What meats are appropriate for dry-aging

Dry aging creates a certain amount of inherent waste:

The weight of the cut being aged goes down significantly
The outer portions become dry, tough, leathery, may have mold, and are otherwise essentially spoiled and must be cut off

For this reason, it is only really practical to dry age fairly large cuts.  So this would exclude chicken and most fish, and so on even if their meat would benefit.
Tender meats like chicken and fish don't really require dry aging, however, whose main affect is enzymatic tenderization of the meat.   It applies more to red meats, more particularly, beef.
This article at Gizmodo says:

When we create [cool and humid] conditions, we allow enzymes to do their work. And we end up with a complexity of flavor—savoriness, sweetness, some bitterness-that just wasn't there before. There's no cooking method that can generate the depth of flavor of a dry-aged piece of meat.
What happens is that enzymes in the meat's muscle cells begin to break down the meat's proteins, fats, and glycogen—a carbohydrate—into amino acids, fatty acids, and sugars. One amino acid generated by dry-aging—the most important and flavorful one, in fact—is glutamate, which is part of MSG. other amino acids have flavors somewhat similar to MSG; others still are sweet.

So you want a meat whose flavor is strong enough to stand up to, and benefit from, these types of changes.
While not mainstream, one can actually locate dry aged pork, although I am not sure it needs the treatment.  One can even find dry aged lamb!


Salmon is a much stronger flavor, to stand up to peppers.   So your dish will be different with cod; the only test is making it and seeing if you enjoy it.


Which of these spices do not lose their tang when heated/boiled?

Paprika and ancho chillies are both from the same family as the hotter peppers and often contain capsaicin, though this depends exactly on which paprika you have.

Cumin and oregano (and black pepper) are all from other families. I would not rate cumin or oregano as spicy in terms of heat, although cumin can enhance heat when consumed with it. Oregano is the main herb flavour you will find in pasta sauces like bolognese. Cumin is the predominant flavor in many dishes from Mexican/central American and Indian cuisines - if you are making "chili con carne" this is likely a spice you use already. Both of these retain flavour when cooked.

For some non-capsaicin containing alternatives see answers in this thread


I had a quick look around pubmed, an aggregator of biological and medical literature, and found very little in the way of actual scientific evidence for teflon toxicity under 500C. In fact, teflon is still widely in use in surgery and can be left inside the body for tens of years.

This does not mean that improper operation (such as overheating to the point of thermolysis) cannot result in compounds you would rather not have in your food. It will also ruin the pan. Don't do it.


No soy and no ginger is a challenge, it can be done though if you pick the right recipes. Galangal has a similar flavor as ginger and may work, it's in the same family as ginger but is a different sub-family, so it may be different enough not to cause a reaction. Cardamom and turmeric are in the same family as well, if you don't have a reaction to them galangal's a decent bet. Other than that there's no other substitutes for ginger in asian cooking. In baking you can use a mix of allspice, mace, and cloves but in cooked dishes they won't give the same result.

Instead of finding a substitute for ginger if galangal doesn't work for you I would suggest choosing recipes without it, or where it's one of many flavorings. Just leave it out, it will still taste good. Fill in the gap with other bold flavors like onions, lemongrass and chili.


How to boil away water from a sauce without it splashing?

If, when reducing a sauce, you are getting splashing outside the pot, your pot may be too small for the application.  Use a larger pot:  a wider base will allow more surface area for evaporation, and higher sides will make it harder for the content to get out.

You can also purchase a splatter guard, which is like a flat sieve or mesh that you can place over the top of the pot to reduce splatter without blocking air flow

although these are more typically used to reduce the splatter from frying.


I can see flaws in the method. Adding water by 'depth' is pretty inaccurate unless you use the exact same rice quantity in the exact same pan as the recipe author. Also, bringing it slowly to the boil like porridge is very inaccurate for your timings.
Let's try it a slightly different way. Use ratios & a flash-boil.
There's no absolutely ideal 'works for everybody' ratio as it depends on pan thickness, tightness of lid & stove heat. You'll end up between 1:1.5 and 1:1.75
Though this takes a lot of text to explain, it's actually really, really simple to do & once you have your ratios right for your kitchen, it will 'just work' every time.

Put the kettle on.
(This works best if you live in a 240v country, otherwise you might have to wait a few more minutes before you start 2;)

Using a small-ish saucepan with a tight-fitting lid & the heaviest base you have, pre-heat at full power as the kettle's coming to the boil. The idea of this is that the pan is hotter than the water as it goes in… but not on for so long it's glowing, or you can smell burning teflon;)

Add 1 cup  of rice to the pan as it's heating (cup, mug, measuring jug, doesn't matter so long as you use the same measure for the water. That way we're working percentages/ratios not inches). Don't bother to pre-rinse unless your rice is particularly dusty. Supermarket rice really doesn't need it these days, & pre-rinsing will change the flash-boil reaction.
Add salt now if you want salt.

Add a cup and two-thirds (middle of your ratio spectrum) boiling water. The water & rice combo will immediately flash-boil almost out of the pan. Immediately drop the heat to minimum (assuming gas, or take the pan off the ring for a few seconds if electric or anything not instant)
Stir once with a spatula, just enough to know the rice didn't clump, which it shouldn't if the water flash-boils on contact.
Put the lid on. (First time, until you get used to this, keep an eye on it to make sure it's not going to boil over as the initial heat drops away)

Simmer for 15 mins, without lifting the lid to check.
Don't be tempted to lift the lid to see if it's done…
This is a Schrödinger/Heisenberg* method - see below;)
This depends on your pan thickness & how low your ring goes. You learn this through repetition; after that, time it.
While you're learning the timing, then you'll have to just lift it slightly & briefly every minute from 12 or so. Once you've got the ratios for your pan/stove combo you don't do this.
Whilst you're learning at the lid lift stage, you're listening for a 'crackling' sound. That's the indicator your very last bit of water is evaporating off the pan base.

Switch off the gas (or for electric switch off & move the pan to a cold ring)

Leave 15 mins more. Don't lift the lid at all.
We don't need Schrödinger for this bit - the cat is alive;)

'Fluff with a fork' as they always say - or if you got it just right, a quick once-round with a spatula will do it. it won't have stuck.

Profit… or adjust your water ratio/timing/heat for next time.

A lot of this is learning your specific pan/stove. If your ring is hot or your pan is thin, you have to adjust your water ratio up slightly, so you arrive at the 15 minute mark as it crackles. This can mean you end up with a ratio somewhere between 1:1.5 & 1:1.75 If you err, err on the side of dryer.
Glass-lidded pans can take a lot of your early guesswork out of it, as you can see what's going on.
*Schrödinger's cat is a famous thought experiment. You don't know if the cat is alive or dead until you open the box.
We're additionally hampered in this by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - that by the mere act of observing an experiment, you change the result.
Hence, you cannot know if it is done until you lift the lid… but by lifting the lid to see if it's done, you change the time it will take  & the amount of water required for it to be done.


What should one look for in the license terms of a crowdsourced recipe website?

Quick Version

Good question
Read a few EULA, privacy policies and terms of service to get a full answer, but generally:

You are expected to have your own back up of anything you upload
Whether or not the site says you have the rights to the data, they cannot track whether or not users give you credit for what you have shared

Answer for yourself:

What kind of credit are you looking for?
What website features must be minimally available before you'll even bother checking whether or not their terms of service live up to your requirements?

Full Version

I think this is a great question and needs to be addressed in areas far more broad than just cooking and recipes.  "The cloud" is a unique and interesting place to store and share data, but brings up a whole host of issues like:

Who technically owns the rights to the uploaded data?
Who should be responsible for backing up that data?
How is the data accessed?
Who can access it?

And then there's the additional question of, do you want to crowd source feedback on your recipes, or just have them available for people to look at?  And probably a whole bunch more questions.

General Advice

A good rule of thumb when using any cloud service, is that you and you alone are responsible for backing up your data.  Even if a company has the financial resources to back up everything (and most of them do back it up), they're not going to guarantee something like that because all technology is fallible and there is usually someone with a fantastic lawyer around every corner, just waiting for a guarantee to fail.  Read a couple EULA (end-user license agreements) and/or privacy policies/terms of service and you'll get a clear picture of just how often they guarantee your access to your data.  Usually accessing your data isn't a problem (if it was, why would people use the cloud?) and as such, it's something you shouldn't worry about beyond having a copy of your recipes on a computer at home somewhere in addition to sharing them in the cloud.  (That being said, back up your home computer too.)

Another good rule: don't ever expect something stored in the cloud to actually be secure.  Generally with recipes it's not an issue if your data is stolen (like it could be if you were storing tax returns), but all of the marketing around consumer electronics does a really good job of making people forget that even PayPal and the US federal government were hacked.  Cloud storage is not secure storage.  In fact, think of the Internet as the Wild West: we're still trying to figure out who is here and who has enough power to actually enforce laws.

Every EULA, privacy policy and terms of service document I have read states clearly somewhere deep in the pages of legalese that they have the right to modify or change their policies whenever they see fit.  Aka, no guarantee on anything, although this usually doesn't lead to the problems you mentioned.  The few times I have had data uploaded to a cloud and the policy was changing in a way to prevent me from accessing (or having to pay for) my data, I was informed of the change months before it ever started affecting me, with the whole purpose of giving me the chance to download any and all of my data onto my home computer, where I could access it whenever I wanted, even after the change in policy.

My Experience

I have uploaded a few recipes to a Dropbox account to share with a relatively small group of friends.  We all have access to upload, read and download, but there is no place to leave comments or feedback on any of the recipes.  It's also kind of a clunky method of sharing if I ever wanted to give the entire world access because it's just a link, not a webpage full of brightly colored photos that people can click on.  I believe that Dropbox's terms of service state that I am the legal owner of the data in my Dropbox account, but I'd have to double check that, and I have no idea how it works if a friend uploads a recipe to my account.  Whether or not my friends give credit if they re-post any of those recipes, is up to whoever does the re-posting; both Dropbox and the new site won't have a way to track if credit was given where credit was due.

