Coconut bread dough is crumbly and does not come together to knead

You can't substitute a non-wheat flour for a wheat flour and expect similar baking properties; bread doughs rely on gluten for their structure which is why gluten-free baking is difficult.

The simplest way to fix this would be to double the recipe, look at what you've already added, and add more ingredients up to the correct amounts. You can freeze bread dough which helps mitigate the 'too much' problem although I appreciate it might get you through your ingredients faster than you'd want.

If you're dead set against that, add more flour in small quantities and try to knead the dough until it has a workable consistency, and see how it comes out.

For your broader desire for the bread to have a stronger coconut flavour, consider buying coconut extract or essence and adding that to the original recipe.


Which onions to use and how to cook them for an Indian curry recipe that specifies "fry until deep pink"?

I own the same book and was similarly surprised when I read that instruction, but in the section on ingredients, the author does mention a particular variety of onions called pink onions.  The mention is on pg. 32, and there is a picture of a pink onion on the upper left of pg. 34.

Here's an excerpt from pg. 32:

  "The longer the onions are fried, the browner they will get and the deeper the color of the curry will be... When the onions are fried until only light pink in color, they will impart a sweetish taste to the curry. Certain varieties of onion, like Spanish onions, are too sweet to be appropriate for curry-making. The most appropriate from the taste point of view are the French and the small pink English."

From 50 great curries of india

I've never seen pink onions in any of the local markets (in northwestern US), I used white onions and sauteed them just to the point of browning. The recipe turned out fine, but it's a lot of onion. (The recipe calls for 2 large onions, finely chopped. It's a recipe that produces 2 servings.)  Personally, I'd go a little lighter on the amount of onion or use yellow onions (despite the author's recommendation against Spanish onions), but that is just personal preference from a Western palate.

Note: it looks like the current printing of the book is different from the one I own, so the page numbers I cite may be off, but if you search inside the book (on Amazon) for "pink onion" you can see the page I've cited and the picture of what the author calls a pink onion.


That really wouldn't work.

With steaming the water is heated to boiling which creates steam. Since the food is colder, the steam condenses on the food which transfers heat to the food.

With hot oil there is no boiling and vapor of the oil. So in an enclosed container it would be more akin to baking, the hot oil heating the air, than steaming. (There would be some oil in the vapor above hot oil, but not enough to transfer much heat.)

(1) Another factor here is pointed out by user "Lorel C" in another answer. Cooking oils tend to decompose and smoke before reaching their boiling point. If you could get oil to boil without smoking, then "steaming" in the boiling oil vapor would be very close to frying in oil, but at a temperature much above what is normally used.

(2) Also as user "yo" points out in a comment below, the bubbling that you see when frying something isn't the oil boiling. Rather it is the water coming from the food that is vaporizing.


I make orange caramel at work for one of our desserts.

You will need:

zest of one orange. big chunks is fine
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
2oz grand marnier/cointreau/triple sec (optional)
approx 1/2c butter, unsalted
approx 1/2c 35% cream
generous pinch kosher salt
1-2tbsp pulp-free lemon juice

Combine the first three ingredients in a saucepan. Brush the exposed sides of the pan with lemon juice--this prevents crystallization. Dissolve the sugar in the water over medium heat, turn down to low simmer for 20 minutes. Strain out the zest, return sauce to heat, bring to boil. Cook until the sauce has taken a light amber colour, pour into stainless steel bowl. Whisk in butter, then cream, then grand marnier if using, then salt.


yeast subtitution in a recipe with no water

Yes, you can proof the yeast in the milk. Heat the milk gently to around 120 degrees F (use an instant read or candy thermometer to check).  I would use all the milk.


How can I thin a sauce that has too much tapioca flour

There are a couple of things you could try to partially recover the sauce, but my feeling is that none will have very satisfactory results.

The reason is that starch gelatinization is an irreversible process. The problem is even worst for tapioca, which is rich in amylopectin  in comparison with other starches like potato and corn, richer in amylose. Amylopectin is the responsible for the characteristic 'gluey' texture and translucent colour of gelified tapioca (and also asian sticky rice) starch, and is the driving agent of the gelatinization process. Starches which are richer in amylopectin form stronger gels. There are a couple of factors that could have helped slowying gelatinization, like for example adding acid to the water. But the issue is that once the starch has been heated for enough time and the gel formed, acid won't help you go back.

There are some potential fancy solutions like using amylase to digest the gel into shorter sugars. Amylase is present in your saliva, but you really don't want to spit in your sauce because the other stuff in your saliva will likely lead to fermentation and spoilage of the sauce.

Another potential solution but laborious solution would be trying to dehydrate your mixture and rehydrate it avoiding heating. For example you could bake it in the oven under low heat until the mix gets dry and hard. Then you process it into a blender with water avoiding to overheat it. In Brazil they use tapioca gum to make pancakes, and by personal experience cooking these for two long make it crumbly again.  But I cannot guarantee you this is going to lead you to satisfactory results.


What are some vegan thickeners for beverages?

Xanthan gum may be more expensive than you like, but consider that you so VERY LITTLE of it that it will last a long, long time. There's a reason why it's used in industrial production so much, I think -- it's very cost effective.


Can you and how do you melt quark cheese into bechamel?

Quark doesn't melt at all. What you can do is to stir it into the sauce.

From there on, it depends on the version you have available. I haven't seen the Polish one. If it is firm and crumbly like some of the quarks I've had, it will remain that way in the sauce, and you will have a grainy texture. The German type is similar to yogurt in texture, and it will blend with a sauce perfectly (but not melt). Polish cuisine borrows from both Russian (which has firm quark) and German (which has the aforementioned yogurty quark) so I can't predict what will happen with what you have.

Note that having a somewhat crumbly texture in a sauce is not necessarily a bad thing. Personally, I like a lot a sauce/dip made from 50% mayonnaise and 50% firm quark, stirred together and served with black olives. It depends purely on your taste. My advice is to make the sauce and see if you like eating it.


Does Pressure cook work for hard to soften soybeans?

Tried it.  Failed utterly.  If the beans won't soften with overnight soaking and an hour of cooking, you should forget about them.


You ask for advice, the best advice I can give is to use up to date procedures from start to finish to can your pickles. While your Grandmothers method for canning reduced the likelihood of spoilage (which is not always obvious), today's updated methods are scientifically based and much more effective.

Here are a couple of good sources to learn more about safe canning:

Fresh Preserving
National Center for Home Food Preservation

I could explain the water bath process, but that will not result in making your pickles safe at this point. Having a good seal on your lid now, just means nothing is going to get in. You haven't used enough heat, for long enough to prevent the growth of undesirable bacteria, yeasts, and molds in your jars.

From the CDC

  Home-canned vegetables are the most common cause of botulism outbreaks in the United States. From 1996 to 2014, there were 210 outbreaks of foodborne botulism reported to CDC. Of the 145 outbreaks that were caused by home-prepared foods, 43 outbreaks, or 30%, were from home-canned vegetables. These outbreaks often occur because home canners did not follow canning instructions, did not use pressure canners, ignored signs of food spoilage, or were unaware of the risk of botulism from improperly preserving vegetables.


In my experience, if I use a cheese like Philadelphia, it will have a more cheesy tang, whereas using Mascarpone has a smoother creamier taste.  I also find that using higher fat creams will give a more creamy taste, as opposed to a lighter cream and particularly sour cream, which will add to the tang.  I've actually just made a very creamy tasting cheesecake today using Mascarpone and extra thick double (heavy) cream.  For my palette, it is too creamy and doesn't taste enough like cheesecake, but it may suit you.


How can I make cheap, smooth homemade Alfredo sauce?

The real stuff is expensive because it's still actually cheese. If you're gonna use the canned stuff, you're probably better off just leaving it out entirely (or sprinkling it on top at the table as-desired...)

It doesn't take a lot of cheese either - it's pretty strong stuff. You can probably get away with just a few ounces...


Why do my macarons have a proper shape and feet, but are hollow inside?

If they are hollow inside, it can also be because they have been cooked too long and/at a temperature that was too high. Most of the recipes say it should be between 140-155° F for 10 to 15 min, but then it depends on your oven, the size of your macarons, and a 1000 little details in the way you made them, so the best is to try little by little to figure out your own ideal temperature!


Is it safe to put hot food in the fridge?

This is a myth left over from the days of iceboxes. Go to any official food safety resource online, like the USDA or FDA, and you will find that they are all in agreement: it's perfectly safe to put hot food in your refrigerator. In fact, unless you are using some more direct cooling method, like putting your food in an ice bath, waiting to refrigerate your food is often a health hazard.

For example, see

FDA — Despite what some people believe, putting hot food in the refrigerator doesn't harm the appliance.
FDA — A lot of people think it will harm their refrigerator to put hot food inside—it's not true. It won't harm your refrigerator and it will keep your food—and you—safe*. (Page not found)
USDA — Hot food can be placed directly in the refrigerator or it can be rapidly chilled in an ice or cold water bath before refrigerating
Washington State Department of Health — Fact: Hot food can be placed in the refrigerator.
Partnership for Food Safety Education — Fact: Hot foods can be placed directly in the refrigerator. (Page not found)
Alaska Food Safety and Sanitation Program — Myth #10 "I can't put hot food into the refrigerator. The food will spoil if I do." —
The food will spoil if it is not quickly cooled! The leading cause of foodborne illness in the United States is improper cooling, such as leaving cooked foods at room temperature … (Page not found)
Florida Department of Health — Hot food can be placed directly in the refrigerator if you divide large quantities into small, shallow containers. (Page not found)

These are just a few links I found in the first couple pages of a search; there are obviously many more. IMPORTANT NOTE: Particular precautions should be taken for large quantities of food; see below for details. But there are three common objections: (1) it will "overwork" the fridge, (2) it will heat up other food in the fridge to unsafe temperatures and cause it to spoil, and (3) somehow, the uneven cooling of the hot food in the container will cause it to spoil. Let's take these each in turn.

"It will overwork the fridge" — False in most cases

Lots of people worry about putting a quart or two of hot food in their fridge, but they wouldn't think anything of filling their fridges with multiple gallons of room temperature drinks to chill them, even if it might require the same amount of energy to cool.  Anything that is above the temperature of the fridge will require energy to cool.

