How does "That's It" makes fruit bars with no preservatives

A couple things - first, fruits that are dried for storage are not always dried hard - they can contain a fair bit of moisture, softness, flexibility while still being dry enough to be shelf-stable, especially if stored in a well sealed bag or container.

Also, the fruit puree or paste might have been heated in the processing, effectively pasteurizing it.  If it is also stored in airtight wrappings after this step, it can be treated as if it were canned - if the bacteria present were killed, and no more allowed in by an airtight seal, the food is effectively kept bacteria free.  This can be more effective if the food is stored in modified air packaging, as paparazzi's link suggests - stored without oxygen in the package, perhaps replaced with nitrogen or something stable and neutral.

If the fruit wasn't heated (there is a market for "raw" or uncooked food, and I'm not familiar with the limits to which a food can be heated before it is not longer considered raw, mild heat while dehydrating is often not considered a problem) - it still may have been sterilized by some other method before packaging - food irradiation or high pressure (pascalization).  Again, if stored in an airtight container, possibly with modified air packaging, the food would stay preserved longer because there are no bacteria that can reach the food to spoil it.


What gives the sponginess of a Chiffon Cake?

Chiffon cake gets its rise from:

The chemical reaction of the baking powder
Expansion of water into vapor
The expansion of air trapped in the batter

Chiffon cake gets a great deal of lift from #3, mostly from egg whites that are whipped and then folded into the batter. If you are not getting a fluffy cake then these are the most common mistakes.

Not whipping the egg whites enough: The whipping of the egg whites is very relevant, you need enough fluffiness in them to have trapped air bubbles. You don't have to whip them into hard peaks like most recipes say, but you do need to get them at least to soft peaks. I've experimented with this myself and I find halfway between soft and hard is best as if they are too hard they don't always mix well
Losing air when folding: you have to be gentle folding the egg white in, if you are rough with it or overmix it you pop all the air bubbles and then you get a dense cake
Opening the oven too soon: if you open the oven before the cake has a chance to rise and form a solid structure the cake will cool rapidly and you lose a lot of expansion that you won't regain. Do not open the oven until at least 10 minutes after the cake has stopped rising
Under-baking: This is a mistake I made a couple of times, if you under-bake the cake it doesn't form a solid crystalline structure to trap the air, and it collapses. Once I think the cake should be close I use a touch test and listening test to see if it is done. If I hear a lot of crackling from the cake then it's far from done, if I hear several crackles a second but it's not a constant drone of crackling it's getting there, 1 pop per second or less means the cake is done. A tap test also is good, the cake should spring back very well in the absolute center
Not turning the cake upside down: chiffon cakes needs to hang upside down while it cools, this is because it has expanded so much and is so light. Have what you need to do this ready before you take the cake out and turn it over right away, even 30 seconds makes a difference!

If the cake never rose much then it's 1 or 2, possibly 3 depending on when you opened the oven. If the cake got good rise but then lost it all then it could be 3 (again depending on when you opened the door), 4 or 5.

Keep trying, chiffon cake is a little tricky but once you get it worked out it's worth it!


Gluten development is not something you need for a cake to rise, excess gluten development in a cake leads to a tough cake, dense cakes are usually caused by a different reason. With a carrot cake my first thoughts would be:

Too much moisture: carrot and other vegetable cakes can get very wet due to the moisture in the vegetables added, an overly wet batter (not enough flour and sugar to balance it out) can lead to a dense cake. You can dry the carrot a bit before using it to reduce this, or add a tad more flour
Underbaked: one common mistake new bakers make is baking to a recipe time rather than a result, if you bake a cake for 45 minutes that doesn't necessarily mean it is done, that time is a guideline. When you bake a cake the batter dries and crystallizes, trapping the air, if you underbake it this lattice isn't completely formed and it loses the air - you see this massive oven spring and then the whole thing collapses. The skewer test method isn't very reliable, next time keep baking until the cake springs back then you press it with a finger on top. I personally use that method and back it up with temperature measurements made with an instant read thermometer. A heavier cake like a carrot cake is done when it reads over 200°F (94°C), lighter cakes would want a higher temperature, closer to 210°F (99°C)


Caramel syrup, as the name says, it is a syrup, so it is composed mainly of sugar and water, then cooked to concentrate the water and caramelize the sugar.

Caramel sauce on the other hand, usually contains heavy cream or other sort of fat-heavy component (some people add butter, or vegetable cream) to make it similar in consistency to a ganache.

The application depends on the intent.

If you mix caramel syrup in iced coffee for flavor, it will not mix well and remain as a layer in the bottom. Caramel sauce is easier to mix and dissolve, and it also has a richer flavor because of the dairy / fat.

If you want to use it to decorate your coffee (hot or iced) on top of the whipped cream, I'd recommend syrup because it holds well in lower temperatures and it is better to make drawings.


Depends when.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assize_of_Bread_and_Ale
The price directly related to the cost of the wheat so would have fluctuated over time, and even where the bread was sold.
There were also several types of loaf. I think this would typically refer to white bread, the most expensive.
This is from 1765 in London

I'd say around 'one pound', but it's massively variable and not really answerable without much more context.


How can I know how long home-cooked food will stay good in fridge?

The USDA says to eat refrigerated leftovers within 4 days.

Be aware that how long you leave something out before refrigeration and the size of the container can shorten the edible lifetime. The gist is the longer it's warm, the more [likely] pathogens will be able to multiply to unsafe levels. A large container holds heat longer and takes longer to reach 40°F.

There's also some other interesting information on the linked page about safe storage durations for many store-bought items as well, including recommendations for how long it will stay good in the freezer. To be fair to @Allison's answer, many of the durations listed in that chart are 3-4 days or 3-5 days, though some are longer or shorter.


Can I get a haze off of ceramic cooking pans

Two opposite things to try, depending on what the haze is (or what works.)

Barkeepers Friend (mostly oxalic acid) or vinegar (acetic acid, not
quite as strong as oxalic.)
Baking soda and water paste (alkaline) or soak in hot water with
baking soda.
Actually, that brings a third to mind - mechanical - Bon-Ami -
feldspar - abrasive but softer than glass (which is what ceramic
glaze is, more or less.)

Default assumption would be that it's a hard water deposit, so start with the acid approach, but all three gives you options if that doesn't work.

Another mostly-mechanical option that won't require shopping for a special cleaning product - try scrubbing with toothpaste.


Yes. Keep in mind though, that strong / bitter flavors may become unbearably strong / bitter in a reduction. That said, I use beer in sauces, marinades, as a braising liquid, mixed with broth in risotto, and as lubrication for the cook.

  I have a fridge full of steak and Sam Adams. Can I turn this into something amazing?

Marinate the steaks in beer for several hours. Pat dry, sear, slice thin, serve with pickled beets.

Fry up a couple of onions. Deglaze the pan with a bit of lightly-flavored beer, reduce, season, serve over steaks.

Bring the steaks to room temperature, lightly season, sear, and serve with frosty Sam Adams. Simple can be amazing...


The fastest way would be simply to boil them in salted water for a few minutes.

Throwing them on ashes (a barbecue?) would do the trick also, but I guess you might want to leave them there for more than a few minutes to ensure they were cooked throughout, and theres a bigger danger they'd overcook.


Will smoked-then-fried foods impart smoke flavor to cooking oil?

The smoke flavour will definitely impart into the oil and you will have to cook the wings separately to achieve the desired flavour difference.
Cheers Dean


Indian Curry: Frying spices vs marinating the meat in them

For Vindaloo, it is not customary (nor necessary) to fry the spices before marinating.

Curries vary quite a bit within and across parts of India. Many do not require the roasting of spices before addition.


Use a pressure cooker.
Try for example this recipe:

http://ljcny.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/chicken-pozole/

where dried hominy is cooked in a pressure cooker.


Ingredients injected into chicken breast

After a good search of the internet I could not actually find the ingredients of the broth. I think, as its a broth your dog will probably be perfectly fine.

However I've also been reading another post that seems to be totally against giving broth.. So I took a look for the toxic level for Dog's and found this:

  The toxic dose has been found to be as low as 5 g/kg in cats and 15
  g/kg in dogs.2 A medium-sized onion (2 to 3¼” in diameter) is
  approximately 150 g, and the average weight of a garlic clove is 6 g.
  A 10-lb dog would ingest a potentially toxic dose by eating only half
  of an onion.

So a Dog eating for example a 200g chicken breast pumped with 30% weight chicken stock (60g Chicken Stock) I'd hazard a guess at around 2g of the stock is Onion residue. So probably perfectly safe.

However

I would be more worried/concerned about the sodium content of these 'enhanced' chicken breasts. I've read on one page that the sodium in some chicken is 20% (440 mg) of an adult human's daily intake which I'm no vet but I'm guessing (I can't seem to find a figure anywhere) is close if not way more than a dog should be having.

Might be worth just buying premium dog food if you fancy treating your pooch?

Sources:

http://notinmyfood.org/posts/2839-what-are-they-pumping-into-your-chicken
http://www.pawnation.com/2013/08/16/what-can-dogs-drink/4
http://www.love61.com/other/pet-0347.html
https://www.vetlearn.com/_preview?_cms.fe.previewId=88ca0770-ed59-11e2-8f1a-005056ad4734&ArticleURL=https://www.vetlearn.com/compendium/hidden-dangers-in-the-kitchen-common-foods-toxic-to-dogs-and-cats


The short answer is no; there are no specific ingredients that don't scale (double or triple or quintuple, makes no real difference).

There are, however, two pitfalls you need to be aware of when scaling any recipe:

If your recipe uses volumetric measurements, especially very small ones for important ingredients (such as half a teaspoon of baking soda) then there is a greater risk of ending up with the wrong amount when you scale up.  That is why most "professional" baking recipes use weight measurements.

Honestly, I doubt you'll run into problems with just tripling, but if you want to make 10 times the amount, you'd be wise to convert those measurements to weight, or just find a recipe that uses weight measures in the first place.
Your cooking method may not scale linearly.  In particular, problems tend to come up related to cooking times - which you may need to increase a certain amount (the exact amount depends upon the exact recipe), and the size/shape of the vessel (especially with respect to its surface area vs. volume).

