With such a random collection of ingredients, I'm hesitant to suggest anything lest it conflict with one of the flavors.  With that in mind, add extra ingredients a little at a time to make sure it doesn't go overboard or taste jarring with something already in there.

Suggestions to improve the flavor:

Celery salt or celery seed (preferably ground).  Fresh celery is normally part of the mirepoix in veg soup, but it's probably not a good idea to add to a cooked soup, so we're adding the next best thing.  It is amazing the difference celery can make.
White wine vinegar (for acidity and a richer flavor, and pairing with the cabbage and onions)
Dry vermouth or white wine. Some flavor compounds are more soluble in alcohol than water, so this can help bring to the front additional flavors that are already present but undetectable.
A jigger of sherry or cooking sherry (the latter has salt, so add it before salting the soup). This is a common suggestion when serving canned soups to guests, to make the soup taste fancier.
Rosemary, thyme, and parsley flakes/stems (adds aromatic and herbal flavors)
Worcestershire sauce (use carefully, it's potent stuff) -- this adds umami and spiciness
Paprika and a pinch or two of cayenne -- adds warmth and back heat, and smokiness
Dijon mustard (use sparingly).  Adds front heat and a little richness to the soup
A little more salt and pepper
Parmesan or parmesan rind (for the rind, plan on simmering for a long time to extract flavor).  Self-explanatory here.
Balsamic vinegar -- adds sweetness, acid, body, and umami.  Use caution, it may conflict with the cabbage here.


How to pick a good mango at a local store?

I look for a few things...

Colour: There are many different varieties of mangos. Some go from green to red, some end up Orange, some start off yellow and end up orange. So once you're familiar with the type of mango you're buying, you can get an idea of what a ripe one looks like.
Smell: A ripe mango will smell sweet. Check near the stem end, the smell should be stronger there. You should smell it and think "mango". Smell is a large part of your taste, so it should be very familiar.
Firmness: Mangos, like peaches will soften as they ripen. Just as it starts to go from firm to soft, it is just about ripe.
Weight: With most fruit you can tell their ripeness by their weight. A riper fruit will be slightly heavier than an unripe one.

As an aside, if you're at a grocery store, and you see a few different types of mangos, look for these Ataulfo mangos: http://goo.gl/IeEZ4. They're my personal favourite. The flavour is richer, and they are a lot less stringy.

Finally, DO NOT refrigerate if you want them to ripen.

More info on the Ataulfo mangos. (There is also some generic mango info there)


What is a good recipe that uses a lot of evaporated and/or sweetened milk?

Flan, a type of custard, is the same as crème caramel, tasty desert.

Pumpkin pie uses a bunch of evaporated milk.

Ducle de leche is a terrific desert topping and filling, translated literally it means 'sweet of milk'.  The reason I mention this is that in Argentina and Chile, cans of sweetened condensed milk are boiled, unopened, on the stove for some hours to produce dulce de leche.  I understand that what you have is evaporated milk, which is different; there is no reason not to try using it to make this delicious treat.

Here is a link with a bazillion uses for evaporated milk:

http://www.carnationmilk.ca/recipes.aspx


How can I hold a chefs knife for efficiency and safety?

There are a couple ways I hold a knife.

One, my go-to grip, is a thumbs-up grip - with my thumb braced against the back of the knife blade, and my fingers wrapped around the hilt.  Usually, I'm using my other hand curved over the blade, to move the food on either side, or add additional pressure to the knife as it cuts.  I am using the blade like an extension of my thumb, pressing down with weight behind it - and it is really good for rocking cuts.

Another grip is with my forefinger along the length of the blade - this gives a bit more precision in placing the knife, but less force behind it.  This would work for making long rocking cuts, where I need the length of the blade (it extends line of control further), or for slicing, and also for making delicate cuts, or teasing things apart with the tip of the knife.  This grip it really helps to use the other hand to give extra pressure along the back of the knife blade.

And the third, is very nearly a pinch grip - except moved back about an inch, so my grip is wrapped around the handle, not the blade.  I am pinching the handle, just behind the blade, between my thumb and the side of my forefinger, with that finger curled along the side and slanting under the handle, and my other fingers wrapped loosely around the hilt.  It's possible to edge the grip forward just a bit, so that the side of the forefinger edges into the gap where the blade falls away from the handle - but the finger is still far enough back that it can wrap under and behind the blade, and the thumb is still on the handle.  This can make a very secure grip.

The pinch grip is kind terrible, I agree with @Joe, it pulls the knife out of balance and makes the grip weak.  The difference between the width of the blade and the width of the handle weakens the grip, since the pressure has to be variable, and the majority of the index finger is kinda hanging out into space, not involved in the grip at all.  The whole thing is kinda awkward, and the videos show the thumb pointed across the blade, while to control the cut it needs to be nearly horizontal along the blade, which pulls the forefinger out of alignment unless you pinch against the side of the finger, not the pad - in which case it's more comfortable and controllable to move the grip back along the hilt to the handle.


Don't Rinse

You should not need to do more than shake the excess marinade from your chicken, or if you want to be very thorough, pat it down with towels lightly.

If you rinsed, you would be washing away from of the flavor developed by your marinade, and the seasoning at the surface of the chicken.

Cook on

The goal is to not put the chicken on the grill with so much left over marinade that it fails to cook through and dry.  By the time you are done grilling, the chicken should be essentially dry at the surface with nothing left to curdle.

The other goal of the grilling (or putting in the tandoor, I imagine, if you have one) is to develop the nice browned and delicious flavors, and that won't happen if there is still liquid yogurt on the surface.

Type of yogurt

The particular type of yogurt you use should not be a factor, since it should be fully cooked in the grilling phase.

However, in general, very high fat dairly products (like cream, or a yogurt made from full cream).


Is it possible to reduce without boiling?

It's not necessarily a practical home kitchen answer, but rotary evaporators do this, by lowering the pressure over the liquid and circulating the liquid to increase surface area.

There does exist a culinary vacuum rotary evaporator, for only $9,999.95 by special order! Note that it also captures the vapor to condense, because often the flavor you want is actually volatile aromatic compounds, which evaporate faster than the water does, so trying to evaporate/boil away water is futile.

So if what you want to concentrate is aromatic, you're probably out of luck for home purposes. If you just want something non-aromatic dissolved in the water (dumb example: reducing sugar water into syrup) then boiling/evaporation can work, though. You could certainly speed things along by using as broad a surface as possible (a large pan), gently heating, and blowing a fan over the surface. But it's still going to take an awfully long time without actually boiling.


I have experience with a few natural options such as Bred-Mate, Bro-Lite and MoisturLok, but I doubt that any of those will get you as much shelf life as calpro will. MoisturLok and Brolite both have formulations for sweet goods, and I did have luck getting yeast breads to have a 7+-day shelf life with Bro-Lite.
If you have access to it, I'd recommend just getting halal calpro, as that's going to have the longest shelf-life by far.


I haven't used goat milk in my baking because I don't like the taste of goats milk. I suspect it would be a good idea for you to taste goats milk first to see if you like it if you haven't already. Other than that, there's no reason to not use it.

As far as fat content goes, I only use full-fat dairy in my bread. No adjustments to the recipe are needed.


What is the best and fastest way to liquify Nutella chocolate spread?

Heating it up in the microwave will temporarily make it runnier, but then it will go back to its original consistency. Here are some ways that may work for you:

Add some neutral flavored oil: just a bit though or it will get greasy
Add chocolate syrup: chocolate syrup is very runny will thin it out while still keeping the chocolate flavor. Hershey's is available in the US and UK, Tate and Lyle makes one in the UK. Not sure where you are but there will likely be something available
If you can't find chocolate syrup try making a very thick chocolate milk with some cocoa powder or chocolate milk powder


What type of tea should I use to make Thai Iced Tea?

I currently live in Thailand and there is really only 1 brand that's used (If there is another brand I've never seen anyone use it!) nationwide by all the street vendors to make traditional Thai Ice Tea and that's this one...

I don't know the name of it but I'm pretty sure it's just Number One Brand. I'll confirm the name when I get chance!


Homemade coconut milk in coffee compared to store bought

Are you talking about canned coconut milk, or the newfangled coconut "milk" beverage in cartons, meant as a non-dairy replacement for milk, like So Delicious and Coconut Dream? The latter is formulated specifically to taste and behave as close to dairy milk as possible. The (tri)calcium phosphate not only fortifies the milk, but also buffers it and makes it behave and taste more like real milk. Non-dairy coffee creamer and cheap half & half have dipotassium phosphate or similar phosphate salts for the same purpose.

I don't know if I can suggest anything to help. If you try regular canned coconut milk (with no dilution, stabilizers, or fortification), is it any better than your homemade coconut milk? You might try experimenting with heating your coconut milk, or adding small amounts of salt and/or sugar, or blending the warm coconut milk to better emulsify it.


Substitute for fresh lemons - I need to make 70 liters of homemade lemonade

You can very likely buy frozen lemon juice or juice concentrate, even if you can't buy fresh lemons.  (This is different from frozen lemonade concentrate.)

This is what we do often when we're making large batch lemonade; while it's not quite as good as fresh lemon juice, it's usually close enough that it's not noticeable.

For example:

It's kept in the freezer section. That jar is roughly seven lemons' worth of juice; each one makes something like 2-3 liters of lemonade, depending on your strength requirements.  I usually put a few sliced fresh lemons in with the pitcher after that.


Do unopened bottles of Gin and Campari turn bad in extreme heat?

It won't turn bad, in fact it may make it last longer. You may have madeira-ized it (see below)

Madeira wine is known for it's extended "shelf life" after opening because of it's unique process of being heated to as high as 60 degrees C (140 F).

You may find that in the Campari some of the sugar may have crystalised. This may slightly affect the flavour, but it most certainly won't make it turn bad.


Thai Curry seems more watery over the last year?

You're not alone, I've noticed coconut milk being watery too, it used to have a decent layer of cream on top and now there is practically none. When I make thai curries, I use coconut cream and coconut milk (half and half) to get a nice creamy taste.


