Any books that teach the science of Indian cooking?

You might be interested in the new release The Flavor Equation: The Science of Great Cooking Explained by Nik Sharma, a molecular biologist from India. I haven't read it, but the table of contents, reviews, and the author's previous work suggest that it has a heavy emphasis on Indian cooking.


Use foil when you want to retain moisture.  Cook uncovered when you want to lose moisture.  Depending on the rib you are using, you'll want to monitor timing for desired result.


First, you need an accurate thermometer that measures average temperature to adjust an oven. For example, a Proaccurate Oven Thermometer, which works by having an oil-filled chamber to average the temperature.

Normally, you can just pull the temperature dial off—the (usually) plastic piece you turn generally pulls right off the actual thermostat, its held on by friction. A gentle prying may be necessary.

After removing the knob, you'll have one of two types of adjustments:

They'll be two screws on the knob itself (in which case, loosen them both to adjust the temperature, it should be marked as to how much to turn it and in which direction—though, if you stare at it long enough, you can figure it out even if its not marked)
There will be one screw inside the shaft on the thermostat. It may be hard to see the screw (it can be at the very end of the hollow shaft). Turn it using a very small screwdriver.

After adjusting the dial, you should re-measure using the thermometer (and possibly adjust again...)

Appliance411 has pictures.


When can milk substitute for buttermilk in sourdough recipes?

I think your understanding here is incorrect.

The idea is to leave it overnight and let the sourdough SCOBY incorporate the buttermilk culture.

With a mature, functioning starter, there won't be much of any "incorporation" overnight, in the sense of actually reaching a new equilibrium of species in the starter. I don't think the buttermilk is being added to change your starter, it is just there because it is a common ingredient for pancakes and the like.
So, just go ahead and do whatever substitution you like that would be appropriate for the same batter without sourdough. You can expect analogous results, maybe even closer to the original, since you already have some lactic acid production from the sourdough.

curious about whether there's a flavor or safety reason for preferring prepared buttermilk

Flavor yes, buttermilk tastes differently from buttermilk substitutes. Safety no, adding buttermilk to a batter doesn't make it shelf stable.


Are there uses for sodium citrate other than with cheese?

Sodium citrate is sometimes used in "spherification", a rather unnecessary "molecular gastronomy" technique. Beyond that, it's generally used with dairy, so not much help to you. Also, if you don't have any on hand, it can be produced pretty easily by combining lemon juice and baking soda in the proper ratio. If I were you, I'd give away the tub.


The concern here is that this is something unexpected and potentially harmful. The general rule is - if in doubt, throw it out!

Many microorganisms will grow quite happily and form a whitish sediment below a liquid layer. The liquid you have is also turbid, which tells me that you most likely have some suspended microorganisms as well, but this could also be caused by residues from the chopped cabbage.

Some chemicals will precipitate out of tap-water under certain conditions, particularly calcium, if they are in the presence of conditions that make insoluble salts. Calcium salts are also white, but could be discolored by dissolved colored substances from the cabbage.

However, basically there is no way to tell without doing some basic tests and a bit of microbiology. If you happen to have a microscope you could put some of this on a slide and see if it looks like yeast.

Yeasts will be round or oval and large enough to easily see at 100x magnification (i.e. use 10x objective with 10x eyepiece), and will be visible at 40x too. Classically they will show a budding form; where smaller ones come off the side of the full grown yeast cell, but this is might not be present too. Bacteria are generally much smaller (need at least 100x mag) and come in a variety of sizes and shapes from long rod-shapes to round balls and a whole bunch of others. You would generally fix bacteria onto a slide and stain to make more visible. However, there are few (if any) bacteria that bud like yeast do - off the side, budding bacteria usually do this from one end of an elongated form.

Having said all that... the question still remains; are these what you want them to be? Unfortunately, there is no way to tell.

The only advice I can give is to make sure you sterilize the jars before starting your culture, and make sure that you wash your hands and other implements thoroughly before starting to make the sauerkraut. You could also start with bottled water or water that has been boiled and then cooled, to help eliminate any potential contaminants.


Your wife probably thinks "It's just water and thoroughly boiled, so all is well.". Unfortunately, it is not.

If you look into your pot after the first use, you'll notice that the water contains traces of the vegetable, meaning it technically falls under the "food that becomes unsafe after 2/4 hours at 40-140 °F (4-60 °C)" category and should be refrigerated quickly or discarded. More on this on our canonical post on the topic.

Perhaps you argue that cooking will kill any "nasties" that might have grown since the day before, but while this may be true for most bacteria and fungi, it does not work for some of the toxins they produce. Boiling does not make unsafe food safe.

Weighing the cost of a bit of water and sugar agains the the risk of a child's health, I'd dump it and clean the pot every time.
You could put the pot in the refrigerator, but must heat and cool it as quickly as possible (keep in mind that the time is cumulative) - which sounds to me like a lot of excess effort and takes up a lot of refrigerator space.


Does the towel touching the day 1 starter and absorbing the liquid matter?

You should be fine.  I would suggest using a container that creates more space between the cover and the starter.  That way you won't have a mess to clean each time.


The lollipops are the glass, so you couldn't substitute food dye alone. The sugar in them provides the bulk, and nothing else is comparably transparent. You'd either get dyed pancake (painting rather than stained glass) or just a stain on the pan. You could substitute home-made coloured sugar/hard candy, for which you'd need any (water-soluble, i.e. common) food dye.  But this would be a lot of work to make several colours so buying lollipops or some other boiled sweets/hard candy would make more sense unless you specifically wanted unflavoured glass.


There are various types of bread without yeast. Unleavened Jewish Passover bread, for one, and soda bread for another. Unleavened bread doesn't have the spongy texture.

Basically, yeast has two uses in baking. 1. The spongelike structure and 2. Taste.


The reason they're supposed to be warm is that cold eggs tend to curdle, and de-emulsify. This is only really an issue if you're adding a bunch of fat (because otherwise you don't get an emulsion). They should also get a bit bigger, which may explain why they seem to shrink more when you fold things into them.

You can always try adding a little cream of tartar in order to stabilize them, which might help.


What are some established western cook books from 1920 - 1960?

Irma Rombauer published the iconic The Joy of Cooking in 1931. It’s more of a textbook than just a collection of recipes, with whole chapters dedicated to the ingredients. And elaborate kitchen techniques are explained in full. You can pretty much find any ingredient or recipe for any dish, I even think there’s a recipe for haggis! And subsequent editions of the book (the last edition was published in 2006 for the tome’s 75th anniversary) expanded the content greatly to include many ethnic cuisines. It’s a real treasure!

Julia Child published the Bible for French cuisine Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961. It is definitely not for the timid cook. But even if you never plan to make bouillabaisse or coq au vin, the book is a delightful read. Julia’s inimitable character shines through on every page.


What is the quickest way to evenly slice chicken breasts for jerky?

Freeze the breasts, then use a mandoline to make even slices. (If you have access to a deli slicer with its rotary blade, that would be even faster; however, a mandoline slicer is more typical in a home kitchen.)

The freezing keeps the relatively small pieces of meat stable so they will slice more evenly. Frozen breasts slice more evenly even by hand in my experience.


Adding too much flour to bread dough in Kitchenaid Stand Mixer?

I agree with rumtscho that your dough is probably way too wet, but I'd like to make a few other points as well:

You don't necessarily need to add extra flour just because your dough is sticking to the bottom of your bowl. And definitely don't add any flour until your dough is fairly smooth (unless you already have a feel for the recipe). The flour will absorb a lot of water as you work the dough, so dough that seems way too wet after one minute of kneading may be fine after six.

Also, I've found that with the hook design in the Kitchenaid, dough frequently sticks to the bottom even with proper hydration. Just use a scraper to turn your dough out of your bowl and give it a fold to make sure that there isn't an underworked spot on the bottom.


Difference between Pancakes and "Kaiserschmarrn"?

There is a wide range of pancake variants.

Kaiserschmarrn are an egg-white leavened pancake often served with fruit and nuts, with the pancake itself being shredded for presentation.

This is different than the most typical pancakes served in the US, which are not egg-white leavened, but baking powder leavened, but it is still a type of pancake.


You can store your cut potatoes in the fridge. Place them in container(s) and cover them completely with plain, unsalted water. They should be fine for at least 2 or 3 days.

I don't know that it's necessary, but I usually drain and rinse them before use.

Alternatively, as you are cooking them in the oven, you could cook a large batch and then store your preferred portion sizes in the fridge or freezer, depending on how long you plan to keep them before use.


How to make authentic black Russian bread?

There are two elements responsible for the darkness of “black bread”, which is a term used for different breads all over East, North and Central Europe

Whole grain flour, typically rye, but sometimes with a part wheat or spelt.
A low and slow bake, the probably most extreme example is Pumpernickel, which needs almost a day at 100-120 C and is more steamed than baked. Other recipes aim for 2.5 hours at 150 C. Above that, you will still get a good and dark bread, but more brown-grey than dark “black”.

The lower and slower, the darker will the bread turn out. Some sources claim that the darkness is caused by the Maillard reaction, but I am not sure whether this is the whole truth. Considering the temperature range, other factors like enzymes out of the grain are at least involved. The only “traditional” colorant I could find at a quick research was molasses or similar, which is used in some recipes.


Chocolate: difference between "Cocoa Mass" and "Cacao"?

Yep, cocoa and cacao are the same thing.

The 72% has sugar making up the rest of the mass. The description on amazon actually mentions that it's 27% sugar and 43.5% cocoa butter. The rest is cocoa solids, the chocolate-y stuff. As you say, that particular brand is pretty expensive; it's also pretty popular and well-regarded. Since it has plenty of sugar in it, you can use it for pretty much anything, including things like coatings, or even just eat some.

The 100% is unsweetened (there's no room for any sugar in there) so it's really only usable for things like baking, where you'll add some sugar. It's unlikely to be pleasant to eat on its own.

For what it's worth, usually in English you'll hear cacao only when referring to the overall cacao seeds and their use as a component of chocolate. It's not common in non-culinary contexts. For example, we'll say "cocoa powder" not "cacao powder".