You can control the latter variable in baking relatively easily by simply using multiple vessels of the original size, or by baking in batches (be mindful of when you add the leavening agents if doing batches).  Cooking times, however, you can really only guess at, and I can only recommend that you watch your dish carefully as it nears the final stages - hopefully you know what it looks like when it's almost done.

As long as you don't change anything else - such as making individual cupcakes 3 times as large - then you should not run into any problems.


Left out, store bought, Tyson sealed fully cooked chicken patties 20 hours

Yes. This is far outside any kind of safe zone.

Always always always throw it out if there's any kind of question.


When a recipe calls to reduce oven temperature mid-cooking, should you leave the door ajar until the oven reaches said temperature?

No, don't leave your door ajar. The recipes have already factored in the time an oven needs to go lower. Also, as a very loose rule of thumb, many dishes tend to do better without very wild temperature swings during baking, and some of them (e.g. steam leavenend cakes) react really badly to them.


Some people find very brown crusts on sourdough desirable. Judging from the first picture at your link, the author of your recipe may be one. If you don't, one thing to try is to remove the loaf from the cocette something like 10-15 minutes before the end of baking time. This way the crust isn't directly exposed to the heat of the cocotte itself and will brown less. (We started doing this when the bottom crust was getting too dark by the time the top crust, after removing the lid, was browned to our liking.)


Is it possible to cook bacon without melting as much fat?

I'm not sure this is really a sensible answer… but it's one way…

Deep-fry it.
Should take about 15 - 30s.

That way it will come out even fattier than it went in. Any fat that comes off will be added to the next batch, though probably at an overall loss to the fryer, so you'll have to periodically top back with oil.

Late edit:
I forget the US likes their bacon crispy. My timings were for UK bacon to keep the fat soft but get the meat technically cooked, as the OP asked for 'more fat'.
Crispy I guess will take longer. I've never made crispy bacon in my life & have to assume it's cured differently to be able to make it cook like that.


Rice is mostly made of starch. Starch is, in itself, a molecule made up of glucose components attached to each other. There are two types of starch: Amylose - it is a long straight chain of glucose - and amylopectin, which has a branchy and fuzzy structure. When you cook a rice which is rich in amylose, the grains stay separate. When you cook rice which is high in amylopectin, its starch molecules catch on each other and cause clumping. So the main factor is indeed the type of rice. While the amylopectin rich varieties in general are short grained and amylose rich ones are long grained, it can be that you accidentally picked a non-sticky short-grained rice.

Washing will cause less sticking. Normally, the starch in rice has to be released from the cells before it can stick. In a bag of rice, there are many cells which are broken mechanically during handling/transport, and their starch is free, clinging to the surface. If you wash it away first, you have less sticky grain so less clumping.

Now for soaking. Starches are packed very close in a grain. For gelation (that's when they cook and swell) you need both enough water and the right temp (70 degr. C). As heating is quicker than water penetration, presoaking makes things quicker. I guess soaking will help stickiness a bit, because there will be more molcules ready to swell in a short time. Plus, some of these will come undone from the grains and start swimming free around. This turns the water itself into a weak glue (so don' discard).

Using less water will help with stickiness. This will result in a bigger concentration of free starches in the water.

A slow simmering should also promote clumping slightly, as the starches will have more time to swell, move around, and hook to new starches.

All arguments above are the theoretical explanation for the direction in which the factors you mention are likely to influence clumping, given that the rice is always the same. In practice, their effect should be much smaller than choosing the correct type of rice. In fact, amylopectin rich rice types aren't soaked as often, because they don't need it - amylose is packed tighter. I don't know about washing habits, but it is cooked with less water, because it needs less. And any rice should be cooked slowly, a hot boil overcooks the outside and leaves the inside hard.

In the end, if your wife wants the rice she is familiar with, you must buy short-grain japonica rice. Else ask for a "sticky" indica, that's better than just eyeballing grain length.


Even though this thread is old, it's the first thing that comes up when you search "arm roast" at the moment, so I thought I would comment with what I ended doing after googling arm roasts two days ago! I also had a totally grass fed 4 lb. arm roast and it turned out amazing. Most importantly, I cooked it very long and slow, about 5 hours at 300F.

Chop 1 carrot, 1 celery stalk, half an onion and a slice or two of bacon and saute them together in a large pot until lightly browned. Remove from pot.
Salt and pepper the arm roast and then brown it on both sides in that same pot. Remove.
Deglaze pan with red wine, I had the tail end of a bottle of super cheap stuff.
Then throw back in the veggies, the roast, a large can of tomatoes (I used San Marzano), and a few sprigs of fresh rosemary (I really recommend not skimping with dry on that part because it's the main flavor that gets infused). I also put marjoram in because I have that growing, but I don't think it's as important. The top of the roast will be sticking out of the tomato/wine concoction so I studded it with numerous garlic cloves so they would roast.
Put the pot in a 300 degree oven for as long as it takes for the meat to just be falling apart. It was like, 5 hours for me, and I turned the roast over about 2 hours in. Add more liquid if needed; I didn't. When it was done I took the roast out and pulled out the bone and picked off the fat and threw it back in--it was semi-shredded by then--and served it on egg noodles.

It was the best roast I've ever made!


What's the most efficient/effective method for removing the rind of a well-ripened Brie?

Addressing the frame challenge: I forgot about the Brie in the cheese drawer for a bit too long. It was nearly liquid, so there was no hope of removing the rind; I was happy just to get the plastic wrap off.

I put it on the stove with some butter and heated it on low for quite a while, stirring frequently. Eventually I added the cream cheese. (Twice the usual amount, because it wasn't "coming together" without it.) Then I put it through a fairly fine-mesh strainer. The result is slightly grainy (for lack of a better term), but not unpleasantly so. However, it was enough extra work that I think a less-ripe Brie, properly "peeled", is the better way to go.


Sourdough starter began acting strange after storing in fridge

Sourdough starters are rarely completely ruined, unless you're growing significant amounts of mold or something.

It is possible that your refrigerated "break" early in establishing your starter ended up hurting the yeast population and accidentally selected for something else (perhaps undesirable bacteria) that is now growing and creating odd odors.

It's also possible that your starter is perfectly healthy and well-established.  A strong starter should often rise and begin to fall in 12 hours or less.  Mature starters tend to go through a cycle where they smell yeasty as they are expanding, have alcohol notes around the time of collapse, and then acidic (vinegar/acetic acid and lactic acid) notes as they age further, due to bacteria converting the yeast waste products into acids.

Have you tried to bake with your starter yet?  I'd see how well it works and whether it can successfully leaven bread dough.  If so, it's probably fine.  Starters do often go through periods of odd smells and weird behavior in the first couple weeks, but they'll stabilize after more regular feedings as a more consistent set of microorganisms becomes permanently established.

You don't mention any liquid floating on top ("hooch") or any discoloration.  If those were appearing, I might be a little more concerned.  If not, try baking a small loaf with it, and see what happens.  My guess is that it won't be very sour, but with a feeding regime like you have, it probably shouldn't be.

Lastly, you asked about whether more frequent feeding is required.  I don't think so, given how much you dilute your starter during feeding.  Twice per day feedings are recommended at room temperature for those who do something like a 1:1:1 (i.e., 1 part starter:1 part flour:1 part water by weight) or 1:2:2 feeding.  You're doing something closer to 1:8:8, which means it will take longer for the yeast to process all the new flour and then for the bacteria to deal with those waste products.  The only danger with such high dilution in young starters is that microorganisms actually present in the flour may still be able to overwhelm the things you want to grow and/or the starter may not be developing enough acidity by the end of your growth cycle to kill off those bad things.

Does your starter smell (or taste) acidic right before you feed it?  (It doesn't have to be strongly acidic, but at least mildly so.)  If so, I think your starter is likely very healthy and having youthful growth spurts.

In any case, I'd test it in a batch of dough before trying to diagnose further.  In a worst case scenario, as long as you're getting some acidity before feeding (and not seeing mold, hooch, discoloration, or other weird things besides the odor), you should just keep feeding regularly, and it will likely sort itself out in a week or so.


Normal cheese melts like that. It is made of proteins, fats, and water, and these separate when they are heated.

For dipping, you need processed cheese. It has additives which keep the fat, fluid and solids mixed in a smooth mass. Also, it really helps to use very slow and even heat. This is the easy option.

If you want to do it "for real", without processed cheese, you have to make a cheese fondue. It is traditionally made with Swiss cheese (I am fond of Appenzeller fondue), but you can use most types of semi-hard yellow cheese. It also contains some fluid, traditionaly white wine, and is emulsified with simple starch. It is preferable to have a special pan for this, as you can serve it heated. But if you make a big portion in a pan with a high thermal capacity, and make it immediately before serving, you can do without the special gear.


Using over-rested pizza dough as old dough

Primarily what is happening when you add an old dough/pre-ferment/pâté-fermentee to a fresh lot of flour etc is that you are inoculating it with yeast (see definition 1b). This is the equivalent of adding a pre-activated yeast (e.g. sponge) to your flour with some differences. It is also a more direct equivalent of using a biga or poolish. The reason why bakers in former days used to keep some dough over from the day before and use that to start the next day's batch is that they hadn't developed the technology to grow and store the yeast as we do now. The technique is still as legitimate today as it was then.
The major difference is that the yeast in the old dough has used up some of the sugars and other nutrients in the old dough and will have slowed replication as they run out of nutrients (for those interested this follows a classic S shaped/logistic growth curve), whereas in a sponge or other pre-activation there is still a surfeit of nutrients, so the yeast are actively and rapidly dividing. I doubt that the nutrients will be entirely depleted from the old dough, and this would depend on a huge range of factors as to how depleted they actually were, and without specialist chemical analysis you won't be able to tell. As a positive, this depletion of the nutrients means that the yeast have been metabolizing these compounds and releasing the subsequent metabolites as interesting flavour compounds, adding extra taste to your new dough.
The nutrients may be somewhat lacking in your fresh dough if you mix in a substantial amount of the old dough with your fresh ingredients, but in general this won't affect the dough formation as the yeast from the old dough start to grow on the fresh nutrients. You can mix in up to 1:1 ratio of old:new(see page 97; this is the English translation of Clavel's "Le Gout du Pain") and still make good dough. It is worth noting that most recipes that are old dough based also add some fresh yeast. The addition of fresh is not entirely needed, but will make the rise quicker as the inoculation will be larger and the growth lag shorter as a consequence.
How you store the old dough may affect how useful it is as a starter - If you could freeze, it would store almost indefinitely. In the fridge for several days, maybe a week or two. On the bench, a day or two at best. The colder you can make it, the better it will store, as the yeast will slow metabolism and growth (halted entirely if frozen), and so prevent them from dying.


