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13814
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How long can I let a steak rest after seasoning and before cooking?
I read over at Serious eats that when seasoning a steak, you either need to cook it immediately after salting, or after 40 minutes and more.
(To sum up the article, this is due to a process of osmosis that starts after salting, drawing out the liquids, and it takes at least 40 minutes for enough of them to be reabsorbed)
Anyway, they say that after the 40 minute mark, the longer I leave the meat to rest, the better it will come out at the end.
My question is: How long is too long? I imagine that at some point the meat will dehydrate (less likely) or go bad. At which conditions should I leave it and when is the point of no return?
Possible duplicate: How long do you let a steak from the fridge come up to temperature, and when do you salt it?
This is not quite what I asked... I am coming from the asummption that the longer the steak is left to rest after seasoning, the better it will get. My question is where to draw the limit and how to keep it from going bad this time.
If you're asking how long it is safe to leave a raw steak out then that is answered by What Do I Need To Know About Temperature And Food Safety?. The seasoning makes no difference, and it will go bad long before it dries out.
This is more in the lines of what I was trying to ask, but it's a bit complicated and generic answer to my question. You're probably right about dehydration not being a concern, and that the seasoning makes no difference. I would still appreciate if I'd get an answer as to how and where I should leave the meat to rest, and how long to leave at there...
This is the reabsorption I was talking about in the recent question regarding getting a juicy burger!
Yup, seems so. Although I am not entirely sure it's the same with burgers as it is with steaks. They talk in the article about muscle fiber and such... But again, I'm not sure...
The one problem I see with the article is that they cook the steak "as is" after letting it rest. They even mention that because so much liquid had been pulled out it caused problems with cooking. The missing step is to pat the steak dry. It needs to be dry when going in to the pan. I think the results are slightly skewed because of this - it was dry at the 0 minute mark and at the 40 minute mark but not at the in between marks. Keep in mind that you can wipe off seasonings when patting dry so this is still something to keep in mind.
As for your question - how long to leave it out? As Aaronaught said it doesn't really matter if it's salted or not. How long a steak can sit on the counter and not go bad will depend on the conditions and is more of a food-safety question unrelated to seasoning. You can, as the article mentions, place it in the fridge if you want to let it rest for a long time. Just remember to let it come back to room temperature before cooking for best results.
I'm not sure I really buy in to the importance of water reabsorption in how it relates to taste. The entire process of dry aging is designed to pull moisture out of the meat to give it a more concentrated beef flavor. Again, the article mentions that letting it rest this way for up to a day only results in an ~5% loss by weight, which pales in comparison to the 20%+ loss from cooking.
Now if you want to let it "rest" for a LONG time, like days or weeks you're talking more about a process like dry aging, in which case you'll want to start with a large piece of meat as the outside will need to be cut off as it will get rather dried out and not very appealing to eat. This involves more than just putting meat in the fridge though, so you probably don't want to go too far past 24 hours in the fridge.
Kenji's experiments proved that the amount of time you can leave the steak in the fridge safely is <= nine days: http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/01/the-food-lab-dry-age-beef-at-home.html
Tough question to answer without jumping off the subject. It's kinda dangerous too. I think it would depend on the individual. Chef Gordon Ramsay says 10-15 minutes. Me? After I pat a six ounce steak dry, I apply salt and other seasonings. I usually end up leaving it on the counter for 15 minutes to 3 hours with room temperature at 65 degrees sometimes as high as 85 degrees, and then season again before searing it. My main goal is a picture perfect steak. Next week, when I start my exercise routine, I'm going to experiment to see if my way of searing produces any cognitive decline or loss of physical strength.
Once the steak has reached room temperature, about 20-30 minutes, it should be cooked. You can put the rub on the steak and refrigerate it for several hours, or overnight, but it should be rest 20-30 minutes before cooking. No longer than that.
The question specifies that they intend to let it rest for a minimum of 40 minutes, so anything shorter than that is unlikely to be useful.
If you add salt to the steak, you need to cook it as soon as possible, because the salt will make the juices of the steak leak, and it will loose a lot of taste.
Could you comment your downvote, please?
I believe he downvoted you because you simply stated what I had already presented in my question: "you either need to cook it immediately after salting, or after 40 minutes and more."
Nice article, I think it's for more than 2 hours. After that, it's contaminated by bacteria.
Are you assuming the salted steak is left out at room temperature?
Really bad/wrong answers are still answers in my mind, so I've declined to delete this. (It's possible another mod will think differently.)
I like to leave a steak out at room temperature for three to four days, marinated in wine, coke, garlic and spices of my choice. When I fry it melts like butter in my mouth. When I worked at the cold storage commission we were told that you should leave steaks out at room temp a few days before cooking. As long as it is properly covered and sealed and marinated. It tenderizes naturally by standing out at room temperature.
That is dangerous advice. I removed the all-caps from your message and downvoted. I also flagged it for removal, which may or may not actually result in the message being removed. Perhaps "room temperature" has a different meaning for you than for most of us? A steak, regardless of marinade or covering, cannot be safely left at room temperature for "days". If you mean a temperature lower than 60-70F (15-21C), please edit with the temperature you do mean.
Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.695846
| 2011-04-06T20:41:28 |
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25695
|
How to choose fresh, ripe (hot) jalapeños?
When shopping at a supermarket or a farmers market, how can I tell which jalapeños to take home? I want them hot and ready rock that very day. Do they get hotter off the vine? Is a ripe jalapeño a hot jalapeño? Does shape affect hotness (or the other way around)?
I'm interested in this too. There's such a wide variation in the capsaicin levels of jalapenos. I'd be surprised if there was a way to tell externally though...
There isn't... but since you can't prove a negative, there isn't really a source to back that up.
The BIG ones are likely some variant on the TAM Mild Jalapeño http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Mild_Jalape%C3%B1o They are NOT very hot.
First, Jalapenos do not ripen once picked. No pepper does.
Red jalapenos are actually ripe and have more flavor, although they are not, in my experience, any hotter than the standard green, slightly-less-than-ripe, jalapenos.
There is no relationship between shape and capsaicin content that I know of. So, mostly you're just trying to get jalapenos which are as freshly-picked as possible: no bruised spots, no spots or mold, stems not shriveled, etc.
Also, note that the seeds and membrane inside the jalapeno contain most of its capsaicin, so if you're looking for hot, do not remove those.
Seeds do not contain capsaicin only the membrane, but usually lots of the membrane is removed together with the seeds, so the confusion.
And from my experience chilli peppers will ripen a bit after being picket, at least they may get some red colour. But I would not rely on that. Green peppers are often even better (crispy!). :)
@Jacek Konieczny all parts of the pepper contain capsaicin, in many varieties there is a higher concentration in the membrane and sometimes also on the seeds
@TFD: from the study published here: http://publikace.k.utb.cz/handle/10563/1001918 (first one found): „In general, the highest capsaicin concentrations are found in the ovary and in the lower flesh and the lowest capsaicin content can be found in seeds. These results are in a good agreement with the common knowledge of pepper consumers regarding the pungency of different parts of pepper fruit.” – so I guess the capsaicin content in seeds may be negligible… though, it is hard to clean the seed of the particles from the hottest parts of the fruit.
@FuzzyChef: this answer to a question I asked a while back says that jalapenos Do ripen off the vine.
Downvoted due to a few factual inaccuracies in here ie. ripening off the vine & capsaicin content in seeds.
@Jacek Konieczny "you stated "Seeds do not contain capsaicin only the membrane", this is not true, they contain less, not none!
Cos, interesting. Unfortunately the answerer there doesn't have a reference, and I've never seen Jalopenos ripen after being picked. I wonder if we could get a definitive answer from a famrer or botanist ...
Jacek, I actually did a bit of research on that, and references I could find seem to be divided on whether or not the seeds contain substantial capsaicin.
The primary conditions affecting hotness (capsaicin production) are genetic and environmental. Stressed plants generally produce more capsaicin than non-stressed plants, all other things being equal. This is why some weeks you'll go the the grocery and get jalapenos that are quite mild, and other weeks some peppers that look identical will rip your face off. The difference is probably that they were grown in different regions of the country and under different conditions.
What I usually do is buy more peppers than I immediately need. Then, if they're not particularly spicy, I can add more, and if they're "good" ones, then I'll know approximately how hot the remaining peppers are, and can make other dishes with them.
Except that when I buy them at the grocery store, I can get mild and hot peppers all at the same time. So if you want that consistancy of growing conditions, it's better to buy at a farmer's market where peppers are all from one source, instead of a grocery where they are from who knows where.
You can recognize them by looking at strech marks more of them the hotter jalapenio ill be
Do you have any sources that corroborate this?
The regular sized ones from my garden all have stretch marks, and are properly hot. The giant, smooth ones from the grocery store lack these marks and are extremely mild.
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.696384
| 2012-08-16T23:22:15 |
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22886
|
Why does my soufflé collapse in the oven?
I have now tried to make Bobby Flay's blackberry souffle twice, and both times, after initially rising beautifully, it collapsed completely while still in the oven. The results were inedible.
Does anyone have any idea how to prevent this disaster should I be brave enough to try this recipe a third time?
Did you open the oven door at any point?
I don't think it's related, but try and use a thermometer to make sure your oven is as hot as you want it to.
I didn't open door at any point during the cooking process. The souffles just fell :-( after about 20-23 minutes.
Thanks for the tip Johnny... great idea to verify the oven temp for alot of reasons. I'll give it try
you need to make sure your souffle has an even cooking temperature.
1) dont open the door to the oven
2) make sure your oven tempature doesnt fluctuate widley
3) put the souffle inside a small pool of water. This helps to regulate the temperature better.
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.696766
| 2012-04-09T06:59:40 |
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23013
|
What oils are suitable for Indian cooking (i.e. extended frying duration)?
Indian cooking basically uses oil from the beginning of the process, typically starting with sautéing ginger and garlic, then adding shallots, chillies and onions. So the oil is on the fire for quite some time.
I would like to know whether any type of olive oil will be suitable for this type of cooking. Extra virgin olive oil seems to be out of the question from what I have read.
It's not really the extended time on the fire which is the issue, but rather the high temperature reached.
@nico What you have stated is actually a common misconception: The amount of time actually matters just as much as the temperature. More information is available in this question: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/17605/can-extra-virgin-olive-oil-be-used-for-stir-frying-roasting-grilling/17612#17612
@ESultanik: I do not have access to the book linked in the question. Could you please cite a few examples of temperature/time equivalence (considering that Indian cooking generally needs high temperatures)?
@nico Unfortunately I no longer have a copy of that book (I borrowed it from a library). I just added a link to Wolke's article which does contain some good information, however, neither that article nor, IIRC, the book contains definitive temperature/time equivalence examples.
With Olive oils, the more refined they are, the higher their burning point. So you are correct, an Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil would be a terrible choice for Indian cooking (would cause effect on taste, smell, and nutrition) which has prolonged periods of sauteing on high heat.
Lower quality olive oils, or a light olive oil, interestingly, would be a better choice. They are much more refined like vegetable oils, so have a higher burning point. But at that point, you'd consider why are you using Olive oil?
Consider using refined butter (ghee) or coconut oil for Indian cooking. Ghee and Coconut oil will rarely smoke or burn and can stand high heat pretty well. I believe traditional Indian cooking uses ghee.
Actually, Virgin Olive Oil is fine for high-temperature frying as long as it is completely filtered, which most of the oil sold in regular food stores is. Since only virgin olive oil is ever sold unfiltered (and unrefined), this causes common confusion about smoke points and frying temperatures vs. Pure olive oil, which is always filtered and refined.
Indian food is commonly cooked with ghee (clarified butter), for both religious and flavor reasons. Where ghee is not used, coconut or refined palm oil are common.
I can also tell you from experience that Indian food can be made with unflavored vegetable oils (canola, sunflower or soy), without a deleterious effect on flavor or texture.
Mustard seed oil is also used traditionally for Indian food.
Yeah, good point. I'd forgotten about mustard oil. Mind you, it's is pretty hard to get outside Asia.
Mustard oil is easy to get in my area, but there are a lot of Indian specialty grocery stores here.
Be careful with mustard oil. I bought a bottle and used it for a dish before discovering it had something like "not for consumption" or "only for external use" written on it. I bought it in an Indian food store. I threw it in the bin.
Indian cooking is mainly dependent on coconut oil or sunflower oil. Coconut oil is widely used in coastal parts of southern India. Olive oil might not give the same taste as you get in coconut oil. There are some dishes that could only be prepared using coconut oil.
Coconut oil is generally only used in the south of India and is very rare in the north, but it is true that many South Indian cooks will only use coconut oil for certain dishes.
Different types of oils are used for different recipes or cooking styles that vary across India. Some of them use mustard oil (Bengal and Bihar) while south indians prefer coconut oil. On the other hand, western states in India use groundnut, sunflower oil for the daily cooking needs. Olive oil is rarely used for authentic indian recipes.
Also, while some of the recipes let you pick ghee or oil, they are used for different recipes and can't always replace each other.
AFAIK, the cold pressed groundnut oil / coconut oil / sesame oil / mustard oil are healthy. Mustard oil has a strong smell and it doesn't always go well with all the recipes (it's typically used in the marination process for tandoori chicken and it's one of the ingredients that give it a red color).
It depend which region the Indian dish you are cooking is from.
Kashmiris use mustard oil quite a bit which requires 'cracking' before using by boiling at high heat.
I use mostly sunflower seed oil in my restaurant in Delhi, I may add in some ghee, coconut oil, or mustard oil depending on which region of India the dish you are cooking is from.
Most south Indian dishes contains groundnut, coconut,butter,ghee and gingelly or sesame oil. Which adds more taste to your food.
Its really good experience to cook and eat food cooked with sunflower oil but olive oil is also a good choice to cook. Don't use olive oil for frying, it can be used for shallow fry and to make curry where you don't needed to cook at high temperature.
Hi, and welcome to our site! We only discuss cooking here, not health/nutrition, so I had to remove that. The shopping suggestions were also superfluous. I left in the info which actually answers the question, just changed the sentence structure a bit to make it easier to read.
sunflower oil is the best for indian cooking.
indian food tastes best in peanut oil.
Can you elaborate why peanut oil is best? Otherwise this is just an opinion and not really an objective answer.
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.696919
| 2012-04-14T13:48:06 |
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17168
|
Culinary uses for honeycomb?
On a whim, I bought real honeycomb (not the cookie type dessert) from a local shop. I tried eating it plain, but the wax makes it unpleasant and chewy.
What can I do with it?
it IS wax. why would anyone wanna eat it
The comb, which is beeswax, holds the honey. Honeycomb is used for decorative desserts, placed on or along side nicely arranged fruit, is used as a spread on toast or bread or crackers and is served with cheese platters.
As a child I loved honeycomb, would pop a hunk in my mouth and chew like gum until all that was left was the wax, and either spit the wax out or swallow it.
You say the wax is unpleasant and chewy. The wax will remain chewy, the melting point of beeswax is somewhere around 60 C/140 F. If the wax has a bad flavour, would suggest tossing the whole thing and trying again.
Don't know of any use other than eating it raw. Was in the US capital a while back eating across from the bar association national headquarters and had an excellent appetizer platter which had bits of meat, cheese, preserved and fresh fruit, olives, different breads and honeycomb; it was very good.
Bottom line is if you eat it plain, you wind up with hunks of wax in your mouth that you have to do something with. If you eat it with other foods, the wax isn't really noticeable, kind of like eating the rind on cheese; it just gets ate up.
There's a recipe in Rose's Heavenly Cakes for spun sugar. One ingredient is beeswax. The recipe produces a nest of what I would assume is somewhat like cotton candy.
It's the finishing component for the St. Honoré's Trifle (which, coincidentally, I just finished making, hold the spun sugar).
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.697504
| 2011-08-26T22:18:13 |
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|
25469
|
Why does my olive oil smoke/burn when I fry with it?
I see many chefs/people in food channels who use olive oil to fry stuff (like salmon). However, when I add olive oil for frying it quickly burns releasing dark smoke. Is there a specific type of olive oil that they use for frying that doesn't burn? or am I just possibly doing something wrong?
Related: Is cooking with olive oil bad or toxic?
Peanut/groundnut oil has high breakdown temperature. It's also more expensive than ordinary cooking oil but certainly cheaper than olive oil.
You're heating the oil past its smoke point.
There is no trick or technique that will prevent oil from smoking and oxidizing ("burning") at temperatures above the smoke point. It is literally being slowly destroyed at that temperature.
I honestly don't know why TV chefs are so attached to the idea of cooking with olive oil when most serious attempts to compare it to other oils (for frying purposes) strongly indicate that it loses all or almost all of its unique taste by the end. Some cite dubious health benefits, but the low smoke point of virgin/extra virgin olive oil may also make it worse for you health-wise due to exactly what you've witnessed - smoke and oxidation.
EVOO is great as a dressing but it's a terrible choice as a cooking oil. If you absolutely must imitate these confused TV chefs, you can either fry at very low temperatures (as in, just barely a sizzle), which will take considerably more time, or used a refined (not virgin) olive oil which has a much higher smoke point. These would typically be the "cheap" olive oils you find in large plastic or metal containers.
I am currently making the transition from (non-virgin) olive oil to grapeseed oil, the latter being much more versatile, I find.
Frying in "just barely a sizzle" is the wrong frying temperature for many things. It is not just that you need more time, starches can soak up the oil, getting greasy. But if you really want the taste of "fried in olive oil", you can fry the item in neutral oil, then lightly brush on it EVOO and return it to the pan for 3-4 seconds (so the oil will warm up without burning).
@rumtscho: Yes, it is the wrong temperature... just like EVOO is the wrong oil. It'll still cook, it's just that the end result won't be particularly desirable, hence "if you must". That's good advice about the brush though.
@ElendilTheTall: Indeed, every "serious" cookbook and chef (that I am aware of) tends to recommend frying with a neutral oil or clarified butter. Very little flavour is imparted during those few minutes, so there's very little point in using a flavoured oil; most of the flavour is either going to come from marinating/brining/rubbing/seasoning beforehand or saucing/brushing/seasoning afterward. Any olive oil is just going to limit your options vis-a-vis the before and after, because even a subtle hint of olive (which may taste like nothing on its own) can seriously clash with other flavours.
What makes olive oil "virgin" or "extra-virgin" is avoiding air contact in the pressing process - it is graded by the "acid value", and that increases if the oil oxidises. The oxidation which results from frying with it changes it into an inferior grade as it fries! Having said that, there is a "black" form of olive oil that can impart a unique and interesting taste when used for frying. I had a bottle from a factory in Northern Cyprus once, wish I had bought more. Never seen it in a shop.
@klypos: I'm pretty sure that's not correct. Virgin means not deliberately altered (i.e. chemically processed to remove strong flavours and raise the smoke point), confirmed by several reliable sources like the IOOC. I suppose, if it was left exposed to air long enough, it could eventually oxidize enough to no longer be "virgin", but that has nothing to do the labels on commercially-bottled oils - those are all about processing.
Bottled OO in unlikely to be EVOO, as light causes oxidation nearly as quickly as exposure to air. Only EVOO in a air tight tin or other light proof container should be considered EVOO. Unless you live next door to a Olive Press :-) IOOC describes virgin as it's acid value
@TFD: IOOC includes maximum acidity as part of the definition, it's completely possible for a lower-grade or refined oil to meet the acidity requirement. As for your other comments, you seem to be making the same mistake as klypos; normal oxidation over a few days of shelf storage, whether due to light or heat, is not going to have such a dramatic effect as to change the category from EV to V or worse. Please don't present such claims as facts without evidence. Refinement of olive oil is not oxidation - in fact, it makes the olive oil more resistant to oxidation.
@Aaronut Days of storage? How long do you think stuff sits around in warehouses for? Olives are only picked once per year. EVOO is chemically tested (acid < 0.8) and then tested by a panel of trained judges to have zero flavour faults. That's it! IOC is not a global standard. It probably isn't possible to make EVOO with chemical/heat extraction methods and pass those tests. Here is our local ONZ standard http://www.olivesnz.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Declaration_of_Compliance-2010.pdf
@TFD, no matter what kind of container the oil is in, it's going to be in a sealed, temperature-controlled box or carton at the warehouse, and probably in transit as well. The only storage you'd really need to be concerned about is the time it spends on the supermarket shelf. Even if it were several weeks instead of days, you're simply assigning far too much significance to the effects of light and/or heat. Heating at or near the smoke point causes rapid oxidation; leaving it on a shelf for a while doesn't suddenly turn EVOO into ROO. That's unscientific and frankly elitist.
@Aaronut you're getting off the point. As Klypos refers to, heating EVOO turns it into an inferior grade. I assume you agree that heating destroys the interesting flavour compounds in EVOO? EVOO is a chemical test AND just as importantly a trained judge test. That part is effectively elitist and potentially unscientific, but that is what EVOO is!
@Aaronut a few different tests here recently showed that while bottle/cans of EVOO where potential good at point of production, after purchase at modern supermarkets many where not really EVOO, one ref http://www.consumer.org.nz/reports/olive-oils/products-compared
You want to use 'extra light' olive oil, not 'extra virgin'.
It's more refined, and has a significantly higher smoke point. It's closer to 240°C, while many other oils used for frying, such as peanut oil, smoke well below that temperature.
Don't just go for the cheap bottle of olive oil and assume that the price indicates that it's 'extra light' ... there are a number of companies that will blend olive oil with some other oil to reduce the price, but it doesn't necessarily increase the smoke point.
Also, if one researches olive oil a bit, you'll quickly learn that what you think is in the bottle may not be what is actually in the bottle.
Actually extra virgin olive oil has one of highest smoke points so it's perfect for frying. The only problem is that it's expensive.
Probably you are using a refined olive oil or a cheap one that has a low smoke point ..try to use extra virgin and not to over heat the oil not only to avoid burning the oil but also to avoid undercooking the food. Regular vegetable oils degrade when heated beyond the smoke point and because of their low smoke point they start forming free fatty acids which are bad for health. Extra virgin olive oil is more stable with a high smoke point and will not loss it's beneficial properties by frying or heating that's why it's preferable oil for cooking and frying.
Some more information:
Olive oil is ideal for frying. In proper temperature conditions, without over-heating, it undergoes no substantial structural change and keeps its nutritional value better than other oils, not only because of the antioxidants but also due to its high levels of oleic acid. Its high smoking point (210ºC) is substantially higher than the ideal temperature for frying food (180ºC). Those fats with lower critical points, such as corn and butter, break down at this temperature and form toxic products.
Another advantage of using olive oil for frying is that it forms a crust on the surface of the food that impedes the penetration of oil and improves its flavour. Food fried in olive oil has a lower fat content than food fried in other oils, making olive oil more suitable for weight control. Olive oil, therefore, is the most suitable, the lightest and the tastiest medium for frying.
It goes further than other oils, and not only can it be re-used more often than others, it also increases in volume when reheated, so less is required for cooking and frying.
The downvotes are because you've got it backwards. Extra Virgin olive oil has a low smoke point. Refining oils (olive oil included) raises the smoke point.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.697697
| 2012-08-04T14:02:35 |
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|
52340
|
Using Glucose instead of Fructose
My recipe calls for 100g of fructose, I don't have any. Can I use Glucose instead? If so would the amount be the same? If not what could I use instead of the fructose?
Maybe yes, maybe not. It depends on why it's in the recipe. Please post the whole recipe, else we have no chance of guessing.
I'm not much of a pastry guy, and I haven't worked with pure glucose before, but it looks like this probably isn't an ideal substitution. Regular table sugar (sucrose) is composed of glucose and fructose, and of the two, fructose is more than twice as sweet. So a simple substitution will leave your end product much less sweet than it should be, and increasing the amount of glucose instead could mess up your recipe in other ways.
You could try a slightly higher amount (maybe 125g?) of a high-fructose sweetener such as high fructose corn syrup or agave nectar to attain a similar sweetness without altering the proportions too much.
Neither high fructose corn syrup nor agave nectar are especially high in fructose, both seem to be around 50% fructose only. The OP could just go for regular table sugar if only the sweetness mattered, and won't have to take the extra liquid into account.
@rumtscho But the odd thing is, a syrup containing equal parts glucose and fructose is actually sweeter than just a syrup of dissolved sucrose. Ever made invert sugar syrup?
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.698379
| 2015-01-06T16:42:34 |
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|
37205
|
How to keep lemons, oranges and grapefruits fresh longer?
I like adding a few drops of citrus juice into my drinks, but they don't usually stay fresh for long in unsqueezed form (if I only cut a small piece and use that) and in juice form (with or without some sugar) and spoil in about 10 days while there's still half a fruit left.
How do I preserve a cut citrus freshness longer?
There isn't a whole lot you can do to preserve the actual fruit for what you describe. You could freeze juice in ice cube trays and transfer the cubes into a freezer bag, but even that would lose something compared to squeezing a fresh fruit segment into a drink.
There is one thing I have done for a similar kind of application that you might like. There a huge amount of citrus flavor in the zest of the fruit. Using a vegetable peeler, a sharp knife, a zester or a microplane, remove just the colored part of the peel (the zest), avoid the white pith below, the pith is very bitter. If you have large strips, cut them up tiny before proceeding. If you've used a zester or microplane your zest is already ready for the next step. Mix the zest with perhaps double or triple its volume of sugar, and process in a food processor until the sugar is super fine and no chunks of zest remain. The sugar can now stay in the freezer for months (indefinitely?), it can live on the counter for several days or perhaps much longer. A pinch of that in your drink may just add to your drink what you are looking for.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.698523
| 2013-09-29T08:41:15 |
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|
77108
|
Would sous vide-ing tomatoes result in a deeply caramelised tomato sauce?
I am looking to take the effort out of slow-cooking tomatoes for several hours over the stove and wondered if sous-vide may be a possible method of doing this. I understand that the end result may be slightly watery but this sauce can then be reduced in a pan at the end, could it not? Is it possible that the end product could have the same depth of flavour a tomato sauce slow-cooked in the traditional way would? If so, what kind of temperature and timeframe would I be looking at?
I had the best luck using a crock pot, low setting and leaving the lid off. I was making ketchup. It reduced nicely, I didn't have to stand over the stove while it reduced. I left it go overnight. I found that I needed to add the seasonings AFTER it had reduced. Otherwise some of the flavors packed a punch after being reduced with the tomatoes.
As a note, in future you might find that phrasing your questions based on the result you want rather than guessing at a method might be more successful. Something like "How can I simplify the process of slow-cooking tomatoes?" - This is the crux of your question. If you have a specific potential method in mind, you can always mention it "Would sous-vide work?" But knowing that sous-vide is not a good option for this doesn't help solve your actual problem... if you'd asked it differently, Michelle's comment could actually have been a useful answer for you.
I've spent a lot of time looking at tomato sauce recipes over the years, and most of the "traditional super-long cooked" sauces I've seen have been more like meat stews, with the long cooking being about the meat and not the tomatoes. Marcella Hazan-style simple tomato sauce gets pretty rich after not much over an hour (depending on the wateriness of the original tomato supply).
I wonder about pressure cooking, if you really do want true caramelization. Those can get you 250, Modernist Quisine At Home has a caramelized carrot soup that is amazing, but the low pH of tomatoes may hurt your process, but that's just a guess.
It would not caramelize for sure, as caramelization occurs between 110 and 180 degrees celsius depending on the particular sugar - well over the boiling point of water, which is your maximum sous-vide temperature.
However, it would serve a few purposes that might well work. For one, it would allow the slow breakdown of starches into sugars, just as other slow-cook methods do. It would also enable your other flavors (spices, other vegetables, etc.) to fully dissolve into the sauce. This could be useful, and would be one of the major benefits of slow-cooked tomato sauces. This recipe on Andrew Zimmern's blog is a great example of how to do it, and why; it includes some good tips for technique, including the very important step of sauteing the root veggies before adding them to the sous-vide bag.
You'd still want to do a high-heat cook at the very end (just like you do with almost anything from a sous-vide) to get that caramelization if that's your goal, but as you note you'd probably need to do that anyway to reduce the sauce if you're going for a thicker sauce (as I often do). If you're using good sauce tomatoes (romas, for example) you probably won't need to reduce it much if at all, but if you're using more watery tomatoes you may need to anyway.
If you really want to get good caramelization for your tomatoes, I would recommend roasting them in the oven, or even better over a wood fire, first. That's going to get very good caramelization and also get some other good flavors in the tomatoes - a bit of smokiness fits very nicely into many sauce profiles.
+1. The question seems to conflate caramelization with slow-cooked-sauce taste, while these are actually not very tightly related.
Wait, you have to sauté the vegetables first before adding to the bag? Might as well call it doux-vide!
@Chloe - Joined this community just to upvote that comment.
About the last two words of your answer: I could... what?
@amaranth You could do anything you put your mind to! :) (thanks, fixed)
I would say no.
Carmelization requires high heat. Sous Vide is the opposite of that - low, slow heat.
Here's some info on it from Science of Cooking.
Caramelization or caramelisation (see spelling differences) is the oxidation of sugar, a process used extensively in cooking for the resulting nutty flavor and brown color. Caramelization is a type of non-enzymatic browning reaction. As the process occurs, volatile chemicals are released producing the characteristic caramel flavor. The reaction involves the removal of water (as steam) and the break down of the sugar. The caramelization reaction depends on the type of sugar. Sucrose and glucose caramelize around 160C (320F) and fructose caramelizes at 110C (230F).
As seen here, you need temps significantly higher than the temperature of sous vide baths (56C/130F - 80C/170F) and you need to remove the water. You can't remove any water in a vacuum sealed bag. It's a closed space. In fact, the minimum temperature for fructose caramelization is even higher than boiling, so a water sous vide would never work.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.698689
| 2017-01-04T15:57:33 |
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|
43089
|
Cooking lamb that falls off the bone
I'd like to cook my mother a nice lamb shoulder roast (cooked in the oven), I've cooked lamb before but always with mixed results. I want Lamb that's juicy, tender, flavourful and falls off the bone. How do I achieve this?
My questions:
What temperature should I cook it at?
How long should I cook it for?
How do I make sure the shoulder retains it's moisture and doesn't become dry? I hear a lot about low and slow, would this help me achieve my goals?
Do I tent the lamb in foil at the beginning, middle, end? Or at all?
Do I have to put any liquid in the roasting pan along with the lamb so it doesn't dry out?
Any other suggestions would be welcome.
Thanks!
This is an elaborate recipe request, and recipe requests are off topic.
Not at all, you can scrub the marinade bit off if that's the case. The main thing I want to know is how I can get the meat to be really tender.
See related for example (and shoulder is the lamb analog of chuck roast for cows): http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/33022/how-should-chuck-roast-be-grilled-to-maximize-tenderness and http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/36854/what-makes-a-moist-steak
Hi Assad, I deleted the last question in your question, because that is 100% off topic here.
Off topic, but I'm really starting to despise the phrase "falls off the bone". It's so ridiculously cliché. Anyway, every single question we have on cooking tender meat is exactly the same - don't overcook it, don't dry it out.
Brown the lamb on the stove top, or high temp oven. Then, braise rather than roasting. That means 2/3-3/4 of the pan is filled with liquid after you put the lamb in first. For flavorful liquids, consider beef, chicken or veg stock. In Malaysia I see a lot of grape juice substitutions for wine in traditional Italian recipes that call for braising. But I would dilute it, so it's not overly sweet. Perhaps some tomato juice would work as well.
Nice suggestion with the browning before putting in the oven
It adds nice umami flavor. Especially good if you're omitting the wine as found in a lot of recipes.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.699070
| 2014-03-27T14:09:48 |
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|
76186
|
How do I sous-vide a shoulder of lamb?
I've recently purchased a sous vide immersion circulator in preparation for Christmas. In my home we typically cook lamb on Christmas (don't ask..). The way that I usually cook a shoulder of lamb is by searing it in a skillet so that it is well-browned all over and I then place the shoulder in a very hot pre-heated oven. I then cover the tray in foil and immediately turn the temperature to 80 degrees celsius and then I let that cook for 7 hours or so. The resulting shoulder is fall off the bone tender, moist and unctuous because the collagen and fat have been rendered. I'd like to recreate the same thing using the sous vide method.
My family are very queasy at the thought of meat being even the slightest bit pink so ideally I'd like to avoid this. My biggest concern besides this is that the meat will become mushy if I cook it long enough for the collagen and fat to become tender and that it will look "boiled" as opposed to "roasted".
So my question is:
How can I achieve this same result with the sous vide immersion circulator?
What temperature would I have to sous vide the lamb at and for how long?
Also would it be advisable to sear it beforehand and then sous vide it? or sous vide it and then finish (to give it a brown roasted exterior) it off in the oven?
There are plenty of websites dedicated to Sous Vide (e.g. ChefSteps, Serious Eats) who have directions for this sort of thing. One thing I've noticed with SousVide is that at the same done-ness, the meat is pinker than using a conventional method.
I would sear first, both to begin flavor development and to kill any bacteria on the surface of the meat. Bag with or without herbs and a small amount of liquid. Cook sous vide for 18 - 36 hours at 165F/74C for well-done/traditional braise texture. Then before serving, I would have a very hot oven ready. Carefully remove from bag (it will be very tender), pat dry, and finish in hot oven to finish browning.
At the end of the day, you just may prefer roasted/braised to sous vide. It's just another tool/technique.
I have always browned after cooking sous vide. Cooking sous vide for several hours will kill the bacterias even at "low" temps. I don't think the browning will stay on when cooking sous vide after browning.
@JDelage. when cooking at low temperature, one can inadvertently incubate bacteria on the surface. You will know this happens if your bag puffs up. It doesn't always happen, but the initial sear allows you to avoid this. Also, when you sear before, the final searing/browning step happens more quickly...reducing the potential to over cook the protein. Of course this wouldn't matter too much with the lamb example above, but it is significant if you are trying to maintain a medium rare steak.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.699377
| 2016-12-06T23:01:46 |
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|
54534
|
How do I finely process/puree a large amount of chillies?
I have a large quantity of chillies that I would like to make a hot sauce out of. But firstly I would like to create a really fine puree out of these chillies, is anyone aware of the appropriate equipment that will allow me to do this? I don't think a conventional food processor will suffice as it will leave coarse bits of chilli. What are my options?
Pestle and mortar?
@Doug that's not practical, it's a large quantity
Vitamix or Blendtec? Are you peeling the chilis? You could use a French Sieve or a ricer?
@Catija I'm just destemming them. That's the thing, I want to puree them to the extent where near most of the whole chilli after it's been processed passes through a fine sieve. I don't think this is possible with a vitamix, I've tried it before and far too much chilli gets caught in the ricer/sieve at the end because it hasn't been processed finely enough. I want to maximise my yields from the chillies. Would this be possible with a hand blender?
Because of how tough the peels are, I have a difficult time imagining being able to grind them finely enough to not have a ton stuck in your sieve. The flesh is the part you want, just like with tomatoes... and that's why you sieve them... to get the peels (and seeds) out. I also feel that hand blenders (you mean an immersion blender?) will tend to be more spotty than something like a blendtec or vitamix.
With gloves, goggles, and a respirator. Seriously. No matter how careful you are you will wind up in a world of pain. This is personal experience talking.
I assume you will be cooking the sauce. If this is the case, my recommendation is to cook the chillies first and puree them afterwards, as with traditional ljutenica or ajwar. In this case, you can either peel the skin off after charring it and then process the resulting soft flesh whichever way you want (it's very easy, leaves no chunks), or put them unskinned through a meat grinder with a special disk which separates the skins from the pureed flesh.
Is there a reason a large capacity food processor couldn't be used? Not sure about the type of chili and if you need the seeds to be removed. Either way, this should work fine, just pulse until finely pureed.
Recommend this. Get rid of the skins and food-processor the rest, with a little drizzle of oil.
@MasterShizzle : then you should click the little up triangle to the left of the answer.