What's the difference between "English" & "American" bacon?

There are many things called bacon in many places, and all cook different.  I will hit a few and hope I am mostly right, please feel free to edit where I may be speaking from mistake.

British Rashers is typically made from the loin with a bit of the side to belly still attached.  This would be a meatier cut and tend to have more of the taste and texture of ham to those used to American style bacon.

Irish Bacon, from my limited exposure to it is similar to Rashers but tends to have more of the streaky belly included.

What I know as Bachelor or Cottage bacon is really more of a ham, made from the shoulder, cured, usually smoked and sliced thin and fried like streaky bacon but with far less fat and more of a ham taste unless a very high heat is used.

Canadian bacon in the US, or just Back Bacon to all Canadians I have known it the loin round, cured and smoked.  Much more of a ham flavor than that of streaky bacon and mostly very lean.  Typically a fairly firm cured product.

Pancetta and similar products I would personally call a ham, not bacon, but it is your choice how you choose to classify.  I would never fry and serve like bacon though.

Jowl Bacon is common in Southern and Soul cooking in the US, if from the fatty jaws of large hogs and is typically used as a flavoring component in other dishes and to add fat and salt.  It would typically be sold as slabs.

Old West Bacon as talked about in old western movies being cooked over the fire is not what most Americans would think of as bacon, it is more Salt Pork.  Leaner than streaky bacon and heavily cured to allow for preservation without refrigeration and cooked as a main protein, not a side dish.

Streaky Bacon can me from side bacon or belly.  In the US it will almost always be belly which will normally be more fatty than side.  Commercial stuff is fast force cured and will often be from older hogs so very fatty.  Home of custom butcher cured will often be from younger, leaner animals and therefore a higher percentage lean.

These are very different cuts of meat, and you are never going to get belly and loin to test the same, well at least not other than burning both to inedible.  ;)  Even within the types, curing, smoking, seasoning, and other ways of treating will result in different products.  Was the belly cured with nitrates, nitrites, both, neither, not cured at all, smoked, etc.

Having cured my own, even with two slices off the same cure and belly, I learned though that heat makes a huge difference in flavor though.  Higher heat with a searing pan or cast iron on a fatty piece of belly meat brings out what as an American I think of as bacon flavor, while lower, slower heat on that same piece is more of a cured ham flavor in my experience.  If through I take a piece of Cottage bacon, cured the same way, to get close to that same bacon flavor, I need a pan at or very near smoke point and added fat or it will taste like ham to me.


Using melted butter vs rubbing it into flour?

Melting the butter would create a more homogeneous mixture of butter and flour. This may sound like a good idea, but actually preserving little clumps of butter and flour in the final mixture for your crumble (or streusel, or pie crust, or US biscuit) is what gives the finished product its flaky texture. If you try using melting butter you will a lower-volume, denser, harder results which is undesirable in the applications you are describing.

You can even inadvertently get this result if you warm the butter up too much with your hands while creating the mixture; in such cases it can be helpful to return the dough to the fridge for a few minutes and letting the butter re-solidify before crumbling any large clumps apart again.


It is not really practical to make homemade chocolate, although you can make chocolate flavored confections like syrups or fudge.

The reason is that true chocolate has two main ingredients:  cocoa butter (the fat native to the cocoa bean), and the cocoa powder (which is is made by taking cocoa mass and pressing out the cocoa butter).  Sweetened chocolate then has sugar, perhaps vanilla and salt, and usually lecithin added.

In order to have the right consistency (hardness) and melting characteristics, your fat would absolutely have to be cocoa butter.  No other fat has the unique crystallization characteristics or melting point that cocoa butter does.  It is possible to buy cocoa butter, although it is expensive.

The problem is that cocoa powder is not ground very fine, so the product will be gritty on the tongue and not have the same accessibility of flavor.   In true chocolate manufacturing, specialized devices called conches are used to grind the cocoa particles down to very small size, to the point where they cannot be felt on the tongue; this is what gives chocolate its characteristic smooth texture together with the cocoa butter.

Conching is not practical in the home.

Your best, and most likely most cost effective bet is to simply purchase chocolate.


Sangria doesn't have "fizzy pop" of any description in it.

It has brandy.
That was where it went wrong, long before the sweetener stage.

Sugar of any description is optional, though personally I'd rather stick my head in a fire than put artificial sweeteners in it, I'd just rather it without anything.

Rioja - Tempranillo, Garnacha etc
Brandy
Fruit

You can adjust the sweetness by modifying the fruit mixture if you don't want to add sucrose; though the difference between fructose & sucrose is almost indiscernible 'health'-wise.


That is hospital white enamel paint. So WW2 to 1960 would be a good guess. Look at the tag. I can not read it. Run that on a search. Give you a better idea. Those names can still be found. Also the red tag. Does the motor have a name & number on it? With that you can do a number check often to get it down to year motor was made. With luck. Any serial number on it those can be ran on a search. Threw company records if it is found. Or post good photo's of the tags. & numbers.


Cooking smoked cured ham on a rotisserie

If it is a country ham, meaning salt-cured then you need to boil the salt out of it. I may get flamed for this, but that article is not how I process my ham. So here is what I do.

I get a lard tin, I usually have to cut off the hock to make the ham fit but since yours is split you may not have to. If it is not a salt cured ham, and is a city ham it may not be fit to eat if you do this, you could make ham soup maybe.

Anyway put the ham in the tin fill it full of water bring it up to a boil let it boil for about fifteen minutes then bring the heat down to medium-low for about 1/2 an hour then let it cool down enough so you can take it off the stove, but just barely cool enough. While it is cooling down get blankets and spread them out on the floor, one or two thin ones should do, then get some newspaper and spread that in the middle of the blankets put the tin in the middle of the newspaper and wrap the tin with the newspaper then wrap the blankets around it and then push it over into a corner overnight.

The next morning pull the ham out of the water give it a rinse and pat it dry, it will still be warm-to-hot. (I rotisserie ham hocks and small hams I get from my butcher but I have never done a full size ham I would imagine the amount of drippings would make a mess though.) Next I get my big roasting pan put the ham in it and pat it down with brown sugar, medium or dark is up to you. Then I cover it with aluminum foil, making sure I tent the foil so it doesn't touch the ham, and let it cook usually between four and five hours for a good size ham at about 325. The last half hour I take off the aluminum foil and if I feel it is necessary I add more brown sugar and let it caramelize.

I have been cooking ham this way for as long as I have been cooking and the process is passed down from my mother and her father before her. Farther back than that I cannot confirm or deny. :)

Here is a great article on country hams and other hams, just to make sure you do have a country ham, and gives other great suggestions on how to cook a ham, although they do it differently than I do.

http://www.amazingribs.com/recipes/porknography/zen_of_ham.html


Why does oil transfer heat to food more gradually than water?

First, I don't think the question you are asking about is written well (your question about this question is better). We don't have the benefit of the course's context, but alone this question seems poor. The phrase "you are less likely to overcook food" is problematic because the techniques for cooking with oil and water are quite different, as would be expected based on the specific heats and boiling points. Although oil may transfer less heat over a fixed time period at the same temperature as water, it is unlikely you would have the oil and water at the same temperature. You simply don't cook with oil and water in the same way.

In the original question and answer, the term overcook seems to refer to the core temperature of the food. Your answer considers overcooking as burning, which is not the same thing. Perhaps they are thinking of the case where your steak will not get well done (overcooked) before you notice the outside is unpleasantly charred when pan frying in oil, but boiling the steak may result in a past-well done product without visual indication.


How do I reduce kitchen temperature during cooking?

Sucking hot air out of the kitchen using the hood ("chimney") will cool the room, though possibly not by much on a hot day. A nice big open window to allow fresh air in will maximise this effect.  Even on a hot day, the hood will cause a through draught, and the lower humidity, slightly cooler air blowing over you as you cook will be much more comfortable.

In very rare cases where the outside temperature is above the inside temperature (traditional buildings that are designed to cool at night and heat as slowly as possible during the day) there's little you can do.  Such buildings aren't really designed for use with air conditioning (and they often come from a tradition involving outdoor cooking)

Some other things you can do that make at least as much difference:

Cover dishes when cooking and turn the heat down (yes, even if it's not traditional).  This is especially useful when boiling/simmering as the steam contributes to the discomfort.
Some dishes can be brought up to boiling point then insulated to continue cooking.
In a heatwave I've been known to get a long extension lead and an electric hotplate and cook outside (probably not an option in an apartment unles you have a balcony).


Heat the grill, like good and hot (I have used the hottest setting). Once it is hot, just scrape it down with a brush or wooden scraper. After that, let it "cook" for a few minutes. Once all that is done, I would say you are good to go.


Does white whole wheat flour need to be refrigerated?

The only difference between regular whole wheat flour and white whole wheat flour is the variety of wheat from which it is ground.  Regular whole wheat flour is ground from red wheat while white whole wheat is from a lighter pigmented wheat and thus the lighter color.  In both cases the germ is still intact and thus as Jonathan Campbell stated, it will go rancid more quickly than white flour.

Keep it in a cool dark place and use up quickly if you can't refrigerate or freeze it.

When you keep it in the refrigerator or freezer and plan to use it for yeast breads, remember to allow it to warm to room temperature before using for best results with your yeast.


Weigh the contents of one packet.
Check the packet instructions to see how much liquid to add.

That's your ratio, very precisely.

You can then apply that ratio to any measurement.


How did people make bread before sugar was 'discovered'

Making bread without sugar is nothing strange - I do so several times a week! The wheat flour (or whatever you're using) contains enzymes which, when you blend it with water, breaks down starch to sugars which fermenting agents such as yeast or lactobacilli can feed off. The Wikipedia page on sourdough has more info.


Leaving the ladle in the soup considered harmful?

Maybe because the ladle gets hot and could burn someone?


Lodge Dutch Oven seasoning fail (My first cast iron experience)

I always let some oil remain on the pan and as it burns off it leaves an almost non stick surface. Perhaps the paper towel is removing too much of the oil.


Can I get more overrun despite single-speed machine?

