Does freezing butter or margarine change the properties?

Butter and margarine freeze perfectly.  I generally stock up during sales and thaw it as needed. You just have to make sure it's wrapped tightly in the foil, to prevent oxidation.  It'll keep at least 6 months, probably more if you don't have a self-defrosting freezer.

Thawing butter does take quite a while, however.  I usually give a package a few days to thaw fully. If you need butter in a hurry, you can always put it in a Ziploc bag and fast thaw it a bowl under running running water.  Or, just soften it in the microwave.


Can agave nectar be substituted for honey in baking?

You can use agave nectar instead of honey or sugar if you modify your recipe a bit by lowering the amount of liquids.   Agave nectar has more water than honey and is sweeter than honey (about 50% sweeter).

Honey
Fructose: 41%,
Glucose: 36%,
Water: 18%

Agave nectar
Fructose: 53%,
Glucose: 15%,
Water: 25%

As a starting point in modifying the recipe, keep the amount of water fixed by using less agave nectar than honey (amount of agave = 0.72 amount of honey).  Also, dishes made with agave nectar will brown faster than those made with honey because of the agave's higher fructose content.  Start checking a little earlier.


If you're working with something acidic like a jam, you can indeed process the jars in hot water. This is sufficient to kill any pathogens that got sealed in with the product and can thrive in an acidic, high-sugar environment like jam. Since the water bath also seals the jar, nothing can enter the sealed jars, the jam is now shelf-stable. In your case, the spread is unlikely to be acidic enough that water bath canning is sufficient to preserve it.
You should look into pressure canning instead. You would need a pressure cooker for this, which will let you process the jars at a higher temperature than a water bath allows. There's also some concern around the fat in your spread (I assume it's based on something like coconut oil?). Fat can interfere with the seal and prevent the jars from sealing properly, and it can also go rancid even if the jars sealed correctly.
You would need to reach out to the food safety agency in your country to see what requirements they have on similar products, and likely have a food safety lab test your sealed product to determine that it's safe for as long as whatever your best-before date says.


Can I add frozen vegetables to my thawed chicken meat in a slow cooker?

Most slow cooker instruction manuals tell you to put the food in hot for most recipes. For traditional crockery inner pots the list of foods that can be cooked from cold (never mind frozen) is quite short and consists mainly of foods that are stable at room temperature. So you were marginal to start with (less so for some "auto"  modes).

If you put the veg in then realised (almost) straight away, just bring it to the boil and carry on cooking. Of course don't use a crockery pot on the stove top or a metal one in the microwave.

If it's been sitting lukewarm for some time you're on your own. It couldn't be deemed safe.


How to turn pasta sauce into a longer-lasting ketchup?

Ketchup keeps because it is full of sugar (reduces water activity) and vinegar (acid, keeps microbes and especially molds at bay). A boatload of both. Look at a ketchup recipe for reference...


What's the difference between using stock and water?

While the liquid that you end up with in your pie will be similar to beef stock in that it has had beef cooked in it, the difference is that the flavor compounds will have cooked out of the beef already in your dish. This means it's basically just diluting the flavor of your beef.

If you start with stock on the other hand, there is beef flavor is in the stock itself so it's actually adding more flavor compounds to your dish rather than just spreading around the ones already there.


This is not really an answer,

but rather a report on an experiment.

After the discussion here I got very curious and wanted to compare what I would call a "yeast cake" (even though this is against the traditional definition, but the texture is more or less that of a spongy cake/quick bread) to the "same" cake made with baking powder.

To perform the comparison I divided all ingredients in two and the only difference between them was the leavening.

I tried to keep it really simple, and threw together some ingredients that I had in the house (using a simple quick-bread/muffin method).

Just so you have the feeling of what the batter was like, I will add my experimental

materials:

For each cake I used:

2 ¼ cups soy milk
¾ cup baking margarine
3 cups all-purpose flour (type 550)
2 cups raw sugar
¼ cup cornstarch
½ tsp ground vanilla pods

Then for one (A) I added:

1 ½ tsp dry yeast
2 tbsp sugar

and for the other one (B) I used:

1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
2 tbsp cider vinegar

For both I warmed up the milk and margarine just enough that it melted and added the vanilla, then let it cool down.

For A I then added the extra 2 tbsp of sugar and the yeast, and let the yeast get activated and work for an hour - the soy milk curdled and completely separated. When I made B I added the vinegar to the milk mixture and mixed - the soy milk got thicker and curdled a little. The baking powder and baking soda I added to the dry ingredients.

After waiting for an hour for A to do its thing (of course B was ready to put in the oven instantly), I poured the milk mixture into the combined dry ingredients and gently stirred, just enough for the components to combine. I poured the batters into oiled and floured pans and baked each cake on its own in a preheated oven for 40 minutes (this is when both passed the skewer test) at 350 F.

Results:

Both cakes rose to 2.5 times the batter height/level. However, B rose more evenly, whereas A rose a bit less towards the edge of the pan. B smelled like a normal cake/quick-bread, but A filled the house with a "doughnuty" smell (the most scientific term that can be used here would probably be: super yummy). When cooled and cut, both had a really (equally) nice bouncy, fluffy, slightly crumbly spongy texture. A had a bit more and larger trapped bubbles, see figures 1 and 2.

One of my taste testers (or is it test tasters) is quite sensitive to baking powder, and said B tasted a bit too much like baking powder. Everyone agreed that A tested a bit more complex. Both cakes would probably have been better with some nuts or chocolate or fruit, but I avoided these in order to have less complex experimental conditions, to make the cakes easier to compare.

Fig. 1: Side-by-side comparison of the yeast leavened "cake" (left) and the baking powder leavened cake (right).

Fig. 2: Zoomed in image of the yeast leavened "cake" (left) and the baking powder leavened cake (right).

The experiment was performed using an electric oven as I don't have a bread machine. A comparison between this two would be interesting as well.


What features should a food processor have in order to make nut butters?

Resurrecting this thread in case people end up searching for it.

The only requirement for which food processor is that the motor is powerful.  Underpowered will tax the motor too much. If the FP says that you can knead bread dough in it, it almost certainly will be fine.  Run long enough with a cutting blade, and you will get a smooth butter.

Blenders mainly have powerful enough motors, but they are not shaped properly to get thick/pasty substances in contact with the blades.  My Vitamix would work for a cup of nuts, but more would be too annoying.

Top end Breville FP that I have will make smooth nut butters, with the caveat that some nuts (hazelnut. Walnut) always feel somewhat “pasty” in comparison to peanuts or cashews.  I don’t add additional oil, so perhaps if I did so the mouth feel would be better.


Why do my English muffins have such a tough crust?

I strongly suspect that it's the trip to the oven that's making those muffins tough.
My personal recipe for sourdough muffins does not involve baking them; they are cooked entirely on the griddle.  I checked three different sourdough muffin recipes (1, 2, 3) and none of them used the oven either.
So my suggestion is that you try cooking them entirely on the stovetop and omit the oven.  This will require longer cooking on the griddle to make sure they're done all the way through; I suggest checking with an instant-read thermometer (should be 90C in the center).  I don't suggest lowering the griddle heat, which should be around 175C ... cooking them longer may actually toughen them.
The second thing I notice is that almost every sourdough recipe I've checked has some kind of fat in it, usually butter or whole milk, and the recipe you linked does not.  The recipe I've tried that doesn't is Arizmendi Bakery's, which are also very chewy and tough to bite into (I like them, but I suspect you wouldn't).  So adding some kind of fat to the recipe would probably help your crust texture; it generally does with bread.
There's other general tips to peruse, just in case you're running afoul of something else like using way too much flour during kneading.
It's also true, though, that different sourdough cultures can result in chewier (or less chewy) crusts.  So if eliminating the oven step and adding fat doesn't work, I'd suggest testing a non-sourdough recipe to see if you're having the same issue there.


How many grams of gelatin are in stock/broth?

This is going to be tough to answer. Too many variables.

I pressure cook all my saved chicken bones until they can be pulverized easily between two fingers (only about 1 hour). Then I reduce the stock from 3 quarts down to about one. When cooled and poured into a can-and-freeze jar it will typically gel at room temperature.

The answer depends highly on the amount of feet used, the amount of water it was cooked in and how much reduction is preformed.


Is there any way to salvage an old rusted wok?

Hi Leigh Anne and welcome to Seasoned Advice! First let me say that you will probably get a few different answers as many of us have different ways of handling such issues.

Since you had what sounded like a pretty good amount of rust to start with, I would recommend a thorough cleaning with steel wool to ensure that you have removed all of the rust. Be sure to rinse well and dry thoroughly.

Regarding the type of oil, I would recommend a good quality vegetable oil. You could also use a good quality vegetable shortening. Make sure to apply a very thin layer and wipe off any excess, especially since you are not using the wok frequently. Any excess residue can become sticky or gunky when the pan is left to sit for a period.

As for gas burner or oven, that is really your choice. I personally would use a gas burner but many prefer using the oven.

All in all, it sounds like you already have a pretty good handle on this. A couple of other things you may want to consider, though. Even though you are keeping the pan in the open air, humidity may be a factor. Also, if you live near a body of salt water, salt in the air could be a problem. You may want to consider keeping the wok in a closed plastic bag. (I do this with any cookware that hangs or sits outside of the cabinet to ensure it's always clean and dust-free when I am ready to use it.)

Good luck! :)


Butter:  Butter is an emulsion of fat and water (more or less)—it is typically around 80-82% fat (European butters tend to have a little more fat, American butters tend to have a bit less)—and this fat is solid at room temperature.  This suggests that a good substitute for butter would be another solid-at-room temperature fat (such as coconut oil, lard, bacon grease, etc), plus a little bit of water.
Personally, I have had luck with coconut oil and a splash of coconut milk when cooking for vegan friends, but this leaves the sauce tasting a little coconutty.  Lard or bacon grease will similarly flavour the sauce, but this may not be a negative—macaroni and cheese with bacon, for example, is a great combination.  Olive, canola, and peanut oils have also worked for me in the past, but result in a slightly different texture at the end of the day (which you likely wouldn't even notice in a casserole like moussaka or lasagne).
That being said, butter has very little lactose in it.  A lot of people who are lactose intolerant do not have difficulty with butter.  It might be worth experimenting with your child to determine whether or not butter is a problem (e.g. go through the process of an elimination diet, and add butter back into the diet in a controlled manner to see if is tolerated).

