Why does my Wonder Pot now bake unevenly?

Your flame may look even, but check the heat diffuser component of your wonderpot in your photo - you see the sootmark? That's a clear indication[PDF document from Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers] that the flame isn't burning cleanly... soot is made of carbon byproducts that should have been consumed by a clean burning flame, which consists of both fuel (cooking gas) and air. The burner's job is to combine both to make a clean flame. That much soot means it's not burning efficiently, which leads to uneven heat.

It can also lead to the production of carbon monoxide, which is not a good thing.

You will need to clean and calibrate the burner so it produces a clean, pure blue-white flame that burns clean on the bottom of your pots, or replace it if that doesn't help. This should only be done by someone knowledgeable in gas appliance repair.


How should block cheese be stored for maximum shelf life?

Hard, aged cheeses like cheddar and Parmesan are fine to freeze, particularly if you're going to be melting them when you get around to using them anyway. Freezing causes ice particles to break up the molecules of the cheese, and when they thaw, they leave holes in what was (prior to freezing) a pretty smooth cheese. So you might notice if you freeze blocks of cheese, they are more crumbly when you unfreeze them than they were when you bought them. The cheeses you're working with should be fine if stored properly, but softer / creamier cheeses (brie, harvarti, etc.) might become somewhat unpleasant if you freeze them.

As far as storage is concerned, you can actually do one of two things:

Grate the cheese before you freeze it. All you need to do for this method is grate your cheese and put it in a ziploc freezer bag (thicker than a regular zip-top bag). Just make sure to squeeze the air out before sealing, and seal it well.
Freeze the cheese in blocks. Wrap them in plastic wrap and then put then in a ziploc bag, and you should be all set; it'll keep for 4-6 months. (source)

No matter which method you use, you may notice a slight change in texture. Make sure you thaw the cheese before using it. (Though I've put frozen shredded mozzarella on pizza and frozen shredded Mexican cheese blend - a blend of cheddar, monterey jack, queso blanco and asadero - on tacos and not had any trouble.)


How to bake extra turkey legs along with a whole turkey?

It's hard to say exactly, it depends on the size of the turkey and the size of the extra legs, and whether the turkey is stuffed or not. I always cut the legs off my turkey so they don't dry out, they take between 1 and 1.5 hours to cook. I usually let the turkey bake for an hour before adding the legs, then I start checking the legs' temperature an hour after that. This generally means the legs and turkey body are done about the same time. I'm usually roasting a 16lb (7kg) turkey though, if yours is smaller you'd probably want to reduce those times somewhat.


Why stretch and fold vs traditional kneading of bread dough?

The purpose of all kneading techniques is the same: as @rumtscho wrote, to stretch and align strands of gluten.

The traditional kneading method is to fold the mass of dough on itself, press it together with the palm of the hand, turn, and repeat.

With very high hydration doughs this is impossible because the dough will hopelessly adhere to the hands. The technique is, therefore, modified to reduce hand contact with the dough as much as possible.

A dough scraper is used to gather and fold the dough which is laid over on itself instead of being pressed. The result is the same as normal kneading but only the fingertips come in contact with the dough. After just a few turns the gluten sheets will align and the dough will still be tender but much less sticky.

As for why it seems more effective I can only conjecture. Gluten forms in the presence of water. Higher hydration doughs allow for faster gluten development. It is not that the folding is more effective but that kneading very wet doughs progresses faster.


I use the German ceramic crocks. They come with stones that keep the kraut submerged and they have the lid that sits in a water filled moat. The company that made mine went out of business but there are other similar German/Polish fermenting crocks available.

The water seal does three things...it allows you to see bubbles coming out and lets you know fermentation is occurring. Secondly, it prevents organisms from the air getting in, and lastly, the oxygen gets forced out so all you have left inside is the CO2 given off by the anaerobic fermentation. You can use home brew airlocks to achieve the same effect. You would drill a hole in your plastic bucket lid, insert a rubber grommet and then add the airlock. Add some water to the airlock and then watch for the bubbles to start.

The only problem with the moat is the water can evaporate out and you lose the seal. Oxygen gets in and your anaerobic environment is lost. There are jars that only use an airlock, no water seal, so in that sense, the jars with the airlocks are better.

The side handles on ceramic crocks are sometimes not very functional. They can be hard to get a solid hold on, especially if your hands are wet.

I know lots of people use the open crock method. I have only used the closed crock. I believe anaerobic is best for getting the best bacteria but I am sure there are people who will argue open crock is better.

In the end, what's "best" is subjective. Functionally, I don't see why the food grade plastic bucket or the garbage can wouldn't work. Why it went bad...maybe the kraut wasn't covered or your brine concentration was too low. Use canning salt for your brine. It has no iodine and no anti-caking agents. It takes a while for the lactic acid to build up. That gives the kraut its flavor but also provides protection from unwanted microorganisms. Avoid the temptation to look inside (if using a closed crock) for the first 10 days. Let your kraut ferment at least a month. You could start eating it at 10 days but it needs more time to really complete the ferment.

Funny thing is...I don't even like kraut. I have some home made in the fridge right now. It's been in there a year and I am sure it's still perfectly fine to eat.


Can I make my crumble topping in a mixer?

You could use just about anything to mix that, a food processor, a mixer, a stand mixer (just about any attachment), even a blender would work in pulses. Freezing it too will work just fine. Just move fast because any of those methods will create heat, and heat will melt butter. As long as your ingredients are mixed and your butter (margarine) isn't melted, you're golden.


Can I use citric acid instead of lemon juice when canning?

Yes, you can.  In fact, many canning and jarring recipes specifically call for citric acid.

Presumably you are using citric acid in its dried, crystalline form.  In that case, a solution of around 4% citric acid (e.g. 4gm in 100ml of water) should be around the same strength as lemon juice.


What is the purpose of resting non yeast flour dough?

Flour is essentially dried ground wheat, and when you mix it with water, it takes a long time for the flour to absorb water and soften.  This is necessary for the gluten to have a chance to connect, so that you have a streachy dough.


Skillet cooking Medovik (Russian Honey Cake)?

Apparently, yes.  What you'll end up with will be a somewhat different texture than traditional medovik, but I bet it'll still be delicious.


How to cook roast pork with a crackling wrap

Lucky you! Not sure which cut of meat you have or what your normal cooking method is, but this crackling wrap can add a lot of flavor and moisture to your roast.  It`s great, especially with leaner cuts that can tend to be dry.

You want to season your roast as usual, but be sure to put seasoning between the wrap and the top of the roast (and on top of the wrap). You will want to cook the roast low and slow to your desired doneness.

The crackling wrap will act like a fat cap on top of the roast and slowly render the fat, essentially basting your roast as it cooks.

Rather than buy a pork or beef roast out of the case that has been trimmed all the way down, we usually ask the butcher to get us one out of the back that has not been trimmed. We then trim the bottom and leave the fat on top so that we can achieve this same result.


Baking with oven without bottom heating element

For things that can be baked for a short period of time, you can partially compensate by adding a baking stone in the bottom of the oven, then sufficiently preheating the oven.

The stone will release its heat, resulting in there being some additional heat coming from the bottom of the oven.

For pizzas, you can move the stone closer to the top element, so that you can get it very hot, and then lay the pizza onto the stone, so that the bottom will cook from conduction, not just radiant heat.

If this still isn't enough for cooking a pizza, you can put the naked crust on the stone, let it cook until it's developed a bit of a crust on the top, flip it until you've browned the bottom, then remove it, top the pizza, and slide it back in (right side up).

You can also just brown it and then flip and top it, but your pizza will seem strange, as the top is now the flat side of the crust ... and the toppings will be more likely to slide.


Should I roast meat/bones before making stock out of it?

Roasting the bones first will add a deeper flavor. The roast flavor may or may not be desired, it depends on your preferences.

This is from the article I've posted below: "Roasting caramelizes them, heightening sweetness and deepening flavor. But any blackening will make meat stock bitter. 'You don't want that burned bone thing,' cautions Keller."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/31/FD0JSAGEJ.DTL


Per the link @Max provided in the comments: just a container to dispense olive oil... or any other liquid of your choosing.


Why does Green Tea taste sour as it cools down?

The most likely culprits are:

Steeping too long: 1-3 minutes, depending on the type and grade of tea.
Using water that is too hot or too cold: Again, this depends on the type and grade of tea.

Here is an excellent resource for getting these factors right:

On Steeping Time:

  Green tea does not require much time. Too long a steeping time will result in more bitterness and a less balanced flavor. We recommend experimenting with a range of 1 - 3 minutes. Japanese green teas generally taste best at 1 - 2 minutes while Chinese green teas seem to prefer 2 - 3 minutes (the smaller leaves of Japanese teas will extract faster than the generally larger leaves of Chinese teas). Steeping time should be balanced with water temperature: the lower the temperature, the longer the tea can be steeped.

On Temperature

  As a general guideline, green teas taste best when brewed at temperatures between 140°F - 185°F (60°C-85°C). The grade of the tea and the time of its harvest will also influence the appropriate steeping temperature. Green teas picked earlier in the spring will benefit from lower temperature brewing due to their overall higher levels of amino acids.

...

  The most accurate way is to use a thermometer to measure the temperature of the water in the kettle. One approach is to heat the water in your kettle to the desired temperature and then pour it into your teapot. Another approach is to heat the water to boiling and then let it cool down a bit before pouring into your teapot.

Read the whole thing for further background.


Roughly chopping large batches of hard nuts

A chopping jar:

(photo from Etsy)

should be exactly what you need.

(You may also want to look at multi-blade mezzalunas, but they're really meant for mincing herbs.)


What would be a good substitute for coconut milk in curry sauces?

Half and half or heavy cream is a pretty good substitute.  It has similar fat/water suspension, reduces and thickens similarly, and emulsifies similarly.  You lose the coconut flavor, but it cooks similarly and you keep the texture.

You cannot substitute coconut cream, because it is too rich,  which changes the texture of the sauce greatly, and doesn't do as good a job of getting flavors out of spices.

