What to look for when buying a rice cooker?

Volume

Volume is usually the primarily advertised statistic for rice cookers. This indicates the volume of cooked rice that can be prepared in one cycle. Common sizes include 5.5 cups and 10 cups. 5.5 cups is completely adequate for a family of five people for a single meal.

Bowl quality

Bowls in entry-level models are typically aluminum. Higher end models will be stainless steel. The same heating properties present in pans are relevant here. Aluminum heats quickly, and unevenly. Steel provides a more even heat.

Also of concern is the interior of the bowl. Nearly all bowls have a non-stick coating of varying quality. I've seen the coating start to flake off within a handful of uses on the cheaper rice makers. Higher end bowls can have a durable coating that lasts years or longer.

Cooking logic

The simplest and cheapest rice makers will have basic static logic. You put rice in, push a button, and the logic simply applies X amount of heat for Y minutes.

Higher end models also have additional functions including:

Presets for multiple varieties of rice
Delayed/scheduled cooking (like a slow cooker)
Keep warm functionality
Digital displays
Elapsed/remaining time displayed
Dynamic monitoring and adjustment of temperature/humidity

Cooking/Heating method

Most rice makers use a simple coiled electric heating element located under the bowl. This is a major cause of overcooked/browned/burnt parts where the rice contacts the heated area. This is exacerbated by cheaper aluminum bowls.

Higher end rice makers use induction heating. Induction is a rapidly alternating magnetic field which uses the entire bowl as the heating element. This heats much more evenly and is far less likely (almost impossible) to burn the rice.

The highest end rice makers add pressure cooking capabilities. Pressure cooked rice purportedly is softer, and retains softness longer than regular cooked rice.

Brand & price

This is probably the most important. In my experience, you actually get what you pay for. Without fail every American brand rice maker (presumably made in China)  I've used has been atrocious. The most positive thing I can say about one is "it worked great for the first batch".

There is one Japanese manufacturer that stands out from the pack: Zojirushi. I cannot overstate how amazing their product is. It literally just works, every time. I received the Zojirushi NP-HBC10 5-1/2-Cup Rice Cooker and Warmer with Induction Heating System as a gift over two years ago. I have used the hell out of this thing and have never had a less than perfect batch of rice.


In order to get the chocolate to harden correctly, still look shiny, and have that nice snap when it is broken, you need to temper your chocolate. There are many methods for doing this, but the seeding method on this site is most people's preference:

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/article/155/Tempering-Chocolate

After that you tempered chocolate, follow this process:

Ensure molds are 100% dry
Fill molds completely with melted chocolate.
Tap the molds on the table or tap them with a spoon for a few seconds to get rid of the air bubbles.
Invert the molds over your bowl of chocolate and let them drain out, leaving a chocolate coating in the mold.
Place the molds face down over a sheet of parchment paper (or something like that) to let them drain out a little more.
Put them right side up again and let them dry for 20-30 minutes.
(optional) place the molds in the fridge for 10 minutes (will make demolding eaiser)
Invert the molds over a sheet of parchment paper. If necessary, tap gently or carefully twist the mold to get the pieces to release.

EDIT: First, if you are going with this technique, use real chocolate (the only fat should be cocoa butter). Second, if you can, use a high cocoa butter chocolate.


Are can openers like the original Swing-A-Way sold under a different name now?

Perhaps: http://www.ez-duz-it.com

St Louis, claims to be only one made in USA, Seems to fit time-wise.

per one of several catalog sites (http://www.sierravalleytrading.com/JOHN-J-STEUBY-CO_c_815.html)

John J Steuby Company
of Hazelwood, Missouri, has purchased the equipment used to manufacture the original,
MADE IN USA, SWING-A-WAY
can opener and now uses that equipment to manufacture the
EZ-DUZ-IT
can opener.


A curd made from chickpea flour is known as Burmese tofu or shan tofu. Most recipes call for making a slurry with chickpea flour or besan flour and seasonings, simmering it until it thickens, and then chilling it in a mold of some sort. Once it has cooled, it sets and can be cut into pieces and used much like regular tofu. Many descriptions seem to place it somewhere between tofu and polenta on taste and consistency.


Are any retail vacuum-sealing systems worth the expense?

This is the cheapest chamber vacuum sealer that I've come across: VacMaster VP112. At $669, it's half the price of most other chamber sealers. Chamber models are far more "professional" than the stuff marketed to the home, and my understanding is that they are far more reliable.

The difference between a chamber model and a home model is that you place your food in a bag in a chamber. The entire chamber is used to create a vacuum, meaning that liquid won't leave the bag. A home sealer will also not go below atmospheric pressure while a chamber unit can get a much higher vacuum allowing for vacuum marination, compression or fruits, and better flavor penetration during sous vide, which may or may not hold any interest for you.

In terms of your specific questions:

My understanding is that these consistently make a good seal.
I can't speak to longevity, but these are the kind of units that restaurants use for sous vide prep, so I assume they take a beating in those environments.
Because it's in a vacuum chamber, liquid is no problem, and you can actually vacuum seal just liquid.
Major Fail. These things are big and heavy. The one I mentioned is 24" x 16" x 9" and weighs 53 lbs.
Shouldn't fail to seal. Not sure about waste if it does.
Cannot be used with a container, but why would you need to rather than using a bag?
Minor Fail. The model I listed is a little over your price range. Most other models of this type will be between $1,250 and $7,000.

The other consideration is chamber size. You obviously can't vacuum pack anything that's larger than the vacuum chamber. The one is listed has a chamber size of 12" x 11" x 5".


looking for an idea for "fondue alternative" dish, that can be served in a buffet

Any variation of the swiss holy trinity (lardon, cheese and potatoes) is good, but for maximum wow factor, see if you can rent a raclette oven or two and have someone stand by it and slide the molten cheese on people's plates :

Downside is you need a raclette officer on duty (can be done by anyone, its not hard)


Gluten-free Carrot Cake batter mixed with normal Carrot Cake batter

Well, it went quite well. The flavour was really nice (I guess corn flour did not change the overall carrot cake flavour that much), and the texture (which was what I was most scared of) was as a normal carrot cake.

The timing in the oven was more or less the same (as I used the same mold several times, I did not measure the grams I was pouring). So my conclusion (not scientifically tested) is that it did not change, or if it did, it was minimal.

Just to state constancy, the final mix was more or less:

1/4 of all the mix: Normal Carrot Cake batter (wheat flour)
3/4 of all the mix: Gluten-free Carrot Cake batter (corn flour).

I also mixed some blue coloring but in the end it turned out green, but it did not change the flavour nor texture!

Final results: As I needed to transport the cake for 30 minutes by car, the frosting went a bit ugly, and in the fridge later, it was hard to re-shape it properly. But flavour was good.


Cooking time adjustment for large quantities of stew

Normally, cooking a stew (not counting prep) in less than a three hours seems like rushing it to me.  I can't imagine that you'd ever get the fall-apart tender meat that people expect from a stew, but...

There are a number of techniques that I've seen professional cooks use when they're in a time crunch that may help you overcome time constraint problems such as this one:

Cut the ingredients into smaller pieces
Use larger bottomed or multiple pans (even electric ones as mentioned in the comments)
Use a deep fryer (not recommended for a stew ;-), though it would certainly help get the meat up to temperature)
Use a microwave (works well for some ingredients, not so much for others)
Use a pressure cooker (if available, this is what I would recommend for a stew)

From a scientific perspective, it's going to take 5 times as much energy to bring 20 portions worth of ingredients to temperature as it would 4 portions.  Coming up with an exact formula would require some detailed information such as the BTUs put out by the stove, the spread of the burner, and surface area, shape, and material of the pan being used, etc.  However, we do know that a lower portion of the energy will be lost when cooking 20 portions due to more surface area of the pan being in contact with the ingredients (even if only on the sides).  I would guess that the wasted energy probably ranges from 50% if you're cooking small portions to 20% if you're cooking large portions (again, depending on the efficiency of your cooking arrangement, which will vary widely).

So, if F is the energy required to bring 4 portions of the food to temperature, and S is the energy per time unit put out by the stove, and t1 is the time required to bring 4 portions up to cooking temperature, and we guess that we have 50% efficiency when cooking 4 portions, we have F=.5*S*t1.  When we increase to 20 portions, assuming the efficiency increases to 80%, we'd have 5F=.8*S*t2.  Solving for t2 relative to t1, we get t2=5*.5*S*t1/(.8*S), or t2=3.125*t1, so (given the assumptions of course), bringing 20 portions up to cooking temperature would take 3.125 times as long as bringing 4 portions up to temperature.  To speed things up, you would have to alter the input energy (more burners, electric assistance, etc.), or increase the efficiency (more pan surface area, smaller cut ingredients).  A more general equation would be t=M*Eb*tb/(Mb*E) with tb, Mb, and Eb being the time to cook a baseline amount, its mass, and the efficiency for that volume, and t, M, and E being the time for the new amount, its mass, and its efficiency.

Of course this is just the time to bring the ingredients up to cooking temperature.  Once there, the volume of ingredients doesn't matter much unless there is a lack of convection due to the thickness during the cooking phase, so with more portions you may need to stir more (this would be the solution to the gradient problem). After coming to cooking temperature, adding energy faster or more efficiently won't help much (if at all), but changing the pressure will change how quickly the food cooks, which is why this is what I would recommend.  The cooking phase is the majority of the time, so a 10% savings there will save you more than a 10% savings during the 'coming up to temperature' phase.  Depending on the stew, you may or may not need some time at the end for reduction and thickening as well.

In addition to all this, if you're doing prep work during the time you've listed, I'd skip the mise en place and get whatever you can heating up immediately so you can get as much heat as possible into as much of the stew as possible as quickly as possible.


Short answer is no.

If you were a cook/food scientist we could cover a lot of the ways you could combine potatoes and starches and then layer on forms, but really, most people would rather just make homemade potato chips with a potato, a mandolin slicer and some hot oil.

If you want Pringles, they are generally cheap and available.  No need to duplicate in the kitchen.

This description should give you an idea of how difficult it would be in the home

The relevant portion from the article...

For producing Pringles, new machinery and techniques were required involving mixing of rice flour, potato flakes, water and other ingredients. When smooth dough is made, it is cut in to thin round pieces, placed in baking trays are then fried very quickly in a machine. Seasoning is also quickly added before the chips are sent to a stacking machine that packs the chips in distinctive Pringles containers.