Now if you plan on putting a very large amount of hot food into a small fridge all at the same time, it might strain the fridge. If you do it once in a while? Probably not an issue in a modern fridge, as long as it's not excessive. If you plan to do that on a regular basis, you should consider using ice baths or other cooling methods to pre-chill the food before putting it in the fridge.

It will cost more energy to cool hot foods in the fridge. If you are looking for the most energy-efficient method, it is probably to use a cold tap water bath, replacing the water a few times to bring down the temperature as fast as possible to room temperature. Then refrigerate.  Chilling with ice water is safer and faster, but it's not the most energy efficient, if that's your concern.

Also, in most cases it probably makes sense to wait until the food actually gets into the "Danger Zone" (below 140°F or so) before refrigerating; there's little safety benefit in putting a boiling pot directly into the fridge. Unless you're monitoring the temperature of your cooling food, though, it still is safest to move it to the fridge as soon as you can.

"It will heat up other food in the fridge to unsafe temperatures and cause it to spoil" — False in almost all cases.

This is the real myth that comes from the icebox theory. In an old icebox, you just had a block of ice, and no air circulation. If you put something hot in there, the ice would melt, the food wouldn't even get cool, and everything else would warm up and spoil.

That just doesn't happen in a modern fridge, as can be found out on reputable food safety websites, such as mentioned above. I've actually tested it myself. I once put a gallon of very hot soup in the fridge just to see what happened. I checked the fridge every 30 minutes or so by measuring surface temperatures of other foods with an infrared thermometer.  My fridge is generally around 35–36°F.  There was one item which was almost touching the metal pot that maybe reached 44°F or 45°F for a short time—above ideal refrigeration temperatures, but hardly enough to cause a lot of spoilage. All other items in the fridge—even many on the same shelf—stayed within a few degrees of the refrigerator temperature, 40°F at the most.

And this wasn't in some fancy fridge: it was actually at least 10 years old and a rather cheap model. The air circulation is enough to keep most other foods cool, unless you're actually touching them to the hot container. The radiative heat coming off the hot container will raise stuff around it by a couple degrees for a couple hours, but in a fridge kept at a proper low temperature, this should not be an issue at all.

If you have a very old fridge that doesn't work properly, or some weird new fridge that is super energy-efficient and doesn't cool properly, you might have an issue. But for anyone with a normal modern fridge, this is not an issue.

EDIT: Another question was posed in response to my comment here, and I documented there a more detailed experiment I carried out by placing a gallon of boiling water directly into my home refrigerator (admittedly a newer model than in the last experiment).  My results, in summary, were that even food items placed within a couple inches on the same shelf of the pot of boiling water were only heated by 3–4° for a few hours.  Other items in the fridge (on other shelves, etc.) barely changed temperature, moving maybe a degree or two at most.  These temperature fluctuations might be a minor concern around highly perishable foods like raw meats, but it is probably common sense to keep raw meat away from hot food and warm food in general.  Other items in a well-functioning modern refrigerator are unlikely to be negatively affected. If you don't believe me, here's another documented similar experiment with a large hot cheesecake put directly into the fridge from the oven.

"The uneven cooling of the hot food in the container will cause it to spoil" — Certainly false, compared to room temperature cooling.

In fact, leaving your container out on the counter at room temperature has a much, much, much higher probability of causing faster spoilage.  With some dishes, it is actually quite irresponsible.  There's a common belief that cooked food is "sterile," and by leaving it out with the lid on, it won't get contaminated.  But there are a lot of microbes that produce spores which can even survive boiling or near-boiling temperatures.  Many of them are kept at bay by competing with other microbes during the initial cooking phase, but after cooking, all that's usually left are nasty spores.

Rice, for example, is commonly infected with Bacillus cereus, which forms spores that aren't destroyed during normal rice cooking.  Leave a rice dish out on the counter for too long, and you'll start growing a lot of that stuff, which can produce persistent toxins that won't be destroyed during reheating.  This sort of thing is actually the cause of a lot of food poisoning from eating things like leftover Chinese food: if the rice was cooked earlier and not held above 140°F, and then was allowed to sit in a take-out container for many hours, it could grow a lot of toxins.  It's often more likely to get food poisoning from the leftover rice than from a lot of other dishes that might seem more "dangerous."

Rice and Bacillus cereus are just one example.  You really want to get food down to refrigerator temperatures as quickly as possible after cooking.  Don't just leave it on the counter.

If you have a large quantity of hot food, break it down into small containers, and then refrigerate. Not all stacked together though; let air circulate around them.  Or put your pot into an ice bath or cold water bath.  Stirring periodically in an ice bath will make it cool even faster.

It's true that in a large pot of chili or something, the temperature of the center of the food will go down much more slowly and potentially could allow bacterial growth compared to outer layers.  That's the reason that large pots of food should be broken down into small containers.  But note that leaving a pot of chili out on the counter will make this bacterial growth even worse than if it is refrigerated immediately.

Even if you don't do any of these things and leave all the hot food in one large pot, it's still a safer strategy to put it directly into the fridge rather than leave it out on the counter at room temperature.

Important Edit: For large quantities of hot food, I am NOT advocating the practice of placing a large container in the refrigerator.  It may take WAY too long for the large pot to cool completely, and the food in the large container may be unsafe to eat.  Either break it down into smaller containers or use an ice bath.  However, it's still unlikely to harm the food in the fridge or the fridge itself unless it's in direct contact with the hot container.  And it's still safer than leaving the food on the counter to cool.


Don't doubt that turmeric will turn anything yellow. It doesn't take much T. for an extremely bright, fluorescent yellow.


How to get frozen soup to not be chunky?

Freezing from hot isn't a good idea for the neighbouring items in your freezer but shouldn't make much difference to the soup (it will start cooling down faster, but then more slowly as the freezer will be warmer than it should be).

Freezing the soup before blending it should help, then reheat before blending. If you are making it specifically to freeze, you could add a bit less liquid in the first place and slightly undercook it. Then you'd adjust the consistency when you reheat it for serving.

You might also try omitting the courgette. Even cooked, courgette doesn't freeze as well as your other ingredients. It tends to go watery. It might even be better overall (though that's pure opinion).


Does smoke point affect max temp of patina

It sounds like you need to better understand the process of seasoning your cast iron. What you are doing when you season a cast iron pan is a two part process of polymerization and carbonization. Done properly, the second step, called the carbonization stage, requires that you apply heat slightly above the smoke point of the oil.  Once completed properly, you should have a non-stick surface. You can use your pan in a hot oven.  It is possible to destroy the seasoning of your cast iron.  See this as well. However, in a 550F oven, with food in the pan, I doubt you will reach the temperature necessary to destroy the seasoning.


Can food be boiled "extra fast/hard" in water?

The most obvious thing is nothing to do with heat/temperature. The rapid boil agitates the food a lot, to the point that if the food is soft, it can pretty much tear it apart. You probably don't really want disintegrated food, but smaller pieces do cook faster, so I suppose you can look at this as a rapid boil cooking faster from a certain perspective. It certainly cooks differently.

The other big thing is that rapidly boiling water will recover faster when you add food to it. It's not because the water itself is hotter, but the pot is, and the stove is too if it's electric. So you want a rapid boil to start, even if you don't need it later.

As for heat/temperature, there are differences between a full rolling boil and a slow boil, but not really what you're suggesting.

At a rolling boil, the water is mixing well enough that effectively it's all at 100°C. At a slow boil, it's really only boiling at the bottom, with a few little bubbles floating up from there, so most of the water is actually a bit below 100°C.

This difference is bigger than any effect from steam coming into contact with food; the heat capacity of water is substantially greater than that of steam, the steam isn't under pressure so it won't be above 100°C, and the food will be in contact with water more of the time than steam anyway.

Of course, if all you're doing is boiling water with a relatively small bit of food in it, it doesn't make a huge difference if the water's a little below boiling. But if you've got a lot of food and not that much water, like in a stew, the difference can become way more pronounced. Convection becomes inefficient, so at a simmer or a low boil the heat doesn't propagate from the bottom to the top very efficiently. That lets the temperature at the top be significantly lower, and so things will cook more slowly. Covering the pot does mostly mitigate this, if it's an option.

Finally, the bottom of the pan is substantially hotter than the water, and if you've turned the stove up higher to make it boil faster, it'll be even hotter, so food that comes into contact with it will cook (or more likely, scorch) faster. That's not directly due to the faster boil, of course, just the heat being transferred from the stove to the pot, but they go hand-in-hand.

So yes, things do sometimes cook faster at a rolling boil (what you call "boiling it really hard") than at a slow boil, but it's not because of steam coming into contact with the food, and once it's truly boiling, adding even more heat doesn't really change anything in terms of heat.


Substitute apricot with some other fruit in this Sunny-Side-Up Apricot Pastries recipe

If your objective is to maintain a similar color/texture/firmness, then cling peaches are the way to go. Except they are almost always found canned (I live in California and sometimes find them fresh at farmers markets where vendors come from the Sacramento valley).

I'm a fan of the pear.  Bosc and Anjou will hold up well during cooking (Bartlett pears may fall apart).

Both should work well with the pastry cream and vanilla in the recipe.

If you end up using pears, consider adding just a hint of almond extract or amaretto to the pastry creme.


Smoked a brisket that was edible but not great. What would you do differently?

From what I can tell you're generally on the right track here. From what you've said, there are probably just a few issues.

tough/dry/rough. Believe it or not not cooking long enough could be the problem here. You want your brisket to get in that 190-200 range, this will cause the connective tissue to break down and make it very nice. The other possibility here (and you didn't say so we don't know), is that brisket can be very tough if it's not cut properly. You need to cut the flat across the grain for it to be tender as it's a very long muscle.
Lack of a smoke ring. This is what we call the pink ring around the outer bit of the meat. You don't want the inside to be pink, you want the outside to have a pink ring around it. This can be unpredictable in formation and depends on a lot of things. If you liked how much smoke flavor your meat had, I wouldn't change anything, but if you wanted more smoke, try to either put in more wood chips at the start, or put them in dry (careful though, you don't want them to burn, but wetting them really just slows the burn time). From what I've read, the smoke ring forms early, so the first hour or so is the important part here.
Foil. This is hotly debated in the BBQ world. I only foil if I need to hold my meat for a period of time (if I mistime and finish early I'll wrap it up, drop it in a foam cooler with towls), but a lot of people swear by it for producing juicier meat. Totally up to you, experiment here.