Milk:  As noted above, I have had good luck with coconut milk.  Because the phrase "coconut milk" can be ambiguous, I specifically mean something like Thai Kitchen's unsweetened coconut milk.  It should be noted that this has a much higher fat content than dairy milk, so you may want to water it down a bit.  Nut milks, soy milk, or oat milk should also work well—you are really just looking to get something that is mostly water with a bit of fat in it.
You could also consider lactose-free milk.  There are a number of commercially available brands of lactose-free dairy milk, which are made by treating milk with with the lactase enzyme (this is an enzyme which breaks down lactose, and is produced naturally by most people—lactose intolerance is generally the result of a person's inability to produce lactase).
Another alternative would be to consider the milk of another animal—my understanding is that there is some anecdotal evidence that goat's milk is often better tolerated by people with mild lactose intolerance.  Goat's milk has about as much lactose as cow's milk, but is apparently otherwise easier to digest.  Again, experimentation with an elimination diet might prove fruitful.  On the other hand, goat's milk has a rather distinctive flavor which many people find off-putting, so maybe not.

Cheese:  I have never found a non-dairy cheese which I thought was any good.  There do exist vegan cheeses, some of which even seem to melt like dairy cheese, but I (personally) find them all to be quite bland and unappealing.  They compare favorably to Kraft singles, but that seems to be damning with faint praise.  That being said, taste is personal, and your milage may vary.  Vegan cheeses are meant to replace dairy cheese in a one-to-one manner, so if you find a vegan cheese you like, it should
On the other hand, cheese often has far less lactose than milk, and the longer a cheese has fermented and aged, the less lactose it is likely to contain.  I am not sure what to do about the ricotta in a lasagne (assuming that you use ricotta in your lasagne), but the parmesan should be well-tolerated as it typically contains almost no lactose.  For other cheeses, as a rough rule of thumb, the older and harder a cheese is, the more likely it is that it will be well-tolerated by a person with lactose intolerance.
Again, an elimination diet might be in order.


Butter largely acts to prevent the crystallization of sugar in toffee. This leaves the toffee smooth and breakable.

  Fats in candy serve a similar purpose. Fatty ingredients such as
  butter help interfere with crystallization—again, by getting in the
  way of the sucrose molecules that are trying to lock together into
  crystals. Toffee owes its smooth texture and easy breakability to an
  absence of sugar crystals, thanks to a large amount of butter in the
  mix.
  There's more about the role of ingredients in candies here.

You should still be able to make stickjaw (or, if not authentic stickjaw, at least a more sticky) toffee. The consistency of toffee has more to do with the temperature you bring the toffee to while cooking. Here's a chart detailing the various stages of candy temperatures. For a sticky toffee you'd most likely want to bring your toffee to the soft-crack stage.

Here is a recipe for authentic, old-fashioned, stickjaw toffee but without butter.


Can you create brown butter directly from heavy cream?

Yes, this is a brown butter. You can use it in pretty much all applications which call for standard-made brown butter.
In the traditional process, first almost all of the water is removed from the cream, along with a large part of the nonfat milk solids. This gives you butter, in which the butterfat is emulsified with a small amount of water, and the remaining milk solids are dispersed. When you heat it, the water evaporates, and the solids undergo browning processes (caramelization, probably some Maillard for the proteins).
In your case, you are simply skipping the mechanical removal of the water. Instead, you are evaporating all water by heat. No milk solids are removed - from my point of view, this is an advantage, as you now have more stuff that goes tasty while browning.
You can certainly use this in cookies. As for the question of the taste being "overpowering", this is up to your subjective taste. If you don't like it, you can switch back to more standard browned butter, or mix this one with normal butter, ghee, or some other solid fat.


Milk substitute for ice cream and others

Ciao Bella has an excellent 'coconut sorbet', that had the creamy quality of ice cream, without any actual dairy.

They released a cookbook a few years ago, and although I don't have it, I did browse through it in a store ... I don't remember the whole recipe, but I recall there being actual coconut meat in it, not just coconut milk.  I don't remember there being any other starches or thickeners in it.


Does mayo "break"/decompose if you stop whisking then whisk the other way?

Welcome to the world of urban legends and old wives' tales.

Handmade mayonnaise can be a fickle thing to create if you don't work within the laws of physics and chemistry and don't achieve the desired emulsion. So like with other tricky processes, many "rules" have developed, that are more myth than method. (I was even told once to "always stir counter-clockwise"...)

If you think closely, it becomes obvious that an emulsion - for mayonnaise, tiny particles of oil suspended in water - is something completely different from tiny strands of something. One can not "unwind" or separate by stirring in the opposite direction.

My personal theory for the origin of the "don't change direction" rule is that if you constantly stir in one direction, you reach some kind of "flow state" and work in a steady rythm - the latter being far more important for a good whipping or stirring result than any direction. And that the rule predates the use of electric kitchen equipment, going back to the times where all whipping was done by hand.


What is a refrigerator tray in older recipes?

I ran a quick search on ebay Images.  Looks like a refrigerator tray is a shallow glass or enameled dish.  I saw a few plastic ones, also from the 60s-70s.


I would recommend you find a (hobby) baker locally. Almost everyone who maintains a sourdough has some extra that they would otherwise discard. I have read about local Facebook groups etc. of people sharing their starters during the pandemic (when sourdough suddenly was “a thing” and weirdly enough yeast was hard to get at times), including  contact-less drop-offs and similar. I have shared my starter(s) freely with everyone who asked for it in the past. Even repeatedly for one-time-bakers as you are planning to be.
The charm of this approach is that you can make new acquaintances that way and that the shared starter most likely will come with a bit of an explanation as to the specific culture’s temperament. They might even be willing to share a few favorite recipes and give you some hits that a generic recipe doesn’t have.
That said, if you have an established starter, it’s really not that much of a problem if you bake only once in a blue moon. Mine is parked in the fridge, sometimes for months on end, without further care. A bit of pampering and it’s as good as new, ready to climb out of the jar.


Does the sugar used in the curing process of Gravlax add to the caloric value of the final product?

The salt and sugar used in gravlax will largely be absorbed into the salmon. Gravlax doesn't produce a lot of brine, and in my experience none of the dissolvable components of the surface treatment remain undissolved after curing.


Why do Duck eggs have longer expiry than Chicken Eggs?

First of all, eggs are generally much more robust than commonly thought. Food safety advices for eggs vary a lot, but healthy (chicken) eggs can stay good for many months. If the eggs are contaminated with bacteria when laid or during processing, they can of course spoil or rot before their "best before" date as well. I didn't find any publications, but in this interview, a researcher from Nofima (a Norwegian food research institute) tells that they were not able to find any harmful bacteria in 7 months old eggs and even after 12 months, eggs are usually edible.

Back to the difference between chicken and duck eggs ... Chicken eggs are good for at least three weeks even without refrigeration. The reason for this is that the eggs contain natural preservatives, which are required for the egg to stay good during the nesting period. The natural purpose of the egg is of course to provide nutrition to the contained chicken, and it would probably not do the chicken any good, if it has to stay with a rotten egg yolk for several weeks. It varies between different duck species, but ducks generally breed their eggs much longer than hens. I am now just assuming, but I suppose that duck eggs have a similar natural protection as well, to keep them good throughout the longer breeding period and that may explain the longer recommended shelf life for duck eggs.


How well do frozen oranges peel after frozen?

Well, it wouldn't cost much to figure it out! I'll try a guess, though, and say that it will make peeling MORE difficult. The peel will be stiffer, and I think the pith might be even more likely to stick to the orange flesh, and maybe less likely to stick to the outer peel. But I'd like to know what your results are if you test it.

I'd say if you're having a lot of trouble peeling your orange, I've heard that giving it a good squeeze before starting can help, and there are also some easy-peel varieties out there now.

And of course the pith won't hurt you and unless you leave almost all of it, you're not likely to notice it after you run it through a blender with the rest of the orange!


How can I make my carrot cake taste more carroty

You could try a few different tactics:

Use some roasted carrots. Roasting intensifies the flavour by removing water. Try not to brown them too much though, which will give them a burnt-sugar taste.
Use complimentary spices. Mace, which is the dried membrane that surrounds nutmeg, compliments and enhances the flavour of carrots very well. If you can't find mace, try nutmeg itself.
Reduce carrot juice. Simmer until syrupy and add to the cake. You might need a little more flour to compensate for the extra liquid.


Can I make "falafel" with different beans?

Yes, you can, however if you want to use red kidney beans, or white kidney beans (cannellini), please boil them at least 30 minutes at 100 °C, otherwise you might suffer from food poisoning.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytohaemagglutinin

Regarding taste, in the original recipes there is no need for eggs as an binding agent, so you can taste as you go. Go with the usual onion, garlic, fresh parsley, coriander, cumin and flour (+ obvious salt and pepper to taste), but you can add also a bit of mint and/or rosemary that goes nicely with the beans.

Also, you can do test ping pong ball sized specimen, fry em up, and taste which one is the best, then season accordingly the whole batch before frying.


Some of your 'shortcuts' are not good ideas. Definitely start with cold water. Definitely bring up the temp slowly. Definitely do not boil. Do add aromatics upfront to the broth, but remove them as they get mushy so they don't cloud it.

Standard ratio for beef broth would be: 8 pounds of bones to 6 quarts of water to 1 pound of veggies (onion, leek, carrot) to one 'boquet garni', essentially garlic, rosemary, anise flavoring for pho, and bay leaf, plus whatever else I forgot.

If you have 'pond water', which I interpret as thin-tasting, you probably put too much water in the second time -- this is fixable by slowly evaporating out the water until it gets to a good texture. If you skimmed properly, it will be clear as you do this. I will typically strain through a kitchen towel or cheesecloth as the liquid evaporates down.

I'm guessing you put in like a gallon of water, so you had like three or four times too much water.

As a warning which you probably already know, you are not going to be able to duplicate your local pho joint's broth -- the broth recipe is the thing for pho makers, and they probably have a bunch of tricks they use, including using a neverending supply of yesterdays pho, that you won't be able to do at home. That said, you should be able to get a good beef broth if you follow some basic rules for making stock.


