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56747
|
Graham cracker crust too salty for cheesecake
My first cheesecake was too salty, particularly around the crust, and I want to know what could have caused it.
One possibility is that I mismeasured the salt, although I do not make that mistake often. I doubt it was the use of sea salt as it is usually less salty.
So I got to wondering if it could be that I used salted butter. (I buy salted butter because the ingredients are salt and butter, whereas the unsalted has natural flavors added.) Is this something I should adjust for?
"too salty, particularly around the crust" - do you mean the filling was salty? If yes, the salt didn't seep from the crust into the filling. We can help you better if you clarify, was the crust alone salty, the filling alone, or both? Also, if it's the filling, see http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/18178. In short, cream cheese is so salty that you can end up with salty cheesecake even if you don't add salt yourself.
@rumtscho, removal of the crust made it much less salty, but it did seep into the cheesecake adjacent to the crust was salter than the main body. There was no salt in the cream cheese, as I make my own.
What has been said to you in the answer and comments are all correct. Let me add my 44 years of experience to you which should solve this problem. Make your own crust and use sweet, unsalted butter. You might have added salt instead of sugar in the crust if you made your crust. A very easy mistake. Also as a master cheesecake maker (creamy style baked, creamy style unbaked and a few of my own creations) do not ever use salt in your cheesecake, ever. I also make the NY style cheesecake, no salt. Cheesecake equals no salt, at any time. Some people have little bowls of salt and sugar on their counters and oopps you may have put a pinch of the wrong item. Oh well, it is over and done with and now you will not make any more oopps again with salt and cheesecake, right? I use regular Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese
the recipe called for salt in both the cheesecake and crust
I understand I may be old and the recipe called for salt in the crust and the mixture, the recipe is wrong, very very wrong. The results proved it and sometimes recipes add or leave something out, especially from relatives or friends or even some good cooks. If you search this site, somewhere here is my recipe, I believe. REMEMBER, NO SALT, ONLY SWEET UNSALTED BUTTER, there is no reason for me not to guide you the correct way.
I was not disagreeing with you, and indeed I will follow your advice, but I was particularly upset that when using less salt than called for it was too salty.
First let me apologize to you for making you upset, that was not my intention. I am so very pleased and happy that you made a desert that is very difficult. Since salt was the only problem you had, pat yourself on the back! Most people can't make a good cheesecake.Tthe stuff that's sold in restaurants and the freezer section, yuck. Do not be upset, make it again and again and see how happy you will be. Cook and bake with LOVE in your heart. No matter how much experience someone has, we all screw up, time and time again. I do, I even cry about it and sing and dance when things come out perfect.
It was n't you I was upset with, but I think time in jail should have impressed the recipe's author with the value of attention to details.
look up the question can cheesecake be cooked without a spring-form pan? There, I believe you will find what I was talking about something that will put a big smile on your face after about half hour of work, waiting, learning, waiting overnight, then feeling hopefully very good. If my daughter in law could do it, so can you. I'm tired and need to rest, it's been the toughest 2 months of my life and this is my only escape, so forget the rest, you'll have the best, just a bit a honing in, but not tonight. You will be JUST FINE AND MAYBE THE ONE WHO BECOMES THE CHEESECAKE BOSS!!
Yes! Try to avoid salted butter in cooking and baking. If you must use it you will need to adjust, but I am not sure there is a consistent way to do this. Different brands probably have different salt content.
Agreed, you should never bake with salted butter.
Different brands definitely have different salt content, and most recipes assume unsalted butter and therefore add salt. It's impossible to predict how much each brand of butter may need to be adjusted for, although with some practice you may be able to find a rule of thumb for the brand you typically use.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.813855
| 2015-04-17T17:18:20 |
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|
45101
|
Is Nattou safe to eat when it has white dots on it?
I bought a couple packs of Nattou (fermented soybeans) and stored it in my refrigerator.
They come sealed in plastic, so I opened the plastic and only ate about half of one container. I wrapped it back up in plastic and stored it in the fridge again, and the next day I checked the Nattou and it was covered in tiny white dots, which look kind of foreboding.
It did not look like mold, though, since the white dots were uniformly the same size and spread out evenly. In my experience fungi usually grows at random, and in different sizes, and usually larger than the tiny white dots that I see on the nattou.
What are those dots and is it still edible?
I threw it away without trying it to be on the safe side, but I did notice this experiment is repeatable (I got white dots on the next package by doing the same thing the next day).
I think it might have something to do with storing it in the fridge, since I have stored Nattou in the freezer before without the white dot results.
Yes, those spots are normal, they form as the nattou ages. They are amino acid crystals, and they are perfectly safe. Here's a picture.
They're a bit crunchy, which you may or may not like. If you don't like the dots, get young nattou and consume it before the crystals form. If you do like them, get more mature nattou. With younger nattou, you should be able to store it opened in the fridge for a few days before the crystals start to form. As you have experienced though, once they start, they grow quickly.
Wow, great answer! The picture is exactly what mine looked like. For bonus "chemistry" points: why/how do those amino acid crystals form...?
@starmandeluxe Somebody else can get the bonus points, I don't have a clue :)
Can I use probiotics to start natto ?
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.814240
| 2014-06-24T01:49:18 |
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|
49963
|
Using sauce as a soup base
I am wondering which, if any, prepared sauces would work as a soup base. After several experiments I have found that none of the many (mostly Asian) sauces I have on hand work for this (just an experiment folks-- I am not trying to live on sauce). Is there a general property that makes a liquid (or powder) an effective soup base? Is it just more intensely reduced? Hopefully, it is not just a matter of salt.
I have noticed that in packages of ramen the soup base packet is tiny but packs a lot of flavor. Recently I have gotten some ramen where the soup base is liquid in a tiny packet and that got me thinking about this.
Update: Based on an answer below I should add that my experiments showed that even a LOT of sauce still makes for an very weak soup. The characteristic I am wondering about is how a tiny packet of liquid (much less than a teaspoon) can provide a strong flavor where say a 2 or 3 TABLEspoons of stir-fry, or other sauces make for a horribly weak soup for the same amount of liquid.
Very simply, all of them work.
The major driver of what tastes good to you is expectations. If you are accustomed to eating soup with a certain taste, and expect it to taste that way, then any time you prepare the soup with something different, it won't taste good to you.
But there is no rule to define that some liquids taste good as a soup base and others taste bad, universally. And without knowing how you like your soup, it is impossible to predict which ones you will like personally.
Update In the edit you mention that it is the concentration that is wrong for you, not the flavour profile altogether.
What gives the soup flavour is not the liquid part. In fact, the liquid in both sauces and commercially available "soup base" as well as fond, stock and other similar stuff is pure, tasteless water. The taste comes from whatever is dissolved in the water.
Whatever you are using as a soup base seems to be just much more concentrated than the sauce. It is very probable indeed that one of the things which don't have enough concentration for your taste in the sauce is salt, another one is probably MSG. But also other flavour bearing compounds are probably provided in less concentration in the sauce. After all, the sauce is supposed to be poured over solid food, and shouldn't taste bad when you lick it off the food surface, it is at a concentration which doesn't taste too bad when it comes in contact with your tongue. The soup base is at a concentration which after dilution falls in the commonly acceptable range (but at a lower concentration than undiluted sauce).
I updated my question. For me, none of them work (so far).
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.814445
| 2014-11-21T16:30:28 |
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|
46794
|
Help converting dry milk + milk in recipe
I'm converting a cake recipe for a breadmaker that calls for 180g (3/4c) milk and some instant pudding mix. Wanting to convert it all to basic ingredients, I found an instant pudding mix recipe that consists of sugar, cornstarch, salt, and.... dry milk powder. So my resulting recipe contains 180g milk and 21g dry milk powder (and no water, of course), which seems silly. How can I convert to all milk (as I don't keep dry milk powder on hand) ? Converting to dry milk powder would total out to (45+21=66)g dry milk powder + 180g water, which is like 150%-concentrated milk, which I don't know how to achieve with regular milk.
If it helps, the rum cake recipe is here and the instant pudding recipe is here.
Your cake recipe link is dead, and the recipe search on the site doesn't show a rum cake.
This question and answers illustrate rumtscho's point: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/37755/what-can-i-use-beside-applesauce-to-replace-fat-in-baking
fixed the link, sorry!
You don't need to do this conversion. Most pudding mixes don't contain dry milk. And the mixture is in there to provide starch, not anything else.
The first and best way to make a cake is to start with a good existing recipe. Getting a substitution right is not trivial, it requires some theoretical knowledge and a few iterations of making the recipe and comparing it side-by-side. It can taste OK the first time, but a tested recipe will taste great from the first time, without giving you trouble. Moreover, this one has been converted from normal ingredients to substitutions for some reason. Back-converting it is unnecessary.
If you are absolutely decided to go with this recipe and make the substitution, you can use cake flour. Forget the pudding and its extraneous milk and sugar, and calculate the gluten content of your cake if made with cake flour (use roughly 10% for AP flour, 0% for pudding powder and whatever percentage is printed on your cake flour package, typically 6-7%). If replacing all the flour with cake flour does it, that's best. If the ratio is off, calculate how much pure starch to add to AP or cake flour to get the gluten amount right while keeping the total flour amount constant (which is the weight of your flour + the weight of the pudding from the original recipe).
If you think the original pudding made a difference in fat content, just use cream instead of the liquid milk. The more fat and less water you have in a recipe, the more cakelike it becomes, the most common types of cake use no water or dairy at all. Milk makes your cake more quickbread like. And if that's the effect you want, don't bother replacing anything there just because there might or might not have been dry milk in the author's pudding mix.
+1 for putting a name to my pet-peeve, "back-converting". I hate that!
Accepted because you recommended what I actually did - which was to just ignore the powdered milk and go with just the regular milk. It came out great!
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.814689
| 2014-09-02T00:40:06 |
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|
8107
|
What is a kitchen rag?
In his answer to a question about nail biting, nicorellius referred to not wiping your hands with the "kitchen rag". I've never worked in a professional kitchen, and the only rags I have around my kitchen are dish towels, which I often use to dry my hands.
What exactly is a kitchen rag, and what should it be used for? What should one avoid doing with a kitchen rag that you might use a towel for in a home kitchen?
It's like a shop rag... But in the kitchen.
A kitchen rag is typically a white, rectangular towel that has various duties in a professional kitchen. Some of the uses include: wiping-down counter tops, sopping-up spills, securing cutting boards (use DAMP rags), and grabbing hot pans (use DRY rags).
Generally, it is a good idea to wash your hands with soap and a sink. Often kitchen rags are used to clean debris from the hands between preparing food items.
