I combine wet ingredients first (milk with eggs) and then sugar, yeast and butter. Then whisk everything. After that, I add the flour and salt on top and mix by hand. I then let it rest for 30 mins before kneading so the flour absorbs all the wet ingredients. I hope this helps.


Can anything be done with cooking apples that fall early?

Yes, they are usable, at least if they have reached a minimum degree of “ripeness”.

There are a few reasons of falling fruit. The first is the so-called June drop, when the tree discards excess baby apples. These fruit are so tiny and unripe, they don’t have real value in the kitchen.

During summer, fallen fruit is closer to ripeness, especially if infected by codling moth caterpillars or in early fall, when wind causes almost-ripe fruit to drop. Just try a slice and decide whether they have enough flavor already.

These fruit can be used in the kitchen, but you need to consider a few points:

The fruit will be less sweet than usual - can be fixed with a spoonful or two of sugar. Likewise the flavor may be less complex than usual, adding a bit of spice will help hiding this.
You will have difficulties cutting neat slices. The apples will be bruised where they hit the ground and if you have moths, there will be a “channel” full of gunk that needs to be cut out.

The cooking behavior (keeping the shape vs. falling apart) may be different.
Higher pectin levels in underripe fruit can cause unexpected thickening.

Because you will be cutting off a comparatively large part of the apples, I would collect mainly the largest, ripest (scent and color can be an indicator) and least bruised. This should still give you a decent amount of fruit without too much work.

And you are not alone:


How does adding baking soda to soaking beans/lentils reduce the gas they make you have?

Summary: Baking soda is mostly used to soften the beans faster and decrease cooking time by increasing pH.  In some scenarios, it has been shown to aid in breaking down gas-causing sugars as well.  Higher concentrations of baking soda and/or pressure cooking may be needed to make this latter effect significant.  In most cases, an increased soaking time will have a much greater impact on gas-causing sugars, so baking soda should perhaps be reserved for situations where preparation time is limited.

Baking soda isn't primarily added to reduce gas.  As pointed out in previous responses, it can use its sodium ions to replace the magnesium in the cell walls of plants, resulting in faster softening.  However, this can also be done with the addition of regular table salt.

The reason baking soda in particular is often added to bean recipes (either during soaking or during cooking itself) is that it makes the beans slightly alkaline, which increases the softening effect.  As Harold McGee says in Food and Cooking, "Acidic cooking liquids slow the dissolving of cell-wall hemicelluloses and therefore the softening process, while alkaline cooking water has the reverse effect."  He further recommends:

  Baking soda at 0.5% (1 teaspoon/qt) can reduce the cooking time by
  nearly 75%; it contains sodium and in addition is alkaline, which
  facilitates the dissolving of the cell-wall hemicelluloses.... The
  alkalinity of baking soda can give an unpleasantly slippery mouth feel
  and soapy taste.

The softening of the cell walls will allow faster breakdown in some of the sugars with cause gas.  Scientific research showed this effect of alkaline substances like baking soda on beans and legumes many decades ago, dating back at least to the early 1970s.  Unfortunately, most of this research is only available in obscure food journals, but this free article gives a sense of common findings (here regarding Seker beans).  As for the mechanism, they offer:

  Ku et al. (1976) noted that soaking in the 0.5% sodium bicarbonate
  solution might increase softening of the testa [seed coat] and cotyledons [interior of bean] that
  could increase the sugars extraction.

Ultimately, the combination of an 18-hour soak in the baking soda solution followed by cooking in a pressure cooker achieved the highest reductions in gas-causing sugars (up to 70%).  (Pressure cooking also destroys these sugars more effectively than conventional cooking.  Also, note that, unlike McGee's advice, they rinsed the beans after soaking and used fresh water for cooking.)

While baking soda speeds cooking and can reduce flatulence, it also has negative impacts on nutrition.  Ku et al. (cited above) noted protein destruction when cooking tripled when baking soda was added.  But the more significant concern is B vitamins.  Again from the Seker bean article:

  [A]lkali condition may cause further destruction in the Vitamin B
  contents, especially thiamin and riboflavin (Swaminathan, 1974).
  Therefore tap water might be a good alternative to protect vitamins
  and have a moderate decrease for the flatulence factors.

And actually, it's important to note that pressure cooking had a very significant impact on how effective the baking soda solution was.  Assuming an 18-hour soak, the following reductions in gas-causing sugars were seen on average:

Plain water soak, pressure cooking: 51% reduction
Baking soda soak, pressure cooking: 69% reduction
Plain water soak, normal boiling: 48% reduction
Baking soda soak, normal boiling: 51% reduction

Baking soda thus barely had a significant effect in this study without pressure cooking.  Other studies have also seen the effect of baking soda affected by cooking method, but elements such as soaking time may play a role as well.  This study, for example, measured statistically significant decreases in gas-causing sugars due to baking soda in five other bean types under almost all types of preparation conditions (6-hour soak vs. 12-hour soak, soaking alone vs. boiling vs. pressure cooking, sprouting for 1-4 days, etc.).  However, in almost all preparations the sugar contents were only decreased by a few percent with baking soda.  (Even pressure cooking did not change this in most cases.)  Only one sugar, raffinose, was reduced by more, in some types of beans achieving an additional 5-14% reduction with baking soda.

However, the important finding to take away from these studies is the relative importance of the various parameters.  In order of effect, they are:

Length of soaking (or germination, for even greater effect)
Pressure cooking, instead of simmering
Adding baking soda

For almost all scenarios, it appears that soaking for an extra few hours, doing a 24-hour germination before cooking, or choosing to pressure cook beans will have far greater impacts than adding baking soda.  Moreover, extended soaking or germination tend to actually release more nutrients from the beans as various enzymes break down indigestible substances, rather than destroying some of the nutrients as baking soda can.  Other studies have suggested that long cooking will also break down gas-causing compounds more quickly than soaking could do.  Thus, in some circumstances, an extended low simmer with no prior soaking might achieve a greater reduction than a brief soaking period with baking soda.  (The baking soda might even be counterproductive in this case, since it would soften the beans faster and not allow a longer cooking period.)

In any case, most of these studies have assumed a rather significant amount of baking soda during soaking (generally around McGee's recommendation of 1 tsp/qt), since the pH must be increased significantly for the baking soda to have effects.  Adding only a "pinch" may have only a negligible impact, particularly if the beans are only boiled and not pressure cooked.

Moral of the story (again): While baking soda does something in reducing gas, the effect is generally quite small.  Use it primarily to speed up cooking or soften beans instead.


The process for cooking slices of brisket is the same for a whole piece, the time involved is needed to break down the tough collagen. Slices the size of yours will take a bit less time to cook than a whole piece as they will heat up faster, but it's not that much of a difference. Your proposed method should do fine.


What is the proper volume to weight conversion for Bisquick?

Do you have a scale and measuring cup? Weigh a cup of Bisquick.

Also, this site has a line for Bisquick, but I'm not sure how trustworthy it is, being from a "forgotten source". Anyway, the site says Bisquick is 130g/cup, and also lists the conversion in a number of other units.


Tips on cooking Christmas dinner for large group

We did the best turkey ever on Thanksgiving. Butterflying was the key http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/11/butterfiled-roast-turkey-with-gravy-recipe.html.

It cuts down massively on oven time, tastes great, was fun to prepare with my son.

The oven is fairly hot, which is better for doing potatoes etc at the same time. You can do oven potatoes in the skin: no foil, just poke the potatoes with a fork a few time and rub olive oil on the skin, 45 minutes or so at 425. It also makes the turkey very easy to carve, so that's faster and a lot less messy when dinner time comes.

If you do potatoes and turkey in the oven, you have still the whole stop top for the rest, so perhaps you should choose dishes that not need an oven.


Cooling and diluting over-reduced stock down with cold water

I have to ask, why would you want to add water? Chicken stock should simmer 8 hours. That is the optimal time to extract all flavours. What you have there is (probably) perfect. However, if you don't want as much flavour, add the water later, not now. Also, to cool, the best way to do it is in an ice bath or a cold water bath (one where there is a constant slow source of running cold water).


Is it safe to heat active dry yeast to make a substitute for nutritional yeast?

Right, so, there are basically 2 ways of killing micro-organisms: chemistry and heat, and heat can be divided in moist heat and dry heat. Dry heat is more straightforward, although generally less efficient in killing things than moist heat (and also not appropriate for lots of surfaces, etc.)

Now onwards to your questions:

1 - Sterilization efficiency depends mainly on a few parameters: contact surface (meaning that the more your surface is in contact with the heat, the better), contact time x temperature (so, if you use lower temperatures, you need more time to kill everything). For practical applications you should
a) spread your yeast on the largest surface available with the thinnest layer possible to maximize your contact surface and b) be patient and let it toast well - I don't know the temperature, but it should stay for at least 5 minutes in order to have everything  killed

2 - Botulism is caused by Chlostridium botulinum which is a bacteria that sprouts in low-oxygen moist environments and when it sprouts, it releases the toxin that causes botulism. Dry active yeast is a fungus called Saccharomyces cerevisae and they need medium to high oxygen environment to grow and be viable, and they usually out-compete bacteria, to the point of being used to treat bacterial diarrhea so it is very very improbable that your package of active dry yeast will be contaminated with Chlostridium spp and that it will be able to sprout while you handle it. Bottomline: it is safe.

3 - Yes. And also it is the most viable option if you want to just buy it and kill it later (both for price and reliability).


I used black rice in different recipes. It clearly take longer to cook than normal rice, the grains remain separate and its generally harder than normal rice (I would say something similar to wild rice, but more mealy).
As you said, it's not suitable for risotto per se, but I once made a risotto with normal rice and almost at the end of the cooking I added some (already cooked) black rice, which added a nice color and texture.
The taste is quite strong, so you might want to avoid foods that are too mild in taste. A good combination for me is with peppers, olives and feta cheese, possibly mixed together in a cold rice salad.


Is it safe to cook in a clean Teflon pot if the inside bottom has blistered and peeled from exposure to high heat?

You can just treat it as a regular metal pan now, and season it with oil and high heat

Though, first you have to remove all the flaked coating with a hard metal scourer. This may prove difficult!