Incidentally, I highly suggest you pick up a box of instant coconut milk powder. It's not as good as the canned stuff (needs whisking), but because it's nonperishable you don't have to use the whole container at a time.  This helps avoid the "oh crap, used the last can!" moments you get with canned coconut milk.


Does a silicone cutting board really work well?

I would expect a silicone board to be quite keen on scratches as it's soft. The same applies for plastic ones.

I've found the best chopping boards are those made of wood. They are also safer.
Some kind of woods, like bamboo, are natural antibacterial:

https://www.ncsu.edu/bioresources/BioRes_08/BioRes_08_4_6501_Xi_Qin_Antibacterial_Perform_Natural_Bamboo_Fiber_4310.pdf
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00405000.2011.614742#.Ve2BQBHBzRY


How should we divide the recipe ingredient?

For most recipes, if I'm halving the servings, I'd halve everything. If the amount of cheese is insufficient at the half quantities, you'd probably find it was insufficient to begin with. That all said, looking at the recipe you've posted, if I was making that I'd probably find myself not really measuring anything in there and adjusting everything to taste...

The one exception might be the oil. As you're cooking things, you probably still need a minimum amount to coat the pan... Maybe someone can think of something else that wouldn't warrant being halved, but I can't.


Donvier Ice Cream Maker - why stirring only every 2 minutes?

I have had that icecream maker for decades. I never had a problem with ice crystals following their directives. Since you don't need to churn it continuously, they tell you there's no need to. The mix needs some time in contact with the walls to get cold.

If you have kids, it will get stirred more often than the instructions say. But that tends to work out ok too. It's pretty forgiving all around.


How long can home dried herbs be stored?

If properly dried and kept airtight, it will keep safely indefinitely. If it spoils it wasn't dried enough. Active drying should of course be started promptly after picking. But safety of dried herbs is rarely the issue. Loss of flavour is more likely to be the limiting factor.

Many herbs lose flavour just from the drying process, others stay tasty for a long time, and some are in between - they can handle drying but not for long. I've seen attempts to categorise herbs to predict how well they'll taste good after drying, but haven't found them convincing. Mint and some related species keep fairly well, but basil (for example) isn't really worth drying.


Is it safe to use a cast iron skillet over a chimney starter?

I don't think you will hurt the pan, cast iron skillets can take a lot of heat. I think the biggest risk is that you are building a kind of dangerous tower. If you were to somehow knock it over you could hurt yourself badly.


Substituting white wine vinegar with red wine vinegar

You can add any kind if vinegar you'd like, that's a matter of taste, as long as you add an equal quantity. White wine (and white wine vinegar) usually goes better with light foods like fish, but there will be no impact on how the vinaigrette will come together if you use red wine vinegar.


Why does the grated coconut "float" to the top of quindim while baking?

While the mixture is raw, the density of the batter is more or less equivalent to the density of the grated coconut, and the batter is fluid, allowing movement.

During cooking, the egg protein in the batter denatures and coagulates, generating a dense colloidal matrix that doesn't allow movement. As this process is happening, the proteins are aggregating to themselves and pushing the coconut to the top (it is pushed up since it is less dense than the newly-forming colloid).

A similar phenomenon happens with you put raisins, other dried fruit in batter (like in fruit cake or panettone), but they are pushed DOWN instead of up. Coating them in flour prevents them from sinking not because of the change in density, but because it gives anchoring points to the matrix to form around the fruit instead of pushing it.


Your grind is way too coarse. Finely ground coffee not only has more surface area exposed to let out flavor, it also forms a barrier, making the water go slower through the coffee, so you get even more flavor. A burr grinder isn't needed for a drip feed, you can get perfectly good results with a blade grinder, you just need to use it longer, and perhaps in smaller batches depending on the size of the grinder and how many cups you are trying to make.


What is the animal product in pizza sauce in korea

All sorts of animal products may be used in a tomato sauce, and only the restaurant itself can tell you exactly which they used. For example, one could add anchovies for salt and umami, one could add chicken/beef/pork stock for a richer flavour, one could add a splash of cream for a rounder flavour, or one could use honey instead of sugar to balance the acidity of the sauce. This list is by no means exhaustive and only the restaurant can tell you what they did. (The "authenticity" of any of these options is up for debate.)


Is it possible to churn butter in a food processor or blender?

Sure, why not? It probably won't turn out quite like the stuff you get at the store, but all you need is cream, a way to churn air into it, and enough agitation that the milk fat molecules start to clump together.

It will require some manual work once you've got the butter and buttercream separated. But the food processor will get you most of the way there without too much of an arm workout.

Check out this PBS article on DIY butter with a food processor.


The typical recipe from Asturias uses slightly cured (3-4 days) chorizos. But that's just the traditional recipe, you may want to try different chorizos (there are basically endless different kind of chorizos through Spain) and see what suits you.

Personally, I don't think a completely raw chorizo will withstand the cooking without coming apart, and a more cured one will probably end up being a flavourless dry bunch of meat.


Is it safe to freeze ground beef one day before its expiration date?

It's fine to freeze, no need to cook if you don't want to; just be sure to use it immediately after thawing.

Freezing things essentially stops the clock: food will stay just as safe to eat no matter how long it's frozen. It can deteriorate but it's more about drying out (freezer burn), taking on odors, and so on, not safety. So since it's safe right now, it'll be safe frozen.


To slow down the fermentation process of a food in a can

Masi,

Given that I'm a severe allergy and migraine sufferer, I was surprised by your assertion that canned foods in general contain large amounts of histamine.    As far as I can find from internet search, they do not.  The canned/jarred foods which specifically have been measured to contain histamine are:

canned fish, especially tuna
canned tomatoes
fermented vegetables, especially saurkraut
fermented soy products, especially soy sauce and tofu
red wine and red wine vinegar (and anything pickled in wine vinegar)

The answer is simply: don't eat the above if your sensitive to histamine.  You can avoid them.  Also, the histamine in the above foods already exists in the can or jar before you buy them, and will not be reduced using salt or chilling.

I am quite puzzled by the inclusion of canned tomatoes on that list, but several sites reference it.

Part of your confusion is clear with this statement:

  Histamine is created as a result of fermentation so can-food has
  significant amounts of histamine compared to non-can-food. Assume we
  have food in a can. It ferments all the time little although it is in
  a salt liquid.

Um, actually, no.  If your can of corn is fermenting, it's bad.  Throw it away before the can explodes.  Canned and jarred fermented foods are fermented before they are put in the can or jar.  Cans of non-fermented foods are not going to ferment on you; they are heat-treated to destroy all microorganisms which would cause fermenting.

Further, histamine is only created as the by-product of the fermentation of certain proteins or fibers, so not even all fermented foods have it.  There is a larger list, though, of foods which stimulate histamine production than which contain histamines.

References on which I base the above statements:

http://www.reverta.com/blog/histamine/top-10-histamine-containing-foods/
http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/programme/programme_rafs/programme_rafs_fc_01_04.html
http://www.allergyuk.org/fs_histamine.aspx
http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_home.html

One thing which is interesting and irritating is that while there have been numerous studies showing that canned fish can contain deadly levels of histamine (because of the decomposition of the fish before canning), several nutritional information sources have apparently taken to restricting all canned foods "to be safe", presumably since they don't think their readers can differentiate between tuna and green beans.  This is presumably the source of Masi's confusion.  I spent some time searching for any studies indicating the presence of histamines in canned vegetables or fruits, with no results.

If an actual nutritionist or biochemist is reading this question (I am neither), please add to what I have above or correct me.  Thanks!


Drying fatty meat in food dehydrator - is it okay for short time consumption?

Yes. It may be fine for immediate consumption.

The problem is the air flow from the drying itself can also accelerate the oxidation of the fat.

When I have dried fatty meat the fat already tasted a bit off.

This is a matter of quality, not safety. If the fat isn't objectionable to you after drying then it is fine. As you said, you should expect the fat to go off and eat it soon.


Is there a spreadsheet with recommended heating and pasteurization times for different meats and temperatures for sous vide?

The best resource I know of for sous vide pasteurization times is Douglas Baldwin's A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking.

The recipes section has tables for pasteurization time as a function of temperature and thickness for fish, poultry, and red meat. Note that for red meat, there are pasteurization times down to 131F/55C, which is generally regarded as medium-rare, so you have the matchup between pasteurization and doneness slightly off.

In the basic technique/cooking section, there are also tables for heating times, starting from either refrigerator temperature (41F/5C) or frozen (0F/-18C), going to 1F/1C short of the water bath temperature, for various shapes of meat.

If you're aiming for pasteurization, you want to use both tables, to make sure that the meat is both pasteurized and heated through. You'll also be fine cooking for longer than that, since it's safely pasteurized.

If you're cooking something rare enough that it won't pasteurize, you can just use the heating times table. In that case, you'll want to try not to cook too much longer than the given time, since it's not getting any safer.


Boil water first when cooking what foods?

There is no single universal answer to this question, as it depends on the specific food and outcome desired, but there are a couple of common themes that influence whether starting from cold water or boiling water is the preferred method:

Larger foods that need to cook through may overcook on the outside before the inside is cooked, if started in boiling water.  For example, potatoes are usually started in cold water so that they cook through to the center.
Some foods contain enzymes that will be deactivated at boiling temperatures, but may act more quickly at lower temperatures.  Starting in boiling water would be for when it is desirable that the reactions be inhibited; starting in cold water facilitates the reactions continuing.
Sometimes it is simply for precision to get a repeatable recipe.  Boiling water is always the same temperature (at least for a given altitude), so beginning cooking at the boil is reliable and repeatable compared to starting with cold water which may have an unknown temperature curve as it comes up to the boil.


You may need fresher buckwheat flour.

Also, If you have access to a grain mill, you could buy buckwheat groats, lightly toast them, and then mill them to make your own flour.   The toasting process would amplify the flavors, just as it does when toasting nuts or spices.


Molds themselves are usually killed by heat treatment, but the toxins they've produced are not. Depending on the water content, it's probable that there's residual mycelium and toxins in the starter even after removing the spot.