Usually the rags are dropped-off, picked-up, and washed by an outsourced service provider (e.g. Cintas). The kitchen rags from these providers often have a thin, colored line that runs lengthwise down the towel.
If you would like to find some for your home, try searching 'bar mops'. They are essentially the same as kitchen rags, and are usually very cheap.
I've only ever seen them in red, with a white tartan-like pattern.
A kitchen rag does not, as far as I know, have to be something exclusive to a professional kitchen. In this very old NY Times letter to the editor, the writer talks about a cloth used to wipe the floor as either a file cloth or a kitchen rag.
A kitchen rag is simply a cloth that can be used for many things around the kitchen. You might wipe your counters with one. You might wipe your floors with one (I hope you don't wipe both your counters and floors with the same one). A dish rag would be a similar term that is a name for a wash cloth-ish sized absorbent cloth used for washing dishes. I've heard of a friend's roommate using the same kitchen rag to dry hands, dishes, and sop up liquid from a raw chicken off of the floor - obviously that's an improper use of a single rag, but rags could be used for all those tasks without cross-contamination if you used one for each task.
To sum it up, most uses for a kitchen rag can end up spreading bacteria. If you've got an open sore, you don't want to be doing that.
One logical answer I can think of is in a professional kitchen you move hot handled pans in and out of the oven or on and off the stove protecting you hand with a rag or kitchen towel. From experience I can assure you that if your colleagues decide to use your rag to dry their wet hands then you try to pick up a pan handle that has been in the hot oven with the damp cloth, the resulting burn is very unpleasant! As is the language used afterwards.
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.814953
| 2010-10-14T18:04:06 |
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|
12782
|
How could I keep one-ingredient "ice cream" soft?
According to this question, guar gum and xanthan gum can be used to keep ice cream soft by preventing ice crystals and keeping the air that's been mixed in from leaving the ice cream.
We have tried making one-ingredient banana "ice cream" by freezing bananas for an hour and then mixing them in a blender. It creates a yummy banana ice-cream-like pudding. (I put ice cream in quotes, since there's no actual cream.)
However, if you try to freeze the results, you get a mess full of ice crystals and losing the appeal of the original dessert.
Could additions like guar and xanthan gums help to maintain that yummy texture over time? If so, since I've never used them, I'd like some help figuring out how to do so.
Thinking about this from first principles, a banana is about:
75% water
20% carbohydrates (mostly sugar and a small amount of starch)
Less than 5% combined fiber and protein
Trace amount of fat (generally considered to be zero).
The anti-crystallization effect of guar gum works on the water component, so adding a small amount of guar gum actually should be of some benefit. The hard part is getting it all dispersed; you don't want to over-process the banana (you'd lose the creaminess) but you also need to hydrate the guar gum in order for it to work its magic. You also need to avoid over-thickening, which might be difficult even with the very small starch content in a typical banana.
Bananas convert more starch to sugar as they ripen, so I suspect you'd have more success trying this on very ripe bananas that are, essentially, little more than sugar and water to begin with.
Incorporating and maintaining air is something that I just don't think you're going to be able to do. Proteins and fats can both participate in foaming (egg whites being an example of the former, and heavy cream being the canonical example of the latter), but bananas have neither of those. There's simply nothing to whip, and thus nothing to stabilize, so neither xanthan gum nor any other emulsifier/stabilizer is going to do you much good here.
If you really want to incorporate air then you're going to need more than one ingredient. My instinct would be to say coconut milk, which has relatively high fat and pairs well with banana (and obviously is also vegan / non-dairy), but I can say from experience now that coconut milk just doesn't have enough fat. You could try cooking it down first to get the fat ratio up, or using coconut oil, but I'm not sure how it would taste.
Traditional ice cream is about 60% water, which means the amount of guar gum that most people seem to get the best results with (about 1 tsp/qt) is about 0.87% of the total water. For a small (100 g) banana, that's about 75 mL of water corresponding to very close to 1/8 tsp of guar gum.
So, I'd give this a try with 1/8 tsp of guar gum, forget the xanthan gum. Try adding it after you've frozen the banana for the first time, when you first pop it into the blender.
No guarantees, but, you can probably afford to waste one banana in the attempt.
Update:
I thought I'd give this a try myself since (a) it seemed pretty easy and (b) I can always use more non-dairy dessert recipes. Here's how it came out with 1/4 tsp of guar gum for 2 bananas, after being frozen for two days:
You can see that ice crystal formation is pretty minimal, and although some parts did harden a bit (much like ordinary homemade ice cream with low overrun), they returned to normal consistency within just a few minutes.
Of course it still tastes like frozen bananas, so if I were to do this again I think I'd probably try adding a few other flavours. Also note that even though the texture is decent, the colour is getting dark, and I have no doubt that this would eventually turn black after enough time in the freezer - and the lemon juice trick doesn't really work so well when the whole thing has been blended up.
If we didn't want to keep it vegan, could cream add the fat needed?
@Martha: Very likely; heavy cream whips pretty well no matter what you add to it. But isn't that basically standard ice cream then?
Makes sense. I was just trying to understand the concept. Thanks!
I'd probably add some vanilla and vegan chocolate chips. Or maybe cinnamon and some walnuts that'd been soaked in maple syrup.
you could also try adding something like versawhip (modified soy protein) that would likely allow you to whip the bananas to incorporate air in the initial stages.
If you roast bananas in the peel, they will leach out quite a bit of liquid, which is very high in pectin. You could then use the bananas as usual, but whip the pectin portion (it forms a pretty solid gel when cooled, so it would probably hold air).
I add 2 oz of rum to 5 frozen bananas and 5 tbs unsweetened cocao powder (if I'm making chocolate). The alcohol keeps it from freezing hard and keeps it scoopable.
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.815291
| 2011-03-04T17:38:16 |
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21319
|
How to make a "Winter queen" cocktail?
A few days ago, I had a cocktail called "Winter queen". It may have been a specialty of the place where I had it, I couldn't find any recipe for it when I searched for it. The menu listed it as "a hot chocolate beverage with rum, topped with cream".
Based on the taste, I can say that the thing had rather low alcohol content, but the rum aroma was fairly strong. Also, I am not sure what liquid they used for the chocolate "beverage" - there must have been some milk in it, but I don't think it was straight full-fat milk. I suspect that it also had other spices, maybe some vanilla, and it was slightly sweet, but not oversweetened. The cream was only a swirl of whipped cream from a NO-bottle, with some chocolate-deco sprinkles on top.
I tried to copy it at home, but couldn't get the same result. I started with semi-sweet chocolate, melted with sweetened milk, added vanilla aroma, a pinch of salt, and Bacardi Gold rum. With a small amount of rum, it didn't have enough taste. When I added more rum, it got very bitter and alcoholic. Also, something with the fat content wasn't right - the original drink was less rich, but still quite smooth, unlike water-based hot chocolate.
Should I have tried to do it some other way? Did I use the wrong rum? Would it have helped to cook the rum first, so some of the alcohol evaporates? Is there a better way to mix it? And what about the smooth-without-fat problem?
Where did you have this cocktail?
There is rum extract, that may help getting the rum flavor w/o the alcohol.
@KatieK in a place in Stuttgart - strangely, it had a Maredo brand on the outside, but it didn't have the Maredo menu inside - it was more of a bistrot-like place, with mostly drinks and cakes and a few snacks/salads/antipasti, not a steakhouse. I checked the Maredo website, they don't mention such cocktails.
@rumtscho - I was thinking of calling them, but perhaps not.
I agree with derobert - rum flavour without alcohol suggests a rum syrup.
As to the rum, there are lots and lots of rums out there, and they all taste different. Using a darker rum might help in this case, since lighter rums tend to have less flavor. Maybe even a spiced rum (the one I have on hand, Kraken, has a distinct vanilla flavor).
I never heard of "Winter Queen" cocktail
But if you're talking about the "SNOW QUEEN COCKTAIL", I found the recipe here:
Snow Queen Cocktail Recipe
Snow Queen Cocktail Ingredients
1 part vanilla vodka
1 part Bailey's Irish Cream
1 part creme de menthe
3 parts Fresh Single Cream
3 parts milk
1 dash chocolate syrup
Instructions
Mix the Vanilla Vodka, Baileys and Creme de Menthe with ice in a shaker then drain into a glass omitting the ice (or you can cheat/skip this part by chilling the Vodka and Baileys in a fridge). Then add the Cream and a dash of Chocolate Syrup, stir, add the Milk and stir again.
This is based on the recipe for the popular but seasonal Snow Queen served in Revolution Vodka bars. Now you don't have to wait until Winter to get one! Note: All the ingredients should be correct but the Milk and Fresh Cream measurements are a best guess. Experiment and enjoy :)
Interesting. I am sure mine didn't have creme de menthe or Bailey's, but it could have been a simplification of the original.
Maybe this recipe might help you find the one you are looking for?
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.815692
| 2012-02-13T15:11:05 |
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|
68807
|
Can I use tomato paste in dal?
My current method for making an Indian dal include using whole peeled tomatoes, almost always canned. Would substituting Tomato Paste, the thick stuff from cans, change the taste, and if so, how? I don't mind the change in texture
Tomato paste is far more concentrated, and it's produced by actually cooking down the tomatoes a couple times. Since tomatoes contain a lot of sugar, this will actually caramelize those somewhat and produce a richer, sweeter flavor. Even canned tomatoes will taste more acidic and less sweet.
So your finished dish will likely follow suit - it'll be a bit sweeter, have a slightly richer flavor, and it will have a bit less moisture. That's not necessarily a bad thing; you may find that those different flavors interact with the spices in an interesting way. Just make sure that you don't use a 1-to-1 substitution; because tomato paste is much thicker you'll want to use less of it or its flavor will totally dominate.
Sweeter? The general term I hear to describe tomato paste is "bitter". I know these aren't exclusive, but I think it's worth mentioning.
Acidic is not something i would use to describe dal, when i make it from whole canned
it will have a bit less moisture -- in my experience I'm always add an undetermined amount of water to dals to adjust the thickness. My written recipe and procedure wouldn't change were I to use tomato paste. While I'd certainly add more water, I wouldn't have to adjust the recipe or methodology, which is simply: add water until its the consistency I want...
I believe when you use even a tiny bit of tomato paste, it changes the whole taste, the daal taste disappears. I personally think daal needs only fresh tomatoes, not so many either, like I use one tomato for 4 servings.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.815975
| 2016-05-05T18:58:43 |
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|
44030
|
Why is cooking rice so complicated?
I'm slowly teaching myself to cook and I made some rice today. While the result was perfectly acceptable, the process didn't go smoothly and I had to add some water in the end and cook it some more to get there.