Why are predominantly grapes an ingredient in wine?

While almost every fruit and berry contains right yeasts on its peel, according to this article people prefer to make wine from grape due to right acidity, sugar and tannins contents.

I also can assume the grape was easier to process manually at almost every stage from collecting to juicing.


can i use yeast instead of baking powder in a cookie receipe?

Your usual cookie recipe can't simply be adapted, but there are plenty of yeast cookie recipes (chocolate chip example). Some of them look rather interesting, but unlike the one I linked have significant rise times.


Getting the flavor of honey without the sweetness

What comes to mind immediately is to experiment with different varieties. Honeys vary a lot in sweetness and strength of flavor.

From About.com

Acacia honey is very sweet with a clean, pure, classic honey flavor.
Alfalfa is a light honey but with a nice mild spicy note and floral aroma.
Blueberry honey has a slight tang and a fruity flavor.
Buckwheat is tasty on toast, but its strong and spicy flavor makes it perfect for marinades.
Clover is the classic honey - light, sweet, floral.
Coffee honey tends to be quite dark, with a rich, deep flavor that matches its color.
Eucalyptus honey has just a hint of menthol flavor in it, making it perfect for stirring into tea.
Fireweed honey has a markedly complex flavor and a slightly buttery texture. Like buckwheat honey, it can stand up to meats, marinades, glazes, and grilling
Heather is pungent and almost bitter, in a good way. It's great with smoky things, or on wholesome baked goods.
Linden honey is quite delicate and has a fresh, woodsy aroma perfect with tea
Orange Blossom is widely available but watch out, much of the orange blossom honey on the market is artificially flavored. Real orange blossom honey is mild and citrus-scented.
Palmetto is a mild honey with balanced sweetness.
Sage is a lot like palmetto honey - mild, sweet, flexible.
Sourwood is caramel-like and buttery and delicious on toast, biscuits, muffins, and any other vehicle you can think of.
Tupelo honey is somehow sweeter than other honeys, but with a lovely balanced mild flavor.
Wildflower honey is light and fruity yet richly flavored at the same time.

Based on that, perhaps heather honey would be a good place to start.


It is traditionally served with coffee when getting together with friends for coffee; kind of like tea-cakes are served at tea-time.


Is anyone aware of cast iron pots and pans that are enameled on the exterior with plain cast iron (no enamel, no non-stick) interiors?

Staub has cast iron enameled outside and bare iron inside


How do I get my cheesecake bottom not to crumble?

When you crumble the Oreos for the Oreo crust, keep the fillings in. You can put them all in a plastic bag and squash them thoroughly with a rolling pin, then scrape the whole (somewhat greasy) mass out and press it into your cheesecake pan. That one ingredient -whole Oreos- is all you need for the crust.


Why and how does the egg white stick to its shell when cooked sous vide?

It is because the outer most layer of egg white is not firm/tough enough to survive being peeled without ripping apart.

If you do not want to ice and boil it, you can torch the outside of the egg for up to a minute. This will cause localized boiling under the shell and physically separate the egg whites from the shell wall.
Also, overcooking the outermost layer of egg whites will help the egg hold its shape for the softer styles of eggs.


Sounds like you want trenchers (add "recipe" when searching to weed out the digging tools) as the bread plates of old were called. Since recipe requests are off-topic, I won't include a recipe, but your favorite search engine will provide many.

You could also do something in the puff pasty shell line, for a different texture - easier to eat but also less durable.

A savory pizzelle would also fit - you have to form those when hot, before they harden, and the standard pizzelle maker limits the size, but there might be ways around that limitation.

You can also steam and then bake tacos (which you can either purchase or make) into various shapes by laying them in or over something that shapes them the way you like when baking.

I don't know if there's a way to get pappadums soft enough to shape without cracking before heating and hardening/blistering - though they can be somewhat pliable when hot, they are prone to crack.


What is the purpose of kosher salt in peanut butter? Can it be replaced with something else?

Alton Brown just generally prefers kosher salt, for reasons that don't really apply to peanut butter, which will be ground down anyway.

What matters is the total weight of salt.  Remember, kosher salt tends to weight approximately 1/2 as much (depending on brand) as table salt, per unit of volume.

So you can replace the kosher salt with sea salt, or any locally available salt on a weight per weight basis.  The absolute amount of salt to use is also completely a matter of taste and preference.

The purpose of the salt in peanut butter is only to enhance the flavor.  It does not participate in any chemistry, and is not sufficiently concentrated to have any preservative effect.


Let the butcher do it
This is roughly the bone structure of a mammal tail:

As you can see, it has very many small bones, with of course all the connective tissue. Unless you have solid knife skill, a very sharp boning knife (with the needle-like blade), a protective chain mail glove, and lots of patience, I would say something like this is better left for a professional butcher. Especially if you have not done much boning, this could easily end up in an injury.
For reference
Boning knives:

Chainmain butcher glove:


How can I clean utensils (e.g., knives) used to cut longkongs?

The stickiness is similarly stubborn as trying to clean up pine sap, where regular soap often will not clean it up.

Instead, try using mineral oil to clean up. You might have mineral oil in the kitchen for oiling cutting boards. ("Baby oil" is a form of mineral oil that also has fragrances added.) Simply rub the sticky utensils with a towel and mineral oil until the stickiness is gone.

After cleaning the sticky longdong sap off your knives with mineral oil, you will then be able to then wash off the mineral oil with soap and water.


Why in this one recipe parsley is used in 2 different ways?

Parsley is both a flavoring herb and a decorative element for plating the finished dish.  By adding it during the cooking, it imparts flavor to the shrimp.  By adding it to the finished dish, it provides color and flavor.  The cooked parsley will have a slightly different taste to it than the fresh parsley.  This is how cooks layer the flavors in a dish.

TB stands for Tablespoon.


Then the explanation for the flour is that the water and flour interact to produce gluten that then gives the cake its structure.

Your confusion is well-founded, because

  gluten is required to form the structure of cake

is too strong of a premise.

Gluten can be a primary contributor to the structure of a cake, as in a wacky cake, but it is not required.

This answer limits its scope to cakes and does not discuss other forms of gluten-free baking (bread, pies, etc). Gluten is a significant contributor to the structure of wheat products including breads, croissants, and some types of pie crusts and pastries.

Non-Gluten Sources of Structure for Cakes

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee is a well-regarded reference. In its section on cakes, it does not describe gluten formation as necessary or desirable. I consider this weak evidence that "conventional wisdom" does not count gluten as a major structural contributor in cakes.

Egg Protein

As noted on page 554 of the second edition of On Food and Cooking,

  A cake's structure is created mainly by flour starch and by egg proteins.

The omission of gluten as a contributor to structure is especially notable given that the next sentence mentions how other ingredients interfere with gluten.

  The tender ... texture comes from gas bubbles ... and from the sugar and fat, which interfere with gluten formation and egg protein coagulation, and interrupt the network of gelated starch

Angel Food Cake

As noted in this recipe for angel food cake by Stella Parks, egg white can provide sufficient structure for a cake.

  ... angel food cake is so high in protein from egg whites, it has enough strength to stand on its own ... With that kind of underlying structure, all angel food cake really needs is enough starch to keep its moisture in check

Note that the motivation behind removing gluten in this recipe is specifically avoiding the additional structure gluten provides:

  angel food cake toughens up like shoe leather in the presence of gluten

Personal Example: Gluten-Free and Egg-Free Brownie Recipe Adaptation

In my personal experience with a few brownie recipes, protein from eggs provide a considerable amount of structure; omitting eggs without adding protein produces dramatically different results.

The most rigorous experiments that I have performed were attempts to remove gluten and replace eggs in this recipe for brownies by Alice Medrich.

Egg Protein

In my earliest experiments adapting Medrich's recipe, I tried replacing wheat flour with an equal amount (by mass) of rice flour. This produced a result that was recognizably a brownie.

However, also replacing eggs with binders and emulsifiers without protein (in my trials, a mix of water, lecithin, fiber, and starch) produces a sticky, caramel-like mass that separates from a significant amount of oil. This outcome was observed when using rice flour and gluten-free flour with xantham gum added.1

These two results are evidence that, in this recipe, eggs are sufficient for structure even without gluten.

Another recipe by Dandelion Chocolate also appears to work fine with AP flour replaced by an equal amount of rice flour.

1 Correction: A previous version of this answer reported similar results with AP flour, and inferred from that result that the procedure outlined in Medrich's recipe made the gluten content of the flour irrelevant. In light of newer experiments that showed that simply adding enough starch and enough gluten in place of the AP flour produces brownie-like results, the inference is incorrect.

Other protein

Whey protein isolate, mixed with psyllium and starch for binding, baking soda for lift, and water for hydration, is the best substitute for eggs I tried so far; it produces a crumb very similar to that produced when using eggs.

Carbohydrates

Adding more starch than called for in Medritch's original recipe (e.g. increasing flour used from 65g AP flour to 100g rice flour, then adding another 10g of tapioca starch) appears to have a stabilizing effect.

Mucilage (in the form of hydrated xantham gum, psyllium, or flax) may contribute to structure as part of their role in egg replacements.


The answer is that they are not much different.

During fermentation, some of the milk's lactose is converted by bacteria into protein and other substances. The amount of conversion is pretty insignificant in terms of calories and grams of macronutrients. The most important effects are the changes in taste and consistency and the presence of live bacteria. Usually many of the bacteria survive the highly acid stomach fluids to reach the small intestine where they continue digesting lactose.

Fitday.com gives the info below for a cup of each, which may be surprising at first. However, commercial yogurt tends to be more dense than milk, as you might see if you make it at home: a cup of milk gives you some watery fluid floating on top of less than a cup of yogurt.