Have done this to a few pans, and they work well as plain metal pans. Somewhat easier to use that plain steel, as they are aluminium and therefore lighter on the hand


How do I cook radicchio to make it taste less bitter?

Roasting and grilling seem to help.  You can also lessen the harshness by using ingredients with a sweet flavor profile in conjunction with it.

Years ago I tried a Radicchio appetizer (basically a radicchio bruschetta...but this was mid to late 80's and bruschetta wasn't something that was as common then!) I believe it came from Sunset Magazine or Better Homes & Gardens:

Dice up the radicchio and place into a baking dish.  Infuse some olive oil with garlic and dry herbs of choice (I think it had thyme, pepper, and oregano).  Drizzle the oil over the diced radicchio and roast until radicchio is tender.  Then crumble goat cheese over the top and bake until cheese is softened.  Serve the roasted radicchio and goat cheese piled onto crostini.


Sanitizing fridge and freezer after days of no power

you don't have to throw out the fridge, you just need to clean it. Forget steam and boiling water, just get a bottle of spray surface cleaner and a bunch of rags, or a tub of soapy water (use dishwashing liquid). Take out the shelves and drawers and clean them separately, then clean the inside thoroughly with your spray cleaner and/or soap. If you've used soap then rinse with clean water and let it dry. Air it out for a few hours.

There's nothing you can do about the air circulation, but you probably don't have to. It's not as if you actually put food in there, the worst that could happen are maybe some mold/fungus spores and they won't like the dry and cold environment of the fridge. You may have some residual smells in the air ducts, those should work themselves out fairly quickly, a plate of baking soda will help absorb these although there are purpose made fridge deodorizers which are better.


Omiting salt in baking recipes that use chemical leaveners?

I completely agree with Cascabel's answer. I do want to add a bit.

Salt is an amazing flavor enhancer and most (sweet) baked goods use very little (1/4 to 1 tsp) considering that most of the recipes make 12-24 servings (more for cupcakes/cookies etc)  but it does make a difference. Most baked desserts gain quite a bit from having the added salt... and they don't even have to be baked.

Even in things like buttercream frosting, adding a little salt greatly helps to balance the overwhelming sweetness of the frosting and makes it more palatable to adults. All of my favorite buttercream recipes have a small amount of salt.

Anyway, removing the salt won't cause the recipe to fail... I'm sure I've accidentally omitted it several times in the past when I'm in a rush to get stuff in the oven... it can just make the flavors not as strong or remove some of the flavor contrast, so things can taste a bit flatter.


Dumplings! (The minced meat fried with vegetables wrapped in dough kind)
It's a tradition for many families to make dumplings together at the holidays, which in many cases, are when family reunions take place. It's really common to see children helping out, as there is usually a task for everyone.
Your children can help you with the dough, as it's very hard to mess up. Simply measure some flour, salt & water (we don't even measure in my household), knead, and you're good to go. While the dough is in progress, either being kneaded or resting in a covered post, you can make the filling. Not much to it, just seasoned minced meat stir-fried with finely diced vegetables.
When the dough and filling are all set, the fun begins!

You roll out the dough into multiple narrow log-shaped portions, and constantly slice the logs forming cylindrical chunks.

With each slice, you pass the chunk onto the next section of the "production line", well dusted with flour, where your 6 year-old can roll out the cylinder into a flat circle.

With each rolled out dumpling wrapper, your 9 year-old can scoop some filling onto the center of the wrapper, fold the wrapper around the filling like a taco, and seal by pinching the edges of the wrapper with their fingers (or with a fork).

Of course, your children won't be able to keep up with your slicing, so you can transition to rolling out the dough or wrapping dumplings here and there.


Why boiling water, then cold water for this shaobing recipe?

Adding boiling water to flour causes the starch granules to swell and gelatinise, allowing the dough to absorb more water, resulting in a softer and/or fluffier finished product. However, a dough made entirely with boiling water lacks extensibility (i.e. can't be stretched) because some of the precursor proteins to gluten are denatured at such a high temperature. This may be desirable as less gluten means the dough is easier to roll out thin.
On the other hand, dough made entirely with cold water has high extensibility, especially when gluten is allowed to develop through time and kneading, giving the finished product more chewiness.
Your recipe uses a combination of both types of dough, balancing between both extremes so that the finished product is not too soft but not too chewy.


I've had good luck baking naan on an indoor grill. I have an electric one, but you could use a stovetop one as well. Just apply a little butter, ghee, or spray oil, wipe it off, and bake.

(Click for larger images)

I used an alternative method to make lavash: an inverted wok over a stove burner. You'll need a gas stove to do this one. I applied them dry, cooked about 1-2 minutes on one side only. You can brush with butter or ghee after they're done.


How long will a balsamic reduction keep?

It should last years. If the reduction contains just vinegar, reduced until thick. This yields a very acidic solution very high in sugar (partly caramelized, depending on how long it was cooked). Other than sugar and acetic acid, there are some polyphenols and other gunk, some aromatics, and a bit of water.

There are two primary ways that food spoils: decay by microorganisms and oxidation. Decay happens when things get stinky and slimy, such as meat that has been left in a warm place for a few days. Bacteria can live in a lot of habitats, but need fairly mild conditions to thrive. Oxidation occurs when unsaturated fats (and other substances) pick up rogue chemicals from the environment, and is often refereed to as 'rancid'. This process will occur whenever something that can oxidize is exposed to air, but tends to progress slowly.

In the case of a balsamic reduction, the high acid and sugar content will stop bacterial growth. Since the reduction also contains acid, anything that could have been oxidized has already oxidized. Therefore a balsamic reduction should last pretty much forever. You might want to seal it up to keep bugs from getting in it, but other than that, it should be stable for years.


It actually makes no perceptable difference as far heat retenion. The paper has a miniscule insulating effect too. Once heat hits foil interface, it is partially reflected.

The paper does absorb some of the fat and liquids from the wrapped contents and helps keep it from making the 'bread' mushy and if the paper is out, you MIGHT have a bit less messy hands or is it the other way around?

Similarly, Reynolds will be the first to tell you that shiney side in or out on foil makes absolutely no difference

End result = it doesn't matter!


StillTasty says you can safely store waffle batter for 3 months, but I've had bad luck freezing it as far as quality goes.  After thawing and cooking the batter, the waffles didn't really "rise" enough to be worthwhile.  They tasted ok, but the texture wasn't nearly what I wanted.

Waffles are essentially a quick bread, and I believe the baking powder doesn't have the same effect after freezing.  I do know that you lose the frothy goodness that you get from the whisking/beating, which is important in achieving the light, fluffy lift inside the crispy exterior.  I was told that if you use a yeast recipe instead of a baking powder recipe, you can thaw it overnight and it will give the yeast time to activate by morning - unfortunately I haven't tried it so I'm only passing it on as a suggestion.

What I've found works:

Making a bunch of waffles and freezing them between layers of wax paper.  Not as good as fresh, but better than store-bought frozen, and very convenient.
Storing the dry mix in the pantry (short-term) or freezer (longer-term), as I generally have milk and eggs on hand and have time for a quick whisk.  Not as convenient or portable, but tastier.  If you modify the recipe using evaporated milk or dried buttermilk, you can make them with water and egg instead of milk and egg.

As a side note, you probably have about 3 days in the fridge.


Why is my Taiyaki (Cake that looks like a fish) too hard and dry?

I have never made these, but this is what I observe from comparing your recipe to the most readily found online ones:

Your mix is dry. Other recipes tend to have up to twice as much liquid as yours, by proportion to the flour.
Your mix has no egg. Every recipe I found included egg, in quantities
ranging from 1 egg per 1 cup flour to 1 egg per 1/2 cup flour.
You include water in your mix. Other recipes I've found contain no
water.

These recipe differences mean that your mix has much less liquid than most and also, importantly I think, much less fat. Eggs and milk both contain fat which will give a more tender result.

You also mix all the ingredients directly together. Recipes I found recommended whisking the flour, salt and baking powder together then beating the egg in a separate bowl, creaming the egg with the sugar then adding the milk and only then gently combining the wet and dry ingredients being careful not to overmix. I'm not sure how much difference this makes, but mixing the sugar and dissolving it into the egg rather than putting it directly into a lower hydration mix will allow you to capture tiny air bubbles into your batter which will also tend to make the crumb more tender.


From a quick Google search:

  you should rinse, rub the surface, rinse again, and dry.

Pretty simple, and it's pretty much what you suggested.  The site claims to be getting their advice from a scientific study, and I'm inclined to believe them, but they don't provide a link.


Is it really necessary to wash a skillet that will be heated up again soon?

Seems almost every question about bacteria seems to bring about both the bacteriophobes and the cavalier.  In this case, the cavalier are probably closer to being right, but I'll try to present the facts so that you can decide for yourself.

The most common microbe groups responsible for household food poisoning are:

Salmonella, found in poultry, produces the CdtB toxin. CDT can be denatured (technically, "heat-labile") but is one of the most resistant toxins, taking 30 minutes at 70° C to destroy. This type of bacteria isn't normally associated with eggs, but since chicken eggs and other poultry products may be handled in the same area, it's not unthinkable that the shells could become contaminated - and depending on how you handle the eggs, so could the frying pan.
E.Coli is normally associated with beef but is also known to be found on egg shells.  It's improbable, but not impossible for it to be found in yolks as well.  This is a bit of a weird one because egg yolks also have immunization properties against e.coli, but not in the yolk itself or the frying pan. The strains of e.coli associated with food poisoning encode Shiga-Like Toxin (SLT) and also Enterotoxins, the latter of which are often heat stable. I'm not sure about SLT, but the STs can withstand boiling for 30 minutes.
Campylobacter (causing Campylobacteriosis) produces certain enterotoxins and also CDT.  As above, these tend to be heat-resistant.
C.botulinum is responsible for for botulism and is ubiquitous.  The spores are incredibly difficult to kill but they are also only harmful to infants and the immunodepressed.  More importantly, the bacteria are killed by heating to 85° C for 5 minutes and are also anaerobic - meaning they can only grow when they are not exposed to air.  In other words, these may be present, but won't grow and produce toxins on a reasonably clean pan.
C.perfringens is one of the most common sources of food poisoning, and I believe is actually what drives a lot of the specific food safety/food inspection rules.  The spores are very heat resistant (can survive boiling for a full hour), and even though it is anaerobic, it is also aerotolerant.  It can grow on a pan - just more slowly than it would grow in an enclosed container or in raw/fresh food.
S.Aureus causes staph infections but also produces heat-resistant enterotoxins. It doesn't generally come from food, but more than 20% of humans are carriers, and also many pets (cats and dogs), so it is very likely in your household somewhere and can easily get on your frying pan and multiply on leftover food bits.
B.cereus is less common but very resilient (they're known for "fried rice syndrome" because they can survive steaming) and afterward produce spores and heat-resistant enterotoxins. Important to note that many strains of this are harmless - but not all.
V.cholerae causes (as you may have guessed) cholera symptoms which come from CTX and TCP toxins.  Both of these are heat-labile although I wasn't able to find a time/temperature data point.