I did follow the process on the package of rice, though I also read a bit about rice cooking in general before that. So I added the rice with a defined amount of water in a pot, brought it to boil and then simmered it with a half-closed lid for around 10 minutes.
What I'm wondering now is why rice is cooked in this way, with a defined amount of water added and then until the water is absorbed or evaporated? The process seems to me to be rather fragile as the result depends a lot on getting the rice/water ratio right.
Compared to cooking pasta for example, the process seems to be more finicky and depending on rather exact measurements. So why exactly isn't rice just cooked like pasta, where you bring excess water to a boil and put the rice in for a defined amount of time, with the option of tasting when it is done?
All cooking takes plenty of practice. Most people can't cook pasta properly anyway, they usually overcook it by 50% to 100%. Overcooked pasta is just not as bad as overcooked rice. http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/26123/what-does-al-dente-really-mean
If there was a valid answer category for jokes, I would say "because you have 10000 grains that all need to be cooked right".
Once you get the hang of it, rice is as easy as pasta. One thing you say in the question that may be central to the difficulty you are having is that your lid is "half-closed". For the majority of rice cooking methods, not only should you keep the lid tightly closed, but you shouldn't even open it to check the rice until it has cooked close to long enough that it might be done. Look at the accepted answer here: Rice gets burnt and watery. That answer explains it more thoroughly.
You can cook rice like pasta, boiling in excess water until done then draining. But there are a couple main reasons not to:
You'll wash away a lot of the starch. Especially for starchier varieties (short and medium grain), this may not be a good thing - you'll end up with distinct grains, not nice fluffy, slightly sticky rice.
It can be a pain to drain properly. You probably have a colander for pasta, with holes large enough that rice will fall through. If you use a metal sieve, it can be prone to getting little bits stuck in it, making it hard to clean.
If you accidentally overcook it, it'll be awful, soft and mushy. If on the other hand you start with the right amount of water, and overcook it, it'll just stick to the pot on the bottom, leaving most of it still good on top.
So if you're having trouble with traditional methods, you can try boiling, or try a pilaf (something like this, but you can make it plain if you want), which will be less prone to sticking and overcooking. Or else you can just get a rice cooker and get it right every time!
But it's really not that bad, and I'm sure you'll figure it out after a few tries. Measuring the ratio correctly is easy enough (though you may want to adjust it if you find it's consistently not quite to your tastes), and beyond that you just have to be careful not to let it cook too hot and stick.
Also, for your specific experience, the half closed lid might have the problem. That will let a lot of steam escape, so you won't have enough water left to cook it properly. And adding more at the end is never as good as having it right to begin with, since it takes time for the new water to come up to temperature, and the rice has time to get soggy on the outside without cooking thoroughly. The method I've always known is to simmer with a closed lid - just make sure you turn it down as soon as it's hot enough so it doesn't boil over or stick.
For convenience and foolproofness, it's hard to beat a rice cooker. These inexpensive appliances cook the rice only until the free water has boiled away (measured by when the temperature of the pot starts to rise above boiling temperature of water) and the temperature begins to rise, then drop back to a keep-warm setting.
But in fact, I've had perfectly adequate success by following exactly the directions on the package. Usually a 2:1 water-to-rice ratio. Boil water, reduce to low simmer, add rice, cover, ignore for exactly 20 minutes (do use a timer!), remove from heat. The only tricky part is figuring out how low to set the simmer so it doesn't foam/boil over... though that's only messy, not a problem for the rice. Any venting should be minimal -- the rice steams as much as it boils, so you don't want to lose much moisture.
I actually like very slightly burnt rice, but have found no way to get that to happen reliably to exactly the right degree.
I think if you're trying to brown or even burn it just the right amount, you probably want to uncover it at the end. That way it definitely won't just be steaming, and you can tell by smell when it's done how you want.
You can cook basmati rice easily in the microwave. Just add almost double the amount of water and cook on high power for between about 6 minutes (1 portion) to about 15 minutes (lots of rice). Remember to use a lid/pierced cling film, and a fairly large bowl, because the water tends to bubble up and make a mess otherwise.
Edit: The rice will be hot for a few minutes, so water will evaporate. Hence you don't want it to be dry when you take it out of the microwave, as it will get even drier. Best to take it out when still slightly wet and fluff it up with a spoon/fork/utensil of your choice. If there's still some water left after a couple of minutes, pop it back in for slightly more. If it is cooked but dry, add some water, stir and pop it in for a minute or so.
Edit 2: Since I started cooking, I've always used basmati rice. Recently I tried brown rice for the first time, and let me tell you microwave cooking doesn't work well for it. Another thing - I wouldn't advise making lots of basmati rice and reheating the leftovers over the course of a week, but if you do, it's better to reheat individual portions in the microwave rather than the whole thing.
That sort-of works http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/41235/rice-gets-burnt-and-watery/41281#41281 unless your goal is to enjoy eating it
Nothing wrong with it my opinion, and I'm of Asian origin!
@Jolenealaska Rice is pretty sensitive. The other answer said no lid, 12-15 minutes until no liquid is left. This one says cover at least partially, 6-15 minutes, until just a little liquid is left. I imagine that makes a pretty big difference.
@Jefromi Gad. Now I need to experiment again. It's a good thing I buy rice at Sam's Club.
@Jefromi I tried it. I got the same, less than great, results as the last time I tried microwaving rice. I don't recommend it.
@Jolenealaska What type of rice are you using?
@BrianFunt American long grain. I've also tried it with basmati, jasmine and Calrose medium grain.
@Jolenealaska Microwaving should work fine for basmati rice at least. What results are you getting exactly?
@BrianFunt Imagine rice that has been refrigerated for six hours, then reheated. The very inside of the grain has that hardness, while the surface of the grain is overly soft, like rice that has been overcooked in too much water. Its edible, just not as good.
@Jolenealaska I can't say what's going on there... perhaps overcooking? Anyway, if you don't want to use this method, fair enough. But I use it frequently and am happy with the results.
@BrianFunt I honestly think answer is that I'm more particular when it comes to rice. Funny thing, I'm watching an episode of Kitchen Nightmares UK. Gordon Ramsey took one look at the rice, rolled his eyes, and said "microwaved". Microwaves do bad things to starches, if your expectations are high, microwaved rice doesn't cut it. There's a reason high level chefs don't microwave rice. Once you've got the knack of it, it's just as easy and quick to do it right.
Get a pressure cooker(works for any kind of cooking) or an electric rice cooker.
All you have to do is - put rice, add equal or little more water, salt to taste and your rice is ready in 15 minutes. Millions of people in India use that for generations!
I've never used a pressure cooker for rice, I'd try it if I had one. But equal amounts of water and rice? Every other method (including rice makers) require 1.5+:1. How does pressure make that different? I can imagine slightly less than 1.5:1 under pressure, but I'm finding 1:1 a stretch.
Yes, equal. A pressure cooker doesn't lose water to evaporation, and it does make that much difference.
This pagefor example explains all great and with images:
Basmati cooking
Trick is to use a rice:water ratio of 1:2, so for every cup of rice you add two cups of water. And to keep the lid closed at as soon as the water boils.
For most meals you want to have the rice a little sticky so it doesn't fall off the fork or chop sticks.
As for the why question it seems rice takes longer to cook and is losing more starch than pasta, so you can't just cook it in 5 liters of water.
That might be the right ratio for basmati, but it's really high for a lot of kinds of rice.
The reason why it's different is because pasta is boiled in hot water. It cooks from being immersed in the hot liquid, some of which might be absorbed into the noodles, and the excess is discarded. The purpose of that water is primarily as a medium to transfer uniform amounts of wet heat to the noodles.
Cooking rice is not done by boiling the rice in water. This is where you got off track. The specific amounts of rice and water and cooking times are for allowing the rice to be cooked by steaming. Furthermore, the rice grains are supposed to absorb all the liquid, and we stop right at the point where it's all absorbed, but the lack of remaining liquid doesn't cause the rice to burn or scorch.
If there's too much water at the start, then the rice keeps absorbing additional liquid, and it becomes a mushy porridge, so having more water then pouring it off, like with noodles, falls short in that area, as well, if for some reason the timing is disrupted or off.
The fact that you had the lid half off, instead of completely covering the rice, is why you needed to add additional water at the end. While some recipes or methods (especially for brown rice) might have you boiling off excess water at the beginning, the bulk of the cooking and the final stages are usually with the cover on.
Obviously, there are exceptions for particular dishes, but, ultimately, the most used method for preparing plain rice is steaming.
Sorry, but the theory that you shouldn't cook rice in extra water and then discard is wrong. It just happens that the steaming method is more popular in the USA than the extra-water method. Both are valid, and give good results. The rice does not become a mushy porridge.
@rumtscho - If you drain the water at the right moment, sure, but if you don't, the extra water is absorbed. If you don't turn off the low heat simmer on steamed rice, on the other hand, some of the rice on the bottom of the pan will overcook or scorch, but most of the rice will be unaffected. I'm not saying it always will, I'm saying the margin for error is different, and one is more likely to produce undesired, unwanted results than the other. I will edit to make that clearer. https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/common-mistakes/article/the-6-most-common-rice-cooking-mistakes
@rumtscho - plus the OP was asking why the measurements for water were so much more exacting, in general, than just the "pot of water" needs for pasta. This is the reason for the preparations that call for precise amounts of water. Your example is not one that is being asked about.
I still disagree, even after the corrections. I have eaten lots of rice made with the lots-of-water method (I don't think my family has ever heard of the steaming method), even when cooked for prolonged time, and nothing unusual happens to it. And yes, the question "why exact ratios" may have implied "in the steaming method", but the correct answer cannot be "because other ratios make bad rice" when they don't.
@rumtscho - Since I never claimed that other methods make bad rice, I'm not sure why that's a factor. Saying one method is more forgiving and easier to get good results is not the same as the blanket condemnation you claim. Fair enough, but you have the tendency to invent claims that aren't made if you disagree with the exact method or advice given. As to your claim that rice doesn't absorb extra liquid, that's simply false, as evidenced by the literally thousands of articles on what to do when the rice absorbs too much water and turns to mush.
Stepping in late, but yes, rice cooked in "too much water" does become porridge, because that's specifically how I make rice porridge when I'm feeling unwell, and what all instructions/recipes for rice porridge (congee, okayu, etc) say to do. It may vary by type of rice, but it does definitely happen.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.816173
| 2014-05-10T20:13:55 |
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|
107918
|
White stuff on the top of my apple cider vinegar?
This white stuff has appeared on my Apple cider vinegar. Is it good or do I remove it?
