85% hydration tangzhong sourdough bread - what went wrong?

It's hard to say exactly what went wrong, I've worked with plenty of high hydration doughs and sourdoughs so I have a few ideas though. I can see from your picture that you did get yeast action in your dough, with lots of holes and good structure, so you did something right, probably most of it.

Shape

Firstly, whole wheat flour absorbs more water than white flour, so by substituting white for the whole wheat you increased your hydration. 85% is already very high, this would have added a couple of percentage points to that, which changes your consistency. Next time I'd reduce the water a small amount to compensate.

High hydration doughs are tricky to work with, you need the right equipment at the right stages. Very high hydration doughs do not hold their shape, and tend to pool out if they aren't supported by something, just as you saw. That's normal, and a sign that perhaps you are a bit over-hydrated. Even if you had a proofing basket it's very possible this would have lots its shape right away.

These doughs are also are extremely sticky, and easy to knock the air out of. When you put it in a container to proof overnight it would have adhered to the sides, if you were rough with it getting it out you may have bashed some air out of it. Be gentle, use oiled hands and an oiled scraper to free it up.

Density

I think you had a good amount of air left though from your picture, I suspect a big reason for your dense loaf is that your oven was dry. Sourdough crusts form quickly in a dry oven and are very thick, I think what happened is that your crust dried out and prevented the loaf from being able to spring. Sourdough and high hydration doughs need to spring a lot, if they can't spring they get a consistency that is very dense and you get a raw dough consistency as you describe.

To resolve this you need a moist oven to start. Get your oven up to temperature and put a pan with plenty of hot water in it a good 15 minutes before you put your bread in to bake. Open the door, get it in quick, close the door most of the way and then squirt some water in with a spray bottle before closing all the way. Let it bake in your moist oven until it the spring stops and it stabilizes in size and shape for awhile, this is usually about 60% of your baking time, then remove the pan of water and finish baking in a dry oven.

Safety Note: When you open the door of a moist oven keep back as the steam will billow out. It's probably not enough to burn you, but it certainly isn't comfortable!

In Summary, reduce your water a bit to help improve the shaping, and bake in a moist oven to start to allow it to spring and fix your density problem.


The Bread Baker's Apprentice has a 2-page long chart of different types of breads; in terms of classifying (not "describing") them, they look at the following:

Water Content - literally the amount of water in the bread. From lowest to highest you have Stiff, Standard, or Rustic.
Richness - the amount of fat, primarily, but also sugar, milk, eggs, or anything else to provide a richer mouth-feel.
Fermentation - direct or indirect specifies whether or not there is pre-fermentation.
Leavening - various categories describe the type of leavener used, including commercial yeast, wild yeast, chemical leavening, or a mix.
Flatbreads have their own designation and can also describe unleavened breads.

That's enough to classify the vast majority of breads out there.

As far as "describing" bread goes, that is entirely subjective and culture-dependent. For anything more detailed, you really need to go and read a book - there's far too much literature to condense into a single Q&A thread.


How do the strawberries smell? If they don't have a strong strawberry smell, you won't be able to squeeze any more strawberry taste out of them. You can try adding a strawberry extract to add more strawberry flavor; maybe start with 1/4 teaspoon.


How do I get rid of smells and tastes leaching into other cookies when stored together for gifts?

The only way you're going to accomplish that is to (shrink)-wrap them individually or to put small hermetically sealed tin or plastic boxes inside a larger box...

Mint is just too powerful not to leach into everything and that's why the professionals:

shrink-wrap them individually or per type
sell a box per type ("Chocolate cookies", "fruit cookies" , ...)

Sorry: probably not what you wanted to hear...


How to prevent liquids from spilling when pouring from measuring cup?

Use a larger measuring cup so it is only partly full. Then the cup will be tilted more when the pour starts.


Yes, yeast-risen foods such as bread will contain trace quantities of ethanol. The concentration will likely be lower than that found in fresh fruit.


I was told to bring a dessert that is NOT savory....what would you infer is meant?

Because so many cakes, sweet tarts, and classical sweet desserts can be made with a sprinkle of salt (and this is in the recipes of a lot of sweets) I don't think we are looking at a dessert with no spices nor salt.

It might be tasteless.

I'm guessing, without knowing the context, that it meant no onion tart, mushroom bell pepper tart, or prosciutto wrapped fruits etc.

When sugar was first abundantly available in Europe, a lot of cooks put sugar on everything - meat, stews and so on. There might be something in our food history where desserts, sweet and savory, combined a lot more than today.


What is the difference between ranch dressing and ranch mayonnaise?

I don't know whether the "ranch mayonnaise" you had was a commercial product or simply something the supermarket whipped up to put on sandwiches.  I personally had never heard of "ranch mayonnaise" as a supermarket product, but an internet search tells me that apparently some companies do market it.

In any case, both the dressing and mayonnaise are likely to contain a similar mixture of herbs and spices (which makes them "ranch").  The difference is likely to be texture.  "Dressings" tend to be more runny and thin, so they can be mixed easily with other things even at the table (e.g., salads).  I would imagine that "ranch mayonnaise," on the other hand, should be somewhat thicker (like plain mayonnaise), just with the herbs and spices of "ranch dressing" mixed in.

Bottom line is that ranch mayo is probably more spreadable (as one would want on a sandwich) instead of thin and pourable (as one would want on a salad).  One could put ranch dressing on a sandwich and get a similar flavor, but it might be somewhat more messy to eat.  Usually the dressing is based on some combination of buttermilk, yogurt, or sour cream mixed with mayonnaise to give it a thinner consistency.

I don't know where to advise you to find the product you want, but you could likely approximate the flavor by adding some of the herbs and spices of ranch dressing (usually some combination of garlic, onion, mustard, chives, parsley, dill, and black pepper or paprika) to plain mayonnaise.  I don't know if these are available in the UK, but US supermarkets sometimes sell a packet of "ranch seasoning mix," which you could use rather than buying all of the ingredients separately.  (If I bought a sandwich from a supermarket that claimed to have "ranch mayonnaise," I would assume that's probably what they did to make it.)

Or, for a simplest solution if the spice mix is unavailable, you could probably mix a bit of ranch dressing into plain mayonnaise so that it's still thick enough for a sandwich (though perhaps without as strong of a flavor as adding herbs directly to mayonnaise).


My personal experience with frozen oven fries is like Wayfaring Stranger's, it takes longer to cook them than what the manufacturer suggests. I think though this comes down to personal preference. If I do follow the instructions then I get fries that strictly speaking can considered cooked, they're hot throughout, but they can be fairly soggy and not anywhere near as crisp and brown as I like. So I generally bake them as long as they can stand, to the point where a few the tips are black and maybe one or two smaller ones have gone completely black and inedible. This takes the fries to the other extreme, arguably I've overcooked them and they're dried out, but that's the way I've come to like them.

In addition to simply cooking your fries until you think they're done, regardless of what the manufacturer says, you should make sure that you're baking them the correctly. The answers to the question How to bake Frozen French Fries have some good advice. In particular, it's important that the fries be spread out evenly in a single layer on a pan. Try not to crowd the pan too much, that will make them take longer to cook. Also flipping them half way through will help them cook more evenly and faster.

I don't have much experience with cooking frozen fish, so I don't know why they would end up being over cooked when you follow the manufacturer's instructions. You might try cooking them separately. You can bake fries in a toaster oven if you don't need to cook that many, and you can probably do frozen fish in one as well.


Choosing between semolina and non-semolina durum flour

Your understanding is mostly correct. Durum flour is sometimes used for bread, generally mixed with softer flour. (Pasta is also sometimes made from a mix of hard and soft flours.) It's unusual (in my personal experience) to find soft wheat semolina labeled as "semolina". More commonly it's labeled as "rava", "farina", or "cream of wheat". Labelling will vary by region.
Pasta can be made from any of the flours you listed. Using semolina will give you a firm but tender pasta; coarse semolina will give you a rougher texture (but still firm/tender). Using part or all bread flour will result in a chewier, stretchier pasta (think hand-pulled Chinese noodles). Pasta dough with coarse semolina should be rested for a while before rolling out, as it takes longer to hydrate.


I'm seeing several answers that seem to be tiptoeing around the problem but not quite hitting it head-on...

If you have time, have a look at this Serious Eats article, The Food Lab: Real Ice Cream Without an Ice Cream Machine.  Although it's about making ice cream without a machine, many of the principles apply to machines as well, because the problem you're experiencing is the same as those experienced by those without ice-cream makers: Ice crystal formation.

Contrary to what Chef's answer says, you do not need to keep ice cream at above-freezing temperatures in order to prevent crystals.  As Mollie has correctly pointed out, that is precisely the purpose of overrun; the airier the ice cream, the less opportunity there is for ice crystals to form.  But that's not the whole story.  You don't just need to incorporate air, you need to keep it dispersed so that that the liquid never gets too dense in one place.

Ice-cream makers are supposed to do both of these things.  By churning the cream while it freezes, it keeps the mixture dispersed and introduces more air (overrun).

It sounds to me like what's happening is that your ice-cream maker is simply not getting cold enough.  If it actually brought the temperature of the ice cream to zero or below, then the consistency would not change after putting it into an actual freezer.  So you're getting not-quite-freezing ice cream out of the ice-cream maker which is great, but then you're putting it in a freezer where that not-quite-frozen liquid is forming large ice crystals as it freezes for real.

So your solutions to this problem are:

Invest in a higher-end ice cream maker that chills better (this may or may not be practical).
Introduce extra overrun by pre-whipping the cream before putting it into the machine.  Whip it until soft peaks form, then fold it into the mixture (don't stir!).  You can do the same with the egg whites as well.  This may give you an undesirable amount of overrun, like the 94% that's in Breyer's, but it will make it almost impossible for crystals to form.
Flash-freeze it with dry ice or liquid nitrogen.  This may not be practical either but is the surest way to prevent ice crystals from forming, since the main thing crystal formation requires is time.
If you can't flash-freeze, then try packing the churned ice cream into ice trays as Kenji (Serious Eats) does with the "raw" ice cream, then give it a whirl in a food processor once it's frozen.
Finally, one thing that even Serious Eats neglected to mention is to use a stabilizer.  Xanthan gum is great for ice cream and will help keep it at "whipped" consistency while it's in the freezer.  You don't need a lot - use about 0.5% of the total weight at most.  Stabilizers in particular are what will allow you to freeze the ice cream for longer, and prevent that 1-2 day "expiration date" that was mentioned by an earlier answer.