Chances are, you have at least one these friends in your kitchen.  Chances are, you have several.  The question is, did enough of them manage to get onto your frying pan after your last meal to produce dangerous levels of toxins?

Probably not. It's really very unlikely.  But it is possible, and you're taking a chance if you don't wash your dishes.

In fact, it's probably more dangerous with eggs, because typically you'd cook eggs only up to a temperature of around 70° C, at most (63° is the temperature at which they set).  So day after day you're bringing all those lovely bacteria right into the danger zone for several minutes and not staying above it for very long at all!

Doing this one time... really not a big deal.  Bacteria don't get to multiply much in the 5 minutes (or less) it takes to fry an egg, and most eggs aren't even contaminated to begin with, although there have been small outbreaks.

But doing this several times, day after day - you're increasing your risk each day because the pan may never get hot enough, long enough, to kill all of the new bacteria from the day before.

I would strongly recommend that you wash your pans after use.  You don't need to use soap if they're cast-iron; a good scrub with salt and hot water is fine.  But please - especially if you're going to be cooking for guests - don't just leave the dirty pans sitting there and use them again the next day without washing them first.  It's not safe.

P.S. I'd like to draw attention to the fact that of all of the items in the list above, botulism, despite having some of the worst symptoms, is generally the least of your worries. Both the bacteria and the toxin are easy to kill, and the spores are harmless to healthy adults. So if you hear people on this site or any site talk about food safety entirely in terms of botulism and the temperatures required to kill/inactivate the bacteria/toxin, ignore them, because they haven't done their homework.


I've been substituting ground oat bran for flour for muffins, waffles, and muffins for as long as I can remember, when I am on a diet or a family member is. I have noticed the results to be a tad drier than with regular flour, so i just add a splash (maybe a tablespoon) more liquid (water or milk) depending on what I am doing. I hope that answers your question.


The most common problem is that your consumer oven is not as hot as a professional stone oven. Pizza stones are created to replicate this effect, but there's no way to really achieve the same result if you cannot heat your stone to the same temperature as a professional pizza oven.

My advice to get better results is:

Preheat your oven to the highest available temperature 20 - 30 minutes before actually baking the pizza. Use upper and lower heat rather than convection.
Put the baking tray in the oven to preheat as well. That's the only way you can get the bottom of the pizza crispy in a short time.
If you use a pizza stone, preheating takes longer. Follow the instructions given with the stone.
In addition to rolling the dough, pull and stretch it with your hands. Yeast dough is very elastic and takes some insistance to roll out as thin as you'd want in a pizza.
Don't pile your pizza with too much topping.

The actual baking should be done in approximately 5 minutes. If it takes longer, the temperature of your oven is too low.

There are pizza baking devices out there that can achieve a decent result (if you go for quality rather than a cheap price) and safe you preheating your entire oven.


Can water in which pasta was cooked be used to make gravy?

No you would not. If you are cooking pasta properly, you need to use a lot of salt, rendering any gravy made with this water far too salty.

In addition, gravy is properly made with stock; made with water it will have no flavour.


Where to buy football/quenelle/shell-like scoop/mold/mould [food presentation]?

There is a technique called quenelling where you form this shape using two spoons. It appears to be usually used for ice cream and other items of similar consistency but I don't see why it wouldn't work for steamed rice (although those would have to be large spoons).


This is Texas A&M University's description of calemondin:
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/patiocitrus/Calamondin.html

In it, they seem to indicate that the leaves are not toxic:

  The distilled oil of the leaves serves as a carminative with more
  potency than peppermint oil.

However, they list just about every use of the tree and its fruit, from marmalades to hair conditioner, and that's the only mention of the leaves.  Because that's the only usage mentioned, I would suspect that even if the leaves are not toxic, they're not suited for flavoring anything.

I hope that's at least a little helpful.


A blender certainly sounds like the easiest method.

If you prefer straining, but your sieve isn't fine enough to filter out the things you don't like, use cheesecloth. You can use enough layers to get a really fine strain, though bananas are thick enough that you'll have to squeeze it through.

The other thing you can try for things like this is a food mill, with the finest disk you have, but it sounds like you don't even want tiny tiny particles, so that may not be good enough for you - and it takes a bit of time and elbow grease.


What is the difference between good quality chocolate and cheap chocolate?

The short answer is that good quality chocolate has a high proportion of cocoa constituents with little or no substitution.

What to look for:

High cocoa solids content. Chocolate with less than 50% cocoa solids will have little real chocolate taste and those with more than 70% will have a much more complex and fine chocolate taste.
Cocoa butter content. Chocolate makers tend to substitute vegetable oil in place of cocoa butter to reduce costs. Cocoa butter prices have increased in recent years due to demand in the cosmetics industry.
Smooth texture. This comes from the cocoa spending a longer period being crushed in the concher.

Conversely, these are indications of a poor quality chocolate:

Low proportion of cocoa solids
Use of vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter

Chocolates with low cocoa solids content, such as milk chocolate, are usually inappropriate for baking due to their proportionally low chocolate flavor. Baking cocoa powder itself is in fact just another word for cocoa solids, and this is why it is favored when baking: it is the pure chocolate flavor.

The milk constituents of milk chocolate may also go rancid, giving the chocolate a'bad olive oil' taste as described here.

In this image the cocoa solids go up from 0% in white chocolate to a maximum of 100% in the highest of quality chocolates.

As white chocolate contains no cocoa solids, look instead for cocoa butter and vanilla in place of vegetable oils and vanilla extract.


Yes, shortening can be used in Swiss buttercream. Comments on an online article suggest a couple of good reasons you might want to:

The buttercream will hold up better in warmer weather than an all-butter recipes;
If you want a pure white "buttercream" then shortening is the way to go.

The same article notes that some tasters didn't appreciate the buttery aftertaste of a low-sugar recipe. A vegetable shortening like Crisco is practically tasteless and could be used to fix that problem although you presumably want at least some butter taste in your buttercream.

In various other places online I see comments stating shortening should not be used. Mostly this advice is given without any clarification of what might result, but I saw one suggestion that shortening is responsible for the greasy feeling that some buttercream leaves on the roof of your mouth.

There are actually not that many Swiss buttercream recipes online that include shortening, but I decided to average out the proportions of those I did find to come up with this weight ratio:

  1 : 2.2 : 2 : 0.7 (egg white : sugar : butter : shortening)

Or, to make ~1kg of buttercream,

  155g, 150ml or 5 egg white where each egg white is 31g
  349g or 414ml sugar
  332g or 328ml butter
  109g or 125ml shortening

I ignored that some recipes use either granulated sugar, confectioner's sugar or both.

I whipped up a batch with these proportions and the result has a pleasant butter flavor. I didn't detect the greasy mouth-feel I had been warned about and although I don't have a piping bag handy I can tell that it will pipe just fine.

Since you asked for a ratio you could do worse than start with that I've given.

Side note: if you do use this ratio I screwed up dissolving the sugar, so you might either want to use slightly less sugar, or leave it on the bain-marie a while longer. Either way, don't do like I did and just assume the sugar has dissolved.


Why is my lemon juice fizzing and smelling like yeast?

It sounds like fermentation to me.  That's what you'd expect when you're making mead or hard apple cider.

I'd personally dispose of it ... partially because I can't think of a good use for alcoholic lemon juice, but also because you don't know exactly what the bug is doing the fermentation.


How to explain why aluminum won't work on an induction stove?

A induction stove is a high frequency transformer. The primary winding is built into the stove, the secondary winding is the bottom of the pot or pan placed on it.

In principle, such a transformer works with all types of conductors as the secondary. The problem is, you want to have a high electric resistance in the secondary. Because that high electric resistance is what produces the heat inside the bottom of the pot or pan.

And here's where aluminum and copper drop out. They are good conductors and have a low electric resistance.

Iron in contrary has a very high electric resistance because of one special feature: because it's ferromagnetic AC currents can only flow in a very thin layer below its surface. This is called the skin effect. Again, every metal shows that skin effect, but for iron it's 80 times higher than for aluminium and copper. And so is resistance and heat production.

That's why you need an iron sheet in the bottom of your pot or pan.


Amount of Brioche dough in a Brioche mould?

From this web discussion (very last post, at the time I read it), a poster named gcook17 shares:

  Sherry Yard's book, "The Secrets of Baking" has a table on page 233
  with how many brioche molds of different sizes you need for 2, 2.5,
  and 3 lbs. of dough.  She gives the mold size in inches which I take
  to be the diameter of the top.  That assumption has worked out for me
  so far.

  Here are the number of molds for 2 lbs. of lean brioche dough that she
  gives for several sizes:

  3" - 21, 3.5 - 16, 4" - 11, 5.5" - 8, 6.5" - 4, 7" - 3, 8" - 2

  When I use these they work fine, but I find I could probably put more
  dough in each mold (i.e. use fewer molds) than she recommends.

It sounds like you have essentially an 8" brioche mold (and they are not exact measurements anyway), so 2 lbs or approximately 0.9 kg of dough is indicated to fill two such molds, so about 1 lb or 0.45 kg of dough for a single mold.


Do I need to seal the food with food wrap before put them in the fridge?

