Per this paper, you want an extraction time of 15-60 mins at 113F / 45C. This patent uses temperatures below 131F / 55C. Both of those temperatures may be too low to make the cod actually taste good / cooked. 140F is a fairly typical temperature for sous vide fish. While 113F has some interesting results, it may or may not work for your dish as the result comes out quite different than standard cooked fish. However, I don't think that using a higher heat will have a negative effect on the gelatin extraction, so I'd start with 140F and work down from there.

This process may cause other problems though. In addition to extracting the gelatin, any other juices from the fish will mix with your gelatin. In a pan, these may steam off, but with sous vide you're stuck with them. I think you're likely to end up with a mixture that's much more watery than if you used a pan. You may find that this needs to be boiled down a little bit in order to get the desired consistency of your emulsion.

As always with sous vide, you've also got potential safety issues. You'll never reach pasteurization at 113F. You should check Douglas Baldwin's A Practical Guide To Sous Vide for cooking times (which are highly dependent on width).


Is boiling or pouring better for emulsifying chocolate ganache

There is.  Pouring hot milk or cream over chocolate pieces is a much gentler way of melting it.  If you boil the chocolate, however, chances are good that you will overheat it.

Chocolate has a low melting temperature, and a low burning temperature.  Boiling your chocolate for too long (more than a few seconds) will burn it, changing the taste and texture from sweet and smooth to bitter and grainy.

Simply pouring hot dairy over the chocolate allows it to melt much more slowly, preserving its taste and texture.  It is the superior method, which is why most recipes advise doing it that way.  If you're concerned about having more washing up to do (I am!) then you can simply add the chocolate to the hot milk off the heat and swirl briefly to disperse, instead of pouring the liquid over the chocolate into a second bowl; it gives the same effect.


Can I find out the caloric content of bread by dehydrating it?

Conventionally, drying is only the first step.  The second is burning it and seeing how much energy is given off.

But this isn't always the best way to determine the calories that your body gets from the food, as it doesn't deal with bio-availability - basically, can your body extract that energy from the food?

Diet foods often cellulose or other fiber added to them -- which can burn and have heat, but your body can't absorb.  So for nutritional reasons, they're considered 0 Calorie.

For the case of unenriched bread, we basically have only a few ingredients ... water, flour, yeast, and maybe salt.  Once we remove the water, the yeast and salt are lower percentages, so we can estimate (stress estimate), but we also need to know what type of flour was used.

whole wheat flour : ~339 kCal / 100 grams
white flour : ~364 kCal / 100 grams

(but this is likely for American whole wheat, which is white flour with bran mixed back in, not ground up whole wheat berries)

Of course, it's also worth mentioning that calorie counts on menus and food packaging in the US are only estimates.  There are tables of calories per item, and they just add them up in the amounts used to get a number. (so all wheat bread is considered to have the same kCalories/gram, no matter how it was made)  Some of those values might just be estimates based on the ratio of carbohydrates, fat, and protein in the ingredient.

But how something is cooked, and the particular person (their gut biome, how well they chew, etc.) can affect how much energy they can get from the food, so it's always going to be a really rough estimate


What are examples of spoiled food that is part of a culture's cuisine?

The difference between "rot" and "ferment" is extremely thin. The use of bacteria and fungus to partially break down foods is as old as any cultivation process. "Rotten" is just the word we use when the microorganisms have done something we don't like.

Fermented (rotten) foods are incredibly common, from cultured butter, ghee, buttermilk and yogurt to cheese, wine, soy sauce and beer. Not to mention bread, Tabasco, Sriracha, kim chi and sauerkraut, or heck, salami, chorizo, kombucha and fish sauce. Wikipedia has a huge list. We use bacteria like Lactobacillus, yeast like Saccharomyces cerevisiae, mold like Penicillium roqueforti and thousands more. Some are cultured specifically for their task, and others occur naturally and are allowed to do their business without interruption.

A few that come to mind that are less commonly considered and fairly interesting to me:

Bonito - Fish are dried, smoked and inoculated with mold (Aspergillus glaucus). A staple flavoring in Japanese cooking.

Kumis - A carbonated, fermented milk product. Lightly alcoholic, and traditionally made from mare's milk, and fermented with wild yeast and bacteria. Quite the beverage, I hear.


Here, in Turkey, cabbage dolma is also very popular. I have no clue about cooking, but probably you may need to cook it differently.


It doesn't matter. All you need is for the oil to be properly heated. You can use the cue which is most convenient for you - shimmering, smoke, an IR thermometer, smell, throwing stuff into the pan, or your spidey sense that suddenly reminds you of the pan after enough time has passed. Go with whichever is most convenient for you, they are all correct.
That being said, shimmering is usually visible in stainless steel pans, but more difficult to notice in pans with a dark bottom such as seasoned iron pans or PTFE coated ones, so it might not be the easiest one to pick.


I would say it depends. I find once you freeze an item the flavor/texture/propeties of the item is changed (for better or for worse) the next time you goto use it.

If your using caramelized onions in a soup, or stew, something where flavors blend together for a longer period of time, then yes go ahead.

however if your using the caramelized onions on top of a steak or something similar. Then my answer would be no.


Does active dry yeast really need proofing?

No, it isn't actually necessary.  The yeast activates just fine with the moisture in the bread.  I've been using Active Dry Yeast for years and hardly ever bother with proofing it.

Proofing shows that the yeast is actually alive.  If you have any doubt about it, proof it as the first thing that you do, before mixing up the other ingredients (and especially before putting liquid in).  If it fails then you didn't waste materials.


How to clean stains from anodized aluminum pans?

This looks like you are starting to getting a layer of polymerized oil on the pan, like the seasoning on a cast iron pan.

I wouldn't try removing it. The usual methods are either using a strong base (which works really well) or mechanical forms of removal, which are less effective. But the strong base will corrode your pan, and the mechanical removal will scratch and damage the anodized layer.

You can try the baking soda, but it is so weak a base that it is unlikely to have much of an effect.

I would just continue to use the pan as it is.


Simple: it's undercooked.

So what was the specific variable that caused this outcome? Who knows. Maybe 400 on your oven isn't the same as 400 on the oven of the person who wrote the recipe, or your pie started out with colder ingredients, or you opened the oven door too many times, or any number of other factors which could affect how long something takes to cook in an oven.

More important than where you went wrong, is how you can avoid doing this again in the future. As I sit here typing, I can hear my pastry instructor in school yelling "Put that back in the oven! Golden brown means brown, not gold!"

You should always cook a pie to the correct color/doneness, not to a specified time. In most cases in cooking, time is the least reliable indicator for doneness. To someone with experience, even smell by itself is more accurate than time.

Good luck with your future pie baking!


Why is a copper bowl recommended for whipping cream and egg whites?

According to wikipedia, the copper bonds to the sulfur in the egg whites, which has the effect of stabilizing the foam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_white#Copper_bowl

Cookwise by Shirley Corriher says the same thing.


Is there evidence that adding salt to water prior to boiling can damage a stainless steel pan?

There is empirical support for the effect of temperature on pitting corrosion, although from what little I'm able to understand of the very complicated metallurgy, the common explanation given is far too simplistic and the actual behaviour is not nearly as clear-cut as "colder = more salt crystals = more pitting", but rather due to something called transpassive dissolution (searching for this will give you lots of scholarly results on stainless steel corrosion).

I'll get straight to the point by referencing this chapter on pitting corrosion from the Metals Handbook (textbook) which has the following convenient graph:

More pitting happens at lower temperatures. As the link explains:

  At low temperatures, extremely high breakdown potentials are observed, corresponding to transpassive dissolution, not localized corrosion. Just above the critical pitting temperature (CPT), pitting corrosion occurs at a potential that is far below the transpassive breakdown potential.

But you can see from the graph that that's not the whole story, either. Excluding what happens at very high temperatures (above the CPT), the impact of temperature looks to be maybe 20-30%, but there are much more significant variations based on other factors, the most notable kitchen-applicable examples being the material (described as the PREN - Pitting Resistance Equivalent Number), surface condition (grit), and inhibitor elements in the solution (traces of which may or may not be found in tap water).

While this does certainly support the conclusion, it's also obvious, if you read the explanation of pitting or look at the lovely reaction diagram on page 2 of the textbook link, that it has literally nothing to do with undissolved salt. In fact, pitting is caused by the Cl- ions specifically, and so can only happen after it is dissolved in the water. If you just poured salt on a dry pan in a dry environment, it shouldn't corrode.

Moreover, pitting is a stochastic process - it's quite literally random even when you know all the other parameters, so while one can certainly average it out over many experiments and thus quantify the correlation with temperature, that ends up having little meaning in a kitchen setting because you are cooking with one pan/pot and the random variation seems to be a lot more profound than the effect of the temperature variable.

Anyway, in case anyone was thinking that it sounds pretty simple so far - it's not. The experiment that produced the graph above was performed under one set of conditions - using just salt, water, and stainless steel. While that's certainly comparable to cooking, it's interesting to see what another source (Inﬂuence of the electrolyte composition and temperature on the transpassive dissolution of austenitic stainless steels in simulated bleaching solutions - PDF warning) says about oxalic acid:

  The addition of oxalic acid has accordingly a much bigger impact on the transpassive corrosion rate at 70° C than at room temperature [...] In the solutions containing organic additives at 70° C, transpassive oxidation starts at significantly lower potentials than at room temperature.

In case you're not familiar with oxalic acid - or wondering why you should care - it's the primary ingredient in Bar Keeper's Friend, which many "premium" stainless steel cookware brands such as All Clad recommend using to clean your cookware - and nearly every cleaning guide recommends warm, but not hot, water. Admittedly, I just looked at the label and BKF doesn't specify a temperature, so the warm-water recommendation is entirely anecdotal - but looking at the above, it makes sense; you want to use warm water in order for it to be more effective, but using hot water (or even warm water for more than a minute or so) increases the risk of corrosion, especially if what you're trying to clean is caked-on salt or charred food.

