How to throw dough, a basic step by step guide.

Make sure you have a dough that can stand up to being airborne.  This means that you need a high gluten dough.  You can throw wetter doughs as you get more experienced but they require much more precise hand placement and are much less forgiving.
Make sure your dough is fully risen with out being "blown".  It should be elastic and soft to the touch.
Coat dough in flour.  This step is necessary to allow free spinning on your hands and to get good, clean releases.
Create crust. You can use the method that daniel describes, you can use the Papa John's fold and tuck method, you can do it like this video, it doesn't matter as long as you end up with a piece of dough that is flat over the interior with a ridge going around the outside.
You should be comfortable with in-air hand stretching before you get to the actual throwing.  This is when you place the dough on the backs of your hands, support it with your knuckles and stretch it out.  This position is a great way to start a basic toss that won't rip your dough as you will be catching with the backs of your hands and not your fingers. You want to release the dough by having your right hand provide upward thrust as your left hand provides spin. This will provide a straight up toss that is very easy to catch.
The way to do the more advanced throws is learn to release from your finger tips.  This involves having your fingers rest along the ridge that we made in step four.  You can check out a quick tutorial starting at 2:17 on this video. Feel free to ignore the rest of it, but it was the best explanation I found online.  Basically, you want the dough to hang in such a way as to allow you to impart spin and momentum with just one hand, while other is occasionally used as a stabilizer.  This allows tricks like the roll and the through the legs and all the others.

Important tips that will help you be successful at learning this skill.

Cold dough is more elastic than warm dough.  That means its terrible for pizza but great for practicing.  It also resists puncture a little better, so less holes.

A damp kitchen towel has about the same aerodynamics as a piece of dough.  It's what I used to train the guys at my restaurant on for extra practice, and it's way cheaper than one of those rubber doughs.

The dough should always be spinning in the air.  If it's not, you aren't doing it right.

Throwing dough can result in a very thin middle. You want to make sure that you are stretching evenly and keeping an eye on that if you intend to use the dough for it's actual purpose of delicious pizza.

Practice, Practice! Throwing dough is a physical skill and you have to train your muscles a little to be good at it. It can be a little frustrating at first but stick with it, it's a lot of fun.
If you have any additional concerns leave a comment and I'll do my best answer them.


Short answer: no, it is unlikely. There are some concerns with eating potatoes, but these apply to any form of consumption of them.
Longer answer:
Maybe. The main risk from potatoes (along with most garden plants) is ingestion of pesticides, fertilizers etc added to the garden where they were grown. So long as the with-holding periods are observed for these additives, and the tubers themselves washed sufficiently, these should not be a problem.
There are additional concerns:
Potatoes (and tomato, peppers (chili), eggplant/aubergine) are members of the Solanaceae, which is known as the "Nightshade" family. Nightshades all contain something known as Solanine, which is an glycoalkaloid toxin. Glycoalkaloids largely result in neurological and gastrointestinal symptoms, resulting in muscle cramps, vomiting, nausea, headaches, diarrhea at low levels, and can even cause death at high levels.
Solanine can be found in any part of the plant, including the tubers and is not reduced by boiling or dehydration, although temperatures over 170 C (~390 F; i.e. baking and deep-frying) can cause a reduction in the level. Most of the solanine is found in the skin, so peeling the potatoes removes a large majority of it. There is also a suggestion that green patches on the skin of a potato indicate higher levels of solanine, and places like the US National Library of Medicine recommend against eating green potatoes.
It seems that there is some variation in alkaloid levels in different potato varieties (May be paywalled), and they are higher in organiclly grown potatoes than non-organic.
Apparently you can test for solanine by placing a small piece of the raw skin in your mouth for a few seconds. An itchy feeling or bitter taste indicates high levels of solanine and related glycoalkaloids.
Having said all that, it seems that alkaloid poisoning is rare in the general population, though possibly misdiagnosed as food poisoning in many instances as symptoms are similar. Masses of potatoes are consumed in the western world, and given the low rate of alkaloid poisoning, I think you will largely be safe. Sources indicate that eating up to 5 g (0.18 oz) per kg (2.2 lb) of body weight per day of green potatoes does not cause acute illness. If, as your name indicates you might be, are a typical Israeli male of 85 kg (187 lb; which is also a pretty typical western body weight), this equates to 425 g (0.9 lb) of green potatoes per day.
TLDR: most likely safe.


How to soften diced meat that was has had too much of its juices leave from being cooked too long?

In the general case, it is not possible.

As you cook meat past about 165 F, all of the proteins will have denatured and contracted, squeezing out moisture.  This is what makes well done meat tough and stringy or rubbery.  This process cannot really be reversed, although you can try to mask it with a sauce.

In the specific case of certain cuts--the ones famous for braises or barbecue, the "low and slow" cooking techniques--there is some hope, but it is a thin one depending on what you have been doing.

These cuts, the most active working parts of the animal such as the shoulders (chuck for beef or butt for pork) have a great deal of intramuscular fat, as well as connective tissue made of a protein called collagen.

Over time, when cooked slowly at temperatures of about 180 F, the collagen in the meat will turn into gelatin, which has a silky, smooth mouth feel, and the fat will lubricate the meat.  They still have their proteins irreversibly dentures and tightened, but the gelatin and fat provide a new kind of moisture and unctuousness that is highly prized.

The cooking techniques for this (braising, barbecuing, slow roasting) are rarely employed for chops or steaks that you would do in the frying pan.  They also simply don't have the collagen or the fat to make it possible.  That is why they are better off with the higher temperature, faster cooking methods, but should not be overcooked, as you have discovered to your dismay.

Your best option is not to try to recover from this situation, which is very difficult to do, but rather to learn to prevent it:

Get a good instant read thermometer to check the internal temperature of your steaks or chops
Learn what the safe temperature is for that type of meat.  For example, poultry and pork should both be cooked to at least 155 F (and for poultry, many people have learned to like even more done meat)
The FDA recommends 165 F for ground meat (which is quite well done)
Measure the temperature of your meat and learn to recognize when it is done
Assess what level of risk you are willing to accept

Over time, you will learn to recognize when cuts are done to your liking by how they feel when you poke them with your finger (which is a pretty good indication of how done they are, based on how resilient they are), but the thermometer will be your guide until you build that experience.

Still, this will require that you adjust your expectations of what completely cooked meat looks like.  Pork may still be a touch rosy, for example.


All gelling agents work only under certain conditions. You need to be in the working range for:

temperature
sugar content
pH
alcohol

Pectins are more sensitive than gelatine, working in narrower ranges. Also, not every pectin is active in the same range, the main difference is between HM and LM pectin.

You can try if gelatine works with your recipe, but here we get into shelf life problems. If you wanted a refrigerated jelly, gelatine is OK. But if you want a jelly that is shelf stable after canning, you need to have at least 33% sugar by weight, better more, and as far as I know, it won't work with gelatine (I don't know if this is because of food safety consideration or because this is outside of the gelatine's working range).

The better way is to find out what changes to make to the recipe in order to have the proper ranges for pectin to work. Use this table for the pectin properties.

(source: Texture by Martin Lersch)

If your pectin type was not on the label, you're more likely to have HM pectin.

I don't know whether trying to reprocess your current batch of jelly is worth it; it may or may not work. You have to calculate the risk (do you see it violating some of the conditions on this table?), your time, and the cost of the ingredients. Also, you don't say how much sugar you used, but if it was too little, it is not edible after 2 weeks in the fridge.


Using acidity to brighten simple sides like purees

For anything of this kind, I would use lemon juice. It is acidic while not being overpowering like a vinegar can be. It performs the same job in, for example, fruit pies - a little lemon juice enhances the fruitiness and flavour of whatever the main fruit is.


Is there any way to "Salt" unsalted cashew pieces?

You may have luck just tossing them in popcorn salt. Popcorn salt is ground much finer than regular salt, and should stick to the surface much easier than the larger grains in table salt or kosher salt. If you don't have popcorn salt, you can start with kosher salt and pulverize it into a fine powder in a food processor, spice/coffee grinder, or mortar and pestle.


Actually, it isn't really to allow the garlic to dry, it's the opposite (to help prevent it from drying out too much).

  Most models of the garlic pot are relatively small and usually round. Often, the garlic pot is constructed of some sort of porous material, such as fired ceramics or terra cotta. Both types of the garlic pot will feature a lid that is loose fitting, allowing for quick retrieval of the garlic clove from the container. In addition, the garlic pot will have a series of air holes on the backside of the body of the container. These holes supply the garlic bulb with proper circulation and help to prevent the garlic from drying out. Coupled with the lid, the garlic pot also protects the garlic from direct contact with light, which could hasten the process of mould appearing on the garlic.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-garlic-pot.htm

  A garlic keeper is a small garlic pot which is designed to stay cool and which has holes to allow air to circulate

http://www.garlic-central.com/keeper.html


mashed potatoes - fixing undercooked potatoes

I would suggest microwaving them on to complete the cooking without getting them waterlogged, unless you have a huge volume of potatoes.   They should still be quite hot from the previous cooking, so should not take long to begin cooking in the microwave.

If you don't have a microwave, you could try continuing to boil them, but you don't want to add cold water and have the starches begin to crystallize, so I would try to keep them as warm as reasonably possible while bringing the water to a boil in an electric kettle or another pot.


Recommendations for spice organization strategies

Alphabetically works best for us.

I have a friend that does alphabetically by sweet and savory.


Is nonstick cookware safe to use after overheating

Based on a search of sources covering health risks around Teflon (PTFE) cookware, nobody has found any evidence that cooking with previously overheated cookware is dangerous to your health.  Breathing the fumes during overheating is bad for you, and cookware that has been overheated may cease to be nonstick, even though it looks OK:

  Teflon™ nonstick coatings will not begin to deteriorate in appearance
  or performance until the temperature of the cookware reaches about
  500°F (260°C). The coating will not show significant decomposition
  unless temperatures exceed about 660°F (349°C).

... in other words, the nonstick starts to fail before there's visible damage.


Can "cream-style" corn substitute for creamed corn in cornbread?

