alcohol (*), and fat. You cannot use alcohol, so we are left with water or fat.

Hazelnuts contain lots of oil and little water. So it is possible to press hazelnut oil, therefore there is no need to try to make an infusion. This is about the strongest you can get. When I buy hazelnut oil, it tastes as if made from raw hazelnuts, not roasted, although it should be possible to make it with roasted ones. In any case, you are left with a liquid which has an unmistakeable hazelnut taste when eaten pure.

However, it would be highly unlikely that somebody tries to eat hazelnut oil in ways where it can be tasted pure, except maybe to dip pieces of bread in it or to pour it over a salad. If you try mixing it, you have two problems. First, it is an oil, and won't mix with anything that is water-based. Second, the aroma is not as concentrated nor as volatile as in a hazelnut liqueur. I don't know how you want to use your liquid, but if you want to add it to stuff (cakes, ice cream, whatever) as an aroma, you will have to use a large amount to get a very small hint of hazelnut.

With water, the best you can make is hazelnut milk, since it is not just an infusion, but also contains some of the original hazelnut solids suspended in the milk. Again, it is strong enough when tasted on its own, but cannot be added spoonwise to something else to achieve hazelnut taste - it will have to be the main ingredient somewhere. So you can use a recipe where the base is mostly water and replace it with the hazelnut milk, but not, say, bake a cake and hope for strong hazelnut taste.

Concentrating a water based concoction may be possible to some extent, but you are more likely to end up with the equivalent of double-strength coffee, not the equivalent of nescafe, when using procedures accessible to the home cook.

Other solvents exist, but they are not foodsafe in the amounts required for making infusions at home. Industrial processors use them when they have some synthetic aroma which is way too strong, to dilute it into usable levels.

So, to sum it up, you cannot make something at home which, when used in small amounts, can flavor a large batch of food, the way you can do with, say, vanilla essence. But if hazelnut oil or hazelnut milk are good enough for you, then you can easily get hold of those, or even make them at home if you invest in the proper equipment.

* In this post, I use "alcohol" to mean "ethanol", because this is the standard meaning in cooking and everyday life. If you mean "alcohol" in the chemical sense, please edit it into your question, since this is not obvious when you simply use the word "alcohol".


It sounds like you're essentially looking for Ratio by Michael Ruhlman. It has plenty of what you call master recipes - ratios of ingredients for various recipes. It's not just baked goods - also batters, stocks, meats, sauces, and custards. And it doesn't stop with the ratios; there's a lot of additional discussion of actual recipes to make on top of the plain base, as well as discussion of how varying the ratio will affect the result.

There are of course plenty of reviews on Amazon and elsewhere online, but if you like perspective from members of this site, yossarian also reviewed it in a blog post a while back. I also own it and think it's pretty great.

There's also an app based on the book for Android and iOS (thanks, Stefano). I haven't tried it but it looks like the reviews are mixed to positive - not the shiniest app but it does contain a lot of the basic information.


How much vinegar can I safely add to bread dough?

Cool Russian Black Bread!

Since you gave an update I figure you might still be tracking the question.

Does your recipe use Baking Soda? That would react to your vinegar to create the CO2 needed to rise the heavy bread, but since it is a very fast reaction you would need to go from adding vinegar to oven in a matter of minutes.

I'm guessing the recipe uses yeast instead and that the vinegar is merely for a strong sour taste. I would think that much vinegar would inhibit your yeast, but since you got a good springy baked bread you are already on the right track.

Some traditional recipes rely on a sourdough starter where the yeast does the rising and the bacillus bacteria is teamed up to convert the milk's lactose into that tangy sour lactic acid instead of vinegar. You could create your own "wild yeast" by mixing your flour (rye & wheat) with buttermilk or yogurt with an active bacteria culture and adding commercial yeast (or praying to capture and grow your own wild yeast which can take a lot of time and will probably be the same yeast species based on the Sourdough Project tests).


How can you make pancakes more healthy (without making them taste bad)?

We have had good luck with canned pumpkin in the pancake batter.   That and some pumpkin pie spices go really well with maple syrup.   We just add half a can to a variation on Alton Brown's pancake recipe.   It generally adds one pancake or so to the pile.

Adding a cup of blueberries or sliced strawberries has also worked out well (especially with a thumb of minced ginger tossed in).


Using manual egg beater to cream eggs and sugar

You have a whisk; the object in your picture is a whisk and you can use it to cream ingredients for your recipe. The gearing system makes it easier to get a high speed but you could even use a fork or a (totally manual) balloon whisk once the mixture is soft enough.
I would avoid using an immersion blender as it will be hard to get air into the mixture without careful technique; see this related question for more.


Probably generated some chloramines by reaction between the hot bleach and proteins on the stove surfaces. There's no telling exactly which chloramines you created, as we have no idea what amines were on your stove top. However, these things can be quite nasty.
Open windows if possible, and leave home for several hours. Your eyes and lungs are giving you important warnings. Heed them.