Wrapping food in plastic wrap before refrigerating has a few obvious benefits:

1) keeps the food from drying out in the fridge.

2) prevents odors (garlic, onions, fish, etc.) from transferring between the item in question and everything else in the fridge.

3) keeps crumbs, extraneous particles from falling into the food. If there were a lot of mold/microbe life already proliferating in the other refrigerated goodies, it might even serve to slow down slightly their penetration into your new leftover food on intra-fridge air currents (...ovbviously I'm reaching here)

But no, you don't have to use the plastic wrap; it's just a custom.


How to saute without oil on stainless steel pots/pans?

I wonder where you have read it. Your link doesn't help, maybe you linked the wrong question? It talks about using a stainless pan with oil.

If you are talking about true saute (very quick movement of bite-sized pieces of food on a very hot pan), it is completely impossible without oil. If you are misusing the term to mean shallow frying, you can do it without oil in a coated pan, if you take care not to overheat to the point of damaging the coating. Stainless steel pans have to always be used with oil or other fats, else they will stick. The taste of food browned without fat (in a coated pan) will also be different from that of food browned in fat, because fat is needed for important flavor-producing reactions. It is up to you if you like the different taste or not.

You can braise food in a broth, meaning that you put a small amount of broth in the pan, add the food and wait for it to cook through. This works with stainless steel pans too. But this is not comparable to either sauteeing or shallow frying. The temperature does not exceed 100 Celsius, which is way too low for Maillard and other flavor-developing reactions. So, if your recipe calls for sauteeing, browning, grilling or frying the food, you cannot use this method as a substitute.

In summary, you seem to have been misinformed. This is not possible, frying always requires oil, and browning without oil requires a PTFE coated pan (or a fresh ceramic coated one - they tend to lose their antistick properties with time).

Update You can sweat vegetables without oil, as mentioned in the corrected link. This is very different from both the true sauteeing you will find in textbooks and the quick browning usually meant in recipes which call to start with sauteing the ingredients. The result are softened vegetable pieces suitable for e.g. stir frying or mixing into chunky sauces. If you are going to make a soup or stew, don't bother using it instead of browning, as it doesn't add flavor and a soup doesn't mind the vegetables weeping into it. For other applications, you can try it and decide if the taste is good enough for your purposes.

The process is simple. Cut your vegetables finely (in the 4-7 mm range). Pour 3-5 mm of water into the pan and add a level layer of vegetables, up to 1.5 cm thick. Turn on the stove on slow to medium heat and leave them largely undisturbed. Wait until they are done - they will have softened and lost some moisture. As you are not using oil, you have to watch the food closely, because if all the liquid evaporates, the food will heat enough to stick and scorch. But don't stir much, because the vegetables need time in contact with the pan/broth to heat through, not to get a new side exposed to the heat each second. You could do it with constant stirring, this is the risotto method, but you will end up with preparation times similar to risotto (> 40 min) while waiting for the vegetables to heat through despite the stir. So it takes a little experience to know when the bottom of the vegetables is done but the liquid is not yet evaporated, without stirring to take a look at what is happening on the bottom.

In the end, it is up to you to decide if you really want to bother. You get a higher probability of failure (risk of scorching it), higher effort (the need to watch it closely) and less taste. If you feel that the fat reduction makes up for it, do it.


When jaggery / sugar syrup mix is rolled on to sheets, what kind of sheets would be most suitable - least sticky?

Cling-film (US term Saran-wrap, I think)
Since they changed to formular for 'health' reasons in the 90s, basically it only just sticks to itself & barely notices any other substance exists. (Yes, I'm being a tad cynical;)
You just need it stretched out onto something flat & firm (baking tray, chopping board etc - wrap it underneath & try to make it stick to itself a bit - then whatever you put on top of it will be easy to release once it's set.


You should sterilize your jars and lids before every use.

The dust that gets on them between uses and even in the box is enough to warrant sterilizing.

It doesn't take long. Running them through a cycle in the dishwasher with a steam or sterilization step is enough. I boil the lids in a small sauce pan.

Edit

Debbie M's comment below made me think that some clarification is warranted.

Lids used to need to be heated to soften the seal so it would seal properly. That is no longer the case.

Additionally, bottles and lids don't need to be sterilized if they are going to be processed for longer than 10 minutes or pressure canned.

http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/general/recomm_jars_lids.html

Foods that are processed less should have sterilized jars and lids. I am in the habit of washing them in the dishwasher which also sterilizes them.


Is it possible to gain more body mass from a food than the mass of the food itself?

Short answer - no.  Due to Conservation of Mass, your body cannot gain more grams of mass than it consumes.

Long answer - maybe.  Eating certain foods could cause you to retain more water, more unprocessed waste in your colon, etc.  However, if you account for all the mass from all sources, then it must always balance out.


Why did my "Turkish Delight" turn into a horrible goopy mess?

I've worked with agar a lot, and made a few things from the HRC. Of all of the things you've identified as possible problems, I think the biggest likely ones are the quantity of agar, and the agar powder itself. Everything else about the cooling issue is normal. Agar powders do vary. You want to find one that is pure, unadulterated agar, not one that is setup to be a pre-prepared dessert as those are weaker.

If just for a laugh you want to try to save this batch, heat it back up until the agar fully melts, shear in a second amount equal to what you did last night, making sure it fully dissolves, then let it set again. I'm pretty sure that will work.

You can also pick up a sub-gram scale on Amazon for around $20. Thanks, drug dealers! They are very helpful when making small batches of "molecular" recipes.


Why refrigerate bagels after shaping dough?

It doesn't matter as far as rise or flavor is concerned.  You can cold rise the dough, or the shaped bagels, or both.

However, the advantage of cold-rising the shaped bagels is that the cold dough is easier to peel off and dunk in the boiling water than room-temp dough is.  Bagel dough tends to be sticky and soft, and it's challenging to avoid stretching the bagels while dunking.


As a regular croissant maker, and reading lots of croissant recipes from different french chefs, they all say the same information: the butter quantity should be the third of the doughs weight.

So if your dough measure about 900 grams. The butter used should be 300 grams.

I think you added a lots of butter into your dough and you didn't rest the dough enough in the fridge for at least 30 minutes between each folding step.

UPDATE

As a personal experience, to prevent butter from melting even before baking, let the shaped croissant rest at room temperature for couple of hours. Pop it up into the fridge for 30 minutes, then bake it.

This will prevent the butter from quickly melting and ruining the croissant layers. Usually, you should use European butter as it contain less amount of water. Try some french AOP butter (if you can find it), and the result would be different than using the commercial butter.


Any magic formulas for roasting a gammon joint?

Slow cooked, braise, to internal temperature of 160 F plus.  So, covered in the oven, with some liquid.  Treat it like a pork shoulder or a fresh picnic and you should be fine, since most ham recipes (which is what this is, really) assume a ham that is already cooked.


When I was working as a cook, we did this to cook the potatoes enough so that we would have a better result after deep frying. Deep frying alone can make for a fry that is not always cooked through to the center. If you blanche, or par-boil, the potatoes ahead of time, some advantages are these.

Frying goes more quickly, because the potatoes are partially cooked
The fries are more evenly cooked, because you don’t have to rely on
the deep fryer to do all the cooking

Probably not an thorough list of advantages, but these are the biggies.

If you go to hand cut fires, make sure cut the size you go with is consistent. This make of a better deep frying experience.

You can also deep fry potatoes at a low temperature (300 degrees F) for some time as an alternative to blanching.


All fried rice recipes seem to have the same toned down interpretation

Shaoxing wine OR water, what nonsense is this? You will get completely different results with water and the wine.

As for your question: Add some Douchi (or black bean sauce), or Doubanjiang (if you want it spicy) for a focus on umami. I'd omit the cilantro altogether as well. A dash of rice vinegar might go a long way. Be careful though, since you've already added some acidity with the wine.


Ganache by pouring before fondanting a cake

There is no reason pouring ganache wouldn't work for this. 50/50 cream to bittersweet chocolate will work just fine. Just move quickly while the ganache is warm - you shouldn't have any problem at all.

here's a picture of a cake iced by pouring 50/50 ganache:

50/50 poured ganache sets firm in the sense that it stays put once it has cooled. Considering the carving that your cake is going to require, and the fragility that I would expect in the cake, I'd definitely go with a liquid that is more pourable than the icing in your picture looks to be. 50/50 ganache slices just fine. Look at the cut out in my picture. The slice through the ganache will just as "clean" 48 hours later.


There is a modified form of tapioca that gives a clear solution, but it is not easily available and I do not think it would help in this case.

The obvious way to firm up Jello is to use less water than recommended - use somewhere between a half and three quarters of the amount specified on the packet.  But you are comparing agar with gelatin here, it is like comparing chalk and cheese. Gelatin is extracted from bones, agar-agar is extracted from seaweed.  They are chemically very different, the big common factor being that they form an edible jelly.

I'm not going to discourse on those differences, beyond saying that mixing chalk and cheese is not a good idea. I am just going to point out that, since much of the gelatin comes from pig bones, Muslims object to gelatin. OTOH Muslims like jelly, so in every Halal shop you will find a range of commercially produced fruit jellies which are mostly based on seaweed. Since vegetarians also object to gelatin, you get those jellies in health food shops and other vegetarian outlets as well.

Get some Halal jelly and start from that, you should be able to adjust the texture as desired with agar-agar ...


The second easiest way to get stiff, but still edible mashed potatoes is to bake the potatoes whole, then put them through a ricer.

The easiest way is to use potato flakes ... and then you can make them as thick as you want, and even thicken them further if they came out not to your liking initially.

You can still mash potatoes that have been baked (although you'll probably want to peel them), but if you use a wet cooking method, after they're done cooking, drain them and put them back into the pot (still warm, but with the heat off) with the lid off for a minute or two.   Once you don't see any more steam coming off them, check to see if the bottom of the pot is dry .. if it isn't, move the potatoes to another pot (lift them out, to avoid moving the water with them), and drain the water.

I'd personally then dump them back into the now dried pot ... I just find that when you're limiting the amount of moisture going into the potatoes, making sure they stay warm as you're mashing helps the process.  You'll still need some liquid, but making sure that the water is out gives you more control of what liquid is added back in (and you can make sure it's a flavorful liquid ... dairy, olive oil, chicken stock, etc.)