I tend to find recipes on allrecipes.com, although I have yet to upload any of my own.  It's a great place to for people to share recipes, leave feedback, suggest modifications, upload pictures, etc.  I can't even remember if I read their EULA so I don't know if it claims the rights to the recipes, or if they belong to the original poster.  Either way, allrecipes.com can't give credit if a user copies and pastes your recipe onto another site; the only way to give credit is if a user posts a link back to your recipe on allrecipes.com.

Credit vs. Copyright

Credit and copyright are not the same thing.  Credit would be me saying "I got the idea write this answer because of a question that mmcghan posted."  While that is nice and generally what people are looking for when they post stuff intended for sharing, it's not going to hold up in court.  If copyright protection is what you're after, you probably don't want to post your recipe on a crowd sourcing site, but you would definitely want to read the EULA, terms of service and the privacy policy (and likely involve a lawyer who specializes in this) before posting or uploading anything you want to protect.

For that matter, "credit" could be all sorts of things, although I am by no means an expert of how recipes can be legally protected.  In the open source world (think Linux if you aren't very technical) there are actually several different kinds of licenses, which do hold up in court, unlike generic "credit."  I'm not deeply familiar with a lot of them, but here are a couple examples of the differences:

You can use and modify anything, but you cannot make a profit off of any of it
You can use and modify anything, but you have to share your modifications with the world and credit the original writer(s)

What's Next?

It's great that you are thinking about all the legal junk behind sharing recipes (or anything really) because we don't do it nearly enough.  But you'll also want to think about what you mean when you want to "share" your recipes.

Do you want to share them with just friends, or the whole world?
Do you want feedback or comments on your recipes?
Would you like to upload pictures, tips, etc.?  Or just the recipe itself?
Do you want to be able to upload a bunch of Word files you already have written?  Or would you rather have to type each of them into the website by hand?
What kind of credit do you want for your recipes? How enforceable does this credit need to be?

Being able to answer these questions will help you greatly in your end goal.


Your photos each look like decent early attempts at bread making.  I would encourage you to keep at it.  While I think your process will improve (for example, you probably want to improve gluten development with further kneading or stretch and folds), nothing about your process would impact the flavor to the point of making it "unusual."

I would make two observations.  First, you might want to take the temperature of your bread, at the center, near the end of the bake time.  Just to make sure you are cooking it completely.  It should be 190 - 200 F (88 - 93C).  I usually bake darker.  If I am using a dutch oven, I will remove the top at about the halfway point, leaving the pan and bread in the oven.  I just like the flavor of a darker crust.

Second, the breads that you mention in your comment are typically made with a starter, or are enriched breads.  These breads will have a different (and perhaps more enjoyable to you) flavor profile.  You appear to have some of the basic technique down, maybe you want to experiment with a sourdough starter and a formula that uses a combination of flours, and allows for more flavor development.  It will take more time, but the flavor will be noticeably different.

By the way, you can always make croutons or breadcrumbs with the loaves you don't enjoy.


I usually see powdered milk used rather than non-dairy creamer, as in this recipe; This source seems to say it has less or no trans fat.


How do you know when your flavor base is thoroughly sauteed?

Usually when sauteeing (or more precisely, sweating) vegetables meant to form an aromatic base, you're doing three things:

Breaking down cell walls
Developing new flavors through mild caramelization
Driving off moisture

The first of these is really the most important; driving off moisture is a natural result of doing so. The cell walls in vegetables act as little "containers" that store all the moisture, nutrients, and flavorful compounds present in the vegetable. You want to break them down in order to release those contents, or the flavors won't have as much time to combine and mellow in the aromatic base. Of course, by releasing the moisture and compounds you're also giving some of the water a chance to evaporate, and some compounds like sugars a chance to caramelize slightly which deepens their flavor.

The usual guidance for knowing when you've sweated sufficiently for a flavor base is to look for transparency. Onions in particular will start to look glossy and softer around the edges, and you'll notice that you can see right through them in thinner layers. Like so; see how you can clearly see the color of the spoon right through these onions?

The same thing happens with other vegetables too but onions are the most noticeable, and fortunately they're present in quite a few traditional bases (mirepoix, trinity, and sofrito all contain onion for example).

Of course this does depend a little bit on what flavor you're trying to bring into the finished dish. Some preparations (French onion soup for instance) call for extensive caramelization, and for onions to be sweated until they've gone far beyond translucent and have become a rich brown color, which also develops a deep, sweet flavor. So if that's what you want, you can keep on sweating for as long as you like (or at least until you move from sweating to, um, burning).

Here for instance are some onions that have been cooking for a longer period of time; notice that they've developed a mild golden-brown color and are nearly see-through around the edges:

There's no specific temperature to look for here as it's more about time and breakdown; fortunately, sweating happens slowly, and it doesn't need to be overly precise. Look for glossiness which lets you know that moisture is escaping, and transparency which gives a visual indication of cell wall breakdown, and you'll be fine.


Why does steak change colour after seasoning?

Details on beef color changes can be found here.

Briefly:

When beef is first cut (or ground or whatever), it has a purplish hue, caused by deoxymyoglobin, a pigment that can only exist in the absence of oxygen.
When exposed to oxygen, a chemical reaction occurs, producing oxymyoglobin, which leads to the bright cherry red color most people associate with "fresh meat."
Eventually, the molecule oxydizes, producing metmyoglobin, which can no longer bind oxygen -- and this turns the meat brown.  (There are natural enzymes present which can convert back to oxymyoglobin when in the presence of sufficient oxygen, though these will eventually be depleted.  Packaging can preserve the strong oxygen-rich environment for longer, which is why grocery store meat stays bright red on the surface.)
When meat is cooked, the globin denatures and forms a tan/gray hemichrome pigment which can no longer convert back to the other myoglobin pigments.

Anyhow, this is all a preface to explain that certain chemical additives will change the chemistry here, pushing the reactions to move to or away from certain pigment states.

The primary one that you mentioned is salt.  As discussed in the linked article:

  If salt has been incorporated into patties or is present in the case
  of enhanced steaks, salt decreases metmyoglobin reducing activity
  allowing more MMb to accumulate [i.e., turning brown]. . . .  In addition, salt promotes
  heat denaturation, or breakdown, of myoglobin [i.e., turning tan or gray].

Basically, salt causes the pigmentation molecules to convert faster to states resembling old or cooked meat, causing the color change you see.


No, cream and butter are not the same thing. Butter is made by agitating cream, causing the fat to clump up and separate from the rest of the cream. The butter is then washed, optionally salted, and pressed. So the “ingredients” of butter are cream and optionally salt.
Pasteurization is a process for inactivating microorganisms in foods  like milk and cream by heating them to a fairly high temperature for a short period of time. It has the effect of increasing shelf life and reducing the risk of food-borne illness. All dairy products you buy at the grocery store, with the possible exception of some fancy cheeses, have been pasteurized.


What spice does not have any flavor or aroma?

A stale, old one. The flavors in spices are volatile— they don't last forever.


The moisture from the bread is absorbed by the brown sugar. After a while, the bread will be like a withered old mummified piece of white toast. Get rid of it, and put a new piece of bread in there.


How do I peel prosciutto from wax paper without it coming off in strips?

I usually use a palette knife (frosting spatula) to separate the slice from the paper by sliding it betwixt the two.  It is quick, but does require some care.


Cast Iron Bread Tin is Leaving Black Spots on Bread?

I think this is just iron reacting with the bread. In cast iron, I think your choices are to either:

line the pan with baking paper (then it's hardly bread anymore ):
heat up the pan to oven temperature first, and then drop in the dough, returning the pan to the oven. This technique is often used with cornbread.


I would say, go with your gut. It is possible that you see a very slight advantage, or that you don't have any at all, so do as you feel better.
The denaturing of proteins has already been done in both the canned and dried milks, so you don't need to heat up for that part. What you can win is a bit on the contamination front. Making yogurt is about creating an ecosystem, and to give your preferred culture the best start in life, you are trying to keep the mixture as sterile as possible. The combination of canned milk, milk powder and water shouldn't have any more bacteria and yeasts than anything else in your kitchen, and heated milk gets re-contaminated during cooling, so if you can get any edge, it will be small. But if you want to shoot for it, there is no harm in that. Especially if you are reinoculating from the old batch a lot, this might reduce the time until you have to refresh your culture.


Strange orange gel on surface of zucchini?

The cut end of your zucchini (courgette) looks like it's exuding some water/sap that was previously in the fruit. The colour is due to the rest of the "stuff" in the sap besides water: e.g., perhaps sugars, starches and other stuff. As the water evaporates, it looks like what you show in the picture, which will also explain the beads of goo being stiff or tacky. That is common to occur with certain fruits, especially squashes, and especially at the stem-end, as you're showing in your picture. You can see the same thing happen when cutting the fruit cross-wise (across the fibers), and especially with freshly-picked specimens. I notice this especially with fresh butternut squash.

Unless it's soft, moldy, or otherwise showing signs of rotting, it's probably fine to eat. Cut the ugly bit(s) off and discard just before using... or otherwise the newly exposed flesh will exude more sap! It's probably got some temporary protective properties against fluid loss.

With fresh (summer) squashes, at room temperature, they'll start to get starchy and soft rather quickly. Putting them in the refrigerator (i.e., humidity/temperature control) can slow this process, but you've really only got a few days until the fruit starts going downhill quickly. So in this sense, it is "going bad" -- this process starts as soon as it's picked! Eat it up. With winter squashes, on the other hand, you've got much more time.


I bite my nails. How can I keep proper hygiene in the kitchen?

Gloves are annoying and, much like condoms, do obscure sensation and--in the case of kitchen work--precision with your fingers. For those reasons I avoid them wherever possible.

As a lifelong nailbiter (from when I was about 9 until I was 31), it was a habit that was really hard to give up. But it has been worth it, not just professionally. I know this isn't the answer you're looking for, but: stop biting your nails.


What is the correct mixing method for this kind of batter?

In France, that is a classic dessert called a Gâteau Fondant Aux Poires. In American English we'd call it a Pear Cake. Who can figure out the French and their dang desserts? What I can say, is that your instructions are fairly typical. In America we would call that a cake batter and wouldn't change a thing, except maybe to make it less fussy.


After purge mussels 6 time in salt water 20 mins each, why they still exude much grime?