I'd recommend using a food mill with the fine disc for this, personally.
It will prevent the skin (if sufficiently tough) from making it through to the final result. After that, if it isn't fine enough (although I doubt that), you could always then blitz the result in a blender.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.699622
| 2015-02-08T19:15:53 |
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53516
|
Why is the texture of the pasta in a store-bought pasta salad different to the texture of pasta I've cooked at home?
So I've bought a store-made pasta salad and I've tried to recreate it at home.
It consists of Penne and a tomato dressing, fairly simple, however no matter how hard I try I can't emulate the exact texture of the pasta of the store-bought salad.
At first I thought it was because I overcooked the pasta, but I was pretty certain I didn't. But to be sure I tried several different cooking times on several different batches of the same pasta. To no avail, the texture I am after still eludes me. The texture of the store bought is soft, yet slightly firm and has a pleasant chewiness to it.
I checked the ingredients on the back of the pasta salad and it says the pasta is made out of Durum Wheat Semolina (and water), this is the same ingredient as the pasta I used is made from.
So now I am left wondering what the difference in texture could be down to; any ideas?
undercook the pasta a little bit; do not rinse the pasta; mix the ingredients while the pasta are hot; use a little bit more salt and spices than usual (cold dishes need more "punch";
@Max, your comment should be an answer. You have posted information that answers the OP's question about texture plus other information that may help achieve the desired results. Please format it and enter as an answer. :)
One extra hint: Try adding a dash of vinegar to the water. This allows the acid to flavor the pasta. It seems to change the texture a slight bit, but I have no clue, why or if this works for all kinds of pasta. Otherwise: @Max has given the essential points.
I once heard that batch cooked pasta is done in a steamer rather than boiling water. Might be worth trying, I know it certainly changes the mouth feel. Whether or not it's what you are looking for, I'm not sure.
Brand matters in pasta. It may be the one company grinds their Durum Wheat Semolina finer than another, or gets their supply from the Northern vs the southern Caucasus, but for whatever reason, some brands will usually cook up firmer and less foamy than others.
Adding to the above, gluten free pasta goes firm when cooled no matter how much you over cook it.
Expanded from the comments...
Use properly salted water when cooking the pasta.
Slightly undercook the pasta a little bit; the pasta will continue to cook as you prepare the salad.
Do not rinse the pasta.
Mix the ingredients while the pasta are hot; they will absorb more flavour; I would try to season the pasta before adding oil; since oil will tend to coat the pasta and will block the seasoning from being absorbed.
Use a little bit more salt and spices than usual (cold dishes need more "punch".
Good luck and have fun experimenting.
I shall try this and report back
Just a little note - In this case "slightly" would mean "very, very, very slightly", because the temperature will be very quickly brought down by the salad ingredients.
Another possible thing to try -- there are recommendations for gluten free pastas to keep them firm to soak them first before cooking. (it'll also shorten the coking time; sorry, can't find the website I learned the trick from, but see The Food Lab). Another alternative is to ice it down after cooking
Different brands of pasta could result in different textures. Have you tried to determine the store brand...or experimented with different brands? Ingredients might be the same...but quality, manufacturing and drying varies, influencing the end result.
That's on my list of things to try.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.700145
| 2015-01-11T17:19:12 |
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108583
|
Is it actually possible to send food to a lab to get the recipe?
I've seen this trope on TV shows from time to time. Well now, I know someone who actually has some bbq sauce that they want to send to a lab to find out what the recipe was.
Is this actually possible, and if so, how would we find a lab that can do it? Or is it just a silly TV trope.
Googling turned up nothing.
What is the bbq sauce -- the brand and variety?
I know someone who has a pint of original Flint's BBQ sauce in a freezer. We've come pretty close to reproducing it, but I've tasted the original, and we're not there yet. Two people who remember original Flint's also agree that we're not there yet either. The sauce we've developed is by far the best BBQ sauce I've ever had, but Flint's has a signature taste that's beyond words. It deserves every bit of the reputation it has.
Send it to this guy
Wow, what an amazing site. There goes my weekend.
As long as you have a list of potential ingredients, it would be possible to find out if these ingredients are in the sauce. For example, if you don't know what spices were used, you could start with a list of spices, find information on some signature chemical compounds found in each spice of the list, then tell the lab to find out which of these substances are present in the sauce. This would give you a pretty good list of substances (spices) you could use. You will need a curious chemist-food scientist who has experience with that kind of work and is willing to play a detective, I'm pretty sure you can't get to a general purpose organic chemistry lab and expect them to just plug it in and get a result.
Even that information won't be 100% certain. First, you would have to find substances which are present in one source ingredient but not another - and these are unlikely to be the main aromatic substances, since these tend to be shared between plants, for example eugenol is something you'll find in a lot of herbs. Second, you might have unusual combinations in which the plant may get into the recipe: for example, where the lab suspects the use of inverted sugar and hyssop as an herb, it might turn out that the recipe contained wildflower honey and the bees processed lots of hyssop.
And when you get the information, you still don't have a recipe. Both the ratio and the process are missing. A good cook (or food technician, for industrially produced food) can make educated guesses about possible processes, and with some work, they are likely to create some kind of replica, if the original recipe doesn't include surprising tricks.
So, you decide to do so, it is kinda possible, but it will be a long process involving experts, not a send-the-sample-get-full-answer kind of thing. If there are no businesses offering it as a service, it doesn't seem like a practical proposition.
You'll probably also have to invest into a certain amount of basic food chemistry research: this "detective" task is not only inherently difficult, but also has unusual compared to how food chemistry research usually goes. For a given substance of sufficient scientific interest, you may be able to get information from the literature about some plants that contain (or do not contain) it - but you cannot conclude that no other plants have it. Nor can you conclude that all substances in a particular plant species are known. Even for the plant-substance combinations we know, only a subset will
...have information about typical concentration ranges available. So calculating back even from an unprocessed mixture (no reactions due to cooking, frying, pH, time,...) will be very difficult. OTOH, if you add to this information about typical recipes (and maybe experiments that dig down into the differences between your sample and BBQ sauces prepared to compare to), you'll probably get further.
@cbeleitesunhappywithSX I would go even farther than your suggestion - I doubt that the work of matching chemistry signatures to ingredients is doable by a random person who brushes up on research, the small traps waiting out there are probably unnoticeable even for a graduate who studied food chemistry but has not done this work . That's why I specified that you will need an experienced person involved in the project. And yes, you will also need somebody (probably not the same person) who will make guesses about the broad type of recipe used. And it certainly won't involve trying to...
... recognize all compounds in the recipe (impossible and unnecessary), it is just about having a list of possible components, assuming that it is complete (cook expert comes in here!), then finding 2-3 unique chemicals per component and measuring only a yes/no signal for each, nothing about ratios, browning etc. The naive method I have in mind is already too complicated, if I were a chemistry professor putting a grad student on that research, I would already be somewhat worried about it going well without any "nice" features.
yes. I guess I was focusing more on that already "just ...finding 2-3 unique chemicals per component" may be an amount of reserarch that is worthy of a PhD thesis. The more so as smell and taste are very non-linear wrt. the involved chemical substances and their concentrations.
OK, I think this is as good an answer as I'm going to get. What I really need to do is find a food scientist or genius chef who's motivated to re-create this recipe.
From the chemical point of view, you could run the food through a spectroscopy device to have an exact substances list. From there maybe ingredients could be "guessed".
http://flavorscientist.com/2016/08/21/pineapple-flavor-and-allyl-caproate/
You can certainly analyze food for its content (to a degree) but that won't tell you the recipe. For example, when you caramelize or brown foods there is a very complicated chemical reaction creating hundreds of new molecules. Sending food to a lab won't tell you how something was cooked. If you're looking for percent of basics like sugar, water, etc., then a lab can be helpful. I suspect that most BBQ recipes are pretty simple so a lab would get you pretty far toward figuring it out.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.700498
| 2020-05-24T01:27:42 |
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42664
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Recipes - Adding up calories and nutritional info?
When cooking, a recipe has a list of ingredients. If I wanted to find the calories in the recipe would I just add up the calories of every ingredient? Same situation with carbs, protein fat ?
Or does cooking change the number of calories the ingredients originally had?
related : https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/66/67 ; https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/42664/67 ; https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/24147/67 ; https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/63129/67 ; https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/49492/67
SAJ14SAJ's answer is very good for the basic case. There are a few exceptions.
First, if you have an ingredient which is partly discarded, it can be hard or impossible to find out what part ended up in your final food. If you deep fry vegetables in oil, you will have to calculate the change in oil weight to find out how much oil got absorbed. Worse, if you soak cookies in milk, the cookies will absorb lots of whey, but no milkfat, and probably no lactose. On the other hand, some of the sugar in the cookies might get leached out into the milk. So, in this case, you can't get a good calculation even if you measure the amount of milk you throw out.
Second, if your cooking process involves fermentation, all bets are off. Yeast and bacteria will eat some of the carbohydrates, but not all. They will convert them to alcohol (which has calories) and carbon dioxide (which does not have human-digestible calories). It might be a small error in something like bread, where there are so many carbohydrates that the amount eaten by the short fermentation is noise. But if you are fermenting liquids with relatively little carbohydrates (kwass, alcoholic drinks), the result will be very different.
Third, alcohol also has calories (about 7 per gram). In most recipes, a part, but not all of it, evaporates during cooking. You can't control well for that, and it can make a significant difference in dishes with lots of alcohol, like coq au vin.
Fourth, the rule will hold for the macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, fats) and their energy content (calories), as well as some stable micronutrients (predominantly trace minerals like calcium). Fragile micronutrients such as vitamins can break down during cooking. Also, if you are interested in a specific subtype of nutrient, that can also change. For example, you can start out with sucrose (table sugar) and end up with a mixture of glucose and fructose. This will still be the same total amount of carbohydrates, but for some diets, the difference in sugar type is important.
Use Wolframalpha, it is just adding them up. Your products may not exactly match Wolframs average products, but many labs use average ingredient figures too
As @rumtscho mentions the change or loss in the fermenting/cooking process will affect the final results. There have been books published with tables showing the changes caused by fermentation and chemical reaction
It produces pretty labels, all ready to go!
e.g. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100g+flour+and+100g+butter+and+50g+sugar
Yes, analytically, you would sum that calories for each ingredient.
In theory, cooking may slightly change the the caloric content of some ingredients, but given that there is a huge level of variability in natural ingredients (small versus large apples, and so on), an uncertainty of accurate measuring in execution, and so on, this is likely to be in the noise for you.
If you truly need high precision, you will need to consult food scientists for the detailed methodologies.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.700964
| 2014-03-11T15:04:50 |
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43138
|
How to decorate a cake so that the icing is smooth?
I am a self taught baker love to make birthday cakes now I have been asked to make a wedding cake for september. Could you please help me to get the sides of my cakes nice and smooth before icing. Do I start of with a big cake and cut smaller ?
What do you mean by getting it smooth? Usually that is what the crumb coat is for.
Hello Tracey, and welcome to Seasoned Advice. We are a Question and Answers site, and answers are expected to answer the question very literally. As answering a "how to make a cake perfect" would be too long for us (there are books about it and don't cover it all), I changed your question title to match the content of your question body. I hope you get some good answers.
looks close to a duplicate : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/22277/67 ; although the question about stacking is : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/5163/67 and maybe http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/25117/67
There are a few things to look at here:
shape of cake before you start icing
What kind of icing to use, and the kind of effect that it has visually
Specific techniques to use with the cake and the icing
It looks like your original question has more to do with the cake itself before icing. Good quality cake pans are the key to getting a cake that is a consistent shape, and to make sure you put enough batter in the pans to get the size and shape you want. Make sure you have straight sided pans that bake your cake evenly.
http://www.amazon.com/Wilton-Aluminum-Performance-9-Inch-Round/dp/B00006G958/ref=sr_1_12?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1396099879&sr=1-12
This link is to an example of the kind of pans that have straight sides. I have three inch deep pans, rather than two inch like the ones in the link.
I would avoid cutting a cake down to size, as you will likely have crumbs everywhere!
On to the icing parts:
Are you looking to use fondant, which is a separate kind of icing
layer that is rolled and placed on top of the cake? This is what
usually gives a very smooth look. Fondant is a specific ingredient with its own set of skills required to get the look you want.
If you are not planning to use fondant, some of the result is
dependent on how you prep the cake with a "crumb coat" first, before the regular icing layer, to control the amount of crumbs in the final coat of icing. There are YouTube videos, and other web links on how to do this. This step really does improve the quality of your icing.
Above all, with the tools you have, and the skills you need, PRACTICE will make all of this advice come together. To get the look you want, you will need to practice a lot.
And a turntable ... can't forget the turntable.
I addendum to what Jennifer S. has submitted:
You can trim the cake to level out any large deformations but filling it in with buttercream is probably a better bet. Make sure to brush away any crumbs so they don't get trapped in your final layer of frosting. The crumb coat technique is very helpful especially if you chill it before applying the final layer of frosting.
One trick that I've seen used is to warm a thin, metal bench scraper in hot water, wipe it dry and lightly smooth over the buttercream. The heat helps melt the butter slightly and create a really smooth finish before applying decorative icing.
Craftsy.com provides a free instructional on what I just described.
Agreed on the fulling in with buttercream -- I generally do a sort of spackle when I'm dong my crumbcoat, so I have generally straight sides before I do the final coat. (if you have a lot to fill in, you can take the scraps when leveling the domed the portion, crumble them up and mix it with a thin or medium frosting, and then use that to fill large gaps. And rather than a warm knife, I use waxed paper : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/27739/67
In addition to what Jennifer S and ceelum have suggested, these are my recommendations, if using fondant as your icing:
No buttercream or ganache (for rounded corners):
Before fondanting, try to fill all the visible holes with little fondant and smooth over with a smoother. This makes sure that all the gaps are filled before you put your final layer of fondant.
Try using 2 layers of fondant to get a smoother look.
With Buttercream/crumb coat:
A thin layer of crumb coating with buttercream would fill all the holes and gaps in the cake and give a smooth base for your final fondant icing.
With Ganache (my personal favourite, for sharp edges):
Ganaching your cake would fill the gaps and you can get very very smooth edges and corners for your cake.
You can even leave your cake out with no real need to refrigerate as it will hold its shape, which you cannot when using buttercream.
It also gives more support to the cake as it firms up.
You can get recipes of ganache and ganaching tutorials on the web. Here are some as a starter.
Ganache recipe
How to ganache
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.701252
| 2014-03-29T09:22:46 |
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65676
|
How to set up the sous vide bath for guineafowl breasts?
I have a hard time finding hints on how to sous-vide guineafowl breasts properly. Traditionally in an 140-165°C oven they’re really hard to get right. Some of the few recipes i’ve found place them in a bath of ~65-70°C for some 30-120minutes. This feels a bit short for my taste, as i’m not sure whether the breastmeat will reach the desired temperature at its core in such a short time. So the time-temperature for this cut in sousvide would be one point i’m interested in.
Furthermore, i’ve often heard that poultry especially contracts muscle fibers when “temperature shocked”. So i guess i’d start the bath with cold water and cold meat, to get a slow heat-up.
The last question is for sauces which could go well with it. The meat itself should be way more aromatic than many other poultry meats. Due to this i’m not sure if using the liquid from the sous-vide-bag as a base for sauces (i.e. fruity riesling butter sauce with caramelized onions and some mushroom bits? Maybe others?) is a good idea. On the other hand, if not using the meat-juices there’s pretty little base you can make a sauce of … right?
Hello NebuK! Even as a new user, you might have noticed that recipe requests are off topic here. Your actual question is fine, as it is not of the unanswerable "which is the tastiest recipe ever for lasagna" type. But because many users here would react allergically to the word "recipe" and maybe even vote for closing without paying attention to the question body, I reworded your title to not produce such a knee-jerk reaction. Good luck with your guineafowl breasts, I hope somebody will have a nice answer for you!
Hi, thank you for your clarification! My question was in-between, so i thought it might be okay enough. I’ve tried to keep most parts of the question as generic and open as possible, so that the answer can be used by many cooks in many recipes. I hoped that this is okay enough for here :-).
As a rule: questions about "what steps to take to achieve " is a good question. What we don't accept is "I need a recipe for ". The second one produces a type of question known as 'big-list', where we get dozens of answers, everybody posting a random recipe. In the end, nobody cares to read the list, and voting picks out the earliest posted recipes, not the qualitatively better ones. Also, voting on subjective questions like "tastiest recipe" has no predictive value, because you personally don't have to like what most people like. I hope this make it clearer how we work.
One of the benefits of sous vide cooking is that you cannot cook food over the temperature set, if you set the temp to 70 degrees it's physically impossible for it to go over that. This means that if you cook it longer than it needs to get up to the desired temperature you won't dry it out. I would think for guineafowl that 120 minutes would be enough. As for temperature shock you'd have to go much higher than 70C to run into that, so I'd start with the water at your desired temperature.
As for sauces guineafowl is very rich and savory, so something with acidity would help to balance it. I like your sauce idea and think it would work fine. Riesling is a good choice if you get one with a more mineral character than a sweet bomb, although a squeeze of lemon can supplement the acidity if needed.
Hi, thanks for your answer! Thanks also about your opinion on the temp. shock again (i was comparing to the reverse steak-off-a-grill-must-rest-a-bit thing). I’ll not heat up slowly then. Also — you now mentioned 70°C, is this some value you have experience with yourself, or randomly picked as an example? Could the chicken-breast-guide at seriouseats also be used for guineafowl: http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-sous-vide-chicken-breast.html — or is the bird much different in its cooking characteristics?
The safety guidelines for guineafowl and most other wild game are actually to cook to 74C, whereas most chefs go below that. 70C seems to be in the middle of the two.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.701655
| 2016-01-21T12:27:15 |
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|
14067
|
Alternatives to acetate?
What are some alternatives to using acetate strips? I'm not interested in a specific application here, so feel free to give ideas for all types of techniques. Under what culinary circumstances, if any, can they be substituted with a silpat? Parchment paper? Other types of plastic?
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.702101
| 2011-04-15T12:23:39 |
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|
22912
|
What nutrients are concentrated in citrus peels (not juice)?
I just bought my first juicer today and I'm having a blast experimenting with the different favors.
I'm looking at all these juice recipes and they all say to peel the rind off of the citrus fruits when juicing as they leave a very sour flavor. I don't mind extra sour things, so my question is, what nutrients am I gaining if I keep the rind on when juicing the whole fruit (eg oranges, lemons, limes, etc)?
Is it still better to leave the rind off when juicing?
Sour? This is strange, peel is not especially sour, but if you juice whole citrus fruits, you also include the pith, which is very bitter.
I juiced an orange and it was indeed sour, but delicious in my opinion.
You can look up nutritional information at the USDA nutrient database. Their entry for orange peel says that 100g of orange peel contains: 97 Calories, various minerals, and a few vitamins. You can compare it raw oranges to see how it differs from the rest of the fruit. You can also look up orange juice, etc.
You can also get some of that information (plus comparison to USDA recommended daily amounts and to other foods) at Wolfram Alpha. You can even have it compare orange peel and orange.
As rumtscho mentions, the pith (white part of the peel) is bitter. The zest (outermost colored part) is very fragrant (and flavorful).
Oranges vary in sourness depending on variety, cultivar, growing conditions, etc.
Peel is a rich source of dietary fiber (non soluble polysaccharides) and will help reduce the risk of colon cancer and reduce constipation amongst other things
it is low in calories, sugar and fat and free from cholesterol
the peel of an orange contains more vitamin C that its juice does (without peel, of course)
and, if you asthmatic, the peel of a passion fruit can help reduce coughing and wheezing
[citation needed], especially for health claims.
I edited it from here
We generally expect reliable sources when making claims beyond the nutrient content itself (such as causing/preventing cancer or treating the symptoms of some chronic disease). Regardless, it's off-topic, the question was about the nutrient content and not what potential benefits they might have.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.702170
| 2012-04-09T21:19:09 |
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|
22165
|
What can I substitute for butter in Alfredo sauce?
While I was cooking a very simple Alfredo sauce today for my lunch, I had already started my sauce before I realized I was out of butter.
If this happens again to me in the future, what is a good emergency replacement for butter in a recipe?
My recipe (if needed) was:
1 1/2 cups butter, divided 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast
halves - cut into cubes
2 (16 ounce) containers whole milk ricotta
cheese
1 pint heavy cream
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add fettuccini
and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain.
Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute
chicken until no longer pink and juices run clear.
In a large saucepan combine ricotta cheese, cream, salt, Parmesan
cheese and remaining butter. Cook over medium heat until well
combined, about 10 minutes. Stir in cooked fettuccini and chicken;
cook until heated through.
What I ended up doing was adding some EVOO to the sauce because I figured it had a similar fat content. The sauce turned out ok enough, but I'm wondering what the difference would have been if I had used actual butter.
This is 100% about flavor. Butter will give you this, EVOO will give you that, ...
Butter will give you a 'richer' taste, whatever that may mean for you.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil, generally speaking is far more powerful and may become overwhelming.
Any other oil will give you a different taste profile.
Sunflower oil may be the most neutral and therefor the most appropriate for Alfredo sauce. Cannola oil may be another neutral oil, but I've never used it myself.
Generally speaking, an oil is an oil is a fat (for emulsifying).
I wouldn't say it's 100% about flavour. Butter is a far better emulsifier than oil. I'm not sure that an oil-based alfredo sauce would really be stable (although certainly the cream helps).
Maybe you're right, I was talking from the top of my head. Will look into it. I did make a couple of roux with EVOO without problem, and mayo is a mix of sunflower and EVOO.
Mayo uses egg yolks which are very effective emulsifiers. Alfredo is not a roux, it's a cream sauce. Are you confusing it with béchamel (white sauce)?
@Aaronut, rumtscho's answer on another question suits me :-) One of the first Google results.
@Aaronut, I've made bechamel with oil, no problem. Never made Alfredo's though, so maybe it's completely different.
3 of the mother sauces use a roux, Hollandaise uses egg yolks, and tomato sauce clearly doesn't apply here. Maybe oil would work in an Alfredo sauce, but you'd have to test that claim by itself because it's not related it in any way to the mother sauces.
@Aaronut, whatever 'casein proteins' are missing from the oil, the ricotta, parmesan and cream will provide. Methinks.
Per the previous question about Fettucine Alfredo, the traditional Alfredo only uses butter, parmigiano, cheese, and pasta. So your recipe already contains several substitutions and changes from a traditional Alfredo. I'm not sure making one more (the olive oil) really made that much of a difference.
For a traditional Alfredo it would be pretty much impossible to substitute for the butter, since it's one of only 3 ingredients.
Fettuccine alla Alfredo were invented in 1914, essentially to spill some money from American tourists... I'm not sure "traditional" is the right adjective to use.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.702398
| 2012-03-10T22:35:02 |
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|
17583
|
Why doesn't my quick bread rise properly when substituting splenda for sugar?
I used Splenda in one of my favorite quchinni (squash) recipes and it did not rise at all. It is about 3 inches thick and is heavy as the batter was thick.
Why did this happen, and is there any way to tweak the recipe?
Welcome Becky! Generally when asking about how to fix or improve a recipe, it helps a lot to post the recipe you tried.
BTW, if its quick bread leavened with baking powder - are you sure the baking powder is still valid? Have you used it successfully with other recipes?
If it is a quick bread then it should be chemically leavened with baking powder or soda.
The presence, or absence, of sugar should not play a role at all in the working of baking powder.
Where sugar may play a role, however, is in creaming the fat. If this recipe calls for solid fat such as butter or shortening then it will often also call for the sugar to be creamed with the fat. This step is very important as it will create the millions of little bubbles that will define the texture of the finished product.
You can try adding more soda which will affect the flavor. You can try beating the butter more on it's own. I have read that some people folded beaten egg whites into the batter.
I can't recommend one approach over the other.
My personal opinion is that if the recipe calls for creaming butter and sugar then it is not a good candidate to use splenda.
If your recipe relies on yeast to make it rise, Splenda will not work.
Sugar is food for yeast: if it's zero calories for you, it's zero calories for the little yeastie beasties too.
Yeast like flour just as much as sugar.
I disagree. Sugar is a simpler carbohydrate to digest and is therefore preferable. For example, if you're making beer, yeast will process the maltose and other complex carbohydrates from the grain, but you add priming sugar right before you bottle it to really activate the yeast to produce the CO2.
Considering the billions of loaves made without any simple sugar - i can't see why they wouldn't just use the flour. There may be some other chemical reaction with Splenda preventing it, but its doubtful that its hunger....plus - its a quick bread, unlikely yeasted.
In addition to Splenda's front line product they also offer "Splenda Sugar Blend" which is a blend of sugar and Splenda which is what they recommend using for yeast breads:
Yeast Breads
Yeast breads rise well with SPLENDA® Sugar Blend. There is enough
sugar present to feed the yeast, speed up fermentation, and aid in the
browning of the bread.
Splenda yields a lower content when making quick breads. In order to make it rise better, add an additional 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda per cup of Splenda used. Splenda doesn't react the same way as regular sugar would with the baking soda.
Source: http://www.zenoplex.com/splenda/recipes/tips.htm
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.702668
| 2011-09-08T20:47:07 |
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|
18683
|
What to look for when buying good quality loose black tea?
What features should I look for when buying good quality loose black tea?
I'm not a tea expert, but I think you can get a better answer if you specify if you want pure tea (black? green? or another type?), aromatized tea (e. g. blended with jasmine), herbal tea, or a synthetically flavored tea (although I doubt that the last one is available as good quality loose tea).
I am looking for black tea or scented black tea (Earl grey). Thanks!
Every tea can have potentially various grades and different teas will have different qualities. I'm not sure what is available where you are, but if you're fairly new to drinking loose leaf teas, I'd for starters find a store that lets you see, smell and possibly sample various teas. Once you have a better idea of what you're looking for, then online dealers will be easier to navigate.
So, firstly, find a reputable store, one where they are knowledgeable about their product, and difference in grades.
Ask to smell the teas. Please DO NOT stick your head in the tea, waft it with your hands or the lid of the tin. If you like the aroma, it's a good starting indicator of how you'll like the tea.
Look closely, are the tea leaves fairly even in size? An unbroken leaf is generally graded higher than a leaf that is broken/crushed. Though since you're specifically asking about black teas, note that certain black teas are deliberately cut, to encourage a stronger flavour. If the leaves are torn, crushed, it may be a sign of a rough machine harvest, or poor handling. This could result in bitterness. The lower grades (small crumbs and dust) generally end up in tea bags. So, note that.
Most importantly, taste it! If the store offers a few different sampler sizes, go for that. Ask the people there, about how they'd recommend you prepare it. And try a few different kinds and grades.
Note, if you're new to loose leaf tea, it should taste different than what you're used to. Trust your taste buds and your nose first... Regardless of what it looks like and the price and what the description says, if you don't like the way it tastes & smells (which is often subjective) the rest is pretty meaningless.
Edited and added some more detail...
Thanks, I'm used to drink loose teas (Twinnings Earl Grey is one of them), but I was looking for tips on how to identify the features that make a good tea stand.
I usually buy my tea from Le Palais des Thés and they have lots of choice and good quality. They mostly have physical shops in France (and a couple of other European countries), but you can buy online. If you're in the US, they also have a US online shop
To back up what I say, I can site lots of articles that said said all sorts of things. Some that made sense, others not. Although I put it all together as such. Some black teas are premium ones (labelled Assam, Ceylon, Darjeeling, Nilgiri, Keemun, Souchong, and Yunnan). Also estate Africa blacks and good grade South/Central American ones which they also have today are good as these are generally orthodox teas. Thiland, Vietnam and Burma also produce higher quality ones. They are called flowery, tippy, golden or othodox. Most places in the world use these with the exception of North America, UK, Belgium, Egypt and some although not all or most middle Eastern countries which use CTCs a lot. Countries using orthodox though tea articles never say it directly although indicate to it if you read lots of other articles to get it -are always satisfied with their blacks.
Blended teas are not always lower quality necessarilty than single leaf estate ones. Common sense says that if you mix decent quality tea you get a decent blend. If the blend contains cheap teas you get a cheaper blend. This is common for general supermarket teas. French Breakfast tea for instance is often made of a higher quality blend. Whereas you can get good English Breakfast blends - most of them use cheaper CTC teas for the bag. This is the case today with British breakfast blends (English, Irish and Scottish) since convenience became more of an issue here. Also Earl Grey is often used in cheaper blends though one can buy expensive ones. Masala Chai blend is probably the cheapest as this is often what the dust grades are used for though they can taste quite good in it. Orange pekoe can follow suit with that although it is possible to have very good ones (flowery grade ones) which are far better than masala and most chai blends are sometimes cheapest even though they put the word specialty on it on a cheap tea set. Most in the supermarkets however are the dust grades. Orange pekoe can also refer to a leaf grade size for certain types of (often Ceylon teas) although at full is a nice flowery-bud tea. Also keep in mind that green and many herbal teas in bags are also usually these days very low quality and bland and some even below the former though I have seen it according to my observations outside
Flowery, (F) Tippy (T) and golden (G) are high end blacks. B means a broken leaf which still can be a good tea, especially if listed after the previous notations or the OP sign. If an F is listed after the B however its likely a less good tea as that means a fannings which is a lower grade. D or dust is the lowest. Flowery golden tippy are orthodox. Broken can be if not a fannings and dust. The latter two are CTC grades. They can however work well IF you want to make masala chai or some sweet iced tea, just for the sake of it. The higher end blacks are loose leaf and have more of a malty brisk flavor yet they take a couple of minutes to brew up. CTC teas brew up faster in the bag which is what people like although they never as good as an estate orthodox one
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.702928
| 2011-10-31T10:14:51 |
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|
18069
|
What makes a good quality pasta brand?
When I browse the pasta aisle I see a number of different brands (De Cecco, Rummo, etc.). Are there any notable differences between these brands?
If I have a choice between different brands of the same pasta (spaghetti, penne, etc.), how should I determine which brand is appropriate for me?
In what region are you looking?
Spain. Most of the local shops and marjets just have Barilla or local brands, so I'm happy to buy online.
I think your question needs some more detail to really be on topic. Buying recommendations are generally off topic here. The question really is what makes a good pasta brand and how do you judge it. Can you please edit to include some of those criteria / questions? Otherwise it's likely to get closed.
Round in the US, Barilla is one of the better brands we can get.
@user65616 the question is almost unambigously about dried pasta, which usually has no eggs (apart from either a few specialty shapes or non-italian, eg german or chinese, styles).
The biggest indicator I've found of quality dried pasta is how rough it feels when you rub it between your fingers. Compare Barilla and De Cecco spaghetti to see what I mean. The best brands use copper dies when extruding their pasta and this lends a rougher texture that will hold sauce better than plastic or teflon extruded pastas.
they are more often bronze dies than copper, but your point is still valid
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.703346
| 2011-09-29T11:56:50 |
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|
17802
|
How can I mill / press sweet sorghum with household equipment?
I grew sweet sorghum this year as it looked like the easiest way to grow "sugar" in New England. Now I've harvested it, but I'm hard pressed (ha ha) to find a way to mill it with generally available household equipement. Any suggestions or ideas of how I might cobble together something?
The other NE sugar "crops" I know are honey and maple. I'm interested to see what you find out here.
Looking around at a few pages on the web, it seems that commercial grade mills exert several tons of pressing force on the sorghum to squeeze the juice out. I don't know of any normal kitchen equipment with that kind of pressure.
I think you could do the evaporation with household gear -- looks like maintaining temperature and getting the timing right will be tricky but doable.
Ideas for extracting juice that I'd try in your place (these may not work, and could possibly damage the equipment):
juicer machine (you'll probably end up with a lot of solids in the juice)
pasta roller with flat rolls
But given that you can find these for around $25-40, it might be worth the price to experiment and see if either has any chance of working. Then you'll know if a home sorghum refinery is at all practical.
Using a juicer and then processing the liquid through several stages of increasingly fine mesh frames, with cheese cloth as a last stage would be a time-consuming but effective way to finish this process off.
Yes, I don't think there's a way around the "time consuming" aspect of it. Before processing through mesh/cheesecloth, I'd probably also give the juice time to settle so that you can pour off the liquid and hopefully leave behind some of the solids. I'd love to hear from someone (maybe you, Mark) who tries this to see how it works.
Bstpierre I think that about sums up the situation. I ended up cobbling together a primitive press with casters, some scrap wood , and furniture clamps. I can't really recommend that technique :). It was good enough to extract a small amount of juice which was pretty easily filtered and. Oiled do
How about an old "Ringer" clothes washing machine? I was just at a sorghum making demo yesterday and the machine reminded me of a ringer washing machine - just bigger.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.703497
| 2011-09-16T15:58:17 |
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|
7405
|
Milk or water for fluffier scrambled eggs?
I used to add milk to eggs when whipping them, but someone told me that water was better since it evaporated and made the eggs fluffier. I've tried it, and I'm not sure which one works better.
Does milk or water make eggs fluffier? Are there other factors changing the fluffiness?
why would you want scrambled eggs to be fluffy?
If you want slops use the Ramsay method. If you want something with texture and taste try this
Turn the heat onto max and use a light weight pan for gas, or a medium weight pan for electric. Add a small drizzle of oil to the pan
In a strong deep bowl add a splash of milk or water and two eggs (say 20% liquid to 80% egg)
Beat like crazy for 20 seconds (use a whisk or a fork)
When the pan is sizzling pour in the egg mixture and use a medium spatula (a 5cm wide strip of wood is great) fold in the cooked parts as they appear. Work quickly
It will begin to form a loose lump in the pan. Keep folding the egg into the lump until all the liquid egg is gone
Optionally add a handful of coarse chopped broad leaf parsley or some thinly sliced cheese just before the final few folds
The cooking phase should have taken seconds, not minutes
Remove pan from heat
Let it rest for a while before moving so the egg has time to set
The texture is changed from smooth to rough by how often and hard you fold the egg
Please, may I give this 10 upvotes? Please?
This is mostly what I do; sometimes I also dash in some Cholula or similar hot sauce while beating the egg.
Alrighty then - bumped you to 10. This is much more my style than Ramsay's :)
Is there a video for this cooking method? Or a picture of the end result?
The biggest difficulty I had with this was making sure all of the runny stuff ran into the pan. As I got closer to the end, some of the runny stuff didn't want to flow out as I was folding, so it didn't set completely. Any suggestions?
@Bob That's how it should be. Soft, with texture. The runny stuff does get cooked, it's just not fully set. This is like a rare steak with a good crust. And if you let it rest, it will firm up more as per your personal preference. Personally I like to deliver to the table an scrambled egg with visible runny bits, to show how fresh it is, and not have it fully cooked, and then maybe fall apart as a series of "egg crumbs" as some places think a scrambled egg should be?
the rule of thumb i've heard is as you say: adding water makes them steam (in effect) and be fluffier, adding milk or cream makes them creamier. the only trick i have for eggs of any sort is to use a low heat, not a high one, and to let them warm up a bit before putting them in the pan, which keeps them from getting rubbery. you could maybe accomplish two things in one stroke by using a tablespoon of warm water when you blend up the eggs.
Low heat is the way to go and lower the fluffier as long as you tend to the eggs and not let them sit on any side for too long.
Taking this a step further: I've heard of people adding soda water for even more effect.
Just look at Ramsay on Youtube.
He cracks the eggs into the pan, adds plenty of butter, and then stirs pretty much continuously until they're just barely done. He even takes the pan off the heat now and then to keep them from cooking too fast. He finishes them with creme fraiche, salt, pepper, and chives.
I can't repeat often enough: Ramsay's recipe is disgusting. It's a way to consistently produce "scrambled" eggs that have all of the bad features and none of the good features of this dish.
I heard you the first time :)
I didn't. @Marti -- What are the bad and good features of which you speak?