How can I fix a hollandaise sauce after it has split?

You can rescue it by starting the process again, with an egg yolk in a bowl over a bain-marie which you whisk until it starts to thicken a little.  then incorporate a little warm melted butter into the egg yolk.  Once this is incorporated you can slowly start to add the split hollandaise and this should then incorporate into the new base, unsplit.

There is a video here


You can bake bread in a dutch oven, as long as you have one big enough, in fact it's a great way to do it because the lid seals in moisture, preventing the crust from drying and allowing the bread to expand. You get a ton of oven spring this way, and a great crust.

The method is:

Preheat the oven for at least half an our with the dutch oven inside
Shape the bread, flour, semolina or corn meal the bottom well, then put it in the dutch oven, being very careful to not burn yourself. Use mitts if you can. It's often best to take it out of the oven to do this. If your DO is not much bigger than the shaped dough then make sure you flour/semolina/corn meal the sides as well, or put it on baking parchment or it will stick to the sides like glue. Flour the parchment well on all sides or it will stick to the parchment instead
Put the DO with the dough back in the oven and cover it with the lid, which should also be pre-heated
Bake for about half the normal baking time for that loaf, then remove the lid to let the steam out, this will allow the crust to solidify and get crunchy. The bread will have expanded all it is going to by then
Bake the bread until done, then take it out. Some use the tap test, I back this up with an instant read thermometer, the bread will be done when it gets to 98°C inside, about 210°F

You may find that depending on your oven or your dutch oven the crust may overcook on the bottom. It's hard to predict this - you just have to try it and see how it goes. If it does get a bit too done turn down the oven 20°C/35°F during the preheating, then up to the full temp after the bread goes in.

About parchment, I don't like baking bread on parchment as I don't like the kind of crusts you get, however sometimes its the only way to keep it from sticking, again it varies with your recipe and equipment. I prefer to use semolina or coarse corn meal instead of parchment, if do use parchment I will pull the loaf out and remove it once the crust has formed enough not to be sticky.


Preparing as much as possible of a cake in advance

If you look at how boxed cake mixes do it, you'll get the right idea. They combine the dry ingredients and you have to add the wet ingredients. There are a couple of good reasons for this: spoilage (not too much of a problem if you're taking about a couple of days in the fridge); and gluten formation, which requires water and will give a tough, bready texture.

I suggest you mix the dry ingredients, and measure each of the wet ingredients into its own container (combining the apple sauce, vinegar and vanilla should be fine). Use containers that you can get everything out of or your measurements will be off. Then you don't need to refrigerate the oil or dry mix but do need to chill the wet mix and presumably the almond milk.

The buttercream should be fine made in advance - it certainly would be if it was based on dairy butter and milk. Of course this needs chilling. It also needs to be applied to a cool cake so it doesn't melt.

The other option is to bake the cake in advance and only ice it when you get there, but some recipes keep better than others. This has the advantage that the cake will definitely have cooled. I'm no expert on the keeping properties of vegan cakes in general, let alone this recipe, but many of the vegan cakes I've eaten have been the sort of thing that would keep their texture for a few days.


I haven't tried baking with beets yet, but, as you said, it must be a bit like carrot cake.

To keep my carrot cake from going soggy while baking (carrots giving off steam), I mix them first with the recipe's sugar to weep them. This also pulls out flavour from the carrot to the cake batter.

With beets, the procedure could be called bleeding rather than weeping, ha ha.


Real Worcestershire sauce has a very long shelf life, many many years

Some people even age it, in a dark cellar!

Be warned though, many brands of Worcestershire style sauce are not actually Worcestershire sauce, they are just sugar with flavourings, no sign of rotten fish etc :-(

See What are the key ingredients in Worcester Sauce?


hardened residue after high heat cooking (carbon steel and cast iron)

Your residue looks like burnt on carbohydrates to me. It can happen with both sugar and bread, but bread gives it a different shape, it chars in a crumb-like texture. Yours seems like viscous caramel flowed until it burnt on.

The seasoning of a young pan is indeed quite sensitive. Don't make sticky stuff in it.

What I have found to work well in new pans is meat with sufficient amount of fat, such as marbled chops or steaks. You also need to do some decent deglazing after that, to remove the stuck-on meat.

If you get protein residue, make something with wet eggs to clean it. Crepes work great for leaving you with mirrorlike pan seasoning. Use a little bit of oil between every 2-3 crepes. If you can do good scrambled eggs or an omelette, this is also a good pan "cleaner", and the residue taste fits better. But if you are likely to dry out the eggs, it can happen that they take off the not-yet-settled seasoning with them.

Wet carbohydrates (such as the flour in crepe batter) are no problem, but once dry carbohydrates burn on, I don't know of any method to remove them without damaging the seasoning (and sugar syrup counts as a dry carbohydrate if it stays for long enough to caramelize). Just don't use them on new pans. Once your pan is seasoned well with use, you can start using them, but always combine them with sufficient fat - you should be shallow frying the items which have them, not grilling.