If your mussels are really that dirty, scrub them well first, then soak them in fresh water + salt (about 35g per litre) - or sea water - and add a scant handful of ground oats. The oats are supposed to irritate the mussels and they'll purge it together with the sand, while the salt water will keep them alive.

It can take a long time to purge really gritty mussels (according to some sources, from 2 to 12 hours). I'm not sure how clean you expect your mussels to be, just make sure most of the sand is purged.

You should also ask the shop if the mussels have been purged before - it's usually the case.


Can I cook 2 very different things at same time in the oven?

It is absolutely safe to do so...

For most foods, I would say that there is no reason not to.  If they are savory muffins like corn muffins to be served with the roast, I would not hesitate at all.

For sweet goods, with a high amount of butter or oil, there is some small risk of absorbing aromas.  I would generally segregating strongly aromatic foods for baked goods.  The foil should mitigate most of the possible transfer, but I wouldn't try it for the first time with guests.


How do I prevent tomato making quiche soggy

You may wish to seed the tomatoes, removing the gelatinous part containing the seeds, which is mostly water, and very little flavor.  You want to use only the meaty, fleshy part of the tomato in a quiche.

Depending on the size of your tomatoes, scooping the seeds out with a melon scoop, cutting out the seed sections, or simply squeezing out the seeds will help.  The Shiksa in the Kitchen has a very nice article with very clear pictures showing these three different methods of seeding tomatoes.

This will substantially reduce the amount of moisture the tomatoes are adding to your quiche.

Another method you may choose to use, if you have the time, is to roast your tomatoes before using them in the quiche (which may also involve seeding them first).  This will reduce the moisture and concentrate the flavor.


What is instant pudding mix used for in baking cookies?

Flour is basically a mix of gluten and starch (about 10% gluten to 90% starch for all purpose flour, the ratio varies for other types). Whenever a baked good asks for the addition of pure starch, it is made under the assumption that you have no easy access to low-gluten flour types. Its purpose is to reduce the gluten-to-starch ratio.

Gluten makes dough tough and is also the substance which makes it hold together. With less gluten in your dough, your cookies will be less tough, have more of a tender texture. They will also crumble more easily.

Instant pudding is an ingredient which is more common in some kitchens than pure starch, so it is used as a substitute. It usually has sweeteners and aromas in addition to cornstarch. It is less controllable than using pure starch and adding the best amount of sugar and the desired flavoring itself, so it trades quality for convenience. In my experience, recipes which call for instant pudding also cut corners in other respects, and are unlikely to be of high quality overall. So I prefer to not use them. If you want the low-gluten type cookies, choosing a recipe with cornstarch (or directly cake flour instead of a mix of AP flour and starch) will probably give better results.


How to choose appropriate drinkware for cocktails?

The most obvious difference is that a highball glass is much larger: 8 to 12 ounces as opposed to 4.5 ounces for a martini glass. Cocktails served traditionally in a larger glass usually include a large quantity of mixers, such as a Tom Collins (served traditionally in a Collins glass, 10-14 oz, though a highball would be appropriate), which only contains about 2oz of gin and is topped off with a large quantity of soda water, or a Cuba Libre (traditionally served in a highball glass), which contains mostly Coca-Cola with a small amount of rum. On the other hand, cocktails served traditionally in smaller stemware, such as the Martini, may contain nothing but the alcoholic ingredients (gin and vermouth). Therefore, they require smaller quantities before one would be inebriated, and thus are served in smaller glasses. Furthermore, stemmed glasses keep your hand further from the (presumably cold) drink, thus keeping it colder longer, important for drinks traditionally served neat (whereas a highball would have room for ice).

If you ask an enthusiast, the shape of the stemware used can be crucial; for example, red wine apparently tastes better after oxidation, so red wine glasses maximize surface area to increase the amount of wine that oxidizes, while white wines do not oxidize well. Champagne needs to stay bubbly, so a champagne flute tries to minimize the amount of bubbles that escape, while some alcohols have a pleasant aroma and thus benefit from wider glasses like a sherry glass that maximize the amount of aroma that escapes.

However, for many average consumers, stemware is stemware is stemware. The differences may or may not be enough to be noticeable to people who are not wine enthusiasts. I would say, if you're looking to stock a kitchen, get a couple types of stemware you find attractive and improvise rather than trying to make every drink in its own special glass.


Does a Romanian omletă ţărănească (peasant omelette) have standard ingredients?

Judging from search results and the handy firefox babelfish addon, the peasant (or country-style) omelette seems to be, as you suspected, one of those dishes where anything handy is thrown in.

EDIT: the firefox addon is actually unnecessary as google provides an option on the search results page for translated versions of the search results.


Ground beef storage and use past sell-by date

(1) Yes, that's fine. If you use freezer bags, you don't need foil even. For longer-term frozen storage, vacuum sealed bags work better.

(2) Frozen food stored at 0°F (or lower) is basically safe to eat forever. Eventually, the flavor will be affected and you won't want to eat it (but it won't make you sick). Three to four months is reasonable in tightly-sealed freezer bags. Longer in vacuum sealed bags. The storage time is entirely a flavor thing, so you can get away with a little longer for strongly-seasoned meat (e.g., tacos) vs. lightly seasoned (hamburger). The sell-by date assumes storage at around 30°F (normal for refrigerated meat)

(3) I believe so, stuff should still be good a few days after the sell by date.


How much calcium propionate should I use as a bread preservative?

Most sources recommend 0.1% or so, but not more than than 0.5%. Try to use only enough to achieve the preservative results you desire.

In other words, for 1000g of flour, start with 1g of calcium propionate. If that works good for you, then stop there. If you still think it's spoiling too soon, then next time try 2g of calcium propionate for 1000g of flour.

Adding more calcium propionate may or may mot make it last any longer, so don't use more than needed — and never more than 5g for 1000 of flour.


What is the purpose of oiling a wooden chopping board?

The oil is not actually doing anything to protect the wood - the idea that it does so is a very widespread myth. This is the conclusion of the guy who wrote the book on wood finishing, and I can confirm it from personal experience. You can continue using it for cosmetic reasons, I am personally partial to the look given by flax oil - although there are people who prefer the opposite, because cuts are much less noticeable on unoiled wood.
To get real protection on an wooden item, you have to apply a layer that actually seals the wood. The substances which do this well are shellac, nitro lacquers, acrylic finishes and alkydic finishes.
While you could use a safe-in-trace-amounts finish on a chopping board, the mechanical action of a knife will soon damage such a layer to a point where it becomes useless. Most people are just not interested in refinishing their chopping board a couple of times per week.
As for the source of the myth: Long before good finishes were discovered, people tried protecting wood. Since it was known that wood is most damaged by moisture, they used all kinds of water-repelling substances, such as different oils and waxes, sometimes also natural resins. The protection afforded by those is minimal, but it was all they had - and to the naked eye, it does look like a great protection, since oiled wood has an entirely different appearance, and water droplets pearl on it instead of visibly wetting it.
This is a concept that is known in science as "face validity" - you look at an approach and your intuition tells you that it must be working, so you are likely to conclude that it works. Scientists try to prove that methods work independently of their face validity, but cooks and woodworkers rarely do so :) And since there is a tradition, which convincingly does something, people continue applying it and promoting it.


You do not want hollandaise to cook completely.

"Cooked all the way" means that you cook food to a temperature where proteins (of which bacteria walls are made) completely lose their shape. When this happens to a bacteria, it stops functioning and the bacteria dies. When this happens to a protein we want to eat (meat, egg) it gets a certain stiff texture; it curdles. And this curdling process happens at a similar temperature for bacterial cell walls and for food proteins, which means that killing all the bacteria for certain automatically gives your food a certain texture.

Hollandaise is a food whose texture depends on not curdling. You are creating an emulsion between the liquid and the butter, using the egg yolk as emulsifier. It only works when its proteins are in a certain state, and they reach this state at temperatures between roughly 50 and 80 degrees Celsius, with best texture at (IIRC, don't have the source here) 72 degrees. If you were to cook it above that range, it would not work, and you would end up with tiny grains of cooked egg suspended in melted butter, which is not a hollandaise (even though it has been served to me under that name by well-meaning amateur cooks).

If you have heated your eggs to that temperature and held them at it for long enough to beat the emulsion, you have more or less pasteurized them. They are not as safe as cooked eggs, but this state is considered acceptable for consumption. Still, there are restaurants which choose to not serve yolk-emulsion based sauces because they fear that a single case of food poisoning can have large impact on their business. If you are afraid to eat eggs which are pasteurized but not cooked through, you have to stop eating hollandaise.

If you do not mind the risk of eating pasteurized eggs (which is much lower than the risk from eating raw eggs), then the fact that the hollandaise succeeded is enough by itself to indicate that the eggs are pasteurized to some degree. This is because your hollandaise won't emulsify well if your eggs are too cold. This is only true if you are using no additional emulsifiers; some cooks prefer to add a pinch of xanthan to ensure that their sauce will give a perfect emulsion in only a few seconds, and then you no longer have the guarantee that your eggs were heated to the optimal temperature range.

As the hollandaise process can partly succeed at temperatures too low to be considered a good pasteurization, the safer option would be to just use a thermometer (which has the side effect of also allowing you to make better hollandaise if you are not experienced enough to recognize eggs in the optimal temp range based on their whisking behavior). Aim for 72 degrees of your mixture while whipping. Hold the sauce at that temperature for longer for added security, but do not let it climb over 80 or thereabouts. Remember that prepared hollandaise has a certain thermal inertia because of the air beaten into it, so you cannot cool it quickly if you get it too hot. Also do not let it cool under 60, because then you are actually increasing the danger, not pasteurizing.


Can I use dried dates instead of fresh ones for baking a cake? The dates should build the base of the cake

Based on similar recipes for this cake, it looks like "dates" actually means "dried dates".

Here's an example with a video.

I don't speak German so I don't know what's being said but those are certainly dried dates.

So... not only can you use dried dates for this recipe, you should use dried dates!


Can you Refreeze baked/cooked chicken? How long can it stay in refrigerator after cooked?