@anon: IMO, scrambled eggs should have body - not tough, but toothsome. They should also taste, well, eggy. Ramsay's method produces a slimy, disgusting mess with little to no flavor.
Surprised no one else mentioned this.. my kids like this: 1/2 tsp ranch dressing per 2 large eggs.
The resulting egg scramble get more palatable from: attractive flavor tanginess, creamier body, and fluffier composition. Very simple, and no other ingredients required :)
And, if you're looking for even fluffier, you could add 1/2 tsp water on top of that, as well. The issue I have with water is if you forget to take it off right after the mix is done cooking, it can leech the water back out. It's less likely to happen on a lower heat, but sometimes in the breakfast rush. I also like to top with a moderate amount of mild cheddad for kids, or pepper jack for me. One of my kids likes ketchup with the ranch scramble, too - but he's a freak, so I don't recommend trying that unless you are as well =P
The salt should not touch the eggs until the very end, it solidifies the proteins and makes 'tough' eggs which release their water content, don't believe me? try next time you make whatever recipe you prefer but leave the salt out till the last strokes.
My secret is lots of butter. Put a generous lump of it in the pan, and melt, then add the beaten eggs, milk/water, seasoning, whatever else you are putting in (I often add parsley, chives, grated cheese), and then beat and heat gently until almost at the consistency you want. It's personal choice really - some people love their eggs runny, others like them almost dry. I'm somewhere in between, but if you serve just before they get perfect, they finish themselves off with the heat they have in them.
Serve with buttery toast - cut into soldiers for kids!
I can't really tell why, but the perfect recipe seems to use some water: Add some water along with the raw eggs into the pan and constantly stir it until you get the consistency you like. The water prevents the mass from becoming too dry or even stick to the pan. Also this way you have more time to control the consistency since it takes longer to become ready. The water will mostly vaporize (if you don't add too much) and not make a mess out of your scrambled eggs.
Btw. I first prepare some diced onions in the pan using butter (better than oil). After that I add the eggs and some water and salt. When it's done I pour it onto the dish, grind some fresh pepper onto it and eat it together with bread & butter. Hmmm.
"Adding 1 tablespoon of water for every egg results in a lighter texture. Adding the same amount of milk or heavy cream will have the same effect, except that the fat level of the milk or cream also influences the creaminess of the eggs."
From this article.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.703725
| 2010-09-17T16:21:44 |
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|
12804
|
Why do brassicas like cauliflower or brussels sprouts sometimes taste bitter, and (how) can I avoid it?
Cauliflower or Brussels Sprouts sometimes taste slightly bitter after cooking. Is this some mistake in the way they are cooked or is that just the vegetables themselves?
All the vegetables form the Brassica family have a bitter component to their flavour. Brassica is the family that includes cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli and Brussels sprouts.
You can actually remove quite a lot of it by leeching it out in to the water, or by using salt. Remember that this means you're also losing some of the nutritional value, though that doesn't matter too much.
You can also try ot mask the bitter taste with the sauce/dressing. Something like a cream sauce, or even barbeque flavour will usually mask the bitterness quite well, while letting the cabbage-ness come through.
+1 for salt; there is simply no more effective way to overcome bitterness, either during or after cooking.
There was some UK research into this about three of four years ago. 5 minutes of boiling a Brussels Sprout caused a 20% primary nutritional loss. Boiling a Brussels Sprout for 5 minutes would ruin it's taste anyway! So their advice was microwave or steaming
Everyone in our house hates the smell of boiling brussels sprouts unfortunately. So, I like to microwave them for a few minutes and then grill, as per Alton Brown's method. They also roast well under a broiler instead of grilling, as JeffG suggested. I find that this high heat method alters the flavor of the sprout itself - when combined with a salt/spice/fat rub of some kind, the bitterness is well masked and they have a very different flavor than traditional steamed or boiled sprouts. I've also added jaggery or brown sugar to my sprout rubs with good results.
Don't overcook your cruciferous vegetables. Or cook them with flavors that will mask it better -- garlic, olive oil, salt, hot chilies, etc.
When you overcook them you release more aromatic compounds and aromas.
Also, you may be sensitive to phenylthiocarbamide (PTC). Similar compounds exist in cruciferous vegetables and therefore for some people they can taste radically bitter while for others there's no noticeable bitter taste.
Sources:
http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/season8/lettuce/greens.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylthiocarbamide
Coat lightly with olive oil, sprinkle w/ balsamic vinegar, liberal application of kosher salt, and fresh cracked pepper in a bowl to coat evenly. Then spread 1-layer thick on sheet pan.
Roast in the oven, ~35 min 375 degF.
The veg will develop a light caramelization on the outside in some places, but will have a sweeter flavor.
This works well for brussel sprouts, asparagus, green beans or cauliflower.
I'd also say if you want to "counter the healthiness" of the cauliflower or broccoli a bit (but make it delicious), you can use bacon fat instead of olive oil/balsamic then roast as above - I used this trick to get my wife to actually enjoy broccoli, which she normally won't even allow in our kitchen (the smell of it cooking makes her ill, she says)
Roasted cauliflower for dinner tonight was super yummy. A little hotter (400) and nothing but olive oil. It gets kind of crispy and frizzly in places, definitely sweeter, and addictively good.
CAULIFLOWER doesn't have to taste strong. I steam it in the liners from cereal boxes in the microwave. Just cut the cauliflower into a bit larger than bite-size pieces, place them in the bag and run water into the bag. Pour out the water, then fold the end of the liner under and pat the veggies so they are level in the bag. Steam it for about 3 minutes in the microwave for a 3/4 filled bag. NOT bitter at all. Add cheese sauce over it when serving.
Also SPINACH is devine cooked this way. Omit pouring the water into the bag. Just steam it for a couple minutes. Then put butter and salt and pepper on it. Yum. I also steam CORN ON THE COB, BROCCOLI, and SLICED YELLOW SQUASH this way. The timing for corn on the cob is 3 minutes per ear. Broccoli, the same as cauliflower, and squash a couple of minutes. I've been doing this for 25 years and am very healthy.
@Erin Not all plastic - plenty of it is microwave-safe. But yes, there's no way that cereal bags are microwave safe.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.704426
| 2011-03-05T15:21:48 |
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|
43570
|
Should I cook frozen salmon differently from fresh salmon?
I bought some frozen wild-caught salmon fillets for the first time so see how we like it. Can I broil it the way I usually cook salmon, or does the freezing process lend itself better to other methods, like sauteeing or poaching, or does it even matter?
Dear tangible3, our site has some strict rules. One of them is that we don't ask questions which have thousands of equally-good answers, such as "what dish can I prepare with ingredient X". Reading the body of your question, I see that you did not mean to ask that, but your old title was very easy to be interpreted this way, and I guess this is why somebody cast a close vote on your question.I edited the title in order to prevent such an interpretation and keep the question from getting closed; I hope it expresses your original intent well enough.
Once you thaw the salmon, you can treat it like you would fresh salmon. Freezing may degrade the texture of the fish a small amount (it may not even be noticeable if they were commercially frozen in a blast chiller), or allow a little moisture loss, but otherwise the fish is essentially unchanged.
If there is any weeping or moisture coming out, pat the filets dry with a lint free towel or paper towel before high heat cooking methods like broiling or pan frying.
If the filets are thin, you can even cook them from frozen without pre-thawing them; they will thaw as part of the cooking process.
The best way to thaw them is to put them in refrigerator until they are thawed. You can then proceed with your recipe like you normally would.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.704826
| 2014-04-18T12:40:32 |
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|
52147
|
What should the consistency of the meat filling of moussaka be like?
I intend on cooking a lamb moussaka (having never eaten one before); in planning to do this I've referred to numerous recipes. The meat filling of the moussaka seems to be it's most integral element however in looking at all these recipes I've been unable to reach any consensus as to how this should be cooked. The sticking point seems to be the choice of ingredients to cook the meat filling with. My options seem to be:
tomato passata/canned tomatoes/peeled tomatoes
tomato puree
or a combination of both.
I am under the impression that the meat filling in a moussaka tends to be less tomatoey and thinner than say a Ragu alla Bolognese meat sauce. When cooking a Ragu alla Bolognese meat sauce you're aiming for a nice thick consistency with caramelisation of the tomatoes in the sauce.
I feel that cooking moussaka meat filling with tomato passata/canned tomatoes will result in the meat sauce being similar to that of a Ragu alla Bolognese. Is this desirable for moussaka?
Can someone tell me the consistency I should be striving for?
Which type of moussaka are you talking about? Adding a cuisine tag would help - Turkish is very different from Greek, for example, and those aren't the only variants.
From my travels in Greece I can say that it's 100% dependent upon taste. I've had it many different ways. In some restaurants it's so thick that the servings sit like a block on your plate and some that the filling was quite runny and there are staunch defenders and critics of both.
As with most traditional dishes there are as many variations as there are cooks who prepare it.
The traditional recipe calls for chopped tomatoes to be mixed with the aubergine(eggplant) and meat and spices and reduced to the desired consistency.
What would you say about the spices? Allspice, Cinammon, cumin, cloves, does that sound about right?
That sounds right to me, but there are many variations.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.705005
| 2014-12-31T16:54:53 |
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|
65367
|
Why do BBQ sauce recipes specify that you must cook the sauce?
Most BBQ sauce recipes specify that you cook them, why is this? Would it not suffice to just mix the ingredients together as they will be cooked when you use the sauce on the grill anyway?
What about the sauce you add after the items are cooked? Also, raw onion and garlic, 'nuff said.
Most of the popular ingredients for BBQ sauce (vinegar/ketchup/sugar etc.) tend not to mix very well together. I know whenever I've made BBQ sauce, placing all of the ingredients into a pan together they tend to separate and are difficult to combine.
Heating up the ingredients, however, causes them to combine better, and after a short time cooking they will bind together and give a more consistent texture/taste. Otherwise the different ingredients may continue to separate even when mixed, and you may find clumps of sugar that have not dissolved into the liquid etc.
It's quite possible your BBQ sauce recipe doesn't need cooking, so long as things are substituted (like sugar for sugar syrup or honey) in order to combine better, but this may well give an incorrect texture because of the change in ingredients.
Therefore if the ingredients you use can be combined without being heated, it's likely that it doesn't need cooking, however you may end up with an uneven flavor.
As pointed out in a comment by @ToddWilcox, there may also be constituent ingredients that do require cooking, such as garlic or onion, in order to achieve the correct flavor so that they do not taste raw.
Some sauces may also specify being cooked simply to make them thicker or more concentrated, as adding thickening agents such as flour may affect the taste, particularly if it is uncooked.
So whilst there are some BBQ sauce recipes that may get away with being uncooked based on their ingredients, there are others that will definitely require cooking.
I would add that some ingredients, like onion and garlic, won't be right at all if added raw, could work if they were pre-cooked, and would also need to be cooked in if added in dry powdered form. And also that after adding all the liquid ingredients together, the sauce may be too liquid and need to be thickened. Thickening by adding something like flour or cornstarch can dilute the flavor, while cooking it down by boiling off excess water will actually concentrate the flavor.
@ToddWilcox thanks, I've added in your points to my answer. I was focused more on why some recipes would specify cooking when it seems they wouldn't need to be, but your comment made me realize that a lot of the sauce recipes do need to be cooked based on their ingredients. Good catch.
There are some sauce recipes where you need to thicken them to the point where they'd stay on whatever it is you're grilling. If you didn't cook them down, they'd have the consistency of a marinade, and just drip off.
Sometimes you need to evaporate out some of the moisture, but other times you're actually creating chemical changes ... cooking sugar to a new stage in the case of most barbeque sauces. For starch thickened sauces (not as typical in barbeque sauces), you'll often need to bring them to near a boil so the starches will start their thickening.
As barbecue sauces may also be used cold (after you're done cooking / when serving), it's also not guaranteed that it'll get cooked otherwise. In those cases, even if the sauce is a bit viscous after mixing, you might warm it to help the flavors blend better.
Most sauces that I make require cooking because they have sugars that need to be heated to blend properly in the sauce. Spices that are added also need to be cooked to blend into the sauce evenly. BBQ sauce is mostly added at the end of the cooking process or at the table as a condiment. If it's not cooked first the spices and sugars would give the sauce a raw flavor that I'm sure no one would enjoy.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.705236
| 2016-01-13T13:38:17 |
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|
29244
|
How to clean stains from inside of vacuum flask?
I use my vacuum flask to bring my lunch to work. I've been doing this almost every day for half an year or so. Now there are some sediments or stains in the bottom of the flask although I wash the flask almost always immediately after it's emptied.
How can I get rid of the stain and smell inside the flask? I even used steel wool on a stick but could't make it clean 100% and I don't want to scratch it too much inside. Because I use it for food I am not sure if bleach is a good choice to go for.
Update
I have original Thermos made of stainless steel interior and exterior. Something like that one http://www.thermos.com/products/vacuum-insulated-10-oz-food-jar.aspx
Note that I am located in Austaralia so no cleaning products are available to me.
What is your thermos flask made of? Stainless, plastic, or something else?
I have found that a tablespoon of Oxy Clean followed by boiling water will remove even the harshest stains inside a vacuum bottle. Fill it to the brim (it will bubble and overflow, so do it in a sink), let it sit for a bit, then rinse very very well, and you will be amazed, I promise. I do this periodically to remove the coffee stains inside our steel thermos flask. [Edited for typos]
Looks like we don't have Oxy Clean here in Australia.
Maybe there's a local equivalent, under a different name? This page suggests a (liquid) product called Preen Oxyaction: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071218113902AA6rLV9 -- not sure of the ratio of a liquid product to water, so you may have to experiment. I buy a powder version.
"Oxy clean" is a brand name. But any peroxide-based bleach will do. (Take care not to use chlorine-based bleach).
@rumtscho: Great suggestion! This is a quote from Thermos website "DO NOT use bleach or cleaners containing chlorine on any parts of the product."
Re: Rumtscho's suggestion, you could try soaking it in a water/hydrogen peroxide mix.
This reminds me: I've been using a hydrogen peroxide and lemon juice mix (1 part of each with 6 parts water) as a non-chlorine bleach/whitener for my laundry, which seems to work well enough. So maybe a lemon juice/peroxide/boiling water mix would work here, too.
Lemon juice means freshly squeezed juice?
I actually have been using just the bottled kind, but I'm sure fresh would be even better.
A combination of coarse salt and vinegar is usually very effective. The coarse salt is used as an abrasive.
Salt also reacts chemically with vinegar to make a stronger acid:
http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/2765/salt-in-vinegar-to-clean-pennies
Likely stains are embedded in hard water build up, mineral salts. A good long soak in vinegar/NaCl should dissolve the mineral deposits. Stainless will not mind an overnight soak, and it is much easier than trying to get the stuff off with steel wool.
I would scrub it with baking soda.
Try a Steradent (or similar denture cleaning tablet) or two in hot/boiling water. Will froth up, so do in sink until it settles.
Steradents are available from any good local supermarket in the Oral care section. Designed for dentures so safe for food/drink containers. Great for cleaning many kitchen utilities such as electric jugs etc.
Thermoclean (available in the UK) is meant specifically for cleaning vacuum flasks.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.705609
| 2012-12-17T23:19:45 |
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|
41524
|
I only want to buy two knives, which two types to get?
I plan on cooking pretty simple foods and will need a knife for things like stir fry, the occasional meat dish, soups, casseroles, basically just standard fare. What brand and type will get me good value and all-purpose use?
possible duplicate of What knives are "required" for a serious home kitchen?
I recommend that you get a chef's knife or a santoku (both are general purpose knives), and a paring knife. For most western cooks who will be learning from western examples, the chef's knife may be the better choice.
These two knives will cover most needs. See:
Which knife is best for somone just learning to cook?
If you were to add a third knife, a serrated bread knife can be very useful for certain tasks (like bread, and perhaps unexpectedly, chopping chocolate).
This is the right answer. I'd recommend getting a larger (~4 inch) paring knife, because I think they have more utility, but those are the only two you really need.
How much should I expect to pay?
If you are only getting two, I'd say get a medium sized serrated paring knife along with a Chefs. Also don't forget a steel or means of sharpening.
@grayQuant Somewhere between $20 and $250, assuming you are in the US. There are huge variants in knife pricing, not all of which are quality related. elsewhere in the world, i cannot even speculate.
If you're only getting two, ignore price, go to a good kitchen store and see what feels good in your hand and buy it. It's 2 knives you'll probably be using daily for a very, VERY long time.
I have three: a santoku style all-purpose knife, a long bread knife (also good for grating/scraping), and a cleaver since I often buy meat in large chunks.
Brands aren't really important unless they offer something unique that you find desirable, but do spend more than $10 or you'll likely end up with something that won't last. A good knife is one that feels comfortable and has a decent rep. If you can satisfy that, then just like a guitar, it will get better the more you use it.
Also, get a honing steel to keep it in shape.
Just a Chef knife, and a pairing knife. However, make sure that you love working with them. I recommend that you get 2 or three of each, bring them home, and experiment on a potato or cucumber. then return the un-easy ones, and keep your favorite grip friendly ones. good luck.
I imagine some stores won't be wild about you returning a used knife; you can often make do with just feeling the weight of it in the store, how the handle fits in your hand, and imagining using it.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.705944
| 2014-01-28T05:06:13 |
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|
81796
|
Are there desserts which use whole eggs (not mixing them in)?
It is my opinion that all savory dishes can be improved by putting a fried egg on top, and I've yet to find an exception.
However, the idea of doing that to a sweet dish seems totally foul.
Considering that eggs are ingredients in many desserts, like cake batters, curds, and meringues, why would that be? It's not just that they're not sweetened, because you can use, for example, unsweetened cream cheese in both a sweet pastry or a savory one.
Am I wrong in my premise? Are there sweet dishes with eggs that are used without mixing them into the other ingredients?
I've heard of eggs poached in maple syrup - more a breakfast food than a dessert, but it is at least one whole-egg sweet application.
Hi Brian, wondering "why" is a fun question to consider, but not one we can really answer. Traditions are traditions, they don't need a reason, and when they have one, you need to know the exact circumstances of it arising to be able to answer. Instead, people love falling into speculation, and votes get given to the appealingly written answers, regardless of whether they are right. So I removed the "why" from the title and left only the part you ask in the body: are there counter-examples.
So, how was the sushi with a fried egg on top?
@rackandboneman better than the carpaccio?
Though this might be a textural/presentation thing - eggs in the right place within a sushi platter are normally considered a good idea, just not fried on top :)
While there are plenty of sweet dishes made almost entirely of egg in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_egg_dishes all of them seem to beat, whisk or otherwise mix the eggs (whether separated or not).
@rackandboneman and ChrisH, I think both sushi and carpaccio would be improved with a fried egg on top. Perhaps a quail's egg for downing in one bite though.
@Brian hot or cold fried egg? The former would make the sushi/meat unpleasantly warm, the latter would just be unpleasant (IMO of course)
Korean gyeran-ppang is a small sweet cake with an entire egg cracked into each before baking. They might be an acquired taste, or maybe take some practice--my friend who studied abroad in South Korea loves them. I made them myself, and they were okay, but... Not my cup of tea in the end. I shouldn't have been too surprised; I dislike runny yolks. One of them came out absolutely perfect: the egg in the center was just barely set into a sort of mildly sweet custard, but the rest... shudders.
This is definitely the sort of thing I was wondering if it existed! I think I'll have to reassign the "correct" answer to you.
I would contend that I have never seen Italian Easter bread served as anything but a dessert, but I am told by others they have had it as a main course side. Would seem very out of place there to me. It is a sweet bread with an orange and anise glaze and dyed egg in the center or sometimes more than one.
What we consider dessert or main is far more tradition IMO than some written fact. I personally hate boiled eggs, but my grandfather considered them a dessert.
It looks like the egg is so intact it's even got the shell on. Is that right? I think you might win this one
@ChrisH Yes, traditionally, at least the ones I have had, the egg is dyed raw and put in the bread for baking, so is a baked egg rather than boiled. I have also had Asian salted eggs served as a dessert, but in Asian cuisine it is not uncommon to have a dessert or closing course that most of us would consider savory.
It looks interesting to eat. And we've just missed Easter.
Do you peel and eat the egg along with the sweet pastry? When I was thinking about the question, I was wondering about dishes where the sweetness and flavorings commingle with the whole egg, but the shell would prevent that in your bread.
@Brian When I have had the bread, some people treat the egg more as I decoration. I find the taste of a hard boiled or baked yolk about like licking chalk, so I am firmly in the decoration camp. The Italian families I shared dinner with that made it though treated it as a tradition to peel the egg, slice it up and everyone share it with the bread. Not my taste, but they enjoyed it.
It's a cake rather than a dessert (always a tricky distinction) and traditionally uses the unbroken yolk rather than the whole egg, at but I offer you the Chinese moon cake. The egg isn't universal; neither is the cake being sweet. You certainly get sweet ones with egg.
Apart from being a (rather poor) example, the Mooncake hints at something else: the sweet/savoury-main course /dessert distinction isn't universal. In fact it has European roots but has spread widely.
Eggs also have small but non-negligible amounts of salt and glutamate, flavours we associate with savoury foods, especially together.
A small amount of salt is good even for sweet foods....
@rackandboneman, many, yes, depending on the other ingredients. You and I will almost inevitably draw the line in different places -- I cooked with very little salt even before reducing it for a baby weaning onto the same food we ate. The salt content of an intact egg may be a little high for most people's tastes (combined with the zero sweetness of that bite) in a sweet cake, while dispersed in a cake mix it wouldn't be.
I ABSOLUTELY love mooncakes with sweet lotus seed paste and the kind with mixed dried fruits. I also love most Asian foods and make/eat them more often than Western foods. But one time I unknowingly bought a mooncake with a salted duck yolk in it. It doesn't taste at all like a cooked chicken egg yolk but VERY different. I hated it and ended up throwing it out.
I'm going to give it to @ChrisH here because the idea of a yolk as the filling of a sweet pastry is the closest to what I was thinking. Along with his thoughts about the salt in a egg being noticeable when concentrated vs. mixed in, I think the sulfur-containing amino acids in eggs would be similarly noticeable.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.706223
| 2017-05-19T04:15:35 |
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|
42288
|
Can you eat the seeds of Tamarind if you roast them or boil them?
I just bought some fresh Tamarind & was told that I can eat the Tamarind seeds. Are they really edible? How would I prepare them if so?
They're certainly edible, but you might have to work for it.
A Western view from Purdue CropINDEX:
Tamarind seeds have been used in a limited way as emergency food. They are roasted, soaked to remove the seedcoat, then boiled or fried, or ground to a flour or starch. Roasted seeds are ground and used as a substitute for, or adulterant of, coffee.
People from more native cultures are perhaps more willing to put in the effort:
... But I was surprised to find those semi-charred seeds tasting wonderful. They were a little like well-roasted peanuts without their disadvantages, and gave me both the challenge and company I seek of suparis!
I also found a few other mentions of them being a snack food, something people had eaten at home, like this one, which also mentions roasting and de-shelling in bulk with a grinding stone.
As for how to prepare them, I think your best bet might be to roast them, peel with the aid of a mortar and pestle (to crack them open), then soak for overnight or for a day in buttermilk like this recipe suggests. It's worth looking at the full recipe - there's more detail and a little background.
You can certainly try them before soaking as well, if you're looking for something that takes work to eat - you might have to suck and chew a while. As the recipe SAJ14SAJ found says, and says "This is the real test for teeth as it is very hard and crunchy."
Yep, they are edible and I am eating them right now. They are roasted untill they turn black charcoal colored and then peeled. The kernel smells a bit like coffee bean. They are very hard to bite, so they must be kept in the mouth for some time mixing with saliva and eaten slowly.
It helps people who have a habit of constant nibbling, so they can engage their mouth and at the same time have a cholesterol free, slow to eat, healthy snack.
I have myself ate roasted tamarind seeds in my childhood. We eat that like candy (Top black cover has strong taste but core tastes similar to roasted peanuts but not same). Many people from Gujarat state of India call it 'kachika'.
I soak the tamarind in hot water or boil for a few minutes and drink as tea. I prefer it to tea and coffee but wasn't too sure what to do with the seeds. So I figured, if tamarind is edible, then the seeds should be too. I remove the skin, let the inside seed dry, salt it a bit and roast until it's golden brown. I keep them in bottles or plastic bags and, when it's cold, I snack on them and especially like it as a late night snack! It's yum!!!
This time you were right, but not all edible fruits have edible seeds. Indeed, some edible fruits have seeds that are potentially deadly poison.
I just soak the seeds until the skin is soft. This takes a few days, and the water has to be changed every day. Afterwards, you can wash and roast or boil them as you like.
Some people are making a desserts with tamarind seeds... I just like to make tea with it...
According to Plant Cultures,
The seeds are also edible and flour made from them can be used to bake cakes and breads. Roasted seeds are reputed to be delicious.
Finding recipes that address removing the very tough seed coat is difficult, especially since there are false hits for the flesh or pulp of the fruit, as well as many non-culinary uses. Here is one set of instructions.
Hm, that link you found does address removing the seed coat, but it just says "remove the outer cover" - do you know if it's straightforward once they're roasted? I think we need to know that to fully answer the question.
@Jefromi The problem is sensible references that don't devolve into strange health claims are very hard to find. This was the best I could do with a reasonable search effort. It is clear they are not harmful. It is not clear what the right treatments are to make them palatable.
Once you're past the harder-to-find objective "is it edible" stuff, finding practical advice isn't actually too hard. A few more of the results for [roasted tamarind seeds] are helpful (mentioned in my answer).
@Jefromi Ironically, that is one of the first search strings I tried. I even saw the document you linked but gave up on it too early.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.707061
| 2014-02-24T15:02:32 |
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|
56576
|
Replicating commercial gluten-free/non-gebrokts matzo -- where to start?
I'm on a somewhat restricted diet right now in which I'm not allowed to eat any grains of any kind. It turns out that the Yehuda gluten-free matzo and Manischewitz gluten-free matzo-style crackers are entirely grain-free, being made of tapioca and potato and eggs.
Unfortunately, they're only available during Passover, and even then they're somewhat hard to find and somewhat expensive. Therefore I'd like to make my own. I'm not expecting a perfect clone, but any kind of approximation would be fine as long as it tastes good.
All of the gluten-free/grain-free matzo recipes I found online are made of nut flour, which I don't like much and I'd rather not use.
Obviously it's good to "just experiment," but in this case I have no clue where to start. What should I try first? How would one go about trying to "clone" a product like this?
Here you go. It's a recipe from Joy of Kosher. The flours and starches may be a bit hard to find in stores, but they'll be on Amazon.
@Jolenealaska thanks a ton! I don't think I'll have a problem finding the ingredients.
@Jolenealaska you should turn that into an answer
have you given socca a try? made entirely of chickpea
@PatSommer yup, and I like it. but it's just not the same.
Here's a recipe from Joy of Kosher. The flours and starches may be a bit hard to find in stores, but they'll be on Amazon. As a matter of fact, the matzo is on Amazon too, but you're right, it's pretty spendy.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.707458
| 2015-04-10T23:55:31 |
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|
44998
|
Whole wheat pasta from milling to the results
Can it work to make pasta from freshly home-milled flour?
Yes. I will show you. Here are my experiment results.
I have this as my mill. It takes a long time to go from wheat to flour and I mean like hours maybe even days.
I tried a 2 3/4 cup flour: 6 eggs: 5 tsp oil ratio and kneaded both batches for a good 10 minutes and rested 1 overnight and 1 for 30 minutes.
I obviously got more than what is shown but I can't show a full 20 ounces with each strand separate.
those black lines are supposed to be the pasta, the dark orange representing that it is whole wheat pasta. The brighter orange is the cheddar cheese sauce. I made this by taking some sharp and some mild cheddar that I have made myself and melting it on low bit by bit so that instead of a crust I would get a smooth sauce. It turned out good and after about 5-6 minutes, maybe less, maybe more, it was al dente and it didn't turn out to eggy or flourly or oily. I think I have found the right ratio for my whole wheat pasta.
I'm not certain the pictures add anything here.
Also they are not so great.
If you must use paint to make diagrams at least use the text tool for the text.
Better yet do diagrams in something that supports decent shapes etc, like inkscape.
caters, I think your answer is mostly fine. If you actually did all this work, posting an answer about it is exactly what we want. I won't undelete it for you - that's your decision - but don't let one user who doesn't like MSPaint stop you from posting. I do agree that the images might not add all that much, since you pretty much explained it all in the text, but it's up to you whether you want to include them. If you do, I might suggest trimming the extra white space off the sides so they don't take up so much space.
You're milling grain with a bicycle? Awesome!
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.707617
| 2014-06-20T05:06:15 |
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|
8603
|
Can store bought salmon be used for sashimi?
Is it safe to consume raw fish purchased at the fish counter of a typical suburban grocery store? If not, do you have any tips for finding sushi grade fish. Also, are there requirements for safe sushi/sashimi beyond the use of safe fish?
Not being aware of your location, some general tips:
Buy your fish from a fishmonger, and tell him/her what you are using it for. You want to do business with somebody whose business is selling fish and only selling fish. They are going to know what's been stored to eaten raw standards in a way that the just above minimum wage fish guy at your grocery store doesn't.
Don't buy it early. Buy it the day you mean to consume it or the day that you are going to prepare it. This question can help walk you through that.
Take a cooler to get your fish. You have to maintain the freshness, that means not allowing it raise in temperature anymore than you have to.
Or have them pack in ice if you're just heading straight home.
And don't forget that the skin (if it's still there) makes a really nice filling for sushi rolls. I usually just crisp it up, and put some avocado in the roll with it.
Any fish to be eaten raw must be frozen to –114°F for five days to kill parasites. I think I remember that correctly.
Living far away from the ocean for much of my life- fishmongers and freshly caught fish are hard to come by.
Luckily that doesn't matter that much. The freshest fish are the ones that are frozen on the boat they are caught on.
Suburban grocery store fish counters can sell you frozen fish in small quantities. I buy tuna or salmon steaks in .5 pound portions. They make excellent and very fresh tasting sushi when thawed.
It will keep indefinitely when solidly frozen but as soon as you thaw it the normal rules apply- use it that day or it won't be fresh anymore.
So don't order the fresh or the fresher fish. At Finney's, if you're wise, you'll say, "Fetch me the finest, French-fried freshest fish that Finney fries!" (Sorry, I couldn't help it- I've been reading to the kids.)
My kid has that same book :)
I wouldn't trust anything from a grocery-store fish counter to be fit for raw consumption.
http://www.sushifaq.com/sushiotaku/2008/01/31/where-to-buy-sushi-grade-fish/ has a lot of info, and suggests http://www.catalinaop.com/ . I've never bought anything from them, but it looks like they're probably a good source if you want to buy online. If you're in the SF Bay Area, there are a number of places to buy it. I usually go to Tokyo Fish Market on San Pablo in Berkeley.
sadly the supermarket here has better quality fish than the fishmonger... And that doesn't mean their fish is good...
I have used smoked salmon to make sushi rolls with success, I would not try it with nigiri as the difference would be extremely noticable. Depends on how authentic you want to be.
Smoked salmon and cream cheese rolls are fairly common here in Toronto (and maybe some other places). About as far away from authentic as you can possibly get, but fairly tasty nevertheless.
Definitely frozen fish would work better for sushi, but industrial and processed, don't try to freeze it at home or you're at risk of infections. I'd recommend going straight to seafood wholesalers, as they have already the fish processed for sushi to sell straight to restaurants. I had to make takoyaki and octopus sushi for an octopus festival in Cali and contacted http://www.discefa.com/en/ to sell it chopped and ready to make sushi with it. In case you don't need that much quantity, you can ask the wholesalers where they sell it to and contact those guys. Hope this helps!
I've used "regular" salmon for sushi once or twice, but the advice I received was to either buy it frozen or freeze it yourself to kill off any parasites.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.707836
| 2010-10-28T01:32:44 |
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|
47585
|
What do I need to consider when upgrading to a 40 quart mixer?
I have a cookie business. Currently I'm using a Kitchenaid 7 quart mixer and can only make 50 cookies at a time.
I'm thinking of upgrading to a Hobart HL-400 40 quart mixer. I selected this brand because they have a bowl scraper.
Do you think they will mix the dough as well as the small mixers?
Any advice on what useful accessories I could get for it? (other than beater + bowl + scraper)
Hello Cookiecookie22, and welcome to the site! We are not a discussion forum, and we have some restriction on the format of the questions. We don't accept a "should I buy it?" question, this is something you have to decide for yourself, ultimately. But the actual details you asked for are on topic, so I changed the title to reflect that and to avoid answers such as "yes, buy it" or "I wouldn't buy it".
If we assume that each of the mixers is as capable as your existing one, you'd have to consider how much it saves you, and compare that to the cost of the new mixer.
New, that model of mixer when new goes for US$10,000 to $15,000. Accessories will increase the cost; the scraper blade you mentioned runs around $500.
We have two ways to calculate the value to you; we can base it off of time savings of using the new mixer, but those calculations can be a bit messy. If you're planning on buying this to grow into it, and only going to be doubling recipes, your time savings from mixing may be lost from cleaning (if it doesn't fit in your sink), or just hauling it around (shipping weight for a replacement bowl is listed as 47lbs/21kg); even if the bowl is only half that, a full batch might be 60lbs or more).
If you value your time at $8/hr, at $11,0000, you'd need 1375 hours to start seeing a benefit. If you only saved 1hr per day, working 5 days per week, this would take over 4 years to start seeing a benefit. If the cost with accessories is near $16,000, you'd need 2000 hrs, or almost 6 years).
These time savings may seem low, but remember that you're not necessarily quadrupling your batches in the same time; you still have to consider time to scoop them out, bake them, etc. If you don't have sufficient oven & cooling space, you may not be able to take full advantage of the larger mixer.
You may value your time as more than $8/hr, and that would improve your cost recovery time ... but also consider that if you value your time highly, you could instead hire extra help. If you hired someone half time at $15/hr, it would take 10.5 to 15.25 months to recover the cost.
...
Your second alternative for calculations is in how much additional profits you could make. So, if you could turn out an extra 400 cookies per day (and could actually manage to sell them all), you'd consider the cost recovery time to be the increased profits minus the increased costs (ingredients, extra sales staff, etc.)
...
And for both of these calculations when we're looking at long time-scales, you have to consider what they call the 'time value of money' ... or what your effective interest rate is. If you have the money saved up, it may be near 1%, or whatever you can invest it at (with low risk). If you have to borrow the money, it may be 15% or more if you're putting it on a credit card. It should be somewhere in between with a bank loan.
So, that 6 year 'payback' value with a savings of 1 hr per day at $8/hr, if you had a 15% interest will actually take 27 years to pay off (calculator), as you only make back $140/month. If you were to save 1.25hrs/day ($160/month), we cut the time down to 13 years.
...
So, to summarize, some of the considerations:
can you fit the bowl in your sink to clean?
will you be able to manage the bowl when it's filled? (may be able to get a dolly to move it around)
how expensive are all of the accessories you need?
would you be able to take advantage of the size, or should you consider a smaller (20qt, 30qt mixer)?
how much time will this save you per day/week/etc?
how much extra profit could you make if you had this?
are there other things you could do to expand other than the mixer? (eg, hire extra help)
how long would it take to recover the cost of the mixer?
Don't tease us, what may be the 6 year recovery? :P Else, good info here, +1
@rumtscho : sorry ... started writing answer, then got distracted by work, then fell asleep ... woke up, and hit submit when it was incomplete.