What defines a gui chow dish in Chinese cuisine?

Guizhou is a province in china. Sichuan is also a province and is much different food than guizhou food. Guizhou dishes are sour and hot where Sichuan are more spicy and garlicky. Just do a search for guizhou cuisine and you will find those dishes related to that culture.

http://community.travelchinaguide.com/forum2.asp?i=38624

再建!


What are these crispy bits on top of rice?

Those are fried onions.

They're pretty recognizable, but for confirmation I did a search by image and found this blog post in Finnish containing that exact image. The caption underneath the picture is:

  Kun riisi on kuohkeutettu, sipulit lisätään mukaan - n. kolmasosa jätetään koristeeksi.

Google Translate translates that to "When the rice is loosened, the onions are added, the -. The third of the leaves for decoration." I think the proper translation is probably something like:

  After fluffing the rice, the onions are added, one third as garnish.

The recipe itself says:

  Sekoita mukaan 2/3 paahdetusta sipulista. Tarjoa suurelta vadilta lopuilla sipuleilla koristettuna.

Which translates to (again with a bit of fixing):

  Stir 2/3 of the fried onion. Serve on large dishes garnished with the remaining onions.

(Google Translate thinks "paahdetusta" means roasted, but earlier in the recipe it's pretty clear that the instructions are to fry them.)

You ask about things that look like those but might be smaller. I'd assume they're still onions, just sliced smaller (or possibly shallots) since that's a fairly common garnish. Of course, it's certainly possible you've seen something else; hard to say without a picture of the exact dish you wanted to ask about.


How long will eggless pasta dough last in the fridge?

Most importantly: there is nothing in the recipe that will go bad in two days. I am unsure whether the texture will be affected after two days in the refrigerator. But make sure the dough is wrapped tightly. The most common way to store fresh pasta is to freeze it. Tell you what, make an experiment: Freeze half and refrigerate the other. Then after two days compare the cook both and tell us whether is a difference or not.


TIL Sherbet powder...

According to Wikipedia, you mix and match other carbonates

"...And the base may be sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate, magnesium carbonate,or a mixture of these and/or other similar carbonates..."

Maybe a mix of those will help in making that taste less.


The main binding ingredient in eggs is the protein-rich albumen (the white). The yolk generally imparts flavour and richness. So you should be able to simply leave out the yolks entirely and still get pretty good results. You might add some butter at step one (if you haven't already) to substitute the fat in the egg yolk.


Best way to cut up a cheesecake into bites

My grandmother's favorite method for cutting cheesecake is dental floss.  Waxed or unwaxed shouldn't matter, though waxed may help keep cake from sticking too much.  Just be sure not to get a flavor!

Grip the ends tightly, the way you would if flossing your teeth and pull evenly down through the cake.  Then release one end and pull the floss through the cake.  Do NOT pull the floss back up.  Repeat as necessary until you have the size pieces you want.


The raw chips should be sliced directly into the hot oil for deep frying. The frying oil should not be too hot. Further the deep frying should be done on medium heat till all the moisture in the banana chips are completely evaporated. The oil should be pure coconut oil. After removal from the pan the deep fried chips should be stored in air tight plastic covers to prevent moisture regain.


Potato and Macaroni Salads soak up all the mayo when I store them

It is highly likely that they simply add enough mayonnaise and other ingredients of their sauce that even after the macaroni or potatoes absorb their maximum amount, there is enough left.


Smoking a pig at 225 F vs barbecuing one at 250F?

You may want to check out the following pages:

What Influences Cooking Time

Thermodynamics of Cooking

Using their methods, I have not had a shoulder take 15 hours to come to temperature at a smoker temperature of 225 (computer-controlled). I have never done whole hog, but as Jefromi stated the actual method of cooking makes a significant difference. The Hawaiian imu (the bury-it-in-the-ground style of cooking using the retained heat from sand and rocks that were under the coals) is a much more efficient way to rapidly transfer the heat to the meat than using air to conduct the heat, and forced convection from the blower in my smoker is more efficient than natural convective currents. If my smoker did not have the blower it would take longer to get the meat to temperature, but I still don't think it would take 15 hours for a shoulder.

Whole hog weight versus time at 250 degrees:

40 pounds: 3.5 hours
75 pounds: 9 hours
100 pounds: 12 hours
125 pounds: 15 hours
150 pounds: 18 hours
175 pounds: 21 hours
200 pounds: 24 hours

From Goin' Whole Hog

AmazingRibs.com is essentially a peer-reviewed barbecue site. They don't publish a recipe until it has been tested multiple times and is nearly foolproof. They also bust some of the barbecue myths that have been spread for generations. I am not affiliated with it other than donating some money to them due to their high-quality articles.


How do I reduce the sugar in this recipe without affecting the taste?

Use an artificial sweetener. There's no single best one, just pick whatever suits your tastes. The packaging will hopefully have conversion factors (or you can look them up online). They probably won't be perfect, but they'll give you a starting point for how much to use to replace the sugar in the recipe.


How to cook a pot roast without it tasting like vegetables

I think you've answered your own question. Browning and adding veggies later will both help.

Browning doesn't "seal" the meat to keep flavor or juices in, but it does create a very nice flavor that's almost always associated with meat, caused by the Maillard reaction. I think browning could go a long way to resolving your flavor issue.

This is a little counter intuitive of cooking with a slow cooker, but you can start the meat with a bit of water (or wine, stock, other juices) and then only put the vegetables in much later in the process. Of course, then you have to tend your crock pot, which is often not the point. That would decrease the time that the vegetables had to affect the taste of your meat. You could even experiment with which ones to add later and which to add at the beginning. If it's just the carrots that are offensive, that may be the only thing you need to throw in later.


What effect do different slash patterns have on bread oven spring?

Slashing the skin of a loaf creates a weak area. When the oven spring occurs the dough will expand through that weak spot. Expansion will be limited in the stronger, unslashed areas.

Conceptually this is fairly simple. Leave the skin unslashed in the direction you don't want the bread to expand. In the case of a checker slash on the surface of a boule- the edge stays stronger than the entire center so the expansion is forced upwards.

In practice, with different loaves, it may be difficult to predict exactly how the physics will occur. You can start with traditional slash patterns that you see on professionally produced bread.
For example, on long loaves, such as baguettes, the slashes are short, at a slight angle to the length, and overlapping to promote lengthening of the loaf. Whereas on wider, football-shaped loaves the slash may run parallel to the loaf to widen it a little.

As a demonstration I baked two loaves this weekend. They were identically formed as small football-shaped loaves (batards). One I slashed at an angle, the other parallel with the length.


Can durian be used as a cocktail ingredient?

There are even a couple results talking about whether it's even safe to mix with alcohol.

I think this is the interesting part of this question: you obviously can use durian in a cocktail, but should you?

As you point out, there's a question of safety. There are at least two reasons to believe that mixing durian and alcohol might not be entirely safe:

One study suggests that a component of durian can interfere with alcohol metabolism.
There's evidence that eating durian can increase blood pressure.

For most healthy people, the risk associated with drinking a durian cocktail might not be all that great. On the other hand, sharing a cocktail with friends and family should be a safe, enjoyable activity that doesn't require interviews about the imbibers' medical conditions and the signing of waivers.

The last thing you want to do as a host is to offer your guests something that you don't know to be safe. There are hundreds of other fruits available for use in cocktails, so I'd steer clear of durian until more is known about its interaction with alcohol metabolism and blood pressure.


Is it ok to store peanut oil in the container it came in after being used?

If the container is labelled with one of the standard logos that mark an unconditionally food safe container, there should be no concern: Used peanut oil is still food, so a container specified to deal with food should deal with it too.

If not, assume that the container has only been designed to be safe with the exact, unaltered ingredient shipped in it (oil and plastic chemistry can get very complicated, some edible oils WILL dissolve some plastics).

The best option will always be an airtight, food safe, glass, stored in the dark container well filled.


What is the guideline sourdough to flour to water ratio for 24-hour feeding?

I am using as little as 10-20 % old starter, e.g. 100g flour, 100g water and a teaspoon old starter, which is somewhere around 15g, plus/minus. To be honest, I usually eyeball the ratios, aiming for the just-right consistency of the flour/water mix, then add the starter. A few percent deviation is ok.

Don’t forget that the growth in your starter is roughly exponential, so if you want to double the time to maturity, you need significantly less than half of what you would use otherwise. And the environment also plays a role, during summer heat or near the radiator a starter will grow and collapse way faster than on the counter on a cool spring or autumn day.

If you need longer phases between feeding, I suggest parking your sourdough in the fridge and feeding it only once a week.


Quickest, and safest way, to bring milk to boil

I put the pan with the milk inside a larger pan containing some water. This makes it much harder for the milk to boil; but it doesn't need to boil in order to turn for cottage cheese. It takes much longer to turn this way (1-2 hours), but during that time I can pretty much leave it alone and just check back every 5-10 minutes to see if it's started to turn yet and give it a quick stir to break up the skin.


Cooking vegetables with butter and water

The word you are looking for is glazing.

Quote from source:

  Glazing, a technique taught in culinary schools but underutilized in home kitchens, quickly renders root vegetables (like the yellow beets and carrots pictured) sweet, tender, and glossy. Start by cutting vegetables into uniform pieces and arrange them in a single layer in a sauté pan. Add a few tablespoons of butter, a dash each of salt and pepper, and a pinch of sugar. Add water to nearly cover the vegetables; lay a piece of parchment paper on top; and simmer. As the water cooks off, fat from the butter combines with the vegetables' starches and sugars to form a rich glaze; a shake of the pan distributes it throughout, transforming humble vegetables into elegant side dishes.


Edit: If cooking longer softens the potatoes, then this isn't what's happening. In that case, well, you just need to cook longer. The main variable is probably temperature (maybe the pot isn't actually all hot for all 30-45 minutes), followed by variations in cut size and in the firmness of the original potatoes. But the rest could apply to some readers too!

I'm going to take a wild stab at this. It can explain this sort of thing, but it does depend on how you cook your stew. The following is a quote from On Food and Cooking (excellent book!), one of my favorite discoveries from reading through the sections on fruit and vegetables.