Lastly, a few bits of advice (I've done a couple of briskets now, all on charcoal though). Don't bother to sear the meat, let your smoker take care of the whole cook. Do that, make sure you get your meat up to temp (brisket is hard to tell without a thermometer as it doesn't have a bone you can check, so go get an instant read one, they aren't too expensive). As far as the dry rub goes, that's a matter of taste, a lot of folks put it on the night before, but the meat gets plenty of flavor just applying it right before you put it on.


Rust is iron oxide.  The body needs some iron.  We all drink some rust from pipes.

To be toxic the only number I found is 200 milligrams per kilogram is lethal. But I have a degree in chemical engineering and I am not sure what they mean by that.

As for iron the lethal dose is about 45 mg / day.

Just saw the picture - not enough to hurt you.


Why do we need ceramic pan if they serve for several months?

For people who believe that Teflon causes health issues and ceramic does not, ceramic becomes the better choice.


To make basic bread, including Zwiebelbrot, all you need is a place to mix and knead ingredients (clean work surface or large mixing bowl), a warmish place for rising, and an oven with reasonable temperature control.

For the onions you need a small pan, and a stove top. Or you can do them in the oven too!

Therefore, your kitchen looks fine.

Making bread is not difficult, or hard work. The effort and time required for kneading bread is way overrated. Also have patience, allow the dough to rise properly.

Expect a few failures; search the net about any failures, if you have them.

Use a marker pen on the oven dial when you find the right temperature (The calibration of the dials is usually not very accurate).

For Zwiebelbrot, you can cook the onions in a shallow tray or light pan in the oven while waiting for it to come up to temperature for the bread. Make sure you cool the onions before spreading on the dough. A simple way is to spread them out on a spare metal oven tray for a few moments first.


Are there any particular type of corn chips that are made from masa flour?

Tortillas are made from masa.  So, if the chip is truly a "tortilla chip", then it was made with masa.  Corn chips, like the brand Fritos, are made from corn meal, I believe.  Masa is made from nixtamalized corn.  Corn meal or corn flour is simply ground corn.


What is the best way to cook pasta made from quinoa,amaranth, and brown rice?

I've been gluten free for two decades and have probably cooked every kind of GF pasta available. The first challenge is to not expect it to look, behave or taste like wheat pasta ;-)
Use a big enough pot. Like wheat pasta it needs space. Add a little oil to the boiling water to keep it from sticking together.
If the water is boiling like crazy, bring the heat to a gentler boil. GF pasta can be fragile. If it's spaghetti the ends are probably sticking out of the water so patiently and gently immerse it.
Once it's swimming in the pot, stir a bit with a wooden spoon or silicone utensil to make sure it's not sticking together, same as with regular pasta.
Usually the package says 8-10 minutes. You have to taste it to know. Remember it will cook a bit after drained so keep it a little bit on the chewy side.
Personally I prefer combinations of quinoa and corn as opposed to rice. "Ancient Harvest" in a turquoise box is my favorite, with Barilla a close second. Just my opinion.
There is definitely a learning curve with GF cooking. You will succeed, even if it takes more than once to attain perfection!


Prevent pepper spray effect when cooking raw hot peppers

You have a couple of options, one is to wear a respirator or a bandanna that is soaked with water over your mouth. There really isn't any way around these fumes being created when you put peppers on a hot pan unless you cook them at a very low temperature.  The reason is that the capsaicin molecules become airborne when heated.

Whenever I cook with peppers I incorporate them in with the dish after I have done any sort of frying.


Marjoram is a type of Oregano, or rather it is from the Origanum family (origanum majorana, oregano is origanum vulgare).  So oregano makes the closest substitute I find, though it is stronger, so use less, oregano is often called wild marjoram.


Kosher butter substitute for baking (flavour and mouthfeel)

The classic substitute is margarine.

Most brands are vegan, which would meet your non-dairy /non-meat requirements.

As far as taste and mouthfeel goes, I suggest either trying out a few brands or checking some vegan blogs from your country or region, there is a difference between brands but some are reported to be remarkably close - whatever that means.


One of the most memorable times I've seen someone dry herbs was Alton Brown on Good Eats: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5GkD2GQ3Tg

He creates this large contraption with A/C filters and a box fan... I've never tried it myself, but it was fun to watch.

I typcially do it with a food dehydrator like this one: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=14099344

I would just get one with multiple temp settings as you don't want to cook the herbs (in the dehydrator).


Where can I purchase Banquete Chilero Sauce from Costa Rica in the US?

I enjoyed this sauce from Costa Rica as well, and ordered it from Ticoshopping.com.  However 2 of the bottle arrived broken and the contents spilled all over the place. It would help if someone showed them how to pack items for international shipment. 12 bottles loose in a cardboard box with packing peanuts doesn't cut it.

:(

Well, I just heard back from them and they are reshipping some bottles to replace the broken bottles. So they do have GREAT customer service.


What's an efficient way of removing seeds from citrus fruits?

We have a twin-screw masticating juicer (an older model Angel juicer) and although the seeds come out quite chewed up, I wouldn't want to drink them and we've never put the pulp back into the juice.

One possibility that comes to mind is to cut the oranges, etc., into pieces and separate out the pieces that have seeds from those that don't.  Run the seedless ones through first and save that pulp to put into the juice.  Then run the pieces with seeds through and toss that pulp.


When should garlic be added to the pan to get maximum pungency?

Garlic's pungency is released by cutting it.  The more finely the garlic is cut-up, the stronger its taste will be.  So minced garlic will be stronger than chopped garlic.  Chopped garlic will be stronger than sliced garlic.  Etc.

Cooking mellows the sharp pungency of garlic.  More cooking - milder flavor.

In order for garlic flavor to be strongest, you should mince the garlic and cook it briefly.  Assuming you are trying to flavor vegetables, you should add your minced garlic shortly before they are cooked to the point where they ready to be served - give the garlic 30 seconds or so.


How far in advance can a vegetable filo strudel be made and kept in fridge?

From a food safety perspective, 2 days should be totally fine. Especially since it doesn't sound like you're using animal products.

From a quality perspective, the strudel's freshness might depend on whether you used fresh vs. frozen vegetables and filo (phyllo) dough.


Residue in a cup of tea using household filter

Your tap water probably contains more minerals and your household filter does not remove them completely. (maybe your household filter is not working properly).
Bottled water use industrial food grade filtering techniques, they work better than home filters.
You could ask your city about the mineral content of your water, it should be
publicly available.


Method for how much cinnamon to add to recipe

There aren't really any hard and fast rules when it comes to deciding how much cinnamon to start with.  There are certainly considerations when thinking about how much flour, milk, fat etc. to use in recipes and this is thrust of the book to which you refer. Baking is essentially chemistry and you need to get the proportions of the chemicals right to produce fluffy pancakes and light sponge cakes etc.  When it comes to flavouring the results of that chemistry there is less restriction but balancing the flavours should be a consideration.

One thing to think about is 'what do I want to end up with'? For example, are you aiming for apple pancakes, apple and cinnamon pancakes or cinnamon and apple pancakes.  If you only want a background cinnamon flavour to an apple pancake, then start with a smaller quantity of cinnamon.  If you'd like something that's more balanced in apple and cinnamon flavours then add more cinnamon to the same quantity of apples you used before.  If you're after something that's essentially cinnamon in flavour but with some apples there to add body then have at it with the cinnamon and go easy on the Bramleys'.

I've done some reading in the copies of Larousse Gastronomique and McGee on Food and Cooking we have at home and also consulted a book called The Flavour Thesaurus. None of these suggest any ratios of cinnamon to other ingredients. The addition of flavouring will always be subject to both personal taste and the needs of the recipe.  The proportions of the 'building blocks' of a recipe, particularly baking, can be much more easily defined and, to a degree, calculated.  Consider this, if you left the cinnamon out of your apple pancakes completely, they'd still be pancakes and have flavour. If you omitted the flour you'd have an mess.

As an addition, in series 2 episode 3 of Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals, he raves about sprinkling cinnamon over Sicilian fish dishes. This is an example of there being no set rules about how much of a flavouring to use or where to use it.

I'll try and add some inline references to this tomorrow.


How do I calculate the nutritional values of a recipe?

Lose It!, a free weight-loss site, has this feature. To use it I think you need to start an account. To access it, you hit the Settings tab and then select Recipes in the left-hand column. Then select "New" and follow the prompts. This calculator allows you to enter the ingredients of a dish you are preparing. Most common ingredients will pop-up in the site's list with their respective caloric values. You can also manually enter in the values if you know them or if the ingredient is not in their list. You then set the "serving size" of your dish as its total volume. Then, when you enter in the amount you are eating into your daily food log, the site automatically shows you the caloric value of your portion.

The fifth screenshot here, shows you what it looks like.


Yes, although you probably want to chop it up.

The German's brand is very sweet, but it is real chocolate and should work just fine.


When should I add cocoa powder to instant coffee?

If you're using plain cocoa powder, which doesn't really dissolve, I would mix it with the coffee powder before adding to the water, and as long as the coffee powder will tolerate it, add it all to the water before heating. Mixing the two powders should help avoid clumps in the cocoa powder, and adding it early will give it time to release flavor into the water. You'll still have to stir a bit to keep it from settling out, though!

If you're using instant cocoa mix, which is sweetened and processed to make it dissolve evenly, you can just add it at the end. There's no benefit from adding it earlier, and it'll be easiest to stir and dissolve it in already hot water.


Is there a web site indexing cooking competitions, or an effective aggregator?

The site that has the best information I've found in regards to competitive cooking is Contest Cook.  They don't quite meet all your criteria in terms of searchability, but they do some levels of sorting and provide a wealth of information on the contests they list (which are quite numerous).


