Do pan "pores" exist, what are they, and what are their effects?

This is the microstructure of SAE 304, a steel type commonly used in pans:

At this magnification, its "pores" look like cracks. Now see it at other magnifications (still a SAE 304, other types of steel look completely different, especially if you look at martenistic steels):

It gets even more complicated than that, because steel structure differs between the surface and below the surface:

As you can see, the holes are nowhere "pore" shaped. But they exist; steel is not even at the microscopic level.

I cannot point you to more cooking-relevant sources, but this at least confirms that holes exist in the type of steel used for pans. Somebody else will have to tell us what happens to them when heated.

Note that there is a version of the "pore" theory which insists that the "pores" are still moving at certain temperatures and static when the pan is properly preheated. I'm not sure if it's true. On the one hand, it's presented in a rouxbe video, which is generally a very good source, and I can imagine steel doing funny things on the crystal level. On the other hand, the use of the "pores" term and the lack of explanation of the underlying mechanism make me doubt it.


What I think you have made is brined or salted eggs which are very different from the blackened "century" eggs.

Salt preserved eggs do need cooking, at least the egg white will need heat to solidify. If you extract an egg yolk and cure that with salt and sugar (no added water), you can use it almost like cheese, the texture would allow you to grate it over pasta without cooking for example.

The blackened century eggs do not require cooking, because it is already cooked, or the proteins fully denatured. It takes alkalines and salt to achieve that. The high pH usually comes from a combination of lime (calcium oxide) and calcium hydroxide. The process is very different. Strangely, you get the opposite of brining when it comes to textures - solid "white" and runny yolk vs runny white and somewhat hardened yolk.


At what temperature should monkfish be prepared?

To be perfectly honest with you, in all my years of cooking in kitchens I never took the temp of the fish.  It was always by feel and look.  Yes, I know that the gov't has guidelines that say 145F for fish but really when it comes down to it, if you have an 8oz cut of salmon/cod/monk in the pan, sticking an instant read into the middle won't do you much good.  (Caveat: If it was a salmon Wellington I would shoot for 130F as it's a fully enclosed package that you can't feel for doneness)

The thickness of the cut will make a huge difference in when you should pull it out as you get post-oven cooking during resting in which the heat continues to heat the core of the flesh up to a final cooked temperature.  That's why most chefs will take the roast out at a rare measured temp when they are shooting for a med rare serving state.

If your question is what state should monk fish be served, IE  med rare (like salmon) or rare ( like tuna) then I would say med-rare is your best bet.  Over cooking is a bad thing for monk fish and it goes from a lovely moist state to dry nastiness really quick.  A nice way to cook it that helps to give you a little move wiggle room when cooking it is to wrap it in Parma ham (prosciutto).  The little extra wrapping tastes great but also gives you a little bit of buffer as you get close to that magical temperature of doneness.

Hope it helps.


Plum preserving/storage method that tastes like plums, not prunes (I just picked 30 lbs)

I think freezing would be your best bet - not fantastic for the texture, but when defrosted you could make a pie/cobbler or other cooked item with them. Plenty of web sites (eg http://www.fruitexpert.co.uk/using-up-a-plum-glut.html) say you can just halve them and freeze them on open tray, then when they're frozen move them into plastic bags. It's the lowest-effort option so probably worth trying on at least a fraction of your harvest.


Does preferment add sourness to taste of bread?

Your question has a couple layers, so I'll peel those away one at a time!

What causes sourness?
Sourness (the taste, speaking generally) is caused by acidity. The acid (i.e., sourness) in sourdough is created by bacteria (e.g., Lactobacillus spp. which are generally benign and sometimes beneficial, such as inhibiting the growth of some harmful bacteria). More bacteria makes more acid, and more time permits bacteria to make more of the acid, and to multiply. Hence, more time (generally) makes more bacteria and more acid.

Fundamentally, pre-ferment does add sourness to the taste bread, for the aforementioned reason: the extra fermentation time (of the pre-ferment portion of the dough) permits additional time for bacteria to cultivate and produce acid.

The other part of your question makes a distinction between time: The time duration of pre-fermentation does have an effect on sourness. This is for the same reason: More time permits more acids to be produced by the critters in the dough, which makes the bread more sour. This is supported by your experience: What you're calling "preferment bread" has a longer first (pre-)fermentation stage, and you report it as more sour; in contrast, your "sponge bread" has a shorter pre-fermentation, and you report it as less sour.

I'm using some hedge-words ("generally", "basically", ...) because there's undoubtedly a lot more happening with interactions of starches, acids, enzymes, bacteria, yeast, etc. than I'm discussing here.

I hope it helps! Have fun with your sourdough. Let me know if I've missed the point, or missed part of your question.

More musings below the cut...

Your question (and associated dialog) got me to think about the connotations of terms. This glossary includes some definitions and examples of terms, and how certain types of pre-ferment (e.g., biga, poolish, sponge, pre-ferment) have subtly different connotations. But basically a pre-ferment by any name consists of flour, water, and some source of yeast: either a previous pre-ferment, commercial yeast (e.g., active dry), or some other source (e.g., grape skin).

Other SA questions for additional reading... This question discusses sponges and pre-ferments as pertains to sourdough. This question discusses the soaker as a non-yeast-containing portion of dough, which permits more autolysis ("self-digestion" by enzymes that exist in the flour/grain itself) without necessarily much fermentation.

Other sourness musings...  Even straight dough ("single stage" mixing all ingredients together at one time; i.e., without using any pre-ferment technique) can become (desirably) sour; using less yeast and a correspondingly longer fermentation time will produce a similar (albeit less pronounced) effect. Separately, actual acid could be added directly to the dough, as suggested by this KAF recipe, but that's not necessary or common.


Uses of dittany of Crete (origanum dictamnus)

In Greece we use diktamo mostly for tea, as beverage.
You can try it by boiling water in a jar and put 5-10gr diktamo for 5-10 minutes.
Other uses as any other tea leaves. For example you can boil milk or 35% milk cream  and put diktamo and then use the milk or cream to make pastry cream or ganache or any other similar.


What is the name of this Ukrainian bread?

According to this site it is a bread called "korovai":

  Korovai. A traditional braided wedding bread baked from wheat flour embellished with little dough flags and figurines (sun, moon, birds, animals, etc). Its origin is ancient, and it is a relic of the pagan belief in the magical properties of grain. Women prepared it while singing traditional wedding songs at the new home of the couple about to be married. The bride and groom were blessed with it before their marriage ceremony. At the wedding the korovai was kept in a prominent place, and the bride was greeted with it when she arrived at her new home. After the nuptials, the best man served it to all the guests; some scholars consider this ritual a manifestation of collective communion.

It's possible that the name and recipe is regional... as this site says that it's not the wedding bread but a variation of the Easter bread called "Paska", which is similar to Challah.

  The Greeting Bread is basically the same recipe as the Easter Paska Bread, except that it has an indentation in the middle, for a small container of salt, accompanied by wine, which is used by the parents to greet the newlyweds, as they enter the reception hall.  The parents, and the bride and groom, partake of the Greeting Bread dipped in salt, which symbolizes the bitter moments of life, followed by a sip of wine, which symbolizes the sweet moments in their married life.  This also is a time when both families unite as one, and welcome the newlywed and their families into their family circle.

On this site, it seems to agree that korovai is correct, as the paska doesn't resemble the image you've included at all.

  Ukrainian braided bread. This main ritual wedding bread has a circular form and is decorated intricately with birds, periwinkles, other ornaments made of dough. Ukrainian wedding bread is made of special dough similar to dough used for babka. Some other types of sweet bread can be used during wedding ceremony in addition to korovai — lezhen, dyven, shyshky.


I will often freeze black bananas that are too soft to peel, then thaw or run warm water over them till I can remove the peel from the still frozen fruit.


What natural emulsifier can I use for almond milk?

Your best bet for this is xanthan gum, which is an excellent stabiliser. Whilst the distinction between 'natural' and 'unnatural' is fraught with difficulties, insofar as xanthan gum is a product of microbial fermentation then it is no more 'unnatural' than alcohol or vinegar.

Be careful not to use too much though (unless, of course, you  want your drink to have the texture of mucus), you really only want to use about 0.4% of the volume of the liquid you're trying to stabilise: so if you have 500ml of milk then you would use 2g of gum. Add it to your liquid and use a blender or an immersion stick to incorporate, a few pulses should do, any more than that and you'll just incorporate air and you could just end up with an annoyingly stable foam!


Yep I agree with Stefan I'd get a can of edible spray paint!! (no affiliation)


Spice combination(s) excluding salt, oil/butter, sugar, msg, vinegar, onion/garlic/alliums?

There is the French quatre épices (four spices): pepper, cloves, nutmeg and ginger. And of course you can go crazy with the herbs: parsley, basil, rosemary, sage.
French again: bouquet garni, look it up here.

Let me just add something about the MSG: monosodium glutamate is practically everywhere (tomatoes, cheese, seaweed, ...), not just in Chinese cuisine or soy sauce. If you really cannot eat MSG, your choices are going to be extremely limited. Read more here.

Broadening the field of your question, you could look into culinary traditions that, for religious or philosophical reasons, eschew those ingredients. Some Indian cuisines might help you here, but I am definitely not an expert.


Do silicone baking mats come in 14x16" sizes?

Don't know if you got it yet, but I just purchased one from Kohl's. It's a Food Network branded product. I had hoped for two, but store only had one.  There's some issue with the SKU from the bar code on the product, but they do carry the product.  Here's the link. http://www.kohls.com/product/prd-756153/food-network-14-x-16-baking-mat.jsp
Here's the SKU that they had to look up in the store to ring it up:  91482863.  You can look up if your local store has any in stock, but not the quantity.

Wish I had it yesterday before I baked three hundred cookies.  I'll be ready next year.  Tired of cutting parchment and it sliding around, especially with balled dough cookies!


Normal vinegar concentration (usually around 5% acetic acid) is too acidic to grow mold in the vinegar itself. Mold can sometimes grow on the bottle or on the surface of the vinegar. It isn't dangerous and can be wiped/skimmed off.

What you are seeing is called the mother.

Vinegar is produce when acetobacter bacteria consume alcohol and produce acetic acid. The bacteria form a culture as they work. In the case of filtered vinegar, this culture is removed before bottling but letting a bottle of unpasteurized vinegar sit for a while will allow the culture to reform. Unfiltered vinegar often already has some of the mother present.