I'd say throw away and start over if you do suspect that it was a black mold.


If the utensil is not visibly damaged in any way, it's fine.

Even if it were visibly damaged, there's no known toxicities associated with overheated silicone, so you'd still be safe; it would just be less useful.


Genoise vs whipped egg whites - which makes cakes fluffier?

Génoise is always made with whipped white eggs for maximum fluff. No matter how long you whisk your whole eggs, they will never get close to the consistency of whipped egg whites.
Found an interesting comparison video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCdOU-1sjO0
Now if you make your cake with foamed eggs I'm sure it will be good, but it won't be a génoise anymore.
Regarding the use of butter, there are two schools, some use a bit of melted butter, others don't use any butter at all. I personally never use butter because I think it is lighter and fluffier without it, and generally I fill my génoise with ganache, so that brings the fatty element to the cake. However it is always melted butter, I have never seen a recipe using creamed butter, and indeed I think it will make your batter heavier and your cake will be denser.
But if you ever try please let me know!


Some quick Googling leads me to believe these are "Bouchées Parmentier au Fromage" (literally 'mouthfuls'), which seem to be some sort of potato-and-cheese croquette.
To find this, I did a Google image search for "Parmentier au fromage". This shows many different dishes (lots of which are indeed shepherd's pie-like, but it also gives a few hits on the Bouchées. These seem to be perfect as a canapé, so fit the description in OP's question. Searching for "Bouchées Parmentier au Fromage" yields only these. It's admittedly not a water-tight argument, but it's the best I could find.


Uses for tzimbalo fruit of varying ripeness?

When it comes to the part about underripe fruit: that's ok to use in chutney, pickles, and other preserved recipes. There are recipes which are made intentionally for underripe fruit, like mangoes. You may want to adjust the sugar to your taste.

As for other uses, while I've never had tzimbalis, there are several methods typically used for very tangy fruit. Pickled pieces of it (alone or as a mixed pickle) and liqueur come to mind. Aside of that, you could try pureeing it and see if it is a good substitute for tamarind paste. Or mix the puree with random creamy ingredients and see which combination strikes you as a good dip.

Also, these being a solanum, try them as a substitute in recipes for unripe tomatoes. Although these will have a high overlap with the pickle suggestion, you might find a salsa or two that work.


How do I avoid dry meat and burned masala and rice in biryana?

Most people get burned biryani because of the rice. It must be soaked and the par cooked
before going into the pot. Also the quality of the rice is important. IMO that would always
be Basmati rice. I always soak my rice for an hour for any dish.
The cooking vessel has to be heavy and sealed. This ensures that the cooking happens
in an almost pressure cooker state inside the pot. Some people seal their pot lid with
a flour dough. Cast iron pots are the best.


Some tahini tastes very salty, other tahini does not. Why?

Just toured 17 tahini factories in Palestine. The traditional process soaks the sesame seeds in salt water, first to soften the hull for de-hulling, again to separate the hulls from the seeds, and finally to obtain the desired flavor. The seeds are rinsed in fresh water prior to drying and roasting.
Alternate de-hulling processes avoid the initial salt water soak, but retain the salt water soak after de-hulling and prior to rinsing and roasting to obtain the desired flavor.


Nixtamalization is a culinary process that begins with dried corn kernels (maize), and uses alkalinity to alter the chemistry of the corn. The process is thousands of years old, first recorded by the the Aztecs, but probably older and more wide spread.
This guide is very informative. Here the author describes the result of the nixtimalization process:

This practice accomplishes several things: soaking dried maize kernels in an alkaline solution makes it easier to remove the thin outer seed coat, or pericarp, that encases the kernel, either through grinding or by rubbing. Next, both alkalinity and heat treatment help to not only soften the kernel, but also chemically alter the endosperm and germ of cooked maize [...] (Bressani et al. 1958; Bressani and Scrimshaw 1958). Finally, nixtamalization flavors maize, altering the taste profile of the kernels, giving them a slightly bitter and earthy flavor (Briggs 2015).

...and of course, the added bonus is that it makes corn (masa) delicious!


This looks like a pull through sharpener, using a combination of a carbide bit (left) and one type of ceramic wheel (right).

The carbide section is best ignored unless there is a need to (badly) make a completely blunt knife usable, it will take off a lot of metal. Do not use on any valuable knife.

The ceramic wheel section is to be filled with a bit of water (in the bottom half) so the wheel runs through the water, this helps lubricate, clean and cool the ceramic wheel. The Knife is then inserted in the slot and pulled through several times (as if to slice the device. Edge resting at where the ceramic wheels meet), stabilizing it with your hand as much as possible (keep it straight and wobble free as much as possible). Stropping on paper afterwards is a good idea. The rubber pad is just for holding the device to the work surface with the other hand, though it can with some models be misused as a stropping pad.

Compared to freehand sharpening on a stone or more sophisticated devices, these gadgets have limits to be aware of:

There is no control over the (pre set) sharpening angle, nor can a microbevel, convex or other compound edge be established. A V edge is not the most optimal edge for many knives since you have to choose a more obtuse overall angle than otherwise needed to get a stable edge.
Each time you use them, you worsen/thicken the geometry of the behind-the-edge section, and there is no way to remediate this with the device alone. Also, if the area behind the edge is damaged from other devices or sharpening techniques used in the past, you cannot fix it with this.
Since there is only one grit available in this particular device (there are other versions with up to three wheels), there is little control about what KIND of edge finish you get.
Deburring is imperfect at best, usually leading to edges that do not last long compared to a bench stone job.

In practice, such devices will work better-than-nothing to good with certain knives and horrible on others. Do not attempt to use on an asymmetric (eg sushi) knife.

Knives are configurable tools - unfortunately, the configuration happens on the whetstone.


Should you wait certain amount of time after steak reaches 170 degrees internal temperature

The first question I would ask yourself is, why do you want your steak to be 170 degrees? The temperature and "well done" is just an arbitrary measurement and you really should look deeper to get a better answer. I see a few potential answers to that question.

1 - You are worried about getting sick from under cooked food

If this is the case, you really don't need to be as worried about steak. But, if you are still worried, cooking longer never hurts to kill more stuff. The problem is you will find your steaks to generally by dry and not very flavorful (or maybe too flavorful if you get burn it). Cooking the steak slowly (at a lower temperature) will help to keep the steak a little juice while getting it to be well done. You might also want to get over being scared of getting sick and move on to option 2.

2 - You don't like steaks that still show some pink

If this is the case, then maybe some experimentation is needed. Cut your steak once it hit 170 degrees. If you don't like the look, leave it on a bit and know that in the future you need to let the steak sit for a bit longer. If you like the look, then take it off. After a few times of repeating this process, you will learn what you like. Remember the end goal is to get a steak cooked how you want, not reaching a specific temperature.

You will get to the point that you no longer need to cut your steaks to check them. You should also keep in mind that steaks will cook for a bit longer after removing them from heat. You may end up with a slightly pink steak during this trial and error process, just use it as a learning experience.

3 - You pride yourself in being able to grill, but you received a request from a friend for a well done steak

In this case, you don't have the ability to perform experimentation over time and may very well be scared to cut a steak before serving it to some one. Get over yourself and be willing to tell your friend that you are inexperienced with well done steaks and ask for some help telling when it is done. They may not be experienced themselves and will end up just cutting the steak to see where it is at anyways.


Best way to make pizza with limited options?

It's possible to make a good pizza on the stovetop (with a lid), but it won't quite have the same consistency as a New York style pizza.
Serious Eats had a write-up on 'skillet pizza' years ago.
Basically, the idea is that you cook the crust first in the skillet, flipping it twice (so the flat side is on the bottom again), then top it and put a lid on it to melt the cheese ... which should work pretty well in your tandoor.
A few words of advice :

If you like lots of toppings on your pizza, you will want to pre-cook them.
Flip the crust shortly after it sets up on the first side, as you'll be returning it to that side when you're melting the cheese.
A pan with sloped or curved sides makes it much easier to get in there rather than something with steep sides.

I actually use this method even when I have an oven, especially when I'm cooking for a lot of people -- I cook the crusts on both sides on a cast iron skillet or griddle, then move them to a sheet pan and let people add their toppings, then put them in the oven to melt the cheese.


How can I tell if the tea has been stored properly, is not too stale or oxidized?

You can't (or at least I can't) tell without a lot of experience with teas of that sort.  Generally, a sufficiently fresh tea will have a decently strong fragrance when you smell the dry leaves.  As it grows stale, the fragrance will be replaced gradually by mustiness.  But which fragrance to expect varies dramatically by the tea.  For instance, pan-fried greens like dragonwell (longjing) tend to smell vaguely nutty, while a sencha will smell more grassy.  Dragonwell will also be more yellowish while the sencha will be more greenish.  But these are two of many different varieties of green.

Also, there's a continuum of oxidation from green to black, so "too oxidized" is really a matter of taste.  If you buy a Darjeeling (black), it'll tend to be lightly oxidized for a black tea; if your green is darker than that, maybe it shouldn't be called green.

I'm sure with appropriate analytical chemistry equipment you could determine some aspects of tea "quality"--but this would be complete overkill unless you're running a major tea business and you want to ensure quality.  And even then, you'd probably be better off hiring a number of taste-testers.

There is one test (but it's not definitive): brew the tea, then leave the cup out for a day.  If it doesn't get dramatically darker by the end of the day, it's already mostly oxidized.

In any case, if you like the tea, why do you care so much about the quality?  You can find some outrageously expensive teas--I've noticed some South Korean greens in particular--that start getting into the price ranges of fine wines, but unless you're doing this to impress people, you're better off trying a variety of samples and then getting the one/ones you like.  (Hopefully you won't find that you really like those South Korean greens....)


This is candy.
It is sugar cooked to a particular concentration with other things mixed in for texture and flavor. Low sugar candy is like low fat ice cream- a contradiction.
If you were to reduce the sugar in half compared to the other ingredients the product would have a harder time holding together. It wouldn't take too far before it was simply nut butter. Still tasty but not halvah.
Try it. You might like the outcome anyway and simply prefer a less sweet and less firm but more nutty spread.
You might have to come up with a new name for it.