@Joe thanks so much for your long answer. i honestly hadnt thought about the cleaning part. though it can be solved by taking out the middle rack of the washing machine haha
And going for a bigger mixer than my current 7quart is the only option as sometimes i sell more than 2 batches a day. i could get a 20 quart but then i think its better to get a bigger one for the future right? my main question was if the big beaters mixed as well as the small ones? also does anyone know if there are machines able to make balls out of cookie dough? thanks
@cookiecookie22 : you might want to ask that as a new question, so more eyes see it. As best I know, there are things called 'cookie depositors', but they don't produce balls. (most 'dough ball' type machines are for kneaded bread-type dough)
i will make a new research and then ask that here. thanks again : ) @Joe
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.708160
| 2014-10-01T19:19:44 |
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|
33467
|
How to thicken a sour cream recipe?
Sour cream is not sold in stores where I live. I found a sour cream recipe. This asked me to put some cream in a bowl, add white vinegar, then let it sit in the refrigerator for one hour. I used some cream called “UHT thickened cream” and added some drops of white rice vinegar.
The taste is okay, but it is liquid like milk and not thick like the sour cream sold in stores in the United States. How can I thicken this sour cream?
The sour cream sold in the US is cultured sour cream, not just cream with acid added.
You need more vinegar for it to thicken. I make salad dressing with cream as the oil and when I stir in the vinegar, it becomes quite thick. Unfortunately, it will probably have a strong vinegar taste in your recipe (which turns out to be okay in a salad dressing).
The vinegar works on the protein in the cream to make it thick. It may be that the UHT Thickened Cream is lower in protein and fat and already thickened with chemicals (Xanthan gum, guar gum, glycol, etc).
If you can't find real cream with 30% or more fat, you may have to add gelling agents such as xanthan gum to get it thicker. It wouldn't be my favourite thing to do. Otherwise, see if you can find cream creatively elsewhere.
Not sure about the health factors of this but I used to use evaporated milk (the canned stuff you can mix with water 50/50). 1 cup of evaporated milk, 1 tablespoon vinegar and let it sit until it thickens, allways start with both at room temp and keep them there, it kind of clots up on its own, refrigerating may be what kept your method thin.
I think using heavy whipping cream (1 cup) to 1/4 cup buttermilk works best, Personally, I have never used vinegar. Mix in a jar and let it sit 24 hours on the counter. It is not as thick as store bought.
|
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|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.708606
| 2013-04-14T03:29:24 |
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|
22475
|
What natural ingredients can be used to color food blue or green?
I've been experimenting more and more with "natural" food colorings - meaning spices and other ingredients that naturally impart color as opposed to a commercial food dye made specifically for this purpose.
For example, I've let scallops (among other things) sit in a beet puree, and they get a brilliant pink color. I plan on trying turmeric and saffron for more yellow/orange/red colors.
Are there other ingredients that I can try that might create a green or blue color in scallops? And would these work for other foods as well?
Related: I would like to make my own food coloring with natural vegetables, what is the technique? and Which spice gives brown colour to Indian curry?
I've edited your question (mostly just the title) to focus on the specific, answerable part. There are a huge number of ways to color food, and the former title will tend to attract answers like Caleb's: true, but not necessarily helpful, and impossible to be complete. If you have other colors you need help getting, feel free to post another question.
Parsley was a medieval cook's go-to when coloring something green. There isn't much that'll achieve blue, though.
Perhaps also of interest: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/30839/colored-cake-without-food-coloring
You may find Why are so few foods blue? from Biology.SE interesting.
According to this blog, you can make blue dye from red cabbage, water, and baking soda. I don't know if it would specifically work on scallops, but I haven't been able to find any proof that alkaline dyes are detrimental to them. The article points out that they work for pastries, though.
Spinach or matcha (green tea powder) could work for green dye. Matcha is already used, primarily in Japan, to dye several kinds of foods and/or drinks and I've personally used spinach to dye Easter eggs.
First, compliments on sticking with natural.
Red cabbage is a natural pH indicator. While you can get it to turn any colour, it will shift in colour if the food pH is not the same as the cabbage.
You can use blueberries (ha!), blackberries, and Elderberries for various blues (see the note below on why it's hard to get a natural blue).
For greens, we use basil pesto.
For reds, there are some edible flowers that do well, obviously beats and raspberries.
For yellow/orange. Saffron! grind it down in a pestle and mortar and dissolve in a bit of hot water. Note of caution: Saffron at high doses is toxic, but at that dose, you'd be spending hundreds of dollars worth of saffron to get saffron poisoning.
Obviously you can mix these to get secondary colours.
You can loosely follow this vegetable dye making recipe (obviously leave out the chemicals).
Blue dye in history:
Getting a natural blue has been traditionally difficult (and expensive). Artists show Virgin Mary wearing blue because in those days it was more expensive than gold.
How do you get blue from blueberries or blackberries? They are both purple? The bluish sheen on blueberries is an iridescent effect, not an actual color from pigment.
@SAJ14SAJ Blueberries I've used have been blue. Here is an example: http://www.kiwimagonline.com/2012/03/diy-dye-plus-an-all-natural-kit/ blackberries, I agree, they have some red. However, "A deep blue-purple dye can be made with Himalayan Blackberries": http://wiki.islandwood.org/index.php?title=Himalayan_Blackberry
Butterfly pea flowers will give a nice blue or indigo color - it is sold as dried whole flowers for making tea with (out of Thailand), and also marketed as a natural blue food colorant or dye. The tea itself is interesting and pleasant, but also mild and herbal in flavor - so should be easily incorporated into or even masked by whatever other flavors you want in your dish. The tea will also turn purple in the presence of acid (like, say, lemon juice) - so you might be able to get your purple coloration from that, if you don't mind adding a lemon taste.
Blue is tricky, at least if you're trying for a taste more neutral than, say, blueberries - so the pea flowers are a good find. And you can brew much more strongly than the picture for a deep color without too, too much extra taste.
If you want a red color (which you can also add to blue for purple) I find hibiscus usually works, it gives a more vibrant red color, while beets usually end up coloring something more pink or itself appearing a duller red, almost maroon, to my eye.
Turmeric or saffron will indeed give yellows and oranges (depending on concentration). Turmeric is also used as a yellow cloth dye, so should have really good staining power for whatever you're coloring. Saffron will get to orange tints if the concentration is quite high (but it is expensive, so only if you already want the strong saffron taste if you're using that much). You might actually try carrot juice for a more consistent and less expensive orange color (or tint your red beet or hibiscus red with yellow, depending on what you want or what you have).
The combination of saffron and butterfly pea flower makes some really beautiful and vibrant greens, from teal to deep emerald - and also a tasty tea, which is what I was doing with it. I had also heard that red onion skins will create a green dye. Other answers mentioned spinach juice and spirulina and the like, so I'll leave them be.
Interesting. However, still an anthocyanin dye with the same limits (eg will not color sour foods blue).
@rackandboneman - ah, neat new term. I guess you're right, it only works if the foods are basic to neutral-ish, otherwise it will start turning purple on contact if the food is acidic...even if it's pretty neat within those limits. I'm not aware of any food based blue dye that would work, then, if the scallops OP wants to color are acidic or sour. Maybe making a basic sauce with the color and letting it slowly change while being served could be neat, though.
There's already something won if it stays blue at neutral pH ... unless the there is an alkaline compound in the plant - if there is, it is at least weak enough for the tea to be palatable :)
@rackandboneman - I saw in another post (http://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/40617/47365) that ginger and garlic can turn blue in the presence of acids... which means a blue color can be safely gotten in some acidic foods. I don't think they would make good dyes for food, per se, they would probably be unpalatably strong in the quantities needed to color something (though a very light dusting of powder on a pale food...), but they might provide an avenue to look for a better blue color at those PHs.
A very good way to achieve a deep green colour would be adding spirulina powder, or possibly barley grass and wheat grass powder.
The colour of the food very much depends on its pH (acidity). I remember learning about this in a biochemistry lecture about 35 years ago and then demonstrating it whilst cooking - adding cream to blackberries. The cream changed the acidity of the blackberries, whose colour changed from purple to blue.
All anthocyanine based dyes - blueberries, red cabbage, beets, red grapes, red wine - are pH dependent. Problem is, the whole blue part of food item will need to be alkaline for the dye to stay blue - which might or might not work well taste-wise depending on the food.
Annatto seeds will give you another version of yellow/orange.
Squid ink or cuttlefish ink will give you black.
Red wine or grape juice sometimes colors foods red.
Apparently, scallops will sometimes turn blue on their own under the right conditions.
Blueberries will give a nice purplish hue. Also beets will give a strong red color for natural food coloring.
In order to dye the scallops BLUE, bring RED cabbage and/or PURPLE potatoes to a boil in a pot of water. Tweak the cabbage/potato to water ratio as needed in order to achieve desired pigment (I recommend adding only just enough water for the cabbage and/or potatoes to fit comfortably in the pot). Let the BLUE water cool down to room temperature (be sure to wait long enough as to not cook the scallops prematurely); then, gently plop the scallops into the color bath and place in the refrigerator. Allow 2-3 hours for the dye to sufficiently imbue the scallops.
In order to dye the scallops GREEN, bring fresh spinach and water to a boil. Add only enough water to just barely submerge the spinach. Let the GREEN water cool down to room temperature. Gently plop the scallops in the color bath and place in refrigerator. Allow 2-3 hours for the dye to sufficiently imbue the scallops.
Its a well known fact vanilla ice cream are green in colour. For getting the green colour, you can use vanilla or its products which render green. There are plenty of manufacturers who sell natural green colorant.
regarding blue colour, i am not sure. I think one can try blue grapes to get blue (more of purple) colour.
Apart from this there are lots of green / blue flowers / fruits in nature. Just google it and may get some positive results for colour extraction from the selected flower / fruit. and can be extracted in backyard and can use it.
I dont think spices can render green / blue colour.
"Its a well known fact vanilla ice cream are green in colour" - might want to take a colour-blindness test.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.708801
| 2012-03-21T17:19:56 |
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22921
|
Why do brownies made from commercial mixes form a flaky top?
When I use brownie mix products such as the standard Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines - the ones where you just mix up the ingredients, and then put it in the tray and bake it - I notice that the top just magically becomes flaky and delicious.
What causes that? The top is composed of the same mix as the bottom and sides; I realize it's exposed to the air, but how does that make the difference?
I don't know for sure, but I suspect it's because in addition to air, the top is exposed to more direct heat. The sides and bottom have the pan conducting heat to them.
Related: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/2652/how-to-make-flaky-top-brownies
No @KatieK, that doesn't pertain, I don't think. I never have to do any of those things and it just happens naturally.
If I could offer a possibility..... When you bake a loaf of bread, the surface, exposed part of the loaf has a different crust than the interior (even when baked in a pan). This is due to the carmelization of the sugars on the surface. I suspect that this is the case here as well.
I get the same effect baking a mix or a scratch recipe. I've always assumed it is due to the carmelization of the surface sugars coupled with a bit of dehydration due to direct heat exposure....
Agreed. Commercial mixes usually contain sugar and corn syrup, which would contract on the heated surface during caramelization while the bread part expands. The difference in expansion of the two materials would explain a cracked, flaky top.
I was always under the impression that it was something mixed into the batter. Something maybe oil-soluble, or some of which rose to the top as the batter sat in the oven and settled just a little bit, and cooked into a separate layer, and some of which stayed mixed into the rest of the batter for additional sugary, chocolatey flavor.
Part of the reason I thought this was the differences in color and texture from the brownie to the flaky top (especially clear in box pictures). Part of it was the way it seemed to flake away from the brownie - after all, browning on the top of bread or other baked goods tended to match the texture of the rest more closely, and be really attached to the interior, not flake away.
KatieK's accepted answer on how to make the top crust flakier mentions it's actually a meringue (I have no other citation, sorry). Maybe a bit of meringue powder in the box mix would create that effect, if it is light enough to rise through the batter - and since it's egg white and sugar (and cornstarch), any left in the mix that didn't rise to the top would simply be absorbed into the sugar and egg already in the recipe. Somehow I don't think the white of the added egg reacts to the sugar on its own, since I don't see the same kind of crust on other baked goods.
If its not that, it might be the result of adding just a little too much oil, on purpose, because maybe a sheen of extra oil rising to the top will react with the extra heat and the batter below to create that flaky layer. Again, not saying that's what it is, but that if it isn't, I don't have any idea what else it could be.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.709600
| 2012-04-10T01:58:27 |
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46107
|
How long will durian smell linger?
My housemate just brought home a durian. I remember smelling one of these from four floors up in a dormitory years ago and it was overpowering but I don't remember if it faded away quickly or not.
Should I veto him cutting this open in the house? Will the smell go away?
NO @AARONUT THIS IS A QUESTION OF SAFETY YOU CLEARLY HAVE NOT SMELLED THIS THING BEFORE
You're obviously trying to be funny, but we have very specific guidelines for the food safety tag. I tried to edit your question into something that might stay open, but honestly, it's like any other smelly thing - it depends on the size of your area, ventilation, etc.
Moderators = no fun
@Aaronut In my very limited experience, a durian isn't like "any other smelly thing".
@Aerovistae It's not their job to be fun: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/
@Aerovistae We love fun, as long as it doesn't mess with the way the site's supposed to work. Tags are part of that; we don't want unrelated questions to surface when you search by tag. It's not the most important thing, but tagging appropriately (and leaving jokes to the body of the question) seems fair!
@belisarius: Sure, it has a rather... unique smell, but fundamentally it's the same thing - particles from the food get dispersed in the air, and the smell fades away as the concentration gets lower (i.e. circulation of outside air).
Of course the smell will go away, given enough time. The question is exactly how long you can tolerate it, which only you can judge. Durian actually has a remarkably fascinating smell, featuring a huge range of aromatic compounds including some that haven't been identified in any other produce. (This link is unfortunately behind a paywall, and I haven't read the whole thing, but even the abstract gives an interesting glimpse.)
If you're concerned, take precautions. Open it outside, or in a room with plenty of ventilation. Put down paper or plastic sheeting to catch any juices or mess that might leave a lingering smell (as this helpful article suggests).
A couple of sources (such as this blog post, and somewhat more lucidly, this About.com article) suggest that by running hot water over the expended shell, you can create a mild solution which helps neutralize the smell. I can't vouch for the accuracy of this method but it's suggested in multiple places, so it seems unlikely to be a cruel prank.
There are actually other, more pressing concerns with durian. For instance, one study suggests that durian fruit breaks down some of the enzymes that your liver uses to neutralize the toxic byproducts of alcohol. It's apparently a bit of southeast Asian folk wisdom that drinking and durians do not mix, and more than one death has been blamed on the combination. So, don't worry about the smell. Worry about mixing tequila shots with durian instead.
I lived above a durian shop for a year.
At first I found the smell nauseating and reminiscent of a rotting pigeon carcass. But the brain adjusts and soon you don't smell it as strongly. Only the occasional strong whiff. After a time it only smelled like rotten onions which was slightly more pleasant. Eventually, I began to smell the fruity, vanilla, meaty scent which is what most people familiar with the fruit can distinguish from the other malodors. At this point, I finally summoned the guts to try some. It's a remarkable taste. Unparalleled.
But if you're not prepared to wait that long, keep it in a sealed container. Or hang it out the window.
Well. I also hope someday you try it. Maybe if you do so sooner, you might find the smell less disagreeable...
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.709895
| 2014-08-05T02:16:09 |
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|
13864
|
How long can I keep green curry paste?
I make green curry paste with green peppers as main ingredient. I put all ingredients in the processor, and keep the paste in a closed jar in the fridge. It stills smells fresh after 10 weeks.
Can it be kept for that long? Why (not)?
I would suggest 4-6 weeks. I buy all natural, preservative free green curry paste all the time. The packaging suggests refrigeration once opened up to one month. Most foods without the help of preservatives don't last much longer than a month under refrigeration. The curry paste may not spoil per se, but the quality does degrade significantly. Green curry paste is naturally very strong in the odor department, so it can smell fresh long after it is. I'd bet that if you compared it to a freshly made batch you'd tell the difference.
In my opinion, quality starts decaying significantly after one day, especially the coriander aroma dissapears. I am wondering when the curry becomes inedible, not when quality begins to degrade?
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.710231
| 2011-04-08T13:29:45 |
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|
14827
|
"Pie" vs "Tart"?
I've been told that there are some differences between a "pie" and a "tart". What's the difference, and when do I call it a pie, and when do I call it a tart?
Sorry for my English!
Your English is fine :-)
Generally speaking, a pie refers to a pastry covered with a lid, like a typical apple pie. A tart is open topped, like a quiche, or a French tartes aux pommes.
However, there are exceptions to this: many pies will be open topped too. Usually this is a matter of depth: the deeper it is, the more likely it is to be called a pie rather than a tart.
Regional variations also apply.
Would a tart normally be served cold, while a pie often hot? I can't recall having a hot tart
Hmmm, not necessarily. You can have hot, savoury tarts as a main meal - 'sun-dried tomato and goat's cheese tart' is almost standard-issue at vegetarian restaurants. Dessert tarts are usually cold though.
Yes, of course, I have had those, just didn't remember them as tarts (thin and open(ish) topped). I just did a quick google on "hot tart" to check out any good recipes, very bad mistake!
Tarte Tatin? =)
I did say there were exceptions. Although tarte tatin isn't really lidded, it's just upside down...
It's the shape. A tart is baked in a shallow dish with straight sides; a pie dish is deeper, and has sloping sides. At least, that's the way it is in the US.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.710340
| 2011-05-16T08:17:58 |
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|
14977
|
Coriander in a blueberry ice-cream?
I'm a beginner, and trying to follow this recipe.
Along the lines, it's said that we should add coriander. I'm still a beginner, but I find it weird to add coriander into an ice-cream recipe. Please explain to me why should I add coriander? Thanks in advance
If you add coriander, it should be because you agree with Mr. Weeks's assertion that it has a particular affinity with blueberry. Freshly ground coriander has a vibrant citrusy aroma, and (though I haven't tried it), I can see how it would go well in blueberry ice cream. I've found that sometimes a single flavor can be a little monotonous, and the coriander can bring some fun to the party. Give it a shot and see what you think.
I agree both with your reasoning and your evaluation of coriander. It sounds like it would be very interesting with blueberry. Keep in mind that ice cream flavorings need to be stronger than other dishes because the cold deadens the taste buds.
I also find that rosemary is very nice with blueberry. That might be a fun substitution.
just as another example, another interesting pairing with blueberry is ground cardamom.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.710489
| 2011-05-22T20:22:49 |
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|
52339
|
Why did my thai curry have a bitter aftertaste?
I'm on the low fodmap diet so i tried making my own thai curry paste (without shallots or garlic). Here are the ingredients that i used:
1/4 cup coriander leaves, stems and roots
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 large stalk lemon grass
6 red chillies
1.5 tbsp ginger
1 tsp salt
1/4 spring onions
3 tsp garlic infused sesame oil
1 tsp lime juice
I'm guessing it's either the lemon grass or the lime juice which made it bitter
Was it bitter before or after cooking? If after please list all your other ingredients and your cooking method.
It was bitter before and after. Even the coconut milk and palm jaggery that I added didn't take away the bitterness. the other ingredients used were: eggplant (normal, not thai), red bell pepper, white button mushrooms, carrots, coconut milk, palm jaggery, salt, and a little extra red chilli powder
Hello Niv, and welcome to the site. The question about it being bitter is a good one, I hope somebody will figure it out. But recipe requests are off topic, so I removed that part.
As far as I can tell, your eggplant is one possible culprit and the other is the sesame oil having gone rancid. I'd try some of the oil on its own and fry a slice of aubergine on its own as well. If it's the latter I'd sprinkle some vinegar and salt on the aubergines and leave them to dry for a 2ple of hours. I'd wipe the slime before cooking.
Some people find that coriander leaves/cilantro tastes soapy or bitter. Do you know if you have this reaction to coriander leaves?
Cooking method and temperatures would be good to know. Did the seeds burn? Were the red chilies dried? Did you happen to taste as you went and taste the ingredients before cooking? I lean toward @Giorgos suggestions especially if the sesame oil was infused with garlic. I tend to notice infused oils taste off/bitter.
Did you use fresh lime juice? After a few hours, lime juice will start accumulating limonin, one of the most bitter substances found in food. Asian limes tend to produce less of it. Cumin and coriander are slightly bitter, but that should be a pleasant balance to the other ingredients (unless you have a rare receptor recently identified in twin studies that makes coriander bitter). Try squeezing the lime juice just before serving. Beware that limes from supermarkets often get mishandled and their juice is bitter (not just acid) even when fresh.
Disclaimer: I have no experience with low FODMAP diets. But it seems quite a challenge to make a Thai curry without garlic or shallots in any case!
In Thai cooking, you typically want to have very strong flavours, and a balance of the basic flavours: bitter, sweet, salt, sour, and umami. So perhaps your problem isn't so much having a strong bitter taste (which isn't appreciated as much in western cuisine as it is in Thai cuisine), as a relative lack of the other basic tastes?
I would suggest that you may be missing out especially on salt and umami, because you haven't used any fermented fish sauce (which is typically very salty) for seasoning, nor fermented shrimp paste ("gapi", which is very umami) in the curry paste. One teaspoon of salt is not very much; in commercial curry pastes you may find as much as 25% salt.
Other things that come to mind (which may or may not be relevant to your issue):
Don't use lime juice in the curry paste; but do use a bit of lime zest. It's fine to use lime juice for seasoning while cooking the curry, though. I typically use a bit more than one teaspoon, perhaps two or three. But it all depends on the balance of the dish: as a rule of thumb, add (palm) sugar for sweetness, fish sauce for saltiness, and lime juice for sourness, until you can taste all basic tastes, without any one overwhelming the others.
Don't include the coriander leaves and top part of the stems in the curry paste, only the roots and lower part (about an inch) of the stems. You can use the leaves to garnish the dish.
Don't use spring onions in the paste, as they make a poor substitute for shallots; they're also better used for garnishing the dish.
Use galangal instead of ginger, if you can find it (if I can't get fresh galangal, I won't even bother trying to make my own curry paste).
Hope this helps!
Unfortunately, the green parts of spring onions are about the only allium allowed on the low FODMAP diet, so you end up using quite a bit, and asafoetida, if you have a source.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.710608
| 2015-01-06T16:01:46 |
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|
18908
|
Using beet stock
There's a pot full of water left over after boiling beets.
I know beets are full of good stuff. I'd rather not throw this beet stock down the drain, but rather use it.
How can this beet water or beet stock be put to good use?
For next time, you can bake the beets instead of boiling them. Neater (I peel them after they are cooked) and keeps more flavour in them. For this time, you could use it to start a beef stock (add some browned bones and simmer a while) that you will then use for borscht. My borscht needs about a litre of beef stock per pound of beets.
You can use it as a base for risotto if you like the flavor. It will make lovely pink rice.
Wow, I like this idea. Can't wait to try it.
The best use for beet stock--the water you boiled fresh beets in--is to drink it. Make sure, of course, you wash the beets before boiling so your stock is free of unwanted icky stuff.
Beet stock is just one of the four ways you can use fresh beets. First, cut off the stalks and then cut the leaves off the stocks. The stalks, boiled or sauteed, can be eaten like asparagus or chard stalks. Same with the leaves--use them the same as chard. Then boil the beets, without cutting so you don't lose too much of their color to the water. After the beets are cooked, let the stock cool--overnight, preferably--before using as a beverage.
Beets are a food of which nothing goes to waste.
The only use I know for beet water is in pickling things. For example, traditionally pickled turnips served with Lebanese food are colored with beet juice in the pickling brine. I don't have a recipe for it, but you can probably search one out.
I just took my cool beet juice, threw it in the vitamix with some ice and a blood orange and a dash of stevia..... Yuuuuuuuuummmmmmmm! Wowie!
Beet Lemonade.
No need for sugar. Just squeeze some fresh lemon, chill and sip. :P
Add some honey you have a SweetTooth.
You must make borscht. See for example here; you don't have to have meat in the recipe.
I was puzzled as what to do wirh beet water, i added honey till it was to my desired sweetness and chilled it, even added vodka to a glass of it, delicious
We use leftover beet water in protein shake along with other veggies..too many nutrients to throw down the drain.
It seems that a whole pot of water is a bit much to save for shakes; can you include a recommendation on how to maybe minimize the volume of water or something like that in the answer?
I use the beet water as a liquid replacement when I cook quinoia, farro, couscous, buckwheat. Excellent flavor! Season with salt & pepper.
I enjoyed it with some carbonated water! Yum!
I peel beets, quick rinse, then boil in water and seasoning as I want to create the stock.
After serving the cut beets, I throw the rinsed, cut beet greens (or any other greens on hand) into the stock while hot. Sometimes it's parsley, cilantro, spinach, kohlrabi, or even lettuce.
From here, it can be eaten as is or used as the base for a complex soup.
This seems more like a comment than an answer. This is interesting, but how does this help the person who asked the original question?
If you make jams or jellies, use the beet water instead of plain water for a healthier version of your favorite jam/jelly (blueberry, strawberry, cherry or raspberry).
Also, good in homemade vegetable soup or borscht.
Can be used for some pickling as well.
You can add some brown sugar boil it down until it is a bit thick but not syrup consistency yet.
Then then drink it like a natural beet flavoured cool-drink.
Thank you, i just boiled some beets outside in my yard as it is summer in New England. I want to get the most nutrition from my veggies.
We will strain the beets for smooties and then have morning Nova Scotia Oat cakes and have some sweetened beet juice for breakfast.
The other day I made a gravy for a roast diner with beet stock. It worked as well as any other vegetable stock, and the resulting gravy was an amazingly vivid purple colour that I found it hard to believe was really derived from natural ingredients.
I like to cut and quick boil my beets with pieces of ginger for about 15-20 minutes. Then, when tender, pour into a jar and pop into the fridge (beets, ginger, and stock). After a day, the beet juice becomes slightly more thick, sweet, and slightly spicey. The beet peices are saved very well and soak up the flavor very well. Add the beet tops too if desired for soaking and saving!
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.711007
| 2011-11-12T03:05:32 |
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|
113911
|
Minimum quantity of heavy whipping cream to get whipped cream from dispenser
I tried to make whipped cream with a 500mL dispenser by following the instructions (chill the dispenser for 3 hours, shake at most 7 times), but since I didn't want as much as commonly directed (2 cups), I only used 6 tbsp. However, that led to the cream coming out runny/liquid (Horizon Organic Heavy Whipping Cream, if it matters).
What is the minimum quantity of heavy whipping cream you need to put in dispenser in order to get actual whipped cream out?
I don't know the answer to this, but for such a small quantity, wouldn't it be easier to whip it by hand...?
@rumtscho: This isn't a duplicate, as I don't have access to a smaller dispenser.
@DanDascalescu it both explains the reason for the runny result and gives an answer relative to the volume of the dispenser. Do you believe it will be different for the larger dispenser?
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.711512
| 2021-01-23T22:34:47 |
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|
58084
|
Can I let food be tested for spoilage after freezer power outage?
We had a chest freezer filled with beef get disconnected from power for some period of time. Reconnected and refroze the meat. I don't know how long it was without power. Packets of hamburger were soft to the touch. I didn't think to check the temperature so I don't know if it was above 40 degrees but I suspect so.
Are there facilities that will do small batch food testing for pathogens for end consumers?
I'd assume food testing is more expensive than the food, unless you have lots of it and you know said lots have been at the same temperature (so that you get a good sample).
I seriously doubt it. The expense and complexity of making sure there are NO pathogens in a random sample of food would be significant. And then that would be all you'd have; a statement that the tested sample had no pathogens, but who knows about the rest of the food.
Testing food in a manufacturing plant depends on the commonality of how the food has been treated; if no problems are found in the samples then you can presume no problems will be found in similarly-handled food. In your freezer, though, you may have different packagings done at different times, and when it warmed up, different parts certainly warmed to different temperatures. Finding out if one item is safe would have very little to do with whether the rest of the contents are safe.
There's also the liability of the tester; if they claimed they could tell you if your beef was safe, and then you got food poisoning, they'd be on the hook. I doubt they'd take the risk.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.711616
| 2015-06-07T18:59:47 |
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|
59622
|
How should I substitute jalapeño peppers for fresh green cayenne peppers?
I'm making tomato relish and my recipe requires 10 fresh green cayenne peppers, which aren't available at this time. I can buy Jalapeño peppers and would like to substitute those, but I don't know if I should use 1 to 1.
I use a bushel of tomatoes, peeled, cored, seeded; lots of work involved. Add peppers, onions, sugar, vinegar, a little canning salt and cook til real thick. Recipe calls for 8 cups of coarsely chopped tomatoes; I double or triple the recipe most of the time in order to can enough to use til next summer. It's canning season in the southeast USA!
Can you post the recipe or clarify exactly which chili pepper the recipe is asking for? There are several different green Chili peppers out, each with their own unique flavor and spice level.
It's the fresh green cayenne pepper. The pods are normally 5 to 6 inches long; they can be used ripened, (red), but I prefer to use them green.
It sounds like maybe this is your own personal recipe - are these also peppers you're growing? I know they get hotter as they ripen, so this isn't as crazy as using 10 ripe ones, but still, 10 sounds like quite a lot. Is this a big batch? Or are yours maybe pretty mild?
Or are you scraping them out pretty thoroughly so the heat doesn't matter much?
I think 10 jalapenos would add a lot more bulk than the original green cayenne peppers and might change the texture of the resulting dish. Maybe add the same volume of jalapeno as you would have had from the green cayenne and use something else to adjust the heat (one habanero, for example, or some powdered cayenne).
I'm not sure you're familiar with it but I'd like to introduce you to the Scoville Scale:
The Scoville scale is the measurement of the pungency (spicy heat) of chili peppers or other spicy foods as reported in Scoville heat units (SHU), a function of capsaicin concentration. The scale is named after its creator, American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville. His method, devised in 1912, is known as the Scoville Organoleptic Test.
Unlike methods based on high-performance liquid chromatography, the Scoville scale is an empirical measurement dependent on the capsaicin sensitivity of testers and so is not a precise or accurate method to measure capsaicinoid concentration. [emphasis added]
This scale is subjective but having many people rate peppers at similar levels gives a pretty decent scale of relative "hotness".
On the scale, the Jalapeño rates between 2,500 and 10,000 Scoville units
It is of mild to medium pungency, 2,500 and 10,000 Scoville units in general.
While the cayenne rates around 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville units:
It is generally rated at 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville units.
It is unclear whether this range includes the immature, green varieties, though some charts place the cayenne at 50,000, so that could give the lower 30,000 as the rating of the green peppers.
So, even at its lowest rating, the cayenne pepper is three times hotter than the jalapeño's higest rating.
Relative hotness aside, I don't believe there's any reason you can't substitute the two. There are two important factors to be mindful of:
different flavor profile
Classified, as a hot pepper, Green Cayenne chiles are not as hot as in their more mature red form, yet still offer a pungent heat with a fresh grassy, chile pepper flavor.
The crisp and juicy flesh of the Jalapeno pepper offers a vegetal flavor and a spicy bite with heat increasing as the pepper peaks in maturity.
different water content
the jalapeno is more wet as it has thicker flesh while the cayenne has thinner flesh. This alone could affect your final product a bit, though you say you cook it down a lot, so it may be less impactful than a fresh salsa.
I'm would not recommend increasing the ratio to 3-1 to make it more hot because I'm not certain that having a higher ratio of heat producing content will actually make it taste as hot as the cayenne ever would - and it will add some volume to your relish. In the end, using jalapenos instead of cayenne will certainly be a different product but that doesn't mean it will be bad.
You can always taste as you go and add more spice before it's finished cooking if the flavor is too mild. Remember, though, that spicy flavors can change as a product ages, the way chili always tastes better the second day.
Also, cayenne is not as hot when you pick it early (that is, when it's green and not red - as her recipe mentions)
@djmadscribbler that is probably true. I'll see if I can find some numbers on it.
That's why I didn't post an answer - I'm not really at all sure how hot the OP's usual peppers are, but given that she's using 10 of them in a single batch of something, I'm suspicious they're not very hot.
@Jefromi true. The scoville site states that color doesn't actually mean anything about the hotness. The page on cayenne even pictures a green one and still quotes the 30k-50k number. http://www.eatmorechiles.com/Cayenne.html also, it's very possible that this is a large batch recipe.
@Catija It says that, but... http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/23604/are-chillies-hotter-when-theyre-ripe It does look like there's some diagreement about details and it's hard to find anything super super reliable, but it sure seems like they do get at least somewhat hotter in at least some cases as they ripen. The claim on the Eat More Chiles site strikes me as an unhelpful one - "technically, color is just ripeness, not heat." (But heat may come along with ripeness.)
Suggestions: I'm pretty sure the Scoville Scale ignores the size differences. So, e.g., if OP's jalapeño peppers are smaller/lighter than a typical cayenne pepper, OP will need to add more (and less if they're bigger). You could also suggest OP mix peppers—e.g., a single habanero pepper will give quite a bit of heat and then use a few jalapeños (or poblanos or even bell peppers) to get the other pepper flavors.
Info from the last comment edited into the question body, cleaned up comments
@derobert : scoville scale is by volume of pepper. (so a pepper that's 10x as hot in scoville, but 1/10 the volume contributes the same amount of heat overall). If cayenne are ~80/lb and ~5-10x the scoville of jalapenos, then you want about 10 to 20oz of jalapeños. As green is less spicy than red, I'd probably try 4 to 8 oz first, and then see how it is. You might consider making a 1/2 batch on the low side, and then adjust for the second one and blend the two.
There are two main factors to consider when you substitute one chili pepper for another. The flavor and the capsaicin level. The flavor of each pepper will have its own unique notes but it will not drastically affect your recipe.
The capsaisin level is the thing to watch out for. A Cayenne Pepper is much spicier than a Jalapeno pepper. A Cayenne pepper will have around 30,000-50,000 on the Scoville Scale while Jalapeno is typically around 3500 to 10000.
It would be unreasonable to substitute 50+ Jalapeno peppers for the Cayenne peppers. But one thing you can do is use the 10 Jalapeno for the flavor and introduce an external source of capsaisin to make the relish spicier.
Except cayenne are milder when unripe, and the fact that the OP is using 10 in a single recipe suggests they're a lot milder, unless the recipe is huge. (Even 10 jalapenos would make a pretty spicy relish.)
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.711794
| 2015-08-05T16:38:36 |
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|
43980
|
After a few days why does my hot sauce separate leaving liquid in the bottom?
After making my hot sauce it tends to separate leaving a vinegar at the bottom and sauce at the top. When I shake it up then it's back to normal. Any suggestions?
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.712350
| 2014-05-07T22:13:50 |
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|
54367
|
Teryaki sauce becomes viscous after boiled
I recently cooked chicken in a Teryaki sauce/marinade, and it turned out great. I cooked the chicken on both sides, and then cooked it in a bath of Teryaki for about 3 minutes. The Teryaki bubbled a lot.
I let the Teryaki sit there in the pan, after cooking, for about 24 hours, and it turned into a tar-like, viscous substance. It reminded me of a video of a guy doing the same with coca cola, which had the same type of affect, which brings me to the question: is this a problem, or a harmless effect expected to happen?
Also, is it bad practice to cook it in a bath of Teryaki like this? Would marinading it be a better alternative? How long should I marinade it for?
This is Yoshinoya's Sweet & Sour (Teryaki-like) sauce, from Costco. Very tasty.
Why would consistency effect healthyness?
It looks really disgusting, and it wouldn't be something I eat if it was originally presented to me in that form. If you something like tar, you probably wouldn't eat it even if someone said it were edible.
The fact that it was left sitting out at room temperature for a day is a more significant food safety issue than the sauce becoming overly thick. However, the increased viscosity is not caused by bacteria or other contaminant, just evaporation.
Hello! I understand that you are concerned about your health, but nutrition and healthy is off topic here. Food safety is on topic, but it depends on safe food handling, not on the thickness of the sauce. I decided to edit out that part instead of outright closing the question, maybe somebody can explain what is happening and whether to expect it to happen again.
Where did she ask about nutrition? I read it as she was asking if it would make her sick.