It is harmless and can be used to start your own vinegar if you have stale wine sitting around.


What's the difference between a flauta and a taquito?

If I remember correctly, flautas are made with a softer flour tortilla while taquitos are made with a harder corn tortilla. Both are filled with similar fillings and then wrapped and deep fried.

However, you can oftentimes find taquitos made from flour tortillas and flautas made from corn tortillas...so what's the deal? There is another differentiation: size. Flautas are often longer than taquitos, as taquitos are made from taco sized tortillas, while flautas are made from burrito sized tortillas.

Another little tidbit if you go to a fancier Mexican place: flautas are often narrower on one side to create a funnel shape. But this is not common in your standard places.

TL;DR; They're oftentimes the same thing


Use only the stalks; the leaves are poisonous (or at least toxic if eating in high quantity)

Cut up the stalks in chunks from the bottom up to the where it becomes green (to keep the result as pink as possible) and cook down with sugar and enjoy in a crumble or a pie (with strawberries).

I've ate raw stalk dipped in sugar when I was a kid.

from http://www.rhubarbinfo.com/poison:

Precautions for rhubarb gardening

Trim leaves from stalk immediately.
Don't use stalks from frost bitten plants.
Wash the stalks well.
Children should be taught to eat only the rhubarb stalks, preferably under supervision


How is "nacho sliced" jalapeño different from regular sliced?

As near as I can determine, "nacho sliced" is simply a marketing term for such pre-sliced, pickled jalapeno peppers.  A quick Google for the term brings up several brands which appear identical to one another.  There are also similar combinations of the words such as "nacho jalapenos, sliced".  The bottle on the right is the only one labelled as such, but they're basically the exact same thing.

So, the only difference?  The "no heat" on the right-hand bottle, and some other subtle changes to the packaging.  It's marketing fluff, not a real distinction.

Bonus answer: they probably decided that the picture on the right bottle looked healthier, or lighter, or more colorful, or some dang thing.


Why do store-bought dips have such a limited shelf life?

I would assume that it's for safety reasons.
Not yours only, but the manufacturers' as well.

At the plant the manufacturer can control the environment and make sure that the product leaves in a condition that should last for a certain time under specific conditions ( e.g. when refrigerated). Subtract a bit for safety and you have the manufacturers best-before-date.

Once the consumer opens the sealed package, all bets are off:
There is no way to know what may be introduced into the product. This may be as simple as getting oxygen to food that was sealed with packaging gas, introducing new (and ever-present) bacteria, yeasts or mold spores in a previously pasteurized pack or simply scooping with a not entirely clean spoon. Leaving bread crumbs or double-dipping is simply a very extreme example. In other words, one never knows what might start to grow after opening.

But if the product is refrigerated promtly and consumed within X hours, it may be assumed that even if something risky was introduced, the time/temperature is too short for it to multiply into a critical amount leading to foodbourne illness.

If you work very cleanly, I assume that you could extend this time frame quite a bit, but obviously won't tell you to do so - lest you or some other reader comes back complaining that I told you to and made you sick.


What is this one-handed tool with five dull steel "blades" called?

It's a pastry blender, less commonly also called a pastry cutter or dough blender. The primary use is cutting (mixing) solid fat into flour to make pastry dough.

Another common variety has stiff wires instead of the metal strips yours has.

That kind also works fine for pastry dough, but likely won't work as well for your alternative use on clumpy powders; it'll tend to flex out of the way a bit, especially if the clumps are hard.


Chocolate will stay fresh for weeks or even months if stored correctly.
And yes, the spheres will stay as shiny and beautiful as you made them if you store them correctly:

in a cool, dark place away from sunlight
but not necessarily in the fridge - taking them out will lead to condensation on the surface
at rather constant temperature
and dry.

So in short:
A large enough foodsafe plastic container in a cool cellar or cupboard, away from (sun-)light and, if applicable, curious kids, pets or others that might feast on your stash in advance. Unless you have a high humidity environment, it's not absolutely necessary that the box be airtight. But if you want to be really sure, include some silica gel packs against excess humidity.

Do not stack them like nested bowls, or you could scratch or otherwise damage the glossy surface. If you have to, place one layer in your box, cover with parchment, foil or similar, add a sheet of cardboard for stability and another layer of parchment or foil, then the next layer of spheres.

Good luck and have a good party!


Should indoor ripened tomatoes be used for sauce?

I've never heard that. I have picked end of season tomatoes when they were green and let them ripen and used them for any purpose that I would normally use ripe tomatoes. And I know others who do also. It's much better than losing them to a frost or to animals.

If there is any downside, it would be that they might not be as flavorful as vine-ripened, but that still beats losing them.

Also consider that most of what we get in grocery stores come from large farms where they are picked green.

Just for the sake of saying it, many stores now also sell vine-ripened or locally grown tomatoes but they do cost more.


Is it okay to leave cooked octopus in water till next morning?

I've realized that the price of mistake is not the high anyways so I've just divided cooked octopus to two parts: one left in water, another one not. This morning I finally have an answer!

It's better to take cooked octopus out of water but it won't be a tragedy if you didn't.

While both meals were tasty, octopus left in water was slightly slimy - it was a very subtle difference however noticeable.


Why do English recipes of “sauce marchand de vin” call for Worcestershire sauce?

Worcestershire Sauce is added where the recipe wants a fast way to develop or add savoury richness, umami.

It's often used where umami would develop over time with slow careful cooking (and heavy bottomed pans). Adding this extra ingredient is a good cheat where you just want that kick without the wait.


When a recipe says, 'simmer uncovered', what's the issue?

Simmering uncovered serves two purposes.  The first is liquid reduction.  Simmering with a lid on causes condensation on the inside of the lid that will drip back into the food.  If you're trying to reduce the liquid, the steam needs to be able to evaporate away.

The second purpose is temperature regulation.  With a lid on, the heat won't dissipate quickly enough and your food will eventually advance beyond a simmer and potentially throw off what you're making.


How long before a dead chicken becomes inedible?

I will post as an answer as too long for comment, but would support closing as opinion based with no definitive answer.

When I raise meat chickens, my answer was zero.  Even if the cause was harmless, the meat would be low quality at best due to lack of ability to remove blood.  Even simple heart failure, besides the lack of ability to purge blood, could result in contamination from systemic issues related to poor circulation.  Note that consumption of down birds was blamed for spreading Avian Influenza in Asia.  The use of down animals was responsible for a widespread Mad Cow recall in US and Canada a few years ago.

At times, and in many cultures, using down animals, either dead or dying, has ranged from acceptable to taboo.  I personally side with the taboo argument.  I hate to waste an animal, but the risks are too high for me.


Is cornstarch a less effective thickener when used with gelatin?

Cornstarch can be a bit temperamental.  You can weaken the strength if you cook it too long and it doesn’t do well if you reheat it.  If you use a lot, it could weep.  There is a much better alternative.  ARROWROOT! (not to be used with dairy products)  Arrowroot doesn’t cloud your gravy, doesn't alter the flavor like cornstarch can.  For me, it's just a better thickener.  I use it all the time in my pot-roast gravy that has tons of gelatin and a spot of vinegar. It doesn’t interfere with the silky texture you are seeking.


Are there visual differences between regular and decaf coffee?

Coffee foam/bubbles is made up of a mixture of proteins, sugars, oil droplets, caffeine etc, and the lifetime of a bubble is highly dependent on the composition of its membrane. Given that decaf is coffee that's been solvent extracted, it wouldn't be at all surprising to see its different composition affecting bubble lifetime. However, no one seems to have conducted definitive studies of the matter. – answer upped from comments as requested.


A simple way to do this is to place 250 grams of whole bean coffee and 500 grams of butter in a ziploc bag.  Then place that in a water bath with a sous vide device set at 90C.  Cook for 3 hours.  Alternately, you can do this on the stove top.  Very low heat, same amount of time.  The longer you cook, the stronger the coffee flavor.  Strain, discard beans, use the butter.  Credit to an old ChefSteps formula.


Why is freshness more important for fish than beef?

Once an animal is dead, the enzymes in its own cells start degrading its tissue. Enzymatic reactions are complicated, and only work well within a narrow temperature range.

Land animals have a body temperature similar to humans. When they are slaughtered and the flesh is chilled, the enzymes slow down their work a lot.

Fish are "cold blooded" animals. This is usually a misnomer - a snake lounging on a sunlit rock can get quite warm. But fish live in water, which tends to be cold. Their enzymes are very active in the temperature range found in refrigerators. So non frozen fish starts to spoil, and this can't be halted.

People generally use spoilage as an indicator for unsafe food, and are probably not aware that it doesn't apply in this specific case. Also, the decomposition of fish produces some amines which are usually perceived as a very objectionable smell. So people just prefer eating their fish before this decomposition process has progressed much.

Beef's decomposition is slowed down a lot in a refrigerator, and it takes different chemical pathways which do not produce a fishy smell. People even like some of the smells which appear during early decomposition (the gaminess of aged beef). Also, specifically for beef, aging provides tenderization. This is not needed for fish, whose muscles fall apart easily without aging.


What is the lowest possible temperature for stewing meat?

As far as I know, Collagen starts to break down below 60°C/140F, time play a big role, i.e. to get the same breakdown at 60°C as 80°C you might need 24-48h instead of 3-4h.

The higher the heat the more the meat is contracted and it will get dryer, in a stew that might not be as obvious as in other cooking methods but it should still be the fact. Compare tough cuts of meat cooked sous vide at 55°C-60°C for 24-100h, they get very tender and moist.

So the benefit will be moister meat. I think you must cook the veggies at much higher temperature (80°C-95°C) so you would have to separate the two. If the end result is worth the effort I do not know, I have wanted to try doing a 'stew' with meat cooked sous vide at 55°C - 60°C for 24h+, with the veggies done on the side at 80°C-95°C, normal stew style, to see if it would be better, but I have never tried.

Sources

Hum, I'm sure you or anyone can find enough sources to argue that you need 70-80°C(160-180°F), see e.g. On food and cooking(2004) pg 163 "...Meats with a significant amount of tough connective tissue must be cooked to a minimum of 160-180°F/70-80°C to dissolve their collagen into gelatin. "

The only potentially credible and official (what do you mean by that?) source that potentially can trump On Food and Cooking is Modernist Cuisine, I will quote.