The oil which you used for seasoning also matters. I've seen lots of sources to recommend flax and other unsaturated oils, because they polymerise easier. The problem is that they are also stickier after polymerisation, especially if the polymerisation wasn't complete. Try seasoning with something which has a larger percentage of saturated fat (lard, coconut oil) and cooking with it the first few times. If you are doing a multi-layer seasoning, you can start the first one or two layers with flax, for a better grip between polymer and metal, but seal it with a saturated oil.

If you cannot physically remove the caramel residue but want to strip the seasoning and start anew, remove it chemically. Use a strong base, I prefer a lye soak. Don't use acid, it will rust the pan in seconds. You can also leave it there, but it will reduce the evenness of heat transfer and increase the chance that the new seasoning flakes off.


Are there any negative effects to kneading bread dough longer?

There are several negative effects from over-kneading bread dough:

Overheating - if the dough gets too warm, it will ferment too quickly (or over ferment) and will therefore lack flavour.
Oxidisation - kneading for too long can cause the flour to oxidise and bleach, again impairing flavour.
Breaking down - eventually the molecular bonds of the gluten will break, which is obviously not what you want to happen!

The latter two are really only possible with electric mixers, however.

Most doughs are ready for fermentation when they reach an internal temperature of 77-81ºF (25-27°C). You can also check the gluten development with the Windowpane Test: pull off a chunk of dough and stretch it with your hands. It should stretch to form a very thin translucent sheet, without tearing.


How do I ripen unripe oranges and grapefruits?

You don't.

Citrus fruits, unlike most other fruits, do not ripen after being picked from the tree.

The only solution is to be proactive and not buy unripe citrus.


How should I modify my vanilla frosting to convert it into a chocolate frosting?

Whatever your type frosting is, ie Italian meringue or confectioners' frosting, you can simply add enough (cooled) melted chocolate or cocoa powder (sifted to remove lumps) until it tastes good to you. Since neither cocoa powder nor melted chocolate will curdle the frosting it is simply a matter of taste. However, if you are going to refrigerate the frosting, remember that the chocolate will solidify and thus your frosting will become firmer.

For some rough guidelines I recommend  1/4 cup cocoa powder for every 2 cups of frosting and 3 ounces melted chocolate for every cup of frosting.

Use a good quality dark chocolate, with a high proportion of cocoa solids, for a strong chocolatey taste. Or, if you don't like dark chocolate, use a half and half mixture of milk and dark chocolate.


Will an airtight container negatively affect yeast growth / dough expansion?

This should not impact your rise at all, unless the container is too small to allow for dough expansion.  In which case, you might have a mess on your hands.  Many people (me included) use sealable containers, though I more frequently just use a clean kitchen towel (a plate would work too), the idea is just to keep the dough from drying.


Here is a quote from the company that makes the registered trademark Baileys Irish Cream:

Baileys® is the only cream liqueur that guarantees its taste for 2 years from the day it was made, opened or unopened, stored in the in the fridge or not when stored away from direct sunlight at a temperature range of 0-25 degrees centigrade.
One of the keys to achieving this 2 year shelf-life is in our patented process of blending of fresh Irish cream with the spirits and the whiskey without the use of preservatives. The alcohol acts as a natural preservative for the product.
Under normal conditions of storage Baileys has a shelf-life of 30 months.
If you are concerned about a bottle of Baileys® please check the best consumed before date on the bottle - all bottles now carry a best before date. This number is located on the bottom left hand side of the back label. Example : Code 11 20XY would mean that we guarantee the product would taste perfect until that date (XY is the year 2 years from the date of manufacture)

(source).
The alcohol content is the sole preservative listed.


Caster sugar is just ordinary table sugar that has been ground to a finer texture. It is still grainy like sand rather than completely powdered.

Bura, on the other hand, is caramelized and dehydrated. It is typically made by dissolving table sugar in water, then boiling off the water. This results in a texture like that of caster sugar, but a deeper flavor.

Generally sugar in a recipe provides more than sweetness. The texture of the end result is affected by the sugar. Since bura has less water than regular caster sugar, it will probably result in a drier scone.

Also, part of the taste of any baked good comes from the caramelization of sugar that occurs during the baking. Since bura is already caramelized, it will be more prone to burn.

Finally, bura is intended for desserts like laddus, where sugar makes up a much higher proportion of the ingredients and the overall flavor is supposed to be sweet. Why use it for something like a scone? Sweetness is an important contributor but not the main goal for scones, and there is no point using something as complex as bura when its flavor profile will be overwhelmed by the other ingredients.

For these reasons, I think you are better off just grinding ordinary table sugar rather than using bura. If you don't want to go through the bother of grinding, I think you'll have better luck using the sugar as is instead of using bura; though that isn't a great choice either.


How to thicken a sour cream-based pastry cream?