Any or all of these things will improve the smoothness of the ice cream and help it to survive the freezing process.


Change your olive storage to glass jars and plastic lids. I use Bell jars and buy the plastic lids where I buy the jars; Walmart or hardware store, during canning season. The glass jars can be sterilized, if mold forms on the food. Plastic can never really be clean once the mold starts. Toss the plastic.


How to use lemon or other fruit acid in Brigadeiro without curdling?

As someone pointed out, key lime pie (or "torta de limão com merengue" as we know it) shouldn't curdle, but it is a different type of heat we're talking about, so bear with me for a while.

A few tips:

1) Add less zest at the end of the cooking. If you add everything together, the essential oils evaporate during cooking and you lose the flavor;
2) If you want to use juice, make a white brigadeiro and add the lime juice (our "limão taiti" is actually called lime) after cooking so it doesn't curdle and preserves the flavor


Milk or milk-based products generally help lessen the hotness after eating chili peppers. At least it works for me.

Some people go for plain bread, I didn't try it yet so I can't say for sure if it helps.


Even though this question seems a little trivial, I have had the same problem.

Usually the beans will come out with just gentle shaking. They won't budge at first but after the suction is broken they will descend and can be shaken out.

Occasionally I have had to use a spoon. You are right that if you just scoop them out you will mash many of them. If you just work the utensil along the side of the jar you can break the suction and they should shake free.

If you do mash them you can always finish the job and make refried beans out of them.


How do I clean a refrigerator with no removable shelves?

200 proof alcohol to the rescue! (If you cannot get that locally, use the cheapest vodka with the highest alcohol content you can buy)
Pour a bit into an atomiser for best results (but a good spray bottle will do¹), spray a tiny amount inside the fridge and wipe it off with a kitchen towel after a few seconds.  It'll sterilise your fridge and any leftovers you didn't wipe will evaporate naturally.
Warning:
200 proof alcohol is combustible, so don't:

cook
smoke
burn candles
...

while you're doing this and please: keep the kids away and store any leftover alcohol in a safe place.
You'll go from a dirty fridge to the cleanest fridge in a 50 mile radius.
:-)
Note¹: A spray bottle will do, a squirt gun will not: the alcohol has to be nebulised at least a little...  ;-)


Can I fix a box cake recipe where I added oil instead of water?

If the recipe calls for oil, butter, or any other fat, then you can try to scale the other quantities to match it.

If not, there's still a chance you can salvage it.  The oil doesn't actually chemically react with the mix at all, it just "coats" it; in fact, most cake recipes use some amount of fat in order to slow gluten formation (i.e. stop the cake from getting tough and chewy).

However, if the recipe called for 1 1/4 cups water and you used the same quantity of oil instead, then that is going to be way too much oil for a single serving.

What I would do is double or maybe even triple the cake mix, make sure it's very well mixed with the oil, then add however much water you needed in the first place.

If you realized your mistake early (i.e. if the original recipe called for a lot more than 1 1/4 cups of water) then you might be able to just proceed as normal and end up with a very moist cake, but more likely you'll still need to add some more cake mix (and the corresponding amount of water) to compensate.  I'd still double it, because otherwise you'll be stuck trying to figure out how to use the leftover mix.

Don't just add flour; the amount of water that the recipe calls for is proportional to all of the other ingredients in the mix, and it's virtually impossible for you to know how much extra water you'll need to compensate for the added flour.  Besides, you'd only end up with a bland, flavourless cake if you did that.

If none of these options appeal to you then I'm afraid it's destined for the trash, unless you want to prepare your own cake mix from scratch and combine the two recipes.


Perhaps I am not entirely qualified to answer this post, but as someone who was taught to cook (by my mother) mostly without recipes, when it comes to dishes like curries or stews, salt is simply 'to taste.' This, however, is always with the added note that you can always add more salt later, but taking it out of a dish that has been over saturated with it is a hassle, if possible at all. So just start with a sprinkle and taste, adding more as you see fit.


Safety of room-temperature soaker from Reinhart's *Whole Grain Breads*

If you use yogurt (or cultured buttermilk) it sounds like the creator of the recipe is trying to get the Lactobacillus in the yogurt to start metabolizing some of the components of the mixture. Otherwise, it sounds like they want some random yeast to start the fermentation for the bread. There is definitely a risk of other potentially pathogenic organisms growing also as there is a source of moisture and food with those ingredients and a suitable temperature.

For buttermilk or yogurt specifically:
From a safety standpoint, you would need to consider what the load of pathogenic bacteria is compared to the intentionally inoculated Lactobacillus as the Lactobacillus may interfere with the germination of B. cereus due to creation of an acidic pH.

In general:
As per http://smas.chemeng.ntua.gr/miram/files/publ_77_13_1_2004.pdf it takes approximately 20 hours for a 2-log increase in concentration of B. cereus (1 bacteria dividing into 100 offspring), and as per http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/wk/mm4310.pdf it takes 10^5 B. cereus per gram of food for symptomatic illness, so your initial concentration in the ingredients (assuming the growth conditions in the first paper) would need to be 10^3 per gram overall of viable organisms to get to the toxic level in this time frame (potentially meaning that your ingredients carrying B. cereus in and of themselves would need to be relatively close to the toxic range to start since not everything would be presumed to be contaminated). Since it takes time for spores to germinate, if we are talking about no viable organisms and spores only it would take an awful lot.

Regardless, I trust cultured organisms (yogurt, yeast, etc.) more than the naturally-occurring ones I might find at home (particularly since I work at a hospital and might track some nasty stuff home with me). I would inoculate it with some trusted microorganisms if I was making the recipe.

With that said, the standard caveat of if it smells bad after letting it sit out it probably should be thrown out would apply. Also, although I have a degree in biochemistry I am not a microbiologist, toxicologist, or pathologist.


Why using ammonia bicarbonate and baking powder for deep fried bakery product?

1) the various ionic interactions with proteins in the batter can determine its characteristics.

Some information are at https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/leavening-agent

I can't judge if a model can be really draw out of it but using different mixtures of salts in baking powder formulation reasonably leads to difference.

This is already a comment to your other recent question.

2) Both ammonium and sodium bicarbonate are the leaving agents. Different to yeast in which gas and volatile compound are results of the little organisms metabolism, using the above salts is based on their thermal decomposition. The leaving effect is due to carbon dioxide and ammonia released at the high temperature concomitant with frying/baking. There is no need to wait for raising a dough, with chemical leaving agents.

Unless you need a very special formulation, you should be able to reproduce the previous results without importing anything. Just experiment with the ratio of the two and it should be fixed.


I suspect that you're not talking about 'slow cookers' but 'sous vide' as you mentioned 'new trend'.

Although food is often cooked at temperatures within the 'food danger zone' (below 140°F / 60°C), the increased time at that temperature results in pasteurization of the food item when done correctly.

The recommended temperatures to cook food so you can be assured that you've killed off bacteria and such are based on having it there for only a few seconds.  The further below that temperature that you are, the longer time that's required to kill off the bacteria ... although there is a lower limit of when you can't achieve pasteurization (practically it's 130°F / 55°C)

For more details, see http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Safety


If you have a recipe which calls for "creaming the sugar and oil", forget it and find another recipe. Creaming is a process which only makes sense with a solid fat, so the sugar crystals create tiny air bubbles which are then expanded during leavening. Mixing sugar and oil separately, with or without much whipping, doesn't do anything. If the recipe author was not aware of that, he had no business creating recipes, and you can expect there to be other mistakes.

But if we assume that you have recipes which require real creaming (they will use butter or other solid fat), you can't make them in the blender. The cutting motion of the blender blade is very different from the paddle action of a mixer. It won't work. You can do it by hand, although it is a bit tedious.

If you have other cake recipes, for example muffin method cakes, it will work OK. You shouldn't overwhip, for the reasonds SAJ mentioned, but it is not guaranteed that it will happen. A cake recipe has lots of fat and uses a low-gluten flour. If you blend in short pulses, the result's toughness will be very slight compared to a mixed cake, it can cost you points in a culinary school, but family and friends won't notice it. On the other hand, there isn't any special reason to use a blender for them and not mix by hand, as there isn't much work involved there.


Can I add mint flavoring to ready made royal icing?

Yes you can in small quantities. My mum used to do a lot of cake decorating, and still does bits with my kids.
Adding small amounts of liquid such as flavoring/colouring is perfectly fine. It is important to knead it in properly. You can use a small quantity of icing sugar to prevent it sticking, but the main thing is to keep handling to a minimum where possible as the heat in your hands is more likely to make it sticky.

In terms of application, we typically use wooden tooth picks and dot the flavoring/coloring in, then repeat as necessary.


What to do with egg whites after stiff peaks collapse & you can't re-beat

You could try making coconut macaroons: http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1012523-coconut-nut-macaroons

The egg whites only have to be lightly beaten until they're foamy, so deflated egg whites might work.


I accidentally made a thick pita by simply rolling my pitas thicker.  In my experience, technique is king with pita.  The temperature of the oven (I bake at 450 degrees) and making sure to roll smoothly without any punctures in the dough, then place directly on the rack make perfectly puffy pitas every time.  The thickness of the dough surrounding the pocket is entirely dependent - in my case - on how thick I roll.  I use the lavash cracker recipe from Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice as my dough.


Sour flavours come from acids, like citric acid (in lemon juice, for example) or acetic acid (in vinegar). I don't think there's any one acid that qualifies as 'simplest'.
Bitterness is much more complicated; there are lots of different foods (coffee, uncured olives, citrus peel, alcohol, hops quinine) which are bitter to some extent but there isn't an obvious culinary ingredient/chemical that just gives 'bitter' as a taste. Our perception of bitterness is believed to have evolved to signal toxic foods.
It's worth pointing out that your existing examples are an oversimplification: C₆H₁₂O₆ is glucose, which is only one kind of sugar, and there are others which also taste sweet to us (as well as non-sugar sweeteners, some of which taste far sweeter by mass than sugar. There are also other salts, like KCl (potassium chloride). There is much more information in the Wikipedia article if you are interested.


