Generally, any salty/pickled ingredient becomes part of the overall salt (and acid) balance of a salad - since olives are salty but not INEDIBLY salty, you can decide to taste how much you want to include, and how fine you want to cut them - you could do everything between including them whole (maybe pitted) and cutting/grinding them to a mince, brunoise, or paste - or a combination of such. The trick is to reduce the salt (and maybe acid) you add to other parts of the salad.


How does dried cilantro relate to fresh?

Coriander, the plant, is the one whose leaves are called cilantro in many regions - the Spanish name for the plant. Of course, in some regions, the leaves are called coriander (or coriander leaves) as well. Coriander, the spice, is indeed the dried fruit/seeds of the plant, commonly sold both whole and ground. The seeds have a very different flavor from the leaves.

As for dried cilantro, the leaves? They're going to be pretty much flavorless compared to fresh cilantro. Cilantro loses its aroma quickly when heated or dried. Obviously there's still something left, or you wouldn't be able to buy dried cilantro, but it's not going to be a striking addition to a dish. If you can get it fresh, it's worth it.


Does accidental vinegar have a culture that I can pass along?

This video of Alton Brown - Good Eats explains it way better than I ever can.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JEi4OW2Q54

If your bottle of wine turned to vinegar you probably have some "mother" at the bottom of that bottle that you can use in your next batch.


Think I found the video you are talking about:
Sorted Traditional Ramen @ 3:34

They are not making stock when they dump the water, Ben and James (chefs in the video) are only bringing the water to a boil. They are blanching the pig and chicken to get the scum, this is mainly because the pig parts they are using has a lot of denatured protein. It is not boiled twice Ben says @4:01  "bring to a boil" he doesn't say to leave it there.

Sorted also has these recipes written out in the descriptions of the videos if you ever get confused like this in the future.

The recipe for the "TONKOTSU RAMEN BROTH" (Traditional Ramen),
if you don't want to make ramen just stop after the stock is made.

If you meant these videos:

Ultimate Ramen Chef Battle

Ben is still doing the same thing possibly a different pork bits.

Big Night In Ramen @ 1:09

Same thing just with pork ribs.

Hopefully I was able to help! Good luck and hope your relative gets well soon! It was fun trying to find these videos!


How to achieve a thin caramel sauce/coating that stays fluid when refrigerated

If you make caramel acidic, it won't harden. So use cream of tartar (neutral taste) or lemon juice (easier availability) to create a non-hardening sticky caramel fluid.

I am not sure if you can add dairy (milk, cream, butter, etc). to acidified caramel, but there is a small chance that it will curdle, so I'd advice you to use clear caramel (browned sugar and water only).

I don't know how much acid you need to keep caramel at a certain viscosity at a given temperature, you'll have to experiment for that. Or maybe somebody else can supply this information. IIRC, a good starting point is a tablespoon of lemon juice per 100g sugar, but this is very imprecise.

The other option would be to make a semifluid sauce (cream, or starch-thickened milk, or diluted syrup) and add caramel to it, but the taste would be much weaker. My preference would be the clear caramel + acid route.


Cooking messy foods in a bamboo steamer without a cleaning nightmare

My mom uses pieces of lettuce, cabbage, spinach or some other large, leafy green as a bottom for her steaming uses.  I can't explain why this works, but for dumplings and Shanghai-style dumplings, this prevents the pool-of-water below as you describe.  Perhaps it has something to do with the varied height with the leaves...offering the water pools a place to collect without staying in contact with the food.

This may or may not catch the chicken gunk you're referring to, but I think it's worth a shot.


Keeping the bubbles in sparkling gelatin desserts

As Chris says, its to do with the setting time of the gelatine vs the bubbly.

Ensure all of your containers are chilled (maybe even frozen? - I put mine in 3/4 hours before making the actual dish) before you add the (chilled) champagne and get it into the bottom of the fridge as quick as you can.

I suspect though cannot prove also that a smaller container (I use wine glasses or similar) will work better than one large dish (trifle sized etc).


Need faster reheating of frozen vacuum packed roast beef

That would almost certainly overcook the outside while leaving the inside still frozen, depending on how the package is shaped and the meat was originally cooked.

It takes time for the heat to penetrate the meat, which is why sous vide is classified as a "low and slow" method of cooking.  Because your package is frozen, in order to bring the meat up to temp it has to thaw first, which takes even more time.  Depending how thick the package is, if you pull it out in 15 minutes it is entirely possible that the inside will still be frozen.

If you cooked the meat sous vide in the first place, an merely wish to use 200 degree water to reheat it, you will over-cook at least the outside of the package, again depending on the size/thickness.  If you cooked it in a more conventional way, its still possible that you will overcook it by using such a high temperature, as even chicken (which is usually cooked very well done) is only cooked to an internal temp of 165F.

Regardless, I would definitely expect some loss of quality if you reheat by boiling.  In order to preserve the quality (tenderness, juiciness, flavor), your best bet is to reheat gently.  Water temperature of 140F is generally recommended for reheating via sous vide.  It will however still take time.


This happened to my Cast Iron when I left it in the oven. If it has the slightest hint of moisture, it will rust, even if it is seasoned. You don't ever want a cast iron or Wok to be left sitting around with moisture on it.

Scour your cast iron with a bristle-brush to remove the rust. Use hot water. Wipe it dry with paper towels. Keep washing until the paper towels aren't showing any brown-orange from the rust.

The next part is crucial!

Take a dry paper towel. Put a small amount of oil in the pan. Coat the entire surface of the cast iron with oil. This layer of oil will prevent any further rust from forming


Should I fill up a double boiler or leave an air gap?

What you do depends on what you are doing.

There are sauces where the directions specifically call for "over boiling water" (as opposed to "in boiling water") which imply a gap. Heating soup is probably somewhat less demanding in requiring gentle heating, though a ceramic inner pot will slow that down anyway.

However, the first thing to try would be just to turn up the heat a bit - steam is a very effective heat transfer mechanism, so if you have a good boil in the lower pot you should get effective heating of the upper one, even with a gap. If the lower pot is only simmering you will get poor/slow heating of the upper one.

If the lower pot is too full you may get boiling water spurting out between the pots, which might be hazardous.


There are no current safe recommendations for home canning oils/fats as it’s considered unsafe for a verity of reasons. Although you are using alternatives for dairy many will still have high fat and oil content that can cause botulism which is a type of food poisoning that can lead to death. I would recommend that if you make a large amount of this sauce to freeze it instead and to not exceed storing it longer than a couple months. I know this can be really disappointing considering that it’s a vegan sauce and you probably would like the ease of “reach and pour” but I wouldn’t risk it. Please use your own discretion. https://www.healthycanning.com/fat-and-oil-in-home-canning/


Can the broth from a low country boil be used for anything else?

Your instincts are good; throwing tasty broth away is a criminal waste!  I have a couple ideas that are worth a shot.

Risotto: use it for the broth or stock. You may wish to add some more sausage and seasfood bits in for extra tastiness.
Rice/pilaf: use the broth in place of water for cooking the rice.  It'll give a richer flavor to the result.
Bisque:  Reduce broth, salt it, season, and mix with cream and maybe a little roux to thicken it.
Pan sauce: Throw broth in a saucepan, reduce it by up to half, and stir in cold roux to thicken, then season with salt, paprika, pepper, herbs (thyme, parsley, rosemary), and maybe a splash of white wine.  It should produce an excellent savory sauce, akin to a veloute.
Bread: Replace some or all of the water in bread you bake with the broth, to give the bread part of the flavor.  Since I don't know how much of each ingredient the boil has, I can't say if this will come out tasty or not, but it's worth a shot.

The other 4 items are pretty safe bets, as long as the broth is fairly tasty. If you reduce and thicken the broth with roux, cornstarch, cream, or cheese, you'll probably be able to turn it into something tasty to dip bread into. In a pinch, it could also become a soup.

One note: you may wish to simmer the broth down until reduced by half to get a stronger flavor for use in other dishes; however, taste it periodically to make sure it's not becoming too overpowering in flavor. If the boil is already fully salted, you will need to adjust salt accordingly when using the broth in cooking. Reduce salt in dishes prepared from it, avoid reducing down the broth to prevent it becoming too salty, and maybe even dilute it down with water.


I regularly see these (although, not usually as big), and they are considered safe to cook and eat as usual.

The American Egg Board (which is, just to be clear, a US government-backed lobby and marketing group, not a scientific body), states that

blood spots are caused by ruptured blood vessels (which can happen for different reasons) of the hen (mother) at the time of ovulation (before the hard outer shell of the egg has formed)
they are not an indicator of fertilised eggs
they are safe to eat.

We don't see them (or don't see very large ones) regularly because they are normally detected by candling, and such eggs are removed (this is why blood spots are more common in eggs from local farms that might not be using such mass-production techniques).

Many other sites say things along the same lines, including the USDA. However, notice the other USDA comments on egg freshness and safety. Definitely make sure the eggs are cooked thoroughly (as always!), especially if they're from local farms and may have not gone through pasteurisation or other post-collection disinfection methods.

@BaffledCook might be right on the freshness comment (independent of the blood spot), although the photo you took is very bright and makes it a bit hard for me to tell how clear the egg white is or whether the yolk just broke when you cracked the egg.

The "err on the safe side" is usually a good rule to follow if you're concerned (it's just an egg!).


Cooking one-handed: things to watch out for

I can give some general recommendations, but if I had some specific recipes that you were considering, I might be able to give more specific recommendations.

First, I'd avoid using any tool that I can't clean one-handed.  If you have a dish-washer, this might not be a problem, but even things like a blender you might have difficulty disassembling and re-assembling one handed, as you can't screw on/off the bottom.  Likewise, most jars and screw-top bottles will be a problem.