I'm wondering if mixing in some cream cheese in addition to, or in place of a portion of the sour cream, might help thicken things without altering the taste profile too much.

Sour cream is roughly 73% water, while cream cheese is only around 53% water. That may be a way to reduce some of the water content without having to resort to heat.


This is strange. I've never made waffles before, but that pancake recipe is almost exactly the one I use, except for the baking powder. If it goes dark soon after preparing the mix, it is most likely a chemical reaction between two or more of the ingredients. It should still be perfectly safe to use, so don't worry about the discolouration. :)


Minimum temperature for slow roasting almonds

I found these slides that may help. The information is a difficult to interpret, but the page with conclusions says that the optimal roast uses the lowest possible temperature for 20 to 30 minutes. This however is information for the food industry and it is clearly geared towards increasing shelf-life which you are probably not too concerned about.

If you look for the slide with the title 'Generation of flavor compounds during roasting', you will get another perspective. As I understand the graph, a roast at 200ºC (400ºF) for around 25 minutes gives maximum flavour.

This article, although about roasting walnuts, gives clearer information. It states that walnuts are typically roasted at 100-180ºC (212-356ºF) from 5 to 60 minutes. You could infer from this that roasting at 100ºC for an hour is as low and slow as you can go. The conclusion to this article is that the "best sensory properties" are exhibited after roasting at temperatures between 130-150ºC (266-300ºF) for 15 to 20 minutes.

I think that gives you at least four worthwhile experiments to try:

120ºC for 25 minutes (recommendation from the slides)
200ºC for 25 minutes (the time/temperature profile that appears to give maximum flavour)
100ºC for 60 minutes (the apparent limit of low/slow roasting walnuts)
140ºC for 17 minutes (the recommendation for roasting walnuts)

Update: I remembered a fact about the Maillard reaction that could point in another direction of experimentation. Although the reaction needs relatively high heat to get going, once browning has started, the reaction will continue at lower temperatures (as low as 60ºC is what I remember reading). So perhaps you could kick start the reaction by initially roasting at 150ºC (300ºF) or above and then dropping the temperature right down to around 75ºC (170ºF) as soon as browning starts.


Will microwaving lemons make them easier or more efficient to juice?

It makes the lemon easier to squeeze. I think it has the most effect on the peel; it's softer and more flexible when warm, so you're able to get more juice out of it than you could otherwise if you're juicing by hand. That's especially true if you're trying to juice several lemons - you'll just get tired and stop being as thorough if it's harder.

It definitely still makes it easiser if you have the squeezer-style juicer, since those do basically turn the fruit inside out in the process. It probably doesn't help as much with the kind that you push the fruit down onto.


How do you keep a Turkey Meatloaf from getting too "dry"?

My mom's meatloaf recipe included a couple slices of bread that had been soaked in milk and then blenderized with the egg before mixing in to the meat. The milk obviously provides moisture, and the bread a nice carbohydrate matrix to hold onto that moisture. Give that a shot, I bet it will hydrate your turkey. (Do you dare take meatloaf advice from a 25 year vegetarian?)


After steaming for 5 mins, why are live PEI mussels shriveled, but PC's mussels plump?

The President's Choice mussels in sauce are (properly) fully cooked and then frozen in packages for your convenience. I can't find heating instructions for their products but, regardless of which method you use, they should be prepared from frozen with the goal being to heat them - not cook them.

Regarding the live PEI mussels, you are overcooking them. If the meat is shriveled, they are overcooked. You can't just assume that 5 minutes is the ticket for properly cooked mussels.

While there are different methods of cooking mussels and other shellfish such as grilling or baking, for steaming, there are some tips to help ensure that the mussels are fully cooked but not overdone.

Use a wide base pan so that the mussels are not overcrowded in the pan. Cook in more than one batch if necessary.
Use a proper amount of cooking liquid. (Personally, I usually aim for ~.5" - 1", depending on the size of the shellfish.)
Bring your cooking liquid to a boil, add the mussels to the cooking liquid (no steamer basket), and reduce the heat so that the cooking liquid is simmering - NOT BOILING. You want a gentle steam.
Cover the pan with a clear lid. That will allow you to see when they start to open and monitor the cooking.
If you have uniformly sized mussels they will cook more evenly. So, two methods for finishing:

If the mussels are not uniformly sized and smaller ones are opening before others, pluck them out as they open. When the last ones are open, remove the pan from the heat and put all of the mussels back in the pan and let them sit covered for a minute or two.
If the mussels are uniformly sized and are pretty much opening at the same time, as soon as they are all open, leave the pan covered and remove from the heat. Let them sit for a minute or two in the residual heat and they will be ready to serve.

The reason for letting them sit for a minute or two in the residual heat is that some mussels will open very quickly, ~3 minutes. That typically is not considered enough time for them to be fully cooked. And if they take longer, an extra minute or two in the residual heat is not enough to ruin them.

Last but not least, remember that time can vary. Even with mussels that take longer, it's still a quick process.  So it's important to keep your eye on things.