Food              | Calories | Fat  | Carbohydrates | Protein
------------------+----------+------+---------------+--------
Whole Milk Yogurt | 149 kcal | 8.0g | 11.4g         | 8.5g
Whole Milk        | 146 kcal | 7.9g | 11.0g         | 7.9g


How do you properly wash hands after dealing with raw chicken?

As I recall from all my food safety training: to properly wash your hands, wet them with warm water (at least 100 F), apply soap, scrub all over your hands and in between your fingers for 20 seconds and rinse.  That should thoroughly remove the bad bacteria and any other debris clinging to your hands.  That should be all you need.


You should throw it out, and inspect everything else in your pantry to see if there is any sign of moths, including the cocoons and webbing, and throw that out too.

As an alternative to throwing things away, you can remove whatever it takes to make you feel okay eating the food, then freeze it for a week to kill everything that you missed.

As far as I know, they're not toxic or anything (confirmed for example by this article), so you could eat things they've gotten into, especially if cooked, but you really just don't want to keep it around.

That container looks like it might be pretty airtight, but moths can be really annoying. If you leave it open and one gets out, you can end up with moths in everything they find remotely in your pantry, and have to throw it all out. They can sneak through tiny holes like box corners and loose-fitting lids, and chew through bags. They will get everywhere.


Yes, that amount of cocoa will change the batter. It will make the cake drier.

The more cocoa powder you add the more sugar and moisture you will need to prevent the cake from getting dry.

I would take out a 1/4 cup of the almond flour and add a 1/4 cup of cocoa powder. If you feel you would like a little more go buy a tablespoon at a time after that.


Too much pepper in soup: any way to fix?

A little lemon juice plus a bit of sugar might help. That is a fairly well known folk-remedy. If you can squeeze in something starchy (some rice maybe, or noodles?) that might help too.


alternative leavening agents other than baking powder, and their ratios of substitution

I must confess, I can't give you straight substitution amounts -- all of these leavening agents behave somewhat differently, so in most cases a straight substitution for baking soda isn't appropriate.

Ye Olde List of Leavening Agents:

Biological Cultures (Wikipedia, plus kefir whey I've seen recipes for)

Yeast - norm is 1 tsp/pound flour for 1-2 hour rise time
Sourdough - uses 1/2 to 1/4 of final flour mass, rise time varies
Kefir whey - similar to sourdough, unknown rise time or measurement
Buttermilk - no clue what substitution ratio, but wikipedia lists it.  Probably acts similar to kefir whey and sourdough.
Yogurt -- wikipedia lists this as a leavening agent too, but I'm skeptical.
Beer (unpasteurized, with live yeasts)
Ginger beer (same deal)

All of these share the common ability to ferment flour, when handled properly.

Chemical Leaveners (Pulled straight from On Food and Cooking)

Pearlash and potash (mostly potassium carbonate).  Purely historical leaveners, these were derived from wood ashes, and were the predecessors to baking soda.
Hartshorn AKA baker's ammonia (mix of ammonium carbamate and ammonium carbonate).  Not used much anymore.  It was once made from deer antlers, ergo the name.  When heated, this produces both ammonia and carbon dioxide. Because of the ammonia, this cannot be used as a straight substitute for baking powder, due to the changes in flavor and smell it causes.
Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), basic component of baking powder, reacts immediately with acid
Cream of tartar (tartaric acid) -- Acidic component, reacts with bases immediately
Monocalcium phosphate -- Acidic component, common in baking soda, reacts immediately
Sodium aluminum pyrophosphate -- Acidic component, reacts slowly with base after mixing
Sodium aluminum sulfate -- Acidic component, provides the "double" in most double-acting baking powders.  Reacts slowly under heat.
Sodium aluminum phosphate -- Acidic component of double-acting baking powder, acts during early cooking at 100-104F/38-40C
Dimagnesium phosphate -- Acidic component of double-acting baking powder, reacts early in baking @ 104-111F/40-44C
Dicalcium phosphate dihydrate -- Acidic component of double-acting baking powder, reacts late in baking @ 135-140F/57-60C

So, basically you need an acid + baking soda, or one of the heat-activated compounds (hartshorn, or one of the last four salts). In many cases a dough can provide its own lactic acid.


Not getting the creamy result beating butter and sugar

There may well be more than one issue here.

The type of butter. If you're using what is sometimes sold as "cooking butter" then this has a much lower moisture content than normal butter, and so it is very difficult to get the sugar to dissolve enough to cream.
Sugar choice. Granulated sugar is much more difficult to cream than than caster (superfine) sugar due to the large crystal size.
Recipe proportions. It is more common to use roughly equal weights of butter and sugar when creaming them together; here there is more than twice as much sugar compared to butter, so I am not at all surprised that it is not ending up as a very creamy mixture.

As the aim of the beating process is to dissolve the sugar and to add air, adding one of the eggs and beating well would allow you to achieve both of these.


Does any other cultures have a food similar to jewish Chulent?

Many cultures know stews that are cooked "low and slow" and they are often either a case of practicality or tradition or - as in your example - due to religious customs.

Let's start with your Cholent:
It used to be cooked in the communal bake-house or in the local bakers' ovens, then carried home and kept warm, thus both making good use of the residual heat from the wood-fired ovens and giving a hands-off method of cooking.

A dish that used the same cooking principle is the Alsatian Baeckeoffe, but I bet that further research would lead to dozens of other dishes all over the world.

What is really interesting in this question is that there is a dish that is quite similar to Cholent, yet according to the German Wikipedia entry, can be traced back to the Bronze Age: the Ritschert or Ričet from the Styrian and Croatian Alps. It seems the cncept of slowly stewing a mix of meat, legumes, grains and veggies predates the religious or cultural customs of today.


How can I easily peel baby round potatoes?

As the skins are quite thin, use a (new) green kitchen scrubber.  This would give the same result as the potato peeling bowl for a Kenwood, and a whole lot cheaper.  Enjoy your potatoes...


They're coarser, so they have a better texture when cooked. Rolled oats are mushy and bland, even if you get the non-instant variety. Groats are a pain in the butt to cook: like millet, they take forever.

Steel cut oats are a nice compromise (technically steel cut groats). Get some yummy groaty flavor, but the prep time is much lower (a mere half hour, instead of a week or two for whole groats).


Safe to consume pork basting liquid directly?

I'm not sure I was able to tell exactly what he did when watching the video.  What I know is that you should not use a marinade that came into contact with raw meat as a brushed on finishing sauce.  Once it has come into contact with raw meat, it is not safe to consume uncooked.  It is possible that he marinated the meat in a portion of the marinade, and reserved a smaller portion (no contact with raw meat) to use as a finishing sauce.


Can I season a cast iron pan on a charcoal grill?

Maybe you are using heat that is too high.  It really doesn't take that much.  A 375 - 400 F oven will do the trick.  Light coat of oil, heat for an hour.  Allow to cool in oven.  Wipe out.  Upside down allows excess oil to drip out (use a drip pan)...but you don't need that much to begin with.  There is no reason you could not do this on your grill.  For the first few uses, wipe out and scrub with kosher salt to remove cooked on bits.  Then give a light coat of oil and wipe out.  Once you have built up the surface it is fine to clean with soap and water.


When milk is poured into cereal, what is it?

It is none of those. If pushed to provide a word I would call the milk an accompaniment to the cereal, but I don't see any good reason there should be a general word to apply here.


Could cheese "halt" the tenderness of cooking lentils?

I have always been told that high acid-yielding foods can cause dried legumes to stay hard. I can't say that I have ever added Gouda (although it sounds delectable) but I have had dried beans stay hard when adding tomatoes too early in the cooking process. Wondering about this, I looked up Gouda and was quite surprised to find that it is a high acid-yielding food.

Could be other reasons such as legumes that are old or a hard water situation but I suspect you have already considered and eliminated those as you are very thorough. :)


How can I make cookies without any sugar?

No, there are no other agents. Caramelization is literally sugar in a certain state. If you remove all the sugar, you cannot have a caramelization taste. You can make cookies which don't taste caramelized, of course.

As for the "important structurally" part, it depends what cookie you are trying to make. If you want to achieve the texture of a sugar-rich cookie, this is again impossible. Out of all edible substances, only sugars behave like sugars when baked.

You can however use other fillers to get a different type of cookie. A shortbread cookie (like pie crust, but in cookie form) with stevia shouldn't taste that much different than a shortbread cookie with sugar. Nut flours or nut butters will give you some very good fillers so you can make a cookie with some bulk without having to use too much flour.

The result will never look and taste like a standard American chocolate chip cookie, or its relatives but will certainly deserve the term "cookie".


Some butchers will custom cut beef leg bones. You can specify a short cut for the marrow bone so that your retrieval device can fully reach all of your marrow. I work at a charcuterie and we frequently cut marrow bones to order.


After years of cooking, I don't really need this service anymore, but I sure did wish there was something good like this 5 years ago. I couldn't find anything then, though. However, I've seen a couple of sites pop up since then. I can't really testify to how well they work, because I haven't used any of them. But here are some things to explore:

Recipe Key - Lets you create your own pantry and then get matching recipes. This looks like it could be a really cool tool if you use it regularly as well as a good spot solution for inspiration.

Recipe Matcher - Lets you type in the ingredients you have for matches.

And now I need to run, so here are a couple more sites to check out:

Super Cook
All Recipes
Recipe Puppy
Yummly

Hope one of those helps. I think the first two (recipe key and recipe matcher) look like your best options. Let us know how you fare.


Blender Buying - Square vs. Round Container

I can think of two reasons to prefer square containers :

They store in less space for the same volume, when you're dealing with dozens of them (as the smoothie shops likely are)
The key to a good blending is that the inside is not round -- you need baffles and such to keep the blender from forming a single, smooth vortex.  The square containers would help to make baffles more effective by providing larger areas with slower moving liquid away from the center of the vortex.


If you are noticing freezer burn or foreign odors/flavors with your loosely-wrapped meat, then you need to do a better job of storing it.

Your roommate may be in this habit because he is used to storing things in the freezer for a longer period.  2-3 weeks is longer than I would store something loosely wrapped like that in order to maintain good quality.


