Your second suggestion is best.  When hunting, we always brought cheesecloth game bags into which to place the quarters, etc.  They worked well at keeping flies off and allowing air circulation.  I prefer the cheesecloth ones as they allow better air circulation than the muslin ones; particularly important for long term hanging and drying.  You can also just wrap the sheep in cheesecloth if you prefer.

Also, keep a close eye on the sheep.  Making pinnekjøtt and skerpikjøt as on the Faroes is partly dependent on the micro-organisms available (or unavailable) due to the salty air as well as continuous air circulation (wind).


Brining shouldn't have any real effect on fat content, just moisture. The issue is, that fat and water can have similar cooling feelings on the tongue, and dried fat may not feel as greasy to the hand.

I have noticed that if you take the bird straight from the brine to the pan, the skin doesn't crisp as much, leaving it feeling mushy and greasy. The best thing you can do here is after you're done brining it, dry it off thoroughly, and have it rest in the refrigerator for 3 or more hours. This will dry out the skin, and make it crispier, and the subcutaneous fat should effectively fry it.

Alternatively, you could have just gotten an unusually fatty bird. It's hard to say from just one sample.


15-20 seconds seems to be all it needs for me, and then scoop them up and shock them in iced water to stop them cooking.


What is the most cost effective way at home to dehydrate nuts?

Most dehydrating is about using as little heat as possible to dry the air out without cooking the food.  On dry, sunny days, you can use the sun on a dark surface as a heat source.

Dark surfaces will absorb heat from the sun, heating the air which will lower the relative humidity and and warm the nuts which will 'mobilize' the water in the nuts so the air can carry it away.

If you have a dark enamel pan, put a single layer of nuts in the pan and leave it in the sun for a few hours.  Keep an eye out for hungry birds!
If you have a black outdoor grill that sits in the sun, place a single layer or nuts on a pan or sheet of foil, and close the lid.  Check every two hours.

Total time to dehydrate will vary on many factors including the season of the year (angle of the sun), outside temperature, relative humidity, type of nut, etc.

Because of the additional exposure to spores in the air, the nuts should be used before they can mold, usually within a day or two.  To discourage mold growth, don't store the dehydrated nuts in the dark.


is Doubanjiang (sezhuan hot bean paste) an acceptable substitute in recipes calling for gochujang (Korean hot sauce)?

Both are mildly spicy, but the similarities end there. Gochujang is tangy and slightly sweet, whereas doubanjiang is more salty, savory and fermented-tasting. Even the textures don't match up: gochujang is smooth, while doubanjiang is chunky and ragged. I wouldn't substitute either one for the other.

Incidentally, if your doubanjiang is just sitting there because you got it for some elaborate Sichuan recipe involving like eight other seasonings... doubanjiang is more flexible than that, and will work well as an addition or even just on its own. Try frying up some ground pork with a bit of doubanjiang and some scallions, served over rice.


What I can use to replace black beer on roast recipe?

Non-alcoholic beer makes sense. If you can't find any you could simmer alcoholic beer for about 3 hours, which should remove the vast majority of the alcohol. You might need to add a little water afterwards if it has reduced too much.


If the soy is "sweetened", I would not suggest using it in a savory sauce. However, if it is unsweetened, it should be ok. I personally like soy, but it all depends on the brand, and whether full fat, sweetened, plain or vanilla as to how I would use it. You might try baking with it, perhaps muffins, cake or biscuits - and substituting the soy for whatever liquid you would otherwise use.


Put in a ziplock bag with a piece of paper towel to absorb moisture, and stick in the fridge. Also applies to lettuce.


Not long at all.  Usually 1 minute is enough.

If it starts to turn brown, it's been in there too long.


What's optimal hardness for a kitchen knife blade?

Unfortunately, even hardness is a trade-off, all other things (like maintenance, appearance, balance, thickness, and so on) being equal:

Harder

Pro - Holds edge longer
Con - More difficult to hone on a steel
Con - More brittle, so more likely to chip

Softer

Con - Doesn't hold edge as long
Pro - Easier to hone on a steel to an extremely sharp edge
Pro - Less likely to chip
Con - More likely to get little dings and dents

I think the manufacturer's indicate the type of alloy they use to help indicate the quality of their product, as opposed to more generic knives.   Things aren't always equal, though--in choosing a knife, I would not consider this fact one of the more important ones compared to how it feels in your hand, the thickness of the blade, how much maintenance it requires (for example, so-called carbon steel knives need more loving care).


You could keep it frozen for longer than a week, but by the time you reheated it, it would be like rubber.
I wouldn't attempt more than a couple or three days in the fridge.

The only way I can think to keep anything omelette-like would be like a Spanish tortilla - maybe it's the potato & onion that changes the texture, but that is fine after being cooled then re-heated.


Canned foods are by their very nature cooked once they're in the can.  That's how they keep so well.  It is possible to grill canned meat if you dry it first, and it may benefit from a little browning for best flavour (assuming this wasn't done before canning).


Here in the Philippines, there are two different variations of BBQ Pork, one that is intentionally served as an appetizer (part of the cold cuts menu), and the other which is different and is served hot on top of rice as rice toppings. So to answer your question, I think you can request for it to be served the way you want but the intended flavor might not be the same.


For a brine, no it doesn't really matter, except that granulated sugar will dissolve more nicely than raw sugar.  The sugar is for flavor more than anything else, though it does help the brine some. It also promotes browning of the meat.  If you change one kind of sugar for another, I'd use a 1:1 swap by weight rather than volume so you don't have to worry about crystal sizes.

Though the sugar does help the brining action some, the salt is the important component.

From Cook's Illustrated:

  How does brining work? Brining promotes a change in the structure of
  the proteins in the muscle. The salt causes protein strands to become
  denatured, or unwound. This is the same process that occurs when
  proteins are exposed to heat, acid, or alcohol. When protein strands
  unwind, they get tangled up with one another, forming a matrix that
  traps water. Salt is commonly used to give processed meats a better
  texture. For example, hot dogs made without salt would be limp.

  In most cases, we add sugar to the brine. Sugar has little if any
  effect on the texture of the meat, but it does add flavor and promotes
  better browning of the skin.


Must a lid for a pot used for steaming be vented?

If a lid doesn't have a vent and the pot does not have any sort of locking mechanism like a pressure cooker, then the pressure of the steam inside will lift the lid off the pot and steam will escape. That was the "dancing" of the lid that you experienced.  Venting holes in a lid just let some steam escape so the lid doesn't bang around, having a vent hole or not wouldn't make your idli's sticky.


Is the grey stuff the thing we make fond out of

Fond isn't just browned protein scum. There really are small bits of meat/fat that get stuck on the pan, and you should be able to see them before they're thoroughly browned/burned if you pay close attention.

That kind of sticking isn't the same as when meat sticks really obviously and badly. When that happens, you'll naturally notice when you try to move the meat, and be aware of what's sticking to the pan. But even without that kind of awful sticking, you can have tiny little pieces that stick, then tear away from the bulk of the meat when you turn it. You won't notice nearly as easily, because most of the meat isn't stuck.

The exact details depend on the type and cut of meat, I suppose, but in general it's quite easy for this to happen.

As for the additional questions... proportions probably vary a lot, but I'm guessing in terms of protein and fat (i.e. without the water that you're just going to cook off) there may actually be a lot more in the stuck bits than in the juices and protein scum. I know that the really good fonds come from pans that have a lot of obvious stuck bits, not just an even coating of cooked-down liquid across the pan. I'm sure you could make something without any stuck bits, but you probably won't be able to make nearly as much as you'd get from the normal process.


Rapeseed oil (aka canola for those across the pond) has a high burning point, but it can still start on fire using a blowtorch. If you are using just a bit of oil in a non-stick pan then there's not much fuel to burn, however if it flames it will probably go quick and the flames will go pretty high. It's unlikely to start your kitchen on fire, but you could get a nasty burn. Also, if you are using non-stick pans and you miss with the torch you could damage the coating.

If you are using lots of oil then the risks of starting a serious fire are higher, if it flames you could get burning oil spattering all over the place. Probably not worth the risks.


Can I pause halfway through coking boneless shoulder?

Not exactly.

In your situation, as you're just trying to slow things down and not halt it entirely, you can turn the heat down as low as it'll go on your oven, and then when you get back, turn it back to the desired temperature.

It'll throw off the cooking time enough that you'll want to use a thermometer to check for done-ness.  (and it might finish in the time that the oven was set to low).


Based on your description of being more solid, I think you might actually want palm shortening.  Shortening is 100% fat and doesn't contain any water, making it more solid at room temperature.
Palm shortening does look a little closer to butter

A quick google search shows that Amazon does sell palm shortening.


How to make cake like almond squares into fudgy like Squares?

A hint is that a lot of brownie recipes don't include any leavening agent at all, so I recommend you reduce the baking powder amount, to about 1/2 tsp.
Also, it may help to replace part of the whole eggs with egg-yolks, as the richness in the yolks make for a fudgier treat.


When should or shouldn't you use pasta water?

The simplest answer is, if you need to dilute the pasta sauce, it’s better to use the cooking water.


The container of "my" soy-milk specifically says not to freeze it, though I don't know exactly why. I use a brand of "shelf-stable" soy-milk with no other additives (i.e., only ingredients are water and beans), so that's where the following comments are coming from.

I go through about a quart a week, so I buy quart-size containers and go through it before it goes bad. This is probably obvious, but probably your best bet.

As for freezing, I tried to make soy-milk-based frozen popsicles a couple of times, and the results were undesirably grainy; I think the soy milk didn't freeze evenly (there were other ingredients, but it "felt" like particulates from the milk). Even after thawing, the texture and consistency wasn't quite right. YMMV; freezing behavior likely depends on the brand -- for instance, how the milk is made, how it's processed, and how any additives (emulsifiers, thickeners, or stabilisers, such as carrageenan or xanthan gum) happen to respond to freezing/thawing.

For practical concerns:

expansion when freezing -- make sure your containers won't explode!
separation -- shake well before and after freezing!  Some soy-milks have additives (like above), so this might be less of a concern for those.
texture -- I found that after a freeze-thaw cycle "my" soy-milk changed in consistency. It was "off" in some way that I can't really qualify. It may be less of an issue when the milk is used "in" something else.