According to the USDA:

  After cooking raw foods which were previously frozen, it is safe to freeze the cooked foods. If previously cooked foods are thawed in the refrigerator, you may refreeze the unused portion. Freeze leftovers within 3-4 days. Do not refreeze any foods left outside the refrigerator longer than 2 hours; 1 hour in temperatures above 90 °F.

Frozen foods typically remain safe indefinitely, but according to the USDA, cooked poultry can maintain its quality in a freezer after cooking for about 4 months.


How can I keep samosa pastry crispy longer?

Allow the samosas to cool on a rack. If you put the warm samosas on a plate, moisture will build up and create steam. Steam makes fried foods soggy.


Yeast 101: Active Dry Yeast, Instant Yeast, Baking Soda, Baking Powder. Differences and Info

Note:  I am only putting this as an answer because it is too much for a comment and because the titles show.

Many of these topics are already covered:

Why use yeast instead of baking powder?

Why are there no recipes combining both yeast and baking powder?

Does active dry yeast really expire?

How to convert a recipe calling for active dry yeast into rapid rise yeast?

Is there any difference between bakers yeast and regular yeast?

Does active dry yeast really need proofing?

Can active dry yeast be substituted for a compressed yeast cake in baking?

Is 'Pizza yeast' any different than normal baking yeast?

Can/should I use rapid rise yeast for longer proofing?


Nasi lemak means fat rice. The fat is from the coconut milk, which is up to 20% fat depending on how you make it. The fat will change the flavour and mouth feel of the rice but it is not particularly going to give a strong flavour .
The nasi lemak needs aromatics in the rice. These would be lemongrass, ginger and pandan leaf. Pandan leaf is particularly important. The lemongrass and pandan are whole and don't disappear in cooking so will continue to impart aroma to the surrounding rice even after it is cooked.
Nasi lemak is mainly about the condiments so the rice is not supposed to be too strong since you have fried fish, sambal, etc. But with the herbs you will get a good aroma in the rice.
You could also try adding shallots lightly fried before cooking (in addition to the aromatics)
Rice is not really boiled but steamed in SE Asian cooking. Just use a rice cooker. The other ingredients are optional, but coconut milk and pandan leaf are the only 100% essentials.
If making Hainan rice then you should start by frying ginger/garlic paste, then add star anise, cinnamon, cardamom (I am not sure all of these are required), then coat the rice in that. The rice should not be cooked in water but in chicken stock from poaching the chicken. Sesame oil is not for cooking, it is a garnish, so always add it at the end of whatever you are cooking. Again you need pandan leaf in the rice cooker, and lemongrass is unlikely to be a bad idea either. You can add sesame oil when serving.


substituting black treacle/molasses for brown sugar

A standard substitute for brown sugar is to take 1 Cup = 200 g of white granulated sugar, and mix-in 1 tablespoon of molasses/treacle.  There's a lot of flavor in that tablespoon.

My own recommendation would be to either supplement your full 200 g of brown sugar with a tablespoon of treacle or consider using 200 g of granulated sugar and mix-in 2 tablespoons of treacle.

Since you are planning to use dark soft muscovado sugar (which is already flavorful) in your recipe, I think supplementing the full 200 g amount with 1 tablespoon of treacle would give your cake a terrific taste.


How do you get 'ears' when baking bread?

In my somewhat limited experience you have two things that affect growth of the crispy ears. As Caleb mentions using a lame to score your bread means you can cut with a bit of an angle that will promote a little flap.

The second is ensuring a rapid oven spring, which will cause the flap to open as much as possible before the starches on the surface set. The key to good oven spring is having a hot enough oven (preheat longer than you think you need to if you are using a stone or other heat-storing vessel in the oven), and a source of steam injection. A few ways to do get some steam:

When you put the dough in, pour a 1/2 cup of boiling water into a small cast iron skillet pre-heated in the oven.
Spritz the walls of the oven with water when you put the dough in.
My favorite - preheat a large dutch oven, and put the dough inside the dutch oven (lid on) to bake. For the last 10 minutes of the bake, remove the lid. The dutch oven stores some of the initial steam release and makes for much nicer spring and crusts. Of course, only round bread fits.


differences between cooktop, range and stove?

Yes, the cooktop is the top part of a stove (also known as a range) - just the burners/heating elements (the round things you refer to), which as you've discovered can be found without the oven underneath! There's not really a difference beyond that. You can see this pretty easily if you google "cooktop" and look at the pictures of the products you find.


How can I cook dried noodles with just hot water?

Par-boiling the noodles at home would allow you to finish cooking them with just hot water.

I would boil your chosen noodles 2 minutes under the package recommended time. Then rinse and chill the noodles and toss with a bit of oil and chill it. Take this to work in an insulated bag with an ice pack.

A "saucy" noodle dish would be simpler to prepare at the office. Put both the noodles and veg in a heat proof container with your own seasonings and additions of choice, add hot water, let stand for 2-3 minutes and you'll have a whole meal in one bowl.

Serious Eats has a whole "food lab" series about it, including several suggested "DIY Instant Noodle" recipes:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/diy-instant-noodle-cups-food-lab.html

However if you want "dry" noodles you could also pour on hot water to your par-cooked noodles, let stand for 2-3 minutes, then drain the noodles, and continue with your preparations. I'm thinking a plate over a pyrex bowl could serve as a simple colander.

The draw-back of this technique is that you have less direct heat exchange into your seasonings and veg. If you're just hoping to melt some butter and a sprinkle of parsley, that would be fine on the hot noodles. If you're hoping to heat up a heavy tomato and meat sauce, it probably wouldn't work.

I also really enjoy cold soba noodles, if you're just looking for a change from salads!


I moved to US recently from India and I am looking for Plastic jars for storage,

Run a search for something called "Snap-Ware." Tough, durable, airtight, and very stable plastic. It's even recommended by David Suzuki as a storage medium. Granted, a lot of people consider him alarmist, but he knows his stuff when it comes to bisphenol-A and neoestrogens. I've been using the same Snap-Ware containers for 13 years, and not one has broken, discolored, degraded or had its seal fail.


What is the effect of adding sugar to the water when poaching eggs?

Sugar stabilizes proteins and reduces foaming (salting in).
I'm not sure how much sugar you'd need to add to your egg water to reduce dissipation and strand formation, but some protein structures are affected positively by sucrose concentrations below 30 grams per liter.


For the beef, I would recommend rib-eye.  A traditional Philly cheese steak uses thinly-sliced rib-eye, so it's time tested.

Other than that, I bet sirloin would do well with quick, hot cooking.  It doesn't have much fat or connective tissue, so you don't have to worry about melting anything before it becomes tender.


Can a charcoal grill maintain a constant high temperature?

The recipes you are referring to are probably for BBQ/smoking, rather than grilling, which happens at a much higher temperature.  It is fairly easy to get a kettle-type grill to reach 400 F (and well beyond).  The challenge will be maintaining your desired temperature.  However, that is what the vents are for.  There should be a vent on top and a vent on bottom.  With a little practice, you should be able to manipulate the vents to maintain the temperature.  Try to overshoot your mark by 25 - 50 degrees F before you reduce the airflow. You will get some smoke flavor from the charcoal, particularly if you use hardwood. The addition of smoking wood will add stronger smoke.  For vegetables, I would stick with fruit woods.


I have a sealed pkg of gorgonzola cheesw dated March 2018. It is June. Does it go bad?

The date on your package of cheese is most likely a "best by" date.  This means that the manufacturer assumes that the quality of the product begins to degrade by that time.  It DOES NOT mean that the product suddenly becomes unsafe to consume.  Whether or not it is "good" will be up to your taste buds, but I would assume it is safe to consume. Cheese has enough salt and (particularly blue cheese) "good/safe" bacteria, that nothing harmful would be growing in your sealed, properly refrigerated package of Gorgonzola.


I'll use (cow) milk as an example, but the idea is the same for other products like juices and fake milks.

In the case of milk, the milk you get in tetrapak cartons (shelf stable milk) is ultra-high temperature pasteurized (UHT). It is heated briefly (1 to 2 seconds) to over 135 C then cooled down very quickly to kill bacteria and spores and then filled into a sterile container (the entire system is designed to keep bad organisms out, so the result remains sterile). This gives a much longer shelf-life than fresh milk (but once opened, it should be refrigerated), on the order of months. In contrast, the usual method of pasteurizing milk (at least in the US (*); Europe does a lot more UHT) is pasteurized by heated to about 70-75C for 15-30 seconds, then chilled and packaged (and lasts on the order of days).

The flavor can be affected due to things like the Maillard reaction occurring. Also, the temperature can affect the uses of the milk for applications like cheese making affecting the proteins.

(*) This is dependent on the type of milk you get; organic cartons in the US you find in the refrigerated section are often UHT pasteurized.


This is from a UK perspective.  A casserole dish is generally round or oval, almost always has a lid, and can go in the oven. It may be made of a variety of materials.

The use that earns the name is cooking dishes consisting of ingredients cut up and in a liquid sauce/gravy, without a topping except possibly dumplings. The terms casserole and stew have a lot in common. The dishes may be used for other things as well.

Some can also be used on top of the stove (metal ones, a few special ceramic examples). This is handy for browning ingredients before adding the liquid. There's obvious overlap with a (fairly large) saucepan, but unlike casserole dishes saucepans may have long handles, which might not be suitable for oven use either because of size or material.

A milk pan (not pot) is a small saucepan with a long handle, usually with a lid, and sometimes with a spout. In a set of saucepans it would be the smallest.


What is the magic time and temperature for stewing meat and vegetables?

If you are going to wait until an hour before serving you definitely have to sweat the vegetables, you could also add them to the stew earlier, like half way through the cooking of the meat. In a pinch I have also put vegetables in some water with seasoning in the microwave after about 4 or 5 minutes, the will be softer, then add to the stew. I also don't think that adding the vegetables with the meat for the whole cooking time is a problem, the vegetables take on all that flavor that the meat gives up.


Why sugar butter cocopowder mixture got hard in double boiler

When I hear the method, I don't see a way it could work as described.