MC 3.78-79 "When meat is cooked at temperatures above 50°C/122°F, a different chemical reaction -- the conversion of collagen into gelatin -- becomes prominent." it continues and says "Cookbooks and some scientific sources commonly claim that collagen converts to gelatine "at" some particular temperature. Usually the cited threshold lies between 60°C and 75°C / 140°F and 167°F. In reality, the hydrolysis of collagen is simply another example of a chemical reaction whose rate varies exponentially with temperature." it goes on describing that the exact temperature have not been measured and that it depends on what type of collagen, e.g. breed, cut and age. Finally it says "Tough meats can be cooked until tender at any temperature above 55°C/130°F (and even a bit below, if you are patient enough)."

Also see lots of sous vide recipes on the net saying that you can cook tough meat at much less temperature than 70°C/160°F and get it very tender. Or try it, I have and it works!!! I have stopped eating primary expensive cuts, flank, shin and brisket tastes much better!

See also SAJ14SAJ reply and Stefanos comment below, as per Baldwin which should be almost as good a source as oFaC and MC

Conclusion

The answer to the question, "how low can you go and still get collagen break-down" I would answer 55°C/130°F or even a bit lower. That is NOT a realistic temperature for cooking a stew, especially not if you will put veggies in it, but as far as collagen breakdown goes that is the lowest temperature for 'stewing meat'.


Why do I get a 'food burn' alert every time I use my pressure cooker?

A quick google search illustrates that this appears to be a common concern for instant pot users. Have you checked the sealing ring, steam release, and float valve to ensure that they are clean and working properly?  You may just need some cleaning and preventive maintenance.  You don't mention the brand, but you can begin with your user manual.  Here is some information specifically about the Instant Pot brand cooker.


Food that does not spoil, lightweight, energetic and balanced

You have asked a huge question; bigger than one can reasonable answer on a site like this.

I suggest you look into "Crusing Guide" type books.  One such is Sail Away - I have no involvement with this book other than having met the authors; there are many others.

Books like this will take sailing-specific exigencies into account such as limited water/power/etc. as well as accounting for storage issues.

Sailing, like many other travel endeavours can vary widely between people as well.  My version of spartan may well be your luxury.  Power budgets lead to refrigeration issues, and the like.

Good luck and fair winds!  (from a sailboat owner)


The main problem with adding the baking powder last would be getting it evenly incorporated throughout the dough or batter.

In the traditional methods where it is in the dry ingredients, it can be sifted or whisked evenly throughout the dry mixture which facilitates having it evenly distributed in the final batter.

If you tried adding the powder to a batter that was prepared except for it, even sprinkling it across the surface, it would be more difficult to evenly distribute throughout the entire batter.  Also, you would then have to mix or beat the batter again to distribute the baking powder, which would develop additional gluten and lead to a tougher end product.

Remember, baking powder requires liquid in order to react (in dry form, the acid and sodium bicarbonate don't interact with each other).  When you think about it, in the major baking methods where baking powder is used, the baking powder is activated as late as possible right before baking—the wet and dry parts of the batter don't meet up until the last step:

Muffin method.  The wet and dry ingredients are mixed separately, and can be held.   They are combined, mixed gently, then portioned into molds or pans and baked immediately.
Creaming method, common for cakes.   Typically, the ingredients will be divided into the three groups:  an emulsification of creamed butter and sugar, eggs, and perhaps vanilla; a liquid ingredient or mixture (such as sour cream or milk), and the dry flour mixture.  Each of these stages again can be set up in advance.  They are combined (usually alternating the liquid and dry in two or three stages to maintain the butter/liquid emulsion and to minimize lumping) as the last step in developing the batter.

So even if you need to try to fit baking in with other preparations, you can stage your prep, up to the final combination at your leisure.

If I want muffins for a brunch party (or cornbread on Thanksgiving, when my oven is scheduled down to the minute), I prepare a wet mix and a dry mix the night before (remember, wet mix in the fridge for safety).  When I am ready to bake, I just mix the two together, scoop into the muffin tins, and bake.


You could use the smoked salt, but it would not impart that much smoked flavor and would be quite expensive compared to normal kosher salt. Since most wet-cured bacon available at the grocery store is flavored with liquid smoke, an easy alternative would be to rub the belly with liquid smoke prior to roasting as described at The Splendid Table.

As a side note, Ruhlman's recipe yields bacon that has a significant herbal flavor.  If you were looking for something closer to standard bacon, try a simpler recipe like the one from The Splendid Table or this one from Salt and Smoke Food


Can pressed cookies be made without creaming butter and sugar?

It depends on exactly what mean by pressed cookies.

If you mean the kind of butter cookie traditionally made in the US using a cookie press:

I surveyed the top dozen or so recipes on the web.  They all use the creaming method.

If you think about it, this makes sense.  The dough that will be used in a cookie press needs to be sufficiently stiff to work in the device, and yet have enough leavening to make a nicely textured cookie.  It also needs to set in the oven before it spreads, to retain the pressed shape.  As the creaming method leaves the fat as a solid, it meets these criteria well.

Prior to the advent of the cookie press (and still, in professional pastry kitchens), similar cookies were made using a piping bag.  Not all of the types of cookies that are piped require the creaming method, although they tend to be very different types of cookie.  Some of these include:

Simple meringues
French style macarons (which are meringues enhanced with nut flour usually, similar to a dacquoise)
While not usually called cookies, small petit fours made from choux paste are usually piped, as are their big brothers the eclair or profiterole


You say that they were frozen with the stones? I think it is the freezing of the stones that caused it. The stone is where most of the "artificial", almondlike flavour sits, just like with apricot pits and almonds. I bet that when they were frozen, some of them cracked and [insert correct name of flavour agent] seeped out into the flesh of the fruit.


If a recipe calls for 'ready-prepared potato wedges', what exactly does that mean

"Ready-Prepared" typically means a packaged product.  Many 'ready-prepared' potato products are par cooked and coated lightly in oil before freezing, so cutting your own may be a problem.

A specific recipe would be useful, so that we can give recommendations on how to deal with freshly cut potatoes (par cook vs. adjusting time/temperature of the whole dish)


What is the dish shown in the "Sunset Limited"

I vote the dish is a hot dish, not a dessert. Samual L Jackson's character gives soul food to the man who is empty. I can't see soul food being cold, or a dessert. That shit is hot for your belly. This is amusing because I was looking for the same recipe after I saw the film. It seems that if the fruits and vegetables were all in chunks, and the molasses mixed with other chili like ingredients sort of provided the in between sauce you might be on the right track. Invent it. My friend once made chocolate soup on a Sunday afternoon.


That sounds like a standard queso cheese (typically found on your chimis etc.)

If you are looking for a terrific queso recipe, there are myriad. However, two tips for any queso:

seek out "Chihuahua Cheese" (its a mild white that melts very smoothly and has a subtle flavor)
pepper and cumin and paprika roasted first are your friends, but if you add more than a little, they are your worst enemies. (also, fresh roast jalapenos for ideal flavor, don't use diced.)


Can most sour fruits be jelled by cooking with sugar?

Fruits that are high in pectin are not necessarily sour and sour fruits are not necessarily high in pectin. However, pectin is typically found in high concentrations in firm fleshed fruit such as apples and in the skins of citrus. Unripe fruit has even more than the ripe. So- I can see why you would come to that conclusion.

It is easy enough to find charts of pectin levels in various fruits.

As you may notice many of these charts list not only fruits high in pectin but those high in acid. This is because acid is necessary to make pectin gel as it removes a charge on the pectin molecules that prevents them from tangling with each other. Low acid fruits, even if they are high in pectin, need extra acid for this reason.

If you are feeling all scientific about it, you can test pectin levels yourself.

There is no danger in experimenting. At least no danger of illness. You might end up with grainy jam if the pectin is too high or syrup if it is too low but it will all taste great.


Horseradish substitute in creamy chowder

If the wasabi is pure wasabi powder, it's only a pale yellow color, not neon green like wasabi you get at a sushi restaurant. A lot of wasabi actually has food coloring in it. Similarly mustard powder is bright yellow... but in either case if you only use a bit of powder (which can be quite strong) it might not impart a lot of color on the final dish.

If the soup needs to be spicy you could try ginger. I also see here you could try black radish, which does have a very spicy taste but apparently it requires advance preparation.


Smoking chicken breasts with and without skin

It's not a question of fat.

Tougher meat- that is, meat with more connective tissue- needs to be cooked low and slow to melt out that collagen and make the meat fall-apart-delicious.

Meat with little connective tissue does not benefit from low and slow.

Ribs, pork butt, and brisket are cheap (they used to be anyway), tough, pieces of meat. Smoking them at low temperatures for a long time fills them full of flavor and dissolves their collagen, making the delicious BBQ we love. You don't want to smoke these at higher temperatures because the proteins will be fully cooked before the collagen has melted.

Poultry doesn't have as much connective tissue. The only purpose in smoking it is to impart the smoked flavor. The faster it reaches its target temperature the less time it will have to dry out and the more moist it will be.

In either case- overcooking will yield dry meat.

Some tips for moister chicken:

Always cook chicken at higher heat so it cooks faster.
Use a thermometer and take the chicken out when the white meat is around 160F. Overcooked proteins squeeze out moisture and the extra cooking time dries it out further.
If your smoker doesn't get hot enough for fast cooking (mine doesn't) smoke the meat for 20 minutes and finish in the oven or on a grill. It will absorb almost all the smoke it is going to in that time.
Brine the chicken. Wet or Dry brine recipes work. I prefer dry brining. There are many recipes online for how to brine. The added salt super charges the meat with water and locks it up even after cooking. It takes some planning ahead but makes a huge difference in moisture.
Chicken smoked with no skin will dry out on the surface. There is just too much air moving around. On the other hand, the meat itself will absorb the smokey flavor instead of the skin and fat. It's a tradeoff. Even if the surface is dry the interior of the meat can stay moist if it doesn't cook too long.
Increase the surface area of the chicken to decrease the cooking time further. Cutting meat lengthwise to fold it open is called "butterflying". It works best with whole birds but can be done with breasts.