Matcha doesn't dissolve.

It is very finely ground to be suspended in water after very vigorous whisking when the preparation is done the traditional way.

A few tips for your matcha latte:

Use good, high quality matcha. High quality matcha is bright green and a very fine powder (almost like confectioner's sugar or cornstarch) - this helps keeping it suspended in liquid
Whisk very vigorously with the appropriate tools. Traditional tea ceremony uses a bamboo whisk with a lot of room in the bowl to make sure the tea is very well suspended and aerated, and the fork is not the best tool for that. Use a fouet and prepare in a bowl or, if possible, use a blender (a bullet blender or immersion blender would work for small quantities). If all things fail, even a nutritional supplement shaker (the one that has a wire ball inside to help dissolve whey) would be more effective.


The lay person's procedure is: Take your flour and weigh a sample, then wash away the starch and weigh the sample.

Here is a video showing a procedure that you can do at home. I would suggest doing this procedure with a control sample (a flour where you know the protein content to determine your accuracy) before doing with your target sample.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6oQNo4gpeE

Here is a more scientific approach:

The amount of protein in a food material is usually determined by measuring the nitrogen content of the material and multiplying that value by a factor. The nitrogen content of a given protein varies depending on its source. For milk products a factor of 6.38 is used, for most cereal grains the factor is 6.25, and in wheat products the factor is 5.70. These factors depend on the percentage of nitrogen in the respective proteins.

The flour protein content is an important parameter for bread flour. Flours containing higher protein contents are more expensive than flours of lower protein content. Likewise, flours with very low proteins for cakes are also more expensive. There is usually, but not always, a good correlation between protein content and bakery performance of a flour.

The classic procedure to determine the nitrogen was the Kjeldahl procedure. This involved digesting the sample in concentrated sulfuric acid, then neutralizing the acid with concentrated sodium hydroxide, followed by distillation of the ammonia (derived from the nitrogen in the protein) into a standard acid. The procedure worked well, however it was an environmental nightmare. In addition to the strong acid and base, the catalysts used to speed the digestion included such materials as mercury and selenium. It should surprise no one that the procedure is seldom used today.

The Kjeldahl procedure has been replaced by the Dumas combustion procedure. In the original Dumas procedure the sample is mixed with cupric oxide and heated in a stream of carbon dioxide in a combustion tube packed with cupric oxide and copper metal. The organic material is converted to carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen. The gas stream is led into 50% potassium hydroxide. This absorbs the carbon dioxide and any oxides of sulfur, leaving only nitrogen as a gas. The volume of nitrogen is then determined. Various machines have been developed to carry out the analysis automatically. The percent nitrogen is then converted to protein using the appropriate factor. Both the Dumas combustion and the Kjeldahl procedures estimate the quantity (total amount) of protein and not the protein quality. As discussed elsewhere, the quantity of protein is extremely important in the baking performance of a flour.

source: https://www.ndsu.edu/faculty/simsek/wheat/flour.html


It sounds like that's a combination of protein/fat/liquid that coagulates when you cook the chicken. Was it the lower half of the chicken that had this liquid?

And if that is indeed what it is, it's safe to eat. It doesn't taste very good though, so I wouldn't recommend trying it.


Why would heating salt in a pan prevent food from sticking?

Most of the described method will help you to clean and dry your pan. A clean pan, especially when it is cast iron, is a happy pan and will work better. A clean and smooth surface, and rubbing salt on it will clean and smooth a metal surface, will also help to prevent food from sticking.

Sprinkling your pan with salt immediately before frying fish or meat is pointless. What salt does to food is to bind water and less moist things stick less. But your pan should be so hot that the little salt can't make a difference. If the salt has time to dry your food, your pan just isn't hot enough.


I'm not really sure why you would want to bother making something that by definition is fatty when you are trying to avoid fatty foods. Egg substitutes simply don't have the same flavour or richness. So, yes, you could do that. It just won't taste recognizably like quiche.You may suffer from denser texture, also.


Does this recipe want me to start with a dry-aged roast beef?

The recipe means to start out with it already dry-aged; presumably you'd just buy it like that because most people don't want to do that themselves at home. Dry-aging beef is a lot of work: you have to do it in large quantities, and it takes a long time.

The salting and leaving in the fridge is a separate thing. It's nowhere near dry-aging, and it works well for for meat in general, not just dry-aged beef. It's really just about properly salting it, with enough time for the salt to be absorbed into the meat, and for the moisture drawn out by the salt to either evaporate or be reabsorbed, leaving the surface of the meat nice and dry.


How do commercial sauce companies remove seeds from tomatoes?

In a commercial setting, i.e. a food processing plant, industrial, large capacity equipment is used. This equipment is specifically designed for this purpose and is part of the production line.

In a home setting, there are a couple of options. First is an electric tomato mill. These can be a little pricey, but are designed specifically for tomatoes and other soft fruits. Some come with different size strainers to accomodate different textures and seed sizes. Here is a link to a mid-priced unit on Amazon.

Second, and more affordable, is the manual tomato strainer and sauce maker. They are much more affordable and are designed to remove the skin and seeds while leaving the juice and pulp. Here is a link to a moderately priced and highly rated unit on Amazon. The pics for this item clearly show it discarding the seeds and skins, while keeping the juice and pulp. The texture looks quite nice, also.

To be clear, I am not endorsing these items, just using them for examples.


Are there alternatives to okra as a thickening agent?

Filé powder (ground dried sassafras leaves) would be style-appropriate.

Fresh okra is only just now coming into season in the American south.   I'm in Tennessee and most supermarkets carry fresh okra for most of the year (though it often looks quite sickly), and frozen year-round.

If it's something you enjoy, you might look into growing your own, as it tastes excellent when it's fresh picked and handled appropriately.


Looking for the name of an orange crunchy snack

Yes, it is indeed jalebi. Everyone, go out to your local Indian eatery and try it out!


What shape is a French omelette and how is it achieved?

There isn't a standardised shape as such, but the rugby ball shape is common. To achieve this shape, all you have to do is cook your omelette (French style uses a super-hot pan and lots of butter), then roll three quarters of it up in the pan.

Then nudge the omelette up the side of the pan a little, so that it partly protrudes over the edge, which will then allow you to flip the remaining quarter back over onto the rest of the omelette. You should now have a rugby ball shape with a 'seam', i.e. the edge of the omelette - simply turn this out so the 'seam' is on the plate and you have a nice smooth omelette showing on top.


Why does this recipe call for so much yeast?

Having that much yeast is doing two things for this recipe:

It will give it a nicely yeasty flavor
It will shorten the rise time.

Yeast requires water to be active. This recipe, as is often the case with enriched doughs, has very little water in it. There is water in the cream and the eggs but not much and the yeast will be competing for it with the sugar.
Because of this rich doughs often take a long time to rise.

This recipe was used by a restaurant that probably needs faster rises. The cost of the yeast is cheaper than the cost of the extra time to rise. The extra yeasty flavor is a bonus.


Calories in alcohol-based sauce brought to boil (bourbon chicken)

Chronometer uses the best scientific-quality database, which is from the USDA's FoodData Central. You can find the same data at nutritiondata.self.com, which is easier to access from a desktop computer (in my opinion).

The data set for 80 proof spirits is here. For all of them, bourbon included, the calories from not-alcohol is 0. All the calories in bourbon come from alcohol; there are no carbs, proteins or fats.

The boiling point for alcohol in spirits is around 78 C (173 F). So if you get your food hot enough for long enough, you will eventually get rid of all the alcohol. Bourbon has highly concentrated alcohol, but since the recipe calls for a rolling boil and extended simmer, I would assume that you would remove all the alcohol through cooking, leaving zero calories behind in the sauce from the bourbon.


A small shot of liquid smoke added to the bag before cooking the rack sous vide will give it a mild smokiness that captures most of the flavors of real outdoor cooking.

With a grill and wood chips you can still impart some flavor. Try to keep the temperature low (say 300°F) to avoid negating the effect of low and slow sous vide. To avoid drying it out, don't post-sous vide smoke it for more than 3 hours.

If you want the deepest smoke flavor you would want to smoke the meat from raw and could use the sous vide to finish it off (the flavorful compounds in smoke will adhere to and penetrate raw meat much better than they will cooked meat).


The idea of a "fast" oven comes from the time when wood-burning stoves without temperature gauges were the most common ones in kitchens. A fast oven is anywhere from 400-425° F.

Conversion to Fahrenheit

Very slow (very low) oven: 300-325° F.
Slow (low) oven: 325-350° F.
Moderate (medium) oven: 350-375° F.
Fast/quick (high) oven: 375-400° F.
Very fast/very quick (very high) oven: 400-425° F.

Various "modern" cookbooks that attempt to explain these terms will often give different temperatures, but the degree of difference isn't usually that great (usually about 25 degrees in either direction); what was a fast oven to one cook may only have been a moderate oven to another.

A "pastry," "bread," or "bread-baking" oven generally refers to a temperature range of 360-380° F.

(Rounded) Conversion to Celsius

Very slow (very low) oven: 150-160/170° C.
Slow (low) oven: 160/170-180° C.
Moderate (medium) oven: 180-190° C.
Fast/quick (high) oven: 190-200° C.
Very fast/very quick (very high) oven: 200-220° C.

Conversion to Gas Marks

Very slow (very low) oven: 2-3
Slow (low) oven: 3-4
Moderate (medium) oven: 4-5
Fast/quick (high) oven: 5-6
Very fast/very quick (very high) oven: 6-7

Oven To Campfire Temperature Conversion Chart
(For Use with Dutch Ovens and Charcoal)

Slow (low) oven: 6-8 briquettes below/ 12-16 on lid
Moderate (medium) oven: 8-10 briquettes below/ 16-18 on lid
Fast/quick (high) oven: 10-12 briquettes below/ 18-24 on lid


Why are bay leaves used whole and then removed rather than crushed up like other spices?

Dried bay is sometimes left in, for example this herb mix from Schwartz includes bay leaves (at less than 3%).

Dried they can easily be crushed and added as a powder, but you don't often want a lot of dried bay as the flavour can be quite overpowering.