It's canned cream-style corn that the recipes are expecting you to use, it's not a substitution at all. It does make for nice cornbread.


How to properly use alcohol when cooking something?

This is borderline too broad as there's many ways alcohol can be used in cooking, but in reality preparation method doesn't actually make much difference, alcohol doesn't cook off nearly as quickly as people seem to think so it's good practice to expect there will be almost as much alcohol in the end dish as you put in. Some techniques like flambe will burn off some, but there will still be plenty left.
I think the way to go is to understand how much alcohol goes into different foods so you understand you may end up eating, you can then steer away from things that may have too much. It would be unusual for you to ever feel the effects of alcohol when it's used in food because the generally the quantities are very low compared to the bulk of the food. A good example of this is using red wine in a tomato sauce, you may add 250ml of wine to say 1.5 liters of sauce overall. At 17% alcohol that's around 43ml of actual alcohol in that wine, if you have 1/6th of that sauce in your meal you're having about 7ml of alcohol in that sauce, which isn't enough for you to notice any effects.
That's not true across the board though, looking at the other end of the scale you have something like Rum Babas, where you have alcohol at about 8x the concentration of the tomato sauce. If you ate one of those you'd be having about 20-25ml of alcohol, depending on the serving. That's about the equivalent of 1/2 a glass of wine. That's not really that much, even for a teen, but you might notice an effect.
An extreme example would be vodka marinated tomatoes, this involves soaking peeled cherry tomatoes in 500ml (2 US cups) of pure vodka for hours. I served this at a party and a vegetarian guest ate a ton of them and got completely lit!
The upshot of this is that it's about the quantity of alcohol you will end up eating or drinking, preparation only makes a bit of difference in that.


What is the approximate shelf life for herbal infused olive oil, coconut oil, glycerin, or vinegar?

For 1), it is 2 hours. See Infusing olive oil with herbs: infused olive oil is not a shelf stable product and the same rules as cooked meat apply to it. 2 hours on the shelf, 3-5 days in the fridge. The type of oil doesn't matter. As soon you have plant matter where the oxygen is cut off, you risk botulism (can be deadly even if treated properly).

For pure coconut oil, look at the date stamped on the package. This is what is relevant for food safety purposes. If you are asking "when will it go rancid", there is no way to predict it. Just smell it before use.

Herbal infused vinegar will last the same as other vinegar. It is safe for years, unless you notice signs of spoilage (mold).

Pure beeswax also lasts for years without becoming unsafe.

All of this is for each of the exact products you mentioned above, unaltered in any way. For example, if you were to emulsify together the infused vinegar, the beeswax, the coconut oil, and some water, the resulting shelf life would be again 2 hours outside of the fridge, after which it would be unsafe for consumption. Or, to say it another way: the storage lifetime of a prepared food is not determined by the storage lifetime of each ingredient. You can learn some more in our tag wiki on food safety: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/tags/food-safety/info.


What is this cut of meat? Ideas on what to make?

It's difficult to guess based on the cut alone, as they butcher animals differently in the US / UK / France / Russia (and Jewish and  others), which can result in cuts that aren't easily recognizable in other countries.

I'm going to assume pork, due to the variation in meat color. (it's possible that it's an issue in monitor calibration, but the top left of that first picture is way more 'pink' than 'red' as compared to the muscle to the right of it. You don't typically see that significant of color change between two adjacent beef muscles, nor that pale of a color in beef)


baking cupcakes in a commercial sized pan?

Yes and Maybe. You should definitely place the pan 'centered on the center rack' of a well pre-heated oven. The heat should be absorbed evenly and allow all of the cupcakes to bake at the same pace. (If your oven has 'hot spots' you may wish to rotate the pan once, 180°, about half way through the expected cooking time).

As for how long to bake them, do not let time @ temp be your guide to 'done'. As with any cake, use the toothpick test (stick a toothpick into the center of a cupcake and pull it out, if it is clean, they are done.) You should start testing this way at the 'expected' baking time.


The "cheese pull" is considered to be one of the oldest advertising tricks in the book. From  QUARTZ :

  In advertising, the cheese pull is more than just a tantalizing glimpse of melted goodness. It’s an idea, and an enduring one at that. Advertisers use it to communicate with the part of our brain that’s not verbal, with the primal core of our being that doesn’t understand words but responds with hunger, thirst, arousal, desire.

And:

  In food advertising, the cheese pull can “trigger deep-seated memories of food experiences” to “signal an enjoyable experience in you,” said Uma Karmarkar, an assistant professor of marketing at the Harvard Business School. “Food is what we call a primary reinforcer,” she said. “We recognize the value of food items even when we can’t touch them or feel them in person.”

(Interestingly enough, this article tells us about other ad 'gimmicks", as well.)

So, it makes sense that, if it works in advertising to make us want a certain food, it would work the same way in practical use, perhaps enhancing our perception of that food we are about to eat.

The first and most important thing is the cheese. While you can use any cheese in any dish, it's better to pair the cheese with the dish it will be used in. E.g., mozzarella is considered one of the best cheeses for a great cheese pull. That said, it doesn't have a huge amount of flavor. So you wouldn't want to substitute it for a more flavorful cheese, but you may want to mix some in with another cheese.

Another factor is temperature. If you want a good cheese pull, you need to let the food cool ever so slightly. Too hot, as in 'just done' or 'just out of the oven' and the cheese may be too liquid. Wait too long and you have the opposite.

Additionally you want a good melting cheese. This article from  Bon Appetit  discusses eight of the best melting cheeses for a cheese pull. They indicate that a young cheese will melt better. (I'm sure that anyone who has melted an aged cheese will agree with that.)

  Generally speaking, younger, fresher cheese is going to give you a better melt. You know, the softer stuff.

(I do disagree with them on one thing, however. I've not found fresh mozzarella to be a good 'stretching' cheese.)

There are some other hacks that can help you get a good cheese pull. E.g., for a commercial shoot, they may cut a slice of pizza (in the raw dough) so that after cooking it can be more easily lifted with a spatula without completely severing the cheese strands by a knife or pizza cutter.

So, for practical use, you could entirely slice the raw pizza dough to get the same effect.

The cheese pull has become quite popular. It's not limited to pizza and grilled cheese. Taco Bell is incorporating it in some of their dishes. From the QUARTZ article linked above:

  Taco Bell recently co-opted the techniques of its sister brand, Pizza Hut, to push its cheesy new menu item—the Quesalupa. The fast-food chain spent two years perfecting the messy practice in stores and on camera to ensure that the strands of pepper jack shown in ads resembled what customers encountered when they pulled the quesadilla-chalupa lovechild apart themselves.

And there are a lot of recipes online for pull-apart cheese breads - looking delectable, of course, because of that stretchy cheese.

Last, but not least, experiment. A good cheese pull can be created from almost anything that has a good amount of cheese.


What can I do with super salty cream cheese mixture?

This is too salty to be worth salvaging. You could use small quantities of the mixture in place of salt in recipes where the cheese would be complementary. But since it is so salty you cannot use very much; it would take weeks to get through it all. Salt is pretty cheap, so instead, I would just discard the mixture.
To go with your quiche idea, take a look at a few recipes. They use between 1 and 2 teaspons of salt for a single large quiche. Since you have a cup of salt to deal with, this is 48 teaspoons, or at least 24 quiches! I assume you do not want to bake this many.


Pulled pork - interrupted cooking in oven?

You can completely cook it the night before.  Pulled pork will reheat quite well.

Alternately, you can cook it completely that morning, and hold it for an hour or so before your guests arrive.  It should braise or roast in no more than 3-4 hours, tops, which should allow you to cook it the same day.  You can then hold it a while for service, if you don't want to be pulling in front of your guests (I would; its fun).  It should have enough mass that in a covered container, maybe with a towel over it as a blanket, that it won't cool off too much.

Home ovens don't hold temperatures terribly accurately, especially at the low end of their ranges, so I would not try some sort of overnight cooking.


It should keep in the fridge for a week or two- and you should be able to smell it if it goes bad.  However, you can just freeze any unused juice in 1 or 2 Tablespoon portions (in an ice cube tray) and keep it around for the next time you need it.  Just transfer the frozen cubes into a labelled freezer bag so they don't get lost or thrown out.  Waste not, want not, right?


What is the roasting time per pound for a spatchcock turkey breast?

The answers duck the question.  No, you don't determine doneness by time, only by temperature, but when you're planning a meal, you don't want to have the potatoes done and still have to wait two hours for the turkey.  So, you CAN estimate cooking times based on research/experience.  I smoke my turkeys so I'm smoking at about 250F.  I also spatchcock the birds to even cooking and speed cooking times.  But I know I can figure ROUGHLY 15 minutes per pound for whole turkey or breast.  If you cook a whole bird or a whole breast not spatchcocked estimate ROUGHLY 30 minutes per pound.  If you're roasting at higher temps, cut your estimate to probably 12 minutes per pound spatchcocked, and 20-25 minutes per pound not spatchcocked.


My research confirms the first comment by @Chris H; that is, homemade caramels are shelf stable.  From a safety concern there is no problem.  However, some home candy makers describe a graininess that occurs over time, making the candy less pleasurable. Some folks have experimented with different types of sugars to attempt to combat this effect. Moisture absorption over time is another problem impacting quality.  Suggestions are to wrap individually, then place in an air tight container. There is actually quite a bit of discussion about caramels on the internets, if you want to compare your recipe to what others have tried.


Is a little oven less hot than a bigger oven?

It could be that your oven's temperature control is off somewhat. Ovens aren't exactly scientific instruments, so you can't be sure how accurate they are with this kind of thing.

Get a decent oven thermometer and go by that rather than the temperature knob. You might be surprised. Mine runs about 10-15 degrees less: when I set it to 180 on the dial, it's often about 165 on the thermometer.


How can food cooked 1-2 hours ago be effectively reheated in a microwave?