  It turns out that in certain vegetables and fruits - including potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, beans, cauliflower, tomatoes, cherries, apples - the usual softening during cooking can be reduced by a low-temperature precooking step. If preheated to 130-140F/55-60C for 20-30 minutes, these foods develop a persistent firmness that survives prolonged final cooking. ... Firm-able vegetables and fruits have an enzyme in their cell walls that becomes activated at around 50C (and inactivated above 70C), and alters the cell-wall pectins so that they're more easily cross-linked by calcium ions.  At the same time, calcium ions are being released as the cell contents leak through damaged membranes, and they cross-link the pectin so that it will be much more resistant to removal or breakdown at boiling temperatures.

So, if you started the stew from cold (or drastically reduced the temperature by dumping in the sweet potatoes and other things) and had it on low heat, so that it took a while to come up to temperature, then your sweet potatoes may have been in that 50-70C range where the enzyme is active for a while. So maybe while your length of cooking time is consistent, your time before simmering isn't; that could depend on how cold the ingredients were before adding, the pot you used, whether you got exactly the same setting on your stove, the temperature in your home, and so on. (I know you said this isn't it, but having larger chunks of sweet potatoes could conceivably contribute to that too; the inside would take longer to heat up, so you could end up with a firm interior, and the softer part on the outside could get rubbed off.)

Sweet potatoes do also vary some in firmness, but certainly not by that much. It could still be a factor, though, in combination with the rest! In any case, if you want to avoid the firm potatoes, I'd try making sure to get everything heated up quickly.


Should i oil my cast iron pan before storage?

As rumtsho has said oiling will help, but I think you have a more fundamental problem with is learning the care for your cast iron.

There are lots of resources on the web to learn how to prepare, and maintain your cast iron. Some of it works even though it's wrong, some of it is very good and some of it is scientific in nature. However here are the basics.

You want to scrub your pan down once. Oil it all over...every nook and cranny even in the handles .... with a very thin layer of oil. Then wipe this off with a clean towel and bake the sucker at 385 for an hour or more until it looks bone dry.

I recommend you do some good reading however and learn all the different ways to keep it in shape along with all the different fat and oil choices.

I use peanut oil, it has a high smoke point, which means the polymer you create will burn at a higher temperature than those oils with a lower smoke point, and peanut oil makes a hard seasoning.


Salt should be put before putting the spaghetti (or any other type of pasta for that matters) in the water.

For 200g spaghetti (2 people) count ~2-3 liters of water and 20-30g rock salt.
You can reduce the amount of salt if the sauce you are using is already quite salty.

As a note to your point 2, the salt INCREASES the boiling point of water (a process known as boiling point elevation)

However, the increase in boiling point when adding 20g of salt to 2l of water is practically insignificant.


How to pick good clementines and mandarins at the supermarket?

Bitterness can come from underripe fruit (although a lot of times they'll just be sour or less flavorful), lack of juice is usually something that has been stored too long and dried out.

A ripe mandarin or clementine should be firm but not hard with a good, bright citrusy fragrance. Rubbing your finger on the skin should impart some citrus oil (unless it's waxed of coated...) I think usually the smell is the best guideline for flavor, although I have still sometimes had a fruit that smells great and tastes pretty bland. But I think usually if they are really fragrant that's a good sign.

The skin should be somewhat loose-feeling. If the skin is tight on the fruit, it is either not ripe or it is drying out (or it's not a mandarin or clementine).

Don't squeeze the fruit and bruise it, but when you pick it up, there should be a bit of give in the skin. Mandarins and clementines have very thin skins, but these still have the sort of spongy texture of other citrus. Because they are thin, they dry out quickly. It's hard to describe what drying citrus skin feels like - progressively rougher and harder than fresh, eventually turning into a crisp and brittle almost stony layer. I'm sure you would notice far before it gets to that stage, but it's not going to happen overnight. (But the fruit shouldn't be squishy or have soft spots, that is generally spoilage or damage.)

It should not feel dry and hard. A juicy citrus will feel heavy for its size, although for really small ones that's kind of hard to judge.

One more thing to note, though, is that most of the time, the whole batch of whatever type of fruit at the grocery store or at a particular market stall at any given time will very likely come from the same source. While there might be some better and some worse ones, overall they'll probably be pretty similar, unless you can clearly see that some are older or from a different source.

If you're not sure about a batch, just buy a couple and then get more after you see that they're good. (And if you find some great ones, buy a lot and freeze some for juice for later.)


At what concentration is sodium bicarbonate a sanitizing solution?

Sodium bicarbonate alone is not a sanitizer at any concentration, although it may be an effective cleaner, mostly due to its abrasive quality.  It may be used in certain sanitization regimes, in combination with other chemicals and agents.

Food Safety Site of Clemson University does not list it as a sanitizing agent.  According to 21 CFR 178.1010 - Sanitizing solutions (as queried through VLex), it is a part of two sanitizing regimes, but not the only component.

There are many non-credible, non-scientific sites that seem to claim sodium bicarbonate has anti-fungal properties, but I do not consider them worthy of consideration.

In terms of reputable sources, there is some evidence from NIH that sodium bicarbonate, at concentrations of 3%, can contribute to anti-fungal properties (at least for storing oranges), but it is part of an overall plan also including biological antagonists, not used alone.

I would not take this to mean that sodium bicarbonate is a sanitizing agent, which is a much stronger statement than simply reducing growth of fungus, which is only one possible type of pathogen.  I simply cannot find any evidence to support this stronger statement.


Hot chocolate and cheese (Colombian Special)

Queso Blanco just means "White Cheese", which is kind of a catch-all term many locals use for simple cheeses. What is meant by Queso Blanco will likely change from region to region even within Columbia, and the chances of you being able to find it in the UK are pretty unlikely. Most imported Spanish cheeses tend to be the high-quality, specialist ones.

You haven't put what the cheese actually tastes like in your post, so I am assuming it was most likely pretty mild and it is the texture of it that really floated your boat. When I think soft, mild cheese I usually think cows milk, not sheep or goat, although there may be non-cheese alternatives as well in the following list:

Panir may work for you, it's soft and will get softer, also pretty mild flavor
Tofu: ok, not cheese but texture-wise a soft tofu may work great, and the flavor will work with chocolate pretty well.
UK white cheese: any major UK supermarket has a white cheese on sale, usually cheap, usually flavorless. Could be worth a try
Curd cheese: this is probably what would be called cottage cheese in the US. It's pretty liquid but if you drained it and compacted it you'd get a crumbly, easy-melting cheese

Let us know how you get on, I'm dying of curiosity!


Is there a more exact temperature for cold smoking?

The person who wrote this, agrees with you on the 80-100° part.
However, in his salmon recipe, he advices to smoke below 85°.

So my guess is that it depends on the food you're smoking.


What happens to pound cakes if I forget the flour and then add it after baking a little?

You will end up with a very sweet sunken souffle type item without the flour.


Can you use cooked fish heads and bones in stock?

Nope, go ahead. I do it all the time, and in fact some stock recipes call for roasted bones. Just make sure to store the heads/bones safely to keep a nice taste between the original cooking and the stock-making.

If you season the fish heavily during the original cooking, it may influence the taste of the stock.


Would there be a difference between boiling whole black peppercorns or fine ground black pepper in a stew?

Well, I've never had whole black peppercorns dissolve.  In very long cooking, and depending on the variety and age of the peppercorn, they can soften somewhat.  But when adding whole peppercorns to a dish, I either plan to remove them after cooking or be prepared to bite into a serious bit of pepper every now and then.  To avoid this problem, I generally at least "crack" or crush the peppercorns a bit if I intend them to be in the final dish.  (This aids in softening and seems to allow the flavor to blend a bit more, though large bits can still be very peppery.)

Black pepper tends to lose a lot of subtleties of flavor quickly once it is ground, which is why pepper grinders are so common in restaurants (and at home).  There's no advantage of using pre-ground pepper in a soup or stew, but I definitely tend to grind it myself right before adding to avoid the large chunks of peppercorns.  (Different varieties of peppercorns can vary a lot terms of potency, especially when they are fresh, so perhaps yours are more mild than the ones I generally use and thus less noticeable when in larger chunks.)

Some people buy pre-ground pepper and find it convenient, though.  My one caution, if using pre-ground pepper and you desire a very peppery dish, is to not overdo it.  Whereas whole peppercorns will gradually release subtleties of flavor, pre-ground pepper can change somewhat quickly from barely noticeable to a burst of strong pungency.


How do I identify the fermentation process in a wild ferment?

In addition to @kitukwfyer's answer. There's quite a bit of biology that goes on here...
Not only are you influencing the competition, you are actively selecting for organisms that grow well under the conditions. This is the real reason brewing (and bread etc) works better with a starter culture. There are a few things influencing this:

With a starter culture you are putting in a high number of organisms, which results in a shorter lag phase. Wild ferments rely on a relatively low abundance of naturally occurring organisms - so have a long lag.
With a starter culture you are also adding organisms that are already at least semi-adapted to the type of culture, so they will grow better.
It takes a while for the wild organisms that are there to actually adapt to the conditions. These are related to abundance of water, salt(s), nutrients, oxygen, CO2, pH etc; all of which may be on the boundaries of what is tolerable for the organisms that are there. Cultured organisms are at least partially selected for these characteristics already and selected against ones you don't want, indeed that is actually part of the reason people add things like acid to fermentations - it inhibits gut microflora like Escherichia coli that can make you quite ill.
In the ferment you are selecting for strains that grow well under the conditions; this will be a small proportion of those that are there, so it results in a very small inoculum, and a long lag phase.
Finally, wild organisms often have slow growth rates compared to cultured ones, because we generally want things quickly, so we select for strains that grow faster under the conditions we want - you probably did this subconsciously a couple of times already - you didn't see any signs of fermentation in a brew, so you threw it out and made a fresh batch; or something along those lines.