Some additional thoughts can be found at can you freeze this, but sounds to me not much more than speculation.

Have you tried it?  I'd be interested to hear what your results from "your" milk are like.


Further editing about other causes of oil foaming

It never occurred to me to add reasons other than lecithin leaching into oil as a cause of foaming. I hope most people don't re-use their oil for frying more than a few times since it's harmful to a person's health which I'll explain a little. Since this site isn't about health but cooking, it'll be brief.

Frying, in itself, chemically changes oil. Water, plus other components in the food (what they are isn't listed), can cause 'soaps' to form, which causes foaming.

A second effect is oxidation leading to saponification. From Surfactant Science and Technology, page 261

  ...polyunsaturated acids such as linoleic and linolenic acids are particularly susceptible to oxidation, introducing peroxide and hydroxyl groups that enhance the amphiphilic character of the materials with the observed results.

(Amphiphilic means a molecule having one end that can attach to water and the other end to fats like soap does.)

Another contributing factor is oil polymerization. When fats are subjected to frying temperatures, they'll become polymerized. (Good for seasoning cast irons pans but but for our health.) Fats that at present high in polyunsaturated fatty acids are more prone to this. Polymerized fats are thicker (more viscous) and will tend to form more stable foams during frying. The more the same fat's been used for frying, the more polymerized it will be and therefore foam more.

I remember reading why food particles can also increase foaming but can't find it now. (Doesn't help I've had a headache for 2 days.)

While the saponification of frying oil (formation of 'soaps' though it's not the same type as soaps used in cleaning) might seem unpalatable, what's important is that using old oil that's been subjected to frying temperatures repeatedly causes free radicals to form. Most people understand their harmful effects. I'd suggest if your oil starts foaming and you didn't add lecithin to your oil, by intention or through leaching from egg-containing batter, discard it or recycle it at an appropriate depot.

Personal experience

I didn't think to include this but it may be of some value. I use liquid sunflower lecithin in baking and mix a small amount into regular oil specifically for greasing baking pans to allow baked goods to lift easily without sticking. I've occasionally added a little of this oil to a frying pan with regular oil for frying when I want a crispy exterior but absolutely no sticking of food to pan. At such times, the oil will foam if I add a bit too much. It's how I first learned of this. The more lecithin there was, the more the oil foamed. It's easily tested in your own kitchen.

Edited to include links

I actually thought  it was fairly well known that foaming when frying was caused by lecithin in the oil but it seems it isn't. Here are some links about this.

  ...frying a comestible in a frying medium which comprises an oil or fat and an amount of an emulsifier effective to foam the fat or oil during frying. The amount of fat or oil and emulsifier need be present in an amount effective to foam the fat or oil at a level sufficient to cook the comestible in the foaming frying medium. The emulsifier may be incorporated into the frying medium as part of a dry coating mix which is coated onto the comestible prior to frying.

  Appropriate emulsifiers include citric acid esters of mono and diglycerides, phosphated mono and diglycerides, sodium stearyl fumarate and sodium sulfo-acetate derivatives of mono and diglycerides. However, the preferred emulsifier is lecithin (a phospholipid). Lecithin is preferred due to its ability to sustain a desired level of foam for relatively long periods of time while preventing sticking and burning, as well as foaming without substantial splattering.

From Foam frying US 4188410 A

  The leaching of lecithin from egg yolk batters and/or doughnut mixes will cause foaming. Moreover phospholipids (lecithins) may cause darkening of the oil at higher frying temperature.

From the book Frying of Food: Oxidation, Nutrient and Non-Nutrient Antioxidants page 255

I'm also including the link that user110084 listed as it was one of the links I'd previously seen.

  During egg-frying, phospholipids of the egg migrated to the frying oil. As the results an increase of foaming tendency of the oils were observed. The higher the migration of phospholipids was, the higher the foaming tendency of the oil was. Added soya lecithin or egg yolk lecithin promoted the foaming tendency of oil during heating, ...

From Science of Cookery: Foaming Tendency of Frying Oil by Egg-frying

The foaming action is caused by two reactions working together - lecithin from the batter (containing a whole egg) migrating into the oil during frying and the vigorous bubbling of the oil as moisture present in the food is vaporized.

If you fry a piece of potato in oil, the oil also bubbles vigorously but the bubbles break when they reach the surface. Lecithin, found only in the yolk, not the white, serves to stabilize the bubbles of water vapour for a short while although they will break down after you've finished frying.

Vegetable oils all contain a certain amount of lecithin naturally. The amounts vary and I don't know how much. Lecithin helps prevent splattering when frying but very little is needed. I don't do deep-frying but I'd imagine if one were to fry something that contained water in pure mineral oil (not that it would be edible), it would splatter a lot.

Next time, if you were to use egg white only, you wouldn't find it foaming. If you save and strain your oil for frying again, it would still have enough the lecithin from the batter to foam again.


What is the difference between more expensive cocoa powder and regular one?

Just as with other agricultural products, there are different grades and qualities of cocoa beans, and the resulting product is also affected by handling. Valrhona does use very high quality sources and has high standards for processing, but it isn't the only high quality chocolate producer out there, so you may want to give a few other brands a try and compare. There are also different methods of processing the cocoa powder that affect how it works as a drinking chocolate or in different recipes.

On the topic of taste, Serious Eats did a taste test of bar chocolates and found Trader Joe's compared favorably with Valrhona (although they gave the prize to Valrhona). But the comments about the flavors of others in their top 10 may also give you some ideas as to other chocolates to try. They also did a taste-test for drinking chocolates. They were specifically looking at things marketed as drinking chocolate and Valrhona seems not to have been compared here, but again, the notes about the different chocolates might be of interest.

King Arthur Flour also has several articles about cocoa powders and what type works well in what sort of recipe. Of course, they want you to buy the ones they sell, but it's still interesting reading. :-)

This one compares 5 different dutched cocoa types and ghirardelli natural cocoa and how each one affects a specific brownie recipe.


How to use and is there a good thermometer for very small small fish?

Whitebaits are thin. If you are putting them into hot water or hot oil, it should take under a minute for the whole fish to reach the temperature of the surrounding liquid, assuming they are no thicker than 5mm. Heat transfer at this scale is rapid. If you have frozen whitebaits of course, that would take much more time. My suggestion is to cook them once thawed.

It is not practical to probe the inside temperature of such small fish. Your thermometer, unless faulty, should be well capable of measuring the temperature of your cooking water. You would have to design an elaborate experiment to get at the core temperature of the cooked fish. Unless you are after the data rather than wanting the fish cooked, don't bother.


What are different methods of preserving chillies?

Freezing

You can freeze hot peppers.  Scotch Bonnet and other thin-walled varieties freeze particularly well, although thick-walled ones can be frozen as well.  I think the recommended storage time is 6 months, but I know I've had ones that were fine after a year or so.

So long as you're going to be using them in slow cooked applications, you can just drop them in frozen.  For other applications, they might be a little bit mushy.

If you want to cut them up, it's easiest to use a really sharp knife or scissors, and cut them up while they're still frozen.

Pickling

Pickling works better for thick-walled peppers, like the jalapeños.  It will also affect the temperature, but as a function of time (the longer, the more mushy they get ... slower for the thicker walled varieties)

The vinegar gives a nice brightness to the peppers which may not be desired in all recipes.

You'll want to cut up the peppers before pickling, to ensure that the liquid gets to the flesh from both sides, but you can leave it in slabs to give more options for later.

Drying

I've had mixed luck with drying peppers, but it might be an issue with the local climate.  It generally works better with thin-walled peppers.

Once you think they're dried, you'll want to put them in a tightly sealed glass jar and check for signs of condensation on the inside after a day ... if there's any, they're not dry enough to put away for long-term storage.

To use, you'll either have to pulverize them (to make your own version of 'crushed red pepper), or soak them to soften them up enough to use.  You can cut up dried peppers into stripes fairly easily with scissors before soaking, but dicing is a bit of a pain.


What type of salt for sourdough bread baking?

This may come across as a little cynical ;)
Don't believe the hype.
Salt is salt.
The difference between Himalayan, iodised & kosher is so small you'll never taste it. They're all 98%+ sodium chloride. To a 1Kg loaf you're going to add something like 10g salt.
As it will completely dissolve before you bake it, not even the granule size is important.


Is there a way to make compressed watermelon without a vacuum machine?

Haven't tried it but here:
http://newmountaincookery.typepad.com/a_new_mountain_cookery/2008/06/compressed-wate.html

The link suggests the following technique:

Vacuum seal pieces of watermelon (if
you don't have one, just put it in a
ziploc bag and take out as much as
the air as possible)
Freeze it overnight
Take it out and thaw


How to marinate tofu for my mint & lemon juice couscous salad?

As someone who makes their own tofu, I would season it with citrus juice or zest during the coagulation process. Since you are using store bought I would soak it in lemon juice and toasted sesame oil 8 hours before lightly frying it. You could also use a sesame oil and ponzu marinade.


Au poivre without green pepper, is it good?

Technically, green peppercorns are from the same plant as black or white peppercorns. Green peppercorns are unripe black peppercorns, and white peppercorns are black peppercorns with the outer coat removed.

  Green peppercorns are true peppercorns of the Piper nigrium flowering
  vine plant.... Green peppercorns are really unripe black
  peppercorns. These are often preserved in brine or vinegar and served
  in pickled form. In dried form, they don't last very long and have to
  be used quickly. They're commonly found in Thai and other Southeast
  Asian recipes and have a fresher flavor than their black counterparts. (via Kitchn.com)

Most steak au poivre that I have had (never made it myself) had visibly black peppercorns, coarsely cracked and liberally coating the outside. I would suggest using that while you're perfecting cooking technique, and then try using pink (or if you can ever find them, perhaps in an Asian market, green) to see whether and how much it impacts the flavor of the dish.

One potential substitute is capers, which are also preserved in brine (and if I didn't know better, I'd think the dish in your Question's picture had capers in the sauce), but the flavor is likely to be fairly different.


How to spread peanut butter that is required to stay refrigerated?

