Can I Sear Sous-Vide Rib Eye Under Infrared Broiler?

You can do it.  It really depends on the result you are looking for.  The reason to sear is simply to produce a maillard reaction, and caramelization.  The issue with sous vide is that you want to do that rapidly so as not to continue cooking the internal part of the protein.  On the other hand, some people cook a couple of degrees lower, then take a little longer to sear.  There are all kinds of options here and no perfect answers. I don't think you want it much closer, as you will likely have fat popping off the top of your steak.   I would give it a shot and see if you like the result.  There is no reason to discard the idea out of hand.


What kind of pan works best with a waterbath?

You pretty much have to use the sprinform pan with cheesecakes, otherwise you can't get the cheesecake out of the pan. If you don't care to remove the cheesecake from the pan whole, then you can use anything you want—a deep cake pan would work well, for example.

There are two ways to help keep the springform pan from leaking:

Wrap the sprinform pan (the entire bottom, and up the sides) in aluminum foil. Use two layers of foil, especially if you're using the cheap thin stuff.
Find a round cake pan slightly larger than your sprinform pan (say, a 10" wide, 3" deep pan with a 9" springform). Sit the springform pan inside the cake pan, then put the cake pan in the bain-marie (so the water isn't actually touching the springform pan). This suggestion comes from Cooks Illustrated (sorry, paywall), who tested this and found the small gap doesn't matter.

If you're doing a lot of cheesecakes, then you can get a 10"x3" cake pan on Amazon for $10–15.


Spare Ribs: spacing out the soak and the grill

This will have almost no impact (if any) provided you wrap them well using a cellophane wrap. This is also a good opportunity to apply a rub to the meat.


Sauce with Jalapeno, garlic, cumin and lime?

This looks great, and if it was offered in a restaurant I expect it to be called a 'Fresh Jalapeño Salsa'.  That would give me all the information I would need when deciding to order or not.


How can I spice up ground beef without using pepper?

Ground allspice berries and rosemary can add that piquant taste that you may otherwise be missing from the pepper.


Flat-leaf (also called Italian Parsley) and curly parsley can be used interchangeably but most chefs prefer flat leaf as it usually has a more distinct taste.  That is going to be up to you and your preference.

Curly parsley provides a more unique and visually interesting look when you're talking about garnishes but putting a sprig of parsley on a plate is what would be called a "non-functional" garnish.  Aside from adding a bit of green it serves no purpose as very few people I know will pop it in their mouth and eat it.  You're better to sprinkle with chopped parsley or herbs that can help enhance/accent the flavor.

Curly parsley is also visually appealing used in a parsley salad due again to the ruffled edges.

I usually use flat-leaf if available, then curly if flat-leaf isn't available.  Under no circumstances (except if you just need a touch of green dust) do I recommend using dried parsley.  Clippings from the underside of yor lawn-mower probably have more flavor.  Same goes for dried chives.


Is it safe to only rinse visible residue from container if I then refrigerate the container?

I see you're familiar with the "danger zone" concept. I think the only on-topic way to answer this is to help you add up the "danger zone" time, (and raise the concern of cross contamination!). I will say in response to your heading, there is no "loophole" in food safety guidelines. They are pretty stark in that things are either safe or not.
Eating something that has been treated "unsafe" aren't guaranteed to make you ill--but for this site, "will it make me sick?" is off-topic, while "is this considered food safe?" is on-topic, so I'll focus solely on the latter.
Cross contamination ❌
It's not guaranteed this will happen, but every time you handle something, you risk cross contamination. Uncovered food in the fridge can also be a contamination vector. Each time you reuse a dish without washing, you essentially double your chances of having a problem. A trace of e. coli on an apple peel during breakfast has a chance to be transfer to the plate, grow all day long and be ingested during every meal of the day, increasing the chances that you might get ill.
Danger zone math ⚡
Keep in mind that this is a CUMULATIVE time for the food (and residue)--it doesn't reset when the food hits your bowl. Also, food safety guidelines consider a plate to be "contaminated" with food from the time food hits it until the plate is properly washed/sanitized (ie, with soap). Even if there is no visible residue, if it hasn't been washed properly the plate is treated the same as if  there was still a full serving of food on it, from a food safety perspective.
Based on all of that, you'd need to add up time the ingredients (for everything that was on the plate) are unrefrigerated coming home from the grocery, being prepared & cooked (between cold and hot), after cooking on your plate, time in the fridge while cooling back down, repeat for each meal.
If you use the same plate for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert without washing, you'd essentially be calculating the danger zone time as if you had breakfast leftovers that you refrigerated then reheated at lunch. Then added extra lunch leftovers and put them in the fridge. Then you reheated breakfast and lunch leftovers, added some dinner leftovers and back into the fridge. Then reheated breakfast, lunch, and dinner leftovers to eat them for dessert.
So it gets complicated to do all that math... But there's a lot of time that will accumulate as it passes from warm to cold to warm to cold, etc.
My verdict? ⚖
It seems unlikely that you'd be able to add up all that time in the danger zone and still stay within the time window that is considered food safe by government food safety guidelines.
If you're already going to rinse it water to remove visible residue,  a quick swipe of a soapy wash cloth seems like a low-difficulty added effort to wash away the remaining unseen food & bacterial residue. I'd even possibly argue that a quick soapy wash is no more difficult than trying to find a way to stay within food safety guidelines.


Why throw away so much sourdough starter? Tartine Book no. 3

At the beginning, you are throwing out a lot because you are just feeding the culture. You're just seeding the growth medium (fresh flour and water) with the young culture, so you want to be sure that the ratio of food to culture is appropriate.

Once the culture is established, you don't have to throw out any, but you do have to keep feeding it. This generally means that either you throw out a little, or have to feed it a ton. At the bakery where I work, we use so much starter that we don't throw any out. We're left with little enough at the end of the day that we just add fresh flour and water.

The ratio of starter to fresh flour and water (and ratio of flour to water) are used to control the culture. Different strains grow better at different levels of hydration, and leaving more of the already cultured starter in when you feed it can leave in more of the "waste products", like acids, which contribute to flavor.


Best way to preserve nutrients while dehydrating fruit and veggies

Dehydration in all ways spoils nutrients. There are few tricks (like freeze/dry dehydration, sulfur dehydration, and orange juice bathing), but in the end you will always loose something along the way. That said, home dehydration is not as bad or aggressive like industrial one is, so you will probably still end up with a positive weight/nutrients ratio. But, be aware that being sugar much more resistant than everything else and much more present in fruits and vegetables, you'll basically end up with "lot" of sugar and few nutrients. From this point of view, fresh fruit is always the better trade off.

That said, maybe you can solve your problem if you look at it from a different perspective.

So, first a step back: as of today marketing is trying to convince people that the more, the better; things like "if 100% of the daily recommended intake make you healty, imagine how super you will be with 1000%". Now, that's entirely marketing bull***t, dangerous for your health and on top it even if for some vitamins or minerals it could be not dangerous to exceed, it will force your organism to do lot of work to expell all that is unneeded/unused (yes, there is practically no "storage" of nutrients in our body)

Then, if you want to bring your own dehydrated food with you, instead of worring about maximising how much nutrients will remain after dehydration, maybe just do the math to understand how much dehydrated food you'll need to bring with you; maybe you'll discover that even after loosing 90% of nutrients you will need just a couple of hectograms of dryed food instead of 2 kilos.

That said...try not to kill yourself with spoiled dryed food or by doing the wrong math and bringing a 2 days reserve for a 5 days hike, ok?


How to tell when a turkey burger is fully cooked?

I use an instant-read thermometer. It's by far the simplest method.

I use the Taylor 9842 Commercial Waterproof Digital Thermometer. As Darin states, you're shooting for 165℉ for turkey.

My old Taylor died a few weeks ago. After reading rave reviews from Cooks Illustrated, and Alton Brown's recommendation, I splurged and got a Thermoworks Thermapen. It is amazing!


Alternative to Escolar ("Butter Fish") for Nigirizushi

Escolar is not butterfish. It is considered to be more closely related to the Oilfish species.

Butterfishes are from the family Stromateidae, which does not include Escolar.

As far as I know, there are no digestive issues reported with butterfish. That "wax ester" is highly localized to Escolar and Oilfish. So if you're looking for a "substitute", just use actual butterfish. Source it from somewhere you trust, or look for a more specific label like Pomfret or Harvestfish.


Cooking rib roast for a large group with minimal time

This is a perfect application for sous vide cooking.  I would pre-sear, bag, sous vide @ 58C (136.5 F) for 5 to 10 hours, then chill. All that can be done ahead of time.  Bring to the site, re-therm for a couple of hours, crank the oven, and finish in a hot oven to develop outer crust.


Yes, but chestnut purée comes in sweetened and unsweetened varieties, so making your own depends on what you'll be using it for. Chestnuts are pretty versatile, but I've come across using sweetened purée in old world desserts, while the unsweetened purée is typically used with root vegetables and winter squashes (the European variety of chestnut drop in late fall).

You'll start by scoring the skin of the raw nuts and roasting them at 400° (this prevents them from bursting). After this, peeling them is easy work. You will then boil them, optionally in a sugar syrup. Finally, reserve the liquid and puree in a food processor, adding back the liquid for the desired consistency.

About a pound of chestnuts per cup of purée.


Safe to buy food baked in plastic containers:

There are plastic oven bags like this

Source http://lamiacucina.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/saumon-en-papillote-au-citron-vert-lachs-in-folie/
that can be used at temperatures at least up to 200°C. I am sure that there should be equivalent baking pans with similar properties for baking goods.
In conclusion, referring to your link to another question: It depends on whether the plastic is supposed to be baked or not. The questioner of the other thread said he had forgotton to remove a piece of plastic that he had been supposed to. In your case: It is very likely safe.


Can poulet noir be prepared as standard chicken, or is there anything special to consider?

Depending on how much fitness it did space it had to run around in, this type of chicken is best used in a stew, so depending on your personal chicken recipes, yes, use the standard ones but do not:

BBQ
Fry
Roast
Bake it in an open container (A closed closed container with moisture-releasing veggies is still OK)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Is there a reason to not grate cheese ahead of time?