For me, I use the microwave's power setting. This is sometimes a misunderstood feature. When you don't set the power level, then it is 100%. This means during 100% of the cook time the magnetron inside the microwave is active and radiating your food. If you set the power level to 10, then during the cook time, the magnetron will not be active the entire cook time, instead it will be active during 10% of the time. "Power" is a bad term because it does not effect the power level of the magnetron. It affects the amount of time it is active.

This is helpful to know if you also understand that microwave energy does not penetrate very deeply into your food. It enters about 1 to 2 inches. This mean the surface of your food gets really hot when the magnetron is on, but the deeper parts are not getting hot. You use this to your advantage by setting a lower power level which allows the heat to conduct through your food naturally when the magnetron is not active. It is a way to warm the entire product without blasting the outside of it.

If you are microwaving something thick, then reduce the power and increase the time.

If you have a microwave safe shelf, then use it! That allows more microwave energy to come in conduct with more of your food's surface. The waves "bounce" inside the box, so being on a shelf lets some wave bounce under it and hit the bottom of your food.


why does coconut ice turn brown after a couple of days

Whenever you have a fresh fruity thing go brown, the word is "oxidation."

There are a couple of ways to prevent oxidation in sorbet or other fruit ices. The first, and easiest, is to cook your mix before you freeze it. You'll lose some of that "fresh" taste, but your color will be more stable.

The second is to add an acid...Acids love oxygen, and bind it away from your fruit (for a while)...This may not work in your case, since I imagine "Sorbex" is a version of "Fruit Fresh" which is a citric acid powder. Regardless, this will obviously effect the taste.

Finally, you can grind up a chewable vitamin C tablet (or buy powdered Vitamin C) and mix that in.


How can this "Bloody Brain" cocktail be made without alcohol?

Most of the things in this are very easy to substitute.

Roses lime juice is sweet and non-alcoholic (and can be found in most supermarkets).

You can easily sub in heavy cream for Baileys: they don't taste the same, but chemically they react about the same.

Grenadine is just a pomegranate juice simple syrup. No alcohol there at all.

The only question is what you want to sub for the strawberry vodka. Some kind of soda, most likely. It's a question of taste. It won't be easy to get something that is both fruity and clear, but you might try white cranberry juice, or white grape juice.


Can I increase the cocoa content in fudge?

Looking at your recipe, the most obvious thing to me is that there is no salt.  Adding a small quantity of salt (say, 1/2 tsp) will enhance the flavors of the ingredients already present.

The second thing you might try is switching to dutch processed cocoa; many people find this has a more intense chocolaty taste.

You could try enhancing the overall flavor by adding a small amount of cinnamon (say 1/4 tsp) or instant espresso powder (perhaps 1 tbl).  While these ingredients do not, in small amounts, overwhelm the flavor, they do increase its complexity and the impression of how chocolaty the fudge is.

Of course, you can increase the amount of cocoa powder (at least by ratio): simply increase the absolute amount of cocoa, starting with small increments of perhaps 1 tablespoon per test run.   The problem with this method is not only that it throws off the sweetness balance, but also that it will eventually change the chemistry, possibly influencing the crystallization of the sugar phase which is what provides the smoothness of the fudge.

Finally, and more radically, consider reducing the amount of dairy, changing the milk for water, or reducing the amount of butter.  The milk fats and milk solids tend to mask the flavor of chocolate.  While I consider these part of the overall desirable balance of the fudge, since you after an intense chocolate experience, it may be worth experimenting with.


Does the airflow pattern in a hot air popcorn popper matter? / What should I look for in a popper?

All of this techniques are simply trying to get an evenly, uniform amount of heat to all kernels. If one part of the machine or blower gets more heat than the rest, then you will first start hearing the kernels pop. Then a brief silence. Then other popcorns The rest that did not get the same heat as the first ones) start popping. By the time this second kernels stop popping, the first should be burned out.

So several ways have been created to solved this. You got horizontal heat blowing, diagonal heat blowing (This cases involved a bowl like container). Then you got the vertical heat blowers. Most of this are meant to do 2 things:

Create enough heat at the bottom and blow it up until the kernels pop.
Make the popped kernels literally blow out to the top of the machine and on to a bowl of some sort.

The problem here is that, what happens if a kernel is at the bottom and it pops, but this same kernel has way too many kernels on top of it. By the time it gets blowned out, it will be almost burned or totally burned. This is the most common problem with this vertical ones (I bought one long ago). the ones left are either burned or not popped yet.

What I would look if I wanted a popcorn maker would be:

Vertical Popcorn Makers

Enough space where the kernels are heated for them to move (Since heating them will make them start jumping because of the amount of heat/energy received) and to come out quickly.
The height of the place where the kernels are left should be low to help them come out quickly.
If the space where they are is very narrow, there is a bigger chance they will burn while trying to escape their doom.
Kernels should not be thrown in with butter or any other sticky liquid, since this liquid will make them stay on the bottom and will burn more of them faster.

Horizontal Popcorn Makers

Make sure it actually spins. If they do not spin, make sure the airflow circles around the machine in a somewhat evenly distributed airflow. This should also take care of moving the kernels. If not, then kernels that stay on the borders longer will burn. For this cases, the center should have something that kicks the kernels to the borders, making sure they all pop quickly.
The space inside the machine should be in the shape of a circle so it can spin better and heat the kernels evenly. If you see a machine that starts making some socially acceptable figures that are not circles (Like a Horizontal Unicorn shaped popcorn maker) do not buy it. It will eventually burn more kernels than a circle which is the best way for airflow to work it's magic on the kernels.

Diagonal Popcorn Makers

Tips from the 2 above should be applied here. Typically they will either give you an option to spit the popcorns from the top to a bowl or from the side. In any case, watch out for space for kernels to move and heat sources.

For all the cases above, there is another small, minor, insignificant detail in regards to this machines:

Do not use plastic ones. They will not last since we are talking about a machine that will heat kernels to the point of popping them. It is much better a metal based one and have the handles be made of plastic, but never have the actual plastic be in the same place where the kernels will get heat and pop.

What I would suggest, if I may be so bold is to either use the microwave or the stove. In both cases you get the same result. On the stove you actually need to be moving the popcorn with a spoon until you see all kernels popped. In the microwave, you need to make sure they are evenly left on popcorn bag for example. Making sure they are not all push to the borders (That would make the kernels on the borders pop first and burn first before all kernels are popped) or push them all to the middle (Same effect but with kernels left in the middle).

Just some tips to look for some of this machines and ways of doing great popcorn.


No, salt actually destabilizes egg white foams. The small amount added to a souffle won't ruin the souffle, but the meringue will actually hold a bit better without it.

There are many reasons for a souffle to not rise (overbeaten whites, bad folding, wrong base consistency, wrong oven temperature, etc.) but salt is not one of them.


What ingredients can be used to prevent rapid ice cream melting?

Hydrocolloids like Guar and Xanthan gum don't prevent the ice cream from melting, rather they change the texture (more like jello).  There are other ice cream additives. Instead, I'd recommend optimizing the physics before enlisting chemical help.

What happens is that the ice cream batter mixture warms up during the churning process and loses consistency (melts).  The best defence against melting ice cream is working in lower temperatures:

Make sure the ice cream maker bowl/machine is properly cold (-16°C, or 0°F minimum).  Get it as cold as you can get it.
Put your ice cream batter in the freezer for half an hour to an hour before making the ice cream to keep it just above the freezing point.
Working in a colder room helps as well.

You should be able to get great results using these simple steps, however, if it still looks like a losing battle, you can also try pre-cooling your churing bowl with dry ice. (if you throw the dry ice in the ice cream batter, you may get a tangy ice cream).

Afterwards, put the remainder of the dry ice in a container next to your machine and cover them both loosely with a tarp (keep the place ventilated) to keep the air around the ice cream batter and machine cold.


Loose-leaf tea: specifics of re-steeping multiple times?

As you've noted in your description of your experiments, there are many variables (e.g., amount of tea, type of tea, steeping times for each infusion, etc.). Fundamentally, the type (green/oolong/pu-erh/etc., quality, nature) of tea is a huge factor, and personal preference is a factor but not the only factor (what you describe as "bland" or weak might not be to someone else). I think there are some objective generalizations, though.

The tea you start with matters. A specialty tea dealer will often annotate a given offering with brewing recommendations (e.g., commonly temperature, time, quantity of leaves per cup, as you note); some dealers will also suggest that the tea can be enjoyed through 2-3 or multiple infusions. Such a tea is a great place to start for your own experiments.  I find that some teas (e.g., darjeeling, broken orange pekoe) simply infuse too quickly and to fully in the first infusion that they are totally spent. Further infusions are weak and bitter.

Some teas that I find work well for multiple infusions:

good quality green-oolongs (multiple infusions; tung ting or formosa)
green-white blends like white peony (2 infusions)
lightly roasted/toasted green teas, like long jing (dragon well) or gunpowder green (aside: this is probably a good place to start as it can be inexpensive and enjoyable)
higher quality pu-erh teas.

Techniques. This varies per the type of tea; but in general, I personally do the following when I intend to infuse loose tea multiple times:

Infuse slightly more tea (perhaps 50% (1.5 times) more; certainly not 2-3 times);
Infuse for a shorter period of time (perhaps 1/2 to 2/3 as long) on the first infusion;
Infuse for progressively longer amounts of time for subsequent infusions.
If anything, slightly lower temperature on subsequent infusions.

That tends to make the resulting brew (to my taste) slightly more uniform in result, though there is significant difference in flavour.

Other things to keep in mind: if you're using tea with caffeine, most will come out in the first infusion; if you're using 2-3x the tea, this is significant! As you also note, the character of the brew can be very different through the several infusions. This can be part of the enjoyment, as each infusion will extract different ratios of "stuff" into the resulting brew. For lower-quality gunpowder green teas, for instance, I actually prefer the second brew over the first.

Instead of multiple infusions, you might also simply

consider brewing a larger pot all at once into a thermal carafe, then enjoying it a cup at a time.
consider brewing just a cup at a time, which will have a better result for certain teas (a pathological example: bags)

I would not recommend some things that you said: most specifically, I don't think you'll get benefit from infusing at a higher temperature for subsequent brews; this is likely to give you bitter or off-tastes; you're "burning" the tea and extracting stuff you don't want.