The easiest solution that comes to mind would be to figure out how much you need for a sandwich, remove that from the jar, set it on the counter to come to room temp (or put it in the microwave for 10-15 seconds) and then spread it when it's warmed up.

"Refrigerate after opening" doesn't mean that it must be in the fridge every second, though... so even if you left the entire jar on the counter for 30 minutes to warm up, it shouldn't pose much of a problem.


Can chicken not completely cooked then cooled be fully cooked later?

Please don't bother.

Meat spending any significant amount of time in the danger zone of 40 F - 140 F (4.4 C - 60 C) that has not been fully cooked should never be re-chilled to be served later. Given that Salmonella can be found throughout poultry, not just on the surface, and that it's almost guaranteed that your poultry had some level of a pathogen present, you shouldn't risk it.

Your not so thorough cooking, likely to an internal temperature of 120 F - 130 F, has basically heat-shocked the bacteria present imbuing them with a much higher than usual heat resistance. On top of that it likely took at least a few hours to get the meat back below 40 F (at which they can still grow, albeit slowly), so depending on the initial amount of infection and the time spent in the danger zone you likely have a bacteria population minimally in the hundreds of millions, possibly in the billions.

In this answer of mine I give a lot of detail regarding the relation between temperature and duration and it's effect on Salmonella. The important take-away is that with any reasonable temperature death is not instant, it's merely a percentage of the population that is killed at any given temperature and duration. As few as 100,000 Salmonella cells can get you sick, and it takes much fewer for E. Coli. So even if you're killing five-9's worth of bacteria, is it really worth it?

I'm all for eating rare meat (not poultry), but only if I'm confident in the quality and handling of said meat before it reaches my plate. Think of it this way, if the meat were exposed to these conditions before it reached your plate it would be considered gross negligence, and would likely result in a recall.

The guidelines that many agencies publish to safely cook meat all assume typical levels of contamination, given proper handling (though they do err greatly on the side of safety). They simply aren't accurate when you are starting with meat that has a population large enough to sicken or kill a small village.

I'm not even going to begin to address the toxic waste products produced by some pathogens, which are not destroyed by heat.

Throw it out and prevent this in the future by being sure to cook it all the way through. It sounds like you likely just grabbed the chicken out of the refrigerator and threw it directly on the heat, this can lead to the exterior cooking too quickly before the interior has time to cook. Get in the habit of setting your meats out for 30m to an hour so that it reaches room temperature throughout, but cook it immediately, do not re-chill it.


Stewing meat with vinegar or adding it after

Probably the turkey legs are frozen right now.  Why don't you experiment on some turkey legs from the store?

Probably acid would be good to help break down tough cuts.  I have not heard of stewing in vinegar but definitely stewing in wine.  I stew in V8 juice pretty often.  If vinegar is what you dig, try stewing some regular turkey legs, with an onion, cinnamon stick + star anise and some navy beans to soak up flavor.  I would pick apple cider vinegar for turkey if you had to use vinegar.  If I were doing it I would use apple cider +/- cheap white wine and save vinegar for a condiment.  Or I have heard of these things "recipes" you might find.

If you like what you make with the farm turkey, then you can try it with your wild turkey. If you screw up farm turkey it will still be edible and you can tweak it for round 2, and round 3, until you get it right.


Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc Cookbook (one of the best cookbooks I've seen) recommends the following:

Place the chicken with the legs towards you.  Tuck the wing tips under the bird.  Cut a piece of chicken twine about 3 feet long and center it under the neck of the breast.  Pull the twine up over the breast towards you.
Knot the twine, pulling it tight to plump the breast.
Bring the ends of the twine around the ends of the drumsticks and straight up.
Tie as before to pull the ends of the drumsticks together and form a compatct bird.  Then tie again to secure the knot.


Those holes are most likely caused by some kind of larva(pdf), such as mushroom maggots.

While disgusting, such larva are harmless to humans, and the holes they leave behind are equally harmless. Since you just seem to have the holes, I wouldn't worry about it.


What effect does rinsing have on blueberries?

The antioxidants in blueberries lie in the berries themselves, not in the pesticides residing on their skin.

Washing them before freezing means that water freezes on the outside. The water crystals puncture the skins of the berries, changing the texture.


Is there any loss of nutrition when toasted?

Toasting only effects the thin outside layer, and most nutrients cannot be modified by the low heat used in typical domestic cooking, so the amount much "lost" (modified) should be very small

As with many foods, cooking actually increases the availability of some nutrients to the human body's digestive system, and improves the flavour so you will eat the food. This is probably more important then the small loss, if any, from toasting

One of the worst cooking nutrition losses is water soluble vitamins when cooking them in hot water, and the water is then not returned into the finished dish/meal. For general vegetables you would expect a 25% loss of vitamin C with 5 minutes in hot water. Not great, but not a disaster


What is this seafood that I bought in a Chinese market?

That's abalone (鮑魚 bàoyú), a popular and expensive delicacy in Chinese cuisine.


Rice has water inside after being cooked

Do you mean an actual pool of water forms or the rice just does not get sticky like your other rice?

Have you tried different amounts of water to cook it, either more or less?

All rice is different, depending on the variety and where it's grown. You sometimes have to treat a new rice differently than the rice you're used to.


There are several options:

wrap jerky in paper napkins/towels before putting in the baggie
put jerky in a paper bag and then in a plastic one
put some uncooked rice, as Optionparty has mentioned

The method you choose also depends on how long it takes the mail to be delivered. Rice is the most long-lasting way, but it will also add the most weight to the package. Paper bags and towels are equally effective, but they won't do for longer than a few days.

Whichever you do, make sure the baggie is well closed to prevent any moisture from outside getting in.


I concur with Elendi's answer, especially about the dumplings in stew (but I love dumplings).

As far as stretching minced (ground) meat, I recommend you try TVP. You might be amazed how innocuous it is, and how far you can stretch meat. For an organic product that does not contain hexane (the potential carcinogen noted in the Wiki article) try TSP. It's a bit more expensive, but once hydrated, it's a whole lot less expensive than meat.


I've been using Bread Bags (variation on Green Bags, not sure which came first) with some reasonable success.  I'm sure there are other brands and sites to buy them from.  I normally just grab them at the grocery store/BB&B.  I only remember the details from the green bags, but they have lining that absorbs chemicals that are released by vegetables to slow down decay. I assume the bread bags use something similar, helping to control humidity as well.

We also slice then freeze bread, getting out slices as needed, throwing them in toaster to reheat.


Toaster Oven pan Without The Toaster Oven

I regularly see them in the catalogs that come to the house all the time. If you are looking for a pan in which a rack sets into, try Walter Drake at this link:

http://www.wdrake.com/WalterDrake/Shopping/ProductDetail.aspx?CID=Kitchen&SCID=Food+Preparation&ProductID=0000136379&SourceCode=20509000001&mr:trackingCode=6726E407-C781-DE11-B7F3-0019B9C043EB&mr:referralID=NA

They also have a few other toaster oven pans that may interest you.


Yes, it is too much. Chocolate has very tight working intervals. Dark chocolate must be used at 32°C. Below 30°C, it is too thick for use, and at 35°C, the cocoa butter separates from the chocolate. An error interval of 4°C when your complete workable interval is 5°C wide is simply unacceptable. You want a thermometer with a much higher precision, actually one which shows you tenths of degrees centigrade.

You also want a thermometer which reacts quickly enough. If you are working with small quantities, a ten seconds delay in measuring can give you errors of over half a degree centigrade, which is also a lot, given your tight working interval. Try finding a thermometer with a 4 sec response time or less.

Also, you don't want a laser thermometer at all! The difference in temperature between the surface of the chocolate and the mass of it near the bottom can be substantial, I once measured 4°C difference in something in a bowl with about a litter of stuff (it can't have been chocolate, probably it was custard, I forgot exactly). You need a candy thermometer for chocolate. Buy a laser thermometer separately for measuring the surfaces of pans, if you need it.

As a last note a 2°C interval is not 36°F, it is just below 4°F. The formula is 32 + 5/9, so your converter probably meant that when there are 2°C outside, a Fahrenheit thermometer shows 36°F. This is obviously incorrect for calculating intervals.


The technique is very basic:  stir together the all of the ingredients in a buttered baking dish, and bake in a moderate oven for about an hour, with one or two stirs near the end.  The water ratio is slightly reduced from the stove top method, as there is less evaporation.

See, for example, this version from Shockingly Delicious adapting the recipe from the back of the Golden Pheasant polenta bag.


No, you should not need to boil your canned food. Most canned foods have already been heated to boiling — or higher — temperatures to kill all microbes as part of the canning process. Seafood is heated to temperatures even higher than boiling and canned under pressure.

Canned food is, by definition, sterilized and hermetically sealed so unless you believe the seal on the can is compromised, canned food is safe to eat as-is.

If you don't trust that it was properly canned, or you think the can's seal is broken, then simply don't eat it, boiled or otherwise.

It's interesting to note that canned food over 100 years old has been opened and — despite losing its flavor and nutritional value — deemed safe to eat.


Can I keep canned peaches in the fridge if water got in during processing?

Yes, basically anything cooked will last at least a few days in the fridge.

If you want it to safely keep it longer than that, you can freeze it. It's probably best not to try to reprocess the jars though, since you don't know exactly how much water got in (and how much acid and sugar got out), so if you're unlucky it could upset the recipe enough to make them unsafe.


How can I measure / weigh really small quantities?

Simplest solution: Buy a more sensitive scale. There's plenty around that can measure grams.

If that's not an option, you can sort of just about get it quite, but not completely wrong by using measuring spoons:

A full teaspoon with something in it is usually around 5 grams.
A quarter teaspoon would be 1.25 grams, if you happen to have a 1/8th measuring spoon, it would be around 0,6 grams.

I'm not very proficient in baking (or not at all, really), but what I notice (or think I noticed) is that correct measurements in baking are more important than they are in cooking. So the best advice would still be (since you're baking a focaccia) to buy a more sensitive scale.