A very simple answer why you prick sausages. When the sausages get heated up, the fat content and also air pressure inside start to grow. Pricking sausgaes allow the air and fat to be 'released', otherwise, the skin of the sausages will start to crack which eventually will result in losing more juice and 'fat'.

Yes, Pricking may lead to dry sausages, so you don't have to overdo it and also use the small toothpick to do it which will reduce the damages.


It looks like you substituted fully a third of the total flour in the recipe with coffee flour. Admittedly I have never used (or even heard of) coffee flour before, but I bet it does not come out as sticky as regular all-purpose flour when mixed with water (or milk, coffee, etc.)

You can make paste (for sticking up posters and wallpaper) with wheat flour and water, so if your muffins came out crumbly and wouldn't stick together, I would suspect the coffee flour, or rather a lack of wheat flour. That novel ingredient does sound like an interesting idea, but one third of a critical component like flour might be too radical.

Both the milk and the coffee in the recipe are primarily water (at least for structural purposes), so I doubt if that substitution was your problem. As far as the butter, one stick sounds like a reasonable amount to me, and lack of fat doesn't usually cause crumbliness.

It would be a good experiment to make the muffins as specified once, just to see what they are supposed to be like, and then start substituting (conservatively at first) in the next batch.


I would try the cold oil spherefication method. Using agar agar as your gelling agent. The cold oil spherefication involves a solution which is in this case coffee that contains 1% to 2% agar (depending on desired consistency). The solution, which is warm is then inserted into a cold oil bath. Which will set the agar.

Why agar? Because agar melt at 85C. Making it perfect if your serving it in a latte.

You'll have to start by chilling your oil in bowl in the freezer for about 30 minutes. Lets say 1 litre. Next measure the amount of coffee your gelling and add your agar ( i would start with 1.5%) so for 100ml 1.5g agar. Bring this solution to a boil in a pan. Agar disolves at 95C. Keep wisking because if will catch. You'll see a change in viscosity, then you know your there.

Now there is alot of ways adding the droplets to your oil bath. Syringes and pipettes and so on. My recomendation is to use a squeezy bottle with a tin nozzle. Take your bowl of chilled oil and spin it ( i guess the choice of bowl and surface is of essence here). A round bottom bowl on an ice bath would be ideal. Now, gradually in a neat stream start dripping with your squeezy bottle into the side of the bowl. And there you are, Agar gellies!


Canning tomato sauce problem, jar broken in boiling method

Jars burst either because of internal pressure or thermal shock.

There are a couple things you can do to reduce the risk of bursting.

use actual canning jars.
Some people like to reuse regular jars that aren't as strong. This will often work fine but increases the risk of bursting.
make sure the jar is hot.
A cold jar into hot water or a hot jar into cold water will burst almost every time.
bring water to a boil after adding jars
don't overtighten lids.
Rings should be tightened just enough to firmly hold the lid on. Too much and pressure won't be able to escape during boiling. Remember the bottle is sealed by pressure-not by the ring.

Based on your description, if you had any of these problems I would suspect the last.
However, sometimes bottles just burst because of manufacturing defects. This doesn't happen often but it is sad when it does.


What is the difference between a guajillo and a cayenne pepper?

The Guajillo is a dried Mirasol chili. The Mirasol is in the same family as the Cayenne (Capsicum annuum),  but with 2,500-5,000 Scovilles compared to Cayenne's 30,000 - 50,000 Scovilles, it has significantly less heat.


Yes it is absolutely possible!

Soft-boiled eggs are delicious. I make them all the time, love it especially on ramen:

( source )

The trick is to boil the egg in a rolling boil for 5 or 6 minutes depending on the size of the egg, then dumping them in cold water to stop them from cooking further. This product might help too.

You have to be a little bit more careful than with hard-boiled eggs when peeling, but it really isn't very hard to do!

I then dip the meat from my ramen in the egg yolks, and later break the white in pieces and eat it with the noodles. Yum!


High altitude adjustment for a small rib roast needed

No adjustments are needed. The main reason that high-altitude cooking is hard is the reduced boiling point of water at low altitudes. But here, where the meat will be under the boiling point of water for the whole cook time, this is hardly an issue. Check out this article from the Spruce Eats:

Dry-heat cooking techniques like roasting or grilling are not affected in the same way because high altitudes don't alter the way air is heated.... Note that the temperature isn't affected, just the moisture content of the food. So a grilled steak might be drier at high altitude than at sea level — even if it's not overcooked temperature-wise.

I don't think that the issue of dryness is a big deal here; since you are cooking a large cut, only the surface will dry out. In fact, increased surface dryness would be a benefit if you plan to sear the meat after cooking. I highly recommend searing the meat if you plan to serving it hot; browning adds great flavor and texture that I think you will miss otherwise.


Why don't most non-East Asian varieties of rice stick together?

Please see the excerpt below from  this page . There is also a chart that lists different types of long, medium, and short grain rices and their characteristics and usage examples.

  Rice is composed of two different types of starch molecules: amylose and amylopectin. The amounts of these two starches determine the texture of rice when it is cooked.

  Rice with higher amylose content, such as long grain rice, is firmer and fluffier. Rice with lower amylose content, such as short and medium grain rice, has a softer, stickier texture.

  The Effect of Starch on Rice Cooking:

  Dishes such as risotto and sushi rely on rice that is low in amylose to create their characteristic soft and sticky textures.
  Rice dishes that have fluffy separate grains, like rice pilaf, are best made with rice that is higher in amylose starch.
  Some sticky rice dishes, like many Asian desserts, are made from varieties of rice that contain no amylose starch. These varieties of rice are called sweet, waxy or glutinous rice.

In general, the shorter the grain, the stickier the rice will be.


How to cook chicken cutlets in a cast-iron skillet

Chicken breasts do not require extremely high heat, nor strong searing (in fact, they are quite easy to overcook), so while a cast iron pan is certainly effective, it is not required.  Any quality pan will do.
If you are sauteing simple chicken breasts (perhaps lightly marinated or seasoned), the technique is quite simple.
Often, you are better off pan-roasting as follows:

Preheat your pan for about 5 minutes over medium high flames (or burner setting if you are electric), and oil it lightly.

Put the chicken breasts in, and leave undisturbed at medium heat until they are lightly browned on one side and released from the pan, 4-5 minutes.

Flip the breasts over and again, leave undisturbed until lightly browned.

If not done, place in a moderate (350 F, 180 C) oven until done, probably 5-10 minutes, depending on the thickness of your breasts.
You will know they are done when they register 160 - 170 F (depending on your preference; I like the lower end of the range) on a high quality instant read thermometer.   You will also learn to know when they are done based on the texture an how much resistance they have to being poked.

Once they are done, remove them from the pan and let them rest a minute or two.

During this time, you may optionally return the pan to the stove top and create a pan sauce of your choice.

While a little more work, pounding the with meat mallet (I don't own one, so I use an 8 inch skillet as a mallet) to an even thickness of no more than a little less than an inch (2 cm) will help them cook quickly and evenly.
Note:  if you have true cutlets (which are about 1/4 inch thick, less than a CM), you will need to raise the heat slightly, and only cook for 2-3 minutes.  The oven phase is unlikely to be necessary.  Otherwise, the technique is the same.


How long does a fruit and sugar mixture last?

It depends on a lot of factors: what you're describing isn't much different from making jam, and homemade jam is good for about a month, once you open it. Assuming you got the temp high enough to kill all the bacteria, the time will depend entirely on PH and water content. The more acidic, and the less watery the better.

Generally things like this freeze well though, so, when in doubt, throw it in the freezer.


What is the definition of a cup of coffee

The most common global standard for recipe and marketing purposes** is 150 ml (5 oz), with a caffeine content around 100 mg. This commonly refers to instant, filter, or drip coffee, or a mixed espresso coffee like a latte

Coffee is traditionally served in a smaller cup than other hot beverages, mainly due to strength and expense. For example, an Italian espresso cup is around 30 to 60 ml (1 to 2 oz) in size, with a caffeine content a little more then 100 mg

Some references

http://www.ico.org/caffeine.asp
http://www.scaa.org/?page=resources&d=cupping-standards

** e.g. marketing description of a "6 cup coffee maker" refers to 6 x 150 ml cups


Looks like heating plates could be the solution. Note that I have never used them, and the link below is just an example; if you decide on these, shop around for the best ones for you!

https://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Ware-Tamer-Burner-Plate/dp/B00004W4UJ


What can I substitute for butter in Alfredo sauce?

This is 100% about flavor. Butter will give you this, EVOO will give you that, ...

Butter will give you a 'richer' taste, whatever that may mean for you.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil, generally speaking is far more powerful and may become overwhelming.
Any other oil will give you a different taste profile.

Sunflower oil may be the most neutral and therefor the most appropriate for Alfredo sauce. Cannola oil may be another neutral oil, but I've never used it myself.

Generally speaking, an oil is an oil is a fat (for emulsifying).


How can I test if a dehydrator is getting to the proper temperature?

The manual for the Aroma 5-tray dehydrator says that the drying temperature is about 150°F (65°C). So all you need to do is find a thermometer that you can fit inside it, turn it on, wait 5-10 minutes for it to heat up, and check the temperature.

You could also simply test it by drying a quick test batch of something; if it gets nicely dehydrated in roughly the expected amount of time, the temperature was probably fine.


My toasted couscous didn't soften properly. Why?

It sounds like it might have been fregola, a toasted pasta from Sardinia. It is quite similar to Israeli couscous. There is nothing wrong with the cooking technique you are using, I think you just might have found a brand/batch that isn't very well made. If there is a lot of unevenness in the toasting or size of the pieces, then that will likely result in an uneven cooking in the liquid. As you can imagine, the darkly toasted pieces have more of a shell that makes it slower for them to absorb water. Don't give up on fregola though, it can be delicious stuff. You can also buy regular Israeli couscous and dry-toast it in the pan for awhile before adding the other ingredients.