There are items that can be mounted under a cabinet to help with opening screw-tops, but most of them are only intended for opening ... they wouldn't work for closing the jar after you've used it.  (and they'd be almost impossible to install one-handed.  VHB or other mounting tape might work, but they tend to fail in torsion, so you'd need to stick the perimeter down well, and maybe add a nail or screw to prevent rotation))

Canned items are likewise out, unless you have an electric can-opener.  (that being said -- check thrift stores.  They often show up there).  It might be possible to use an old school claw-style can opener opener on larger cans, but smaller cans are just going to move around on you too much.  The ones built into pocket knives might work better, as they have a little bit that catches underneath can lip, but getting the tool opened one-handed is going to be a problem.

I would invest in some 'non-slip' shelf liner.  (I like the stuff that seems to be a grid of drops of rubber.  (This stuff might be it, but I couldn't be absolutely sure from the picture.)  It could be placed under bowls that you can't stabilize with your off hand while you mix things, and it might work to place in the sink so that you can scrub a pot one-handed.

This is going to be counter-intuitive, but I'd actually use heavier pans.  You want something that's not going to move around on the stove as you're trying to stir things or scrape up fond when deglasing.  This might also be a good time to learn how to flip your food one-handed.

You can avoid some heavy lifting by only moving empty pots & pans:

Put the empty vessel on the stove
Fill the vessel
Ladle cooked food out of the vessel
Move the empty vessel to the sink (or dishwasher) to clean it

If you have tongs, you can also do this with strand-type pasta, and if you have a good spider you can make shaped pasta.  (I prefer a basket-style spider, as I don't take so long to get it all out that half of it is overcooked).  You can use a pitcher to get the water into the pot, and a large pyrex measuring cup to get most of it out.  (or wait for it to cool, and use whatever you have that you can dip in).

You can avoid some knife work by using ground meats.  (if you're a meat-eater.  If not, well, avoid large blocks of firm tofu)  This will both avoid cutting while cooking, but also while eating.  If you do need to cut things up, I'd recommend kitchen scissors.  You can use them to cut up cooked meats, but they fail at things like cutting up peppers and onions.  (although they might be okay for green onions / scallions)

I would actually avoid anything large that you'd have to move while hot.  This would include casseroles.  If you really want to make something like that, I'd invest in some serving-sized ramekins and make individual portions.  (and possibly put a silicone pot-holder under the ramekin when eating)

You also have to consider eating -- you might be able to cook a steak one-handed, but you're not going to be able to eat it easily.  If you're a meat eater, I'd probably work with boneless, skinless chicken thighs.  They're relatively easy to cook one-handed with tongs, and you can easily cut them up with scissors or turn them into shredded chicken with a potato masher.  (and they're way more difficult to overcook than breasts)

This could also be a good time to call on your friends, and or make some new friends.  (This might work as a pick-up line ... approach someone you're interested in, and ask them if they'd help you cook in exchange for cooking lessons and/or a meal.  If you do this, I'd suggest asking them what foods they like).

You could use your friends for some partial meal prep ... things like dicing or slicing up peppers, onions, or other ingredients so you'll have them for later meals.  Or you could look into making a few single-serve casseroles (large casseroles are going to be impossible to move one-handed) or other dishes that just need to be re-heated so you have meals for a few days.  If you go the second route, you can also send the friend home with a few meals in exchange.


Cast iron is has pours. Oil sinks into them. So oil. let set- Heat till smoking in oven is best. Remove & reoil let set to cool. Never use soap on cast iron. It removes the oil that has sunk in. The more you use them the deeper the oil soaks into them. To clean. While hot add water. scrape out. Or wipe out. Dry reoil with salted rag or paper just wipe with oil salt on rag. It will remove some carbon. The black you see.  let set. This is not the advised way. But works for me.


Question about new sourdough starter, specifically smell

Trying to answer as best I can: Your culture won't smell like alcohol and it won't smell like bread yeast. It will have it's own unique sourdough smell.

Yeast gives off alcohol as part of the process. Different yeasts have different tolerances for how much alcohol they can stand. Basically once the alcohol gets to a certain concentration, the yeast will go dormant. Similar mechanics with beer.

The fact that your cultures doubled is good news. But remember, once the yeast exhausts the available sugars in the flour, they will stop bubbling. That's normal.

If you are leaving your cultures out at room temp, you'll exhaust those sugars quickly.

When I refresh my culture, I leave it out on the counter until it's bubbling and has almost overflowed the container. At that point it goes into the fridge. I will leave it there up to a month before doing another refresh.

Hard to explain but your culture should have a sourdough smell. I can't think of anything to compare it to. Using supermarket sourdough for this may be an exercise in futility as those breads can be pretty lame. My guess is there's nothing wrong with yours.

The only thing I can think that's different from what I do is leaving it out at room temp for more than half a day.

You can abuse sourdough starter up to a point but once you say you're sorry it's your friend again.

Time to make some bread?!


What quantity of coconut oil should be substituted for butter in a brownie mix?

Butter is about 80% milkfat, and 20% water, more or less.

3/4 stick is 6 tablespoons.

You should be able to substitute six tablespoons of coconut oil one to one.  It should be well within the tolerance of the recipe.

If you really want to account for the water, you would do about 5 tbl of coconut oil, and 1 tbl of liquid.


How long do eggs last in the refrigerator out of the shell?

Eggs will last two to four days in the refrigerator.

Source:

StillTasty (yolk & white)


The way the recipe reads is:

  Split open the membrane and dump the egg back in Vinegar & mix well.

("Back" being the operative word there IE, "Dump it back into the vinegar") with the intent of consuming all parts of the egg, including the dissolved shell (the source of calcium), as reflected in the post-script to the recipe:

  ...Egg Vinegar tonic to be an important source of strength and power. The
  protein, Calcium, Vitamins in the egg are well absorbed by our bodies.

The recipe also does not mention any additional vinegar after the 1 cup used at the beginning of the recipe.

So yes. Pour it back into the vinegar with the shell dissolved in it.

Just a note, make certain to wash your egg well before placing it into the vinegar & keep in mind that from a food safety standpoint, you are consuming raw egg. You should probably try following food safety practices similar to those for home-made mayonnaise.


The main reasons are speed and convenience.  Yeast takes longer (even "instant" yeast) and requires more maintenance: waiting for dough to rise, etc.

But those are the historical reasons for the adoption for baking powder.  Since it became common, another reason emerged: that is, it's very difficult if not impossible to get some kinds of texture and crumb that you get with baking powder by using yeast.

Why?  As dough sits (necessary for yeast to rise), gluten chains begin to form.  The longer the dough sits, the more gluten chains you get.  Even with pastry or cake flour, the dough will get tougher over time (though obviously not as much as with all-purpose or bread flour).

So, yes, you can make banana bread with yeast.  But by the time your dough has risen, it will have become more "bread-like," with a chewier crumb, rather than the tender "crumbly" texture most people are used to in modern quick breads.  That is even more true if you de-gas the dough and let it rise a second time, which is generally necessary (1) to get maximum rise, and (2) to even out the gas bubbles so you don't end up with large holes in the final product.

There are entire genres of "yeasted cake" recipes, which used to be quite common in Europe.  Even with a lot of sugar, they are often "bread-like," sort of like sweet brioche.  They can have a fine crumb, but they won't have the tenderness of a cake made with baking powder (or a quick bread like banana bread, for that matter, which is really like a cake/muffin).

There are entire genres of modern cakes (and quick breads) that only became possible with the use of baking powder (or at least baking soda with an acid).  Before chemical leavening, you were limited in tender cakes to a few genres that depended on whipped eggs or egg whites (e.g., angel food cake), creamed butter/sugar (e.g., pound cake), etc.

Aside from texture, there's also a flavor issue.  Generally most people like the added flavor from yeast, but it also can add a "bread-like" or "yeasty" aspect to the flavor, which may not be desirable in some cakes.  Modern baker's yeast is better than historical yeasts in this regard.  Baking powder can add a different (more "chemical") flavor, but with proper proportions and/or with acid in the batter to ensure a complete reaction, it is often barely noticeable.

EDIT: SgtStens makes a great point in another answer, which I was thinking about in my final paragraph with flavor, but didn't note clearly.  High sugar content in doughs/batters will inhibit yeast activity.  That's why most traditional yeasted cake recipes end up using a relatively low-sugar batter and then add more sweetness through a glaze, filling, streusel topping, etc.  A low-sugar dough can still rise within a reasonable amount of time (a couple hours).  On the other hand, high-sugar cake batters generally take a much longer time to rise.  (Many recipes require an overnight rise for the yeast to initially develop and multiply.)  Depending on the type of yeast and temperature, this can sometimes result in an overly "yeasty" flavor to the final product (though the high-sugar content will cover it up partially).

However, the higher sugar amount can perhaps allow you to obtain a crumb and texture closer to a "normal cake."  On the other hand, without adequate gluten support (with lower flour content relatively), it's difficult to obtain a very light cake this way.  It's fine to create a product with the texture of pound cake or maybe a quick bread, but for something lighter, you may need to resort to baking powder.  One reason in this case is that baking powder can continue to react and produce gas until the gluten structure sets, whereas yeast will die a little earlier in the baking process.  Very light cakes often depend on a careful balance between continuous gas production inside the dough and the gradual migration of gas bubbling out the top.  The cake has to set while gas production is still going on, or else the gas will bubble out and the cake will fall.  If the dough rises too high and then the yeast stop producing gas when they die, the cake could collapse before the structure sets.


Why does commercial brown (whole wheat) bread taste bitter?

Much of the bitterness in breads made from whole wheat is caused by the phenolic acid and tannins in the bran layer of the wheat. Different varieties of wheat have different levels of those compounds and produce breads with different levels of bitterness. "Traditional" varieties of wheat, such as red wheat, contain high levels of tannins, while hard white spring wheat contains relatively low levels of tannins.

Here is what bakingbusiness.com has to say about this subject:

  With whole wheat, taste differences boil down to the tannin content of
  the bran. These red pigments in hard red wheat carry a bitter flavor.
  “... Whiter whole-grain varieties typically contain fewer tannins, which
  results in a less bitter taste,” said Brook Carson, technical product
  manager, ADM Milling, Shawnee Mission, Kansas. "Differences in taste can
  also be overcome with added sweetness or with a masking agent."