As to how you can identify the organisms - your best bet would be to get or make a bunch of bacterial (aim for lactic-acid fermentation ones here) and yeast plates (use some filter sterile fermentation broth as the liquid base if possible) and start streaking out your cultures. You most likely won't be able to culture all the organisms in your ferment, but you probably can culture those with the highest abundance (you already know they grow well under some conditions). You can then pick off individual colonies from our plates and grow them in liquid culture to see which have characteristics (flavour profiles) you like by themselves or in combination (try smelling them before drinking...). This is not a trivial task (list of techniques you might need) and relies on a bit of good sterile technique and a knowledge of what a "normal" organism looks like, not a contaminant from your own microflora.


Should calcium propionate be disolved in a liquid when making yeast bread?

With a solubility of 49 grams per hundred ml cold water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_propanoate I would not worry about dissolving Ca propionate in anything before adding to your dough. As with sugar, the liquid already in the dough should be plenty to get your propionate dissolved.


Ideal temperature and method to bake a deep dish pizza

For genuine Neapolitan pizza (very thin dough, tomatoes, Buffalo mozzarella, olive oil) you would use a wood (oak) fired brick oven at 485°C (900°F)

It should be fully cooked in in less than 90 seconds

If you add other toppings, and use a thicker dough it will take a little longer

Cooking at lower temperatures gives you a nice "pie" or savoury flan, but not a pizza

To make a pizza pie (not a pizza), with a deep pan, with a thick dough layer, you should still use a very hot oven, use the maximum temperature your oven will go to. Some people even override the self clean system to go even hotter. Expect times around 5 to 8 minutes

If your crust starts burning on the edges, either accept it as part of the pizza style, or spread sauce right to the edges. Pre-baking the dough for a minute may reduce soggyness of finished product

Go for traditional pizza's for a generally much nicier experience. And if you have the room build your own wood fired pizza oven (plenty of kits on plans on the net)


Why does cooking mushrooms longer alter the taste so much?

I can't speak to specific chemicals/aromatics for mushrooms, but this kind of thing does happen with all kinds of food. The initial cooking is releasing aromatics that were previously bound up in the food somehow, so you quickly get some stronger flavors. But aromatic molecules are volatile (that's why you smell them!) and also generally more prone to breaking down, so as you cook longer, they escape, or are broken down into something else without so much flavor, leaving you with something milder.

Think about onion, for example. When you first start sauteeing it, there's a lot of really strong onion smell coming off, maybe even enough to make you cry if you're prone to it. If you eat it then, it'll still have plenty of sharp onion flavor. But as you cook longer, those flavors mellow out; going to the extreme, slowly caramelized onions have no sharpness and very little onion flavor.

I think the initial strengthening of flavor may be stronger with mushrooms because of their structure. They seem dry at first, with all the water bound up inside. But as you start to cook them, their structure breaks down and they quickly release a lot of water, and with it, those flavors.


What's really happening when reusing tea leaves?

There are couple of factors at work when re-steeping green tea: temperature, time, and the quality of the tea (the size & way it's been processed).  Green tea is supposed to be brewed with water that's been brought to boil and allowed to cool to 167 - 176 degrees Fahrenheit (though many people simply heat the water to that point or what they eyeball as hot but not boiling).  Green tea is typically steeped for 1 - 2 minutes.  And green tea, especially loose leaf, but also with higher quality tea bags, has furled and sometimes rolled leaves.  The lower temperature, the short steeping time, and the curled leaves mean that flavor is still left within the leaves even after multiple steepings.  The leaves continue to expand and release in subsequent baths.  I don't, unfortunately, know any of the exact science--what's being released when, etc.

However, a possible alternative to boiling & brewing individual teas when done or simply using more tea (the typical choice when brewing larger quantities), you can bring your water to temperature, steep, pour it into a preheated or heat retaining container, and repeat the cycle until you've brewed your multiple cups in one go.  As far as I know the tea leaves don't need to 'rest' in between brewings.

The reason green tea can be re-steeped is also the reason most black teas can't.  Black tea is subject to boiling water for a longer period of time (typically Western use is 3 - 5 minutes; some cultures favor an even longer steep for the deeply bitter tannins).  The hotter and longer steep pulls more flavor out of the leaves faster.  Some black teas, especially high quality whole-leaf, can be re-steeped, however.  Most bagged black teas--and a lot of loose leaf--can't.

The heat & steep time is dictated by the processing of the tea once it's picked.  Green tea has minimal processing--pluck, wilt, shape & dry.  Black tea is allowed complete oxidation (called fermentation).  Fermentation breaks down chlorophyll, releases tannins, and forms many of the taste & aroma compounds that typify black tea.  Oolongs and other varieties are subjected to varying degrees of fermentation.  The size & shaping of the tea leaf--allowed to remain whole, broken, rolled, or (for most bagged tea) cut into fannings and dust, also affects how tea should be initially steeped and whether it can be re-steeped.  Highly rolled oolongs, for example, often hold up to more steepings than green tea and are even said to taste best only on the 3rd or further steeping.


Why is my meringue soft, moist and discoloured?

One thing that can affect meringues is humidity. I find that I have to bake them at nearly twice as long in the summer to get them to dry out completely.


How do I mimic trader Joe's (dark) Chocolate covered Espresso Beans?

Some observations that may help:

There is no such thing as an espresso bean.  There is only coffee, which is available in many different varieties and roasts.  You will want to experiment to find one that you like as the center of your candy, based on its flavor.

For candy, you definitely will want an Arabica, I think, not a Robusta variety.  Additionally, you want a single variety of coffee, not a blend, so that you have essentially the same flavor for each piece.   If you don't already know a quality roaster, there are many on the Internet who will ship.
All properly roasted coffee should be pretty brittle and frangible, and crush when bitten.
You can double-dip or even triple-dip your beans to get the thickness of coating that you like.  I cannot say why the chocolate may not be "clinging" without more information--but make sure you are using (and probably tempering, which is a entire discusion on its own) real, quality chocolate or coverture.


My typical method to add flavor, but not "bits", is to wrap the ingredients in a cheesecloth bag and remove it after cooking is done. Usually this is larger items than cardamom seeds (e.g. vegetables or bay leaves), but with fine enough cloth you should be able to add seasoning without adding texture.


Good olive oil is supposed to have a peppery burn in the back of your throat.  It is also not uncommon for it to have bitter elements.  There is no way to discern if your oil is bad by your description.  Olive oil that has been exposed to heat or light, or is just old, will no longer smell fresh.  Fresh olive oil generally has grassy aromas with some olive mixed in.  Rancid oil might smell waxy, some describe it as smelling of old crayons or old walnuts.  It might taste fatty, as opposed to fresh and grassy.  If it is rancid, couple of teaspoons is not going to cause any harm.


Washing vegetables that I accidentally threw moldy tomato sauce on safe?

Washing the vegetables properly after getting the moldy sauce on them, and cooking them properly after should be fine. Your body is pretty well equipped to fight off small traces of most molds, you will only get sick if you ingest a substantial amount of mold.


Why use liquid nitrogen to make ice cream?

Ice cream is an emulsion and in it, you have air, fat, and ice.  The smaller the ice crystals, the smoother the icecream and better chance of achieving a velvety, creamy, smooth texture. The flavor is also elevated given the smaller crystals. Put it in the freezer, and ice crystals start to grow bigger and you lose the benefits.

Also, colder temperature inhibits the taste buds ability to pick up sweetness.  At liquid nitro cooled  temperatures, you can get an explosion of flavour as the icecream warms up and melts in your mouth and the taste buds start to pick up on sweetness.

Finally, aside from a show, it's much much faster to make icecream with LN2 than in a regular machine. Seconds versus 30-45minutes.

There are hazardous issues with liquid nitrogen and handling. As a starting point, look into this primer.


Items in freezer, including ice cubes, taste freezer burnt. Possible causes?

Freezer burn occurs when water molecules in food gather in a colder location in your freezer—whether that be the sides of your freezer or even other foods.

Tips to prevent freezer burn:

Don't put hot food directly into your freezer, let it cool first
Put your food in air-tight containers
The longer food is in the freezer the greater your chance of freezer burn

I'm going to go out on a limb though and guess that—at least with your ice cubes may just be acquiring a "freezer smell" from the other foods in your freezer. If I don't use the cubes in my freezer fast enough they end up tasting really unpleasant. Give your freezer a good cleaning and cover your ice cubes with saran wrap and this should help stop the funny smells/tastes.


How to remove brownies cleanly from silicone molds?

Freeze the brownies in the mold. They'll release cleanly.


Why don't dry aged/hung sausages go bad?

It is due to a combination of several factor, depending on how the particular sausage was made:

Dry cured sausages contain curing salts, a mixture of regular salt and sodium nitrate (which breaks down into sodium nitrite), which prevents the growth of botulism while the sausage cures.
Meat for dry cures sausage is also often frozen to specific temperatures for prescribed periods of time to kill any trichinosis which may be present.
As the sausage cures, it becomes too dry and concentrated in salt to foster pathogens, as well as too acidic from the action of friendly bacteria, and thus is relatively shelf stable.  It may also simply have acid ingredients as part of the initial recipe.
Modern cured sausages may also be subjected to irradiation, cooking, or another "kill step" to satisfy the needs of regulatory agencies, according to the New York Times.

See also:

FSIS
Food Safety News


Can Parkay Spray be used in place of melted butter for baking muffins?

Although a single serving of Parkay Spray lists 0 calories on its label that is not true (due to labeling rules they are allowed to state it as such).

An 8oz bottle of Parkay Spray contains 832 calories.
8oz of butter contain approximately 1625 calories.

Parkay Spray:

  Ingredients: Water, Soybean Oil, Buttermilk, Salt, Contains Less Than 2% of The Following: Soy Lecithin And Polyglycerol Esters of Fatty Acids (Emulsifiers), Xanthan Gum, Potassium Sorbate And Sodium Benzoate (to Preserve Freshness), Lactic Acid (Acidulant), Natural And Artificial Flavor, Vitamin A Palmitate, Colored With Beta Carotene (Source of Vitamin A). Contains Milk, Soy.

With a list of ingredients like that there are better ways to lessen the calorie count of your baked goods. Additionally the water in the spray may have a negative effect on your final product as well.