How to make sugar glass without corn syrup or cream of tartar?

I was composing as @Melissa was responding...  here's some more detail to append to my comment above.

Sucrose is a disaccharide consisting of fructose and glucose.  When boiled with water, it forms a syrup.  When this syrup cools, depending on the relative concentrations of sugar and water, different properties will result (e.g., liquid, thread, firmball, soft crack, ...).  However, sucrose by itself has impurities; these impurities will tend to cause (or help to form) small grainy crystals (think granulated sugar) instead of a smooth, transparent, uniform, glass-like candy. This potential for crystal formation is why, e.g, ...

stirring or disruption of cooling sugar syrup is not recommended;
other things are added (fats, other sugars, etc.) for things like taffee or hard candy;

As noted by @Melissa, other sugars (such as fructose and glucose are found in corn syrup), are added that help to reduce the likelihood of "bad" (undesired) crystal formation.  You should be able to find corn syrup or other alternatives by mail order.  Other options include pure glucose syrup.

You may be able to find golden syrup, which has basically similar properties to corn syrup, but it probably has too many other impurities to make it suitable for candy making. I don't know about maple syrup, honey, or agave syrup.

Your question about acid is an excellent one: Acids aid in the formation of invert sugar.  Invert sugar is sucrose ("table sugar") that has been (partially or completely) chemically broken down into its constituent monosaccharides: glucose and fructose.  Heating alone will start this "inversion" of sucrose into glucose and fructose; acids will help speed this reaction.

Other possible acids include citric acid, but I wouldn't recommend lemon juice; again, it's got too many other impurities.  Powdered, purified citric acid can often be found at Indian grocers; it's useful for cheese-making also.

Basically, the addition of corn syrup and the addition of acid fill a similar purpose: providing monosaccharides to prevent the formation of undesirable sucrose crystals in your cooling sugar syrup. Strictly speaking, you don't need to add anything to get a glass-like candy; however, it's difficult. Adding invert sugar or catalyzing invert sugar formation with an acid will help improve the margin for error.

Also, as I said in comment above, you might consider using isomalt instead of sugar (i.e., only isomalt in place of all the other sugar; no sucrose, no corn syrup, no acid).  It's basically edible in small quantities, but I wouldn't eat a lot of it (of course, I wouldn't eat much sugar, either...:). Please look up information on the edibility and safety for more information on the quantities you're discussing. That said, sugar sculptures aren't often intended for actual consumption...? Isomalt melts directly (no water needed) and doesn't crystallize as quickly as sucrose.  It's more expensive but easier to work with in some ways.  It's less hygroscopic (water absorption) than sucrose, and won't caramelize (browning) as sucrose.

HTH; respond to comments and I could provide more detail if helpful.  Good luck with your sugarwork!


Baking concentrate using Hard Alcohol ex Jack Daniels

You can't. The compounds which make Jack Daniels taste like Jack Daniels are alcohol soluble and highly volatile. If you try cooking off the alcohol, the taste will evaporate together with the alcohol.

If you are thinking of "rum essence" for baking, that's not derived from rum at all. It's simply ethylformate, and it's produced in a lab.

You can mix xanthan gum or something else with alcohol, but it won't make it a concentrate in any way. In fact, it is likely to make the taste somewhat weaker, as these thickeners have a tendency of trapping taste.


During freezing, you care about two parameters - crystal size and overrun. While people making ice cream at home will frequently tell you that smaller crystals equal softer ice cream, that's not exactly correct, especially when you can control the two parameters over a wider range. In reality, smaller crystals make smoother ice cream, while more overrun makes softer ice cream.
In the context of commercial ice cream freezing with a conventional freezer (not liquid nitrogen), if your ice cream freezes too quickly, it will be frozen before it has been properly frothed by the dasher, and you will end up with too dense ice cream. This is why commercial freezers are made on purpose in the -23 to -29C range. They could build them colder, but that is not desirable. This seems to be true over a wide range of technologies, since both batch freezers and continuous freezers operate at these temperatures. The amount of overrun is then controlled by dasher speed and dasher design.
I don't know the exact physics of liquid nitrogen ice cream and why it works well. I could imagine different scenarios: maybe people consuming it prefer low-overrun ice cream, maybe the boiling nitrogen introduces sufficient aeration, or maybe the dasher breaks it up into very fine pieces because it is so incredibly brittle. Possibly somebody with first-hand experience will comment on this. But it is a different principle than conventional ice cream preparation where you want to give your ice cream time to get churned properly before it freezes too much.


Replacement for the ring seal or gasket in a blender

You could cut one from an appropriately sized piece of rubber.  I have a couple of palm-sized pieces of rubber for gripping jars that would probably do the trick.


Many leafy and dark green vegetables have high tannic and dicarboxylic (including oxalic) acid levels. Though these are weak acids, they have a powerful astringent effect. Some of the main tricks to hiding and/or removing these are soaking in:

Ascorbic acid (vitamin C, lemon juice)
Fats
Food grade lime
Milk

So if your smoothy is milk based you will be extracting the maximum tannin from the spinach :-)

A pre-soak in a small quantity of milk and then discarding that milk, or a pre-soak in lemon juice and then a quick fresh water rinse are probably the simplest "fixes" of the spinach's astringent effect


How do I modify cooking methods for a markedly smaller roast than most recipes state?

It is past Easter but for future you may want to try this.  Get a saute pan or a saute pot you want to roast in, heat it and then brown your roast, all sides.  Before you do that, be sure you season your roast very well so that when you put it in the hot saute pan with the oil you are browning the dry seasonings also (be generous with your seasonings).  Once well browned take out of pan or if large enough pan take out of pan, put a rack on the bottom of the pot put the roast back in, cover, put in preheated 350 degree F oven for about 45 minutes to l hour, covered.  Temperature of roast should be 145 degrees for medium to medium rare.  Let sit for about 20-30 minutes.


Is it possible to make souffles that rise without beating egg whites?

TL:DR answer - not really. The beaten egg whites are an integral component of the souffle, forming both the rising action of the mixture (by capturing air within the protein network of the eggs) and and the structure. The recipe you linked to is more of a cake than a souffle, even using the creaming method commonly seen in cake production.

While other ingredients can capture air as well (such as the gluten formation from flour in a cake or bread), they change the nature of this dish so much that it's no longer recognizable as a souffle.

Adding baking soda unfortunately won't help in this particular instance as the rise caused by this is due to the carbon dioxide gas released. The souffles have that part covered with the air bubbles released during baking - what they need is the structure to trap them in.

I hope that helped to clarify!


Well, this is rather complex. Let me break it down in two parts:

Oil on the meat vs. oil in the pan
There are two advantages to oiling your meat instead of pouring oil in the pan: Less splattering and typically less oil used overall.
But keep in mind which oils you use: For frying / searing you want something with a high smoke point. Leave your extra virgin for cold or only slightly warm uses.
Oil or spices first
Your meat should be dry before you put it in the hot pan or you will end up with possibly painful splatters, or at least a lot of extra cleanup (see 1.). So you should always dry your meat, e.g. with paper towels. This will mean your spices are less likely to stick to the surface. Oiling the meat first helps the spices to adhere better, rubbing them in or just sprinkling doesn't make much of a difference.


How can I get unsweetened gluten-free chocolate brownies to hold together?

I would use stewed apple as per assorted recipes on the net - if you stew cooking apples with no added sugar then they won't make it any sweeter.


Why should you remove the core of garlic?

The green shoot in the middle of a clove of garlic is said to have a somewhat bitter flavor.


How do you accompany other veggies with caramelized onions?

Carrots and onions have different cooking times, so no, you can't throw them together.

What I would do is cut the carrots as small as the onions (just for aesthetic purposes), start stewing the carrots in a closed pot first and season them as you like, and when they're nearly done, add the onions and caramelise them normally while they're stewing together with the carrots and you'll end up with caramelised carrot-onion stew.

Obviously, you can always cook them separately and then mix them just before serving, but that would take an additional pot and I don't like doing dishes...  ;-)


What is an 8.5 x 4.5in bread pan in UK lb based pan sizes?

Unfortunately sorting bread pans by loaf weight is very vague. A 1lb light and fluffy white sandwich bread might have about the same size as a 2lb heavy, dense wholegrain or rye bread. Also, do you expect your bread to rise really high over the rim or should that be more of a limit? In short, the size of "a 1lb bread" depends a lot on the kind of bread you have in mind.

A quick Internet check of pan dimensions from various manufactureres confirms that there is no standard size, it seems they vary by up to 50% in volume.

So if your relative's wish list states a pan of a certain size, I suggets you go shopping equipped with a meassuring tape instead of looking for a certain "pound value".

Side note: Most 2lb pans are a tad bigger that the requested size and 1lb ones a bit smaller, but I found one sold in the UK by Williams Sonoma (what a coincidence!) that seems to have exactly the sought-for dimensions.


Why does the pineapple always ripen/soften from the base?

I believe the cause of the pineapple being ripened from the base is because of gravity pulling the juice downwards which it then ferments and turns into alcohol.


How can I increase the longevity of my bananas?

My wife freezes bananas since we buy so many for our two year old and they always taste perfect even after weeks. The peel practically gets frozen and prevents any freezer burn flavor!


You could use oil, but I don't think it's worth it; realize that you're going to be using additional energy for obtaining, cleaning, and disposal of it.

Regarding using a broth with a porous bag, well, that isn't sous vide. That's more akin to a slow-cooker. The whole point of sous vide is the airtight barrier between food and heat.

Update

Oil does not have a higher thermal mass than water. Ammonia does, but I'd suggest avoiding that. ;)

Source: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-fluids-d_151.html


What are the mushrooms used in this (video) recipe?

I'll elaborate on Joe's answer some. It's a little known fact that button mushrooms (also called common, white, or table mushrooms), cremini (crimini, baby portobello, baby bella, brown mushroom), and portbello (portabella) are all the same species. Specifically, agaricus bisporus. The difference in appearance and taste is based solely on maturity. The youngest are white button mushrooms, and the oldest are the big portobello mushrooms. There can be slight differences in skin color for the portobello's, though it tends to be darker than the stark white of the button.