Based on your question, it sounds likely the Pillsbury Chakki Fresh Atta whole wheat flour you use for making parathas is milled from either hard white spring wheat or a blend of the white wheat with a more traditional variety of wheat resulting in a non-bitter end product.

There is another possible source of bitterness in bread made from whole wheat flour, although it shouldn’t really affect commercially made bread. When whole wheat flour is milled, it includes the oil containing wheat germ, which is different than refined white flour where the wheat germ is removed prior to milling.  This oil in the whole wheat flour results in it having a much shorter shelf life than white flour and makes it susceptible to rancidity if not stored properly. Commercial bakeries go through (literally) tons of flour, so their whole wheat flour shouldn't be sitting around long enough to go bad.

I can tell you from first-hand experience, one of the signs whole wheat flour has started to go rancid is an increase in bitterness.


Black tea water: Does boiling water first make a difference?

As you're heating the temperature of the water will rise at different rates, depending on the amount of heat, on the quantity of water, and on whether the pan is covered or not. With the tea in the pan, this would create an infusion gradient, as the temperature rose over a varying number of minutes.

If you boil the water first, then infuse, you've fewer variables: the quantity of tea and the quantity of water. So you'll have less to adjust to get the brew perfect.

I don't see how you could brew even the finest black tea for 10-20 minutes without over-extracting it, producing a stewed, bitter flavour that dries the tongue.


Per the  manual  for your MINERAL B pan, you should season it as follows:

Seasoning: preparing your frying pan
Pour about one millimeter of oil -just to cover the bottom of the pan- and heat it until smoke appears. Next, thrown away the oil in a pan and wipe your pan with paper towels . The more the pan is used, the better the performance. The darker it becomes the better it is for natural nonstick properties.

The manual continues on with use and care instructions.


Why is my cake rising sideways while baking?

A cake baking uneven to that degree makes me thing the heat source is really uneven. One side of the oven is hot, the other is much cooler. I've seen a fan oven cause some uneven baking before but never to that degree.

Make sure your oven is pre-heated for at least 10 to 15 minutes before baking
If you have fan oven and you have no non-fan mode try putting a piece of aluminum foil between the fan and the cake to deflect the hot air around it so the heat is even
If you are not using an oven make sure that the heat is even around the cake

EDIT: It's come to light that an air fryer was used to bake the cake. Air fryers come in several types, but they all work on the principle of blowing very hot air over food inside. This hot air comes from a vent, so the reason the cake is so uneven is that the side right by the vent is getting a blast of hot air while the other is relatively cool. I would suggest putting a piece of aluminum foil between the pan and the vent to deflect the blast of hot air and force it to circulate. Be sure not to block the vent though, you don't want to overheat the machine!

Turning the cake is one option, although it could cause the cake to lose lift and collapse. I would try foil first and then try turning if you still get a very uneven result.


Passata is crushed tomato.  Tomato paste is a concentrate of tomato produced by cooking for a long time, removing seeds and skin, and cooking further.  They are different products that are going to produce different results, both flavor-wise and in terms of texture.  If I were you, I would not add extra water at all, if you are going to use the Passata.  I am sure it will be good...it will just be different from the intent of the recipe.


"Post-marinating"? Is it a real term or do my taste buds deceive me?

There are several reasons why you should marinate before cooking:

Many marinades contain raw ingredients that should be cooked along with the food being marinated, such as garlic or ginger.  In some cases this may actually be a health hazard (raw garlic can harbor botulism), in other cases you'll simply end up with an undesirable pungent flavour.
Many marinades also use some amount of acid, which helps to kick-start the process of breaking down the connective tissue and tenderizing the meat.  This is an especially big deal for chicken breast meat and tougher cuts of beef or pork, because most cooking methods (except for slow-cooking) don't do much of this and tend to produce a tougher, chewier end result.  Once the meat has already been cooked, using an acid-based marinade won't give you much more tenderization; you need the combination of acid and heat.
Finally, many spices release most of their flavour when heated (cooked).  Examples are cinnamon, saffron, star anise, and various types of hot pepper or chili powder.  If you marinate after cooking, you won't get much flavour from these.

Of course if you are using a very simple marinade such as soy sauce and are marinating only for flavour purposes, then it might not matter much, but that's the exception rather than the rule.  Marinating afterward can certainly improve the taste, but most of the time you'll end up with better results by marinating beforehand.


I think the usual use for drippings is incorporating the fat into a gravy or pan sauce.  A bit of flour, a bit of water, salt and whatever seasonings.  I don't recall if it is common for duck specifically, but I see no reason it an't work.

As for your pastry idea, I don't think it usually works that way, the physical disturbance of the dripping and the uneven distribution might make the pastry texture not come out quite so well. (I assume there's a reason pastry isn't commonly used to catch drippings).

If you still want to try something similar, you might be interested in yorkshire pudding - which was historically used to catch and use the drippings from a roast or similar, and being intended for this purpose it will probably work better than a random pastry recipe.


I had the chance to ask a tea scientist this very question about 25 years ago, and he said:

if you put the tea in first, over decades your cups will be more stained than if you put the milk in first
if you put the milk in first, you cannot add less milk on discovering that the tea is weak or there is less of it than you thought

He further reported that the Royal Family always put the tea in first. So, despite being raised milk-first, I am a tea-first person (the milkiness of my tea being more important than possible stains to my cups) and my mother tolerates this when she visits.

Killing bacteria in the milk is really not an issue now and probably never was; even if it were the temperature difference is not important between the two approaches. A little cold milk in a room temperature cup probably won't prevent thermal shock either: many people claim leaving the spoon in serves this purpose, but I think it's just to avoid putting the spoon down on the counter and leaving a dribble.


Your best bet would be to place a desiccant into the container so that it absorbs the moisture which is causing your marshmallows to clump.

Silica gel packets would be fine and are often found in packets of jerky for this same reason. Alternatively some cornstarch would do since it absorbs moisture, but it may be harder to clean off of your marshmallows.


I don't think it makes any tremendous difference. I'd probably lean towards toasting them whole first, then chopping just because the size will be more consistent so the toast might be a little more even.


See:  How do you cook calamari / squid and avoid making it tough?

The principles remain the same for grilling or barbecuing:  you want to cook the squid briefly so it doesn't toughen up, or slowly for a long time, so that the collagen dissolves to gelatin, making the squid tender again.  In between is the rubbery zone.

The main issue is that many squid are not really large enough to place directly on a grill grate without danger of falling through, so you may wish to use a fish or vegetable grilling grate.  You can then grill them briefly, over high heat.

It is probably possible to use low-and-slow smoking techniques (true barbecuing), but I didn't find any really credible sources or recipes, and I have never tried this myself.  You could also grill the squid to get some smokey flavor, then finish by braising them (for example, in a disposable pie tin on the cool side of your grill, with flavorful liquid) for a long time.

Googling barbecued squid recipe will give you many recipes to try, with a variety of marinades and treatments.


How to replace large eggs for medium in a recipe?

There’s a good chance that the difference of what will be perhaps half a tablespoon just won’t matter in the final product. You don’t say what exactly you are going to make, but if your recipe was so sensitive to minute inaccuracies, it would probably be weight-based for all ingredients, including the eggs.

If you really feel your batter is too dry, add a small amount of liquid (milk or whatever fits your recipe) and you should be fine.


Is carob bean cooked when used as a thickener?

Carob bean gum is extracted through industrial processes, not generally reproducible at home.

Per CAROB BEAN GUM
Chemical and Technical Assessment (CTA)

  The seeds are  dehusked by treating the kernels with dilute sulfuric
  acid or with thermal mechanical treatment, elimination  of the germ
  followed by milling and screening of the endosperm (native carob bean
  gum). The gum may be  washed with ethanol or isopropanol to control
  the microbiological load (washed carob bean gum). It may  also be
  further clarified (purified, extracted) by dispersing in hot water,
  recovery with isopropanol or  ethanol, filtering, drying and milling,
  which is called as clarified (purified, extracted) carob bean gum.
  Clarified carob bean gum in the market is normally standardized with
  sugars for viscosity and /or reactivity.


People do beer cooler cooks with a sous vide circulator (in fact, its noted by Anova, one of the most common sous vide tool manufacturers) -- primarily for going past the ~20 liter specification of the circulator to say 40-60 liters (e.g. by cutting a hole in the top of a cooler lid and sticking the circulator down in it; spray some insulation in the hole as well).

For a small container (e.g. a stock pot, dutch oven) at room temperature, the common circulators have more than enough power to heat and circulate the water. But, you could wrap the thing with towels (as in the Anova link above) or something to help prevent heat loss. This can help with reaching higher temps too if you're losing a lot of heat. But yes, the circulator would have to work less hard at heating if you prevented evaporation loss and insulated the container.

I normally do meat/eggs, and in my stockpot which I use for sous vide, my Anova (the current bluetooth model) doesn't have a problem maintaining temps. So, I don't use any towels or anything, just because its one more thing to deal with. I suspect most people use dutch ovens or stockpots or cambro containers just for convenience, and also get fine performance from the circulator.


Baked Raisin Cinnamon Bread and shipping

If the bread wasn't soggy before freezing, it won't be when it thaws. Properly sealed, items that are frozen don't absorb more moisture than they already contain.

At room temperature, a loaf of bread will thaw rather quickly, depending on the size and thickness of the loaf. At most, it would take about 3-4 hours to completely defrost, so freezing your product before shipping wouldn't be of much value.

Instead, consider how best to package it to keep it from drying out, or being damaged. Wrap it first in paper, then in plastic. Put it in a sturdy box, larger than the loaf and with enough extra space so that you can insert padding material (e.g., air pillows, bio-degradable peanuts) so that it doesn't move around. And send it overnight or priority, so that it's delivered within several days.


Why are grape preserves so hard to find in the USA?