Suger will neither dissolve in the melted butter, nor will it melt at low temperatures - and the water bath keeps them from getting high enough. I don't see what the double boiler is supposed to do, maybe prevent the butter from browning. But when using this procedure, there is no reason for the sugar to do anything but stay hard. Even if you were to use powdered sugar, it will give a grainy texture to the mixture.

I was going to tell you to just ditch the recipe for being impossible to work, but on a second thought, I started wondering why you want the sugar to melt in the first place. Upon looking around for brownie recipes with cocoa powder, they do start with melted butter, sometimes even mentioning a double boiler, but none of them had directions to wait until the sugar is melted. Others just skipped the double boiler step and directed to mix the sugar and cocoa powder with the already-melted butter. So your recipe is only bad in the sense of telling you for waiting for the sugar to melt. If you prefer to keep using it, simply wait until the butter in the mixture is melted (with a double boiler or without, as you wish - just don't brown the butter) and keep going with the sugar as hard as-is.


The difference is in the preparation, which may not be as obvious when the food's served.  I'm not an expert on the variations of pilaf & biryani, but here's what I understand:

Pulav / Pilaf / Pilau  / Plov / Pulao / etc. are dishes where the rice is cooked in a seasoned broth.   Some variants include cooking the rice in oil before adding the broth.  It may contain meat, seafood, vegetables, eggs, etc.  When it's finished, there's very little liquid left.

Biryani is a type of pilaf, but you cook the meat and rice separately. The rice is cooked to ~70% in a pot, optionally with very mild spices. Then a layer of meat goes at the bottom of a separate pot & the semi-cooked rice goes on top of it in layers, each layer seasoned with distinct aromatic spices. And the entire set-up is cooked on a low heat. They also tend to be more heavily spiced than Pilafs, with most of the spice generally at the bottom of the pot. They may be a bit saucy, not entirely dry. The bottom-most layer of spice mix often contains yogurt, but may include dairy or coconut milk, not just a broth. Traditionally, the giant pots are  sealed with dough & the lid loaded with weight to simulate pressure cooking and while serving, they split the mix vertically to ensure every one gets a generous portion of each layer. If they're cooked in the clay pots, they aren't opened until serving, so everyone at the table gets the aroma that's released.

Fried rice uses cooked rice (some ay freshly cooked so it's fluffy, others insist you have to use day-old rice so the starche change first).  You cook whatever meat or vegetables you're using in oil (typically stir-fried in a wok), and add the rice and continue to stir-fry.  It tends to be saltier than the others, due to the addition of soy sauce.  It might be a little bit greasy, as the last step is frying, not the first step.  It also doesn't contain saffron which are frequently in the other two.

A few others that I'll add :

Nasi Goreng  (Indoneasean / Malasian / Dutch) are varients of fried rice, but it's made with kejap manis (a spiced, sweetened soy sauce), more heavily spiced then Chinese-style fried rice, and often contains shrimp paste, eggs, sambal, and fried shallots or onions.  There's still a bit of variety, as some say there should only be a paste for flavoring (no chunks of things) and accompaniments on the side, while others have ribbons of eggs, fried onions, and shredded (uncooked) lettuce.

Paella (Spanish) is a type of pilaf, but it's medium grained cooked over high heat in an uncovered, very shallow pan.  A good paella should have a crusty layer of well-cooked rice at the bottom because it's not stirred towards end of the cooking.  If you're adding meat or vegetables, they're typically cooked first, then placed on top of the rice while it finishes cooking.

Risotto (Italian) is similar to the others, but the unwashed medium grain rice is cooked with aromatics (eg, onion) first until it's toasted (lightly fried), then liquid is slowly added with lots of stirring to scrape off the starch on the outside so it thickens the sauce until it's creamy.  It often includes wine as the first addition of liquid.

Jambalaya (American Cajun) is a pilaf with browned vegetables and/or meat, then the addition of tomato paste, tomato juice, or crushed tomatoes (and no saffron).  It's often served wetter than a standard pilaf.

... and dirty rice, arroz con pollo, jambalaia, spanish rice, yellow rice, etc.


What are Omaha Steaks "Potatoes Au Gratin" actually?

These are very similar to potato croquettes, for which there are tons of recipes. Those are usually made with mashed potatoes instead of shredded, but otherwise pretty much the same deal. You can find recipes with varying amounts of creamy things and cheese; I'm guessing the Omaha Steaks ones are on the higher end of that.

If you want to try to match the shredded texture better, you can probably start with a potato croquette recipe and just bake and grate/shred the potatoes instead of mashing them.

As Cindy noted, you can also find recipes by searching for "au gratin potato balls", plenty of which are mimicking the Omaha Steaks ones. I might be inclined to use a croquette recipe, because it's a more common name so it's easier to find obviously trustworthy recipes, but you'll probably be fine either way.


Thaw / Brine partially frozen turkey at the same time

I believe the reasoning for changing the water every 30 minutes is to speed up defrosting.   I imagine the defrost time would be reduced drastically. However, that seems like a mess and a lot of work. If you're brining a partially frozen turkey, from a safety perspective, I would not change the water out. I'd just leave it in the water. The main thing you are looking for is that the water temp never goes above 4C/40F. You can do this by doing in the fridge, or cooler, or outside if you live in the right place.
See these related questions for more info:

How can I effectively time a short thawing and brining of a a turkey?
How cold can a brining turkey get before freezing?


How can I improve my gluten-free pizza dough?

It seems like a lot of recipes recomend gelatin, which could add to the stretchyness. I frequent serious eats and a while ago they posted this recipe and they claim that it is great and stretchy.

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/04/gluten-free-tuesday-easy-pizza-crust-recipe.html


Gravy is supposed to be opaque and is a result of using flour as the thickener.  If you want clear gravy, like what you would get in a Chinese restaurant, then you need to use corn starch or arrowroot as your thickener.  But the opacity is considered to be a good thing.  It's the canned stuff you buy in the store that is clear.


Green gooey stuff when removing head from raw shrimp

I think what you are seeing may be the hepatopancreas. From a Serious Eats article about shrimp heads:

There could be nothing sweeter and tastier than those shrimp heads. For in their armored shells you will find the hepatopancreas, the digestive organ that in lobsters and crabs would be called tomalley.
Shrimp hepatopancreas tastes like tomalley, only shrimpier, and more liquid-like.

This article on hepatopancreas condition states that the color of the hepatopancreas depends on diet:

Regarding shrimp roe (also called coral) and eggs, please see this excerpt about the shrimp life cycle and the picture below.

Eggs develop in the female prior to spawning, and can be seen as a dark band just under the shell on the head. Shortly after mating, eggs are extruded to the underside of the abdomen, where they are fertilized by a packet of sperm previously obtained from the male, then attached to the female's specialized legs. The female carries the developing eggs until they hatch in early spring. Newly hatched shrimp larvae are small (about 3/16 of an inch, or 5mm), planktonic (free floating, unable to swim against currents), and bear only a superficial resemblance to adults.

See this picture (EMS is Early Mortality Syndrome):


Do liquids continue to "boil" when full-pressure cooking is reached?

For as long as it is plugged in and the power setting is appropriate, it should keep boiling as if it was in a normal pot. Imagine if you were to take a normal pot deep underground where you get the same atmospheric pressure and watch it boil, it would look the same as boiling as sea level.

It is the water vapor that sustains the higher-than-outside pressure inside the pot. The lid has a valve that impedes the release of vapor. So, without continuous boiling, pressure would decline gradually (like once you turn off the pot).


How to store parts of whole chicken for long time?

When you want to freeze things so that they don't stick together, you need to freeze them separately and then combine later. So, for example, if you're freezing blueberries, you can freeze them on a cookie sheet and then combine them in one bag or container.

For chicken, I wouldn't advise freezing the pieces uncovered (as you do for blueberries). Instead, I would package the pieces in containers that only hold one meal's worth. You can always defrost more than one package if necessary.

This could be a plastic container or wrapped individually in plastic wrap or aluminum foil, or even a zippered plastic bag. Any of these would allow you to unwrap individually and defrost.


What is this leaf vegetable? It tastes like cress but looks different

I think you have Baby Argula or Rocket.  Check out this site for Turkish greens.
http://www.turkish-cuisine.org/ingredients-7/ingredients-used-in-turkish-cuisine-66/vegetables-69.html


Can you make cheese curds with pasteurized milk?

ehow is not a source of reliable information. It is a content farm, and therefore most of it's articles are effectively screen scraped (either by hand or using 'bots). People get paid to make content, but there is no peer review process

There are plenty of other sources on the web including this site :-) that explain the cheese curd (paneer) process, and that you can use pasteurized or even milk powder with perfect results

Raw milk is NOT a requirement to make curds, and in a blind test is not identifiable. The taste is affected by the fat content and the cows diet. How well you extract just the whey will also affect texture and taste

How do you make paneer?

Search SA for Paneer


Thawing frozen seafood mix is a lot of work

Any time you cook the seafood mix it will shed moisture, which it has a lot of and probably on the outside of it as well. I love that mix and I just soak it in a bowl of cold water then drain it. If you keep driving the moisture out before you use it, it will be shriveled up and dry. As you simmer it over time, the level of moisture you want to drive out of it will steam off.


I've never been one to keep track of cooking times with meats, since it will vary wildly with meat thickness, burner strength and type, phase of the moon, etc.

Edit: I forgot to answer "how to go about searing".  I sear chicken like I sear beef: hard and fast.  The point is to get that Maillard reaction going to add some deliciousness and texture (not to "seal in flavor", which is hogwash).

Pat the chicken dry with paper towels.
Put just enough oil in a heavy-bottomed pan to cover the bottom.
Put the pan over medium-high heat and get it good and hot - the oil may just start showing wisps of smoke.
Lay the chicken in the pan carefully, being sure to start at the edge closest to you and lay it down away from you.  This will prevent you from getting splashed with hot oil.
Let it cook for 2-4 minutes until you get a nice sear on it.
Flip, (the chicken, not you) again being careful to flip away from you.

Now if the breast is thin enough (maybe you butterflied it beforehand), you can just let it finish in the pan.  Often, though, after flipping I'll pop the whole pan into a 400F oven and finish it in there.  Again, times will vary, but I would start checking it after 5 minutes.