Frying mustard oils in indian tempering (tadka)

You don't have to put the seeds after the oil heats up. I'm Indian and we put it with the oil and then turn the stove on, and when the seeds pop, its like a timer and tells us when the other stuff needs to be added


What type of chocolate is in chocolate chip ice cream

If they are crunchy when frozen they are probably made from regular compound chocolate, not freezing grade chocolate

You should be able to buy compound chocolate "chips" from any food wholesaler or baking supply store. They are the same as used in chocolate muffins

For frozen chocolate to still have a chocolate feel and taste when eaten it needs to be made with peanut oil (or similar) so as to have a melt point more like chocolate at room temperature when frozen

Regular "Real" chocolate can end up being like eating crayons

Real chocolate with a low cocoa butter, but high cocoa solid level generally freeze much better

Chocolate chips often come in 3kg or 5 kg bags, if you are not using them in a hurry, keep the surplus in the freezer :-)


How can I make failed fudge (hard and crumbly)?

I confess to having never actually successfully made fudge (lazy, and until recently the local Wegmans sold it), but it sounds like you want your sugar to recrystallize. Normally that's strenuously avoided, but:

Required: Start with a traditional recipe, not one of the "easy fudge" recipes. The traditional ones start with heating a mainly-sugar mixture to soft ball stage (≈238°F). I found one site with a bunch (that I can't personally vouch for, but am tempted to try): Old Tyme Fudge Recipes.
Try taking the sugar past the soft ball stage. Maybe to firm ball, around 245°F. (This is a mistake I can easily see your mom having done, maybe because she didn't have a good candy thermometer).
Corn syrup is used in fudge (and caramel) recipes to help prevent crystallization. Use plain sugar instead. Same with acids like lemon juice in caramel (and presumably fudge); those should be omitted or substituted with water.
All those admonishments about not stirring once the sugar has dissolved? Probably best ignored. Any tricks about applying the lid to help dissolve any sugar on the side of the pan? Wouldn't bother.
Butter isn't known as a health food. More importantly, fat in the recipe helps prevent crystallization, so why not remove some? I can't bring myself to recommend margarine (or, worse, "spread"), but if you were to substitute, I expect spectacular failure. And of course you are using skim milk, right?
You could try lazyness, I mean all that stirring is tiring! (See "never successfully made fudge", above).
Worst case, brute force it: as the mixture cools, during that time when you're not supposed to stir, grab a teaspoon of sugar and stir it in.

I'm sure with a little experimenting, a touch of laziness, and some optimally bad recipes, you too can fail at fudge making. The hard part is going to be finding the exact texture you're going for—failure can range from a slight failure of "somewhat gritty" to a spectacular failure of "I think that's a jawbreaker."


Are garlic butter and garlic oil interchangeable?

I agree that they're similar, but I don't think I'd personally call them "interchangeable" in a culinary sense, just like butter and oil aren't really interchangeable in all cases.

Now, it's not like the ingredients police will arrest you for using one in a recipe instead of another. Note that melted butter is about 20% water (depending on how long you've heated it), but you're probably not baking with this stuff (though it occurs to me that it'd be an interesting addition to a salty cracker recipe).


wooden toothpicks with colored ends, like the kind at cocktail parties? (like these? http://tinyurl.com/3pjf4kx)


I think most of your confusion comes from the paradigm of water.  Water (under kitchen conditions) will not get any hotter than its boiling point.

Oil has no such limitation.  You microwave will heat oil well past water's boiling point and all the way up past the smoke point to the flash point of the oil.  At the flash point, the oil will actually catch fire.

If you put a bag of popcorn in a microwave on high for an extended period of time you'll see this as actually burned corn.

Also, if a significant mass resting against the paper bag gets above paper's flash point (451 degrees F) it will also catch fire.

My little sister has proven this true time after time.


How does boiling impact the texture of tofu?

Ah, so the question is "Why does boiling the tofu change its texture?". Answer: it doesn't. Try doing this recipe without boiling the tofu, I think you will find it is pretty much the same. I think if the boiling serves any purpose at all it is to remove any last remnant of taste from the tofu. I don't mash tofu often, but when I do, I never boil it and I've never had a problem.


Regarding Connecticut style steamed burgers - is the container necessary?

The cheese needs a container such as the tuna can so it doesn't just ooze everywhere, but the burger does not. You could steam the burger by just placing it in your steam tray. Since it's solid, it won't go anywhere!


The simple problem is that you need to warm up the fats sufficiently for it to spread.  The same holds true for many other fatty spreads, like chevé or neufchâtel.  You can get around this somewhat with two tricks:

Place the knife you're going to be using to cut the pâté in a cup of hot water for a minute or two before slicing.  Dry it off, then slice in.  You may wish to warm it again between slices and/or spreading.
Thinly slice the pâté.  You'll have an easier time spreading two or three thin slices than one thick one.

Your other option is to let it warm up out of the fridge.  I personally prefer not to leave the whole thing out, I just slice it, place it on the bread, then put the unused portion back in the fridge; I then let the sliced portion sit a little while before trying to spread it.  (this works okay in the summer ... not so well in the winter with the way I heat my house)


Can I substitute vodka for rum in tiramisu?

Rum used in tiramisu is mainly for flavor. It's not a fundamental ingredient that will completely change the outcome of the recipe.

That being said if you wish, you can omit the rum without adding the vodka. The vodka will add nothing to the tiramisu recipe since vodka is made to be flavorless.

As Jefromi mentioned in the comment, there are plenty of other better substitution in terms of flavor you can use. Kahlua is a very common liquor found in tiramisu as it's coffee based. Chocolate porters might also add a nice touch.


Substitution for Suet in Christmas Pudding

For Christmas pudding, there really is no substitute. In some recipes it's possible to use finely grated, very hard, unsalted butter, or a vegetable shortening, but the results are just not the same.


is there a downside to using a wood mortar and pestle?

There are at least three potential downsides:

wood is quite light, so you will not get the benefit of added weight of the pestle for crushing;
many wooden mortars have a smooth texture, which will not aid in the grinding as much as, e.g., a coarse ceramic mortar; and
wood is porous—increasingly so as it dries over time—so it may have the tendency to pick up the flavors of its contents.


What an interesting idea. Essentially you're looking to make rice out of potatoes, yes?

I can see a couple of options. You could make potato orzo (a small pasta that looks like rice) I suppose; googling recipes for potato pasta should point you in the right direction.

You could also, I think use the reverse spherification method. Make mash as you normally would, and then put it through a ricer into an alginate bath. This should preserve the individual 'grains'. You will need to have milk and/or cream in the mash to ensure there is enough calcium for the alginate to react with.


Some pans have 'oven safe' labels on the bottom. That may help.

If not: DuPont studies show that at 446°F Teflon starts offgassing toxic gasses (Multiple sources).

Generally, I wouldn't put my non-stick pans in: use stainless.


TL;DR Quiche pans are fluted because quiche crusts are ruffled.
Quiche crusts are ruffled for the same geometric reason as muffin liners and some coffee filters are ruffled. Try fitting an inelastic disc into a cylinder, covering the bottom and sides, and the disc builds ruffles on its sides. Since the ruffles of the crust are somewhat fragile, they are best supported within flutes.

This is one of the cases (much rarer than most people think) where it has an objective advantage, as opposed to randomly developed tradition.
Quiches are made with a crust of shortbread or flaky savory pie dough. This dough is not very friendly in handling. It tends to crumble rather than stretch, sticks everywhere to the point of smearing, and has low tolerances with respect to temperature, mechanical stress, and others.
Imagine you have just rolled out your crust - which is hopefully all in one piece, evenly thick, not stuck to your counter or to your rolling pin, not so cold as to crumble from stiffness and not so warm as to smear or lose its flakiness, and circular (as opposed to a map of the Scandinavian peninsula complete with fjords). Getting all these at once is already an achievement which requires quite a bit of skill and/or luck. Now you manage to lift your crust from the counter and place it in the pan.
The crust is now lying such that its center coincides with the center of the pan. The edges are draped over the sides of the pan, so there is a gap between the crust and the pan. You now start fitting the crust into the pan by lifting the edge in one point, and gently stroking the radius pointing to that point from the center to the pan wall, such that the crust lays flush on the bottom of the pan. At that place where the crust meets the pan sides, both the crust and the pan have the same radius.
Now your crust is a bent disc. Let's say your pan is 3 cm deep and has straight, non-fluted sides. Then, if you have the crust follow the side in one point, the radius of the crust at the upper edge of the pan is 3 cm larger than the radius at the same point in the bottom of the pan. Choose a next point 1 cm further the circumference of the pan and also press the crust there. The arc of the pan between the two points will have a 1 cm span - but as the crust has a larger radius, its arc at that place is longer! Basically, when you try to bend the crust to go up the sides of the pan, it ruffles. And you have no elasticity to work with to somehow make the crust get together on top or stretch on the bottom - if you try, it tears or crumbles. You also can't just fit the ruffles beside each other - you can try, but their shape will suffer a lot during baking, if they don't break apart under pie weights during prebaking. If they survive, they will be underbaked because of their thickness.
When you have a fluted pan, the troughs of the fluting take in the ruffles of the crust. You now have a single-thickness crust everywhere without stretching, tearing, or whatever. It bakes properly and doesn't have any problems with geometry. Also, it looks pretty.
Given all of the above, I am pretty sure it was a major factor in the design becoming popular.

For those who have trouble imagining it visually, I found a video which shows the process pretty well. Interestingly, this baker strengthens the crust by folding it double and then smushing it into the flutes, something I have never tried.