The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving includes a section that does just what you're asking.  It also provides a large collection of excellent recipes and general tips and tricks.


Yes, there are two different meanings of taste, as you already mentioned. One is the salty-sweet-etc. multidimensional space of sensory perceptions felt with the mucous membranes of the mouth (many authors add astringency and pungency/hotness, which are not felt by the tastebuds themselves), and the other is the overall impression of the food. The overall impression includes also the aroma - citric acid and acetic acid in a solution at the same pH level are both equally sour, but you can tell them apart by aroma - and the texture. An example for the texture would be to try confectioner's sugar and pure rock candy - both are 100% sucrose, so have the same narrow-meaning-taste (sensory perception of sweetness), and both have the same aroma (provided they are produced from the same plant at the same degree of refinement, which is often the case with white sugar), but your overall feel of them (taste in the broader sense) will be entirely different due to the different texture.

Taste in the narrow sense can also be slightly different with different texture, due to the difference in availability of the taste-creating chemicals to the taste buds (and to the rest of the mucous membrane). The obvious difference comes with density. Cotton candy does not feel as overpoweringly sweet as the same volume of table sugar, because it is mostly air and doesn't trigger as many taste buds at once as the sugar. This is a difference in the strength of taste, not in the taste profile - cotton candy doesn't start tasting more-salty-than-sweet due to the different density, it just tastes less sweet.

Another thing which might happen to taste is that the structure which creates the different structure isolates some of the taste-causing molecules from the taste buds. I know from experience that this happens with aroma. Adding xanthan gum to food reduces its aroma, I assume that it traps the volatile molecules which would normally reach the olfactory sensory cells. But if it does reduce the taste too, it doesn't do so in the same proportion, as there is much more taste left than smell. If somebody knows for sure that it reduces the strength of taste too, I would like to see conclusive information on it; I only include it here as a hypothesis.

Summary, texture changes taste in both the narrow and broad sense. It does so more strongly for the broad sense, which is the one most people care for.


Commerial-grade packaging (long shelf-life) for my cookie-like pastry

Firat, first, first : look at your local rules and regulation regarding selling food product in your area.
First first : Decide how long you want to have your product to last, this will put restriction on packaging.
First, you need to do a lot of testing with different kind of packaging and see how your product behave over days, weeks and months (whatever long you want to keep the product)
Find a local food laboratory to test your product for safety (bacteria, mold.... ) at different days, weeks...
If/When the product is safe to eat, you also need to test the product to see if it is still good (not stale, loss of flavour...)
After that, look for different packaging solution for your product, most packaging can be done in-house (heat sealed) so you can buy custom printed bags or pouches (for example for granola melange) or paper packaging (for example for chocolat bars)
I've googled for "commercial food packaging" and there are many solutions for this, just look it up.


Can I substitute teriyaki glaze and baste for teriyaki sauce?

Well I just tried it and added some soy sauce and brown sugar. It tasted pretty close.


Why use chopped tomatoes and tomato paste/puree?

Tomato puree is concentrated tomato.  So where it is called for in conjunction with other tomato products, be they fresh or tinned, it is an attempt to increase the tomato flavour/presence in the dish without increasing the bulk or water inherent in less concentrated products.

Additionally the flavour of puree, having gone through a reduction process is somewhat different, more intense and rich than straight tomatoes.

Indeed, canned tomatoes tend to be surrounded with juice that is more reduced than would occur naturally.  Which is part of why they are used against fresh tomatoes.


It depends on what one means by "sourdough."  Some people tend to restrict that word to a particular bread style, usually associated with "San Francisco sourdough" or some variant.  That bread tends to be a lean somewhat crusty bread, with sourness varying from noticeable to somewhat pungent.

But others use the word "sourdough" just to connote the use of "natural yeast" (as opposed to bakers yeast).  If your source was using "sourdough" in that sense, it's perfectly possible to make all sorts of sweet breads using natural yeast.  It was actually the standard way to make such breads before the widespread use of commercial yeast.

If you are going to do so, besides possibly adding sugar or some other enriching agents to match your memory (milk, butter/oil, eggs, etc.), I'd also recommend efforts to "tone down" the sourness in your starter.  Traditional French methods for natural yeast sweet breads tended to work on a multi-stage building system, where you'd start with a remaining hunk of dough from a previous batch (the "chef") and then gradually build it up in anywhere from 2 to 4 stages to the final dough size.  Each build would range from an intermediate to large dilution of the starter (to dilute any residual acidity in the starter), and you'd start the next build before the previous one had a chance to turn sour.

By doing this, you maximize yeast growth (which occurs earlier in the sourdough cycle) while minimizing acid production (which makes the bread sour).  After a few such builds, you'll have knocked down the bacteria population -- which lead to sourness -- enough that the rising of the final bread will mostly be just yeast activity.  The final bread is often more flavorful and complex than produced with bakers yeast, but won't have distinct sourness.

Also, this multi-stage method is less necessary if you are baking bread on a regular basis, like a bakery might do daily.  As starters sit for longer periods without feeding (more than a few hours), they will accumulate more acidity.


You can use Lorann flavors, they don't affect the clarity of gelatin:

Found them here: https://gelatinartmarket.com/products/assorted-gelatin-art-flavoring-lorann-oils?variant=14121096455


Can I use Portobello Mushrooms in Lasagna?

The simple answer is Yes. Of course you can use Portobello in your lasagna. You can dice them up and add them to your sauce, no problem at all.

If that is the end product you want then you should make it that way but I would recommend slicing the Portobello into long thin slices. This will accentuate the lovely texture of the Portobello and you could add a nice layering effect to an already nicely layered dish.

Be sure with whatever method you use you cook them quickly on high heat with a little Salt and Pepper to help bring out their flavor.


Alternative thickener for soups and stews

Take one or two scoops of your soup (prefer the solid parts), put it into a blender, blitz until smooth and put it back into your soup.

You'll get zero additional calories and zero awful stuff your grandma wouldn't identify as food.

This obviously only works if we're not talking about a broth.


How much difference is there between brands of flour?

There is a difference beyond just the price.

All-Purpose flours are not the same:

Southerners tend to make more quick breads, pies, cakes, etc. where tenderness is the primary quality factor.

Southern brands of all-purpose flour such as White Lily, Martha White, Red Band, Adluh and others are typically milled from wheat that naturally has a lower gluten percentage.  They also blend it to achieve an overall lower percentage.  In addition, southern all-purpose flour is usually bleached, often with chlorine gas which weakens the gluten structure of the gluten in it and creates an acidic nature in the dough.  Gluten doesn't develop as easily in an acidic environment.

On average, people living in the northeast/midwest tend to bake a lot more yeast-based products (dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, pumpernickel bread, rye, wheat, white, french bread, etc.) which benefit from a higher gluten percentage.

Northern/Midwest brands such as King Arthur, Hecker's etc. tend to use wheat that has a higher gluten content for the milling of their flour and they typically leave it unbleached which allows the gluten to better develop during mixing/kneading.

National brands such as Gold Medal and Pillsbury are being distributed across the country so they blend their flour to fall within the mid-range of gluten content.

As for store brands, those that are national (such as Kroger/safeway) are probably being milled by the national flour mills and should probably perform about the same.  If it's a regional store brand (such as Piggly Wiggly here in the south or Wegman's in the Northeast) I'd be willing to bet that it probably falls within the scope of those regional types of milling practices.

For a chart showing the range of gluten content for various types of flour from cake flour to bread flour (including the all-purpose brands mentioned above) see Flour Power.


How can I make my no carb sausages more succulent?

Are you only using pork belly? No added fat? Even though pork belly has a high fat content, my experience is that sausages require even more. Add some ground, or finely diced, pork fatback and see if it makes a difference.


Once you blanch garlic it needs to be treated as cooked, so if you don't want to pickle it then your options are to refrigerate it or freeze it.


I'm not 100% sure that it can be saved ... but that doesn't mean that it won't end up being something good as-is.  Unless that's your only dish the size you need, I'd just throw it in the oven as-is, and see what happens.

As it's a crust, you might look to see if you have anything that you can use for crumbs (cookies, graham crackers, ground nuts, I've even had ones made with boxed cereal and brown sugar) and make a quick crumb crust.

You could also flip things upside down -- take whatever was intended as the filling, and add a streusel / crumble topping ... or some other buckle, betty, etc. type thing where the crust-like layer is on the top.

As you might not have time to start again, it's possible the crust might come out like a giant cookie ... if so, pop it out of the pan to let it cool while you bake the filling, then crumble it up on top of the dessert once it's out of the oven.


Is there a way to make a generic cheese sauce?

'Cheese sauce' is really anything semi-liquid that tastes a bit like cheese & can be poured or dipped, depending on how liquid.
Some fast ideas:-
Camembert, brie etc - put it in the oven for 20 mins. Cross-cut the top, dip.
tbh, you can do this with most cheeses, just the French-style crusted cheeses provide a cool looking container.
Generic roux - oil or butter in a saucepan, add the same quantity of flour. Combine 2 mins, add milk slowly, stir. Add cheese, stir, serve.
Welsh rarebit - throw cheese, flour, milk, beer, worcestershire sauce in a pan, heat & stir until it's homogenous.
There's not really much you can do to hot cheese to spoil it ;)
The only two cheeses I can think of that don't work are haloumi & paneer, because they're both pre-cooked & don't melt.


What is the best wine to use in a fondue recipe?

Any white with a sufficiently high acid content. The canonical fondue wine is Fendant, which is made in the valais region out of chasselas grapes, so any chasselas (see Wikipedia for a long list of alternative names) will work well.

One notable alternative is a dry champagne. This will make your fondue very light and fluffy, due to the carbonation.