Not going to accept this, because a couple of professional cooks get primary credit, but here is the first draft for anybody interested. I am also still interested in any answers:
Coconut oil offers the saturated fat and body that I will be missing with a non-meat fat. Also palm oil, but I have several cups of cooking-grade coconut oil on hand already.
For nitrates, there are various seasoned salts that were suggested. I will be going with a mixture of sesame salt and a friend's line of umami salt.
For umami, powdered mushroom. I will be putting dehydrated shiitakes through a microplane, and sifting the results to remove any dirt.


Substituting soy milk for regular (cow) milk in crepes/pancakes

Browning depends a lot on available sugar: if soya was unsweetened and skim milk was now used (higher lactose than 3%), I could see quicker browning.


Is it normal to see flames inside my self-cleaning oven?

Smoke is normal in an electric oven, but flames are definitely not.

In order to start a fire, you either need a spark, or you need to heat something beyond its autoignition temperature (AKA kindling point).  You might have had a short - or you might actually be using a gas oven with spark ignition - but I'm guessing your issue was the latter.

Cooking oil or grease being heated beyond its autoignition point is one of the most common causes of kitchen fires (grease fires).  Supposedly, some oils have autoignition points as low as 550° F (or 288° C), though I'm not sure which oils those are.  Olive oil would be my guess as the lowest, but pepperoni grease could very well have ignited at self-cleaning temperatures (which, as you noticed, go up to nearly 1000° F).

Fortunately for you, all modern ovens have a mechanical interlock which prevents them from being opened during a self-cleaning cycle.  If you'd opened it, you would have made the problem a lot worse by (a) supplying the fire with abundant oxygen, and (b) drawing all the hot air and flames out of the oven and into your kitchen, quite possibly setting your whole home on fire.  Heat wants to move to where it's cold; that's why you keep your doors and windows closed in the winter.

There are a multitude of oven cleaners available for self-cleaning ovens - you are supposed to use these before you run a self-cleaning cycle.  Yes, I know it's odd, but "self-cleaning" doesn't really actually mean that it cleans itself, it just gives you a little extra help.  You need to try to clear out all the grease and big chunks of food first using one of these cleaners, then run the self-cleaning cycle to deal with anything you might have missed.


Should I peel my tomatoes before making a sauce?

It is unnecessary, however some people don't like the skins. They tend to curl up into tube sticks that don't chew very well and can hurt if you chew one accidentally and you have a sensitive tooth or gum disease.

Peeling it very easy. Score an x at the bottom of each tomatoe and blanch. The skin will curl back and leave you with a whole but peeled tomato.

Edit based on change to question:
The skins will have almost no affect to the taste either way.


How to make edges on pancakes be crispy and the inside soft

There are two things at play here, and unfortunately it'll take you some trial and error to get this right.

The first is heat control. You might want to try cooking at a higher temperature for a shorter period of time. This will cook the outsides very fast and the insides slightly more slowly. However, you don't want to raise the heat too much or you'll just burn the outside and be nearly raw on the inside. Yuck.

The second is going to be your batter consistency. A thicker batter that rises a little more will take longer to cook into the middle. If you're having trouble having the middle stay soft, add a little more flour and/or a little more baking powder.

As I said, this will take some trial and error. You may want to invest in a good IR temperature reader, to get an accurate reading of how hot your pan is to assist with the experimentation.

Good luck!


You might be able to overcome the sweetness by adding a tart glaze to the cookies (lemon or lime), but I don't know how well that'll go with the chocolate chips.  Another option would be to crush them up to make a yogurt parfait (made with plain, unsweetned yogurt).

You might also consider some of the options mentioned in What can I use hard, crunchy, leftover cookie-mistakes for?


Do I need to separate all the eggs if a recipe needs more yolks than whole eggs?

Your recipe calls for both whole eggs and egg yolks. (Presumably, it needs the extra fat from an additional egg yolk without the liquid/protein contribution of an additional egg white.)

Since the goal in this recipe is just to have 2 whites and 3 yolks in the mixture, there is no reason to separate the first two eggs. So you will only need to separate one egg to get that extra yolk.


How can I best select a knife to purchase for learning how to sharpen?

While you can learn how to sharpen on almost any straight blade knife, my recommendation is to start on one that:

Isn't expensive, (try yard sales, thrift stores, and pawn shops - the goal is to learn technique, not have a fancy knife)
Isn't very long, (6 inches max)
Is wide enough that wearing the blade away won't be a big issue, (chef's knife would be fine)
Is not too thin or too thick, (not a boning knife or a meat cleaver)
Is a softer typer of steel, (so that you will sharpen more frequently, and so it will be easier to grind back the edge if needed)
Doesn't have a great finish (the finish is the part that you're most likely to mess up beyond easy repair).

As far as sharpening tools go, I think you need several grades of whetstones to really get a great edge. You can buy them separately or as part of a kit. I would skip any other type of sharpener, even a honer for now (again, so that you'll be forced to practice resharpening more often).

Then it's a matter of practicing sharpening and testing the edge. Make really sure you get your technique down before trying to add ANY speed. Make sure your fingers are NEVER in the path of the blade. Work from roughest to finest whetstone.

If you mess up on the whetstone angle, go back to the roughest stone and regrind to a fresh edge.

Your practice knife will get scratched up and worn down faster than normal. When you're comfortable with your skill, get a slightly nicer knife and a honing steel.


How does the addition of Chicory affect coffee?

Roasted chicory root (which is what you are adding to coffee) contains no caffeine.

What chicory does is add a nice, roasted flavor to coffee, which is desireable either for cultural reasons, or to offset the bitter flavor of over-roasted low-grade coffee beans.  Originally, it was also added because it was much, much cheaper than coffee.  That's not true anymore, even in India as far as I know.

Proper New Orleans or Vietnamese coffee also contains a lot of chicory.


How long should I bake a hamburger meatloaf, and at what oven temperature?

it will be cooked when it reaches the internal temperature corresponding to the "done" temperature of whatever meat you are using. From the US food Safety Chart:

Category................................................Food.........................Temperature (°F)

Ground Meat & Meat Mixtures......Beef, Pork, Veal, Lamb.............160

Ground Meat & Meat Mixtures......Turkey, Chicken.......................165

I'd guess that it will take about 45min-75min depending on what size and shape of pan you are using. I personally don't cover my meatloaf with foil but I have a ketchup mixture I spread on the top so while that caramelizes it doesn't really "brown". If you have a "dry" top you may want to consider covering it, but I do find that covering with foil can increase the cooking time somewhat..


You want to be sure that the egg whites are fully whipped before you add pieces of anything (it's also best to incorporate sugar as either a syrup or very finely ground sugar once the eggs are already whipped as sugar can make the whipping take longer).

When you incorporate pieces of anything into your meringue, be it nuts, candy, etc, fold it in gently with a spatula. You can also add a stabilizer like cream of tartar to help prevent the meringue from falling.


Not covering it was unwise - it accelerates cooling and also allows other (unwanted) bacteria to populate it.

Not insulating it to keep it warm was your main problem. I seem to recall that some cultures in cold climates that traditionally fermented milk products would do so in a bag worn next to the skin, under clothing and blankets, to keep the ferment warm at body temperature. You can probably improvise something a bit less primal, but it's there as an option. A well-insulated box is generally simple enough, but waiting until the milk was already cool to "wrap some woolens around it" is too little, too late - you need the insulation to keep the heat in, as it does not warm the milk up when it's already cold.

I have decent success with a 35-37C temperature for a long time (24 hours) - but without a means to hold the milk at temperature (perhaps set it above the warm computer? Carefully!) I'd start in the 45C range and wrap it up in a lot of insulation to hold the heat as long as possible. Aside from woolens, styrofoam or cardboard are fairly inexpensive or even free insulating materials that are widely available. You can nest several cardboard boxes inside each other to make multiple layers for better insulation. If you are making a small quantity of yogurt you can add bottles or jars of warm water for additional thermal mass (wrap them all up together inside the insulation/box.)


"Odd" flavor in some white fish - how to predict?

I have had this problem and thought it was the taste of tin-foil that I used to rolled up and put into the belly of the fish to stand it up in the oven. So, I was very interested to hear an interviewer on the radio 3RRR in melbourne, talking to a chef who mentioned fish, like Snapper, are susceptible to that metalic taste if they are caught and die too slowly. The slower they take to die, the more stress the fish goes through and the stress hormone accumulates in the flesh particularly around the belly. I think they said a pinker snapper is better than a pale one for taste.


If you live at any altitude other than sea level, you may need to adjust your recipe's temperature. If you live in the mountains as I do, that temperature may vary enough to mess up your recipe, even if you've checked the boiling point of water just prior to starting the candy. The air pressure up here seems more volatile than it was when I lived at sea level. Maybe that's just because one usually doesn't get up to much candy making if there's a hurricane coming in.

At any rate, here's a link to the Unviersity of Utah's The Art of Candy Making. It has a chart on page three that will help you adjust your finished temperature (if that should happen to be your problem). I hope it will help.


Getting rice noodles evenly distributed in wok

I suggest avoid simmering or blanching before frying. Soaking till soft should be enough as the subsequent frying will soften the noodle further, assuming you will be adding a little more liquid as you fry.


For a jam, (assuming with fruit solids), be aware that since you will have to force it through a strainer whether you warm it up or not, it will lose some of it's fruity texture. But it will taste the same. It will be easier if you warm it, but do NOT let it get hot enough to steam or bubble. And yes, keep refrigerated.

My reference is 65 years of making my own.


Why is my garlic brown and slightly translucent?

This is a defect known as "waxy breakdown" or "waxy decomposition", and is caused by growing or storing the garlic under too hot conditions.

See http://livegpath.cals.cornell.edu/gallery/garlic/waxy-breakdown-on-garlic/, which also mentions that anaerobic storage conditions are also considered a possible cause or contributing factor by scientists.


Dashi is almost never used without adding additional seasoning, generally some combination of mirin and/or sake, salt, and soy sauce or miso, and often a small amount of sugar. If your flavor isn't strong enough, most likely your culprit is inadequate salt.