TL;DR: likely because demand was too low to sustain commercial distribution

Barring any relationship to a specific historical incident, it's very difficult to find out why a specific food is no longer commercially produced. In the absence of specific reasons, we can see a number of contributing factors as to why grape preserves would have gone off the market:

In the US, sales of preserves in general trail sales of jams and jellies considerably.  Grape jelly eclipses sales of grapes in other forms (sorry all refs behind paywalls).  This distribution is very skewed with 9 varieties constituting 80% of the market.  So it could be quite possible for grape preserves to "fall off" the bottom of the market.
For historical reasons having to do with the Concord Grape, Americans are used to eating their grapes as jelly, so preserves may seem quite oddball and hard to sell.
From what I could gather from the one grape preserve recipe I found, the runny texture of grape preserves are possibly off-putting to most consumers.

Not terribly satisfying, I know, but that may be as much information as is out there.


What's the purpose of sugar in a pickling solution?

The sugar is mostly just for flavor.  I use sugar when making pickled beets and eggs, but don't use it in my dill pickles or pickled peppers and onions.  It just depends on if you are trying for a sour, sweet and sour, or sweet pickle (note that there is no vinegar in many fruit pickles).

Before you decide to run off and leave out the vinegar, however, I would note that for pickling safety purposes there has to be enough acid to keep botulism causing bacteria from forming and peppers are a low acid vegetable.  If you wanted to eliminate the vinegar, you'd have to move to pressure canning.


Cleaning out residue from thread of sport mixer base

Prevent it from sticking in the first place by putting in a bowl of cold water, or cleaning it right away, if you let it dry on it's a real pain.

Muck in the threads can be extracted using the pointy end of a skewer if it's really stuck on, I find an old toothbrush does a great job as well. Soak it first.


Why is my baguette type bread coming out almost flat?

If you haven't changed your recipe then the problem is in your method, and it sounds like you are over proofing. If your bread expands too much in the final rise it gets over-extended and tends to collapse when scored, exactly as you describe. It's easy to 'get greedy' and try to eke out that much more expansion, but it's actually a very common mistake.
Reduce your final rise after shaping and you'll get a better result.  Go for a doubling in size typically, maybe a bit more. It's hard to give a time on that, but typically 1.5 hours is the most I'd give it, I like to still have some visible rising going on when I put it in the oven because part of oven spring comes from the yeast.
If you do over-prove it's not a disaster, just don't score it, then put it into the oven gently.
As for how to proof the dough, you don't need to use the oven, in fact I'd recommend against that unless your house is really cold. 70°f is fine for proofing, it just takes a bit longer than a warm oven, and you often get more flavor and better structure if you don't rush it. One thing I would suggest is not to use a damp towel as the weight of it on a small baguette can hold it down a bit, and the evaporation of water from the towel cools the bread and slows down proofing. Instead proof your bread in a clear plastic bag (clear so you can see through it, no other reason). You blow air into the bag and then clip it, the air will keep the bag from contacting the dough and sticking. The bag will seal in the heat generated from the yeast activity as well as keeping in moisture, preventing it from forming a skin.


It is quite common to make meat loaf with milk-soaked cubes of bread, but I've never heard of tenderising meat with it. Having said that, some kind of fat is common for marinades (yoghurt for example), so it might work. I'd try it with full cream milk, not half-and-half.

I think the reason for soaking liver in milk is to make the taste milder, as lamb, pork and cow liver can be quite strong tasting.


What actually happens if you pour a glaze over a loaf cake before it has cooled?

The icing will seem like it's melting and soak though the pound cake. The effect will be similar to soaking the cake with simple syrup. A pound cake is fairly 'solid' so the consistency shouldn't be affected very much, unless you use enormous amounts of icing.


How to properly cook basmati rice in a rice cooker

Have you tried changing the rice-to-water ratio? Two parts water to 1 part rice is the norm.


What is the best oil to use when cooking in a wok?

Frying in a wok doesn't necessarily imply a single particular oil for all foods you cook. It may vary up to the ingredients, the technique (yes, there is more than one wok technique), the recipe, personal preferences, price etc.

As a general rule, as you've mentioned in your question, wok techniques require relatively high temperatures so oils with reasonably high smoking points should be preferred, for sure. Depending on its type and the temperature you want to reach, peanut oil may be or may not be suitable for the task.

This table and this list reveals that peanut oil is not the one with the highest smoking point and there are significant differences between the smoking points of the types of peanut oils.

As a result, I don't think that a "best oil" can be named, but I believe -some type(s) of- peanut oil would be fine for many purposes --and it is a must for some recipes. Still, some other oils can be used in the light of what I mentioned above. For example, I prefer sunflower oil in many cases.


Why do canned sardines have no protein scum?

Hard to answer concisely, because there are many variations in processing before the Sardine hits the canning retort (a sterilization pressure cooker). Recall that there are sardines "in oil" "in spring water," even in "hot sauce." Here is a video example.

Sardines are canned under both pressure and temperature in the canning retort. I believe the pressure factor has more impact in supressing what you call scum ** though temp prolly plays a factor as well.

Home brew example: I rarely find scum like formations in my pressure cooker. I do find congealed fat on cool down.. but congealed protein.. not so much.

** Not sure if the scum you are thinking of is congealed fat, or protein.


Name of dish - eggs + flour + bread crumbs (+ baking powder)

I'd say "pancake" is indeed the correct name.
For something as simple as a pancake the number of different recipes is astonishing. You'll find variations with more or less eggs, with or without whipping the eggs, with or without baking powder, with or without added milk or water, sweet and savory variations. Some recipes substitute some flour with starch or other ingredients like coconut or almond flour.
Adding bread crumbs isn't anything I read in a recipe before, but I doubt it makes too much of a difference to call the result anything else but a "pancake".


What dish?: Japanese chicken skewer wrapped in a green leaf and sour red sauce

It looks like tsukune/tsumire chicken with shiso, search terms are chicken tsukune, ooba and plum. This yields some recipes, more without the plum, basically take minced chicken, add egg mirin soy sake potato-starch, divide, wrap in leaf and cook. Google translate/rikaichan will help you. For the plum sauce, basic recipe is to take Japanese plum pulp and add soy, not sure it is easy to do otherwise since it requires the special sour and salty plums.

More assistance with translation can be found on the Japanese Language Stack


When basil gets brown spots, is it still usable?

You can store it with the stems in a glass of water, like a bouquet, preferably not in the refrigerator. A few black spots that aren't moldy or slimy doesn't make it totally unusable, but it isn't very appealing to eat.


Ehow has an article on the specific dangers non-stick coatings can cause to humans and pets including fumes from heating a pan to too high a temperature,  which I was unaware of.

Of course, if the coating is flaking or fuzzy-looking, actual coating material, which is a carcinogen, can leach into the food cooked in the pan.

Link to the Ehow article:
http://www.ehow.com/list_6531918_dangers-using-teflon-cookware.html


How do I substitute rehydrated garbanzo beans for garbanzo beans from a can?

I'd assumed the beans were cooked, not just soaked. Assuming they are cooked and not just soaked, the difference in taste could be due to canned beans' higher sodium content. Salt preference differs wildly across individuals and even across time for the same individual. There is a rich literature on this, including (sorry new user, so had to remove the URLs):
http://www.ijpp.com/vol49_1/99_102.pdf.

It may be the case that you have a high salt preference. In that case, just add some extra salt to your hummus from dried beans.

Opinions on the quality of hummus from canned vs. dried garbanzo beans are a personal matter, but note that some (myself included) prefer the latter.

There are, in fact, differences in the hummus from dried vs canned beans, nutrition being one:
http://humus101.com/EN/2007/03/28/hummus-nutritional-value-dried-vs-canned-chickpeas/.


Sous vide egg white falling apart on cracking

At 66ºC it's possible that the white gets too "crumbly" like yours. I always follow Dave Arnold's guide for egg temperatures and get good results around 64-65ºC.

You should try lowering the temperature to 65 or 65.5ºC, and make sure your eggs are not too old - the older the egg the more "loose whites" (the watery part of the whites) you'll get. It also affects the texture of the rest of the egg.


Bread Improver is a mix of various acids and enzymes that serve to strengthen the gluten in the flour and feed the yeast, both of which yield a better loaf. The idea is to give bread a similar texture and taste to sourdough-based loaves, without having to go through the laborious feeding process usually involved with that method.

For more information, look at this Wikipedia article.


Food grade lubricants

Looks like there's quite a few food grade greases available online. Some of them are silicone based. Still, I'd get something that definitely says food grade, rather than whatever's on sale at Ace hardware.


I have bough pasta that contained cocoa, here in Italy, and it was not that sweet.
The pasta package suggested to use red pepper in the sauce (e.g. olive oil and red pepper).


removing breast before roasting rest of duck?

I would actually recommend you remove the breasts, regardless of when you will be cooking them.  It is very difficult to get the duck breasts to a perfect 125–130°F, the legs to ~15° hotter, and to simultaneously render excess fat and crisp the skin when roasting the bird whole.  Cooking the individual muscles separately greatly simplifies this.  Also, with duck, there is (in my opinion) relatively little advantage gained from roasting the individual parts on the carcass, other than tableside presentation.


Anise Cookies: Why 12-hour rest before baking?

There are different types of anise cookies. One particular type is a common guest on my German family's Christmas cookie tray. The recipe I use calls for a over night rest, too, and has a similar ingredients list to yours, so i assume you want to achieve this kind of cookie. It basically looks like a french macaron.

The resting time allows the cookies to dry out a bit and build a kind of skin. This is the reason for the chewiness, as the moisture is preserved during the baking time a bit more than it normally would (same as in bread making). However, it also creates a little signature "foot" (see french macaron). During the baking the cookies rise a little bit, but can't expand as they usually would, because of the skin. So instead they create the little foot.

My grandma was a very impatient person and didn't let them dry over night. She instead dried them in the oven at a low temperature (<100°C) for about 15-20 minutes before baking. However, I like the texture more with the longer drying period. I find it produces a better moisture to crispiness ratio.


What are some appropriate accompaniments for satay?

It likely depends on how hot you make your peanut sauce, and what you consider to be a salad.  You mentioned that you had chilies in your slaw (and some people consider slaw to be a salad), but if you have a very hot peanut sauce, you might want something more cooling.