The mushrooms in that video are most certainly fully mature agaricus bisporus, a portobello.

It's a safe bet that anytime you see a mushroom being substituted for a "steak", that it will be a portobello. They have a rich meaty flavor and texture that is perfectly suited for this.


Making saucisson sec from salami at home

While you might be technically correct if you were to call saucisson sec a salami, you do not make saucisson sec from commercial salami. Without knowing how the salami was produced it could be dangerous to try to do so.  The pictures you posted seems to be of a cooked salami, which is significantly more perishable than its uncooked cousins.

Traditionally, both saucisson sec and salami are dry cured sausages, but they can have significant differences in terms of ingredients and process. Saucisson is usually a coarse ground, pork based sausage lightly seasoned with garlic.  Salami is usually more finely ground, pork or pork-beef sausage often seasoned with coriander, ginger, and nutmeg. Salami is usually fermented with an added lactobacillus bacteria culture, saucisson sec can be made with or without an added culture. Both can be found with or without a covering of penicillium mold.

See also:

Is there a difference between 'Saucisson Sec' and 'Salami'?

http://www.popsugar.com/food/Difference-Between-Charcuterie-Salumi-Salami-3368740


How effective are modern home refrigerators at keeping other foods cool when hot food is introduced to the space?

In the answer linked in the question, I already provided the results of a simple experiment I carried out a few years ago with an infrared thermometer.  However, tonight I decided to try something slightly better with something closer to a worst-case scenario.  I don't think it definitively answers the question, but it gives another few data points.

I heated 4 quarts of water in a 6-quart stainless pot (with a glass lid) to a rolling boil.  I chose water since I didn't want to risk spoiling a large quantity of food.  Also, in some ways, water is a worst-case scenario.  It doesn't hold as much heat as, say, the equivalent volume of chili, but the heat circulates better in a thin liquid.  That means that the entire pot will stay at roughly the same hot temperature as it cools, rather than developing a cooler outer layer (as in a pot of chili), which will start to transfer heat more slowly after the initial burst.

Meanwhile, I inserted a digital probe thermometer with a cable to the display (usually for measuring meat temps in an oven) into a quart container of yogurt.  The probe was stuck through the seal in the top of the container, so very little air should have been able to get in or out.  The probe measures temperatures down to 32F accurately.  I taped the probe in position so the tip was immersed in the yogurt about 1/8 inch in from the edge of the container.

At the start of the experiment, the temperature of the yogurt was 38F.  Using an infrared thermometer, I could measure surface temps of many other items in the fridge, which varied from about 33F to 40F.  (There were a couple outliers, due to inaccuracies about the way infrared thermometers deal with reflective surfaces.)

When the water was boiling, I measured the temperature with a separate probe thermometer: it registered 212F.  I quickly put the lid on the pot and whisked it immediately into the fridge and shut the door.

The yogurt was less than 2 inches from the pot.  I allowed just enough room for a reasonable amount of air circulation.  The yogurt was oriented with the temperature probe toward the hot pot, so it should measure the area of the yogurt that would rise in temperature the most.  Also, as noted, the probe was only a fraction of an inch from the edge of the container, so any fluctuations even near the surface of the food should be registered.

Approximate times of temperature change in the yogurt are noted here:

0 minutes: 38F
~13.5 minutes: 39F
~26.5 minutes: 40F
~44.0 minutes: 41F
~64.5 minutes: 42F
~125 minutes: 41F

I was only checking the temperature every 10 minutes or so near the end, so the timing of the move back down to 41F may be slightly off.  At 150 minutes (2.5 hours), I stopped the experiment and removed the pot from the fridge, since I didn't want to waste any more time or energy cooling down a large pot of water.

Since little was happening with the temperature of the yogurt, I did open the fridge at 30 minutes to look around.  Using an infrared thermometer, I could tell that some container surfaces on the same shelf as the hot pot had reached the upper 40s with a maximum of about 50F.  (This included a dark surface container that is gray and black; it was not significantly different in temperature from the surface of the light-colored yogurt container.)  However, a probe inserted into these containers showed that no food inside was above 40F after 30 minutes.  Note that one large plastic container on that shelf had a large empty space near the top, and the surface temp for the empty portion rose to about 60-65F, but the bottom of container that actually contained juice remained about 40F, just like the yogurt.

Using the infrared thermometer, I measured the surface temperatures of food on shelves above and below the pot -- they barely budged a degree.  Nothing on any shelves above or below the pot was above 40F.  I checked these again every 30 minutes or so, with the same results.

(Note that 40F is not a hard cut-off point for bacterial growth.  Many types of spoilage bacteria grow in the 32-40F range, and they merely grow incrementally faster as the temperature gets warmer above 40F.  Spending an hour or two at 41F or 42F or even 45F is unlikely to cause problems -- this is a typical temperature range for most items kept on refrigerator doors -- though to be absolutely safe, avoid putting highly perishable items such as raw meats in areas with temperature fluctuations.)

I could feel warmer air circulating around the pot when the door was open, but it does not seem to have been enough to significantly alter temperatures other than in the items on the same shelf -- and there only by 2-4 degrees.

I also did check the water temperature a few times:

0 minutes: 212F
60 minutes: 156F
120 minutes: 128F
150 minutes: 116F

Since the temperature of the yogurt began to drop a little after 2 hours, it seems that even a gallon of water at about 130F wasn't enough to sustain a temperature increase in the fridge -- even on immediately adjacent items on the same shelf.

So, what do I conclude from this experiment?

Even a very large quantity of very hot food (a gallon of boiling water) was only able to move adjacent food items by a few degrees, and even that only might occur in outer layers of the food.  Items on shelves above or below were barely impacted at all.

I would note that I did not place any food directly in contact with the hot pot, because that would obviously cause an unacceptable rise in temperature (the pot continued to feel quite hot to the touch even after a couple of hours).  But with only a couple inches of space around the pot, the adjacent foods did not rise significantly in temperature.

I should also emphasize that surface temperatures of containers did rise up to 10-12 degrees on adjacent items in that first hour, even if the interior of the food varied much less.  (By about 1-1.5 hours, the surface temps had settled back down to within a degree of the internal food temps.)  I think this observation suggests that caution should be applied to keep highly perishable foods (e.g., uncooked meats) away from any very hot containers, though this seems like common sense.

Perhaps the most surprising result from my perspective is that the temperature rise was halted by the time the water temperature got down to maybe 140F or so.  I doubt many people are placing foods a lot hotter than 140F directly in the fridge.  Also, from a food safety perspective, the food could be cooled outside to 140F (which is when bacteria may begin to grow again), and then placed in the fridge for the rest of the cooling.  In my fridge, anyway, it seems doubtful that even a relatively large quantity of food 140F or lower would cause things to heat up around it.

Again -- please note that I am NOT advocating this practice, since the hot food itself could take quite a few hours to cool down in the fridge, potentially causing spoilage in the hot food.  (For large quantities, use an ice bath, or break down into small containers and allow plenty of air circulation in the fridge.)  But, except in extreme circumstances, there should only be a minor impact on the rest of the food in a modern well-functioning fridge.

In any case, putting hot food directly in the fridge is a safer option than leaving it on the counter to cool.


How to get puff pastry to cook right through

A few points to consider...

Try docking the pastry.

  Docking means to pierce lightly with a fork, or a docker (looks like a spiked paint roller), to make small holes in dough that will let steam escape during baking. This helps the dough to remain flat and even.

ref: http://powerhungry.com/2009/02/puff-pastry-docking/
In general, to cook food more evenly, one should cook longer at a lower temperature. The problem is that the dough on the bottom of your crust is not reaching a high enough temperature by the time the top of your crust is done cooking.
Puff Pastry is notoriously finicky. Be sure to handle the dough according to puff pastry best practices to ensure the layers do not collapse and stick together.

Pepperidge Farm has a tutorial website (http://www.puffpastry.com/videos-and-tips#howto-demos) to help people with puff pastry issues, but it doesn't appear to cover much detail.

You must be very gentle when rolling out the pastry because it is
multiple layers of dough with fat between each.
Do not mangle the dough, cut clean lines and try not to apply pressure except where the knife is cutting
Do not let the dough get warm before you are ready to cook. The fat melts and the layers will stick and not puff properly.


Difference between Welsh rabbit and beer cheese dip

The similarities…
Fat, flour, cheese, milk
The differences…
Welsh Rarebit - English mustard, Worcestershire sauce
Beer cheese dip - garlic, paprika, dijon mustard, beer [optional in rarebit]
You might swap one for the other, but warn your diners first which they're getting.
If I got garlic in Welsh rarebit I'd probably not eat it, wondering what the heck was wrong with it. if I knew it was meant to be there beforehand, I probably would.
Similar could be said for the Dijon [too vinegary] & paprika [odd colour even before tasting].
I'd eat either & probably enjoy it, so long as I knew what I was getting before I tasted it; otherwise you get that odd mental trip-up like when you think you've been served tea but it's actually coffee. It's revolting until you realise, then it's fine.
BTW, rarebit works really well for Philly cheesesteak ;)


You can freeze (as < 0 °C / 32 °F) bread and it will last longer. As @FuzzyChef answered, there's even a whole "just baked bread" industry using that method.

The main problem with taking a piece of bread at room temperature and freeze it, is that it must go through the 0~5 °C / 32~41 °F zone. That is the temperature at which bread stales faster (as starches degelation). So, one should try the bread to be at that temperature the least possible time (maybe having small pieces of bread, or having a freezer at the lowest temperature as possible).

The same applies when you defrost the bread. Luckly, that degelation is, up to a point, reversible: If heated above 60 °C / 140 °F it will gelate again. So, better than letting warm up at room temperature, you can put it in an oven or a toaster.

Side note 1: remember to cut the focaccia before freezing it.

Side note 2: frozen bread industry helps itself with this.


Does Lemon juice change acidic level when frozen?

The acidity, ie. the amount of chemical acid in the juice, will not change when lemon juice is frozen. Acid would need to be neutralized by a base, or in the case of citric acid and other organic acids, very high heat.