You should only grate cheese as needed, particularly the cheeses you mention.  When you grate cheese you create more surface area.  That is more surface exposed to air and oxidation, which will degrade the flavor and aroma of the cheese.  It is also more prone to drying out further degrading the quality.   The cheeses you mention are best when grated for immediate use, but stored in chunks, wrapped and refrigerated.


From Oneida.com:

What is in a Hostess Set, Serving Set and an Entertainment Set?

A simple way to remember what pieces are in a Hostess Set is: The word Hostess starts with an "H" everything in a Hostess Set holds something.

Hostess Set: Gravy Ladle, Tablespoon, Sugar Spoon
Serving Set: Serving Fork, Butter Knife, Pierced Tablespoon
Entertainment Set: Casserole Spoon, Dessert Server


When is best to apply sauce on to BBQ chicken?

If you let it sit in the sauce overnight then it's no longer a sauce, it's a marinade.

That's fine, but marinating is something you generally do with tough, cheap, and/or dry cuts of meat such as chicken breasts or top rounds (beef).  For a full chicken, especially the wings, drumsticks and thighs, a marinade is entirely unnecessary and in my humble opinion simply dilutes the deliciously moist interior and often makes the whole thing soggy and depressing.

Generally the goal (or at least my goal and that of the majority of restaurants I've been to) for chicken wings or even a traditional roasted whole chicken is a nice crispy, golden-brown, well-seasoned skin with juicy meat on the inside.

You can't get that if you douse it in sauce before grilling it.  The water in the sauce will inhibit the Maillard reaction that causes browning (and crisping), and as Mike points out, the sauce may even burn.  In fact, it almost certainly will burn; most store-bought BBQ sauces only last a few minutes exposed to direct heat.

With that in mind, the best time to sauce a grilled (BBQ) chicken is after it's cooked, or more precisely, when it's nearly cooked.  Go ahead and season it liberally and coat it in butter or oil beforehand, but wait until it is no more than a few minutes away from being done before you sauce it.  You're not trying to cook the sauce, and it takes no more than a few minutes to get the sauce to bind to the skin - i.e. a few coats with 30-60 seconds each to reduce and form a sort of glaze.

This is true for almost any meat and any cooking method as long as you're not marinating - BBQ chicken, fried or convection-baked wings, smoked or oven-braised ribs - you almost always want to sauce it right at the end.  If your technique and ingredients are good then the meat, not the sauce, should be your main attraction.


What kind of dough staple is easiest to make, for soaking in mussel juices? No oven, eggs, milk

In the southern US, people make what is known as flour bread. (Also known as biscuit bread or skillet bread.) It's made with biscuit dough that is flattened into a circle about 1/2" thick. It is cooked on top of the stove, in a lightly greased skillet over medium-high heat on one side until that side is golden brown and then flipped and cooked until golden on the other side.

I typically use leftover biscuit dough that has been shaped into a ball, wrapped and refrigerated overnight. (It doesn't have to be leftover but I do find that the time in the fridge makes a difference.)

Typical southern-style biscuits are made with flour, salt, hard fat (vegetable shortening or lard), baking powder, and water or milk (cook's choice). So, no need for milk, eggs, or an oven.

It's great for sopping up gravy or juices.


Can I add milk to tea while it is steeping?

The big issue is temperature. There are various guidelines for setting temperatures for various kinds of tea, but the most common advice for traditional black tea is to use boiling water. If you add cold, or even warm, milk to the tea it's certainly going to alter the rate at which various flavor components (caffeine, tannins, polyphenols, catchins, etc) dissolve.

It is primary a matter of solution rather than actual chemical changes. Tea is toasted before you get it; black tea is the most cooked. You aren't engaging in many more changes during the steeping. It's just a matter of what dissolves out when and at what temperature. Compare cold-brew coffee, which leaves behind many of the more burnt/bitter flavors of a roasted bean, as well as less acidity and caffeine. Some people like it; others don't. There are a great many chemicals involved in both, all with different rates of solution, and some people put great care into getting the temperature and brewing time to their taste.

You can also heat the tea in the milk. That's how traditional masala chai is made. Generally, you won't want to boil it for long, since that will cook the proteins in the milk, rendering it clumpy. It's often given a long simmer at a temperature somewhat below boiling.


Cooking Brown Rice on a Portable Induction Burner

For what it's worth, I find it difficult to get brown rice cooked properly using any sort of regimented process. It seems sensitive to the variables involved, and it doesn't come out right without me being more involved in the cooking process.

So, I follow the procedure which (if I recall correctly) I found in Cook's Illustrated: cook the rice in a much larger volume of water than is needed (two-to-one, or even three-to-one if you can spare the room in the pot), stirring occasionally, monitor done-ness by tasting the rice periodically, and when the rice has the desired consistency (different people prefer different degrees of firmness), take it off the heat and drain it (e.g. in a chinois).

Even using this approach, it's important to maintain the heat relatively low, at a simmer. But it's a lot more forgiving than techniques that demand you get the rice-to-water ratio perfect, because you never run out of water, and the rice never sticks to the bottom of the pot.

The "simmer" setting on your hob should work well with this approach, but if the hob is so underpowered that "simmer" doesn't simmer, the "boil" setting might work out okay, if that setting doesn't in fact result in a very vigorous boil.

At the end of the day though, if your hob has only two cooking levels (plus the "warm" setting), it might just not be a hob worth using. There are plenty of other hob choices out there, which allow a more fine-grained control than choosing between "not quite warm enough to simmer" and "rolling boil", and with a better hob, cooking rice should be very easy, whatever technique you prefer.


If you mean cleaning in terms of getting rid of the 'beard', use clean pliers and a lot of elbow grease. It's hard to pull that out.

If you mean just cleaning the shells, use a stiff bristled brush and scrub.

If you mean cleaning the sand from the inside of the mussels, put the live mussels in a large container full of water and cornmeal and leave overnight in the refrigerator. The mussels should flush the sand out and replace it with cornmeal (never tried this method, but I've heard it works well.)


There's a couple of options. I've never heard of "sweet stones of Perosa", but if the recipe actually goes back many years then it's likely it originally used extremely thin silver (or other metal) foil, stuck to the buns and then baked.

Those pictures don't look like edible foil, though. The silver is attenuated at the sides. That makes me think they're using spray-on silver food coloring (basically edible spray paint).

In either case, the coloring is likely applied before baking, and as the buns puff up the colored area cracks, making the buns look rocky rather than just silver.


I would suggest finding a heat-resistant balloon of some sort, or a relatively spherical plastic bag, or even a round bag made from linen muslin. You steam the yolks in a small balloon, then cut it away once they're set.  Then you immerse this yolk in the whites, in a bigger balloon, and once again steam/boil this until set, and cut away the outer balloon.  This is based on one version of the Giant Egg recipe, where the egg parts were cooked in bottles which were then broken away.

If you want a shell, then your instinct for meringue, probably cooked with a blowtorch, might work, although it would be hard to avoid browning.  If you want something white, I'd suggest piping (and smoothing) royal icing in coils until you shell the whole egg.  This will dry quite hard and then can be cracked away for dramatic effect.

Note, though, that the monster egg won't be terribly good to eat.  The yolk will be way overcooked, as will the outer layers of the white, and pretty much certainly the yolk will have sunk to the bottom of the whites before they set.  And, ultimately, it's just a giant boiled egg. The purpose of this dish, like many other showpieces, is to be seen and not necessarily eaten.

Thanks for a fun and very original question, though!  And if you make it, send me a picture.


Juice recipe recommendation engine to give me recipes based on the ingredients I already have?

Search engines like that, as you know, are more complicated to build than the standard recipe searches you see in most places, and many websites that have food recipes and are heavily utilized don't have them.
If you want to ultimately be able to make juice based on the ingredients on hand, what I'd recommend is becoming more proficient at matching flavor profiles and knowing what the essentials of juice are.  You can learn more about possible good flavor pairings at this website (more info about the website's technique for pairing flavors).  You can also learn a ton at khymos.org or from The Flavor Bible by Page and Dornenburg.  For learning ratios, start with simple recipes such as these or even try and break down your ideal juice by sugar and water components and then look at how much sweetness and water are in each possible ingredient.
If you get stuck on a particular recipe, you can always ask how to improve it here.


Brown Rice vs White Rice in Stuffed Pepper

Brown rice takes considerably longer to cook than white rice, and requires a higher ratio of liquid to rice.

It may be somewhat helpful to pre-soak the brown rice, but that may not completely compensate for the longer cooking time.

The main issue is going to be getting the rice fully hydrated and cooked through without badly overcooking the peppers.

Your best bet is probably to start with cooked brown rice, which my survey having googled "brown rice stuffed pepper recipe" indicates is the most common method, although they don't generally employ a crock pot.

For a one-step fully crock-pot based recipe, white rice may be indicated.


When in doubt, throw it out.

There are three main indicators to spoiled beef:

Texture: beef becomes slimy as it spoils.
Color: beef will go gray as it spoils, BUT, it will also go gray due to it oxidizing. This makes it a somewhat unreliable measure without the other indicators.
Smell: as beef spoils it will start to smell sour. Note that you did mention the smell being sour in your description.

Your beef has hit two out of three boxes. It may just be starting to spoil.
I would consider it potentially unsafe to eat.

But why take the risk?


You want to be careful with food safety. The "danger zone" is generally cited between 40°-140°F, and you don't want your meat in this zone for longer than one hour if about 90° or two hours if between 40°-90·. You should start your timer when you think it reached this temperature. Wrapped in foil in a cooler it probably took some time to cool down to 140, and also it's not exposed directly to new sources of bacteria (though there will always be some that cooking did not kill, and they will start to propagate).

Did you take a read of the temperature once you woke up from your nap? That would be useful info. I don't want to advise you on whether it's safe to eat because I don't know enough about your specifics and in any case you'll be taking a risk, but there are mitigating factors in your case which could ameliorate the risk.

In answer to your second question, if you feel the food is safe, eat it right away. Any other course will increase your risk. Cooling it will continue to grow bacteria, and bacteria can release toxins which are harmful, so reheating it may kill the bacteria but not these toxins.


What is the ideal coffee temperature for tiramisu?