For dairy based frozen dessert try incorporating more air prior to adding the mixture to your machine. Remember cold is your friend, freeze a mixing bowl then using a mixer, whisk or stick blender beat the mixture like you are making whipped cream. You should get additional volume, then churn as usual.
I’m not sure if this would work, but you may be able to whip additional air into the mixture after it’s finished freezing. You would need to work quickly, with very cold implements that could handle the resistance.


What is the basic technique for making tea with teabags and a mug?

I've never known the science behind it, but water heated in a microwave oven makes horrible tea and coffee. You need a kettle.

The standard British teabag-and-mug technique (as opposed to the loose-tea-and-teapot technique) is:

put cold tap water in kettle
turn kettle on
put teabag in mug
allow kettle to come to full boil
fill mug with freshly boiled water
leave for 30 seconds or so
remove teabag with a teaspoon; give it a little squeeze for extra flavour
stir in sugar (optional)
add milk (optional)

Scientific rationale:

The water needs to be as hot as possible to extract all the flavour: boiling water can't get any hotter
Remove the teabag before adding milk or sugar because otherwise some of the milk/sugar will be removed along with the teabag
Stir in sugar before milk because it will dissolve more efficiently in hotter liquid
Milk last because you can judge the colour more easily

However

I've seen people claim that the water should be cooler than boiling, because the boiling water destroys subtle flavours in the tea. That may be true, but I suspect that teabag-grade tea just isn't that fine; in any case the conventional wisdom is boiling water for tea, below-boiling water for coffee.

A note on strength and timing

The longer you leave the teabag in, obviously, the stronger the resulting tea. Experiment and find your preference. 30 seconds seems to be about right for a typical British tea drinker, and a typical British teabag.

However, it should be noted that a typical British teabag isn't really intended for the one-mug method -- it's a size originally sized for teapots, and you're likely to get at least two mugfuls from one teabag, if you make tea in a pot and top up with boiling water after pouring.

You could, in theory, re-use a teabag to make a second mug of tea, but teabags are so cheap that hardly anyone bothers.

The teabags found in some cafes, smaller and with a string for pulling them out of cups, need a longer steep, since they contain less tea.


Why does my minestrone soup end up with so little liquid?

Are you "simmering" or "boiling" the soup?

When preparing soup, especially from stock, anything above a very slow simmer is going to reduce the soup, so you end up with something that's more concentrated but - obviously - also much thicker.

What you should be seeing is just a few bubbles escaping to the surface every minute or so.  That's it - that's all it takes to cook.  If you're seeing more bubbles than that, you've got the heat turned up too high and your liquid is evaporating.


How to make ice cream without a machine?

This is what we figured out at Serious Eats: How to Make Ice Cream without an Ice Cream Maker

In sum, use more sugar, whip the cream, freeze in icecube trays and run through a Cuisinart at the end.


Ok, first you had me wondering "How did he get the small jar inside?", but having kids I quickly realized this is a futile question. (For those w/o children, read Douglas Adams...)

The standard procedure for detaching two jars / glasses that are stuck, would be putting ice cubes in the inner one and then placing the outer one in hot water. But you said you can't open the inner one which is full of water?

Well, ice is frozen water. So freeze the entire contraption until you have one large ice cube in the inner jar. Proceed as usual.

Your inner jar might break due to expanding ice or the outer due to thermal shock, but currently you have two unusuable jars, after this, you might have at least one good one...


Can I carve up a suckling pig like you would an adult pig?

A suckling pig would have the same cuts as an adult, but they would obviously be much smaller and thus fiddlier to butcher.

Wikipedia reports that suckling pig meat is also quite gelatinous, so you might take all the time to butcher the thing and end up with meat you don't want to eat.

You could always start with half a pig, since they are obviously symmetrical, joint it up and then freeze and/or give away the various cuts. Cuts like the belly could be cured, and other cuts could be ground/minced or turned into sausage.


Skillet rust (?) and next steps with regard to seasoning

The marks look like bare iron, as though the seasoning has actually been fully removed there. How hard did you scrub?

I use vegetable oil and use only about a teaspoon for the inside cooking surface and sides. Another teaspoon for the outside and underside and handle. You really don't want too much oil or it will become sticky because it hasn't broken down fully, which is probably what happened with your first attempt. I imagine your skillet was already pre-seasoned anyway.

To fix it, heat the pan on the cooker for a bit, then reapply the oil in a thin layer with a piece of kitchen towel, and use another clean kitchen towel to wipe away any excess. The pan should be hot but not searing, the heat apparently helps open the pores of the metal. The surface shouldn't look wet or have wet spots. It should have a sheen to it.

Put it in the oven, upside down, on the maximum temperate (around 240c or 450f) for an hour or longer. When you pull it out, it should be seasoned nicely. The surface won't have a sheen anymore, and it shouldn't be sticky to the touch once it's cool.

You can repeat the process a few times if you think it needs it.


Is it okay to remove oil/grease stains from anodized aluminum pan using vinegar?

Try this approach, as I describe on my blog:

  1) Fill the pot or pan or other aluminium utensil with water.

  2) Add a tablespoon of vinegar or two teaspoons of cream of tartar for every quart of water.

  3) Boil this solution for 10 to 15 minutes and scour the vessel with a soapy steel wool pad.

  4) Rinse and dry.


Penzey's spices is one of the most well known places for spices:

http://www.penzeys.com/

They have an extensive selection and reasonable prices.


Do frozen ahi tuna steaks need to be seared?

With fish, you have two safety concerns: parasites and bacteria.

Freezing gets rid of parasites. It does not kill bacteria. You need heat to kill bacteria, that's why officially, food is only considered safe after being cooked to a specific temperature. Eating thawed uncooked fish is officially unsafe, and if you tried to sell it to people, the FDA would come after you.

This being said, if your personal safety standards are not as high as the FDA's (which are extremely conservative), nobody will stop you from eating it. It shouldn't be more dangerous than sushi, as long as you eat it immediately after thawing. There is the small probability of it being kept around some time before freezing (as opposed to sushi-intended fish which should be frozen on the boat immediately), but as fish deteriorates really quickly after death, you should be able to notice it smelling fishy if this is the case.


Making gravy without drippings or butter?

You can make a roux with any fat.  Olive oil will certainly work.  There are also other methods for thickening a gravy, such as the addition of cornstarch or arrowroot.


Are the particulates that settle in a veal stock impurities?

Yes, they are most likely to be denatured protein. It is feasible that they also contain some other matter like stray pieces of vegetable, but the bulk should be the protein.

When the  particles are small enough, they are agitated in the boiling water and become a suspension. When you let them rest, they slowly find their way to the bottom, due to gravity.

So, the answer to your other questions is yes and yes. Are you approaching consomme when you filter them out? Yes, you do. Are you removing flavor? Also yes. After all, it's not the water that flavors the stock, it's what remains in it from the veal. While the pure protein doesn't have much flavor by itself, enough stuff tends to stick to it to make it flavorful.

Consomme is made clear for presentation purposes and for texture, not for flavor. The loss is slight, but it is a loss, not a gain. It is up to you to decide which stock you prefer, the filtered or unfiltered version, there is no single "best" answer.


Is there a reason to not just cut chestnuts through before cooking them?

I've only ever roasted them, and there, you do want to score them at least enough to create a weak spot, since heat above boiling temperatures will come into play and they will burst. In roasting them, I think they'd be more prone to drying out if halved first.

A small serrated knife is a better choice than a big chef's knife for that task, in my experience. The score does not have to be all the way through, either.

I would think that halving them before boiling would tend to leach flavor (making "chestnut tea" from the boiling water) and that would reduce the flavor left in the nut.

I'd also think that if boiling them, scoring beforehand might not be needed, as I can't imagine them managing to steam to the point of exploding in a boiling water bath. But I would probably try it with one nut, just in case I was wrong, before loading up a pot-full.

Mostly I'd be happier if the darn things were less prone to be moldy, which is really disappointing.


If your question is about hygiene (dont get people sick from raw meat), if you're frying it fully and making sure the meat is cooked then you should be fine to use the same batter. If you're talking about keeping allergens separate for health or religious reasons you should use separate batters.


How to prevent my marshmallows from melting in my hot cocoa?

Marshmallows will dissolve ("melt") in your hot cocoa for the same reason that they "melt" in your mouth: both provide heat and moisture. If you could somehow treat the marshmallows so that they didn't dissolve in the cocoa you wouldn't get the desired effect in your mouth either. It comes down to a matter of timing: how can you keep the marshmallows intact until you drink the cocoa?

I can think of three options:

Drink the cocoa more quickly.
Use larger marshmallows.
Add more marshmallows as necessary.

It's not clear from your question exactly what kind of marshmallows you're referring to. I suspect that you're talking about the crunchily dehydrated "micro-mini" marshmallows that come in a packet of hot cocoa mix. Call me a snob, but those things hardly qualify as a "marshmallow" at all; you should perhaps be happy that they dissolve, or else sift them out of the mix and throw them away! If you like them, though, you'll be happy to know that you can buy more: Amazon carries 12 oz. bags of dehydrated micro-mini marshmallows, and adding a spoonful to your cup when you're ready to drink should solve the problem.

If you feel like an upgrading your brew, pick up a bag of mini marshmallows and add a handful of those. Minis should be large enough to last for quite a while, and since they're not dehydrated they'll be somewhat sturdier in the cup. Marshmallows come in a number of sizes... if the minis don't last long enough for you, go with a few standard sized (approximately 1 inch) marshmallows. I've seen jumbo marshmallows in the store lately, but you'll probably need a larger cup if you want to have any room left for the cocoa. Try one of these lovelies.


What can I use as a substitute for Nori Wrapper on a Chocolate Dessert Sushi?

Green fruit leather makes a good substitute for nori in dessert "sushi" rolls, if you're going for something that reminds people of sushi without being creepily realistic. (I recently made a variation of these dessert sliders for Independence Day and they were a little too realistic for people).


What is the proper technique for making an angel food cake?