I once did a very nice carrot slaw (jullienned carrots, left to sit in a rice wine vinegar dressing for a few hours), but I can't remember the complete ingredient list, and I've never managed to re-find it ... I seem to remember there being a touch of sugar, sesame oil ... soy or fish sauce, can't remember ... it was really, really simple.  (might've had some scallions added for garnish, but it was basically just marinated carrots)

You could also add some thin sliced red onion, scallions, bell pepper, or bean sprouts to it, but then you'd be getting into salad territory.

...

If you didn't want to make coconut rice, I find I can get a good amount of vegetables into anti-vegetable people (eg, kids) with nasi goreng.  As I don't have a good source of kejap manis, I also mix in some shredded carrots at the end to add to the sweetness.


Can I use amaranth flour or another grain flour as a substitute for white flour in tortillas?

You might try to add some amaranth flour or any other kind of flour, but it's difficult -impossible I think- you can make a bread or a tortilla out of 100% amaranth flour. Wheat flour (that you call "all purpose white flour") contains gluten, that is functionally used to make dough stick together. If you use amaranth, rice or other kinds of flour you'll find that it's difficult to make the dough.

If you want to make a healthier tortilla use whole wheat flour, and add whatever you want inside: amaranth, sesame seeds, linseed, nuts, peanuts, almonds, etc.


How can I prevent dough from wrapping around a dough hook?

I solve this problem by tipping and holding the machine on the side. If the dough still does not let go of the hook, I turn the speed up for a couple of seconds. When the dough is loose I let the hook work it for a minute or so while the machine is still tipped over. This often gets the dough in such a state that it does not wrap around the hook but gets kneaded as it should.


If the crystals have formed in the same way the crystals form in Honey, then you could try warming the caramel. Honey forms crystals over time, and these are removed by placing the honey in hot water for an hour (you will need to keep the water hot, above body temperature but not boiling).


Will peeled garlic cloves that are stored for later use lose their flavor?

In short, yes, but how much would depend on how long it is held and how it is handled.  Simply the act of removing the protective skin opens the clove to air and deterioration, but not enough I would be concerned if the cloves are used in a reasonable period, the sooner the better.

Now, the shaking in a pot will tend to bruise the cloves.  In doing so, you are rupturing cell membranes and increasing the deterioration speed.  Slicing, crushing, mincing, etc., you have just multiplied that effect.  The more you break down the cloves, the faster it is going to degrade on you.

Think in part this way, if you can smell garlic, or see the oils, you are losing some of its essence right there, and you are exposing it to air which is increasing any bacterial or chemical reactions.  I would stop at the point of peeling and retain whole cloves, not process further than that until read to use myself.

Also note, some people, if they are going to use oil with the garlic anyway, will go ahead and mince, chop, or slice and drop into olive oil.  Be cautious with this!  It will trap you garlic goodness in the oil, but it will also create an air tight low acid environment which is a danger zone.


Best way to remove fruit flies from your kitchen

Fruit fly trap !

Put some strong smelling vinegar, like apple cider vinegar, in a glass and make the trap by making a cone with a sheet of paper. The strong sweet smell will attract them and they won't be able to get out of the glass.


I am French, and while I am not an Escoffier specialist and could not guarantee what is exactly his recipe of "poulet à la reine" (which here would translate more as "chicken queens' style), but I can bring some elements of clarification :)
It is a recipe based on a vol-au-vent ("windblown") which is basically a little bowl of savory puff pastry in which you can put a lot of delicious things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vol-au-vent
This vol-au-vent becomes a 'bouchée à la reine" when they are filled with specific ingredients like chicken, mushrooms and a sauce like béchamel (honestly now we tend to not make the difference anymore between vol-en-vent and bouchée à la reine, except for the purists).
It is called à la reine as an hommage to the queen Marie Leszczynska, Louis XV's wife, for whom the recipe was created in the 18th century.
There is no English Wikipedia page, so here is the French one: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouch%C3%A9e_%C3%A0_la_reine
Voilà ! Hope you managed to finish the book!


I also have neurological disorders that cause symptoms similar to chronic fatigue. Here are a few tricks that have helped me with cooking dinner:

Make sure your kitchen is set up in an efficient organized way. Keeping your kitchen well organized is key to reducing the time you spend cooking.  Take your limitations into account when organizing your kitchen.  For instance, if bending down flares up your symptoms, keep the items you use the least in the lower cabinets.
Purchased pre-chopped veggies
Use tin foil / parchment paper on cookie sheets and casserole dishes as much as possible.  This will limit clean up.
Try sitting as much as possible while cooking. Here is a stool that rolls around.
As alluded to in other responses, try recipes that allow you to prepare much of the meal ahead of time - while you have more energy.
Look for recipes where the majority or all of the cooking is in the oven as opposed to over the stove.  While the cook times may be similar, you can take a load off if you are primarily using the oven.
Once every 3 months I cook up (in the oven) and shred a 'big buy' of chicken and store it in the freezer. I use the cooked meat for risottos, soups, pasta dishes that call for cooked chicken.
Finally, here is a resource for quick recipes: allrecipes


Slow cook pork shoulder without it falling apart

It can be done, but requires a bit more time.  The trick is to cook it, then cool it, then heat it back up again:

Cook the pork shoulder
Drain the liquid, being careful not to poke at the meat too much
Remove the crock from cooker, and let it cook down
Place the crock in the fridge, and let chill overnight

The next day you can slice the meat, then pour the juices back over it to warm it back up.  (or reduce the juices to make a sauce)


I would expect a British recipe to specify whether the soup is condensed (usually Campbell's brand) or ready to eat (after heating), examples are Heinz, Baxter's or any of the many supermarket own brands. So you need to specify what the recipe calls for. If it's condensed, the tins contain 295ml of the concentrate. The other sort comes in several sizes, but if a British recipe calls for "a can" I'd say it's likely to be 400ml, unless otherwise specified.


Common names of plants are a very unclear matter. There are big differences not only between languages, but also regional differences within a single language.

There are lots of (closely related) plants which are sold under the name blueberry. And probably not even the person who grew (or gathered) them can tell you the exact species. While it does matter when it comes to jam (for the same reason it matters whether you use Roma tomatoes or Cherry tomatoes for a sauce) it is highly improbable to find a source which can consistently provide you with a specific known variety. Also, you probably have to study some very specified botanical literature and be provided with parts of the plant other than the berries in order to be able to identify the type with some degree of accuracy.

On the other hand, don't let that come in the way of good jam. Blood orange marmelade may taste different than bitter orange marmelade, but both are good. The same goes for blueberries: you can use any variety, even if some of them would be a bit better on their own.

What you need for a jam is a good sweetness to acid ratio, the proper amount of pectin, and as much aroma as possible. A softer texture also helps to prevent unpleasant lumps. So generally, you want to go with the ripest fruit available. They are soft, and have the fullest aroma. This is something you might want to consider with your current source of berries: maybe they're not a special "green on the inside" variety, but only underripe. If they don't taste very sweet, and their aroma isn't very complex, I'd try to find other sources. Farmer's markets and organic stores are usually able to sell much better fruits (because they cater to a picky, price-inelastic clientelle), but of course they cost a lot too.

Sweet fruit is always good, but you need enough sugar added for food safety. A ratio of 2:1 (fruit to sugar) can still be kept in the pantry, more fruit than that and you need to refrigerate the unopened glasses too. With blueburries, you'll need to add both pectin (to get the jam to gel) and acid (to get the pectin to work). This is the part which will vary with fruit variety: more watery types will need more pectin, and less acidic types will need more acid. If you want a good quality jam, you'll need to do some experiments until you get the proportions right. If not, you can buy "jam sugar" or however it is called in your country - this is sugar with pectin and acid already added. It won't have the perfect ratio for your fruit, but it will more or less work. But then, if this quality is enough for you, you can skip buying the expensive berries and slaving at the stove, and buy manufactured jam.


Which brewing method extracts more flavors from the coffee bean?

More is not always better. To extract the most flavour, just let it simmer for a long time... it just won't be a nice cup of coffee, because that way some unwanted flavours are also extracted.

To make a good cup of coffee, the water, the coffee, the temperature (also of the cup itself), the time, the grind and the blend all are important. Just as important as the method.

Favourite methods are the French press and the espresso machine, but a radical different method is Turkish' coffee, where they take the coffee to a boil three times and serve it without filtering... and it's delicious.


It's not a true Fondue but I've done something very similar by taking a white sauce base made with 50 / 50 wine and milk. You then melt in lots and lots of cheese and you get something very nice and similar to a fondue. You can pretty much use any reasonably melting cheese you like although a strong cheddar is very nice. For something really interesting add some Mozzerella and slowly melt it down and you get a wonderful stringy finish.


Honestly, don't grill.

Don't run away!

Hamburgers were originally cooked in pans, not on grills. One of the reasons for this is thta with grilling you lose any fat and moisture that comes out of the burger.

So I use Heston Blumenthal's method now. While I tend to ignore the preparation elements (I have neither the time nor the money to hand-grind my burgers with a specific ratio of this cut to that cut to the other cut), the cooking method is flawless:

Make your burgers.

Over very low heat, place a pan with just a little oil (or bacon/duck fat, which is lovely). introduce burgers to pan. As soon as they release easily from the surface, flip. Thirty seconds later, flip. Repeat until cooked through. (fifteen to twentyish minutes).

This will give you the juiciest, most tender burgers you have ever had in your life. I promise. Essentially what you're doing is basting the burgers in their own fat.

Alternatively, if you have an immersion circulator, cook your burgers sous vide and then just mark on the grill when done. I've had burgers done this way and they are excellent.

Burgers will flare on the grill--that's all the fat (and therefore flavour) being squeezed out by the action of cooking and burning away.


Tools

I have the following:

Aeropress: Roughly $40 CAD, Quick and easy clean up, Makes a good single serving of expresso.

Moka Pot: They vary in size and cost, but can be found for about $30, makes a good strong cup of coffee.

French Press: Easy to find, about $50 for a decent one, Glass is common, Stainless steel is better, makes also a decent cup of coffee.

Percolator: I have a stovetop one that I bought for camping. Big in size and it's cheap. It makes coffee.