If you are using Savoiardi biscuits then room temperature coffee is probably best for making sure the biscuits don't get too soggy. When I make tiramisu, I roll the biscuits quickly through a shallow saucer of strong coffee which doesn't stay hot for long.

I agree, however, that luke warm coffee just doesn't taste good. The volatile oils in coffee oxidise quickly and by the time it has cooled it will taste stale. Personally I substitute for a dark, non-creamy, coffee liqueur (Tia Maria works well).

I would also like to try using cold brewed coffee which, I'm told, has a different, sweeter flavour profile compared to normal brewed coffee.

Another experiment you could try is to cool the coffee as quickly as possible after brewing, say using a metal mixing bowl in an ice bath, to see if that helps reduce oxidisation. If you attempt this, then please report back.

If you are mixing coffee into the beaten egg white, then be sure to first mix it with the mascarpone which, I assume, you will fold into the egg whites. This way it won't deflate. I would use cold coffee for this, but warm or hot should be ok if it doesn't curdle the mascarpone.

Update: I've tried a variation on my suggestion to cool the coffee as quickly as possible by making, what is known as, Japanese iced coffee. This involves brewing the coffee directly over ice.

Normally a 1:1 ratio of liquid water to ice is used. I wanted it a bit stronger for tiramisu, so I periodically emptied out the brewed coffee so that it would be cold but not too dilute.

I'm very happy with the results. Even though I brewed the coffee a bit too far in advance, it was not stale 20 minutes later when I came to use it for the biscuits. The tiramisu was great too.


Real dried seaweed isn't very pungent/overwhelming in taste

Its taste will increase if it's roasted or made wet

I suspect you got either bad seaweed or its flavor was artificially enhanced


What is the glaze on a bakery-style fruit tart?

The glaze on most fruit tarts is just melted jelly.  Given the small quantity involved, you probably wouldn't particularly notice the apple flavour.  However, there's no reason you couldn't use another type of jelly if you preferred.

If you take a look at many fruit juice blends, you'll note that the base is usually apple, even when that's not the advertised fruit flavour, so it's obviously not an overpowering flavour when mixed with other fruits.

This Tips for Pies and Tarts page has a couple suggestions at the end for glazes for fruit pies and tarts.


Unless you freeze them yourself and don't wash them first, no, you should not need to wash commercially processed frozen vegetables. Part of the process for freezing includes cleaning/trimming preparing the vegetables. Washing is unnecessary.
Info here:

The actual process of freezing a food item varies somewhat depending on what is to be frozen. Peas are the most common frozen vegetable, having virtually replaced fresh peas in the American supermarket. The pea process is typical for many vegetables. A typical process for a frozen entrée follows.
Picking and washing

2 The peas may be picked by hand or automatically. Then, a machine called a viner removes them from their shells. If the processing plant is adjacent to the fields, the peas are carted there. If truck transport is necessary, they are cooled with ice water and then packed in ice for transport. At the plant, the peas are dumped into beds and sprayed with water to remove dust and dirt.


Is there a use for the rind after making Citrus Sugar?

Depends on how fine you have shaved the rind/zest, you can consider candying it (boil it in syrup till it become very transparent) or dip it in chocolate after candying it. if it is too fine, then add it into your next chocolate recipe to get orange-flavoured chocolate....


The tentacles and the muscular body of the squid are edible.

To clean squid, pull the head and tentacles off the body and remove the skin and fins from the body. Turn the body inside-out, remove the central bone, wash out the inside of the body, and turn the body back into its original shape. Cut the tentacles off of the head, and discard the head and beak. Summarized from: Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques


It's no surprise to me that you describe the final taste as being similar to a raw gherkin, because both melons and gherkins are closely related to the cucumber.

Melons actually do have bitter notes; according to McGee, they contain "green, grassy compounds" as well as sulfur compounds, the latter being the same sort of thing you'd find in garlic.

Since melons only get sweeter on the vine, I would assume that the general blandness was caused by the melons being harvested too early and possibly sitting on the grocery store shelf for a long time.

If there was noticeable bitterness beyond what you tasted in the raw fruit, it was probably just because you got a concentrated dose of it in puree form.  Overcooking it would also increase the bitterness, but you say it wasn't exposed to heat (could the custard still have been very hot when you incorporated the melon?).

There is no way it was a reaction with guar gum - it's a very common additive in melon-based drinks and desserts.  It's also extremely unlikely to have been a normal reaction with the cream; I've made melon mousse and other dairy items with melon and never noticed any kind of unusual bitterness.

The only other possibility I can think of is that there may have been a problem with the cream itself.  This varies quite a bit from brand to brand and region to region, but most of the time, the "cream" you buy does not just have cream in it; for example, I'm looking at a typical supermarket carton that contains cream, milk, skim milk powder, dextrose, and a bunch of E numbers, and even some sodium citrate.  These creams can easily take on bitterness before they go sour.  So if you were using the typical supermarket brand of heavy cream, and it was sitting in your fridge for a while, that may have been a contributing factor.

All in all, I think it was probably a very random and unfortunate combination of factors that would have been due to the specific ingredients used rather than the types of ingredients.  I doubt you'd get the same results if you tried again with fresh melons, cream, and eggs.


Does yogurt maker keeps object at optimal temperature maybe around 40 centigrade, or current temperature of object?

There are a variety of ways to make yogurt. One that might be "easy" would to use a thermal cooker (giant thermos flask) if you happen to already have one, which would be under the "maintain temperature" (actually temperature will fall, but slowly) classification - but if you already have one, it's no extra cost or equipment needed.

Others have a thermostat and heater, but it's rarely an adjustable thermostat. I am currently using a dehydrator which is adjustable as my temperature control device; I have in the past used an oven with a standing pilot light (not adjustable, but a good temperature.)

Regardless of which type you use, you need to cool the milk (after scalding) to 35-40c before adding the yogurt culture (a small amount of any yogurt with live culture) or you will kill the culture - so you can't just dump 80C milk into "whatever" and expect yogurt, regardless of temperature controls or lack of temperature controls.

My research and personal testing W.R.T. the tradeoffs of time and temperature has lead me closer to 35C (for up to 24 hours) than 40C as a default setting. On the other hand, some go as high as 45C.


How do I make vanilla sauce without air bubbles?

You could fold with a heat-safe silicone spatula, that will let you reach the whole surface of the pan so you don't get scorching, without introducing so many bubbles.

Or if you happen to have a vacuum machine, put your sauce in a bag after you make it and vacuum out all of the air. Voila, bubbles gone.


How do I clean kale and other leafy vegetables for cooking?

When washing vegetables that can get muddy (Kale, leeks, etc.) I generally recommend first using tepid to slightly warm water to help soften the mud more easily.  Leeks should be split down the middle and then can be fanned under warm water which will help wash the dirt out more readily.

For Kale, if it isn't muddy then you can use cold water and give it a soak and agitate as hobodave indicated below.  If they're muddy and dirty, then I'd use slightly warmer water to first clean them and then give them a soak in some cold water to help plump them up and increase their turgor pressure to make them nice and crisp.

A good wash in water (universal solvent) should be enough.  Most of what I've read on the effectiveness of "vegetable wash sprays" say that they're no better than a good wash with water.


Whole wheat bread recipe not turning out

We have a whole wheat sandwich bread recipe that works just fine. It is certainly possible to get it right every time. As you noticed- if you want to be able to both chew and swallow your bread it does require extra gluten.

To improve your recipe- or at least make it more repeatable- it will help to switch it over to weights. Just make it as you normally would by volume but weigh each ingredient as you measure it out and write it down. You can then reliably tweak your ratios and enjoy predictability of your product.

Baking bread by weight, besides not being as affected by the weather, is also much faster. You don't have to carefully scoop out level cups anymore- you just dump in flour from the bag until the weight is correct.

I will also second the comment above that you might experiment a little bit with a recipe with half whole wheat or less so you can build some experience with what a properly hydrated dough looks like. If you have kids it also helps to break them in to the bitter flavors more gradually.


How do you make chocolate thin enough to dip strawberries?

Melt it. I'm not trying to be funny here -- you should have no problem dipping strawberries or pretty much anything else (that's solid) in melted chocolate. When candy makers coat things in chocolate, that's all they're using -- they don't add anything to make the chocolate thinner. If you're really having trouble in this respect, then perhaps your chocolate isn't fully melted, or perhaps it's something other than real chocolate.

If you want the chocolate to be "tempered" when it hardens/dries/crystalizes, you're going to have to read up on tempering and be pretty careful with the temperature (but you'll end up with a superior product if you do).

  If I make it thin enough to dip (with butter) will that affect
  allowing it to set-up and harden?

Yes, that will definitely affect the way the chocolate sets up. When chocolate hardens, the cocoa butter contained in the chocolate forms crystals. The crystals can actually take several different forms, and only one of those forms makes for the best appearance and hardness. That's why you temper chocolate, btw. Adding other substances, particularly another fat, will affect or prevent that crystallization process.


Recipes for smoked meat are usually mostly about the preparation and then a note about target temperatures. These things will not change; the air will just be heated differently.

With grilling there is quite a bit of difference between charcoal and other heaters. Flavor and the fact that charcoal can get much hotter are the two big differences. Neither of these are important for smoking, in my opinion. You don't want it to get hot at all and any flavor the charcoal might have provided is wholly eclipsed by the flavor of the smoke itself.

One advantage of charcoal smokers is that they are cheaper and you can smoke much larger quantities of meat- you just need a big enough barrel to hold it all.

You can use your recipes as is- you just won't have to check your fire all the time to maintain your target temps.


Opening wine bottle with rounded top using a waiter's friend

Just as a prelude, I've heard these referred to by a huge number of terms: "waiter's friend", wine opener, combination corkscrew... on and on.  I'm going to call it a wine key below simply because that's how I first heard it described.

I have always found hinged versions to be much easier to use, and they do help with rounded tops as you describe here.  It's actually fairly easy to illustrate why.

Here's opening a bottle with a "single-piece" wine key:

Notice how the lever contacts the lip of the bottle at an angle?  For most bottles, that's not a huge problem, but if that lip is significantly rounded, the lever won't be able to "catch" properly and will slip off when you try to extract the cork.  Sometimes you can manually hold it into place (as this guy appears to be doing) but that's tricky at best.