Answering your specific questions, since there's no way for us to know exactly how you did it just by linking to the recipe:

Confectioners' sugar has smaller granules than granulated sugar, which means that you actually get more of it in a cup than you do granulated.  However, if you're making your batter properly, the sugar should completely dissolve, so if you're going by weight there should be no difference. (And you should be going by weight.)
Cake flour is much lower-gluten, so you get a lighter, fluffier texture. All-purpose flour has much more gluten and you'll end up with a chewier end product.
The proper temperature is that which will bring the center of the cake up to temperature before the exterior burns.  In order to get your temperature just right you should preheat the oven well in advance and allow it to stabilize first; give it at least 15 minutes after coming up to temperature.  Also, get a proper oven thermometer rather than relying on the one that's built-in to your oven, and if your temperature is particularly unstable you might consider doing the baking inside of a cloche or a Dutch oven (which needs to be preheated as well, of course).  And, the time stated in the recipe is just a guideline - you should be keeping an eye on it and using a bamboo skewer or similar to test doneness, rather than just looking at the outside.

And one which you didn't ask about but which is a common problem:

When you fold the flour into the batter, do exactly that - fold it in, gently, so that you don't disrupt the airy texture.  Don't stir it or mix it or whip it or anything else, and certainly don't overwork it.


What flour and technique do I need for hand pulled noodles?

This is the last write-up on the topic, and it's much simpler:

For hand-pulled noodles, you need:
Bread flour (wet gluten 29-30%, protein 11%-12%)
45% added water
1% alkaline solution
kansui powder or (Lye Water + Baking powder) or Peng or Baking Soda

Ingredients (Alkaline solutions)
kansui powder
55% sodium carbonate (Na2CO3),
35% potassium carbonate (K2CO3),
10% sodium biphosphate dodecahydrate (NaHPO3.12H2O)

Lye Water
potassium carbonate (K2CO3) 74.5% in 100ml
sodium biphosphate  (NaHPO3) 3.4% in 100ml

Instant ash Peng
sodium carbonate (Na2CO3)  90%
Sodium chloride  (NaCl)    1.15%

It is recommended to use bread flour because of its higher wet gluten content compared to normal white flour. You will also need a small amount of alkali. One recommendation is to use kansui powder, due to its ph of 11. If kansui isn't available, the next option would be baking powder and lye water. If either isn't available, the next option would be to use sodium carbonate 1% of total weight flour weight (e.g. if you use 100g of flour, use 1g of sodium carbonate). If you're using a lower gluten dough like all-purpose flour, then baking powder will do just fine. If you're using cake flour, use baking soda.

(Remember to add the kansui/baking soda/baking powder/sodium carbonate to the flour and mix it in before adding water.)

Sodium carbonate vs. potassium carbonate:
I've haven't had success with bread flour, plain flour or all-purpose flour with potassium carbonate. Even though it increases the ph of the dough, it still does not give the dough its stretchability.

Why use alkaline solution in the first place?!
Alkaline solution will increase the water absorption and gluten creation of the dough to enable it to be pulled sooner than normal by leaving the dough to rest at room temperature for 45 to 60 minutes. The downside of the alkaline solution is that it also breaks down gluten after the peak absorption is achieved. So on one side you have faster absorption but on the other side the dough will become more resilient to pulling if left too long.

For a non-alkaline solution, use this tutorial. It will cover all the basics that you will need to learn, and you WILL need to use all-purpose flour or plain flour. Noodle flour works best.

In conclusion:
Without sodium carbonate it's possible to have hand-pulled noodles with any flour. The downside is you will have to knead the dough for 45 minutes and leave to rest for 2 hours until you can start pulling your noodle strands.

Without sodium carbonate the noodles are harder to pull and I had most success with cutting each strand and going from there from the video.


Chocolate turns white due to "fat bloom", that is, the fat content of the chocolate wanders to the surface and crystallizes into this white bloom that you observe. This can be avoided if you cool your chocolate in a cool, but not cold spot. 18 °C or about 65 F seems to be the sweet spot for this. Source here.

Alternatively, you could try to reduce the fat content by using chocolate with a lower cocoa butter/fat content.


As a quick clarification, honing is going edge first, stropping is going heel first.

Honing will help to straighten the edge. Stropping will help to polish the edge (after honing).

In every other video I've seen (and on the Wüsthof website) they say to hone the blade. Stropping is more of a finishing method, so I would say to hone the blade first, and, if desired, strop the blade after.


Why are store bought paninis only par baked?

Convenience and longer term storage, plus a closer to freshly baked result compared to a pre baked item that has or is going stale to some degree,


How to make semi-hard, unripened brined cheese

I've made halloumi with goat's milk (and cow's milk), and I found the goat's milk version to be preferable. Halloumi is traditionally made with a large percentage of goat's milk anyway. It's definitely one of those cheeses that needs the curds cooked - it helps the texture & helps it achieve that "resistant to melting" consistency it's famous for. It helps to be sure your milk is VERY fresh (and unpasteurized, if possible), to help achieve the firm curd you're looking for. Also, I wouldn't use the whey for a brine - make your brine fresh. here's help: cheesemaking.com/Halloumi.html


Chocolate hazelnut: efficacy of mixing crushed&roasted hazelnuts to sauce

The only way to really know for sure is to give it a try, but I suspect that for a liquid application it will be difficult to get the sauce both thin enough to dissolve easily, and smooth enough to avoid a grainy or chunky texture.

You'll have to blend the hazelnuts very well at minimum - I'd pulverize them first in a blender or food processor, add the chocolate sauce, and then blend for several minutes' more time.  You may have to thin the result with a little water (warmed so as not to seize the mixture).  A run through a sieve or cheesecloth to strain out remaining pieces would be a good idea.

With all that blending and filtering, your yields will probably be pretty low.  One alternative you could try would be a hazelnut flavoring of some kind.  A natural extract should lend a distinct hazelnut flavor to any other sauce or mixture (I'd avoid cheaper extracts labelled "artificial" though).  From a practical perspective it will be easier to mix without texture issues, and if purchased in quantity probably won't be much more expensive than preparing hazelnuts from scratch.


What to use to cut things on non stick surfaces?

I'd pre-cut them myself - I tend to cut mine in the tin using a plastic spatula; after all they're soft and easy to cut. Then

There are stiff plastic knives (for some reason sold for use on lettuce). They're much better than metal and will easily cut brownies.

If you did want something disposable, some of the wooden disposable cutlery is surprisingly robust, and should be safe on non stick. As you're reckoning on getting the tin back, I'd hope you'd get the knife back too.  There are also semi-disposable plastic pie slices/servers (eBay link) but I haven't tried them  myself.

You can't just use a ceramic knife. It's harder than metal and just as sharp, and the problem is both, but especially the hardness. Even a table knife or the edge of a metal spoon can damage a non stick coating.


How to make fried chicken tender and juicy?

The correct answer to any question following the template of "how do I get (some meat) to come out tender when I (some cooking method) it?" is: don't overcook it.

It's seriously not rocket science. Cooking meat dries it out as moisture evaporates.

The second, and perhaps dominant factor is that in overcooked meat—anything above about 165 F / 74 C, all of the proteins in the meat are fully coagulated.  They have squeezed into tight little balls, squeezing out liquid, and taking on a rubbery texture.  This effect cannot be reversed.

Overcooked meat is too dry, which gives it a tough and sinewy texture.

For other tips on making fried chicken more like what you've had in restaurants (very few of which are "broasting" it), see:

How to imitate commercial fried chicken?


Is a degraded Teflon pan toxic to all of its users?

There is no current evidence that already-degraded PTFE (Teflon) poses any toxicity risks in its solid form.  To quote the University of California School of Public Health:

  There’s no evidence, however, that ingesting any PTFE flakes that might have degraded from the pan’s surface over time poses any health risk, and the American Cancer Society notes that “Teflon itself is not suspected of causing cancer.” That makes sense, considering that PTFE is an inert substance, which means it doesn’t react with other chemicals.

Tibbs Bioscience says:

  PTFE is inert in its solid form, meaning it won’t react with other chemicals, which is what makes it such as great non-stick coating. As such, the minimal PTFE you would ingest will likely pass through the digestive tract without harm.

Other sources I checked had the same answer.  The fumes from overheating PTFE are known to be unhealthful; the solids left behind have no known issues.

Note that the same is not true of another chemical that used to be used in Teflon, PFOA.  Again, per Tibbs:

  After repeated heating and cooling, it is possible that the PFOA could migrate into the food. Research suggests that PFOA interferes with hormonal balances as well as reproduction and fetal development

The problems with PFOA have caused manfucturers to stop using it in Teflon production.  However, if you have an older Teflon pan (pre-2013), it may still have PFOA, as might Teflon pans outside the US and EU.


If you add coriander, it should be because you agree with Mr. Weeks's assertion that it has a particular affinity with blueberry. Freshly ground coriander has a vibrant citrusy aroma, and (though I haven't tried it), I can see how it would go well in blueberry ice cream. I've found that sometimes a single flavor can be a little monotonous, and the coriander can bring some fun to the party. Give it a shot and see what you think.


Assuming it isn't condensation, one thing that causes eggs to weep is the breakdown of the protein structures.

When you cook an egg, the heat causes the proteins to unfold, then refold into different shapes, capturing liquid in the process which is what allows the boiled egg to hold it's structure. These bonds are fairly weak and can be broken down with salt and acids--two things which you have in your deviled eggs.

One thing that might help is slowing down the unfolding/refolding process by putting the eggs in before the water is fully heated and not heating the water up to a full boil. By slowing down the process you are building stronger bonds that won't break as easily. You might also want to experiment with the cooking times, it could be that those times you encountered weeping they weren't cooked long enough to build strong bonds.


How do I measure the ripeness of my tomatoes?

Smell and touch your tomato. The softer it is, the riper. Also, the more it smells like a sun-ripened tomato, the riper. The smell is not only stronger, it is different from the smell of a badly ripened (but still red) tomato, or worse, previously refrigerated tomato. If you don't know how a good tomato smells, you'll have to learn it by smelling tomatoes before cutting them and remembering how they smell compared to their taste. Or go to somebody with a tomato garden in a reasonably sunny location, pick the ripest tomato and smell it before eating. I doubt that anybody in the world has developed the vocabulary to simply describe what you're looking for in the taste, so you have to experience it for yourself.