The effect of pH is more generally supported by various studies, where neutral is better (i.e. less corrosion), not to mention that strong acids cause the other type of corrosion (called intergranular), and yes, vinegar counts, although the effect is very slow, but still appreciable over time if you like to deglaze with boiling vinegar, for example.

Even of the type of salt makes a big difference, if you scroll further down on that same previous link. Ammonium chloride is, for example, often found in sea salt, and it would appear to cause pitting corrosion much faster than the sodium chloride in table salt or kosher salt.

Here's what really does matter in a practical sense: Pitting is a reduction reaction, it's caused by a lack of oxygen available to the metal surface - unlike, for example, rust, which is caused by oxygen. Quoting the last link:

  If debris of any kind is allowed to accumulate on the surfaces of stainless steel equipment, it will reduce the accessibility of oxygen to the covered areas and pits may develop in such locations because of the reduced oxygen concentration. [...] ...carbon deposits from heated organic compounds are typical examples of this source of [pitting] corrosion of stainless steels.

If you really want to protect your stainless steel cookware, just don't ever let it boil dry, and make sure to clean it properly if you start to see "stains" or "scum" on the bottom of your pan; those are dissolved salts and some organic compounds from the water and sometimes the food, and when they stick to the pan's surface, they do exactly what's described above - they block oxygen, and they do this for a much longer period - all day all every day as opposed to the 10-20 minutes you spent heating/boiling some water. That long, slow starvation of oxygen over hundreds or thousands of hours, as opposed to the minuscule amount of time it spends on the stove, is exactly what causes pitting.

Short answer: Theoretically, yes, salt water at low temperature pits stainless steel faster than salt water at high temperature, although the popular explanation for the mechanism appears to be completely bogus. Practically, this factor is dwarfed by a dozen other factors and probably isn't worth worrying about at all. It typically takes thousands of hours for a pH-neutral, not-too-concentrated saline solution to cause any appreciable pitting corrosion at any temperature. What's more important is how clean the cookware is while it's stored, as that is the state in which it will spend the majority of its time, and as long as it's kept clean, salt-water temperature should not be a major concern.


In what container should I put lemon water for storage?

Both glass and stainless steel are non-reactive and should be fine.


My understanding is that no cooking method helps with BSE and that seems to be backed up by a U.S. Department of Agriculture fact sheet that states:

  Current scientific research indicates that cooking will not kill the BSE agent

However having a look around at a few references like BSE in sheep from the UK department of Agriculture and Rural Development while there's a theoretical risk of sheep contracting the disease it's never actually been detected. There is a related disease in sheep called Scrapie but from that Wikipedia page:

  Scrapie has been known since 1732, and does not appear to be transmissible to humans

I've never cooked a whole lamb's head but have cooked lamb brains and one word of caution is that they do cook quickly. Most recipes I've used seem to involve poaching for only five to ten minutes so it may be worth considering removing the brain while cooking the head and adding back late in the cooking process. Another idea might be to make two courses as a common theme, maybe a soup using the head and some crumbed brains.


The "key property" of the papaya and the reason why it is used is its texture: crunchyness. I think you can use anything else that is crunchy and has a quite neutral taste, like cucumber peel, cabbage, kohlrabi, carrots, young lotus stalks (like the ones in this receipe, not these), or unripe mango. I had them in salads similar to the green papaya salad and found that these ingedients are quite neutral in taste.

After all, replacing the papaya makes the salad to not be a green papaya salad anymore. ;) You could try other gỏi -- vietnamese salad -- receipes.


How do I cook chips (french fries) in the oven?

There are a couple tricks I've learned from Cook's Illustrated about making oven fries:

Soak your cut potatoes in warm water to rinse off excess surface starch. Drain them and dry them very well (I use a salad spinner and paper towels).
Use a heavy duty sheet pan on the bottom rack of a hot oven to focus the heat on crisping the bottoms of the potatoes.
Oil your sheet pan well, and sprinkle salt on it. This will act kind of like ball bearings under the potatoes to prevent them from sticking too hard.
For the first 5-10 minutes, tightly wrap the sheet pan (with the potatoes) with aluminum foil. This will essentially steam the potatoes and help get a really nice creamy interior. After that, remove the foil and flip the potatoes halfway through. Make sure you use a thin metal spatula when you flip them.

These techniques work well for potatoes in general, and really do turn out some fantastic spuds.


How can I create a drinkable ice slurry?

When you mix it, you're bringing everything to the same temperature, and if the amount of heat in your mixture isn't enough to bring all the ice up to 0C before all the water freezes, you're going to get a block of ice.

You could be careful about it, and figure out the temperature of your ice and your water, and get the right amounts, and perhaps even use warmer water (or warmer ice). But you can also just use less ice per water, and that's easy. Simply start with water and add ice, blending as you go, until you have the amount of ice and water that you want, stopping before you add so much that you just get solid ice. Once you've done it once, you'll have an idea how much ice and liquid to start with.

I don't really see why you'd bother lowering the freezing point. 0C is plenty cold for human consumption, and you can just as easily just use more water and less ice. If you do add things for flavor like alcohol, sugar, or anything with fat (e.g. dairy) then you will end up lowering the freezing point, and possibly making it softer when it's almost frozen, but this doesn't really affect the fact that you want to get it to the ideal temperature by controlling the temperature as you create it.

(Note that a smoothie is basically an ice slurry, with a lot of other stuff in it, and they're made just like this - blended with an amount of ice that can't freeze the whole mixture.)


What is the effect of a semolina/plain flour mix in pasta making?

Firstly, all-purpose, high protein ("OO"), semolina, whole wheat and other flours make excellent pastas on their own or in combination.  So, at the end of the day, you should use what you like, have on hand or is economically feasible.  Semolina flour, either by itself, of in combination with other flours, should not impact the flavor much...but it should create a slightly "rougher" texture.  Some claim that this helps sauce cling better, but I have never done a side-by-side comparison.


what about thai iced tea, and sticky rice with the mango?


How do I trim fat down to an even layer?

This may sound ridiculous, but I cook the meat to about half-done before I trim it. Then just use a filleting knife, the same one I use for fish, and I insert toothpicks to the depth where they encounter solid meat, so I can judge how thick the fat is. Then I just fillet the fat off, using the toothpicks as a depth guide and removing them as i go, and I peel the sliced fat back with a fork. You should be able to get it all off in one sheet.


It depends on how often you want to hone, what steel and edge geometry your knife uses, and how you use it.
Generally, for the vast majority of kitchen knives -- even Kramer knives -- the following apply:

The knife is made of stainless or light carbon steel, to hardness of below 62HRC
The knife is double beveled although not necessarily symmetrically
The cook uses primarily slicing or light chopping action, which reduces the chipping damage to the blade that comes from chopping bones and other hard products

If these conditions are true, I would recommend using a ceramic hone and honing frequently.....ideally before every session with the knife.  Failure to hone will cause the edge to soften, fold or burr in a way that a hone cannot restore, which is when you'll need to send it on for sharpening.
Some notes:

Make sure you have a good cutting board. Stay away from brittle hard surfaces like marble glass or stone, and use wood or plastic.

FWIW I like the Epicurean boards because they're hardy, they don't splinter like bamboo, don't need the conditioning required of butchers blocks, and are better looking than plastic..... But this is a separate and more subjective topic.

If you are using high carbon, very hard steel then a ceramic hone will have limited effect so you may need to use a leather strop, fine wet stone or even steel to hone that edge. Contrary to popular opinion, very hard blades are not necessarily better and can be a real pain to maintain.
If you have a single beveled edge typical of some Japanese knives, then honing is more difficult....in this case learn where the bevel is and be careful of your honing angles to make sure you don't fold or dull the edge accidentally
If you're using your knife as a chopper with bone or hard products then honing will have little effect since the chop impact will be damaging the blade. Get a separate chopper!


To put aromatics at beginning or end of cooking?

Just like many other ingredients, when spices are added to a dish is a function of what effect you want them to have on the final dish.  If you want deep, well-integrated flavors, or even undertones, you add them early so the flavors meld into the product.  If you want a more pronounced flavor or an aroma, they are added at or near the end of cooking.  In addition, you can certainly do both, as the flavor and aroma can be enhanced by this double addition (at the beginning and at the end).  When these aromatic spices (and often alliums) are used, like in curries, they are heated in oil or ghee.  The oil is flavored, and this helps to carry the flavor of the aromatics throughout the product.  Spices and herbs also contain many volatile compounds, which will be lost with heat and time.  In this case, a last minute addition, just before serving, is the best approach.

"What do they know that we don't?"  Well, "they" know the final result that they are trying to achieve, and how ingredients behave at various points in the cooking process.  The end goal is a well-integrated dish.


Is there a good test for whether a flat-top stove is working correctly?

This is, indeed, how electric stoves (flat top, coil top, or otherwise) work. It's also how most microwaves work, incidentally. The heating elements have two states: on or off. If you set a burner to an intermediate setting, the way it achieves that intermediate temperature is by turning on for a particular amount of time, then turning off for a particular amount of time.

Note that the burner doesn't actually cool down all that quickly just because it momentarily doesn't appear red. This is why it's so easy to burn things on an electric cooktop if you're not used to it: burners stay hot enough to cook food for quite a long time after being turned off. If you're done cooking something, you need to physically move it off the stove, or at least off of any burner that has been turned on in the last, oh, half an hour, otherwise you will continue cooking it, thus potentially burning it.

To test whether a burner is working, turn it to the highest heat and check that it stays on more or less constantly. Note that depending on your stove, you might have to put a pot on the burner for it to turn on at all. And if your stove comes equipped with a "boil-over" sensor, all bets are off: the burner may not stay on constantly no matter what you do. In any case, the failure state of most stoves is "stops working at all", not some sort of "works when it feels like it", so if you can get your stove to produce heat, chances are it's working as correctly as it's capable of.