In general, I find that smoking is best done with whole chickens. Breasts just cook too fast. I think you will enjoy you smoker more if you brine and butterfly a whole roasting chicken and save the skinless breasts for faster cooking methods.


I made white bread yesterday, and it smelled similar to sourdough...why would this happen?

It could be an issue with how long you let it rise or maybe how warm you rested it at. I was making a deep dish pizza at home once and the recipe called for resting the dough in the fridge (mixed with the yeast and other ingredients), for 4hrs minimum. Due to my getting home a little after 5pm from work and some of my family leaving for work at 6:30pm, during the time I was attempting to make this, I couldn't use the suggested times for the different steps of the recipe. To shorten that time, I made the dough the day before. I let the dough rest in the fridge from about 9pm until 5:30pm the next day. When I made the pizzas the dough was very good, but it tasted a lot like sourdough, and that was using instant yeast out of a packet. I've since made the recipe with the correct resting times and it's good dough, but there is no sour taste.

So a long resting time for your bread, or possibly having it warmer might induce the yeast to process their 'food' faster. I know it's not true sourdough as the sourness there comes from a combination of yeast and lactobacilli's, but I did get a similar taste from the instant yeast packet and it was because of the duration I let the yeast work. Some of my family actually prefers the sourdough taste of that dough, so I sometimes make it that way. It also saves me from having to do too much work on any given day.

You can test my theory out and see if temp or the leavening time affects the taste. While you didn't originally want that particular flavor, you may come to enjoy it.


Dió lekvár (walnut jam). Usually made with green walnuts (Zöld dió lekvár). https://gasztroangyal.hu/receptek/zold-dio-lekvar/


When baking what works well as a sugar substitute?

It's going to depend greatly on what you're baking.
Sugar serves several different purposes beyond just providing sweetness.  Besides sweetness:

tenderness by interrupting and minimizing gluten formation.  Sugar promotes spread in cookies
Retain moisture and extend keeping quality (in baking sugar is actually considered a "liquid" ingredient due to its hygroscopic qualities - the ability to pull moisture from it's surrounding atmosphere).
Promotes browning and caramelizing
Assists in aeration and leavening (as in creaming butter and sugar to aerate the dough)
stabilizes egg whites
Provides food for yeast growth and fermentation

In some instances you might be able to use a syrup (honey, corn syrup, molasses, etc.) but not in all cases.  For instance the granular nature of sugar is necessary for aeration of cookies and cakes because the jagged edges create air pockets as they pass through the fat.

Syrups primarily serve the purposes of sweetening, browning, and moistening.  Honey could be used in muffins that are being made using the muffin method (aka two-bowl method) because this method would use a liquid fat (melted butter/oil) but not in the creaming method (producing a more cakelike structure from the creaming process).  When using syrups you have to account for the addtional moisture that they provide.
From:  "How Baking Works" (Paula Figoni)
"The National Honey Board recommneds the substitution for using honey in place of granulated sugar.  This accounts for both the amount of water in honey and for its intense sweetness:  use 1 pound honey in place of 1 pound granulated sugar; reduce water (or other liquid) in the formula (recipe) by 2.5-3 ounces."

Overall, when making substitutions of ingredients that are critical to the structural and eating qualities you probably will not be able to replicate the same results with the substitution.  In the end, it will often be a case of "what is the next best thing" and realizing there will be quality differences in the finished product.


Why is soaking water usually discarded when making plant milk?

Generally, we soak grains and pulses then throw away the soaking water. If we didn’t it would likely turn sour in a few days. Also soaking helps remove some of the phytic acid, therefore unlocking more nutrients. I suspect the phytic acid will be in the soaking water which we flush away. Phytic acid prevents absorption of a number of minerals.


Is putting pots on the stove without oil or water damaging the pot?

Assuming your mom was talking about putting them on the stove while the burner was on, yes, she was right.

It is ok to warm them slightly just prior to adding a little oil. Some people say it helps the subsequent fried foods not to stick. Don't know if that is true, but don't leave the room and let the empty pot get too hot, which can happen very quickly.

Overheating can cause thin pots and pans to warp. An enamel coating on a pan can chip off, or even melt onto your heating element. "Teflon" type non-stick coatings can burn off and be damaged releasing toxic gases into the air. Even cast iron can get too hot, and the seasoning can be messed up.


The cocoa butter in your chocolate melts fully at 43 degrees Celsius (110 F). But it stays liquid until at least 30 degrees C (85 F).
The most heat sensitive proteins in an egg white coagulate at around 65 degrees C (145 F), most proteins stay stable until 85 degrees C (185 F).

As you shouldn't overheat your chocolate anyway, you have a certain temperature range where the chocolate will stay liquid, yet the egg unaffected.

Note that the real problem and culinary art therefore is not the coagulating egg, but the effect of warm chocolate on any "foam" you might have produced in an earlier step: Too warm, and the bubbles might pop, too cool and the chocolate will harden as the cool other ingredients take up too much heat before it is fully incorporated.

Rule of thumb:
Melt the chocolate gently and let cool until barely warm to the touch. Stir quickly, yet gently, when incorporating the liquid chocolate into your batter.
(And read the recipe in case you need to deviate from this.)


I do agree with the comments about using the proper temperature and simmering. It can be difficult to achieve that perfect simmer, especially with a lidded pan, but quite worth the effort.

Please see this from  CookingLight  as it gives very good information about boiling and simmering and how to get to where you want to be.

Another thing would be to check on it more frequently (after achieving the simmer). 500 ml of liquid is not a huge amount, especially with a 2 - 3 hour cooking time. (You will surely have some evaporation, even with a lidded pan, and the amount can vary from one time to another.) If you see that the liquid is getting too low you can add more.


If you add spices to boiling pasta, will it absorb spices/flavours?

Poorly. Pasta doesn't absorb all that much flavor from spices in the water, other than maybe salt (and even then you must add excessive amounts of salt to make the resulting pasta evidently salty.) Add spices to whatever sauce you pour on the pasta, otherwise you're wasting like 90% of them.

An alternative would be kneading the spices into the pasta dough. There are several pasta brands with spices/herbs in the dough like that.


Is it safe to store hot tea in PET bottles?

Live and learn, I was writing about PET causing cancer, but that's a hoax, apparently.

Some plastics can stand heat better than others, so try to be on the safe side, and let the liquid cool to 50°C (122°F) before storing it.

No, it won't release any harmful substances.


Why remove the skin and seeds of a tomato?

Texture is the main reason, but if you're going to be blending the sauce, there can be off-flavors from cracking open the seeds.  Even if you don't blend it, they can be these slippery little things that I never much liked growing up.

To reduce the amount of waste, you can :

cook the sauce, then put it through a food mill to strip out the seeds and skins, thus keeping you from wasting the gel around the seeds.
freeze the peeled skins, to save for when you're next going to be making vegetable stock.
collect the seeds and gel, then put it into a muslin bag and hang to let drip to extract 'tomato water'.  (you typically use crushed tomatoes for this ... I don't know for sure if the gel will go through the muslin).  Tomato water is strange as it gives good tomato flavor, without the red color.


Is sugar necessary for the texture of homemade sherbet?

That sounds to me like it'd come out completely rock hard once fully frozen. Immediately after churning while it's still just barely frozen it'll probably be okay, but I'm not sure if it'd make it through six hours in the freezer.

You have no fat to soften it (the thickeners in fat-free half-and-half doesn't really do much), and essentially no sugar (just the bit from the orange juice), so there's nothing to stop it from just freezing.

Homemade ice cream/sherbert/sorbet tends to come out harder than storebought things to begin with, thanks to the lack of softening additives and often people being a bit more conservative with fat and sugar. For example, frozen yogurt with full-fat yogurt and a decent amount of sugar can still end up solid and unscoopable once frozen, and the same can happen with more lightly sweetened sorbet unless you add alcohol. Taking the fat and sugar all the way out without compensating doesn't sound feasible.


Would it be a bad idea to electroplate a knife?

Pictured below is the Ginsu Shoku Series Anodized Cutlery.

But this sort of thing is largely gimmicky, the kind of thing you see on knives at roving Gun & Knife Shows.

If there were legitimate and truly competitive reasons, not cosmetic ones, to employ anodization we can pretty well bet this is something all major cutlery concerns would have already adopted as among viable options.

There is however a new technology known as Low Temperature Plasma Nitriding which appears to have promise. It's covered here and with good pictures here.


The video doesn't really show much of the dough or how it is handled, I only see a prepared square sheet being filled. But if you actually want dough which handles like play-dough, then the property is called not elasticity, but opposite, plasticity - it is a material which can be formed without springing back.

If that is what you want, for a bread dough, you can achieve it by
- reducing the hydration
- adding more butter
- using a flour with little gluten content
- not using any prolonged rises or techniques like stretch and fold, just doing a short rise, without getting it to go too voluminous

But bread dough is not really a good candidate for that, because it is usually elastic by nature. If you have a need for plastic dough, the best option would be to make a pasta dough with eggs and AP flour. It is plastic like no other. Or also salt dough for ornaments, it is not only a better play doh substitute, and keeps its shape after baking.


What are these tiny kidney bean sized things in my rotisserie chicken

Your chicken was a rooster and what you found are his testicles. If you are not queasy, this forum entry gives you a picture and some more anatomical details.

While animal testicles are typically edible and often a speciality/delicacy, many westerners are not necessarily familiar with them, especially in animals as comparatively small as roosters. Asian (e.g. Chinese) cuisine knows various dishes based on chicken testicles, and there‘s also a Hungarian dish that’s basically a stew/goulash.

On the other hand, they have confused unwitting consumers as readily reported by the kind of media that favors sensationalism.

So don’t worry, you can simply eat them, if you want. Or get inspired by Heston Blumenthal’s Regency recipe for his Fairytale Feast.


What is good water-pan placement for offset smoker

According to Meathead Goldwyn, water pans can go over the heat source or under the meat, depending on the style of cooker you are using, and the desired effect.  They can aid in maintaining temperature or adding moisture to the environment.  I would say, in your case, to avoid placing it under the meat, as there will be quite a bit of air circulation in your offset smoker.


Will apricot Jam glaze affect the shelf life of Christmas fruitcake?

No, the glaze will make very little difference. Jam is 60% sugar and sugar is an excellent preservative. To put it another way: if you find jam keeps well in the pot, the same should hold once it's on the cake.