Is it safe to cook in a grill\oven that is rarely cleaned?

The build up on the oven walls is likely grease.

Food contamination risk is low to none if they don't touch.

The bigger risk is a grease fire.


Char Siu sauce ( char siu = fork roasted )


How do you remove strong garlic odor from enclosed space (garage)?

When you see advice to eat lemon, apples, or milk to eliminate garlic breath, it's the polyphenols in those things that break down the compounds in garlic that cause the smell. Tea, both green and black, is high in polyphenols. Try putting some strong green tea in a misting-type spray bottle and treating the air and the surfaces.


At what temperature should one bake a coconut crust for a Hershey Bar Pie?

My friend makes coconut crusts all the time and she bakes them at 350 degrees.  But AllRecipes.com bakes their crust at 325 degrees for 15 minutes.


What kind of soup is this lady most likely making?

There are actually two dishes being sold, and neither is "Phở". The words that she yelled and had Gordon do the same were "Hủ tiếu, Bún riêu". They are both noodle soups, the former is pork based broth, and the latter, porc and shrimp/crab with tomatoes. You can google the words for more info.


What is the formal definition of savory?

In cooking, "Savory" does generally refer to a flavor profile that is anything other than sweet.

"Sweet" doesn't have to necessarily be sugary sweet...basil, tarragon, fennel, carrots, beets, etc. have sweet flavors that are not excessively sugary sweet.

The term "neutral" is typically used for things like crepes and choux paste (eclair paste) because when made in their traditional style they are neither savory nor sweet and can work with either flavor profile.


Increase lifetime of homemade chocolates

If you freeze the chocolate, it'll likely "bloom" (some of the cocoa butter will separate out, leaving white spots). This is an entirely aesthetic problem; they'll be perfectly safe to eat, and it doesn't affect the flavor much. So, you may want to try this for your personal treats.

The filling may or may not freeze well, depends on what the filling is. First, if its a fairly concentrated sugar syrup, then it may not freeze (because the freezer isn't cold enough, it'll just get really thick). But it'll last much longer. Most fillings are also perfectly happy in the fridge, and will last longer that way too (but not as long as in the freezer).

Other fillings may suffer texture changes. E.g., freezing may separate any emulsion.

You probably won't have issues with water escaping, as your fillings should all be low-water anyway.

As with anything in the freezer, tight moisture and air impermeable packaging will work best.


Only the seeds of the habaneros I bought are hot - low quality, or simply the nature of chili?

I've experimented with growing different varieties of peppers over last decade and found by surrounding one with other types of peppers (sweet, medium or hot) and increasing or reducing water near harvest time you can completely change the heat and flavor of the peppers from that plant. If planted in a pot you can move it around your garden to get different tasting peppers from the same plant throughout the season.


This is not a problem at all.  Use a trivet, cutting board, or even a folded towel under your container.  If you are at Home Depot, you could also get one of those cork mats that go under a planter.  Really, anything will work.  You just want to protect the surface from any potential heat and/or water (occasional spillage) damage.


How much salt should be used in dishes for the best flavor?

There's a reason so many recipes say "salt to taste": there's no single answer. Most of the time, we use close to 0.5% salt by weight (so 1kg food has 5g or 1 teaspoon of salt), but "close to" leaves plenty of wiggle room about what exactly is best.

Different people have different tastes. What's perfectly salted for one person may be oversalted or undersalted for another.

Different dishes need different ratios too. Some things are supposed to taste a bit salty, while some just need a hint to amplify other flavors. Some ingredients need more salt to balance them than others.

Sure, you can get approximate starting points, e.g. bread might be around 1% salt by weight, cookie dough might be about 0.5%, soups and stews might be something like 0.5% (with tons of variation - that's a couple random recipes). So very roughly, 1kg of food often comes with 5 grams of salt (1 teaspoon) with exceptions ranging up to 10 grams (2 teaspoons).

But your best bet is always going to be to find a good recipe for the specific dish you're making, and possibly adjust it if you know your preferences lean one way or another. Failing that, when cooking something improvised or new, or using one of the many recipes that just says "salt to taste", letting you do what suits you, trust the instincts that you've developed for your own tastes.

If you're cooking for others, with possibly varying tastes, it gets trickier. For things where salt can be added after the fact, you can use less salt and let everyone individually salt to taste. For things you can't mix after cooking, you pretty much have to compromise somewhere in the middle and hope it works for everyone.

Beyond that, if you can't decide what the right amount of salt is, don't worry about it. There's surely a range that works for you, so if two different amounts both taste good, there you are. And if you find yourself disagreeing with someone about what amount of salt results in the best flavor, stop. You probably just have different tastes from the person you're arguing with.


How to make sorbet from fruit like watermelon?

Some suggestions in the event that the questions doesn't get closed as a duplicate...firstly, get a copy of McGee's book, as suggested in the first possible duplicate.  It is an excellent resource with too much information to reproduce here. Referring to McGee, you will want to decide what kind of texture and what level of sweetness you desire. The proportion of sugar in the mix and how fast it is frozen impacts the final consistency. It's not really about pulp content. Again, this is all outlined in McGee's excellent book. What McGee calls "moderately sweet ice" (20% sugar) becomes rock hard when frozen, and needs to be used before that state...or allowed to temper after.  Sweet ices contain about 35% sugar and need little, if any thawing.  Creating the desired texture is a matter of balancing acid and sweetness given a specific ingredient.  Watermelon and lemon will behave very differently, and McGee has a table that helps to see why.  The ratio of sugar to acid in lemon is 0.4.  For Watermelon it is 45. For example, he suggests the following for a sweet lemon ice: 1 C juice, 14 TBS sugar, 1 cup water.


Ugh. Obviously, the oven isn't usable like that. Well, if you can't pry it up without damaging the enamel, or the surface isn't flat enough to scrape it off with a razor blade, the next step is probably to see if a little temperature might loosen it up. I'm guessing that a freezing attack like gum remover would shatter the enamel, so warmth without enough heat to produce a bunch of fumes might loosen it up. If that doesn't work, if the package says what kind of plastic it is, then you can try a solvent for that plastic. My guess is that it's mylar, which is pretty resistant to solvents. If it is, this chart says that Sodium Hydroxide (Lye) will attack mylar, and that's a common ingredient in oven cleaner. I can't find any information that discusses the safety of this interaction but I'd consider it if I had good ventilation... but it would probably be a good idea to check with a chemist.


Why did my toasted acorn squash seeds smell like chocolate?

The difference between carmelization and the Malliard Reaction

When cooking seeds and nuts, you are essentially carmelizing various basic sugars and amino acids (the components of protiens) via the malliard reaction.  This is what gives a grilled steak a different flavor than a boiled one, just like white table sugar has a different flavor from carmelized sugar via carmelization.

When cooking anything you are trying to add flavor to, there is a point where it goes from tasty to not-tasty.  Think of a charred steak or burnt caramel.  Some items that we expect a certain amount of bitterness from (coffee, chocolate, etc) are pleasant to smell because they smell like they will taste; a little bitter and likely robust.

When you are expecting a buttery, nutty taste, the smell of chocolate or coffee may seem pleasant, but it tends to signify the seeds have cooked to that doness, which is probably not an ideal one for that item.  A medium-well tuna steak may smell nice, but (arguably) won't taste as nice as a rare/medium-rare steak.

You essentially burnt your seeds. (no snickering!)

I would recommend in the future you pull them out of the oven a few minutes before they smell like you want them to.  They will keep cooking on or off the pan for a couple minutes due to residual heat.


It is hard to tell just from text descriptions, but I believe your pork leg is under-cooked.

Note that it is likely fully cooked in the sense of safety, but it has not had long enough for the slow process of collagen to gelatin conversion.

Pork legs (or hams, depending on what you have exactly) are well used muscles with a lot of connective tissue, comprised of the protein collagin.  This is tough, even when fully cooked to 165 F / 74 C (which is well done for most meats).

At temperatures above above 180 F / 82 C, in the presence of water (which is in the meat already), the collagen will begin to convert to gelatin, which has a moist, unctuous texture.

This process is both time and temperature dependent.  At lower temperatures, it takes more time; at higher, it is faster.

Continuing to slowly roast your pork leg will allow this slow conversion to happen, making it again become tender and unctuous, because of the lubricating affect of the gelatin.  In fact, it will eventually be pullable just with a couple of forks (although shoulder is even better for this).

You would probably be better served by cooking it at least three hours; four might be even better.

See also:

What makes a moist steak (or roast)? (despite the name, this is about more than steaks)
What factors affect collagen to gelatin conversion?


Should I refrigerate homemade yogurt before making Greek yogurt?

It isn't necessary, and many recipes don't call for it.

But the results will be slightly different, since the yogurt will continue to ferment (even in the fridge), and the gel structure of the proteins will set. That will alter composition of the whey that you're straining out, which means the resulting difference will have a slightly different texture and flavor.

Since that texture and flavor also depend on the milk you use, the temperature you process it at, the strain of culture you use, etc. I can't really say exactly what the differences will be, and how significant they are. You'd have to make it yourself and see -- and, of course, decide which you prefer.

I can say, however, that you won't ruin a batch of yogurt by straining before refrigerating.


How do I make my roti dough stretch thinner?

I would guess your main problem is the protein in the flour.  To get that stretchy dough that will not tear you need bread flour.  Your water, the proportion between kneading and resting of the dough, and the salt also matter.  The recipe you are using has way too much fat in the dough.  The leaner version suggested by bonCodigo is closer to the needed proportions.

YouTube has a video channel on roti canai.

Flour.  You can buy roti flour from an ethnic grocery store, but many of the chain supermarkets in the US now carry bread flour.  It has higher protein content without being whole grain.  Different flours have different proportions of gluten.  Those with lower content (called weak flours) being better for cakes and those higher content (strong flours), better for breads.  Gluten is not one protein, but a mixture of two protein families: gliadins, which give the dough its plasticity, and glutenins, which give the dough its strength.  Different strains of wheat have different ratios of gliadins to glutenins, hence the need to find an appropriate flour.  In the US and Canada, high protein flours tend to be optimized for loaf breads and not flat breads, so some hunting around for a good brand may be needed.