The way restaurants do it is simple, straightforward, and  also very easy to make organic by using organic ingredients.

Standard 3-bowl breading

1) Bowl One: Seasoned flour -- flour, salt, pepper, and seasonings (for me: thyme, paprika, cayenne, garlic powder, onion powder, and parsley flakes)

2) Bowl Two: Egg wash -- Beaten egg with a 1-2 TBSP milk per egg yolk added

3) Bowl Three: Panko (or other bread crumbs) -- alternately, add some salt, pepper, and seasonings to them

Procedure:
Dredge the item to bread through the bowls in order, then repeat if desired to build up a thicker layer.  You only need to change your seasonings to switch from breading chicken, fish, or even doing fried green tomatoes.

If you make your own bread and breadcrumbs, the ingredient list will read: flour, water, milk, eggs, yeast, salt, and spices. Hard to get more straightforward than that!

It's simple, fast, and works beautifully every time.  Here's why it's the best way: the flour sticks to the wet surface of your item, leaving a dry, starchy surface for the egg wash to adhere to.  The egg wash allows the panko to stick.  For the next layer, the flour fills in the gaps between bread crumbs and absorbs residual moisture from the egg wash.


What happens if I add corn before bringing the water to a boil?

What happens is not so different than when you do add at boil.  You just have less control over the perfectly cooked point.

At sea level, water boils at 100°C and 212°F.  However, when you add your room temperature (or from the fridge at 4°C temperature), the water temperature drops.

How much you say? well it depends mostly on the weight of water and the weight of your vegetables.  If you add 1lb of vegetable from the fridge to 4 quart of boiling water, you'll end up with a mix that is maybe around 85°C (185°F).

At this point the stove tries to take the new mix back up to boiling point and your vegetables  continue to cook.

By adding the vegetables before boiling point, you'll reduced the mixed temperature even further.

At any given temperature, different vegetables will take a certain amount of time to cook.  Since the temperature here is going up and down, knowing exactly when they're prefect gets much harder, that's why the recipes try to standardize on the boiling water at x minutes thing.

That said, some food when taken through a range of temperature (say cold to hot) will have different components in them denature at different times and some things dissolving into the water before cooking begins.  This sequence might end up with unpleasant and unsightly things released into the water and the food not holding together well.

the bottom line:

If you were close to boiling when you added food, don't worry about it.  If you put the food in cold water then brought to boil, you're looking at a different recipe :)


What to do when a recipe calls for dutch process cocoa and you only have regular cocoa?

It's all about whether you should be using baking powder or baking soda.
Cocoa is acidic, thus you don't need to use baking powder while using it, you can just use baking soda directly and they will react.

On the other hand, dutch-processed cocoa is almost ph-neutral you need to add some acidity for baking soda to react, which is provided through the tartaric acid in the baking powder; thus you should use baking powder instead of baking soda.


According to this Sun Maid specification sheet, the shelf life is up to one year, and they contain about 15% water.

This is probably not sufficiently dehydrated for truly long term storage, and mold would be a risk.  Also, if they did dry further in storage they would be rock hard, and probably quite nasty.


How nice to have a question I can just answer. I remember the ads for that thing. You can still buy it, it is called The Miracle Thaw. Now there are knock offs.

I am so pleased that you didn't ask how. It's too close to my bedtime for that.


It's a bit late for "tomorrow morning" but I would've baked them again at 190°F to evaporate most of the extra moisture.
Why 190°F? Well, that is below the boiling point of water but will still get rid of the soupy texture by removing the excess of water without over-baking the entire thing.
Alternatively, you can also just rename the end product to "Crème Anglaise Brûlée" as that is what you ended up with: still tastes good, but just has a different texture and who knows that some people will like your version better as it's "lighter" then the original!!!
:-)


I poured simple syrup over cooked apples. Why did it turn watery?

Some of the water content of the apples has migrated from the apples to the surrounding syrup.
This is due to an effect called osmosis. The apple, like all living things is made out of cells that have (among other things) water inside them. The cell walls are semipermeable, meaning small molecules like water can pass through them, but larger molecules like sugars cannot.
All dissolved substances (sugars, salt, etc.) attract water to themselves, so if you expose the apples to a highly sugary solution (like syrup), the water will be pulled from the apples into the syrup.


Cooking "purple sweet potatoes" or "purple yams"

I used to cook plenty of purple sweet potatoes when I was living in africa:) Sounds like you maybe cooked them too long...

They can be extremely tasty, sweet with a "perfumy" hint if you are lucky. They are best boiled with the skin on like you did and peeled afterwards (as the taste is preserved better that way). As for cooking time it really depends on the size (which means the potatoes are likely done at different times) but you can always feel when they are done by pressing on the potato with a fork - it should give slightly/be soft. I think it usually took me about 30min but I didn't use a clock. It may shorten the cooking time slightly to make holes in the potatoes with a fork (this also adds to the "creaminess").