I only use fresh bay as I have a plant outside the kitchen door and it's evergreen. Fresh, I have been known to get them fine enough to leave them in, but it's much less effort to just use them whole, perhaps slightly folded or torn (without tearing them into pieces). To leave them in you really need to make a paste or of them, using a blender/food processor (except you generally wouldn't be using enough for them to blend well). Pieces of fresh bay leaf are rather tough and prone to getting stuck in teeth, but fresh bay has a better flavour than dried.

Unlike many herbs, you don't have to put in any extra effort to prepare them for removal - they're tough and obvious, so no tying sprigs or little bags.


Sous vide is an excellent way to cook sausages, particularly those that are lower in fat, because you can avoid over cooking. I find pork sausages cooked at 140 F (60C) to be ideal. One theory is that you may have cooked them to a higher than necessary temperature.  However, sausage making technique can also contribute to dry or crumbly texture.  So, you will want to consider that as well.  For starters, try 140F for an hour (if not frozen), then sear or grill quickly.  More than two hours in the water bath could also begin to degrade the texture.


To get that gelatin you're looking, you need joint bones and lots of them.  The back, neck, tail are great for that.  If you've ever made Ox tail soup you'll know what I'm talking about as you'll get a really thick coating on your tongue from the gelatin that is disolved from the tail's connective tissues.

The reason for avoiding marrow bones is because it can make for a cloudy stock if the marrow gets broken up and the fact that marrow bones don't generally have the highest amount of connective tissues.  Cloudy stocks also are caused by boiling of the stock instead of simmering.

Typically when making stock bases, you want them to be as clear as possible so you can use them for just about anything.  A cloudy stock doesn't make a consomme look very nice.  However, if you are just going to use the stock in items which don't demand a high amount of clarity then don't worry too much.

When you go to your butcher ask for knuckle bones(joint bones) and chine bones(back bones) as your first choice.


No, as far as I know pasta made with squid ink, often called nero di seppia, should be stable, and the ink doesn't normally bleed into the water.

From my experience after boiling black pasta, even the fresh kind, the water comes out clear like with regular one, with just a bit of clear starch being left behind.

If you boil regular and black pasta mixed together the white pasta should not get significantly tainted with black color, just like when you boil tricolore type of colored pasta (those multi colored green, red and white mixes) the colors don't bleed.

You can (faintly) see in this cooking video that both the boiling water and the rinse water are not darkened.

Black ink also doesn't bleed into sauces after boiling, so you can use light colored sauces without negatively affecting it's appearance, nor does it stain containers like white ceramic of dishes or bowls.

Only situation where you should get bleeding black is for dishes where the squid ink is added to the pasta after boiling, either while stirring in the sauce or along with other ingredients, rather than being mixed into the flour.


Can I pressure can roasted sweet peppers without sugar or vinegar?

Peppers are a low acid food, so under home conditions, pressure canning will be required to do so.

See for example:  NCFHFP recipe for peppers.


Looks like roasted chickpeas which are actually a legume (related to peas & beans), but you can toast them up and eat like nuts (like you would peanuts/groundnuts which are also legumes).


Still tasty gives you 2-3 months on cheesecake in the freezer.  It will be safe indefinitely at freezing temp, but the texture will change somewhat.  As @ElendilTheTall says, foil and plastic wrap are your best bets.  Additionally, I might try freezing it for a day to get solid, and then sticking it in a vacuum sealed bag.  If your seals aren't airtight on something else, then cheesecake will pick up any funky odors in your freezers.

Congrats btw, and I'm gonna let you in on a secret about the eating the wedding cake at 1 year - it all tastes worse and some tastes really bad.  Normal or cheesecake or whatever, the cake is pretty much always bad by then, but luckily it's not about the cake taste.  It's about reliving the memories and laughing over bad cake.  So don't worry too much about if the cake is not that tasty then - take a bite,remember the wedding, and have a good chuckle.


What is an alternative in Feijoada to smoked ham or beef?

If you want to remove the meat completely, many "meat replacements" like tempeh and tofu are available in smoked varieties.  Most of these simply have liquid smoke AKA "Natural Smoke Flavoring" added as part of their process, but actual smoked varieties do exist.

Smoky flavors can also be attained from the following

Freshly roasted cumin
Spanish style smoked paprika
Chipotle or other smoked chiles
Liquid Smoke
Some porters, stouts, and especially rauchbiers
Lapsang Souchong tea
Smoked salt
Katsuobushi/Bonito flakes (also adds a distinct fish flavor)


substitution of whipping cream for water in jello

There are a variety of recipes on the web for making creamy jello.

There seem to be a few options including:

Method 1 - Using the quick-set method, add 8 oz of defrosted whipped cream topping (cool whip) after icing the Jell-o.
Method 2 - Using the regular or quick set method, replace some of the cold or cool water with cream
Method 3 - Using the regular or quick set method, replace some of the cold or cool water with melted ice cream

The links take you to examples of recipes with more in-depth discussion of the specifics but there are many others out there.


Is there a way to prep mutton in order to ease its strong flavor?

The flavor will vary greatly depending on the cut of meat and the preparation.

Different cuts (eg: chops and legs) taste very differently from one another (legs and tougher meat taste more gamey)
Ground lamb has almost no gamey flavor
Well done meat will taste less gamey than medium (Edit: regarding "done-ness" this how it tastes to me. Since answering, I've discussed this with someone else who says the opposite is their experience)
Cooking with a lot of vegetables or a flavorful starch will by contrast cut down on the strong flavor more than a bland starch. A bland starch will result in highlighting the strong gamey taste


What method can I use to cook pumpkin seeds so that they turn out crunchy?

I let mine dry after washing, then toss them in oil, sprinkle with salt, and then roast on a sheet pan

I also make sure to get in there and stir them a few times during roasting, to be sure that they all get exposed to the heat, and on both sides.


What is the difference between cheesecake and NY cheesecake?

New York-style cheesecake, made famous by Lindy's and Junior's Deli, relies upon heavy cream, cream cheese, eggs and egg yolks to add a richness and a smooth consistency. Also called Jewish-style, it is baked in a special 5- to 6-inch tall springform pan in many restaurants. Some recipes use cottage cheese and lemon for distinct texture and flavor or add chocolate or strawberry to the basic recipe.

New York style cheesecakes are cream cheese mixtures baked without a water bath and are unique because the baking starts at a high temperature (that's quickly dropped down) producing a rich interior and light brown exterior. A NY cheesecake is high, dense, and firm.

or refer this link : http://www.crumblycookie.net/2010/09/12/cheesecake-comparison/


How to make curry always come out dry\easily remove extra water?

I always just let the curry simmer in a pot with the lid off to let the water evaporate more so I have thicker curries. The other option (and this is what my Indian family does) is to pour the liquid (so leave out the potatoes, chicken, whatever..) into a smaller pan and bring it to a rolling boil for a while to reduce the gravy and let it thicken. Finally, add in the rest of the ingredients when it is as thick as you want it.


I suspect it depends what kind of cheese the whey came from. Whey has all of the water soluble components of the milk. It loses the casein and fat. How much of the albumin and lactose it loses depends on the cheese. If the milk was heated enough (190F I believe) then the albumin will denature and not be in the whey. If the cheese was acidified with a bacterial inoculation then the bacteria will have converted some of the lactose into lactic acid which will both be in the whey. Riboflavin is water soluble and is what gives the whey that greenish tint.

Either way- most of the nutrients that bacteria like are not in the whey and it is always highly acidic. I have personally kept whey for a couple weeks with no ill effect.

I usually use my whey soon by making ricotta. If the cheese it came from didn't denature the albumin in the milk then you can gently heat the whey until the the albumin precipitates out. A gallon of whole milk makes almost a pound of mozzarella and then a little less than a cup of ricotta. That's a lasagna right there.


Which cream should I use for cream sauce?

Tortellini is a typical pasta from the region on Emilia in Italy, a stronghold of Italian dairy. It is the region where Parmigiano cheese and the company Parmalat originated, for instance. It is also the region of Parma ham. No surprise this recipe brings all of that together.

The traditional recipe asks for Panna fresca liquida, which in Italy would look something like this, and would be in a refrigerated area in the supermarket. It has between 20-30% of fat and is fairly liquid.

The traditional recipe asks for cooked ham (optional), butter, Panna liquida fresca, Parmigiano, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Thus no flour. The trick for consistency is on the right quantity of Parmigiano (a lot!). After cooking the tortellini, drain well and mix in the sauce over low heat in a hob until the right consistency. The starch coming from the pasta will also help to thicken the sauce. One way to gauge is to first cook the pasta, add to the cooked cream and add Parmigiano over the low fire until you get the desired consistency.

The consistency is of course a question of taste. For example, in this recipe the famous Emilian chef Massimo Bottura uses 300g of Parmigiano (24 months) for 200g of cream. Very intense!


Pizza crust mix for pizza with cast iron pan?

So this takes a little bit of math.

You've got enough dough for a 12-inch diameter pizza.

The area is π6^2 = 36π.  You don't actually have to do the rest of the math.

You have a pan that is 8-inches in diameter.

The area is π4^2 = 16π

To find the difference, divide 16π/36π and you get .44 (the π cancels out), which is a little less than half. For simplicity, I recommend making half of the box.

Be sure to use half of everything, particularly the water, so if it calls for 1/2 cup of water, use only 1/4 cup.


Based on your photo, this is most likely a wagashi (Japanese sweet) called daifuku in Japanese. It's got an outer layer made from cooked glutinous rice that has been pounded and kneaded aggressively until smooth, which is called mochi. The inside is often a red bean paste made from a bean called azuki in Japanese (or adzuki in an odd English-language spelling from circa the 1970s) and sugar. The bean paste is called anko (or sometimes just an), pronounced ahn-ko.

Variations in the exterior include flavoring with yomogi (mugwort), which turns the color greenish, or the addition of other colorants. The filling may be made from other beans such as white beans (shiro-an), green peas (uguisu-an), edamame (zunda), and so on.

There are variations made in Korea and China as well.


Medium rare tri-tip can be achieved using a water bath at 130 - 135F (55-57C) for at least two hours and up to 7 hours.  You will probably not get "melt in your mouth bites", as bison tri-tip is a leaner cut, but it should be quite tender if it is sliced against the grain.


Is eating rice well after its use-by date a bad idea?