What is the absolute maximum salt-to-water ratio of a brine for Lacto-Fermentation

Fermented Fruits and Vegetables: A Global Perspective appears to be a good document. This chapter contains some information that will be helpful for you.  In section 5.6.3, it states:

At the highest concentrations of salt (about 60o salometer) the lactic fermentation ceases to function and if any acid is detected during brine storage it is acetic acid, presumably produced by acid-forming yeasts which are still active at this concentration of salt (Vaughn, 1985).

So, 60 degree salinity halts lactic fermentation. That's about 16% salt.


How can I make my lemonade more tart/tangy?

I didn't post a full answer before, because I didn't have the time to expand on one. Aaronut spared me time by writing 2/3 of what I would have (citric acid, citrate) and presenting it very well. I won't repeat that part. But there is another point which I find important:

When you say "tangy", do you really mean "sour"? Because for me, "tangy" means a combination of "sour" + "astringent", with sometimes a hint of "bitter" thrown in.

This means that even if you drink pure lemon juice, your drink will still not appear tangy enough to you. You need to add astringency.

The way commercial drinks add it is by carbonation. There are systems you can use to carbonate your own drinks at home, but you'll have to make the investment first.

You could try making your lemonade with store-bought carbonated water, but given the price difference between carbonated water and store-bought lemonade on the one hand and tap water and carbonated water on the other hand, it will probably not let you save much money. It will, however, help you drink better quality lemonade (as in, made from real fresh fruit instead of synthetic flavors).

Another way you can achieve it is fermentation. Don't let it go on too long, you don't want an alcoholic drink. The trouble is, with wild cultures you never know when a batch will turn out good and when it will have off-flavors.

You can also add ingredients which are by themselves astringent. Chokeberries resp. their juice would be a perfect choice for a lemonade, if you don't mind the red color. Quinces shouldn't add much color. There are no other easy astringent ingredients I can think of right now, except for a tea of oak bark, but the taste will need lots of getting used to if used in a lemonade.

If you find out that it's the astringency you've been missing, you probably need no additional citric acid.


Woodworker and cook here. Here's something that might work (without having seen the actual problem). You'll need some 220, 320 & 400 sandpaper,  alcohol and shellac (which is food safe).  Create a small amount of thinned shellac by mixing it with the alcohol. Next use the alcohol to raise the grain in the affected area. It'll create little nibs that'll stick above the surface of the rolling pin. Use a thin coat of the shellac to 'freeze' the nibs and sand lightly to remove them and the shellac. Start with the 220, lightly sanding and work up to the 400 after the shellac has dried (it's  fast). You may have to repeat this a couple of times. Keep going until you can't feel the problem area any longer.

It might be easier to just buy a new one,  but things are always better when you've got some sweat equity in them. Plus now you've got a story.


temperature and time to cook a 9" round frozen Chicken Pot pie

375 degrees F for 1.5 Hours should be good.

Get foil ready for the top if it starts to brown too much.

Bake until internal Temp is 165 degrees F. I make pot pies and freeze them and this is the temp I use and it comes out perfect.

Good Luck


why does soy milk curdle when salt is added

As noted in "History of Tofu and Tofu Products", alkaline earth metals (such as calcium and magnesium) in solution cause the proteins in soy milk to curdle. As I discovered by searching for "Magnesium in table salt" and "Calcium in table salt", a cup of salt contains about 3 mg of magnesium and 70 mg of calclum. While those concentrations aren't high enough to turn soy milk into full-on tofu, they should be enough to cause some curdling.

All of this hinges, however, on the soy milk being heated. There are a number of soy milk products available in the US (e.g. Silk) that contain added calcium for health purposes--primarily in order to compete with the calcium content of dairy milk--that, themselves, do not curdle because of the low temperatures of storage associated with consumer soy milk.

While some soy starch is contained in the curds of soy milk, the curdling reaction for any solution primarily involves the kinking of the proteins in that solution, trapping within them fats and starches, in order to form a stable matrix of such.


Is it scientifically verified that bananas will ripen faster when kept in a bowl with other fruit?

I think you've got this mostly backwards. The reason not to store bananas with other fruit is that the ripening bananas emit a lot of ethylene gas and will cause the other fruit to spoil more quickly. You can also use this to your advantage: got a pear that you want to ripen quicker? Put it in a paper bag with ripe bananas overnight.

Other fruit emits ethylene as well, but generally in large quantities only when they are already quite ripe.

Here is a pretty good reference: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0531/p15s01-lifo.html


How long should I wait before I lift the lid of my sauerkraut crock?

Don't check on it.

When I lived in Virginia I used to drive up to Pennsylvania every year to this little Amish farm to buy a gallon of the best sauerkraut I've ever tasted. They showed you how they made it, and I remember the farmer stressing two things: (1) sterilize the jars, (2) don't touch it for 2 months.


How to determine the "doneness" of salmon?

Press the salmon. The less cooked it is, the softer it will be. You more or less just have to learn by touch.

Broad rule of thumb: 6oz (flat-ish) portions of salmon take about three minutes to sear one side in a hot pan, flip, throw in a 350 oven for 5-6 minutes.

If roasting from raw, should be 11-13 minutes in a 350 oven.


Why orange carrots turn black while peeled?

I must admit that my answer contains a bit of speculation.
Let me start with beta carotene which is the pigment responsible for the orange colour of common carrots. It is easily and quickly oxidised by exposure to air and enzymes already present that get activated upon cutting and exposure to light. As such it looses its orange colour very quickly.
Now, browning of fruits and vegetables happens for oxidative processes when they are exposed to air. It is a common an unpleasant occurrence.
Where I do speculate a bit is on why the browning is so pronounced in the case of carrots to be even described as "blacking".
I have few possible reasons that make sense to me (consider I have to deal with "colours" at work, if this gives a bit of credibility).

Carrots are deep orange. The dark layer of oxidised surface on the underlying orange gives us a almost black colour.

Carrots contains other deeply coloured pigments. Some are darker than beta carotene (indeed carrots originally came in purple, and some are indeed black!) and more resistant to oxidation. As such oxidation of beta carotene can reveal darker pigments (anthocyanines) otherwise unnoticed.
This is somehow similar to what happens with leaves. At first they are green due to their content of chlorophyll. Once they fall, chlorophyll has been degraded and other red and yellow pigments become visible.

A mix of the above, depending on the type and amount of pigment present in that particular carrot.

Extra: if cooking with carrots they get a green tint, this is due to a too high (alkaline) pH. For instance too much baking soda in the batter. Pigments can be sensitive to pH, too.
Based on the comment of Lorel C.
Indeed the level of tissue damaged as well as porosity are know to exacerbate the browing process.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/10971842/
This is evident when instead of sharply peeling the carrots we clean them by scratching with a blade hold perpendicular to the surface. This is likely to be the case depicted in the photograph by OP.
Many recipes indeed recommend the use of soft brushes to clean carrots.


How do you decide what temperature to bake at?

If we had a magical (or 4d) oven that could heat up the inside of the food all at once and uniformly, the baking rule would be simple:

bake batters and doughs at 100°C / 212°F until dough expands and dries, and
then increase to 150°C / 302°F to brown.

Any recipe that followed it would take way longer (several hours) than regular recipes, but the timings would be forgiving.  The rule works because baking consists of growing the dough bubbles with water vapor and after that browning for flavor.  Without a magical 4d oven and without hours to bake a dish, recipe authors have to experiment.

In ovens at higher temperatures the water near the surface of the dough or batter will first evaporate, keeping that region at 100°C. Once the surface dries its temperature starts to rise and eventually browns. While it browns, the region below goes into bubble growing mode and the process repeats. To get the whole dish cooked and browned at the same time requires an impossible balancing act because of how the bubble region moves depends on the dough's shape, its water content, its initial temperature, air flows in the oven ...  There are many solutions to the balancing act and therefore many possible baking temperatures.

The exact details of all this are still the subject of research, as a recent paper exemplifies.


How do you remove the chicken smell from Tandoori chicken?

You should try a South Indian way to remove the raw smell of the chicken and this method applies for any meat. After defrosting the chicken, wash it and marinate it with some haldi (turmeric Powder),leave aside for 5-10 minutes and then start the actual marination.


garlic powder and onion powder substitutes

A good substitute will be Asafoetida . It smells like blended onion and garlic . Taste wise , its a great substitute of onion and garlic .


I wouldn't recommend that, most likely it will alter the results somehow.

But why do you get huge holes? My Instant Read Thermometer makes only little holes, so you don't kill your steak etc. again. When you have an older meat thermometer, most likely it is designed to stay in the oven the whole cooking time.


It would depend on the spices that you use.
For fresh spices - whole pieces of cardamon/ cloves/ cinnamon etc., I would add these spices at the beginning with hot oil, so the aroma of these spices would release to the oil. Stewing it slowly would also make the flavor slowly develops.
For adding at the end, maybe you mean adding the garam masala powder. This powder could add back some "kicks" or highlight as some of the "volatile" aromas are lost after cooking.
However, there is not a clear cut between methods 1 and 2, instead, you can add fresh spices at the begining and garam masala powder at the end. Just to make sure that the flavor is kept balanced when you use both methods.


Smallest muffin size without losing the muffin top?

First, you must assume a spherical muffin.  This is a silly but fun question, so lets think about the limiting factors.

What if you could scale down everything (the pan, the size of the ingredients, the size of the gas cells, everything else) uniformly.

If that could be done, muffin tops would be a uniform phenomenon at any size.

So, what can we not scale down uniformly?

It seems to me that there are to major factors that cannot be uniformly scaled down in actual practice:

The cell-size of the starch matrix that is expanded by the leavening.  It has a minimum size, and one would imagine that muffins must be macro-scaled compared to the cell size in order to work.

Since the cell size is visible as the grain in an actual muffin, the muffin has an internal structure on the order of millimeters, typically (I haven't baked muffins just now to measure their structure size) based on my best guess and recollection.  This is taking into account some of the larger scale structures within the muffin, like bubbles, and that "grain" which is composed of even finer "grains".

So one limiting factor would be that the muffin would have to be several orders of magnitude larger than tenths of millimeters, say three orders of magnitude.  That would bring the limiting size of muffin-topped muffins to about a centimeter across.
Heat penetration.