The most accurate way to determine doneness of any meat is with an instant-read thermometer.  I love my Thermapen, but it's a bit pricey.  You can find inexpensive dial or digital ones at your local grocery.  The recommended internal temp for poultry is 165F.

Normally, I poke my chicken with a finger to determine doneness, then double-check it by cutting it open.  Fully-cooked chicken is white all the way through, and the juices run clear when you cut into it.  Under-cooked chicken is pink, and the juices run pink as well.  I get fresh chicken from a local farm, so I cook it until it is barely done to be sure it stays moist and delicious.  For supermarket chicken I would err on the side of completely done, since you have no idea where the meat came from.

For reference, fully cooked chicken:

Under cooked chicken:

Extremely under cooked chicken:


The recipe is easy on spices with (perceived) spiciness: No peppers, just the usual amount of ginger and only 2 cloves. On top of that, close to half a liter of coconut milk gets added, which will sweeten the curry, and dampen the (again: perceived) spiciness.

The main veggies are cauliflower, far from the most exciting taste in the world, and peas, which tend to have a sweet taste.

Also, the amount of veggies (close to a kilo) compared to the amount of the spices seem a tad on the small side.

Personal observation: I'd have to make it myself to see what (if anything) is missing, but as Chris mentions, some cumin (usually an equal or half part compared to the coriander) might help, as would nutmeg and/or mace, all of which (IMHO) go well with cauliflower.

I've found that good Indian recipes are hard to find on the internet (or I'm not very good at searching). They tend to be of the Ginger-Garlic-Coriander-Cumin-Cardamom-Blended-With-Tomato-Puree variety, which although definitely tasty, all merge in to the same taste. Maunika Gowardhan has nice authentic recipes, and the slightly dodgy looking India Curry too, together with lots of spice mixes and background information.


How to make my graham cracker bites crispy/crunchy?

Two suggestions:

Try making your crumbs larger.
Mix the other ingredients together before adding the crumbs - you want to coat 'em, not soak 'em.


dhungar method: How can I make smoky dal tadka without charcoal?

Smoked salt for general use in kitchen to get "smoked/grilled" taste or for dal tadka smoked chilli pepper. Latter is no so strong as normal chilli (so you use more) but give nice aftertaste to spiceness.


Most yeast doughs develop additional flavor complexity if retarded in the refrigerator overnight, and there's nothing about a typical Stollen recipe that would cause anything to undermine retardation.

The only caveats: If you've already let the dough rise for several hours before retarding, there's a chance that you may not have enough food for the yeast to digest when the dough comes back to temperature, and the dough may not rise as much as you'd like. Also, if you've already shaped the dough with the almond paste inside, you'll need to take some care to seal in a bag without deforming the shape, and leave enough room in the refrigerator for the dough and the gases in the bag to expand.

But if you've only let the dough rise for an hour or so, as long as you refrigerate, the eggs won't be a problem, and you aren't likely to risk over-fermentation. In my experience, you usually need about 30-40 minutes time for the dough to become active again, assuming a moderately warm room.


What rules should I follow for improvised food recipes that aren't dangerous?

I've never heard of any two things which are safe to eat separately, but poisonous when combined.  When you consider everything gets mixed in the stomach anyway, I find it unlikely to ever find things like that.

Daniel's question about your food safety knowledge is an important one.  Make sure to use separate tools for raw meats, clean your tools, cook to appropriate temperatures, and not leave food out either thawing or cooling.  I wouldn't feel bad if -everyone- took a food safety class at least once in their life.  I mean, it's typically a few hour workshop.

In the long run, I would encourage you to aim for a diverse diet.  Make sure to include starches, green and root vegetables, and other oddities.  The underlying attitude of "I'll eat whatever is quickest to throw in a pot" can lead to frequently finding the same thing "quick to throw in a pot" and a less healthy diet.


See the improved answer here: What DOES Help?

Which acid works best to keep avocados from browning?

Answer: None (of the acids tested)

It's not that acid doesn't do much to help.

ALL OF THE ACIDS TESTED CAUSED AVOCADOS TO BECOME MORE BROWN AND TO BECOME BROWN FASTER THAN NO TREATMENT AT ALL

I am not kidding.

Method

For acid, I used freshly squeezed lemon juice, freshly squeezed lime juice, distilled white vinegar (diluted to 5% acidity), and Ball brand Fruit Fresh mixed per package instructions, 2 tsp powder to 3 TBS water. Fruit Fresh contains dextrose, ascorbic acid, citric acid and silicon dioxide. According to the label, 1/4 tsp of the powder contains 230% of the US RDA of Vitamin C (ascorbic acid). That roughly translates to the solution I used having 100X the concentration of Vitamin C of lemon juice. I was not able find anything to give me a basis for comparison of citric acid concentration.

I diced 1 avocado and shuffled up the chunks so that no 1 pile had chunks from only 1 part of the fruit. I dropped the chunks into small bowls of the acids, removed the chunks, and allowed to air dry. They remained at room temperature for 24 hours.

I mashed 2 avocados together and put 50 grams of the mash into each of 5 small bowls. I added 1/4 tsp of each individual acid to each bowl, leaving 1 bowl plain. I mixed thoroughly and scooped the mash onto 2 plates, 1 to be refrigerated, and 1 to be left at room temperature. I washed and dried the scoop between changes in acid.

Results

The diced avocados just gradually became darker over 24 hours, with the vinegar treated fruit the first to show signs of browning, and ultimately the vinegar treated fruit became the darkest. The untreated fruit resisted browning the longest and ultimately browned the least. The lemon juice and lime juice were about tied, they both significantly sped darkening and ultimately became significantly darker than the untreated fruit. The Fruit Fresh barely made any difference, but the slight difference there was, was negative. Fruit Fresh also caused the avocado to become darker and to brown faster, but just barely.

At 24 hours all of the mashed, unrefrigerated avocado had become equally brown and unappetizing, it just happened faster to the treated avocado. The difference was most dramatic at 6 hours:

It's not clearly visible in the photo, but the Fruit Fresh treated avocado was ever-so-slightly more brown than the untreated avocado.

At 6 hours none of the refrigerated, mashed avocado was significantly browning.

At 24 hours all of the mashed avocado was the worse for wear. On the non-refrigerated side, it looks on this photo like the vinegar treated avocado ultimately fared the best. It actually didn't. I didn't think to snap a picture, but the vinegar treated avocado was the only one to discolor all the way through. The others were still green on the inside, the vinegar treated scoop was slightly browned even on the inside.

There came a point about 12 hours in that the refrigerated side just stopped browning. It had dried out, leaving it more green than the non-refrigerated side, but no more pleasant. All of the samples browned and dried out fairly equally.

At 48 hours I had one scoop of mashed avocado left that I cared to eat.

By adding nothing, keeping it refrigerated and covered in plastic wrap clinging to the surface, so that it had no air at all, this avocado is still fresh, green and ready to eat.

I'll add lime now for flavor, and some cilantro and cumin. Pass the chips.

Note:

I am honored that this answer has been so generously received, but the fact is, it really doesn't answer the question very well. This answer shows what doesn't help. As of 1/8/15 I have added and accepted a new answer based on new experiments that show what does help, it's HERE next to the checkmark.


is it safe to be behind a microwave while it's on?

A home grade (or dual use unit), unless defective beyond reason (eg if there is a hole in it or an interlock is broken) will be always safe from all directions, since any risk of harming persons or animals and/or creating radio interference (Microwave ovens share a frequency band with WiFI!) behind a wall or in the room below or above is unacceptable.

Same can be expected to apply to a commercial unit, unless it would be some very special device not intended to be used as a normal microwave oven (eg one meant to be operated on a conveyor), which can be expected to come with very clear warnings attached in that case.


When you try to "catch" yeast from the air: is it normal for the flour and water to split

Yes.  It seems like you should be stirring occasionally (when you feed your starter).

This site seems like a reasonable reference and, in the section called "Making your starter" it says:

  In between stirrings it's normal for the mixture to separate and for a small layer of water to be on the top.


Why does the shrimp stick to the shells?

This is most likely caused by the sugar in the brine you used. There must have some sugar left on the shrimp (especially between the shrimp and the shell), even if just a bit.

When you grilled your shrimp, the high temperature of your barbecue caused the sugar to get caramelized and delicious, but also very sticky. It more or less "glued" the shells to the meat of the shrimp as they cooled to eating temperature.

You could prevent this next time by peeling the shrimp pre-cooking, but be sure to oil the grate well to prevent them from sticking to the grill and to watch carefully that they don't burn or overcook.


The key is to understand what impacts the flavor and texture of the ingredients your using.  Then, to use the appropriate techniques to achieve the result you are looking for.  If you keep a peeled clove of garlic whole it can have an aromatic effect if gently cooked in oil.  Smash that clove and the effect is more powerful.  Brown the clove, and you will get sweetened and caramelized notes...go to far, and it will take on a bitter note.  Slice the clove and the effect will be different.  Smash and chop (or grate)...more pronounced and more integrated. Roast without peeling...sweet.  ...the list goes on...

Greater cooking experience will allow you to understand all of the potential nuances that different cutting, crushing and cooking (or not) of garlic can bring to a dish.  Then, you can understand, adjust, and/or create the recipe you are looking for.


Are soft boiled eggs and poached eggs identical?

I'll answer the question in your title.  Poached eggs are eggs, removed from the shell when raw, and cooked in a liquid.  The consistency of the yolk can vary depending on the poaching time. The consistency of the white is generally the same each time. Poaching usually happens at a temperature below the boil.

Soft (or medium, or hard) boiled eggs are eggs that are left in the shell, but cooked in boiling water. The assumption in the comments, that the cooking is stopped before heat reaches the yolk, in not correct.  Soft boiled eggs can certainly have yolks of varying consistency, it is just that they are not hard.  The white, is of course, protected by the shell to some degree, so the consistency can vary depending on the cooking time.  It is often more done near the shell, and of a looser consistency as it approaches the yolk.

Egg yolks and whites are very sensitive to cooking time and temperature, so small variations produce different results.  In addition, the yolk and white behave differently.  It is why many have found cooking eggs sous vide so interesting.

So, yes, the processes produce different results and should not be considered the same.


What materials would work for a waffle iron?