You can always create a larger batch. If you, for example, doubled the amount of port, you can add* all the other ingredients in the same amount you originally used and that would correct the proportions.

*Depending on the recipe and how things are put together, you may need to do more than simply add. You might need to create an new starter and then mix them together.


What styles of barbeque exist in American cuisine?

There's a great YouTube video by Rhett & Link called the The BBQ Song (A Review of BBQ in the Southern United States) that is actually a really good starting point for answering this question.

Here are the lyrics to the song:

  In the mountains of Tennessee, they like a smoky sauce;
  But over there in ol' Memphis, a dry-rubbed rib is boss.

  The folks down in Georgia can't make up their mind.
  You can give it to 'em sweet or spicy, and they'll say "that tastes alright."

  You might think that South Carolinians are just a little bit off.
  Would you believe their barbecue's yellow—with a mustard sauce?

  Pork shoulder is the cut of choice in Mississippi
  And they pride themselves on barbecue that's totally vinegary.

  And Louisiana, them Cajuns,
  They like to spice it up. They like to spice it up.

  This is our review of barbecue,
  In the southern United States.
  And when my life is through,
  Bury me in barbecue,
  But make sure it's vinegar-based,
  'Cause you know that slows decay,
  And it's the style from our home state—North Carolina! (Solo!)

  Mutton is big in west Kentucky, that's a fancy name for sheep.
  But in the rest of the state, sliced pork butt is what they eat.

  Arkansas is kinda like Georgia, a barbecue meltin' pot,
  And when you ain't looking, them good ol' boys'll make that barbecue hot!

  Alabama's got the strangest thing I've seen in my barbecue days,
  'Cause their barbecue sauce is white, made out of mayonnaise!

  Down in Texas, where the long-horn steer roam free,
  They love to smoke their brisket—that's a big ol' slab of beef.

  And down in Florida . . .
  Is Florida a southern State?
  No, it ain't.

  This is our review of barbecue,
  In the southern United States.
  And when my life is through,
  Bury me in barbecue . . .

  People not from the South
  Think barbecue means "cookout,"
  And that's something they're wrong about.

  (Spoken outro:)
  Barbecue is NOT a verb, barbecue is NOT a grill.
  Barbecue is MEAT prepared in a very special way,
  Which varies depending on where you go.


What is this plant I saw for sale at a Romanian farmer's market?

That actually are tips of trees, probably spruce1. It’s this year’s new growth and a very seasonal product. The tips are harvested when the are (about) fully grown, but still light green and soft.

I can’t say for sure what the local customers would use them for, but one of the common uses in my area of the world is to make “honey”, i.e. a syrup by either layering the tips with sugar and let the sugar draw out the aromatic compounds or alternatively make a “tea” that’s them preserved with plenty of sugar and boiled down to a syrup. It’s both a honey substitute (it does resemble fir honey) and a folk medicine against colds and coughing. Other extracts are made with alcohol instead (or in combination with) sugar to create a liqueur, again served both for medical and culinary purposes.

1  This is not a botanical id. Various members of the genus Picea (spruce) and Abies (fir) are used, usually whatever grows locally and has a pleasant taste.


How can I preserve yogurt for at least 2 weeks without preservatives?

Stored in the refrigerator, homemade yogurt can keep for up to 2 weeks. If you're planning to use it for re-culturing a new batch, you'd want to do that within about a week. You can also put active yogurt in the freezer to save it to culture future batches.  For this, one trick is to freeze in small amounts of about a tablespoon each using an ice cube tray (I use a ravioli mold).


Why doesn't mayonnaise taste like pure oil?

Starting from the basics: Mayonnaise, as you know, is a combination of water-based liquids, water-soluble ingredients, and lipids (fats/oils). Since water and lipids are immiscible, that makes mayonnaise an emulsion.

Because the droplets (of fat) suspended in an emulsion are not actually dissolved, the properties of that emulsion depend entirely on the size of those droplets and their dispersion.  The most likely reason that your mayonnaise tasted like oil is that it actually was pure oil in spots.

The technical term for this is flocculation.

(source: Cube Cola)

This is probably what happened to you - it's possible that if you had really poor dispersion, you might have even been closer to the "coalescence" stage.

To use a more tangible example, consider what happens when you dissolve flour or corn starch in cold water, then heat it.  The starch gelatinizes and you end up with a fairly uniform, thick paste.  Now think of what happens if you toss it into hot water; you'll tend to end up with something that isn't uniform, instead you'll end up with big globs of cooked flour floating around in thin, cloudy water.

Keep in mind that the chemistry is completely different with an emulsion - in fact, there technically is no chemistry happening with an emulsion until emulsifiers come into the picture - but the concept is the same.  You might not be able to see those globs of oil floating around in the water as well as you can see the globs of flour, but if you didn't get proper dispersion and suspension, they're there, and they will taste exactly how you'd expect a glob of pure oil to taste.

Traditional mayonnaise uses raw egg yolk (containing lecithin) and mustard (containing mucilage), both of which act as emulsifiers.  These are called "emulsifiers" mainly because they help the emulsion to stay stable, which is why the store-bought mayonnaise doesn't separate (it also probably has a few extra additives).  However, they aren't all that helpful for getting that initial dispersion; the most efficient way to do that is to let small drops of oil into a liquid that is being constantly and uniformly agitated.

You can do this by stirring, but an even better way is to use an immersion blender with emulsifying blade.  Note that this is not the flat aerating blade that is often confused with the emulsifying blade, nor is it the star-shaped liquefying blade that is the default on most sticks and many manufacturers confusingly call an "emulsifying" blade.  The one you want looks a bit like a hubcap; it's flat with several slits or holes and is sometimes also called a "smoothie blade" or "whisk blade":

or

(the one I'm talking about is the bottom left)

These things are perfect for preparations like mayonnaise, but if you don't have one, you can get halfway decent results with a wire whisk.  You'll just need to use a lot of elbow grease.

If you get really good dispersion, and use sufficient emulsifiers such that the emulsion doesn't separate too fast, then I promise you, your mayo won't have that "fatty" taste and it will be 1000 times better than the store-bought goop.


Does the vegetable crisper make a difference?

As stated by Jefromi back in a similar question;

The crisper provides a somewhat enclosed environment, which prevents moisture from escaping as rapidly. Vegetables keep best at a certain humidity, higher than that typically found in the rest of the fridge, but not so high that condensation starts accumulating on them. Vegetables kept in too-dry air in the rest of the fridge will tend to dry out and shrivel up faster; those kept in the crisper will retain their water and texture better, keeping them crisp.
Leafy vegetables are also much more prone to drying out, since they have much more surface area, while hardier vegetables with a decent skin on them (like bell peppers) don't dry out nearly as quickly. Fruits benefit somewhat from this as well, but don't generally need as high a humidity as vegetables.
Some crisper drawers have little sliders on them which vary the size of the opening to the rest of the fridge, letting you vary the amount of circulation and therefore the humidity; you can adjust this to suit what you tend to store in the drawer. If you have two crisper drawers, both adjustable, then it might be a good idea to put fruit and hardier vegetables in one, and more vulnerable vegetables in the other.

Also, by always putting vegetables in the crisper drawer, you can prevent potential cross contamination between foods i.e., the vegetables can never come in contact with raw meat, because they're all in their own separate drawer.


Cooked Cottage Pie, refrigerated. How to reheat

180 for 45 minutes should do the trick. Just make sure it is piping hot in the middle before serving.

Cover the dish with foil to prevent the crust getting any crustier. You will still want to take it off for the last ten minutes of cooking to crisp it though, as the foil will make it soggy.

You can absolutely prepare Cottage Pie to the pre-baking stage and fridge (or freezer) it until the next day. You need to cool it relatively quickly though - hot food shouldn't sit around for more than a couple of hours. Place the dish in cool water (obviously not over the lip of the dish) and change the water a couple of times as the pie warms it, then cover and put in the fridge or freezer.


What types of alcohol will make meat tender when marinating?

Alcohol does not make the meat tender.  It even prevents the outside surface of the meat to fully absorb the flavours.  Then again, most marinades don't penetrate into the meat anyway.

When it comes to Shashlik, I think what is working for your uncle, is the time the meat spends in the fridge getting aged (they probably marinate for a day or more) and the enzymes break down the meat.

It is a myth that Alcohol or Acid make the meat tender.  In fact, they have the opposite effect.  Per food author Harold McGee's quote:

  Alcohol does denature and dehydrate meat and fish tissue, and the
  stronger the alcohol, the stronger this effect.

What you should do instead, is to cook off the alcohol from your marinade first. The ingredient that keeps the meat juicy is salt which most marinades have.

The less acidic marinade (beer versus wine) the more tender the meat.  However, some not so acidic wines end up flavouring the surface of the meat enough to provide a pleasant byte.


Okay, after looking around a bit, I think the proper description of the sweet potato in your picture is 'pithy'. And I saw some pics where this condition had progressed much further than it had in yours. It seems that what causes this is temperatures too high during the storage time. I found references to this in several places.

From  the University of Arkansas :

  Sweet potatoes: proper curing improves quality, shelf life
  By Will Hehemann
  The Cooperative Extension Service
  U of A System Division of Agriculture

  PINE BLUFF, Ark. – Sweet potatoes are not very sweet when initially harvested, Shaun Francis, extension horticulture specialist for the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, said. Farmers should cure their sweet potato crop for a period of time to ensure the correct taste and a longer shelf life.

  “Sweet potatoes remain metabolically active after they are harvested,” Francis said. “As the tubers continue the respiration process, their starches are converted to sugars, hence the sweet taste.”

  Another purpose of the curing process is to heal any abrasions or bruises the sweet potatoes sustain during harvesting, he said. As the potato cures, a corky layer of cells develops just below the surface of the abrasions, which serves as a barrier against disease-carrying organisms.