Ghee  The recipes on the net vary dramatically in the amount of fat added to the dough.  The basic process of dough making is to get the water to break up the gluten in the flour and then stretch those giant molecules to create a network of stringy, tangled molecules.  Too much fat interferes with this process.  About 5g of fat for every 100g of flour is a good ratio.  As ghee adds flavor, the trick to make a dough with higher ghee content is to think of it as a croissant and fold the fat in after the dough has incorporated some water.  This is done by brushing the ghee in later stages of stretch and fold.

Kneading and resting  Making the network of gluten proteins requires energetic changes. Lots of water and rest could do it (as in no-knead breads) and so could a little water, a little rest, and a lot of kneading.  With flat breads one does not need to wait for the yeasts to create the bubbles in the dough. The resting is for the water to do its work of untangling the gluten.  The trick is to know if the water activity, resting, and kneading have brought the dough to the right point.  There are many dough tests that are better explained through a video.  The dough in the leaner recipe is a wetter dough that is a bit trickier to knead by hand.  The basic idea is to place it on an oiled countertop, pinch a corner, and fold it over.  Repeat a few times and it will become easier to handle without having to add extra flour as it often suggested.

Water.  Don't use tap water.  It may be too alkaline, to hard, or too chlorinated.  Andrew Whitley in his Bread Matters book has a chapter on how guilty he felt using Evian to make his bread, but it improved his bread.  For flat breads one is less worried that the chlorine in the water will kill the yeast, but depending on your tap water composition, the other chemicals could be an issue.


There are lots of theories about this topic.  Basically, to get large holes, you want a dough that has enough air to expand greatly, enough structure to support that expansion, and somewhat uneven distribution of the air/structure to produce various size holes.

Some things that will help:

Relatively high hydration.  It's not strictly necessary, but it allows more random gluten connections to be made, making for a more chaotic internal structure.  Hydration needs to be compared to flour gluten content.  High gluten is not generally necessary, but a good bread flour will help.  Nevertheless, it is possible to produce large holes in short or squat loaves (baguettes, ciabatta, focaccia) even with AP flour.  The high protein is usually only necessary to get a high-rising loaf.  Lower protein flour loaves may still have relatively big holes, but they are more likely to spread rather than rise high when baked free-form.
Gentle kneading at the outset.  You really only need to mix until ingredients are thoroughly combined and distributed.  Extended kneading at that point is not only unnecessary, but it can encourage the initial gluten connections to be really even (and not the random network of strands and holes).
Instead of kneading at the outset, do stretch-and-fold maneuvers periodically during the bulk rise.  They will add a lot of strength while minimally disturbing the emerging gluten networks.  And they will encourage more random connections between each stretch-and-fold maneuver.
Don't skimp on the bulk rise time.  This is when the big air bubbles and random gluten networks form.  Many people even do this overnight in the fridge or follow the "no knead" bread recipes that just let it sit out for many hours.
Don't "punch down" the dough after the first rise.  Instead, your goal is to shape the bread as efficiently as possible without destroying the random network of holes that is present.  Contrary to popular belief, you don't necessarily need to be very gentle with the dough at this phase (though with some types of bread, like ciabatta, it can help).  It doesn't matter so much if you lose some air, as long as you are stretching the gluten to add structure.  So, don't deliberately try to get air out, but instead focus on stretching and folding over to get a taut, elastic dough in preshaping.  Or, be gentle -- the dough may not rise quite as high, but it should still have large holes.
If you do lose some air during shaping, don't skip a bench rest.  A bench rest essentially allows another "stretch-and-fold" exercise that adds strength.  Preshape the dough until you can feel it become a bit taut.  Then cover the dough and wait 10-15 minutes.  Then do the final shaping of the dough, being sure that the surface is taut, which will allow the strongest final rise and increase oven spring.  Again, as long as your yeast is strong, the big holes will return even if you lose a little air here.  In most cases, being gentle and "trying not to disturb the bubbles" will actually result in less of a final rise and therefore smaller bubbles in the final loaf.
Use any techniques that will increase oven spring.  Anything that gets you a bigger loaf means more room for the bubbles to get bigger.  That includes: steaming the oven, baking on a preheated stone, slashing the loaves properly right before the bake, baking on high heat (at least for the first 10 minutes or so), etc.


Tomato paste is far more concentrated, and it's produced by actually cooking down the tomatoes a couple times. Since tomatoes contain a lot of sugar, this will actually caramelize those somewhat and produce a richer, sweeter flavor.  Even canned tomatoes will taste more acidic and less sweet.

So your finished dish will likely follow suit - it'll be a bit sweeter, have a slightly richer flavor, and it will have a bit less moisture.  That's not necessarily a bad thing; you may find that those different flavors interact with the spices in an interesting way.  Just make sure that you don't use a 1-to-1 substitution; because tomato paste is much thicker you'll want to use less of it or its flavor will totally dominate.


Can I safely clean/eat harvested foods that have aphids on them?

The best way to remove the aphids is to submerge the vegetables in cold water for at least 10 minutes.  Then drain, rinse them off, and dry them.  Salad spinners are perfect for this.

Once the aphids have been drowned and rinsed off, the greens are perfectly safe to eat.  Actually, it should be safe to eat the aphids as well, it's just unappetizing.


Glucose is used to supersaturate the refined sugar. Without it, the refined sugar would crystallize after some time. We don't want our marshmallow to be like that.


I just made a batch of hot sauce that was very cayenne-heavy myself. Keep the seeds.

You want to get every last bit of heat out of those babies, especially if you are diluting with a significant amount of vinegar.

The only use case I can think of for chopping the tops off as described in your recipe is if you aren't already planning to strain out the pulp as well.

Even if I was eager to keep pulp but avoid seeds in my final batch I would rather scrape seeds from the individual peppers than waste that much product.

I personally don't think you'll notice any off flavors from the seeds.


In my experience (I'm Texan, I've seen my share of okra), 2.5-3" is pretty small, and 6" is on the big side but I wouldn't expect it to be inedible. It's certainly going to be much more tender at 2.5-3"; there's no possible way it'll be too tough to eat. Larger does mean tougher, but at that size they might still be okay (for example this source says 4-6" is good). It looks like different varieties can have pretty different sizes - for example, this cow's horn okra is supposed to be best at 6-7" but still be good at 14"!

In any case, test the okra you have; no reason to choose just based on the length. Just try cutting it with a sharp knife, and if it's really hard and fibrous, you'll know. If it's borderline, any sort of long stewing method will be your best bet. You'd also want to cut it fairly thinly, so that you don't have very long fibrous strands to try to chew.

If it's really too hard to soften even like that, you might still be able to get some use out of it as a thickener but I don't think you'll ever be eating it on its own. If you want to try thickening with it, I'd cut it into bigger chunks, so that you can easily fish them out once they've done their work.


How do I heat up rice and pasta at work?

To reheat left over rice, microwave is the best!
Put a clean damp (wet but not runny) cloth or paper towel on top of your rice in a microwave safe dish and heat it for 2 minutes. Don't put a lid on top of the dish.

Left over pasta is always gross, no matter how you reheat it. So stick with microwave. If you pasta is not super saucy, same method (with a damp paper towel) would apply to pasta, otherwise, just heat with a lid on.


You could replace it with any other powdered non-dairy milk trivially, but I imagine you don't have those either. There's also not enough liquid in the recipe to be able to reduce it and use actual milk.

That being said, the purpose of milk in baked goods is flavor, a tender crumb and a well-colored crust. You could add in a tablespoon of peanut butter or another fat (a local bakery makes dog biscuits with rendered bacon fat) to add tenderness to the biscuits, and your dog will probably appreciate the flavor while you can avoid the issues of canine lactose intolerance.


My Pineapple Open Tarts won't dislodge from their moulds

If there is really no way to delicately take off the moulds, I'd suggest feezing them. Then once they've hardened, heat up the mould and try to push the tarts out/bang the mould on a hard (not fragile...) surface. They'll be hard enough so you can apply more force without breaking.

As a last resort... :)

Also, removing them right out of the oven might not be a great idea as they will often shrink while cooling down, which can help take them out. And as Fabby pointed out : butter AND flour.


I haven't had that happen since the 1980's.  Sound like the Flour Moth.
Freezing Rice or Flour for 3-4 days will kill the eggs.
I usually freeze local flour/rice for a few days so that I don't have to deal with any potential problem.
If you have pantry moths, or other moths that have hatched, you may need to take extra measures to get rid of them.  Once they start flying, they can get into any opened grain-food.


What are properties of good whole bean coffee?

Roast Date

Coffee starts to degrade fairly quickly. If you can find someone who roasts locally, that's ideal. The closer you are to the roaster, the less shipping and handling and the more likely you are to get quality coffee. If a company is roasting something to be shipped nation wide, they have to make certain sacrifices. So like @Max said, look for a Roast Date. Within the last week or two is ideal, a couple months is decent.

Origin

For places like Tim Hortons (Canada), McDonalds or Starbucks, they are looking for a very consistent taste every time. This is easier to do with a Darker Roast as you hide some of the nuances of specific crops. Often these will be from multiple origins to "blend" to a consistent taste. There are still many acceptable coffees that are blended like this. However, if you look at many of the Artisianal Coffee Places, they often tend to go for a light or medium Roast. They'll also tend to advertise a specifc farm and country. The reason for this is that with a lighter roast you can taste more of those specific notes in the bean. Some places in my opinion go to far and under roast it. I find in this case it actually comes across as overly sour. So this is entirely up to you what you prefer or are used to.

Packaging

You want something that was vacuum sealed at the roaster. Coffee reacts with oxygen and degrades as soon as it's roasted. Vacuum sealing it immediately, slows down that process. So this means avoid anything in a bulk bin in a coffee shop or grocery store. You also want to buy something that is a whole bean. As soon as you grind it, it also starts to degrade (within minutes). You can find a ceramic burr hand grinder for about $30.