Rice is one of those dry staples that last a looooong time if stored properly, which in this case means cool and dry and safe from insects.

The more critical part is the seasoning. Ground spices tend to loose aroma quickly. This does not mean they will necessarily turn bad, but possibly a bit bland. Mold is only a problem when humidity comes into the equation, like with the rice.

Even more critical is fats. Some spice mixes contain fats, they can go rancid after a while. I suggest you check the label.

So:

check the rice for "critters" and their traces
sniff at your seaoning mix in case something smells off

And if everything seems ok, enjoy your paella.

Edit as your question focuses on the rice:

White rice stays safe "indefinetively", brown rice has a limited shelf life of a few months as its fats can turn rancid. See Still Tasty for more.

In the unlikely case that your rice is off (or for future paella dishes), use the so-called bomba or Calasparra rice. A Spanish short grain rice with a lower starch content than the Arborio used for a ceamy risotto.

For substitutes, sources are at odds:

some say use arborio for the most similar grains, but you'll get more sticky results
others favour long grain rices because the rice is less sticky.


The crispness comes from the very high heat of the very thick cast iron skillet used in restaurants. The usual non stick pan, unless it is made of heavy cast iron, cannot produce that crispness. Kind of the American reason why oven pizza does not come out nice and crusty like the stone oven pizza.  The ingredient is the very high heat that is missing here.


Is there an English word for the Spanish pepper called Ñora?

Almost certainly not. They look and sound a lot like cherry peppers, aka pimiento peppers, but are apparently a distinct cultivar. With the exception of commercially important (“Maris Piper”) or widely renowned (“Honeycrisp”) names, cultivars tend to be quite local in penetration, and are unlikely to have translations in other languages.
You’d probably do fine to substitute cherry peppers, if you’re trying to make a particular recipe which calls for them.


Is there a good way to make vegetarian carbonara?

Do not look for all these functions in one off-the-shelf ingredient.

For the smoky taste and bacon texture, try various brands (there are differences in taste and texture) and cuts (as in, HOW you cut it) of smoked tofu. Dulse seaweed is also often recommended as a bacon substitute (but can taste too fishy).

Where hot saturated fat is needed, you will need to add that separately at the right time - or separately fry the abovementioned ingredients with excess butter/oil (getting some smoky flavor infusion) and add them with (or before) that excess oil. Butter or ghee/clarified butter (probably preferrable due to heat tolerance) are chemically closer (mostly saturated fat) to bacon fat than an oil.


How long does it take for milk to spoil unrefrigerated?

I don't think anything will be wrong with that milk.

If it's fresh milk, which I doubt, you should consume it in less than three days.
If it's pasteurized milk, which is much more likely, it'll be unaffected.

Signs of spoilage are a sour smell and sour taste. You should make a habit of always smelling your milk (food) before drinking (eating) it. If it doesn't smell like you'd expect, taste it. If it doesn't taste like you'd expect, ditch it.

Milk is cultivated with lactobacillus, a bacteria that's beneficial for us. So, even though milk may taste sour, it doesn't mean that it's undrinkable. In Holland, there's sour-milk (karnemelk), that some people consume (I don't like it, myself).

Under the right circumstances, milk will turn into yogurt, thanks to the lactobacillus...

At any rate, if in doubt, throw it out.


Why might packaged pineapple contain egg, soy, peanut, fish, milk, sulphites, tree nuts, sesame, crustaceans, shellfish, mustard seeds, wheat?

Although it doesn't explicitly say so, that's allergy information. It's just been processed in a place that also (potentially) processes those things, so it potentially contains a trace amount, which could be bad if you have a really sensitive allergy. It won't contain enough of those things to matter for any other purpose.

Often labels like that are written along the lines of "processed in a facility which also processes..." to make it a little more clear. The lists aren't usually that long, either; most facilities don't process everything. But as pointed out in the comments, a grocery store is a lot more likely to just have a single kitchen that possibly handles all kinds of things.


Need help identifying a kitchen tool, with a wooden handle, and a cylindrical cutter

It looks like one I bought a few years ago, it was suppose to cut corn off the cob. You put it around the small end of the corn and rotate in a downward motion. I didn't like the results and went back to using a knife.


You'll want to do some research on sous vide. That way you can use the correct process and terminology.  Cook and chill is common practice in sous vide cooking.  Vacuum is not necessarily required.  To make a chicken nugget, you'll want to bread the chicken after the sous vide step.  For example, you could cook the chicken pieces, allow to cool a bit, blot dry, coat, then brown/crisp the coating.  Your best methods would be to deep fry, pan fry, or heat in oven. If using right away, this will allow you to achieve perfectly cooked chicken with a crust that you like.  You could sous vide a degree or two lower, with the realization that the browning step will finish the cooking. The challenge is to avoid overcooking the chicken when browning the coating, especially if cooking from frozen.  Since chicken nuggets cook relatively quickly, in the end, sous vide may not be the best tool for the job here, as you could easily achieve the same result, more quickly, using traditional methods.


Aspartame is not heat stable.

  Aspartame is less suitable for baking than other sweeteners, because it breaks down when heated and loses much of its sweetness.

Some sodas use other artificial sweeteners.
 You'll need to look up the particular sweetener that's in your diet pop of choice, and see if it's heat stable.


How to make big, fluffy "Mexican-style" flour tortillas (without using any special machinery)?

Authentic flour tortillas use lard.  For an authentic taste, use that, or consider using shortening or butter since they are solid at room temperature like lard.  You also might want to consider increasing the fat in your recipe.  Fat will coat the proteins of your flour and keep the gluten network from forming so easily.

I was also taught when making tortillas to let the dough rest for an hour after kneading and before rolling/pressing.  This helps everything relax.

After cooking each tortilla, put them in a pile with a clean towel over them.  The tortillas will sweat liquid, helping them to soften up.  You can also put them all in a heat-safe bag (paper or microwave safe plastic) for sweating.  When storing your tortillas, make sure to store them in a bag and not in the open air.

If your tortillas are too small, you should be able to roll out a larger piece of dough.

Part of the texture issues might actually be from you rolling them too thin.  If you are used to working with dough your ideas of thin might be different from the overstated ones found in recipes.  Try rolling to various thicknesses.


How am I supposed to heat a pie-iron-style pizzelle iron?

It is not originally for camping but for using with a real flame or fire.  Used it for years. It is the only kind I have.  Works great on gas stove burners.


You wouldn't want to exceed 100F, especially if you don't have good temperature regulation.  Above this temperature (especially in fish) you'll start to see the texture begin to change.

But, if all you're trying to do is thaw the meat, it's more important to circulate the water than to have the water at a warm temperature.  Water with strong convection currents that's even just 10F higher than your target "thawed" temperature (e.g. 35F) will thaw way faster than putting it in a still pot of water at 100F.

And, as an added bonus, bacteria grows fastest at ~107F.  So the outside of your meat exposed is to temperature near 107F becomes unsafe in about 4h.  In contrast, you can safely leave it in water at 86F for 7h and at room temperature 68F water for 18 hours.

So, moral of the story: Put it in a pot in the sink with the water dripping into the pot (to create circulation), and it will thaw fast but you don't need to worry if you forget about it.


Amount of baking powder in a muffin recipe

1 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp of baking soda to 2 cups dry ingredients is actually more baking powder and soda than I found in the first 10 random recipes I checked from Food Network and America's Test Kitchen. That suggests to me that the recipes are fine. Could it be that your leaveners are losing potency?
You can check them.
From Chemistry.About.com:

How to Test Baking Powder
Baking powder is activated by a combination of heat and moisture. Test baking powder by mixing 1 teaspoon of baking powder with 1/3 cup hot water. If the baking powder is fresh, the mixture should produce lots of bubbles. Be sure to use warm or hot water; cold water will not work for this test.
How to Test Baking Soda
Baking soda is meant to produce bubbles when mixed with an acidic ingredient. Check baking soda by dripping a few drops of vinegar or lemon juice onto a small amount (1/4 teaspoon) of baking soda. The baking soda should bubble vigorously. If you don't see a lot of bubbles, it's time to replace your baking soda.


Time and stretching will do the trick as well. Full on kneading or using a mixer is not necessarily required.  There are other techniques, such as "stretch and fold" or "slap and fold", which are generally used with high hydration dough.  Here is one example of a no-knead bread.  Also, This guy is a master...if I recall correctly, none of his recipes use a mixer or the kind of kneading that you are asking about.  It does take some practice to use the techniques he describes.  Bottom line:  using a mixer, or kneading by hand is not always necessary.


Baking bread/cake yields different results than expected

Assuming this is actually a recipe that worked for your friend (it does seem pretty weird - see rumtscho's answer)...

  We are both using a soup spoon, not a measured one, Yet we get different results.

That's exactly why you got different results. Your soup spoons aren't necessarily the same size.

You need to use some kind of reliable, standard measurement when baking, especially for leavening (like the baking powder), whether it's real measuring spoons, or a scale to measure by weight. If your friend can't provide you with a recipe using reliable measurements, then you won't be able to reliably reproduce it.

From your description ("condensed and hard" not "fluffy, light"), it could be that you've used less baking powder than they did, or more tahini than they did. So even if they can't give you a good recipe, you may be able to experiment on your own to find one. But if you do that, do yourself a favor, and get accurate measuring spoons or a scale.


According to ochef, conch is tender only if barely cooked or simmered for at least an hour.  If your conch is tough, it was probably cooked too long but yet not long enough.  You may want to give it a light pressing (not pounding) with a kitchen mallet and then simmer it in fish stock for an hour or so.


Can I reuse glass bottles with plastic lids for homemade sauces?

Reusing the bottles shouldn´t be a problem as long as they can be cleaned properly.
But I wouldn`t use them for canning for two reasons:

Metal lids usually have a 'click' that ensures they keep the vacuum seal and allow you to check if it is still unbroken.
Some sorts of plastic are not meant to be heated and when cooking the bottles for canning there is a risk that some chemicals (e.g. BPA) diffuse to the food.


Not all bacon is equally salty. Look at nutrition labels on the bacon when you go shopping, find the least salty bacon you can, and try that. You'll be best off if you cook a small amount of your meat mixture to taste, so that if you manage to end up with too little salt, you can add some back in. If it's still too salty, then all you can really do is add other, less salty meat. I imagine a burger made from 1/4 bacon would still have tons of bacon flavor.