  The curing process can begin immediately after sweet potatoes are harvested. First, remove them from the field as soon as possible to prevent sunscald damage.

  “If you are harvesting during moist conditions, allow the soil around the roots to dry for an hour or two,” Francis said. “Though you can remove excess soil around the roots, remember not to wash freshly harvested potatoes.”

  Store the potatoes in a warm, humid room for four to seven days. Ideal conditions for curing are a temperature of 85 degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity of 90 percent.

  “As these conditions may be difficult to establish inside a household, consider using a shed on the farm or a garage,” Francis said. “Some farmers can achieve the correct conditions for curing in a room with a space heater, thermostat and humidifier.”

  If the temperature decreases during the curing process, increase the number of days the sweet potatoes spend curing. If it is 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside, let the potatoes cure for up to 10 days, he said.

  Good ventilation is also important in the curing process, as it can prevent a buildup of the carbon dioxide that is released by the tubers. The circulation of air also enables excess condensation to escape, which prevents rotting.

  After sweet potatoes have cured for the correct amount of time, they should be stored at an approximate temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity range of 85-90 percent, Francis said.

  “Keep the storing conditions constant, as fluctuations will cause the deterioration of root quality,” he said. “Low temperatures cause the potatoes to develop too tough a center, while high temperatures will cause the roots to sprout, shrivel and become pithy.”

  Francis said sweet potatoes stored in cool, constant conditions have a shelf life of up to several months.

  For more information on cultivating and preserving sweet potatoes or other tubers, contact your local county extension agent or visit www.uaex.edu.

(Emphasis mine.)

So, while they probably wouldn't have hurt you, they were obviously inferior quality and most likely wouldn't have tasted very good. Good call on tossing them!


Can you help me identify this appliance/tool?

It looks like a rotary drum coffee roaster. I can't find any pictures of one that looks exactly like it though, so I may be wrong.


My sous vide chicken is tough and stringy - did I cook it too long, or too little?

You cooked it at too low a temperature.

Sous vide is intended for meat where you want the protein to remain tender. It shouldn't have any sinews. Think chicken breasts, or the long filet along the spine of a pig. This meat gets nicely cooked at 60-65°C (depends on the animal), and tough and dry above that.

Meat marbled with sinews has to be cooked at a temperature where the sinews (collagen) melt into gelatin. This happens at about 70°C at least, and takes hours. Since the muscle fibres are already toughened at that temperature, there is no reason to hold it low; you can put it at full boil in a normal pot and cook it there, you just have to wait long enough. In theory, you could do it in a sous vide bath too, but you won't get any of the benefits sous vide gives to tender meat.


I forgot to add butter to my king cake dough

Unfortunately, if you attempt to combine the butter into the already risen dough, the dough's structure would most likely get ruined.
I wouldn't stress too much over the forgotten butter in the dough though, as the filling will consist of butter as well. Also, you may be able to salvage some flakyness by gently folding in thin sheets of butter into the dough.


Can ghee be used instead of butter in dessert recipes?

moved here from a comment:

Ghee does have a different aroma and consistency, so, depending on the use of it in the recipe (wether it is used for frying or in the frosting for example), it will quite likely change the final result.

So in some cases substituting butter with some neutral flavored oil or margarine might be better than ghee. Which, I know, might not help if ghee is all you've got.

Also wanted to include what @rumtscho adds in the comment above:

  in recipes where the fat ratio is important, ghee (which is 100% fat)
  can ruin the ratio because butter is 83% fat.

And as to standards, they can be quite relative (making something that tastes slightly different doesn't necessarily ruin it) ... if you are making the desert for an indian audience, using clarified butter might taste quite normal =)


Roast in a hot oven, over grill or direct flame, or in cast iron. Whole...until skin is dark and blistered. Remove from heat carefully.  Place in a bowl and cover with plastic.  Allow to cool.  The peppers will continue to steam as they cool.  Wipe off skin. Then de-seed and dice.  They will be tender.


Nope, it's fine to leave split beans in to cook with the rest of the beans. Split beans are common, and I've never heard of anyone removing them.

They will probably overcook while the rest of the beans get just cooked, but it won't be noticeable.


How can I keep the shape of my free-form bread dough when it is rising?

Jay's answer of a couche is great for relatively long loaves like baguettes or even ciabatta.  For oval or round loaves, however, you'll need support on more than two sides.  In that case, the solution is a basket known as a banneton or brotform (depending on which language you prefer to make your bread in).  Again, they are not for baking -- you dust them with flour and then gently flip them to get the dough out right before baking.  (Note that this is how bakers often make those lovely patterns of rings of flour on the top of their loaves.)

If you don't use either, you may still be able to achieve greater height by shaping more fully.  Many people have been cautioned by various books to shape very gently and avoid degassing.  I spent years producing flabby flat loaves this way, thinking that the key to loaf height was avoiding degassing and letting the bubbles grow.  But it's often the opposite: by leaving the bubbles too big and shaping gently, you don't stretch the gluten enough to provide support and the yeast actually grow more slowly since they are immersed in their own waste product gases.  (The only time to shape gently is if the yeast isn't strong enough to raise the dough again, which can sometimes happen with long sourdough fermentations or with very rich doughs like brioche, for example.)

While it's good advice to avoid unnecessary degassing (you don't actually want to "punch down" the dough to shape it), the main way to achieve a tall loaf is by having a very taut "skin," and that generally can only happen if you shape forcefully to stretch that "skin" multiple times.  When I make free-form loaves without a banneton or other support, I generally:

Cut the dough into pieces after bulk fermentation.
"Preshape" the loaves roughly into rounds or ovals by folding repeatedly to tighten the "skin."  (Stop when the skin feels taut, and definitely stop if it tears.)
Bench rest for 10-15 minutes.  (This allows the gluten to relax, before being stretched one last time.)
Shape very tightly, again being sure to pull the skin quite taut.

For more shaping advice, I'd recommend looking at Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes, which devotes a 30-page chapter to shaping techniques, with a lot of drawings to illustrate the individual steps for each particular loaf shape.  (He also has another entire chapter on braiding techniques.)

Also, to increase the "strength" (elasticity) of the gluten in the dough, you could also try incorporating "stretch-and-fold" manipulations periodically during your bulk rise.  This will prepare the gluten even more before shaping.

Lastly, using a baking stone or steel can help in inflating the dough fast enough in the oven before it has a chance to spread even more: you want the bubbles in the dough to blow up like a balloon quickly during baking.  If they bake too slowly, the bubbles can collapse or the gluten will stretch out and allow the dough to slacken before the crust hardens.


How to cook 1.5+ inch veal steak to medium?

Go buy a thermometer. There is no possible way to be guaranteed to hit the perfect point where it is medium well done but not overdone without knowing the internal temperature. How quickly it cooks depends on things like the temperature in your oven (they are rarely precise), the exact thickness of the steak, its exact internal temperature when you first place it in the oven, and so on. You can find a functioning oven thermometer for $3-4 at your local super market, so there is really no reason not to buy one.


After opening the door the temperature is supposed to drop a few degrees since it's exchanging heat with the outside air (which is usually colder than in the oven...).

The cake batter should also absorb part of the heat put out by the oven, by heat transfer. So if your oven is very small (like an oven-toaster-grill), weak, leaking large amounts of heat (through openings or cracks) or you're putting a huge amount of really cold cake batter the temperature might not rise back to previous levels.

So I'd say it's not normal - at least I never saw such a large temperature drop for such a long time. Trying bake a smaller cake, or checking that the baked goods are not blocking the heating element or the air circulation inside the oven.

Try also putting your thermometer in a different position inside the oven and see what's the difference - maybe just part of the oven is not getting up to temp, since you said your cakes are baking fine.


How to light this type of basic, old fashioned gas-cylinder-powered gas oven?

Back when we had one of these, we used to turn on the gas, wait for a tiny while (I seem to remember 4-5 seconds), then drop a lit match into  the front center hole. That would light up the burners. I'd err on the side of too little gas until you're used to it, and it may take a few attempts

Mom was pretty good at it, but that might have been through years of practice.

This video goes through the whole process, though I could have sworn you didn't need to push down the knob


How to Sous Vide Filet Mignon to Medium Rare

130F (approx. 54C) works great. That brings it to the very bottom of the "medium-rare scale", allowing you to sear before presentation without overcooking.

Although, I have to tell you, filet mignon is kind of a waste with sous vide. Not that it won't be great, but a much less expensive cut can be cooked at that temperature much longer and give you amazingly tender results.

The minimum time for a medium-rare filet would be just as long as it takes for the whole steak to reach 130F (half an hour or 45 minutes, depending on the thickness of the steak). Of course you can cook it longer, that's one of the beauties of sous vide, but that won't make it any better.

You can spend a whole bunch less money and get chuck (shoulder) and slice it into steaks. Sous vide it for two days at 130F, and that makes a steak almost as tender as filet, yet more flavorful.

That is my very first chuck steak cooked at 131F for two days, then seared. I used a NASA hot cast-iron pan for the searing, so 1°F less will give you a little bit more time to sear without risking overcooking your filet (which would be really tragic!).

Key Point: As Jefromi says in his answer, medium-rare is a scale. If you do 130F this time, consider carefully as you eat. Is the temperature absolutely perfect for you? Keep track of the temperatures you use every time you sous vide and your impressions at that temperature. Once you know what temperatures are perfect for you, sous vide allows you to duplicate perfection perfectly.


My sushi rice comes out chewy on top, mushy on the bottom

If you believe your burners are getting too hot, you can always try using a taller pot with slightly more water to keep the rice from getting dry on top or crispy.  A larger pot would not work because it would increase the evaporation rate of water from increased surface area, then drying out the rice on top while overcooking the rice on the bottom. A taller but smaller pot would keep more water from evaporating out of the pot and drying out your rice before cooking is finished.