This is a less significant issue with hinged wine keys, because the hinge allows you to press the first lever into an angle much closer to 90 degrees:

That helps the lever stay mounted while you pull up on the handle to partially extract the cork, and once you've made it this far there's typically much less resistance.

The hinged version is also just easier to use - because the levers are shorter, the actual corkscrew can be placed closer to them.  The entire wine key is really just a second-class lever, and what this does is move the load closer to the fulcrum, which increases the effectiveness of the handle's motion.

For what it's worth, nearly all the professional waiters and sommeliers I've known have carried and used double-hinged wine keys (most bartenders too, but at places which serve primarily beer and where there's little use for a corkscrew, many will opt for a simple flat bar instead).  There were only a couple of exceptions, and in nearly all of them the corkscrew was a gift and used more for sentimental value than ultimate practicality.

In fact, the overwhelming number of those people carried this exact model, which is simple, cheap, and very durable.  I myself have at least two of them (probably three) floating around the house; at least one of those is over 15 years old, and shows little signs of wear even after being used for years during my stints as a waiter and behind the bar.  I can't think of a single other service tool that I'd recommend so highly.


How do you cook nopales while keeping the green color?

I am not familiar with nopales, but I would be astonished if their green color was determined by something else than chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is usually destroyed by normal cooking techniques. If you want to keep the color mostly green (some dulling is inevitable):

cook the vegetable in an alkaline fluid. The easiest way is to use water with some baking soda added. The problem here is that humans like food which is slightly acidic, and alkaline food tastes soapy. Also, vegetable fibers soften more easily in alkaline environments, so they will be somewhat mushy. So use a very small amount. If they are to be added to a dish which is acidic (in a Mexican dish, the culprit will probably be tomatoes), cook the green vegetable separately, and only combine it with the rest of the dish at the last possible moment. Right before serving is best.
Heat destroys chlorophyll too. Cook the green vegetable as short as possible. Blanching is perfect, don't forget the ice bath at the end. It will probably be enough as a preparation method. While I don't know how hard a nopale is, I find blanching to be quite sufficient even for broccoli (provided the water contained either salt or baking soda), and their stems are one of the woodiest things we eat. If you don't think they are softened enough after blanching, cook them longer, until you find they are sufficiently softened.


When I was a child every christmas day we would have ragout des pattes de cochon (pigs feet stew) With meatballs in it. It is definetly possible to cook pigs feet in a pot!

That being said, I have never done it myself. This looks like a good recipe, you can get a good idea of what to do.

http://www.food.com/recipe/rago-t-de-pattes-de-cochon-pork-stew-with-meatballs-398226


All I've been able to find is that is a novelty name for a baton tray, this could be wrong but I've found no other tray called a "Wingy".

That or it could have been a typo in the recipe.


Can you make french toast without eggs and gluten?

Egg replacements are an option depending on where you live and what products are available, but from what I hear they don't produce a similar result to eggs. Most egg-free french toast recipes use applesauce mixed with milk or yogurt and a bit of sugar for dipping, and from what I've heard they work well.


Why did flatbread dominate the Middle East but Europe adopted raised breads?

I'm going to agree with Szczerzo about this being an anthropologic question, but I'm going to disagree about the cause.  While nomadic lifestyles was an influence, it's not causative.

I'm also going to ignore the distinction made about raising agents in the OP, because it's factually incorrect; most Arab/Levantine/Turkish/Kurdish breads use yeast.  Instead, I'm going to answer the distinction between loaf bread and flatbread.

Specifically: loaf bread is an aberration, not flatbread.  You find flatbreads around the world in every society that has access to any kind of grain anywhere.  Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas, Malaysia, everywhere.  Some are raised (yeasted) and some are not.  Some are filled and some are not.  All grains are used: wheat, barley, millet, rice, lentils, corn, etc.

Whereas: loaf bread pretty much only shows up in Egypt (and nearby) and in Europe, and there's good reason to believe that the latter two regions learned it from Egypt.  Thing is, loaf bread requires several different things to be easily and cheaply available in the same place:

Wheat or barley (high-gluten flours)
Ability to build brick, stone, or earthen ovens (this is where nomadism isn't compatible)
Ability to cultivate starters (both the right grains and the right weather)
Inexpensive, but hot, fuel for ovens (e.g. wood)

This combination simply didn't happen in too many places; either people lacked suitable grains, lacked cheap fuel, didn't build ovens, or simply never got started (the Babylonians appear to only have made flatbread, for example, despite having all the right ingredients and tools).

So it's really not so much a question of "why did X culture only make flatbread" as "why did these three places make loaf bread?"

If you're interested in this, I highly recommend the book Six Thousand Years Of Bread.


What is a good substitute for full cream milk powder?

I wouldn't add whole butter if all you're after is some extra fat.

You could try gently rendering down some unsalted butter to get the fat you want.

Do this on very low heat, do not let it burn, take it on and off the heat periodically until it barely begins to foam, then skim off the fat with a small strainer or a tea ball.

Then, save the clarified butter for something else.

A small quantity of that stuff goes pretty far, so you'd have to do some experimenting. A stingy teaspoon per cup of skim milk powder sounds like a reasonable starting point, but try a small batch first for testing.


Basically, it is that easy.  But it is a costly endeaver.  I have know chefs to make it with a pure olive oil or grape seed oil.  Some heat it to 220 degrees or so but I have meet some that don't.  The ones that didn't made sure to pull the oxygen from the bottle with one of those wine vacuum savers.

I have been told self made truffle oil will lose it truffle flavor due to most the flavor actually coming from an odorant.  I have not personally made any so I can't speak from experience on how long it will hold.

All the above being said. If I had the money to buy some truffle, I am not sure the best use for them would be to make truffle oil.


Your recipe doesn't specify 55°C, and I'd be surprised if 5–8 minutes over barely simmering water only gets that hot. Indeed, checking for sources:

McGee, in On Food and Cooking, says:

  When the temperature reaches 120°F/50°C, high enough to unfold some of the yolk proteins, the mix thickens, traps air more efficiently, and begins to expand. As the proteins continue to unfold and then bond to each other, the foam rises into fluffy mounds. The key to maximally light zabaglione is to stop the heating just when the foam teeters on the cusp between liquid and solid. Further cooking will produce a stiffer, denser, eventually tough sponge as the proteins over-coagulate

so that leads to the conclusion that 55°C wasn't hot enough, as it hadn't yet reached "the cusp between liquid and solid".
Hans-Dieter Belitz, Werner Grosch, and Peter Schieberle say in Food Chemistry:

  Egg yolk can be whipped into stable foam only at higher temperatures (optimum 72°C), the volume increasing about sixfold in the process. Above the critical temperature, the volume falls and the proteins coagulate. The protein coagulation is prevented by reducing the pH value, e.g., by the addition of acetic acid. This effect is used in the production of highly stable sauces

so that'd imply you want 72°C, or maybe higher due to the acid (wine) present. As a side benefit, that'd also pasteurize the eggs.

In summary, I think you should have cooked it hotter.

I doubt it is going to firm much in the fridge, hopefully it is stable enough to not further liquify.


How to Make Canned Coconut Milk Separate

Put the can in the fridge overnight or for a few hours. After it's sufficiently cold the cream will be on top and the water on the bottom. Just make sure not to shake the can when you remove it from the fridge!

(In a pinch pop it in the freezer but not for too long or else the can will warp due to the water expansion.)


Making a crock pot style stew in an instant pot

Yes and no.
There are some definite differences when you're cooking with a pressure cooker and a slow cooker.
First off, you need to have sufficient liquid from the beginning in a pressure cooker, so it will actually pressurize and lock shut.  Typically this is about 1/4 to  1/2 cup (~60 to 120 mL), but the type of liquid matters -- you're going to want more if it's something like tomato juice, where there's a lot of sugars and dietary fiber.
There are a number of slow cooker recipes that rely on vegetables or meat giving off liquid as they cook ... those just simply won't work.
But you also have to avoid having too much liquid.  Because the pressure cooker is sealed (at least on an instant pot, some others give off steam as they cook), you won't get any reduction and concentration of the liquids as it cooks.  This can result in stews coming out rather soupy.
For this reason, I would recommend following a pressure cooker recipe if you can.  Some will call for pulling the meat and vegetables and turning the instant pot to 'sauté' to reduce the liquid.  Others will make adjustments to ingredients and seasonings, and might even throw in a cornstarch slurry to try to get the right viscosity.
As there are lots of recipes out there for any given dish, you might want to look for ones that fit your general constraints and then adjust the flavorings more like you prefer, but use the general meat / vegetable / liquid ratios from the pressure cooker recipe as-is the first time.
A few things that I've taken to doing when adapting slow cooker recipes to the instant pot:

Cut up large roasts If you're supposed to brown the meat first, I do it, but I cut large roasts into two or three more manageable chunks.  Then set it aside, deglaze, and pour the liquid out with the meat.

Cook down vegetables that give off liquid. Like for onions, I'll cook down a base of onions until it's almost dry, then deglaze with your liquid making sure it's hot, and then pile the meat and other veg in (possibly some more onion, as that other stuff's going to almost disappear), then change it over to pressure cook.

Replace tomatoes with tomato paste If a recipe calls for a can of tomatoes, tomato puree or similar, I add some tomato paste and cook it for a minute or so before one of the times when I deglaze.  (Note: I'm using the US terms.  In the UK, it would be replacing passata or crushed tomatoes with tomato purée)

Use full salt broths.  If you're not going to be reducing the liquid at the end, you don't need to worry about using 'low sodium' broth or stock, and it keeps it from coming out too flat tasting

Use more garlic.  Pressure cooking seems to reduce the flavor too much for my liking.  I tend to increase it to 1.5 to 2 times what was called for.  If that's still not enough for your liking, you can grind up a clove of garlic with some coarse salt, and stir that in at the end.

Mind you, with the deglazing, you'll lose some of the liquid, so I like to measure it out ahead of time (at least 1/2 a cup (120mL), to deal with evaporation), and then work from that when I go to deglaze ... and add all of the rest of it to bring to a boil just before I put everything back in and seal it up.