I guess they do sometimes get a softer, more "creamy" consistency than your usual potato when well done. However the taste is richer and in my opinion far superior to orange sweet potato. If you prefer a firmer potato, just let your potatoes stay on the firm side (in my experience, though, the taste is enhanced by letting them go soft). But boiled ones would anyways mainly be for puddings as it gets rather sweet.

For panfrying I would suggest avoiding boiling the sweet pots first. Simply peel/wedge them raw, fry them as chips until done and serve with a spicy/hot dip - yum.


You don't need anything special, just a scale. Put a trivet, then a pan on a scale and tare it. Next, pour in a certain amount of flour, say 100 grams. After that heat the pan and therefore the flour up on the stove, which will evaporate the water, then re-weigh (that's why you have a trivet: you don't melt your scale). The difference between measurements will tell you the humidity of your flour.

I personally don't think there's much to be gained knowing this. Recipes are written accounting for water content in flour, they don't expect flour that's completely dry. I've baked a lot and I've never had a situation where the humidity of the flour has made a noticeable difference, especially when considering other environmental variations.


Stronger bread, how could I achieve that?

Gluten is a protein that gives bread elasticity. Water makes gluten spirals relax, and kneading helps stretch the gluten and connect with other gluten strands. Bread that lacks stretchiness:

may not have enough gluten to start with. If you are using a low gluten flour then you won't get and elasticity. In general any plain white flour will have enough, but for best results use bread flour, also known as strong flour
may be too dry. Gluten needs water to relax and stretch, if your dough is too dry, or "tight", then you won't get good elasticity
may have not been worked enough or worked in the wrong way. Kneading mechanically stretches gluten, if it isn't kneaded enough, or the technique isn't right, then no elasticity
may not have been risen enough. Yeast actually improves the dough, it really works on the gluten. Rise isn't just about leavening, it makes a big difference in elasticity. You should notice a big difference if it's been risen enough

If I had to put money on it I'd say it's probably your dough being too dry. This is an easy mistake to make, you turn your dough out on the counter and it's really gooey, must not have enough flour right? But as gluten get worked it uses up some of the extra moisture, so adding too much flour at the beginning will rob the gluten of the water it needs to relax. Kneading with oil instead of flour may help there.

As an aside, I generally add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to my pizza dough to improve flavor and texture although that's totally optional. Also, you didn't list salt as an ingredient, bread needs some salt, many bakers recommend 10g per 500g of flour, although I usually cut that down some.


Adding flavorings & fillings to bread dough

As you have already intuited in your question, what you do to adjust is going to vary based on the ingredient, and how much of that ingredient you add to the bread.

I can try to address some of the specific cases you mention:

Walnuts
This generally should not be a problem with adjusting hydration, other ingredients, or cooking times, although if you add too many walnuts (or other fillers) it can make the bread fall apart more easily. If I am adding nuts to a dough, I typically stick to a quarter cup or so for a normal-sized 1 lb loaf.

Olive oil
Adding any oils or fats to your dough will fundamentally change the character of the bread. As you add more fat, the resulting bread will tend to be softer and of course oilier. The crust will also usually tend to be darker when you bake it. A standard white bread loaf might have 1-2 tbsp of butter in it, for example, whereas a brioche might have 4-5 tbsp. If you just want an olive oil flavor in your sourdough, you might consider brushing the surface of your dough before baking (this will also usually cause the bread to darken more while baking) or right after you pull it out of the oven.

Onions
This depends on the hydration of the onions, but when I use fresh, finely chopped onions I do usually lower the amount of water or other liquids in the recipe. I tend to go by the texture of the dough rather than any hard and fast rules here, but is say for a quarter cup of fresh onions I may lower the amount of water for a single loaf by a tablespoon or two. One thing I will advise is that it takes a while for the water in the onions to be incorporated into the dough; I typically add less water to start, mix the dough thoroughly for 5-6 minutes with the onions, then check the texture of the dough to see if I need to make any hydration adjustments.

Extracts
Small amounts (e.g. a quarter teaspoon) do not have a significant impact on the proofing in my experience. In fact, small amounts of alcohol are already created during fermentation, and for a typical bread yeast (or wild fermentation as is the case with a sourdough) the alcohol levels would need to reach over 10% and potentially much higher before fermentation is inhibited in any way. Link Saccharomyces cervisae or "brewing yeast" is the same type of yeast typically used in bread-making, although in sourdough you will usually also find other things that contribute to the character such as lactobacillus and pediococcus.


How much prime rib should I plan per person?

Prime rib is usually sold two ways, Bone-In or Bone-Out. For a Bone-In prime rib an 8 pound should serve you well, for a Bone-Out, Six will do nicely. I would also highly recommend you refer to the prime rib narrative of "Cooks Illustrated The New Best Recipe Book" to learn how to prepare your roast.