It has been 4 weeks. I was going to strain the apples out today and let it sit for another 4 weeks.
Smell of the vinegar is nice and doesn't have a bad odour.
That is mold. You should skim it off and throw it away. It's probably an indication that your acid to sugar balance is not correct. If it comes back I'd throw away your batch and try again.
Mold and the white film are two separate things! If it’s actually mold then you probably don’t want the batch but the white stuff is a penicillium similar to what covers Brie or end up on top of KimChee and other ferments. It’s part of fermentation and is not goi g to ruin a batch. I would research more before trusting blogs to tell you what’s up with your ferments - sometimes opinions are not sound advice. Just a word of advice
Penicillium is a genus of mold, and while it is part of the production of certain foods (e.g., Penicillium camemberti is the penicillium species for Brie), there's no guarantee the mold here is 1) safe 2) or even a penicillium species. For example, the white colonies you may find on kimchi come from yeast genera, not penicillium.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.817194
| 2020-04-26T07:30:34 |
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|
109289
|
What are some effective tips for cooking bacon in the microwave?
I typically cook my bacon in the oven or stove top. A relative of mine saw me do this and recommended using the microwave instead. I have two questions on this:
Is this food safe--does using a microwave kill the bacteria/pathogens in pork?
What are some effective methods to ensuring I get the same results as I would in an oven or on the stove top?
When I started cooking family meals, years ago, I used a microwave cause it was faster and easier. Several years ago, I don't remember why, I cooked bacon in the oven and a frying pan. and I will never use a microwave again unless I'm in a hurry. That's true for everything I cook nowadays.
As a matter of interest, do you know why they recommended the microwave instead?
You can cook bacon that is safe-to-eat using a microwave. The USDA even lists microwaving bacon as a safe way to cook it:
The three main ways to cook bacon are in a skillet or pan on the
stove, in a conventional oven, or in the microwave. The length of time
to cook bacon depends upon the type and thickness of the bacon, the
heat used, and the desired crispness.
That said, I wouldn't expect the same (or even similar) results as cooking bacon in an oven or on a stovetop. Microwaved bacon usually ends up rubbery instead of crispy and brown. You also can't collect the rendered fat and reuse it since you usually microwave bacon on a paper towel.
Serious Eats wrote a great piece on how to cook bacon and advised against microwaving bacon due to the texture, but try it for yourself! Microwaved bacon is perfectly safe to eat and, at the end of the day, only you can decide whether you like it or not :)
My neighbor cooks her bacon in the microwave, but she also likes taking it to fully crisp, rather than leaving it with a little bit of chew to it, so I don't know how well it works if you like it less well done, but works well for crispy bacon.
She's gone through a couple of different 'bacon trays' through the years. Her original one looked like this one from Nordicware, but she now has a round ceramic one. (if your microwave is large enough, I recommend the square/rectangular ones, as you can fit whole strips on it without trying to curve them or needing to cut them down to fit on the tray)
To use the trays, you just lay out the bacon on it, hopefully not overlapping too much, then place a layer or two of paper towels on top of it, and then microwave it for a few minutes. The exact time is a function of your microwave's wattage, the thickness of your bacon, and how you like it cooked, but she usually starts with 6 minutes, and then does one or two minute steps 'til it's done to how she likes it.
If you have a powerful microwave (greater than 1000W), or you're only cooking a couple of strips, start with 4 minutes or even less if both are true)
She also checks how much grease has come off when she's checking how far done it is, and will drain the tray if needed. (into the trash or a clean container if you're saving it ... not down the sink)
I simply lay out the bacon on 2 or 3 thicknesses of paper towels on a plate, and put 2 or 3 on top, and cook it about 30-60 seconds at a time until it is the right level of doneness. The paper towels will absorb the rendered fat as it cooks leaving it crisp. In my experience a special tray is not needed. If your microwave does not have a plate inside that spins you should turn the plate every 30-60 seconds for even cooking.
This technique is what I have been using and it works well for me, although it isn't the same as ones cooked on stove or in oven.
You put lay bacon strips on the top of an upside-down bowl (that is microwavesafe and can handle high temperature, so no plastics or normal glasses), has a plate under the bowl to collect the fats (optionally with a paper towel), and cover the bacons lightly with a paper towel. For timing, it depends on too many factors so just try it out with your microwave settings and see.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.817338
| 2020-06-25T15:51:14 |
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|
112300
|
Cake yeast rolls recipe missing part of flour measurement
My mother has a cake yeast rolls recipe, but she can't remember it. She's 101 so don't expect it. I have part of the recipe, and it is:
2 yeast cake in 1/4 cups of warm water
1 cup scalded milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup shortening
1 1/2 salt
3 eggs
3 1/? cups flour
My dilemma is how much exactly is the partial cup of flour?
The only practical options are 1/4, 1/2, or 1/3. I would start with 3 and 1/4 cup flour. If it feels to sticky, add 1/4 cup more flour.
While moscafj's advice for gradually getting to the answer can be a good practical solution (you can add flour but you can't get it back out) it doesn't hurt to do the math first and see what to expect.
You have here 450 g liquid (including the eggs), and the flour is in the interval between 3 and 4 cups. At 120 g per cup, this means a baker's percentage of 94 to 125%, which is huge (most breads stay in the 60-80% range), and it doesn't even count the shortening, which softens the dough further.
You can start with gradually adding the flour as suggested, but you can also be brave and start with the 3 1/2 cups, and don't be weirded out if it turns out that you need more than 4 cups just so the dough will hold a little bit of shape. This assumes you are measuring in a roughly standard way (leveled cups, no packing). If you aren't, all bets are off, you might want to just use a scale, see how much it needs the first time (by feel) and then continue improving the recipe from there in subsequent batches.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.817765
| 2020-10-25T23:31:09 |
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|
87585
|
Why do people put Coke on their ham?
Why do people put Coke on their ham? What purpose does it serve? Is there another more specific and specialized ingredient that does the same thing?
This recipe is an example, but it isn't the only recipe that lists Coke as an ingredient. What's the point?
sugar. With all the effects it has in a marinade.
caramel coloring. Well, it colors and caramels.
acid. Both the (volatile) carbonation and the phosphoric acid (not that much of it - undiluted phosphoric acid is a potent corrosive!). Possible tenderizing effect, taste enhancer, and will influence browning reactions on the surface (probably balancing the quick browning of all the sugar). Some cola brands are as acidic as plain vinegar!
various spices/spice extracts, some of which would also be well suited to savory cooking: Cinnamon and nutmeg, citrus oils (and also vanilla, which is of debatable merit in a savory recipe).
+1 for emphasizing the acid, which is strongest in Coke over other brands of 'soda', just drop a couple of nails in a glass of Coke and come back tomorrow. I would note that sugars are more "glaze" than "marinade" though that distinction is not particularly important.
Phosphoric acid is used in heavy duty metal care products... rust removers and stuff...
So you could use vinegar and sprinkle sugar over the ham and get the same effect?
More like vinegar and syrup/honey ...
Basically, Coca-Cola is flavored sugar water, and serves to create a sweet glaze on the ham. It's similar to a maple glaze, honey glaze, brown sugar glaze -- but using Coke instead of a "plain" sugar base. It's often associated with Southern US cooking; Coca-Cola is based in Atlanta GA and there's a long history of cooking ham in the "local" cola.
A bit of sweetness combined with a savory main meat element and probably some spices is a standard combination in many cuisines. Having many contrasting flavor elements in one dish can be like a painting with many colors: Not the only way to do it, but pleasant, if done right.
A British Christmas gammon may be studded with cloves and get a honey-mustard glaze. The Chinese pork belly gets a sticky sauce with soy sauce, honey, sugar and spices. The French Canard à l'Orange adds sweet and fruity flavors to the duck..... You can probably eat your way around the world and find similar patterns. Even the American diner breakfast with pancakes, maple syrup and bacon uses these elements.
Your ham in coke is a simple way of doing something along that line: you have lots of sugar, a touch of acidity and a few “herbal” notes from the coke. So sorry, no, the coke is not a “magic ingredient”. From a cooking perspective, using the coke vs. another type of braising liquid or glaze is a bit like using “cream of... soup” in a casserole vs. making a separate sauce. Neither is per se better, it depends on the desired result and possibly circumstances.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.817928
| 2018-02-06T19:38:47 |
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|
94422
|
How to make raspberry donut filling
How do I duplicate the raspberry flavored jelly filling of Dunkin Donuts jelly donuts?
Welcome! Have you tried other raspberry jelly fillings that weren't quite right, or is this your first attempt at a jelly filling ever?
Welcome! You might want to read this Meta Q/A and consider to [edit] your question with more details. We do accept restaurant mimicry questions, but require a bit of effort from the asker.
Emeril's Raspberry Filling uses a combination of fresh raspberries, simple syrup, and cornstarch. Seems almost foolproof and you could probably substitute frozen raspberries when fresh aren't available.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.818174
| 2018-12-01T22:35:48 |
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|
98925
|
Is this dark muscovado sugar safe to use?
I've got a batch of dark muscovado sugar that I rarely use, sitting in an airtight ziploc bag. Upon opening it today, I noticed that is gone very hard and some of the lumps are white inside. There's also a few darker ones.
Is this natural for this kind of sugar or has something happened to it (could be a fungus for all I know)?
Muscovado sugar is a partially refined sugar. Hence, it has a lot of what is essentially molasses contained in it. The molasses can migrate, leaving whiter areas; also scraping with a spoon, e.g., can leave whiter areas.
To reconsitute, place in a jar with a piece of bread or covered with a damp cloth (what I do). Within a few hours, it should be nice and soft as sugar is quite hygroscopic. If you use bread, it (the bread) will probably be hard.
Thanks I ground these lumps in a mortar (needed the sugar to make jerk). I'll do what you suggested with the rest.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.818259
| 2019-05-11T10:42:32 |
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|
92625
|
Little maggots on top of my home-made apple cider vinegar, is it bad?
This was my first attempt at making apple-cider-vinegar at home. I did this all following a tutorial from YouTube. I simply cut a few apples and put them in a clean jar with sugar+water. I set the lid over the jar but did not tighten so as to allow some airflow. Then, I just kept it untouched for about two weeks.
Up until two days ago, there used to be messy white foam/scum on the surface. And the jar looked a little messy on the top due to that. Today I noticed it is all clean at the top, then when I looked closely I found these tiny maggots lurking all around the top of the jar.
Is this batch completely ruined? What must have I done wrong? Is it salvageable?
Am I right to think that some sort of tiny flies must have found a way inside the jar (since the lid was intentionally not tightened)? Also I don't see these guys below the surface.