We can assume the rate of cooking in the muffin is proportional to the radius of the muffin at any given size, as a first order approximation, for any given temperature.

At some point, the muffin will either cook through before it can expand, or burn on the outside before it cooks through.

The problem with tiny baked goods is that they are outside any effective balance of temperatures.  Either they cook through and start drying out without any good crust development, or the outside is overdone before the inside gets cooked.

The requirement for muffins is even more balanced:  it has to heat the inside enough to trigger the oven spring from the leavening before the outside is set enough that it cannot expand, while still being able to cook all the way through, set the outside, and get decent crust development.

This is very hard to manage.

Practically, it is likely that the current mini-muffin pan size (a couple of centimeters across) is about as small as you can go without having to start taking drastic measures with the recipe.  The main problem is heat management:  getting good oven spring without the muffin setting too fast, while cooking it through, and yet having nice crust development on the outside.

You can have smaller baked goods, but they have a much simpler structure.  They are called cookies.   Most muffin batters would make an effective drop cookie, again probably down to about 2 cm.   They would be essentially all muffin top.

For a look at some of these practical factors, see:

See also:  How to adapt brownie recipe to cook well in a mini-muffin tin?


For making sauces and dressings XG, GG and LBG have different qualities. Especially in lower concencrations my go-to thickener would be XG however as you start using more of it the texture becomes “snotty”.
GG on the other hand, gets more sticky as it gets more concencrated. To balance each other out you can mix it to get better thickening results in lower concencrations something like  (0.5% GG + 0.35% XG). I think this answers your 1st application and 3rd question.

LBG and XG works much not only as a thickener (lower concentrations), but also as a gelling agent when used in slightly higher concentrations (0.8% LBG + 0.2% XG). You can try using this syneresis to achieve a texture for your second application.


Do I have to use butter in a "butter yellow cake?"

For a boxed cake either type of cooking fat should render a similar result. The final flavor will be a little different, but it shouldn't make a huge difference and probably won't be much different than a mix that calls for oil in the first place.

If you wanted to keep the flavor similar while avoiding dairy you could try using butter flavored shortening instead of oil.


I use two different knives when I dice an onion.  First, cut the onion in half, through the root end (so that each half has a bit of the root on it to hold it together). Next, take a paring knife (the skinny blade is why I use this knife here) and make vertical cuts that go almost all the way to the root.  Next, use the paring knife to make horizontal cuts while using one hand to hold the onion in place. Last, use a chef's knife to make downward cuts to finish the dice.

If you are trying to julienne cut the onion, cut off both the top and root part of the onion and peel it.  Then chop the onion in half vertically and cut thin slices of onion on an angle from the outside toward the middle (about a 10 degree angle should be fine).  I do all of this with a chef's knife.


What does flour smell like when it goes bad?

The smell is of rancid fats in the flour. It is a very distinct smell, but hard to describe. I would agree that "sour" is part of it. The best way to learn is by comparison. Smell some fresh, clean flour and remember what it is like. Any kind of unpleasant odor than that is rancidity. You may have smelled it also if you opened a box of cereal that has been around too long, or even poppy or sesame seeds - anything with fats that sits around at room temp will eventually go rancid.


Will store eggs turn into a chick if i leave it out in the warmth?

No. In most (all?) places that sell chicken eggs in quantity, the eggs are not fertile. For that, there needs to be a rooster involved. The hen that laid your egg doesn't hang out with roosters.

Your best bet is to acquire a few fertilized eggs from a farmer who keeps chickens. You can also buy fertilized eggs online, just search for "fertilized chicken eggs for sale".


Keep them frozen. Freezing and thawing will impact the texture adversely. Wrap them well.  For 7 days you will not have a problem.  For longer storage, vacuum sealing is better so that you avoid freezer burn.


Why does beating egg whites with cold water increase the volume of incorporated air

When you beat an egg white, you incorporate air into the water contained in the egg white, thus making an emulsion. The kind of foam that we obtain is the result of the proteins present in the egg white trapping the air in the water.
So it makes sense that if you add a little bit of water you will produce more foam. I assume it has to be cold water because emulsions are fragile and would be destroyed by hot water.
Careful with the quantities though, I haven't been able to find a clear table of quantities but most of the recipes mention just one coffee spoon of cold water.


It sounds like you are adding meat to the pan before it comes fully to temp, which is why your first batch is coming out unbrowned, and you are additionally cooking the steaks to completion in the pan which is why you have too much browning on the second and subsequent batches.

The way to solve this is make sure that your pan is hot for the first batch.  I normally throw the pan that i'm going to be searing in on the fire about five to ten minutes before I start to cook but you might need to adjust that time based on type of stove and how quickly it heats. The trick to steaks after that is to sear in the pan and finish in the oven.  This lets you control the darkness of the sear independantly of the doneness of the meat.  It is critical that you let the pan come back to temp before starting your next piece of meat. Once you have gotten the desired sear on the meat, bring to desired doneness in a 350 degree oven.

Let rest for at least five minutes to allow the steaks to reabsorb the juices.


How do I convert a powdered seasoning into cube (bouillon) form?

In order for your powdered seasoning to hold together in a solid shape, two things are needed.

1. Added ingredients that will work as a binder.

Commercial bouillon cubes are made by adding some sort of saturated fat that is solid at room temperature, such as partially-hydrogenated palm or cottonseed oil. Corn or other modified food starch may also be added, along with sugar, and of course, lots of salt.

You might be able to achieve a similar effect using beef tallow, coconut oil, or lard. Without chemical preservatives however, the result would need to be refrigerated.

2. A device to compress the mixture via intense mechanical pressure.

Bouillon cube factories use large presses to form the mixture into cubes, but of course, such machinery is not available for home use.

Instead, you could compress your mixture into cylinders using a "pollen press". This model costs about $20 and will make cylinders about the diameter of a nickel.

So, you need to decide whether you really want to adulterate your special blend of seasonings with added binding ingredients — ingredients which may affect the flavor and shelf life of your seasoning. You also need to decide whether the extra work of compressing the mixture into a solid shape is really worth all that trouble.

Another possibility that might work better for you would be to put your powdered seasoning directly into empty gelatin capsules.

Such capsules are made from beef gelatin — an ingredient that seems quite appropriate for use in bouillon!

Dropped into hot liquid, the flavorless gelatin capsules would quickly dissolve and release your powdered seasoning.

If you need a vegan alternative, empty vegetarian capsules are also available. Made from a derivative of vegetable cellulose, they dissolve in liquid just like gelatin capsules. However while gelatin is basically flavorless, vegetarian capsules may add a detectable taste. The taste may vary by brand, and depending on the intensity of your own seasonings, it might or might not be an issue.

Both types of empty capsules are sold in various sizes, and there are special trays and other tools available to facilitate filling them with powder. Refrigeration is not necessary, and the shelf life your dry seasoning would be protected inside the capsules.


I would keep the one that you are eating the next day out.  I would then freeze the rest of them.

If you like them warm, you could freeze them wrapped in foil.  Before eating pop them in a toaster oven until gently warmed through.

If not I'd freeze individually until solid then put in a bag to prevent your frozen bagels from sticking together, then thaw overnight (if eating in the morning) or in the morning (if eating for a mid-day meal) to eat.


Very few people have tried a perfectly cooked soft boiled egg.  There is a tradition among chefs of trying to show each other how perfectly they can cook something as simple as an egg.  Chef Fernand Point, who serves as inspiration for the affable chef Gusteau in Pixar’s animated movie Ratatouille, would test his apprentices by asking them to fry an egg.  With a responsive thermometer, such an infrared one, you can approximate their work at home.

If you ever get that mad scientist feeling, try cooking the egg in a bowl of water placed in the oven.  Start with cold tap water in the bowl, place the eggs in the water and the ensemble in an oven set to its lowest setting.  Every five minutes, check the temperature of the water in the bowl.  If you are using an infrared thermometer, stir the water before measuring.   Let the water hover between 65°C to 68°C for an hour. In most ovens you will have to turn the oven off and on to keep the water in that range.  The result will be a bright yellow firm gel.  I have a picture of the gel for the fried version of the mad scientist egg (what I call Eggs Mondrian):

If you want the yolk runny, then the temperature of the water should be between 63°C (to cook the whites) but below 66°C to keep the yolk runny.


How can i bake multiple kinds of cheesecake at the same time in a spring-form pan?

Before you start separating your pie, you need to be sure that your fillings all need the same baking time and temperature. If they are from the same basic recipe and just have some extra flavors, you should be ok, if they are smaller amounts of different recipes, check the instructions carefully or ideally, make them as full pies once and note the actual parameters - random recipes from the Internet can be quite different, not all bloggers use an oven thermometer etc.

But assuming that this is taken care of, you simply need something that has the right length (radius of your pie tin), is food safe, heat proof, and water resistant. For similar problems I have used:

Aluminum strips (fold a few times to get some stability)
Cardboard strips wrapped tightly in aluminum foil or baking parchment.
A pie divider (a special gadget that goes into a regular pan, separating it, similar to this pie pan, comes also in square).
Glass cut to match the shape of the tin - although that was a loaf tin.

Once you have the tool of your choice, the real challenge is to keep them upright during filling and getting the tin into the oven. A kitchen helper is highly recommended.


Remember that a lot of this seafood naming is odd sometimes. Prawn is often used to refer to what we used to call shrimp.

In the UK I get these in brine from my local supermarket, marked "krabben im lake" or something similar ...


Ovearheated/burnt my copper pot, is it still usable?

Try boiling a mixture of water and baking soda and then turn off the heat and let it sit until it cools enough to scrub. You might try 1/2 cup baking soda to a quart of water. Another trick is a baking powder paste. Same idea but more intense. Make a paste, bring to a boil only briefly and then scrub.


What could I use in a vegetarian b'stilla?

I'd like such a dish with courgettes, or mushrooms. Chickpeas sound like a good idea, butternut squash might be good as well. Sweet potato, perhaps.


Can palmiers be refrigerated/frozen overnight?

You should be able to cut them, wrap them up, and freeze them to be baked and served the next day without a problem.


As the comments already cover, thou shalt not trifle with the sanitation department rules if you want to stay in the business.