[Edit]

Most restaurants that I have either had or seen Prime Rib served at will offer 10 oz or 12 oz serving size, with some variations in the overall 8-16 oz (225g - 450g) range. Appetites will vary from person to person, and you may wish to not serve the 'heals' as they will be more well done than the center, though some guests may prefer this..so, 'your-mileage-may-vary'. The very size of beef ribs makes serving them 'bone-in' impractical, as it results in a serving that is too thick for a single serving (though some restaurants do this for eye-appeal). For your home dinner party I would not recommend planning based on 'bone count'. Even if you buy and cook your roast "bone-in" your first cut after preparing and resting the meat should be to remove the bones from the roast. Since leftovers are goal you have set for this preparation you may wish to then slice the roast "on the bias" (about a 15°-20° angle from perpendicular to the bone section) as it will produce a larger footprint on the plate. The ends will provide you with good meat to include in a soup or slice up for sandwiches.


Does cooking with solar cookers preserve the nutrients in food?

Also does it modify or make the food more nutritious with solar cooker.

Not more than any other kind of similar cooking by radiant heat, like baking. There is simply no mechanism by which that could happen. Let's examine some claims I found from Google:

from http://www.greenbuild.org/uncategorized/3-reasons-solar-cooking-is-good-for-you-and-the-environment/

  Solar cooking doesn’t use smoke that can contain carcinogens or microwaves that expose your food to potentially dangerous radio waves.

An electric stove produces no smoke (if you don't burn the food), and natural gas produces very little smoke. Were there smoke emitted by the stove, the area around it would be covered in soot, and the flame would be yellow from the carbon (the main component of soot and smoke) heated to incandescence in the flame. Further, the biggest cancer risk from smoked foods is not the smoke, but the nitrates frequently used to cure them.

If microwaves emit dangerous radio waves, the sun emits far more. That's why it's so bright, and so hot. I suppose you could be harmed by the microwave's radio waves if you manage to turn it on without shutting the door. Then again, you can cook your hand in a solar cooker, too. Or a stove. Come to think of it, cooking involves potentially dangerous heat. Huh.

Also: Does microwaving destroy nutrients in food? (summary: no more than any other cooking)

  Plus, when you cook in a solar appliance, the nutrients stay in the food and don’t leach out. That’s because you don’t use water in solar cooking. And, the temperatures in a solar oven are moderate – around 325 F – so nutrients aren’t destroyed during cooking at a high temperature like on a grill or over an open flame.

This is also true of many other methods of preparing foods: baking, grilling, microwaving, frying and, don't involve water. 325 F is not an unusual temperature for baking, and most other methods can be performed gently, if desired.

To summarize: there may be benefits of solar cooking (a big one: it requires no fuel), but nutrition is not one of them. There's no way sunlight can add more nutrition to food that wasn't there to begin. Any nutritional benefits are not as much from solar cooking specifically as they are from not cooking by some less nutritional method. For example, any cooking method that is not boiling will not have the possibility of dissolving some of the food's nutrition.


It depends on how well you creamed the butter and brown sugar.  The point of creaming fat and sugar in cooking making is to put lots of tiny starter bubbles in the dough which will expand during cooking.

If you really creamed the heck out of the butter and brown sugar, you might not notice a difference. (The cookies might be a little chewier than normal, not because of the over-abundance of brown sugar [you got the white in there eventually] but because of the extra mixing later.)  It would take a lot more time to get to a truly creamed stage - light and fluffy, where you can't feel any sugar if you rub the mixture between your thumb and finger - with half the sugar granules.

However, if your fat-sugar mixture wasn't creamed well, then the cookies will be flatter (less airy) and denser than normal.


Are the leftovers from making stock good for anything?

The veggies aren't very palatable after such a long simmering (unless you like celery paste, I guess), but if you've thrown a whole chicken in the resulting meat is wonderfully tender and flavorful.


If your soaking time is 3 hours, and after 3 hours you are not going to cook them....
then you should take them out of the water and put them in an air tight container and keep them in the refrigerator.
I usually do this and use my soaked pulses for over 3-4 days.
In case you leave them in the water even after their soaking time.. they get extra soft and won't taste good.


French Toast is just French toast because you are soaking it in egg and pan or griddle frying it.

You can use white sandwich bread, Italian loaf, French baquette, wheat bread what ever. I think we evolved to this in the French toast category.

I don't think the garlic would taste good with the sweet syrup. So yeah Weird. Personal taste though. If its not an overwhelming taste of garlic it should be fine.


As an overly broad generalization, yes, smaller peppers tend to be more spicy.

To answer in more detail, the heat in peppers comes from a molecule called capsaicin. The concentration of capsaicin is what determines how spicy peppers are relative to each other.

Incidentally, this is also how spiciness can be measured. The Scoville Scale is a measure of how many times you need to dilute the pepper's capsaicin before it is no longer detectable by taste. While this is subjective, it's a decent point for comparison between different varieties.