I don't think this will work very well. Burners are unidirectional heat sources; the bottom will overcook and the top will be raw. The constant rotating you will need to do will be annoying at best. Ovens provide heat surrounding the entire item, which is why roasting works. I suggest borrowing an oven.

Bear in mind that roasting the pumpkin will compromise its structural integrity. Not roasting seems like a wiser course if you intend it only as a serving vessel.


Possible for chicken to reach 165F and be raw

No, 165 is cooked, but a couple of things could be going wrong. Your thermometer might be out of calibration, or you might not have gotten it exactly to the center of the meat. To test the calibration, check it against boiling water which should be exactly 212 assuming you are at or near sea level.


I found a potential solution to this problem. There is a type of gas heat diffuser called a "reducer ring" that is useful for protecting small pots from big burners. It looks like this:

It is also possible to use a full size diffuser, that operates like a hot plate on top of the burner.


I make paella regularly.  I am either using a paella pan that fits into the top of my Big Green Egg, or a slightly smaller paella pan that I can use on my indoor gas range.  Given your two choices, I would say that both would work just fine.  You may have more direct control over the heat with the Iwatani, since the flame will be directly on the bottom of the pan, but that control (vs. the Weber) might not be that critical. If convenience is a factor, let that be your guide.  Which one is easier?  Otherwise, you could also build a brick or stone fire pit and cook directly over wood coals.  I find the smoke and the spectacle of an outdoor fire add nicely to the festivities of paella.


Figuring out gas oven temperature numbered 1 through 7

The mode selector dial looks more appropriate for an electric oven, but it's still (almost) certainly a "Gas Mark" scale.  It used to be common, though modern gas oven usually have Celsius.  I know such scales often go hotter, but 7 is high enough for almost all cooking, and I've certainly seen them stop at 7.  It's rare for electric ovens to use that scale but not unknown.
The conversion isn't usually quoted precisely, which is throwing you off.  The Wikipedia page I've linked above gives the exact conversion but rounding to the nearest 5 or better 10 °C is much more useful.opf a top
Here's a more practical table (rounded to the nearest 10°C), but gas ovens tend to be a little approximate; 1 is about 140°C and 7 about 220°C.  If you're still in doubt, you might want to get an oven thermometer, but the suggestions broadly line up with the conversions above (cakes Gas 4-6/180-200°C, roasting 5-7 or 190-220°C, meringue as low as it will go - 140°C is a bit hot really, gas 1/4 is often called for).
In fact given that you want precise temperatures and it's old, maintained for safety (at most) and not performance, an oven thermometer would be a very good idea.  This may be a cheap basic model - likely in a rented house and the lack of gas marks 8 and 9 fits with that too.  Preheating times can be quite long on some such models.


They are from the oats, which contain no sugar as a raw ingredient. Processing them to make milk converts some of the starch to sugar, so it is counted as added sugar as it does not appear in the raw ingredient.

From an article entitled Oatly challenged over “no added sugars” claim:

  ... the enzymatic process it uses to create its base oat milk (water + oats) effectively “creates sugars in situ” by breaking down oat starch into simple sugars. ... All oats in an oat beverage are processed, therefore all the naturally occurring sugars in the final product are considered added.

The same article provides an update about this from the FDA specific to the Nutrition Facts Label:

  In our Nutrition Facts Label Q&A guidance issued in November 2017, we addressed sugars created through processes such as hydrolysis: When an ingredient containing mono- and disaccharides that are created through controlled hydrolosys... is added to a food during processing, those mono- and disaccharides contributed by the ingredient need to be declared as added sugars on the label.


Tea taste changes if watered down after steeping

Water extracts flavor and color compounds from the tea leaves. Water can only hold so much of these compounds before it reaches the saturation point, where it cannot hold any more. Any flavors left in the tea leaves are unable to be extracted by the water.

If you only add 50% of the water required to extract all the flavor and color from the tea you leave much of the flavor behind in the leaves, and the tea will taste strongest of the compounds that are extracted fastest. When you then add the other 50% of the water the tea will be weaker and taste different than tea that has been steeped in 100% of the water needed to extract all the flavor and color.


Aged steaks cooked as medium but came out looking well done

That sounds ridiculous. I've eaten more than my share of steak and never heard that one. I also live in a city with lots of good beef and steak. The following should hold true whether it's aged or not.

Rare

120 to 125 degrees F
center is bright red, pinkish toward the exterior portion, and warm throughout
soft to touch

Medium Rare

130 to 135 degrees F
center is very pink, slightly brown toward the exterior portion, and slightly hot
yields only slightly to the touch, beginning to firm up

Medium

140 to 145 degrees F
center is light pink, outer portion is brown, and hot throughout
yields only slightly to the touch, beginning to firm up

Well Done

160 degrees F and above
steak is uniformly brown or grey throughout
firm or hard to touch

Taken from here.

I'd probably accept a steak that was medium rather than medium rare, but if it was brown all the way through, then he overcooked it. You could send him to our multiple related questions...

Edit: I should clarify, an aged steak will be darker, but not so much that your meat doesn't have "ANY" red in it when cooked less than well done.


Does shaping dough require punching/folding it?

I understand that you can either punch or fold dough before shaping it and both have different benefits.

Just understand what you're doing. During the fermentation process (rising), yeast consumes sugar and starch in the dough and turns it into alcohol, carbon dioxide, etc. That carbon dioxide collects gets trapped in the dough (thanks largely to the gluten), and bubbles form. Those bubbles (along with good flavor) are a big reason we ferment dough in the first place, so you want to keep most of them, but you also don't want large bubbles that'll create big empty lumps in your pizza.

"Punching down" the dough and folding it accomplish the same things: the idea is to release the gas from the large bubbles, and also to shift the yeast cells around a bit after they've used up all the food that's available in their immediate vicinities. You don't really have to punch the dough with force like you're angry at it, although some people (especially on TV) like to make a show of doing so. You can just press your hand down into the risen dough so that some of the gas gets pressed out. Removing the dough from its bowl and folding/kneading it a little bit does the same thing, and probably also helps develop the gluten a bit.

  This recipe doesn’t mention this step, though. Is it just supposed to be understood that I’ll have to punch it before shaping or do they intend that I somehow divide and shape it without knocking the dough down.

Yes, dividing the dough and forming balls will do exactly the same thing as punching it down, perhaps a bit more gently. Forming balls will also give you a nice round shape that'll turn into a disc as the dough relaxes, and that disc will be easy to form into a nicely shaped pizza.

Given the long fermentation time, I'll bet the recipe you're using calls for a relatively small amount of yeast. Between that and retarding the fermentation in the refrigerator, it may be that you won't get the kind of large bubbles of CO2 that you'd get with more yeast and shorter rise time, and without large bubbles there's no need to punch down the dough.

  Also, would I punch the dough down twice? Once when dividing and again right before shaping?

No, there's no need for that. Shaping the pizza will break any large bubbles. Sometimes large bubbles will start to form as you're shaping the pizza, or even after you've put it in the oven, and it's fine to pop those with the tip of a knife if you want to.


Spaghetti sauce consistency / coating noodles

Adding a bit of the pasta water that you cooked it in helps sauce stick to your noodles. Have you tried that?


"Cloth" that's edible (or even better, yummy)?

You can press cotton candy into a thin sheet that resembles paper or cloth. Put the candy between two pieces of parchment, flatten it with your hands and cut into shape. Consider that the sail may be delicate or very delicate, depending on how thick you make it. To attach it to the mast use caramel, isomalt, couverture, marzipan ...

El Bulli used to serve 'Flower Paper' made with this technique. Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLpTCN9pT2Q to see a Demonstration (Flower Paper starts around 6 min 30 sec).


I cannot find specific information about Urnula Geaster (devil's Cigar; Texas Star), however, almost all of the members of the Urnula family are inedible.  I would hazard a guess that this variety is as well.

A Field Guide to Mushrooms


E627 can be produced from seaweed, and 631 may be produced from tapioca starch.

Thus, both may be properly vegan. Or not. What does it make the food? With all honesty, it makes food don't know category. You can't assert it's vegan, and you can't be sure it isn't. If you are going to feed your vegan friends, buy ingredients with guaranteed vegan origin. If you don't know, be sensible to inform your friends you don't know.

If you are vegan yourself, only you can tell if you are willing to risk eating non-vegan ingredients when source wasn't stated explicitly.


What precautions should I take when preparing food while I have a cold?

Wash your hands thoroughly and frequently.  See Clean Hands Save Lives.
Do not at any point cough into your hands.  Coughing into a sleeve is considered less likely to transmit germs.
To really prevent breathing on your food and potentially transmitting germs that way, you could consider wearing a mask.

Personally I'd consider the last step optional (and the other two not).


If you boil cumin or other seeds, do the volatile oils get released into the sauce?

Fennel and cumin will release their flavors if cooked long enough in a sauce. I usually fry them in oil before adding other ingredients as I like the result, but that's not a required step. If you have a short cooking time use powdered. You can also crush the seeds in a mortar and pestle to speed up flavor release.


What are the effects of using different types of ground mustard?

Brown/black mustard seed is hotter and more intense than yellow. So, powdered mustard seed that is predominantly brown/black is going to pack quite a wallop compared to powdered yellow mustard seed. In the US, recipes calling for powdered mustard are going to expect you to use yellow. See Serious Eats for an interesting article on the subject.


When substituting dried herbs, a general rule of thumb is 1:3. That is, substitute 1 tsp of dried herbs for every 3 tsps of fresh herbs. Anything more could be overwhelming.

Also consider the difference between mild herbs (such as parsley and basil), which are put in food towards the end of cooking, and strong herbs (such as oregano or thyme) which are cooked with the food for some time. Substituting strong dried herbs works better than for mild, as the drying process diminishes the flavor of mild herbs.

Either way, allowing the flavors to meld overnight should improve the flavor.

As an aside, if you're looking to save money, fresh herbs can also be frozen. You could purchase in bulk or cultivate a small herb garden.