You might try tighter gloves or gloves of different (but still acceptable to the sanitation department) plastics/rubbers, or with different surface textures. Many "food service gloves" seem to the purchased on the one size fits none plan. Wiping your gloved hands frequently with a clean damp cloth may help, or rinsing them frequently under the sink.


My dad uses fresh bay leaves because he has a bay plant in his yard but, in general, when a recipe calls for bay leaves, it means dried bay leaves. They're cheaper and much easier to find and - in general, considering how they're used - they provide the same results in the end.
To quote Cook's Illustrated:

Fresh vs. Dried Bay Leaves
Fresh bay leaves have become available in many supermarkets. In the test kitchen, we use fresh herbs more often than dried—bay leaves being an exception. To decide whether we should switch, we made two batches of a béchamel sauce, simmering dried bay leaves in one and fresh in the other.
Surprisingly, they finished in a dead heat. Here's why: The aromatic molecules in most herbs are more volatile than water. Herbs that grow in hot, arid environments—like bay leaves—are different: Their aromatic molecules are less volatile, retaining flavor even after water evaporates. Similarly, in long-cooked applications, we've found that rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage, and other herbs native to hot, arid environments do as well as their fresh counterparts. (And bay leaves are used only in long-cooked recipes.) Since they are cheaper and keep for months in the freezer, we'll continue to use dried bay leaves (about 10 cents per leaf), instead of springing for fresh, which cost twice as much.

So, while in many cases, fresh herbs are preferred, this doesn't hold true for bay leaves, so go with dried unless you see a recipe that specifically calls for fresh.
As to how many, I'd go with your recipe on that. What you're making and how strongly you want the bay flavor to be present will determine how many you need to use.


How long can vegetable-based foods be stored at room temperature?

This is not an argument you can win. Say your prepared food item is a raw carrot. Clearly carrots are safe at room temperature for weeks and months. They might get rubbery and unpleasant, but they aren't going to make you sick. You can probably even prove this. Now consider a bowl of chicken stock. Rich in both nutrients and water, bacteria are going to love growing in it and even an hour or two at room temperature might be dicy. And between those two things you have items like baba ganoush which, yeah, is probably ok for a few hours. But that's not the point.

Inspectors and rules can't do "spectrum" and they can't do "read the ingredient list" or "read the ingredient list and cooking instructions" (since raw beaten eggs would poison you way faster than a hardboiled egg would.) They need a simple rule that inspectors and vendors alike can understand and enforce. The actual facts of how that particular dish spoils do not and cannot come into it. Customers, vendors, and inspectors need to see at a glance "yes, this place is following the rules" not "well, that might be ok but I'll need to see whether or not they have icing sugar in this version".

It's not about what would be safe at home. It's not about the science of bacteria growth. It's about overall consistency and overall safety. A beautifully-optimized set of rules with 10 or 20 or 50 categories might feel fairer, but would confuse entry-level employees, require tons of signs, labels, written procedures etc, and a vendor would never be completely confident that an inspector wouldn't say "this isnt A-1B dip, it's clearly A-2B dip and I'm writing you up!"


Does anyone know the name of this Mexican Breakfast / Brunch dish?

Migas possibly?

Scrambled egg fried with strips of tortilla, chopped vegetables, sometimes chopped meats.  Sometimes served with refried beans, that sort of thing.

It is of Spanish origin originally, rather than Mexican - probably the Tex-Mex variant, which is a bit different is what you would encounter.  Rice is included in the recipe in some regions, so entirely possible.


Can sour cream be made the same way as yogurt?

You can make sour cream by adding live-culture buttermilk or yoghurt to regular cream. Use 2 tablespoons of culture per cup of cream, mix, and let it sit for 12 hours in a warm place before putting in the fridge.


When a recipe calls for a cup of chopped nuts, should they be measured before chopping or after chopping?

"1 cup of chopped nuts" is measured after chopping.

"1 cup of nuts, chopped" is measured before chopping.


Acid is your friend here. You have some lemon, and tomatoes are acidic, but apparently that isn't enough. You should get at least a good week out of fresh salsa (mine lasts longer than that). Try adding a good shot of plain, distilled vinegar. Many recipes for salsa (including my own) include vinegar; add as much as you can without negatively affecting the flavor.

A bit of salt wouldn't hurt either, again, just to the maximum for good flavor.


How do I adjust for a recipe to bake in an oven instead of on a grill?

Yes. You want it to brown, so I'd do it at about 375 or 400 Fahrenheit. Depending on how thick and wet it is, it could take anywhere from say 20 to 40 minutes. If you have a thermometer, you can figure it is done at say 180 degrees in the center. Otherwise just look for bubbling juices and a nice brown top.


Fudge really only has a shelf life of a week or two. First it will start to crystallize on the outside (which is actually very yummy in my opinion), but then it will start to grow mold. Good hygiene will lengthen the time before mold starts to grow, but ultimately fudge is not a preserved food and isn't meant to keep. The individual ingredients will keep better by themselves, and you can make the fudge nearly on demand.


The reason that your basting sauce flopped was the recipe was calling for an emulision (basically, a vinegrette) and by leaving out the vinegar you are changing the one of the basic building blocks of the dish.  The sauce will require that you add the fats to the mustard as it will clump as experienced if you don't.  The mustard in the original recipe is used as an emuslifer and may need to be cut down without the addition of the vinegar.  To build a sauce like this, you should start with the vinegar, add the seasonings and any emulisfers (in this case, the mustard) and slowly drizzle the fats into the resulting mixture until all has been incorperated.  You will still get a smooth sauce as long as you keep the order even if you leave off an ingredient or two.


You're doing all you can. When I first started using Silpats (love them) I noticed the greasy feeling after washing. I googled and googled but all I ever found was that this just seemed to be a fact of life. I personally wash mine in the sink, and I think it turns out better, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's just my imagination.

From what I can tell it does not affect the quality of my food. I'm also pretty sure that it's not "grease" per se, but probably just some feature of washing and using silicone regularly.


Drying fish before cooking - Is it okay to leave it uncovered in the fridge?

Totally safe to have uncovered

Bacteria can't jump off the fish and fly through the air. They can't crawl, swim, walk or ride bikes between items in the fridge by themselves. If you carefully place it in a clean container it is safe. The aroma may carry, but if the fish is fresh it should have little aroma and this will dissipate anyway.

Better Yet, dry it on the counter at room temp

You can also just have the fish out on the counter. This will bring it closer to room temp, and much of cooking and creating good texture is about temperature differences. Starting the fish at a warmer temperature will also help to create good texture and not stick. Do not worry about the safety of this. If the fish is fresh, any bacteria growth that might begin will be immediately killed in the cooking process. You can blot the fish gently right before cooking with paper towels for maximum drying. If the fish is still cold it will have condensation continually forming.

USDA guidelines show the time that food can be in the danger zone. Don't be alarmed by the 'doubling every 20 minutes.' Everything we touch, eat, see, taste, smell has bacteria on it or in it. It takes many doublings and the bacteria have to emit the toxins for something to become dangerous. If you hold food at room temp, it is coming out of refrigeration and into the danger zone, then will be cooked, ending the cycle. If the fish is poor quality to start with AND you have immune system deficiencies, then extra caution is required. Aged, infirm, or otherwise compromised immune systems should be treated with more caution.


In the US and Canada it's usually called medium, or sometimes doesn't have a descriptive term, it's just cheddar. Either way, if your store has anything in between, it should be pretty obvious.

In the UK, it's still medium, though names past that are different.

If you happen to be in Australia, there's a different set of names with only mild in common.


Generally speaking, frying gives a better crust due to the higher direct heat producing more Maillard flavours. A good, heavy, screaming hot pan is required. Oil the steak, not the pan, with vegetable or groundnut oil (olive oil will burn), and baste with butter towards the end for extra flavour.

If your steak is thick, you might try a reverse sear - roast the steak at about 150°C until the centre is 10°C off your desired doneness level (if you don't have a digital probe thermometer, invest the small amount they cost, it is completely worth it), then sear the outside on your mega hot pan. This avoids you having to overdo the outside just to get the inside right.


Should I be scared of chicken livers? Can I make them less scary? (Ragu Bolognese)

OMG this turned out great!

Really good.

I ended up using half of the liver called for in the recipe, otherwise I followed it to the letter. There is a richness to the sauce that I don't think it would have had if I had skipped the liver entirely, but I can't taste it. For a bit of extra protection from toxic nastiness, I did carefully clean the liver and I soaked it for two hours in milk.

The pasta is imported Italian Campanelle.

Fair warning, a 5 quart Dutch Oven is not quite big enough.


Why the Australian Tomahawk steak is larger then US?

They are the same cut.

Quoted from Meat 102: Cuts, Anatomy & Preparation (emphasis mine):

  Some restaurants will call the ribeye a “tomahawk steak” if the entire rib bone is left on and french cut by the butcher, since it then looks like a small hatchet.  It is common for butchers to cut the bone down a bit, however, for packaging purposes ... Sizes and portions range from anywhere between 14oz to 36oz, most often hovering around the 20oz mark in restaurants.

36 oz is about 1 kg, or half as large as the "Australian Tomahawk" -- which can be attributed to having the full rib bone, as well as probably a thicker cut (and a generous pinch of marketing-speak and publicity).

  The Tomahawk is one of largest steaks in Australia, weighing in at
  1.3kg – 3.6kg (1.8kg average). Each Tomahawk is a rib-eye, or scotch fillet on the bone...

(see also StockJournal article)

EDIT: It's also called a cowboy steak or cowboy chop. So, the uncut rib bone seems to be the primary difference between "Australian" and "US" tomahawk steak.


As far as a I know, the lid is not really necessary for this style of dumpling at all.  The only affect it will have is to increase the level of steaminess above the waterline, and very slightly prevent the dumplings from drying out.  That is rarely a problem, especially if you flip the dumplings half-way through cooking.

Your not quite big enough lid should be more than adequate if you want to use one, as it will help the steam stay on top of the pot.