A smaller diameter pot with a 2:1 ratio of water to rice on the lowest setting would be your best bet for cooking the rice on your stove.  Possibly leave the rice covered for the entire cook time to make it cook more uniformly overall, keeping the steam inside to prevent the top layer of rice from getting crispy.  If the rice is still mushy, washing the rice helps considerably in getting that "mushy" consistency from forming.

If none of that works, you can always use a microwave to cook rice.  I had this issue a few years ago and found that a microwave was more cost efficient than buying a rice cooker since I already owned a microwave.  It isn't a fix for troubleshooting your issues with your stove, but it might save you some of the hassle in cooking rice that isn't satisfying on your stove.


The chocolate chips in my chocolate chip cookies dont rise to the top

I don't think they are supposed to rise to the top. If you are looking at a picture in a recipe or book, the chips were probably placed in that position for appeal. You can do the same before cooking by placing a few chips on top. Advertising is a deceptive busines!


30 minutes. Provided you have some space between them so the air can circulate, it doesn't matter how many you roast at once.


In Indian cooking, what does it mean when a recipe says "until the oil begins to leave the side of the pan"?

Since I'm not an expert in Indian cuisine, I can't say this for certain, but I agree with the comments so far that this seems basically equivalent to the separation of the oil from the curry.

To my mind, the wording makes perfect sense, because in some cases with a lot of oil/butter, you can get separation happening early on the pan's edges.  Oil tends to float on top, and usually the center of a pan is heated more strongly over a burner.  Thus, you tend to get boiling/bubbling in the center, which tends to push any floating oil toward the edges.

But these recipes are not looking for that small amount of oil along the edge (which, depending on stirring and the thickness of the curry, can stay there through much of the cooking process).  They are specifically waiting for the time when separation increases and fat appears floating on the surface even away from the edges of the pan.


Cooking a chicken and peppers in a crockpot instead of sauteeing, how much water should I add?

You don't need to add any water to the slow cooker whatsoever. Your recipe is somewhat similar to the one that I use to cook my lunches but the quantities seem larger than mine, much larger. I assume that you chop everything up into small piece, including the chicken. The slow cooker should not be more than 3/4 full, so reduce your amounts if the quantities are too big.

Chicken breast doesn't need more than three hours on the 'high' setting in order to cook (six hours on low); this cooking time leaves most of the vegetables crisp (courgettes and pumpkin soften, but bell peppers, carrots and onions retain their texture).

Running a kosher kitchen, I would not know about adding cheese to the food, but anyway I would recommend adding the cheese to the food prior to serving, not while it is being cooked.

If you wish to separate some of the vegetables, one technique which I have used successfully is to put these vegetables in a wire tray (I use the plastic punnets in which we buy fresh mushrooms): these vegetable are cooked like the rest but are kept separate.

If you do wish to add certain vegetables after you have already started cooking, then you are supposed to add 20 minutes to the cooking time (every time one opens the lid of the cooker, steam escapes and it apparently takes 20 minutes to obtain the same amount of steam).


Is it safe to bake dough in a microwave?

First of all, just about any food of reasonable size is safe to be cooked in a microwave, assuming you do it correctly.

  I heard that meat isn't safe to bake or grill in microwave because
  there may be tiny areas that contain less moisture and hence not
  cooked though as microwave cooks moving water molecules.

I'm not sure what the source is for this, but it's not true in general.  One can't really "grill" meat in a microwave, but one can bake/roast it.  It's true that microwaves heat unevenly, so for thick cuts, that means cooking using a lower power level and/or cooking in stages.  Most microwaves with lower power settings actually just cycle on and off, which allows the heat already present in the food to distribute itself farther inside.  It's not unlike the process by which you roast meat in an oven: the outside heats faster, but the interior has no direct contact with the hot air, so you depend on the fact that the heat will gradually be conducted throughout the food.  Microwaves instead target water molecules (as you note), but with periodic heating and enough time, the hot parts of the food will heat up the rest.

(If there is one thing to note about microwaves, it's that people tend to just use them on high heat, expecting them to cook faster.  If you want to cook a large cut of meat, you need to allow time to distribute the heat while cooking, which means you can't cook very fast or you'll dry out some parts completely before the rest gets done.  Perhaps that's where you've heard about the "safety" issue -- people who have used microwaves incorrectly to try to cook large pieces of meat too quickly and ended up with parts that were still raw.  Like any cooking tool, microwaves need to be used correctly for different applications.)

Anyhow, to the question about baking: yes, microwaves can be used safely for baking too.  Browning is harder to achieve in microwaves (though it can be done in some limited ways, and there are gadgets to enhance it somewhat).  Pies baked in microwaves generally will bake the crust first for a few minutes before adding filling to ensure the crust bakes better.  It won't brown much and likely won't have a very nice crust texture (particularly if you like "flaky"), but it's perfect safe.  The results overall will vary based on the type of pie (though reading a bit online seems to indicate that custard pies are often a good candidate for microwaving).

As for bread, again, it's perfectly safe, and there seem to be several online recipes for it.  Again, you won't get much of a crust or browning, but if you don't like a dry crust on your bread, it might actually be an okay option.  Typically, you should get a result closer to a "steamed bread" rather than a crusty bread, which might be feasible for some types of bread.  (Cakes are often a better option for baking in the microwave, as they often don't require browning or crust development for good results.)

In general, it's perfectly safe to bake dough in the microwave as long as your final result is done all the way through.  I'd do a search for some recipes with good reviews or from a reputable source before trying them, though, since a lot of baked goods made this way tend to be inferior to those made in a more conventional oven.

EDIT: While the question asked about food safety, I found some general guidelines on baking in the microwave that may address the quality issues that came up in comments.  For bread:

  Select whole grains or products finished with a topping or icing as microwaving does not brown the bread crust.
  Microwave yeast breads at 50% power and rotate at least once.
  Reduce baking powder by at least one fourth in coffee cakes.
  Use extra shortening in yeast and quick bread to prevent toughness and dryness – 1/4 cup shortening per 2 1/2–3 cups flour in yeast bread
  and 1–2 Tablespoons of shortening for every cup of flour in muffins
  and coffee  cakes.
  Decrease liquid in dense quick bread batters or very liquid batters. Additional egg can be used as a binder in  very liquid
  batters.
  Bread must be heated uncovered to avoid sogginess.

For pies, the document notes that "fruit pies will become soggy" by the time they bake completely and:

  Double crusted pies cannot be made in the microwave as the bottom
  crust becomes soggy and the top does not  brown. Microwaved pies need
  to be prepared in a precooked shell and topped with a crumb rather
  than a crust.


Why aren't glass spoons used for eating?

There has actually been some significant research into cutlery being made of the correct substance to match the food

Testing shows perceptible difference in tastes from various metals when combined with certain foods. Just as silver spoons and egg are an unpleasant experience, some metals (e.g. copper, zinc) acted as a catalyst and improved the taste experience of certain foods

We use wood and ceramic for similar reasons, often for the mouth feel of the cutlery and heat dispersion, e.g. hot soups with metal spoons can be painful

Glass would have it's place, but probably not to dissimilar to porcelain (ceramic). Glass spoons are available, but rare

Some references:

Institute of Making - Sensoaesthetic Properties of Materials

Fine Dining Lovers - Cutlery food science


Grains would typically be dried for storage so that they remain dormant and don't sprout or mold. Assuming you're storing them in a sealed container and your ambient humidity isn't ridiculously high, this is probably dry enough for your purposes. Just don't wash or soak the grains without drying them thoroughly.

There's also going to be a small amount of natural oil contained in the grains which you can't really do anything about - that's probably what caused the flour sticking. The mill is designed to accommodate this, just make sure to clean it after use (to avoid any buildup) and don't add additional oil or moisture.


Only recipe I can find for Anacini says "as much as plain flour as the mixture will need"

Biscuits require 3:2:1 flour:liquid:fat. Cookies are 1:2:3 sugar:fat:flour. (from Michael Ruhlman's book Ratio)

I'm guessing based on the description you'll fall somewhere in the crack between there around 5 cups flour.  However, you will simply need to develop the dough maker's intuition by trial and error. I'm guessing a strict cookie dough ratio will be too inelastic,  but I've never had these "cookies"before, nor have I made any with wine in them. All the same I think that you'll be toward the cookie end of that ratio spectrum (biscuit v. cookie). Just be patient adding tablespoon by tablespoon.


What can I do to dry out my marshmallows?

I don't think I've ever seen a marshmallow recipe without corn syrup, except maybe for methocel marshmallows.  But assuming these are standard gelatin marshmallows, you can dredge them in confectioner's sugar and that will make them easier to work with.

Don't "dust" them, actually dredge them, otherwise you'll just end up with globs of wet sugar attached to the exterior.  This might happen anyway if your marshmallows are particularly watery, so you might need to dredge them a few times.

Also, don't cover them; it's important to let any moisture evaporate.  Gelatin is pretty stable as a gelling agent, but fresh marshmallows are still prone to syneresis, and if you leave them in an enclosed container, the condensation will cause more problems.

If worse comes to worst and the sugar doesn't help, just leave them out in the open for a longer period.  The water will continue to evaporate over time and eventually they will reach the consistency you want - although they might shrink a fair amount before then.


In fact it's the porous nature of wood that makes it ideal for preparing meat. There was a test done a while ago, which showed the bacteria are drawn into the wood and no longer replicate; in fact they die relatively quickly.

Personally, I can't stand plastic boards, they're hell on good knives and although they're non-porous, they do stain. It always makes me feel like reaching for the bleach to remove what might be left...

Besides, have you ever seen butcher's block made out of plastic? Get a good quality hickory or maple board and you're set.


First, you don't crowd the pan when sauteing. If you do it, you are no longer sauteing, because your food doesn't come in contact with the surface frequently enough. You also can't really keep the separate pieces hopping, the best you could do would be to throw it around as a mass (like a pancake turning), which means they'll touch the pan with one side only, if at all.