All it is, is loss of water. Left behind is the copious amounts of sugar which is now a thick syrup. A splash of water and a little heat and it'll look the same as it did when you emptied your packet. Nothing to worry about, I wouldn't eat it more due to the chicken residue left in there (Though it is very possible all that sugar has "preserved it" I wouldn't take the risk).Regarding the cooking. I wouldn't bother marinading it, it's been proven else where on this site to be pretty much a waste of time.I also wouldn't suggest boiling it, or any meat, it causes a strange texture.Simmer instead.
Teryaki has sugar in it. If you bring it to a boil, the sugar will behave like it typically does in candy-making, and become viscous and possibly tar-like.
You often want this sort of behaviour if you're trying to make a barbeque sauce from meat drippings, but it sounds like you let it boil a little too long.
And let it sit uncovered too long.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.712416
| 2015-02-04T03:18:37 |
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|
42141
|
What can make a gluten free sponge light and fluffy?
I've tried 5 recipes for gluten free lemon cake and all of them have a tight brick like texture.
What would make a cake fluffy if it is gluten-free? How do I recognize a recipe which produces a good cake?
Recipe requests are off-topic, as described in the Help center, http://cooking.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic. You will have to search for a recipe somewhere else. But choosing a good recipe is hard, as you have already found out, especially for a thing for which actually no perfect solution exists (the texture of a gluten free cake will never be as good as the one of a flour cake). So I hope that it will help you if we look for answers how to recognize which recipe is likely to produce something decent. So I edited your question instead of closing.
@rumtscho thanks for doing this, its just been really hard to find a good one.
I have no trouble making lovely light lemon cake gluten free, and many other gluten free cakes too, I make them for a living. There is a substitute for gluten and it's called Xanthan Gum. You can buy this separately to add to your flour (about a teaspoonful for every 250g), or in a ready mixed flour blend, at least you can in the UK. A mixture of flours such as rice, potato starch, tapioca and maize/cornstarch works much better than a single flour when substituting for wheat flour. Each flour has its own unique characteristics and brings different properties to the cake. The combination of these, if got right, makes a light, moist and tasty cake, often better than wheat flour ones - this is feedback from my customers who are not coeliac!
There are recipes to be found on the web for making one's own flour blends if needed, but look for a recipe that contains Xanthan Gum and it will not turn out like a brick. And there's no need to cream the fat with the sugar and whisk the eggs separately etc. I just use an all-in-one everything in the mixer bowl and mix.
For the all-in-one sponge I use a soft spread as the fat. In the UK the good ones are Flora, Utterly Butterly, Bertolli. I Can't Believe It's not Butter works but tastes way too salty in my opinion. If you want to use pure butter, it has to be very soft for this method to work.
This is what I did when I make a Italian gluten free almond cake. Set aside five eggs to room temperature. Crack the eggs separate the egg whites from the yolks. Take the egg whites in bowl put in 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda whip for three minutes with a blender, add a couple dashes of sparkling water, and whip for a minute more then add the yolks and whip until blended. When the cake was baked it was fluffy and light I was thrilled . A easy gluten free cake made with just few ingredients, Almond flour, eggs, baking soda, sparkling water, almond extract of handful of slivered almonds. of course a oil sprayed cake pan.
You could try separating the eggs, whipping the egg whites, and folding them into the batter. Aside from that, perhaps some buttermilk and extra baking soda would help give additional lift.
The flour should be sifted, and a lighter flour should be used, as suggested by Daniel.
You could even replace some of the liquid in the recipe with club soda, but I'm uncertain of how well the batter will hold on to the extra air.
Try sifting the gluten free flour. Once at least then try your recipe. Perhaps, depending on the gluten free flour mix, you may need to sift twice.
Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.
Gluten is what traps the air bubbles during baking thus making a cake "fluffy". I don't really think there's a substitute...the best way I can think of is to mix some sort of lighter flour (cake flour, tapioca flour) in with the current recipe to decrease the density of the cake.
What sort of flour are you using currently?
Cake flour is downright dangerous - it contains ca. 5% gluten and will make gluten sensitive people violently ill. Gluten free recipes are very hard to get right in texture, so randomly adding tapioca starch to one of them is unlikely to do anything good.
Ah, I wasn't aware that cake flour contained gluten. And I wasn't telling him to randomly add ingredients to a current recipe...
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.712992
| 2014-02-18T17:04:29 |
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|
15260
|
Availability of pure alcohol in the UK (or alternatives as fuel for alcohol-burning cookers)
My friends from Portugal have a chorizo cooker (something, I believe, a bit like this), and they would like to use it in the UK. In Portugal they burn pure alcohol in it, which they purchase from pharmacies.
As far as I am aware, in the UK we are not able to buy alcohol so freely. Does anyone know of where alcohol can be bought, or of a suitable alternative fuel?
I edited the title because it sounded like you were asking about adding pure ethanol to a dish; please revise it if I got it wrong. Btw, it may not be called "alcohol" if you want it as fuel. In Germany, you can buy undrinkable "Brennspiritus" which is still mostly ethanol but is regulated differently from drinkable alcohol. There are probably similar products in the UK.
You should be able to get it at any proper chemist. You could also just buy a cheap high-proof drink like vodka.
The obvious solution is to distill your own moonshine. You can have a drink for the cooker and one for the cook!
You can't use methylated spirit to cook that way. Methylated spirit contains 1% pyridine to deter people from drinking it, and it will taint the sausage (and no, they don't say what is in it on the label).
The way that excise tariffs are set up, you could buy pure alcohol in UK, but the duty would drive the price to about £75 per litre.
Better to buy pure alcohol in countries that are used to selling it retail (I always bring back a couple of litres from Italy, about €16 / litre).
As I understand it, you're only able to buy pure alcohol in UK for industrial / commercial purposes - you could theoretically pay the duty and buy it as a private individual, but you'd have a hard job getting anyone to supply you. Cooking in a restaurant might count, but you would have to keep a log book on how you use it if you wanted to claim the duty back.
Pyridine is a much worse poison that ethanol! Are you sure they actually use that in the UK? Most countries I know off list the bittering agent, typically Denatonium Benzoate
The recipe was established many years ago, and I remember the trouble I had actually finding out what was in there about 30 years ago. My chemist's nose says that they still add pyridine.
What you are after is commonly called Methylated Spirits, or Meths. Also known as denatured alcohol
It is made from ethanol (ethyl alcohol) and tainted with a dash of methanol to make it unfit for human consumption. It is usually coloured purple
In many countries it has a bittering agent added (check the label, or taste it), since many people seem to want to risk drinking methanol
The bittering agent may make your food taste very bad with such a cooker you pictured
What you need is "Industrial Methylated Spirits" from food product, paint or chemical suppliers. It generally does not have bittering agents or colouring added, just methanol
You can taste it by letting it evaporate on your skin, and then giving that a quick lick. If it had bittering agents in it you will know!
You could try getting some Irish Poitín, which is 180 proof, however, I don't know if it's legally sold in the UK. It is carried in the duty free stores in Heathrow and on the ferries to Ireland, though.
You can get laboratory grade, additive-less grain alcohol from here, however, it's £27.98/L + duty (and I think the minimum order is for 2.5L). I don't know if I'd trust something that wasn't explicitly listed as "food grade", though.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.713382
| 2011-06-05T20:39:31 |
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|
25365
|
What is a good book about soup?
I really love soup, and mine always comes out pretty badly - once in a while I get a good one, but generally pretty disappointing.
Can anyone recommend a good book for making soup? Not necessarily a "list of recipes" type of book, more of an "understanding soup" type of book, if that makes any sense to you?
I don't know that such a book exists; soup, as a class, is more pragmatic than philosophical. Will be interested to see the answers you get.
This question should be asked in the Chat, not on the main site, as it's a polling question.
@BaffledCook questions about books, while not exactly liked, are tolerated, if the OP can specify their criteria closely enough, and there is not a large list of literature which fits them. For now, I don't see a tendency of this question turning into a list, probably because there don't seem to be many such books.
If you check out the "Seasoned Advice Blog", @Yossarian has posted the first two parts of a three part series entitled "Three Books for Every Kitchen". In part-one he describes The New Best Recipe from Cooks Illustrated. I will direct your attention to Chapter 2: Soups. Not only will you find a rich collection of recipes, but invaluable advise on every aspect of soup making.
Part two of the series, "Ratio", also contains several lessons that will improve your soup making skills.
Not only will these two books help you with "Soups" they will enrich your overall kitchen life, in every aspect of cooking.
(note: at this point, part 3 is still pending, but I will bet it will be a winner as well)
The third post of the series is scheduled to appear tomorrow (we moved to an every-wednesday schedule). It doesn't have techniques advice, but it is certainly a book worth reading.
@rumtscho, even if part 3 doesn't provide info related to OP's question, I'm sure it will be good. I've heard good things about "The Flavor Bible" but it hasn't made it to the top of my reading list yet.
This video might be useful, as it's quite generic: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/videos/1040/making-soup
A tip sheet from Jamie Oliver: http://www.jamieshomecookingskills.com/pdfs/fact-sheets/Super%20soups.pdf
More soup tips: http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2010/03/how-to-make-fabulous-soup-from-scratch-without-a-recipe.html
My own tips, some of which you can find above.
Stock is key. Make your own chicken stock whenever you have a carcass, and you will have a fantastic base for any fairly hefty soup.
Saute or roast non-leafy veggies such as celery, carrot, pumpkin, sweet potato and onion, to really bring out their sweetness and flavour.
Don't add salt until the end.
Invest in a really good blender.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.713766
| 2012-07-31T02:46:59 |
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|
23529
|
Can you cook bone stock in two hours, if not what are the problems?
I tried to make my first stock, used 1 chicken carcass, brought to boil and simmered all in 2 hours. Regrigerated it and next day everything was gel. I know recipes say it should be 6-24 hours however isn't my one considered a success?
What things am I missing out on by not cooking for half a day?
Chicken stock is often simmered for 2-3 hours. Larger boned animals (beef) is cooked longer, 4-6 hours. What you would miss is some flavor and some gelatin. I don't have any source, so I'm leaving this as a comment... :p
Refrigerated stock is supposed to gel. Its caused by the gelatin you're (intentionally!) extracting from the bones.
To determine if its a success, you'd taste it. Assuming it tastes right, then its a success. If you had you cooked it longer, you may have extracted a little more flavor & gelatin (so it'd be an even thicker gel).
You can also make chicken stock in a slow cooker (if you want an easy way to let it simmer all day), or in a pressure cooker (if you want to make stock in a hour). The taste of these methods will be slightly different, and for best taste pressure-cooker stock requires a non-venting pressure cooker running at 15 psi.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.714013
| 2012-05-02T12:30:01 |
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|
18821
|
How to (cheaply) maintain a plentiful herb supply
I love herbs. When I buy them in packets, it seems they are ludicrously overpriced and go bad quite quickly. I keep them in the fridge, but perhaps there is a way to make them last longer? I have tried buying potted plants but either 1. I use the herbs so much the plant is depleted after a very short while, or 2. If I try to be sparing, the plants tend to die anyway.
Does anyway have advice on cheaply keeping a constant supply of fresh herbs (particularly rosemary, thyme, sage and parsley).
Agree that planted herbs are great but you say you've tried that. I kill about 1/4 to 1/2 what I plant, but those that live thrive and get bigger. After a big push just over a year ago I have an endless supply of thyme, rosemary, lemon balm and a dozen sage varieties. I do think it helps if you use them sparingly in their first season so they can get established.
I don't know where you live, but if in a city or anywhere near a foreign enclave you might find herbs at an Asian market or other international market much cheaper. It's $4-6 for tiny plastic container of cilantro or mint at my local grocery, for instance, but at the Vietnamese and Chinese markets it's usually 0.50 - $1.25 for a big bunch.
To make any leafy green herb last longer in the short term wrap them in a wet paper towel and put that in a plastic bag.
You can freeze what you don't use in small ice cube trays for easy serving / use later. I especially like this for basil and mint. You can also buy pre-frozen herbs.
You can also dry them - air dry upside down, accelerate by drying them in the oven on low (very low) or use a food dehydrator.
Grow them! It's easy, cheap and they'll always be available. NOthing you'll ever grow will give so much back for so little input.
Many herbs - especially rosemary, sage and thyme - are woody perennials and once established in a sunny corner of your garden, they will grow and spread and you'll have them all year round, if your winters aren't too harsh. Better still the woody herbs actively prefer poor, free draining soils with lots of grit mixed in, so they will grow, look good and be fragrant in sunny, high traffic spots such as the edge of a path, where other plants, even grass won't easily grow.
Buy a couple of growing pots from a good local garden centre and have a go. Parsley is a little harder (it germination can be erratic), but it's a binannual (which grows one year and flowers the next), so once you have a root established you'll get a couple of years out of it. Like coriander leaf it needs sun, but more moisture. If you have a moist, even slightly shady spot, and plant chives and mint, you'll never get rid of them as they are hardy and prolific.
Basil will grow very well on a sunny windowsill if you keep it in moist and rich compost and frost free.
Good luck. Nothing steps your cooking up to the next level like everyday access to fresh herbs.
Frozen herbs taste almost as good as fresh ones, and last for ages. I can find the common herbs (e.g. parsley, chives, as well as some mixtures) for around 50 Eurocents for a cigarette pack sized package. I guess that freezing them yourself will work too, but both the packs and pot plants are overpriced :( (I pay anywhere from 1.50 € to 2.50 € for a mug-sized pot with 4-5 sprigs of herb, and packs or bouquets cost similar for less plant matter, if available at all).
The optimal solution would be to plant them in your garden, use them in summer, and freeze them for winter, but this solution requires, of course, time, a garden, and somewhat of a green thumb (although some herbs will grow with practically no care). Else you could go to a farmer's market and see if they sell herbs in bulk. Ethnic grocery stores are also likely to have herb bouquets much cheaper than supermarkets, for example spearmint is really common in Turkish stores.
a) Dry up
Thyme / Peppermint: Should be dried up (if not already) and hang up as a bunch somewhere it gets no humidity (definitely not around cooking area) or grinded by hand and put in a jar with a tight top which isolates air well.
Sage: Dried and bunched as above. Grinding not recommended.
Drying procedure: Wash the fresh herb (separate the branches if in bunch) and put on a paper towel to absorb all the water first. Then put the herb on a large paper with all the branches separated and let to dry up well (It may take some days!) The paper should not be placed anywhere humid.
Testing: If herb gets crashed in between your fingers easily then it dried up well – you can either make a bunch and hang up or grind/crash by hands and put in a jar with tight top.
b) Grow them as "Paul L" recommended
Most of the herbs/plants die just because they are not in proper pot (mostly very small) with proper soil mixture.
Buy a pot of rosemary/laurel bay/parsley/mint, etc. And then change the pot with a bigger size one (big enough to let the herb to grow up) and change the soil as indicated below.
Soil mixture: 2 units of garden soil (from garden/park, etc.) + 1 unit of Turf (from shop) + ½ unit of unsalted sand (if possible, but not very critical).
Mix them all. First put a few smal stones (supllied from garden/park, etc) into the pot (make sure the pot has water drainage holes underneath).
And then fill roughly ¾ of the pot with soil mixture. Then place your plant/herb into the soil.
Then put rest of the soil mixture around the plant (make sure the roots are not left out of the soil or your plant is not placed too deep in the soil which covers the leaves) and then water it.
Place the pot where it gets light (but not directly) and air (but not cold).
Watering period: Check the soil with your finger; the soil should be always humid (neither dry nor muddy - overdose watering also harms the plant).
You can have same rosbery and laurel bay for years and years by the side of a small kitchen window. If you also learn how to prune them, they will live even longer.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.714151
| 2011-11-08T04:24:07 |
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|
14244
|
Cooking tied-up ribeye
This is probably a silly question, but I saw these steaks that the butcher in the grocery store said to be made of several pieces attached together by a thread. So I am wondering:
How do you cook a tied-up ribeye?
Can it be done on a grill?
Should the thread be removed before grilling or after?
My concern is that if the thread is removed before grilling the whole thing might just fall apart. The steaks looked delicious and I'd love to cook those, but I have no idea how to handle the thread.
Cook it with the string on, then remove the string when you eat it. It is there to hold it altogether while cooking. Should be fine to grill, butcher's twine is food safe and stands up to roasting and braising so should be fine on the grill too. But if you wanted to do something else, like turn the smaller pieces into kabobs, then you could skewer them with some veggies and grill them.
At least your butcher was honest about tying the pieces together with string. I bought a vaccum packed ribeye "steak" the other day and when I was grilling it and turned it, the top part came off as a thin slice like roladen.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.714607
| 2011-04-22T00:22:31 |
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|
14413
|
Ways to bar-b-que and smoke Kangaroo
Kangaroo is an unusual meat for most of the world. From reputation, it's quite hard to cook right as it tends to dry out:
Kangaroo meat is very low in fat, usually less than 2%. This is lower than most other red meats. This makes Kangaroo very healthy but also means it must be cooked carefully. Kangaroo is also very high in protein and iron. Fat contains a lot of moisture, hence meats like beef which is very high in fat can be cooked to very well done. However because kangaroo has virtually no fat it can easily dry out during cooking. Because of this it's important to follow a few simple steps to retain the moisture in the meat.
In light of this, what smoking and BBQ techniques are appropriate for kangaroo?
I'd add the 'roo tag, but I don't have enough rep (nor am I certain about tagging taxonomies over here.) Edits are welcome.
I've only ever eaten kangaroo—I've never cooked it—hence this being a comment as opposed to a full answer. Unless you are cooking a fattier cut with more connective tissue (Does a kangaroo even have any? The tail? Saddle?), I'd treat it like a veal tenderloin: Cook it on high heat for a short amount of time to achieve medium-rare. I'd also highly recommend brining it beforehand (just make sure to thoroughly dry it before grilling).
A new tag? How many kanga questions are you expecting to bounce in?
That's why I commented on taxonomies. I know the various sites have strongly different ... requirements. I'd add the tag on an equivalent topic on RPG.SE because it's the central point of the question, but I don't know the policies here.
@tfd Completely legitimate tag. If someone is looking for kangaroo related questions, a tag would make it much easier, even if there only turn out to be a few.
@TFD: We've always had a policy of using specific tags for specific meats. Within a site that is supposed to be global, there's no reason for us to discriminate based on region.
Kangaroo meat has become widely available in Australia in recent years. Major supermarket chains in the cities even carry it now. There may only be 22 million people in Australia but that doesn't seem like a reason to presuppose no other kangaroo questions will be asked.
I have neither cooked nor eaten kangaroo, but I think the information that it is very lean should be sufficient to answer this question. Smoking is a low and slow technique that is used to make tough cuts of meat tender. This works by using a low temperature to break down the tough connective tissues which makes the end result both tender and moist. This would not work with a lean cut of meat like a filet. You'd just end up with a tough piece of meat. So unless you really go after the toughest bits of the 'roo, I'd advise against smoking.
As ESultanik says in a comment, to attack the lean parts of the animal, treat it like any other piece of non-fatty meat (filet / tenderloin for example). Use a very hot grill and shoot for an internal temperature of rare to medium-rare depending on preference. The exact technique for cooking is up to you. I tend to do a two level fire for searing and then finishing, but the exact method depends on the type of grill, thickness of the cut, etc. If you would like some smoke flavor, you can throw some wood chips on while cooking like this and see what you get. The short time and frequency with which you tend the meat / open the grill may make this completely ineffective, but it's worth trying to see if you get some smoke flavor, if that's what you really want.
If you have a way to cold smoke the meat, that would be a good way of adding the smoke flavour without drying it out/making it tough
Well, there is always cooking it super rare. That's usually my method. And it's healthier that the other options, discounting possible foodborne illness.
However the more traditional responses are barding and larding. In short, just because the meat doesn't come with fat, doesn't mean that fat can't be added. In the case of barding, you just put a little bacon or fatback on the top (think fillet mignon), and you're good to go. As it cooks, it'll lend a little of it's fat to your fatless meat.
Larding, on the other hand...This used to be a lot more popular, and it's largely fallen out of favor (imho) just because it's kinda icky. Take a huge hunk of fat, and ram it into your meat using a giant needle. Mmmmmm. I'd only recommend this if you were trying to braise the meat, and couldn't get it to work without the meat drying out.
In this case it is not a healthy dish anymore.
I've only cooked roo meat for myself a few times with varying success; roasting, minced in sausages, and hot-seared steak style.
One occasion, I tried a variation of recipes I found online for a leg-roast cooked in a camp oven (cast iron dutch oven used outdoors in a fire pit). A well-known bbq site also had a slow cooked version that involved sous-vide then slow roasting.
The main issue seemed to be: don't over cook it. I decided I would use my kamado charcoal cooker and also that I would brine the bone-in roast, to counteract the gaminess of the meat and also because I was cooking the very musculour leg meat, not the more tender cuts.
I had the meat in the fridge in brine for 19 hours. After brining I dried the meat then inserted a few slivers of garlic and sprigs of rosemary into cuts in the meat. I then rubbed it with EVOO infused with chilli, then seasoned it with cracked rock salt and pepper. It was then wrapped in cling wrap and back in the fridge overnight for the cook first thing next morning for 10+hrs low n slow.
The kamado ceramic cooker was loaded with gidgee charcoal and smoke chips with the intention of cooking for about 10 hours at roughly 235*F. However my kamado got a bit too warm, and the internal temp of the meat came up too quickly. I had to remove the meat from the cooker a few hours earlier than intended, so I wrapped it in foil and then a couple of old towels, then sealed it in an esky (cooler box) to retain heat until ready for dinner that evening. Just before serving, I glazed the roast with a slightly sweet gravy, then back in the kamado for a few minutes on a higher temp blast before carving.
Now given that I overshot the internal temperature and that it cooked a few hours too quickly, I feared that I would end up with a tough, dry inedible hunk of boot leather. However to my astonishment, this accidently turned out to be one of the best roast cooks I have done for a long time!
The meat was a bit salty due to my brine being too strong, but not to the point of ruining it. The meat had a lovely dark pink smoke ring about 1/4" deep all over under the outer bark, and was ever so moist inside. It was cooked right through but was tender and juicy and full of flavour.
I think the two most influential factors in my accidental success were; brining the meat, and cooking it in a ceramic kamado cooker which retains moisture better than most methods. By most accounts I've researched, my roo meat should have been "overcooked" yet it was quite a delight.
I am no expert, just an avid bbq experimenter. I hope my experience is of benefit to someone else.
For a leg? Lean tough chunk of meat. Place in a sealed plastic bowl. Mix 500mm red horse beer with 2 packs Korean powder BBQ sauce. Place in fridge for 12 hours. Shake often. This will tenderize it. Add BBQ flavor to meat. Lay on one piece of raw pork skin with 1/4 inch of fat on it. Place on top rack of grill. Place 1 wrapped in tinfoil packet of ground dry wood you wish for smoke flavor on bottom rack near coconut hull charcoal. Tinfoil pack need 3 holes small in it to let out smoke from wood but not big enough for it to burn.. Bake 1 hour in grill lid closed to smoke at 250f temp. at top of grill. This should smoke it. Do not open lid to grill. Add more charcoal. Coat meat with BBQ sauce turn over & place back on pork skin. Add thermomitor to bone in meat. Bring heat to 350f. in grill. Bake to 180 f at bone. This should glaze the sauce on the meat to seal. Use a thick sauce. This also works on water buffalo a very lean tough meat.
Only time I barbecued roo was simple chunks (a la kebab), no preparation, rub or marinade. Was with similar chunks of beef and lamb. Was the best of the three. Just cooked them until they looked OK, then took them off.
Tried roo prosciutto last weekend, nothing special, wouldn't buy it, though the piece I tried was too small for proper assessment.
I built a hot/cold smoker last winter, when I get free from work I plan to try smoking roo, probably brining then cold smoking. I'll just use whatever steaks I can get from the supermarket rather than picking up roadkill.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.714746
| 2011-04-29T11:37:44 |
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24620
|
What is the most effective method to mince candied ginger?
I like to use candied ginger in place of fresh ginger in some dishes that will be sweet, but I want to use it in much smaller chunks than what it comes in. My problem is that even using a well-sharpened knife, it gums up both the blade and the cutting board quite a bit. Is there some method of treating the blade or the candied ginger that would ease cutting it some?
Have you tried freezing the ginger? It might work...
Do cooking spray (on the blade) or using a Teflon-coated knife (Kuhn Rikon paring knives) help?
I normally keep it in the freezer. As @FuzzyChef says, it's quite difficult to chop frozen, and isn't any less gummy.
Depending on what the ginger is going into, lightly greasing your knife blade helps (but, obviously, not if you're putting them in something where a tiny bit of oil would be an issue). As does using a heavy carbon-steel knife like a Chinese cleaver. Freezing sounds attractive, but it doesn't work because the ginger becomes impossible to chop -- too hard.
Overall, you pretty much have to expect to scrub the knife and cutting board after you're done. You can make it a bit easier on yourself, but you can't make chopping candied ginger not messy.
I hadn't thought of trying oil. I'll try it next time and see how it goes. Most of the things I'm putting it into use either butter or oil, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Tried a lot of ways, grating, cutting with knife and food processor. Huge fails. This worked, use thinner pieces of ginger. Cut with clean scissors half way up in small rows. Do not cut all the way to the end. Turn the ginger and cut on the side (criss crossing). Clean your scissors with warm soapy water and a brush often (tried oil, didn't work as well). Also add some sugar to cut ginger to keep it from re-sticking. Works like a charm.
Nice answer! Welcome to Seasoned Advice. I took the liberty of removing your signature just because we don't do that here, but your answer is a great example of what we do do here.
If you add sugar to the cut ginger, you might have to cut back on sugar in the recipe.
I really wish I could upvote this answer more than once, 'cause I just did it. Worked like a charm :)
Thanks for your vote Jolenealaska. I found this site because I wanted to make candied ginger shortbread. It was great to read others tips and try them. Sitting with scissors, I thought I would try and it worked so well for me! I could cut the ginger as fine as I would like and no messy boards / knives.
Using Alton Brown's Candied Ginger recipe, try cutting the raw ginger to the desired size and then make it 'candied'. The raw ginger is easier to cut/chop and the result is generally better than what you can buy.
My wife and I had good luck using a heavy duty food processor (Kitchen Aid). Placed about a half cup of the candied ginger nuggets in the processor along with approximately 2 tablespoons of flour. Hand separate any nuggets that are stuck together. Too many nuggets caused some nuggets to stay large. They tend to get a little warm from the friction. Pour the cut pieces onto a cutting board and hand cut any that may be too large. Strain off any excess flour and place in a sealed jar. A & D
I was struggling with this just this morning trying to prepare a ginger bread. I finally wet my Yukon blade with hot water and then wet the ginger piece. Huge difference!
I have chopped it frozen before and it is basically regular if you line up the knife then hit the back with you're hand in a solid thud. The ginger is basically gummy enough to just break without shattering.
This is purely hypothetical, as I haven't tried it. If you're adding it to something that you're also adding sugar, you could try dusting it with powdered/icing sugar as you cut, similar to how you would dust a work surface with flour when working with dough. You'd want to account for the extra sugar you're adding though.
Alternatively, you could try using a food processor. I imagine the quick blade would be less likely to get stuck. (You could also add some powdered sugar to that for the same effect?
Yeah, i tried the food processor once... the ginger wound up gumming up the blade and was sticky enough to actually cause it to stop spinning.
Yep, I tried it in a food processor too. What a mess.
I have used "Jar" Cyrstalized Ginger and place it in a Coffee grinder with "Rice" It minces and reduces the "Gumming -up". The Rice acts as a Flour and the mixture is much easier to handle.
I have also place the "nuggets" of crystalized Ginger in a plastic sandwich bag and used a small mallet to pulverize the nuggets. Then mix with flour to prevent gumming. .... Good Luck!
I take a couple tablespoons of the sugar from the recipe and put that over top of the ginger and chop through the sugar and ginger together to minimize sticking and keep the ginger from reforming like a spicy Terminator. As suggested above, I suppose flour would work and prevent the ingredients from sinking.
If I'm using the chopped candied ginger for a topping, I will use a tablespoon or two of turbinado or raw sugar.
This trick works for chopping up any dried fruit.
The scone recipe I used called for minced crystallized ginger. I floured the pieces with flour from the recipe so I wouldn't be using extra flour. I had success both with chopping with a knife and with grating on a fine grater. Actually, though, the chopped ginger was more favorable in the scones because eating the little bits gave more flavor to a bite than the smaller grated ones.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.715426
| 2012-06-22T01:35:42 |
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30092
|
Why did my hollandaise sauce break when adding spices?
I just made my very first attempt at a hollandaise sauce, which of course broke.
The funny thing is, the sauce was perfect, and was finished. However, it was really, REALLY bland. So, to add some flavor as I've seen several other chefs demonstrate, I attempted to stir in spices (a little salt, a little chili powder, a little black pepper). As soon as the spices hit the sauce it instantly broke.
Sadly I am now out of eggs and butter, so there's no way I can salvage it. Down the sink it went.
So, what happened? What did I do wrong? Any help would be appreciated - it has to be something with those spices. Perhaps the salt??
I refuse to give this up, I need to learn these mother sauces!
Adding salt and pepper should usually not lead to a clotted sauce hollandaise.
It happens if the whole thing starts getting to hot.
The next time you do it you can try the following:
Put some ice water aside as you start. If you determine the sauce starts separating beat in a tiny amount of ice water. If you are lucky you can form the emulsion again by that. If it doesn't work you have to start over again.
I would agree but the sauce was already finished, and removed from heat when I added the seasonings, so I don't think it is heat related.
Mine just separated and all you do is add boiling water a drop at a time while stirring and it comes back together. If this doesn't work you can slowly add another egg yolk.
A few reasons it would separate are it gets too hot, the butter or fat is added too quickly or its kept warm for too long -- should be served right away.
Do you really add boiling water, not cold water?
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.715888
| 2013-01-14T22:55:31 |
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|
29174
|
What is the difference between tomato puree, paste and sauce?
I was looking for a recipe for an Italian tomato sauce when I came across an old cookbook from an American Creole Chef I like, but I'm really confused about the terminology he uses for some of the ingredients and wondered if someone could clarify exactly what he's referring to.
In the recipe he asks for -
2 cans (6 ounces) of tomato paste
2 cans (10 3/4 ounces) of tomato sauce
2 cans (10 3/4 ounces) of tomato puree
I've always assumed that tomato paste and tomato puree were the same thing, but clearly not. Can anyone clarify the difference between these two?
Tomato sauce in the UK comes out of a ketchup bottle, is he referring to passata, sieved tomatoes? If not, what is he referring to?
This recipe reads overly fussy, and chooses some of the more expensive tomato products based on amount of actual tomato (the sauce). You could easily substitute with close results, 12 oz of tomato paste (for intense tomato flavor), and 2 each 28 oz cans of whole tomatoes that you puree yourself, or crushed tomatoes. It will require a little cooking, but will give you nearly identical results.
@SAJ14SAJ Thanks for your quick answer. So, paste is what we would call puree, sauce is what we would call passata and puree is essentially crushed tomatoes in tomato sauce? Is that right?
I wish I could answer you @spiceyokooko yes or no, but my British is limited to gratuitous use of the letter "u" in words like "colour". I don't know what they are called in the UK, so I can only refer you to the descriptions of the products below.
@SAJ14SAJ From your answer, I think I understand what he's now asking for. Many thanks. This is only part of the recipe, there are other ingredients and I'm interested in it because he caramelises the paste with the onions to give sweetness.
That makes sense--good luck with your dish.
You'll find very helpful answers in this question also: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/28638/can-tomato-paste-be-substituted-for-tomato-puree?rq=1
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/412/should-i-put-a-comma-before-the-last-item-in-a-list :)
@AnishaKaul You can do it either way, I prefer not to :)
Okay, but I am more inclined towards the second answer there: http://english.stackexchange.com/a/11151/14474
Besides have you heard of the book; "Eats, shoots and leaves"? :D
@AnishaKaul "It is used less often in British English, where it is standard usage to leave it out". That's why I leave it out :) I haven't heard of that book no, I shall familiarise myself with it! And it's ironic she uses an & instead of an 'and' in the title, tsk tsk!
What has the comma debate got to do with tomato products?
EVERYTHING! ( )
@JoeFish As a formally trained linguist in a long ago other lifetime, then, I say "pshaw" on prescriptivism! Anisha Kaul Nice garden path title... Well done. I think the issue of whether to seed canned tomatoes--which is tedious and messy--or make sauce from them as is is a far more important topic. I go all in with the seeds for rustic dishes like chili mac, and seed for a more refined product like pasta amatricciana (sp?)....
In the US at least, common canned tomato products include:
Paste, cooked down tomatoes, to the point where they are scoopable with a spoon but will not flow. Very thick, like peanut butter. Often sold in six or twelve ounce cans.
Pureee - cooked tomatoes that have been--well--pureeed, but are mostly at their natural density; also called crushed tomatoes.
Sauce - cooked down, strained tomatoes, a little thicker than tomato soup. May include herbs, spices, or some flavoring in addition to pure tomato product.
Diced - solid chopped tomatoes, usually in tomato juice.
Whole - whole cooked (usually peeled) tomatoes, usually packed in tomato juice. These will still have the seeds.
Most of the tomato products I mention here are interchangeable given enough reduction or cooking, or adding of liquid depending. Ketchup--which I understand the our British friends call tomato sauce--has vinegar, sugar, and spices added, and is not really equivalent to any of these products.
Passata is not the same as sauce or puree, and is an additional item to SAJ14SAJ's list.
Here is a an excerpt from Wikipedia:
Tomato purée is never referred to by its Italian name, passata di pomodoro, when it has been "passed" through a sieve to remove seeds and lumps. Passata is an entirely different product, its main point of difference being the fact that it is not cooked. In this form, it is generally sold in bottles or aseptic packaging, and is most common in Europe. In the United Kingdom, in this form the product passata is always uncooked, otherwise it would be tomato puree (see above).
Note that wikipedia no longer includes that text, which wasn't quite right anyway. There may be no long cooking, or reduction, but it must have been heated to cooking temperatures as part of the bottling/canning/aseptic process
In the US, ketchup is prepared with tomatoes, sugar, vinegar/acetic acid and spices. It is used as a dressing or table condiment. Ketchup is cold and is never heated as a rule. Tomato sauce, on the other hand, is made from tomatoes, oil, meat or vegetable stock and spices. Vinegar is not usually used. Sauces are generally served hot. Most manufacturers insist that ketchup is made with spices while sauce is generally made without spices.
One use for heated ketchup I can think of is in some sweet and sour recipes.
The classic cheap BBQ sauce is equal parts Coke and ketchup; there are also meatloaf recipes with ketchup on top. However, ketchup as a condiment is served cold or at room temperature.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.716178
| 2012-12-14T22:44:22 |
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|
23011
|
Is it okay to prepare "Cannelloni with Spinach" recipe and put it in fridge BEFORE baking?
I'm working on this "Cannelloni with Spinach & Ricotta": http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/awesome-spinach-ricotta-cannelloni
The last step is bake it for 20-25 minutes. Is it okay to do everything, and just before the last step, place the dish into the fridge, so the next day I can just take the dish and bake it, and it's ready. Is it okay, or will it ruin the recipe's flavor?
Most casserolles are OK to be stored in the fridge before baking, or even made several days ahead and frozen. Assemble it, cover it well (e.g. with plastic wrap) and put it in the fridge. When you are ready to eat, you can bake it as usual, but you will have to make the baking time longer, because it starts out at fridge temperature, not room temperature. I can't tell you how much longer, in the worst case you will have to try cutting into the cannelloni a few times to see if they are done.
|
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.716659
| 2012-04-14T12:46:07 |
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|
14828
|
Prevent the dough from "oxidizing"?