Don't go by color, that depends more on variety and can also be created with artificial ripening without imparting sweetness.


Is only roe from sturgeon considered as caviar?

It's even more specific than that: traditionally, only eggs from the sturgeon of the Caspian or Black Seas are considered caviar.

Other fish eggs that are eaten in the same manner as caviar are: sturgeon eggs from elsewhere, paddlefish eggs, salmon eggs, trout eggs, carp eggs, or lumpfish or whitefish eggs.  Of these, only the carp is adaptable to warm climates; all of the others are cold-water fish.

So, if you want fish eggs that you can use as "caviar" that you raise & eat fresh in the hot areas of Pakistan, you'd be limited to carp eggs. That said ... Pakistan has high mountains and cold areas as well, presumably you could raise salmon or trout in mountain streams/lakes for their eggs, which are enjoyed by more people than carp eggs.


Must bread dough clear the side of the mixer using the hook?

Often, higher hydration doughs don't need to be mixed in a mixer at all.  However, when using a mixer, it is more important to get the hydration correct, than to have all of the dough come away from the side of the bowl.  I would say to use a kitchen scale to measure ingredients, and don't worry about whether or not the dough comes away from the side of the mixing bowl.


Must I store uncooked pasta in an airtight container?

It's usually fine to keep the pasta in an open container. But there are two potential issues:

First, if you live somewhere with a very humid climate, the pasta could get unpleasant after many months of storage.
Second, you'll be surprised what weevils like to eat! Keeping anything with even a small amount of starch sealed away makes sure that, if you happen to get an infestation, they won't make a hidden nest in the pasta box.

If neither of these issues bother you, you can use any convenient container without caring whether or not it's airtight.


Unfreezing and cooking steaks like ribeye or club steaks

To get something as close as possible to fresh meat, you should freeze the meat as quickly as possible:

Package the steaks into portions with a high surface area.
Chill them well before you freeze.
Make sure your freezer is set as low as it will go
Freeze them in a single layer.

You can use some other tricks, such as having a thermal sink ... place some metal sheet pans into the freezer while you're chilling down the steaks, then place the steaks between then when they're freezing.

...

But all of that being said ... the chewiness problems are likely some other problem, such as incorrect butchering (ie, cutting with the grain instead of across, not trimming off the silver skin) .

Also, as you're only keeping it for a 'few days', and that means less than 5, you might be better off just chilling them rather than freezing.


Which mild pepper is a good substitute for Serrano pepper?

Anaheim peppers make a nice substitute, first in reducing the heat (500-5000 scoville), but also in terms of its availability and similar flavor. It does frequently run on the hotter end of that spectrum though.


Can water cause fermented pickles to spoil?

ANY amount of water on the jar or the ingredients does result in the formation of whitish fungus at the affected spot. This will later turn black and the pickle will sour giving off a fermented smell.

The only exception is if that spot is well immersed in oil- but no guarantee it is off!
The "water" in the fruit, being juice, fights formation of fungus and mold.

I'd tried to cheat but the punishment by the pickle is heavy!! -and I am a cookaholic going on 60 years.

Note: This precaution applies especially to hot climates where the reaction is in hours and max in a couple of days--- hv observed it in u.s in Florida and California.
Try your bravery.


How much should I beat choux pastry for optimal rising?

You have gotten a fundamental principle of the choux pastry wrong.

The rising and airiness is not caused by beating air bubbles into the batter, unlike with sponge cake and similar, but by trapping steam in the well formed network of gluten and egg in the batter.

The cooking step is not meant to just have the flour-water-fat mix come together, but to have the starch in the flour starting to gelatinize, i.e. develop the properties that bind pudding or roux. So you have to keep cooking and stirring the lump of batter until a white film forms on the bottom of your pot (assuming you are using stainless steel or similar, not a non-stick coated one). Without that, your batter won't be able to trap the steam created during baking, which forms those large holes characteristic of choux pastry.

There is no need to stir vigorously when adding the eggs, add them one at a time and stir only to incorporate them. Do not beat your batter, you would be doing more harm than good.

Apart from that, follow the usual advice and don't open the oven door during baking and you should be fine. You can add some extra steam by splashing some water into the oven, but that's optional.


Use any part of an animal for making stock/broth?

Stock is made from bones only and broth is the liquid that meat has been simmered in.
A well made stock should be clear without particles or cloudiness.  Broth will usually be somewhat cloudy due to containing more dissolved proteins.

Bones for lamb stock (and any brown stock - veal can be made white or brown but lamb is usually brown) are typically first roasted.  The roasting will melt fat that may still be intact.  After roasting bones for stocks such as lamb, veal, and duck you would then remove the bones from the roasting pan and roast the vegetables.  You can use the residual fat for coating the vegetables prior to roasting. (Just put vegetables in roasting pan and toss to coat with the fat).  Fat from the bones will congeal on the top once the stock is chilled and you can then easily remove it.

I wouldn't add or purposely leave chunks of fat attached to the bone as you just have to remove it later but what is there isn't a problem.


Which one of the five mother sauces is Sauce Messine derived from?

Sauce Messine should fall into the bechamel category. Velouté sauces incorporate stock rather then cream or milk.

This is a basic answer to the difference in the two, from  YIANNISLUCACOS .

  The difference between velouté and béchamel is that the milk is replaced by a stock, i.e. chicken, beef, fish etc.

  In every other respect velouté sauce is almost identical to béchamel.

  In general, it is used as a base for a number of white sauces. Its main applications are:

  Base for sauces
  Base for soups
  Basic ingredient for mixtures and fillings, as it offers moisture and a rich texture, such as patties, pies, pasta fillings.

As for other sauces with parsley, watercress, or other ingredients, they would fall into certain categories based on the mother sauce base, not the flavors or other additions.

It is a fairly easy internet search to get more information, should you need it.


I'd lower the temperature. You'll have to experiment. I think what happened is that the bottom quickly cooked and sealed. As your liquid ingredients turned to steam an air pocket was created, which would further slow the cooking of the middle.The still fluid batter would flow to the sides and provide more liquid, as the bottom rose.


The baking recipe idiom "preheat oven to X" implies to bake the item at that same temperature, unless the recipe specifies changing it.

200 C (390 F) is a little higher than most baked goods, but not out of the range of possibility.  more typical would be 180 C / 350 F.


Why is rock sugar used in Chinese cooking?

while all of the above answers are correct, I want to provide a perspective as a native Chinese. Rock sugar is better used (than granulated sugar) when you try to make dishes involving coloring the ingredient (by caramelization, dishes like braised pork belly (Hong Shao Rou need this step) mostly because of the shape difference. Rock sugar has less surface area touching the oil while granulated sugar immerses itself in, which makes it react faster, and more likely to get burnt.


No. It's just for taste. Moderate amounts of salt taste nice to people especially if we are accustomed to it in our food.

Salt tends to enhance the flavor of sweet foods as well. Recipes for cakes, cookies & other desserts often include a little pinch of salt, but you can always omit it if you would rather minimize your intake of sodium. From what I read, people on low sodium diets acclimate after a while to a lower saltiness level in their food, and don't even miss it.


My personal experience is that corn tortillas will stay more pliable if stored at room temperature, but may not last as long.  I'd assumed that I could find some head-to-head tests from one of the usual sources, but surprisingly not, which means that it's more likely that storing them in the fridge vs. counter doesn't actually make any difference.

Regardless of where they're stored, though, corn tortillas will only be pliable for a few days.  Even my homemade tortillas are really only good for 3-4 days, before they're good for nothing but making chips.

If you're buying them warm, first you want to store them in the open or wrapped in cloth while they're cooling (so that moisture evaporates and they don't get moldy), and then immediately put them in airtight packaging (so that they don't dry any further).

Incidentally, there's one other way of heading tortillas: putting them in a moist container (a cloth wrapper or a plastic food cointainer) and microwaving them for a short time.  This effectively steams them, and the tortillas will be pliable until they cool.


What kind of dishes use fresh coriander fruits

Here's an article that suggests using on seafood/white fleshed fish. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/dining/19cori.html


What cheeses work 'best' in melted cheese sandwich applications?

Gruyere is DELICIOUS. It melts without getting too gooey or soupy, and it is the traditional cheese component of a Croque Monsieur (if you're into that ham thing...). You could actually probably use any of the cheeses in that "variations" list, but I love Gruyere so that's my recommendation. It's widely available but tends to be kind of pricey here in the US.

Brie is also a good choice; since it is soft to begin with, it melts nicely. (Just make sure to cut off the rind before putting in the sandwich - that would be a weird texture combo.) It's great in grilled or toasted cheese sandwiches because of the richness and slightly buttery flavor.

As a local reference, check out Gorilla Cheese's menu for some tasty ideas; they do classic grilled cheeses with cheddar, American, gruyere or mozzarella, but they make others that have additions of other non-cheese components.


What purpose could baking soda and cream of tartar serve in a meatball recipe?

According to Cook's Illustrated's article Tenderizing Meat with Baking Soda (possible paywall):

  Briefly soaking meat in a solution of baking soda and water raises the pH on the meat’s surface, making it more difficult for the proteins to bond excessively, which keeps the meat tender and moist when it’s cooked.

This is almost certainly the effect of the baking powder:  to help create a more tender product.   This is probably especially necessary given the lack of bread products (which provides starch that physically interferes with protein linking, and helps retain moisture in the, thus producing a more tender meatball).

The tartaric acid is probably there because recipe authors are used to pairing it with baking soda which is necessary when it is used to create leavening in baked goods.  In the meatballs, it will simply tend to help make them more acidic, although it will also neutralize some of the baking soda.

I have surveyed several recipes on the web which include baking soda in meatball recipes; they variously claim that it helps make the meatballs lighter or more tender.


Does the thickness of a cake affect the baking time?

Yes, you would have a problem whereby thinner parts would cook quicker than thicker ones. You are much better off cooking uniform cakes (sheet cakes are ideal) and cutting them to shape.