Vietnamese drip thiny: It makes a single serving of very strong coffee. I used this because it was really, really cheap and made a good strong coffee. I stopped using it as the aeropress is better.

I don't have one, but I've enjoyed what is becomming popular these days which is a pourover. There is also a few others (Siphon, True expresso machines), but I don't have much experience with them and some of them are a lot more expensive. They're relatively cheap as well.

If you're mainly making coffee for yourself, I'd look into an aeropress or the pourover. They probably make the best coffee and are both affordable. The aeropress is my daily coffee, because well it's awesome. I often serve the french press as it's bigger or the percolator if I have lots of guests that don't care for "good" coffee.

Coffee

First thing, find a source of good coffee. You're looking for somewhere that roasts their own coffee and sells it relatively promptly. There are a few online sources as well. (No I wouldn't start at Starbucks or the like...). I don't want to link to places I haven't shopped at, so you'll have to search yourself. Unless you're in Alberta, Canada...

If you really get ambitious you can source green beens online and roast them yourself!

Grind

If you can find a burr grinder (not a blade grinder) that would be ideal. You want to grind as close to making the coffee as possible. Coffee starts to "lose" flavour as soon as it is roasted, and even quicker after it's ground. A burr grinder will give you a consistent grind, which means consistent flavour. Coarse grind for french press, fine grind for the aeropress/expresso, medium grind for most of the others.

Technique

Now... for the preparation, that varies by whatever machine you use... Check the instructions or google around.

Resources

http://www.ineedcoffee.com/: Lots of good information about different brew methods, coffee in general.

http://coffeegeek.com: Really great site with a lot of coffee specific information. At the top there is a Guides & How-To section. If you click that they will have much better laid out guides as to specific preparations.


What controls the pressure in a MultiCooker?

The body of the cooker doesn't directly control the pressure - this is regulated by the floating valve on the lid. It sounds like there is something wrong with the safety pressure valve on the handle. My first thought is a bad gasket or something preventing the gasket from sealing. Inspect the gasket if you can get at it and make sure there's no damage that would prevent a seal.

Worst case scenario you could try to find a replacement lid. It sounds like the body of the cooker still works fine so it would be a shame to discard the whole thing.


Homemade taffy turned out too thick and hard

Temperature is certainly important. If you start out with a hard candy straight from the pot you're gonna be largely out of luck regardless.

But really, the signature taffy texture comes from the continual pulling, folding, pulling that happens after you remove it from the heat. Pulling taffy works lots of air into it and stretches out the strands of sugar crystals into thinner, chewier shapes. So be sure you really work that taffy once you take it off the heat (and before cutting it).


making a sourdough starter in desert like conditions

Well every yeast strain is a bit different but normally the range is fairly forgiving.  Speaking from homebrew side; killing yeast from cold is almost impossible.

Homebrew side; they make electric thermostat controlled blankets to control temperatures; if you are going repeat this a couple times might be worth investment.  In beer world; changing the yeast reproduction rates and brew temp can have significant effect on flavour; not sure this applies to sourdough starters at all.

Temperatures:

above 108F - yeast start to die

140F - all yeast dies

below 32F - yeast can die

40F-65F - most yeast strands will be sleeping / dormant

78F - usually optimized production

Now I see optimized production of CO2 change from 10-15 degrees depending yeast strain; some being as high as 100; others being low as 70; but gives a good idea.


Is it safe to eat food cooked on a dish on which breaded chicken has been cooked and which wasn't washed?

Maybe strictly speaking there's a slight risk, but assuming you're a non-pregnant adult with a healthy immune system I would think the chances of any serious food poisoning would be pretty slim.


Why is there such a big difference of carbs in dark chocolate?

Nominally, high-quality dark chocolate is made of just two things, cocoa beans and sugar. In reality, nobody just chucks beans and sugar into a machine together. The cocoa beans get processed to different intermediate cocoa-derived products, and these get mixed with sugar to make a chocolate bar.

The cocoa-derived products can be very different. There is a range from cocoa butter (100% fat) to low-fat cocoa powder (about 5% fat, the rest is basically all carbohydrates), with other products with a fat content between these two extremes. The difference in fat comes from simple mechanical separation - once the cocoa butter has been "churned" from the cocoa liquor, what is left can be milled into cocoa powder.

The 90% number printed on the package means the total amount of cocoa-bean derived products. But their combination does not have to resemble the nutrient composition of a raw cocoa bean, it can be chosen by the producer any way they wish. So, apparently, Lindt Excellence uses a higher percentage of cocoa butter (or other fat-rich cocoa products) than Amedei Toscano Black.

If you are wondering about the sugar content being different, note that the ingredient "sugar" (the 10% added to the 90% cocoa) is not the same thing that gets counted in the nutrition label, where any sugars (including those already present in the cocoa bean) are included in the calculation. See this recent question for a longer explanation.


separating almond flour from almond meal

Any good hardware store will sell screen in a variety of mesh sizes.
Pick one out that matches your dome-sieve, and buy a couple square feet.
Make a wooden frame with say six inch sides, and tack the screen solidly to the bottom.
Sieve into a clean dishpan. Your sifting rate will increase substantially over what you're getting now.

For really fine flour, head to the fabric store, or buy a pair of nylons, and frame as I've already described.


What species of shrimp is "delicate pale colored river shrimp"?

Wikipedia works well as a contextual dictionary in these cases, so I just C+P the chinese name in Wikipedia and it gave me this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longjing_prawns

In that case you should be looking for river prawns (a.k.a. freshwater shrimps, depending on where you live), and a quick search in google gives you this guy: https://www.siamcanadian.com/freshwater-shrimp.html


If you replace liquid ingredients with a powdered equivalent, you'll need to add in additional liquid to compensate.

For instance, let's say the recipe calls for two eggs. If you replace two eggs with a powdered substitute, you'll need to add water to the mix in addition to the milk in order to replace the moisture loss by using a powdered egg substitute.

I'd also be concerned about loss in product quality when using an instant / powdered substitute, but in principle it should work.

That being said, I work in a bakery where we do something similar. For our muffins and scones, we combine the butter, flour, salt, sugar and baking powder and mix it until the butter is incorporated into the dry ingredients. We also beat together the eggs, milk and water required.

The dry mix and the wet mix are stored separately in large quantities in refrigeration and when we go to bake we simply combine them.

There will be a shorter shelf life to the dry mix because it's got the butter in it, but under refrigeration it lasts a long time. In theory, you could store it in the freezer -- I know you can freeze butter with minimal loss of quality so I cannot think of a reason why this wouldn't work, and it will give it a very long shelf life (however long you can freeze butter for.)

The egg, milk & water mixture's expiration date is whichever expires first from the egg and milk.

This probably isn't a practical solution unless you're making waffles all the time, but if you make them a few times it week it might be worth it because you won't lose quality. Otherwise, parse through your waffle recipe an ingredient at a time, replacing liquid with powdered versions, making sure to keep track of the water you'll need to add back in.


This recipe for Grilled Baby Octopus has instructions for cleaning them.  You can either cut off the heads, or if you choose to retain them:

  Make a shallow cut along the head, being careful not to cut too deep
  and puncture the innards. Carefully but firmly pull out everything
  inside. Cut the head off, turn it inside out and use a knife to scrape
  away the innards.

  In both cases, if a small black, triangular beak does not come out
  along with everything else, then push your finger up through the
  middle of the body and the beak should pop out.

As explained in this question, you will want to cook octopus very briefly so it does not get rubbery, or for a long time, to move past the rubbery stage.  If, as mentioned in the question, you wish to fry them, the cooking time may be around one minute.  Some recipes suggest 2-3 minutes per side.

For specific recipes, you can google "baby octopus recipe".


How can I rescue an undercooked pastry cream?

When this happens to me, I am distrustful of a simple reheat. It is possible that it was undercooked, but also possible that it was maybe overcooked/understirred and that most of the binding proteins solidified on the bottom and too little of them remained in the milk, or maybe that the ratios were simply wrong.

Your specific recipe also contains starch, so if you truly undercooked, then it's very probable that the yolks dissolved your starch, so you are left without any starch binding power.

The most secure way is to throw it out and make another batch, this time boiling so that it blubbs for at least a minute. If you really want to save it, just use another thickener. In pure custards, I tend to add starch if they don't turn out. If there is already starch in there, I prefer another thickener such as xanthan. First, I don't know why the starch didn't work the first time, but repeating it somehow feels wrong. Second, it can get too much of a starchy/floury taste.

The "other dish" is not something that can be answered on a Stack Exchange site. You have limitless possibilities to do with it whatever you want, starting with drinking it as it is. Anything which you can make with a custard which was made thin on purpose can be made with your failed custard too.


Heating bread in the microwave oven and wetting

There are two main strategies I employ to combat sweating in the microwave.

Microwave the item in short intervals, rotating in between each round. This will help steam dissipate rather than collect on the glass. Using a lower power might also help the item heat more evenly and lose less water.

Place a paper towel or tea towel under the item. This will collect the moisture so it doesn't pool and make things soggy.


Years ago there was a related question, How long can eggs be unrefrigerated before becoming unsafe to eat? .  In that one, we're looking at how long are they safe (which means a very low probability of them being spoiled).  But one of the answers links to an experiment from the 1970s by Mother Earth News.

In the article, they mention that they abandoned the unrefridgerated eggs (both store-bought and fresh laid) were still edible (but not great) at 90 days.  But another month in:

  By June (120 days after the experiment was begun) all the supermarket and all the homestead control eggs had gone completely rotten.

But not to worry, you don't have to wait 4 months:

  Our experiment was set up on February 4, 1977 and was designed to run for a full year of regular monthly "look, sniff, taste, and texture" tests. It very quickly became apparent, however, that some of the "preservation" methods we were trying were worse than no attempts at preservation at all. The eggs (both fertile and unfertile) buried in both the wet sand and sawdust looked bad, smelled bad, had lost their taste, and had runny textures just one month after being "preserved". Even the control groups — eggs which were just allowed to lay out at room temperature with nothing done to them — were better than that. Conclusion after only four weeks: Trying to store eggs in either wet sand or dry sawdust is counterproductive. Forget it. Anything else — even nothing at all works better.