Instant Pot -- how should I resolve conflicting sets of instructions?

If you only have 2 conflicting pieces of information I'd choose the safer route and not put it in the dishwasher. The manual is specific to your model while the website is not. If you trawl through forums you'll probably find that there's experience out there on the subject.


No, you can't bake pizza in the microwave. See Why do my pizzas get such hard crusts? for details. The short answer: it gets as hard as brick.

I won't say that baking a pizza with a stove and a grill is impossible, but it is definitely not something for beginners. So this, too, is out. Really, a pizza needs an oven.

If you insist on pizza, the cheapest way is to buy a toaster oven. They start at 50 €.

If you just want to ease into cooking by preparing pre-made food, look into frozen pre-seasoned vegetable mixes for the pan, or fresh dumplings from the refrigerated goods aisle, or noodles with easy sauces. All of these can be prepared without an oven, and don't need much time or cooking knowledge. They won't let you experience all the benefits of home cooking, but neither will frozen pizza, so this is probably not a problem in your case.


Why are there holes in pasta dough when it is cold

Viscosity of the cold dough is probably too high for good rolling. It's tearing and blobbing rather than feeding smoothly through the rollers.

I'm not finding a ref for rolling, but for extrusion:

  The ideal temperature for pasta extrusion is between 45 and 50°C, as anything above 50°C will
  denature the proteins, impeding gluten production and therefore resulting in a soft sticky product.
  Using a cold water jacket will cool the dough and barrel too much, resulting in undesirable
  dough viscosity.

Nice plot of dough viscosity vs temperatures here (fig. 4.3), but it only goes down to 30°C (86°F) Lower temperatures, including heating within the extrusion die, are likely not usually encountered.

This pasta rolling cook states:

  In making pasta it is important to avoid cold so use room temperature eggs.  Also, do not work on a naturally cold surface such as marble or stainless steel.


Which average weight % of the banana is edible? i.e. Which % of the banana is not peel?

I had an application not long ago for which I needed the answer to the question as written.

America's Test Kitchen (sorry, paywalled) has a recipe for banana bread that I love. I save over-ripe banana chunks in the freezer until I feel like making banana bread. The recipe calls for "6 large very ripe bananas (about 2 1/4 pounds), peeled". My bananas were already peeled and chunked. I wanted to follow the recipe very precisely because the recipe and particular methods were new to me.

So how much peeled banana equals 2.25 pounds of unpeeled banana?

My doctor has been nagging me to eat breakfast, so most days I manage to eat a banana early in my day. For one week I weighed the banana unpeeled and peeled. Then I struck an average.

My average banana weighed 183 grams unpeeled, 116 grams peeled. 185/116=1.58.

So, 2.25 pounds (1021 grams) of unpeeled banana = 1.43 pounds (647 grams) of peeled banana.

My average banana (very average in the store, Dole brand) was 62.4% edible.


What is a good bread recipe for light bread, but able to be shaped?

Do you want to use (more or less) the same bread recipe for flavor reasons? If so, coating the outside with oil or butter can help maintain softness. Also, adding or increasing oil/butter to the recipe itself (in place or in addition to moisture from water/milk) can make it more generally pliable.

Alternatively, perhaps a challah loaf may work better. I make it frequently, although I'm usually just braiding it instead of making a more complex shape like a bunny. It will get a crunchy crust on it when baked, but the inside should be quite soft. (Plus it's an egg bread, which seems nice for Easter.)


How do you clear food that sticks to the cutting knife?

even the greatest knife masters will forget every once in a while to clean with the edge in the opposite direction

No, they won't, not after cutting themselves a couple of times. It's natural to cut yourself while cutting food, occasionally, but I have never cut myself while slipping food from the blade.

Always keep the edge away from you, place the side of your finger against the flat of the blade keeping it absolutely rigid and straight, and run your finger down the blade. It's that simple. Using the side of your finger reduces the chance of you curling it around the cutting edge.


Why Do Bagels Take Longer To Toast Than Regular Bread?

Toasting is a form of browning, and browning requires temperatures in the neighborhood of 300 F (150 C…see Maillard reaction). There are at least two things that impede this progress when toasting a bread product: mass, and water.
The more mass the bread has, the more heat is required to be absorbed to raise the temperature of the bread by some amount. So naturally, a thicker, often denser bagel will require more heat to toast than a thinner, less-dense slice of sandwich bread.
Of course, a significant amount of the mass is water, and water at the surface of the bagel or other bread will prevent the temperature of the bread from reaching the level needed for browning. Heat must be applied long enough to drive off enough water to allow the temperature to rise high enough; there is more water stored in the thicker, denser bagel than in regular bread slices, and it takes time for enough of this water to work its way out of the bread that the surface can toast. †
Of course, a bagel also has a thick, relatively impermeable side which limits how much water can leave that side. So as the bagel heats up, moisture which is being driven off preferentially exits the sliced side. So not only is there more moisture to remove, the moisture isn't as free to move as it would be for sliced sandwich bread.
In other words, bagels need more total heat input to achieve the browning that is "toasting".
A typical toaster does not provide a way to control the level of heat during toasting. The main parameter that can be adjusted to account for toasting is time. I.e. to achieve the same total amount of heat input and subsequent toasting, an increased amount of time is required, because the same level of heat is being applied.
It is likely that a toaster could be designed that uses a variable amount of heat output according to the toasting setting, and which could toast a bagel in the same amount of time as thinner sandwich bread slices. But a higher heat level offers a much faster toasting over all and thus a narrower range of time for the right level of toasting. I.e. it'd be a lot easier to apply too much heat and burn the bread. The heat level for toasters seems to be designed to provide a good, user-friendly speed of browning, so that the casual user can easily achieve the desired level of browning without too much variability and over-toasted bread.

† Note: one might assume that because of the boiling step used to cook bagels, they might absorb additional water during that step and thus have more water to be removed during toasting. A logical assumption, but one which turns out to be incorrect. Little or no water is absorbed during the very brief boiling of the bagel:

Boiling breads like bagels and pretzels effectively sets the crust before it goes in the oven. The water doesn’t actually penetrate very far into the bread because the starch on the exterior quickly gels and forms a barrier.

The starch on the exterior quickly gels and forms a barrier. This keeps the water from penetrating very far into the bread.

no, the type of water used for boiling has no effect on the flavor because the dough doesn’t absorb any liquid as its surface hardens.


When choosing a cheese for soufflés, the standard approach is to choose a (semi-)hard cheese with an assertive flavour - because you typically want the soufflé to taste cheesy. So many recipes suggest Gruyère, add a dash of Parmesan or similar.

Gouda on the other hand is a surprisingly vague term. It can mean everything from a young, four week old cheese to a mature cheese that has ripened for a year or more. Of course that also means a range from "mild" to "lots of character".

If you go by the typical approach of choosing cheeses, a mature gouda would be an excellent choice for a soufflé (a medium age Gouda is similar to a Guyère, but with less tang and more caramel undertones, very old Goudas show salt crystals and a flaky texture not unlike Parmesan), yet there is no reason why a younger Gouda would be "wrong" if you prefer your soufflé less "cheesy" and more "eggy".

So use your favourite recipe (or scour the Internet) and select the right Gouda for you - there is no accounting for taste.


You could, but it will not be "as" good.

Freezing and thawing destroy cell wall structure; making food "mushy" (*).

When freezing, water turn to ice, and when freezing slowly, large ice crystals are formed and will break the cells wall. (and ice is take more volume than liquid water)

To reduce the risk of damaging the food when freezing/thawing, is to freeze as fast as possible (as cold as you can) and thawing as slowly as possible.

(*) http://www.extension.umn.edu/food/food-safety/preserving/freezing/the-science-of-freezing-foods/


Grinding coffee beans in the Olde Time Nut Grinder, now sold by Hampton Farms?

I would not expect it to work well.  It might not even work at all.
Nuts are very oily, relatively difficult to crush, and when crushed do not immediately become powder, but tend to require extended pressure and grinding to reduce them to a paste.  Once pasted, they need to be pushed out of the machine with some force.  Presumably the Hampton Farms grinder does all of these things.
Coffee beans, on the other hand, are moderately oily to dry, are delicate and crushed easily, and can be reduced to a fine powder in seconds.  Once powdered, they fly out of the machine on their own.
You can see some of the difference in the burr mechanisms.  Here's the peanut grinder:

And here's a conical burr grinder:

As you can see, those two grinding burrs are very different in design.


Not sure what you mean by "squeeze the pit out".  After you have cut the little guy in half, the pit is sitting exposed on the cut edge of one of the halves, and you squeeze it into a jar or something?  I guess getting the pit to disengage from the plum flesh is messy & time consuming (?) .

I have done this a more wasteful way in the past by slicing twice on the flat sides of the seed, then using the two outer cut off (seedless) slices, and even cutting off some of the flesh of the center section (containing the seed) if I was feeling frugal, .... otherwise discarding the whole center slice.  Depends on how wonderful your plums are.  Mine were considered "junk fruit" by the tree's owner.

See diagram: you start with "A", make your cuts, and wind up with two "B"s and a "C".

Anyway, it is still pretty labor intensive, but pretty quick once I got the hang of it.


Why does the inside of fried chicken sometimes turn brown?

The darkening is harmless.  It is more likely to occur in younger birds, since their bones are immature, soft, and porous.  It is also exacerbated by deep chilling or freezing, since microscopic ice crystallization will allow various colored substances (e.g., marrow) to coalesce around the bones.  When the meat is cooked, these substances will usually turn brown.

Therefore, interior browning can be avoided by using older chickens and avoiding meat that has ever been frozen.  Given that most commercial chickens in large countries like the USA are slaughtered very young (less than seven weeks old), it may be difficult, but not impossible, to find an older chicken.


There is no tested safe method for home conserving meat with alcohol. This means thata your safety time is as unpreserved meat, which is up to 5 days in the fridge.


How does Korean chili powder differ from "US" chili powder?

Korean chilli is a little different as it has a slight smoky flavour, in addition to being slightly sweet and also quite hot.

The actual name of the chilli use in kimchi and for that matter, most Korean dishes is gochugaru (고추가루). It comes in a variety of preparations, typically, finely ground, flakes and a paste.