Why do you have to add sugar when apples have sugar already? Why doesn't this turn into alcoholic cider instead?
@Chloe I don't understand why sugar was added but unpasteurized apple juice will turn into alcohol, no added sugar needed. Roughly: alcohol is a byproduct of yeast and vinegar is produced by bacteria. I'm not sure why this was done with apple bits. Juice/cider would be my choice.
@Chloe I was simply following the instructions given in this video Would anyone mind telling me how it should be made instead.
I wouldn't even try to salvage this. It's not worth it.
The two main problems I see are:
You don't have enough liquid. There should be enough water and apple juice that apples can drown in it.
Even with a lid on, there should be a gauze under or over it. Like in the old pictures of a jar with anything sweet.
Because those maggots probably originated from fruit flies (or regular flies) that were lured with the sweet scent. And you won't see them under the surface as flies don't lay eggs in water.
The foam/scum would be natural as your mixture started to ferment.
The apples were submerged in the liquid with the help of a bowl ( made of glass ). Gauza under a loose lid is a good idea. I will do it in the next batch. I am getting rid of this. Thank you.
Yeah or even a paper towel.
Another option is to get a brewing airlock. You can find these anywhere brewing supplies are sold for a couple of dollars. Just pop a hole in a lid to put the lock in, you can buy a little o-ring/gasket for the hole.
@JimmyJames With a brewing airlock you will stop the influx of oxygen though. This will result in apple wine, not vinegar. You can take it off later to make vinegar from the wine, of course. But then you'll have to worry about the flies again. Gauze should be the best (and also cheapest) solution for OP's problem.
@Kakturus what if you don't fill the airlock with water and just put gauze over it's opening? The jar can then be properly sealed so there would be a smaller access point to defend from flies.
@yetanothercoder that will work as well. The gauze is just cheaper and easier to buy.
@SZCZERZOKŁY true, but now you have the option of making both wine and vinegar with the same set. :)
@yetanothercoder Yes, but around this time of year my wine balloons and airlocks are busy making more valuable things. All the extra fruits are in jars with cloths on them.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.818372
| 2018-10-03T14:25:25 |
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|
63719
|
Baking apple roses in oven in France, which mark should I choose?
I'm baking some apple roses as described here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rGrwvEjZIQ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKOla0-aW5o. Basically, it's apple-packed puff pastry plus some other ingredients, baked in the oven.
In both of the recipes, they instruct to set the oven to 400 degree F (=200 degree C approx.) I'm in France and using their oven, I set the temperature to 200 degree C and chose the mark "flans/tartes", set the roses for 42 minutes. They got burnt quite a bit. What mark should I choose? I see that there's also a
"poissons/pâtisseries" mark, should I choose that instead? Or, should I just lower the temperature?
Excuse me if it is quicker for me to ask then watch some video: Is this using homemade or storebought puff pastry? If storebought, I would start with whatever the instructions on the pastry suggest, and adjust from there. You could always make a couple, put them in the fridge unbaked, and then bake them one by one at different temperatures/oven rails/modes (convection vs still oven will matter here). Also try covering them with tinfoil for a part of the baking time, so they can bake while not browning/drying out as much.
This is store-bought. Thanks for your comment, but my problem is with the oven being French though.
Do french ovens come with any feature that keeps you from doing trial runs? ;) I would suggest double checking that you do not have convection on.
if they're numbered like the British gas marks, see https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/27517/67
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.818896
| 2015-11-21T21:05:02 |
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|
57383
|
Mustard substitute
My husband just found out he's allergic to mustard. Are there any substitutes for it? It's a staples in my kitchen and he loves it.
Edit for clarification (was in the original question):
Husband is also allergic to horseradish and egg whites, so substituting horseradish for mustard is not an option.
The substitute you use will depend on what you're using it in, I would think...
I'm going to edit this down to just ask about mustard since that's what's in the title. Please do ask about the others too though!
For the mustard, I might add a shot of vinegar to make up for the lack of acid that's generally in most prepared mustard (especially if you're replacing dijon mustard). Any other flavorings would likely vary based on the dish, as Catija mentioned. And in the some cases, the vinegar might be in something else (eg, using mayo for a sandwich ... but you have to make sure it's a mayo that doesn't use mustard as an emulsifier)
you could use very fress watercress in some recipes.
Pickled and pureed hot radish paste, with plenty of vinegar and some turmeric?
Fermented vegetables can often provide the pungent, salty kick that is often desired from mustard. If he is not allergic to cabbage (which is a member of the same family, brassica), sauerkraut may be a good option. Similarly, other members of the brassica family, such as broccoli and collard greens, retain a similar bite, particularly when raw. You might try making a collard green pesto.
Outside the brassica family, tamarinds can deliver a pungent, sour flavor that complements many different kinds of foods. Tamarind is a signature ingredient in many sauces and chutneys, particularly for meat. You could try making your own A1 sauce while leaving out the mustard.
The only thing that even closely resembles mustard that I can think of would be Horseradish and real wasabi.
Unfortunately horseradish is also something he's allergic to, but that got edited out of the question.
Sometimes wasabi is not stretched with horseradish, quite often it is, so read the labels carefully.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.819061
| 2015-05-11T15:48:19 |
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|
69293
|
What kind of reaction is this?
I have made elderflower 'champagne' a number of times, but I don't really understand it. I ferment other drinks and foods, and generally understand the process quite well, but I'm not sure about this.
I'm wondering if it is-
some sort of yeast off the elderflowers
A kind of reaction similar to vinegar and bicarbonate of soda (I assume not)
Some other type of symbiotic fermentation/wild yeast or something I haven't thought of.
The recipe includes elderflowers in a gallon of water with 1 lemon, 1 1/2 pounds of sugar, and a tablespoon of white wine vinegar soaked together for 24-48 hours and then bottled for 2 days for carbonation.
Unless there's a boiling step natural yeasts are going to ferment -- do you bring it to the boil (or heat it significantly) at any stage?
No, and I'm sure there are wild yeasts in it. I just was wondering about a breakdown of the process.
I don't understand the question. What is a "symbolic fermentation"? What is the difference between "yeast off the elderflowers" and "wild yeast"?
Sorry, that's supposed to be symbiotic fermentation. I'm thinking of something like kombucha. And by the yeast off the elderflowers I'm basically asking what the source of the yeast would be. I guess they are both wild yeasts, but does elderflower have specific yeasts on it that lend it to being suitable to ferment is this way, like apples do for making cider, or is it airborne yeasts? Sorry about the confusion.
AFAIK nobody can tell which yeasts fermented a given plant matter, the airborne ones or the ones stuck to it. OK, the methods for it are there, so food technologists might have studied the proportions for given industry-relevant processes like winemaking, but I doubt that they did it for elderflower, or for the specific conditions in your kitchen.
Ok, thanks. I knew I wouldn't get an exact description, but I was hoping for a basic idea.
It is certainly a fermentation. A simple chemical neutralization wouldn't need that much time, and wouldn't produce lasting fizz.
You can be certain that there are wild yeasts everywhere: in the air in your kitchen, on your elderflower, probably on your utensils, etc. It is impossible to say which ones prevailed in the fermentation, the ones you brought in with the elderflower or the ones which came into it from some other sources.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.819274
| 2016-05-27T09:29:53 |
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|
124333
|
What technique or tools should I use to make frosting in this particular shape?
I want to make dessert like in the screenshot. How can I make the white part to look the same in real life as in the screenshot (it could be not rounded corners, if it will be impossible)? The consistency is something like frosting. The brown is a dough almost like a muffin.
I can't just pour it on, because there will be drips. I also thought I could make the dough and dip it in the frosting, but then there would be peaks on top when it all dried out. Is there any other way to do it?
fondant is usually how very flat and smooth icing is achieved
Off the cuff I have at least three ideas how this could be done - can you explain what kind of experience and expertise you have? Frankly, that picture is about as nondescript as it can be.
I would wrap the lower part in something, plastic foil is probably best because it is slightly elastic and can be stuck together to be tight. You can try lightly oiling the inside of the plastic wrap, so that it might not stick to the cake itself too much and possibly rip off some of the surface. Make sure the cake has fully cooled first.
Then drop or spread the glaze on top, let it set, then cut it away using a knife or spatula, then remove the plastic. If the glaze is soft enough, you should be able to pull it off by simply removing the plastic. If the glaze is very gelatinous, be careful not to tear it during the removal.
If you don't want to have to pull anything off the cake, you could make a thick paper or thin cardboard 'collar', like a cat's medical collar preventing him from licking and biting himself. The narrow opening should be at the top just where you want the frosting to end, taped together there. Make sure is tight enough that no glaze could leak between cake and collar (although a tiny bit of leakage is probably fairly easy to clean up later).
Yes, great idea. I would suggest to apply some non-stick spray on the foil just before wrapping the cake, so it does not tear off the surface when taking the plastic off
@Marck: Good idea, though I don't remember ever seeing such a substance for sale here in supermarkets.
yeah, same here. I believe it's more available in the US (at least this is what I concluded from the videos I am watching). Otherwise, I would suggest to butter the foil like we would do with a cake mold, or maybe spread a thin layer of tasteless vegetal oil.
@Marck: Right, that is a good idea. I'm not sure how well that will work, but it's certainly worth a try, I'll add it to my answer. I've also added a bit about a cat collar.
I would recommend preparing a frosting which has the consistency of heavy whipped cream, or the consistency of a very well made chocolate mousse: incorporate a lot of air, it's one of the secrets. Then, put your cake on a plate and grab a spatula, spread your frosting on top and on the edges, like you want. The frosting's consistency is crucial here: you must be able to spread it evenly (without any lumps popping on the surface), but it is also important that it is not too liquid, or the frosting will drip on the edges.
Note that you can always do a cleanup of the edges after the operation, with a clean spatula and/or some paper towel.
Here are some links for methods/recipes:
Binging with Babish's chocolate cake
Binging with Babish's angel cake
Joshua Weissman's chocolate cake
Jushua Weissman's carrot cake
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.819473
| 2023-05-30T14:24:57 |
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|
124189
|
Can I cook brown rice in broth?
Can I make brown rice substituting chicken broth for water? How much of the chicken flavor transfers to the rice?
I edited your question to bring it in line with the Q&A format we expect here.
There is no problem doing this, some flavour transfers to the rice as you'd expect. Try to measure the amount you use so the rice doesn't need draining (or just have it with the remaining liquid). And be careful with additional seasoning like salt if the broth is already salted.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.819744
| 2023-05-15T20:20:05 |
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|
124951
|
Hand cranked food processors: do the blades go dull?
My friend suggested getting a hand cranked food processor to save time. I'm skeptical of if this a good idea due to the possibility of the blades wearing out.