How long to sharpen Japanese knife with whetstone

The answer partly depends on how dull the knife is when you go to sharpen it.
Most electric knife sharpeners have 2 or 3 different wheels with coarser and finer grinders, the coarser allow you to establish the angle of the edge and the finer grain refine it, similar to coarser and finer sandpaper.
The two disadvantages of sharpening with a whetstone are that you generally only have one grit or fineness to use (though some whetstone kits have more), and if you are freehanding the sharpening, it may be difficult to hold the right angle if you are sharpening for a long time.
So if you are starting with a very dull knife where the angles of the edge are off or if there is damage, it might take a lot of sharpening to establish them, and unless you're holding the stone at exactly the right angle all the time, you might not end up with a good edge.
On the other hand if the blade already had a good edge and you sharpen it frequently with a whetstone, like every few uses, then you are just fine tuning the edge and this should be fairly quick.  I would say somewhere between 10 and 50 strokes depending.


Sugar alternative when beating eggs and sugar together

I find that the chemical and mechanical reactions between egg-white, egg-yolk and sugar is quite an delicate and complex one. I find that there is even a difference in using white refined cane sugar and white refined beet sugars when baking and the amount of effort of creaming eggs and sugar. Sugar substitutes that claim that they "behave" the same as sugar also don't seem to react in a manner that you'd expect.

I would suggest that you try a range of sugars... The worse of them seems to be corn based sugars. The eggs just don't behave at all...


Is possible to create a transparent caramelization?

It is possible and not particularly difficult to make candy that is completely clear.

However, it is not possible to have caramelization that is clear and colorless. When sugar is caramelized the sucrose begins to decompose from the heat. This gives us the distinctive delicious flavor but also changes the color of the sugar. It will go from yellow to brown to black... and then to the trash.

110C (230F) is not nearly hot enough to caramelize sugar-- that starts happening around 170C (340F). If you simply keep your syrup from overheating it will stay clear. As with all candy making, this is easier to do with an accurate thermometer and slow heat.


Do I need onions when making thai curry paste? or can I just add onions to the dish I'm cooking later with the paste?

If the mortar size vs volume of ingredients is truly the only concern, you can crush things in batches and mix them in a bowl afterwards. :-)

I think the main reason for adding them into a prepared paste is for convenience in adding that paste to recipes later. If it has everything you need already in it, then it works better as a base. If it doesn't have everything in it already, you will have to make sure you have more ingredients on hand later when you're preparing the recipe. If you're making the paste and using it in the same cooking session then this doesn't make any difference at all.

Adding the onions to the paste vs adding onions with the paste won't affect the flavor as long as you add them at the same time.

If you add the paste early in the cooking and the onions significantly later in the cooking then that can affect how thoroughly the onions get cooked and how well they impart their flavor to the sauce.

Also, if you are storing the paste for some time in the fridge, the flavors of the various ingredients may change a little over time, and onions in particular might mellow somewhat, but I don't think they would change significantly enough to matter for the end result. This is just where you get into the convenience factor -- if you have added the onions already, your Thai green chili paste is a complete ingredient in itself and you don't have to worry about having the shallots on hand as well.


You're baking using a convection fan.  This generally won't work unless the cake recipe is calibrated for it; you'll end up with a cake which is brown on the outside and raw in the middle (as you did).  It's remotely possible that a combination of lowering the temperature and convection would be successful, but I don't have a formula for you.

Suggestions:

If the issue with top heat is that the cake is burning on top before the bottom is done, I would suggest placing a rack above the one the cake sits on, and a cookie sheet on that rack.  This will protect the top of the cake from the radiant heat of the element, causing it to cook only from reflected heat off the sides of the oven.  This may, however, increase cooking times somewhat so make sure to check cake doneness with a skewer.

Or: Add a baking stone on the rack holding the cake as well (under it), and preheat the stone for 30 min before baking the cake.  This will give it some heat from the bottom.

Or: both of the above.

Or: get a new oven.  They make fairly nice countertop ovens now which have a bottom baking element.


Hamantaschen just wouldn't pinch and hold tight

It seems Hamantaschen cookies unfolding and leaking is not an uncommon problem. Of course the flax egg substitution can very likely also contribute to the unfolding but here are some tips from someone who has been baking Hamantaschen cookies for a while.

Tips for Creating Perfect Hamantaschen

  1) Find a great dough recipe. Often, the problems people have with
  baking hamantaschen can be traced to an inferior dough. Here are two
  foolproof, tasty dough recipes that I highly recommend. They are easy
  to handle and shape, and they provide great results when baked:

  Dairy Free Hamantaschen Dough

  Buttery Hamantaschen Dough

Of course you can use your flax egg substituted in for the eggs that the recipes ask for.

  2) Roll your dough out to 1/8 inch thick (or less). You want your
  dough to be as thin as possible, while still being thick enough to
  maintain the cookie’s structure. 1/8 inch seems to be the magic
  number; sometimes I roll mine out even thinner than that. For a more
  doughy texture you can roll it thicker, but remember– the thicker the
  dough is, the harder it will be to handle and shape. Thick dough is
  also more prone to opening/spreading in the oven.

  3) Use a thick filling that won’t run/weep from the cookies while
  baking. Knowing the proper consistency of a hamantaschen filling takes
  experience, because each type of filling is slightly different.
  Poppyseed filling has a very different texture than fruit filling, for
  example. A good filling should be somewhat thick so that it doesn’t
  run.

  4) Cut your hamantaschen dough in 3-inch circles (or larger) before
  filling and folding into triangles. Anything smaller than 3 inches
  will be difficult to fold around your chosen filling.

  5) Most fillings can be chilled before using to fill hamantaschen.
  I’ve found that fruit, poppy seed, and cream cheese-based fillings
  tend to be easier to work with when they’re chilled in the
  refrigerator. The chilling process thickens the fillings and makes
  them less sticky, which makes them easier to handle with when you’re
  assembling your hamantaschen. Not all fillings are helped by
  refrigeration, however– particularly chocolate-based fillings like
  Nutella, which will harden with prolonged refrigeration. Check your
  filling recipe to see if refrigeration is recommended.

  6) Do not overfill your hamantaschen. Use 1 teaspoon of filling per
  hamantaschen cookie. Do not use more than 1 teaspoon. However tempting
  it might be to put lots of delicious filling in the middle of your
  cookie, using more than 1 teaspoon can cause your hamantaschen to
  spread open and leak in the oven. 1 teaspoon is plenty, especially
  when you cut your dough circles to 3 inches… it’s the perfect amount
  of filling.

  7) Fold your triangles the right way! Using the proper folding method
  will help your hamantschen hold together and create a beautiful shape.

Please that the sides are folded down so that each "side" has an "end" that is above and an "end" that is below in the fashion of folding the top of a box. This will help in preventing the cookies from unfolding.

Also note in Step 5, to pinch each of the 3 corners gently but firmly.

Source: http://theshiksa.com/2012/03/01/how-to-make-perfect-hamantaschen/


Shea Butter (or Cocoa Butter Equivalent) tempering while making Chocolate

Interesting question, but for practical purposes, I think it is a dead end.

If you want something resembling a Lindt chocolate bar, you cannot make it at home. You just don't have the machinery needed to create the needed particle size of the starchy phase. There is by the way no "cocoa mass containing no cocoa butter or trace amounts of it", the best you can get is strongly defattted cocoa powder at about 5% cocoa butter, and that is already so dry that you couldn't have it behave as "cocoa mass", you can only get is as powder. And this powder particle's sizes are several orders of magnitude larger than those needed for a chocolate bar. You need a tightly controlled industrial process with specialized machines to make the bar from that point. Even if there are manufacturers who have managed to engineer a similar process with shea butter as a substitute, you can't replicate it in your kitchen.

If you want something else instead of a smooth bar, the best you can get will be some liquidish product, maybe a ganache or a hot chocolate replacement. There you don't need tempering, because you dissolve the whole thing and emulsify the fat, it is no longer sitting around in crystalized form.


Yorkshire pudding - how do the proportions of the ingredient affect shape, texture and taste?

I take it you didn't read Kenji's Serious Eats column The Science of the Best Yorkshire Puddings which is linked from the recipe column.

It discusses his experiments with various factors affecting Yorkshire puddings addressing some of your points including liquid (eggs + milk + water) to flour ratios and amounts of fats (yolks + milk) as well as technique.  The focus is on balancing expansion, crispness, and the hollow with some mention of richness (fats).

[EDIT]

Major points:

Let rest overnight ("Resting your batter is the single most important step you can take to improving Yorkshire pudding and popovers.");
Starting with colder batter gives denser, more cup shaped; warmer batter gives taller, crispier with a hollow core;
Water added to milk gives a crisper pudding (not needed for skim/1% milk);
Hydration at least 200% and no more than 300% (266% in his recipe) - higher hydration gives "a pudding shaped cracker", lower gives deeper cupping;
Pre-heating muffin/popover tins not required, but essential for cast iron pans;
You can open the oven without ruining it;
Beef drippings are best.


Is it true that good pistachio nuts should have yellowish shell, purplish skin and greenish flesh?

The natural colors for pistacio meats are green, yellow-green, purple and/or red.  Shells are beige.  The Kerman variety, which account for 90% of the pistachios grown in California, are yellow-green to deep green.  Pistacios from Iran tend to be more in the red-purple spectrum, and are alleged by their partisans to be superior to California pistacios.  Personally, I like both the Kerman and the Iranian ones I've been able to sample.

Looking at the picture, I'd say that those nuts were clearly bleached, due to the excessive whiteness of the shells.  This seems to be a common practice in China, enough to cause the government to debate a ban on bleaching. Per that article and others, there is no health risk associated with peroxide bleaching, but there is thought to be a significant loss of vitamins due to bleaching.


What nutrients are concentrated in citrus peels (not juice)?

You can look up nutritional information at the USDA nutrient database. Their entry for orange peel says that 100g of orange peel contains: 97 Calories, various minerals, and a few vitamins. You can compare it raw oranges to see how it differs from the rest of the fruit. You can also look up orange juice, etc.

You can also get some of that information (plus comparison to USDA recommended daily amounts and to other foods) at Wolfram Alpha. You can even have it compare orange peel and orange.

As rumtscho mentions, the pith (white part of the peel) is bitter. The zest (outermost colored part) is very fragrant (and flavorful).

Oranges vary in sourness depending on variety, cultivar, growing conditions, etc.


Does seasoned cast iron still need to be oven dried?

Any exposed, non-coated part of a cast iron pan will be subject to rusting. Oven drying drives off the water before the reaction can happen to a noticeable amount.