30 days might not be enough to get that really horrible smell.  I'd probably go for 45 to 60 days in wet sand or sawdust.  I have no idea if playground sand would be better than sharp sand for this, but I suspect that if you're doing this at a colder time of the year, you might want to give it a couple of weeks past that, just to be safe.

You can also pack up a dozen eggs, and then after 30 days (not weeks), check one.  Then again every week or two until you get what you're looking for.


What was wrong with my Ohio Shaker Lemon Pie?

I have this recipe on my short list to try:
http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/04/shaker-lemon-pie/

Few things I've noticed in her recipe and my own experience with pies containing whole lemons.

The meyer lemons as she notes make a huge difference. Mind you their growing season is short and they are not available everywhere. If you have access to them, then all the better. Otherwise find the sweetest variety you can.
If you can, select lemons with as thin rinds as possible.
That all said, the shaker pie is designed to be sweet, sour and bitter. How bitter depends on the above.


How do I make sure I don't overheat my teflon pan?

To best check temperature, you need a thermometer, and if you can, use a non-contact thermometer (infrared thermometer).

Teflon start degrading at around 260 °C (500 °F).

So check the pan temperature, adjust the heat of your range (electric, gas...) so that the temperature stay below that.

If you want to use high temperature for some applications, then invest in a carbon steel pan or cast iron pan or a stainless steel pan

PTFE Safety


How should I add wine to the sauce for my duck?

Your question makes me think of demi-glace. From your question, I would say that you're trying to get a nice shiny thick sauce for your duck, one that tastes of red wine.

If that's your goal, I would recommend you

Reduce your stock down until it's about the total volume of liquid that you're going to want. The stock reduction should be roughly the consistency you want your final sauce to be.
Add an equal volume of wine
Reduce down to desired consistency (so about by half).

This will give you a lovely sauce, with lots of that sticky goodness that reduced stocks deliver so nicely.

You might do this with all of your stock, then freeze cubes of unused sauce for later; they make a great addition to other bases.

Left-over alcohol is not going to be an issue here, by the way, you'll have long since boiled/simmered it off.


I don't have a recipe, but if you had say a dehydrator, ketchup, and whatsit--dextrose?--that helps dry things resist clumping, you could make your own. I believe Ferran Adria carries a powder product, on his website albertyferranadria.com.

Add the powder to your own tortilla chips that you've just fried, and should work.

Alternatively, multiplex movie theatres often have several different shakers of flavourings--cheese, sour cream/onion, that sort of thing. Perhaps Costco would carry something similar.


How can I prevent the top layer of sauces from discolouring?

This discoloration is primarily oxidation. If you cover it with plastic wrap/cling-film such that the wrap is directly touching the top of the sauce (spread a piece over the bowl, then press down in the center and let the wrap rest on top of the sauce), the discoloration should be minimized. Just keep the plastic wrap on it until right before serving. (If you don't like plastic wrap, you can cut or fold a circle of parchment paper or waxed paper the size of the dish, but plastic wrap is easier.)

I'm not sure how long you're letting it sit on the shelf, or if that is a shelf inside or outside a refrigerator, but you may want to also consider food safety if you are leaving things at room temperature for an extended period.


"Sludge" at the bottom of matcha/green tea latte

If you are making your drink with real matcha, that matcha is very finely ground green tea leaves. There are parts of the tea leaves that will always be insoluble in water, and therefore eventually fall to the bottom and create this sludge to which you are referring. The only solutions to that issue would be either 1) filtering the solution to remove the insoluble solids or 2) allowing the insoluble solids to settle to the bottom and the decanting the beverage above that sludge into another container. Straining is not enough when you are dealing with very fine particles, as the openings in strainers would just allow those particles to pass right through.

If, however, you are not using real matcha and it is completely water soluble (maybe a freeze-dried preparation from brewed tea) there will be no sludge. I would suspect that Starbucks is not brewing green tea with real matcha for every serving.


There is no all-in-one sausage making site that I know of. However, many recipes can be found just by searching "home made sausage." You can further specify by searching individual types of sausage.  For example I recently searched for, and made, "home made Argentinian chorizo".


Here is an article in the Washington Post on a local caught taste test for snakehead:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/05/20/snakehead-taste-test-can-a-fish-this-ugly-really-taste-that-good-photos/?utm_term=.6ff5bd89c114

They compare snakehead directly to cod, tilapia, and flounder and indirectly with catfish cooked in various ways, in general comparing it favorable with each, a bit firmer than cod or tilapia.  Though I have not had the opportunity to have snakehead, this is consistent with other reports that I have had which list it as similar to catfish, usually reported as a bit cleaner or milder flavor.  Similar flavor and ability to grab spices to tilapia, but a firmer texture that holds up to cooking.  I would think that catfish or maybe mahi-mahi would be candidates for a curry for their ability to stand up to a bit extra cooking while candidates like tilapia tend to be thin fillets and soft so may well not stand up as well.


Should you avoid cooling a frying pan with water?

If you cool a pan too quickly it could deform, especially if your using a cheap pan. A cast iron pan could crack. This is most likely to happen if you dip a hot pan in cold water.

If you want to get a jump-start on cleaning, de-glaze the pan with a cup of water as you would when making gravy. Pour off this liquid and set the pan aside to cool completely.


What differences are there between reconstituted dried mushrooms and fresh?

Dehydrated mushrooms usually have a really intense flavor, and are a bit tougher than fresh mushrooms. Reconstituted they can be use in risotto, filled pasta, duxelles for an enhanced mushroom flavor.


Yes, oven drying is fine. Depending on how much liquid is on the popcorn, 15-30 minutes at 300 F should work. Mix the popcorn around a couple of times during this process.

Keep in mind that hot popcorn will seem soggier than it will be once it cools. When checking for doneness, let a piece cool for a little while before testing it.


Your question is bordering on being too broad, there's no "best", or at least everyone's "best" will be different. Here's what I mean:

method 1: Says to bone the meat but keep it whole, brine it overnight, and then confit it in rapeseed oil (canola oil)
method 2: This one says to cut up the meat beforehand, dry rub it with spices and salt overnight, and then confit it in rendered lard

These two recipes differ in many points but both are valid. Cut it up or leave it whole - either. What fat to use - whatever you like. What temperature - varies. The only things where these two methods agree are:

Brine, marinade, or dry rub the pork overnight to improve flavor, tenderness, and juiciness
Confit for about 4 hours
No browning before starting the confit. I've never seen a confit method that says to brown before, some say brown after
Both call for removing the pork from the oil, cooling, wrapping it in plastic wrap, and then refrigerating it before re-heating it at a later point

So how to do the confit depends on the effect you want. If you want something to be easily and quickly served then cut it up before hand, you'll also use less fat overall. If you want something impressive to put on the table leave it whole with the bone in, then pull it apart with a fork. If you want a really rich confit then use lard, if you want it slightly less rich use a lighter oil. Usually you confit using the same fat as the meat or poultry, however in this case I'd personally go for a lighter oil rather than lard, but that's purely my opinion.


Most refrigerators have the cold air outlet on the top, that way the cold air sinks down naturally to the bottom. Air from the bottom is then circulated through the heat exchanger to make it colder and then goes back in the air outlet at the top. So the very coldest place is right in front of the cold air inlet in the top. That's generally below freezing though, so you may get things colder than you want.

Other than that the coldest place tends to be the bottom shelf. You could also cool it down in the freezer for awhile and then transfer it to the refrigerator.


As Rumtscho said in her comment, much seafood is frozen on the boat before it even gets ashore, let alone into a restaurant. However, it is possible to keep seafood fresh using another method. Good seafood restaurants will have live food in tanks ready for eating. I often go to such restaurants and pick out my fish or crab from a tank and watch as the waiter nets it out. In my local market I can buy shrimp still jumping about in the bag as I carry them home. If you insist on fresh seafood, then look for places like these. Usually they will make a show of the live fish in tanks at the front of shop/restaurant.

To answer your question: If you don't see it jumping about live before it's cooked then assume it's either frozen then cooked, or cooked then frozen, or maybe cooked then frozen then cooked again.


From my years of cooking, I would guess this to be about 4 oz. or 1/4 C. as we sometimes used a small 8 oz. juice glass for measuring and half a glass would be half of that or 4 oz = 1/4 C., especially with vinegar, Other than pickles I could not imagine a recipe using more vinegar than that.  Hope this is helpful.


Should a sous-vide-cooked meat be frozen then reheated?

This shouldn't be a problem. What I recommend is to go in this order:

Don't pre-salt the food, other seasonings are fine but anything with a high sodium content should be left out
Cook to your desired temp (and I would recommend pasteurizing since it's not a direct serve situation
Pull food from bath and plunge immediately into an ice bath filled about half and half with cold water and ice to rapidly drop the temp of the food
Once chilled, put in freezer to store, leave them directly in the bag your cooking with. If your using ziplocks I would suggest wrapping them in plastic wrap and then putting them back in the ziplock before freezing.
When it's time to reheat, repeat your sous vide process from the initial cook. It will take the same amount of time it initially took to bring the core up to temp + the time it will take to unthaw the food in the bath. Reheating direct from frozen is your best bet for quality.
Post-sear the food and add salt at that point. Adding salt at this point will prevent the food from taking on a cured texture when it is frozen and held for a period of time.
Enjoy!


The problem that most people make when doing a breading is that they try to put on too thick of a coating of any given layer.

Breading sticks because wet sticks to dry, and visa-versa.  As such, you need to give the item a good shake after it leaves each dry station, and a moment or so to drip (and a little bit of shaking here helps, too) after it leaves a wet station.

I've also seen recommendations to let the breaded item sit for a while before cooking -- I can only assume that this is to allow moisture to migrate into the dry breading, or for the egg to set up some before it turns to steam (which could result in that layer separating).