Is this a justified concern? If so, is there a fix to resharpen the blades?
Thanks.
You'll use it twice, then never again. you can get a cheap electric for the same price as those. I got a full-size one for 30 & a mini for 8. Both been good for years.
Now why'd you say that @Tetsujin
Because I had one - used it twice. You need three hands, two to hold the darn thing still [without hitting your thumbs] & one to crank. They're an inherently unstable system.
I have seen Tammy on Collard Valley Cooks use one of the pull-string choppers occasionally. It seems to work fine for her, although I have to admit to wondering what the benefit is over an electric one whenever I see her use it. Portability might be part of it—it lets her easily carry the entire chopper over to her work table in one step.
@JerryStratton slap choppers work well for some things as well, but all the successful manual devices I've seen are optimised for smaller quantities than a typical electric food processor
Even new, food processor blades aren't all that sharp, not like a respectable kitchen knife (and my knives range from supermarket own brand to Victorinox, so aren't anything special). You should be able to restore a blunt edge with a small diamond file or stone, even very fine silicon carbide paper can be used and works quite well on curved blades
Get tools, not toys if you want something that gives you long lasting productivity. In my experience these cheap plastic gadgets are poor to use and likely to break rather soon. If you are looking for manual food processing with high maintainablity and reparability a professional mandoline like the Bron Cuocke might be for you. (High price tag, sure, but also a good chance to pass it on to your grandchildren.)
This depends entirely on the blade materials and construction, so you'll want to explore manufacturer/sales info to find one with superior blades. For models where there is no info, you can assume that blade quality is very low.
That said, my regular powered (Cuisinart) food processor has probably processed 200+ gallons of various things, and I have yet to think seriously about replacing the blades. A hand-cranked FP would presumably put less stress and wear on the blades. On the other hand, it's more dependent on having sharp blades, because it doesn't have the same speed as an electric one.
The blades on most of these products would be difficult-to-impossible to sharpen due to the design, and manufacturers do not sell replacement blades.
In sum: if you are used to using very sharp knives and keeping them sharp, a hand-cranked food chopper is probably not for you. These products are mainly targeted at folks who don't like chopping things with knives.
It‘s all about what you want to do with it.
If you want not yet another electrical device and want to chop up some onion, celery and carrot for a roast or Ragout, it is probably fine.
If you want to use it for making smoothies or oat milk on a daily basis it‘s not the best of choices.
We have one from Tupper from the time the wife was doing parties, and for us it works very well.
Update
Regarding the blades it comes down to construction and brand if there are spare parts available.
But that‘s an issue with any device
Agreed. They’re okay (other than the stability issues) for a sort of dice/mince, not to try to get things totally smooth. They can be used to make salsa or similar, but they might not have totally consistent size of chunks
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.819835
| 2023-08-12T12:09:49 |
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|
119397
|
Can I substitute blackbelly rosefish for spiny lobster?
Can blackbelly rosefish ("cantarilho" in Portuguese) or HELICOLENUS DACTYLOPTERUS, a fish, be considered a substitute of spiny lobster ("lagosta" in Portuguese), a crustacean?
Some people say, after cooking a seafood rice with both, you can't differentiate the fish (fish loin only) from the lobster anymore.
Since the price for lobster is significantly higher than for the fish, I wonder how to detect if it was cooked with crustacean only, or was "stretched" with blackbelly rosefish?
blackbelly rosefish
source wikipedia.org
spiny lobster
source mundoecologia.com.br
Er, lobster and crawfish are two different animals, with different flavors. Which are you looking for?
@FuzzyChef crawfish is what we have here in Portugal, updated the question
I think what @FuzzyChef is getting at is: are you asking if you can use the fish in the place of the crawfish, or are you asking if they taste different to each-other? If you cook both together then flavours blend and you may not be able to distinguish them.
Edited the title of the question to indicate crawfish per the comment above.
@FuzzyChef thanks, that title is much better to reflect what I had in mind
One more question for clarity -- and in the interest of getting you good answers -- are you specifically cooking seafood rice?
That's actually a picture of European freshwater crayfish (Austropotamobius pallipes), which is an endangered species. Crawfish is a name used in the USA for a different species. They aren't the same.
@BillyKerr I have updated the picture (lagosta = lobster) and rephrased a bit my question to better point to what I'm actually wanting to know
That's what I would call a "spiny lobster". These are usually found in warmer waters of southern Europe, and in the Mediterranean. I've seen them for sale in Portugal and Spain Usually the lobster we get here in the UK and other parts of northern Europe is the common European lobster (Homarus_gammarus) which have large meaty claws, They're purple or blue, and turn orange when cooked.
@BillyKerr definitely not Homarus grammarus, but the orange one on the updated picture
Yeah, your one is called a "spiny lobster" in English. Very confusing!!!
Spiny lobsters, also known as langustas, langouste, or rock lobsters, are a family (Palinuridae) of about 60 species, maybe I should edit it into langouste, which is the closest to the portuguese word?
Let us continue this discussion in chat.
What's your goal? Both can make an excellent base for a seafood based rice dish. In a side by side, I bet you would be able to tell the difference. If you are trying to do this surreptitiously, maybe not a good idea. More importantly, does it matter? Why not just make blackbelly roefish rice with broth...call it blackbelly roefish rice with broth...make it delicious, and enjoy? If you are suspicious that you were tricked, maybe ask the chef.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.820258
| 2022-01-03T02:34:14 |
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|
117455
|
Injecting Jack Daniels into pork
I have been smoking meats for a while now, and was recently given a marinade injector. I searched through a few forums, and found a few people really like mixing apple juice with Jack Daniels for their marinade for pork butts.
When doing this, do I cook off the alcohol first? Or should I just inject it the night before without cooking off the alcohol?
Welcome to SA! I edited your question slightly to make it clear that you were injecting the booze into pork and not somewhere less wise. ;-)
Alcohol doesn’t ‘cook off’ as much as most people think it does. See https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/659/67
Do you need to reduce the alcohol content? Consider how much you add and how many people it serves. You might decide you do need to, or you might decide you don't. E.g I'll put a little red wine in a sauce that my child will have a little of (little ^2 =trace quantity), but wouldn't rely on cooking down alcohol for a strict non-drinker (so I'd use something different). Plenty of room in between for a reduction, subsequently diluted with suitable flavours to get the volume back up
So for anyone that is curious, I just went for it as I was only adding what was essentially just 2 shots to a 6ish pound butt (the rest was apple juice and really finely ground spices) and it turned out great, and super juicy!
Next time I will cook it a little bit since I was hoping to get more sweetness, and I am thinking reducing both the water and the alcohol a little will make the marinade shine just a little bit more.
It really depends on what sort of end result you're trying to get.
If you don't reduce the alcohol before injecting it, you're going to end up with boozy pork. If this is what you want, go for it.
Otherwise, reduce the alcohol, mix in the apple juice, and then inject that. You could also try flaming the alcohol, which won't cook off as much alcohol, but can create other interesting flavors.
I would suggest to reduce it too. Spirits in their pure form will cause flare-ups, unless this is being done with an indirect smoker. Even still, I second the notion that pure whiskey will impart a potent taste.
Just inject.
The subsequent heating will cook off the alcohol. Maybe a few molecules remain so if you are a religion that cannot have those you should cook it first.
I here humbly suggest that you will be paying extra for the name "Jack Daniels" but you can use any whisky for cooking with comparable results. If you have it on hand and are not drinking it very fast it makes sense to use what you have got. If you go thru whiskey reasonably fast you could get some cheap stuff for cooking. I used to keep some on hand for slow cooked beans.
Which would be delicious using the bone from the pork butt!
I suspect the reason for the downvotes is that cooking off alcohol isn't anywhere near as easy as you assume. We've had a few questions on it before. I didn't add to the votes (and think those that downvoted should have said something). See Cooking away alcohol for starters, and my answer to Alcohol evaporation of beer in a cake for some oven-based further reading. BTW good idea on using cheaper stuff
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.820509
| 2021-10-08T21:36:30 |
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|
45339
|
What should I use to produce the hotness of Hong Kong-style borscht?
I'm interested in attempting to make borscht similar to the type that gets sold in fast-food restaurants in Asia (or at least Hong Kong). I've found several recipes online, so the basic process seems straightforward (e.g. this, this, and this). Now, one of the things I've rather liked about the Hong Kong version of borscht is that (ideally speaking), the soup should be fairly hot.
One of the links lists paprika, whilst the other lists chili oil. Which/what seasoning would be more appropriate for reproducing the hotness of borscht (and the taste of the specific type I'd like to imitate)? I'm assuming chili oil would be more effective and more commonly used in Hong Kong, but I don't have too much experience with either ingredient (beyond occasional prodigious use of dried red pepper flakes) and so am looking for confirmation / tips.
Of the recipes you link to only one contains paprika, another one lists "Chinese chili paste, chili oil, hot sauce or dried red chili flakes to taste". The one that specifies paprika doesn't mention a specific type of paprika. Without further distinction, that generally means the sweet, non-smoked variety. Sweet paprika is just dried, powdered pimento, the type of pepper seen most often (here in the US anyway) stuffing cocktail olives. It's not hot at all. Hot paprika usually gets its heat by mixing in another, hotter, pepper. Even those paprikas are not generally overwhelmingly hot.
Paprika of any type (hot, sweet or smoked) from any country (Hungary is known for it, as is Spain) is going to bring you closer to a flavor profile more reminiscent of borscht's Eastern European roots. You may want that, but I wouldn't count on paprika to to provide the kind of heat you're talking about.
For Chinese hot and sour soup the best sources of heat are white pepper and chili oil. Nothing else tastes "right" in my opinion. With that in mind I lean toward those ingredients for your borscht as well. You can buy chili oil in any big grocery store, but Asian markets will have a greater variety at probably a much lower price. You can also make your own.
So I'd recommend starting there. White pepper, chili oil and paprika. Make a batch of soup with none of the above and add each spicy ingredient to samples of soup until you hit the combo you like. For best results, once you got the ratio of spicy ingredients figured out, scoop out a bit of your broth and simmer the spices for a good 30 minutes or so (the pepper and paprika especially, it doesn't matter so much with the oil), and add the simmered spices into your cooked soup. They're just better cooked a while. Next time you make the soup you can add the spices in the beginning, since at that point you'll know what you like.
I've had paprika (from an Indian grocery store) that's plenty hot to achieve whatever you want to here. I don't know whether it's a blend or what, but it's certainly very flavorful and fairly hot.