I was practicing and trying to make an apple pie depending on this source: http://allrecipes.com/howto/perfect-pie-crusts/detail.aspx
In the Liquid section, it's said: "A little bit of acid--vinegar or lemon juice--helps tenderize the dough and prevents it from oxidizing."
What's "Oxidizing"? First time I read/hear this term in cooking?
Please help me learn, I'm still a beginner!
Thanks in advance
Oxidizing in cooking is same as Oxidizing anything. Plenty of base material on your favourite search engine
@TFD I still don't get it. So what happens to the dough when it becomes oxidized? Does it taste.. bad? Or it becomes hard to cook, or what? Sorry for the noob-type questions ^_^;
I'm not a chemist so I'll let wikipedia do it for me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxidation
As far as it's culinary effects in crusts- I have seen unreliable reference to the flour oxidizing and developing a off color.
I have never seen this personally and I am skeptical of it. Pie crusts can be made just fine without vinegar. Vinegar does significantly tenderize the crust as well as add an interesting flavor.
Vinegar on an apple pie crust? Sounds like.. crazy mixture, doesn't it?!
Not really- vinegar works very well with apples. One of my favorite apple pie fillings has balsamic vinegar in it. Delicious.
|
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.716778
| 2011-05-16T08:23:26 |
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|
14678
|
What can I do to make beaten egg puffier and fluffier?
The way I cook an egg is like this. I take the egg, crack it in a bowl, pierce the yolk, then whisk it a bit. Then I add a bit of soy sauce, and fry it in a pan. However, the egg always come out a little bit flat, and hard, so is there a remedy to this?
Yes, a few suggestions:
(1) You are most likely cooking it at too high a temperature. Scrambled eggs will come out maximally tender if you do them over very low heat, stirring almost constantly. High temperatures cause the egg proteins to knot up and become tough. For 4 eggs, figure on at least ten minutes of slow cooking.
(2) You can incorporate more air by whisking more vigorously, or if you want them really fluffy, by running them in a blender before cooking.
(3) To increase tenderness, you can also add an extra egg yolk, or more butter.
Also, remember that the eggs will keep cooking for a little while even after you take them out of the pan, so be sure to plate them up when they're still a little underdone for your liking.
Adding a splash of milk or cream also gives a bit more bulk while they are cooking, and I think improves the taste.
Another thing to recognize and beware of is the age of your eggs. Fresher eggs are fluffier than old eggs.
Adding a bit of whole milk will help with the fluffiness. According to Cooks Illustrated, the fat from the milk will actually separate the protein strands in the egg and allow more air into the mixture.
Found the freshness to be very true. I wonder if there's a science/metric for the exact amount required for that splash of milk? Too much and it seeps out after the eggs sit.
Use a medium heat and a lid (or upside down plate) on the pan so that the eggs are steamed as well as fried. You will find they go extra fluffy!
If you want real scrambled eggs try my technique for that Better Scrambled Eggs
Loved the other referenced answer. I can't stand undercooked slops, either.
Adding cold water to the eggs will mixing will also help increase the fluffiness. You can guesstimate 1-2tbsp for 4 eggs.
Obviously whisking the hell out of it definitely helps a lot.
In the book "The Science of Food and Cooking" by Allan G. Cameron, it is mentioned that eggs are acidic, this book also devotes a large section to leavening. My brother, after experimenting a bit came up with the proportion of 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder to every two eggs. This works really well for any type of mixed egg, quiches included. It also seems to work better if the baking soda is added to a small amount of water to dissolve and then mixed into the eggs.
You mention baking powder and then baking soda. I think you mean soda because you talk about eggs being acidic.
oops: %s/powder/soda/g - switch powder -> soda: all lines :)
Here's an article about making fluffier omelets.
They recommend that you use a hand blender to make the mix frothy. Alternatively, you can use a hand blender on just the whites, then fold into the yolks later.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.716924
| 2011-05-11T06:29:14 |
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|
14692
|
How can I get brownies to bake evenly?
I can never get the middle of my brownies "done" without overbaking the outsides. The middle is tasty, but gooey. What is the secret?
Oven Temperature
Most ovens keep inaccurate temperatures with respect to your setting. You may be setting it to 350, but it could be baking at 375. I would suggest investing in an oven thermometer. I've seen these for a dollar--well worth the investment.
Baking Vessel
I was surprised to find this out, but the pan color actually affects heat conduction. If you use a non-stick tin, for example, your brownies are more likely to burn. I've seen some people use silicone brownie pans to minimize this kind of uneven cooking.
Very true. My oven here really guarantees a minimum of 350 when set at 350 (and varies between 350 and 450). All ovens have this variability as they heat and cool, though most are not such a wide range. Also, further to Ray's suggestion above, it is often worth having a good mulitmeter around, and good ones tend to come with a thermistor component. Generally, a thermistor will be more accurate and sensitive than an oven thermometer.
You can always invest in a convection oven. The fan tends to even out the temperature a bit more.
If your problem is the center of the pan rather than the vertical center of the brownies, you could use
"The Edge Brownie Pan".
Or, rather than getting a tool that doesn't have a whole lot of uses (although, I think I remember someone telling me that some brands of lasagne noodle fit perfectly in there), you could use a muffin pan to get a similar effect, if you don't mind round brownies.
But the center is the best part! =)
You can put your brownie pan in a larger pan...then fill that larger pan with water about 3/4. cook as normal but the water in the larger pan with help diffuse all the direct heat to the sides.
AKA a bain-marie.
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.717209
| 2011-05-11T13:35:19 |
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|
22356
|
Corned Beef in a slow cooker?
I have my corned beef cooking in my crock pot for about 6 hours on low. Should the meat be falling apart by now? It is still one big hunk of meat. I thought it would be ready in about 1.5 hours. Should I bump it up to high?
Thanks!
Not an answer because I've never made it myself, but I just had corned beef that was slowcooked for over a day and it was delicious!
Could you explain what kind of liquid set up have the meat in, if any; and what amount of space there is for the meat in the vessel?
Like mfg said, you need to almost cover the meat in water or broth. If you cover in liquid it will definitely fall apart
I always cook corned beef in a crock pot. I let it go 6-8 hours on low, or 4 hours on high. The meat remains a single hunk but when sliced it falls apart easily.
This year, I slow cooked corned beef for about 8 hours in my crock pot. The slow cooker was set to high for the first 4 hours and set to low for the last 4. The meat didn't "fall apart" when I took it out, rather it kept its form and allowed me to slice it (against the grain).
I should mention that I had the corned beef submerged in a water/beer mixture during the entire cooking process. I used 1 bottle of beer (optional) and filled the rest of the slow cooker with water until the beef was submerged.
Any type of Brisket has to be slow cooked either in a slow cooker or in the oven for almost a full working day if not longer…. the longer the better! and on low! Just barely cover with water and the seasoning packet goes on the meat first. If I recall fat side down :) putting one in to cook overnight as I post this :)
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.717415
| 2012-03-17T22:49:44 |
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|
22548
|
Why is my meat grinder getting clogged with sinew?
Last Christmas, I got a meat grinder and I've stared experimenting with sausage making. My previous batches have been around a pound of pork, and I noticed that it seemed to slow down as I went. Today, I pushed through five pounds of chicken thighs and pork fat, which was a huge chore -- almost immediately, it the grinding would slow, and after maybe a half pound, I needed to take the blade out and clean the sinew out of the die. I could then go back and grind maybe a half pound again, before things clogged up.
Is this normal? I can't really imagine it is, or no one would ever grind meat.
I've tried the blade both ways -- one way is definitely the correct way; the other way doesn't cut at all.
I've cut the meat into cubes about the diameter of my thumb -- definitely smaller than the augur spacing.
I know, this isn't the world's best grinder (it's a "Back to Basics" brand). Does my blade need sharpening already? Is there some basic meat grinder technique I'm missing? Is the grinder just crap?
Just to be sure... you are removing the silver skin off your meat before grinding and making sure that everything is as cold as possible, right? and is your grinder hand crank or electric?
For what it's worth: the meat grinder was also complete crap. It broke almost immediately and I replaced it with a better model. The blades are of obviously better quality and it clogs about 1,000 times less. So: silverskin was part of the issue; however, good tools also help immensely.
Is this normal?
Yes, it is. Sinew and other connective tissues (silverskin/fascia, ligaments) are very tough stuff; you need to remove as much as possible by hand before grinding.
Sinew and ligaments are strong, whitish strands or "cables" connecting bones to muscles and to other bones, respectively. They'll be in the same place on every piece of a particular cut of meat: a poultry drumstick has an easily-identifiable piece of sinew -- actually the "Achilles' tendon" -- heading from the fleshy part to the exposed end of the bone.
Silverskin is a connective boundary between muscles. It's a thin, clingy, and annoying sheet, translucent silvery white, that you will find on the surface, and defining the divisions of, various cuts of meat. It might make it through the grinder if your blade is nice and sharp and the piece isn't too big, but it's best to take it off (your teeth can't deal with it much better than the grinder can). You'll need a thin, sharp, narrow blade for this: a filet/boning knife, sometimes a good paring kife.
Essentially, anything that's not fat or muscle needs to be taken out before the meat goes into the grinder.
Chicken thighs have a lot of connective tissue. Some of it is hidden inside the muscle segments on the underside of the thigh; make sure you cut those open.
Depending on the particular piece of meat you have, you may end up with what seem like extremely small bits after this process. Even a nice pork shoulder can result in 1/4" or thinner pieces after the internal connective tissue is removed. This won't have any real effect on the grinding process; the only thing to watch out for is thorough and even mixing if you end up with many different sizes and are marinating/curing the meat before grinding.
You can grind without removing all the tissue (it gets frustrating sometimes), but you'll have to be prepared to stop the grinder and clean the blade and plate frequently -- the instant you notice that the meat is not coming out of the plate in clean, cohesive, and separate lines. If you see any signs of smearing or over-grinding (the grind will start to be too fine and become pink as the fat and meat combine), stop and clear the blade. Otherwise, the mixture won't emulsify properly, the fat will melt out when you cook it, and the sausage will be dry.
Does my blade need sharpening already?
It may very well, but this still won't help with sinew and ligaments.
You should treat your grinder blade the same way you treat your kitchen knives -- maintain its edge, rather than waiting for it to become completely dull. I'd say that I put my blade onto a sharpening stone every 50 lbs. or so. The nice thing is that it's extremely easy -- you are grinding all the arms of the blade at the same angle: flat. The plate also needs to be maintained by grinding the surface where it meets the blade (the edges of the holes should be sharp), but I'd say that this can be done much less freqently. The blade and the plate can both be maintained quite successfully and easily with a piece of fine (800 grit) wet-dry sandpaper slapped on a table.
Dealt with some chicken thighs last night for another recipe, and took a closer look at them. Yup, connective tissue was a huge part of my problem. Thanks for the help!
Connective tissue is elastic - it will stretch, rather than cut or break.
I initially had problems with this on my Kitchenaid grinder attachment when I did not properly tighten the ring that holds the die and cutter together. Because they weren't mating as tightly as they should have, the sinew wasn't getting sliced, and would eventually bunch up and clog things.
Assuming your grinder assembles the same way, the first thing I'd check is that you're assembling things properly and tightening things down firmly enough.
And of course, other tips about trimming as much sinew and silverskin in advance as possible are spot on.
That's an excellent point -- the blade and plate should be making contact. Sometimes a nylon washer at the back end of the augur is necessary to make that happen.
Or, in my case, completely forget the cutter in the freezer and fail to attach it whatsoever, making everything a lot more difficult.
I've done a lot of grinding of wild game for over 30 years and used all kinds of grinders both electric and manual.
For manual grinders, try attaching a steering wheel from a car as this will give you more torque and make it ten times easier to grind.
On electric grinders such as the Kitchen Aid meat grinding attachment, be sure to use the coarse grinding plate first and then regrind the meat a second time with the fine grinding plate. This is much faster than stopping to remove sinew all the time and sometimes the coarser ground meat is fine if the cut of meat you are grinding is tender anyway.
I have a cheapo( Oster) meat grinder that I use once a year for maybe 15 lbs of deer meat. It never worked like I thought it should so I did some fine tuning on it this year.
First, I took the cutting blade and laid it flat on my diamond dust knife sharpener because it wasn't very sharp. Then I took the plate with the little holes in it , laid a piece of 600 grit emery paper on the counter top and rubbed around a bit. Right away, you can see if the plate is FLAT. It wasn't. Concave on one side and convex on the other. It may not have been more a than a couple thousandths of an inch out of flat but definitely wasn't flat.
600 grit paper would have taken many hours of hand work to get it true, so I took a 5/16 rod that has a 1 inch slot centered in one end and polished it till it fit tight in the center hole of the grinding plate. I put a piece of 250 grit sandpaper on the drill press table and dribbled a bit of oil on it. I put the rod in the drill chuck with the blade pushed on by had so the rod didn't hang out the bottom.
After only about 15 minutes I had a niece shiney FLAT surface. I took it off, turned it over and worked the other side for a bit. After getting it to look pretty flat, I went back to the 600 grit with a couple drops of oil and finished both sides up.
No need to get all the silver skin out of the meat, no need to cut it up in cubes and no need to pre-freeze the meat. I can put a 6 inch long piece in that is an inch by inch and a half and it eats it right up. This would be chilled from the fridge, but not anywhere near frozen
I do fillet out tendons so some of the connective tissue is removed, but I don't have to spend NEAR as much time cutting up to grind as I used to.
Try freezing your meat first then cutting it on a band-saw into cubes then mince it for best results. It will pass through the mincers more easily without constantly clogging the mincer and the blades will cut through the frozen sinews more easily when the meat is frozen.
If you don't have a band-saw then dice the meat into cubes and freeze them loosely on trays. Once the cubes are frozen put them through your mincer and you will have the same results.
Dean, welcome to the site! I jst removed the link because it contains no information relevant to the answer and may thus be seen a spam. You may link to your own site if a) you write a good standalone anwer (check), the linked site supplies additional helpful information (nope) and c) you disclose your affilliation (nope).
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.717604
| 2012-03-25T00:51:38 |
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|
53842
|
Adding sugar and honey to sourdough culture
I am interested in this site's members' opinions on how adding two spoons of sugar and two spoons of honey would affect a sourdough culture. I am wondering if adding sugar and honey to the starter culture will have any desirable effects on the resulting sourdough.
I'm experimenting and curious if this addition would lead to any new types of flavour?
Are you talking about feeding your starter honey/sugar, or your actual dough?
OK sorry for the confusion feeding the starter culture.
It would be helpful to clarify your question to let us know what you're trying to achieve exactly by adding sugar & honey. What is the goal?
I did do an edit,.
Adding sugar or honey to a sourdough culture will increase the activity of the yeast for a little while, but it is unlikely to create "new types of flavour". Honey and Sucrose (Table sugar) are both just simpler sources of glucose and fructose that the sourdough microbes usually get from breaking down the starches in flour. Unlike flour, honey and sugar do not provide much (if any) protein which the sourdough microbes need in order to grow and reproduce. The effect of sugar or honey on the lactobacilli isn't predictable without knowing which specie are active in your specific starter. Some prefer maltose almost exclusively and would slow down if fed sucrose or honey, while others prefer fructose and would become especially active if fed honey; possibly leading to more sourness in the final product.
The purpose of a starter is to leaven bread composed of mostly flour and water. As such, it has always been my opinion that you should only feed your starter flour and water. Adding other things only serves to contaminate the culture or "teach" it to need additional food sources.
If you just really want to experiment feed you mother culture normally a few times, let it become active then set aside half of it for experimentation and half for safe keeping.
See Also:
Sourdough starter developing alcohol
Just to add a comment to Didgeridrew's great summary, the real danger of adding anything other than flour and water to starters is contamination. A sourdough culture consists of a symbiotic community of yeasts (which make the bread rise) and lactic acid-producing bacteria (which make it sour). Like almost any natural fermentation process, sourdough depends on a selective environment with conditions that will tend to allow certain microorganisms to flourish, while not allowing other ones to grow.
Messing with this balance is asking for trouble. I have heard of people trying to add everything from sugar/honey to milk to fruit juices to various foods or spices to their sourdough cultures. While it's possible it might work long-term, the more likely scenario is either (1) the thing you add has undesirable bacteria/mold/whatever already in it and will eventually spoil your culture and/or (2) the added nutrients from these new additions destroy the balance between the "good" bacteria and yeast and allow other bad things to start growing.
If you want to influence the final bread dough and incorporate some other ingredient into your starter early, I would suggest a multi-stage process of building up your dough. Many people just mix their starter directly into the final dough, but you can also begin with a much smaller amount of starter and gradually add flour and water to build up to the final amount of starter you need for the recipe. Along the way, you can introduce other components into the starter (which now more accurately would be called a "pre-ferment"). If you do this in stages, you might be able to add these ingredients hours or even days before the final dough mix, which will allow plenty of time for those ingredients to influence the final bread. Meanwhile, you save the rest of your (uncorrupted) starter for future batches.
I would add that if you are starting your starter (as opposed to feeding it) then honey (though not sugar) could be a good idea in the first day or two as it honey often has yeast/bacteria that can help establish your colony (raw honey would be best for this). Similarly, fresh pineapple juice and probiotic yogurt attempt to do similar things by "seeding" the initial population (and additionally starting with something sour to keep the non-sour-loving beasties away).
This would indirectly eventually affect the taste of your starter because the yeast/bacteria that get established depend on what was there to begin with, but how exactly the taste will change is rather unpredictable.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.718429
| 2015-01-21T09:23:37 |
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|
53445
|
Is this cooking method likely to yield a tasty pork chop?
So I'm thinking of doing three things to a piece of pork.
First salt it for a day
Then Confit it
Then Smoke it
Is this overkill or can this make some good pork?
What are you trying to achieve?
Do you want bacon or a pork chop?
Pork Chops yes sorry for the uncertainty.
Well, I see no reason this shouldn't work. Although I would change the process order slightly. If you think about it you're basically suggesting making smoked bacon and then confiting it.
Brine the meat, adding moisture to the meat. (Make bacon)
Smoke the Bacon (Smoked Bacon)
Confit it...
Smoking wise I would advise a cold smoke as it will help stop the meat drying out before the confiting.
When doing the confit part I would highly recommend a really low fat/oil temperature, around 110c again to help stop the meat drying out and getting tough. Low and slow will save your meat.
When I say make bacon I don't mean brine it for 2 days but if you brine it for 4-8 hours you'll help start the osmosis without actually creating full on salted bacon.
It might taste great, but I see no reason why it wouldn't taste good. Maybe not the "Ultimate Pork Chop" ...
So let's see what would happen:
salting
Assuming you mean brining, not too much. The meat would absorb some of the liquid, that would be unwanted in step 2.
If you mean a dry rub with salt, the outer layer of the meat would dry out a bit. Not nice for a lean chop.
making confitSlow simmering in fat would most likely render the lean meat of the chops tough. Confit is excellent for meat with a higher internal fat content - think duck legs vs. duck breast. Neck instead of chop could work.
smoking
The meat from step 2 now contains a lot of fat (albeit little moisture), especially in the outer layer. Fat absorbs and binds scents. In perfume-making fat was used to extract aromatic oils that couldn't be heated. So the result of smoking the chops would be a lot more intense than you'd probably expect.
As I said in my comment: Smoked shoe leather. I wouldn't recommend it.
Salting could have an effect similar to dry-brining, and a cut with more internal fat (like a rib chop) could stand up to confit better than a lean-trimmed center chop. I've also had smoked chops in restaurants that were quite tasty indeed. But overall I'm inclined to agree - these steps in this order would be complete overkill.
Your answer seems quite plausible and well-reasoned. But what if you used neck instead and shuffled the order? Say, start with smoking, then brine, and finally the confiting?
@TheDag: If I really wanted to do all these steps, I would use a piece that's less lean (-> neck, for example, probably even trotters). Then 1. brine, 2. smoke 3. confit. Reason: brining a smoked piece sounds counter-intuitive and you don't want extra moisture in the lard. Confit is a method of preservation as it seales pasteurized meat from oxygen, so this should be the last step. I'd be rather gentle with steps 1 + 2, because the fat absorbs much taste, especially over time. So if you want to use the fat, too, you don't want it to taste like smoke.
@logophobe: Smoking the chops should work - if done right, ist's similar to low-temperature roasting or sous-vide cooking.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.718849
| 2015-01-09T15:19:01 |
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|
47246
|
What is the proper salt to water ratio for turkey brine?
I want to brine a turkey but have heard conflicting messages on how much salt to use. I have heard 5% salt mixture and from others I have heard 10 salt mixture. I would like a somewhat strong taste of salt. For the sake of this question we can assume I'm going to use 5 litres of water.
Hi! I edited your title to say "turkey brine", because "pickle" suggested canning vegetables to me. Now it is unambiguous.
OK I thought they where the same thing. Thank You anyway (-;
How big is your turkey and how long do you plan to brine it?
The ones I usually get are around 4 kilograms.
A good turkey brine should be around a 9% solution - 9g salt per 100g water - that's 90g salt per liter. You shouldn't go below 6% brine, but using a solution anywhere in the range of 6% - 9% should give you excellent results. Soak for 12 hours if you're soaking a whole bird - keep it to around 6 hours if you're brining just the breast. Be sure to rinse the bird after brining to wash-away excess surface salt.
FYI - The drippings from the turkey will be extremely salty - they probably won't be suitable for making gravy.
You might want to explore "equilibrium brining." While a bit slower, it makes it very difficult to over-brine and have a product that is too salty. See this link for details: http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/equilibrium-brining
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.719409
| 2014-09-19T10:23:23 |
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|
47351
|
Is a longer defrost better than microwave defrosting?
I was taught the idea that if you let frozen meat thaw out over night then it is better for the end product that defrosting it in the microwave? Does this have merit or is it just an old wives tale?
Also does cooking frozen meat effect the taste or will it just take longer to cook?
Related: What is the “idea” behind thawing out meat? and Is it bad to cook frozen meat without waiting it to be unfrozen?
Microwaving meat to defrost it tends to start cooking it at the edges and generally make it go weird and rubbery (scientific terms I know). So yes, it is better to defrost 'naturally' in the fridge, in terms of quality.
Freezing damages meat by bursting the cell walls as their water expands. This affects the texture more than the flavour. The damage is done when freezing, not cooking from frozen, so the latter should not effect taste. The main issue with cooking from frozen is that if the item is big (say, a roasting joint), the outside can be overdone by the time the middle gets up to a safe temperature.
Defrosting in the fridge is typically better than thawing in the microwave ... but not if the item is still frozen by the time you want to cook it. (eg, large whole poultry may take more than a day to thaw)
The issue is that you want to minimize the potential to cook the item being defrosted, so you don't want to thaw it using too hot of a thawing method. You also don't want to leave many foods for too long in the food 'danger zone' (40°F to 140°F / 4°C to 60°C) for too long.
If the item to be thawed is wrapped in plastic (or will fit in a zip-top bag (make sure to remove most of the air)) we can use methods such as running cold water baths (place food item in a container, add something to weight it down, place container in water, run a trickle of cold water into the container). The increased thermal mass of the water vs. air allows us to thaw the item more quickly than we'd get from puttng it in the fridge.
Also note that in cases like steak, it may be better to cook from frozen, assuming care was taken when freezing it.
I prefer meat thawed in the fridge over the course of a couple of days to microwave defrosting. As previously said, the microwave cooks the edges, but it also seems to release juices and fat from the meat, hence making the meat a little tougher in my opinion, including ground meat.
In addition, if you are thawing ground meat for patties, they will NOT bind well after microwave thawing due to the melted fat throughout the meat. If I am in a rush, I will shorten the defrost in microwave, and then refrigerate in order for the ground meat to set or become firm (coagulate, what a great word) for easier handling for making patties.
Absolutely. Most microwaves defrost unevenly.
On the other hand, there are a couple faster ways to defrost other than letting it sit on the counter. Further, it is in fact even better to let meat defrost more quickly, because meat left out will allow bacteria to grow, which is a further concern.
One tip is to let a frozen food rest in warm water while sealed in a waterproof bag of some sort. This will significantly decrease defrosting time.
The old wives' tale was based off the presumption that letting it sit out is the only way to defrost evenly. It does hold some grain of truth, as quickly defrosting an item runs a chance of the inside not defrosting all the way. However, due to the distribution of temperature, if you let a frozen item sit in water (while in a waterproof bag), the temperature will eventually even out, defrosting it all the way to the core.
I've removed the portion of your answer attempting to address health issues. That sort of discussion is off-topic on our site, which is purely about food and cooking.
Defrosting in the microwave just doesn't work properly. Ice hardly absorbs any microwaves, compared to liquid water. So microwaving heats the already unfrozen parts while the frozen parts only get affected indirectly. So it doesn't speed up things very much, costs lots of energy and spoils the meat as mentioned by other answers.
But this is an effect of the microwave more then the speed.
If you want to speed up defrosting, put the meat in a plastic bag and put it in warm water. I have never heard of any negative effect taste or quality wise.
It's probably even more hygienic, because those little critters that live in your meat until you cook it will start to reproduce once, they are unfrozen. So you want to have the time during which the meat is only half frozen as short as possible.
Your last point seems contradictory to me. Growth of most harmful microbes is inhibited at refrigerator temperature, but warm water is likely to raise the outside surface of the meat above 40 F, where they become more active. And that's much slower than a microwave because the microwaves can penetrate the surface more effectively.
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.719586
| 2014-09-23T14:10:49 |
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|
56508
|
Wine substitutions for homemade salami
I want to make my own salami but I'm interested in alternative ways to lower the ph of the meat. I have people in the house with dependency issues so using wine in any sort of food (Like the recipe says) is a big No-No. I was thinking maybe some sort of citrus to reduce the ph. Maybe Citric Acid or lemon juice. I'm not sure how that would end up though.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Substitution in preserved foods are generally considered unsafe. Food chemistry is a complicated affair, and cooking is inherently imprecise. Sure, you can find a way to reduce the pH to that of the original recipe. But a salami is a fermented food. Your pH might be the same, but other things will change, for example the composition of the available sugars, and you can catch a different strain of bacteria. Safe preservation recipes have either been extensively tested in a lab, or used for centuries. Making a small change can destroy the delicate balance which leads to a tasty, safe food.
The solution here is to look for another recipe, one which is safe but does not contain wine. For something as risky as cured meat, I'd suggest not getting some random recipe off the Internet, but choosing from a book, or maybe from the blog of a known, respectable author. This way, you get both good taste and safety, things which are hit-and-miss when making your own substitutions.
So better not to make it then if the alcohol is a problem?
Exactly, it's better to not make this one recipe if you can't have alcohol. But there are salami recipes without alcohol, so just choose one of them.
Or, maybe try getting one of those small single serving bottles of wine, from a liquor store or something, and maybe that's enough to use it all up and not have any left over?
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.720007
| 2015-04-09T07:44:54 |
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|
57818
|
Is the stainless steel pot pitted by salt water a food safety problem?
I added salt and cold raw eggs to cold water in an All-Clad D5 18/10 stainless steel pot before turning the burner on. After the salt water was boiled and eggs were taken out, I saw a lot white spots on the bottom of the pot. I tried to clean with Bar Keepers' Friend, but could not remove the white spots. All-Clad said the white spots were pits etched by undissolved salt in cold water (i.e., I should have add salt to boiled water instead) and the pits were harmless. Does anyone know what the white spots are chemically and if the white spots render the pot unusable according to food safety?
Questions regarding health are typically considered off-topic here (we're amateur cooks, not doctors!) but we can probably help if you want to know how to remove them. If so, I'd recommend that you use the "edit" link under your question text to add that in. Also, adding a picture might be really helpful to identify these.
Sounds strange , table salt in cold water in the pan a few hours should have no visible affect on SS.
Chemically the pits etched in your pot are the absence of the stainless steel material that makes up the pot. In other words the white spots you're seeing are where a small amount of the stainless steel has been removed from the surface of the pot, much like it had been scraped off. So the pits are completely harmless because they're not actually any kind of chemical substance.
Chemically what causes the etched pits to appear is that the chlorine from the salt attacks the passive film of chromium oxide that normally protects the surface of stainless steel. Stainless steel gets its corrosion resistant properties through the addition of chromium. When exposed to oxygen the chromium in the steel oxidizes and forms a very thin layer of chromium oxide on the surface the metal. This layer prevents oxygen from going further into the steel preventing it from further oxidation (rusting).
Normally stainless steel isn't harmed by salt dissolved in water or by the chlorine found in tap water. However things are different when a grain of salt sits at the bottom of a pot. It will dissolve into chloride ions (along with sodium ions) that are concentrated against a small spot on the surface of the pot. What exactly happens then isn't entirely clear, I've read conflicting descriptions, but the reaction seems to reinforce itself causing the chromium oxide layer at that spot to be removed. This exposes the steel underneath to damage by both chloride from the salt and oxygen dissolved in the water.
(The Chemistry Stack Exchange has a question on how chlorine attacks stainless steel if you want a more scientific explanation.)
There's really nothing you can do or need to do fix the spots at the bottom of your pot. You can't remove something that's not there. A new chromium oxide layer has already formed over the pits and your pots is as corrosion resistant as before.
Thanks Ross for explaining. However, "A new chromium oxide layer has already formed over the pits and your pots is as corrosion resistant as before." is not good enough. It will keep pitting and the chemicals will be added to what I cook.
@Aguest No, that’s not true. The existing pits won’t encourage further corrosion.
Existing pits, similar to under deposit and oxygen depletion , are a common problem causing corrosion of SS for industry.
I too have seen this in my SS cookware and have tried the Barkeepers trick also. I do worry however that the aluminum cladding underneath the SS is now exposed at can/will leach into my foods. Any comments on this. A little more research on this and I came across this; so it appears to be okay but could change somewhat the taste in acidic foods.
From: https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/6390-is-aluminum-cookware-safe
The amount of aluminum that leaches into food, however, is minimal. In lab tests, tomato sauce that we cooked in an aluminum pot for two hours and then stored in the same pot overnight was found to contain only .0024 milligrams of aluminum per cup. (A single antacid tablet may contain more than 200 milligrams of aluminum.) Our science editor reports that the consensus in the medical community is that using aluminum cookware poses no health threat.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.720201
| 2015-05-27T20:46:38 |
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|
16765
|
What other names are scallions known by?
If I can't find anything named "scallions" at the store, what else can I look for?
According to Wikipedia:
Scallions (also known as green onions, spring onions, salad onions,
green shallots, onion sticks, or syboes), are the edible plants of
various Allium species, all of which are "onion-like", having hollow
green leaves and lacking a fully developed root bulb.
In the grocery stores I've been to most (east cost of US), if they aren't called scallions, they're called green onions. I've never seen grocery stores label them with any of those other names from Wikipedia (though I've seen recipes calling for syboes).
Then of course there are stores / vegetable stands where nothing is labelled, in which case knowing what they look like is the most helpful ;) (Google image search yields plenty of decent results.)
In English cultures these are usually referred to as "Spring Onions". But as is the case with most of these things the variety commonly grown in each country is significantly different. I suspect even a different species in some cases. It is usually used as a mildly acidic, but tangy tasting and colourful "onion" addition. The English variety is very similar to the common Chinese variety, the US variety seems more similar to what is used in France and surrounds
IN my experience, spring onions aren't quite the same thing as green onions / scallions. FYI, the Cook's Thesaurus is a great resource for this type of question--I'm there all the time: http://www.foodsubs.com/Onionsgreen.html
According to http://archives.record-eagle.com/2007/may/21onions.htm spring onions have a rounded bulb while scallions do not. If you are using this definition, Egyptian onions can probably be used as a substitute.
Yeah, there seem to be different schools of thought regarding the subtleties of green onions v. scallions v. spring onions. Some people (/sellers) use the names interchangeably, while other argue that they are actually different things. I've never really noticed any difference, but like I said, most of my produce shopping has been on the US east coast - geographically limited.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.720574
| 2011-08-09T20:24:23 |
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|
22908
|
Why do my onions keep burning?
Twice now, I have burned my onions while heating them in a pan. I was just trying to caramelize them, and they burned every time.
They were on medium heat, and I put olive oil at the bottom of the pan (which may or may not have been a mistake), and they just burned, sticking to the bottom with a fervor I've never seen before (except the other time I tried to heat up onions).
What am I doing wrong?
Did you stir once in a while?
@Mien I stirred a little bit, but I think that was one of my main problems.
A heavy frying pan would be a good addition to any of the answers below. Light pans tend to have hot spots which makes this sort of thing very difficult to avoid.
Onions have a lot of sugar in them. All they want in the world is to burn and fill your kitchen with oniony smoke.
The solution, as with all things heavy in sugar, is to turn down the heat and stir frequently.
That said- if your olive oil was extra virgin then it might have been your oil that started burning before the onions did.
Hey Soba, I wasn't using extra virgin, but I did heat up the oil before putting the onions in. Also, I didn't stir very much because I was busy screwing up the salsa, but now I will know how to do it next time. Thanks!
Olive oil has a low smoking point: always use very low heat (in general, not only for onions).
@Emeril I hope that you are aware: the medium setting of the stove knob is not always "medium heat". Depending on the material of your pan and how much you fill it, it could produce high heat; it can even turn out that the lowest setting produces medium heat.
To clarify a little, there are several ways you can cook onions.
You could be trying to get them to turn translucent. In which case, you can cook over medium heat, stirring frequently. This will take somewhere around 5 minutes. Preheating the pan isn't really required (especially if using a non-stick pan). If they start to brown, turn down the heat.
You could be trying to get them to turn translucent, with brown edges. Proceed as with translucent, but make sure to preheat the pan, and also use medium-high heat (but if they get too brown, turn down the heat).
You could be trying to caramelize them, turning them brown throughout. Cook them on low heat. At first, you can stir infrequently, but as they turn translucent and begin to brown, you'll have to speed up your stirring. This takes 30+ minutes.
So, if you were actually caramelizing onions, your heat was much too high.
In general, when something is browning too much (or outright burning) before the center is cooked, you need to turn down the heat or if only the pan-contact parts are browning then stir more frequently. To some extent when cooking in a pan, there is a trade-off you can make: low heat, infrequent stirring, long cooking time vs. high heat, constant stirring, quick cooking.
When cooking it's important to use your eyes, ears and nose.
If the pan is at the correct heat, you can leave the onions alone for minutes at a time, just giving them an occasional stir, but your ears and nose will keep you informed. When caramelising, you should only just be able to hear the sizzling. Anything louder, and they'll probably brown too fast.
If the onions actually stick, the heat is most likely far too high. You need to get familiar with your stove to know what the correct setting is, but even then, remember your ears.
You can also add a little salt to the onions as you cook them. This draws out some of the moisture in the onions and can help stop them browning too much, though not if the heat is very high.
Do you have a reference for this claim? My intuition tells me that if you remove the moisture then the food will burn more quickly.
Add a little hot water at the beginning, stir frequently, top up when necessary. When onions at the rigt amount of 'doneness' let any remaining water evaporate and keep an eye on it to make sure the onions don't brown.
Welcome to the site, Charles. The OP was asking about caramelizing them. I think your answer does not address that issue, or does it?
1) Olive oil has a really low flash point. Dont cook with it. It will burn at lower temperatures than Canola.
2) you cant just leave them to sit on the pan and expect that t od
I don't think it's appropriate to advise cooking without olive oil. Olive oil isn't suitable for high-temperature frying but works very well as the cooking oil of choice for many dishes.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.720889
| 2012-04-09T20:18:07 |
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|
22992
|
What can I do to prolong vegetable and meat freshness in the freezer?
In an effort to improve my eating habits I am thinking of buying more vegetables and meats while at the store so that I have them to cook with. However, with a busy schedule it is hard to try and find the time to cook something complex and needing to cut vegetables, meat, etc. I don't want to use frozen vegetables either, as I want to start actually cooking more and not re-heating frozen items.