Second, you don't crowd the pan while shallow frying and pan grilling or working on a griddle. If a piece of the food is not in contact with the bottom, it doesn't fry at all.

Third, you don't crowd the pan when deep frying. If you do, the food cools the oil down and it starts seeping into the food, because it's not hot enough to crisp the surface within the first few seconds.

You can crowd the pan when you are sweating the food. In fact, if you use too little food, it will probably start pan frying or at least roasting, and won't be able to sweat.

You can also crowd the pan when you are braising the food. Else you would have too much water and will simmer it instead.

Bottom line, crowding or not crowding is part of the technique. You decide when to use it based on the technique you want to use. If you don't do it right, the technique doesn't work.


Is it possible to temper chocolate at home?

Absolutely.  I do it all the time, with great results.

The easiest way at home is to 'seed' the chocolate.  Get it up to the proper temperature as best you can - 115 °F/46 °C for dark, 110 °F/43 °C for others.  A thermometer obviously makes this easier.  If you don't have one, it will be just melted.

Doing this in the microwave is more difficult than a double boiler because it's difficult to tell when it happens exactly and you overshoot more easily.  Stir on a double boiler till the right temperature, take the chocolate off the heat and stir in additional, finely chopped, high quality unmelted chocolate (not chocolate chips).

Now stir it in as the mixture cools, it should all melt and 'seed' the crystals into the chocolate.  You'll want to test before you declare victory.  At this point, if it's wrong, just reheat, and reapply with more unmelted chocolate.  To test, simply dip a spoon in and let it cool in the fridge for a moment.  The thin coating on the spoon should be shiny and snapable.


This Chocolate is Van-Leer semi sweet. It was an old American chocolate manufacturer that was recently purchased by Callebaut. It does have a distinct slab style. This is available in the bulk section at Winco.

Here's a picture:

You can also order it online here


Why don't most ice cream recipes include salt in the base?

I can't read the minds of all the recipe authors, but I do have a couple ideas.

I've found it's definitely easy to overdo salt in ice cream. A very small quantity goes a long way. In most cases you don't actually want it to taste salty, you just want a tiny hint that people will only notice as improved flavor. The quantities are small enough that it'll be hard to provide accurate measurements, so you're stuck saying "a pinch" and hoping people don't use too big a pinch.

It's also just not the most obvious addition to most people. Ice cream can be pretty darn good without it. While everyone's used to salt in baked goods, as you said, ice cream recipes often don't include it, so there's not too much learning by example going on. We certainly don't usually put it on fruit! So if you're looking at recipes online that people have come up with on their own, there are decent odds that the author just didn't think of it, even if it would've actually been a nice addition.

Finally, just to clear up an oft-repeated misconception: in these quantities, salt is not going to mess with the freezing point, just like it won't affect the boiling point of pasta water. It takes a ton of dissolved salt to significantly lower the freezing point, and we're making ice cream, not seawater slushies. (Even if you did lower the freezing point, it'd probably be a good thing, since homemade ice cream is generally too hard, not too soft.)


Need to maintain gelato at 10-18 °F without electricity

You could experiment with salt to ice ratio. Somewhere around 15% salt to ice ratio you get freezing in 10-18° F range.

Once you are at 10-18° F, you should have extremely good insulation to keep the temperature stable, have a thermometer placed very close to your gelato and constantly check that, have lots of frozen ice+salt mixture and minimized the exposure of your frozen content to ambient environment.


How long will corm vegetables last in a refrigerator and should they be wrapped?

how long is long ?

They are fine for couple of weeks if stored in a cool place with good amount of humidity.

"These are dependent on ideal storage conditions of 32 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit and 95-percent humidity."


Does the cooking time, adding more water and using high quality and expensive rice help to produce soft and non-stick rice?

This is what I do for cooking ONE cup rice:

Soak one cup rice in one and a half cup water for 20 minutes.  This should be done after rinsing the rice properly since, the water used for soaking is NOT to be thrown away.
After 20 minutes put the vessel with the existing water on the gas stove (with a loose lid on) on a high heat.
When the water reaches the boiling point (indicator: water starts to pour out of the top of the vessel), reduce the gas to a minimum.
After 4-5 minutes check whether the rice is done by taking the lid off sightly. Keep it on the minimum gas till the water bubbles on the top of the rice vanish completely.
Switch off the gas.
Let the rice vessel (with the lid on) be on that switched off gas for 15 minutes. The inherent heat of the gas helps in setting the rice properly and reduces the chances of the rice getting stuck at the bottom.

Also, using a thick bottomed vessel for cooking rice is a must. In a thin bottomed vessel, the food is more likely to get burnt if less water is used.


Difference between vegetable shortening and vegetable ghee?

There's not really any difference between the two apart from the colour. Sometimes ghee contains a few extra flavourings to make the taste more distinctive. However, I don't think there's much of a difference.


In general, calcium chloride is used in cheese making to stabilize and firm up the curd.  It's more necessary in milk that has gone through the standard modern processing routine (pasteurization, homogenization, etc.).  Heating and harsh handling of the milk messes up the balance of calcium in various milk components, and adequate calcium is needed to produce successful coagulation.  It should generally NOT be used in cheeses where the curd needs flexibility, e.g., for stretching in mozzarella.

As for the proposal of using industrial chemicals in your food, I wouldn't do it unless it's actually labelled "food grade".  I have a science background and know quite a bit about chemical manufacturing.  Industrial chemicals may be produced in a multitude of processes on all sorts of equipment that may have handled other chemicals too.  I'm sure ice-melt products generally have a pretty low threshold for this sort of stuff, since they want to prevent environmental contamination. On the other hand, a lot of ice melt stuff contains ingredients other than CaCl2 for various reasons.  Some of those additives may not be safe for ingestion or approved as food ingredients.

In any case, even if it's "just" CaCl2, "food grade" materials have to meet even stricter specific regulatory standards that require such trace ingredients to be below dangerous thresholds when ingested (as opposed to simply exposed to on the skin or whatever might normally happen with icemelt).

Does that mean your particular "icemelter pack" stuff is dangerous to ingest?  Possibly not, but I wouldn't use it in food unless it was labelled "food grade" or I contacted the manufacturer directly and got a straight answer from them saying it's safe to eat.  No one in this forum can tell you how an industrial-grade chemical was produced or handled by a specific manufacturer.  (I doubt you'll get a guarantee from a manufacturer unless it's already labelled as "food grade.")

Anyhow, there are cheaper alternatives, though.  You can buy food-grade calcium chloride in crystalline form. (It's sometimes used in preserving, home-brewing, and other applications.) That will generally be a lot cheaper than buying the liquid.  A quick search shows me a pound of this stuff can be had for $10 or less, and a pound should be adequate for making cheese with well over a thousand gallons of milk.  I'm sure there are better deals to be found; this was one of the first hits I saw.  (If you decide to go industrial, there are plenty of chemical companies which will sell you a 50 lb. bag of food-grade CaCl2 for around $50.)

You then just need to make up a solution of appropriate concentration to match your cheese-making CaCl2 liquid, which is typically around 30% CaCl2 by weight.


beef ribs thawing overnight in sink will meat be good

The food safety guideline answer quoted is a good guideline.

In this case, you have to consider how long was the meat frozen and thawing before it gets to 40 degrees farenheit, the beginning of the temperature danger zone.

After 40, guideline says harmful bacteria will grow at an accelerated rate.

Home freezers operate below 32 F, on average at 0 F. Therefore, there is a good bit of time to come up to 40. There is then a window of time in the danger zone. You will have to judge, based on what the meat looks and feels like. Are there still ice crystals? Is the meat very cold to the touch?

If you cannot adequately judge that it is still very cold, then safety prevails. Regardless, the meat should be par cooked right away if you intend to use it. Putting it back in the fridge means the awoken bacteria get slowed down, but not stopped.


What is the maximum internal temperature of baked goods?

Jolenealaska's answer provides the basics -- internal temperatures over boiling inside baked goods just don't tend to happen under normal conditions.  The reason is because most doughs and batters contain a lot of water.  The final baked goods generally still retain a lot of that water, too.  When the dough is hot and in the oven, however, that water will be heated and will gradually evaporate from the dough.

Assuming you get to close to 212F/100C, at normal atmospheric pressure, water will actually be "boiling" out of the dough.  For the external surface of baked goods, that moisture can leave rapidly enough that the surface rises to higher temperatures (forming a crust).  But internally, the moisture keeps boiling out, maintaining a temperature below or at boiling.  Unless you have a weird situation where you are somehow cooking your baked goods under pressure, water will continue evaporating out of the batter/dough at 212F/100C until the dough/batter has pretty much turned into a dry cracker internally.  That's the only way you'll ever achieve an internal temperature much over 212F/100C: to bake things until they are basically dried out inside (which is not a desirable feature in most baked goods).

As for the maximum useful temperature, that depends on the baked good and the ingredients.  I have to disagree with Jolene slightly here and say I have a number of bread recipes that recommend an internal temperature of 205F or so.  Temperatures over 200F are only generally for lean crusty bread doughs (like baguettes or something), which often start with a fairly moist dough.  The high internal temperature means that more moisture has been removed, which will keep the crust more firm and, well, "crustier."

The more enriched your bread dough, generally the lower the desired final temperature.  Basically, above 175F or so, the gluten coagulation is complete and the dough structure is formed.  So, bread can be "done" anywhere from 175F to about 210F.  If you have a very rich sandwich loaf or brioche or something, you might find that a temp of 180-190F is sufficient.  Large loaves may also need different temperature handling than small buns, for example, since residual heat will continue the baking process outside the oven longer in larger loaves, but it also takes longer for moisture to migrate out of the center of a large loaf.