Aluminum is easy to CNC mill and it can be make non-stick

It needs to be finished to a semi-gloss, and have a slightly undulating (smooth wave pattern) surface to allow for release

It should be hard-anodized to reduce surface pores and future oxidation. Do not scrub hard-anodized surfaces, just soak

Cast aluminum will most likely have too many surface pores to me useful


Pizza dough is way too wet, already in the oven. Fix?

You're probably out of luck trying to save it as a pizza, but one thing you might try is finishing the cooking on the stovetop. Put in in a big skillet or even on some foil and start with medium heat. It's worth a shot. Good Luck.


Baking after the first rise (without punching down) vs the regular two rise approach?

Part of the effect of the first rise is to develop gluten in the dough. With an overnight rise, the flavour and texture of the final product will most likely be fine. However, you might have trouble shaping the dough before it has risen and/or relaxed.

Note that even in bread recipes that explicitly tell you not to punch down the dough (such as Ken Forkish' recipes), there is a first- and second rise.


The inner part of the cake will be fine in the fridge for about 3 days if covered and uncut. Unfortunately, the crust will start to get soggy after about 24 hours. The cheesecake can be frozen now and will be fine for at least a few weeks, but the crust will be soggy as soon as it's defrosted. I don't know of any way to keep the crust's just baked texture.


You don't want to 'spoil' it by adding guar gum but you'll use glycerine? I don't see the problem with using a plant extract like guar gum but if you're adamant there was a great feature on Serious Eats (too long to quote in entirety but worth reading in full) about making ice cream without an ice cream machine which goes into great detail on preventing excess ice formation:
http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2010/07/how-to-make-ice-cream-without-an-ice-cream-maker-the-food-lab.html

So how could I reduce both crystal formation and overrun even further?
A thought struck me: I knew that when freezing meat or fish, the more rapidly the food is frozen, the less cell damage there is due to ice crystal formation. Would speeding up the rate at which the ice cream base froze help me minimize crystal formation as well?
The rate at which a given volume changes temperature is dependent on the temperature of its surrounding environment, as well as the amount of surface area exposed to it. There's no way for me to get my freezer to get any colder, but as it turns out, there's a simple device that is custom designed to freeze liquids in your freezer as fast as possible: an ice cube tray.
The only problem that remained was: who the hell wants to eat ice-cube shaped ice cream?
The solution was as simple as throwing the cubes into a food processor:
In fact, whirling it in the Cuisinart gave me another distinct advantage. I could save the unwhipped portion, freezing just a base of eggs, sugar, evaporated milk, and whipped cream. This cut back on the water content of the mix, further reducing crystal formation. I could then add the cream and the cubes of ice cream directly to the food processor. By doing this, ice crystal formation went down to virtually zero...

The actual recipe is here:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/07/vanilla-ice-cream-without-the-machine-recipe.html


Getting rid of raw onion taste without the frying process?

I used to cook in a school kitchen that had a lot of problems so I had to figure out untraditional ways of doing things. About once a week I would chop 4 full size pans worth of onions and bake them on 400. Took quite a long time but you can walk away and check and stir them once an hour after 2 hours. I always mixed in a little oil but I don't know how necessary that was.


It is virtually impossible to get every last trace of grease/oil out of plastic containers.

Egg whites will not whip with even the slightest trace of oil/grease anywhere in the bowl, on the beaters, etc.

Ergo, plastic and whipped egg whites do not go together.


I have worked in the CPG industry for almost 30 years. A few years back I had the privilege of representing one of the largest produce brands in the US. I learned quite a bit about produce storage and what speeds up the deterioration rate.

One thing I noticed in your picture is that there appeared to be moisture (condensation) inside of the bag of carrots. It is certainly okay to leave them in the bag they were purchased in, but you want to be absolutely sure that there is no moisture in the bag. Moisture can be a real devil when it comes to mold and mildew or other fungus.

Another very important thing that affects the length of time produce will remain good is air circulation. You have to have really good air circulation around produce. Bagged salads, slaws, etc. will go bad quicker (even if they are unopened) if they are stored so that they don't have proper air circulation around them. In the case of the carrots, I would recommend opening one end of the bag so that they can get air.

Overall, I would rceommend that produce be stored in the produce crisper in your refrigerator. Crispers are designed to maintain an appropriate temperature and level of humidity that will help produce stay fresh longer.

If your refrigerator does not have a crisper, I would get a plastic rectangular container and place it on the bottom shelf of your refrigerator to use as a make shift crisper. If possible, cut one inch holes generously in the lid to allow for air flow. If you don't have a way to do this, leave the lid off.

Regarding using the carrots, I would be reluctant without knowing with certainty what the black is and probably would not use them.


Can one become ill from consuming food smoked with wood that contains a common fungus?

The first thing I would suggest is finding a copy of "Food and Beverage Mycology, 2nd. Edition" by Larry R. Beuchat. There are two chapters that are directly pertinent to your question: "field and storage fungi" (p211-232) and "mycotoxins" (p517-570). However, in order to specifically answer the question, one would need to be familiar with three additional chapters: 50 pages of classification of yeast and molds at the beginning of the book, and two equally substantial chapters on detection of mycotoxins and fungi.

Without identifying the exact species of fungus on the wood, and therefore what particular toxins it may produce (many produce toxins that are harmful to us, some produce ones that are only harmful to other fungi), it is impossible to say that it is safe to smoke with this wood. Some of the toxins may be degraded by heat, some may become even more hazardous. Even with all of my equipment in my "kitchen lab" (including an incubator that I use for growing edible fungi), I would just use the mold-covered wood for a nice fire around which my neighbors could gather and share some barbecue smoked on clean, dry wood (scientific studies show that soaking wood does not actually do anything but get the very outside layer wet).


I've never made seitan, but just like when making bread, gluten needs water to activate. I don't know the precise amount. Oil, if anything, has the opposite effect, coating the gluten molecules and keeping them from linking up, which is why we use fat in pastries to keep them from getting tough.


How do you control the level of liquid that comes out of a piece of meat when you bite it?

Did you rest the second steak, the one you liked better?

Resting meat after cooking is an influential variable in controlling juice release. This article discusses [I am not affiliated with the link].

From the article:

  ...as one surface of the meat hits the hot pan (or grill), the juices in that surface are forced away towards the center, increasing the concentration of moisture in the middle of the steak. Once the steak gets flipped over, the same thing happens on the other side. The center of the steak becomes supersaturated with liquid—there's more liquid in there than it can hold on to—so when you slice it open, all that extra liquid pours out. By resting the steaks, you allow all that liquid that was forced out of the edges and into the center time to migrate back out to the edges.

A picture from least rested to most rested steaks, from the article linked above. Cut at 2 1/2 minute intervals.

\

Important distinction: The rested steak is not less juicy, it has the same moisture. It's just that it is better contained in the meat while you eat. I suspect that's what you liked about your second steak.

There could be other factors in your experience: seasoning, grill temps, starting temp of the the cut, etc. But resting is probably the most influential.

I rest my steaks for 7 to 10 minutes with a piece of aluminum foil lightly laying over the top.


Do all new cast iron pans and skillets have a protective coating on them, which must be removed?

This coating is not the same thing as a seasoning.

Iron rusts when exposed to air. For cooking purposes, you season it, and it prevents rusting. Some manufacturers sell their iron cookware pre-seasoned, but others use other types of coating to prevent rust. This other coating can consist of wax or petroleum products such as parafin. Its only purpose is to seal the pan air-tight for the time it spends in warehouses and stores. It would melt during cooking and mix with your food. Therefore, you can't use it instead of seasoning.

But you can't season a pan "on top" of the wax coating. The real seasoning would stick to the wax, and when the wax melts, the seasoning will come off. Therefore, you have to remove the wax coating before making a normal seasoning from polymerized oil.

If you bought a pan which was seasoned instead of wax-coated, you can start using it without any removing and re-seasoning.


Pork sausage - difference in food guidelines

The StillTasty link you give for the sausages is for all types of fresh, raw sausages, not just pork. That's why it's labeled "SAUSAGES (INCLUDING PORK, BEEF, CHICKEN OR TURKEY) — FRESH, RAW".

Most likely, they're getting the 1–2-day limit from the chicken sausages (which are likely to have a higher initial bacteria load than pork or beef). Note that they give the same 1–2-day limit for raw ground chicken.

That said, if the manufacturer gives you specific advice, it overrides the general advice from sites like StillTasty. They know their specific product. Their specific formulation probably includes things (salt, acids, preservatives, various spices) which slow bacterial growth, thus keeping it good longer.


How to reduce microwave power to prevent burned popcorn?

A glass of water in the microwave will result in less microwave energy reaching the popcorn.  I use a large glass of water (8 - 12 oz.) when I'm softening butter because I want the water to absorb most of the energy.  For popcorn, you may get by with 2-4 ounces of water.

I've also found that the amount of oil makes a huge difference.  I sometimes pop popcorn in a paper lunch bag.  If I don't use any oil, I get the combination of burnt and unpopped you described.  With a teaspoon of oil added to 1/3 cup of popcorn, results are a lot better.  Perhaps you just need a little more oil to get great popcorn.


What is the correct consistency of a cream soup?

The 'correct' consistency is very opinionable. The 'coat the back of a spoon' instruction means that you dip a spoon in the cream, then run your finger over the back of the spoon, and if the soup stays apart, it's at least as thick as it should be... but maybe thicker (than you'd like).

The problem is the amount of time that the soup stays on the stove, as it keeps on thickening as moisture evaporates. That is why you'll get heavy soups. Add water, to make the soup as thin as your own preference.


Are these almond cookies likely to be a success if I make them vegan by substituting coconut oil for butter?