Well, I got around to braving this and potentially sacrificing a box of strawberries at ‘rona prices, and going half xylitol half syrup at ~25% added sugars of total it turned out… fine. Not as creamy as using all syrup but not sandy the way my early all sugar batches did - at a guess, it behaved barely different from table sugar for me. 1 part substitute : 2 parts syrup might be better, but at that point it seems like mostly a pointless complication and expense - xylitol has 60% the calories of sugar, cutting the calories of the sorbet by all of 13%.


Optimal stirring technique: I read that stirring liquids in a straight line is better than in a circle, but I can't find any references

Well, this does not surprise me. If you move the spoon in circles, you create a shearing action between the faster moving spoon and the slower liquid. This is where you create a force that makes the two different liquids mix. If you move it back and forth, you still have the shearing action between the spoon and the liquid and it is the same as before, as it only depends on the size of the spoon and speed and length of movement, but also the action of the liquids knocking into each other. This is a stronger force than by going in circles as the molecules crash into each other, instead of side-by-side.

Of course, the difference in technique depends a lot on how much force the liquids need to mix in the first place. So, you should be able to easily verify this if you use water and oil and try to mix them by stirring in circles and going back and forth. The difference should be noticeable, while the difference for water and ink should not be detectable.

I don't know the Japanese research, but Harold McGees 'On Food and Cooking' confirms this in the section about whipped cream, how this force allows the fat globules to destabilize (and finally end up as whipped cream).


According to Dairy Australia, an Australian industry association (emphasis added):

  Cheddar Classifications

  Mild Cheddar - matures for one to three months.
  Semi-matured - matures
  for three to six months.
  Matured or tasty - matures for six to 12
  months.
  Vintage - matures for 12 to 24 months.


Placing a ceramic bowl over stainless steel saucepan

It will take longer to heat than a thin metal bowl. It probably wouldn't crack, being oven-safe - it's just being exposed to steam, not direct flame, so long as it is above the water, not sitting on the bottom of the pot (which is what you describe.)


No the best option here is to cover food better in the fridge. Invest in some storage jars, or tubs, or better plastic wrap. If the food is in an air tight container it shouldn't dry out.

If you leave food outside you'll find you attract rats, mice and other vermin which will be very hard to get rid of.


Covering jello while it sets is not usually a problem. At my last job the pantry person covered the jello every time it was made while setting. This was due to health code regulations. Having the jello for that long usually isn't an issue either unless there was some way moisture got to the box and may have compromised the gelatin or even caused mold growth. Was the box expired?


Cayenne pepper and red pepper flakes? Chili powder?

I've never come across anywhere where powder and flakes mean the same, but substituting one for the other should work in terms of flavour (the appearance and texture might be a bit different).

More specifically, in some places chilli powder means powdered chillies (like cayenne), in others it means chilli spice blend. Here in the UK it's even worse - both meanings can be found in the same shop.

Red pepper flakes aren't as common here as chilli flakes, but I wouldn't expect red pepper flakes to be hot, unlike chilli flakes. Sweet/mild paprika would be the substitute in that case.

So you have to be careful of where the recipe comes from as well as where you are. I suggest you have some form of mild pepper in powder or flake form, and some form of hot pepper, and adjust to taste when the dish is nearly cooked. This isn't perfect as (especially with flakes) the flavour needs to cook into the dish a bit.


If Soy Milk gets congealed at the bottom, is this a sign that it's going bad?

That sounds like the settling of the soy solids at the bottom of the carton; shaking the milk before pouring it should solve that issue.


How do I get something sticky like honey or Golden Syrup off measuring spoons or measuring cups? Is there a better way?

It's possible to get specialized equipment for this: a plunger measuring cup. The base is adjusted to the level you need to measure, the sticky honey or syrup is poured in, and then the cup is upended and as the base is pushed in, it scrapes the sides as it travels.

I'd only invest in this if you very frequently measure sticky ingredients -- it's not strictly necessary, but it can be a timesaver for some recipes. It's available from many different brands.


Can I add body to vegan stock with carrageenan?

Carrageenan is not suitable for the application you propose.
First, you need iota carrageenan, since the kappa variety is inhibited by salt.
Second, you need a source of calcium ions for the iota carrageenan to form a gel (kappa needs potassium). I doubt that it will be sufficient to chuck a piece of kale in there, you will probably need something more. I don't know for sure how it is done in vegan cheeses, but this type of preparation is frequently firmed up with inorganic salts. If you were to add calcium sulfate to a stock, you would end up with something rather unpleasant, I imagine.
Third, the carrageenan action is also inhibited by long heating at low pH. A stock is usually not too low in pH, but it is lower than neutral.
In short, my suggestion is to pick a better suited thickener.


How can I remove a stuck babka from a stoneware baking bowl?

My sister had this exact issue last Easter, we just couldn’t get the babka out.  Eventually, she just tore out what she could using a clean pry-bar, and then let the family dog clean out the rest of the bowl.  Then she soaked the bowl in water.


What determines the 'saltiness' of salt?

Summary for the Quick Reader

Only the shape and size of the grains really makes a difference.  Otherwise, salt is salt.

What makes a difference between salts?

There are only two real differentiators between different types of salt (assuming the product is essentially just salt, and not a seasoning blend):

The mineral or other impurities resulting from the method the salt is collected, or additives (such as iodine) during processing.  For example sea salts will have some small proportion of other minerals, and a tiny amount of biological detritus like dead plankton in them.
The size, shape, and density of the crystals or flakes.

Note that almost any salt you buy will be quite dry—there will be negligible water content.

Reasonable blind tests show that despite chic chef use of fancy salts, almost no one can tell the difference between salts with different impurities based just on their flavor.  When in other foods, any difference from this practically vanishes.

The second aspect, the nature of the salt crystals or flakes, is very salient.

Large crystals dissolve more slowly, and provide crunch between the teeth, and texture you can feel with your lips and tongue.

Certain types of salt, such as fleur de sel and some brands of kosher salt have large, less dense crystals or flakes with a lot of air in them.  These two factors together mean that per unit of volume, there is simply less weight of salt than there would be for the same unit of volume of a salt like US style table salt with very small, uniform crystals.  That is, a teaspoon or mL of fleur de sel will simply weight less than a teaspoon or mL of table salt.

This means that when added to a dish by volume, it is simply less salty, because you have added less actual salt—the rest of the volume in the measuring spoon was air.

Common types of culinary salt

The overall size of the crystals lends different salts to different uses.   I will use US terms since they are the only ones I know.  From smallest to largest grain size (more or less), some common salt products are:

Popcorn salt Very finely ground, so it easily sticks to popcorn and other snacks.  Not a lot of feel, but even coverage.  Dissolves very rapidly in the mouth, so rapid kick of saltiness.
Pickling salt Quite similar to popcorn salt.  Useful because it dissolves rapidly in the pickle juice.
Table salt  The familiar standard we are all used to.  A good compromise for most purposes.   Dissolves quiet well.
Kosher salt  Relatively large, slow dissolving crystals or flakes, engineered to stick to the outside of meat.   Often used in cooking, where it performs quite similarly to rock salt.  Note that different brands have significantly different densities, but it is usually on the order of about half as dense as table salt.
Sea salt, rock salt, fleur de sel.   Various natural salts which usually have larger, less dense crystals or flakes.   Allows more perceptible texture, and a longer slower saltiness as they dissolve in the mouth.  Take longer to dissolve in foods, due to the larger crystal size.
Pretzel salt  Really big (comparatively), sometimes opaque chunks (they are opaque due to air inclusions).  Lots of texture to chew.  Crunchy bursts of saltiness.  Not generally used to season foods other than as a surface topping, since it doesn't dissolve quickly at all.
Rock salt For salt grinders.  Just for table aesthetics.  Salt is salt, and it is the size of the grains after grinding that matters.

What salt performs best?

I cannot say that any particular salt is better to cook with.  Many cooks use a small variety of salts depending on what they are doing.  If you were to pick only one salt to have in the kitchen, I would recommend table salt which is not perfect for every use, but pretty good at most.

For a reasonably stocked but not extravagant pantry, I would choose:

Table salt for baking.
Kosher salt for topping breads and stuff where a little texture is desired, and because it is easier to pick up with one's fingers--also so many recipes specify it these days that having it on hand so as to not have to figure a conversion is nice.

Either of the above will serve well for general savory cooking, although you would use less table salt (by volume) than kosher salt, as indicated above.

Note that by putting kosher or table salt in a spice grinder, you can grind it down to popcorn or pickling salt size, so buying this is rarely necessary unless you want a lot, as for a day of pickling.

The exotic salts

There are some exotic salts out there, which might have extraordinarily high mineral levels or other properties (such as pink salts from Hawaii), but the above covers most usual types of salts that are available.

Just NaCl

Chemically, all normal culinary salt is the same thing, discounting trace impurities:  sodium chloride.  There are curing salts and salt substitutes which consist of or contain other chemicals, like sodium nitrate or potassium chloride.  I don't discuss these in this answer.  Note that so-called "pink salt" (in at least some of its meanings) is a curing salt blended from sodium chloride and sodium nitrate.

Some minimally processed salts (such as sea salt) will have a tiny percentage of other chemical salts in them.

See Also

Update March 2013:  Serious Eat's has published an interesting article talking about the differences between regular and kosher salt:  Ask the Food Lab:  Do I need to use Kosher Salt


How do I replicate the unique crispiness of Korean fried chicken?

It's not so much the dry ingredients as it is the cooking technique, which involves double frying the chicken.

You'll notice that the recipe you link instructs you to double fry the chicken, and so do others like this one: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/04/dinner-tonight-korean-fried-chicken-recipe.html


I also googled it and it seems that sweet white or green grapes are, indeed, probably the closest answer. Since it is a fruit salad, you may want to choose whichever of the grapes is sweetest rather than choosing by color.

Winemonger's page on malaga says that it is a white wine grape and can be called by the following names:

Hunter Riesling (Australia)
Blanc Doux / Chevrier / Semillon (France)
Boal / Wyndruif (South Africa)
Green Grape (United Kingdom)
Semillon (United States)

The wikipedia link for Sémillon describes that as a sweet, golden grape.