I would simply add it near the end baking. If you add it at the beginning it will almost certainly burn, as you said. Pop it on 5 minutes or so before you need to take the bread out and the honey will have a chance to 'bed in' and the almonds will toast a little (if that's what you want).


Why do some recipes claim to "never fail"?

Baking is a complicated process and requires precision; you start out with complex molecules, and transform them into something has to have many qualities precisely right.

The common quality of all baked goods is the foam structure: each baked good is best when its foam is right. Example: for a cake, the "right" foam has lots of tiny, regular bubbles, and the bubble walls support the foam, but are soft, not elastic.  The ideal foam for a bread or pie crust is different.

There are other criteria for the cake layer to be good:

Evenly baked
Regular shape and surface, no cracks or doming
Neither overcooked nor undercooked, starch gelatinized but not retrograded
Moisture content correct, shouldn't be dry or melt in the mouth like a brownie
Color
Balanced flavor: not too sweet, eggy, salty, or bland

This list is just for the layer itself, frosting and combining layers makes it even more complicated!

With so many qualities to balance, you need a precise process to get reliable results; however home bakers don't want to monitor precisely.  Most lack probe thermometers, and Americans often use volume measures for dry ingredients, rather than the more accurate weights.  Finally, most home bakers don't understand the theory of baking.

Great bakers draw on both theory and practice when they bake, and their recipes rarely fail. Theory teaches them the significance of each step, and the hidden assumptions made by the recipe. Practice teaches to judge what is happening before his eyes, and how to recognize when something has gone wrong.  Theory and practice together let great bakers identify when something has gone wrong and rescue the project.

A novice will have neither practice nor theory aid them. He is even likely to misunderstand steps.  For example, he may stir vigorously when the recipe says "fold".  He may also omit key steps when pressed for time, without realizing their significance.  For example, using fridge-cold eggs when they should be room temperature.

Of course, everybody has to start somewhere, and not all baking recipes are created equal. Some have more room for error than others. For example, making a genoise for the first time is very hard.  The egg yolks start foaming at around 50°C, but can't build a good enough foam at below 65°C. They curdle irreversibly at 85°C. So a genoise has to be created in a water bath at a temperature around 70 to 75°C, and when the yolks are foamed, the flour (which has to be low-gluten) is added and mixed well enough to not fall to the bottom in lumps, but not well enough to remove the air from the foam. After that, the layer is baked, and it glues itself terribly to the pan, unless the baker had the foresight to use parchment combined with proper flouring technique, and then used proper technique to remove the layer when it is still warm enough to separate but not so hot that it gets irreversibly squished. There are so many things to get wrong with a genoise that a novice will run into them without ever realizing what happened.

Recipes that "never fail" are the opposite; they are robust, and don't rely on precision. Simple muffins are one example: The chemical leavening of the baking powder works well in many conditions, unlike the fickle yolk foam leavening in the genoise. Muffins even work if the cook just beats everything together in the bowl. You don't have to worry about overmixing, creaming, or specific temperatures. The fat content keeps muffins moist even when measurements aren't exact, and masks mistakes by enhancing flavor.  The cook actually seeks out doming, rather than avoiding it!  Finally, the crumb doesn't have to be soft, regular and airy the way cake crumb should be.  Muffins can tolerate a lot of mistakes!

To summarize: "never fail" recipes are recipes where:

There are few steps
Each step is simple to perform
Even if the baker makes an error, the end result is still likely to come out tasting good.

Of course, this ignores the catches!  Publishers can claim a recipe will "never fail" when they are unreliable for a novice.  Sometimes this happens accidentally, when a bad baker repeats a recipe enough that it becomes easy, but others have difficulty with it.  Finally, not everyone has the same criteria for success. I once found a recipe for a wedding cake on a popular site; it used box mix, smothered it in pudding from a sachet, and decorated with gummi bears.  Virtually all commenters insisted that it has turned out "great" and described how the wedding guests complimented them.  I can't imagine that it was really "great", but suspect that people who know what a great cake tastes like didn't bother to make the cake or leave comments.  There is no guarantee that a recipe labelled "always works" lives up to its name, or is actually good.  But, if you're a new baker, it's a good idea to start with such a recipe until you have gathered some experience.


What are the best cuts of meat for grinding burgers?

I use Alton Brown's "Burger of the Gods" recipe when grinding my own burgers:

1 part sirloin
1 part chuck
salt

He uses a food processor and pulses the meat 10x after cubing it. This is much simpler than using the grinding attachment you use; I only use that for some sausages.

The sirloin gives you that rich beef flavor, and the chuck provides the needed fat so you have a juicy and tender finished burger.  I find that when I'm making my own burgers I don't need or want things like onion or other fillers getting in the way of my beef.

You can also find this recipe on YouTube.


What is the meaning of the term whole grain?

Graphics and quoted text from: Whole Grains Council
Grains, by definition, have 3 major parts: the germ, the endosperm, and the bran.

Whole grains are those that have all of the parts of the natural seed, or kernel (not including an exterior husk that is generally inedible).
To be called "Whole Grain" the product must still have all of the bran, endosperm and germ that it had when it was in the field, although it can milled, ground, cracked, natural, whatever...as long as it still has all of its parts.

If a food label states that the package contains whole grain, the "whole grain" part of the food inside the package is required to have the same proportions of bran, germ, and endosperm as the harvested kernel does before it is processed.
Refining normally removes the bran and the germ, leaving only the endosperm. Without the bran and germ, about 25% of a grain’s protein is lost, along with at least seventeen key nutrients. Processors add back some vitamins and minerals to enrich refined grains, so refined products still contribute valuable nutrients.

This graphic shows what's lost when wheat is refined, and what's added back when it's "enriched":

Durum is just a variety of wheat. Unless it specifically says "whole wheat" or "whole grain", you can assume that it is refined.


Bagels - Use of Barley Malt Syrup or Non-Diastatic Malt Powder

First, it depends on whether your malt syrup is diastatic or non-diastatic.  (Diastatic contains active enzymes; most syrups are non-diastatic because the process to create syrups usually involves heat that destroys the active enzymes.  However, this is not universally true.)

Diastatic malt's active enzymes help convert starch into sugar.  Some bread or bagel recipes use diastatic malt to speed rising (by converting some starch to sugar quickly to give food to the yeast), as well as to condition the dough and soften the crumb somewhat.  The extra rise can also sometimes lead to a lighter result, and the extra sugar can lead to more flavor and good color.  One has to be careful about adding too much diastatic malt to a dough, because it can weaken it too much and produce a "gummy" texture.  Bagels would likely end up flat and/or with an "undercooked" texture.

Non-diastatic malt is just used for flavor and color.  It has no active enzymes, just a malty flavor which is generally more pronounced than diastatic malt products, due to additional roasting and concentration of flavors not possible at lower temperatures when trying to keep enzymes around in diastatic malt.

A little bit of diastatic malt can be useful in bagel dough.  It will affect texture as well as giving sweetness and color.  Non-diastatic malt (in powder or syrup form) is just about giving sweetness and promoting color.  If you're adding malt to the water to boil bagels, there's no point in using diastatic malt, since the boiling will destroy the enzymes.  If it's all you have on-hand, however, it can still give a malty flavor and promote color when used in larger quantities.

If both of your options are non-diastatic, there's not a huge difference between powder and syrup.  Powder's a bit easier to handle for dough; the syrup is notoriously sticky.  But syrup is sometimes easier to dissolve if you're using it in boiling water.  The more important difference may be in flavor: you specifically mention "barley malt syrup" vs. generic "malt powder."  Some malt powders are made from other grains and may not have the sweetness or complex character of barley malt.  The composition of the malt and its specific flavor (which might be developed in different roasting techniques, even if the same grain is used) can have a greater impact than whether one chooses malt powder vs. syrup.  I do believe, however, that malt syrups often have a darker roast than non-diastatic powders, so that may be useful for more color (especially in the boiling step).  Unless you're buying specialty "dark" malt powder, that is.

Also, the quantity used is most important: in bagels, the contribution of malt to the flavor is usually relatively small (though some would say essential).  Unless you're using a lot of malt, you probably won't notice a significant difference between the types of non-diastatic malt in terms of flavor, texture, etc.


Do long-cooked pasta and brown rice lose more minerals than short-cooked types?

I love the subject of nutrition. According to the charts I looked at in the past (I had the same question), only potassium seems affected by cooking and only a slight lose is shown in the charts.


That's not how it happens. Turkey can be labeled "fresh" as in -never frozen- even if the turkey is held at temperatures below freezing. By law, 26F (-3.33C) is the cutoff in the US. If the turkey spends weeks at 27F, it can still be labeled fresh even though it would be considered frozen to any of us mere mortals.

So, if a turkey has spent 2 weeks at 27F, and you buy it and put it in your fridge, it's going to be frozen on the inside for a day or so, despite being labeled "fresh".

Here's more, pointed out by Phillip in his comment. From the Good Eats transcript:


What Kinds of Recipes Should I Sift/Aerate The Flour?

Generally sifting is really only necessary when you are dealing with an ingredient that clumps a lot (cocoa powder, cake flour, and baking soda come to mind).  For the average cookie or quick bread recipe, whisking these ingredients in a bowl before adding the wet ingredients will usually do the trick.

Any recipe that requires aeration of the batter (Creaming method, sponge cake method, etc), it definitely helps to get out the sieve and give the dry ingredients a good sifting.  With the ingredients listed above, you will definitely noticed clumps in your final product or a denser texture.  When it doubt, it never hurts to sift.  I recommend using a small sifter with a handle for small batch recipes over a piece of wax/parchment paper.


The only thing which makes food considered appropriate as a dessert is cultural convention. This is obvious once you observe the differences between cultures.