Personal Notes...

For me, I have a few local roasters that I really like, but for my daily cup I can't afford to buy them regularly either. So basically, I look semi-local (for me it's anything in western Canada) for a medium roast  from a company that can tell me where they got their bean. I look for words like "single origin" and "fair trade" and yes, even "organic". I don't actually care if it's Organic, but I've found these companies often care about their product more. When I get the coffee I like to be able to taste something unique in it. I'm not sitting here looking for "hmmm this tastes of elderberries and caramel by the ocean in the fall..." that's a little too much for me. That said, if it just tastes like generic "coffee", then I'm not really interested. Not to say that any of this guarantees their quality... so buyer beware.

I don't think specific brands fits with this site, as it's too specialized/localized, but hopefully that gives you something to look out for.


Strange bacteria-like substances in honey

From the pictures, it looks like it's just the beginnings of crystallization, so it's perfectly natural and safe. You can reduce the speed of the crystallization by keeping it in a relatively warm place (25C/77F) if possible.

Beyond that, I'd just ignore it for now, but once it spreads through a lot of the honey, you may want to heat it gently to melt the crystals. That's not a permanent fix though. It'll tend to recrystallize some after cooling.

If you haven't seen this before, it could be due to buying different kinds of honey (the more filtered, the slower the crystallization), different storage conditions, or just eating it before it has time to crystallize.


For the 1st question: can I freeze the crumb coated layers?
Yes, you can. I've tried it before and afterwards you can smooth it out further.

As for the thawing frozen cake within 2 days, that would heavily depend on your buttercream type.
If the climate is hot and you don't use a stable buttercream, I definitely won't recommend it.
In my experience meringue based buttercream holds better than american type buttercream.
Hope this help.


It doesn't even necessarily need to be a "pairing" but something that you can add to your existing puree to improve it.
I think you're on the right track with acid -- it's often overlooked in how it can brighten up otherwise dull & muddy flavors.  You might try adding some lemon juice, vinegar, or even a prepared mustard.
I generally don't cook only turnips, so I'm not sure what's best in this case ... I'll do a variety of root vegetables, like carrots, potatoes, turnips, and onions.  You can also look to recipes like colcannon or stamppot and mix in some cooked dark greens.  You can then serve it with or mix in some sort of processed pork product like cooked sausage, bacon, or ham.  (I wouldn't go with just any type of meat ... I think the salt & maybe the fat are the key here, as both can help mask bitter flavors).
If you're boiling the vegetables to make a mash, I'll also toss in a few garlic cloves, and mash them in with everything else.  After the fact, you might try mixing in some chives or if it's still hot, some finely minced scallions or shallots (so they're cooked slightly in the hot mash)
You might also look to where the puree / mash is used as an ingredient in some other dish ... I would think that a shepherd's pie / cottage pie could be really good with a turnip puree on top.


Chipotle chiles, especially in adobo sauce (e.g., here), give an excellent smoky flavor. You should be able to find these in your grocery store in the Mexican section.


Boiling Chicken Breast (or any meat) before cooking to cook evenly

Short answer - you are right on all counts and she's wrong. Tell her that, she'll love it. ;)

The longer answer is that boiling a frozen piece of meat, especially one that is thick in the middle  like chicken breast is exactly the opposite of what you want to do as you'll cook the outside but the inside will still be frozen, and boiling (as you rightly point out) will remove flavor from what is already IMO flavorless to begin with. Any cooking method will dry the chicken out whether boiling, baking, or frying, so by cooking twice you are liable to end up with food that is overcooked on the outside and undercooked on the inside.

Cooking frozen chicken isn't a great idea from a safety and quality perspective but it can be done if the meat is cut thin, so your point about butterflying it is very valid. What I do personally is I thaw chicken meat (thighs in my case) partially in the microwave, then I slice it into 1/2" (about 1.3cm) pieces across the grain before cooking in a saute/stir fry of some sort. I like partially rather than fully thawing in the microwave because it gives a better taste/texture than a full thaw in the microwave, and it is very easy to slice when partially frozen.


Rule number one with sauces: don't miss an opportunity to add some flavor. The worst thing you can make is a bland sauce, and while I doubt a little water or watery store-bought broth would bland this one up, I'd use whiskey myself. It's liquid, the flavor should be compatible, and I've never seen a college student who couldn't lay his hands on a bottle.

Bullion cubes/granules are fine, but, again, I'd probably add booze instead of water to hydrate them.


Why do I need to cook milk in a cast iron pan before first usage?

I've never heard of milk being used to season a pan and so I am a little skeptical of it.

Pan seasoning is always done with fat that is heated until it polymerizes. This creates a very hard non-stick surface that makes cooking easier and protects the pan from rust.

See this question for more about how to season your pan:

What's the best way to season a cast iron skillet?

See the article linked in one of the answers:

http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-technique-for-seasoning-cast-iron/

This process, while slightly more labor intensive, produces the best seasonings I've ever seen.


I'd say it depends. If you are dead-set on observing all food safety rules, the pizzas are probably unsafe to eat. But in the real world, it is possible to bend some of those rules and get by unscathed. But you have to be smart about it--not all rules safely bend as far as others.

What was on the pizzas? Shrimp? Chicken? Raw sausage? Those things have a pretty short safety window. Cured meats like pepperoni are safer longer (that's why they're cured in the first place).

How hot was your kitchen?

How long did they sit out?

And then of course it comes down also to how long and how hot you're cooking things. You might well be able to kill off germs in things that aren't outright spoiled. Pizza isn't that long-cooking, so there's risk there.

Ultimately, you have to be the arbiter of safety. Check the USDA website about food safety and follow every rule if you want to feel certain.


It's vegetable oil spread, not vegetable oil. It's just another name for margarine, which is normally made from vegetable oil. So substitute as you would for margarine, because that's what it is.

Without knowing the recipe, I have to assume oil is a bad substitute here, because generally you don't want to substitute a liquid fat for a solid fat. But if you're just melting it, for example, it wouldn't matter.


leaving oil on a frying pan for use later

If you preheat the pan then you should be perfectly safe as the high heat should kill anything 'dangerous' before you add your meat for the second meal.

That said, I would point out that those oils left out are likely to begin to degrade immediately, causing your steak to take on some potentially undesirable FLAVORS.


What oil is best for seasoning a cast-iron skillet

This question has been answered several times as part of more general questions about seasoning. See the (closely) related links in the related questions list.
This one in particular:
What's the best way to season a cast iron skillet?

Specifically about oil- you want to use an oil that has a high iodine value:
http://www.journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html#highiodine

Of those you listed canola (rapeseed) would be highest. If you can find soybean oil it would be even better.

These oils polymerize more easily. To create an even coating with good adhesion, multiple thin coats work well. I have read of people doing as many as 6 coats but, in my opinion, you should do at least 2 or 3.


As Blessed Geek indicates, vinegar is made by fermentation of ethanol by "mother of vinegar", a bacterial culture.  This is true of all vinegar, not just wine vinegar.  The unique flavor profile of various vinegars is the result of other flavors in the base wine or spirit used to produce the vinegar.  (Well, some vinegars like true traditionally produced balsamic vinegar get flavor from the casks in which they are produced and aged, but that is a special case.)

Finding definitive and credible sources on the amount of remaining alcohol in the final product after fermentation is difficult.  One of the more credible sites indicates no more than about 2% alcohol content remains; other sources seem to indicate about 0.5%.

Unless you are concerned about the laws of Islam, or the possible affect on a recovering alcoholic, this is trace alcohol almost certainly negligible.  I am not qualified to comment on what it might mean for those two areas of concern, though.


No, you are not wrong. The roller you describe produces a noodle that is closer to capellini than spaghetti.


How can you consistently separate Kefir into curds and whey for cheesemaking?

With milk kefir, if you over-ferment it, you will see it break into at least two if not three layers. Slightly cloudy whey is one of them. Without that, you can strain out some grains, but getting a curd is going to be difficult. You can try  acidifying the kefir with lemon juice or vinegar to coax out a curd, but it would be much easier if you let it over-ferment. That means patience (many days) if you have a cool ambient temperature or you can somehow keep it warm (say 30C) for a day. The type of milk matters too. Homogenised fresh milk tends to be harder to work with, and UHT tends to be easier.

You need to see a distinct layer of whey first before trying. It should not take more than half a day to strain out the curd. Salting the over-fermented kefir before straining also helps.


How to make a meringue cake layer that is not cracked?

I am not entirely sure that what you intend is doable. A pure French meringue, when baked enough to get hard, will generally go brown on the outside. Also, I don't think the idea is very functional - first, most fillings and icings will likely wet your layers through, and second, if you can keep them dry, eating the cake will not be especially pleasant, getting worse with every layer you add.
You may instead look into existing recipes for cake layers designed around a meringue. These are usually dacquoise cakes, but I recently also found out that there is a popular cake in Serbia made with what was called orehovka in eastern bloc countries, essentially a merengue-and-walnut cookie, which gets blown up to cake layer size for that recipe.
If you absolutely insist on using pure meringue, you will get better behavior from Italian meringue. Be very precise in measuring the temperature of the eggs and the syrup correctly, in getting it to the right stage without overwhipping, pop it in the oven (your 90 to 120 C range sounds right) and keep your fingers crossed.
In case you continue trying the pure-meringue-route, there are two more things to try. One, you can also add a vessel full of water on the bottom of the oven to reduce the probability of cracking. Two, if you use a silicone or fiber mat instead of the baking paper, you will have more insulation from below, and also less risk for cracking after the baking, during peeling off the mat.


What kind of cabbage to use in cabbage poriyal (Indian stir-fry)?