@Jefromi Then that may be a great idea for the OP, I've never tasted paprika that was intensely hot. I still would recommend playing with the three spicy ingredients to find the balance that works the best, especially since the OP is trying to replicate a Hong Kong dish, more than an Eastern European one.
Oil is the optimal medium to bloom the taste of a pepper. For that reason I would go with the chili oil or paste. It will be easier to control the amount of heat in the soup because it will disperse more quickly and you can taste test more easily.
If you choose to use paprika, I suggest getting one that is labeled "hot", but not one that is labeled "smoked" Smoked paprika is very good but has a distinctive flavor profile that doesn't look like it would fit with a Hong Kong dish (it is super in Spanish food though)
I have had very good luck using Roland Curry Red Paste. I assume it is available in ON. I am in Chicago; it is available in the mainstream supermarkets and certainly the international grocery stores. It doesn't taste like Indian curry as Midwestern American's know curry, but is a pepper paste with a number of other spices in it which gives a nice complexity. I use it in a chicken broth based soup similar to the recipes you posted but without the cabbage. I also use it to mix with mayonnaise for chicken salad.
My jar says it is a product of Malaysia so most of the ingredients would be available in Hong Kong and therefore consistent with the flavor profile you are trying to emulate
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.820767
| 2014-07-05T12:03:47 |
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|
54550
|
Why don't most non-East Asian varieties of rice stick together?
Having tried a number of different kinds of rice, I've noticed that the only ones that seem to have grains that "stick" together are white varieties often used in East Asian cooking (jasmine (to some extent), Calrose and other "Japanese" types, etc.). (Glutinous rice also has this property, albeit to a much more pronounced extent, for obvious reasons.)
Conversely, a lot of other types don't (at least not to the same extent, and when they're not overcooked). For instance, the rice often served at Middle Eastern restaurants doesn't "stick". Nor do basmati or red/brown varieties. I've also had mixed experiences with white rice of the American long-grain variety, although there's the possibility that the place that was serving me it was undercooking it.
For what it counts, the only types of rice I've had experience cooking with (either stove-top or in a rice-cooker) are jasmine, Calrose, and red and brown varieties. I rinse my rice, but would not know if the rice I've had in restaurants or other types of eateries has been, and I'm not sure if this might result in a difference.
Thus: why is there such a difference in "stickiness", in terms of chemical/physical differences? Are there also differences in preparation (e.g. washing rice) that might affect things?
I'm not sure what you are asking in the question. Is it the physical reason for the stickiness, or why some culinary traditions tend to use sticky rice while others tend to use nonsticky?
@rumtscho: I'm interested in the physical reason for the stickiness.
Cooking method has some bearing. When I steam basmati rice, it sticks. When I cook it like pasta (ie straight into boiling water) it doesn't.
Please see the excerpt below from this page . There is also a chart that lists different types of long, medium, and short grain rices and their characteristics and usage examples.
Rice is composed of two different types of starch molecules: amylose and amylopectin. The amounts of these two starches determine the texture of rice when it is cooked.
Rice with higher amylose content, such as long grain rice, is firmer and fluffier. Rice with lower amylose content, such as short and medium grain rice, has a softer, stickier texture.
The Effect of Starch on Rice Cooking:
Dishes such as risotto and sushi rely on rice that is low in amylose to create their characteristic soft and sticky textures.
Rice dishes that have fluffy separate grains, like rice pilaf, are best made with rice that is higher in amylose starch.
Some sticky rice dishes, like many Asian desserts, are made from varieties of rice that contain no amylose starch. These varieties of rice are called sweet, waxy or glutinous rice.
In general, the shorter the grain, the stickier the rice will be.
How you wash it also makes a big difference. And so does covering it in oil (Pilaf) and abrading it (Risotto). Also, mind that your common non-asian rice is often parboiled, while asian varieties are usually sold raw.
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.821139
| 2015-02-09T10:24:56 |
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|
44691
|
Use of ground beef in Chinese food
I rarely see ground beef used in many Chinese or American Chinese food recipes. Is there just a small number of uses for ground beef in the Chinese kitchen?
Not enough for answer but I can think of several Sichuan dishes off the top off my head: ma po doufu, ants climbing a tree and some versions of Dan Dan noodles. I'm sure there's plenty more from the myriad regions of China.
You can find ground meat in dumplings and baozi (i don't know the english for it), a bun with meat inside of it
Ground beef does not work well in any traditional stir-fry or soupy dish, though there are probably one or two that actually call for it
But it does work well, and is actually used in China for stuffed items. Some deep fried or steamed pastry rolls ("dim sum") or steamed buns have some ground beef in the filling
In my experience it was a very coarse grind, and unlike the typical western butchery grind
I have seen a form of a "scotch egg", and hard boiled egg, wrapped with a smooth layer of chilies, herbs, and ground beef, and baked until set. Served cold, but very hot!
It is also used for some kinds of BBQ skewers (kebab style), more predominantly in the Muslim areas (which are limited). Some skewers are actual edible vegetables; like stems of choy sum, or a sort of asparagus etc. All very nice!
Of course, you can get all this in Pork, Chicken, Lamb, Goat, or whatever else moves in China
Examples
Beef Roll (like an English 'Sausage Roll' with light pastry)
Beef "String" (on right, like middle eastern kebab, but totally different herb taste)
Beef Steamed Bun
dim sum is familiar territory, and as an armenian beef kebabs are like second nature, but the edible skewers is an interesting idea
Well, traditionally Chinese (I mean ethnic Chinese not Chinese nationality) doesn't eat beef. That why it is uncommon to see beef as ingredients in Chinese recipes. A lot of traditional Chinese recipe that do use beef are because of the influences from the Mongolian.
It's not terribly uncommon, at least in American/Chinese food. Images. It's homey, and doesn't necessarily make for a pretty plate, but the flavors can be quite solid.
Ground beef is particularly good in egg rolls or dumplings. Ground pork is more commonly seen (at least here), but ground beef is tasty that way.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.821436
| 2014-06-07T00:53:02 |
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44896
|
Why doesn't my caramel sauce thicken?
The actual measurement of the caramel sauce is 50g sugar : 20g water. I divided it to 17g of sugar to 7g of water, but after following the necessary procedures the mixture doesn't boil, and nor does it thicken. Why is it so?
I boiled for almost 30 minutes in medium heat though.
Also, caramel sauce is supposed to be thickened by concentration right?
(This is the link to the procedure that I had used to make caramel sauce.)
Sugar "boils" at a temperature much higher than water. The water is there just to get things started, so you don't burn the non-melted sugar directly in contact with the pan at. Within a few minute the water will have evaporated, and all you have left is liquid sugar
Use a candy thermometer and slowly raise the temperature until you get the sugar colour and flavour you want
When it cools it will thicken, or become solid, depending on how high you heated it. It is not just a time thing, it is the maximum temperature your reached
Caramelisation with happen around 170°C (340°F) depending on what type of sugar you use. Caramel sauce usually requires the addition of a fat like cream
The caramel sauce didnt work out because 1.the heat isnt high enough? 2. the amount of sugar and water are too little?
@mylifeisalie Can't tell why from the little information you have given, Would at least need to know what temperature you brought it too, and how accurate your thermometer is?
..The kitchen that i was using does not have a thermometer, and I did not even know that the temperature must be above the boiling point of water. I heated the saucepan at medium at first but the sauce did not seem to boil for a period of time (30mins) so I increased the heat to maximum. Yes it did boil afterwards, I then transfer the sauce to a small cup. Waited for it to cool and thicken, BUT the viscosity of the sauce was really really low. @TFD
You need a thermometer for sugar. It's a time and temp thing
I am curious, what kind of vessel are you using for this procedure?
I notice that you are working with very small measures here. 24 g of liquid will coat a normal sized pan in a film-thin layer. I cannot imagine this behaving well, or being controllable at all.
The original amount would be doable in a 12 cm "buttermelter" saucepan. The amount you chose will probably not function in anything larger than a muffin cup, ca. 6cm. And I don't know if you can even get individual muffin cup nowadays, they get sold welded into tins.
Basically, when you make candy, try having at least 1 cm of depth of the liquid when you pour it into the heating vessel. Anything else is practically impossible to work with.
If your problem was only the thinness, I would expect it to scorch quickly, maybe too quickly for you to see it going through a boil. But if it had scorched, I expect that you would have mentioned it. Your question is worded as if nothing seems to happen in your pan. If this is the case, then your temperature is too low. "Medium high" is not a meaningful direction unless you are so good at making the food in question that you can predict its behavior at different temperatures, and can adjust the temperature so it behaves such that it is at a bit above the middle of the heat range it can tolerate. This does not correspond to a specific setting of a stove, but varies between stove brands, batch sizes, pan types, etc. Just forget it and use a candy thermometer, as TFD suggested.
Which of course he can't do (use a candy thermometer) if he has a depth of product of a millimeter.
@jolene indeed. But this is not the main problem with the shallow preparation: 1) if he can take the temperature, it is still uncontrollable, he will probably overshoot the needed temperature because it heats too quickly with such a small thermal mass in relation to the surface area pouring energy in. 2) if he could stop it at the right time, he has no chance scraping it out, it only works for giving caramel taste to a liquid which is poured into the caramelizing pan (which may be the case here, but is unusual in candy making). And 3), he actually can measure it with an infrared gun then.
In a medium saucepan (200 to 250 mm) you can melt 3 TBS of sugar with just 1 tsp of water on a typical stove, on the medium to medium high heat. Do not stir, just tilt the pan to get an even melt. This gives you a liquid layer about 3 mm thick. I use a candy thermometer fine with a thin layer
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.821673
| 2014-06-15T06:03:35 |
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|
58826
|
Can I substitite iodized salt or sea salt instead of kosher salt to fry green tomatoes?
I am frying green tomatoes. The recipe calls for kosher salt. Can I use iodized salt or sea salt instead?
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.822057
| 2015-07-06T18:10:42 |
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|
69215
|
How much brown sugar do I add to one third a cup to make half a cup of brown sugar
How much brown sugar do I add to one third cup to make half cup brown sugar?
Questions like this illustrate the convenience of cooking by weight rather than volume.
get 1/2 a cup of brown sugar and remove 1/3 of a cup.
The math answer:
1/2 = 3/6
1/3 = 2/6
So (3/6) - (2/6) = 1/6 cups
As 1 cup is 237 ml, 1/6 is about 40 ml.
40 ml is two tablespoons (15ml each) plus 2 teaspoons (5 ml each).
To fill 1/3 to make 1/2 cup add 2 tblsp + 2 tsp.
The lifehack answer:
Dump the 1/3 of a cup into a 1/2 cup and fill it up.