I never make dashi without using konbu, but I'm vegetarian, so mine is typically based on konbu and dried porcini, or just konbu alone for certain applications. I'd probably only consider skipping konbu if I was making a dashi based on niboshi, also called iriko (dried sardines), as is common in Kyushu and some other regions. Iriko are pretty aromatic and apparently contain enough glutamates that at least some people skip konbu.

It's not unheard of to leave out konbu in katsuodashi, but unless you're using thick or freshly shaved katsuobushi, you'll end up with a basically bitter, uncomplex version that's mostly suitable for use in dishes with lots of ingredients. I might use a konbu-less dashi in a dish that has cabbage in it, because cabbage provides its own source of glutamate proteins.

Dashi is the analog of stock, not the analog of broth. Stock typically contains minimal to no salt, and therefore the primary contribution is aroma, which is only perceived as flavor once you add something salty to it. Once you add seasonings, dashi becomes "kakejiru" if it's at the right saltiness level for noodles. If you make it saltier it's a "tsuyu" or dipping sauce.

If you're going to cook Japanese food, you'll need to get over any issues you have with salt. Actually, if you're going to be making any kind of soups, I'd say the same thing regardless of cuisine. But Japanese food uses salt, or salty ingredients like miso and soy sauce, in relatively large quantities.

Usually, your main dish won't be incredibly salty (except sometimes at breakfast), but most of the sides and soups are fairly high in salt content. The source of the salt varies, as there are two common salty ingredients (miso and soy sauce), and regional things like shottsuru (Akita's fish sauce); wet sea salt is used to adjust seasoning, even when fermented salty ingredients are present in a dish. Most meals include some fairly salty pickled vegetables; the rice balances out the rest of the salt.

One of my Japanese friends lamented that her husband's salt-sensitive hypertension was a big problem for her because she can cook low fat, or low salt, but not both, and low-salt was a much bigger problem for Japanese cuisine, as even high-fat dishes tend to have a fair amount of salt.


You will need to cook the spices before adding them, but you can add them in now and it will be fine. You can either dry-roast the spices in the pan or cook them in a little oil like making a tadka.

Probably if the cumin is whole, dry roast it until it starts to turn golden then add the turmeric and paprika and cook it for just a few seconds more. If everything is powder, I'd heat a bit of oil and add all the spices at once and cook for a few seconds.

If there is coriander, too, though, I feel that needs a bit more cooking.

The flavors will blend overnight in the fridge, and further when you heat it before serving, so as long as the spices are cooked, it is fine to just mix them in.


With vs without egg fresh pasta cooking time

Egg v. no egg does not influence cooking time for fresh pasta. There are plenty of egg free versions.  This is a go-to for me, and produces a great pasta.
Thickness...whether or not it is filled...cooking from frozen all influence cooking time a bit.  In an interview with a well-known pasta chef, I heard him state that most people (in US) over cook dried pasta and under cook fresh pasta.


As for fruits (including, for example, tomatoes), ethylene gas is released by fruits and causes them to ripen. You can buy "produce bags" that absorb ethylene gas, and slow the process of ripening. (Some fridges have drawers that absorb ethylene gas, but I doubt you feel like buying a new fridge.)

Update: See Vicky's answer and my comment for a couple links to examples of the "produce bags."  In addition to removing  the ethylene, the bags claim to also work by "breathing" and "reducing moisture formation."

For vegetables, it sort of depends. If you have root vegetables like carrots and beets, put them in water in the fridge (with the stems cut off), changing the water regularly. The roots will absorb the water (as they do in the ground) and thus stay quite turgid.


How do they Prepare Steak so fast in Restaurants?

When I worked the wheel at a local restaurant, we served 4oz medallions of filet mignon that went from fridge directly to grill. Only took about 5 minutes on each side, then the steak was plated and sent to the table. There was no "wait until room temp", oven or rest stage. The rest stage wasn't necessary because we weren't pre-slicing the steak before sending it out. By the time the steak leaves the grill and makes it to the table, it has hit a satisfactory rest period.

Larger cuts would require the oven, but those too, would not require waiting until room temperature nor the rest period.

  Another question is how do they manage the steaks? Do they have several in freezer ready and when the stock goes down, they start to thaw the one that's frozen?

I can't speak for chain restaurants. The restaurant I worked in would order and prepare the fresh protein twice a week (Thursdays and Mondays). The protein was held in the walk-in cooler. When rush comes, the chef that works the wheel uses several 6" pans that separately contains all the proteins in a smaller fridge nearby.

Of course this is only my experience. Like I said, I can't speak for larger restaurants.


how do I remove partially-disintegrated sediment/tiny-bones from stock?

Straining might work, but you may need to use a process known as "decanting":

Let the stock sit until any sediment falls to the bottom.
Remove the good liquid, avoiding the sediment at the bottom.

You can do this a few ways :

Use something to scoop the good liquid off the top
Use a hose to siphon off the good liquid until just before you get to the sediment
Carefully pour off the good liquid, stopping when you notice the sediment rising to the top

This is more difficult with stock, as when it cools, the gelatin will start to thicken making pouring a bit tricker ... but it means one more potential method:

Let the stock set up, then remove it as a block from the container (you may need to set the whole thing in hot water to get it to release; sometimes a hot-water spray or wrapping it in damp hot towels is enough).  Slice off and remove the sediment layer.  Put what's left back in the container.


As long as the can is undamaged, and in good condition, it is safe.  Expiration dates are typically used to define a period of time when the product is of the best quality, rather than to define safety.  Since this was very likely a pasteurized product, it most certainly did not turn into wine or vinegar. It might not taste great, but if the can remained sealed it will not be unsafe either.


Oil does boil like water, at least in theory, but in practice you should never see oil boil during cooking. The temperatures cooking oils will boil at is much higher than their smoke points. You never want to heat oil to (or above) its smoke point as - aside from generating smoke - it also has a big negative effect on the flavour of the oil and will spoil whatever you're trying to cook.

Even worse, as you heat oil beyond its smoke point you run the risk of reaching its flash point, where the oil can catch fire. A fire which can easily get out of control and result in a disaster. So if you see oil smoking in your pan you want to immediately turn down the heat, not just so you don't ruin your meal, so you don't risk ruining your kitchen.

Finally the bubbling you see when frying things in oil isn't the oil boiling. It's water vapour from whatever you're cooking. Since when frying the temperature of the oil is significantly higher than the boiling point of water, any water the hot oil comes into contact will turn into vapour.


Onions
The more you cook an onion, the sweeter it is going to get; heat breaks down the volatiles and complex starches and converts them to sugars.
When an onion is completely brown then it is basically caramelized.  The point of sweating onions is to draw out some of the pungency, but not all.  If you cook them 'til they're brown (caramelized) then they will be very sweet, and not really retain any of that sulfurous "onion-y" flavour at all.
So it's not really a question of how much you're developing the flavours, it's a question of which flavours you're developing.  The more sweetness you develop, the more of the original onion flavour you lose.
In my experience, caramelized onions are rarely used as an "ingredient" - they're more of a garnish or side dish, since they wouldn't really impart any significant flavour to the main dish.
Celery and other aromatics
These don't undergo the same drastic flavour changes that onions do, but the principle is the same:  You sweat them to draw out moisture and aromas without starting a Maillard or caramelization reaction.
The key is that sweating is a preparation step.  Yes, frying/sautéing these for longer would develop more flavour (or at least more of a certain kind of flavour), but you don't want to do that too early, since they're going to sit in the pan for a while longer; sweating means softening them up slightly without eliminating all of the aromas or the natural crunchy texture.
You generally don't brown vegetables during the preparation of a recipe; you only do that if you plan to eat them by themselves without any further cooking.  If you brown them, then continue to cook, you will turn them into mush and possibly burn them, and there's no way to fix it after that happens.


The amount of iron that you need is going to depend on your age, sex, and health.

NIH: Iron Fact Sheet
WebMD: Iron: What you Need to Know
Having indicated that you work out, you may need more than you think, but you are wise to be concerned about having too much. A typical adult male only needs 8mg. How much iron is leeched into the food your cooking depends on what you are cooking -- and how old your pan is. Acidic foods like tomatoes and (for some reason) applesauce seem to demonstrate this more than other foods. But I disagree with nutritionovereasy.com's indication that food cooked in the pan will aquire a metalic taste (see link below). I've never had that happen.
Do You Absorb More Iron Cooking in a Cast Iron Pan?
Cast Iron Pans can Increase Your Iron Intake
Learning how to handle Cast Iron is a worthwhile endeavor. You can start a dish stovetop and slide it right into the oven. Some of my favorite recipes use the same skillet I've been cooking with for more than 3 decades. Here's one more link to get you off to a good start: America's Test Kitchen: Cook It In Cast Iron.


You certainly can. There are a few things to consider before popping down to the beach and grabbing a bucket.

Some areas of the sea are highly contaminated with toxins. Look for some sort of signage to give you a hint, OR look for fishermen. If they feel safe with the fish they are catching I'd be inclined to think the water was also fine.
Sea water is, as you know, very VERY salty. On average around 35g per Liter. So you may benefit from using half tap and half sea water.
Be sure to boil the water for a few minutes before adding any food, just to be sure any harmful "biological organisms that might contaminate the water".

Another consideration, you may be interested in, would be harvesting your own salt from the sea water. That way you have more control over the amount penetrating your food/blood stream.


What is the fuzz on my homemade granola?

Did you put the granola away while it was still warm? The inside of the container may have collected moisture while the granola cooled to room temperature, causing mold to form.


Why can´t I make a goodlooking napolitan style pizza dough?

It does not look baked enough.

Are you using a pizza stone, that might help a little bit.

You could fire up the broiler mode on your oven to crisp up the top of your pizza.

Keep an eye on it so it does not burn.


What is the white powder on sourdough bread?

Typically that would be whatever was used for dusting the loaves or the bannetons, either flour, starch or sometimes semolina.

It is done to prevent sticking and for decorative purposes - often both:

(Source)


Can you use regular knife sharpeners on damascus steel?