Best way to Sous vide two steaks to different temperatures

Pretty simple, cook the two steaks separately at the required temperatures the day before. Cool in an ice bath and reserve in the fridge. The next day rethermalise the steaks in the bath at say 55C: you really only need to heat them for around 25-30 minutes, as all you want to do is take the chill out of the steaks before you sear them on as a high a heat as possible. Do not season your steaks before they go in the bag because the meat will cure slightly overnight in  the fridge.

There's some good info on Cooking Issue around the cook/chill method, especially the pre-salting question:

http://www.cookingissues.com/2011/10/12/to-salt-or-not-to-salt-thats-the-searing-question/

  There are two main types of low-temperature cooking – direct-serve and
  cook-chill. For direct-serve you cook foods and serve them right away.
  For cook-chill, foods are cooked, chilled, stored, and rethermalized
  at service time. Here is a typical sequence for cooking a steak:

  Sear the raw rib-eye. This step kills bacteria on the surface, starts    the browning reactions that contribute to good meat flavors,
  and    ensures that a nice crust will be formed quickly later when the
  meat    is seared again.
  Put meat in a bag with butter.
  Cook the steak for 1-4 hours at 55 C. The optimum length of time    depends on how tough the particular steak is.

  Now, either:

  Pull the steak out of the bag, sear it (to make a nice crust) and    serve it. This is Direct Serve.

  Or:

  Chill the meat and store.
  Retherm it at 52 C.
  Pull the steak out of the bag, sear it and serve it. This is Cook-Chill.


First, I wouldn't call it a roux. There is a difference in flour gelation when the flour is presoaked in fat (as in roux) and directly mixed with water (as in pate a choux). The butter in pate a choux doesn't coat the flour first the way it does for a roux. Plus, a roux is prepared with way more liquid.

As for a proper name of this kind of dough, I don't think there is one - for the simple reason that nobody has a proper use for it. I mean, you don't give a name to every stage of the mixture when preparing a batter, so why should you do it for pate a choux?

This is what McGee has to say on pate a choux. Note that the eggs are important for both texture (the "richness of yolks" smooths it, probably more due to the lecithine than the fat) and structure (egg whites trap the air pockets). So why should anybody ever make it without the eggs? And if it isn't used as anything but a prestage of pate a choux, why give it a name?

As for the uses of pate a choux, Ruhlman gives a fairly comprehensive list in Ratio. It mentions

cream puffs/éclairs
profiteroles
gougéres
parisienne gnocchi
pets de nonne, beignets
churros, funnel cake
panade for pâtés
pommes dauphine
binder for potato pancakes
Gnocchi à la Romaine (made with durum semolina)
"There's no end to what you can do with this stuff."


What are the major differences between yams and sweet potatoes?

Actually, yams are often white, and may be purple or other colors..  In the US, what we get labeled as yams are actually sweet pototoes.  (They were similar to the african yams that people were used to, and the name stuck, sort of like how 'pepper' is used for chilies, but they're not even close to the same thing.)

update A longer explanation of the confusion between yam & sweet potato in the US.


How long will Duck Fat last before going bad

The main concern is keeping it from going rancid which is due to oxidation and heat.  If you keep it at the back of the fridge in a container that minimizes the amount of open space on top it will keep a long time.

You can also freeze it if you don't intend to use in the near future and don't want it taking up space in the refrigerator.


http://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/bread-baking-tips-making-the-most-of-your-oven/
This post suggests to me that the dough was moister on the outside as it was baking, which probably allowed the bread to spring more than a regular bread dough.  I am guessing that this is a function of the eggs and butter that are in brioche dough.  In reading about butter in Ruhlman's Twenty, some of this may be the butter coating the flour, and preventing the stronger gluten strands that might have kept the spring from happening.


Yes, prolonged baking (or even letting the bread cool down in the turned off oven instead of taking it out) will dry out the bread. I can confirm it from my own experience.

I doubt the idea that the internal temeprature will keep down at 212 F. This is true of water in a bowl, but the moisture within the bread is not a puddle of water. It could turn to vapor (which can easily get hotter), in theory it could superheat (although I don't imagine that happening in bread), etc. And even if the water itself stays at 212 F, this is no reason for the solids to keep at that temperature, the water will cool them somewhat but not to the point of full equilibrium.

And even if the temperature would keep at 212 F, this is no reason to assume that this would prevent the bread from drying out. Starch gelatinization is a complex process, which goes at different speeds at different temperatures, and the water itself, if kept in equilibrium at 212 F, will be slowly turning to vapor, and this vapor will be slowly evaporating from the bread.

Bread with very dark crust is not made by prolonged baking, professionally it is made in higher temperature ovens, and with some additions to the dough (malting enzymes). If you try to use prolonged baking instead, you may get darker crust, but you cannot avoid drier bread then. I have not read any of the sources you reference, and tend to bake my bread by the oldschool books, this means removing it when the internal temperature reaches somewhere between 96 and 98 C.

I have never connected a shiny interior to full gelatinization, for me it tends to happen when I have higher gluten content. Maybe there is some connection, but if yes, I am not aware of it.


What can I substitute for the egg used to seal egg rolls?

Flour paste. Mix flour with water and a bit of salt. Go for a thick glaze-like consistency, and use it instead of the egg. Give it at least 10 minutes to hold before frying, and try to hold the edges closed with tongs when initially frying.


Can't seem to get my rye sourdough starter really going

Your problem likely has little to do with moisture or temperature -- starters can actually be established in a wide variety of conditions, from a dry dough ball to very wet, and can from very cool temperatures to quite warm ones.  It may take more or less time to establish in some conditions, but your parameters sound well within range.  I would check the "oven with light on" temperature if possible, just to see what it is, but I doubt it's high enough to cause problems.  (You probably don't want to go much above 85-90F when trying to establish a wild-yeast starter, and a little lower than that is probably ideal.)

As FuzzyChef said, it's possible that chlorinated water or old flour can cause problems.

But my guess from your description that your starter rose significantly with greater feeding is that it's simply starving.  Once yeast begins to be established (usually 3-4 days after beginning a starter, with 24-hour feedings, but can be anywhere from about 2 to 7 days depending on conditions), you should increase the frequency of feedings.  I generally prefer twice per day, but it depends on temperature and amount fed.  For 1:1:1, every 12 hours or so is reasonable.

The problem with letting the starter sit for 24 hours at a time while trying to get established is that the yeast usually have peak growth pretty early on (within a few hours of a feeding), but after several hours, mostly you're just growing lactic acid bacteria, which makes the starter acidic ("sour").  That's good, up to a point.  The problem is when the starter begins to get too sour, yeast die off, and they run out of food without feedings.

A 12-hour cycle might be enough of a shift to jumpstart the yeast growth and catch them before they start dying off every day.  (Some people with so-called "sluggish" starters or starters that have become too acidic will even try more frequent feedings for a limited time.)  I think at this point you might have a relatively small amount of yeast that just isn't growing much from day-to-day.  Try feeding more frequently for several days and see what happens.  For a 100% hydration starter (which you have), you usually want to see a starter that can consistently double or even triple in size within 2-4 hours after a feeding before you start trying to bake bread with it.


Where can I find the most complete possible list with raw products and their respective pH?

This list is probably the extensive I've seen on the Internet with some scientific accuracy behind it. A more condensed list with great references at the bottom can also be found here.

The numbers seem to jive with my own experience, especially in the high variance of some of the foods.

As some of the commentators alluded to, if you are looking for specific pH values of dishes rather than ingredients you'll probably want to use some pH strips to figure it out.

Also, if you are looking for more pH numbers on the internet, stay away from sites related to the "alkaline diet" as they seem to use some other system to determine alkalinity which doesn't appear to be related to pH. I found several sites that refer to lemons as "alkaline" which seems to be as far from the truth as I could imagine.


Freeze cookies before or after baking them?

If the oven time is not a limiting resource, I would freeze and then bake.

There are a number of sources that strongly advocate for aging cookie dough before baking, which affects the absorption of moisture in the dough and changes flavor:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/dining/09chip.html

Personally, I normally do not have the patience for aging dough. If I am making cookie dough, I want to bake it and eat it immediately. You, however, have the time built in to age your dough before baking. You may even want to leave the dough in the refrigerator for awhile first before freezing.

Also, I think cookie freshness suffers more after baking than before, but I don't have references for that.


What are the key differences between lemons and meyer lemons?

Lemons are quite sour, while Meyer lemons are much sweeter and less acidic. If you substitute directly, it'll have a dramatic effect.

For example, suppose you start out with a dessert made with lemons that has enough sugar added (or little enough lemon juice) to make it the right sweet/sour balance for you. If you replace the lemon with Meyer lemon, it'll be way more toward the sweet side, and won't have the sourness to counteract it anymore. So unless you want that big change, you'd probably want to reduce the sugar and/or increase the Meyer lemon; exactly how you decide to do that would depend on the dessert.

If you substitute in the other direction, Meyer lemon to lemon, you'd likely have to reduce the lemon and/or add a bunch of sugar to keep it from tasting more sour.

Either direction, I don't think it really seems like a good direct substitution. It's a big change, so whether it's a good idea totally depends on whether the original recipe suited your preferences and whether you're okay with a broad range of sweet/sour or have something more specific in mind.

The only things where a direct substitution seems like a good idea to me are things where you're only using the zest. At that point citrus is pretty much all interchangeable, just a different flavor.


The very best option would be to cook sous vide; that way all of the aroma will stay in the bag. You don't need any special equipment. We don't have a recipe for grains specifically, but there is a good, free intro to cooking sous vide with just ZipLoc bags and a pot on the stove here: https://www.chefsteps.com/classes/sous-vide-cooking/landing#/

If that doesn't work for you, a non-venting style pressure cooker should help some, as once it reaches pressure it won't release any aroma during cooking. You could even let it cool naturally and then open it outside and transfer to a sealed container.


Is there really a tradition of some kind to eat white bread when it's hot outside and dark bread when it's cold?

Short answer: No.
There does not appear to be any such tradition.
I got curious and googled around a bit, and couldn't find anything.
That, and being from a country that could easily get to -15c in winter and 25c in summer, so if anyone would have such a tradition, I think it might be us ;-)
Having said that, if OP knows of any places with such a tradition, it would be interesting to know...


Are there any differences in cooking techniques for Farm raised Salmon versus Wild Salmon?

You want to minimize the amount of fat you consume from farm-raised salmon. This means you should trim the fat from farm-raised salmon and avoid frying. Farm-raised salmon should be grilled, broiled, or baked, anything that burns away some of the fat. (Farm raised salmon is 52% fattier than wild caught salmon).