As for other baked goods, similar advice applies.  Cakes and quickbreads are generally done once you get to around 190-195F, though the ingredients will really affect this.  A "drier" style cake without lots of "stuff" in the batter (e.g., pound cake) might go to 205F or even 210F before it's "done" according to normal criteria, while a quickbread made with loads of fruit might "get stuck" in the range around 190-195F for a long time because there's just so much moisture.  (And it's basically done there anyway.)  For cakes or other baked goods which are meant to be excessively moist (with a fudge interior or something), 175F might be sufficient, since again that's roughly the temperature when baked goods get a final "set" structure.  (Of course, there are also things like "lava" cakes where the interior is not actually fully cooked; in that case, internal temp should be determined by food safety criteria sufficient to cook the eggs, which might be a little lower.)  And again, shape and size are often important for these numbers, because residual heat will lead to further stabilizing of the structure in large things after they come out of the oven.  So, a particular cake might be "done" at 195F, but making cupcakes with the same batter might require 200 or 205F to get the same texture.

It's hard to specify a generic all-purpose desirable maximum temperature, because various changes continue to happen to baked goods after the structure gets set at 175F or so.  Between 175F and 195F, the starches continue to gelatinize and some enzyme activity will continue.  Above 195F, it's mostly about drying things out to the desired final texture.


Does it harm juice if I store it in sub-zero temperatures?

Freezing juice will definitely not harm the juice itself, but it might harm your container if you're not careful.  The juice can expand quite a bit during the freezing process, so make sure that your container isn't completely full before you freeze it.

If the juice is already in a container (i.e. you bought it) then keep in mind that the container might not be designed for freezing and could explode at freezing temperatures due to the expanding volume.  If you're not sure, you might be better off transferring them to some large freezer bags.

I should also mention that freezing will only slow down the enzymatic activity that degrades fruit (and fruit juice) over time, not stop it completely.  Most fruit juice has been boiled to inactivate the enzymes, but if yours hasn't, then you might notice (bad) changes in the colour and taste over time.  If you plan to consume it within a few weeks, or if the juice already has various preservatives, then don't worry about it, but if it's very fresh juice and this is for long-term storage, then you might want to briefly boil it before storing if you're not sure about its history.

Keep in mind that the above will itself alter the taste, so if you plan to do it, test it on a small amount first to be sure that you can live with the "blanched" taste.


Typically, you layer the pecans in the bottom of the pie shell, and then pour the custard/syrup over it.  The pecans then float to the top, creating a two layer pie.  You do want large enough pieces to float to the top--whole is traditional just for looking pretty.

Note also that you want to avoid beating air into the custardy/syrupy filling, which will rise to the top and help create the dryer layer above and around the nuts.

See for example, this recipe from Dear Martini, with an embedded video showing the method.


Rinsing the rice is always suggested, it removes the leftover husk, powder from the rice being handled and/or processed, insect fragments (you'd be amazed!) and more.

Soaking the rice is part of the cooking process. Wild and brown rice benefit from this because they'll more evenly cook 'to the tooth (al dente)' with less liquid and time; this is how you get a nice and fluffy pilaf. If you don't soak the rice before cooking, it will require more liquid and time, and be more likely to come out clumpy and overcooked.

Most good markets have dozens of kinds of rice and each one does best with a different kind of process and finesse. And we haven't even talked about Sushi rice or Arborio (literally: "absorbent") rice yet.

Soaking long-grain or basmati rice has benefits too, depending on how you season it. If you like to cook your rice with achiote powder and safflower strands, soaking in some warm water for an hour is really helpful.

Some South East Asian recipes call for the liquid where rice was soaked for a few hours as a thickener or ad-hoc liaison. Tinola (a brothy chicken dish) is one, sinigang na baboy (sour pork soup) another. A fan of either dish can tell when the broth is missing that starchy quality only rice can bring. Rice flour, or cornstarch, even in small amounts, would be too much.

So. tl;dr;:

Always wash whole rice for hygienic purposes.
Consider soaking the rice as part of the technique of cooking it, but make sure it's a conscious decision, e.g. "I think soaking it will yield [result]"
Pre-packaged parboiled rice usually doesn't need to be washed or soaked, follow the packager's directions and your own instincts / experience.


how to cook with garlic and how to use in cooking and salads

You can use garlic in almost anything, (except most people don't care for it in desserts).

Fresh garlic comes from the ground, or the store, in the form of a bulb composed of many (15-30?) smaller sections called "cloves". The cloves are each enclosed tightly in a thin shell/skin and the whole bulb is surrounded by many layers of a papery wrapping. The shells & paper need to be removed before you use the garlic. You can get a little item called a garlic peeler made of a silicone sleeve to rub the cloves with and it will take the skin off nice & easy. I don't have one, and peeling the cloves with a knife can be a little bit labor intensive and annoying.

Once you get the peeled cloves, you can use them many ways, either raw or cooked. Raw garlic retains its sharp pungency which is mellowed and sweetened a bit when you cook the garlic. The important thing to know is that garlic can burn easily, quickly, and suddenly (especially if it is chopped up fine and sauteed). I guess some people like that taste, but it is very sulfurous, strong, and different from raw or gently cooked garlic.

Some recipes call for garlic cloves to be included whole. Others say to slice. Very often you are asked to chop the garlic up fine or mince it, or you can even smash it in a little hand held garlic press. For salads, some people like just to rub the inside of the (wooden) salad bowl with a clove of garlic to impart a subtle hint of flavor to the salad.

If you want large quantities, you can also buy garlic which has been pre-processed in some way: Peeled whole cloves (but I think you have to buy a lot if you get those), pre-minced garlic or even garlic paste. I think the pre-minced or paste has a different taste, and not as nice as when you cut up the whole cloves yourself.

Just about every cuisine around uses garlic, and there are plenty of available recipes to follow.


I want to do the same thing.
Here's an article about acidification and its effect on pathogens in commercial egg pickling.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24215686/
It basically says that eggs must be held in refrigeration while approaching the correct acidity of less than or equal to 4.6 pH, but that the bacteria won't actually die until the acidified eggs are allowed to sit at a higher temperature (room, or ambient temperature), after the target acidity is achieved.  After about 14 days, no pathogens were detectable, using the methods they outlined, but they knew their exact acidities.
Below a certain temperature, the metabolism of a bacterium slows down to the point that is virtually in stasis, and it needs to be active in order to absorb something that is toxic to it.  Most sanitizing and disinfecting agents are designed to work at ambient temperatures for that reason.  You kill germs more effectively using the exact concentration of an agent specified by the manufacturer, too.  Higher concentrations may make it harder for bacteria to uptake the agent, due to hypertonicity.  So, the antibacterial action of many agents depends on the temperature of the solution, the concentration of the solution, and the pH of the solution.  This might explain the rationale for specifying that the eggs need to be held at ambient temperature for a period after brining completely under refrigeration.
Another site, dedicated to egg safety, said that whatever cooking method must heat eggs to a uniform temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit, or hotter.
https://eggsafety.org/cooking-eggs-right-temperature/
You would need to test your cooking method by temperature measurement before cold shocking them, and then be very careful to always use the exact same process to ensure reproduceable results.
That means measuring an exact amount of water and an exact amount of eggs, placing all of your eggs in at the same time, and shocking them precisely after they are pasteurized to keep them from getting hard yolks.
The December / January 2020 issue of Cook's Country does an excellent breakdown of achieving perfectly consistent egg yolk doneness on pages 24-25.
I can't legally upload images of their copyrighted material, but I can say that they cover the measuring, timing, and cold shocking, and then give nice pictures of egg cross-sections from soft to hard boiled, in one minute intervals of increasing cooking time.
The yolk is the part where the bacteria normally grow the most, so, it's kind of important to achieve a safe yolk temp and then refrigerate during acidification.
There is more at stake than salmonella, too.  If done improperly, it is not widely reported, but possible to end up with botulinum toxic in pickled eggs.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4934a2.htm
In that instance, the man who was hospitalized had pricked his eggs to speed up brining, but he ended up contaminating the eggs internally.
Another thing to note about botulinum toxin is that it can be broken down by boiling.  There was a tragic case in the early 1900s of a family of 12 people who all died of botulism from improperly canned beans.  A photo of seven of their caskets grouped around a church altar appears in some college microbiology textbooks.
The editors of the textbooks say that the great shame of it is that they could have survived if the beans had been boiled for 10 minutes before serving.
Still, it is best not to get sloppy with canning or pickling safety, and not to rely upon a final heating before serving to remove potentially lethal pathogens.


Enriched doughs usually need either a whole lot of kneading or a whole lot of proofing time (or both - from memory Richard Bertinet kneads his brioche dough for about 10 minutes then proofs for 14 hours).

One other trick is to add the butter after initial kneading so that you can form some gluten first. This should make the resulting bread less 'cakey'.


Why do you warm a Dutch oven up before baking bread?

The point is you are actually using the dutch oven as the oven itself here--so you warm the dutch oven for the same reason that you would pre-heat your conventional oven: you want the bread to immediately go into the hot oven, instead of slowly raising the temperature.

With a hot dutch oven, you get the "oven spring" that you would get from putting the loaf into a hot oven, and the dutch oven traps the steam that the bread gives off, so it helps keep the crust soft while the bread expands.  This is a great way to bake bread at home in ovens that don't have steam injection.


Are there any cons to heating orange and grape juice?

That's actually pretty a pretty common thing. Add a few cloves and a cinnamon stick and you'll have Mulled Orange Juice, or the same with grape juice. That recipe adds orange zest, lemon juice, cloves, nutmeg and a cinnamon stick. This one starts with grapes.

I can't speak to the nutritional effects of heating the juices, but mulled juices sound nice on a cold, winter day. There certainly isn't anything toxic to be nervous about.


Hojicha is a green tea which is made from bancha, a low grade green tea, and cooked slightly; this very inexpensive green tea often comes out brown because it is discolored by oxidation. Other than this variety, and some very stale bancha, I can't think of a Japanese green tea that comes out brown. Some stale kukicha might come out brown, and low quality genmaicha made with poor quality kukicha could be brownish from the combination of excess oxidation and the toasted rice.