If you are concerned, you can improvise a more tightly fitting lid from aluminum foil  Even if your foil is not wide enough you can link two (or more sheets together):

Lay two sheets on top of each other, with their edges aligned.
At one edge, fold it over  about one inch  (2.2 cm) or so, pressing down well at the fold line.
Fold the one-inch fold over itself so it is now four layers of foil 1/2 inch wide, again pressing down well along the fold line.
For a very good bond, fold the half inch seam over itself again, so you have a 1/4 inch overlap, again pressing well down the fold line.
Open at the fold line edge like a book, creating essentially a sheet of foil almost double the width, taking care not to pull apart the extra folds of the seam you created.

If you need a triple width, you then lay another sheet on top aligned with the edge of of the first batch, and repeat the process.

Another improvised pot lid that is often helpful is to take a large dinner plate or charger that is heatproof, and lay it across the top—you just need one larger than the diameter of the pot; just make sure you use a towel or an oven mitt when taking it off the pot.  Depending on your dishes, you may have one that will work well.


Why do peanut butter sandwiches become hard and how to prevent that?

Oooh, I hate that. If you put butter on the bread to create a buffer layer between the peanut butter and the bread it may help. Also, be sure to seal the bread from the air to retard the process of getting stale.

The other main option is to keep the peanut butter in a separate container and spread it before eating.


Can I compensate for non-working yeast with baking powder in bread?

No, it is not worth trying baking powder. If your yeast is not working, it won't start working because you added baking powder, so you will get the same result as leaving out the yeast and using pure baking powder. Recipes meant for yeast cannot work properly with baking powder, so this is not a solution. You need a source for working yeast.

You seem to have concluded that dry yeast never works, but this is not true. You must have happened upon a bad brand, or maybe even a bad batch from an otherwise OK brand. Dry yeast works very well, and is even lower risk than fresh yeast, because it is less sensitive to bad storage. Just try a different source of dry yeast.


How to remove moisture from cheese that is stored in a liquid?

The tool for the job is a cheese press, though for small quantities a tofu press (I have one similar to this) works well. I bought mine for home-made paneer and bought tofu, but have also used it for halloumi and mozarella (home made, not brilliantly successful).

The idea is simple: wrap the cheese in a cheesecloth, place in the press, weight, and wait.  If your cheese doesn't have flat parallel sides the design I've linked above won't work as well; there are more piston-like shapes that keep the top plate of the press horizontal.

You can improvise with two plates, but it's fiddly, and the bottom plate should really have drainage holes.


Flakes form when salty liquid evaporates. With naturally formed flake salt, like harvested sea salt flakes, it's skimmed off the top of seawater pools. I have read, but not confirmed, that higher-volume commercial flake salt manufacturers boil salt water dry and collect the salt from the cooking vessels.

So the good news is that you don't need to buy any fancy gadgets; the bad news is that if you're just interested in obtaining flaky salt and not doing this for some other reason, you probably don't want to do this.

You could try dissolving your salt in water and then boiling it down, but I'd be surprised if you managed to get a consistent flake scraping it off the bottom of the pan. Pretty sure that just buying flake salt and saving your big old salt nugs for grinding or grating would be the way to go... but hey, it's your salt.


Drying herbs is what I'll use residual oven heat for.


Does peppermint flavour work with orange flavour?

There are two main approaches to pairing: experience and (not always reliable, but sometimes surprising) chemical similarity.

On the experience side, The Flavor Bible's listing for "oranges – in general" lists "mint" as a very highly recommended pairing (level 3 of 4). However, on the reverse it lists "orange" only as suggested by a few experts as a pairing (level 1) for "mint – in general" – a surprising asymmetry. Orange isn't listed at all under the specific entry for peppermint.

The conclusion I would draw from that is that for your scenario in which orange is the base and peppermint is the highlight, it should work.

On the chemical side,

  The main constituents [of peppermint oil] are identical in all oil varieties, but the relative ratios vary widely. Constituents include alpha- and beta-pinene, limonene, cineol, ethyl amylcarbinol, menthone, isomenthone menthofuran, menthol, neomenthol, isomenthol menthyl acetate and piperitone. The oil contains: menthone: 15 to 32%; esters (menthyl acetate) 3 to 10%; and menthol: 30.0 to 55.0%.

(Source: Fenaroli's Handbook of Flavor Ingredients). Of those at least the pinenes and limonene are also found in orange; they're chiral, and I don't know whether peppermint and orange have the same enantiomers, but the pairing looks plausible.

Both approaches look positive, so give it a go and post back when you have empirical evidence either way!


How long can you store a mixture of old bread in a no-oxygen-container?

It sounds like you're talking about bread crumbs--you use these to bread the outside of anything you'd want to fry up (i.e. chicken breasts).

If you stored this in a sealed container and kept this in a cool place, I would say a few months, at least.  It's possible that something like this would last for over a year or longer without going moldy.

After a few months, I would just give it a close visual inspection and taste a small amount.  Are the bread crumbs moldy?  Are they stale?  Do they still have any flavor (if there was any to begin with)?  If it passes all these tests, I'd use it.  Even if it's stale, I may still try to make a small batch of food with it because baking and frying heats water out of foods anyways.

Side note:  My parents have some ground spices in their kitchen from over a decade ago.  The spices haven't gone moldy and I don't get sick eating food with these spices in it.  However, the difference in flavor between these spices and new ones are like day and night.   When I cook there, I don't bother using their spices, but I won't complain if they use it for food served to me.


If you want to use the fat to keep the flavor, or because you are keeping a diet where fat is considered more beneficial than carbohydrates, there are several ways.

First, you can skim the fat, make a roux with the skimmed fat, then add it back.

Second, you can skim the fat, add a little bit of broth and an emulsifier, whisk until you have a nice thick emulsion, then add it back.

If you use a straciatella style thickening, the fat eyes will frequently disappear between the rags, especially if you can get them to break up very small.

But if you are asking because you want to save some work, I don't think there is a good way. Generally, if you use enough flour or other starches at the frying at the start of the stew (including tomato pastes and such), the fat will bind with the starch instead of floating. But it seems that your recipe is for a thin stew, and the fat continues to float there.


How to add fresh fruit chunks to ice cream?

If you will you this technique to first freeze the strawberries. Then add the solid frozen berries to the mixture the berries will stay firm through process and then "warm up" (oddly enough) in the ice cream.


I use dulce de leche as a filling or topping as well, but you are right, it is a bit too sweet, so I tone it down... one way to make it milder is to incorporate some cream and a bit of melted dark chocolate, but you cannot just mix it in...

Leave the dulce de leche in the fridge overnight. Pour off any liquid that separates out. Mix in a bowl to smooth out any lumps. In a separate bowl, whip up some double cream (ratio 2:1:0,3, dulce de leche:cream:chocolate) to stiff peaks. Add cream to dulce de leche and beat until combined. Melt the dark chocolate and stir into mixture. Refrigerate for about 30mins so the melted chocolate in the mixture can stiffen up a bit.

It's delicious and not as sweet as pure dulce de leche at all!


Onions that have been blanched (briefly dipped in boiling water) will taste less sharp than raw onions - so it is possible that the onions were merely added at the end, and the soup may have been hot enough to mellow the taste even if the onions remain firm.

It may also be possible that the onions in the soup that day were dehydrated - if they had run out of onions and were substituting, or had dehydrated on hand because they are much more shelf stable, or they were just experimenting.  Dried onions rehydrated in soup might have a crunchy or crisp texture like raw onion, without the sharp flavor raw onion have.  Also, a dried and rehydrated onion might be crunchy even after being sauteed, and may not soften even when simmered, which could account for your soup.


Yes, you did; although in a non-traditional manner :)  You created an acid-set cheese.  These are made by adding an acid (e.g., lemon juice or vinegar) after heating the milk (e.g., paneer) or by heating soured (acidified) milk (e.g., quark).

It appears that your microwave blast caused the proteins to combine into a single clump.  Normally, the heat is more gently applied.  From your picture, it seems to be most similar in texture to the curds used in a poutine.

Let us know how it tastes!


You're good.
Many people have fears about pork because of trichinosis, which has led to people overcooking port until it is dry and unpalatable. Trichinosis is extremely rare in most places, so you could eat it raw if you wanted to with very, very low chance of getting sick. Previously the USDA guidelines was to cook pork chops or roasts to 160°F (71°C), however there has been a recognition that this is overkill and it has been revised down to 145°F (63°C) as evidence has shown that temperature instantly makes the food safe. 154°F is far above what you need for safety.
Your pork was a bit pink in the middle and still juicy, this is a good thing.
Note: the guidelines for ground pork, beef and lamb are still to cook to 160°F (71°C).


How long can I soak dried beans before they are considered inedible?

If you cook to 180 and there is no smell of rotting at all when you drain them (before the cook) you should be good.  There aren't very many bacteria that rock out on dried beans and the few that do don't leave toxins behind, and the cold temp should have inhibited the rot.  If they do smell after the drain, I would pitch them.


Are Pull N Pak plastic bags appropriate for storing raw or cooked meat in freezer snd vegetables in fridge?

I'm not sure if you mean each portion is in a separate bag and then you're placing the entire contents of what you bagged into a heavier plastic bag designed for freezing. If that's what you mean, it's fine but I'd pick up extra unused plastic pull n pak bags so you wouldn't need to worry about cross contamination with used bags. It's what I often do when separating raw meat. It makes it more sanitary for me as I turn the bag inside out, then put it over my hand like a mitten. I grab the meat with my hand in the bag and turn it so the meat's contained in the bag without me having to handle it.

On the other hand, if you're storing the meat in those bags only, I don't suggest it. Other than cross contamination like Alan mentioned, those plastic bags were never meant as a thick enough barrier between food and freezer air and contents. It's easy to get a tiny tear or puncture in the bag and get freezer burn on the meat or the odor of the raw meat to mix with freezer air. You might not notice it at first but over time, your freezer could get a funky smell affecting other food in it.

My aged mother was always freezing meat in these bags and never noticed how off her freezer smelled. She didn't understand why parts of the thawed out meat looked dry, had freezer burn or developed ice crystals in it. I don't say yours would get that bad but don't rely on those bags only.

Nothing wrong with using them to store vegetables in your fridge though. I prefer to wash and dry most of my vegetables when I bring them home. I wrap a paper towel or two loosely around them and put them in the fridge then.