For reheating stuffing in the oven, how long would you bake it and at what temperature?

I'd reheat it at 375 again, covered, and add maybe 1/2 cup liquid to start. It will probably take about 30-40 minutes to come back to temperature. If you have an instant-read thermometer, it is at a servable temperature at 160, though you may want to go a fair amount higher if it will sit long before being eaten.


I'm not sure what you means by dust exactly but stems are definitely a sign of less sophisticated processing and quality control. You should rarely, if ever get a stem. As for dust its very hard to say as it could just be oat dust produced when oats rub together during transport. If one brand consistently has more dust in the bag than the other then it could be from processing, maybe they are allowing more byproducts into their final product in order to save costs, or perhaps the dust is there because a less sophisticated processing plant. If one brand travels more than the other the dust could be from more rubbing and shaking.

If the dust is not oat dust then its a definite cause for concern, you don't want real dust in your oats! That would definitely be a sign of poor processing and I'd personally avoid that brand.

Having oat dust and stems in oats doesn't mean the oats themselves are bad quality, that's more determined by the wheat varieties and how well it was grown. It does mean there's labor involved to search for stems and perhaps sieve out the dust, which is inconvenient.


Why does my kamado ceramic grill fall out of it's stand when I open it?

The nest for the Egg should fit snugly in the grill, and you should never get the sense that it is tipping or sliding when opening the lid. If this is the case, then either the nest was not properly assembled, or it is not the correct nest for your grill.

You should contact Big Green Egg corporate with your issue. It may behoove you to take pictures, and offer to e-mail them to the rep that is assigned to your issue. You should also mention the name of the distributor, as I am sure the manufacturer would want to know if their product and brand are being represented poorly.

That will probably bring resolution to your problem. You can also bring your issue to their online community: http://eggheadforum.com/


Do people eat clotted cream AND butter at the same time?

It's really a matter of preference. Some people like the salty dimension that butter gives along with clotted cream and jam, others think the cream is enough saturated fat to be going on with.


What to look for when purchasing a blender?

Look for a strong motor and thick blades. If the blades are thin, they're likely to warp over time. The motor needs to be able to spin those blades through the liquid.

Look for a thick glass container. The plastic ones are unlikely to deal with the heat of things like soups and sauces being dumped in.

Check the gasket between the glass container and the piece that attaches the blades. A thin, flimsy gasket is likely to start leaking before a thicker, softer gasket.

Look at the number of teeth on the connection from the motor to the blade. The more teeth, the greater the surface area being used to distribute the power to the blade mechanism and is less likely to wear out.

Overall, as with many things, one of the quickest ways to tell a good one is to weigh them both. The heavier item is better. No one pays for shipping extra weight unless it's there for a good reason.

(note that the "heavier" rule doesn't apply to electronics like cellphones/computers, etc. where the cost of making it small is actually higher)


Sources or name of study concentrated on basic ingridient combinations for basic recepies

It seems to me that Ratio meets your needs:

  Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking Paperback – Sep 7 2010
  by Michael Ruhlman (Author)

  Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3:1:2—or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3:1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor.

Amazon's related titles and "customers also bought" features will probably also be helpful here.


How do I know if a given pickle recipe is meant for long-term storage?

Pickle recipes meant for longer-term storage will include instructions for sealing the jars.  While some recipes may have you use hot jars and hot brine that will result in a fairly reliable seal ratio (meaning most of the jars will properly seal), other recipes will have you put the filled and closed jars in a boiling water bath to be processed for a specific amount of time.  I've found this method to yield an even higher ratio of properly sealed jars.

In either scenario, the sign of a sealed jar (assuming you are using canning jars with a lid and ring system) is an indented dome on the lid.  Jars that do not seal properly will still have a protruding dome.

Most recipes will have all the specific information you need to make pickles including the shelf life of sealed jars.  The Ball canning jar company has a  good website: http://www.freshpreserving.com/recipes.aspx

Best of luck - I hope your pickles are a tasty success!


How long can frozen salmon be unrefrigerated and still be safe for sushi?

While it is considered safe to refreeze food that has been properly defrosted in a chilled environment, any food that has defrosted in a warm environment (The food temperature danger zone of 40F-140F), should be considered adulterated if it has been left out for too long. The maximum time of 2 hours is applied to food stored between 40F-89F [5C-32C], and 1 hour for food stored above 90F [32C] (USDA danger zone https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/safe-food-handling/danger-zone-40-f-140-f/CT_Index). This is why food should never be defrosted on a countertop.

However, food may be safely refrozen (with a loss of quality) if it still contains ice crystals or is below 40F [5C] (https://www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/food-safety-during-power-outage).

It is important to note that for any food that is stored in the danger zone, this figure is cumulative. So if your salmon has already spent one hour at between 40F and 89F [5C-32C] during processing and storage etc. prior to freezing, you only effectively have one hour left at that temperature (if defrosted in a refrigerator) before it should be considered unfit to eat.

That is the theory, but in real life it is difficult to ascertain exactly how well food has been stored and treated along the food chain, prior to purchase, unless it is obviously off. Your salmon could be fine, on the other hand, if you had a long journey in hot conditions that lasted over an hour, it might not. Personally, I'd err on the side of caution here and chuck it, as parts of the fillet have probably gone past 40F [5C], especially as you don't intend to cook it. Even then, there is still a level of risk and this is especially pertinent for individuals that are pregnant, have a compromised immune system or are elderly as there are frequently serious complications if people in these categories suffer food poisoning.

Apart from the food safety issues, there is also a matter of quality. Refreezing a partially defrosted salmon fillet will not do it any favours. Depending on how it was initially frozen, a cycle in a domestic freezer will potentially cause damage to the defrosted part.

I would take an insulated cool bag with some ice blocks with you in future if there is any chance of your frozen food defrosting, or that your journey will be an extended time in a hot environment.


A major problem (that I have had, and sounds like you're having) with filled-and-rolled bread is that the filling (e.g., if it contains water, butter, etc.) will steam and expand, yielding gaping holes in the middle of the bread.  You want this in things like, e.g., croissant and pastry, but not in stuff like cinnamon swirl bread or so.  It will also be very different between a batter bread (e.g., quick breads) versus yeast-leavened breads (which it sounds like you're using here).

I don't think slashing the loaf will be effective in this case.  You've got a rolled bread, which might have many layers -- you'll need to slash through every layer in order to have the steam escape.  Here are some other possibilities, depending on the nature of your loaf:

Try docking (poking the loaf with a bunch of holes); I can't find any good link on this. Use a chop-stick or wide-ish skewer to poke many holes, all over the loaf, all the way through the bread, after you have panned it. This can be effective for breads where you want some steam to escape without slashing the top.  Poking LOTS of holes all the way through may allow steam to escape during oven-spring.
Try a Russian braid. Roll, then cut through lengthwise, then and twist or braid, then put into loaf pan. For example, ATK did this with their cinnamon swirl bread, and this yields a similar swirl but without trapping as much steam.  Do an image-search for more examples.

Aside from slashing/cutting etc.,

If you roll very tightly with minimal trapped air, you may be able to improve the situation.  But this is tricky and may not be effective anyway.
How about mixing in the paste into the batter or dough?  If you do this at the right time in mixing, you'll end up with chunks of the filling (similar effect as swirl) with perhaps less steam-trapping effect.

Hope it helps.  Let us know how it comes out!


If you're going to roast the peanuts, definitely roast them before grinding. Do like you would any other nuts: in the oven, maybe 350F, spread out not too deep in a pan, until they smell toasty and nutty, making sure not to burn them.

If you ground them into peanut peanut butter, and then tried to roast it, it'd be a lot tougher to roast. You'd have to spread it out in a thin layer on a pan, since if it's thick only the surface would really roast. You'd have to be really careful about overroasting, since you won't be able to directly see if the bottom is scorching. And then you'll have to scrape out the pan to try not to waste any, and still have a greasy pan to clean up. Roasting before, on the other hand, is easy. There's space for air between the peanuts so they'll all roast. You can easily give them a stir if you need to, and see directly whether they're burning. And the pan will basically still be clean when you're done.

Whether or not to remove the skins is mostly down to personal preference. You will end up with flecks of skin in the peanut butter, so if that bothers you, remove them. If you're really sensitive (and eating the peanut butter mostly by itself) it's possibly you'd notice a texture difference too. But they won't taste bad (some people even think they improve the flavor), so do whatever you feel like!

If you do want to remove the skins, you can and should wait til after roasting: they should be much looser and easier to remove after roasting. You might even be able to get a lot off simply by putting them in a bowl or colander and shaking. Otherwise, putting them in a kitchen towel and rubbing around should work pretty well.


is it okay to use shredded zucchini that smells a little sour for baking

Fresh zucchini has a fairly neutral or sometimes "greenish" smell. An acidic or vinager-like smell is an indication of some kind of fermentation that has set in.

We can't say what exactly has started to grow (there is lacto-fermentation, which is typically induced on purpose, but also a good chance that your zucchini simply started to decay), but even if it were benign, the sour taste would remain present and likely prominent in your cake, so don't use the zucchini.

Always remember:
"If in doubt, throw it out!"


Frying Steak - disappointing gray crust, not pink inside

It sounds to me like you've made a good start and almost got there. You picked a heavy pan and got it hot, and you had in mind the outcome you want. You also recognized that you needed to get your steaks off the pan before they overcooked, showing you have the theory and practice down.
Here's the tweaks I would make to get the result you want:

Oil: Olive oil is a great cooking oil for low temperature but it is not a good choice for high temperature as it will 1) smoke, 2) set on fire in some cases (it's flare-up city on the barbecue) and 3) produce off flavors (as in taste bad). Canola (rapeseed), peanut, sunflower, safflower, ie most vegetable oils will work fine for this. You only need a small amount ensure good heat contact with the pan, not a liberal coating
Seasoning: salt is fine to put on your steak, pepper will burn and turn bitter, I suggest you pepper it just after cooking
Steak choice: Even on a hot pan there won't be enough time to get enough crust on a flank steak (or any thin steak) before the meat inside is done, if you want a crust then you're better off with a thicker steak. A grey outside without any crust is typical with a thin steak. When buying a steak remember that you're better off getting quality over quantity, a small piece of good quality filet or ribeye is better than a slab of a tough old rubber. Personally I have no problem with flank steak, I suggest you marinade it first and get your barbecue working again as a searing hot flame is the way to go for flank


Why can't I put food on the pan while the stove is heating up?