Many times you can just use less butter/oil. Some recipes replace some or all of the fat with things like unsweetened applesauce (approximately 100 calories for 8oz), canned pumpkin puree (100 calories/8oz) or baby food fruit purees. These kinds of substitutions can add additional nutrients and flavors, making for a tastier finished product.

The internet is a great resource for low/reduced calorie/fat recipes.


Increasing the size of the jar generally increases the canning time.  When processing, you are heating the food all the way through to a particular temperature to kill any microbial contaminants.  For an item with more volume, it will generally take longer to bring the center up to a particular temperature.

How long you have to process it depends on how big of step you take in the size of the jar, and what you are canning.  I would imagine it would usually add 5-10 minutes to the processing time.

Here is a link explaining it. It also refences the USDA canning guidelines. The second link includes canning times for many items; most increase with larger volumes, but not all.  These should get you started, and you can research further if you are canning something that isn't in these documents. I suppose there is a general processing time that is safe for any size, but it would probably affect the flavor and texture of the food to process it too much more than is necessary.

NOTE: While I may play fast and loose with some USDA guidelines, canning is ALWAYS serious business. Improperly canned foods can lead to botulism, which is hard or impossible to detect, and you can't "cook it" out of the food.  Use tested formulas and correct procedures.

PS: Here is the direct link to the pickle guidelines. It looks like for anything larger than gherkins or sliced (bread and butter) pickles, you will add five minutes to the time. MAke sure though...


I couldn't find a recipe I was comfortable online with as none of them seemed to be able to take into account a hunk of meat that size.

In the end I cooked it for 220 C for 30 mins and then 170 C for 6 1/2 hours, rebasting it every hour with the overflow juices and straining off the (copious amount of) excess fat so it didn't deep fry itself.

Result? Delicious


I would generally advise against salting garlic before sautéing, but it depends on your use and style of cooking. Salting garlic is a French technique. It draws out moisture and makes it more difficult to brown (which may be what you're after).

Garlic is difficult to get right as people often over-cook it causing it to be bitter. If you're cooking garlic by itself, start with it in the cold oil and heat them together. If you are sweating the garlic and don't intend to brown it, then salting is fine and may help.

I sometimes use kosher salt when puréeing garlic with a chef's knife as this helps pulverize the garlic. A lot of your technique will depend on the recipe and how pungent you want the garlic. The more you cut, mince, or grind it (before cooking), the more caustic flavor you will get as more allicin is created. Cooking the garlic destroys the alliinase enzyme so no further allicin will be created once cooked.


From Wikipedia:

  Sodium nitrite, used as a curing agent, is what gives pepperoni the pink part of its distinct orange-pink color, while paprika or other capsicum provides the orange part.

It cites a food science blog article as the source.


How to know whether the default coating on the iron cookware has totally come off?

If all the seasoning is completely removed, it will look shiny like brushed or polished metal. This takes a lot of time, and often power tools. I would first ask whether this is what you want to do: does the pan feel waxy, and have a surface that turns glossy when heated? Then there is wax which can be easily removed with a scrub-brush while water is boiling in the pan. Finish with a little soap and hot water, and you're ready to season.

If it is, in fact, the seasoning you want to remove (if, for example, it is coming off in places, or parts are rusting, typically on cookware which has been left outside), the easiest procedure is to heat the pan very hot, either in the coals of a campfire, or in an oven on 'clean' to burn off the previous coating (don't do this with a pan coated in wax, the wax will burn and smoke), then brush with steel wool until the metal pan starts to show through. You will need to season with several coats of an oil like crisco or coconut, and this will take a lot of time. It's rarely necessary to strip a pan unless it is in awful condition.

At the point you're at, I'd assume that any wax or residue is gone from your work with the steel wool, and that you don't need to go as far as to strip the whole thing. To salvage it, put aside the steel wool, scrub with a plastic brush and hot water until the black residue is gone. Clean a little more using a rag and oil (which will pick up oil-soluble debris) until that is clear. Then season as you normally would, using a light oil like crisco in the oven.


What effect have bay leaves in a meat/tomato sauce?

It doesn't do anything, it's your second suggestion.

The feeling of "right/wrong" and "like/dislike" is highly correlated with familiarity. This is proven not only by psychometry, but even physiologically, with fMRI scans. People like most whatever they are familiar with, up to the point that unfamiliar things seem wrong. This applies not only to bay leaves, but also to all other tastes (or taste combinations) and many other areas of life, even beyond sensory perception.

You can teach yourself to like bay-leaf-less sauce too, by just eating it frequently enough that it becomes familiar. But I don't see any advantages in doing so. Just cook with bay leaf and enjoy it.


Given that US produce grading is voluntary (see:http://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/vegetables), I think your task of sourcing the highest quality produce would be one of searching, asking around...basically trial and error. It, of course, depends on how you define quality (as the comments above suggest).  If it is perfect cosmetic appearance, then yes, large commercial farms are the way to go.  If perfect is flavor, then perhaps small producers specializing in specific crops might be the way to go.


Bagels - Baking Soda or Sugar in the Water?

The main purpose of adding things to the boil are to promote browning and flavor. The texture of the crust is more a product of gelatinizing the starches by boiling, using a high oven temp, and using a good amount of steam during baking.

You can increase browning two main ways, by promoting the Maillard reaction and/or promoting caramelization.  Baking soda, lye, or sodium carbonate baths increase the Maillard reaction, and increase surface gelatinization by breaking down some starch, but also give the bagels a "pretzely" taste.  You can also promote the Maillard reaction by adding protein to the surface by using an egg or milk wash.  Sugar (white or dark), honey, and malt added either to the boil and/or the dough increase surface caramelization and also lend a subtle glaze.

Personally, I always use malt incorporated both into the dough and into the boil.  It adds a subtle sweetness and cereal flavor that complements the bagels. I find the pretzel taste from an alkaline bath off-putting.  When I don't have malt I use honey, molasses, or brown sugar. I don't use an egg wash either, if you want to add toppings just place the bagel into the topping right out of the boil... they'll stick without anything else.


Chilled means refrigerated, and frozen is frozen.  The first is for shoppers who want to use the pastry dough right away, and the frozen is for most shoppers who aren't using it immediately.

You can freeze puff pastry.  In fact, you can freeze and thaw it a couple of times before the freezing/thawing process starts to ruin the dough.


TL;DR: You should.
I don't own clay pots myself, so take this with a grain of salt. I found some information on the Bram Cookware website called Clay Cooking 101. It has recommendations as well as an instructional video.
The process apparently is called seasoning, rather than healing. Here is a short summary from the page:

Seasoning Your Clay Pot
Give your new clay pot love and it will love you back! Cookware that
will be used over a direct heat source on the stovetop needs to be
seasoned before its first use. This strengthens the pot and prevents
it from cracking. It will also make the pot more durable so it can
provide you with many years of fantastic cooking.

Now for the black particles in the food, I'm not certain what that could be; so it's probably best to play it safe and not eat the food.


How do I tone down the intensity of raw onion?

Two things control the "sharpness" of onions: variety and age.  While certain varieties of onions are sharper than others (i.e. Reds, walla-walls and vidalias are sweeter), any onion which has been in storage too long is going to be sulphurous and sharp-tasting.  Since it's January now, that's going to be pretty much all onions.

Since onion sharpness comes from sulphur compounds (as I understand it), the best way to sweeten onions is to release some of them ahead of using the onion.  The best way to do that is:

Slice the onion thinly, crossways (parallel to its equator rather than pole-to-pole).
Place the sliced onion in a wide bowl, uncovered or very loosely covered, in the fridge or other cold place for at least an hour and up to a day.

Additionally, either vinegar or salt -- or both -- will help accelerate removing sharpness from onion.  For example, for a New Year's Eve appetizer this year I sliced a red onion in to rings, tossed it with 1/2 tsp salt and 2 tsp red wine vinegar, and left it in an open bowl on the 45F porch for 5 hours.  The result was intensely sweet red onion which could then be used as a canape topping.

If you're in a hurry, though, the only way to make the onion less sharp is to cook it.


How Does a Hot Water Whipped Pie Crust Work?

How does this method work? In a hot water crust, when the high temperature of the water and fat emulsion is combined with flour the hot liquid causes some of the starch to gelatinize and swell with water which makes less liquid available to form gluten. This lack of gluten results in a tender pie crust that might be better described as "mealy" when compared to a "flaky" pie crust made with a dough using ice water and cold butter.
Here are some articles for further reading:

https://joepastry.com/2015/american-vs-british-hot-water-pie-crust/
https://foodcrumbles.com/hot-water-crust-pastry/
https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5790-hot-water-crust


Can I leave my cinnamon bars unbaked in the fridge for a few hours?

It will probably not affect taste, however, it will affect texture.  The reason is that the flour will react to the moisture in the batter and start to convert to gluten.  This will produce at best a chewier bar (which may actually be desirable) or, at worst, a rock hard bar.

If you are willing to take this textural risk, then I would recommend putting the pan directly into the oven from the refrigerator.  This is because the bars will be so thin (and thereby have relatively large surface area) that they will come up to temperature in the oven quite quickly.  You may have to cook them slightly longer; just make sure to test them with a toothpick or, better yet, a thermometer before removing.  The internal temperature should be a little over 200°F or a little under 100°C.

If you want to minimize the risk of chewiness/hardness, do as little initial mixing of the flour with the batter as possible.  It is okay to have some small lumps of flour since they will absorb the batter during the resting time in the refrigerator.  This suggestion is due to the fact that gluten is formed both by moisture and mechanical agitation (mixing).

Another option, for which there is no potential harm, would be to mix the wet ingredients in advance and refrigerate them, also mix the dry ingredients in advance and leave them at room temperature, and then mix the wet with the dry just before putting everything into the oven.


Using avocado oil as a substitute to olive oil

See What oil or fat to use for different purposes? for a general discussion about choosing oils.

If you are using unrefined avocado oil, you it will have a unique flavor that will affect your dish or outcome, and in that case, the flavor would be the primary purpose.