Was the lemon juice completely thawed? If not, that could be an issue, all the juice must be liquid for the acid to be free and work on the yolks.

Perhaps there was something else happening in your recipie. If you can edit in basic proportions and method. AS I understand it an icebox pie is mixed and chilled to set, usually no cooking, like to set a custard?


This can easily work as a grill.  A cover is not necessary. You simply need a grate that fits over the surface. I would go for a grate that fits over the rim, you don't want to worry about shifting and balance while cooking.  Holes in the bottom for air flow would be nice, but again, not necessary.
Start a fire, burn down to coals.  You can use the "hand test" to check the temperature.  Grill your product.
In a grilling situation, the flavor is initiated from drippings hitting the coals, it is not necessarily a smoking situation, though you will pick up some smoke depending on your fuel.


Why my Biriyani gets mushy when I cook for 30/35 mins (suggested by lot of chefs)

As with many dishes of this type, there are as many ways to cook it as there are cooks - but overall I think you have three things combining to make your rice mushy.

You are over-cooking your rice at the start.

Your burner temperature is too high

Your simmer time is too short.

Basically you're driving off water but not at a pace the rice can settle to its final state, absorbing some of the oil too - or being nicely coated at least.
As a 'first fix' method, I'd start with only 2 mins boil of the rice - some chefs even kill the heat as soon as it boils.
If you have an oven, I'd switch the cook to the oven, in a pot with a well-fitting lid, 170-180° for anything from 1 to 3 hours, depending on how cooked down you want the meat. Personally, I'd go for 3 hours - that means you either need enough practise to get your water level right at the start or check it half way & add more if necessary. Don't stir it during cooking, you'll risk breaking up the rice too much.
If you still want to go with stove top, then I'd invest in a simmer ring [$£€ 5 on eBay etc] so you can spread & reduce the heat getting to the bottom of your pan. This will mean you can leave it longer without risk of it burning.
Lengthening your cook time will improve both the meat & the rice.
After comments:-
It may be worthwhile investigating different rice brands, of course, not all rice is equal.
Another option [you don't mention in the question whether you already do this] is to pre-soak the rice in cold water for 30 mins, then rinse well, before cooking.
Overall, the biryani method relies on the rice first absorbing water as it cooks, but then being infused with the oils from the meat & marinade in the later stages; through this period it will go through a slight drying stage & tend to separate better at the end of cooking.


Do you need to break up a large dough ball into smaller balls for optimal proving?

Almost every type of yeast bread dough is allowed to rise twice after kneading.  The first rise is called bulk-fermentation - after kneading, all of the dough (the bulk) gets set-aside to allow the yeast to do its job.  After this rise is complete, the dough is deflated (some people call this punching down), portioned and appropriately shaped, then allowed to rise a second time which is called proofing.

So:  first rise in bulk (bulk fermentation), second rise portioned-out (proofing).

The gas that expands the dough is carbon dioxide and it will form throughout the dough mass from yeast activity without any problem during bulk fermentation.


Why did James Bond heat up the knife for his foie gras?

From this link

  The key to slicing and portioning foie is to treat it like a rich
  mousse-cake: Make sure to heat up your knife under running water in
  between every slice. A cold knife will catch and stick in the foie,
  causing it to tear or crumble. A hot knife will melt the fat as it
  goes through, leaving you with clean, smooth surfaces to sear.


In order to mix the cocoa powder in water/milk, is it a good idea to put the cocoa powder in the milk while heating it?

No, it is not a good idea at all. It will be worse, not better. What you are missing here is that cocoa powder does not dissolve at all, never, it just disperses in water (or milk). So there is no reason why methods for dissolving stuff would work with cocoa powder. You will need to use a method created for colloid-producing powders like cocoa powder, which is mostly starch with fat.

This is why the answers to the other question recommend the slurry method. When you are dispersing an absorptive powder like starch, you always run a risk of clumping, and the slurry is designed to work around that problem. But starch also thickens much more under heat, so if you were to not just forego the slurry, but simply drop the cocoa powder into hot water, this would be the worst choice possible, leading to instant unbreakable clumps. The slurry method wouldn't work with hot water either, you'll get clumps before you have created the slurry.

So, the short answer is: if you try it, it won't "dissolve automatically", it will produce an ugly undrinkable mixture of clumps.


Why is there a luminous orange hue in this piece of tuna?

From Cooks Illustrated

  The rainbow effect is caused by the reflection of light off muscle
  fibers, technically known as double refraction or birefringence. It
  occurs when the muscle fibers are cut crosswise and can be observed
  for several days after slicing the meat. Light striking the ends of
  the fibers is reflected in two different directions, appearing to the
  eye as a rainbow of colors. Just like a real rainbow, the multicolor
  appearance is fleeting, visible only when the muscle fibers are cut at
  a specific angle relative to the grain of the meat and when the meat
  is viewed at a certain angle.

  One more point to keep in mind: While the rainbow effect is harmless
  and doesn’t offer any indication of how fresh the meat is, there is
  another color change that is a sign of meat that has passed its prime:
  the development of a green pigment. Meat with a green cast is
  contaminated with bacteria and should be avoided.


Why can food be left out to cool (140F to 40F in < 6h) but not to defrost?

The very document you link to clearly explains the reason:

  It is important to use methods that will allow the entire mass to thaw evenly. Any method that allows one part, for example, the outside surface, to defrost before the inner portion is not acceptable, because the portion that thaws out first will be in the danger zone before the other portion is thawed.

Bacteria grow and produce toxins while in the danger zone. If you thaw on the counter then the exterior will be crawling with them long before the interior is thawed.

The other methods are acceptable because:

Keeping the food refrigerated never permits any part of the food to enter the danger zone.
Very cold water keeps the exterior cold, which is close enough to refrigeration as long as the food will be cooked immediately.
Microwaves partially penetrate the interior and cook the entire portion very quickly; the food will be in the danger zone but for too short a time period to matter.

It's also very important to note that the cooling rules are not about simply "watching the clock". If it were that simple, they wouldn't bother with rules, because room temperature is in a pretty consistent range no matter where you are. Cooling hot, potentially-dangerous food on a countertop is every bit as inappropriate as defrosting it there.  Food service professionals will hold the food above 140° F until it is ready to serve or store, and if storing, they'll cool it very quickly by dividing into smaller portions and/or using an ice water bath or even specialized equipment (e.g. flash freezing).

There's really no practical difference here. The extra 1 hour permitted to cool from 140° F to 70° F is really only because you've just cooked it, so (a) it's been pasteurized and (b) temperatures very close to 140° F are not very hospitable for bacteria should the food become contaminated again. When defrosting from frozen, it's assumed that the food (cooked or raw) is already contaminated either from factory handling or from prior cooling in the danger zone, so you need to strictly follow the 2-hour rule.


The Dinty Moore recipe adds water to thin the stew so the dumplings will boil properly. Otherwise it will be difficult to get your dumplings to cook evenly as they won't sink into the thick stew and the stew won't have enough convection around them.

I would follow the Dinty Moore recipe including the dilution.

Pillsbury calls for 25-30 minutes but that is in a slow cooker and your stew will be hotter than that. Check the dumplings after 10 minutes just to make sure they are done. Under cooked dumplings are not good memories.


Can I put other vegetables in a manual wheat grass juicer?

Some juicers are better than other kinds for different things.  A dedicated wheat grass juicers probably isn't going to juice spinach, carrots, and kale well.

A centrifugal juice usually doesn't handle wheatgrass well and in general isn't supposed to be as efficient as some other kinds for leafy greens.

A single-gear or double-gear masticating juicer works great for leafy greens, but isn't supposed to be as efficient for softer fruit.

If you're looking for something that will do wheatgrass, leafy greens, and a variety of other things - consider something like the Omega 8004.  Long warranty, easy to clean, and gives good quality juice.  If you need to make juice for a lot of people though, it is kind of slow for large quantities.


To correct your statement:
Water is the arch enemy of liquid chocolate...

You can even let melted chocolate and liquid touch, this will not cause the chocolate to seize, stirring might.

If you want to create a filled bite of chocolate-encased deliciousness often called Belgian praline (but names may vary), you can go different routes:

Prepare a (semi-)solid centre, e.g. a piece of marzipan or, if firm enugh to cut, your fondant, then coat it by dipping it in tempered chocolate.
Prepare a hollow shell by pouring tempered chocolate into molds and pouring it out again before it sets. Then fill the shell with your desired filling, leaving a bit of space to the top. Close the shell by piping or pouring more chocolate on it. Let cool between steps and before unmolding.
For really liquid fillings like liqueur, you need shells that have only a small opening. You can make them yourself, either by using a special mold with a small opening or by making semi-spheres, "glueing" two halves together and then using a warm tool to melt a hole into the ball. Or you can order them from specialized suppliers. Fill the shell with your liquid filling, then close the hole by piping a drop of chocolate on it.
Optional: dip the filled object in chocolate to hide seams etc.


How to detect if meat (or any product) is not safe to be prepared as food?

Visual signs and smells are an unreliable source for making this decision.  Foods can be contaminated, and/or unsafe, and you will be unable to tell by looking at a product or smelling it.  The only reliable ways to be safe are to (a) understand the source of your food, (b) ensure (or assume) that it has been prepared and stored properly before it got to you, (c) pay attention to packing dates and shelf life, (d) store the food properly yourself, and (d) cook your food properly.

According to foodsafety.gov (USA), in general, raw ground meat, poultry, and seafood has a refrigeration shelf life of 1-2 days. Raw roasts, steaks, and chops (beef, veal, lamb, and pork) have a 3 to 5 day shelf life, and cooked meat, poultry, and seafood can be stored in the refrigerator 3 to 4 days.


Why is cocoa powder sometimes used in chocolate cakes when chopped semisweet chocolate is already used?

You can't add too much chocolate into a cake, as you'll end up adding too much fat, which will change how the cake sets up.  They likely wanted more chocolate flavor than what they felt they could get from chocolate alone, and so opted to add cocoa powder as well.


Texture issue in homemade powdered sugar

I'm gonna guess you just didn't go long enough.  I make my own in the food processor all the time, but I turn it on high, go have a snack and come back in 10 minutes.  It certainly does take quite some time.