What are these sweets from 16th century?

I think user23614's comment is correct. They're ragged comfits, sugar coated seeds or spices.

These two paintings by the German painter Georg Flegel, have similar objects depicted, and are described by two different sources (Sugar-Plums and Comfits, Sugar Plums Demystified) as being ragged comfits:

They're apparently not very common these days, surviving in the form Pistoia confetti, also known as birignoccoluto. They're apparently primarily given out as treats at weddings. Coincidentally the Clara Peeters painting you're asking about may be, according to one interpretation, depicting the ragged comfits as a treat at a wedding.


Is it still possible to make cast iron skillets as good as the old ones?

"Back in the day", cast iron pans were manufactured in a much more labor-intensive way.  Each sand mold (minimum of 2 per item) was hand-rammed around a form, which was a wood (later aluminum) "positive" of the pan to be produced.  The forms were slightly larger than the finished pan to allow for the shrinkage of the iron as it cooled. Molten iron was poured by hand into the forms, which is as much art as science to do properly.  After the iron hardened the frames of the molds were removed, and the "raw" pan was ready for machining. First the "gates" on the edge of the pan were removed by nipping/grinding. The pan was then placed in an apparatus similar to a brake drum lathe and turned. A counter-turning grinding burr (shaped as a truncated cone) was run across the cooking surface of the pan. The quality of the result was due to the fineness of the sand used in the mold, the age/quality of the grinding burr, and the skill of the machinist.  The bumps didn't get "smoothed out with use".  To my knowdledge, none of the major hollow-ware manufacturers sand-blasted any if their products.

In the late 50's, early 60's, domestic manufacturers had to compete with imports if cheap overseas manufacture.  Labor overhead made the old manufacturing methods economically unviable.  The surviving manufacturers, BSR and Lodge, retooled for automated casting. This led to the thicker, unmilled pans that are with us today.

The spiel about "the rough surface is for pre-seasoning" us pure marketing BS.  I bought Lodge dutch ovens in the 70's that had the rough surface and NO PRE-SEASONING. They were, however, shipped with a thin coat of paraffin wax to prevent rusting.  Lodge came up with the "pre-seasoning" story years after they started selling un-milled pans (and people complained about how tough it was removing the wax coating).

Older, smoothly milled, properly seasoned pans are WAY slicker than you can get any rough surface iron.  My daily egg-fryer is an unmarked Lodge #5 from the 40's.  It was a $5 crusted-up wreck of a thrift store find. Degreased in a lye bath, further cleaned by electrolysis, and re-seasoned with 6 baked coats of flax seed oil.  With a wipe of oil, over medium heat, the cooked eggs slide around in the pan, nearly as slick as Teflon.

Furthermore, cast iron does NOT do a good job distributing heat, but DOES do a good job retaining heat. Copper, and even cast aluminum, are better heat conductors/distributors. A thinner cast iron pan works just as well as thick one. The only thing that thicker, rough finish cast iron does better than the smooth pans is sear meat.


Making Mayo by hand , using whisk , emulsion breaks down

It's important to determine whether your emulsion actually broke immediately or was just creaming.

I'm going to trot out this diagram again from yesterday:

(source: Cube Cola)

Creaming occurs when the oil drops, which are less dense than the water, float to the top.  As long as the droplets don't coalesce, you can still fix this with agitation (whisk, blend, or shake vigorously).

Emulsions with coarse particles (of oil) are much more prone to creaming, because their increased buoyancy makes them more able to push up past the water molecules.  You want to have a very fine "mist" of oil suspended in the water; if you were using a squeeze bottle, perhaps the individual drops were simply too large.  A ketchup bottle in particular would not be appropriate for this sort of thing, you'd want to use something closer to a syringe (or just get an actual syringe).

Now if you keep adding oil to a creamed emulsion or let it sit too long then it will also start to coalesce, and coalescence and creaming together are what cause an emulsion to break completely.  This, you really can't recover from, except to let it separate completely, skim off the fat, and start over.

So, to recap:

Your oil drops may have been too large;
You may not have been agitating enough, especially when it started to cream;
You may have added too much oil after creaming had already started.

I also agree with commenter Henrik that the amount of oil sounds a little high; 3/4 cup would be more reasonable for 1 egg yolk.  But since you say you only got 1/3 of the way through, that's clearly not your problem here.


How can I keep my freshly baked loaf fresh until the next morning if I bake it at night?

It may be a matter of how you are defining 'Fresh', but my experience has been that 'fresh' isn't that hard to maintain, as long as I'm making a loaf with a significant crust; just don't cut it.  I tend to leave the bread on the rack in my oven overnight to cool down, with no loss of freshness, as long as it hasn't been cut into.  Once it's cut into, things change, but the crust itself isn't terribly vulnerable to getting stale quickly, and protects the rest of the bread.


Is there a technique to making Caramel in a Microwave oven?

Microwave candy recipes are very fast and easy. They tend to be only a little different in flavor than the stove top versions in my experience. There seems to be a little less depth of flavor.

The recipes usually call for short periods of microwaving and frequent stirring. As far as the cooking times- I have to follow the recipe as I have no way of measuring the temperature in the microwave.

I personally have had great success with peanut brittle recipes (which get hotter than caramel):

http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/microwave-peanut-brittle-2/Detail.aspx

A cursory google search found several recipes for caramel but I have not tried them personally.


It's simply to allow the sugar to dissolve and mix into the lemonade.  Because of this, you can more precisely adjust your preferred sweetness level.


First of all, razor on glass is a bad idea.  I hope I don't have to explain why.  Just think about what you're doing there.

You definitely did the right thing by buying the cooktop cleaner (I assume you used Cerama-Bryte or some similar product), but that's only half the equation; if you just use a cloth or paper towel with that, you won't get good results.  There's a product called a "Scrunge" that's specifically designed for cleaning (scrubbing) glass cook tops.  Use that with the cleaning solution and it can clean almost anything off.

With a little bit of elbow grease (okay, a lot of elbow grease) I managed to clean off over a year of caked-on grease and charcoal around the burner rings that I was never able to get with the Cerama-Bryte alone.  I don't want this to sound like a product endorsement as there may be other, similar kinds of specialized "sponges" on the market, but this is the only one I know of that's safe to use on glass (i.e. won't scratch it like a scouring pad or those double-sided 3M sponges).

You can also try baking soda.  Make a concentrated paste (say 3 parts baking soda to 1 part water) and scrub it in as hard as you can.  This is often enough to clean by itself, but if that fails...

Finally, you can use the baking soda/vinegar track.  Use roughly equal parts of each but don't mix them in advance.  Instead, pour vinegar onto the stain and sprinkle on the baking soda afterward, or vice versa, and scrub right away while it's fizzing.  That will usually dissolve anything under it.


Moose Drool Beer Bread in a Bottle OVER 10 YRS. OLD

I never uncapped it and was just wondering if this could still possibly be good.

Probably not... dry yeast is made up of living yeast cells that are in a dormant state, and they become active again when they'r rehydrated. Over time, they degrade and once enough of them have died you won't have enough yeast to ferment the dough. Also, flour doesn't last forever -- the shelf life of white flour is usually a year or two. So, even if the kit works in the sense that you can get the dough to rise, the bread probably wouldn't be really good.

I wouldn't waste time on a 10-year old bread kit: toss it and find a recipe for bread in a similar style that you can make with fresh ingredients.

Update:

It occurs to me that this is a beer bread recipe, and many of those are quick breads that use chemical leaveners (e.g. baking powder or self-rising flour) instead of yeast. That doesn't really change the answer, though... the flour is still going to be way past it's stopped-being-delicious-by date, and like yeast, chemical leavening agents also lose their effectiveness over time.


First, remove some, but not all, of the end.  Make sure to leave a little of the root intact, as this will make the next steps easier.  Peel the onion and discard the peel.

Stand your onion on one of the now-flat ends.  Chop in half with your chef's knife.

Lay a single half on the flat end.  Working from root to cut end, make several cuts at dice width that cut almost to the root end, but leave a little bit still attached.

Working perpendicular to your last set of cuts, make another set of cuts at dice width.  This will leave you with cut pieces.  When you get to the portion with the root, discard it.

Repeat for your other onion half.

During cooking, the layers should flake apart leaving dice sized pieces.


We can quibble, but brining, by definition, is wet.  When there is no liquid, you are just salting or dry rubbing (although the term is popular, and few make the distinction).
It is unlikely that any oj, or anything other than salt molecules are penetrating the meat.  So, the oj is just a surface treatment, as is most marination. If you like the texture of brined pork, why mess with the oj brine?  I would use the oj brine, then right before grilling, use your spice rub without the salt.


Which kind of cream do I use for creme brulee?

What you want is cream with 35%-40% milkfat, and no gelatine or other stabilizers for whipping.  If you use a lighter cream, then it will not have the rich, creamy texture, and evenly thick consistency you seek.  In fact, if you use a light enough cream, it will not thicken properly.

Now we enter the murky realm of regional naming differences, trying to find the appropriate kind of cream!

In Australia, this would be called pure cream (35-56% milkfat)... which might be the same as "cooking thickened cream."  Read the label and make sure it is just cream, not gelatin or foam stabilizers like "thickened cream".  It could also be labelled "single cream" too (~35% milkfat).

In America, we call it heavy cream, or heavy whipping cream, and it is defined as 35%+ milkfat, and is generally around 38%.

In the UK, a recipe I found the uses a mixture of milk and "double cream" (cream with 48%+ milkfat).  They mix 100 mL whole fat milk + 426 mL of double cream. The final milkfat content is somewhere around 40%.

In the rest of the EU, the same procedure appears to be the best bet, since I can't find clear names for heavier creams besides double cream (which appears to be the same as the UK).

Edit: You may also be able to get a good result using straight double cream.  I'm looking at a French recipe that uses it.  The catch is, of course, that while the minimum fat content is specified, actual fat content in double cream can vary considerably, potentially giving erratic results.


It really depends of the amount of rice you are cooking and what type of grain it is (according to the recipes I find online), so try and figure it out yourself. Here are some tips I have when cooking rice.