From what I can find, it seems like the cabbage used for many Indian dishes is what we in the US would call green cabbage. In the pictures of cabbage poriyal that I saw, the cabbage appeared to have a smooth texture rather that a crinkly texture like Napa or Savoy cabbage would have.
Here are a couple of excerpts from  an article about cabbage use in Indian cooking :

Cabbage commonly known as Patta gobhi or Band gobhi in India is a very integral part of Indian cooking. It is usually used to prepare salad, soups, pickles, curries, kootus, added to dals and cooked with other various vegetables etc. There are many types of cabbage available in market which is different in colour, their flavours, texture etc.
There are many varieties of cabbage based on shape and time of maturity. Cabbage has a round shape and is composed of superimposed leaf layers. There are three major types of cabbage: green, red, and Savoy. The color of green cabbage ranges from pale to dark green. Both green and red cabbages have smooth-textured leaves. Red cabbage has leaves that are either crimson or purple with white veins running through it. The leaves of Savoy cabbage are more ruffled and yellowish-green in color. Red and green cabbages have a more defined taste and crunchy texture as compared to Savoy cabbage’s more delicate nature.

Here is a picture of cabbage from a recipe for an Indian curry. It does appear to be a typical green cabbage.


Barley's there to bulk out the soup, and add a bit of flavor and texture. It doesn't thicken or have any other special function, so you don't need to add anything to replace it.

If you want to add something with a roughly similar size with some texture then short grain rice like risotto or paella rice will do, however I prefer Orzo, which is a type of very small pasta. You can also smash up some short pasta like penne, farfalle, or shells and put them in. Just remember that rice and pasta cooks much faster than barley, so add it at the end of cooking and get it off the heat as soon as it is al dente so it doesn't overcook and get mushy. Add a handful of frozen peas to it to get the temperature down quick.


In my experience, sometimes the uht milk can be a bit dense so the bits that are stuck to the top/opening of the tetrapak can dry out and look like nail clippings dropped into the liquid milk. Perhaps this is what you have? If the milk doesn't taste off and it's only a small amount, that's probably what it is. The milk otherwise is safe to consume.


How can I separate the lid from a can that has a pull-tab/ring without flinging food everywhere?

For most of the removal, leverage rather than brute force will give more control, so you don't accidentally pull the last bit off.
At the end while pulling gently on the ring, rock the lid from side to side, so you're only trying to open one side of the remaining seam.  It's much less likely to flick that way.  While my right hand does that, my left hold the can in such a way that it would probably be in the way of  anything flying, but it rarely needs to.
Another approach is to open the lid most of the way, remove most of the contents, then push the lid inwards to finish breaking it off (or in/out until the metal fatigues and it breaks easily).  This works well for things like beans or custard, that come out easily with a pour/scrape.


If your blini are unrolling themselves, they may be too thick, and probably therefore need a higher proportion of liquid in the batter.   They should be thin, akin to western European crepes, and easy to roll.

The other possibility is you are trying to make very small blini, which would be more difficult to roll.  Generally, the crepe for each blintz would be about 6-8 inches across at the smallest

You then fold each individual blintz as you might a burrito:  see How do I make the ingredients in a burrito evenly distributed? for a diagram and description of the method.

The initial fry seam side down should then seal them closed.

See detailed photos of method and sample recipe from Shiksa Chick.


Should I refrigerate canola oil cooking spray?

The answer is no.

Oils are more solid at colder temperatures (how much depends on the oil, 14°F(-10°C) for Canola Oil) While the fridge is not going to reach 'freezing' for the oil it does cause the oil to become more dense and thus harder for it to spray and more likely to clog the nozzle.

Then there is the propellants, which vary by concentration and brand but are all 'considered safe' but, like the oil itself, condense. As the propellants condense the pressure in the can drops and they become less potent at lower temperatures (see pp.44-48).

(note: the propellants link above is to an article that gives some good reasons to not use these sprays at all, but that isn't the question you asked. IMHO, while valid reasons to eschew using these sprays 'too much' they are just too darned convenient to not use 'at all')


Why do chocolate bars (expensive ones like Lindt), cost less than the sum of thier ingredients?

The cost of food, even ingredients, is often dominated not by the cost of production, but by the costs of transport, storage, waste, and sales.

Sugar is a cheap commodity - you pay a typical bulk foodstuff markup compared to what they pay, because essentially everyone buys it, and there are economies of scale at all stages.

Cocoa powder is still common but less so: there's less price pressure (and less competition), so retail profit margins can be higher. There are still economies of scale but less so (e.g. a supermarket will get a box of packs of cocoa powder, but a pallet of sugar, cheaper and easier to handle. Lindt will get it by the truckload, as with sugar. It's also sold by chocolate manufacturers in many cases.

Cocoa butter is a niche product. You can't just go to any supermarket for it, but need a specialist. Margins are high for you - but chocolate manufacturers still benefit from economies of scale.

Chocolate, even decent mass-market chocolate, is on a par with cocoa - popular, but not as major a food as sugar. And it even happens to be close in price to cocoa - partially coincidence of course.


My chicken breasts release a lot of fluid when cooked. How do I prevent this?

Moisture-release is not a result of the cooking process but of the quality of the chicken.

Try the following experiment:

Buy halal or kosher chicken breast
Buy the cheapest chicken breast you can find.

Now put two pans on the stove, and put the industrial chicken breast in the left pan and put the kosher/halal in the right.  Ensure both pans have the same heat setting, the same amount of fat (I prefer duck fat for frying chicken breast) and watch the amount of moisture coming out of the left one and the fat actually being soaked up by the right one.

So the easiest way to avoid this is to buy good quality chicken...


As it relates to the Hospitality Industry what is a par level of product?

It's the same thing as in any other industry ... a minimum stock level.

As for what it should be for your particular place, yes, it will be based on how quickly you tend to go through things.

These might be commonly used ingredients, but can also be other consumables like paper towels, aluminum foil, wooden skewers, takeout containers, etc.


The refrigerator will prevent the melting of the chocolate, but will add more serious problems - moisture through condensation. This causes sugar bloom, where the water dissolves the sugar, which basically ruins the piece.

Usually this can be mitigated with airtight sealing and proper handling, but this works best for square chocolate bars. As it seems that you want to store more elaborate chocolate pieces, I would worry about this approach being successful.

As you do this semi-professional, my recommendation would be to get a wine cooler; they usually have an operating temperature up to 18°C/65°F. This is the ideal storage temperature for chocolate.


Used sesame oil instead of soy sauce - can I rescue marinade?

You don't need to rescue the marinade, sesame oil isn't going to ruin it, just add more soy sauce to get the saltiness you need. Sesame oil isn't going to impart much flavor to the meat in the marinade However, if you plan to use the marinade as a sauce then keep in mind that

Sesame oil is not going to add much flavor to the meat while it is marinaded, however is will add a lot of flavor to the cooked result, perhaps too much
That much oil could make your end result a bit greasy in texture
Sesame oil has a low smoke point and will burn and produce off flavors if added to the bottom of a hot pan, I recommend adding it to liquid

I would suggest if you plan to use the marinade as a sauce just add a little bit of it and add soy separately to the dish to make up for it.


According to Still Tasty, a site that utilizes FDA, CDC and USDA data, cooked pasta should be fine for 3-5 days in the refrigerator.

Use a shallow container or a Ziplock bag to store the pasta, and get it in the fridge within 2 hours of cooking. To keep it from sticking, toss it with a bit of oil. You can reheat it or eat it cold.

You can freeze pasta too, which Still Tasty claims will maintain quality for 1-2 months. Pasta with sauce is somewhat better for freezing than plain. As always, freezing for longer may affect quality, but not safety. Food that is continually kept frozen at normal freezer temperatures will stay safe indefinitely.


Marination, contrary to popular wisdom, is a surface treatment.  Meats are simply not that porous; the only molecule small enough to penetrate more than a millimeter or two beneath the surface is salt, which diffuses at a rate of about 2 cm per 24 hours.

So I would choose the route of convenience:  do you want the marinade in the bag as you are going through the cooking, perhaps as the basis of the sauce?  In that case, add it and seal.

Otherwise, complete the marination and then seal.


Yes, it will work. I do this for a friend who hates to bake but loves apple (or nectarine)-and-cheese pies. Dry cottage cheese will also work.


This afternoon, I made a veggie/bean chilli. When preparing, I was surprised to notice that we are out of fresh onions. I decided to use a can of pickled onions in the chilli.

60 minutes later and this is my happy finding...that the pickled onions have retained crunch and infused the chilli sauce with the most gorgeous deep and rich sweetness. Pickled onion chilli can rest and infuse a wee bit more.


How can I extend shelf life of my cakes?

Increasing the amount of sugar, eggs, and oil should make the cake last longer. The sugar binds water, which slows the cake from drying out. The eggs and oil slow the starch in the flour from recrystalizing, which is what causes staling.


Can you eat acorns picked from the street?

Acorns from which tree?  Acorns from California live oak for instance are edible, but only after a painstaking process of grinding and soaking, without which they can kill you.  European oaks have acorns that are more amenable to eating, but they really can't be eaten raw.  And even the French don't as a rule eat them, which tells me they can't be that tasty :-)


Chump and loin are close together but they are very different cuts of meat. Chump is a working cut, so has much more connective tissue than loin, so a slower cooking process is recommended for it. It's not a bad cut at all, in fact it's delicious when prepared properly, you just need to adjust your method when using it.

One thing to keep in mind is that pork loin has a chump end and a rib end, some people confuse chump end chops with chump, and it's not the same. Chump end chops are still loin, they just come from the back end of the loin and are therefore bigger.

A sirloin chop is an American term, I don't hear it used in the UK generally. US and UK use different primal cuts. A sirloin pork chop (or steak, same thing) in the US contains several muscle groups. It's got hip, backbone area, a bit of loin, etc. It's a cheaper cut because it's got working meat in it and is tougher. It's a great choice for braising.


Necessary to change chemical leavener for sugar substitution in baking recipe?

in most baking recipes, the additional acidity from raw sugar or brown sugar being used instead of white sugar is in the noise in terms of leavening.  You should not need to make any adjustments for leavening.

On the other hand, they may be more hydroscopic, and so the item may tend to be moister.


My best guess is that your stock is very weak.  Two gallons of water to just the bones from one turkey will not be a strong stock.

It may well well have gelatin in it, but very thin.

I make stock for a single turkey with the wing tips (not the 'drumstick' part), the back, the neck--everything but the breast and leg/thighs in with about 1 gallon of water to start, which reduces to several quarts over the course of three-four hours.