What should I look for in strawberries at the market?

I mostly agree with Rumtscho, except that I think "red through and through" is a bit too strong: a bit of white at the top doesn't have to mean anything, as long as it is not too much, and as long as there is not white in the bottom half—so these look good:

Another thing to watch out for is how far apart the seeds are. I think one can never be sure of anything with strawberries, but, if the seeds are farther apart, that usually means they are sweeter. I also like the ones where the seeds are a bit deeper into the skin better. The ones above look good in both respects. These, however, do not:


1 baking pan, dough for 2 loaves. What do?

Is there a very special reason you want to bake it in a bread pan?

The recipe is solid enough to be baked free-standing, in any bread shape you like - batard, boule, and all the fancy ones. It actually will be way too dry if you tried to incorporate the whole flour (but notice it does not direct you to do so). So you can shape, proof and bake completely without a pan, simply place it on a baking sheet or pizza stone, or onto the bottom of a cake pan.

Alternatively, you can bake it in any other pan you have. For example, round pans such as cast iron paella pans make great round-low breads, although I must say these are better for a large family dining together, since they are not that convenient to cut into slices. But lasagna pans, casserole pans, cake pans, etc. will all work. Or try for once a dutch oven bread and see if you like it.

So, unless the exact cross section is very important to you, just follow the recipe properly by keeping the given times and baking together, no matter what pan you are using (or not using).


Is there a non-alcoholic beverage that has bubbles like champagne?

Here, on the east coast of the US, there is a widely available, non-alcoholic, sparkling apple cider.  The producer is Martinelli & Co.


What can substitute for the non kosher ingredients in bolognese sauce?

None of those is a necessary element in bolognese; find a recipe that doesn't use them (use beef mince, or quorn).


Is there any way to predict/calculate the pH level of a recipe when the level of individual ingredients is known?

Short answer — it's definitely not that simple.  For one thing, the pH scale is logarithmic, not linear.  For another, almost every acid and base you're likely to encounter in a kitchen is “weak” - meaning there's an equilibrium between neutral and ionized forms. When diluted, the equilibria shift. When the temperature changes, the equilibria shift.  When mixed, the equilibria interact with each other.

If you're working for a big industry and filling railroad cars with your recipes, and doing the same reactions again and again, and trying to maximize profits, it could be worth doing the math. But for a small scale cook - you could probably get as far as accurately predicting the pH of a mixed drink, but not a lot further, I think.


Added malt is not necessary for yeast action.

The starches in flour are huge sugar molecules. They are too big for our tongue which is why we can't taste them. They are also too big for yeast to break down.

Given some time amylase enzymes in the flour will break some of those starches down into natural malt. This gives dough more complex flavors as well as a considerable amount of sugar for us and for our belching yeasty slaves. For this reason it is added to some flours by millers. Peter Reinhardt has made a career talking about this.

However, this malt, while delicious, is not always necessary. The flour milling process produces plenty of damaged starches that the yeast will happily munch on. For many breads this is entirely sufficient for proofing.

If your flour does not have much amylase and no added malt (which can also add enzymes) then your dough won't be breaking down any of your starches into new sugar. If you age your dough for a long time your yeast could simply be starving to death. You monster.

If you consider your constant quest for convenience to be corrupting the quality of your carbohydrate-consuming companions and curtailing the quantity of carbon-dioxide- an easy way to test this theory would be to mix in a little sucrose (table sugar). Your indentured yeast will love you and will honor your reign with gassy uprisings.


Can salted butter be used to make lemon curd?

Often, at least in the US, recipes will specifically call for unsalted butter, then call for salt to be added to the recipe — which causes many to scratch their heads.

There are three main uses that come to my mind for salt. One is to impart a salty taste.  The usage in butter is primarily a secondary one, and that is as a preservative.  The third is as a flavor enhancer (which can also apply to butter, but to my knowledge is not the primary reason there).  Many recipes that call for a small amount of salt are using it strictly as a flavor enhancer.  The intent is to highlight other flavors without actually tasting the salt.

So why call out unsalted, then add salt?  Two reasons that I know of.  The amount of salt in salted butter varies.  If you read the label carefully and do the math, you might get a rough idea, but in general by just picking up the butter you do not know how much salt is in there.  Some may have enough to taste, others you may not notice.  By using unsalted, you are in control of how much salt is added and can even adjust to taste as individuals who practice a lower-salt diet tend to taste it at lower amounts.  Higher-salt diets tend to become numbed to the taste so do not notice it at lower amounts.  This contributed to the older tendency to call for a "pinch" and a pinch varied from person to person according to their own sense of taste.

The second reason is more subtle.  Salt in butter is a preservative.  Since it has salt, it tends to hold up longer in storage. Since it holds up longer, there is at least a perception that salted butter may be older.  So calling for unsalted by some cooks and authors can be like saying "use fresh butter, not old."  It is an old tendency, and many may not even realize that is an origin, even if subtly implied.

Now, not knowing your curd recipe, it may not call for added salt.  I come from a high-salt background, so it is unlikely I would taste the difference, while others might.  In the case of your particular recipe, there may be a tendency for at least some people to actually taste the salt, especially given that the amount of salt in the butter may vary by maker.


I've had a few times where it just didn't work well.

I'm starting to suspect that the variety of garlic is also a factor -- I've had days where it works great, and others where it barely works, and I don't think it's an issue with technique.    Unfortunately, I don't have a place near me where I can just go and buy many different varieties of garlic to test with ... the best that I can do is disctinguish between hard neck and soft neck garlic ... and sometimes I get ones with purple streaks.

It might also be age of the garlic, rather than just variety.

You also need the right sized bowls for the amount of garlic that you're preparing -- I suspect that if it's too large, they don't beat against each other while shaking; too small and they're not getting momentum before they collide with each other.

update : I just did a quick test ... all garlic came from the same head of soft-neck garlic that I had (bought a few weeks ago), gently prying them from the head (did not smash the head).  I used two variety of bowls :

smaller Corelle bowls, about 6"/15cm across, 2"/5cm deep
larger metal bowls, about 18"/45cm across, 6"/15cm deep

I used clean and dry bowls for each test.  Each round of shaking was about 5-10 seconds.  After the first test, I did a slow count to 10 for each shake, to try to make sure I was being consistent.  I removed the naked cloves and loose paper after a given shake cycle unless otherwise noted.  Results are as follows:

4 cloves, small bowls.  After the first shake, three were clean, one wasn't (and it was wide).  Two more rounds of shaking, and it didn't look like anything was happening, so I added back in the three naked cloves.  One more round, and it was naked.
4 cloves, large bowls.  As I suspected after #1 that shape of cloves mattered, it was 1 wide + 3 more roundish-ones.  After the first shake, the wider clove was naked, and I removed it and the paper.  After the second shake, all were clean.
1 clove, small bowls.  Took three rounds of shaking, but it did come clean without additional cloves added.
2 cloves (one wide, one round), small bowls.  After the first round of shaking, I discovered that the round 'clove' was actually the middle of the head, and was 2 small cloves (one of which was particularly tiny), the larger of which was now clean.  I left it in, and after the second shake, the wide one was naked.  4 more rounds of shaking, and I added back in the other 2 cloves.  Two more rounds (8 total) and I noticed that the paper on the small one was loosened enough that I could peel it free without much effort (but it wasn't naked on its own).
1 wide clove, small bowls.  After 2 rounds, the paper was loosened that I could've peeled it easily; one the third round it was naked from only shaking.
1 round clove, small bowls.  Naked after 2 rounds.

Analysis : Oversized bowls don't seem to be an issue (undersized may still be).  The large, wide cloves seemed to be an issue at first, but peeled easier in other rounds than the mid-sized cloves; a small, tiny clove gave the most problems.  Although a single clove did require more time, and multiple cloves seemed to help, a single clove is not impossible using this method.

As they all came from the same head, I have no idea how much age or variety of garlic is a factor.  I'd say that I've removed the 'smashing the head' as a problem (as I did 6 rounds without it)


From your comment that the dough does not rise at all, it is almost certain that your yeast is dead.

Poor kneading will not cause the dough not to rise.

I suggest proofing the instant/active dry yeast in lukewarm water to isolate as many variables as possible. You can even use room-temp water.

Add 1/2 teaspoon of sugar to the water, add the yeast, mix it well and wait for it to start to foam up. There will be no doubt about the foaming - it will foam up like thick root beer. If the foaming takes significantly longer than 10 minutes, then you will need new yeast because the stuff that you have is mostly dead.


What's an appropriate shelf-life for refrigerated pre-peeled garlic?

According to one farm (Christopher Ranch), theirs lasts 7 weeks from the packaging date, and has a "best by" date on it.

I doubt this is identical for all sources, but it seems like a decent baseline.

As for botulism, I'm pretty sure what you've heard was related to keeping peeled garlic unrefrigerated in olive oil, which used to be a common practice, and is dangerous.  Here's the original report on the incident that started it, and this article has more info on safe handling practices.

From my experience, it'll start to turn slimy and lose its texture and flavor near the end of its shelf life, and you won't want to keep using it.  But as for health risks, you don't have much to worry about as long as you're keeping it in the fridge.


Note that carrot cake isn't the bright orange of raw or even boiled carrots either.  This is especially true of the crust and from your description of partway through cooking I suspect that's the colour you're looking at.  If the inside is much better, there's still hope.

Many colourful compounds in plants aren't stable under heat, but even ignoring that, sugar and flour both brown on the outside of cakes. Both caramelisation and the Maillard reaction (the former is probably more important in cake) take place at typical oven temperatures, so you may have some success with a cooler oven.  This is a moist recipe so it may not turn out too dry, but you may want to cover it for the end of the cooking time.  A cheating approach is to cut the crusts off, then ice all over.

I've had a play with DIY plant extract colouring and the crust colour is clear (I didn't make enough extract, and was going for orange) You may want to look at anthocyanins, in fact given your comments about acid you may already have done so


Following Lorel C's idea, I searched a bit for "patent" "kientz" and "foot massager", and found the patent for this device - https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/3b/09/3c/f580058fba56fc/USD243557.pdf

Short answer - yes, it's a foot massager.