The seemingly smart alec, but actually serious answer is: try to not oven dry it. If it does not generate rust, then it is seasoned enough. If it rusts, then rub again with light oil and oven dry. I tend to lightly wipe all over my cast iron a bunch of times until I get the entire pan nicely seasoned.


Is dry rub necessary in making bbq ribs?

Your ribs will have a lot less flavor if you do not use a dry rub.  However you can minimize some of the time (and only a bit of the flavor) by putting on the rub, wrapping in foil, and immediately putting them in the oven or on the grill.  The process of putting your rub together probably takes only about 5 minutes - it's the fridge time that takes a while.

Sitting in the fridge allows some of the flavors to permeate, and if you used a more permeable material could allow your ribs to air out a bit.  These are good things, but for my rib recipe I don't put the ribs in the fridge and they still taste great.  I also don't put the barbecue sauce on until about the last 20 minutes of oven time, when the foil comes off and the sauce goes on.  Until then the ribs stay in the foil.

I looked up North Carolina (which uses a sauce that isn't tomato based in the eastern part of the state), South Carolina (a mustard sauce), Texas, Memphis (which uses no sauce), Kansas City (tomato based-sauce that is rather sweet) - all of them used a dry rub even with wide variations on the sauce and for both beef and pork ribs.


How do different types of thickener actually thicken?

There are a number of different ways in which gelling agents are classified. Off the top of my head:

Viscosity (firmness/thickness) of solution and gel forms
Thermoreversible/irreversible (does it "melt"?)
Hysteresis (water loss)
Hydration, melting, and setting points
Appearance (in particular transparency)
Sensitivity to heat, cold, alcohol, and pH

Starches are all very similar in this regard. They all form viscous solutions and gelatinize to a stiff and elastic consistency. They are all opaque-to-translucent, have very slow hysteresis, hydrate in cold water and gelatinize in hot water. They tend to tolerate some alcohol and a fairly low pH.

Tapioca has the lowest gelation point, and the most heat stability, and potato starch is similar. Corn starch is particularly weak against acid, heat, and cold (especially freezing), unless it's been modified. There's also arrowroot which is somewhere in between.

Wheat flour is something completely different because it has proteins which form gluten in the presence of water and heat. I wouldn't even consider comparing it to the others, it's sometimes used in gravy but generally you would only use flour to make doughs or batters.

As far as gelatin and all of the other E-numbers are concerned, you can find a lot more about their properties in Kymos' Texture and of course, Modernist Cuisine if you want to shell out the cash. There's quite a lot to read about.

Gelatin, specifically, is thermoreversible, hydrates (blooms) in cold water, disperses in hot water, sets below 15° C, melts at 25-40° C (mouth temperature), tolerates alcohol but is weak against all of the other usual inhibitors, and forms a soft, transparent gel. It's nothing like starches but is a lot like a lot of the other E numbers (Gellan, Agar, Carrageenan, Pectin, etc.) Refer to the aforementioned link for more information.


Is it always possible to visually determine if it's gas or electic stove?

Gas stoves will always have "open" heating elements because the gas requires oxygen in order to burn and generate heat. Anytime you see a closed, glassed-over heating element, the heat is electric in source. However without more information about the design of the stove, it can't really be determined whether the heat is a traditional radiant heat element or an induction element (in which case the red glow may be cosmetic, generated only by lights to indicate that the burner is on).


Dehydration temperatures for long-term preservation

The temperature varies not by how long you want to keep the item, but by what you are dehydrating. Consider a carrot. A raw carrot will keep for literally months. A cooked one at room temperature will not even keep for days. So, when you're dehydrating carrots (for example to reduce the weight of the food you take camping) you want to be sure not to cook them in the process. Now, consider raw meat such as jerky. This has a LOT of water in it. If you dry it at too low a temperature, it will spoil before you have reduced the water content enough. Same for a fruit puree. But herbs, if you have it too hot you will draw out the flavours and just keep dehydrated dust.

My dehydrator came with a book telling me what temperatures to use for what products. There are also words on the temperature dial. This is a cropped shot of my model on the manufacturer's website:

While you can't read the words, they say "fruit", "vegetables" etc. The coolest temps are for herbs, then it goes raising bread, making yogurt, then dehydrating veg, then fruit, and finally jerky.

And just as you can't choose one temperature to use for dehydrating any and all food, nor can you assume one keeping time for any and all food. My book also tells me which things keep for months, and which for years. I don't think there's anything that will let your dried meat keep for years, but you should do ok with legumes and some vegetables.


New to sous vide and not having any luck

Sous vide is a great method for getting tender meat but it doesn't impart flavor to anything. Marinades only go so far adding flavor, you need your meat to have flavor in the first place. Other than from marinade flavor in cooked meat comes from:

The quality of the meat: good quality meat comes from good breeds that have been raised well and given quality feed
The cut: the more work the meat does on the animal the more flavor it has. A tenderloin is tender to begin with because it just fills a gap and doesn't move, but it isn't going to taste the same a shoulder. A working cut has a much stronger flavor and the connective tissues break down into gelatin which adds flavor and a luscious mouth feel. My personal opinion is that there's no point in slow cooking tender cuts, I always go for the beef shin (leg), chuck, or rump (round). Chicken breast, especially your standard cheap store brands, has very little flavor, I prefer dark meat, or if I'm cooking breast I go for quality free range birds
Maillard reactions and caramelization: When cooking at high temperatures you get flavors from maillard reactions and the caramelization of sugars, slow cooking does not add these, so you need to brown before or after (you appear to have done this with your beef which is good), before is better for slow cooking in my opinion as you get the flavors from the browning throughout the meat

The simple truth is you won't get a tasty result in cooking unless you start with good ingredients, and this is especially true in sous vide cooking, or any slow cooking method really. Sous vide is not a magic bullet which transforms mediocre steak into amazing steak, it's got to be amazing steak in the first place. Good restaurants use the best quality meats they can get their hands on, so if you want to get similar results you will too.


How do I add citric acid to my hard candy without it burning?

Colors and flavors, including acid, are added after the candy is taken off the heat.

The syrup is still blisteringly hot (literally) but I've never had powdered acid burn in it off the stove.

If your acid is actually burning in the hot syrup then I would recommend finding a new source.


What is the Purpose of Using Onions in (Almost) Every Soup Recipe?

Sauteed onions can provide both caramel flavors (from the sugars in the onions) and Maillard reaction compounds, depending on how they are sauteed.  Thus onions can supply a range of "umami" flavors for soup which otherwise you need to get through roasting animal bones and other tissue (e.g. brown veal stock).  Of course, even beef stocks often add onion as well for extra flavor.

As an extreme example of this, I often prepare a vegetarian French Onion soup using a meat-free broth made entirely from onions, onion skins, and cheese rind.  Blind tasters often fail to distinguish it from a store-bought beef stock.

You can get a lot of the same flavors from combinations of other browned vegetables, but onions neatly supply a perfect package of flavor compounds in one inexpensive, long-keeping root vegetable.  Why use anything else?


Small Hard White Thing In Whole Wheat Bread - Mold Or Grain?

I'd go with grain or more likely flour/unmixed dough
It's very unlikely to be mould in between slices like that, even if pre-sliced, and essentially impossible if you just cut it.
Bread is also generally made and shipped pretty quickly, so if it's got a few days left on its date (or was bought loose, meaning it should have been freshly baked) it shouldn't have had time for mould to form.
As you say, it doesn't look (or feel) like any of the mould found on bread, which is usually fluffy, hairy, or even scaly. It does look like inclusions I've sometimes seen on home made bread when barely cooled enough to cut - no chance for mould.
So I'd eat it without worrying.  It does look a little like a grain, but if I see that in my home made bread, it's flour that's got wet but not mixed in properly (often near the top as it was stuck to the pan while the loaf was rising).


4 tablespoons of butter is how many tablespoons of coconut oil

In almost all contexts, you can substitute these items on equal amounts, by weight or volume, and be well within the tolerance of the recipe.

This is true for almost all baked goods, for example.

If you want to be absolutely accurate, butter is only about 80% fat, and 20% water (this is an approximation), so you would use 4/5 the amount of coconut oil as butter.


How to prevent dumplings from sticking together

You can't let the dumplings touch after you make them, just keep them spaced apart until you cook them. I'm not a fan of boiling, I prefer steaming them or frying/steaming as described by @user245427 instead, however if you do boil them you can keep them from sticking using this method:

Use a big pan with plenty of water, that way the dumplings have plenty of space
Drop the dumplings in 2 at a time on opposite sides of the pot so they don't hit and stick together right away
Stir them around often, I use a wire strainer I got from an Asian supermarket, it's perfect for the job and you can lift them out very easily with the same tool. See the pic below

I wouldn't bother oiling them before boiling them because the oil will wash off in a couple of seconds and you're just wasting a good ingredient without getting any benefit. Also, don't flour them, you won't solve the sticking problem without using a lot, and the flour will just be a gooey mess later that doesn't taste very nice.


What causes gaps/holes in homemade bread?

It's typically a problem with large pockets of air in the dough before you bake it.

For the cinnamon swirl bread, try to make sure that you're not getting air trapped when rolling it.

For other loaves, you want to make sure to punch it down well after the first rise, and make sure you aren't trapping air in it if you're doing a stretch and fold when shaping it.


How do I dissolve chunky powder completely in milk?

I think the Q&A linked by @Joe has most of the tricks in it. Hot, paste, make syrup, blender, etc. Mixing stuff into cold milk (unless specially prepped for that) is not a good scene. Surprising they haven't done better at that given the marketing, but corporate competence is a rare thing - they may be too big to get someone that knows how to make a powder dissolve in cold milk working where they need to work - Nestle solved that one (at least) 50 years ago. Too many vice presidents, and not enough food science engineers? Puzzling.

If you have "small hard chunks" either pre-grind dry in a mortar and pestle, or grind the paste step suggested in the other answer in a mortar and pestle with a little liquid.