Sous vide whole salmon at what temperature?

Whole salmon simply isn't a great candidate for low temp cooking in a water bath.  While you can achieve excellent results with portioned salmon, cooked at 50C for well under an hour, this timing is impossible for a whole fish.  It would be necessary to cook much longer.  The problem is you would probably have to cook the whole fish for a couple of hours.  This causes the enzymes to break down the flesh and you get a mushy, unpleasant product.  Alternately, as you experienced, raising the temp to speed things up results in a dried out product.

I would choose a different cooking technique for the whole fish...or portion your salmon into steaks or fillets and look here: http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/sous-vide-salmon--2


It's a bad recipe.  Here's why:

The way to make mozzarella without using citric acid is to use cheese cultures to acidify the curd, since in order to achieve the cheese's characteristic stretchiness it needs to have a pH of between 5.0 and 5.6..

That recipe has you add a "culture":

  Add 1tsp natural yoghurt for each liter of milk (I doubled this)

... however, yogurt is not the same as Thermophilic cheese culture, which is what you use in mozzarella recipes. In fact, the 40C temperature you used is enough to kill the yogurt culture, meaning that it likely didn't acidify the milk at all. Besides which, the yogurt culture would have had other, undesirable, effects on the texture of the curd.

There's lots of other weird and suspicious factors in that recipe (18 hour drain?  WTH?); I'd recommend simply discarding it and using the Ricki Carroll recipe instead.


Is there any way to counteract the calcium chloride included in most canned beans?

Calcium in Calcium Chloride indeed firms the beans by fortifying the pectin.
On the other hand, alkali conditions will greatly accelerate the breakdown of pectin during cooking.

You can simply use baking soda to soften the beans while cooking.


You could always try using vegetable, corn, or light/regular olive oil, vegan margarine, or light corn syrup thinned with a bit of water (to prevent over browning):

Wikipedia - Egg wash
Yahoo answers - Vegan replacement for egg wash?

I also saw something here that mentioned the use of soy milk, but you said it didn't brown well. If it didn't brown at all, then it is most likely because you were using unsweetened soy milk (remember, sugar browns when exposed to heat).


Is there a vegetarian gelatin substitute that is as strong as gelatin?

This depends on what you mean by a gelatin "substitute".

What you have to understand is that while most hydrocolloids have gelling and stabilizing properties, they are not simply interchangeable.  You can't substitute one of them 1-for-1 where you need gelatin and expect everything to just work.

A great place to start would be the Hydrocolloid Recipe Collection which, despite its name, is almost more of a cookbook, because it has detailed information on the properties of each hydrocolloid.

Agar is actually a stronger gelling agent than gelatin in the sense of having to use less of it to get the same strength, but you need to use it properly.  The most important property of agar is that unlike gelatin, which gives hydration at temperatures as low as 50° C, agar requires a temperature of 90° C.  In other words, you need to heat the water all the way to a rapid boil before the agar will actually "activate".  A light simmer is not enough.

The other notable property of agar is syneresis, which is the loss of moisture over time.  Agar sets extremely fast compared to gelatin and above room temperature, but unless you combine it with a small amount of Locust bean gum, it will actually dry out.  Otherwise, though, you can absolutely, definitely substitute agar-agar for gelatin if you actually get pure agar (I made the mistake of buying the "dessert agar" once, which is not the same thing) and hydrate/set it properly.  In fact, the biggest concern with using agar as a substitute for gelatin is that you might end up with something too stiff, since gelatin produces a much softer gel.

Perhaps the closest hydrocolloid to gelatin in terms of its properties is iota type carrageenan.  Here's a side-by-side comparison of the most important characteristics (this is all taken from the HRC):

Property          | Gelatin   | Carrageenan | Agar
------------------+-----------+-------------+---------
Thermoreversible  | Yes       | Yes         | Yes
Strength          | Soft      | Soft        | Hard
Elasticity        | Elastic   | Elastic     | Brittle
Shear Thinning    | No        | Yes         | No
Hydration         | 50° C     | 70° C       | 90° C
Setting Temp.     | 15° C     | 40-70° C    | 35-45° C
Setting Speed     | Slow      | Fast        | Fast
Melting Temp.     | 25-40° C  | 45-80° C*   | 80-90° C
Viscosity         | Low       | Medium      | Low
Gelling Conc.     | 0.6-1.7%  | 1.0-1.5%    | 0.2%
Syneresis         | No        | No          | Yes

You should be able to see by this how much closer carrageenan is to gelatin; trouble is, it's difficult to find, and you have to get the right kind (the kappa type and other types have very different properties).

There's actually an even better type of carrageenan to use a gelatin substitute, if you can find it: It's called Ceambloom 3240 and it's specifically designed to be a gelatin replacement.

I'd like to also note for the record that the answer in your ochef link is not really appropriate for gelatin desserts that need to hold their shape.  Xanthan gum is a fantastic and versatile hydrocolloid but (to the best of my knowledge) it does not "set" the way that gelatin, agar, or carrageenan do.  It's more of a thickener/emulsifier/stabilizer, at its highest concentrations being used to produce foams (but not gels).  It's often used to stabilize other gels/foams but I've never heard of it being used to create a gel on its own.

Guar gum is also largely just a thickener, that you could use a stabler replacement for corn starch or arrowroot, which is also mentioned in that answer.  None of these are appropriate at all for gels (desserts), they are only useful as thickeners.


I always store brown sugar in an airtight, ziplock bag. That works pretty well for preventing it from getting hard. It does not need to be refrigerated.

However, if your brown sugar is already hard, there are a few techniques that people often recommend for resoftening it. These include: storing it in a closed container for a short period of time with apple slices (which will impart moisture); doing the same with a slice of bread (which will also impart some moisture); or, briefly microwaving it.

Here is a cooking blog which discusses some of these approaches:
https://www.thekitchn.com/4-ways-to-soften-brown-sugar-and-keep-it-that-way-195922


Is cooking a chicken pot pie with a low power microwave safe to eat?

It doesn't matter for food safety how you reach the required temperature, as long as the food doesn't spend too long in the danger zone. Since you've looking at possibly minutes longer this is not a problem for you. Just make sure you know that the internal temperature is high enough when you finish cooking. I would recommend a thermometer.


The easiest way to prevent meringue from weeping is by adding a teaspoon of cornstarch to the recipe, which will absorb the excess moisture that causes it. If you're a bit adventurous, you can also opt to sprinkle some cookie crumbs over your filling so when it weeps, the crumbs will absorb the moisture.


Why does my sourdough starter have in the top the liquid separated from the flour?

That is referred to as "hooch". It is water and alcohol. It forms when the yeast has passed its peak activity. I've noticed that it corresponds with the increase of bacterial activity when the starter gets more sour.

The hooch will not form when you are feeding regularly. It is harmless and can be discarded or mixed back in.

Sourdough is a balancing act. Finding the feeding rate that will produce the lift and flavor you want. Slower feeding will make it more acidic and rise less. More frequent feeding will do the opposite. You can experiment to get a healthy starter with the flavor you like. When learning you should start with a proven recipe..


Is it normal that my coffee grinder leaves a huge mess all over the counter?

I've owned several grinders -- both blade and burr, but I've never had one that did this.  So no I would not say it is normal

Is the lid closed tight when you start it?  Blade style ones are pretty cheap, so you might just want to get a new one.


I want to know how to express the result of reduced liquid.

There is no single answer to this; it depends on the context and the intent of the recipe in which the reduction is being performed.

Most reductions are expressed as a very approximate percentage, such as "reduce by about half" or "reduce by about two thirds."

Sometimes, you may specify a target amount if that is what is important.  "Reduce to about 1 cup."

Lastly, sometimes you specify the outcome desired, as in "reduce until thick and syrupy" or "reduce until the sauce coats the back of a spoon."

Your specific example of five quarts to three cups is very extreme.  Probably you want an outcome based description, not a percentage.  When specifying by percentage, it is usually for more basic sauce reductions such as a pan gravy after deglazing.  Still, the way you have written it is perfectly clear; there is no reason to calculate a percentage if that is your actual intent.


What is the best way to chip your butter when making biscuits?

I love using a pastry cutter, something like this:

It does the best job cutting butter or shortening into flour. Every now and again while using it I use a fork or butter knife to remove the big blockages.


Technical name for a manual food processor

I believe the term you're looking for is 'chopper'.  Here and here for example.

This, a draw string powered chopper, is an interesting idea as well - I have difficultly believing it can produce enough force though.

And there's the rotating handle, crank kind.

You've got options.

Or even more basic, 'knife' ;)


Why does oil change the color of salmorejo?

When tomatoes are fried, you can see that the oil becomes coloured red - so at least some of the colour components are preferentially soluble in oil.

I will hazard a guess that, under the circumstances mentioned, the oil coats the tomato particles, and some of the colour migrates into it to give a red surface. Because the oil forms a coating, that coat will inhibit oxidation.  The oil will also improve the mouth feel of the soup.

Just the way I see it ...


How to select a coffee powder for preparing Turkish Coffee?

This is something that is likely to depend somewhat on your preference. That said, when I cannot get purpose-made turkish coffee, I usually use a very dark roast for turkish coffee, mixing it with a bit of cardamom (about one tablespoon to every twenty tablespoons of powdered coffee).

From the offerings you have available, I would recommend the Very Strong "Arabica french roast". You may very well find that this is too bitter for your palate. If so, I would recommend sweetening the coffee using sugar, rather than going for a lighter roast, but again, you may find a lighter roast.

If you have one of these roasts in your house already, I would recommend starting out by trying that, then playing around with spicing it with cardamom, and sweetening with sugar before getting a different type of coffee. This will help you determine what way you want to go with your finished brew.


I have used frozen fruits in syrups and smoothies after over a year in the freezer with good results. They will likely not keep their shape when they thaw, so something where you want a fruit puree will work best.


So, I've checked some books (see below), and according to them you have two issues: (1) your finger dents aren't deep enough (puffing up), and (2) your oven is too hot.

All three of the recipes I found for pide bake it at 220C.  Cooking it at 400C is likely what is causing it's more pizza-like texture.  The oven in the video appears to be hotter than that, given that it's wood-fired, but we don't really have a temperature, and all three recipes I found baked it at 220C for between 13 and 25 minutes.  Even if you don't drop all the way down to 220C, you might want to try lowering the heat in the oven, and taking the bread out sooner.