Use the same amount of rice as the measurement of your water. Add a bit more if the rice is a bit dry.
Wash your rice at least 3 times to clean off any unnecessary starch or dirt (if you don't trust the rice all too much, hehe).
Choose the "Manual" program for your cooker to choose the time you'd think the rice would be cooked enough. Soon then, you could identify how long you need to cook the rice.

Check out this site I found for the basic tutorial of using a rice cooker.
Still didn't work? Just stick to using a metal pot and gas/electric stove to cook your rice, like I do.


There isn't really a "test", per se, to tell if a bread is a "real sourdough" or not. Without getting overly technical, the tangy "sour" is created by a lactobacillus (bacteria) culture feeding on the byproducts of the yeast used to make the dough rise. The byproducts of the bacteria produce the lactic acids which give the resulting bread its sour taste.

The taste of sourdough can be simulated by adding other acidic components to the bread dough. Practically speaking, the only way to tell the difference is if you have the experience of a refined palate that you recognize the taste difference.

Ah, but here's the tricky part. Once a baker has a stable culture of yeast and bacteria (starter), they'll save a bit of the fermented dough to add to the next batch, and so on for batch after batch. It is not unusual for bakers to continue their culture for years or even decades. So the problem of recognizing the authenticity of sourdough is that each bakers' sourdough will have it's own distinctive taste. Yikes. So much for the standard taste test.

There is one test I can think of; although, I don't know how practical this is: A very "healthy" sour dough culture is the result of having reached a really stable and balanced, symbiotic relationship between the yeast and bacteria. This is desirable because it prevents other undesirable bacteria from setting up shop. Because of this inherent stability, real sourdough breads are very resistant to mold and other reactions that cause them to go bad. So, if your sourdough bread seems to last longer then you would expect from fresh bread, that might be a good indication of real sourdough. Of course, this can also be the result of preservatives added to the bread; so… no help there.


I dont have refrigrator what are ways to keep milk without that?

You really just have to find a way to keep it cold. The only way to keep perishable food from spoiling is to keep it below 40F/4C. If you can't do that, you'll have to use it fresh. UHT milk may help with that, because it's shelf-stable before opening, so you may be able to get a larger number of smaller size ones that you can actually finish quickly after opening.

There are some things you can make out of milk that have longer life at room temperature, but they're not really milk anymore.

Boiling really can't fix this, because it doesn't kill everything, because the nasty stuff produced by bacteria can survive even if the bacteria dies, and because whatever's left (or whatever drifts in and recontaminates it) is just going to have a nice friendly environment to grow in after it cools back into the danger zone.


Sausages are pretty forgiving. As long as you don't burn them or leave the center raw, they should come out OK. Since they're pretty fatty (at least the good ones are) there's little chance of drying them out, so when in doubt, cook them a little longer. They'll feel firm, not squishy, when they're done.

The easiest way to cook raw sausages is in the oven (at 350-375°F, 180-190°C or so). If you're doing it on the stove, I'd brown them first in a little (very little) oil, then add some water, or beer, or wine, or whatever you happen to have (not much - just enough to cover the bottom), cover, reduce the heat, and simmer until done. Feel free to cook some vegetables in the pan along with the sausage.


How do I know if condiments in refrigarator are good?

A really accurate answer would require analyzing each individual condiment, but there are some general principals you can apply.

Some condiments would be shelf stable outside of the refrigerator because they inhibit pathogen growth by being:

acidic, like ketchup or vinegar
salty, like soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce
sweet, like jam or jelly, or chocolate syrup
sufficiently dry, like peanut butter

These are not going to be bothered by a day or two outside of refrigeration.   We keep them in the fridge because it extends their shelf life to be much, much longer, on the order of months instead of weeks.

Of course, you should still discard them if you see any signs of mold, unusual wateriness, or strange smells.

Other condiments in the refrigerator such as mayonnaise and salad dressings should be considered subject to the normal rule for how long foods can be outside the refrigerator.   This would normally be a cumulative period of about 2 hours maximum, to be on the safe side.

While normally I would not mention any... more liberal... interpretation of the best recommended safety standards, I will point out that 60 F, while technically in the danger zone, is still moderately cool, and the danger increases exponentially with temperature.   You can assess your own risk, but you may decide a few more hours is still a risk you are willing to accept.

As always, check for off smells, colors, or appearance of mold or other spoilage, and apply common sense.

See also:  How do I know if food left at room temperature is still safe to eat?


3:1 ratio of oil:vinegar, vinaigrette -- how can I use this in soups?

Ruhlman's ratios are very useful for baking, where the ingredients play an important role in the physical structure of the end result and a bad ratio can result in a bad cake (why didn't the bread rise?, etc.) They are OK for sauces to ensure a pleasant consistency (and partially because of the physical constraints of emulsified sauces), but much less important there. In fact, I generally make bechamel with twice as much milk as he says, and get a thinner bechamel which I find much nicer than his version. There is no structural problem with it (the way there would be if I tried to use twice the specified amount of milk in something like crepes).

In seasoning, there is no need to consult an external ratio at all. Sure, if you find exactly this ratio tasty, use it. But you can add any amount of fat and vinegar to your soup and get a good soup; your own taste preference is the only reliable guide there.

This said, it is rather unusual to add oil as a seasoning to a soup, and most Westerners don't add vinegar either. A soup is more nourishing when it has some fat, but it usually comes from the meat. It is also popular to sweat the onions (and sometimes some other long-cooking vegetables like carrots) in oil before adding the water, and the oil gets incorporated into the soup. The amount of oil in this case is judged by the onions: they should be evenly oiled, but not swim in a puddle of oil.

Some acidity usually improves a soup, and if you don't thicken with yoghurt, vinegar (or lemon juice) is a good choice. But most people who add it at all add pure vinegar when the soup is ready (to the pot or individually to each plate), and generally just add a squirt, then taste, add again, etc., until it tastes good to them. There is no ratio to follow.

I don't know of a tradition to add vinaigrette instead of vinegar of this point, but preparations containing vinaigrette are possible. For example, the garlic for tripe soup can be held either in pure vinegar or in a vinaigrette (but this is less common), and it gets spooned together with its fluid into the soup. However, if you decide that you like to use vinaigrette as a seasoning, just go ahead.

There is no point of using emulsified vinaigrette for soup (the emulsion will break). If you want to avoid fat bubbles swimming on the soup, make a thickened soup, the flour should bind them. This assumes a "standard" soup, a cream soup should have no trouble absorbing a bit of oil.

There is no need to use vinaigrette instead of pepper (although again, you can do it if that is what tastes best to you). It is better to use both, because they enrich the taste of the soup in very different ways.

The same applies to any other seasoning: no need to use a ratio, go by your own taste. Use as much pepper and salt as you like, nobody can prescribe you to like it exactly 3:1.

As for the traditional use for vinaigrette, it is a basic salad sauce. It can be used as-is, or turned into one of countless variations (actually Ruhlman explains it and gives some interesting variants). But for salads, it is preferable to emulsify it (usually with mustard), else it wilts the leaves. There was a Food lab article on that, but Ruhlman doesn't mention it and gives almost all vinaigrette recipes without mustard (except for the classic one, which of course has it).


Assuming TVP is what you used... it is essentially a byproduct of the production of tofu, and as such is largely tasteless on its own. Generally, to use it you first rehydrate it with a 1:1-1.5 ratio of TVP to liquid. The liquid can be pretty much anything, from water, to broth, mustard, ketchup, liquid smoke, etc. Very similar to tofu, it will absorb the taste of whatever you prepare it with. When cooking it for vegans I usually use vegetable broth, water, vegan worcestershire sauce, a dash of liquid smoke and Bragg's Liquid Aminos (the liquid aminos and worcesershire sauce add some of the savory that you REALLY need to simulate beef). A small amount of sherry works well here too.

Stir the liquids, and add them to the TVP and allow to rehydrate for about 10 minutes. Check about 5 minutes in and ensure you have enough liquid. It's usually better to have too much than too little as you can pour off the excess. You'll have to play around with what flavors you use in the liquid - as mentioned, TVP is more or less a blank palette. This is actually both a boon and a burden compared to store bought "meat crumbles" which are already seasoned.

After rehydrating, it is ready to eat. You just need to warm it. So in the future, you can sweat your onions while it is rehydrating, add the sauce, and add the TVP last (just to bring it to heat). You'll have to play around with flavors that work best here. Sorry I can't be more specific, I usually don't use TVP for lasagne.

HTH


What makes cake a Sponge Cake? And what doesn't?

You are asking for a firm definition where none exists.

Baking is not mathematics, and it does not have a heap of literature where everybody has formally agreed to use the same terminology. Thus classification of baking goods is done into intuitive categories. This means it doesn't work by strictly defining where the border of a category lies (everything that has feature X is a member of the category "sponge cake", and everything that doesn't have feature X is not a member). Rather, it works by defining a center of the category, or a prototype for what a sponge cake should be like. The more a cake reminds one of the prototypical sponge cake, the more likely it is that this person will consider it to belong into the category of sponge cakes. And through social interaction, people will partly synchronize their ideas of what is considered "prototypical", and how close is "close enough" to still be considered part of the category.

WIth that in mind, the best answer that can be given is to describe what a prototypical sponge cake is like. It has a specific texture, not that much different from other things called a "sponge", such as contemporary plastic sponges for dishwashing. It is basically a firmed-up foam, with many small, regular holes inside. It has a characteristic elasticity - not as brittle as a meringue, but not as soft as a marshmallow, it is rather in the middle of these two cooking extremes. It also has a characteristic type of being "moist" - it is not as dry as a baguette, but also not super moist like a brownie. It is chemically leavened, somewhat sweet, and vanilla flavored. (While there are variants like "chocolate sponge", they are not the category prototype). It is not noticeably oily in the mouth the way a chiffon cake can be.

There is a chef named Ruhlmann who has tried to standardize some recipe types by giving a basic formula for creating a prototypical dish of each type. The book is called "Ratio", because the formulas are represented as the ratio of the ingredients used. For sponge cake, he gives a ratio of 1:1:1:1 flour:eggs:butter:sugar, and he requires that the cake uses the creaming method. A cake created with the same ratio, but using the muffin method, is given in the book as "pound cake".