Food Scientists: Please Explain the Final Dough Temperature (FDT) Formula

If kneading does not significantly heat up the dough, and the process is sufficiently quick then, by basic thermodynamics, the final dough temperature (FDT) is the average of the temperatures of the ingredients. (JoutlawPhysics points out in a comment below that this assumes equal masses of ingredients, which is usually only approximately true.) Hence

FDT = (water temp + room temp + flour temp + preferment temp)/4.

Here 4 is the `multiplication factor'. In general the multiplication factor is the number of temperatures involved, minus one. Rearranging the formula above we get

water temp = FDT*(mult. factor) - room temp - flour temp - preferment temp.

Your formula is the small generalization allowing for the heating effect of friction during kneading or mixing of the dough.


Is my microwave damaged if I can smell the food inside it?

Microwave doors don't have an airtight seal; the window between the electronics and the cooking compartment is also not airtight, and the electronics are cooled by a fan. It would be surprising if some cooking smells didn't escape. In practice, every microwave I've ever had allows me to smell the cooking, from the very cheapest to some rather fancy ones with grill and convection.

This means that being able to smell the food cooking says nothing about the safety of the microwave, and you have no need to worry (unless there are other indications such as damage)


What is the real difference in lo mein, chow mein, mei fun, and chop suey?

The problem with your question is that you're kind of asking something akin to "what is the universally accepted traditional preparation for Spaghetti". While conventionally in much of the English speaking world, that refers to spaghetti and meat sauce. The word/dish itself refers to a specific style/type of noodle and could be topped with anything.

Lo Mein and Chow Mein refer to the method of preparation and not the contents ("Stirred Noodle" and "Fried Noodle" respectively). They are both often wheat based egg noodles. Lo Mein is typically cooked in a broth, whereas Chow mein, by definition will be cooked in oil. Sometimes it'll be cooked till crispy, sometimes not.

If you happen to be in some location that serves authentic Chinese food, you could order dozens of different preparations for each of the above; It could include various combinations of proteins, vegetables. There are also different types of specific noodles used (eg: the small flat ones usually called "chow mein" in north american restaurants, larger round noodles often referred to as Shanghai Style Chow Mein, etc...). If I walked into a chinese restaurant in Hong Kong and asked for "Chow Mein" in Chinese, I imagine the response would most likely be, "what would you like on it?" Generally speaking there would be some protein and one or more vegetables. This is highly dependent on what is available locally. This varies greatly in China. Hong Kong will have access to more ingredients having been an international westernized port for a long time. The rest of China is more subject to local farming/fishing. That said, Seafood is very common in Hong Kong Cuisine given that it's a port. My friend from the north grew up with a lot more pork. But now my answer is becoming less about the dishes themselves.

Mei Fun means "Rice Noodle". Again, there is no accepted universal rule for what goes into it. My mom who comes from Hong Hong cooks those noodles half a dozen different ways depending on her mood.

Chop Suey like @Ching Chong said, just means "miscellaneous leftovers" or "assorted pieces". The origin is heavily debated and full of myth (see the wiki page). It is most commonly found these days from my understanding in Americanized Chinese restaurants in the US. I don't remember seeing it in Canada for example. Wherever it started, what makes it difficult to answer as it depends on what the cook wants to put in it. Anecdotally, I'm Canadian Chinese and have eaten at Chinese restaurants all over the world since I was born and have never actually ordered this dish, so take my answer for what it's worth. :-)


What's that scum at the sides of my home-made burger when I cook it?

This scum is made from proteins. Meat contains muscle fibers (the proteins actin and myosin) as well as some loose proteins swimming in the fluids within the meat (the cell plasma). When you cook meat, the protein-rich fluids are expelled (that's why overcooking makes meat dry). Under hot temperature, the proteins in the fluid coagulate, making it firm. It is especially noticeable in your burger, because there is more liquid flowing out quickly from your cut-up meat, but it also happens with whole pieces of meat, albeit more slowly. It is also very noticeable when cooking stock, because the stock is cooked for a long time and the liquid has time to come out from the meat.

The coagulated liquid can form a single piece (as it does with steak on a slightly oiled pan), but when it flows into water or oil, it mixes with it without dissolving, creating small loose particles. They float to the top, creating the frothy scum you describe.

The process is perfectly natural, you're not doing anything wrong. You can in fact eat the scum without any ill effects, but the taste isn't that great. So it is better to fish it out from the oil (or water when making stock). In dry cooking (aforementioned steak) it is exactly this stuff (after getting nicely browned on the hot pan) which makes gravy taste so well, together with the dripped fat.


What is inside the Prawn Cocktail crisps flavour?

Assuming you're talking about Walker's brand, we can see the following ingredients list from Tesco.co.uk (should match what's on your bag):

Prawn Cocktail Seasoning contains: Flavouring, Sugar, Glucose, Salt, Citric Acid, Potassium Chloride, Dried Yeast, Dried Onion, Vale of Evesham Tomato Extract, Colour (Paprika Extract), Sweetener (Sucralose)

Nutritional yeast (which is what I assume the 'dried yeast' is) is often used in vegan recipes to simulate a cheesy flavor, so it's probably not that. You can imagine what sugar, glucose, salt, citric acid, tomato extract, and dried onion taste like. Potassium Chloride is commonly used as a salt replacement to lower the salt content of food without losing that salty flavor.
I suspect it's that first ingredient, 'flavoring'. You're probably talking about a product like this: http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/prawn-Flavor-O5557-used-in-puffed_1699947706.html?s=p

prawn Flavor O5557 used in puffed foods

Professional and mature R&D team, Application team.
Manufacturer of flavor

Origin: Jining city, Shandong Province, China.


Can I replace sugar with honey in baking?

Yes, it can be. The general rule of thumb is to use half the amount of honey as you would cane sugar, reduce the other liquids by 1/4 cup, and add one 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda for every cup of honey used. I've done this with a couple different muffin recipes and had them turn out fine.

I've also combined honey with sugar substitutes (1:4 ratio) to use in place of brown sugar when baking for my diabetic father. When I do this, I don't eliminate any other liquids as the sugar substitutes tend to dry out baked goods.


Savoury version of caramel or sugar cage

You can make some pretty delicate cages using pastry, which is (or can be) pretty neutral in flavor.

An example is posted on a foodie blog post about a dinner they had at the restaurant L'Heritage in Kuala Lampur.

  Slow-braised Black Angus ribs with sweetbread & morels in a choux pastry cage.

Images for "choux pastry cage" are pretty easy to find and they seem to be made in a couple of ways:

A "lattice" style cage that uses flat (premade) puff pastry dough into which slits are cut and then stretched to create openings and then baked. This can be done by hand or with a specialty rotary cutter called a "lattice cutter". Described in detail in this Joepastry article.
Using choux pastry, pipe the pastry around a form in the pattern you like using a small tip and then bake. This is described in a YouTube video here.

Joe Pastry's beautiful caged pears using the lattice cutter look like this:

The choux pastry from the video comes out looking like this... he uses them as bowls but you should be able to use them as cages instead.


Turkey took 2 hours longer in oven with no bottom element

I suspect that your oven has a hidden bottom element as I've never seen an electric oven w/o a bottom element.

Regardless, in a working oven the whole oven should be near the desired temperature. It will be a lot closer to even throughout the oven if you have a convection oven.

Since the oven took much longer than expected here are a couple reasons that could affect the temperature and/or cooking time.

Was the turkey completely thawed? A turkey that isn't thawed takes a lot longer to cook. And don't think that fresh turkeys are ready to pop into the oven. They can be cooled to 28F (I believe) and still be called fresh. They aren't frozen solid but they aren't ready to cook as is.
Check your oven with an oven thermometer. Ideally you use an oven thermometer every time you cook but certainly use one until you understand how accurate your even is calibrated. And then every few months afterward. You might find out that setting the dial to 350F gives you an oven at 300F.

I remember using a pan that was too big for the oven (it covered almost all of the rack) and burning the bottom of the dish. The heat couldn't reach the thermostat so the lower element never turned off. Not what you were experiencing but shows what can happen in non-convection ovens.

If you can provide more information (make & model), which rack position the turkey was on in the oven and the size of the turkey, you may get a better answer.


What happens if I wash my baker's couche?

Flax is a very problematic fabric to wash, and even more problematic to dry. You risk ending up with stiff, wrinkled, and/or shrunk fabric.

I would never machine wash the flax couche. Actually, I wouldn't wash it after regular use, when it doesn't come into contact with anything but flour and lean dough. But if it accidentally got dirtied with something else, you are obviously better off washing it than throwing it away.

In this case, I would hand-wash it in room-temperature water, neven in a washing machine (not even the wool cycle). Use wool detergent (no fabric softener), and don't crumple the fabric while washing. Instead, try to let it soak a bit (maybe 15-20 min) and then gently "shake off" the dirt under water. You can add a bit of food grade citric acid for the last rinse, because acid acts somewhat similar to fabric softener.

When it is washed, don't wring it. Shake off as much water as you can, then lay it between two frotee towels. It should be spread out, not wrinkled or folded. Keep it at room temperature, not near sun, wind or a heater. Change the towels after 6 to 8 hours (the first time you may have to change them sooner). Repeat until it is only moist, not wet. Then spread it somewhere to dry without towels, again away from sun, wind, or excessive heat. Turn it every few hours. It will probably be stiffer than when you started with it, but I think it will be still usable.


Do I need to cook smoked beef before eating?

What it looks like you have there is a Pastrami. Though not a particularly 'good' one, perhaps made from Eye of Round rather than brisket. It has been brined (soaked in a salt solution) in order to preserve the meat and then smoked (most likely to an internal temperature of 175°F (80°C)). This should make the meat 'completely safe' from food borne illnesses and is good to eat either cold (which I prefer) or hot (as in a Reuben sandwich). It is typically shaved (sliced very thin).

It should be stored wrapped in a cold place (the fridge). It has a reasonable shelf life, you might check to see of there is a 'best by' date, beyond that it would be impossible to say 'how long it will last' as there are just too many unknowns.