Poolish is a type of sponge. You prepare it before mixing your dough. As in 16 hours before. Then, you mix it with the rest of the ingredients.

What I usually do is mix 150g of flour and 150g of water with a pinch of yeast (less than 1g) and no salt at all the night before the day I'm going to use it. The idea is to use the same amount, in weight, of flour and water, and the least amount possible of yeast and let it work as slow as possible.

This will depend on many factors. I'm giving you my quantities, but it changes from winter to summer, you will have to experiment. That's half of the fun. For the mixing I use a fork and a 1 litter/quarter container and 30 seconds of work, it shouldn't take you more. The poolish usually gets almost to the top in 14-18 hours. Once I put 5g of yeast and got to the top in 1 hour. This is not bad but defies the purpose of the poolish taking a lot of time. Some people even put in the refrigerator to make it take longer.

Why would you want it to take time? This is what I was told and makes sense to me: when you mix water, flour and yeast two things happen: the yeast transform the sugars and some good bacteria starts creating acids that will determine flavour. The yeast work depends on the temperature and amount of yeast (among other things, like water, salt, fat, etc). The bacteria doesn't. Also, the bacteria and the acids help preserve the bread.

Once it has reached the top you have 1 hour approx to use it. If not, it will collapse and you better start with a new one. If you think you are not going to use it in 1 hour, use a fork to degass it before it collapses and let it rise again. It will rise faster this time, but that will buy you some time. You can see what it looks like.

If you have a recipe you like, try replacing 150g flour and 150g water with the poolish and see what happens. You may replace between 10% and 50% of the final dough. You'll see changes in color and flavor.


Anything wrong with this chicken/can undercooked chicken be white inside?

Your chicken looks fine. It seems as if you have succeeded in getting the meat done without it drying out, which is always great!

The surface does not look 'crusty' and as you say it's soft and easy to eat, I would say it's a success.


How does substituting Butter for Margarine/Shortening affect the Recipe

Here are the players:

butter (~80% fat, salt varies)
margarine (~80% fat, added salt)
vegetable oil spread (less than 80% fat, salt varies)
shortening (100% fat, no salt)

I only list it that way, because some people think a vegetable oil spread = margarine. It is not.

If you substitute an oil spread for butter, you could have problems.

My experience is that butter and true margarine can be substituted freely without negative results. Though, most people believe butter has a better flavor profile.

Salt content could also be a factor. Salt varies in different butter/margarine brands. I'm not sensitive to salt levels, but you might be.


Is it true that natural peanut butter splits in cookies?

I've made peanut butter cookies with various "all natural" peanut butters, containing no extra oil/fat, just peanuts and possibly salt. They didn't split. I suppose the recipe you're looking at could be somehow different but it seems really unlikely. I haven't even seen splitting in cooked sauces using these kinds of peanut butter, along with plenty of other liquid.

As far as I know, the main thing meant by "all natural" is that it doesn't contain other oils like yours does; those are generally used to replace some of the peanut oil, so that it doesn't separate while in the jar. But separating over a long period of time in the jar is a far cry from splitting in cookie dough where it's mixed with plenty of other ingredients, and probably sits around for a few hours at most before baking.


What variety of squash produces "flor de calabaza"?

They're commonly called squash blossoms in English - as you might guess, this is because it doesn't matter too much what kind of squash they're from. They'll most commonly be from smaller summer squash plants (e.g. zucchini) though, since they produce many small squash instead of a few large squash (like pumpkins), so you can get more blossoms for your trouble.


How much does potato starch affect a cheese sauce recipe?

Hmm I suppose they add starch to keep it from turning back into one block of cheese.

Thing to do is if the sauce looks to thick just add more milk.


Spelt flour is not gluten-free. Light spelt flour has less protein (gluten is a protein) than regular spelt or strong bread flour, but it's still there (5-8% from what I've seen), so if you need gluten free you need to pick another ingredient.

To answer your question, there are limitations to what you can do with low or gluten free doughs. Bread made with gluten is stretchy and keeps its shape because the gluten strands relax and become intertwined with each other, if you take the gluten out you lose that stretchiness and body. Dough improvers like xanthan gum can help give some stretchiness but not to the point of being able to make something like challah. Low or gluten free doughs are always going to be a bit crumbly - it's the nature of the beast - so my advice is to pick bread types where that's an asset.


4-5 days would be a stretch.  Oxidation causes a taste and sight change to the cut fries that is typically un-appealing.  While 4-5 days; it would technically be safe to eat; the taste may be off.

Typically in restaurant world we would pre-cut and store for 24 hours in a water bath in the walk-in.

Alternatively they would be frozen; but this alters the flavor also (somewhat less though)...


What does adding dark rum give to a fajita stir-fry?

It adds the flavour of rum.

I'd love to go into a detailed exposition of how rum is a fantastic pairing for "latin spices", but as far as I can tell, no such relationship is documented.  It's just a theme ingredient, something that the author evidently felt would make an interesting combination.

Rum is more commonly associated with sweet fruits, chocolate, and apparently certain dairy products.  It's not something I'd consider adding to the typical fajita mix (peppers, onions, cumin, chili) - seems like a waste of perfectly good rum to me.

If you don't want to spend the money on rum, just buy some rum extract in the grocery store.  It's not as good as genuine rum, of course, but as a first-time recipe experiment it will give you a pretty good idea of whether or not it's worth using real rum the next time (assuming you like the recipe at all).


800g of peanuts give 700g of peanut butter – why?

About 100 grams of peanut butter will fit into about 6 tablespoons, or slightly under 1/2 cup.  If you tasted, and there was peanut butter left on the sides and floor of wet grinder, that could certainly explain the difference. There is really nowhere else for it to go.


Are these parts of the ginger plant edible?

Given that you can eat most of the rest of the plant, it is likely that they are edible.
Note that edible != palatable. I can't find any references indicating that they are eaten anywhere. It may be that they have a texture that is odd or are just not flavourful in any way.


My personal choice would be to throw this away just because I'm too squeamish.

But people here use salty water to get rid of larvae from wild mushrooms. The idea is to soak the unprocessed mushrooms containing living insects, which will try to escape and eventually die outside the mushroom. You then rinse couple of times with fresh water and dry it to avoid mould development.

I've found this is used as a laboratory test here with fruit. They use 1/4 cup salt in 4 cups water, but they mash the fruit with a potato masher.


Yeah, I would agree with the people in the comments, and make the assumption that it had to do with concentrating the ethylene gas from the bananas.

After a bit of googling, it looks like the rice bag trick might be popular because it apparently results in a nearly ideal, stable environment for ripening.

I imagine that the rice would keep the moisture level at a lower point, the bag would contain the gas, and the mass of the rice would decrease the temperature variants (assuming that is conducive to ripening)

I found an informative article which mentioned rice bags here:
http://monsterguide.net/how-to-ripen-bananas-quickly


What are the uses for a roasting pan? Do I really need a roasting pan?

I use my roasting pan (either with or without a rack) at least once a week to roast vegetables - either for salads, for sides, or (for instance with pumpkin for soup) to get a slightly different and more concentrated flavour before blending the veges.  I find the vegetables cook more evenly in a roasting pan than a baking pan - perhaps the higher sides help to create a kind of microclimate around the veges??  Not sure about that one.

When making roast vege salads, you can take the pan straight out of the oven and take advantage of the high sides to mix your other ingredients in (pasta, greens, dressing etc) then serve from there if no one is looking at your serving dish!

I also use it as a water bath when cooking souffles, puddings etc.


Haggis - taste difference between traditional and artificial casing

I'm positive the artificial casing changes the flavor because it tastes differently from natural casing. Besides, the stomach is bigger than most artificial casings.

So, it affects the flavor (not something I would worry about too much) and the size and therefore the cooking time.


Why do some eggs crack while being boiled?

Well, sometimes eggs have non-visible (or non-visible without candling - shining a very bright light into the egg and looking at the light coming out of the egg) cracks.

That would be one possible cause - the crack pre-existed. Even if it was not cracked when graded, cracks both visible and invisible are possible in the distribution process.

Getting cracked from moving around in the pot is possible, depending on how hard you boil them. If actually boiling them I'd suggest a simmer, but in fact I don't suggest that at all - just boil the pot of water, lower eggs in with a spoon, turn the heat off and cover - yank when they suit your concept of "done" (if hard boiled, 20-30 minutes by this method.) "Coddling" is sometimes used to describe this, though it's also used to describe cooking (without shell, and possibly with added ingredients) in a specialized ceramic container (an egg coddler.) Anyway, it greatly reduces the odds of cracking via "rattling around in the pot" (though not why I do it that way; I do it because it appears, observationally, to reduce my incidence of overcooking the yolk and making it nasty.)


The exterior coating on an egg is known as the "cuticle".  It helps to protect the (porous) shell and minimize moisture loss, but it eventually breaks down as the chick matures and prepares to hatch.

The reason that eggs in the US are typically sold under refrigeration is because they are washed with warm water and detergent to remove the large amount of bacteria that are deposited on the shell while being laid.  Once the cuticle is removed the egg becomes more porous.

Most bakeries that are using whole eggs will typically keep several flats out at all times to have them at room temperature.  Eggs will store better and longer in the refrigerator but if being used frequently and fairly quickly, they can also be left at room temperature.  Howard McGee in On Food & Cooking says that egg quality deteriorates as much in one day at room temperature as it does four days under refrigeration.


They make whole wheat flour, but their bread flour is definitely refined; it does not contain bran or germ. Their bread flour is milled from a specific hard red spring wheat from North and South Dakota. That particular wheat is higher in protein than the wheat and wheat blends of other brands of bread flour.

KA's whole wheat flour (not the white whole wheat) is also milled from hard red wheat, but it's unclear if it's the same "hard red spring wheat" as in the bread flour. The protein level is higher in the whole wheat flour than in the bread flour.

Notice that the bread flour is enriched (see the ingredients), as is required by US law for refined flours. The whole wheat flour is not enriched.

You might find this information regarding whole grains helpful: What is the meaning of the term whole grain? Notice from the graphic that there is not a lot of protein in the bran and germ.