Following this ratio indeed produces a cake whose qualities are very close to what most people would call a prototypical sponge cake (with some cultural differences - I think that traditionally German and Austrian "bisquitboeden" are ligher on fat but else they are used interchangeably with Anglosaxon sponges). Making his pound cake (by mixing the same ingredients without creaming) results in a cake with a different, heavier texture with less regular holes. However, this does not preclude other recipes from creating a cake with a typical "sponge" texture without making use of a creaming method, or even from people finding the difference so insignificant that they would consider Ruhlman's pound cake to be a sponge cake too.

So, it is not about any specific method, or ingredient, or ratio. It is about whether people who eat it will agree that they associate it with the term, based on whatever triggers their feeling of similarity.


How to cut a cooked chicken, including the bones, with a cleaver?

I think what you want to do is this, cribbed from this book, which has an excellent step by step guide with pictures:

Remove the wings. Stand the chicken on its neck, legs point to the ceiling and breasts pointing away from you. slide the cleaver between the body and wing, cutting through the joint close to the body.  You should slide the knife between the joint cutting only the tendons, not the bone.
Remove the legs.  lie the chicken on its back one leg near you, one leg away from you.  slide the knife between the joint near the body, again cutting only tendon not bone and remove the leg.
Separate the thigh from the drumstick, again go for the joint.  If you want the legs to be in smaller pieces then you can cut each thigh and drumstick in two with a firm action.  You have 2 choices for technique

Start with the cleaver tip furthest from you on the board, place the thigh under the blade and push down firmly and quickly.  you should cut through the bone.
Chop through the bone by lifting the cleaver in the air and bringing down hard and fast.  This has better chance of a cleaner cut through the bone, but you need to be a better aim.

Split the carcass in half.  Stand in the same position as 1. and with the blade parallel to to your body cut down through the carcass so you have the back and the breast in separate pieces
Remove the breast from the bone by sliding the knife (might want to use a smaller knife here) between the meat and the bone.
Remove the backbone out of the back, kitchen scissors are easiest.  you can skip this if the back doesn't have much meat.
Cut the back pieces into nice size pieces across the length.
Slice the breast pieces crosswise into nice size pieces
Reassemble the chicken on the plate with the breast meat on top of the back pieces

this picture doesn't really do it justice, but until I can find a better one...

this video shows it being done with a bit more force and not for presentation, but might be more what you are after


Measurement for 3 sheets of crushed graham cracker

Jefromi answered this related question How much is a cup of graham cracker crumbs in crackers and weight? with the information that there are 7 or 8 crushed crackers in a cup. So, 3 crackers would be about .4 cup crushed.


In examining sponge cake recipes, I've noticed that some call for adding the melted butter with the flour.  Some call for adding it afterwards.

The important thing is to fold in that butter in a way that preserves the network of bubbles that was created while whipping your eggs (unsure if your recipe called for whipping whole eggs with sugar or yolks with sugar and egg whites separately, but both will be creating a bubble structure integral to letting your cake rise).  Ratio mentions that folding in flour helps to preserve that network (as long as you don't overhandle).

If you over handle while folding - and you may have tipped it over the line when adding butter - you will destroy that bubble network and your cake won't rise as you'd like.  It's also possible to under-handle, which will result in only a thin layer of sponge on top with a thick buttery cake underneath.


bread made with egg safe to leave outside?

Food safety categorizes each food on its own. You cannot take the categories of the ingredients that went in ("flour is shelf stable, eggs need refrigeration...") and decide on the shelf stability of the product based on the ingredients. For detailed information on the basics of how food safety works, read our tag wiki on food safety, https://cooking.stackexchange.com/tags/food-safety/info.

Breads can be stored on the counter, no matter what they were made with.


Should I pre-season meat with salt even if it's skinless?

If the chicken is not left exposed to the air (see below), then seasoning ahead of time will not dry out the chicken; in fact, it will do the opposite. When salt is applied to the surface the osmotic pressure differential (the difference in salinity between the inside and outside of the chicken) will draw out moisture at first, then the salty water will be drawn back into the chicken, helping to break down muscle fibers and season the chicken inside.

You will lose less moisture when cooking, and your chicken will be more tender, moister, and better seasoned.

This is also true for steaks and other fleshy comestibles. The use of salt is a complicated subject and there has been a lot written about it. Unfortunately, there is a lot of false information out there, even from famous, professional chefs. For example: whether to pre-season eggs for scrambled eggs or not.

I have done my own tests with seasoning and also read a lot on the subject. One thing I found, for example, is when sous videing chicken, white meat and dark meat behave differently with regard to pre-seasoning and need different temperatures and different lengths of time. In the case of white meat I find it comes out better with no pre-seasoning, and with dark meat, which I sous vide for longer, the affect of pre-salting becomes less pronounced the longer you cook it for. I do my dark meat for eight hours.

If you are going to pre-salt, do it at least 45 minutes ahead of time. If you salt a steak, for example, 20 minutes before cooking it will be worse than salting right before cooking or an hour before cooking.

Note: Dry aging of meat and poultry can be done at home, and in this case you want to leave the meat unwrapped in the fridge. For example, when I make a whole turkey I spatchcock it then dry brine (with salt only, no liquid) for three days covered and then one more day uncovered. This makes really crispy skin and the salt gets deep into the flesh for better seasoning and moister turkey.

I could write a book on this subject, but fortunately, people much smarter than I already have. I suggest you read Harold McGee and Kenji López-Alt's books as a start.


I have long kept a copy of an old usenet posting on my web server that addressed the flavorings issue. There are alternatives to sassafras, and sarsaparilla plus dried burdock may get you most of the way there, and I always like the drink called sarsaparilla a little more than most mass market root beers. Birch beer has its charms, too. I think you can experiment with a few different barks and roots. Wintergreen and some of the other ingredients are used for other reasons; I'm pretty sure they were present in earlier forms of root beer as well.

See http://www.jagaimo.com/bistro/rootbeerfaq.html for the old discussion I kept a copy of (circa 1995). The same posting covered some suppliers but they may or may not be relevant 16 years after I collected that posting.


When freezing prepared meats, is it better to freeze the meat separate from the sauce/gravy?

I use two containers when possible. The meat and the sauce usually thaw at different rates, so you end up w chunks of frozen meat embedded in thawed sauce. This can be messy to work with.
Once frozen, it's OK to combine meat and sauce in a single container. Just separate when thawing.


My first thought would be you over-roasted the methi.

Fenugreek seeds benefit from a light roasting or bhuna which removes the slight bitter edge they have - however, if you over-do it that bitterness comes back with a vengeance.

To avoid the issue, I usually add fenugreek powder to my sauce as it's cooking. It still develops the full aroma that way. It adds a very slight bitterness, but removes the danger of over-roasting right at the start & not finding out til right at the end.

I'm not sure it can be 'fixed' as such, other than by trying to balance [or really mask] it with sweetness, more acidity, or trying to dilute it in a larger batch.


Vitamin B12 is stored in the liver and muscle of animals, and is also passed on to eggs and milk, so these are good sources for non-vegans. Humans produce B12 in the gut, but cannot absorb it. Many other animals produce it in the gut too, so unwashed plants that have been fertilized with animal feces may be a source of B12. However, there are many other reasons to wash your plants before eating them.

Some plants (spirulina, for example) has been touted as a plant-based B12 alternative but is inadequate for most people. As vegans, our best bet is synthesized B12. You can't synthesize it yourself, so no, you can't "grow" it at home, if that's what you mean. Where I live, vegan B12 is available both through the internet and in pharmacies, but I don't know the situation in your country.

The Vegan Society has useful information about B12, as does VeganHealth.org. The Vegan RD has a section about cyanocobalamin versus methylcobalamin if you want to dive into the details.


Why does roasting vegetables before pureeing into soup affect the flavour?

Cooking causes certain chemical reactions within the food being cooked, many of which produce (and consume) compounds which have various flavours.

I don't know the real specifics, but I can outline why your two cases are different, and you can verify it visually. If you take a potato, cut it up and boil it, it stays pale. The texture changes to become much nicer to eat, and the flavour loses that raw starchiness that raw potato has (ever eaten raw potato? I don't recommend it...)

If you take that same potato (or, for realism's sake, a very similar potato) and cut it up and put it on a baking tray and put it in the oven to roast, what you get out has golden brown edges and a different texture, and a bit of a skin over the surface. Why? Ovens apply heat differently. Inside your oven is air at 200 degrees C or so. This is much hotter than the water in a saucepan (which caps out at 100C at sea level unless it's a pressure cooker). So the first potential difference is temperature - some reactions simply do not happen at the temperature you can achieve while boiling.

The second difference is the environment. If a reaction relies on one of the gases in the atmosphere to happen (chances are it's oxygen), this is not going to be the same when the food's submerged in water containing far less oxygen than the air does.

So when you roast your squash in the oven, you're allowing reactions to happen which cannot happen if you boil it, thus leading to different flavours. Particularly relevant is the Maillard reaction, which requires a kind of fat and sugar and lots and lots of heat, and happens when you brown meat in the frying pan, or in onions being roasted in a hot oven. It's a complicated business that has many different possible end products, some of which can then react further to make different ones again... read about it on Wikipedia if you're interested in the details. The point is that there is no way to get those flavour compounds at temperatures too low for the reaction to happen - Maillard requires about 155C, well over the boiling point of water at sea level. There's also caramelisation, which is a different flavour-producing reaction.

I guarantee that if you make two batches of soup, boiling one and roasting the other, you'll find that the roasted one tastes quite different. That doesn't mean you can't make nice soup by boiling raw vegetables (I've done it), but you can't make the same soup.


Why does salt and seasoning stick better to hot foods?

It's really not about temperature at all.
"While it's still hot" is a great description of when to do it, but it's not why.
You want to salt fried food when it's straight from the oil, because the surface is still wet with oil. This ensures that the salt sticks to the surface of the food. As the food sits, the surface will dry (it cools off at the same time-- which is where the "while it's hot" advice comes from).
Even with non-fried foods, heat often comes with surface moisture, either from the cooking process or from the steam being released by the hot food.
Salt sticks to "wet" surfaces. Freshly cooked, still-hot food usually has a "wet" surface (either from water, steam, or oil).