In some cases, the difference is very clear-cut. The only tastes acceptable for desserts are sweet and sour, with sweet being banned from all other courses. This is common in cuisines inheriting Ottoman traditions. Desserts there are very sweet, and the addition of a sweet taste to a main dish (e.g. duck with oranges) or non-sweet to a dessert (e.g. salty caramel) is considered very strange and unpleasant. Other modern cultures are more permissive. There are well-known sweet-and-savory pairings even in Western cuisine (the abovementioned salty caramel, melon with ham, sugar-glazed carrots), and Asian and South American cuisines seem to be even more prone to such mixes (e.g. a meat pie in a plantain crust). Then there are cases where no sweet dessert is eaten at all, for example the French tradition of viewing a cheese plate as a dessert. And historically, there was no distinction at all, with nobility eating everything expensive they had mixed in a single dish, so that you had rose water mixed with black pepepr, rice and honey served to meat, for example. There is a reason why older books on English cuisine list "savoury puddings", even though today "pudding" in its broad sense has come to mean "dessert". For further reading, also see this article - it is mostly on food pairings, but you can see how North American cuisine builds two clusters of food combinations, one centered on baked desserts (flour, eggs, vanilla) and the other one on savory ingredients, while in Asian pairings, the effect is much less pronounced.

That said, I suspect that if you are serving your dessert to people with predominantly Western upbringing, they would have hard time accepting something very meaty as a dessert. While ham with apricot and almonds is an acceptable combination by Anglo-Saxon standards, it is not served for dessert. I would make something with a strong fruit component, and combine with a small amount of delicate meat. A fruit salad with a few shreds of proscuito should work. Alternatively, you could take some meat without much taste on its own, like chicken breast, include it in some kind of filling, and combine with lots of fruit.


What is the target internal temperature of pork back ribs for maxium tenderness?

Tough cuts become tender because collagen breaks down over time in the presence of heat and moisture, which usually takes several hours. When cooking that long the meat heats up to be the same as the oven temperature, so in this case internal meat temperature = oven temperature.


Can you make jerky from stewing chickens?

Sure! You can make jerky out of any meat that isn't too fatty. Jerky is just meat that has been flavored and dried. The drying has to be done with care no matter what kind of meat you use, experimentation is playing with food-safety fire.

Homemade chicken jerky for dogs was loudly in the news a few years ago because a lot of dogs got sick and even mysteriously died after eating chicken jerky dog treats imported from China. To my knowledge, the mystery has never been solved, but a lot of people started making their own chicken jerky at that point.

I have no idea if there is any benefit to using a stewing chicken vs a young chicken for jerky. I rarely see stewing chickens, and if I got a hold of one I'd stew it, but that's just me. At least in the US, they are not common. Where do all the tough old birds go?

The USDA does not endorse using any method for drying other than a dehydrator or an oven. They also (in a step not included in many recipes) recommend fully cooking the meat or poultry before dehydrating. USDA Fact Sheet

Beyond taking proper safety precautions, your choice of meat for jerky is your own. My favorite is salmon.


How do I use this store-made tomato paste with pasta?

Oh, that is not a real tomato sauce, this is mostly a tomato mush with a bit of salt. (The term "tomato paste" on the jar might a bit misleading, this product looks somewhat thinner.)

In a pinch, you can use it similar to a store-bought sauce by heating it gently in a separate pot on the stove (or in a microwave) and serving it with your spaghetti. But for a real sauce, it is probably too bland, missing spices and too acidic. Not what one expects from a sauce.

If you are really inexperienced, do a quick websearch for "easy tomato sauce" or similar. Many use tomato paste and you'll at least get a quick idea on how to use it, together with herbs and spices. In short, you want probably a bit of garlic, some herbs like basil (or even "italian seasoning"), possibly salt and pepper and - depending on the consistency of the tomato paste - a bit water (scoop a bit out of your pasta pot). If it's too acidic, add a pinch of sugar, not to make it sweet, just to balance out the acidity. Either toss the drained pasta in the sauce to coat or serve the sauce on top of the noodles.


keeping ice cream fresh for 12 hours while transporting

My dad used to buy icecream after a long day work for us (it was a 3 hour drive.)
He used styrofoam boxes with some dry ice. Not sure if it can hold up till 12 hours.


It depends on whether you're adding the water to the noodles or vice versa.

If I'm boiling the noodles on the stove for three minutes, I measure the right amount of water, and after the noodles are cooked I usually lift (most) of the noodles out of the water and into the bowl, drop the egg in and let it cook in the water while I add the seasoning to the noodles, then pour the egg (and as much water as I want) into the bowl.  I tend to lift the noodles out because they splash more when pouring, but no reason you couldn't add the egg to the noodles and water straight after they're cooked, or even during cooking.  If you do you add the egg as soon as the stove is turned off, the residual heat in the water cooks it enough.  If you don't want extra water in your noodles, you can lift it out with a slotted spoon, or pour most of the water out first, then add to your noodles.

If I'm pouring boiling water onto the noodles (already in the bowl), I add the egg first, even break the yolk and stir a little, lay the noodles on top, and pour the boiling water.  In this case, the water will cool too much to cook the egg fairly fast, so it needs to be there from the start, and almost scrambled to cook more evenly.


It is a multi-tool, which appear to have been given out as novelties. The bottle opener and serrated knife are obvious, the slits are there to act as a pot strainer, the semi-circle shape and flat surface allows you to hold it against the edge of a pot and pour out the liquid while keeping solid bits in. I found a few of them on Ebay, the good links (as of this answer) are:

Vintage Farmers Co-op Creamery 1967 Bread Knife

Vintage Multi-Purpose Knife Bottle Opener Strainer Stainless Wood Handle Japan -
Given the nature of Ebay I can't guarantee these links will be good for long

According to the inscriptions on some they were given out by a couple of different Farmer's Co-ops and a Drilling company...does yours have any writing on it?

...and here is a picture of a pot drainer (single purpose) as it would be used.


I can not give you an answer to your question, but whenever I had problems with kefir, I was told to thoroughly rinse the tuber and restart the kefir.
On this German Website they recommend to restart with 200ml of milk and 1 tablespoon of lactose for a recovery of the kefir. I do not know if this could change the yeast to bacteria ratio.

On a sideline, this Russian website recommend a ratio of 107 CFU/g of lactic acid bacteria to 104 CFU/g of yeast for health reasons. If you don't get the yeast to bacteria ratio down, maybe a fresh start with a kefir with 104:107 could help?


Does resting kneaded dough for few hours change the taste/texture/softness of parathas?

I know of four reasons to let your unyeasted dough sit for a while:

Gluten relaxation. user9074 has already explained this. The gluten that has formed during kneading needs time to relax, which will make the dough easier to work with and cause the cooked bread to be more tender.
Gluten formation. Kneading isn't the only way to get gluten molecules to link up. Time works well too. There are "no knead" bread recipes where you just mix the dough and then let it sit in a cool spot overnight, or in the fridge for a day or two. A few hours sitting on the shelf may improve your dough by letting more gluten molecules connect.
Autolysis. The flour itself contains enzymes that will break down some of the starch and proteins in the flour and improve its flavor. The effect of autolysis will be greatest if your dough doesn't include salt, but it may be a factor even with salt added.
Hydration. It takes time for the flour to really absorb the water that you add. If you've ever made a pie crust you'll know that pie dough changes dramatically during the rest period. It becomes soft, smooth, and pliable. That transformation happens because the rest period gives the flour time to soak up the water. I expect that giving your dough time to hydrate will improve it as well.

These are just some reasons why resting could improve your end result. Ultimately, there's an easy way to answer your question. Make up a batch of dough and give it time to sit. Prepare another batch just before cooking. Cook up some parathas from both batches and compare. I bet you'll find a noticeable difference.

All that said, I'd also bet that unrested parathas are better than no parathas at all. Don't let short time prevent you from making them any way you know how. If you're into experimenting, there are ingredients such as dough relaxers that you could add to get some of the same benefits that you get from a long rest, but in a shorter time.


How to make Chicken Laksa taste more like To's restaurant?

For a start, any Asian dish will be effected if the chicken stock is not good. Make quality chicken stock from whole chicken carcases, and take your time with it

In the case of Laksa, the key flavours are mostly in the Laksa paste (shrimp paste and lemon grass). If you don't have an equivalent of the one used at To's you will have an entirely different dish. A lot of effort can go into a Laksa paste (or for that matter curry pastes in general), in terms of exact ingredient ratios, roasting times etc, quality and freshness of ingredients etc

Laksa is often made with prawn stock, not chicken stock. Save the prawn heads and other fish bits, and boil them up for a very stinky prawn stock

Don't overdo the coconut milk/cream. Stick to one brand, and start with a lot less and see how it goes, if it is lacking, add more. Record what the magic amount for your favourite  brand is

Getting quality and fresh ingredients for Asian dishes is often a major stumbling block for truly authentic tastes. Making your own decent Laksa paste is near impossible outside of Asia. Western grown lemon grass, tastes like, well grass!

When you're next at To's have a peek in the kitchen, ask if you have too. And check what they use for Laksa paste. If it's out of a branded jar you're in luck, if it's homemade, it's back to the grindstone, literally

The recipe linked, does not seem like a very good Laksa recipe to me. Also a good Laksa is topped with chilli oil. This is an import part. It consists of a lot of chilli and a little garlic cocked in a cup of oil. Float a couple of spoons of this on each bowl as you serve it


Can I leave butter cookies in the fridge?

I would store them outside, not inside the fridge. Fridge temperatures make anything containing flour go stale quickly. Of course, sometimes people have to live with it, such as when they have made a cake with perishable icing or filling. But cookies are not perishable, so they are better stored outside of the fridge.

As to whether to put them in a sealed container or not, it depends on the cookie. The harder type does all right in the air, and can get flaccid in a sealed container. If they are soft, they are probably better off covered. It is still preferable to not isolate them completely, a canvas bag or a bread box with ventilation slits does better.


How does roasting beef in a rotisserie compare to doing so in a regular oven?

Dry and even heat.  There is still a difference, even with the same cut of meat and using a roasting rack to avoid roasting the cut in its juices: meat on a rotating skewer will be exposed to uniform heat.  If you set the temperature of a home oven to 350°F, the top of the roast will be exposed to that temperature, but the bottom, in line of sight to the heat source, will be much hotter.

Commercial rotisserie ovens also cook the meat by convection and use the heating elements to create the outside crust.  As the meat roasts, it becomes darker and absorbs more of the radiant heat from the roasting coils.  So the outside ends up getting overcooked unless the roasting coils are carefully controlled, which is kind of hard to do.  In a convection oven the temperature is constant around the roast.