This interesting Chicago Tribune article from 1890 about what people in NY fruit markets were calling Malaga grapes also indicates that it is a "white or pinkish white" grape, and not the true Malaga grapes, which that article claims were too delicate to ship.


What causes egg-covered puffed rice cakes to become soft when pan fried (and how to control it)?

They get softened up when the moisture from the egg gets hot enough to bathe the rice cake with steam, and rehydrate the starches with moisture and heat.

The rice cake was absorbing moisture while it was sitting in the egg - not too much if it still seemed light, and clearly not enough to start disintegrating, but some.  The texture of such dried products is open, but the strands (of gluten, or starch) are dried hard - the crumb can be heavy with moisture if soaked long enough, but it drives out the air not soaks into or softens the starch.  They will still be stiff (and dripping) after soaking, and they won't ever become soft and chewy from all the way dried out, with only added moisture.

Add heat, though, and the combination lets the inner structures absorb the moisture from the surface, reconstituting the starches to a chewy consistency (the brittle stiff structures swelling, and becoming flexible and compressible like bread and not just brittle or mush like soaked crackers) - and it becomes flexible enough to let the steam wick upward through the rice cake to bring the combination of moisture and heat to transform the interior.  If the moisture form the soak hadn't reached the center, though, it can remain  dry and stiff - especially if the edges also hadn't soaked enough to get water for the steam, which helps mobility (turns it from soggy-edge and dry-center to moist all through).

This process isn't limited to eggs, or to rice cake.  If you have bread that's gone bone dry and hard, soaking will soften the edges to mush but it won't reconstitute it to a bread-like consistency without heat.  Soak it in water or milk, though, then pan fry or toast it - and the heat and moisture will make the gluten absorb the water, swell, and become flexible again.  I have rehydrated bread, rolls, or pastries this way (usually with water, it changes less) if they become totally dried out without otherwise spoiling - soaked in water for a while, then heated to transform from wet-and-brittle to soft and chewy.

You should see similar effects in your rice cakes (becoming soft/chewy) if you soaked them in water or milk or whatever, before frying again, to those you got when dipping them in egg first, and again similar effects from using a toasting or using an oven rather than frying.  The combination of heat and moisture makes a difference in re-hydrating starches, not just the specific combo of egg dip and ricecake (disclaimer - obviously, there will be different results from using egg, water, milk, or alcohol, and rehydrating rice-cakes, breads, and other dried starches - just, similar kinds of results from moisture, heat, and starches)


There aren't many good visual signs. What I'd suggest is to add pectin gradually and take samples.

Bring the kettle to boil,
add less pectin then you would expect to add totally (say, half),
take a small amount of the jam, put it in the fridge to  let the pectin settle quickly,
see if it requires more pectin; if so, add a small amount and continue with step 2.

It's pretty much alchemy if you don't have sugar profile of your strawberries or supplier information about the pectin.

You might want to add some thermal insulation around the kettle so you don't burn unnecessary amounts of energy keeping it hot before you get the ideal amount of pectin in.


making iced tea with lowest caffeine content

The only way to significantly reduce caffeine content is to use decaffeinated tea or "herbal teas."  I know it's probably not the ideal solution, given the limitations on variety and flavor.

There are various claims about which types of tea have more or less caffeine, but the reality is that there's a huge amount of variation in individual tea varieties and blends.  Caffeine content has to do with how and where the tea leaves are grown, more than the way the tea is processed afterward (and it's the processing that determines whether a tea is black or green or white or whatever).

For example, this study notes, based on 20 different commercial teas:

  Caffeine concentration in white, green, and black teas ranged from 14
  to 61 mg per serving (6 or 8 oz) with no observable trend in caffeine
  concentration due to the variety of tea.

Each sample was brewed for 1, 3, and 5 minute times, so most of the lower numbers resulted from the 1 minute infusions, while the high numbers came from 5 minutes.

Granted, this is a small sample, but you can find other similar studies that come to the same conclusions.  (This study measured caffeine in 4 different ways and found the white tea sample to have the highest caffeine of all.)

I believe the idea that green and white teas have less caffeine comes from the fact that such teas are often brewed at lower water temperatures (steaming rather than a full boil), which will in fact reduce caffeine content somewhat.  But if you brew all the teas at the same temperatures, you'll find little consistent differences among tea types.

Caffeine concentration does become greater with longer brewing times, but if you brew the tea for a shorter time, you're likely need to use more tea leaves to create sufficient flavor, which can negate any reduced caffeine effect from the shorter brew.

A similar thing can happen with temperature.  Yes, caffeine will dissolve more slowly by brewing at a colder temperature (see here for a detailed experiment showing the rates), but so will many other flavor components.  You'll obviously need to steep cold-brewed tea longer, and that longer steep may counteract the fact that caffeine dissolves more slowly.  Whether you can end up with a cold-brewed tea that tastes like what you want with a lower caffeine content will likely depend on your exact process and your exact tea leaves.

In any case, if you're actually trying to reduce your caffeine consumption significantly, I'd have to recommend decaf or herbal teas.  Some tea companies may publish statistics on how much caffeine their "regular" tea contains, but it's hard to say how reliable these are, how consistent they could be from year-to-year, or how they would be impacted by different brewing methods.  And short of having that sort of information on brands, the only way to know whether switching your tea/method has an impact would be a lab test.


How should chicken breasts for a chicken salad be cooked?

It really depends on the texture you are looking for in your finished product. If you want a chunky chicken salad then bake your chicken breasts seasoned or not, I season mine, and then cube them. If you want something a little more exciting pan grill the breasts to the point of a little char and then dice. If you want your chicken to be flavorless and get all of your flavor from the mix you are tossing your chicken into, boil it or put it in a slow cooker if you are cooking up a big batch.

It all really comes down to how you like to eat your chicken salad, and more importantly how pretty you want it to look in your serving method, because a cajun blackened chicken salad sandwich can look down right homely. I say try them all until you fall in love with one temporarily and when that has lost its passion try a different version.

Also as a side note if I am preparing it for me and not for someone else, so it doesn't have to be all white and pretty, I use thighs instead of breasts since they are more forgiving and generally cheaper. If I am not just breaking down a whole chicken and using the leftovers.


Does fresh garlic have any specialized uses?

I love fresh (also called green) garlic. Some uses:

For a quick, simple and delicious pasta sauce, chop a whole bulb of garlic (with peel and all) and sautee in some olive oil, rosmary and chili peppers. Add some white wine and reduce.
Make a soup
Clean whole bulbs from dirt, remove the external peel, wrap in tinfoil, sprinkle some salt, olive oil and thyme and bake for an hour. The garlic will turn into a paste which you can then squeeze and spread on fresh loaves of bread.


Is butter required to caramelize onions?

Onion can be caramelized without butter. Or any other type of oil. However, unless you are actively avoiding using fat, there really is no reason not to.

The main benefit of using oil when caramelizing onion is the fact that oil can reach a higher temperature than water. To caramelize onion you need to reach about 230F. Water boils at 212F and will not go higher than that. So to caramelize without oil, you would first need to draw out the water and "dehydrate" the onion a bit before they reach temperatures that can caramelize the onion. Note: Never put water into the pan if you wish to caramelize onion.

The reason you very commonly see butter used is because it can reach temperatures above 230F and it's flavor profile works really well with the savory sweet flavor of caramelized onions.


The alcohol does indeed change the coagulation of the egg yolks, so you have to be wary. Small amounts are not problematic (I have made orange crème brûlée with a tablespoon or two of orange liqueur to a full batch), but if you want more for taste reasons, you should look closer at the recipe. I tried looking this up, but couldn't find an upper limit on the alcohol amount - although note that eggnog can be made without curdling, so there is quite some tolerance in eggs.
For the maximum alcohol that is usable, I would look at sabayon recipes. Pick a recipe that is meant to make a firm enough version, and look at the total amount of pure ethanol. Since marsala has less ABV than brandy, you will be able to add more of the brandy - for practical purposes, you may want to fill up the cocktail with enough milk (or cream) until you are around 17% alcohol, then use this as a substitute in the sabayon recipe. There is a very good chance that this goes well - while the fats in the cream will interfere a bit with setting, the mixture should have less acidity, which will again give you a good overall mixture. It is not predictable how further components in the bitters may interfere, you will have to watch the first few batches and adjust the temperature or ratios if needed.
Once that version turns out well, you will have established a good upper range of alcohol for your crème brûlée, and from there, you can adjust downwards for the taste you like.


It sounds like it could be Shishito peppers, which about 10% are spicy, and "even experts may not be able to distinguish relative hotness on the same plant.".


Chicken or quail have black or dark red spots on the meat

It's just clotted blood.

Quail is a far more game-y meat than chicken meaning there is much more muscle and you end up with a lot of dark meat. You get the same with truly free range chickens.

This is nothing to worry about and I have never seen a quail which doesn't look like that.

Source: My mum had a poultry farm.


Safety of vacuum packed smoked salmon in turned off fridge?

If the salmon was actually nonperishable (perhaps refrigeration was needed only for quality), you're of course fine. You'll have to try to figure that out from the packaging or maybe the manufacturer.

If the salmon needed refrigeration for safety... the danger zone is temperatures above 40F/4-5C. Even in a warm house, refrigerators generally are insulated well enough to keep a safe temperature for up to ~4 hours. (Really old refrigerators, or ones with a damaged seal around the door may not do as well.) So if the room cooled down fast enough, the refrigerator would never have gotten into the danger zone. On the other hand, if it stayed at 10-20C for most of a day, the fridge may have gotten too warm for a while. You can try to guess at this based on your knowledge of your house and the weather, but it's hard to say from here. If you think the salmon spent several hours over 5C, and it needed refrigeration for safety, it's no longer safe. If not, it's fine. Take your best guess, and when in doubt throw it out.


Is this fish dish actually Greek in origin?

I found an article (Polish) that may shed some light onto the origins of this mysterious dish. The first two paragraphs in translation:

"If you were to show the Greeks fried hake or pollock filets, covered with grated carrots, braised until soft with onions and tomato concentrate, asking if they could recognize it as a Greek dish, they'd probably nod their heads in an affirmative manner. At such time it's good to know that this gesture has the opposite meaning in Greece as compared to us.