You should be able to find this in most good supermarkets or an Asian store. If you can't get this, you can still use a good quality chilli powder or possibly, a paste.


Is there any way to avoid fruit flies with my fruit on the counter rather than the fridge?

You've described exactly me and my apartment.   I like bowls of fruit on the counter, but I don't like the inevitable fruit flies.  But I actually haven't had a fruit fly problem for about two years now.  The solution is to simply lay something over the bowl of fruit.  Make sure it's breathable, or your fruit will ripen really fast.  Cheesecloth, a towel, or piece of netting will all work fine.

This works because the fruit flies can't reach the fruit, so they can't use it to feed and reproduce.  That's same reason putting your fruit in the fridge works.

I have noticed that the fruit still ripen more quickly compared to an uncovered bowl.  This can be a benefit or a drawback, depending on your situation.  Also, a bowl with something over isn't as pretty as an open bowl full of fruit.  But given the choice, I prefer good fruit and no pests.


It is difficult to offer a general answer applicable to all recipes and all cooking methods.

In almost all situation, there is no need to change temperature (I cannot think of any exceptions off the top of my head, but I am sure others will think of a few).

The most obvious effect portion size has on cooking time is the time needed to take the food from starting temperatures (say from freezer or fridge or room temperature) to cooking temperatures. Once the food is reaches cooking temperature and if there is a need to cook it further by holding it at that temperature for a certain amount of time (for example a casserole has holding time requirement, but a piece of steak does not), this time should not change regardless of portion size.

For the same stove or oven and at the same setting, half the amount of food by weight will take half the energy to raise it to cooking temperature, a linear relationship. However, the transfer of heat into the food is strongly influenced by the shape of the food, surface area and thickness. This affects the time it takes to raise the food's temperature. This is where "it depends" matters. If you are comparing a small chicken to a large chicken, then size difference is usually accompanied by change in surface area and thickness. A 1kg chicken will take more than twice the time than a 0.5kg chicken. However, if you are cooking one piece of chicken breast instead of two pieces of the same, the heating time will be halved.

If you are making two trays of pasta bake, then cooking just one of the two trays will take half the heating time and unchanged holding time. However, if you are going from one big tray to one small tray with half the quantity, the change in geometry (thickness and surface area) will mean that heating time change is no longer a straight forward linear decrease.

In practice, doing a heat calculation will only give you a very rough idea so that you know where to aim, but you will need to test it and get an empirical relationship.

Edit: There is one more caveat. Imagine frying a piece of chicken breast in an open pan. You will likely find that adding another piece (or more) does not change cooking time noticeably. They probably all cook to the same doneness in the same duration. That happens because with a single piece, especially in a large pan, there is considerable "wasted heat". Your stove is likely putting out far more heat than there is food too cook most of the time and you end up heating up of kitchen air.


None of the classic food preservation techniques will work for you. They are about having the food stay edible, not stay beautiful.

Most fixation solutions will work, but you probably don't want to keep them around your house. For example, if you filled the bottle with formaldehyde, it will not only be a major problem should it break in an accident, but I'd be also worried about anything which might seep through an imperfect seal - it is highly volatile, and neurotoxic and carcinogenic already in the ppm levels.

The one good way I see to do it is to use man's favorite poison: alcohol. Fill the bottles with ethanol until they are fully submerged. In principle, drinking alcohol at 37.5% will do, but in this case, the stronger, the better. Just use medicinal ethanol, it's also cheaper because you don't pay taxes.


Do you add extra oil when replacing eggs in baked goods?

Eggs are about 10% fat by weight, a large egg is about 50g, so you would lose 5g of fat in the recipe per egg, which is just over a teaspoon of oil. Whether or not you add it depends on what you want out of the recipe. If you are taking eggs out to reduce fat then you don't need to add anything, if you want to keep the richness and consistency then a splash of oil or butter would be a good thing.


Will removing short rib bones after cooking dry the meat?

The bones will not make a difference in the moisture of your meat, but overcooking will dry your meat.  Make sure you cook and reheat correctly, and you can remove the bones with no problems. (Plenty of folks cook boneless short ribs that are moist!)


Home made Rice Milk that's not slimy or chalky?

Since I'm not sure how to re-post as my guest account, I just want to say that I tried a little variation after reading logophobe's answer stating that he thought an added oil would counteract the chalkiness.

I toasted the rice grains (as the linked article stated) before soaking them, and then after blending, I strained the resulting milk once, and then threw the strained liquid back in the blender and added some canola oil, and the result was a MUCH better texture overall.

I didn't have Xanthan or Guar gum on hand to try, so I'm still yet to see how the mixture will hold up in the fridge, and if stirring will be enough to keep it this texture.

It definitely needed some sort of sweetener still though (in my opinion, but that's probably up to preference), but I feel like the oil, and possibly the toasting, really affected the texture in a positive way, to where it's a much more palatable base.


I'm not sure what causes the bowing to be more pronounced from one cooking method versus another, but the solution is to put a thumbprint indentation in the middle, creating a slight "donutted" shape.   This will help to ensure you get the "patty" shape you want.


How do I fix a cast iron pot that was heated empty for hours?

Your pan is NOT ruined.YAY! What has happened is that you have burned off most of the seasoning. Any other kind of pan would be ruined, but your cast iron pan only needs to be stripped and reseasoned. If you have a self-cleaning oven cycle, that is a great way to completely strip the pan. You can also throw it into a hot fire (like a fireplace, wood stove, or campfire if you've got one) and just leave it until the fire is out and you can touch the pan. For any of these methods, the pan should be up-side-down.
Another thing you can use to get to the bare metal is oven cleaner, in a hot oven or not, depending upon the product. Again, the pan should be up-side-down.
Complete the mission with steel wool and dish soap, an SOS pad would be great for this.
Now it is naked, and needs to be seasoned. Unfortunately, it will stick like hell until you've got a good solid season. Season it a few times and cook only greasy food in it for a while. It'll come back eventually.
You may get answers that say you don't need to strip the seasoning you've got left. I would disagree with that, seasoning over badly damaged seasoning never gets as strong and smooth. Start from scratch.
Look here for seasoning advice: What's the best way to season a cast iron skillet?
I have recently become a flaxseed convert, so my preferred method is this one, from Sheryl's Blog, which I first saw thanks to Neil G's answer to the above Seasoned Advice question. The whole article is worth reading, but here are her instructions for seasoning from scratch. I just did this to one the cast iron pans I inherited from my grandmother. The result was fabulous.

The Recipe for Perfect Cast Iron Seasoning
The basic idea is this: Smear a food-grade drying oil onto a cast iron pan, and then bake it above the oil’s smoke point. This will initiate the release of free radicals and polymerization. The more drying the oil, the harder the polymer. So start with the right oil.
Go to your local health food store or organic grocery and buy a bottle of flaxseed oil. It’s sold as an omega-3 supplement and it’s in the refrigeration section because it goes rancid so easily. Check the expiration date to make sure it’s not already rancid. Buy an organic flaxseed oil. You don’t want to burn toxic chemicals into your cookware to leach out forever more. It’s a fairly expensive oil. I paid $17 for a 17 ounce bottle of cold-pressed, unrefined, organic flaxseed oil. As it says on the bottle, shake it before you use it.
Strip your pan down to the iron using the techniques I describe in my popover post. Heat the pan in a 200°F oven to be sure it’s bone dry and to open the pores of the iron a little. Then put it on a paper towel, pour a little flaxseed oil on it (don’t forget to shake the bottle), and rub the oil all over the pan with your hands, making sure to get into every nook and cranny. Your hands and the pan will be nice and oily.
Now rub it all off. Yup – all. All. Rub it off with paper towels or a cotton cloth until it looks like there is nothing left on the surface. There actually is oil left on the surface, it’s just very thin. The pan should look dry, not glistening with oil. Put the pan upside down in a cold oven. Most instructions say to put aluminum foil under it to catch any drips, but if your oil coating is as thin as it should be, there won’t be any drips.
Turn the oven to a baking temperature of 500°F (or as high as your oven goes – mine only goes to 450°F) and let the pan preheat with the oven. When it reaches temperature, set the timer for an hour. After an hour, turn off the oven but do not open the oven door. Let it cool off with the pan inside for two hours, at which point it’s cool enough to handle.
The pan will come out of the oven a little darker, but matte in texture – not the semi-gloss you’re aiming for. It needs more coats. In fact, it needs at least six coats. So again rub on the oil, wipe it off, put it in the cold oven, let it preheat, bake for an hour, and let it cool in the oven for two hours. The picture above was taken after six coats of seasoning. At that point it starts to develop a bit of a sheen and the pan is ready for use.
If you try this, you will be tempted to use a thicker coat of oil to speed up the process. Don’t do it. It just gets you an uneven surface – or worse, baked on drips. Been there, done that. You can’t speed up the process. If you try, you’ll mess up the pan and have to start over.
The reason for the very hot oven is to be sure the temperature is above the oil’s smoke point, and to maximally accelerate the release of free radicals. Unrefined flaxseed oil actually has the lowest smoke point of any oil (see this table). But the higher the temperature the more it will smoke, and that’s good for seasoning (though bad for eating – do not let oils smoke during cooking).
I mentioned earlier there’s a myth floating around that vegetable oils leave a sticky residue. If the pan comes out of the oven sticky, the cause is one of three things:
You put the oil on too thick.
Your oven temperature was too low.
Your baking time was too short.
It’s possible to use a suboptimal oil for seasoning, like Crisco or bacon drippings, and still end up with a usable pan. Many (most) people do this. But the seasoning will be relatively soft, not as nonstick, and will tend to wear off. If you want the hardest, slickest seasoning possible, use the right oil: flaxseed oil.


It sounds like the persimmons (or one of the persimmons) were not quite ripe enough.

  When you eat an unripe astringent persimmon (American or Asian) the
  mouth immediately draws up.  Sometimes you'll get a hint of sweetness
  (if it is near-ripe) but the mouth-feel is immediate.  Tannins in
  persimmons make your tongue, cheeks, and gums feel as though you're
  chewing on a cross between aspirin, alum, and chalk.  Your tongue
  almost feels like a fine sandpaper. Judging the Ripeness of Persimmons

Unfortunately, I think that specific batch of jam can't be salvaged -- I don't know any way to "ripen" a persimmon if it's already been cooked into something. Next time you try this, taste a small bit of each fruit first to see if they're ripe enough.