What to do with browned butter after frying a steak

Often, assuming they are not too burned, you would make a simple pan sauce from the fond and fat left after pan-cooking a steak.  Methods vary, but might include sauteeing some shallots or onions in the fat, deglazing with wine, and/or adding a slurry of flour to thicken.  You would then serve with the steak.

Other than this, there is no general purpose use for the left over pan drippings.


Converting stand mixing time to hand mixing

I remember when cake mixes included the number of strokes needed to mix the batter by hand.  The Betty Crocker FAQ website (a U.S. baking mix company) suggests 150 strokes per each minute of electric mixer time recommended.  Note: that is not 150 strokes per minute!  So if the directions call for 2 minutes of mixing, that translates to 300 strokes.

Betty Crocker FAQ Site

EDIT

The stroke count in this answer is specifically for use with a cake mix.  As KatieK pointed out, mixing time and strokes are really dependent on the ingredients and desired consistency for that particular recipe and step in the recipe.


How do you make sure aubergine doesn't go bitter when cooking?

Yes, it is to do with freshness - the fresher and younger the aubergine, the less bitter it will be. If you have an old aubergine, you could try peeling it, as the bitter compounds are concentrated just under the skin.


What technique should I use to make latkes for a party so that I don't have to stay in the kitchen?

Number 3 will give you the best results. There simply is nothing as great in this world as a latke crisp from the frying pan, having spent but a couple seconds on a paper towel receiving the blessing of a few flakes of good sea salt.

I've never tried number 2. If you do, please report back.

Number 1 will not give you crisp latkes. They will still have the delicious taste of homemade latkes, but they will be soft, not crunchy.


You can eat raspberries. You can chew them as much as you like, without dying. Your teeth (unless yours are suffering great defects) are perfectly capable of crushing the seeds.


I think 2. is the most likely. Remember the beef has been brining for ages, a rinse will just remove the salt from the outside, and even then it won't do much.

Personally I wouldn't bother with the sous vide. 'Proper' corned beef should be gently simmered in a covered pot for about 2.5 hours. It doesn't need 'boiling' per se, and certainly not to oblivion!


What are the differences between candy thermometers and meat thermometers?

I think Doug and yossarian both touched on the main points, but to summarize, there are four reasons why you might not want to use a meat thermometer for candy:

Range A meat thermometer might go from 140 F to 220 F or something like that, which is plenty for meat. Candy often requires a range from about 75 degrees (chocolate) up to 400+ degrees (hard candy). The range on most thermometers is simply not sufficient for most candies.
Accuracy When you temper chocolate, 88 F degrees is an ideal working temperature (for dark chocolate). Some people would consider 91 so high you might want to think about starting over. When you make caramels, the difference between 235 F and 240 F can be the difference between wonderfully chewy caramels and a sugar-flavored rock. If you can't read one degree increments at a glance, you need a real candy thermometer.
Speed Meat thermometers often take 30 seconds to a minute to get an accurate result. When you are making candies, you have to be able to tell what the temperature is right now.
Contamination I don't want the thermometer that goes in semi-raw meat anywhere near my chocolate.


More temperature?

If after an hour they haven't softened up at all, and this occurs with different vegetables (so you're certainly not just encountering a batch of old, dried out gourds or something,) the problem is almost certainly an inaccurate oven thermostat. Oven thermostats are notoriously unreliable. Get an oven thermometer and see what temperature your oven really is.

  More or less stacking?

for even cooking and optimal browning, you should arrange your vegetables in one layer on the tray. If this were the primary problem, the vegetables on either the top, bottom, and/or in the middle (depending on the intensity and direction of your heat source) would be undercooked while the more exposed parts would be more cooked.

  More oil/liquid?

Note, oil and water based liquids affect cooking very differently. Water-based liquids will get the vegetables to soften more quickly than oil because water transfers heat more efficiently than oil, and it can turn to steam which is a good medium for spreading heat evenly on an uneven surface (such as a pile of chopped vegetables.) It also kills any possibility of browning because water doesn't get hotter than 212. Just because it's in the oven, it doesn't mean you aren't steaming your vegetables rather than roasting them. There's nothing wrong with steamed veg, but that's a very different end-product than roasted veg. More oil will create more crispiness, but a thin, even coating over all of the vegetables should be the only thing you need to roast them properly.

Now, about that recipe: 175 is low for roasting those types of vegetables. Even without par-boiling/steaming them (which lets you finish them at a higher temperature for more even browning and crispiness,) I'd still go with something around 220. That said, even if the cut vegetables were heavily refrigerated, you still shouldn't be waiting hours for them to soften up if your oven was actually 175. Get an oven thermometer!

Good luck, and happy roasting!


Is MSG able to penetrate meat like chicken breast and steak when dissolved in a brine?

Yes, MSG will penetrate, and it appears to diffuse about 1/3 as fast as table salt. You will learn a lot from this link.  You'll need to scroll down quite a bit, or search the page for MSG.


Ayer cooking kielbasa and sauerkraut in a 300 degree oven for one hour, can I eat it after it was sitting on kitchen counter for five hours

Let's give it the benefit of the doubt & give it an hour to fall into the danger zone. What are you left with?

Kielbasa  - Pre-cooked, smoked sausage, in itself will stay good for weeks.

Sauerkraut - if it's fresh not pasteurised, again it will stay good for weeks.

So, we've disturbed both by cutting, spooning, stirring & then heating. You wouldn't expect them to now be good for weeks, not even days - but 4 hours?

I'd go right out on a limb & say, whatever the 'golden rules' say, if the lid was on & the room wasn't at 25°C or warmer, it will be absolutely fine.

 I'll brace myself for the downvotes ;)


The traditional Injera is made with wild yeast. Basically, you mix the ingredients and let it sit for 2-3 days to ferment. The wild yeast just finds it, and it works fine. However, the time it takes to ferment changes based on the average presence of yeast in the air and things like that, so it changes from batch to batch.

As a shortcut, and mostly for consistency of results, you can use a sourdough starter. In fact, once you've made your first batch, you can keep an Injera starter, so that you're still just using Teff flour.

To be fair, the biggest factor in fermentation time is usually the ambient temperature, rather than the source of the yeast.


As a straight answer to "why" it's the quantity of mustard oil in any given mustard type.

There are many types of mustard, but the two you may find the most confusing visually are English & American.

Though both are a fairly bright yellow in colour, that's about as far as the similarity goes.

Mustard seeds themselves come in many different 'heats' - the mildest generally being pale yellow, almost white & the strongest are dark brown.
Additionally, mixing mustard with vinegar tempers the heat & lengthens the shelf-life.
Mixing instead with pure water increases the punch, but the flavours will dissipate over a much shorter period.

American mustard is one of the mildest available. It starts with a mild seed, pale yellow/white in colour, but the colour is then boosted by using turmeric. The mixture is then diluted with vinegar.
This is your 'standard' mild American mustard, found in many places, including McDonald's. You can slather it in huge quantities on a hot dog with no ill-effects.

Almost at the other end of the scale [Chinese mustard can be even hotter] is English. Made with a mixture of yellow & brown mustard seed, then mixed with water not vinegar, this will take the roof of your nose out if used in injudicious quantities. It can quite literally make your eyes water & your nose run - though if you did it by accident, take solace in the fact that the hit is very short-lived, not like eating a blindingly hot chilli pepper.
The full impact & flavour of English mustard is quite short-lived even in the jar, once made up from powdered mustard. Even ready-made, store-bought has quite a short shelf-life for a condiment.  Made at home & mixed with water it will lose its punch in just a few days, so the trick is to buy powder & mix it just 15 minutes before you eat it, for the full experience.

If you're ever uncertain visually which you are about to add - taste it first.

Personally I love English mustard on hot dogs! With ketchup too [one of the only things I will ever put ketchup on]. The balance between the sweet, vinegary ketchup & the hard hit of the mustard is really quite the feast. Bring on the junk food!

There is an in-depth article on the various types at Serious Eats - Mustard Manual: Your Guide to Mustard Varieties


Why does a mix of condensed milk, cocoa and coconut solidify in the fridge?

Condensed milk may not get hard in the fridge by itself, but it does firm up considerably. It's very pourable at room temperature but it's almost too viscous to pour once chilled. The crushed biscuit absorbs the most liquid components of the condensed milk, leaving those components that do firm up to do so. The cocoa would also do some of that, effectively "binding" those components of the condensed milk that would otherwise remain liquid. So what is left "unbound" solidifies.


There's no exact definition of asian toasting seeds that I know of, but most mixes I've seen are geared more for curries with cumin, sesame, and black onion seeds as a common base. To that base I've seen poppy, black mustard, yellow mustard, fenugreek, and lovage (ajwain) seeds.

I have all of these except lovage, but kept separate and I mix them together when I cook depending on the flavors I want. You can make your own mix in less than a minute each time. If you do want to make a basic mix then do 3 parts cumin seed, 2 parts sesame, one part black onion, and one part black mustard seed. If you use yellow mustard do a 1/2 part as it's much stronger.


Irish Coffee harder to get right than Baileys Coffee?

Some preparations for Irish coffee demand that the whiskey and sugar be caramelized together by heating them in a heat-proof glass over a burner and then topped with hot coffee and thick liquid cream. It takes some experience to get this heating step right. (Youtube video here)

Baileys coffee is simply coffee with added Baileys liquour (cream optional), like many other [coffee and alcohol] combinations.

Of course there are lots of other sources where "Irish coffee" is simply whiskey + sugar + coffee + (even whipped) cream, probably the "original" preparation served to warm up travellers, so without knowing what standards your pub/restaurant follows, it's nearly impossible to say whether you could have ordered Baileys coffee.


Chinese dumplings vegetarian style - mushrooms raw or cooked?

Is this always necessary and if not what are the pros and cons of cooked vs raw mushroom?

If you don't fry the mushrooms first, they will turn out rather watery and bland. So yes, you could say it's to drain some water first, though I don't really drain the water; I let the water evaporate.


Turning on oven's fan for preheating - Oven turning off by itself - How to preheat properly

After so much trial and error, I found the solution, and yet, it's so simple:

Leave the oven door open for 2 minutes when preheating, then close.

And I also turn the fan on for preheating, I think it will make it more effective.

It doesn't turn off by itself anymore.