If I pre-cut all the vegetables beforehand, how long will the vegetables stay fresh before losing flavor and getting soggy or drying out? Also, is there a preferable storage method, such as Ziploc bags, Tupperware containers, or glass bowls/containers with plastic wrap?
As for meat, is there a temperature that meats should be stored at in the freezer to keep them from getting freezer burn? Currently, it seems that whenever I put anything in my freezer, it forms ice crystals the next day. I've tried lowering the temperature dial in the freezer a number of times, but I am afraid that if I lower it too much then it won't freeze the food and it will spoil.
There is nothing against buying frozen vegetables. Sometimes they are even preferable over other possibilities (e.g. frozen peas are better than canned peas). Just don't buy the prepared, seasoned "pan mixtures", get the pure vegetables and treat them the way you would treat a raw ingredient. Commercially frozen vegetables are flash-frozen, so most of their taste and nutrition is preserved - probably more than if you leave a cut fresh veggie at fridge temp.
@rumtscho I've never been a big fan of canned items anyway, but thank you for the knowledge of frozen vs. pre-cut vegetables!
Adding on to @rumtscho's comment, a very very common preference in Italian restaurants is canned tomatoes over fresh. Tomatoes can be canned much closer to the farm than markets tend to be. Thus, they can be allowed to ripen much more as they don't have to be as firm to withstand travel.
For most vegetables, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to retain their quality once they have been cut. Your efforts would be much better spent either improving your cutting/chopping proficiency or in cooking entire meals ahead of time. Also, you could prepare components, such as sauteed onions or peppers, and maintain relatively high-quality versions of those.
Meat is a different story. You can do preparations in advance, and freeze individual portions for later use without degrading quality.
The best way to avoid freezer burn is to have a very cold freezer (ironically, easing the cooling settings on your freezer was having the opposite of your desired effect), and to prevent your food from coming in contact with air. You can use a freezer bag for each food item, making sure you squeeze all the air out of it first. However, if you are really serious about this, you would be well-served by investing in a vacuum sealer. Air is the big enemy here, so mechanically removing air from the system will greatly extend freezer life.
Thank you for the tips/pointers! I will have to try turning my freezer back up when I get home! I never thought of preparing prepared components such as sauteing items beforehand.
I've also been debating investing in a vacuum sealer, I just can't find one that is affordable and good quality.
Again, thank you!
For general freezing, these three links suggest common things: tight wrapping and cold temperatures. Though these sources are hardly definitive sources, they're consistent with what I've seen elsewhere. If you want to prevent freezer burn, look to:
Minimize exposure to air. Seal your target foods in tight plastic. If there will be air gaps, cover them with oil or water to displace the air.
Make sure your freezer stays below 0 F. Understand that the freezer is only as cold as the average temperature of everything inside. When it's 75% air, a lot of those low-energy molecules will escape out whenever you open the freezer door. This is why one of the articles recommends freezing water bottles. One gram of water will absorb much more energy than one gram of air before changing 1 degree.
If you want to go all-out, create an ice bath of water and ice, then throw your-food-to-be-frozen in the freezer. Water absorbs much more energy and transfers energy much quicker than air does, so this will freeze the food much faster. Be careful of creating a massive ice block, though. Flash freezing is this process, but using liquid nitrogen instead of an ice-water bath.
In addition to those tips, I also recommend looking into tried-and-true preservation techniques besides freezing.
Storage techniques: There are many time-tested storage techniques. Keep an eye out for some in the various cultures you encounter.
If you want to preserve tomatoes, for instance, there's oven-drying. I've bought a silpat to dry tomatoes on a non-stick surface in the oven at a low temperature. Once fully dried, they keep in room temperature jars almost indefinitely. Ditto for dried fruits.
Fully dried tomatoes can have an undesirable leathery texture, so I opt for a partial dry, keeping the chewy tomatoes soaked in olive oil in the fridge. Again, storage lasts for quite a while.
There's also pickling (for veggies...sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles..), brining (for meats, capers, olives...), smoking (lox), and curing (bacon) to extend food shelf life. A meat soaking in a brine will tend to last longer because of the high salinity. Corned beef is brined, and lasts well beyond an un-salted piece of meat.
These techniques also have the side effect of making you front-load the work of flavoring your food. When you want to use foods preserved this way, there's one less thing to concern yourself with being properly flavored (once you have the technique down).
Intermediate ingredients. Stocks: Google how to make a vegetable stock out of your standard mirepoix (carrots, onions, celery). This can be used as a base for soups and, if reduced, for sauces. It's quite a simple process to make them and takes very little active-time. Stocks can be frozen and reheated to add quick flavor and nutrients into a dish. They don't really lose flavor in freezing, and can even be reduced, concentrated, and frozen in ice cube trays if you're lacking in freezer space.
Broths: Similar to stocks, but built with bones. These are, again, a great addition...no, a necessary foundation to a sauce or soup. Like stocks, these can be frozen and lose little or no flavor, even reduced for space first if necessary.
Don't bother trying to preserve herbs, like cilantro or parsley. Their presence in foods is mainly for flavor, not nutrients. This flavor includes some volatile organic compounds that evaporate easily--once gone, they're somewhere in the atmosphere and can't be recovered.
If you plan to store vegetables in the freezer for any considerable length of time, blanch them first. This kills the enzymes that would otherwise cause continued deterioration of home-frozen vegetables in the freezer.
Don't actually cook them, just put them in boiling water for about a minute or two, cool them quickly in an ice water bath, then dry and freeze them. Doesn't matter so much how or to what degree they've been cut, but you'll probably find the whole process far less burdensome with larger chunks.
Studies have found unless you buy veggies directly from a Farmers Market, frozen from the supermarket does retain more nutrients and vitamins then buying it from the produce section. They are flashed frozen either the same day or the next from when they are harvested. Yes there are some fundamental differences in texture and color, such as parsley, basil, spinach, squash, celery and a few that I have missed, but that is freezing versus keeping fresh and you’re going to cook them anyway. A lot of the other answerers are correct on the how to’s, but I can’t imagine putting myself through all that hassle. There are staples I try to keep fresh on hand, celery (wrap in foil), onions, potatoes, carrots. I put them in the produce draws with paper towels on the bottom. They last longer than a month. Yes I did say potatoes, peeps I’m Irish, it doesn’t affect them. A little sweeter I know, but why is that wrong?
Parsley and Cilantro leaves may not be frozen with good results, but their stems can. I tie up the stems then freeze them. I just throw them in to whatever I am cooking still tied up. I also freeze chopped green bell peppers, not a fan but some dishes need it. When cooking frozen veggies, I find this works the best. Put into tempered glass bowl with micro proof lid. You can also use plastic wrap, it will vent itself. I like using clear glass so I can keep an eye on it without having to open up and take off the lid. Do not add water, just salt and sometimes a little sugar to brighten up the flavor. YES I said sugar, no responses please. Put in Microwave and cook for 3 mins, then shake about the bowl, return and cook another 3 to 6 mins. depending on the veggie. I try to slightly undercook them; by the time it makes the table they are perfectly done. Spinach the same way, then press out the extra water. You can tell they are cooked when you see a few tablespoon of water sitting on the bottom. I just drain it out.
Meat is easy too. Do Not use Zip Locks. Use really good plastic wrap, not the cheap kind, very important. Have you ever seen someone make tortilla sandwich wraps? They roll once, then pull it tight, then fold the side in and finish rolling it. Same principal here, roll once, pull it tight roll two more times. Then use the side of your hands to push out the air from the side and fold ends. Then roll the opposite way two more times pulling tight. You could then put in a zip lock to keep organized and it also helps buffer the food from the defrost cycle. Using this method, I never get freezer burn. I just pulled out pork chops I wrapped over 8 months ago, still looking perfect. Defrosting meat in the fridge works best, you don’t lose as many juices. There are other methods, but that is a subject for another day.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.721316
| 2012-04-12T19:20:36 |
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|
23008
|
Cooking Porridge in steam oven
Can anyone tell me if it is possible to cook porridge in a steam oven? We're not fond of porridge in the microwave, and, as we never have much time in the morning, we are not able to cook porridge on the stove and allow it to cool for our toddler. I was thinking of trying it in the steam oven with the timer to cook an hour or so before we get up.
I'm not entirely sure what a steam oven is, but you can certainly cook porridge in a gas or electric oven. You can also pre-cook porridge the night before and rewarm it in the microwave.
@JenPen Microwave ovens make the best porridge, what is going wrong with that?
I'm not sure what a steam oven is either, but I think I can answer: YES!
I regularly cook porridge in an unsealed/unlocked pressure cooker that has been set on a hotplate which is plugged into an appliance timer. I put my oats and liquid into a metal canister that fits inside my pressure cooker, and I put foil on top of the canister to keep extra water from dripping into it. The pressure cooker has a "rack" in it to keep the canister off the bottom of the pot, which keeps the porridge from burning on the bottom, no matter how high you turn up the heat.
I keep the hotplate set to just barely a boil, because I use 100% milk for my liquid and don't want it to scald.
I have the timer set to start cooking it a full 3 or 4 hours before we wake up. I prefer to soak my grains overnight, so I set everything up the night before, and we just wake up and eat!
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.722138
| 2012-04-14T09:37:57 |
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|
36196
|
Salt in boiled meat
Is there a way to estimate consumption of salt when dealing with the boiled meat? I.e. I had 500 grams of meat, boiled in 2 litres of water, with 5 grams of salt diluted in that water. If the water is to be discarded, how much salt will be left in the meat?
See also http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/27407/how-much-salt-is-absorbed-by-meat-during-brining
This is probably going to be pretty difficult to answer - the answer depends on the exact quantities (and the kind of meat, and so on), and I doubt there's a nice simple formula or anything, just the various specific circumstances someone's bothered to test in a lab.
My non-scientific answer would be "almost nothing", since meat generally loses water during boiling rather than absorbing it. That's why it comes out so dry. Salt would normally be absorbed with water, as in brining.
@Aaronut: When making a beef roast, I usually make a fond by boiling unsalted meat in unsalted water (and reducing the result to about a cup of semi-liquid). I have learned to not to cut corners and buy ready-made fonds, because when I reduced those, they contained too much salt and the sauce got too salty. So boiled meat does absorb salt. Undermining that is the fact that the meat this boiled without salt tastes terribly bland. Even the kids don't want it.
The upper limit of salt absorption should be easy to establish- if you assume that the meat is about 75% water, then the concentration of salt would be 5g*(500g0.75)/(2000g+500g0.750)=0.789g, or 789 mg salt. This is assuming that the meat salinity has reached equilibrium with the cooking water, which is a huge if.
Short answer: Not really.
Doing some armchair math, you have two liters of water and 55g of salt, which is about 0.25 liter. That gives you 12.5% the amount salt as there is water in your original solution. The logical solution would be to then cook the meat, then measure the quantity of salt afterwards, right?
However...
That would assume that the absorption and dilution were one-way, i.e.: water-to-meat (as in reverse osmosis to filter water, for instance). In reality, it goes both ways.
The meat, while cooking, will release blood and other body fluids (like oil from the fat) which also contains a certain amount of sodium, and so your post-cooking solution will be "dirty" and that makes it nigh-impossible to get an accurate reading of how much sodium was absorbed vs. released.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.722298
| 2013-08-21T17:33:04 |
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23745
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Is it okay to put baking powder in Yorkshire Pudding batter?
It's just that, the first time I tried, they didn't rise as much as I thought they would. would baking powder help?
I upvoted the answer below because it is all about the heat, could your oven have been quite cold or opened frequently? I usually preheat the muffin tray with a small amount of vegetable oil in each until it is very hot. Then add the mixture quickly before placing back in the oven. The yorkshires are usually massive.
Yorkshire puddings rise because of the eggs in them. This means that the mixture for you Yorkshire puddings needs heat to rise So if your oven is not hot enough, they won't rise as much as you want. So here are some tips:
-make sure your oven is hot before putting your puddings in
-Don't open the oven while cooking your puddings
-I always pre heat the muffin trays before I use them.
So you put your mixture in a hot muffin tray (or something els you use), put the hot muffin tray in a hot oven, and don't open the oven anymore before the cooking time is over. So I won't use baking powder, I first try it by making sure the heat is there.
Note that of course every oven is different and so you might need a couple of time before have the right temperature. Also I recommend this site for more information about Yorkshire puds: http://www.hub-uk.com/tallyrecip03/recipe0124.htm
It's the tiny trapped air-bubbles in batter that expand exponentially and are locked in by the egg going solid. Very good suggestion here about the heat -expand before getting cooked. Also can look at incorporating more air to start if results still not as wished.
+1 - hot fat is the absolute no. 1 factor in a well-risen Yorkshire Pudding in my experience. I heat mine for at least half an hour.
Although this is good information, it really isn't answering the question. There's already a Q&A about getting Yorkshire Puddings to rise, and it already has all of this information. This answer doesn't address whether or not it is appropriate to add baking powder and certainly doesn't explain why, except to dismiss it as "I don't/wouldn't do it".
I thought I would try adding baking powder to see if my usually really good Yorkshire puddings would rise any more but no batter went like light cake mixture was a waste of time will stick with my old recipe. If having trouble add another egg I always use 2 and not the recommended one and they are brilliant. Don't know why I messed around
I use a mix from a cash and carry for yorkshire puddings for my pub sunday lunch service (it's as cheap as buying the ingredients separately), to which you just add water. It has bicarbonate of soda in it as a raising agent. The puddings are OK, but not brilliant. Last week I used my emergency pack of Aunt Bessies mix, and the puds were amazing. These are the ingredients list:
WHEAT Flour, Dried EGG, Skimmed MILK Powder, Raising Agent (Sodium Bicarbonate), Salt, Sugar, Potato Starch, Emulsifiers (Mono- and Di-glycerides of Fatty Acids, Lacto Glycerides, Propylene Glycol Esters of Fatty Acids), Dried Glucose Syrup, Maltodextrin, Stabiliser (Diphosphates).
So it seems that bicarb is commonly used in prepackaged mixes.
Wouldn’t it be wild if you made them from eggs, milk and flour.
Don't use baking powder in your mixture. It's an absolute no no, the rise rise LESS and have a cake type texture
Welcome to Seasoned Advice! Your answer might be improved by explaining why exactly it's an "absolute no no." The OP actually implies that he/she wants a greater rise, so simply saying not to use it and that less rise is better doesn't actually address the question.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.722557
| 2012-05-13T17:16:00 |
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23259
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What's the point of using sugar in savory dishes?
I never get why people add a sweet substance to a savory dish. Especially in something like a a curry or noodles. People say it balances out the flavors. But which flavor is it actually balancing out?
Generally I add it to balance acidity (e.g. in tomato sauces).
@nico But won't the addition make the dish sweet?
Depends how much you add. For a pot of tomato sauce I would use a teaspoon. For curry I don't generally use sugar...
The actual question is: what is the reason to not use sugar in savory dishes? And the answer is: tradition. It is that simple. Until the 14th or 15th century, nobody even made a difference between sweet and savory dishes.
...For the record some people add sugar to make things sweet, specifically. Sugar is yummy and it sells. Here in Murrca, I think a lot of people have been trained by mass-produced, commercial food to expect things to be sweeter. I grew up eating more home-cooked/from-scratch foods than most of my friends, and my siblings and I definitely notice sweetness a lot more than most of the people we know. Obviously there are other, more legit reasons posted as answers, but part of the reason is likely due to what people grow up eating. Taste/balance is subjective...
Hot Sour Salty Sweet
Sugar balances both salty and sour flavors in dishes. Adding just a little sugar makes salty things taste less salty and sour things taste less sour, without actually reducing the amount of salt or acid in the recipe.
For example, the liquid base of the Pad Thai recipe I follow contains chili powder, fish sauce, tamarind, and light palm sugar. The palm sugar balances out the sour from the tamarind and the salt from the fish sauce. Without it, the noodles would come out too sour and too salty.
I don't know the physiological reasons for this. Would be interesting to hear them if someone knew ...
Adding sugar to something acidic changes your perception of it up to a point but if you add too much it will start to taste sweet. The trick is to add the right amount so that it doesn't taste sweet but you get the reduction in the other property of the dish. The same applies to bitter flavours which are masked by salt. According to this article by Heston Blumenthal they don't know why it happens but the important thing here is that it does:
Try this great experiment, and you'll see what I mean. Pour some tonic water into two glasses. Add a pinch of salt to one and taste it. Now add a little more salt, and taste again - the tonic will have become sweeter. Carry on adding salt and tasting, and each time the tonic will be sweeter.
You'll eventually reach a point where the tonic starts to taste salty, at which stage taste the two glasses of tonic water side by side. You'll marvel at how the bitterness in the salted tonic has been reduced - there is as yet no hard and fast evidence as to why this happens, though one of the more likely theories is that the salt diverts the mind away from the bitterness inherent in the tonic, and it is the reduction in bitterness that creates the perception of sweetness. '
It probably has to do with how your brain interprets/combines the tongue's taste sensations. Flavors are a combination of all your different sweet/salty/sour/bitter sensors (plus the added complexity of scent, and moist/dry/texture). Each person processes & interprets that info a bit differently, and I don't think the process is as well understood (physiologically) as say hearing & sight, which are actually less complex (fewer types of input sensors).
Sugar doesn't have to add much sweetness to a dish if it's for browning.
Caribbean example: in your pot and mix in a couple tablespoons of brown sugar. Heat it up til the mix starts to caramelize and smoke a bit. Next add your beef cubes, sautéing them in the browning. Along the way, you'll notice that the Browning adds a deep, rich dark-brown color and a wonderfully smoky, molasses-like scent.
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.722896
| 2012-04-22T12:08:46 |
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17770
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Can condensed milk be safely used after it's 'best before' date?
It's just that I have an unopened tin of condensed milk which is a couple of months past it's best before date. And I don't feel like throwing it away :(
Most things in cans will last for many years, as long as the can was intact and not bulging it will be fine
Yes, as long as it hasn't been opened. 'Best Before' dates refer to quality, not safety, and reflect the date at which the manufacturers believe that it is not up to normal quality standards. Have a taste, and if you think it's OK, go ahead.
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.723342
| 2011-09-15T18:07:31 |
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21280
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Should I sear sous-vide chicken breasts?
I'm planning on cooking some boneless skinless chicken breasts tonight sous-vide. Should I finish them with a quick pan sear like I do with my steaks or should I just season and slice?
I would sear. It is not necessary, really, but I prefer the texture and flavor that comes with a good sear. To me, while it would be moist and tender, it would also be rather uninteresting. Bear in mind much of this is driven by personal preference.
I think I share these preferences too. This was my intuition. I imagine if I was using the chicken for a chicken salad or a sauced wrap the sear might become unnecessary. Thanks!
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.723421
| 2012-02-12T16:51:09 |
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58937
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What is the difference between a thickener and an emulsifier?
I ask this because I have used a minuscule amount of Xanthan Gum to slightly thicken a chilli sauce I have made. However upon looking at the ingredients of many popular chilli sauces they all tend to use a "modified starch" (modified cornstarch, modified maize starch, modified tapioca starch, are the common ones I've come across) as a "thickener" and Xanthan Gun as an "emulsifier".
Given this what is the difference between a thickener and an emulsifier? How would my chilli sauce change if I used a modified starch instead of Xanthan gum? And why is it ideal to use both?
Emulsifier will make two or more element blend together, for example the egg in the mayonnaise recipe will act as an emulsifier.
A thickener will simply make something thick, as you wrote, cornstarch is a thickener.
Personally, I would use neither cornstarch or xanthan gum in a chill sauce; seems to me that it is a shortcut instead of letting it cook down properly (but I might be wrong).
It took me a second to get this, but I believe the OP is asking specifically about xanthan gum - it appears to act as a thickener, but as the ingredients say it's an emulsifier. It sounds like the truth is that it's an emulsifier that also thickens a bit. Acting as an emulsifier is more unique and important, though; there are tons of thickeners but they'll generally still let oil and water separate unless you thicken to the point that it's not really liquid anymore.
As Max points out, emulsifiers work by allowing two normally incompatible ingredients to mix. There are different ways that emulsifiers do this. Lecithin, probably the most common emulsifier, can do this because its molecule has a water-binding end and an oil-binding end. Hydrocolloids, like xanthan gum, can also have emulsification properties, but they work quite a bit differently.
Hydrocolloids work by binding up water, which causes a marked increase in viscosity. This allows them to function as thickeners. They are sometimes used in this capacity in combination with other emulsifiers as the increased viscosity helps to make emulsions more stable. Some hydrocolloids can work as emulsifiers on their own because they either increase viscosity enough that the droplets of differing materials can't separate, or they have a small protein component that helps to bind the ingredients.
In your case, the main difference if you switched ingredients would probably be texture. Different hydrocolloids can have similar thickening capacities, but give markedly different textures. Because of this, they are frequently used in "synergistic systems", where multiple hydrocolloids are used to modify each others' textures to acheive a desired result. This is basically what's happening in the commercial sauces.
If the xanthan gum worked fine for your purposes on its own, I'd just stick with that. Modified starch can be a lot of different things with different purposes, so if your problem is solved more simply, it's probably best not to go down that rabbit hole.
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.723503
| 2015-07-09T22:56:21 |
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58973
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Is it advisable to season a chicken with salt after having brined it?
I've used a standard 5% salt and water solution to brine a chicken, after having brined it is it advisable for me to season the chicken with salt before cooking it? I'm worried that if I do so that the chicken may become too salty; am I wrong in thinking this?
If it is the case that the chicken CAN be salted after brining; what concentrate of brine would be needed so that salting is not necessary after brining? 7%, 10%?
Myth busters beware, are you ready? Go!
No brining nor seasoning will make your chicken too salty.
5%, 7%, 10%, The only sodium saturating process known to men is the injection, the needle injection, the so called "added solution".
If you're only brining, you're miles away from needle injection consequences, yet another misunderstood process.
Brining is not to be feared, injections is.
Edit (after all these comments/questions showed up):
Brining is a complex subject which I cannot address here, and a lot of myths are floating around, mostly related to nuances, while people do not understand the enormous impact of:
osmosis vs. diffusion,
which ingredient are real actors in brining and which are not, among salt sugar fat acids alcohol herbs/flavors spices/Pungency/[scoville scale]
what happens during passive brining vs. active cooking, including the effects of slow cooking vs. high heat
the type of meat, the thickness of the meat, the duration of the brine/marination.
You can debate this thing for days and years, but what matters here is the question. The assumption is "I marinated (5%) a chicken and now that my marination is over, I'm thinking of seasoning (salt) before cooking. Am I running a risk to saturate the end product with sodium?"
The clear answer is NO, as long as your brine didn't last weeks, or your meat was not previously injected with a sodium solution, e.g 12% or 15%. The only time you have to worry about salt seasoning is when your meat has already been salted with injection, or if you just managed to cook a peace of meat with a higher than 5% salt solution for more than a week, which won't happen unless we are talking about dried cured meat, which is an aberration as I've never seen it.
Please be careful with references to articles, books, so called scientific published papers. You really need to read them slowly and carefully, interpretation is key, understand where they came from, who wrote them, who paid for it, who's getting paid for it, which is the source, ... etc, even if the almighty gods of molecular gastronomy are named on it.
FYI: I've been fighting a few USDA/FDA strict rules for years (e.g. caning, meat temp), while believing their overall work is awesome.
Brining will not salt chicken on the inside despite myth. But neither will salting. But it still seems very reasonable that there will be no salting needed after brining, as the brine will have changed the salt on the surface of the chicken, just as salting will. Injections are irrelevant for that effect.
@rumtscho I'm afraid I don't understand. This is completely opposite of answers to other questions on SA about brining, as well as reputable culinary and food science resources.
Can you provide any resources that substantiate your information?
From the USDA (http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/meat-preparation/water-in-meat-and-poultry/ct_index), not all solution enhanced products are injected: Enhanced or value-added meat and poultry products are raw products that contain flavor solutions added through marinating, needle injecting, soaking, etc.
I agree with @rumtscho that you should not need to salt after brining. However, I totally disagree with the accepted answer. There are simply too many reputable sources that say otherwise, not to mention my own experience.
First, please see the accepted answer to this question which is from Cook's Illustrated.
Secondly, this article from Stella Culinary gives a very detailed description of what brining is and how it works. Please see excerpts below.
What Is A Brine and Why Should I Use It?
In its simplest form, brine is a salt and water solution that food products, most commonly meats, are soaked in for a given period of time to improve the product’s overall quality.
When food is brined correctly, the process yields three major benefits:
Textural improvement, especially when brining proteins.
Brines can and will enhance overall flavor. Not only does the salt contained within a brine help to season the food product (assuming the brine is applied correctly), but brines also commonly contain secondary flavor profiles such as herbs, spices and aromatics, that are chosen specifically to enhance the overall flavor of the food product being brined.
By far the biggest reason food is brined, and that’s moisture retention. Especially when it comes to cooking lean proteins such as chicken breast, pork tenderloin and even fish, brining allows proteins to retain more moisture throughout the cooking process resulting in a moister finished product.
How Do Brines Work?
The most conventional explanation of how brining works describes the movement of salt and water into proteins through a process called osmosis. This however is incorrect. Brining actually works through diffusion, not osmosis, and it’s important to make that distinction if we are to truly understand how a brine works.
This is a very good article and gives an in-depth look at brining. I personally use a gradient brine (5%) or dry rub and I can personally attest that the salt does get into the meat.
No, I do not cook my brined chicken with added salt. I always brine chicken overnight with maybe a bit more salt than is standard. The next day, I rinse and soak it briefly in clear water, then cook it without adding salt. It is always salty enough from the brine and very few people eating at my table ever add salt. From my taste buds, I believe chicken does absorb salt from brining even though others insist it cannot be absorbed. I respectfully disagree.
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.723773
| 2015-07-10T22:33:31 |
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52100
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A question about browning meat for spaghetti bolognese
I've been told in one form or another: "no colour, no flavour", so when cooking Spaghetti Bolognese I always brown the meat (after chucking in the onions, carrots, celery etc.). The browning does impart flavour but it also alters the texture of the minced meat - it becomes grainier, drier, etc. It's not that i'm overcooking it, I believe this to be a natural byproduct of the browning – the browning can only occur once the moisture has been cooked off, after which point the meat forms a crust and becomes harder.
Is it possible to retain the flavour benefits of browning alongside the qualities of the mince being tender and moist?
Kenji at Serous Eats pondered exactly this question at length. (emphasis mine)
And now we get to the most crucial phase of the process: the long cook. If you take a quick look back at that passage from Cook's Illustrated, they do make one good point: browning meat toughens it far more than simply simmering it. But we also know that browning adds flavor, right?
In fact, some very well-respected ragù recipes call for browning the ground meats until very brown, like the version that Mario Batali makes on The Chew. In that version, he cooks the meat until what he calls "beyond brown". I've made that recipe (or variations close to it) a number of times and have even eaten what can be presumed to be the same sauce at two of his restaurants. It's absolutely packed with flavor, but I simply can't get over the dried nubs of meat you end up with when you brown ground meat past the last inch of its life.
Surely there has to be a way to get great browned flavor without having to reduce the tender meat to dry rubble?
In point of fact, the whole reason I was extra excited for Bolognese season to start this year was because of this slow-cooked tomato sauce technique I developed a few months back.
The concept is simple: rather than simmering a pot of tomato sauce in a pot on the stovetop, just transfer the whole thing to the oven. Not only does the oven deliver more even heat and better reduction with less mess, but it also creates delicious caramelized bits of tomato on the top surface of the sauce and around the edges of the pot which you can stir back into the finished sauce for richer, deeper, more complex flavor.
He's got another secret for his amazing Bolognese: Fish Sauce. (no joke) Umami bomb
Doesn't that look good? He gets down and dirty with all of the explanation of his technique in the article linked to in the beginning of this answer.
The recipe (it's a beaut) is here
EDIT HA! I made it (with half the liver), and it turned out great!
If you click on nothing else on SE today, click on that recipe. That looks soooo good.
That's an insanely complicated version of a spaghetti bol in my eye's. What is lost flavour wise by not Browning the meat is replaced by 3 extra meats and a good slug of msg. I can't help but feel if you tried this method but with only ground beef you'd be severely missing out on flavour.
@Doug All of my favorite Bolognese recipes are at least that "complicated". I like the ATK one too, that's 5 meats. Yes, with just beef it would only have the flavor of beef.
@Doug : Ragù alla Bolognese is typically more than one meat; usually minced (or ground) beef plus some pork (pancetta or similar). The British meat sauce they call 'bolognese' is a pale imitation. I'm going to assume that seeker is British as he mentioned 'spaghetti bolognese'.
I've done the sauce-in-oven bit a few times, and it's amazing. Never really thought about why, but Kenji's explanation makes perfect sense.
When I make Bolognese I take the mince carefully from the packet in its cuboid shape and place it straight onto a smoking cast iron and then flip it after a few short minutes, like a rare steak. The ratio of caramelised to pink meat it the same as in a good steak. When it comes to the liquid cooking stage, the cuboid can be broken up to give a good mix between Maillard-y goodness and succulent, untainted meat.
For me, separating the strands of mince first just causes the strands to boil in their own juices (and, let's face it, the injected water which pours out). Because they are so thin, they cook straight through before any colour is achieved.
Edit: I see a some posts suggesting to brown the meat with vegetables in the same pan. I think this is undesirable as
A high heat is required for meat browning which can burn vegetables (especially garlic)
Vegetables introduce more water and so inhibit the reaction between the pan surface, meat and oil which creates the caramelised flavours we desire
When I brown mince I start with the mince alone, get it nice and brown till all the fat is released. Then I pour off the majority of the fat, I can only afford the cheap stuff so there is a lot possibly a cup full.
Then I throw my onions and garlic in till tender, then add the rest.
By the sounds of it, what you are doing is essentially boiling your mince first is all the water coming from your veg and meat. Till breaks down the mince to a horrible grainy texture, then you are Browning the grains.
Also when adding the tomatoes you need to pretend you are making a soup, low and slow. Boiling too rapidly will again effect the texture of your mince.
Don't add salt until near the end. Adding it at the start draws more moisture from the meat before the Browning can start. Adding it before you've reduced the tomatoes can risk an overly salty sauce at the end, due to higher concentration.
I think if you keep those 3 points in your mind next time, you won't find it so dry and grainy.
I also brown the meat first ... when you add the onions and other vegetables, you cool off the pot to reduce the overcooking of the meat. (and you avoid adding extra oil to cook the veg, as you can use the drippings from the meat).
Note that there isn't a clear link between fat content and price as you suggest in your answer. Many of the better cuts of beef include relatively large amounts of fat and that's what gives it the flavour.
Hah, I meant the £2 500g (20% fat) mince from Tesco has much more fat than the £5 500g (5% fat) mince I use at work.
@DavidRicherby Shop bought meat in packets does have a definite and direct price to fat content ratio. 5% vs 15% vs 20% is cheaper for the same weights, I guess because you are paying for the same weight for a cheaper product - fat being cheaper.
Classically speaking the meat should be browned in batches so it doesn't stew. You don't want all those juices to run out of the meat. That is how you end up with dry meat in the end product.
I always brown the minced meat first, with chopped onions, olive oil, oregano, basil, chopped parsley and grounded pepper.. I let that simmer until there the entire meat is brown (as kids we used to eat some of that right away).. Then I add carrot stripes and cinnamon sticks.. Adding sieved tomatoes, I let the bolognese simmer for about 1 and a half to 2 hours.. The longer the better, just like making soup..
The simplest way is to use higher heat. Put the meat alone on high heat, and stir it now and then until ready.
If you want to cook the vegetables for a very long time, it might make sense to wait until the last 15 minutes or so before adding the meat.
If you are not cooking the sauce in the same pan as the one in which you browned the meat, it makes sense to deglaze and add the liquid to the sauce. Also, I wouldn't throw out the fat, that's where the taste is. But most people's preferences differ on that point.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.724255
| 2014-12-30T12:33:21 |
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|
50483
|
What to do with grapefruit seeds?
I have several grapefruit trees and get tons of grapefruits almost year round. When I eat the grapefruits, which is fairly regular, I typically eat a good amount of the seeds with the fruit for nutrition, though I do get tired of them after a while.
Is there any recommendation as far as what to do with grapefruit seeds that might break the monotony of just eating them raw? Any way to prepare them or mix them into something... I've put them into smoothies which works fine, but I'm trying to see if there is anything more creative out there that I haven't considered.
You could try roasting them like pumpkin seeds: http://www.marthastewart.com/351200/roasted-pumpkin-seeds The worst that can happen is that you won't like the result.
I had thought about that - didn't sounds too appealing, but it wouldn't take long to find out if its good or not.
Hello jhawes. We have very strict guidelines on culinary uses questions (http://meta.cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/740/can-i-ask-about-how-to-use-a-specific-ingredient-aka-culinary-uses-guidelines), and many new users tend to break them because they are not aware of them. Your question fits them well. No matter if you knew about them or not, thank you for providing a good example that the policy can work, and that it is worth keeping the complicated distinction instead of summarily closing all of them.
My first reaction was to think that grapefruit seeds have cyanide, don't they? Nope, that's apples, apricots and peaches.
I did find an application you might find interesting: Grapefruit Seed Extract
Self-made pure GSE processed without solvents is prepared by grinding the grapefruit seed and juiceless pulp, then mixing with glycerin.
A few sites suggest that it's not quite that simple, but a Google Search for "grapefruit seed extract homemade" will give you quite a bit of reading material.
If you try this, I hope you let us know how it goes!
Yeah the grapefruit seed extract is a pretty intensive... not that it isn't a solution, but I was looking more of something that could be a simple solution. From more searching I don't think there really is - it can be re-planted, put in a smoothie (little flavor to them), or as you suggested it can be made into an extract.
@jhawes Can you sprout grapefruit seeds, and for example, use them in salads?
great idea @ElmerCat - I hadn't even thought of that!
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.724925
| 2014-12-10T21:52:29 |
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|
46634
|
How do you create and store bacteria cultures for fermenting?
I'm very new to fermenting and am typically doing it with vegetables pressed under either salt or salt and water.
I've come across several sites teaching about how bacteria cultures can be used in this process, but am unsure how to create them and store them instead of buying them.
Unless you've got the time and resources to set up your own biology lab, you're not likely to have much luck raising your own bacterial cultures from scratch. You'd probably need growth mediums suited to particular strains of bacteria and strict isolation between them to prevent other opportunistic bugs from taking over. If you really, really want to try, you might have better luck asking on another SE site.
Fortunately, a lot of pickled-vegetable recipes (such as this recipe for dill pickles, or this kimchi recipe) don't bother with an initial culture. This is what's called a "wild fermentation", meaning that you're culturing with whatever bacteria happen to float their way into your fermentation vessel. If the initial culture is present, it's there to kick-start the process, or to obtain a very specific flavor profile by using a precise blend of bacterial strains. In those cases, you'll want to buy, because it's practically impossible to invite only a single strain of bacteria to the party. Even if your kitchen is scrupulously clean, exposing your food to open air also quickly exposes it to bacterial colonists that you can't control.
Other fermented foods can be started from a purchased culture, or they can be inoculated from a sample of active culture in a purchased food. For example, you can use store-bought yogurt with live cultures as a starter for fermenting your own, and you can cultivate the scoby from a store-bought bottle of kombucha to make your own at home. With some care and maintenance, you can make some of these cultures last for years. The cultures that give sourdough bread its distinctive flavor are sometimes kept this way.
If you need a specific starter for your recipe, you'll just have to pony up and purchase it. Depending on the final product, you might be able to use a different starter and wind up with a similar end product (see here) but it would be inadvisable and possibly unsafe to deviate from your directions.
Thanks for the advice - great learning more about all this :)
There is typically no need to do that. Sometimes you can use an existing cultures to accelerate fermentation (use some liquid from the sauerkraut batch that just finished fermenting in the new batch for instance).