Yes, you can use a honing steel with a damascus-style carbon steel knife blade.  Depending on what you have, you may need to get a harder honing steel, because the carbon steel of the knife is harder than a stainless blade.  I have a honing steel from Shun that works quite well.
Do NOT use that "Anysharp" sharpener or any sharpener like it.  Such sharpeners are designed to sharpen blades by aggressively removing metal from the blade edge.  If you use one of them, you can expect to wear down the edge of your blade and use up the hard steel there in just a few years.

NOTE: Many "Damascus" blades sold commercially aren't actually Damascus-style, that is, folded carbon steel.  Instead, they are stainless or standard carbon steel with two face plates of folded steel on either side of the blade, purely for decorative purposes.  These blades have the same care instructions as any stainless or carbon blade.


Why should dried mushrooms be soaked in warm water?

Rehydrating dried fruits and vegetables in warm water is fast - mushrooms might take 15-20 minutes, though some varieties take longer, and it of course depends on how hot your water is. It would take a lot longer with cold water. You can still do it, and possibly more of the flavor will remain in the mushrooms (since you're not effectively cooking them slightly), but it'll take hours - not the kind of thing you can do without advance planning.


Agree with the above posts as general guidelines but considering the taste buds it sounds like the "patron" does not like savory/umami flavors.

Best luck I've had for hiding the flavors of iron supplements is making smoothies; Citrus or some other very over-powering fruit.  Then the "meaty" flavour disappears in the smoothie thickener.

ie:
pineapple
Chocolate banna
orange
Berry (black berry, strawberry, etc...)

A homemade v8 blend / Bloody mary would be perfect also; if they love veggie taste.


Good (cheaper) alternative to Vitamix Blender

I don't think it's possible. You are talking about restaurant / bar quality blender (like Vitamix, Waring, or Blend-tec). Cheaper units will not have the horsepower or quality of construction to do things like smooth blends of ice in a drink, generate enough friction to heat a soup from scratch, or grind flour from nuts and grains.

Even if your blender will handle some of these things initially (like blend ice, I'm skeptical any cheap mixer will provide enough heat for a soup), I think your blade / motor will quickly take enough abuse that it won't be able to continue to perform.

Update: Since initially posting this answer, I've actually bought a Vita-Mix (I'd been lusting for quite some time). I now feel more strongly that my answer is right. I've used it three times in the first 12 hours of ownership:

Nut Butter - I made a pistachio nut butter that required nothing more than 2 cups of pistachios and a tablespoon of oil. It came together really quickly and has a lovely velvety texture.
Pureed halved peaches - these ended up complete liquid with no texture / fiber left from the fruit. Exactly like Looza Nectar, but fresh.
A smoothie. The smoothie had zero ice chunks in it and was professional quality.

I have never seen a cheaper blender capable of the quality of any of the first three things I've tried. I'm afraid you're out of luck.


When oil gets overheated, it turns into a polymer that is insoluble in water, even with soap.

The best way to clean this up is with Barkeeper's Friend, Bon Ami, or a similar solvent (I think they're all alkaline-based solvents). It's non-abrasive, and safe to use on almost all cookware without leaving marks.

Edit: To help prevent this from happening in the future, use a paper towel to wipe off any excess baking spray on the edges of the baking dish that won't be covered by food.


Just a guess, too, but I've at least seen a drink that could be the one you're looking for: "Munich Mule", a variation on the "Moscow Mule" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_mule) where you just exchange the lime for strips of cucumber. I only found recipes in German - obviously invented in Munich, saw it in Berlin once - here is a translation from http://www.rezeptewiki.org/wiki/Munich_Mule:

4 cl Vodka
5 Strips of Cucumber
Ginger Beer
crushed ice

Put the cucumber into a highball glass, add the Vodka. Stir, add the ice and fill with Ginger Beer. Serve immediately.

There also seem to be recipes around that recommend Tonic Water, but I've never seen Mint mentioned.


Possible to Cook with a Wok on an Electric Hot Plate?

Impossible is a strong word, but yes its near enough impossible as there is insufficient surface area touching to transfer the heat through, and hot plates do not have good heat .. not sure of the word, but they don't transfer heat well to things which are not touching them.

You can get flat bottomed woks which are more suited to this set up, but even then if you are moving the wok about a lot you still end up with the contact being lost quite a bit, and so not as much heat being transferred as you might want.

I've always found woks to work best on gas.  In fact gas is just best, full stop.


How to minimize splatter using an immersion blender?

First, use the highest-sided, smallest diameter container available. The food you're puréeing should have several inches from the top of the container. If the diameter is small enough, your blender will be able to get all the food moving at once -- you'll get a nice vortex right in the middle, and won't have to do any horizontal movement, just vertical. (Essentially the same thing as would happen in a counter-top blender's jar.)

The absolute best container is what's known as a "bain marie", a cylindrical metal pan that's much taller than it is wide:

You can get these fairly cheaply at restaurant supply stores. It's not absolutely essential, though, and if you don't want to buy one, use your pasta pot or stock pot.

Next, always turn the blender on and off while it's in the food, and keep the blade and its hood submerged. You should be able to move the business part of the blender near the surface, but keeping it a good inch or so underneath, and have the food at the top being sucked under and into the blade. Bringing the blade to the top, so that it's partially in the air, is all but guaranteed to splatter.

Start blending near the top of the container, then slowly and smoothly move your way down and back up. If your container requires you to move horizontally, do the top "layer" before moving downwards.

If you have speeds on your blender, go through all of the food on low, getting it uniformly chopped up before raising the speed. If you have especially chunky food, it will take a while on low before it's safe to raise the speed without splashing.

It will occasionally happen that the blade isn't making contact with the food, especially if you get too near the bottom or it's something especially thick that you're trying to purée. It may feel like the blender "grabs" the bottom of the container -- I guess there's some kind of vacuum forming, although that doesn't quite make sense to me. The motor will start going too fast and the vortex, if you had one, will fall apart. You can usually get it restarted just by tilting the mixer, but you may have to stop the blender, go back to the top, and begin again.


Homemade Beet Pasta loses color when cooked

You could use commercial food coloring. I wouldn't tell, and it wouldn't take much. I use this brand for baking, I'm sure it would be fine in pasta:


Are "non-fat" condiments as effective as full-fat versions at reducing spiciness?

It's the fat that actually cuts the spiciness - see my answer on making a sauce less spicy/hot. When you're dealing with the type of spiciness that's reduced by cream (generally capsaicin), it's pretty safe to assume that it's fat-soluble, and the same principles apply when you're using the "reducer" as a condiment vs. including it in the recipe.

There's certainly a possibility that certain non-fat/low-fat substitutes will work, but it's going to be luck of the draw; it depends on how they're made. Alcohol in general is almost as good as fat at cutting spice (sometimes better), but that's not going to be a common ingredient in these products. Generally they'll have a bunch of emulsifiers and other E-numbers to maintain their consistency, not many of which (possibly none) have any documented relationship with capsaicin or its like.

Low fat (as opposed to non-fat) might be fine because it still contains some fat. "Light" sour cream is typically still 5-10% fat and would probably still work pretty well, if not quite as well as full-fat. But don't expect any miracles from non-fat products.


How to keep lemons, oranges and grapefruits fresh longer?

There isn't a whole lot you can do to preserve the actual fruit for what you describe. You could freeze juice in ice cube trays and transfer the cubes into a freezer bag, but even that would lose something compared to squeezing a fresh fruit segment into a drink.

There is one thing I have done for a similar kind of application that you might like. There a huge amount of citrus flavor in the zest of the fruit. Using a vegetable peeler, a sharp knife, a zester or a microplane, remove just the colored part of the peel (the zest), avoid the white pith below, the pith is very bitter. If you have large strips, cut them up tiny before proceeding. If you've used a zester or microplane your zest is already ready for the next step. Mix the zest with perhaps double or triple its volume of sugar, and process in a food processor until the sugar is super fine and no chunks of zest remain. The sugar can now stay in the freezer for months (indefinitely?), it can live on the counter for several days or perhaps much longer. A pinch of that in your drink may just add to your drink what you are looking for.


Is it safe to use olive oil that has gone cloudy?

The most likely reason is that it was stored too cold (= in the fridge). If this is the case, then it is perfectly safe to use.

Some oils are also sold unfiltered. They don't really "go" cloudy, but are that way from the onset. But it can happen that the sediment falls to the bottom over time, then somebody shakes the bottle and it looks cloudy again.

If you had filtered oil sitting on a shelf and it turned from clear to cloudy, then this is suspicious. It is unclear what is causing the cloudiness in this case, but it is probably not doing anything for the quality, and has some potential to do harm (although there aren't many pathogens which can survive in a bottle of pure oil). Throwing it out would be on the safe sid.


Why did my ginger simple syrup develop such a disgusting consistency?

My guess is that:

 1) The syrup wasn't acdic enough

and

 2) The sugar concentration wasn't high enough.

If the sugar concentration is high enough, the sugar so-to-speak draws the water out of bacteria by osmosis thus killing them. If you don't like the syrup to be too sweet, try adding lemon juice.


I frequently cook fish in the microwave, as I'm the only one who eats it in my house. Thaw filet in cold water and place on microwave safe dish.  I turn fish over halfway through cooking.  The kind of fish and the thickness will determine time.  I recommend using partial power or your fish will be rubbery.  I have a 1200 watt microwave and the following is just a guideline.
From completely thawed:

Salmon filet @2" thick - about 2 minutes each side at 70%
White fish or Tilapia filet (these are very thin @ 1/4") 1 minute on each side at 80%.

Please be aware that this is just from my personal experience.


Can a disposable aluminium pan be used to bake a cake?

If you're asking if you can bake a cake in that aluminum tin because you're wondering if it's safe, then the answer is yes. It says Lasagna Pan on the label, as in you're meant to bake a lasagna in it. No reason why a cake would be dangerous. I imagine you'd be baking the cake at a lower temp than a lasagna.

You'd want to worry about the cake sticking to the sides maybe. You'd also want to account for the fact that the pan is thinner and heat transfer would be different (cooking times and temperatures might need to be adjusted).