So, some suggestions to fix your recipe:

Don't use the milk, but also don't dry your meat.
Use whole eggs, but make sure they're well beaten (the color will go to a pale yellow).  The whites act as more of a 'glue' while the yolks only serve to wet things down.
Make sure to shake the item after it's gone in the flour.
If the eggs layer is going on too thickly, thin it with a bit of water before you do the next item.
Really press the crumbs in on the final station.  Shake the container to get a good distribution, then set the item in there.  Spoon the crumbs from the side on top of the item 'til you can't see it, then press the crumbs into the item.
Shake the item as it comes out of the breadcrumb station, or leave it to set for a few minutes on a sheet tray or wire rack, or both.


Is there a formula for converting pancake batter to waffle batter?

Add an extra egg and 1/3 cup oil, my waffle recipe uses half baking powder, half baking soda while my pancakes only use baking powder (but when converting a mix I usually just do the egg and oil).


Could malt used in bread show up as dark brown "grains" in the finished loaf?

Without pictures, it's hard to say for sure, but that doesn't sound like malt. Malt syrup (barley being the standard grain used for malt) is fairly dark (between honey and molasses in color), but it's also transparent and would be dissolved in the dough. Malt powder isn't significantly darker than flour, and should be distributed evenly through the other dry ingredients. Neither are used as a "darkening agent", aside from occasionally being used to darken the crust of bread slightly. As rumtscho points out in the comments, there is a "rye malt" which is used as a darkening agent in some traditional breads. If this is used, it could be a lump that didn't get mixed in? A much more common darkening agent would be caramel color, which is still very unlikely to lead to dark lumps, as it dissolves easily in water.

Depending on the type of bread, it could be a kernel of some type of grain (rye maybe?) or a lump of unhydrated flour. Without more details, there's no way to give a definite answer, but it doesn't sound like malt.


What is a good substitute for ground veal?

The original recipe calls for a total of 2 lbs of ground meat, 1/2 beef and 1/2 veal.

I would suggest a close approximation to the effect can be had by using either (in decreasing order of preference):

50% ground pork, 50% ground beef -- Some of the mild flavor of veal, with tenderness and flavor from the pork
100% ground beef -- It won't be as tender or as subtle, but still will be good

I would avoid trying to use as part of your substitution mixture:

Ground lamb, goat, ox, and so on -- flavor is too strong
Ground chicken or turkey -- these are extremely low in fat, likely to toughen your overall mixture, and likely to make it taste more poultryesque

Personally, I would also switch from whole eggs to just the yolks, which will bring the binding and tenderizing qualities of the yolk, without the slightly rubber-like texture of albumin based white, to more closely approximate the qualities the veal would have brought to the dish.


Grape Juice left out overnight, now has fizz

I'd be very wary of this, if only because it seems to have fermented remarkably quickly. The fizz is likely the result of carbon dioxide being produced by yeast eating the sugars in the grape juice; this is the same process that carbonates beer or sparkling wines.

The thing is, most of these yeasts are introduced deliberately, and they take a while to do their job. In my experience with home brewing, it would generally take at least a few days for the yeast to begin producing significant carbonation. If you truly did just leave this out overnight and it's already noticeably carbonated, that seems to be a very aggressive or efficient strain of yeast. Since it's impossible to know for sure, the safe thing to do would be to throw it out.

Wild fermentation of this kind is used to produce certain beer styles, and other fermented goods such as sauerkraut, so it's not unsafe by definition. I would exercise caution here only because that level of carbonation seems very unusual to me, and grape juice is unlikely to be precious enough to justify the possible hazard.


Yes, it is called a toque.  I don't have a copy of CIA Pro Chef handy at the moment, but it was in the first chapter IIRC. Wikipedia and a casual googling will confirm this.


At what point is eating left-overs or perishables not just daring but dumb?

When in doubt, throw it out. It's cheaper than a hospital visit.

If you are wanting to save money, be proactive and find out the best way to store each food, and how long it can be stored.

Some things lose taste and texture as they age (even in the proper environment), while some things begin to grow dangerous kinds of bacteria or molds. For example, hard dry bread gets turned into french toast. Moldy bread gets thrown away.


Maybe you can try whey powder, which you can find in the sports drink column in grocery stores. Whey is one of the proteins present in milk.

Also, whey powder is low fat and low carb, some comes in vanilla flavor, which maybe good for making sweets/dessert. Hope it helps :)


Hamilton Beach 5 qt Slow Cooker Bad taste and smell

It sounds like the cooker malfunctioned. An electrical fault inside the unit may have caused a short that caused some component to burn. Various electrical parts can give off strong acrid odors when this occurs. It's possible that the nature of the fault was such that its circuit only came into play when you switched the unit to "warm".

However, assuming it's a typical slow cooker with a ceramic bowl and glass cover, I don't know how the taste would be transferred inside to your cooked food. Perhaps the odor was so strong and held in the air such that it affected your taste buds.

In any case, you are wise to return the unit. Whatever happened to yours is likely an unusual occurrence. Hopefully it won't happen again to its replacement.


Can the bacon in homemade "Bacon Salt" be made shelf stable?

Remember that the whole reason we cure bacon is to make it shelf stable over time, a process developed before refrigeration was as it is today.  Now we do it more for taste, but the salt and curing process make bacon pretty shelf stable.  If you are cooking the bacon as well, before you put it in the salt, I don't see any reason not to leave the bacon salt on the counter.

I'd try leaving it on the shelf until you noticed any issues.  But I'm willing to live a little more dangerously than some others.  :)


I think what's really happening here is mostly physics, rather than any magical reaction between the meat and the "velvet" (i.e. egg and cornstarch; I'm going to use this term for brevity).

The largest effect is that the velvet adds a thin, clingy coating to the outside of the meat.  When introduced to heat, that's providing a barrier to the movement of thermal energy into the meat proteins.  The proteins in the egg are denaturing, the starches are gelatinizing, and that absorbs some of the energy that would otherwise have gone into your meat.  The presence of sheer additional mass from the velvet also means that it simply takes more energy to raise the overall temperature.  This means that the temperature increases more slowly, and can be better controlled (sort of like sous vide cooking).

As the starch gelatinizes, it's also forming a  moisture-resistant barrier around the outside of the meat.  That could very possibly prevent moisture from leaking out of the meat as it's squeezed out of cells with denaturing proteins.  Ordinarily it would leak out into your poaching liquid (or wok if you're stir-frying, where it would rapidly boil off) but now it's trapped in the pieces of meat.  This is also somewhat analogous to sous vide cooking, or maybe to poaching in oil - the food being cooked stays moist, because the water is trapped inside (by a bag in sous vide, by hydrophobic oil in oil-poaching) and has nowhere to go.

Another factor is the very gentle cooking being done, in a barely-simmering water bath for a short period of time.  This is cooking the meat just up to the point of doneness, by doing so at a rather low temperature (say 210 F or so, compared to 500 F or higher for a properly hot wok) and only very briefly, with the velvet coating for additional thermal protection.  After that, the meat doesn't really need to be cooked much at all - it can be tossed into a nearly finished stir-fry just to the point of being re-heated.  That seems to be why this article tosses out this interesting comment:

  The meat remains soft and tender. (You've probably noticed in Cantonese restaurants that stir-fried meat is almost never browned or seared.)

I hadn't given it much thought before now, but that seems to match my experience in good Chinese restaurants, at least with certain dishes.  Contrasting this with stir-frying sans-velvet, think about a browned piece of meat: the surface is covered with a delicious Maillard-browned crust, but those proteins have also been cooked to the point of losing their moisture.  Even if the interior of the meat is moist, the outside's been dried, literally to a crisp.  With velveted meat, that's not the case - each entire piece remains moist, and there's no browned, crunchy layer.

I'll be the first to admit that much of this is conjecture, but I think it provides a reasonable explanation for some of the processes that keep velveted meat moist.  Might be interesting to dig up some scientific references on the thermal gradients of proteins vs. starches - I'll see what I can find.


Can I make a cheese sauce with edam cheese?

AFAIK, you should be OK.

It is a hard cheese, similar but different than cheddar, but should work.

You might have to experiment a little bit, even if the cheeses are similar, their behavior when melting might be different.


Do pickled sausages need to be refrigerated?

I have a jar of "Big John's" pickled sausages and right on the bottom it says "NEVER NEEDS REFRIGERATION"!  They sit at stores and bars for for many days if not weeks and are sold by the sausage.

I found this on Hannah's Facebook page.  "They do not need to be refrigerated after opening in temperatures below 75 degrees. Recommended refrigeration for temps higher."


Baking lots of bread - keeping a yeast starter

Making a starter. I suggest you make a sourdough starter but add yeast at the first stage. I would begin with 50g wholemeal flour, 50g water, and 1tsp instant yeast, and then feed it twice a day, maintaining equal weights of flour and water and discarding (or otherwise using) half the starter each time. Keep this going for at least five days.

Once you have an active starter it will survive unfed at fridge temperature for up to a week. Make sure to use a clean container and a clean fridge to avoid contamination with mould.

Incidentally, your starter might also pick up wild yeast. I would expect wild yeasts to be out-competed by the commercial yeast and for the yeast strain to remain stable, but this isn't guaranteed. Either way you get an active starter.

Checking for yeast activity.
You can get some idea whether your starter has active yeast by looking for bubbles on its surface or an increase in volume after feeding. But I've had sourdough starters that barely grew after feeding but could still raise a loaf.

Another quick way to check that your starter has active yeast is to fry a tablespoon of starter on a high heat. I find there is just enough time for the yeast to develop a matrix of bubbles in the top surface before it dies. If there is an acidic smell and no bubbles then I'm afraid the yeast is dead and you'll have to try again.

A much better way to gauge the activity of a starter is to use it to make a loaf. I expect you will find your starter has less activity than instant yeast (or active dry yeast) but you will still get good bread. In fact because your starter will pick up natural bacteria (like a true sourdough starter) you might even get better results.

Using your starter.
I typically give my dough a long first rise in the fridge: this allows for some variation in yeast activity since the whole process happens much more slowly. It also gives a deeper flavour. One sourdough rye starter I maintained for several years had relatively little yeast activity but was still able to raise a good loaf given 48 hours in the fridge.