The pide recipes I consulted were:

"Pide" from The Complete Book of Turkish Cooking by Ghillie Basan;
"Pide" from Savory Baking from the Medditeranean by Anissa Helou;
"Tirnak Pidesi" from Istanbul & Beyond by Robyn Eckhardt.

Of the three, the last recipe is probably the closest to the one from the video.  The first two recipes use yogurt and/or olive oil in the dough, which would tend to make it more tender.  I don't recommend trying that in your Uuni, though, since olive oil doughs tend to catch fire at 400C.

Eckhardt's recipe, though, is just flour, water, salt, and yeast, plus an egg wash like the bakery.  She even has instructions on a "stretched" version, like the video.  She recommends "bread flour", which probably means high-protein flour.  Her ratio is 4 1/4 cups flour to 1 7/8 cups water (American measurements), and she kneads it for 8-10 minutes, and rises it for 2 hours. She lets the dough rest for 15 minutes before denting and stretching, which if you haven't been doing it, might help with the texture.

Hope that helps; see if you can find a copy of the book.


Can I substitute dehydrated veggies for freeze dried in recipes?

I think the issue here is long term storage.  If you are only going to keep the food for weeks to a couple of months, I think your home dehydrated products should be perfectly acceptable.

Depending on your application—and I make no value judgements here—if you need to store the food for considerably longer for whatever reason, then you want to be sure nearly all of the water has been removed, and commercially freeze-dried products are going to be more reliable.

Also, according to wikipedia:

  Freeze-dried products can be rehydrated [sic] (reconstituted) much more
  quickly and easily because the process leaves microscopic pores. The
  pores are created by the ice crystals that sublimate, leaving gaps or
  pores in their place.

For another perspective, the vendor Rainy Day Foods says:

  When comparing freeze dried foods to dehydrated foods, there are
  advantages to both. Some advantages of freeze dried foods are that
  they are light in weight and reconstitute quickly and will have the
  appearance of fresh foods when reconstituted. A disadvantage to freeze
  dried foods is that they will take up more space for storage because
  they are lighter and more space is needed to store the same amount (in
  weight) as dehydrated foods. Advantages to dehydrated foods are less
  space is needed to store a large amount of food and it is economical
  to purchase. Freeze dried foods can be a great deal more expensive
  than dehydrated foods.

  So in answer to the ongoing question of whether freeze dried foods or
  dehydrated foods are better – only the consumer can determine which is
  best depending on his or her own personal needs and preferences.

However, they are addressing commercially dehydrated or freeze-dried products, not home prepared products.

Your home dehydrated foods will probably retain more moisture and have less even quality control than commercial processes.  For this reason, they may not be as shelf stable.

For most uses, though, especially if you are making "meals in a jar" for convenience or short term emergency preparedness, not long term (years) of storage, your home dehydrated fruits and vegetables should be just fine.


How can I remove salt from a saline infused pork sirloin roast?

Before cooking, Remove any packaging and soak in cold water for 4 - 6 hours changing the water once or twice


Keeping scrambled eggs with tomatoes from being too watery

Another effective method (not mentioned in the link SAJ14SAJ provided) is salting. Dice the tomatoes, generously salt them and leave them in a sieve for 20 minutes or so. You probably want to squeeze off some of the juicy bits first. Flip the tomatoes half-way through the resting time. That will draw off a lot of water without pre-cooking the tomatoes (which will also work, but will change (not necessarily negatively) the taste of the tomatoes. If you use kosher or other coarse salt, you'll be able to shake or wipe off quite a bit of the salt before proceeding with your application.


Sandwich wraps always getting way to crispy

If you are using a "tiny bit of olive oil," I'm sure you are using too little.  I have only made tortillas using shortening and lard and when doing so, my fat weighed-in at nearly a quarter the weight of my flour.  I don't know how you measure-out your ingredients, but that would be roughly 1/3 cup lard or shortening for 2 cups of flour (with a little over 1/2 cup water and maybe a teaspoon or so of salt).  Also, I always used water that was cool to warm - never hot.

The fact that you are getting bubbles is a good sign.  If you increase the fat percentage in your dough and still have problems, try rolling-out your tortillas thinner.

To be clear - I have never made tortillas using oil, I have only made them with shortening or lard.  But having said that, the fat is certainly an important textural component of this unleavened bread.


Can "juice from concentrate" be diluted 100% juice?

As you have a Canadian website in your user profile, I assume you are asking about the legal requirements in Canada.

Canada's Food and Drug Regulations state the following (emphasis mine):

  B.11.133 [S]. Reconstituted (naming the fruit) Juice or (naming the
  fruit) Juice from Concentrate

  (a) shall be fruit juice that has been prepared by the addition of
  water to fruit juice of the same name from which water has been
  removed;

  (b) may contain juice of the same name, a sweetening ingredient, and
  natural pulp, oils and esters of the named fruit;

  (c) shall conform to the standards for the named fruit juices as
  prescribed in this Division; and

  (d) may contain, in the case of reconstituted lemon or lime juice, not
  more than 10 parts per million dimethylpolysiloxane.

Thus, it is not explicitly illegal to add more water to the concentrate than you removed from the original juice, as long as the resulting product would be marketable as "juice". The rules for that differ per fruit, but see for example the definition of orange juice. Mostly, constraints are placed on which compounds can be present in the product at which concentrations.


Can I use a deep fryer instead of a pot with oil?

You can definitely cook donuts in a deep fryer.  Most, if not all, donuts shops cook them in that manner.  Just make sure your temperature is good and use something like chopsticks to flip them.


As far as I know, there are no official categories of sandwiches, although there are considerable regional differences in what is considered a "prototypical" sandwich across the world (and some cultures have multiple common sandwiches). A traditional American sub is very different from a German Käsebrot. So, I can't point you to a type of sandwich and tell you "it will always be creamy".

There are two things which you can use to make a sandwich creamy.

Spread butter or cream cheese on the bread before adding the toppings. It will give the sandwich a nice, mild taste, and remove the dry mouthfeel, without making it very moist.
Use a condiment. Typical sandwich condiments are mustard, mayonnaise and ketchup. They make a sandwich very moist and creamy, and tend to also give it a strong taste. They are normally placed between the toppings, not on the bread, so they don't soak into the bread and make it soggy.

My suggestion is to try out both variants and decide which you like best.


What kind of domestic use machine is needed for preparing Brown Rice from Paddy?

There are 3 main types of rice huller in use:

The oldest, Mortar and pestle, takes strength, time and patience.

Centrifugal hullers have been around since the late 1800's, but high speed (5Krpm+) centrifuges are not consumer devices. They can be quite dangerous if not used correctly.

Rubber roller based hullers are probably the most common type today. You don't see many consumer friendly units around, but rubber based attachments for Corona mills are sometimes available.

Once you get your rice dehulled, you'll need to separate the chaff. There are lots of ways to do that, starting at a low tech level.


What is the difference between 100% whole wheat pasta and 100% whole wheat couscous?

Other than the shape, obviously, not that much in the grand scheme of life.
the couscous grain is coarse wheat semolina; when wanting to eat it, it is usually boiled (boiling water added to couscous) or steamed (using a couscoussière)
Pasta is a dough made from finer semolina, it is made with water or eggs.
From the pasta dough, you can make many different type of pasta.
Some small pasta shape can look like couscous, for example Kushku or Fregola (larger than normal couscous) ...
As to know which came first, I would venture to say Couscous as it is easier to prepare.


French Fries: Why soak in cold water, and if so, why a long time

The reason why you want to get rid of the excess starch on the surface is, while cooking they will brown faster and will yield very dark brown fries, instead of golden-brown "which we all like ;)". It has nothing (or little) to do with enzymes aiding caramelization/maillard reaction. The browning happens at high temperatures, such as the temperature of the frying oil. As you have more starches on the surface, they will get darker, or even burnt.

As a side note, I’ve found out that instead of soaking, just cooking the fries in water for a short while helps greatly in getting rid of the surface starches, even more than soaking or running them through water.


chef's knife for cutting chicken, or butcher's

If you're just separating a chicken into pieces, you don't need to cut through any bone, and a chef's knife or a boning knife will work fine. You need to aim for the joints in between the bones, and cut the softer connective tissue.

If you're actually trying to hack legs and thighs into pieces (some indian curries, stocks, and other preparations do well with splitting bones), then you need a heavy duty meat cleaver (note: a "chinese cleaver" has a thin blade, and is unsuitable to cutting through bones). A chef's knife would work, but can dent or chip the blade of your expensive Global knife.


How can you prevent lettuce from becoming bitter?

I think the key here is that you've been buying oversized lettuces. Bitterness of lettuce plants is not something under your control. When the lettuce matures (on the plant), it eventually starts flowering (called "bolting") as a way to perpetuate its genes. Once this sets in, the leaves turn bitter due to the production of certain chemicals, and acts as a defense mechanism against insects.

The process of bolting is irreversible and if it has commenced in the plant, it will continue on in the cut lettuce head (perhaps at a diminished rate). Big lettuce heads are invariably more mature than the smaller ones, which is why you experience a higher occurrence of them turning bitter. You could try the other suggestions here, but I cannot say for/against any of them as I haven't heard of any of them being used to control bitterness.

My advice would be to buy small to medium sized lettuces. Young leaves are tender and less likely to turn bitter. One might be tempted to buy the biggest lettuce on the shelf so as to "maximize" the leaves/dollar, but in the end, you have to decide whether the bitterness is really worth it.


What should I look for when buying a ramen bowl?