"Most likely, the original recipe was psari plaki - fish baked in a tray, covered in tomato sauce with vegetables. The vegetables are prepared separately. Onions and garlic are sauteed with olive oil, sometimes with the addition of carrots and celery, perhaps some olives, a spoonful of honey and always - a lot of tomatoes. This is braised briefly with the addition of white wine. The sauce is delicate, fragrant with the wine, herbs and full of vegetable chunks. The fish is gutted, rolled in olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon juice and prepared for baking by covering it with the vegetable sauce. It should not by any means be fileted, as it is detrimental to the flavour."

So as was to be expected, our national variation is probably at most a bastardized version of a Greek dish. But who cares, it still tastes great. ;) I just made my first batch and it was delicious, I highly recommend it if you have the opportunity. :)


How do you get a smooth surface on cakes?

Frost it.
Most surfaces will be rough when looked at closely enough. Bubbles are introduced when you mix the ingredients together (perhaps more if you use a high-speed machine beater & less if you do it by hand) and as a natural part of baking, from baking soda etc.  That's what makes the cakes more light and airy as opposed to thick.


I am making an apple crisp and need to know how much salt I need for 4 tsps baking powder

Just a large pinch of salt will be fine for both the crust and the filling. In the crust it helps with flavor, makes a buttery crust taste less oily, and it also helps with browning. In the filling it helps give a lift to the flavor.


What's best: boil eggs in advance or just before use?

By your definition, I would cook them all at one time.  From there you have a couple options.

Leave them in the shell and peel when needed.  This keeps out a lot of the air which extends the shelf life to 2 weeks, but can dry them out a little making the texture a little harder.
Immediately peel and dry them as best as possible.  Put them in a Zip Lock along with a dry paper towel on the bottom to catch any extra water and condensation.  Remove as much air as possible.   The texture is much better, but your shelf life if approx. 1 week and is a little smellier. (also can put zip lock into a covered container) Lol.  Food stores now sell eggs this way.

Either way you may want to let them sit on the counter long enough to take the chill off, so it's not as hard. For me it doesn't matter, I can eat them any old way.  LOVE EM!


I think that washing pre-washed greens is an issue of emotional security, if you don't trust the purveyor.  As the FDA indicates:

  Many pre-cut, bagged, or packaged produce items like lettuce are pre-washed and ready-to-eat.  If so, it will be stated on the packaging.  If the package indicates that the contents are pre-washed and ready-to-eat, you can use the produce without further washing.

It certainly does no harm, but you then have to also dry them for most uses, so it is more work, and kind of redundant:  you have paid a premium price to buy the greens already washed.  If you are going to wash them yourself, why not buy less expensive produce, and perhaps have more control over what goes into your mix?


Can I use store-bought orange juice instead of fresh squeezed

Probably won't make too much difference for carnitas. FWIW, when I make them, I cut up an orange or two and cook it with the pork for a while. Then remove before cooking down completely


What you need is to deflect the heat from the top of your pie. If you have two racks in your oven, and can position them so that the pie is in the middle with a rack above it, place a piece of aluminum foil directly above the pie. Another option would be to set a piece of foil on top of the pie after it has partially baked. Either way will protect the top from direct heat, allowing the ambient heat to penetrate and bake the whole pie.


American versions of Mongolian BBQ are often pretty sweet (this doesn't sound like an authentic recipe). More soy sauce (or more of everything but the sugar) would cut the sweetness. Chili oil would certainly give it heat, but isn't going to temper the sweetness much. Any of the following would offset the sweetness and be appropriate for this type of dish:

Any tart apple (a common ingredient in the Japanese version of Mongolian BBQ)
Onions (not caramelized)
Rice wine vinegar


I agree with Brendan's answer above. Having also made freezer burritos ahead of time, I find that it helps if I put some source of re-heatable 'liquid' in the wrap while preparing them (e.g. salsa, not sour cream, for example). It might have something to do with steaming the food instead of directly heating it, maybe? Let me know if that helps.


How much dry ground ginger do I substitute for fresh grated ginger?

Fresh ginger and dried ginger are very different, the flavour, texture and properties are not overly similar that they can not readily be substituted for each other.

Having said that, in the instances where they can be substituted I have seen estimated from 8:1 up to 6:1 (fresh:dried).


Does whole milk or soy milk spoil faster? Why?

Not sure about why, but in my experience cow's milk spoils much faster than soy milk.


The biggest problem with lye lies (pun intended) in the fact that it is a strong base (lye is a metal hydroxide, usually sodium and/or potassium hydroxides) and will attack some metal surfaces such as aluminium strongly. Generally most other compounds are non-reactive unless they can form some sort of acid-base reaction.
Quartz countertops are engineered stone - that is finely ground stone powder/chips held together with resins, usually polyester or epoxy resins. Polyesters are readily attacked by alkali, while epoxy resins are more resistant (see entries for potassium and sodium hydroxides) so, in absence of knowing which resin has been used to make your countertop, I wouldn't allow lye to sit on your quartz for an extended period. Indeed use of such chemicals is not recommended for quartz countertops at all - partly because it can permeate into the pores in the stone surface and contaminate food later.
Lye will dissolve lignin (the main component of wood) to some extent, but I think this is fairly limited. However, as with the countertops, fake woods are held together, with - you guessed it - resins (different type). In the case of MDF and particle board, these are held together with urea-formaldehyde resins, which seem to be quite resistant to hydroxides (Warning: PDF). You will find that the biggest problem with these sorts of woods is water getting into them and causing the wood component to swell and mechanically break apart the material. However, this problem isn't specific to lyes.
Ceramic tiles should be completely resistant, but the grout between them probably isn't completely resistant as that is usually made up of cement with some epoxy resin as binder. Hydroxides will attack the grout slowly (as noted above for epoxy), but so long as you can clean the lye off fairly quickly, it should be fine.


A clove is not a clove. There are 2 main types of garlic:

Hard Neck: hard neck garlic varieties have larger bulbs (or head as you call it), and fewer, larger cloves
Soft Neck: soft neck garlic are generally smaller than hard necks, and have more but smaller cloves

Hard neck varieties are on the whole stronger flavored than soft neck varieties, although a lot of it depends on the richness of the soil and how well it was farmed. All garlic varieties have larger cloves on the outside and smaller ones on the inside.

As for how many to use, if a recipe calls for 8 cloves I generally treat one large hardneck clove as 2-3 cloves, and softneck cloves on a 1:1 ratio. Some of the varieties I grow are very strong, so if I'm using a red duke I may just use 1 clove for a recipe that calls for 8. Generally the rule I gave will work fine for store bought garlic.


I don't know of any "rules of thumb" other than experimenting to find optimal results.  Some loaves will expand a lot more horizontally than others while baking, so it will likely depend on the specific context.

From your description, it sounds like the problem isn't a lack of steam/moisture, but too much.  Crusty breads need steam early on to prohibit crust formation and thus allow maximum open spring.  But then they need space to allow their surfaces to dry out.  If they are almost against each other, moisture that's evaporating from the loaves will linger a bit more and remain somewhat concentrated in the areas between loaves -- thus keeping the crust a bit softer.

As for why loaves added later bake better, it might be a temperature effect.  If you overload an oven (even a commercial one) or have "cool" objects concentrated too close to each other, they'll bring down the effective heat during the early stages of the bake.  In contrast, with breads you often want the strongest possible heat at the beginning of the bake to achieve maximum oven spring before the crust sets.  My guess is that loaves added late take advantage of the fact that the oven has "recovered" in temperature after the massive influx of crowded (cooler) loaves.

But again, this is just a best guess based on your description.


Does steak from a supermarket cook quicker than steak from a butchers?

Going to a butcher is a very good idea, and doing some of your own butchering on larger cuts is a great way to save money and get really good quality meat. It's not a question of butcher versus supermarket though, the factors that make a difference in cooking time are:

Cut: The word steak is a generic term for a small cut of meat cut across the muscle fibers, these cuts come from many different parts of the animal and have very different properties. Some cuts are denser because they do more work on the animal, these denser cuts like rump/round take longer to cook. Skirt steak does not cook at the same rate as filet, you can't compare them directly
Aging: Most of the time steaks are aged, this can be using a wet or dry method. Dry aging allows beef to loose moisture, concentrating the flavor and making it denser. Wet aging is cheaper and faster, but does not allow for this moisture loss. Dry aged steaks will be denser than wet aged steaks of the same cut, and therefore take longer to cook. There are plenty of butchers and supermarkets that sell both wet and dry aged beef, butchers are much more likely to be selling dry aged beef because you buy from a butcher when you want something better. Note that you can dry out wet aged steaks a bit by leaving them unwrapped in your refrigerator for a day, but it's never going to be the same quality

The key message is not to cook to time, but to temperature as all steaks are different. A good instant-read thermometer is well worth the few bucks to get the right result.


Cooking a turkey in an electric roasting pan for the first time

You can absolutely cook a turkey without a wire rack.  I have done this for years.

What I suggest is laying down a grid of celery and carrot sticks, to elevate the turkey a little bit and keep it from sitting in the juices that will come out during cooking.

These aromatics will then lend their flavor to the pan drippings, and help you make a fantastic gravy.

Another approach, which I do not like as well, is to crumple aluminum foil into a snake-like shape, and coil or snake it around the pan to serve as a makeshift rack.

This works well, but doesn't offer the flavor benefit that using aromatic vegetables does.


Pressure cooker missing a part. How do I fix it?

It's good that the "green arrow valve" never popped up; that's the safety fuse, and only "pops" (destructively, and probably spraying food onto the ceiling) when the cooker pressure goes way too high.

The missing part is the pressure regulator, gauge or counterweight. The pressure cooker won't work without it. It blocks steam coming out of the vent until the steam pressure gets high enough to push the regulator up off the vent, thus limiting the internal pressure.

These are usually pretty easy to replace, as they are easy to lose.