Why? Farm raised salmon have ridiculously high amounts of carcinogens known as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) as compared to wild salmon, and many other foods for that matter. You can blame the feed they are given. These carcinogens are concentrated in the fat of the fish, which is why you want to minimize the fat intake. The levels of PCBs in farm-raised salmon can be 10 to 16 times higher than wild caught salmon, and up to 40 times the level found in other foods.

Experts recommend eating farm-raised salmon no more than once a month to minimize exposure.

Sources:

http://www.ewg.org/reports/farmedpcbs
http://www.healthcastle.com/wildsalmon-farmraisedsalmon.shtml
http://www.seattlepi.com/national/132952_fish30.html


One problem that I've had in the past with making smoothies ahead of time is getting the right consistency because many smoothie recipes rely on ice or frozen fruit to thicken them and thus are not great after several hours in the refrigerator.

I found and have been been playing with a make-ahead recipe that includes oatmeal and chia seeds placed dry in the blender and processed to the consistency of flour to thicken the smoothie, which means you can make them ahead of time without sacrificing thickness.

Recipe source: http://www.theyummylife.com/Oatmeal_Smoothies


Is powdered sugar a dietary alternative to granulated sugar?

Powdered sugar is, basically, just sugar, but with the grains ground to a fine dust.

To be very precise, powdered sugar sometimes contains an anti-caking agent like corn starch to prevent clumping but as far as nutritional values go, treat it like ordinary sugar.

So:
Powdered sugar is no sugar alternative because it is simply sugar.


Can I substitute fresh tomatoes for canned?

Recipes that call for canned tomatoes usually do so because these are picked and preserved when at peak ripeness, as well as saving you the trouble of peeling. For whole or chopped canned tomatoes, you can substitute fresh tomatoes (get the ripest ones you can) that you'll have to peel yourself. For other canned tomato products (like passata or paste), you will need to process the fresh tomatoes to get the same result.
Note that if the recipe calls for canned tomatoes and a pinch of sugar, you might want to omit or dial back the sugar. Recipes often include sugar to counteract the higher acidity of some canned tomatoes.


Before I say this and it sounds like a slam, I use the Ben & Jerry's method and like it.  That said, it is a cheat on creme anglaise.  If you beat the eggs the recommended amount you get it to behave similar to creme anglaise but without the effort and risk of actually making one.  Consistency wise, I find it a bit more air than a if I were to actually make one, but much easier and more consistent.  A proper creme anglaise, to my taste, is better though slightly denser, but not only does it take more effort, it is easy to mess up as well.  Whipping the eggs for 4 minutes on the other hand comes out just about the same each time.  I tend to opt for product that I would consistently score about 90 on a 100 point scale over one that might be a 99, and next time might be a 70 plus takes more effort.  But that is me.  They airy vs dense is more of a personal preference and to me is fairly slight difference but others may have different results.

On the safety side, if you use pasteurized eggs, the risk of raw should about the same as cooked, and unless you are careful with temps, it is easy to have creme anglaise and some other custards not really be at temperature long enough to match pasteurized.  I personally do not worry about it as I am using my own eggs so am confident my birds are clean, but if I were using commercial eggs I likely would use pasteurized.  Maybe not in UK where the birds are vaccinated though.


Why does aluminum foil on a pizza stone ruin the pizza?

To understand what's happening here, we should first have a look at what a pizza stone does.

A pizza stone is made from a semi- permeable material with a high thermal capacity, or, plainly put, can store heat and soak up humidity. This means it ensures constant heat at the bottom, plus it buffers the wetness of the dough, giving your pizza a crisp, yet fluffy bottom.

This is why your foil causes the problem. Where the stone can absorb water (and steam), the foil is watertight. Which, as you noticed, can mean a soggy bottom - the humidity from the dough and sauce has nowhere to go on the underside.

Unlike the foil, the parchment is not completely watertight (especially not "steam-tight"), so the stone can still do its job.

If you have trouble with sticky pizza and like easier cleanup, parchment is the way to go. Alternatively, a generous dose of (coarse) flour, semolina or corn flour can help a lot. And don't worry if your stone gets a few stains, there is no need to scrub and clean it every time, just give it a quick wipe once it's dry again. From time to time, you can also burn off residue, if it bothers you.

A press toaster has a different working principle: Its plates are smooth and you are roasting your food only for a comparatively short time. And if you looked closely, you might have noticed a lot of steam either during toasting, but especially when opening it. So the foil has roughly the same properties as the toaster plates, hence you'll get the same result with or without it.


Kefir sensitivity to drinking tap water?

In general, rinsing milk kefir grains is not recommended. Rinsing grains apparently washes off a layer of protective bacteria. An experiment showed that rinsing produced grains that were smaller, and kefir that was milder.

I'm told that occasionally the grains build up orange fatty deposits that must be rinsed off, though I've never seen this so far. If you must rinse the grains, then the advice is to use as mild and soft water as possible. The link specifies non-chlorinated water. I've also seen advice that says the water should be boiled to kill possible contaminant bacteria, then cooled to room temperature before being used for rinsing the grains.

That said, kefir grains are hardy little chaps. Or chappettes, if they're of the feminine persuasion. I don't know where they identify along the gender spectrum. But I digress. They're pretty resilient and bounce back nicely from most injury. You may need two or three changes of milk but they will most likely thrive again soon.

Which leaves the question of why your kefir was the way it was: separated and tangy. There are two possible reasons. The unlikely and more worrying one is cross-contamination from cheese, sourdough, yeast, or other cultures. In that case, you may be out of luck and will need new grains; though you could try the suggested remedies at that question too.

But a far more likely scenario is simply that your kefir is overfermented. When kefir ferments for too long or too quickly, it separates into watery whey and thick curds. Cultures for Health mentions the precise symptoms you're seeing:

  Other characteristics include a strong yeast or cheese odor, as well as a tangier-than-usual kefir flavor.

Such separated kefir is fine to consume, though. If you stir the kefir, the liquid and the curds will mix and it will be easy to strain out the grains, which are otherwise hard to discern in the curds. Once you do that, you can drink it right away, and the flavor is not as strong as the separated kefir. Or let it separate again by leaving it undisturbed for a couple hours. The curds can be eaten, and the whey used for baking bread, adding to soups, etc.

So how to prevent overfermentation in the first place? Separation is a sign that all the milk sugars have been converted into the thick  curds, leaving behind the watery whey. The standard reasons and remedies for this are:

Fermentation time is too long and your milk is done separating before 24 hours. Check your kefir at 12 hours, 18 hours, etc.
Too little milk. Since it's inconvenient to have less than a one day cycle for kefir, just add more milk for the same amount of grains.
Too much starter. If you started with some grains and haven't ever taken some out, but have kept adding all the grains back to the fresh batch, then you probably are using too many grains. More grains = quicker fermentation. As the grains grow, you need to remove some so that the quantity of starter stays roughly the same between batches. I usually need to do this once every ten days or so. You can eat the grains (which I don't recommend) or give them away. As you know from your previous question, they store well in the fridge with milk until you find someone to take them off your hands.
Temperature a bit too high. You can slow down the fermentation by trying a cooler spot. Or do a long ferment in the fridge. Or simply use cold milk to start each batch, instead of room temperature milk. I invariably use cold milk because otherwise my kefir is done more quickly than I can drink it.

Some combination of the above will probably solve the issue for you.


Different cooking times for red and brown lentils?

You likely won't find a definitive answer out there, as there's a range of times for the lentils.

To summarize an article from the Washington Post :

Red, orange or yellow split lentils : 15 to 25 minutes
Black beluga lentils : 20 to 25 minutes
French du Puy lentils : 25 to 30 minutes
Brown or green lentils : 30 to 40 minutes

... suggesting that you'd need to add the brown lentils 15 minutes before the red lentils ... but you mentioned that you cook the red lentils for 25-30 minutes, suggesting that either you like them to fall apart, or you're cooking over lower heat.  If it's lower heat, I'd give the brown lentils a 20 minute head start.

If that's going to put a crimp in your timing, I'd suggest starting the brown lentils in water (or some flavorful liquid), and cooking for 15 minutes while you're getting everything else together, then draining and adding them at the same time (or shortly after) the red lentils.


If it is stale or rancid, you will get substandard muffins that simply don't taste very good.  Usually you would smell rancidity.

It is unlikely to have suffered mold or other decay if it still smells just like corn, but....  cornmeal is quite inexpensive, at least in the US.  You might want to buy a new bag.


Does the snake method only work on circular grills?

The point of the snake method is to provide constant, indirect, heat and smoke for a extended period of time.

The burning charcoal lights just the next bit of fuel in the chain instead of the entire mass of fuel that would be consumed in a normal charcoal arrangement. By having only a little of the fuel and smoking wood burn at a time it makes the fuel last longer and keeps the smoke level low.

This method will work for any shape of grill/smoker. Depending on how big your grill is you may have to have more fuel in your snake to keep it at temperature. Depending on where you weave your snake you may have to move your meat around to keep it away from the direct heat.


Where to store boxes/cases of Carbonated Energy Drinks (Like Red Bull) Fridge or Room?

Storage? Doesn't matter so much so long as the drinks are not subjected to broad temperature swings. Put them in the fridge at least 24 hours before you want to drink them so they can get chilled nicely.


What temperature should milk be when adding to roux?

I've heard a few different answers (theories) as to why you should use different temperature liquids to the roux, most of it's related to starch gelatinization.  I'm also not a fan of scalding milk when I don't have to, as it can bubble over if you don't pay attention and/or taken on a bit of a scorched taste.

I've always added cold milk when making a bechamel in part because that's the way I learned growing up, but if I'm thickening a gravy I'm generally using warmer liquid (drippings, let to sit so you can separate out the fat).  I rarely use a roux to thicken something near a boil ... for that, I'll use a slurry.

There are differences when dealing with adding cold liquid to a roux -- you need to add the liquid slowly, and stir it well before each addition, which also gives it a chance to come back up to temperature.  Of course, I recommend always adding the liquid slowly, as I find it easier than trying to work out lumps afterwards.


I think you've got too much liquid in your ganache, either because the chocolate or the glucose syrup (assuming its syrup). Milk chocolate can be used in a ganache but as it has a lower proportion of cocoa you would want to use less cream in your recipe when using it.