This is just a personal preference I would like to share here:

Size: I tend to top my ramen with things like pork slices, vegetables such as bean sprouts, seafood etc. So, I prefer a bowl with
wider opening so that I can still get to the ramen on the bottom with
the food on top of it. But usually if the ramen bowl is wide, its
bottom is flatter, and that means, in order to fill up the noodle with
soup one would have to add more. To me, that's undesirable because the
soup would be watered down (for instant type) and second with flatter
bottom the heat disperses more quickly. I prefer still seeing steam
coming off within the bowl even after I finish the ramen. That means
it is hot enough and one of the most undesirable thing eating ramen is
it gets cold before you finish it.
Material: I prefer a heavier type, a thicker type such as clay - it holds the heat better and for a longer time.
Lastly: Size really depends on how much you normal eat. Suggestion is: get one
with the aforementioned taken into consideration and one that, when
you put food on top, you would still be able to see your ramen on the
bottom and can easily get access to it with your chopstick without
having to fumble around or shove around the food on top. Just wide enough but not too
wide because the heat lets off quickly with flatter bottom.

Now I am getting hungrier writing this. Bon Appetite.


How do I prevent an egg cracking while hard boiling it?

I used the method here before with good success: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_make_perfect_hard_boiled_eggs/

Basically you start with the eggs in the pan with cold water and bring the water to temperature, right when it reaches boiling you pull the heat back and let the eggs cook for 10 minutes.

You don't need a full on boil to hard boil the eggs.


Bake frozen pizza without a tray - will it melt and drip?

I have baked many a frozen pizza without a tray and never had a pizza lose structural integrity like that.

The oven should be quite hot  (usually the box will specify at least 400°F).

Usually the difficulty arises when it's time to get the pizza out of the oven. I suggest a baking tray with no sides.


Does 100% rye sourdough bread always have a sticky crumb? How do I make it stick to the knife less?

One cause of gumminess in 100% rye breads is excessive starch degradation related to amylase enzyme actions.  Amylase action is slowed down by increasing acidity.  You can increase the acidity by adding a small amount of lemon juice or cream of tartar to your dough as described here.

In his books "Whole Grain Breads" and "Crust and Crumb", Peter Reinhart comments that you can use ascorbic acid (1/8 tsp / 125 mg per loaf) to increase acidity and inhibit both amylase and protease activity.

Since rye bread doesn't have significant gluten for structure, but instead relies completely on starches and pentosans, it is imperative to let the loaf cool completely before cutting it so that the starches crystallize and the gums solidify.


Store them in the bag in your fridge. Also, if you take the greens off they will last longer. I keep mine in the drawer at the bottom.


This answer presumes your worry is that by not putting in the pulses/tubers from the beginning, you're actually not ending up with the "correct" result.

My experience with recipes (even from reputable sources) with regard to slow cooked, stewy dishes, with ingredients that take time before they're done, is that they're either short on time, or short on liquids. Either that, or I'm bad with measuring, use ingredients of lesser quality, or suck at cooking (most of the time I suspect the latter two are the guilty parties).

But most likely (and here's the good part), the pulses/tubers are there from the beginning to act not only as a nutritional component, but also serve a dual function as thickener. They're most definitely (IMHO) not there from the beginning to impart flavor to the curry.

So one of the solutions you've already found yourself:
Cook the pulses/tubers separately, and add them in the end. The curry will not suffer any loss in flavor. If it's to thin, either squish some of pulses so the starches can thicken it, or reduce a bit longer.

Second solution: Start out with more liquid than the recipe prescribes, and cook/reduce longer, until the desired thickness has been achieved.


How to stop waffles from sticking to pan?

Make sure the pan is properly preheated to cooking temperature before pouring the batter in. If you've oiled it, and water sizzles and skips when splashed on the pan, you should be good to go.


Can I use parboiled basmati rice just like ordinary non-converted basmati?

Parboiled rice should be cooked more or less the same way, but may come out a little less sticky than regular rice. It should taste exactly the same. Your recipes should work just fine.

I would probably do a trial run with a quick batch of the plain rice as you would normally do it just to make sure since parboiling as a process is different in different parts of the world.

Good luck!


Which is a typically American way of seasoning spaghetti and other pasta?

I might refer you to this video, where Malcolm Gladwell talks (a little bit) about spaghetti, and how Americans prefer to eat it.

Apparently, companies doing market research found that Americans say they want "real Italian pasta sauce," which is somewhat thinner than "American style," but actually prefer eating the chunkier, heartier sauces now common on supermarket shelves.


Bacteria in steak from cutting with household scissors by mistake?

You will be fine.
The food was cooked...
Just clean the "house" scissors with soap and hot water and dry them so that there is no rust.


Ways to Make Matcha Powder Less Bitter in Baking?

So, first things first... matcha is not supposed to be overly bitter. It has a certain bitterness to it, but good, well-prepared matcha is not overpoweringly bitter. (I'm talking about the actual tea itself, not anything made with it)

I'm going to add a few precautions you should take when making anything matcha-flavored:

Make sure what you're buying is good and authentic matcha, even if it is culinary grade.
Good matcha is very bright green and very finely powdered.
Look for shade-grown, stone-ground matcha made of tencha from Japan. It is going to be expensive, but it will keep you from disappointment.

That being said, matcha doesn't like to be heated past 80-90 degrees C and needs to be quite thoroughly aerated for the flavor to spread and blossom. This is why the best-tasting products made of matcha are usually things that are not boiled or baked, like mousse, icecream, or cookies with matcha frosting.

Potential solutions:

Switch to a no-bake cheesecake recipe (so you don't cook your matcha)
Prepare the matcha in milk (or other very fluid, easy to aerate liquid) and incorporate that as an essence / extract in your recipe - the usual proportion for drinking is 1-2g in 80mL of water so you can go from there for adjusting your liquid quantity


Perhaps I'm stating the obvious, but is your oven rack perfectly level? Muffin mix initially has low enough viscosity that it can be influenced by gravity as it gradually rises. Even a small inclination of the tray/rack is likely to cause this.


How to store a 5 gallon bucket of pickle slices?

I'd transfer to pint mason jars and store in the refrigerator -- at least until I figured out what to do next.


Different oils burn at different temperatures. I'm guessing that you don't have a thermometer that will measure the heat of your pan (that's a pretty specialized item that most cooks don't have), so just know which oils you use have low smoke points, and which have high. Here's a good chart concerning smoke points, and here is a good answer about guaging the heat of the pan Cooking on the stove: what is "too hot" for a pan?. Deep frying (with a couple of centemeters of oil in the pan or more) is different. For that you should use a thermometer if you can. Most deep frying is done at 350F (175C). Choose an oil with a smoke point well above that. If you don't have a thermometer, drop a small piece of whatever you're frying into the oil, and look for it to start to brown right away, without threatening to burn.

You can tell when your oil is getting to it's maximum safe and tasty temperature when it just starts to smoke a tiny bit. That tiny bit is OK, just don't go any further. Ideally, you should start with all the oil that you will need, so you don't have to add more. An exception to that is if you're frying in batches. If you need to add oil, give it time to get as hot as for your last batch.

Any oil can catch fire if it gets too hot. If that happens, usually the best way to put out a grease fire is to get a lid on the pan to deprive it of oxygen. Kitchens should also have a fire extinguisher (B type, or ABC or AB type). NEVER use water to put out a grease fire.

Finally, the easiest way to spread oil is usually to tip and swirl the pan. If the oil isn't hugely hot, you can also use a paper towel to spread it.


Actual chicken soup is based on chicken stock which is made by simmering a chicken carcass for several hours, usually with stick veg and a few herbs.

This long cooking breaks down the collagen in the bones, skin and cartilage, turning it into gelatin and extracting a lot of flavour.

The steaming water should be perfectly safe to eat but definitely isn't the same thing as chicken stock.

Maybe use it to cook rice or noodles to go with the chicken or if the breasts cam e off whole chicken then add it to the carcass to make stock if you want. But in reality it probably doesn't have that much flavour and probably isn't worth keeping unless you have an immediate use for it.

A an aside one of the great thing about poultry in general is that you can use the whole of the bird to make several dishes.

The breast meat provides good texture, the legs and thigh meat is moist and flavoursome and good for pies and stews, the carcass can be used for soup and the wings and timings can be turned into a tasty sauce or gravy.


Why does cheese sometimes slide off my pizza and how can I prevent it?

Let it cool a bit.  Then eat. Added bonus: You don't sear the roof of your mouth.


Why clean a pot (used to cook rice) with cold water?

Residual starches swell up and get sticky in hot water.  This doesn't happen with cold water -- In the time it takes to wash a pot.


It's not really chemistry¹, but simple physics:  you can have the same result with salt. (and an experiment you can easily replicate at home: salt is much cheaper than sugar).

What happens is that the salt and the sugar and a whole lot of other things indeed absorb the water in the egg, which makes the proteins in the egg unfold, hook into one another and make these dehydrated eggs look just like cooked eggs where the heat does the same thing: unfold proteins.

Even if you add water again, these polymerized proteins will not re-absorb the water as they cannot unfold just like with a cooked egg: you can easily boil an egg, but it's hard to melt it again afterwards...  ;-)

So it's a common misconception as the cooked and the dehydrated versions both look very similar, even under a microscope.

Note¹: To all the chemists and physicists out there: yes, it's an endless debate whether boiling an egg is chemistry or physics... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Are there culinary applications for carrot tops/greens?

I've never had them, but they are indeed edible. Due to the high amount of potassium in them they can be bitter. The World Carrot Museum (lol) even has an entire page for carrot greens, including several recipes.
Excerpt:

They ARE edible and are highly nutritive, rich in protein, minerals and vitamins. The tops of the carrots are loaded with potassium which can make them bitter, so the use of them in food is limited, but there some ideas and recipes below.  The tops are antiseptic and can be juiced and used as a mouthwash.
However, it is edible, so you may mix some in with a mixed lettuce salad. You may also use it for garnish. Combine your common sense and your creative skills, and invent something! That's what makes cooking fun. It is a form of art.  Carrot greens are high in vitamin K, which is lacking in the carrot itself.
Carrot tops are an outstanding source of chlorophyll, the green pigment that studies have shown to combat the growth of tumours. Chlorophyll contains cleansing properties that purify the blood, lymph nodes, and adrenal glands. Scientists have been unable to synthesize chlorophyll in the laboratory, but green plant foods contain sufficient quantities to protect the human body.


I make partially wholemeal-flour pasta, and have tried 100% wholemeal also; I prefer the former.

Let's start with the dough. I think a couple things are at work:

wholemeal flour will take a bit longer to hydrate than refined (e.g., all-purpose) flour;
wholemeal flour will generally absorb (require) more water to fully hydrate than AP flour.