If you are using refined avocado oil, its main unique characteristic is that it has an unusually high smoke point at about 480 F (250 C).  While this may make it exceptionally suitable for applications like deep frying, you would have to consider whether the cost is justified, given that many more available and lower cost oils (at least in much of the world) perform very well, and most deep frying temperatures don't exceed 375 F (190 C).

As to a drawback—if you exclude cost—no, there is no reason to avoid refined avocado oil in recipes.


Downside of 'Turbo' mode on rice cooker?

I have one of the Cuckoo cookers with a Turbo mode. The one (slight) downside is that white rice will come out a bit more... gooey? with the Turbo cooking. It's not bad and seems to primarily affect smaller batches. If you let the rice rest a bit and plan on tossing it with oil or butter (or just don't mind stickier rice), it's definitely workable.


What flavor (besides chocolate) goes well with hazelnut?

Coffee goes well with hazelnut and has a slightly bitter note, so you could make a coffee infused crème pâtissière by simply folding in a shot or two of espresso (or just some good strong coffee) into whipped cream (or make a coffee frosting).


Is salt important to the texture of dough?

Salt toughens gluten and makes the dough less sticky.  So with that said, it would make it much easier to work in too much flour and make the pierogi dough more dense.  Do a search on the following page for "biscuit" and read the few paragraphs before.

http://www.saltinstitute.org/Articles-references/References-on-salt-use/References-on-salt-use/References-on-salt-in-food


Why is it that caramel sauce should not be stirred after it has boiled?

Actually, I think "the Internet" is wrong on this one, assuming that we are talking about proper caramel sauce.

In most of candy making, you are very careful of crystalization. You are working with a supersaturated sugar solution, and it is looking for the slightest excuse to precipitate. Stirring will clump the sugar out of the solution into crystals.

Some candy types need to be perfectly smooth, while others (like fudge) get their characteristic texture from careful management of crystal size. You shouldn't be stirring there at all.

But once you have reached caramelization, you can stir. What you have in the pan is no longer a supersaturated sugar solution, but caramelization products mixed in a less-concentrated sugar solution. In other words, you have caramel, which is a substance quite different from sugar syrup. And it does not clump into crystals. It is amorphous in its structure, not a crystal, and it's actually got some viscosity (if you leave a clump a solid caramel around for years, it will flow a few centimeters).

And you are not just dealing with pure caramel, but with caramel sauce, which also has lots of liquid added in the form of cream. So much liquid would have also prevented the sugar syrup from crystalizing if it had been added earlier.

So, to summarize, you shouldn't stir a sugar solution during candy making, but you can stir both caramel and caramel sauce.

It seems that somebody learned the rule about hot sugar solutions and decided that it applies in all kinds of candy making, without exceptions. But in fact, it doesn't apply to caramel sauce.


An oyster knife, paired with the most common technique used to open oysters will fail you when it comes to clams.  You need a thinner bladed, clam knife...and you need to find the seam opposite the hinge side of the clam.  Another approach is cryo-shucking; that is, freezing for a short time in a traditional freezer...or even using liquid nitrogen, if it is available.  Large cherrystone clams can be steamed.  I prefer them raw...or opened, seasoned and baked, such as in clams casino.  If they are very large, approaching the size of quahogs, steam them open, chop them up and make chowder.


Implied cooking temperatures on food packaging

It sounds like by "temperature" you're referring to the setting of your stove. If your stove is powerful enough that you don't need it at its maximum power to keep water at a rapid boil, then you can of course reduce the setting once you've returned it to a rapid boil (between your steps 3 and 4). On the other hand, if you have a smaller, older stove, you might need to keep it at high to keep the water boiling rapidly. So the answer is "maybe" - you do whatever you need to do with your stove to keep it doing what the directions say (boiling).

That said, this isn't necessarily the best way to cook pasta. You should test it, rather than counting on the time on the package to be accurate. And you don't actually have to cook it at a full boil, or boil the water before adding the pasta; see this great column by Harold McGee on cooking pasta in a way contrary to popular wisdom, and a Food Lab article based on it. You can in fact start with pasta in just enough cold water, bring it to a good simmer, and keep it there until it's done.


What can I substitute for hot Korean chili oil in this pork noodle recipe?

You can always just make your own Korean chili oil. For example, here's The Woks of Life formula for chili oil:

  1½ cups oil (ideally a vegetable, peanut, or grapeseed oil…light olive oil is fine, but it has a tendency to set in the fridge)
  5 star anise
  1 cinnamon stick, preferably cassia cinnamon
  2 bay leaves
  3 tablespoons Sichuan peppercorns
  ¾ cup Asian crushed red pepper flakes (Sichuan chili flakes are the best)
  1 – 1½ teaspoons salt (to taste)

  Heat the oil, star anise, cinnamon stick, bay leaves, and Sichuan peppercorns in a small saucepan over medium high heat. When the oil starts to bubble slightly, turn the heat down to medium.


How can I save flour from little insects?

There's no way to make your flour completely safe after it gets infested with bugs. You could sieve the flour and the mesh will separate the bugs, however any diseases carried by the bugs would be left in the flour as will bug droppings (i.e. insect excrement). Cooking it may kill whatever nasty stuff the bugs leave behind, but it may not so the safest thing to do is throw it away. If it's use the flour or people go hungry then sieve it and cook it, but if you don't have to it's not worth the risk.

I keep flour in a sealed plastic container, it keeps it fresher and bug free.


Firstly, there is no one way Italians use pasta.  Italian cuisine is defined regionally, and each region's cuisine approaches pasta somewhat differently.  Secondly, it might be better to consider fresh and dried pasta almost as different ingredients.  They produce different results and are used in different dishes.  I presume that more dried/factory produced pasta is consumed than fresh both in Italy and elsewhere, simply for reasons of convenience.  However, it is not just "marketing", in my opinion.  Fresh pasta, in the correct applications, is delicious, and the correct ingredient for the dish.


should new cast iron have flat smooth bottom

If it's new, return it. New cast iron is uniformly awful, and your pan sounds dangerous to boot.

Look for a vintage/antique cast iron pan on ebay or Etsy or a local flea market or yard sale. You're not going to make a sow's ear into a silk purse, so start with the main ingredient you need: an older pan. If you opt to buy an older pan that is rusty and crusty, it will likely be cheap and, at the same time, your best kitchen investment ever.

Buy some heavy-duty Easy-Off oven spray (make sure it's the heavy-duty formula), put the pan in a black plastic bag, and spray every surface of it while it's inside the bag. Seal the bag and put it in a warm place for a week. Take the pan out (wear gloves) at the end of the week, wash it down to get rid of the caked-on seasoning, and scrub it. After drying, survey what hasn't been stripped to a clean surface. Spray those areas heavy, the other areas lightly, and repeat the process.

Old cast irons were finished by hand, and the cooking surface is amazingly smooth. Once you have stripped the pan with the oven cleaner and seasoned it, you should have a lovely cast iron pan that your great-grandchildren will inherit.


Unit price of olive oil: volume versus weight

According to this, a gallon of olive oil weighs 7.6 lbs.; 1l weighs .91kg.


Cooking "Low and Slow" allows the heat to break down the connective tissues that cause toughness in meat, creating a more tender dish.

As for what the "Slow Cooker" is referring to, that is the volume of the crock pot.


How can i tell if a pineapple will be sweet?

Usually you can tell when Pineapples are ripen, which will be sweet, when

Leaves are loose and can easily be picked from the top
The shell has golden colour (but not dark brown, these are getting rotten)
The aroma even from out of the shell is strong

A typical pineapple that is bought green and unripen, takes one to two days to ripe well. Don't put them in the fridge if you want to ripe them. Keep them out on the counter. As a street food vendor, we always keep them in the truck for one night prior to selling, that ensure the pineapples ripe enough and the juice comes out of it.

Hope it helps.


How do you stop banana flower soup from tasting astringent?

If the banana flower was astringent it is because of the flower, not the cooking method.

When the flowers are large and young they taste a lot better. If you wait until the bananas are formed and the stem to the flower is long then it will be astringent. The best time to pick the flower is when the stem is 10cm or less from the banana bunch. If the flower is old it will not be as good.

The variety of banana will also influence the taste of the flower. Sugar bananas often have the best flowers. You can eat the pink section but it is not as pleasant as the white section. If you eat the small individual flowers you need to take out the sepal in the centre which is incredibly time consuming.

Putting the banana flower in lime water is simply to stop it from going brown before you cook it. It does not significantly change the flavour.

There are many ways to cook banana flower. Here is my preferred method:

Peel the flower until you come to the white centre.
Discard the red outer section and the individual flowers hidden within this.
I like to quarter the centre and then I place in boiling water and simmer for 15 minutes with some salt.

For me it is delicious just like this with some lime, but from here you can put it in a cooked curry, salad, etc.


There are many potential causes, it is impossible to say which one (or maybe multiple ones) is the problem in your case.

Wrong measuring. The only way to exclude that for sure is to start baking by weight.
Wrong flour. You mention that you are in the southern US, I have some vague memory reading that they use bread terms a bit differently. Look at your flour package and make sure that it lists at least 9.5% protein. But if you want to have it easier, I suggest making it with bread flour (11-12% protein). Also, these recipes are made for standard wheat flour, don't do any substitutions.
novelty. Maybe you are simply not accustomed to working with doughs on the wetter side. Especially if an elderly relative taught you to make stiffer doughs by hand, they may have told you to do it without measuring and just add flour until it stops being sticky. Many bread recipes are made with doughs that are sticky during work. If you want to start using them, you will have to get accustomed to them. If not, just disregard any recipe above 70 or 75% hydration.
wrong kneading process. Maybe you are kneading for too little time, or not resting properly.

I am uncertain how to interpret your descriptions, and whether it is predominantly the novelty factor or a problem with the dough. "super sticky, getting stuck on my hands and work surface" - for the Julia Child recipe, this is not super sticky, it is normal for dough with 83% hydration and some butter to stick during initial mixing. "batter-like and drooping from the dough hook" - if it was a ball that was slowly drooping from the hook of a turned-off mixer, then it wasn't batter like. Or did you mean that it was dripping from the hook?
In any case, it seems that you are not getting the results you want, and your attempts at troubleshooting are not helping. So, I would suggest to stop using shorthand recipes from random sites, and learn making bread from a book that describes the whole process of making the dough, proofing it and baking it, as well as containing proven recipes and info on proper troubleshooting. Once you have gathered this initial knowledge, you can start hunting for additional recipes again.