How much EGCG and caffeine can specific amount of water absorb from tea leaves?

3x tea would not mean 3x extract

But it is going to be close to 3x for small amount

Water is a good solvent for those chemicals but there is a limit

The solubility of caffeine is 2 g/100 mL at room temperature (by weight about 1 : 50).
66 gram / 100 mL at boiling.

A coke is 20 mg (milli 1/1000) 12 oz.
The caffeine we drink is not even close to saturation.

In extraction you equalize the mole fraction with a fudge factor.  I don't know where to find fudge factor for tea.  But it would favor the water.

A dry tea leaf is about 3% caffeine. Getting the caffeine out with boiling water you can pretty easily get up to saturation at room temperature. But you would need quite a bit of tea.  2 g caffiene would be 66 g of tea.  A tea bag is about 2 grams.

In a commercial extraction they would use a solvent like ethanol.


Most people would say it's gone bad, or gone off, yes. Since you didn't ferment it intentionally, there's no telling what it is now, and you should throw it out.
Cheese is a fermented food which develops slowly as it ages. Maturation isn't random or by chance. The environment is carefully controlled to ensure the fermentation process continues smoothly, and that continuation is desired. Since you didn't intentionally begin or control this fermentation process, I don't think anyone would consider it "mature."
As far as other fermented dairy products go, they generally aren't intended to last as long. I suppose you could call an overripe creme fraiche "mature," but probably wouldn't, simply due to the fact that maturity isn't desirable in a creme fraiche or buttermilk. Those products are fermented quickly and then stored in a way that attempts to halt the fermentation process.
So, no, you don't have matured cream because what you have isn't the result of intentional, controlled, and desired fermentation.


What is the name of a drink made with iced tea and orange juice?

Having a citrus juice in iced tea certainly isn't a new concept. However, there is no official name for half orange and half iced tea drinks. So you may call it whatever you wish.


It sounds like you are trying to maximize the amount of pan juices, sometimes referred to be the French word jus.

Any piece of meat is only going to express so much jus; if you have potatoes or other absorbent vegetables in the roasting pan, they are going to absorb it and it won't be available for another purpose such as gravy.

What you still will almost always have is fond, the brown roasty bits at the bottom of the pan.  Many cooks deglaze the fond with a small amount of stock or wine to create the basis for a sauce or gravy, as the fond has a very rich and complex flavor—and its flavor may actually be enhanced by aromatic vegetables in the pan.


I suspect that you'd like a solution do with no expensive or difficult to find equipment, as would we all - so that's what I offer.

What you will need:

A tin - as from soup or sweetcorn or tunafish. The only stipulation is that it should have straight sides, not crinkled.
A little oil/butter.
A saucepan, medium/small.
A jug or beaker of water.
A thin flexible knife to free the egg from the tin.

Firstly prepare the tin. Use a tin opener horizontaly to remove the top lip of the tin that is left after normal use.

Clean and dry the tin, then coat the interior surface with the oil/butter careful to not cut yourself on the sharp metal edge.

Pour the egg white into the tin, place the tin in the centre of the saucepan.

Using the jug, add water to the saucepan till the level is approximatley level with the surface of the eggwhite. Do this gently to avoid disturbing the tin.

Gently heat the saucepan until it simmers very gently, leaving the lid off the pan.

Wait. For every 50 mL of egg white, wait whilst it simmers for 6 minutes.

Turn the heat off.

Allow to cool enough to touch the water surface without burning yourself, don't rush this just let it cool naturaly.

Remove the tin from the water and gently invert on a plate.

Use the tin opener to pierce the base of the tin and gently shake the tin up and down with the plate till the egg releases, if it doesn't, you can turn the whole thing upside down and trace the inner side of the tin using the knife to free the egg, re-invert and gently shake till it releases.

Voila, you should now have an egg white cake.


The heat provided by capsaicin really is a pretty unique one that seems to have a lot to do with how it binds to pain receptors (see Aaronut's answer from a previous thread).  I think this component would be pretty much impossible to replicate with a substitution, unless you want to physically burn yourself on your meal.  You could experiment with alternative sources of strong, pungent flavor like garlic, ginger, black pepper, and horseradish, which are similar but certainly distinct.  Chinese-style tacos, maybe?

That said, Tabasco and other "pepper sauces" like buffalo sauce often feature vinegar as one of their primary ingredients besides chili peppers.  A few dashes cut with a bit of olive oil may help replicate some of that sharpness; think a strong vinaigrette.  It won't be quite the same, but it will help recapture at least one of those elements without causing harm to your unfortunate partner.


I want to know if beet juice without the beets is available for making pickled eggs

The "juice" in a jar of pickled beets is pickle brine and flavors leached from the beet by the vinegar. To replicate in bulk, without wasting a lot of beets, make a batch of pickle brine following any recipe that tickles your fancy (lots of them on the internet!), and then add beet puree or juice to suit. You can make your own puree by roasting, blending and then straining beets, and juice by doing the same to the beets raw - or just send them through a juicer if one is handy.


Browned butter + roasted flour = baking magic?

You can absolutely do this. I do it in brown-butter cornbread, for example. A good trick to boost the flavor even farther is to add non-fat milk powder to the butter as it browns, to supply even more protein for the Maillard reactions.


How do chefs know when to start cooking each dish in a restaurant?

Different restaurants use different methods. In some cases, they may rely on the server to pace your meal. In this case, the server enters the order all at once, but then returns to the POS system to hit a button to "fire" the next course after the appropriate delay, which sends it to the kitchen to be prepared. Presumably, some POS systems (particularly for major chains with extensive processes) would now be smart enough to handle that delay automatically--but I'm not specifically aware.

In other cases, the ticket comes into the kitchen all at once, and the kitchen is responsible for timing courses. The expeditor or "expo" is in charge of getting food out at the right time, and coordinating to make sure food coming from different cooks/stations in the kitchen all gets delivered to the same table, together (if necessary) or in the right order. In this model, Expo receives the ticket, reviews the items and calls out to fire items at the right time. In this case, Expo can introduce the appropriate delay between courses. Expo also doesn't have to do this alone. They generally work the window where food passes from kitchen to dining room staff to be run to the table. This allows Expo to coordinate with a tables server to adjust timing if a table is eating particularly fast/slow.

One note on this detail of your question:

  if they are cooking a dish from scratch its impressive its ready so quickly.

Commercial kitchens that cook from scratch don't do end-to-end cooking at the time you order food. Prep is integral in commercial cooking, and ensures food is cooked quickly. Earlier in the day, things are washed, chopped, sliced, etc. Individual components are created, and sometimes even pre-portioned. Things may even be par-cooked if they tolerate par-cooking and being held in the refrigerator (ex, certain noodles). When you order, it's often more of an assembly, often with just the primary protein being cooked at moment.

Consistent prep also helps make cooking time consistent. This allows for the whole restaurant to know exactly how long items take to get to your table--which gets to your original question of how they manage to pace courses from the kitchen so you get your entree at just the right time after your appetizer.


Does brewing hot chocolate for longer hours make a difference?

Cacao powder is not very soluble in water, so I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that the extra time allows for the cacao to incorporate better into the liquid.

The recipe includes actual chocolate nibs, but after it's melted into the milk / cream there's no extra flavor infusion by keeping it for a longer time.

12 hours sound like a lot: if you keep the mixture cold, it takes longer to dissolve (but not that long); if you keep it warm there's a risk of spoiling the milk. I can't think of a benefit to let the drink sit for such a long time.


How much salt and pink salt do I need for pork sausage?

According to Smoking Meat Forums, you would need 2 ounces of pink salt for 50 lbs of sausage, which is a ratio of 0.0025 pink salt to meat (they provide three significant digits) for short curing time sausages.  These are sausages which will be cooked or smoked.

Therefore, converting to metric, 50 kg, you would require 125 grams or so pink salt.

Note that the regular salt is not really a curing agent at concentrations used in this type of sausage, but for flavor and texture:

  Although salt is not generally used in concentrations sufficient to
  effect preservation it exerts some antimicrobial activity. Some
  bacteria are already inhibited at 2 percent levels of salt. Other
  microorganisms tolerate a much higher concentration of salt.

You would need to provide an original recipe or formula on which you have based your calculations to get any validation of your computation of the regular salt amount.

See also:

How to dry homemade pork sausages with proper humidity and temperature?
Rhulman on meat curing safety issues


Preparing spaghetti without boiling water

You can certainly cook spaghetti in water as low as 180 F.

Soaking it in cooler water will hydrate the starches if you wait long enough, but won't cook the proteins, so may not be optimal.


How do you know if stone-ground flour is truly milled with stones?

The FDA does not currently have a legal definition of stone ground.

Companies like Hodgson's Mill, Bob's Red Mill, and Arrowhead Mills have petitioned the FDA to set a definition in the past under the concept of truth in labeling, to no avail.

Petition example


Where does the Asian dish "sang choi bow" come from?

Probably Hong Kong.

It is written in Chinese as "生菜包", which in Pinyin is "shēngcài bāo", noticeably different to any of its usual spellings in English.
However, in Cantonese it is "sang1 choi3 baau1". Much closer to the English spellings and pronunciation. Cantonese is mainly spoken in Hong Kong, a great culinary exporter and major influence on "Chinese food" in the west.

生菜 means "lettuce" and 包 means "wrap", etc.

It does in fact have a Wikipedia article, but only on the Chinese Wikipedia. The article is very short and Google Translate does not handle it well. I will include the Chinese text here in case any readers who can read Chinese can find something of the dish's origin or history:

  生菜包
  维基百科，自由的百科全书

  生菜包是一种食品，寓意“生财”。

  起源

  生菜包源自广州市芳村的坑口生菜会，该活动举办的时间为从农历廿四至廿九一连六日（旧称前三日后三日），这里会设有戏台和比武台，唱粤曲的，舞狮的和比武的登台。为供村民观赏之余家人朋友共聚用餐，小贩便推出生菜包。

  材料

  生菜菜叶包着特制的饭菜（通常有蚬肉碱菜等馅料）。

  這是與食物相關的小作品。你可以通过编辑或修订扩充其内容。

Of course it's still possible the dish originated outside Hong Kong, the name is very literal and isn't necessarily the original name of the dish. But it is clear it came to the English speaking world by way of Hong Kong.