Most of the non-Japanese green teas I've seen sold as "green tea" and some lower quality teabags marked as "sencha" are broken down tea leaves that can easily oxidize in the packaging to the point where they are, at best, yellowish.

However, if you use even a moderate quality sencha, and it isn't stale, it should come out green. Most good quality kukicha and genmaicha will at least come out greenish-yellow. Since most Japanese restaurants use a fairly inexpensive second-harvest sencha, I imagine you're either buying hojicha or simply using a very stale, low-quality sencha.

Chinese green teas are sometimes slightly yellow, but if they're actually yielding a brown brew, they, too are either stale or are simply mislabeled oolong.

I used to sell a fair amount of green tea when I ran a small scale import business. I do recall even matcha products turning brown after being exposed to excessive sunlight; one of the bakeries I know was constantly running into issues with their matcha pound cake slices on sunny days, especially those pieces in the front of their pastry case. So it's reasonably possible you simply have tea which has been stored improperly; you're best off with a nitrogen flushed tea and it should be used within about 6 months of opening the sealed package. If your tea comes unsealed, it probably isn't in very good shape to begin with.

In any event, my recommendation is to try a first-harvest high-mountain grown sencha that is sold in nitrogen-flushed aluminum packages. Depending on the style, the brewed color will be either very green or slightly yellowish if brewed in the typical way. You can either do a very brief, several second infusion at near-boiling, or a longer infusion at around 80 celsius. I like it both ways.

Gyokuro, if you can afford it, is extraordinarily green, but is unlikely to be served at a restaurant without an additional charge (it's essentially the same leaves used to make matcha, except rolled instead of being milled).


Avoid butter in puff pastry dough from melting while baking in the oven

There are a few things that may be wrong here:

Oven not pre-heated enough: how long you need to preheat depends on the oven, but for 200 degrees C I'd give it 20 minutes. If your oven has not pre-heated enough it will be at too low a temperature the butter and will melt rather than turn to steam, which is what gives you lift
Oven at too low a temperature: often the temperature you set on an oven and the actual temperature is different, sometimes these differences can be really big, I've seen 35C (70F) difference in the past. It may be worth investing in an over thermometer to see whether your temperature is right. An oven thermometer will also tell you whether your oven has pre-heated as well
Dough too warm: it's important to keep your dough cold throughout the process, if butter gets too warm you will lose the lamination (layering) in the dough. When it comes to baking it if your butter is too warm it may melt, so you could try chilling your pastry in the fridge. How long to chill them depends on the size and the thickness of each pastry, the important thing is that the thickest part of the pastry stabilizes at the refrigerators's temperature. That could take 10 minutes, it could take an hour or more. For the cookies you describe try at least 20-30 minutes, or up to an hour if you have the time.


Does it matter that my pots are bigger than my ceremic cook top element?

Matching the size of pan to size of burner is the most important consideration for creating a cooking surface with even temperature.  Parts of the pan bottom that reach beyond an electric element will not heat well at all and could remain a hundred degrees or more lower in temperature than the center of the pan, depending on the pan size and design.  (Yes, I'm not joking -- I've measured such differences with an infrared thermometer.)

The folks who wrote the giant food-science book Modernist Cuisine did detailed tests and used computer models to determine what happens to heat distribution in pans under various conditions.  (Here's a link to an abbreviated passage which deals with the issue, and this video has a number of their images showing the differences in heat distribution, including large vs. small burners.)

From the first link:

  When it comes to heating food evenly... What matters more are the
  thickness of the metal, the size of the pan, and the size of the
  burner heating the pan.

Basically, they conclude that size of burner trumps just about anything else in terms of whether your pans heat evenly.  The best way to counteract burners that are too small is to add thickness to your pan, or -- as they recommend -- to get a conductive thick metal plate made from aluminum or copper to put over your burner.  That will help to spread the heat out a bit, though it will make your stove a lot less responsive, since it will take a long time for that thick plate to heat up or cool down.  And it still won't be the same as a larger burner.

(As an aside, in the quotation above, I left out part of a sentence that says "the metal the pan is made from is the least important factor," since I think that's incredibly misleading.  It's a combination of metal and thickness which determines the thermal profile.  Modernist Cuisine's own research shows that to get the equivalent benefit of more evenness from an extra millimeter of copper, for example, you'd need to add about an entire inch of thickness to a pure stainless steel pan.  From a practical standpoint, aluminum or copper are the only two materials where extra thickness in a pan to achieve evenness is actually feasible without creating a pan that would weigh several hundred pounds.  Aside from pans using aluminum or copper in the base, there's little reason to shop specifically for extra-thick pans -- you'd be better off getting larger burners or getting a copper or aluminum plate to put under your other pans.)

A personal anecdote related to this -- A few years back I moved into a house with an electric cooktop, and I attempted a chicken-and-rice dish in my large oval enameled cast iron dutch oven.  Despite having a rather large electric burner, the oval pot still stuck out over an inch beyond the burner on both sides.  I figured water would circulate at a simmer.  But I found out how much of a difference burner size makes: after simmering until the rice in the center was so soft it was starting to break down, the rice outside of the burner was still hard and crunchy.  It wasn't even cooked.  And this was in a dish with a lot of liquid that could potentially circulate around.  Since then, I've discovered the only way to cook anything in pans that are larger than my burners is to move the pan/pot into the oven.

In sum: If you're only planning on doing slower cooking at lower temperatures in your large frypan, you may be able to get away with smaller heating elements if you stir periodically.  If you plan to cook at higher temperatures (as you probably tend to do in a fry pan), you may have significantly greater difficulty getting things to an even doneness.  A thick aluminum or copper plate under your pan might help, but it can only do so much.


Binder, thickener, emulsifier for parmesan?

Melt hard cheese with a little sodium citrate to make "processed cheese", which is pourable and moldable while hot

You can make sodium citrate by heating the juice of a small lemon (2 to 3 tsp) in the microwave, and then adding one tsp of baking soda, and heating until it stops reacting (bubbling). Then add 1 cup (~100 g) of grated/shaved/powdered cheese and gently heat until is forms smooth paste. Use a little milk if the cheese is too dry


How does one glue together fried onions with an edible, savory adhesive?

Oooh! This is interesting! I think the first thing I'd like to know is there a requirement for the entire bar to savory? Because a lot of foods mix flavors and textures. Salted Caramel with nuts is an easy example. I can't remember the episode but there was an interview with David Chang of Momofuku on the Splendid Table where he spoke about his grand unified theory of flavor where the most satisfying dishes contain sweet, bitter, salty & sour (often now with hot and umami added in). If you are willing to add in others you expand the range quite a bit as most sticky things are sweet. And you could have just that binding layer be sweet.
If not the next question I'd have centers around what sort of textures are acceptable along with how long until consumption? If, it short term maybe something  Tamagoyaki would work. That's more adhesion by pressing into a softer material and obviously wouldn't work if you are thinking bar as in a packaged bar that gets sold in a store.
Modified corn starch and rice are options. You could enrobe or possibly even spray those.


Why are stone ware and dutch oven items exempt from bacteria?

I'm not sure what you mean by a "stoneware pan" in this case...but some pottery used for cooking shouldn't be washed with soap.

If it's glazed, then you should certainly clean it with soap, there's no reason not to.

If it's unglazed, and it's really stoneware, it should be safe to wash it with soap; since stoneware is watertight, the soap will stay on the surface, and you'll be able to rinse it off, so using soap is fine.

For water-permeable baking stones, like a pizza baking stone, or some domes used for baking bread with a french-style crisp steamed crust, then using soap is a bad idea, because you typically can't rinse the soap out afterwards. I've never tried washing one with soap, but the instructions that came with my pizza baking stone say that a soapy pizza baking stone is ruined and unusable for food.

For unglazed earthenware used for pizza, bread, or similar, you clean it with water and/or heat: if it gets dirty with something you can't wash off without soap, the remaining option is to burn it off by heating it to a high temperature in the oven, and then brushing or rinsing off the ash. This removes the "food" from derobert's list of things needed for bacteria to grow, by turing it into less nutritious ash.


Does caramelizing an onion increase its non-dietary fiber carbohydrates?

Since dietary fiber is made mostly of cellulose that isn't broken down during cooking I don't think it should be an issue.  The browning that occurs is from the proteins and sugars already in the onion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition#Fiber


How to fry ground beef so it is well-browned

Use a bigger pan...or much less beef in the pan.  Stop stirring.   If you over crowd the pan, nothing will brown.  It will steam, then braise because the water can't evaporate fast enough.  Secondly, browning happens when an item remains in contact with the pan.  So, stirring (unless you are using very high, wok-type temperature) will only defeat the browning process.  Allow it to brown, perhaps longer than you think is necessary, then stir, and repeat.


If the flavor is already in the dish, there isn't really a way to get it back out. You may be able to add more spices to bring it back into balance, but this is also likely to simply make all of the flavors equally overpowering.

If it is only the marinade that has too much coriander, you may be able to leave the coriander out of the remainder of the recipe.


How to change the texture on dulce de leche?

The texture is controlled simply by time; 2 hours isn't enough. Try 3 to 4 hours. Or use a pressure cooker, it goes much faster in there - about 45 minutes should do it.


Do storms influence the souring of dishes?

The short answer is no, storms don't cause souring.  Souring occurs because of bacterial or yeast growth.  Sometimes this is desirable, sometimes not, depending on your goals.  If by "souring" you mean spoilage, proper sanitation and refrigeration are your best protections.  Sometimes the composition of a food container can impact the flavor of foods (tin and acidic dishes, for example).  That is why there are often instructions to use non-reactive containers. However, this has nothing to do with the weather.  Of course, ambient conditions, such as extremes in humidity or temperature, can impact the cooking process, when baking, for example...but storms don't accelerate or influence spoilage.