There is a simple fact which many intermediate cooks don't seem to realize:

The rate at which you pump heat into your food has a huge influence on what the end result tastes like.

So, if you put food into a cold pan, and it gets heated slowly, you end up with a different result than if you throw it into a hot pan that transmits a lot of heat into the food at once.

Both techniques have their place in the kitchen, but the "heat quickly" one usually produces results which the majority of people like - vegetables stay firmer, doughy foods get a nice crust, sticky things release easily, etc. So it is used more often. And if you want good results, I'd suggest to stick with your recipe and use a heated or cold pan as it directs you.


Why would parsnips make a beef stock not freeze?

I dont think that adding parnips to a beef stock would change the chemistry. I would give the beef stock a longer time to freeze as well as check the temperature in your freezer!


Yes, a simmer will be on the order of 180 to 200 F (82 - 93 C) which is a safe temperature for cooking and holding stew.

Browning beef does cook it, but usually not all the way through as that is not the point; instead it is to develop the flavors.  The full cooking is done during the braising or stewing stage while you simmer it.  This also allows the collagen to hydrate into gelatin, creating the tender texture of well cooked stew meat.


What varieties of beans are high in calories?

This is possibly pointless to answer, the general calorie difference between bean varieties is less than the difference from sub-varieties and growing conditions

Use wikipedia or wolframalpha to get average figures for the beans you can get locally, but you really need to test them if this is truly important

For what it's worth chickpeas are very high and commonly available. Wheat is much higher still!

Beans are around 1 to 1.5 calories per g
Wheat is around 3 calories per g
Chia seed is around 5 calories per g
Dried beef is also around 5 calories per g, and much tastier :-)


can you cool manicotti noodles off completly before stuffing

What is your method for cooling the pasta? Is the goal to have it cool enough to work with? Or to stop the cooking process, keeping in mind it's going in the oven later?

My opinion is that the only cases when you should rinse pasta after cooking is if you're making a cold pasta salad, or if you're going to serve it plain. The reason why you should avoid this method of cooling it in virtually every other case is because in a great majority of the time you'll be adding a sauce to your pasta and you want the starch that's covering the surface of the pasta to help the sauce stick. This way all of the ingredients in your dish will be well incorporated and just give it that little nudge that makes all the difference.

Ultimately if you end up with overcooked pasta out of the oven you can always reduce the cooking time in the pot and if your sauce has enough moisture the pasta will keep cooking through in the oven (which would most likely be the cause of your problem in the first place, but we're clever, we'll work around it, take advantage of that!!).


Convert fresh basil leaves to a dry measurement

This is a more tricky conversion than most.  As another answer already said, the "standard" conversion for most herbs is 3 parts fresh = 1 part dried.  (There is more general advice on that question in the link rumtscho gave in comments here.)

Basil is a particular problem because its flavor is generally very different in dried vs. fresh forms.  Dried basil can also vary greatly in its potency and flavor notes: I often find it has enhanced "sweetness" compared to fresh basil, but lacks some of the other distinctive flavors of the fresh form.  The only time I'd generally consider substituting dried basil in a recipe for fresh is if the basil is cooking in the dish for a long time (for example, simmering an hour or more).

In any case, sometimes you just can't get the fresh stuff.  But converting a number of leaves into a measurement of dry basil gets even trickier: what size is a "standard" basil leaf?  Is your particular dried basil fresh-bought and potent, or has it been sitting around for a while?

I poked around in internet searches, and people seem to recommend anywhere from 4 to 8 fresh basil leaves = 1 teaspoon of dried basil.  So, if I had to do this, I'd go somewhere in the middle and probably try 2 teaspoons of dried basil for 12 leaves.  If you are using this in a dish that will cook for a while you'll have time to adjust, so I'd start a little on the lower side and add more basil to taste if necessary.

On the other hand, if you're using this in a dish where you're depending on a specific "fresh herb" flavor of fresh basil, there's just no substituting the dry form.  In that case, I might recommend trying another fresh herb you do have (perhaps something more neutral like parsley) mixed with a little dried basil to give a bit of the right flavors.  It still won't be the same as fresh basil, but at least you'll get a bit of the fresh herbiness which is often part of the experience too.


You cannot make it stronger with this style of pot. You are limited by Nernst's law: the amount of solute extracted from the leaf into the tea does not depend only on the amount of tea leaves, but also on the current concentration of solute in the liquid surrounding the leaves.

If you make tea using loose leaves in a teapot, they float everywhere, with sufficient distance between leaves. Several processes in the teapot (convection, diffusion, etc.) let the solutes move around easier, and you get an even, weak, concentration throughout the teapot, so the layer of tea surrounding each leaf has low concentration and works against the leaf from all sides, extracting lots of stuff. If you make it using a drip style method, the leaves are packed together, but the water moving through them doing the extracting is fresh and has no solute in it at all, so it is able to extract a lot.

But with your style of teapot, the water is of course able to get into the infuser through the tiny slits, but once this has happened, there is very little exchange between the infuser and the rest of the teapot. The slits create a bottleneck, and you end up with an area of highly concentrated tea in the infuser and an area of low concentrated tea outside, with little communication between the two. The concentrated tea in the infuser can't extract the tea well.

You could always increase the amount of tea or the time you infuse, but both methods have their drawbacks.

Bottom line: you have to decide between well extracted tea or conveniently extracted tea. The same methods which make teapots easy to clean (concentrating the tea leaves in a small area without too much communication with the rest of the pot) reduce the extraction quality and strength.


Sous vide chicken without an internal temperature of 165 °F (75 °C)

The reduction of bacterial growth, and thus food safety, follow a logarithmic pattern that factors in temperature plus time. During sous vide cooking, lower temperature are frequently used for longer times. Employed correctly, this renders food safe. For an excellent explanation see the work of Douglas Baldwin.


Sugar in tea better if put after boiling

Yes, it would taste different-
Sugar chrystals are made of sucrose saccharose(glucose combined with fructose), if you boil sugar with an acid (milk is slightly acidic[ph 6.5-7]) your sugar splits into its monomers-fructose and glucose(invert-sugar).
Fructose fits into your taste receptors better than sucrose or fructose causing it to taste sweeter(1.73 x sweeter).


Can I make a béchamel sauce with coconut cream?

First, you don't specify if you mean cream of coconut, or coconut milk. I think coconut milk would be the thing to try here, as it has less fat.

Second, if it works, it won't be bechamel any more. But this is a technical detail: if it is tasty to you, you should be able to use it as a substitution practically everywhere.

Third, does it work? I haven't tried it, but I would strongly assume that it will. Coconut milk has more fat than normal milk, but this isn't a terrible problem for roux-based sauces. Indeed, I have read recipes (in reliable cookbooks) which direct the cook to add melted butter to the roux before or after adding the liquid. Which means that the fat ratio in the sauce isn't too exact; it is the ratio of flour to water which you have to keep straight.

The one thing to pay attention to is that coconut fat melts around 34-35°C. So your coconut roux sauce will exhibit noticeable difference in thickness depending on the temperature. As long as you serve it warm, it will be a similar thickness to bechamel. If you let it go cold, it will probably thicken quite a bit. If you plan to serve it cold, adjust the flour amount accordingly.


Congratulations, you accidentally made allioli, a Catalan emulsified sauce requiring only garlic and olive oil to thicken and emulsify.  Unfortunately, it's harder to make and less stable than the other aiolis (garlic mayonnaises), which include egg yolks as emulsifiers.  This is probably why you are having difficulty replicating it.

To make it more consistently:

Smash the garlic up into a fine paste before adding oil
Add oil slowly, starting with a drop at a time, and mixing rapidly until incorporated (traditionally this is done with a mortar and pestle, but it is easier with a mini-whisk).
Optionally, cheat and add an egg yolk (beaten) for every clove or two of garlic (it is no longer a true allioli though).


According to this neat chart on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PH_Scale.svg

Lemon juice is around 2, and baking soda around 9. Our digestive juices are around a 1, so it's probably safe to go a bit less than 2, but you wouldn't enjoy it. Baking soda is 9, and milk of magnesia is 10...both of which are safe to consume in small quantities, but I wouldn't want to serve a dish in that range.

So...I'd probably stick with 2-9 as an acceptable safe range. As far as taste goes, we're not really wired to enjoy the taste of alkaline. Between 2 and 7 (acid to neutral) is the tasty range.


Sorry to rain on your parade, but making good quality chocolate in a home kitchen without special equipment is basically impossible.

The magic tool is a conche - a machine that grinds the cocoa solids so finely, that you can't feel them with your tongue any more. We are talking about a particle size of 10-20 micrometers here. It also distributes fat and sugar in a very specific way. At the same time, temperature rises in a controlled way, altering the flavour profile of your ingredients. For very high quality results one batch took up to 90 hours. Modern technique recently brought this down to an hour or so for good results, provided the chocolate mass is pre-treated to remove unwanted aromatic compounds. Note that we are talking about an industrial scale here, small-batch conches still need 12-24 hours.

The bad news is that even if you committed yourself to manually "conch" for hours, the results would probably be not very satisfying: the precise parameters (time, temperature, humidity...) are a carefully guarded secret of each manufacturer as they significantly contribute to the specific taste and mouthfeel of the brand.


It's complicated.  Really, really complicated.
And hard, oh so very hard.

So, this kind of texture is not a "natural" consequence of nuts and sugar, in fact it has little enough to do with nuts at all - I'm pretty sure I've seen soan papdi without nuts, and other variations of this technique - and usually the nuts are flaked, and added at the very end (pressed into the top)... they can't have any effect on the texture of the candy before they're even introduced!  What the nuts might add is a bit of fats, a bit of starch in slurry, maybe some proteins, in the nut-exclusive recipes like butterfingers.  Soan papdi uses flour (and possibly chickpea flour, in some recipes), along with sugar and ghee, in the steps where they're making the bulk of the candy - the nuts are just garnish.