What is the benefit of using a Mezzaluna Knife over a traditional knife

Advantages

no hand needed to hold the food, therefore safer for children or those lacking knife skills
quicker for those lacking knife skills
no need for gloves when cutting foods that can irritate the skin, like chillies.

Disadvantages

Awkward and dangerous to wash in between the blades for the double-blade version.
Difficult to store safely
A unitasker really only suited for chopping herbs and spices. The most common items chopped in many cuisines, onion and garlic, would require rough chopping first with a traditional knife, making it hardly worth it.
Inhibits the development of valuable knife skills.


Why are there so many different pasta shapes?

One answer to this is that Americans have a reversed understanding of the relationship of pasta to sauce compared to Italians. In Italy, the sauce is called the condimento, meaning literally it is a condiment to the noodles, which are intended to be the main source of enjoyment in the dish. When you begin to understand it that way, it makes sense that you would want to have a wide variety of sizes, shapes and textures. (What Taeraresh said is also true, there are functional differences in how the different shapes hold sauces.)


As you are no doubt aware, there are 5 basic tastes - salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami. Umami is the savoury flavour of mushrooms, cheese, cured meats, and so on. MSG is essentially 'pure' umami. In other words, MSG is to umami what salt is to salty and sugar is to sweet. So if you add it to savoury dishes (throw a parmesan rind in to vegetable soup while it's simmering) it enhances their savouriness.


Assuming you are asking how to debone a raw chicken thigh, the process is not very difficult, and becomes easier with practice.

This video from AllRecipes shows it clearly (I watched, but with sound off, so I don't know about the narration).  Its much easier to understand by watching than by reading.

The best knife to use a thin, slightly flexible knife, often called a boning knife.  While less ideal, a paring knife, utility knife, or even a chef's knife will still do the job.

If you have a leg-thigh quarter, bend the leg at the joint to reveal where the joint is, and slice to through to separate the drumstick from the thigh.
Lay your thigh skin-side down on the board.
Slice along each side of the bone, closely, with your knife, being careful not to cut through the skin.  The flexible tip of the knife will help you hug closely to the bone, minimizing any loss of meat.
Slice under the bone, kind of reaching under it, with the point of your knife to separate the bone from the the thigh.


Heat treatment changes the allotropy of an iron alloy. Steel doesn't equal steel; first, there are chemical differences (different amounts of carbon, nickel, etc. added) and second, there is a difference in the microcrystalline structure of the metal.

The different allotropes (= same material in different structures) of steel have different mechanical properties. They have different levels of brittleness, flexibility, softness, etc. So, if you have two steels made from the same proportion of elements, it is possible that one of them will be harder. If you make a knife out of it, it will keep its edge for a longer time.

Molten metal has no crystalline structure, it is a liquid. The structure forms when you cool it down to a solid state. But depending on the conditions while cooling down, different structures will form. There are a few factors determining which structure you'll get in your finished blade, but the most important one is the rate (and direction) of temperature changes to which the blade is subjected. Specific tempering processes will create different proportions of different allotropes, determining the final mechanical properties of the knife.

I don't know which process Shun is using, but it seems that it has properties which your shop owner doesn't like. This is not necessarily a bad thing: there is no perfect combination of properties in a knife, everything is a trade-off. Knives hard enough to keep an edge longer are very hard to impossible to sharpen at home once they go dull. Knives which achieve perfect sharpness with enough care will be much worse than the average knife if you don't invest enough time in them. And so on. So, you should choose a knife based on your sharpening skills and willingness to invest time in it, not on what professionals consider the best.


Frying chicken wings all the way through

It sounds like your temperature is way too hot. You need a thermometer as there's no reliable way to tell the temperature of your oil without one. A simple method is 190C for 10-15 minutes depending on the size of the wings, that's from refrigerator temperature.

Serious eats has a page on wings here if you want to get more complex.


What's the difference between a cupcake and a muffin?

There is considerable overlap between cupcakes and muffins.

Method

From a technical point of view, muffins are made by the muffin method, making them small quickbreads.  In the muffin method, the wet ingredients are combined in one bowl; and the dry ingredients are combined in another bowl.  Then the two are quickly incorporated together with minimal mixing to avoid gluten development.  This gives muffins a somewhat coarse crumb.

Cupcakes are small cakes, and are made by one of the traditional cake methods such as the creaming method, the reverse creaming method, the genoise method, the chiffon method, and so on.  They tend to have a finer crumb than muffins.

Contrast

While no single criterion distinguishes a muffin from a cupcake if you do not adopt the technical definition above, the following trends exist:

Cupcakes tend to be sweeter than muffins; there are savory muffins such as cornbread
Cupcakes are often iced or frosted, whereas muffins tend to have no topping, or a simple crumb topping
Cupcakes usually have a head or top no larger than the body of the cupcake; muffins are often encouraged to overflow their baking cup, so that their top is larger in diameter, giving them somewhat of a mushroom shape
Cupcakes are almost always, well, cupcake shaped; muffins can be made as just muffin tops
Cupcakes are almost never crispy or crunchy; muffins are often encouraged to brown and develop texture, especially on the tops


Can I use unsweetened baking cocoa raw, or do products with it in it need to be cooked?

If we are talking about something like Hershey's (the brand I know) unsweetened cocoa powder (the dark reddish-brown very fine powder), it can be mixed with cold milk if you make a paste of it first, and then dilute it to the consistency you want. I.e. start with the powder, pour in the milk bit by bit stirring and "mashing" as you go so as not to let any of the powder float on the milk. This cocoa powder also mixes easily with oil & fat, so that property should help with your ice cream ingredients which probably have some butterfat included.

If your recipe includes only ingredients and no instructions, perhaps that paste technique can help.


My cheese congealed and I don’t know why?

I can't comment to ask a question yet, so I'll try to phrase it as an answer. IF you used a vinaigrette, it could be possible that the vinegar broke down the cheese and/or the oil congealed in the fridge, like someone else mentioned.


It doesn't go bad, but it does change the taste.
When water is just sitting there, water evaporates, but most things dissolved in it don't. Then, each time you boil it, the steam causes additional water to escape leaving the same amount of dissolved stuff in there. So, the concentration of dissolved stuff keeps going up.
Dissolved oxygen also decreases when you heat or boil water, changing the taste.
Finally, even if your kettle is stainless steel, it can eventually rust.


What would make a custard turn out looking like scrambled eggs?

I've had this exact same issue when making Creme Brulee. If you heat the mixture too long it will turn to the consistency of scrambled eggs. I have figured out that if I gently jiggle the pan a few minutes before it is supposed to be set and you will see a slight wobble. Repeat this for the next few minutes until it wobbles less, then remove it immediately

This is the method that works best for me. There are so many variations due to the oven, altitude, number of eggs in your mixture, etc. to give you an exact time. It took me at least 15 tries to finally get my creme brulee recipe right but now I know what to look for when its done.


What is the term for serving a soft-cooked fried egg that breaks when the meal is consumed?

There actually doesn't seem to be a special word for this as a technique - as common as it is (to add an egg to the top of a dish and use the runny yolk as sauce), it is usually just the dish name "topped with an egg" or "topped with a fried egg".  Sometimes the egg is fried, occasioanlly poached, sometimes it is cracked on top of the dish and cooked in the residual heat - the goal of having the yolk serve as sauce remains the same, though.

Some dish variations specify the egg on top - in some south American countries, a steak topped with an egg is called a "horse-riding" or riding steak.  I have heard of pancakes topped with a fried egg being called a "texas one-eye", though i can't find a citation just now.  Pasta with a raw egg added, which is supposed to be cooked in the residual heat and make a sauce of the yolk - is pasta "carbonara".

Its a little funny, but as common as it is to find a dish with topped with an egg, so the yolk will double as sauce - it doesn't seem to have a name more specific.  (And it is really common, all sorts of cultures have equivalents).  You can say "topped with an egg", or use ElendilTheTall or ESultanik's suggestions for how to specify the soft-cooked nature of the fried egg, and people will probably understand you.

Edit: with the help of some comments from Andrew Mattson, Relaxed, and Chuu, we now have a potential term: steak "Au Cheval" (French) or beef "a cavalo" (south American) means a steak with an egg on top.  The words look similar-ish enough to seem related in word appearance and meaning, yet from two different countries - which translate the term to horse riding or horseback steak, meaning the egg is on top of the dish.  So with that commonality, we might take the term "Au Cheval" and take it to mean when an egg is laid on top of, or "riding" the dish.  As a term it won't be too well known right now, someone may not be understood if you just ask for a sandwich or veggie hash "au cheval"... but if enough people see this definition, or start using it, it may become the official term for the cooking technique!


Is there a good technique for cooking chestnuts?

If you are going to cook chestnuts, you need to score them first. Most commonly, they're scored in an X pattern -- try to do it on the side away from the flattest side. Make sure you cut all the way through the shell. Then as they cook, the shell will actually peel back slightly as they cook. Here's a link with pictures about baking them. (425 degrees until they're done, 20 to 30 minutes.)

For certain recipes, you can also boil them. According to this website, you can boil them for about 3 minutes and then peel them. You then will need to finish cooking them in your recipe. Or you can boil them in the shell for 15-20 minutes. This will lead to them falling apart -- which may be appropriate for a chestnut puree.

Still another method I found is to cook them in oil, as described here. Cook for 5-10 minutes, stirring constantly.


I am from Burgundy and I have never heard of flambéing the beef bourguignon! But after all why not. It is definitely possible to flambé wine, and it does make the process of "burning" the alcohol faster, and it will give it a stronger taste.
Regarding your last beef bourguignon you made, if it was too "alcoholy", how long did you let it cook? Maybe it was not long enough. I see that the chef recommends 2.5 hours, but I have never known anyone cooking a bourguignon so quickly, even with marinated meat, we generally leave it from 3 to 4 hours (you can actually let it cook for a couple of hours, let it rest, and then finish the cooking process later, or the day after). I also depends of course of the type of wine you used, some are stronger than others. Did you use for example a light Pinot noir, or a stronger syrah or cabernet sauvignon ? You can add a pinch of sugar in your sauce to balance the acidity of your wine sauce if you feel that the alcohol hasn't evaporated correctly.