You could try whipping it as the inclusion of air should thicken it, however that will change the consistency so it won't be smooth and glossy. I would suggest you reheat it and melt in another 30 grams of good quality dark chocolate or so. That amount is not exact or based on any sort of science on my part, more instinct from previous ganache making experience. You might need to add more depending on your circumstances.


How much acid to use for stabilizing meringue?

As there are multiple types of meringues, I imagine the core of this question is really the effect of acid on egg white foaming.

According to KATERYNA LOMAKINA and KAMILA MÍKOVÁ writing in the Czeck Journal of Food Science, there is a moderately complex relationship between pH of the egg whites, and its foaming capacity (overrun) and the stability of the foam:

  By the addition of a small amount
  of 1N H2 SO4  or NaOH to  the liquid egg white (pH values: 9.5, 8.6,
  6.3, 4.7,
  3.1, 1.0), NAKAMURA and SATO (1964b) obtained  a great foaming capacity at the neutral and acidic  pHs except at the exceedingly
  acidic pH (pH 1.0).  The foam stability was high at pH 8.6, the pH of
  the natural egg white, and decreased with changing pH.

  With an aqueous
  egg albumen solution, HAMMERSHØJ and LARSEN (1999) established that
  the foam overrun was the highest at pH 4.8 and  the lowest at pH 10.7.
  The foam stability against  drainage was the best at pH 7.0 after 30
  min, but  on a long-term scale the foam at pH 4.8 was the  most
  resistant to drainage. This is the result of the  more rigid behaviour
  of the surface at pH 4.8 and  the formation of small bubbles,
  therefore a slow  drainage of liquid from the foam, lower dynamic
  surface tension causing the high overrun.

The conclusion is that you will get the most volume of foam at moderately acidic pH around 4.8, but the best stability of the foam once created at the alkaline pH of egg whites.

The moral seems to be that for stable egg foam, not to add acid.

Later in the article, they also indicate that volume can be increased without ill effects by adding up to 40% more water to the egg whites.

Also, adding sugar to the egg whites inhibits foaming, requiring more agitation to form the foam.


How to know (without a thermometer) whether an egg is cooked when we put a lid on the top of it?

Watch the area around the yolk for it to become translucent. Jiggle the pan a little to see if it's cooked.


Problem with gummy-bears being too much like jelly

Be careful of substituting agar or any other "firm" gelling agent; you're likely to end up something closer to Turkish Delight and agar in particular has the property of syneresis (meaning that your gummy candies will dry up fast).

I can think of a few things that would alter the consistency of a gelatin candy/dessert:

First, it is very important to let the gelatin bloom.  When it says to "soften" it in cold water, you need to let it sit there for a good 5 minutes or so until it has absorbed plenty of water and you can actually see a gel forming.  Don't stir it at this point!
All gelatins are not created equal; you need to look at the bloom strength.  I think the most common kind in supermarkets is Knox, which has a bloom strength of 225 and is usually what most gelatin recipes calls for.  "Platinum" gelatin (normally sold in sheets) goes up to 260, "Gold" is generally around 200, "Silver" is 160, and "Bronze" can be as low as 125 - practically useless for this.  If you managed to find powdered gelatin with a bloom strength of under 200, you would need to increase the quantity or else end up with jelly.
Although gelatin does not require particularly high temperatures to hydrate, you do need to heat the solution to at least 50° C before you set it.  If you don't do this, it won't dissolve properly.
When using powdered gelatin, you're normally supposed to bloom and dissolve it in the same liquid.  The recipe you have seems to call for chucking the bloomed gelatin directly into your syrup; this may be deliberate in order to produce some effect I'm not familiar with, but it sounds like an oversight to me.  Instead I would heat the gelatin/water solution up to 50° C after blooming (as described above) and then add that to the syrup.
Finally, as Computerish says, make sure you're heating the syrup solution enough to get all the sugar dissolved, and you might even need to reduce it a little (let it simmer).  The more you reduce it, the more viscous the syrup itself will become (at the extreme end turning into pure caramelized sugar, which is rock-hard).  So if you're absolutely sure that you are using the gelatin correctly, this would be the next line to pursue.  If the syrup is actually syrupy at room temperature then it should form great chewy gummies, but if it's watery then you're more likely to end up with Jell-O.


Obligatory mythbusters: Instant Frozen Beer

It's an instance of Supercooling. The liquid is chilled to below its nominal freezing point, but it doesn't transition to solid, largely because there isn't any growth catalyst for ice crystals. But agitate it, or open it, and the disruption jumpstarts crystal formation, and it freezes solid in seconds.


Can I reheat meal in pyrex-like glassware on vitro ceramic stove?

I would absolutely not recommend heating Pyrex with any type of direct heat, ever.

That stuff goes off like a hand-grenade, highly dangerous - not to mention messy.

I've seen it happen too many times for it to be even vaguely worth the risk; even when accidentally placed on recently switched-off hobs.

Pyrex is a low-expansion glass. However, low-expansion does not mean zero-expansion, so if the bottom is being heated whilst the top stays cool, the expansion difference is enough to cause it to simply explode all over the kitchen.

Yes to microwave, but a solid no for a hob.
[& I'm talking UK Pyrex, I didn't know US was even worse until I read the Pyrex wikipedia page ChrisH posted]

If you have no microwave, then either oven or transfer it to a pan.
The extra washing up is safer & far less hassle than trying to clean the hob, then find all the really really sharp glass shards that will find every corner of a 20m square room.


When does the new home oven/stove smell go away?

This apparently is normal for at least some GE ovens, as can be gleaned from Consumer Affairs complaints filed by

Gary of Port Angeles, WA,
Eileen of Henderson, NV, and
Susan of Portland, OR.

In two of the three complaints the smoke became intense enough even to discolor the oven-door glass. (A good deal can be inferred from that, but doesn't need to be gone into here.)

Nonetheless, (as this has been going on for years), with exposure to enough rounds of high heat the adhesive will eventually undergo a phase change (to a solid) and stop creating smoke or even a hint of the former problem. It is a shame that any company would foist such a problem onto the general public, but we're probably right to suppose it will always be a buyer beware marketplace.

Beyond this initial disappointment I hope you get years of pleasure out of your appliance. But in the meanwhile, please do your best to keep yourself or any animals from inhaling these fumes.

[EDIT]

If it is not possible to achieve the required amount of ventilation during the process of burning off the glue, there are a couple of things you can do (short of donning a mask) to make the process bearable and, most importantly, safe.

One is to employ an air purifier proximate to the oven while it's generating fumes. Do a visual check on the smoke to determine whether it's rising (lighter than air) or falling (heavier than air), so that you can be sure to place the purifier as close as possible to the point of aggregation.

The other is to employ an activated carbon felt blanket, perhaps even in conjunction with the air purifier. If used alone, you would cover the stove entirely by tucking it in at the wall, spreading it left and right over the counter tops, draping it to the floor over the front of the oven, and doubling up wherever possible. If used in tandem with an air purifier you would follow largely the same process for the blanket, but would shape it on one of its sides in such a way as to feed the fumes into the purifier.

Air purifiers of course are readily available and come in at a wide range of prices. Activated carbon felt however tends to be a bit pricy and difficult to find. Examples of sellers are here and here. But it may also be possible to locate one through a welding supply store. Just make sure that its carbon is active, not inactive.

The Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) specs for activated carbon felt can be found here, and includes the following description,

  Activated carbon cloth and activated carbon fabric is characterized by its large adsorption volume, fast adsorption speed, heat resistance, and chemical resistance.


Does starch thickened custard get thinner after a few days?

It is not the starch alone, but the combination of starch and egg yolks. Yolks contain an enzyme which digests starch after some time, making the whole custard thinner.
If you absolutely have to use a custard with both starch and yolks, either consume it quickly, or boil it well (at least of minute of visible bubbling) to deactivate the yolk enzymes.


I have some mesquite smoked brisket and would like to minimize the smoke flavor

Smoke flavor is challenging to work with, but I would think an appropriate barbecue sauce would fit the bill.  I wouldn't get anything too salty as I suspect that would worsen the perceived smokiness; but not too sweet because that will just clash with it.

I think a vinegar sauce would be probably best; acidity and bite would help cut through that smokiness.  A mustard sauce also could be a good fit for a similar reason.  (See the Serious Eats guide to barbecue sauces for more details.)


How is the lamb meat made in lamb gyros?

For the times I've done gyros as such, you basically make a 'paste' out of it in the food processor.

Throw ground lamb in and give it a whirl, mix your spices and such in, put it on a spit, fridge to give a bit hard, and then on the spit.  It comes out with a texture like that.  That's how that kind is often done.

For 'proper' tasting meat (more like the one on the left), its alternating layers of razor thin meat and fat.


Can microwave safe glass vessels be used in an electric oven?

Sometimes. Basically, this is the same as asking if glass is oven safe:

Generally, glass is oven-safe if taken from room temperature and put in a moderate-temperature, preheated oven. The key thing is to avoid temperature shocks (which will cause the glass to shatter). Some glass is specifically designed for oven use (either by being tempered or made of borosilicate glass). Often glassware will say if it is safe for oven use or not, and under what conditions—check the packaging or instructions it came with.

You also need to take precautions when removing glass from the oven. Do not set it on something that'll conduct heat away rapidly, such as a wet countertop.

Before heating glassware, inspect it for damage. Scratches, chips, etc. make failure much more likely. This applies to the microwave as well.

Note that non-glass parts of microwave-safe glassware may not be oven safe. For example, if it has a plastic lid, that should generally not be used in the oven (even though its OK in the microwave).

edit:

In response to your update, that oven is what would often be called a toaster or countertop oven. Those change temperature much more rapidly than a larger oven (which can be electric as well). So, generally, you'd avoid glass in them.

But, your glass says it can be used over a flame, from the freezer. So it's clearly one of the very shock-resistant ones, possibly borosilicate. I wouldn't expect it to be a problem. Just make sure to preheat the oven.

Also, since you know who made it, you can of course contact the manufacturer to confirm.


Out of Salt! But I've got a seasoning blend. How do I figure how much to use?

If the label on your product lists the amount of sodium per some amount of your blend, then this answer should be useful to you. In the US that information is required on all manufactured food items sold.