Does frozen broccoli need to be cooked to be eaten safely?

I cannot comment directly on the broccoli, but I want to point out that this part

  How big a risk am I taking by just blending frozen broccoli into my smoothies without cooking at all? How likely is it that I get sick and what might be the symptoms?

is impossible to answer. This is not how food safety works.

Creating a prediction for such a risk is as complicated as creating a weather prediction. Only the people who'd have the resources to do such a prediction for any given piece of food (for example the FDA) don't have enough data to make the prediction. They'd need to know the history of the pack of broccoli to calculate the risk.

Instead of calculating the risk for every type of food under every condition, they calculate a range of conditions which can be considered "safe" and promise you that nothing will happen when you eat the food. All other ranges are called "unsafe", but a better word would be "undefined". The risk for them could be anywhere from 0% to 100%, and nobody can give you a better answer.

There is no general food safety guideline that produce has to be cooked through, and normally, eating raw broccoli would be considered safe. Of course, there are still rare cases where safe food, including produce, does cause problems - we are talking low risk here, not zero risk - and there could be a lawyer who decided to wash their hands of the matter. Or they could indeed know that their food has a higher risk factor than typical broccoli, maybe they use maize-fed cow dung for fertilizer on the broccoli (which is a source of E. coli), and decided to write it there. Whichever it is, nobody can tell you but the producer. If you decide to eat it, you are on your own in that pesky "unsafe" zone where the risk can have any value.

As long as we don't know which microorganism they suspect in their broccoli, we cannot say what amount of longer cooking at somewhat lower temperature is an adequate substitution for reaching the temperature they recommend. So that part is also unanswerable.


How well do counter top knife sharpeners sharpen knives?

A pull-through sharpener will never do as thorough a job at sharpening your knife as a stone, and over time will lose its efficacy and actually dull your blade. In a pinch they can be useful, but be sure to give the knife a few passes on a good quality steel afterwards, as the pull-through sharpeners tend to remove metal quite coarsely.


Is there a difference between tepid water and lukewarm water?


Good ol' Chef John has a solution right here.

Basically, you want to enclose your garlic in some kind of container that lets them move around fairly easily. He uses two bowls, a commenter suggests a jar, I suppose it depends on the number of garlic cloves you want to peel.

Close the container then start shaking away, maybe for 20-30 seconds or longer once you get the hang of how long this method takes for your chosen clove count.


Has anyone tried to cook spaghetti or other pasta in a skillet?

It adds a little bit of "nutiness"; it is subtle and depends on the other flavors in the dish.

It is the same thing when sauteing rice (or other grains) in oil or butter before adding water.

I've done it a few times, but long time ago.


Safe to use some vanilla pods that have been fished out of another recipe?

No, I wouldn't use something that had been in cream and then dried at room temperature. There is nothing to protect from bacteria growing. Used vanilla beans in sugar might not work since most of the flavor has been removed. It would have been ok in the fridge for a couple of days. One way to store vanilla is in brandy.


Is it possible to substitute Wax Paper for Parchment Paper during baking?

As @MeltedPez mentioned -- melting.  (coincindence in the name?  I'm not sure)

Specifically:

Waxed paper is wax-coated paper.
Parchment paper is silicone-coated paper.

Waxed paper is basically a candle in sheet form -- it'll melt, it'll burn, and it'll make your food taste like you're eating crayons.  It'll start to melt near 350F / 175C.  Parchment should go up to 500F / 260C ... it might get a little crispy or char at the edges, but won't spontaneously combust.

If you had to use something other than parchment, I'd go with 'release foil'.


Refrigerators are heat engines, and the energy cost is somewhat proportional to the difference in temperature desired.  Assuming your room temperature is typical, higher internal refrigerator temperatures are going to therefore take less energy to maintain.

Modern refrigerators are well insulated and remarkably energy efficient.

You should choose the the temperature setting of your refrigerator based on the quality and safety of the foods stored within, which indicates a temperature of about 32-40°F (0-4°C).

Too cold may freeze food, which can lead to quality issues, but is safe.  Too warm can allow food to spoil, which is a far greater risk.

See also:

What is the ideal fridge temperature
What temperatures should I keep my refrigerator and freezer set at?


I don't think that the word exists at all. "Overboiling" and "overcooking" always implies an undesirable result. Else, you have to exactly describe what you are doing, which depends on the dish. Update: native speakers tell me that overboiling is not a real word in English. But I would have liked it to be :)

"Simmer for hours on low flame" is the term I would use for making things like katak, which are essentially an evaporation process, or just a generic term when you don't have a better description. Your goulash example will be probably called "cook until the onion disintegrates". The word "reduction" which somebody used in a comment at ELL is also restricted to evaporation-only techniques, where you start with liquids and let them sit until they lose some predetermined amount of their water (but normally does not also include curdling and/or fermenting the way katak making would). But reduction is a special case, because if it is not clear from the context that it means just evaporation, it is mostly used for the combination of deglazing and subsequent reduction, which involves pouring an acidic liquid (wine, vinegar or fruit juice) into the hot fat left after preparing meat in the pan, and then letting most of it evaporate (which happens in under a minute).

So, unless you have a very specific word for the technique you are using, you have to stay descriptive. There is no single word which encompasses all kinds of long boiling.


Fruit leather sticking to parchment paper

Try a little cooking spray (pan release) on the pan, or, another option would be to use a silicone mat.


What knives are "required" for a serious home kitchen?

There are three core essentials:

Chef's knife

8" or 10" depending on your preferences

Paring knife

3" or 4" depending on your preferences

Bread knife

As long as possible, 12"+
Feel free to go cheap here, it's serrated and thus largely unsharpenable

You may want to check out Alton Brown's book, Alton Brown's Gear For Your Kitchen. He spends a chapter on knives and where to go past the essentials. He also suggests which ones are worth spending money on and which should be throwaways.


What is the best type of machine for making smooth nut butter?

Any machine that can reduce the nuts to very fine granules should do the job.

Wet grinders given there’s enough liquid/fat content in the nuts should do the best job. However that might not always be the case. Special high powered blenders (such a blendtec) with a purpose designed jar (like a twister jar) would generally provide more reliable results.


Sealed Philadelphia cream cheese left out overnight, is it still safe to eat?

Probably, but depends on brand. More precisely, on manufacturing and packaging processes. If it was subject to some equivalent of pasteurization and is still sealed, probability it spoiled is minimal. If it contains preservatives, it helps. Some brands also have citric acid, and low pH helps to make them a bit shelf stable.

If seal is broken, or if it wasn't pasteurized (or something like that) and does not contain any preservatives, discard it. Otherwise, if it looks good, smells good and tastes good, I'd guess it to be all right, but there is a high chance what I ate was different from your cheese, so no promises. And don't give it to eldry, pregnant or children. You know, better safe than sorry.


How do you make the sauce that is underneath Flan?

That is simply caramelized sugar that coats the dish before the custard is poured in for baking.  As the flan is chilled, the moisture from the custard liquefies the caramelized sugar and results in the sauce.

If you're wanting to make it for other desserts and aren't making flan, then simply caramelize sugar and then add water to it.  Be careful as the steam can easily burn you if you're standing over it.  The sugar will seize up and then as it continues to cook the crytallized caramelized sugar will liquefy.  You will then have caramelized sugar syrup.


If you want to do as much ahead of time as possible you have a couple of choices.

You can definitely peel the sweet potatoes the day before and store them under water, but I wouldn't recommend slicing them. If they are sliced thinly enough for gratin they're going to absorb a lot of water which will ruin the flavour. You can make the cream etc. mix up the day before though.

The alternative is to make the whole gratin up the day before and keep it in the fridge uncooked and covered. This will mean some of the cream is soaked up overnight and you'll get a very soft finish, but that might be what you want. Sweet potato doesn't hold as much texture as potatoes during cooking anyway so the difference might turn out to be negligible.


When spicing rice, should you add the spices in the water beforehand or after the rice has cooked?

I can only answer from a perspective of the Indonesian kitchen, and my own personal experience, but in general the answer is:

In the water, with the rice

I quite often use saffron, turmeric, cloves, daun salam (The English Wiki entry links to bay leaf, which, completely, utterly, is not the same thing), and lemongrass, and they all go in while cooking the rice.

Possible exceptions would be green leafy herbs, (coriander / cilantro for instance), which you put in the end. Not so much to flavor the rice, but more to "scent" the bowl of rice.

[Edit]

In answer to your edit:

There is no preferred way. The preferred way depends on the herb, as observed by thrig in his/her answer. Going by experience, and the herbs I use myself, the answer is in the water with the rice. Putting a bay leaf in after the fact, is not going to do much for a dish. Putting it in while cooking the dish is. This goes for a lot of herbs: Turmeric, ginger and laos (galangal?) can flavor rice, but not if you put it in the end. On the other hand: Putting cilantro while cooking the rice will just destroy the cilantro, and leave nothing to show for it. I lack the knowledge of what is water-soluble, and what is fat-soluble, but as a general guideline I use my highly personal "is-this-going-to-survive-the-15-to-20-minute-cooking-process-or-not?" guideline, and the even more personal "did-it-work?" guideline.

In addition, and perhaps also supporting thrig's answer, Indonesians are not shy of cooking their rice in santen (again: English wiki does not do justice, creamed coconut is not quite the same), adding a mildy greasy layer to the grains, aiding in flavor absorption, although I have to say it's not a common practice, but more often used for festive occasions.


Why get a chef's knife or santoku if I don't eat meat?

Even for meat eaters, almost all knife work is done on vegetables.  Santukos and chef's knives are general purpose knives, with great utility on vegetables.  Chinese cleavers are also general purpose knives, the functional equivalent in that culture to the chef's knife.