I don't know all the chemistry, if the protein plays a role, but I think it isn't important, I think that the flour and chickpea flour are mostly inert, chemically, in the recipe - just thickening and drying out the sugar (and absorbing the ghee, which separates the strands and keeps the stuff flaky), and all of them adding to the characteristic flavor, of course.  I think this is the case because both the texture and technique are somewhat similar to the beginnings of dragon's beard candy (hand pulled sugar floss, essentially, made with just sugar and rice flour... but add ghee and press flat, and it would be very similar stuff).

Anyway, sorry for the tangent, but the technique for soan papdi is to make a sugar syrup, boil it to the single thread or soft-ball stage, and as it cools, it is dumped onto an oiled (ghee'd?) workstation, then stretched and folded - freehand at first but then into cords or strands - generally pulled from the center to make a round, the round doubled over into a smaller loop, then that loop pulled out into a round, doubled over and pulled out, and so it goes until the proper consistency is reached (by this time it will be many rough threads).  I think it may be gently heated or the pulling surface or the workspace kept heated, to keep the sugar pliable longer, especially if being made commercially.  It's worth noting that this was traditionally made by hand, and it involved a lot, a lot of muscle power and time and effort to make.  Anyway, a (pre-cooked) mix of ghee, flour, and chickpea flour would be added to the workstation, and the stretch and fold would continue until the mix was completely absorbed (coating each strand, so they would stay separate, and adding flavor).

Then, to make a flat pan - the round would be cut, threads cut to length, and layered on top of a pan where the slivered nuts, raisins and other toppers had already been sprinkled.  The threads were often layered in one direction, but didn't have to be.  Then they were pressed down, rolled out, and generally packed into a compact layer.  It could then be cut and packaged once it had finished cooling.

So, the flaked nuts don't have anything to do with the texture directly - they aren't added till the end.  that texture comes from the constant repeated stretch and fold to make sugar threads, and coating the threads with a starch and fat mixture, so the threads wouldn't re-merge under pressure.

I think butterfingers, and possibly the hulwa, are the result of mechanized versions of the same process. The ground nuts were made into some thin paste or slurry, and added to cooling sugar candy somewhere like halfway through solidifying (too thick to actually mix, thin enough to try?), which finished cooling as the two were mixed.  In essence, the fats and starches didn't quite mix with the sugar in the candy, just surrounded it as it was mixed and ended up with sugar in flat-ish flakes and the nut paste formed into layers between the sugar.

Anyway, if you want to make something similar-ish to butterfinger candy or that halva, just to see how it works, what you need is soft-ball stage sugar syrup, cooled enough to be just workable, that is, still runny and sorta stretchy, and add a starch and fats slurry, and sloppily fold the two together - stretching it out, and folding over, as much as you can.  Don't mind the mess until the stretch-and-fold gives enough surface area to sort of absorb the slurry.  The more it's pulled thin, the dryer it will be (thinly coating all the surface area), and the more it's folded, the more flaky it will be - yes, same basic principle  of puff paste, only with solidifying sugar syrup instead of dough, and a hot starch-and-fats paste instead of cold butter.

Or, alternatively, you can start with a soft-ish sugar candy (like, say, candy corn), and heat it up, adding your fats-and-starches slurry while the candy is still cool and solid.  As the candy heats and softens and melts, it will pass through the semi-solid stage that's you're looking for, and if you're mixing (folding over) at the time, the candy will flatten out, stick to the slurry (and not to the other candy pieces melting alongside), and generally pass through a flaky layered stage you can use.  Of course, if you heat it up all the way I think the sugar will melt, then everything will actually mix instead of layer, and you'll end up with something fudge-like instead of crisp brittle layers - but heating from cold will get you to the same half-melted runny stage you need, if you keep an eye on it and stop mixing before it's actually homogeneous.

You can even make soan papdi in your regular kitchen, or substitute out the flour slurry for nut sauce or whatever variation you want, there are recipes and stuff online... just be prepared for a lot of stretch and folding, and a lot of muscle power to pull thousands of strands of sugar candy into fine, thin, threads.


The problem with lids is in how they drip -- the water tends to condense and run down the sides, making it so there's uneven moisture in the dish.  Some dutch oven lids solve this by putting little nubs all over the lid, so it drips more evenly all over the dish.  With a paper lid, you don't get that large collection of steam in the air above the dish, so you don't run into those problems.  You also won't get as much total evaporation, as there's less liquid-to-air surface for the liquid to evaporate from.

You could go with a just a skewed lid, but it's possible that the rice might come out less than ideal.  (although, I'll one for taking shortcuts ... if I can get an 8/10 with 1/2 the effort, I'm all for it -- you just have to know how the shortcut might change things ... this one's a bit of a toss-up, because using a normal lid means there's one more thing to clean, but that's balanced by the extra trash from the parchment lid).


Baking My Own Sweet Potato (Yam) Chips - Help Correct My Current Methodology

The dense nature and high sugar content of sweet potatoes can make them difficult to turn into crisp crunchy chips without burning, even when you ARE frying them.  This is the reason so often sweet potato fries are soft rather than crisp.

I have never tried baking them into chips but your method seems to be very sound.  Any higher temp is going to burn them even more quickly and a lower one is going to just turn them to mush by the time you cook them longer to try crisping them.

Here's a slightly adjusted method:  Try slicing them closer to 1/16th of an inch and then place them between two pieces of greased foil or parchment paper.  Preheat two baking sheets in the oven for about 15 minutes so that they're hot when the sheet of potatoes goes onto it.  Put the sandwiched sheet of potatoes on the first hot pan and place the second one on top to "press" them so that they're essentially "oven frying" between the sheets of paper/foil.  This still may not work as the steam will be trapped but pressing them between two preheated pans may help.

My primary suggestion:  Fry them and don't eat the whole batch.  OR Fry AND eat the whole batch and don't do it too often.

Many times it's just best to do things the traditional way and enjoy it, than to try substituting and having a less than ideal result.


You can probably get rid of much of the wine and its sweetness by removing the brisket from the sauce, and possibly rinsing it (at some cost to flavor).

This may leave you with an under-flavored brisket; you could try putting it in a flavorful (and maybe spicy, if you like that) tomato sauce to give it some balance.  Acidity tends to cut any remaining sweetness.


Why is it recommended to mix yogurt starter with a small amount of milk before adding to the entire batch?

Dry powders are easier to mix if you make a slurry first with a small amount of liquid and then mix the slurry in.

If you skip this step you will have clumps of dry powder floating on top of the milk and it will take a lot more effort to mix in.

When you are using yoghurt as a starter for a new batch this step is not necessary and the starter can just be mixed in directly.


Is there a technique to freeze gnocchi so they maintain their consistency?

I typically use potato, flour and egg.

Make. Freeze.  Then, go directly from freezer to boiling water.  Do not defrost first.


What is the optimal height and depth for a hood fan?

This is going to be dominated by ergonomics.
The perfect fan for exhaust isn't so perfect if you're always banging your head on it, or can't see in the pan. Some unusual devices are rather tall and wouldn't even fit in your 18" (I can't strain jelly on the worktop because of the cupboards so do that on the cold stove).
In catering, where kitchen air quality is a concern, the fan hoods are normally high, well over head height for the tallest users, but powerful.
The stuff you want to get rid of, whether steam, oil aerosol, or smells, tends to be carried upwards by convection, which gives a push to complement the fan's pull. You also have to consider the source of replacement air - if the house was sealed completely tight there wouldn't be one and the fan would be largely useless.  Airflow from the rest of the house into the kitchen to replaced the exhausted air can be effective in controlling the flow of smells, despite not increasing or even decreasing (for the same total inlet size) the amount of airflow.


What is the minimal set of ingredients that English rice pudding can be made with?

The absolute minimalist version needs 2 ingredients:

1 part short-grain rice, cooked in
4 parts milk

If cooked long enough and especially when stirred diligently, the rice will release enough starch to create a creamy, mushy texture, like risotto. But for rice pudding, the rice is usually cooked softer than risotto, which should have a bit of a “bite”.

You can stop at this point and will have a perfectly fine dish, but probably a bit on the bland side, with just a hint of sweetness from the starch and milk. But it can be a neutral base for fresh fruit, applesauce, ...

I personally would always add a pinch of salt and, if going for an especially rich taste, a splash of cream when fully cooked.

All spices are optional, they change the flavor profile and that’s where the cook’s creativity can shine. Roughly the same is true for sugar or other sweeteners. (I like to add sugar after cooking, sometimes even as topping for each serving, because I feel that cooking without sugar reduces the risk of sticking/burning and because it seems that I need to add less for the same perceived sweetness.)


Benefit to covering pasta while cooking?

I see a benefit to covering the pot while bringing the water to a boil, as you will reduce evaporative cooling and get to temperature quicker.  I might also allow, that in some cases (maybe frozen pasta or too much pasta to water), when you add the pasta (thus cooling the water) replacing the lid will help return it to the boil quicker.  However, boiling pasta with a lid simply invites a boil-over situation.  Once boiling, covering is not influencing the cooking of the pasta.  Just leave it off.


Which type of UK supermarket rice is closest to Philippine rice?

If your goal is slightly sticky rice, you can mix glutinous(sweet) rice with plain rice in different ratios to get the right blend of stickiness you are looking for.

Short grain rice also tends to be more sticky, chewy, and denser. So go with short grain rice if you remember the rice being more dense and chewy.


Why do some foods have to be cooked only when the pan is really hot?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wok_hei has very good explanations about it. Let me sum of it up:

The geometry of the wok is very important:

better use of the surface area
ability to shallow fry big items and deep fry small items with small amounts of oil.
intense heat for low amount of fuel

The temperature is also very important:

caramelization (or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction)
carbon steel, cast iron, stainless steel and others have different properties in terms of heat capacity and heat conduction.