IF YOUR LABEL LISTS SODIUM

There are three things you need to know to calculate substitutions involving salt.

Edible salt is very close to 40% sodium by weight. This one is universal, it has nothing to do with your label or the type of salt. Salt, by its very definition, is sodium chloride, NaCl. It doesn't matter if it's kosher salt, sea salt, iodized or non-iodized. It is 40% sodium, 60% chlorine. (Fancy finishing salts like Fleur de Sel or Hawaiian Black Salt are barely exceptions, with mineral content other than NaCl as high as 15%)
1 tsp salt contains 2300 mg sodium (that’s the USDA figure which is also the figure used to calculate values on the “Nutrition Facts” label on products in the US.) Using the 40/60 ratio listed in point #1, that would say a tsp of salt weighs 5.75 grams. (close enough assuming table salt)
Your label will tell you how much sodium is in a specific amount (serving size) of the seasoning blend or other ingredient. In the US, that listing will be in milligrams, 1000 milligrams = 1 gram.

Armed with that information, you can calculate any salt substitution. Let's take your example:

You need two portions of salt, 1 TBS and 1 tsp. Since a tablespoon equals 3 teaspoons, we only have to do this once. We'll figure out how much of your seasoning you will need to have 1 tsp of salt.

By some odd coincidence, I happen to have exactly the product you're using. Let's look at the label:

You need 2300mg sodium (1 tsp salt) for your dredge. Your product contains 1400mg sodium per tsp. Remember cross multiplication? You're solving for X:

So, 2300 / 1400 = 1.6 (1.643)

You need just over 1 1/2 tsp of seasoning to have 1 tsp of salt for your dredge.

3 * 1.643 = 4.9 (4.929)

You need just shy of 5 tsp of seasoning to have 1 TBS of salt for your brine.

Knowing all that, it's sounds like you might want to dig up some chili powder or something. Your "Creole Seasoning" is almost all salt.


Why can't I get a seasoning layer on my carbon steel pan using an induction hob?

Induction hobs (cooktops/ranges) use magnetic fields to heat the pan directly, only metal that is directly in contact with the hob gets heated by the hob, the rest gets heated through conduction. On a large gas hob burner the flame goes up the sides, heating them. On my induction hob (not my choice, there when I moved in) I find that the heating area does not range as far as the lines on the hob indicate that they should, so you may not be getting direct heating on the entire bottom of the pan.

My recommendation would be to season it in the oven rather than the cooktop presuming the handle and other parts are oven safe. That way the whole pan gets heat evenly. The answer to this question will be of interest to you as it's about induction and metals.


None of the standard pan conversion charts that I could find had that size, but it looks like your recipe will work with an 11 cup volume pan.  If this means your brownies are thicker or thinner than the original recipe, then adjust the cooking time accordingly.  For thicker brownies you may also want to lower the temperature to keep the top from burning while you do the extra cooking.


Your best bet is probably mortar and pestle:

I've never used one for coffee until just now and it didn't take long to grind up a scoop of beens into a very fine powder.  When searching for a picture, I found lots of references to mortar and pestle being used for Turkish coffee, so super-fine seems to be no problem.


Save in a bag in your freezer along with all chicken bones you come across.  Cleave through the bones to expose some collagen before freezing (consider roasting all ingredients before hand).  Add whatever vegetable bits you don't use in your cooking - including things you wouldn't eat (but nothing poisonous) to your bag, especially onions (including skin and root), celery, and carrots.

When you have a good amount, put in a pot and just cover with cold water.  A bit of vinegar helps promote a nice gelling of your broth.  Tomato paste, peppercorns, and a bay leaf will add to the flavor.  Simmer gently for around five hours.  Remove.  If you had fat still on your meat you may want to chill until the fat rises to the surface to remove the fat.

Your broth will keep 3 to 4 days in the fridge or it can be frozen until you have a recipe which calls for chicken stock or broth.  Your homemade broth will be an excellent addition to sauces, a great base for soups, or an excellent liquid for cooking rice, couscous, or quinoa.


Onion has yellow center. Is it safe to eat?

Sprouted onions are perfectly safe to eat. If far advanced the texture may not be ideal; yours does not sound very far advanced at all (not even green.) Considering you can eat green onions, there's nothing to fear from onion sprouts.


How to get spongy slightly chewy pancakes?

In my reading, injera is a sourdough-leavened flatbread, and it does indeed have the consistency you describe. I've made it with wheat and (the more traditional) teff flour. It's not sweet or quick-bread (in any sense!) but is fun, tasty, and worth a try to eat or make.

If I'm understanding correctly, what you're looking for is a pancake with qualities I'm often trying to avoid. :) Guesses on how to get where you want, based on what you've got so far, based on what I've done accidentally in the past. Apologies that this is all over the map.

Over-mix your batter. With quick-breads you often want delicate crumb; over-mixing will give you more gluten development (assuming wheat or other gluten-containing flour). This will have a more rubbery mouthfeel.
Let your batter rest longer. This will also allow gluten to develop (and/or relax), which might have a similar effect.
Use a harder (higher-percentage gluten) wheat flour. Flours will vary greatly in protein; try a high protein "bread flour" made with hard wheat.

These might help with the sponginess factor also.

Might also want to experiment with type and amount of leavening.

more or less quantity of baking powder, or perhaps baking soda optionally with some kind of acid (e.g., buttermilk).
yeasted pancakes! I can't immediately find a passable recipe link, but James Beard had a lovely (albeit a bit finicky) overnight yeast pancake recipe. Give it about 4 attempts before you abandon it. :)

Wackier suggestions:

Try soy milk. Unlikely to be how your favorite restaurant is accomplishing it's feat, but this might do something different because of protein or perhaps if there's other adulterants or thickeners like gums or so.
Go off the deep end: try a thickener like corn starch, arrowroot, carrageenan, xanthan gum, ...
Try a gluten-free pancake recipe or mix. Who knows!

Good luck! Have fun! And let me know if I've missed your goal.


How to cream when there is more sugar than butter in the recipe?

For the purpose of mixing butter and sugar (oddly enough) are considered "wet" ingredients. What other wet ingredients are in your recipe? Eggs, Milk, Extract... these may be added in the creaming process to get a more smooth "paste" rather than a crumble.

You may also wish to try starting with 50g (or even less) of sugar to get the "smooth mass" (paste) that you are accustomed to and then slowly add the remaining sugar.


You're probably overmixing the batter, which is making the gluten form a "network" and rendering the product chewy. Mix just until there are no streaks of flour remaining.

Try not to roll the dough too much in your hand when forming balls. Instead scoop with a spoon and then lightly form in to a rough sphere.


Jaggery doesn't require any kind of soaking.

It's usually added either while sautéing or if the dish is gravy based, while its boiling.

Jaggery usually softens up when heated and gradually dissolves with other ingredients just as salt or sugar would.

The hard blocks of jaggery are difficult to break into pieces and its easier to grate it.


Does it take a special type of blender to make smoothies?

Ahh, the complexities of blending. Have you tried pulsing the smoothie? Short bursts tend to stir up some of the stuff that sneaks below the blades.


Farro is a grain, a bit nutty, usually cooked to soft, but with toothsome body.

Here's a good article about it from NPR

Pearled barley would be a good substitute, but if your recipe includes cooking times and instructions, those will vary if you substitute out the grain. Follow the package instructions for whatever grain you do use.

I do prefer barley "pearled", but that means that most of the bran is polished away along with the inedible hull, so it's no longer a whole grain. You can also get it with just the outer hull removed, so that it is still a whole grain. I prefer the texture of the pearled, but either choice would be a perfectly acceptable substitution for farro.

EDIT: I concur with Matt Ball's comment though. If you're in a part of the world where it's easy to get (that includes all of the US), you should try it!


Fully submerged water bath for stove top baking?

Unlikely. Without even getting into the mechanics of how it would work, simple physics dictates that you can't get the temperature of this "immersion oven" above 100 degrees Celsius. Most cakes and breads are cooked at temperatures above 170 degrees Celsius. A second issue is that moisture can escape when baking in a normal oven. Your "immersion oven" would not allow steam to escape whatever you're cooking, which would lead to the contents being a bit steamed as well as baked. Sometimes this is desirable (see eg making bread in dutch ovens), but not for the majority of breads and cakes.


What is the purpose of baking powder in batter?

The baking powder undergoes a chemical reaction which produces small gas bubbles in the batter.  The bubbles break up the batter coating (sort of like the geometry inside a sponge) so you wind up with a mass of little holes each surrounded by a thin layer of bready material, and it all fries up airy, light and crispy; instead of one thick, dense, hard shell of cooked paste around your cauliflower bits.


Sourcing El Rey chocolate (or substitute) in the UK

I eventually found Michel Cluizel's Los Ancones, a 67% cocoa couverture sourced from the Caribbean and easily available in the UK in 1kg bags. I remember having tried this before in its retail form and it has a very fruity flavour profile, which is exactly what I'm looking for.


Can I assume chicken internal temp rises 5 degrees while resting?

Yes 3C/5F is about right. Chicken is always tricky because you're try to get legs at 72C but breast only at 65C (or even a bit less). Several cooking techniques to achieve that but it's for another post... The thermal mass argument seems to make sense although there is also 'more to do' so I would stick to the general rule of thumb and experiment. Resting is essential (but you already know this) either under foil or in a warm area. If your bird gets a bit too cold, you can flash the cut portions for 2-3 minutes in a hot oven; no need to rest again.


My preference for sugar work is to either use a pair of rubber-coated cotton gloves like this:

or to use basic cotton gloves and put latex or nitrile disposable gloves over them.


What's happening to the coating on the OUTSIDE of my roommate's non-stick cookware as we wash it?

Are you SURE they were advertised as dishwasher safe? If so, contact the manufacturer because they were lying. It is, in fact, the bare metal you're looking at— those pans are made from aluminum which was anodized: an electrochemical process which changes the appearance of the metal. All aluminum pans including anodized ones that are not painted or otherwise coated will be damaged in the dishwasher because aluminum is sensitive to strongly alkaline chemicals, and dishwashing detergents are strongly alkaline. As long as the interiors have some sort of coating, such as Teflon or ceramic, the exteriors of the pans should work fine, but they'll never look quite as nice as they did. If the interiors of the pans aren't coated, you might want to consider seasoning them like you would a cast iron pan to avoid eating a bunch of aluminum that was softened in the dishwasher.