Or contact Cadbury all wide eyed and innocent and ask why you get little hard chunks when you mix their product (I assume, as instructed on the package) 8-)


Correct temperature and technique for frying in cast iron

There are a few things to keep in mind when cooking with cast iron:

It must be seasoned properly. The biggest mistake people make here is to have the oil too thick when seasoning. You need to wipe the cast iron with a dry paper towel to remove as much oil as possible. If your pan feels sticky when clean you've used too much oil and should start over.
Yes, you want your pan hot before adding fish (see below).
You want your pan evenly heated. Cast iron is a very poor conductor of heat and it takes a while to fully heat evenly. You're best heating it a lower flame/setting for a longer period before putting in your food.
A little oil rubbed on both sides of your food will help.
The advice you got about letting the fish release is 100% correct. That's a common mistake people make. As you found, it works like magic. Some things, like eggs, will always stick and are best for a non-stick pan rather than cast iron (even really well-seasoned cast iron).
In terms of temperature, I would suggest maybe 400-425° for the flesh side and 450° for the skin side. I generally cook the fish first on the flesh side long enough to leave the perfect color marks and then cook mostly on the skin side. If you score the skin it will be crispier (and salt also helps). A temp gun is really useful, and I highly encourage you to purchase one, but flicking some water on the pan will also give you a pretty good indication of how hot it is. If your water evaporates slowly it's too cold. If it evaporates quickly then the pan is hotter, but not hot enough. If it rolls around the pan and takes some time to evaporate, then your pan is hotter still (at least 380°F), and probably about the range you want. The reason it takes longer to evaporate when really hot is that steam under the water droplets is insulating the droplet from the pan, causing it to take longer to evaporate. (This is called the Leidenfrost effect.)


Using parchment paper to bake whoopie pies

Absolutely.
There are only a few cases where parchment and grease/flour are not interchangeable and whoopie pies are not one of them.


How to reheat a Croquette without it getting soggy

As this basically got answered through questions in the comments, I'll collect up all of the various problems that might help prevent the sogginess:

After frying, allow the croquettes to cool on a wire rack, so they don't get moist as they give off steam.
Reheat first at a lower temperature to heat through, then turn it up the temperature to regain the crunch & get any extra browning.
Make sure when reheating that they aren't packed too tightly, and if possible, heat on a wire rack rather than a pan.
If reheating in a small but tightly-sealing oven, try cracking the door slightly so as to prevent humidity buildup.

(anyone who has any other suggestions, feel free to add 'em)


Why do you need to peel peaches to can them?

My opinion- I haven't done rigorous testing:

Canning softens the interior of the peach but when I have (in my laziness) left the skins on they stay tough and quite unpleasant tasting.

I doubt it has any effect on the longevity of the product but it would make it a little less pleasant and versatile.


How to judge the quality of pizza dough?

My targets for the final dough:

when I stretch it over my fist, once it has got to the size where it covers my whole fist, it starts to stretch under its own weight
if the inside of the dough is exposed it will stick to hands/surface
need to use semolina/cornmeal to transfer the pizza around
contains lots of visible bubbles before stretching, with the dough having enough integrity to stretch the bubbles without losing them.
can stretch it to be translucent without tearing too much (preferably without tearing at all)

What I look for at different by stages:

I have been making a lot of pizza dough over the last year, experimenting with different amounts of water and kneading techniques. In order to make a very thin base, (on you can stretch so it is translucent) but can still transfer into the oven I make a very wet (60% hydration) dough and either:

No-Knead approach: use small amounts of yeast and salt. Just leave the dough for approx 18 hours. Then put in the fridge, I find it is best after 2 days in the fridge. Because the dough is cold you can easily handle it, although you might need to let it warm up a bit before you can do anything with it.

What I am aiming for is that when I stretch it over my fist, once it has got to the size where it covers my whole fist, it starts to stretch under its own weight.

I expect to see a lot of bubbles, up to 0.5cm in diameter but most smaller, in the dough, but not to be able to pour it out. I will have to scrape it out of the bowl using a wet spatula. and will have to use a light dusting of flour (not too much) to stop it sticking to the surface or my hands. I sometimes let it rise again after shaping (need to at least let it relax for a few minutes) and usually have to add more flour to my hands to do the stretch. Try to use as little extra flour as you can. I usually have to only dust the dough once and lightly before stretching it. If you have to use any more it might be too wet or not have enough gluten development.
Hand Knead approach: using more yeast and salt. When I first turn the dough out to knead I do not expect to be able to handle it, it is to sticky and runny. I use tools to fold it a few times. You will probably need some flour to do this, but try not to use too much. After several folds the dough comes together enough for me to lightly cover it in flour I "roll knead" - which is rolling and stretching it, but not bringing the wet inside to the surface. If you start to fold or tear the dough it will stick to your hands and the surface, if that happens you have to put more flour on which will reduce the hydration of your dough so avoid it. You will have to work it for quite a while. Try to get your body weight applied to the dough as your roll it.

What I am aiming for is a dough which you can pick up without your fingers just going into it and that springs back when you deform it; but if you tear it or open it up the inside will immediately stick to your hands and the surface. When I get this I stop kneading.

I usually rise it for 80 mins but it depends on the temperature. After this rise, I will divide it and shape it into balls. I expect to not be able to easily rip the dough apart due to its wetness. It should contain quite a bit of air, and some largeish bubbles which I try not to knock back too much.

I have to use a wet spatula to divide it, and then use a small amount of flour on the outside to form a smooth surfaced ball. Then I cover it and rise it again for 20mins. The outside will be smooth with some bubbles visible and due to the flour dry enough to handle. The inside will be too wet to handle without adding more flour.

After this second rise I put a bit of flour on my hands and stretch it over my fist, it should behave pretty much the same as the no-knead version at this stage.


How to Remove Garlic Ginger Paste smell from refrigerator

For the future, the only effective way I know of is to seal it doubly. That is, take two containers that promise to be airtight (such as glasslock style containers with gaskets), keep the paste in the inner one, and the inner one in the outer one. I know this is very tedious, but I have not found any other way that works for garlic smells in a fridge. Try using glass or steel containers, since plastic is permeable after some time, and also binds with the smell.

If your fridge stinks now, you have to clean it out thoroughly. Throw out whatever food has taken on the smell, you cannot remove it. Wash the shelves, preferably in a dishwasher at a "pots" cycle. Turn off the refrigerator, wash it with something strong - I suggest 12% hydrogen peroxide, this also kills mold spores if there are any - and let it air for half a day until you return the shelves and food and turn it on again.


'Preserve' suggests jam - peach jam would be my substitution, at 2tbsp the purpose is most likely to accentuate the peach flavour and potentially add to consistency. Hard to know without recipe context.


What happens if I use my sourdough starter too soon?

It won't be viable to leaven bread. Too soon and you'll just be using it in the leuconostoc stage which is bad bacteria and isn't good for anything. I wouldn't use the starter or discard till it becomes viable.


What to do with ginger leftover from ginger ale production

I have used excess ginger by candying it- I boil it for about twenty minutes in a simple syrup, when I take the ginger out of the syrup I place it on a cooling grate and let it cool completely. I then roll each individual piece in turbinado sugar(I have used white sugar too.) To store I place it in a plastic bag with a little extra sugar to prevent the pieces from sticking to each other. I also keep the syrup tightly sealed in the freezer, the syrup is great for cocktails, or as a remedy for an upset stomach.
I have also peeled leftover ginger and stored it in a tightly sealed container inside my freezer. This is convienent because when you need ginger, you can easily grate the frozen ginger for your recipe. Generally you can store it frozen for at least a good three months. Hope this helps.


Notice how dogs enjoy gnawing on bones?  Ever been to a restaurant where they serve bone marrow?

Boiling bones in water draws flavor out of them.  Most canned broth and stock you buy--beef stock, chicken stock, etc--is just this--water boiled with bones for hours.

Most literature I've read suggests using raw bones, but some recipes call for roasted bones--the ones I've seen most often involve roasted veal bones.

I've also made stock from roasted chicken bones.  The stock does still take on flavor.  It's easier to get good flavor from unused bones, though.

Additionally, I've found another pitfall.  I've tried to make stock from the leftover bones of bbq'd ribs.  This was not a good idea.  The broth had a savory flavor, as intended.  Unfortunately it also had the background taste of bbq sauce.  Now, when I do make stocks, I'd consider using leftover bones, but

there have to be enough bones leftover (otherwise I get very little stock for my time or it's weak on flavor)
the bones can't be "tainted" by other flavors (like bbq sauce)

To answer your original question, try this:

start with a pot of plain water
put about 4 lb of bones in per gallon of water while it's still cold, add ~1 tsp of vinegar per gallon of water
Once the water comes to a boil, lower the heat so that it's just simmering

this keeps the stock from getting cloudy/white (which doesn't taste bad, just looks worse)

leave boiling for about 6-8 hours, minimum.  Longer is fine, but you won't get too much more at this point.
turn off heat, allow stock to cool fully, strain it for the bones, refrigerate

you can speed up this step by putting the pot in a sink full of cool water
do NOT put a hot pot in your fridge.  It will heat up the fridge significantly and just make the food in there go bad.

Use this to

make soups
make sauces (reduce it first)
as a substitute for water in savory dish preparations (i.e. make rice with stock instead of water.  Be creative here)

The main benefits here are flavor and nutrients, but I just do it for the flavor.  Cutting bones up does improve the extraction process, but if the marrow is exposed already (most beef/veal bones will be) you're fine.  If you save old bones, freeze them until you have enough.  Don't bother trying to make stock with the bones from one chicken.


How much lemons are needed to produce pure 1 kg lemon essential oil?

I haven't personally tried making lemon essential oil. But according to Young Living, an MD named Jean Valnet estimated that it takes 3,000 lemons to produce one kilo of Lemon essential oil. Here are some links to the estimations (keep in mind that a kilogram is roughly 2.2 lbs):

Young Living (states 3000 makes 1 kilo)
LemonMania (states 3000 makes 1 kilo)
Veriditas Botanicals (states 3000
makes 2 lbs (about .91 kilo))


A US cup is 237 mL.

It is more practical to use grams though:
   256 grams of milk and 156 grams of oats.

WolframAlpha is the perfect place to look up these kind of things:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cup+of+oats

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cup+of+milk