It's important to get the right one, to use the wrong one could be very dangerous!

Your cooker is made by Presto. Presto calls that part a pressure regulator, as well as I can tell: http://www.pressurecooker-outlet.com/Presto-Pressure-Cooker-Parts.htm


You could microwave it, put the whites in a glass container with a loose lid and blast it, the texture will be very similar to a boiled egg. You might have to check from time to time for doneness.

It will harden in the shape of the container if you don't "scramble" it every 30s, and it might also explode from the steam trying to escape (hence the cover). Brush some oil in the container to make sure the whites don't stick.

Personally for that much egg I'd just cook them in a pan like an omelet, it's much less trouble.


What are the different applications for differently shaped wooden spoons?

Number five is a folding spoon. It is made for folding flour into light foams without overmixing, for example when making Genoise. The big hole makes the mixing easy, and the shape is good for scraping the bottom of a round bowl.

As Dave Griffith already said, 3 and 4 are for stirring stuff in pans and skillets (making roux, cooking off the liquid in tomato or pepper puree for ajvar-like condiments). They prevent the contents burning on the bottom, because they remove the very heated layer from the bottom and let cooler liquid flow in.

The slot in spoon 2 make it a poor replacement for a skimming spoon. Normally, you want a bigger perforated spoon for that, with bigger holes. Also, I think metal is a better material in these cases, it isn't so good to put wood in boiling water.

Number 1 is useless in cooking. Historically, these spoons were made for eating. When they were big enough, housewives just used an eating spoon for stirring, because this is what they had at hand. Nowadays, people don't eat with wooden spoons, but the tradition persists in that they continue using the traditional shape for stirring. This is a bad idea. It has the wrong shape for flat-bottomed pans and curved bowls. There is no use case for which the other spoons aren't a better fit. Maybe getting flour out of a package into a bowl, but being much flatter than an eating spoon, it is inferior also for this use.


How should I store 15h cooled and then 2h cooked at 65C white soybeans?

Generally, cooked beans keep best frozen, at least if you're keeping them for more than a day or two. As for what you'd refrigerate them in to save the to use tomorrow, I'd suggest either their own liquid (if you're going to use it in the recipe) or drained (but tightly covered). Alternatively, if they're going to go into some sauce, you could let them marinate in it.

A teaspoon of citric acid (assuming anhydrous, i.e., dry) is a fair bit, especially for 1L. That will be very sour. ⅛ tsp citric acid into 1L water is notably sour.


I believe they're made as half-balls and sandwiched together with the filling.

If your recipe comes out of the oven pliable they could be baked in a similar way to brandy baskets and moulded before they cool. Otherwise you'd need to bake the half shells over or in a mould.  That's a matter of finding a food- and oven-safe item of the right shape and size.   Cake pop moulds are available; you'd probably need to fill the wafer with something like rice as in blind baking pastry.

It will take some trial and error, and after you've done that you're still left with the task of assembly.
Some recipes can be moulded after baking, others don't seem like they can.  You could use the same tools after baking to mould the former sort (or over the end of a large test tube).

For my own personal consumption I could also be tempted to try baking over large clear glass marbles, having put them through the dishwasher and then the oven (to make reasonably sure thermal stresses won't crack them) beforehand.  Even better if I coudl get the relative size right, use the marbles to blind bake in the cake pop mould.  I wouldn't use coloured (even internally-coloured) marbles.


Do beef foreshank (the shin) and hindshank taste different? Should they be cooked differently?

The fore and hindshank are very similar in characteristics. The hind can be a little tougher as the hind does a bit more work, so a bit longer cooking time. They have a similar taste and texture.


Is it possible to keep battered deep-fried (pork) crunchy?

The secret to crisp sweet and sour pork is mostly how you serve it

Roast, BBQ, grill (whatever you like) the pork so it fully cooked, but on the lighter side of done. Cut into bite sized pieces

If you want to deep fry (not actually required) use a thin and light tempura style batter (flour, baking soda, beer mixed for ten seconds works OK). Drain well. This can be done the day before and keep it in an airtight container, but reheating is as much trouble as fresh deep frying. Remember, when using a thin light batter deep frying only takes a minute

If not deep frying, finish and reheat under the grill (broiler) till it just starts to smoke

Use a hot Chinese style serving platter and poor in all your sweet and sour sauce fresh from the wok. The sauce and the platter should be piping hot, it doesn't matter if the the pork is not that hot

Pile the middle of the platter with freshly shredded raw cabbage and onion. This should make a low flat island in the sauce just breaking the surface of the sauce. You can use wok fried capsicum, onion, carrots etc instead of cabbage (not as good!)

Carefully pile the pork pieces onto the island

For extra zing add more shredded raw onion on top

For a coastal style, and some fresh shredded coconut and/or mango (not to everyone's taste)

Serve immediately with a large serving spoon, so guests can scoop up the sauce and pork all in one go


It sounds like what you need is a powder, you could try a protein powder, or you could use peanut butter powder, which is a good thickener. Chia powder is also a great binder.

Another option would be a gum like xanthan or guar gum.

Heat is another option if you aren't baking these already, heat will drive out moisture and help the mix crystallize.


Brown pods from tree like Carob okay to eat raw?

You don't show a picture of the tree but those appear to be pods from a honey locust tree. The tree usually has thorns growing on its trunk. I've never heard of them being edible but I did find some info here: maybe but probably not best idea.Young fruits may be more edible.


Should I maintain a carbon steel knife with oil?

I write it as a seasoned carbon steel knife user and a hobbyist knifemaker.

Use edible oil or nothing

Safety first. You can use any oil as long as you are really, really sure you wouldn't mind it added to your food.

Patina is good.

There are two kinds of iron oxide. Let's call them red (rust) and black (patina). Black one is good.

It mitigates red rust
It's less sticky
It's mostly tasteless

It's main drawback - it's ugly.

This is my everyday carbon steel knife. It's scrached and developed patina. It does not mind being used for cooking. It no longer requires wiping every minute, it can well be washed and dried after few hours.

How to develop good patina?

First, the less patina you already have, the slower you need to go. Don't keep virgin steel wet too long. Only after it begins to darken you can allow it to stay wet longer.

Remove red rust when you see it. But don't just use scrubber. If you want to develop patina fast, you should boil your knfe's blade for ten or twenty minutes when you see it getting red. This will convert some red to black. Then gently scrub the rest of red from your blade. If you don't want to boil, just gently remove rust, carefully not destroying patina.

If you want to artificially develop patina, dijon mustard is especially good for that. Few hours in warm place should do the job. Lemon juice is not half bad, either.


Why does my onion have very few, very thick layers, and a hollow center?

Was this onion by any chance purchased from a local farmer's market or grower?

I have grown onions that did this, experimenting with over-wintering onions and allowing them a 2nd growth, with onions that I thought too small to harvest in fall so let them keep going.  The experiment was a failure.  Most rotted, but some did this, produced an onion that looked fine, but few, leathery layers and hollow or growth in the middle.  Taste was fine, a bit strong, but texture was less than pleasant.  Some flies and disorders like milky rot will also hollow them, but a high share of the time will also result in goo or slime and I have not seen the thick layers associated with those conditions, but that is strictly personal experience.  And, it could easily be an individual mutant or bolted plant.

Any stress while growing, too much or too little water, heat, light can cause a plant to bolt and go to full maturity before it should.  In you case, to my personal eye, the onion looks like one that went to full maturity rather than a disease.  We actually eat many items, like onions and garlic before they are fully mature.  In both of these items, blooms are typically removed to try to delay the plant from fully maturing.  This helps to produce bigger bulb and clove heads.  In the case of onions, if the onion fully matures, rot occurs or a product similar to what you have.  Only a guess, but what my thinking would be is an onion that was missed when top buds were removed, or one that fully matured without bothering to bloom.


Can I let my bread dough rise in the mixer bowl?

Your metal bowl sitting in your 70°F room is 70°F (at least, if its been sitting there for a bit). Your plastic bowl, or glass bowl, or ceramic bowl, or any other bowl sitting in the same room is also 70°F. They're all actually the same temperature.

Now, given, when you touch the metal bowl, it feels cooler than the plastic one. This is because your finger isn't 70°F, and your body heat is transferred away quicker by metal than (say) plastic.

If the dough is room temperature, it won't matter—heat isn't flowing out of it. The dough itself doesn't generate much heat. If your dough started above room temperature, it will cool a little quicker in a metal bowl. But, if you wanted to keep it from cooling, putting it in a warm place is much more effective.

A stainless steel bowl is fine. I'd avoid aluminum (and copper, if anyone makes a mixer with such a thing) due to them being reactive, especially if you're making sourdough.


The pasta in the soup is only there to add substance and calories, so the amount is not really fixed. You can change it according to your preference.

Without any further information about how you like your soup, I'd say go for a volume replacement, and add 1/2 cup of barley. When you pour a spoon of soup into your mouth, it is mostly the volume of the barley which you perceive as "amount" in relation to the volume of the vegetables and liquid. So if you were to start consider densities and try replacing by weight, the final soup will appear to have less starch than the original.

This is only a starting point, if you find out that you don't like the amount, you can always adjust it for the next batch to whatever you like it to be, without fearing interactions with the rest of the soup.


You don't need the "uncleaned" word there at all.
All of the qualitative amounts are just approximates, so "(about 1/4 onion)" works fine.


Is it safe to eat fish that has been left out in the cold overnight?

I hate throwing away food, for me (and I stress "for me") I would use the "Smell By" test and then make sure it is cooked really well through.  Make a stew, curry or pasta source (something where it is cooked through and in small bits). BUT DO NOT sushi, light pan fry or similar of it.

If you are in doubt do not use it, you do not want a dose of something a week before holidays.

Other factors
Was the fish cleaned?
Was it in bag or one of those polystyrene (Styrofoam) boxes?
Was it in ice?


Glucose is water soluble, so you can use water to make it return to liquid phase. You can also probably use some penetrating oil / water displacing spray like WD40, which can also help a lot if some of it ended up on the cabinet door hinges.