Summary
Pure coconut oil is not an adequate replacement for butter in this recipe. However, coconut oil and water appears to work as a substitution when using ratios between 4:1 and a 5:1 coconut oil to water by mass.
Cookies produced with pure coconut oil fall apart when touched. Ratios of 4:1 and 13:2 coconut oil:water worked in my test.
However, the substitutions tested did not produce an exact match for the recipe produced with butter. (h/t rumtscho for catching the omission of reasons to predict this outcome).
Empirical Tests
Test Procedure
I used a batch size that was 1/3 that of the included recipe, or

32g Almond Flour
7g Confectioner's Sugar
Equivalent* of 1/2 ounce butter
A pinch of salt (quantity too small to measure)

The butter equivalents tested were:

15g Coconut Oil
13g Coconut Oil and 2g water
12g Coconut Oil and 3g water
1 tbsp butter, as marked on the butter package (16g in this trial)

Batches were mixed in the order specified in the butter equivalents list on the same equipment. All batches were placed on a single tray and baked at the same time
Two of the batches were divided into 6 cookies instead of 5 to make them distinguishable from the other batches.
Results
Coconut Oil, No Water
Cookies produced with a 1:1 replacement of butter with coconut oil were extremely fragile. I believe this reproduces the result reported in the complaint cited in the question.
I decided to give up trying to transfer them to a cooling rack after fracturing all cookies in the batch multiple times, so I do not have post-cooling observations for this batch.
Coconut Oil and Water, (13:2) ratio
Cookies hold their shape when handled but crumble readily when chewed. Compared to butter cookies, these are slightly harder along the bottom, and have more snap (it takes some effort to break by bending).
Coconut Oil and Water, (12:3) ratio
I was not able to notice a difference between cookies of this batch and cookies of the 13:2 coconut oil to water ratio batch.
Butter
Note that 16g of butter (instead of the planned 14g) was used, possibly skewing comparisons.
Cookies produced with butter produced results that were between that of the coconut cookies with and without added water; they crumble easily in the mouth but not during handling, and can be broken easily by hand.
Conjecture and References
Some wheat shortbreads are made with oil and water instead of butter, so having an oil and water emulsion as a replacement for butter may not be critical; therefore, it may suffice to simply replicate the fat:water ratio of butter, which is approximately 5:1 by mass.
The existence of vegan shortbread recipes that use vegan butter substitutes suggests that commonly-used vegan butter substitutes may also be acceptable; building on the earlier conjecture, it may suffice to replicate the fat:water ratio of a commercially-available vegan butter substitute. Earth Balance has a 4:1 fat:water ratio by mass.
The original conjecture before empirical tests was that coconut oil and water added in a 5:1 or 4:1 ratio by mass would be an acceptable substitute for butter.
Dairy Butter Characteristics
Dairy butter has a nonzero amount of water. This American source reports about 16% water and 82% fat for American butters.
Using these numbers, this recipe contains about 42.5g butter, which contains about 6.8g (or ml) water. Substituting butter with pure oil removes 6.8 out of 9.3ml of non-oil wet ingredients (2.5ml from the vanilla extract); if non-oil wet ingredients are important, this is a significant change.
As noted by rumtscho in a comment, butter is an emulsion of water and fat and may behave differently in a recipe compared to adding an equivalent amount of fat and water. A difference between butter and coconut oil with added water was observed in empirical tests.
Vegan Butter Substitutes
Earth Balance original spread (easier to read form here) has a significant amount of water. From the calorie counts (assuming 9 Calories per gram of fat) and the fact that ingredients other than oil and water are listed as  <2% ingredients, Earth Balance appears to be around 20% water.
Other Shortbread Recipes
So far, I have not found a directly-comparable recipe.
I found three recipes for wheat shortbread; one without any added water, another that adds water in the form of syrup, and a third that suggests adding plant milk as a binder but discourages it. The first recipe is evidence against the inference that added water is strictly necessary. The third recipe is weak evidence that it is not necessary to have all fat and water emulsified beforehand.
However, almonds and wheat flour have considerably different characteristics, so it may not be straightforward to generalize from successful wheat flour recipes.


Is there a maximum amount of time heavy cream can be fermented?

It is the opposite. Fermenting lowers the pH of the cream, making it taste sour. And the time you can ferment it is limited by how sour you can stand to eat it. If you ferment it for too long, the taste will be simply unpleasant.

Typical fermentation times are similar to yogurt and will depend on your culture. I ferment with thermophillic lactobacilii bulgaricus for about 8 hours. I don't know for sure when it will become too sour, you could just let a batch sit for longer and note the taste, until you see no improvement. If you use other cultures, you will have to inform yourself about the preferred fermentation times. Also, if you want a certain product, you will obviously be limited by how the product is supposed to taste, for exapmle creme fraiche is intended to be very mild and most people won't appreciate it if you fermented it to a more sour state.


As long as the surface isn't rough (i.e. with burned-on bits of food) then yes, the patina should be a dark brown or black.

That's more-or-less what a patina is; it's essentially tarnish, the result of cumulative oxidation, which normally happens to some metals anyway but is accelerated by the rapid oxidation of oils via high heat.

If you end up with a slick, evenly-distributed black layer, then you've seasoned it perfectly. If it's streaky or splotchy then you need to start over by scouring it down.

(P.S. Carbon steel is different from, for example, cast iron, because the latter is porous and you'll never see that perfect black, just a noticeable darkening.)


What precautions should be taken while cooking a thin steak?

Sounds like it's time for a steak sandwich.  Grill it up in a frying pan, add some cheese and top with sauteed onions, mushrooms and peppers and serve it on a toasted baguette.  You said the steak was thin, so make sure not to overcook it.  Cook up the veggies first, then the steak.

No idea if its halal or not, but it sure will taste amazing.


Do I need more fermentation? Why my sourdough is flattened?

First of all, that's quite a decent looking loaf. It doesn't look dense or overly pancaked. The crumb is consistent, with good bubble formation. A lot of amateur bakers would be quite proud to achieve that result. So give yourself a pat on the back before you start trying to improve further.
Now, 82% hydration is quite high, even for a whole wheat loaf. High hydration free-form whole wheat loaves are notoriously difficult to shape well, simply because the dough is so loose. Careful shaping and skillful oven control (including steam) are necessary to get a good loft in those circumstances.
Now, three hours at room temperature is not enough time to develop significant sourdough taste. Neither is ten hours in the refrigerator. (Ten hours in a cool room would be closer.) As more fermentation occurs, however, the gluten structure will weaken, leading to a flatter loaf.
So overall, I'd suggest you try a lower hydration and a longer cold rest (but, if possible, at a slightly higher temperature than your refrigerator).


Does the fruit label get put on a bad spot, or does the bad spot develop as a result of the label?

A few years ago I had the rare chance to take a look behind the scenes of the largest manufacturer of fruit sorting, labeling and packaging equipment in the Pacific Northwest and it was impressive to see how much effort and planning goes into designing everything in a way that damage to fruit is avoided at all costs. We talked about how the business evolved and what the biggest challenges are.

And yes, the stickers are a crucial part. Developing a glue that is food-safe, will stick well and come off without damaging the fruit is a challenge and different manufacturers have solved it more or less well. If you observe carefully, you will notice that the stickers will behave differently.

There are two main ways how stickers can lead to damage:

Too much local pressure when applying the stickers and
A glue that is too sticky and tears the fruit when the sticker is pulled off.

The former will result in a soft spot or other blemish, the latter is visibly fresh. Soft-skinned fruit like peaches are much more prone to damage and a real challenge compared to e.g. apples. The damage is not unavoidable, a lot depends on the settings of the equipment and a good operating personnel.

But I can assure you that no fruit packaging plant will “cover up” blemishes with a sticker - simply because they label way too many pieces per hour. Blemished fruit will be sorted out before packaging, damaged fruit in packs will typically mean the whole package is rejected by wholesalers - because they won’t travel and store well.

Knowing all this, one of my pet peeves is supermarket workers that think refilling displays is best done by upending boxes of apples, but that’s not part of your question.


I wouldn't see it as safe to eat. I cannot imagine that the acetone was present when you bought the bread (QA should have caught this if it happens every now and then), so it must be the byproduct of some microorganism chomping down on the bread. Especially if you say that it develops over time.

On the chance that it is mold (this is more common in bread than bacteria), try keeping it with less humidity. If it is in a plastic bag or in a bread box, stop doing that. Use a paper bag or leave it naked, and not in the direct way of fumes (e.g. a shelf above the stove).

Seeing that this bread has sprouted grains in it, it could even be moist enough to have bacteria colonizing it. Still, the remedy is the same. Store it in a dry location.


What is the difference between whole grain mustard and regular yellow mustard?

Yes, there is (generally) a significant taste difference between whole grain mustard and regular yellow mustard.  Texture plays a part of it, but it is secondary to the overall difference in flavor.

I say generally because there's a lot of variation in each, and some extremes of one type may approach some extremes of the other type in flavor.

Yellow mustard is usually very mild, and vinegar plays a very strong role in the flavor.

Whole grain mustard is usually stronger than yellow, and the vinegar flavor is much less pronounced, if not altogether absent.

In many situations, one type can usually be substituted for the other, although it is a matter of personal preference, and many people will argue that some uses of mustard are appropriate for one type, but not the other (for example, I would never use yellow mustard as a condiment for cheese and crackers, but I would use a whole grain mustard for some types of cheese).


Japanese knives for someone who can't sharpen freehand?

You can sharpen the Japanese knife to 17 degrees.  It won't be ruined or anything.  I'm sure I just horrified some people, but I accidentally did this for years, sharpening my Victorinox knives at 22 degrees (because they're European, so obviously they're 22 degrees, right?) when they're factory sharpened to 17 degrees, so I've got real-world experience here even if I shouldn't admit it. :)

Otherwise, check out a sharpener built for Japanese knives instead.  I've had fantastic results with this model from Chef's Choice:
https://www.amazon.com/Choice-Trizor-EdgeSelect-Electric-Sharpener/dp/B0018RSEMU/


How can I substitute or make soft brown sugar?

Put the regular (refined white) sugar and molasses (about 2 tablespoons per cup of sugar) in a food processor and give it a spin. Use more or less molasses as needed to get the color and consistency that you want.


Flavor of wasabi, horseradish, mustard, capers, and jalapeño

Mustard, horseradish and a few others are sometimes grouped together as "pungent", which can also include aliums, ginger, and other strong flavors.

But it's a pretty fuzzy category.  Some people might not include hot peppers (but still include other types of "pepper").  Some might include other objectionable flavors that can overwhelm a dish if not used sparingly (so for me, cilantro, for you, capers).