Other times you can keep a colony of bacteria alive for a long time. I've kept my sourdough culture going for 3 years before it died in the fridge after I took a long break from baking.
If you create the right conditions, you'll naturally get a culture of bacteria you want in whatever you want to ferment. Most of the time, lactic acid bacteria and/or yeast are the microbes used for fermentations. These are literally everywhere, so it's easy to get them into the food.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.725162
| 2014-08-25T00:26:48 |
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47171
|
Should I wait until the oil smokes when frying eggs?
Making ordinary fried eggs, I heat up the (soy bean) vegetable oil. I usually use the smoke as an indicator of being in enough temperature to pour the eggs in.
I heard that in olive oil, bad chemicals emerges when the oil reaches smoke point. I wondered if this is the case with vegetable oil? Should I strife for borderline of hot enough oil that is not smoking?
This question is related to and maybe a duplicate to the question "Is it safe to use oil at its smoking point?" and a answer to the thread "Frying Eggs—Sticking to the Pan".
There's a visual indicator before you reach the smoke point -- the surface of the oil will start to fluctuate slightly. People typically refer to this as 'shimmering'. (I tried finding video of it online, but is seems there's some beauty treatment called 'shimmer oil' which is screwing up my search). You can also place a wooden object in the oil ... if it's sufficiently hot, you'll see small bubbles as the moisture in the wood steams out.
I almost closed this as a dupe of http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/10425/is-it-really-necessary-to-properly-heat-oil-in-a-pan-before-frying-veggies?rq=1, then noticed it's about eggs, so changed the title instead, to prevent others from making the same mistake
Considering that you're using Soybean Oil - which has a smoke point of 450°F, you might be using far too much heat for your eggs. Even if you were making an omelette, which typical recipes demand a higher temperature of ~ 400°F - you'd still be far too high if you're smoking soybean oil. In any case, I would recommend frying between 350°F and 390°F.
As for you hearing that in olive oil, bad chemicals emerge when the oil reaches the smoke point - this is true of any oil. Heating any oil or fat past its smoke point causes rapid oxidation (peroxidation) and more-or-less mimics the effects of rancidity. Think about whether you want to be cooking using burnt, rancid oil. At that, you shouldn't be using olive oil (which has a lower smoke point than most fats) for high-heat cooking. As for the bad chemicals, any oil or fat that is taken past its smoke point will oxidize, and as a result, different chemical reactions will occur which may or may not release/create carcinogens. This is a topic that you should explore more with your dietician/physician than on this board.
Ideally, you should monitor your oil temperature - either visually by looking for a slight shimmer/sheen, or physically by using a cooking thermometer or a wooden spoon (look for air bubbles).
You can also test the temperature by holding your hand over the pan. Over time you get a feel for the desired temperature. Watch out for splatters though, if you're using a lot of oil (don't).
While I've also used that method, I wouldn't advise someone to use that method due to risk of harm vs watching for shimmer.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.725535
| 2014-09-16T14:32:25 |
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|
68905
|
What can I make with corn flake that is no longer crispy?
I left the cornflake bag open for too long that it is not crispy anymore. Still taste good, but I wonder what can I do with it.
For what it's worth, I think this is fine per the culinary use question guidelines - in fact, one of the examples given there is stale bread.
You can crisp them up again in a hot oven for a few minutes (exact temperature not too important, spread them out thinly on a baking sheet and take them out before they burn). I'd then go on to make a normal cornflake cake recipe of your liking straight away, to avoid having the same problem again.
A nice thing might be cereal milk (made famous by Momofuku Milk Bar).
The cornflakes are toasted and steeped in milk with some brown sugar. Theres also cornflake crunch (both recipes are in the Milk Bar cookbook) -- clusters of toasted cornflakes with some sugar and milk powder and butter.
Maybe see how it does in the food processor for corn flake crumbs. Possible uses could be meatballs or meat pies or anywhere else you would want a filler.
My solution is close to Chris H except i found this for myself
Take a bit of butter on a pan.
Main point is to use a butter (home butter at best), dont use natural or flower oils that can be bought in a store. That way corn flakes reach nice aroma which natural oils can not reach.
Heat the pan up . After butter gets melt add corn flakes and roast them 3-5min.
Dont burn them.
You will see that the cornflakes had now slightly different taste because of a butter.
Optionally add salt after you finish roasting.
Thing i should point out.
I have not tried this with "budget" corn flakes since they has different taste and structure against quality ones.
enjoy
Crushed cornflakes can be used in place of breadcrumbs when doing a three-part breading. There are a lot of recipes out there for ‘cornflake chicken’, a baked alternative to fried chicken.
In my opinion, they work better than breadcrumbs for breaded and baked items, as they’re already crispy.
Okay, in this case they’re no longer crispy, but baking will dry them back out.
Cornflakes, not very crispy..leave them in the inner bag of the box. Remove the bag, close it. Using a rolling pin, crush flakes. Make a couple piles..one savory and one sweet. Add garlic and onion powder, cayenne or black pepper or Cajun seasoning and parsley. For sweet, mix in brown sugar, cinnamon, apple pie spice. Spread the mixtures out on foil. Form 2 balls of softened cream cheese, roll balls in each mixture until completely covered, wrap in plastic and place in fridge. You can use flavored cream cheese if you like. Delicious snack.
You can just fry them at high heat for a minutes or two in a non stick pan
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.726065
| 2016-05-09T13:55:06 |
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|
23577
|
Cold Smoking in the Tropics - Condensation
I am determined to find a way to cold smoke in the tropics. The obvious problems we face here are a high outside air temperature (avg. 35° C) and high humidity (at times 85%) In order to get around this I have had the idea to channel the smoke through a functioning freezer which I redesigned with copper tubing on the inner walls to cool the chamber.
This will lead to a large amount of condensation collecting within the chamber, effectively dehumidifying the air.
My question is: Will this condensation collect on the meat or will it only collect on the copper pipes and walls of the inner chamber?
Condensation occurs when the temperature of humid air drops below its "dew point". In other words, at ambient temperature (35° C), the amount of water in the air is 85% of what the air can hold. But the air near the copper will be quite a bit cooler, enough to make that, enough to rise the relative humidity to 100%.
So with that rough sketch in mind, back to your meat. While the condensation is collection on your copper because the copper is cool, your meat should be warm throughout the duration of the smoke--about the same temperature as the air in fact--which would not cause the humid air to condense on it.
Ray, You are a gentleman and a scholar. thank you!
Cold smoking at 35 degC is very dangerous. Do not do this! Between 20 and 60 degC is the most dangerous temperature at which to keep food, as that is the optimal temperature range for numerous food pathogens to incubate and/or generate toxins. Keep cold smoking temperature at 4-18 degC.
I'm not a smoker, but my understanding is that you need to get the meat sufficiently warm enough for the smoke to penetrate the meat ... so you want your box around 60-80°F (15.5-27°C). Wood smoke does have anti-bacterial properties, but it won't kill everything (eg. e.coli), nor does it protect against spores, so you still want to follow good sanitation practices.
Condensation during cold smoking
Warm air can hold much more water vapor than cold air
1 kilogram of air at 5 degrees Celsius can contain a maximum of 5.7 grams of water vapor. If it is 25 degrees Celsius, 1 kilogram of air can contain up to 20 grams of water vapor. Or to put it another way: if you increase the temperature at the same amount of water vapor per cubic meter of air, the air will become a lot drier. (relative air humidity)
We call this physical phenomenon the maximum vapor pressure.
The maximum vapor pressure of a liquid at a given temperature is equal to the saturated vapor pressure of the liquid at that temperature.
When steam (= warm) condenses (= cools) then you get condensation = liquid.
There is also condensation on a cold glass of beer on a hot summer day.
If you are going to cold smoke with an outside temperature where the humidity is so high that the saturated vapor pressure has been reached, then you only need small temperature fluctuations to get condensation on a slightly colder surface, (lid of your smoker / BBQ)
Mist occurs at different temperatures, high and low and that just means that the saturated vapor pressure of water has been reached at that temperature. (Relative humidity is very high, 100%)
Cold smoking if it freezes well for a few days, then you will hardly suffer from condensation, after all, the icy air is very dry due to the frost and therefore contains little water vapor.
If the dry air heats up without the presence of moisture, the air will only become drier and there is no chance of condensation if it encounters a colder surface.
This happens in practice:
Air with temperature X saturated with water vapor enters your smoke barrel and is burned by the smoldering smoke moth and heated slightly, so it can absorb a little more water vapor that is present in the environment, the air rises and encounters the cold lid, causing the air again. cooling down, he can no longer retain the water vapor absorbed that this air had absorbed after heating by the smoke moth, since the air was already saturated with water vapor when it was still colder.
this extra absorbed water vapor during heating must therefore let go of the air again and will deposit on the lid as condensation.
As long as the relative humidity is low and the cool air can warm up and cool down again without becoming saturated with water vapor, everything is fine, without condensation.
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2025-03-21T13:24:55.726304
| 2012-05-04T09:09:33 |
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|
30733
|
Salad dressing- does it go bad fast if it is creamed in a blender?
I made a salad dressing with these ingredents:
1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup Tahini
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 Juice of a lemon
4 garlic cloves
6 basil leaves
1 handful of parsley
2 green onion
Then blended it all to a creamy finish.
Does it go bad fast if it is creamed in a blender?
If so, can it be placed in the freezer?
very related: "Olive oil gets bitter in blender?" http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/15263/olive-oil-gets-bitter-in-blender, particularly the answer about oxidation.
All the blender does is emulsify the mixture--it has no effect on how long it will keep before the dressing begins to spoil or go off.
Normally, oil and water do not like to mix. The oil will coalesce into droplets, then rise to the top due to buoyancy, so that you will have a layer of oil above the water-based liquids. Blending the mixture will break up the oil droplets into very small droplets. These take much longer to coalesce together, so you have a creamy dressing for a time.
Over time, the oil can coalesce and separate back out. If this happens, assuming the ingredients have not spoiled, you can always remix or re-blend the mixture--it s not a safety issue.
I suggest storing your dressing in the refrigerator, where it will be good for several days, probably up to a week, although the oil may separate out.
You can freeze it, but this is likely to encourage the emulsion to break.
Note: I have not discussed emulsifiers like lecithin from egg yolks or mustard which help keep oil-water emulsions stable, because I don't see any in this recipe.
Thank you for your responce, are you saying that if I put mustard in the mix it will take longer to spoil?
or if I cook the dressing will it take longer to spoil?
No, mustard would help the oil and water stay emulsified. It would have no real affect on how long the dressing would be safe. Cooking is likely to bring flavor and texture changes--and to break the emulsion. You can try it, but it isn't something I would consider likely to be successful.
The existing answer by SAJ14SAJ addresses the food safety concerns really well. Blending won't change those.
But as for taste, it may change earlier. The point is that your blender will introduce more oxygen into the mixture. And even though you have no good physical emulsifiers like mustard, the ingredients are heterogenous enough to act as not-so-good physical emulsifiers, trapping a bit of extra oxygen. This oxygen will alter the taste of the oils.
I cannot predict how large a difference it will make within the typical shelf life of the dressing. It is possible that you won't be able to taste the difference between a previously blended and a freshly blended dressing after a day or two in the fridge. But theoretically, it can have an effect, so if you are unsure, you should test it next time and see if you can taste it.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.726663
| 2013-02-06T07:41:14 |
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|
21279
|
What temperature should I use for sous-vide chicken breasts?
I'm finally going to advance my sous vide repertoire from just steaks to poultry. I know the safety issues and am familiar with the salmonella death rate chart. What I'm wondering about is the texture of the meat itself.
I've been cooking chicken on the grill and in the oven and in the pan and have grown used to a particular texture for the meat. Most of these techniques end up taking the breast meat up to the 160-165 F range.
With sous vide I have a much better control over what temperature I can safely eat the meat at, however I don't want the texture to drive me away from the experience. I was thinking of preparing the chicken at around 150-155.
Does anyone have any experience with poultry at these lower temperatures?
Go for 145. 2 hours.
Salmonella dies even at "low" temperatures (from 135) as long as you cook it for longer.
135 for at least 87 minutes, will kill salmonella.
However, I like it best when cooked at 145 for 2 hours.
How does the texture compared to the 160-165 range?
145 compared to 165. 145 will have amore "juicy" bite to it. It will be notning like an ordinary roasted chickenbreast. It will have a lovely "poached" feel.
Pot wound up running a little hot and I ended up at around 150 internal. Was magical nonetheless. The heat wasn't as even at 145 compared to 130 (my steak temp) which I hadn't immediately accounted for. Next time I'll be sure to drop it 5 and go for 145.
I find 58C (136F) for 2.5+ hours to give the best results. I experimented with 60 and 62C for a little while but found that there is considerable moisture loss once you get above 60. Longer cooking times don't matter much; I've forgotten about the meat on more than one occasion and left it overnight (8-9 hours?) with no adverse impact on the final product. I personally found chicken breast after 24 hours unappealing, but my partner liked it - I would describe the texture as 70% meat, 30% cake? I would avoid shorter times though - 2.5 hours is usually well inside the safe margins for the thickness of meat I'm using according to Doug Baldwin's models.
However the biggest (positive) difference in the result has been from switching meat suppliers, and in a literally eye-opening way too: Organic chicken breast makes for a significantly nicer result every single time!
We actually did blind testing across multiple batches of meat and across several weeks, and found we could pick the organic chicken with 100% accuracy. There are differences between even organic suppliers, but in general the stringiness was gone, the meat cut in straight lines without tearing or shredding along muscle fibres, and it was noticeably more moist and juicy.
I suspect that the difference comes largely from better quality feed and the fact that the animals tend to be (at least in Australia) slower-growing breeds and ~50% older when slaughtered, thus have more time to develop more flavourful muscles.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.726921
| 2012-02-12T16:49:23 |
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|
20633
|
What type of sauce is appropriate for a dry-aged prime steak?
Yesterday I purchased some dry aged prime strip steaks from my beloved Wegmans. This will be the first time I will have the opportunity to eat (as far as I know) and cook prime beef. With that in mind how should I sauce my beautiful meat?
Typically I cook my steaks sous vide to 130 degrees and then salt and pepper with a cast iron sear. If I'm going to make a pan sauce I finish in my enamelled cast iron, deglaze with a dry red, some shallots, add some heavily reduced beef stock, and then finish with a pad of butter and demi glace.
This results in a very rich sauce which is delightful in its own right. I'm concerned that I might be make a sauce that covers up this glorious beef.
Does anyone have any recommendations for my first time?
Things I'm particularly concerned with are:
What wine to use in the sauce - is high-end/vintage wine important, and what varieties might be best?
Should I seek out something a little more upscale than reduced Swanson beef broth?
Is this cut generally served sauced or unsauced?
I edited out the parts about searing; please ask one question at a time so they can be answered one at a time and thus be of more value (and easier to find) for future readers.
I do hope you're planning on at least trying a bite without sauce either way; I think that's good practice when trying anything new!
Oh definitely, I always have the first bite sauce free, but would rather not go through the trouble of making the sauce if I won't end up needing it
Oh my god. This steak was perfect in every way. Why can't I eat this every day? Ended up just salt and cracked peppercorns with a pad of butter finish. Oh yes.
This sounds yummy!
I'd recommend cooking sous vide (SV) as you suggest (130 F for 1-3 hrs). I tend not to season in the SV bag at all because salt & spices often turn out oddly; for example, raw herbs/onion/garlic are far stronger and taste "uncooked". Figuring out how to spice SV takes a fair amount of experimentation and is best done with dried & powdered herbs/spices instead of fresh ones.
VERY IMPORTANT:
Before cooking SV trim excess fat from the steak
After cooking take the meat from the SV bag and DRY it thoroughly before searing!
If you're planning to use bag juices, first bring them to a full boil in another pot and skim off the scum (myoglobin "blood"), then use whatever is left as your meat juice.
To sear, pre-heat the cast iron sear to a very high temperature (~500) and use a high-temperature oil like peanut.
The sear should be at VERY high heat for only 30 seconds or so per side - if you leave it on much longer you'll lose the beautiful 130 degree edge-to-edge miracle that should be your reward.
Using butter for the sear is not a good idea as either the butter will be destroyed by the properly high heat OR the steak will be destroyed by keeping the cast iron's heat low enough for the butter. Rather, use compound butter as a topper for presentation.
As for using a torch, I've used a brulee torch a few times and the heat & coverage is insufficient to sear a steak well with my limited experience. You can sign your name on the steak with it, but getting a good, even edge-to-edge Maillard crust is very tough. Using a MAPP torch is quite a bit better; MAPP gas is flavorless, it's hotter than propane or butane, and MAPP torches tend to fan out broader flames, but I still don't think they create as dense or flavorful a crust as a pan-sear. Moreover ANY torch runs a likelihood of flat-out burning areas of the meat, and that's especially true for a first-timer!
Let's talk about salt before going any further. I've always salted meat before grilling. But SV is a completely different ballgame. Salting before SV doesn't add much flavor for you on short cooks and hurts badly on longer ones (cures the meat). There are online arguments about this, but I prefer salting only after SV and preferably after searing. Taste tests support this post-SV salting approach - check out http://www.cookingissues.com/2011/10/12/to-salt-or-not-to-salt-%E2%80%93that%E2%80%99s-the-searing-question/ for a great take on the subject.
If you keep the searing time appropriately short you won't have to rest the meat before serving. The meat is still incredibly juicy and doesn't need time to reabsorb fluids.
As for what to do with a sauce, I'd go for the butter instead and incorporate a steak-friendly sauce into a side dish.
A quality hunk of well-marbled dry-aged beef should sing with this preparation and I'd put it center-stage to sing solo, with the side dish's sauce grooving nearby ready to join in on the chorus.
You may want to come back and edit your answer; the question no longer asks about searing. (That part of the question may end up as a separate question; you could post an answer there using what you edit out here.)
Yeah I've been sous vide-ing for the last couple of years and have come to a lot of the same conclusions you have. I didn't think of pre-boiling the bag juices however which has always led me down the road of having to strain my sauces. That's a good tip!
So 130 is good for prime dry aged? It's what I prefer for my normal run of the mill choice steaks and I had seen some chatter elsewhere about how prime meat may need to be brought a little hotter to render the marbling.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.727185
| 2012-01-20T15:08:36 |
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|
17439
|
Left my cast iron on the hot burner, now what?
So the other day, while baking off excess water after washing, I spaced out and forgot it was there and headed upstairs for say, an hour. When I got back down the pan had a white-ish ring in the center. After cooling and scrubbing it down it appeared that the seasoning had been vaporized in the area that has the ring.
I oiled the pan to prevent rusting and haven't gotten back to it in a week or so.
My question is:
Should I remove the seasoning from the rest of the pan or should I just re-season the whole thing?
If I should remove the seasoning, what is the best way, I think I read some on here but I haven't been able to get back to it. I recall possibly using the clean cycle of the oven?
There's plenty of info on here about seasoning so don't worry about that!
Feel free to make jabs at the space cadet too, I beat myself up about it until I realized the pan wasn't completely ruined!
Personally, I'd just season the pan a couple times to cover the spot; it seems excessive to strip off all the other seasoning and start from scratch unless the pan is really deeply rusted.
Other people may feel differently, of course; there are as many opinions about caring for cast-iron as there are people that own it.
Yeah, no rust, just virgin cast iron. I made sure to oil it as soon as I got it cooled back off
Seasoning almost done, I'll let you know how things worked out!
I represent the other camp: uneven seasoning can lead to hot spots and/or flaking, so I'd remove the whole seasoning first. The method I prefer is a lye bath, but self-cleaning ovens get hot enough to easily burn the complete seasoning off and seem to be the easier way (if you have one of them).
I've completed reseasoning and had the chance to use the pan a couple times. Everything seems pretty good.
I got rid of most of the spot by coating the pan with oil and scrubbing with a wad of aluminum foil. I did it twice rinsing in between treatments.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.727591
| 2011-09-03T14:18:46 |
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|
15734
|
How do I cook chicken and asparagus over an open fire?
I have some chicken breasts and some asparagus that I want to cook tomorrow whilst we're out camping for midsummer.
The fire will have a grate over it probably.
Is it better to wrap the food in foil to prevent it being touched by open flame? How can I make sure the chicken doesn't get too burned on the outside whilst being cooked on the inside?
You have two delicious choices. Both require a bed of coals, so I'll start with that.
You'll need to build a fire with the logs stacked 'log cabin' style, and let the fire burn down to coals. You want a deep red coal, just starting to darken on top. The coals should look something like this.
You can bake, or bbq the chicken and asparagus. Both are delicious methods.
To bake, wrap the chicken, asparagus and a starch like potato gratin style in layers of tinfoil. Use the starch around the outside, you'll sacrifice a layer of it as some of it sticks/burns to the tinfoil. Put the most delicate item in the middle, in this case the asparagus, and the chicken around the asparagus. Add a generous amount of butter, salt and pepper and bake for about an hour buried in the coals. Corn or green beans are also very good, and can be sacrificed a little around the outside to preserve your meat and vegetables.
I would layer it this way.
1.Coals
2. Tinfoil
2. Potatoes
2. Generous dollop of butter
3. Salt & Pepper
4. Green Beans
5. Asparagus
6. Chicken
7. Potatoes
3. Tinfoil
4. Coals
Now, BBQ. You'll do it very much like a charcoal BBQ. Keep the grate close to the coals, you can generally test the heat by holding your hand above the grate, you should only be able to keep your hand there for a second or two at most.
Grill the chicken like you would on a bbq, and roast the asparagus on a cooler part of the grill. I'd marinate both before putting them on the grill. I'd also try to get an aromatic wood like hickory or mesquite, pine will impart a resinous taste.
One thing newcomers to fire cooking don't know is just how long it takes to burn down to coals. It can be hours. Don't light the fire at 5pm hoping to eat at 6.
The most important thing is to cook over open coals not over open flame. You'll get more even heat and no sooty smoke. Just build up a fire with some good-size pieces of wood and let it burn down so the flames are gone and you're left with a nice set of red-hot coals. Then start cooking.
At this point, theoretically, it's just like cooking over charcoal briquets, although you'll probably have less control over the distance from the food to the coals. The grate might also not be as clean as you'd like.
If you want to cook directly on the grate, I think grilled asparagus is absolutely amazing. Just olive oil, salt, and pepper and then cook over pretty high heat until it wilts and blackens slightly. You'll want to have tongs. Grill the chicken like you would in your backyard.
An alternative for the true boy scout camping experience would be to do a tin foil dinner, where you wrap the food completely in aluminum foil and then bury it in the coals. Google gives lots of hits for this technique, although people usually use ground beef and not chicken.
Wrap the chicken and veggies in the tinfoil but don't cook for an hour- probably a maximum of 20 minutes
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.727800
| 2011-06-24T00:00:03 |
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|
39433
|
How to prevent minced chicken from sticking and forming a single lump?
I am not an expert in cooking, so I would like to ask for advice on how to cook minced chicken so that it doesn't stick together. What I want is separated minced chicken as small particles that I can spoon and use for pasta sauce or other dishes.
Thanks!
Hi dracc, we don't answer very general questions like "how to cook X", because there are too many answers. It turns out that you had a specific problem this time, and asking for a concrete solution, which is exactly the type of question we do. So I changed your title to reflect the exact content of the question, else other users may have cast closing votes thinking that your question is of the general kind.
related : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/32212/67
The water method works (it keeps the pan from getting above 100°C), but the more generic solution is just to cook it over lower heat, and keep it moving around as it's cooking. (and this works for any ground meat product).
If you let one lump brown too much and form a crust, it'll fuse that bit together. You then need to break up that bit (I like a spatulas, so just flip over the lump so the browned side is up, and then either squish it or chop at it 'til it's broken down to a smaller size. Reducing the heat while you're cooking will give you more time to break up lumps before they've fused together.
I generally turn the stove to medium heat, and then add the meat before it's fully pre-heated. I give it a couple of seconds to brown, then flip the whole blob over and break it up so it's spread throughout the pan ... wait a bit for the bottom to brown again, and then continue flipping and breaking it up.
If you're going to be standing right over the dish, you can use a higher heat, but I generally tend to be doing something else nearby (eg, chopping vegetables) while this is going on, so adjust the heat so it's cooking at a rate where I can get back to it easily.
If you're going to be adding some other chunky item to the minced meat (eg, chopped onion) that won't be impacted from extra cooking time, go ahead and add it after the meat's only partially cooked, as the meat won't stick as well to it as it would to other meat, making it less likely to clump up (or at least easier to break apart should it clump up)
Add a little oil to your pan then add the minced chicken. Using a wooden fork break it up into large chunks and let them cook a little turning them so to firm them up, you can now start breaking the large chunks up into smaller pieces. They wont stick to each other because they should be almost cooked. Continue the process until all the chicken is cooked through and is in small pieces.
This will also mean your chicken retains it's flavour and texture.
Adding water will give you a rather sludgy concoction!
If you want the mince even finer, you could use a stick blender or a food processor AFTER you have done the above.
actually, the water boils off ... it's not a problem. It can make for a different texture, but I wouldn't describe it as 'sludgy'. (compare Coney Island style chilli vs. Cincinnati style chili)
While the chicken is still cold, add a bit of water (perhaps about 1/4 cup, 125ml per pound of meat). Use your fastidiously clean fingers to break up the chicken pieces in the water. Put it on the flame and stir while the water evaporates. After the water is gone, continue to stir while the chicken browns.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.728178
| 2013-11-14T11:10:56 |
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41637
|
Searching for a "Dry Goods Starter Mix"
Friend of mine had a dry goods mix that included things like flour, salt, sugar... it kept indefinitely and could be used in proper portions for any number of bread type items - muffins, pancakes, and so on.
Can I make such a mix at home? Where can I find sources describing it? And how can I use it?
Hi David, and welcome to the site! If you want the correct composition of the mix, you will give us some more details (brand, name, ingredient list, etc.). As for your question for recipes with this mix, I'm afraid this is outside the scope of this site. We do not do recipe-requests because of their open-ended nature. You can always come to the chat though for such questions.
I don't know the composition, that's what I'm hoping for.... beyond what I said above. It was a sort of generic "Jiffy Mix" that one could keep more or less indefinitely.
Can you edit your question to fit in the site without losing its essense for what your looking for? Coz it could get lost...I experienced that :)
If it's Bisquick or similar, I don't know if they can keep indefinitely, as they have a bit of fat in them, so you can risk it going rancid.
This site has a recipe for the mix and recipes for using it.
http://kitchensimplicity.com/homemade-bisquick-mix/
Or google homemade bisquick
In case of link rot, the proportions given are : 5c flour, 1/4c baking powder, 2TB sugar, 1tsp salt, 1c butter or margarine; mix first 4, then cut in the butter 'til crumbly.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.728484
| 2014-01-31T19:11:43 |
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40800
|
Keeping steaks hot after cooking in a cast-iron pan
I have been using my cast-iron skillet for some time with good results.
Essentially, I bring out the meat from the fridge with time so it gets at room temperature, then I heat up my pan until it smokes and then I place the meat (with some salt and pepper and a little bit of oil) and cook it so it comes out medium-rare.
My issue is the temperature of the meat. As soon as I let it rest for 5 minutes after cooked, the meat cools down and it's no longer hot. I assume, since it has only been cooked for 3 minutes per side, that explains how fast it gets cold.
Is there any solution for this? How do restaurants do to keep the meat warm when it gets to your table?
How long you wait for the meat to come to room temperature? And what is the room temperature? 70 F?
I wait around 5 min for the meat to rest, and yes, room temp is in the 70s
You wait 5 min --before cooking--? I wait sometimes 2 hours for a steak that I took out from refrigerator and inside is barely at 70.
@Zeynel I wait around 5 min for the meat TO REST AFTER COOKING
I bring out the meat from the fridge with time so it gets at room temperature, How long you wait to bring it to room temperature?
If you cook rarer you don't need as long a rest period, for rare and medium-rare you only need a minute or two. Put the steak onto a row of chopsticks or a cooling grate if you aren't using a warmed plate so the plate doesn't cool them, then put a bit curved pot lid over the top. You can use a tent of foil if you need, it's just that there's less waste if you use a lid.
If you are cooking many steaks and can't serve right away then put the cooked steak into an oven just a bit lower than the temperature you want at the center of the steak, this will keep it warm without overcooking it. Don't do it for too long though, you'll dry the steaks out.
There are a couple things you can do which will help:
Tent the steak, while resting, with aluminum foil, to minimize the cooling.
Warm your plates.
If you feel fancy, use a plate cover or cloche to help keep the plate warm until it is presented.
However, the simple fact is that steak is thin and is going to cool off. Rapid service after it is cooked is your best friend.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.728666
| 2014-01-02T16:54:01 |
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|
58868
|
What is GABA Rice?
GABA rice seems to command a high premium is only found on Amazon in a few varieties, one by Koshihikari, one by Sempio. Is GABA rice anything but brown rice pre-heated? Is the GABA setting on a rice cooker for GABA rice? Or, is to cook brown rice in a fashion that makes it GABA-like? And, if so, would there ever be a downside to cooking rice marketed as GABA using the GABA setting? Does that double GABA it?
The rice you are referring to is sprouted brown rice. From wholegrainscouncil.org , GABA stands for an amino acid, gamma amino butyric acid.
THE MOST TOUTED HEALTH BENEFIT of sprouted rice is GABA (gamma amino butyric acid).
The GABA setting on your rice cooker will take much longer as per this article on Techilicious .
If you want to push your culinary skills, the Zojirushi also gives you room to grow that other models do not provide. Its GABA setting for brown rice is intended to slowly cook the rice by "activating" it at a temperature of 104 degrees for 2 hours before cooking. It's supposed to increase the amount of an amino acid—gamma aminobutryic acid or GABA—released in the brown rice, producing a softer grain. However, it entails a total cooking time of roughly 3 and a half hours. So is it worth the wait?
We found that for rice connoisseurs the GABA setting worked wonders. It brings out the nutty flavor of brown rice without turning it into mush. It produced perfectly cooked individual grains that were firm, but not crunchy. Even our youngest reviewer noticed the difference.
However, if you use a regular setting or cook on the stove top, the rice will cook quicker as the bran layer has been softened during the sprouting process.
The sprouting (germination) process adds a
variety of nutrients through the activation
of dormant enzymes, while also softening
the bran layer. The rice kernel is germinated
until the flavor and nutritional benefits are
maximized.
Please follow the link and review the .pdf. It has a great deal of information about sprouted brown rice as well as comparisons to white rice and regular brown rice.
Yet, the GABA setting takes massively longer. And, it's a Zojirushi rice cooker. Where are you reading it should take a shorter amount of time?
My mistake as I misread and combined two pieces of information. I will edit to clarify as the GABA setting does take longer.
@EvanCarroll By the way, thanks for catching that!
Re: longer cooking time in a rice cooker. I find it of no concern, since many (most?) rice cookers that can cook GABA rice also have a timer feature, so you can program your cooker to make some GABA rice in time for dinner.
To achieve gaba brown rice takes at least 9 hrs to germinate. If you cant see small sprouts the rice hasnt germinated. Gaba setting or not. Your not getting gaba rice, your getting soaked rice..
Note: your first link is now dead. I am curious to know your response to the second half of the question, viz. "would there ever be a downside to cooking rice marketed as GABA using the GABA setting". Presumably rice marketed as GABA is pregerminated, so is the faster brown-rice setting just as good at that point?
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.728889
| 2015-07-07T20:04:56 |
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|
123291
|
How to order cheeses by strength for a cheese tasting event?
I read on https://www.northlightfoods.com/blog/2015/12/15/host-your-own-cheese-tasting-party:
Organize your cheese tasting order from mildest cheese to strongest cheese.
That's a typical advice I used to hear in France.
However, I was told that cheese strength is subjective, and may be a factor of several elements such as "tensile, compressive, shear, ductile, elastic, plastic, brittleness, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, hardness, flexural" (quote from bob1). Should I instead base the cheese order on one of these factors? Or do the order in some other way?
The question of how should I order my cheese? is too broad for this website (it is just opinion-based), but the question if I am trying to order my cheeses by strength, how can I do it? is answerable, so I have answered it.
There are many factors in cheese but wear resistance isn't one of them. In any case I hope you get some gouda advice...
@GdD ISWYDT ...
A lot of wine between the rounds to wash the taste.
More importantly, you need a palate cleanser.
"Should I instead base the cheese order on one of these factors?" -- um, that comment was a joke. Ordering cheese by corrosion resistance? (facepalm)
Franck Dernoncourt, If you sequence cheeses alphabetically, tasters have another advantage in trying to recall which cheese was what and you are reducing your own selection bias.
Yes op, you def need to consider corrosion resistance in your cheese tasting xD
This question reads as if it's not from a native English speaker. Do you know what the words "tensile, compressive, shear, ductile, elastic, plastic, brittleness, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, hardness, flexural" mean? Do you realize that not one of them applies to the strength of flavor, but are instead actually various measures of physical strength of a material?
This is bot level humour.
The question got interpreted as "which criteria can be used to order cheeses". I would like to remind everybody that, as already stated in the first comment, such interpretation would require us to close the question - there is no single objectively right answer to it. So I reworded the title to be specifically about applying the criterion of "strength" which the OP concentrates on in the question body.
As was pointed out in the comments to your other question, there is no objective definition of 'strong' when it comes to cheese.
But good news! Cheese tasting parties don't have to be based on objectively measurable qualities! Just taste the cheeses yourself (or make assumptions about their taste, based on what you know about them, if you don't want to start them before your guests) and arrange them how you want. If you want to follow this advice (which is entirely optional, and not universal) then you can do so based on your impression of which is stronger than which.
It's also worth noting, in case the ironic tone wasn't clear, that bob1's comment to your other post was about the many definitions of 'strong' in English, not a set of suggestions on what 'strong' might mean when applied to cheese. When people describe a cheese as strong, they are making a subjective judgement about the experience of eating it.
Youngest to oldest can also be a decent approximation of strength of flavor, if you want to starting point. There's exceptions of course, like blue cheese, but certainly most people will say that fresh mozzarella is not nearly as strong a flavor as an aged gouda.
Also, you don't only order cheeses from mildest to strongest. You may order cheese in some other way, depending on what you're tasting.
For example, you might taste manchego cheeses at different ages: fresh, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years. If so, you'd usually do it youngest to oldest.
Or maybe you want to taste cheese with flavorings. Then you'd, say, start with a plain gouda, followed by one with caraway, one with garlic, one with rosemary, and one with coffee.
Or maybe, you're going to taste the same cheese made with cows milk vs. goat milk vs. sheep's milk, vs. mixed milks. Those could be in almost any order.
It's really up to you! Just figure out some kind of logical ordering that lets your guests have an enjoyable experience comparing cheeses and finding out what they taste in them.
The only reason for the "mildest to strongest" general instruction is that some cheeses are really quite tastebud-dominating, and would make it hard to taste other cheeses afterwards. For example, if you just ate 40g of Rogue River Blue, you won't even taste the lovely, delicate mozzarella di bufala because your mouth will still be full of blue cheese taste.
Cheeses at different ages would be the same as mildest cheese to strongest cheese . You could also add more common to less common for the local food culture. Going from parmeggiano and brie in the direction of blue cheese and red smear sounds like an adventure where everyone can test the limits of their comfort zone.
One does not simply eat Rogue River Blue before other cheeses!
"Given two cheeses, which order of eating requires the least amount of effort to be able to properly taste the second cheese eaten?" -- that's the order they belong in. Now that you have a pairwise comparison, you can use any sorting algorithm you wish to determine the final order (something like insertion sort would be good).
Note that cheeses aren't necessarily well ordered--you can have A stronger than B stronger than C stronger than A. In that case, just arbitrarily break the cycle where ever it seems most convenient. Likewise with solving ties, just pick one.
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Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:55.729194
| 2023-02-05T21:56:03 |
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