Can you add seasoning halfway through cooking with sous vide

That is not a problem.  If you are just lifting the bag, adding an ingredient, and returning it to the water it should not be an issue.  You are not going to change the temperature in that amount of time.  In this scenario I would suggest a ziploc freezer bag, rather than vacuum sealing, so maybe even double bagged.  Normally for a long cook, I would recommend vacuum sealing.  The reason that vacuum sealing in this situation is problematic is that after a few hours your brisket will release quite a bit of liquid.  This would make re-sealing a challenge.  I don't see a real issue here.  Lift the bag, open, pour in your liquid smoke (not too much), reseal.  You don't even have to take it out of the bath.


There are a couple of things that jump out at me:

170 F (77 C) - This is overkill for ground beef. The USDA guidelines recommend 160 F (71 C).
Venting holes - This is unnecessary. There is no need to "vent" a hamburger. What you're doing is creating holes for the juices to flow out of and get vaporized on the pan. This is likely a significant source of the smoking you describe. Keep those juices in!

I'm not familiar with electric stoves, so I'm not sure if 6/8 is too hot or not, but it might be. I cook my burgers on a gas stove at medium-high flame and generally do 5 mins per side for a medium burger (I grind my own beef). My burgers are about an 3/4" - 1" thick too. So you might have your stove too hot, try turning it down a smidge.

Update

I want to clarify regarding the "blood" you are worried about. It's a common misconception that the red liquid packaged with beef is blood. It's not. Beef is drained of virtually all blood when it is slaughtered. Beef is 75% water, so the liquid you see is mostly water and the pink hue comes from the iron & oxygen binding protein myoglobin which exists in muscle tissue. When cooking, the juices you are releasing are taking a lot of the flavor with them. This liquid is a combination of liquified fat, water, and proteins. You can verify this at the USDA site for beef.

Another common misconception is that a completely grey-brown interior indicates well done. According to the USDA, 25% of burgers turn brown before being fully cooked; this can happen as low as 135 F (57 C). The inverse is true as well, some beef can be cooked to the USDA recommended safe temperature 160 F (71 C) and still retain some light pinkness in the center.

If your concern is merely safety, cooking the beef to an interior temperature of 160 F is sufficient, regardless of it's hue. If you you're cooking it beyond that just because you don't like the sight of pink meat, well you're overcooking your burgers and doing yourself a bit of injustice. :)


What are these clear parts in beef steak?

This looks like gristle.
I wouldn't go hacking at the steak just to remove it. If the eaters don't like it, they are free to cut their steak around it and leave it in their plate.


Most guides I've seen recommend a salad spinner after the initial draining/squeezing. I've never had trouble with that method.

Failing that, I guess you could blot or squeeze it with paper towels; that's what I used to do with lettuce before I had a spinner, and it works... sort of... but not as well, and you'll go through a lot of paper towels that way.

Given that we are talking about seaweed here, I wouldn't try to get it perfectly dry. Restaurants actually use specialized (and very expensive) automatic "vegetable dryers" that I believe operate on a similar concept as a clothes dryer. You're not going to get that kind of result at home. Just squeeze or spin-dry enough to get it past the "sopping" stage.

It's also possible that you soaked it too long. More than a few minutes and it will just turn to mush, which may have been your problem. I've seen at least one ridiculous recipe for seaweed salad calling for a 5-minute rinse and a 15+ minute soak, which is pretty much guaranteed to give you slime.


Thanks for your reply.
I think I may have found the answer here. Apparently you can sous vide pickles to pasteurize them, and then leave them packed in vinegar so no bacteria can grow. As I read this, salt is just a flavoring agent here.
https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/make-crisp-flavor-packed-pickles-on-the-quick

Now, is there a way to make corned beef or pastrami without salt?


How do I roll or wrap up pasta into a log-like shape for presentation?

The answer is in your third picture -- chopsticks.

Grab the bunch with the chopsticks, twirl it around, then slide the chopsticks out.


Based on my experience as a chef I wouldn't recommend spit-roasting your sturgeon. It's a rather large fish for that technique although smaller fish may work. Your idea to wrap it in wire albeit a good idea, give a moment to consider what would the wire do to your fish as it cooks. Proteins shrink when they cook and although  you may wrap the fish in wire while it is still uncooked the wire will not shrink to accommodate the shrinkage of the fish.A 30 lb. sturgeon would probably be roasted and there will be less complications when it comes serving it whole (given you have a big oven!)


Grind your peppercorns in a spice grinder, then put them in a large, fine meshed sieve and tap them over a large bowl. The spice will fall through and the husks will stay in the sieve. Should take about 5 minutes max.

Alternatively, buy them pre-ground.


Can you use cooking oil to make "African Drop Doughnuts"?

It's hard to give a specific answer since I don't know what temperature you need. I looked at a couple recipes for African Drop Donuts and the temperatures were pretty far apart: 340F and 375F. I also don't know what you mean by cooking oil!

But you can use any oil suitable for deep-frying at the temperature specified in the recipe. Depending on what kind of cooking oil you have it may be fine, or it might have too low a smoke point.

Things like canola, sunflower, peanut, corn, and safflower would most likely be fine, since they all have smoke points of 400F or higher and are pretty neutral. You can look at a table of smoke points to get an idea beyond that.

The one thing you probably want to be careful about is oil labeled as generic vegetable oil; without knowing what kind of oil it actually is, it's hard to know what its smoke point is. It might also be more strongly flavored.


How to dethaw multiple pieces of steak when not planning to use them all at once

In your specific case I wouldn't eat them after being left unrefrigerated all night due to safety concerns.

However if I've frozen steak safely and later decided that I want single portion I've found found that a cold chisel normally used for metalworking does a good job of seperating them without defrosting the whole lot. The following image from Wikipedia illustrates what they look like:

I place the meat on a wooden cutting board on it's edge, press the chisel in between where the steaks are joined and give it a quick strike with a hammer. I've tried doing the same with a meat cleaver but the narrow edge on the chisel seems much easier and more effective.

Presumably the steel used may not be food grade in the usual sense but being tempered I can't see any realistic chance of anything nasty being transferred to the meat, assuming it's clean of course.


Vegetables with a naturally blueish-red color - red cabbage, beets, red onions, shallots, blueberries, red grapes (wine too) - usually have that color due to anthocyanin content.

Anthocyanin behaves like litmus paper, and takes on a different hue depending on pH value. If food containing it turns blue, it is too alkaline - and might also be at less than optimal flavor because of that. Add acidity to make it red.

Specifically with shallots, though, do make sure that it is not actually blueish mold getting washed into the cooking liquid. Unpalatable at any pH.


When cooking any sort of legumes
1) Sort them (if you don't trust it to be pre-sorted)
2) Soak them (make cooking easier, and also more uniform, since they already absorbed moisture)
3) Now you cook them. I don't simmer in the slow cooker, I usually pressure cook them


Pan-frying marinated meat without making a huge mess?

As others have said, the issue is the hot oil and water interacting. You need to reduce or eliminate one in order to prevent the splatter or find a way to mitigate the damage.

Remember the basics - allow the meat to warm up to room temperature before cooking and pat it dry before you begin. That should allow you to use less oil without it turning into a charred lump with a raw center. You can use a lid or a screen to prevent splatter (you might need to adjust cooking time with a lid that will trap more heat).


Natto shouldn't be salty by itself, because salt kills the culture that grows on the soybeans. Salted soybeans are fermented into miso; unsalted ones become natto.

Normally, you'd season the natto with some combination of strong Japanese-style mustard, soy sauce, scallions or Japanese leeks, and maybe grated nagaimo if you want an even more mucilaginous texture.

The flavor of natto is fairly mild; the aroma is certainly stronger than the flavor itself, and is reminiscent of bleu cheese and sweat. I'd say it's slightly sweeter than a boiled white soybean would be, but it's possible than an objective measure of sugars might disagree with me there.

Soybeans are very mildly bitter on their own. Tempeh, a similar cultured soybean, tends to be slightly bitter, but I would say it's not a very pronounced trait, if at all present, with natto, as most of the bitterness seems to be removed by the fermentation.

Assuming you started with frozen natto that wasn't freezer burned that you allowed to reach room temperature, or fresh natto that wasn't excessively old, I would simply mix the natto aggressively in a small bowl for a few minutes until the mucilaginous strands form. Then season as desired.

If you're expecting a surprising flavor, by the way, you may be disappointed in nattō. Japanese cuisine emphasizes contrasting textures much more than aggressive flavors, which is to some extent why so many dishes are seasoned only with varying proportions of salt, soy sauce, sugar, sake and mirin, and vinegar (su).

But if you're experiencing an unusually bitter natto, that sounds like a problem with the natto that you purchased, rather than the ingredient itself.


Pulled noodle dough: how can you realign the gluten after a failed attempt to pull?

I'm new to the site and I wish I could make this a comment, not an answer, but I don't know how.

Hand pulled noodles use cake flour with less gluten and baking soda to reduce the gluten even further.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze2SphqrWyg&feature=g-hist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBSTSKY_DQs&feature=g-hist

If you are hand kneading, it's unlikely you are over-kneading because the dough will become very hard. The issue is very likely the soda ash overreacting with the wheat. But if you did over-knead, there is nothing you can do to save it

If you did break, there is no way of fixing it. Maybe to save the dough, change the strategy: Add eggs and more flour and make egg pasta. I have over-kneaded egg pasta many times in my KitchenAid mixer and it still turns out alright.


A good portion of the "wasabi" that you buy is a mixture of western horseradish, mustard, green food coloring, and occasionally, a token amount of actual wasabi.

So if that's the experience you're trying to replicate, use western freshly grated (or prepared) horseradish and a small amount of powdered mustard.

Having eaten fresh wasabi, I can say that the sensation is more pronounced than the taste. If you're trying to mimic freshly grated wasabi, you're going to have a harder task ahead of you, but the primary objective will be to find ingredients that have a clean aroma but have a marked pungency. Freshly grated western horseradish comes pretty close, though there is a difference.


Why prefer prime-cut sausage over MSM sausage

It's probably simple marketing.

People like the idea of eating 'prime' meat more than 'scraggy' meat, and tend to assume it makes for a better taste and texture (even when it might not).