Milk or water for fluffier scrambled eggs?

If you want slops use the Ramsay method. If you want something with texture and taste try this

Turn the heat onto max and use a light weight pan for gas, or a medium weight pan for electric. Add a small drizzle of oil to the pan

In a strong deep bowl add a splash of milk or water and two eggs (say 20% liquid to 80% egg)

Beat like crazy for 20 seconds (use a whisk or a fork)

When the pan is sizzling pour in the egg mixture and use a medium spatula (a 5cm wide strip of wood is great) fold in the cooked parts as they appear. Work quickly

It will begin to form a loose lump in the pan. Keep folding the egg into the lump until all the liquid egg is gone

Optionally add a handful of coarse chopped broad leaf parsley or some thinly sliced cheese just before the final few folds

The cooking phase should have taken seconds, not minutes

Remove pan from heat

Let it rest for a while before moving so the egg has time to set

The texture is changed from smooth to rough by how often and hard you fold the egg


Treat it like normal wine, 15% isn't enough alcohol to preserve it. Refrigerated it will be drinkable for up to 2 weeks and you should be able to cook with it for a bit longer than that. I'm not a huge fan of freezing wine, especially if you're going to be thawing and then re-freezing it, although for cooking you can get away with it.

Incidentally, most sherries do not have a long shelf-life and should be treated the same way.


How to calibrate Polder instant read thermometer?

You can download the manual for your particular model on the polder website.

The instructions for the model 574 (not sure if that's yours) are:

  Calibration function: Put the probe into iced water (32 F); wait until the reading value stabilizes. ␣ If the value reads between 23 to 41 F (-5  to 5 C), press the “CAL” key for 2 seconds. “CAL” will appear on the display for 2 seconds: the unit will then be calibrated automatically and return to its normal state and display 32 F.

You can always give them a call too.


Why did my sponge cake go moldy so quickly?

Not sure exact fridge temp and it was stored in a plastic rubbermaid covered container. but I think oil does have something to do with it since other cakes with butter such as pound cake does not grow moldy so quickly.


Best time to cook chicken, to keep it from going off

The best time to cook is "now" as it gives germs less time to multiply.

If you have a slow cooker, sous-vide set-up, you can keep the cooked meat for up to 21 days in the fridge (for months in the freezer).

I must direct you to this previous question for more info on food safety.

Edit: If your goal is, as stated, to maximize the time you have chicken in your fridge without getting sick, 3 days + 4 days will give you seven days. However, from a food quality point of view, cooking "now" will give you more satisfaction.

Something else... you don't know how long the chicken has been dead already. I've seen some nasty looking chicken at butchers. If the skin looks dry, it has been dead for some time already.


Is there such a thing as unsteamed rolled oats?

Rolled uncooked groats will shatter. You can get uncooked, unrolled oats though. Food coops and organic grocery stores/coops have them. $1.49 a pound is a good price. You want hulled oat groats, as it takes considerable technology to get the hulls off. Sold in bulk, or one pound bags. You can get 50Lb bags online. They'll last a year or more.It takes about 2 hours to cook them in a rice cooker. Brown rice 2X. Add just enough water to cover on the second cycle. Let them sit on warm fir half an hour to reduce stickiness. Chicken broth and brown sesame seed oil are good additives. Dirty oats, Mexican style, or Stroganoff style, with sour cream, mushrooms and onions added at end are both pretty tasty. Of course, you can eat them plain too.


Cooking stove vs cooking on open camp fire

Campfire

Advantages: Less equipment to bring, you can do everything from grilling to roasting to steaming to baking, makes you feel more awesome for having cooked over a fire.

Disadvantages: Longer to set up, can darken pots, harder to control and regulate heat, more prone to burning food/hands.

My Usage: BBQing/Grilling (Steaks, burgers), roasting (anything that can be skewered), no dish steaming/baking of foods (Tin Foil wrapping), anything else that benefits from direct heat.

Stove

Advantages: Quick to set up, It's just like cooking on the stove at home. Much better control of heat.

Disadvantages: More equipment, you're limited to what you can do on a stove (which admittedly is quite a bit).

My Usage: Anything cooked in water (soups, noodles, hot drinks), Stuff that is really better done on a pan (eggs, french toast)


Netvet - or caul fat doesn't work well with sausages - it is hard fat - rather use soft fat for sausages. Like lamb's tail or something similar like pork fat.

I usually make skilpaadtjies from ground sheep's liver, that are spiced etc and then wrapped in netvet before being grilled on the braai.

Never tried cured lamb sausages - lamb has quite a pronounced taste and drying it will make it even more pronounced. We have used lamb in droe wors though - with beef and game meat.


What is Okinawan "yushi tofu" made from?

Food.com actually provides a recipe for making it, saying:

  Yushi doufu is tofu that has not been pressed and formed, but simply scooped out after tofu coagulates...

The ingredients are soy beans, water, and nigari.


This isn't a perfect test, but a magnet won't stick to a silver utensil whereas it will stick to most other metal utensils (i.e., stainless steel).


Here's some general guidelines I have used in the past:

Small onion = 4 ounces by weight or
about ½ cup chopped
Medium onion = 8 ounces, or about 1
cup chopped
Large onion = 12 ounces, or about 1½
cups chopped
Jumbo onion = 16 ounces, or about 2
cups chopped

source
The terms are not always completely accurate so use your best judgement. I've often seen large onions that were as big or bigger than "jumbo" according to this data.


Is it customary to use pigs pluck to make sausages?

Historically, absolutely pig organ meats were used for sausage making. (The old joke "everything but the squeal" comes to mind.) In fact, I suspect that the notoriety of pig organs, due to their association with food adulteration, is largely responsible for them going out of fashion so entirely.

Pigs liver has a strong, distinct taste. It's used in a number of sausage recipes, but largely those which are based around it (e.g. scrapple). Lungs are illegal to sell for human consumption in a number of jurisdictions, but hearts show up in a lot of "industrial" sausages I've seen.


Chow Mein: What is the starchy sauce called and how can I cook it?

The x sauce you refer to is just plain corn starch added to stock for thickening it does contain salt ,pepper, ajinomoto, you may have come across this more in indian chinese restaurants in New Jersey. Just enriched stock .chicken, veg or shrimp whatever reason the chow mein.


Is blanch freezing vegetables required for short term storage?

Blanching is done to halt enzymatic action that would start to destroy the plant cells. You can freeze without blanching and the veggies will still be edible even after 6 months but their quality will decline faster.

If you are planning on juicing those veggies within a month then you are going to be doing a lot more damage than the freezer will and I don't think you would see much benefit from blanching. The spinach and celery might stay a little greener when it thaws- the carrots and zucchini would probably not be effected at all.

As for the sugar water. Are you planning on freezing them in the water? I don't think that would do much but dilute their juices when the ice crystals rip them apart. Of course you wouldn't be able to keep spinach in a bowl of water for a month- that would be more like a swamp than food.


Identifying quality fruits/vegetables at a farmers market

Some general rules for veggie hunting at your local farmers market.

Get there early and watch how they handle the produce, if they are rough unloading it chances are they where rough loading it.
Does it smell fresh and like the product you are buying. Beware some vendors use air fresheners and other products to hide the true smell.
If the deal seems to be too good to be true it probably is.
The firmness of a item is not always a good sign. Some fruits and veggies tend to get hard as they age.
Talk to the vendors ask them about where the item was grown. True farmers and craftsmen are usually proud of their items and will speak loving of it.
Don't be afraid to haggle, worse they can tell you is no.
Some produce can be very hazardous to your health if eaten rotten.
Check the items for wax or other preservatives

Some quick hints for the items you listed (please note this is in general and may not apply to the variety you are looking at)

Cherries - should be slightly firm and ooze juice if squeezed hard enough

Oranges - should smell fresh and be squeezable without being mushy or firm

Mushrooms - good coloring, should not be mushy, fresh murshrooms tend to be earthy smelling

Onions - firm, good onion smell, no eyes or growths (could always buy them to plant) look for dark spots if found unless they are small or you are going to eat it soon after walk on

Garlic - pretty much like a onion

Broccoli - look for firm very good coloring, check the nooks for bugs and worms

Celery - very firm, should have a good smell to them and should break with a crispy snap


A lot of jam recipes call for adding some lemon juice to help guard against oxidation, which could be your source of browning.  Did you use any kind of acidic additive?

Turning brown, in and of itself, is more a cosmetic/aesthetic thing.  If it tastes fine, I wouldn't worry about it.  Label it, so you don't get it mixed up with other jams/preserves that are normally brown.


Well, it seems you answered your own question, though you then expand this question of fat content to "quality."

"Quality" of butter is subjective.  It depends a lot on application.  Higher fat does not necessarily mean better flavor or better performance (particularly as an ingredients in things like baking).  See, for example, this article, which discusses the ranking of butter in a number of applications.  Fat content varied from 80% to about 86%, but that wasn't highly correlated with superior results.  The tasters' opinions there came down in favor of the lower-fat butter for applications like pound cake (where they claimed more steam from the higher-moisture content added to lift) and buerre blanc (where they claimed the excess fat unbalanced the flavors of the sauce).

But I think this is probably more evidence that American recipes are likely calibrated to assume butters on the lower edge of spectrum, around the legal minimum of 80% butterfat content.

Anyhow, my personal experience is that processing matters a lot more than butterfat content.  In particular, I generally taste a strong difference between cultured vs. "sweet cream" butters.  And salt content can make a huge difference.  But another thing that came up is storage/wrapping, as fat tends to absorb odors and other flavors, as mentioned in the above article and in a Cook's Illustrated review article that also ranked butters in various applications.  I find it interesting that this article is available on the Vermont Creamery website, which makes a big point of how it has the "highest butterfat content you can obtain when making butter" of 86%; even they are posting an article whose title is basically that butterfat may not matter as much as other factors.

(By the way, I'd personally disagree with the CI characterization of cultured butters in general as having "artificial, margarine-like" flavors.  But everyone has their own preferences, and I think American palates have shifted to expect "sweet cream" butter.)