What are the ingredients (spices) of Sri Lankan curry powder?

There are two main types of Sri Lankan curry powders, yellow and black. Yellow curry is much like stereotypical Indian curry powder, whereas black curry powder is roasted.

Also, in my experience, Sri Lankan curries tend to be hotter than Indian (and more than one friend of Indian heritage has expressed surprise that I enjoy Sri Lankan food, since they find it too hot.)


How to clean pulp collector of a fruit juice extractor

Before migrating the question to cooking.SE, someone commented on the home-improvement.SE like this:

That comment was true. I pull off the rotating center part a bit and it just came out of its plastic lock system. Locking system looks like this:


See this 1972 NYT article from back when these bags were a recent invention and the explosion problem was still current news. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/08/archives/why-cooking-bags-explode.html
In recent years, news was made of the dangers of boiling water in the microwave in something like a Pyrex measuring cup, because water heated in that manner could potentially become superheated (hotter than the normal boiling point, but not bubbling, steaming, or visibly boiling) if the surface of the container is so smooth that "nucleation sites" don't form. It then sits there, hotter than boiling but looking still (as if it weren't boiling yet) -- until something disturbs the surface (like the next ingredient, or your hand jostling the cup), at which point it can violently and simultaneously boil, seeming to explode.
Apparently the same thing was thought to be happening in these cooking bags due to water getting trapped under a layer of grease from the meat, and the flour would help those nucleation sites to form (called "boiling chips" in the NYT article) and also bind with some of the fat and water to form a gravy instead of letting the water remain separated. I am not a scientist but I don't think I've said anything egregiously wrong.
Justin Wilson mentioned the explosion risk and the need to use flour in one of his cooking shows back in the day while demonstrating the bag, but didn't go into the science of it, just mentioned that the flour was needed and went on with the show. It's in an episode called "Cajun Meat and Potatoes".


Troubleshooting: Kitchen Sink Vegetable Soup

To address your points in order:

If you only cooked your soup for ten minutes, you didn't give it enough time for the flavours to 'marry'. A gentle simmer for half an hour would give you better results. A night in the fridge to really let everything blend would be even better.
You will not get crispy potatoes in a soup - the liquid will see to that. The only way you will achieve a crispy potato is by cooking and sauteeing them entirely separately and adding them at the end as a kind of crouton
Green beans don't need much cooking at all - they should still have some bite. If you really want to keep the colour specifically, blanch them separately, plunge them into ice water, then drain and add to the soup for the final 5 minutes of cooking or heating.
Tomatoes help counteract this by lending some acidity and fruitiness. If you don't want to use tomatoes, try a little white wine or cider vinegar to give a bit of zing.


Yes, but make sure it's actually ceramic if you intend to roast for a long time. Some plates are a slightly cheaper (but still kiln-fired) clay dipped in glaze, and could be prone to cracking from thermal expansion and contraction.

But at just 300 degrees for an hour or less, I don't think it would be a problem either way.


What are these little balls in my sardines?

Yes, that is sardine roe. In Portugal it is considered a delicacy on a par with caviar.


I get black flecks on my butter when I grease my pan

Never use steel wool on teflon-coated pans!!!

You surely have scratched and damaged the teflon and some of it came off the pan.

I'd throw it away.


Melted pot residue on solid plate cooker

This might not have a happy ending I am afraid. You might need to get a replacement part for the plate.

If it was a true enamel pot (and it sounded like one) rather than an aluminium pot with an anodized surface, that is a metal pot with an enamel coating, once it is heated to above the fusing temperature of the enamel (500C at least, likely much higher), the coating will melt. What you went through is the reverse of the process to apply the enamel.

Enamels are metal based compounds, ceramic or glass like once re-solidified. It tends to fuse with metal and glass with no defined boundary. Despite that it is typically brittle, it is going to be very difficult to get it off the stove, especially if it is a metal hot plate or a ceramic hob. Enamel is pretty unreactive. Anything that would dissolve it would likely first dissolve your cooker surface. It is also much harder than the cooker materials. Heating it back up to fusing temperature would only help enhance bonding of the enamel to the cooker.

Not a terribly helpful answer I am sorry to say. Hopefully, I am wrong and there is a more helpful suggestion from others.


Is 440° F too hot for an oven temperature?

Assuming the packaging means 440°F, no, that's not that insane. Casseroles are heavy, with a lot of liquid, so it takes a lot of heat to heat them up, especially if this is a frozen premade casserole. It is on the high side, so you might want to make sure it's not browning too much on the top (cover with foil to shield if necessary) or burning on the bottom. You can always reduce the heat partway through if you have to; it'll just take longer.


Is my bacon still safe after being left at room temp. for 32 hours?

Does the package say it needs to be kept refrigerated?  Did it come from refrigerated storage at the store?  If either of these is true, then you should toss it.

Bacon CAN be heavily smoked and cured for room-temperature storage, but most grocery-store bacon is not this kind.  Due to the nitrates/nitrates and smoking process, normal bacon should be safe at room temperature for longer than the 2 hours we give uncured meats, but 32 hours is simply WAY TOO LONG.


Is it really necessary to properly heat oil in a pan before frying veggies?

If you are looking to fry veggies then yes, it is necessary to pre-heat.  If you put them in a cold pan with oil, you start 'sweating' the veggies instead of frying them.

For example: if you put a sliced onion into a pan with hot oil, it will cook and have a nice golden brown color as it caramelizes.  Put that same sliced onion in a cold pan with cold oil and then add heat, and the onion will first turn translucent and lose moisture.

Both of these cooking methods have their uses, but they are different.
How do you know when the oil is ready to cook? It will start to shimmer a little before it reaches the smoking point. Put the veggies in when you see this shimmer, or at the very first wisp of smoke.


Definition for light, medium and heavy flour?

The blog sourd'oh referenced is the best I've seen up to this point:
http://www.myrealfoodlife.com/understanding-gluten-free-flours/

Basically, My Real Food Life breaks it down into the following categories:

Heavy: Give structure and binding, have lower rising capacity.
Medium: Lighten heavy flours, even out stronger tastes, soften the
crumb and texture.
Light: Needed for binding, adding lightness, and sometimes
crispiness.  Neutralize the taste of stronger flours.

If you're looking to use a wheat-based flour, this seems to correlate to the flour's milling and the type of wheat used (hard seems to correlate with heavy and soft seems to correlate with light).

Heavy:  Whole wheat flour, bread flour
Medium: All purpose flour
Light: Cake flour

For additional information on the composition of wheat-based flours, see the following Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_flour


Do metal skewers make a considerable different cooking time than wooden?

Absolutely!  Metal skewers contribute to cooking the meat from the center as they pick up heat from the exposed parts and conduct it throughout.

It is a good idea not to crowd your metal skewers with pieces of food to promote this.  Not crowding the skewers also exposes more surface area for the food to caramelize.  Doing this on a wooden skewer runs the risk of burning the skewers and losing food into the grill.


How to keep cooked French fries (for French fry dogs) warm and crispy?

Depends on what kind of fries you are using. If they're frozen fries— who knows. They're not all processed the same way— some have flour or batter coatings— aren't all made from the same material— some are made from formed, pureed potato and/or reconstituted potato flour— or cooked to the same level of doneness. If they're fresh potatoes which have been par cooked, they'll last in the refrigerator at least overnight before they dry out.

The other problem is your batter. If you're using a batter with baking powder, carbonation, or anything else like that to give it a little puff, it will flatten out if you hold it for more than a few minutes.

Generally, foods with batters are much better when you cook them immediately. If you only need to store it for a short amount of time, maybe less than half an hour, cook it then put it in an oven preheated to the lowest possible temperature (ideally there's a warming setting) on a sheet pan with a wire rack on it. It should keep the fries crispy, but the longer you keep it in there, the drier it will get.

Good luck!


Has anyone had success at large scale sous-vide at home?

My scale was not quite as big as yours, but I cooked my Thanksgiving turkey for the extended family this year sous vide. Not only was the outcome a huge hit among the guests, but it was a huge relief for (your truly) the chef.

  I want to go to party scale, say 30 to 40 servings, what are my chances of success?

In my experience, scaling up is one of the biggest advantages of cooking sous vide. Cooking 30-40 servings on a home stove would be a daunting prospect, to say the least. With sous vide, 15–20 servings is only marginally more work than 4–6. Again, I've not done 30–40, but it should scale accordingly.

  Should I just get three or four chilly bins or just one large bin?

If your food will fit in one cooler, it will work, but I think you'll find it much easier to use more. The more water you have, the slower it will lose heat, and thus, the less you will have to pay attention to it. I also typically cook chicken and beef at separate temperatures, so I would probably have two coolers for chicken and two for beef.


Egg substitution in Indian meatball recipe

If you add salt to your meat and leave for a few hours this will break down some proteins in the muscle (myosin), which cross-link / bind with each other. Hopefully you wouldn't need the egg to bind. I have done this with burgers and meatballs before, so no reason this wouldn't work OK for kofte


I recommend watching Egg Files VII - Good Eats. It is an entire episode on meringue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmIuFX3x_ik

Important factors affecting the result:

temperature
amount of sugar
how the sugar is incorporated

Alton Brown explains how to make three types of meringue: french, italian, and, swiss.

Here are a tidbits of info from that episode:

French Merigue

add pinch of salt to egg whites
whip egg whites,
add sugar slowly until dissolved
add vanilla extract
add cornstarch and vinegar
bake, then turn off oven and wait 3 hours with oven door ajar
low temperature 250 degrees fahrenheit

The low temperature means the meringue dries out slowly.
The outside becomes dry (crisp) first, and since the
temperature is dropped before water inside can escape
the inside becomes soft and moist.

The acid from the vinegar helps the structure of the foam (note: new eggs
are slightly acidic, so use new eggs for meringue).

The corn starch prevents any liquids from seeping out.

Swiss

add pinch of salt to egg whites
dissolve sugar in egg whites
whip on medium while heating (Alton uses a hair dryer!)
wait until the temperature hits 140 degrees fahrenheit
kill heat
whip on high
These meringues were poached

These meringues becomes very gooey inside.
Note: Hot water can dissolve more sugar than cold water.
      Sugar keeps water in the final product.