This is probably the same principle behind things like high meat and low fat sausages - people buy them because they fear 'mystery meat' and anything with cheap content, even when that cheaper content is better suited - such as fat and rusk keeping sausages moist and soft.


I've recently changed from tinned beans to dried in my mixed bean chilli, which I slow cook. White (cannellini or black eyed) beans stay fairly white if starting from tinned, but dried beans absorb some colour in soaking/cooking. This is reduced by soaking the kidney beans separately (it makes it easier to boil them hard to remove phytohemagglutinin) and would be further reduced by soaking and pre-cooking the white beans on their own (as demonstrated by the tinned.

To minimise the darkening you need to minimise the amount of coloured liquid they absorb. This means minimising the time they spend in contact with the sauce, and making sure they're fully hydrated when added. Cooking then completely separately and stirring them in just before serving is the obvious end point. I wouldn't consider that myself, preferring to optimise for flavour, energy consumption, and effort over a minor aspect of appearance, but I rarely serve it to others, and when I do they're too hungry to care! All of this means starting with separate beans. I find them much cheaper that way anyway.


It is safer and helps increase the shelf life of the milk.

Otherwise the milk will pass through dangerous temperatures and  and may be recolonized with air born pathogens.  These will grow rapidly during the period the milk is warm, and more slowly once it is refrigerated.  While the milk may not become immediately unsafe or unpalatable, its storage lifetime will certainly be reduced.


Why are my (italian Whole foods) sausages still pink inside?

Checking for redness is not a good indicator of doneness.  For instance, freezer burned chicken tends to look less red or pink--taking on white spots and a grayish color.  Some meats will also stay red no matter what.  Think back to every time you saw real pork bacon.  Were the meat strips ever any color except red, even when fried to a crisp?

The most advised way to check for doneness is to use a meat thermometer, inserted into the deepest part of the meat.  Once it reaches a temperature you're comfortable with, that should be sufficient.  The FDA publishes a table, which was revised in 2011 here.  For some of their meats, I go off of other sources that actually suggest lower temperatures for more desired textures--but some people want a higher guarantee and that's fine.

For me, the main reason to heat meat is to eliminate bacteria.  This chart illustrates how long it takes to sterilize cook chicken at various temperatures.  The bacteria-death-rate chart will look similar for other meats, but might have different temperatures because of different natural bacterias.  Often times when I cook, meats come out reddish or pinkish in the middle, and I enjoy that.

Edit: This link provides a detailed bio-chemical explanation for why meat will turn brown or not during cooking.  Nitrites and nitric oxide are one explanation, but in general a lack of oxygen, presence of carbon monoxide, or certain pH levels in the meat will cause cooked-pinkness as well.

Some presence of carbon monoxide is common when cooking in a gas or charcoal oven.  Furthermore, a sausage cooked in its casing fully intact will have very little oxygen available to the meat--meaning the iron inside will not oxidize and brown.


As the bacon cooks the meat reduces in size faster than the fat does.

Since they are cut into strips this causes the fat to bunch up or even coil if the bacon isn't flipped enough.

The fat will eventually reduce as well when it renders but not enough to straighten out the poor bacon.


How to make entrecôte steaks on a grill?

Thickness of the steak is really personal preference. There is no "right" answer. The thicker it is, the easier it is to get a nice rare to medium rare in the middle with a good crust on the outside. The thinner it is, the easier it is to get the center well done without turning the outside to charcoal. I personally like my steak between 1.5 and 2 inches.

Spices are in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I'd just put salt and pepper on it. Depending on the quality of the meat, I may put some Worcestershire Sauce on it. Or maybe Soy, if it's an asian dish. Stay simple though. The flavor of the meat should shine through, so don't overly spice it.

Ideally you want a two level fire to cook steak on a charcoal grill. One side should be as hot as you can get it. Sear for 2-3 minutes per side over the hottest portion of the fire. The second level of the fire should be medium hot. Move the steak over once it's seared to finish cooking. Keep the grill lid down for the second portion. If you have a gas grill, just set one burner as hot as it will go and one on medium. Cooking over a medium heat will allow you to finish the steak without over doing the outside. Time depends entirely on how thick the steak is, temp of your grill, and how you want it done. Learn to tell "done" by feel rather than time or get a thermometer.

When the steak is done, you need to let it rest for 5-10 minutes. Otherwise, when you cut in to them, you lose a lot of flavorful juice. Resting allows the meat to retain the juice. Wrapping in tinfoil while it's resting will help it retain some of it's heat and be a bit warmer when you serve it.


The problem you are facing is that your microwave temperature is too high and boils your milk too rapidly. The microwave does not heat food evenly and boils the milk too fast. Milk shouldn't be boiled too rapidly and doing this causes the casein in it to clump together and that curdles the milk. It should instead be brought 'to a boil' by heating on a slow heat for longer until it starts to boil.

So, you can try a couple of different options:

You can bring the milk to a boil in a pan on a stove on slow heat, which will take long depending on the amount of milk. And I can vouch for this method. I've seen my dad do this for years and as long as your pan is clean and the heat is low, you'll have a successful result.
I haven't tried this myself, but you can Pour milk into a microwave-safe container and microwave on medium-high (70%) power, stirring every 15 seconds, just until steam begins to rise from the milk. To scald milk for custards or yogurt, heat 250 mL (1 cup) on HIGH for 2 to 2 1/2 minutes. - Reference


Can these Oktoberfest dishes be reheated without ruining them?

The potato salad, and the peppers and onions, are standard steam-tray fare. If you can, make them somewhat ahead of time and keep warm, covered, in a low oven. The brats can be treated likewise, though you won’t maintain the same crackle to the casing; your can re-crisp in a fan assist oven for 5-10 minutes at 200C.
Don’t mess with the preparation instructions for the cheese. It’s the least stable of the four.


How to clean stains from inside of vacuum flask?

I have found that a tablespoon of Oxy Clean followed by boiling water will remove even the harshest stains inside a vacuum bottle. Fill it to the brim (it will bubble and overflow, so do it in a sink), let it sit for a bit, then rinse very very well, and you will be amazed, I promise. I do this periodically to remove the coffee stains inside our steel thermos flask. [Edited for typos]


Substituting parchment for foil in slow cooker

My experience would suggest that unless the aluminum foil is used to form some kind of shape such as a seal around the food, parchment paper would be superior.  Aluminum foil is better for forming shapes.  Parchment paper is better for non-stick qualities.  Parchment paper has a temperature limit of around 400 degrees F, whereas aluminum foil will tolerate much higher temperatures (technically it will melt around 1200 degrees F).  Most slow cookers wouldn't be too hot for either one, but they vary, so you may want to check yours to be sure.


You can also do it with Yellow/green Moong Dal or Millet. I used this recipe before - it's a mix pf Urad Dal and Millet https://masalachilli.com/proso-millet-idli-no-rice-idli-recipe/


What am I doing wrong with my Beurre Blanc?

Julia Child's "classic" recipe for beurre blanc uses quite a lot of butter (3 sticks) to 1/4 cup each of white wine and white wine vinegar (plus shallot and salt and pepper, with a squeeze of lemon to finish).  I suspect that you (a) used too much liquid, and (b) used the wrong vinegar, leading to an overly sour/acetic sauce.


Brewed vs regular soy sauce : phytochemical content

AFAIK, "brewed" is the term used for naturally fermented soy sauce compare to faster fermentation using chemicals; remember that using chemicals is not automatically bad.

https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/how-to-buy-soy-sauce-like-a-pro-article

As for the phytochemicals (stuff in plants) I don't have a clue.


Purple skin with white flesh yams/sweet potatoes have black/green spots after I boil them. Can I still eat them?

A couple of years ago we got some sweet potatoes from an Amish market that we visit whenever we travel along the Eastern Shore of Virginia and Maryland. They were simply labeled "Japanese sweet potatoes". They were as you describe with a purple skin and white flesh. We almost always bake our sweet potatoes and were quite delighted with them as they were very sweet. On a few future visits we asked workers at the market but no one knew the actual variety.

To your question about the color, we mostly buy white flesh sweet potatoes as we find them to be tastier. (Each year around this time we make trips to the Eastern shore to buy boxes of the Hayman variety and some Jersey Whites.) When cooked, white fleshed sweet potatoes do look quite off putting, with varying greenish and grayish coloring. Honestly, if I didn't know what they were supposed to look like I would have asked the same question as you did.

Bottom line is that the color is not so pretty, but a worthwhile trade-off for the flavor!


Shortbread dough made with lard is delicious. I have never used beef fat, but both pork fat and goose fat have worked perfectly for me in this setting. I prefer the texture over the texture of shortbread baked with butter. So go ahead and make it, it's very likely that you get very similar results to pork or goose fat.


Rotting occurs as cells break down and autolyse together with other chemical reactions and aided by microbial (fungal and bacteria) contamination.  It is not initiated by pathogens, but is rather a normal cause of events.

Note that ripening (i.e., the earliest stage of rot) and fermentation (e.g., beer and kimchi) are related processes performed under controlled conditions


What determines the variety of paprika to use in recipes?

If a recipe didn't specify which type of paprika to use (and I've never seen one that didn't) I would default to a 'sweet mild' paprika. Sweet refers to 'not chilli hot' rather than anything to do with sugar. Smoked paprika is a very particular ingredient used in very few cuisines so I wouldn't think of it as just a variant or substitute for the other paprikas.

The other clue about which to use will be in the rest of the recipe. Is it a spanish or basque recipe? Then smoked is likely what they mean. Is it Croatian/Serbian? Then it is sweet mild. Does the recipe include chilli as a spice separately? Then they likely won't be asking you to double up by using hot paprika too, use mild. The quantity the recipe calls for will also be a clue. Smoked & hot paprikas are very strong, so I'd expect to see a pinch or 1/4 teaspoon listed in most cases, whereas mild paprika is often used to add colour as well as flavour so you might see greater quantities used.


Blow torching meat after sous vide - add fat or not?

I have not noticed any real difference from using a fat, so I skip it. What does make a difference is thorough drying the meat.

I haven't ever had great results from a torch though. I prefer a screaming hot pan or grill, although both are way more effort.