The advice offered to you in this question:

Which knife is best for somone just learning to cook?

does not change simply because you are a vegetarian.


Matzah meal as a binder in veggie burgers

I'd say the matzah meal is the equivalent of finer grain breadcrumbs. So what ever ratio you would usually use for breadcrumbs + eggs I'd do the same for matzah meal.


If you have evaporated milk (also known as unsweetened condensed milk) in your pantry, you can use it to replace everything except the cheese in a cheese sauce for stovetop macaroni and cheese.

Stovetop Mac and Cheese with Evaporated Milk Cheese Sauce

This recipe is an example of mac and cheese made with an evaporated milk cheese sauce.

Ingredients

  6 ounces (170g) elbow macaroni
  6 ounces (180ml) evaporated milk
  6 ounces (170g) grated mild or medium cheddar cheese, or any good melting cheese, such as Fontina, Gruyère, or Jack

Directions:

  Place macaroni in a medium saucepan or skillet and add just enough cold water to cover. Add a pinch of salt and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently. Continue to cook, stirring, until water has been almost completely absorbed and macaroni is just shy of al dente, about 6 minutes.
  Immediately add evaporated milk and bring to a boil. Add cheese. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring continuously, until cheese is melted and liquid has reduced to a creamy sauce, about 2 minutes longer. Season to taste with more salt and serve immediately.

The recipe does not drain the macaroni, but instead uses the remaining cooking liquid as part of the sauce. This is important, as the starch released by the pasta during cooking is needed to keep the sauce smooth.

(Consider this cheese sauce recipe, which uses a similar ratio of cheese to evaporated milk but also includes cornstarch. The "Read more" link in the recipe notes that a sauce made with just cheese and evaporated milk was significantly less smooth than a sauce made with both evaporated milk and cornstarch.)

A note for baked macaroni and cheese:

A footnote in a recipe for baked mac and cheese from the same website noted that a different cheese sauce recipe using evaporated milk did not work well in baked mac and cheese.

  I found that [the cheese sauce] didn't translate as well to the baked version of the dish; it tends to break when subsequently baked, diminishing its gooey texture and cheesy flavor.


I've had this issue also with new pans.  I've purchased pans before that need to be seasons and tempered by heating in the oven.  As any metal heats it expands, during expansion you will hear little knocks and creaks.  I've had pans with rolled edges that trapped water from washing, has caused the water to escape as steam and whistle on its way out, very disconcerting sound.

You may try checking the manufactures website (check bottom of pan for name) to see if you may need to temper your new pan in the oven prior to using. My daughter and I are a stickler for reading directions on every new item we get, which is how I learned to temper my pans. I wouldn't worry too much about the sounds it makes, over time it will stop.

If the pan is a frying pan the easiest way to temper it is to put some oil in the pan and heat it till the oil comes to a smoking point (remember different oils have different flash points, cheap vegetable oil being one of the lowest).  Remove pan from the heat and allow to cool, pour or wipe out any excess oil. For long lasting non-stick surface on your stainless steel pan don't allow it to come in contact with water.  The stainless steel is very porous and the water will wash the oil away.  Also, never put a hot pan in water, it will warp it. Watch the video I linked below to learn how to season your new pan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1376ITxF1Oc


What's the best way to clean and dry blueberries?

That's the same method I would use.

If you have a salad spinner you could try giving them a gentle spin in there first.  They are sturdy enough (unless they're over-ripe) that they should handle a gentle pass through it.


Does heat distribution vary between uncoated stainless steel pans and non-stick pans?

Non-stick pans have a coating on top of metal, this metal could be aluminum, stainless steel, copper, or any  other metal or alloy. The coating doesn't make a whole lot of difference to the heat distribution, that is the property of the metal underneath it.

Heat distribution doesn't change the end quality of your food, it determines how quickly heat spreads through the metal of the pan. What determines the quality of your end result is your technique in using the combined properties of your heat source and your equipment to cook food well. You can make great food with the most basic of equipment if you know how.

The type of range you have should have a big influence on your pan choice. I cook on gas which produces a nice, steady heat which I can control very finely, I prefer using a set of inexpensive non-stick aluminum pans as they are light and heat up quickly. I can keep the pan at a steady heat by adjusting the flow of gas. If I (god forbid) had an electric stove I would opt for stainless steel or cast-iron instead because these materials even out the fluctuations in heat from the on-again-off-again nature of electric heating elements.


What is the difference between making French baguettes and US style baguettes?

If you buy a French baguette in the morning, you can use it as weapon or vehicle jack in the evening. It is no surprise that a Frenchman, Jean-Baptiste Boussingault, tried 1852 to prevent this by hermetically sealing the bread, as he thought the problem is merely the loss of moisture - and who then learned, that his lovely baguette would still go stale hermetically sealed and so discovered starch retrogradation at the same time.

Anyway, bread that is stale the very same day is not what the average customer wants. They want their bread to last for a week - the tradition of buying fresh bread every single day these days can be mostly seen in France and Italy, not even in Germany any longer. And in France it is easy to maintain this tradition, as the next boulangerie is just around the corner. And they usually bake in two shifts, a morning and an evening shift.

It is rather easy for a real baker to choose how the baguette has to be (if he makes the dough), all the processes are well-known since more than 50 years, but there is always a trade-off and that is the problem. The biggest trade-off is the shelf/kitchen life. You get the best shelf life without traditional yeast, without much leavening and with emulsifiers that delay the staleness. This will produce bread with a soft, cake-like interior, an uncrusty crust and uncharacteristic flavor.

Here you can see the difference in comparison:

(The lack of natural yeast and traditional rising leads to this huge difference of the inner texture, the color difference is due to the flour. Note that bleached flour is an US invention. I don't think you can get bleached flour anywhere in France or Germany.)

This is how a lot of industrial doughs are still optimized. The more shelf life you are willing to sacrifice, the closer you get to the French baguette. This is the core problem. Of course, it is possible that one bakery uses a more appropriate flour than the other bakery, but there is no magic involved that only a handful of French bakers know - if the US baker would want to mimic the French baguette perfectly, it would take him less than a week to adjust the recipe to the local circumstances. But then again, how many US bakers ever flew to France to get a baguette for comparison? And how many US bakers actually make their own dough instead of buying the French baguette dough?

It is not possible to determine afterwards why the bread is different as customer. You can make a non-industrial baguette with a terrible crust but great shelf life f.e. by incorporating buttermilk or egg yolks, but it could also have be an artificial industrial emulsifier or an industrial dough in the first place.

Let's come to the ingredients and techniques:

French baguette is flour, water, yeast and salt. That's it. The very moment you add anything else, so it lasts longer or can be better kneaded by machines, you lose.

The most important technique is time - from ingredient to baguette takes at least 3 hours and the best result is obtained by kneading it as human, because what is desirable for bread, a consistent interior by kneading over and over, is not desirable for baguette. So the big difference between the US and France is:

Regarding the steam:
The steam prevents the building of the crust as it prevents the drying out. With steam you get a larger and lighter loaf, with a thinner, but nicely glossy crust. Here you can see the glossy crust of a baguette with steam:

This is not a particular trait of French baguettes.


What is the proper oven rack height position for baking cakes and cookies?

Mid height for cakes in non-convection ovens, slightly above mid height for thin cakes, top for cookies. In a convection oven it doesn't matter because the airflow distributes heat evenly throughout the oven's volume.


I have an old SoyaQuick (mine has a filter, newer models don't), and I think it was largely a cleaning concern. The tiny perforations in the filter clogged very easily, and the instruction manual had a whole section of bizarre tips for cleaning it (soak it in bleach! squeeze a soapy sponge to one side to force the suds through!)

There's also some marketing speak about "leaving in the perfect amount of pulp for your taste!" but that sounds like bull to me.


How do I thicken my Japanese curry after the fact?

Several options, depending on the type of curry and the ingredients already present.
Japanese Style Curries
Using a commercial, packaged Japanese-style roux:
Add another brick or two from the package. This type dissolves nicely generally with minimal clumping.
Using a homemade, Japanese style roux:
You can prepare additional roux by melting fat (butter, beef fat, etc) in a saucier, foaming it if needed (as with butter), and whisking in flour (we usually use a 1:1 ratio). Allow the flour to brown to the desired level, keeping in mind that the thickening power decreases the darker it gets. If you prefer not to use flour, potato starch/katakuriko is a reasonable alternative. When suitably dark, take some of the liquid from your existing curry and mix in to the roux, whisking vigorously to minimize the risk of clumping. Add more of the existing curry liquid if you think there's a risk of clumping, then reintegrate it back into the main pot. (if you were starting this roux from scratch you'd also integrate fat-cooked spices into the roux, but your problem does not appear to be flavor).
Avoiding fussiness:
Mix cornstarch or potato starch (katakuriko) in cold water. Once reasonably dissolved, add it to the curry pot. This type of thickener can create a slightly odd texture in a Japanese curry, as the browned roux creates a more velvety texture, but that doesn't mean I haven't done it before in a pinch. The liquid will thicken as it boils.
Indian Style Curries
For more Indian-style curries, there are other options.
If your curry contains lentils, chickpeas or potatoes:
Smash some of them in a small bowl, or just against the edge of the pan. Allow the pot to boil a bit.
If you have almonds, cashews or similar nuts available:
Grind a small quantity of nuts in a coffee/spice mill, and incorporate them into the curry. These need to boil more gently, and I usually do this sauce more intentionally by making them the focal point (dum ki ghom, for example, which has mushrooms and tomato puree in a nut sauce) but can rescue an existing curry too.


I usually don't buy crumbled tofu, but since you have that, I would suggest making tofu burgers. Add another hearty ingredient, like lightly roasted finely chopped walnuts, or baked eggplant cubes. Combine with chopped onions, garlic, grated carrots, and breadcrumbs.  Bind with beaten egg. Season with your choice of herbs or spices, such as thyme, oregano, basil.   Form into patties, fry lightly in olive oil and sprinkle with tamari (or soy sauce) until both sides are browned.  Bake until fully cooked in the oven at 375 degrees. Serve on a bun just like a beef patty.