Italian

whip egg whites with a litle salt and vanilla extract
make hot sugar syrup with sugar and corn syrup
slowly drizzle syrup into foam while mixing


Should I let stock cool with the bones/veg still in it?

You need to strain the stock and cool it until it's 40 degrees F. or below before you refrigerate it.

Leaving it to cool overnight on the stove is going to create a bacteria cesspool.  The temperature danger zone is between 40 and 140 degrees.  This is the range that is prime for the growth of bacteria.  Food safety guidelines require that it cool to 70 degrees or below within 2 hours and then below 40 degrees within another 4 hours time.  Total maximimum time that it should take to get to 40 degrees is 6 hours.

Even if you get it cooled down now with all of the vegetbles and bones in it, the problem will be that you have to heat it back up in the morning to strain it as it's going to gelatinze overnight (provided it's been cooked long enough to extract a good amount of gelatin - usually about 4-6 hours for a good chicken stock and 12-16 hours for veal/beef stock).  When it's reheated you're running the risk that the carrots and other vegetables will break up into smaller bits and end up clouding the stock.

Strain it and cool it down tonight before putting in the refrigerator.  To cool quickly, either divide amongst several pans (greater surface area is better than depth as it will dispel heat quicker) or if you don't have a BIG pot of stock, strain it and put it in an ice bath (water and ice cubes) in your plugged kitchen sink.

If you make stock a lot, you can save plastic milk jugs and fill them 3/4 with water and keep in the freezer.  After straining the stock you can place one of those inside the pot of stock to also help cool it from the inside out.

In the morning you can then skim the layer of congealed fat from the top.  If it's chicken stock, save the fat for frying potatoes with extra flavor!


A billion Asian households use a thin carbon steel "wok like" device to cook on quickly and efficiently. I have never seen anything work as well, or last as long. Daily use for 20+ years is normal

After the first 10 or 20 uses, the patina is well developed, and they work as intended

Buy one from a Asian food supplier for a few tens of dollars, there is no point in getting a fancy brand name one, it will not be as good

The heat transfer issue, is a factor of your burner. The heat output rating of your burner will dictate how much food you can stir fry at once. If you want to do more at once, you need a bigger burner, not a fancy pan


I usually scale spices evenly with the rest of the recipe.

One caveat - if there is water involved in the recipe (say a liquid sauce made with the spice mixture) and salt in the spice mixture, then you may end up boiling off a bigger percentage of water and concentrating the salt too much. Taste it and thin it out a little if it's too salty.


Can I refreeze sauce made from frozen tomatoes

Probably. Depends on your sauce; some sauces do not tolerate freezing (e.g., they "break"). The fact that your tomatoes were frozen at one point doesn't matter.

Mostly warnings about not re-freezing foods are due to quality loss. For example, each time you freeze a vegetable, it will turn closer to mush.

Safety warnings are primarily about quick thawing (e.g., in the microwave) where the food may get into the danger zone (between 4°C–60°C/40°F–140°F); the recommendation is to cook it before freezing (if you thaw in the fridge, this is avoided). You've already got a cook step between the thaw/freeze, so even with a quick thaw method, there aren't any extra safety concerns.


Well, it makes the eggs go further for one...

But it also produces softer, creamier results. You're moving toward something like a custard or quiche. If you like your eggs very stiff, this is probably a bad idea.


prepared meals and storage time in fridge before delivering them to clients

In catering, you do not use your home fridge because your family opens and closes it so many times that the temperature drops and the food in it that is cooked does not stay at a steady temperature.

For example, you said she may prepare seafood. That is a Big NO NO.  The seafood should be prepared and served within hours.

Think about it like this:

You prepare it.
You store it 2-3 days.
You deliver it or it gets picked up.
Then does it get put in the fridge again or put out?
Then, either way, it is served.

How many times is it in the fridge, opened with the air from the family, transported getting back to a lower temp, put back into storage or set out?

Sounds like someone might get sick to me.

When I did catering, our clients expected fresh food, not leftovers.  Some caterers freeze some of their products but anyone I have talked to does not store things unless it is being marinated, pickled, a desert made a day in advance, or sauces frozen and reheated.

Another thought, if you go to a restaurant, are you willing to pay money for food sitting in the fridge for 2 or 3 days?  My family and friends would not.

Regardless, getting sick is the biggest problem you have. Do you have a license from the Health Department to do this?  There are  cleanliness issues here also.


Does method of coagulation matter when extracting ricotta from whey?

Ricotta cheese is made from whey left over from making cheeses using rennet, such as mozzarella. The whey is heated and an acidic element (such as vinegar, lime juice) is added to it to incite coagulation.

Paneer is made by adding an acid to hot milk.

To answer your question, you can make ricotta using whey left over after making mozzarella, but you cannot make it from whey left over from paneer as acids are used in it's production.

Note: if ricotta is made from whole milk it will be practically identical to paneer.


Paprika brings out the best in savory flavors. I'd go with something a little hotter to compliment the sweetness of the sweet potato - but not too hot, or you'll loose the regular spuds.


I ate undercooked steak, what can happen to me?

The risks of eating undercooked steak vary based on the the region, the risk status of the person involved (are they a child, elderly, or immunocompromised in any way).

For normal healthy adults, the risks of eating a single bit of under cooked steak in any of the industrialized nations are fairly small.

Nothing might happen
You might suffer from food-borne illness, most likely e coli. from steak, with consequences ranging from:

You might get a "tummy ache"
You might suffer flu-like symptoms or vomiting for a few days
You might die, but it is quite unlikely

Note that food borne illness normally takes at least 24-48 hours to develop, and is related to the quantity of contaminated food consumed.  One bite is lower risk than a whole meal (lower, not none).

If you are seriously concerned, you should consult your physician.

See also:  Foodborne Diseases Factsheet from Texas state government


Once you get the hang of it, rice is as easy as pasta. One thing you say in the question that may be central to the difficulty you are having is that your lid is "half-closed". For the majority of rice cooking methods, not only should you keep the lid tightly closed, but you shouldn't even open it to check the rice until it has cooked close to long enough that it might be done. Look at the accepted answer here: Rice gets burnt and watery. That answer explains it more thoroughly.


It's worth a try letting your bread rise again as you've come this far, however the chances of it coming out well aren't great. Your bread will rise as long as there is enough sugar for the yeast to consume in the dough, if the food supply is exhausted the yeast will die and your bread will collapse, and it's a strong possibility that's happened to you.

However, it could be that you knocked the air out and the yeast is still going, so let it warm up to room temperature and see. If it rises then bake it, if it doesn't get rid of it as it'll come out dense and gummy.


The primary flavors of Greek meats are lemon, oregano, and olive oil. Typically either (or both) thyme and mint are present as well. I'd start with the following base for a marinade:

1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice (2-ish lemons)
2 Tbsp oregano
1.5 tsp thyme
1.5 tsp mint

I'd also suggest adding some garlic and onion to this. Maybe 1/2 an onion and 4 cloves of garlic. Adding a 1/4 to 1/2 cup of red wine could add some depth as well (I'm assuming lamb or steak, use white for pork or chicken).

A good soak in this overnight, perhaps with some tweaks, should equate to Greek kebabs.

Other herbs & spices common in Greek cuisine include: marjoram, paprika (sweet & hot), and pepper. You can also find, in small quantities:  cinnamon, nutmeg, cumin, anise, coriander, fennel, and allspice.


Each "wedge" is a clove.  The entire garlic is called a "head".


I need a substitute for crushed tomatoes!

Cut a small cross in the ends of your whole tomatoes, dunk them in boiling water for 30 to 40 seconds and remove them. With a paring knife, grasp the edge of the skin where you cut a cross and peel the skin off.

In a large bowl, grasp the tomatoes and crush them with your hands until the size you require is achieved. You now have crushed tomatoes.


Water solubility isn't enough - that gets the flavour into the water but says nothing about whether the flavour gets to the food. Consider salt as an extreme example.

You may get somewhere by putting the source of flavour on top of the food being cooked. There are recipes that do this with mint for example, though they normally add more mint at the end.

The ginger you mentioned may work in a similar way, but testing is difficult as this approach tends to scent the kitchen or even the whole house, so you perceive the flavour even before the food is served.


standard way to make crispy sweet potato fries?

Freezing fries opens up their texture and makes them more fluffy. This is helpful for regular fries or sweet potato fries.

Sweet potatoes have too much sugar and not enough starch to crisp up on their own. The only crispy sweet potato fries I have ever made- or eaten- were coated in starch to provide the crispiness.

While I haven't tried this exact recipe- I haven't used club soda for example- it has all the right steps and looks like it would work.


How can I avoid chocolate truffle mix curdling?

I have made a lot of truffles, and even more ganache for other purposes, and I have never had this happen. My guess is that you are boiling the cream too hard and that is causing the curdling.

How to make ganache:
You will need by weight one part 35% cream to 2 parts chocolate of your choice.

Chop your chocolate (if it's in blocks or chunks), put into a heatproof bowl (stainless steel is best) away fro your heat.

In a saucepan or pot (depending on how much you're making), bring the cream up to a high simmer.

Pour the cream immediately over the chocolate and stir with a silicone spatula if you have one, a wooden spoon otherwise. The chocolate should completely melt within about two minutes; longer for very high percentage dark chocolates. At this point if you are making flavoured truffles, add your flavourings (unless your flavour compounds have been infused into the cream).

Chill until set, make into truffles.

Edited to add:

If you are using alcohol as a flavouring in your truffles, you will need to use either more chocolate or less cream. I have found that approximately for every fluid ounce of alcohol added, remove 3/4-1 fluid ounce of cream from the recipe. I prefer to infuse flavourings in the cream, and have had great success with beets, bacon (with a Guinness reduction added to the chocolate later), black truffle and pureed walnut, and honey. Be sure to strain, of course, before adding the hot cream to the chocolate.

I have also found that white chocolate will often need slightly less cream than a milk or dark.


I'm not quite sure what you mean by having the filling 'stick' to the crust, but if you mean that the filling slides out, then you probably haven't added enough thickener (usually flour or cornstarch) to your apples, so the juices that leak out during cooking are too thin.

Different brands and batches of flour/cornstarch, and different apples, will have different levels of liquidity - a bit of practice and experience is necessary to get consistent results.