I'd suggest the following:

After mixing just until incorporated (still perhapas a bit ragged) allow the dough a period of rest (wrapped in clingfilm/plastic-wrap) on the bench, for perhaps 15-30min, before the major kneading phase. It will allow the dough to hydrate and relax a bit more. With this rest, you can probably get away with closer to 5min of kneeding (phew!). Compare this SA question and this Fresh Loaf for a discussion about bread dough and resting.
If it's still dense, consider a further teaspoon/5mL or two of water per egg. Note, though, that this water is best mixed when you're first mixing the egg and flour (it's more messy and difficult (albeit possible) to add later). Large eggs are perhaps 50mL per egg so keep that in mind -- too much hydration will make things hard to work with.

As for the cooking: are you drying the pasta first, or are you putting it straight into the water?  I find wholemeal pasta takes perhaps 50% longer to get to the cooked'ness that I seek (but not more than 4-5 mins in rapidly boiling water), but certainly not as long as commercial pasta (10+ mins).


Getting some crispiness in Burgers' crust

Crunchy (I suspect crusty is probably a better term) burgers are often made by what Kenji Alt of Serious Eats like to call the smash method, as described in The Burger Lab:  Smashed Burgers vs Smashing Burgers.

The basic technique is to form the beef into what he calls a "puck", and then cook them on a ripping hot skillet or cast iron pan, smashing them down into patties onto the hot pan.  This promotes the browning reactions and crisping on the first side of the burger.

The burgers mostly cook on that first side where the crust development will happen; the cooking on the second side is much more brief.


Why do hamburger patties have ridges on one side?

What sort of streaking? A pattern of lumps or is there color streaking?

If there's color streaking and the meat is supposed to be raw, the meat's probably bad.

If there ridges or a pattern on one side it's from the hamburger patty press.

It does not matter which side you cook first. While with most meats you want to cook the "presentation side" (the side that will be up on a plate) first, with hamburger, because it's usually inside a bun and hidden, you don't generally cook one side differently than the other for any particular reason.

UPDATE:

The hamburger patty press uses dimples on one side (which produce the ridged pattern) in order to increase the pressure on the meat and the resulting compression of the patty. A more compressed patty results in more efficient packing (the same mass fits in a smaller volume) and a more stable patty (less likely to fall apart during cooking).

If you've ever seen roadwork which includes preparing a dirt surface to be layered with gravel or asphalt, there is a compression process involving what I think is called a sheep's foot roller, which is like a steam roller, except the roller/compression drum/wheel is studded with "feet" that result in a waffle-like appearance in the rolled dirt. This is done because this pattern increases the compression possible on any given portion of earth, creating a significantly more stable surface on which the road surface will be layed.

The hamburger patty press uses exactly the same technique for pretty much the same reason.


My cast iron has become flaky, did I damage it?

If it's flaking, it wasn't seasoned right to begin with. However it really only matters on the cooking surface. You want seasoning to build up, but it shouldn't flake.

See if it really is coming off, try with you fingernail. If it's coming off then get all of it off that you can by chipping it away. Scrape it off. If it doesn't come off then leave it alone, and season as normal another new layer.

If you aren't happy with it, you can always strip it and start over but that's usually something you end up wishing you hadn't done. You do this by putting your cast iron in the oven and running it through a cleaning cycle. Be warned, don't do this unless you already know what to do and how to season your newly bare cast iron.

Old cast iron seasoning is the best, you don't want to start over. I have some with a 1/4 inch of seasoning (I am exaggerating) on the outside of the pan and it looks crusty, but the inside seasoning and finish is baby skin smooth and slicker than any Teflon coating. I keep it that way by scrubbing lightly with a green scrubby to "tip" the bumps down before putting back in the hot stove to cook another thin layer of oil.

You can't ruin cast iron except by breaking it. Don't worry, it's not ruined, it just needs some care. Some of my best cast iron was a lump of rust I rescued from the junk store.


Olive oil "shelf" life and summer camping

Olive oil will degrade over time, but that is measured in months and years if stored out of the light, and in cool conditions.

If you leave EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) in a glass container in sunlight, it will start to loose some of it's amazing flavour, astringency, and smell, but again this will take many days to be even slightly noticeable. It will still be safe to use.

Just don't leave a glass bottle of oil in the sunshine, keep it in a cool place (like under the seat in the car), and it will be OK.

If you have a few hours read up on it: http://static.oliveoiltimes.com/library/Olive-Oil-Storage-Conditions.pdf

The key point is that it takes 3 months at 37°C to ruin EVOO.


How to cook Mixed grains all together in one pot

Some of them aren't grains, and they'll be the limiting factor.

In particular red kidney beans must be boiled for a good few minutes to remove phytohaemagglutinin. If you treat the whole lot as beans, you won't go far wrong, though the actual grains are likely to end up rather soft, a short of porridge with beans in. This is probably intentional.

So I'd soak overnight, then boil hard in fresh water for long enough to make the kidney beans safe (sources vary from 10 to 30 minutes). Then I'd drain and slow cook on high with whatever flavours you'd like for 6-8 hours, or simmer gently for a little less time. Alternatively you could pressure cook them.


Good websites/cookbooks covering more tailored approach to cooking vegetables?

There are a myriad ways to cook vegetables, some of which are suitable for younger, more tender specimens, and some of which are suitable for older, more robust (one might even say tougher) examples.

The general principal (and there are a many exceptions) is that the older and tougher the vegetable, the longer you cook it.

I think your question indicates you already have the the start of the answer:  if it isn't pleasant raw, cook it.  And if it isn't pleasant when cooked briefly, cook it longer.  Basically, the tougher and chewier (which often is directly related to how mature the vegetable is) the item, the longer it should be cooked.

Very young baby vegetables, and delicate leafy greens, young peas, and similar very tender vegetables are suitable for salads, or just being wilted on top of a hot dish without additional cooking.

Middle ground vegetables (these tend to be vegetables that you might eat raw on a crudite platter--they are substantial, but not tough) of hardier species like asparagus, as well as younger versions of hardy greens like kale, broccoli and so on benefit from a moderate cooking period such as roasting for 10-15 minutes, a brief saute, or a brief steam, but you may enjoy them with some of their original texture and snap left.

The sturdiest vegetables, and the most mature, such as mustard greens, older kale, mature cabbage, older Brussels sprouts, broccoli stems, and such benefit from long cooking which bring out their flavors and soften them.  The long, slow cooked southern braised greens are an example.  These vegetables can take the heat and retain their character.

It is difficult to give you a single rule, as their are a variety of treatments that will work in any given case.

Some cooking methods often come up, as they are optimal for the different rough categories:

I would suggest googling for recipes on the specific vegetables you have received, including their varietal name if you know it, and see what trends you get.  Combining this with your growing intuition and experience should soon have you consistently creating vegetable dishes you enjoy.


I can't say that I'm an expert in Dutch food, but I did live there for a few years (decades ago).

It's entirely possible that the soup really was just salt, pepper and nutmeg in the meatballs.  The Dutch for 'soup with meatballs' is 'soep met balletjes', which will help you avoid having to sort through all of the 'Pennsylvania Dutch' recipes out there.

If you recall there being some green flecks in the soup, it's possible that it was finished with parsley or chives, but there's a good chance that most of the flavor was developed in making the stock -- cook down the chicken bones with onions and carrots at the very least.

You might always want to talk to whomever helped your grandmother move when they realized she had dementia -- they might remember some of the spices that she had ... and if she relied on any of the various dutch spice blends.  (many of which have an Indonesian influence)


Is it necessary to keep vinaigrette in refrigerator?

None of the listed ingredients require refrigeration so you are safe to leave the vinaigrette at room temperature as long as it's not fluctuating much. Leave it in a cool, somewhat shaded area (out of direct sunlight if possible). If you wanted, you could absolutely leave your vinaigrette in the fridge.


What to use to tame my chicken tikka masala?

You're thinking along the right lines with using yoghurt. In fact because yoghurt is often used to tone down spice, you might find that you can use more than half the sauce, if you increase the yoghurt.
But you probably wouldn't want to double the yoghurt to make up for the missing sauce. Instead replace the sauce you didn't use with yoghurt. So if the packet contains 200 ml  of sauce, and you only use half of it, you'll be short 100 ml, so use an extra 100ml yoghurt. You might find that's a little runny, so might want to use a bit less.
If you have tomato puree/paste or even passata, you could mix some of that into the extra yoghurt. Most tikka masala recipes include some tomato, so this will maintain the flavour without the heat. Puree will have a slight thickening effect compared to yoghurt, while passata will be thinner,unless you simmer it long enough to reduce.


Can I save peanut oil from turkey fryer after rain?

Generic, short answer, just to make sure a potentially dangerous state of things is not left uncommented.

Certainly unsafe for deep frying at that scale unless you can guarantee you got all the water out - any water separating out tends to collect at the bottom of the vessel, where it can boil suddenly when the setup is heated again, propelling hot oil out of the vessel. Hot oil being propelled in any way is usually very unsafe.


About 'sharpening"; do you PUSH OR PULL the blade across the stone?

Depends on the stone. If it's a countertop wetstone, then you want to angle the blade slightly, while you pull and slide outwards. You never want a purely straight pull.

If it's a handheld micro-sharpener, then (while holding the blade at the sharpener designated angle) out and up, minding your fingers and wrist.

If it's a sharpening steel, there's a quite intricate motion that I can't quite describe in words, so I would suggest you visit YouTube.

For more on knife sharpening and diagrams, see: http://www.buckknives.com/about-knives/knife-sharpening/

To clarify on "pull" and "outward":

Pull means to pull the knife directly towards you, as if it were a rope in a tug-of-war game.

Outward means dragging left-to-right or right-to-left, as if drawing a line.

A pull-outward motion would be pulling the knife towards you while dragging it across the stone. This should create a diagonal motion that is heavily accentuated towards having more pulling  movement than outward movement.

As noted in the comments, I am an advocate of pulling the sharp edge of the blade with the blunt edge leading, rather than the blade leading. To visualize, imagine a knife in your right hand on a stone. The sharp edge is nearest your left hand, and you move it across the stone towards your right.