This produces a very shaky jelly--much thinner than the one in a jar of Smuckers for example.


Yes high heat can burn off the nonstick coating.

My roommate's girlfriend did one of my pans that way, heating it very hot while dry.  It was pretty spectacular.  Everyone in the house had this weird little cough like from dilute pepper spray.  Anything silver in the house tarnished.  I presume the nonstick was burned off and floated around in the house, causing these effects.  The pan was still usable after, just no longer nonstick.


Why does brining work with dry heat methods and not wet heat methods?

Salt dissolves in water. Brining is simply the process of soaking something in a saline solution so that either it absorbs saltwater, or the salinity of the pre-existing water approaches equilibrium with that of the brine. The end state is just a lot of water, some on/inside the meat and some outside, all with approximately the same salinity.

If you roast the result, you're evaporating most of the water but keeping the salt. If you boil it, then you're just reversing the brining process you followed in the first place, by diluting whatever salt (not to mention any other minerals/flavour) it has.

The salt in a brined chicken is not reacting with the meat, it's just dissolved in the water (which is in/on the meat). Give it a good enough "rinse" and the salt water will be gone.


Substitution of root beer concentrate for extract

Usually extracts are used for flavoring foods, but in this case root beer extracts and concentrates both are for making root beer at home, so I would suspect that you could use concentrate in this case as long as you get the proportions right and use a non-sweetened concentrate. The products out there vary in concentration and sugar content, you'll probably have to buy one and experiment to get the amounts right.


Rule of thumb for conventional oven baking vs. grilling kebabs (ground meat &

Rather than normal oven baking, I usually put things under the broiler (grill, whatever your country calls top-only heat), on the highest temperature, with the rack set so the items are 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 cm) from the heating element.  If it's a thick cut of meat, like a bottom round steak (for "london broil"), then you'll want to leave at least 2" (5cm) of space as it will plump up when it cooks
And then just cook until the top is browned to your liking, roll / flip them over, brown again, etc, until it's well browned.
And while this is going on, you'll want to leave the oven door slightly ajar.  This prevents the oven from warming up so much that the heating element shuts off, which means you're no longer getting radiant heat.  And you want to watch it, as things can go from brown to black in only a minute or two.
If they're not sufficiently cooked through at that point, then you can leave them in the middle of a low oven (maybe 300°F / 150°C) until they're cooked to your liking.


Why does freezing vegetable shortening alter its appearance?

Fats can have a complex molecular structure:

Not only do elements have different properties, resulting in different behavior when exposed to heat or cold, but there are bonds between atoms that may be affected by these different neighboring reactions. Think of this somewhat like the way a frying pan heats up very easily, but the plastic handle of the pan behaves a bit differently; or, the way an ice pop is very cold coming out of the freezer, but the wooden stick isn't nearly as cold and warms up quickly.

These differences in the way temperature effects substances could've acted on the molecular structure of the fats, damaging or altering them as a result. This can result in changes to consistency, color, etc. This is very likely similar to the way damage can happen to certain foods due to the fact that water expands when frozen, while other substances tend to contract (which can result in strange, spongey, and otherwise undesirable changes in texture and taste).

It's fortunate that it seems not to have effected the taste or smell!

Just keep in mind that there are certain more desirable temperatures for foods, and they may not maintain their structure internally, their taste, color, or other qualities, if kept outside of that desirable temperature range for too long. While freezing does help to prevent bacterial growth and decay, it doesn't protect food from the changes which result from temperature change itself.


Sous Vide ribs -- can't eat for 2 days... best choice?

Pull them out on time. Cool them rapidly in an ice bath. The rapid cooling is for food safety reasons rather than any affect on the cooking. Reheat them for cooking however you were going to finish them originally.

I wouldn't leave them cooking for 48 hours. I think you run the risk of affecting the texture of the meat negatively.

If you're planning on finishing in the oven, I'd do that just before eating as your reheat method. You're likely to get some nice effect on the outside in terms of texture by doing that. If you refrigerate immediately after, you'll lose that benefit. So pull it out when they're done, chill, and refrigerate. To eat, let them come up to room temp a bit and then finish in the oven.


Does your bread look like this (photo)? From your comments, it seems that you think your bakery's "butter crunch French bread" may be the same bread which is called "Dutch crunch," among other names. Since no one else is answering this question, I'll take a stab at it even though I have never baked any of this bread, & tasted it for the first time just now.

In my supermarket, they call it "Dutch crust," and the topping's ingredients are called out separately: Rice Flour, Palm Shortening, Sugar, Active Dry Yeast.

Semifreddi's Bakery website   http://www.semifreddis.com/products   lists all the bread's ingredients:  Enriched Flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), Water, Safflower and/or Sunflower and/or Expeller Pressed Canola Oil, Sugar, Rice Flour, Sea Salt, and Yeast.

Wikipedia describes Dutch crunch bread as having sesame oil and rice flour in the topping, although neither of my examples mention the sesame oil, just the rice flour... But no cheese in any I see. Any cheesy topping is probably not the same as what I am thinking of.


How do I know if a black banana is too old to be eaten?

One thing to add to the answers above - as bananas ripen, the starch in the flesh is converted into sugar. This continues until the starch that was providing the firmness and structure for the banana has, for the most part, been converted to sugar, which is also partly why the insides continue to get mushier as the banana ripens. So more time converting starch to sugar means sweeter fruit.

This is why black bananas are often preferred for breads and such - when the peel has turned black, the banana has converted almost all the starch to sugar and thus has gotten as sweet as it can before it spoils.

So for the sweetest possible banana bread/shakes/smoothies/etc, let the banana peel turn completely black, but harvest the banana before the insides turn to dark brown or black since that will indicate that the flesh has spoiled.


It appears to me that all you need is to give the dough more proofing time. Also, make sure that your pan is generously dusted with flour before placing the dough in and baking.
For the yeasty smell, the fix is quite simple; use less yeast.
This may seem like an ignorant piece of advice, but I'm serious. I used to follow pizza dough recipes that end up smelling way to yeasty. I didn't want to reduce the yeast amount, as I thought "that's what's written in the recipe, any less and the dough won't be as good", but over time, I've come to realize that a smaller amount of yeast can accomplish the same level of proofing (with more proofing time).


Is there any advantage to cooking steak on the bone?

Well, many steak experts have held for years that bone-in steak just tastes better, something about that marrow being good.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt from Serious Eats tested that theory.
He found that the steak bones were too impenetrable for the marrow to actually flavor grilling steak, but that the bones provided beneficial insulation:

To test this, I cooked four identical roasts. The first was cooked with the bone on. For the second, I removed the bone, but tied it back against the meat while cooking. For the third, I removed the bone, and tied it back to the meat with an intervening piece of impermeable heavy-duty aluminum foil. The fourth was cooked completely without the bone.
Tasted side-by-side, the first three were completely indistinguishable from each other. The fourth, on the other hand, was a little tougher in the region where the bone used to be.
What does this indicate? Well, first off, it means the flavor exchange theory is completely bunk—the completely intact piece of meat tasted exactly the same as the one with the intervening aluminum foil. But it also means that the bone does serve at least one important function: it insulates the meat, slowing its cooking, and providing less surface area to lose moisture.

He also mentions that the bone provides a framework to protect the shape of the meat, but it's a pain to carve the bone from the cooked meat:

The best way to cook your beef is to detach the bone and tie it back on. You get the same cooking quality of a completely intact roast with the added advantage that once it's cooked, carving is as simple as cutting the string, removing the bones, and slicing.

(The quote says "roast" but in the article he seems to be talking just as much about steak)
You mention that bone-in steak costs more at your butcher than boneless. I have not typically found that to be the case. When I have purchased steak, the bone-in has been less expensive than a boneless steak of the same weight of actual meat, cut, and grade of meat. I would sometimes pay extra for the butcher's time removing the bone.


How to prepare salsify (schwarzwurzeln) to minimise sap?

Rinse the salsify first before using, that will help.
Use a sharp peeler. Ive found that dull peelers create a lot more sap.

as soon as you have peeled it, drop the salsify into acidulated water ( water + lemon juice).  The acids help prevent the color change that occurs.

Also wipe up the area with a damp cloth as you work.  This will keep things clean and prevent your hands and everything you touch getting tacky.


Actually, Harold McGee supports brine-and-simmer as an alternative to baking, and explains the texture-related goal behind both: octopus contains a lot of connective tissue, and both that and the muscle need to be softened.

I've read elsewhere (can't remember the source right now) that octopus muscle fibres contract and drive out their water at unusually low temperatures, such that the ideal cooking temperature is 55C. You're going to want long cooking times at those temperatures, so we're talking either sous vide or deep-fat frying in a temperature-regulated fryer.


What makes the Pillsbury canned biscuits puff up?

It could be achieved with almost any leavening, but I suspect it's baking soda or baking powder, and not yeast.

You'd just need to package it before the reaction is completed, and let it finish in the container.  This would create additional gas, which would pressurize the can.

As for why it doesn't continue to rise, it's because they can control how much leavening goes in, so they'll have a known amount of gas created.  Once that gas gets to one atmospheric pressure (roughly, depending on how close to sea level you are), it'll expand appropriately.

It's effectively the same sort of process that happens with fizzy drinks -- when you open the bottle or can, you allow the interior pressure to equalize with the surrounding, which causes the bubbles to escape.  The difference in that case is that the bubbles are dissolved in the liquid, and so may need some agitation or nucleation sites to escape.  But there's still a fixed amount of bubbling that could happen.


Is there anything I can substitute eggs for when making meatloaf?

In Sweden, breadcrumbs or porridge oats are sometimes used as an alternative to egg for binding köttbullar (meatballs). The crumbs or oats are mixed with boiling water and left for a while until you have a porridge-like consistency and then mixed into the ground meat.

Unfortunately I don't know the exact ratios of dry ingredient/water/ground meat since I generally use both egg and breadcrumbs. I would guess somewhere between 4 tablespoons and half a cup of dry ingredient for a pound of meat.