Larger peppers like bell peppers or banana peppers are low on the Scoville Scale (0 & up to 500 Scoville Heat Units respectively), while smaller peppers like Serranos (up to 25,000 SHU) and Habaneros (up to 350,000 SHU) are usually much hotter. Thus you have a trend with smaller peppers being hotter.

NB: Scoville units per pepper listed as 'up to xx', as there can be huge variations dependent on things like soil composition and climate. This is why you can get some Jalapenos that aren't terribly spicy, but then get others that are (relatively) really hot. SHU listings from Wikipedia.


Name of an Indian dish with stuffed whole potatoes

I think what you are referring to is the Kashmiri Dum Aloo, it's a vegetarian dish where potatoes are stuffed with a mix of paneer (cottage cheese) & cashew, and then cooked in a thick gravy. It's best enjoyed with any kind of Indian bread like roti, naan, paratha, etc.


The ingredients it lists are

  Sugar (Sugar, Corn Starch), Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Corn Syrup Solids, Nonfat Dry Milk, Milk Powder, Cocoa, Soy Lecithin, Natural Flavors

This sounds like a product which has been very much engineered and fine-tuned to produce a very specific consistency when melted and cooled. I suspect that the "do not add" list means to not add those when using it as a glaze, because any of those will either cause it to seize, or make an inferior glaze texture when firmed up, if it firms up at all.

In principle, you could try using it as baking chocolate in a recipe, for example when making the dark part of a marble cake, and see what happens. The result will probably be edible, although you are running a risk of creating weird textures in some recipes, and it is almost impossible to predict which will go well and which won't. The taste will suffer - baking chocolate is already an inferior substitute for real chocolate, and this product has only a small proportion of cocoa-derived products (cocoa powder only, and no cocoa butter). It may turn out that it is good enough for you, not every eater expects to get the complexities of an original Sacher torte in a muffin.

So, the bottom line: it is OK to experiment. Just don't do it where it has to come out perfect, for example when you are time pressed to bake something for an occasion with guests. Make a dessert for your family now and then and see if it goes well.


How to keep homemade soup and cooking stocks/broths consumable without refrigerator?

When laboratories need to grow bacteria in a dish, they use a medium which is basically broth with gelatin--the bacteria love it. Not even normal canning will sterilize broth enough to be safe. Broth must be pressure canned, and for a long time (75 minutes at pressure for pints, 90 minutes for quarts). Many soups can be canned this way as well, but be careful not to add dairy or thickeners of any kind--the liquid must be able to distribute the heat of the pressure canner evenly throughout the jar to ensure sterilization.

I preserve vegetable, chicken, and beef stock this way with good results. Dashi has a more delicate flavor that might not hold up to it, so probably the traditional method of dehydration is best.


Check the protein content of your flour. Make sure it is not too high. Also, did you add too much sugar? Do not use confectionery sugar. And try using corn oil in your next attempt. Hope this helps.


Unfortunately, your link does not seem to be working for me right now, but assuming you are making a leavened bread dough, here's some tips. Let me know if you've tried all these before.

Wet your hands before handling the dough. This will temporarily keep the dough from sticking to your hands but be warned: this effect will not last forever. Make sure to keep wetting your hands as you go.
If you're getting near baking time, go ahead and flour the surface and your hands. Ge generous with the flour, too little will find yourself elbow-deep in dough with no way out
With the scraper, wet the scraper a bit before using it to reduce "drag" on the dough.

If you could provide more details on the exact makeup of the dough, that could provide more insight, but that's all I have for you right now.


Getting correct baking consistency when using stevia as sugar substitute

Not really, unless you go for a different carbohydrate with physical properties similar to refined sucrose. And if you are removing the sugar for dietary reasons, you're probably not winning anything by doing the substitution.

Artificial sweeteners and stevia are just that - a sweetener, not a sugar. They can only be successfully used as a substitute where table sugar is used as a sweeteners. For example, they work well in a coffee or a homemade lemonade.

In baking, sugar is not used primarily to make the batter sweet, in fact it often makes it too sweet for my own taste. Its purpose is to provide structure. It has unique physical properties it shares with other short carbohydrates, but not with non-sugar sweeteners. You cannot substitute sugar for something which is completely unlike sugar and expect to get the same result.

If you are very adventurous, you can try using soluble fibre in place of sugar. But it's hard for a home cook to 1) get a supply of it, and 2) tweak a recipe such that it works well enough texturewise.

If my assumption is wrong and you are not counting calories, it becomes easier. Adding pure glucose or fructose will produce a recipe which still needs a tweaking, but can potentially be made similar to a sugar-containing one. Then you should also leave out the stevia, because it will make the bisquits overly sweet.


When I've made and used starters in the past I've generally fed it 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup flour every other day.  The challenge with sourdough starters is that you need to be using them regularly as the volume obviously grows if you're just feeding it and not using it regularly.  Of course a friend, family member, or neighbor might be thrilled for you to share it with them but then again...it's kind of like having a pet - you have to keep it fed!