Of course, from a cookbook that I read last week, not all tablespoons are the same. In the US, 40mL is 2TB + 2tsp, but it's 2TB + 1tsp in the UK, and 2TB in AU. Of course, in the AU, a cup is 250ml, but 1/6 of the difference between an AU & US cup is less significant than 1tsp.
@Joe - taking the variances of volumetric meassurements compared to the precision of weight into account, 1/2 a tsp shouldn't matter much ^_^.
"lifehack answer":....yeah so clever, but I think she already put the 1/3 cup into the batter (or whatever), so needs to measure out just the incremental amount
@LorelC. That's why I gave basically two answers. See part 1. And I believe that there are cases where one doesn't see the simplest solution. I certainly have experienced it.
Can you imagine how many kids in elementary school working on fractions in Math class would like to be able to use your "lifehack" answer in lieu of having to replicate your "math" answer!
If all you have is a 1/3 cup then you can get 1/2 cup by adding 1/3 + a half of 1/3. So you measure 1/3 and put it into another container, then fill the 1/3 cup half-way and then add that to the container.
In purely US volumetric cooking measurement units, 1/3 cup plus two tablespoons and two teaspoons is exactly 1/2 cup.
1 cup is 16 Tablespoons
1 Tablespoons is 3 teaspoons
which means
1 cup is 48 teaspoons
So:
1/2 cup is 24 teaspoons
and
1/3 cup is 16 teaspoons
The difference is 8 teaspoons
1/3 of a cup plus 8 teaspoons is 1/2 cup
In more compact measurements, 1/3 cup plus two tablespoons and two teaspoons is 1/2 cup.
Use the 1/4 cup and leave about 1/8 inch off the top unfilled.
This may be less accurate than other options, but it's definitely quickest and doesn't rely on having additional measuring tools.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.822149
| 2016-05-24T13:54:59 |
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|
54431
|
Why boil adzuki beans for anko twice?
This anko recipe calls for boiling the adzuki beans twice, draining and re-filling the water in between. Why is this done? Is this necessary?
I won't answer because I've never made it, but I looked at several recipes. They all call for straining after the first boiling, and refilling with clean water. Some call for an overnight soak first, some don't. Your recipe is right in line.
Please see the excerpt below from this site . All of the recipes I've seen for anko recommend changing the water but this is the only explanation I've found.
Amy Escobar MARCH 12, 2014, 3:13 PM
Hey Nami, do you know why the boiling water is emptied and then refilled? Cooking With Dog uses the same method and I don’t know the reason.
REPLY
Nami MARCH 14, 2014, 12:52 AM
Hi Amy! Thank you for asking the question.
Traditional method usually includes a process of emptying water for 1-2 times. The reason is to remove impurities (we call it “aku” – English translation is “scum” – not sure if that’s the right word) from the azuki beans. They taste bitter and you don’t want to cook with them, so we get rid of it by changing the water. Some people do once, some do twice, but you don’t want to lose too much of azuki flavor, so I believe one time is good. Hope this helps.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.822453
| 2015-02-05T23:14:02 |
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|
59505
|
How to cook spaetzle (German homemade noodles/pasta) without it ending up soggy?
I've made spaetzle a few times now but every time I struggle with it ending up a bit wet/soggy, I try to drain it the best I can but it holds a lot of water still.
I do sometimes end up cooking it longer then usual recommended 2/3 minutes because I worry it will stay too raw. am I doing something wrong, or could I do something to stop that its always so soggy/wet? I use a spaetzle maker (the sliding bucket grater type).
The usual kind of recipe I make is this:
Ingredients (Makes 2 servings; Modified from original which served 10)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground pepper
2 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
The full recipe is here: http://hickitchenblog.com/2013/06/21/cheese-spaetzle-recipe-and-spaetzle-maker-or-hobel-tips/
I see that recipe says the pot of water should only be simmering. I just read when researching that the water should be at a rolling boil for it not to be soggy, maybe this is what I need to do? I'm sure I tried that at some point though. Or that I overcooked the spaetzle until now and that makes it soggy? Im not sure.
Just took a closer look at the pictures in the blog: The shape of the Spätzle tells me that the batter is too liquid, they are bound to be soggy. No need to fuss as much with the ingredients, dump everything in your bowl and beat the heck out of it. Letting the batter rest is a feasible idea though, no need to cook them right away.
Looking at your recipe I see two issues:
Two eggs plus 1/4 cup extra liquid is likely too much for one cup of flour.
My rule of thumb is one egg per 100g flour (that's the "cheap" version from the "poorer" regions that requires a bit extra liquid, more on this later). One cup of flour is about 120 g, so I would guestimate 5/6 of a cup. But you can wing it a bit. Use little liquid to thin the batter a bit, it should be still rather stiff and if you lift it with a spoon stretch a lot, not simply flow down. For your "Spätzehobel" (the grater-type thingy) you might have to thin a tiny bit more, just enough to cause gravity to let the batter form thick drop-like "blobs" underneath. If it flows, it's too much.
Ditch the milk, use water and use it only to adjust the consistency.
I see no benefit and admittedly it's a regional thing, but (and like so many things it's a cultural question) as a purist it's flour, eggs, salt. Nothing else. Off the cuff 1/4 c sounds reasonable, but follow the instructions above. You can also increase the egg amount and omit the water entirely.
The batter must be beaten well. You can do this with a mixer, but it's likely to "creep up" your dough hooks. I know a few restaurants that do even large scale recipes by hand (or arm, in this case). You need the gluten to develop and the batter to become nice, smooth and quite stretchy:
(Not beaten with the spatula in the pictures, but with the dough hook in my mixer.)
Bring a pot of salted water to a roling boil, just like you would for pasta. Use your "Spätzleshobel" (-> "Knöpfle"1 / "buttons") or a potato ricer (-> (long) "Spätzle" / noodles) to form your Spätzle right into the water. Do not put more than one "tool filling" in the pot at a time, work in batches. They will sink to the bottom of the pot. A quick stir can loosen those that may have stuck to the bottom. Once they float, take them out or leave them in the pot for another minute or two, depending on the "stiffness" of your dough. With your "Spätzlehobel" it's probably best to take them out as soon as they float to the top. Place them in a colander to drain. Repeat with the next portion.
Left: not yet done, right: ready to take out.
When you have cooked all your Spätzle, either pour the hot water over all Spätzle or return all noodles back into the pot (give a quick stir to loosen) and drain together.
On stickiness:
Don't expect "al dente" like for Italian pasta. This is something Spätze will never be - it's simply not in their nature. That said, the goal still is to get them quite firm, never a glutinous mass (bleach!). Also, if they stay in the serving bowl, they will start to stick, period. To counter this, you can add a tablespoon (or more) of butter and gently stir to coat them. Note that stickiness isn't much of a problem in traditional Swabian cuisine because we tend to serve generous amounts of gravy with our food. (Non-Swabians have claimed that we "drown" our food, but to each his own, right?)
1 On Nomenclature:
There are regional differences on what qualifies as "Spätzle". Some will only accept the long noodles as such and call the round blobs "Knöpfle" ("Buttons"), other regions have mainly the round variety and call them "Spätzle". For your "Kässpätzle" which hails from the Allgäu, the latter is the case.
I use 2 eggs and 2 tbs milk for my spaetzle recipe (with the 1 cup of flour and 3/4 tsp salt). And a rolling boil, cooking for 2 - 3 minutes until all of the noodles are floating at the top... I also dump the batter on a cutting board and with a large knife I slice lengths of dough into boiling water.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.822597
| 2015-08-01T09:30:53 |
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|
67669
|
Turn melted sugar back into granular?
Is it possible to turn common table sugar that has been dissolved in water back into its original granular form?
By "melted in water" do you mean dissolved? Or melted as in caramelized?
Sorry for being vague. Melted as in dissolved in heated water.
I guess you could try creating a saturated sugar solution first and then cooling it quickly to help tiny crystal growth. Otherwise do the old school science trick and produce a large sugar crystal, dry it and bash it up.
can I ask what do you want to do with the sugar once its back to its granular form?
You probably can't achieve the size and uniformity of classic granulated sugar at home, not without finding some special equipment. But if you are OK with other crystal sizes, it is very simple.
All you have to do is to search for recipes for rock candy. It is nothing but re-crystalized sugar. Also considered to be the easiest candy to make, you'll find it in many "cooking with children" books and blogs.
The one problem may be that you are not crystalizing sugar, but a combination of fruit juice and sugar. If the juice has enough acid to invert your sugar, it might not crystalize well. You'll have to try and see.
Imagine, if you will, a cup of Koolaid. Essentially, sugar dissolved in water. Just let it sit there in the cup. The water slowly evaporates leaving gummy residue in the cup. Basically the same result would occur if you boiled the water away (only faster). Once it dissolves, you've lost the crystal lattice forever.
Even if granulated sugar merely absorbs moisture from a humid day and becomes a solid hunk in the sugar bowl, returning it to its previous consistency is difficult. You'd need to break it apart as best you can, maybe grind it in a blender to get a granular form factor.
The other challenge is microbial activity. Depending on the strength of the solution it may have a high enough water activity for an unsafe number of bacteria to breed in a sugar-rich environment before you manage to evaporate the water.
I understand what is being said. I have read many discussions regarding how to stop or avoid syrups or sugar batches for caramel, fudge, etc. from crystallizing. I actually want such crystallization for my purpose but I have found no methods to intentionally induce such a thing consistently. I seek to turn a flavored syrup consisting of all-natural fruit juice and refined cane sugar into a flavored granular dry table sugar.
Thank you for asking this question, I've enjoyed poking into the chemistry. Check out this article on the chemistry of candy-making. So to get a "rock candy" like output that you could then grind down, you'd need the saturated solution, then something for the crystals to cling to, utter stillness while the crystals form, and then a way to turn that crystal into powder by grinding it. http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/resources/highschool/chemmatters/past-issues/archive-2014-2015/candymaking.html
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.823016
| 2016-03-22T21:51:03 |
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|
76088
|
Replace or reduce sugar in milk?
Is there any company that produces milk with the sugar removed or replaced? If not, is there any way to do this on your own?
I love skim milk and mostly buy Fair Life Skim Milk, which is filtered to improve nutritional value, but it still has way too much sugar.
Milk sugar is lactose. I think I've seen lactose-free milk - maybe that's what you need to search for
In the US, LACTAID is a very popular brand of lactose free dairy products.
@ChrisH Based on a couple of nutrition labels I've looked at, it seems that if there's a difference in sugar content between lactose-free and regular skim milk, it's only a gram or two per cup and it depends on the milk brand. I have one brand that says there's 16 g of sugar per cup in skim milk and another has only 11 g while Lactaid has 12 g of sugar per cup.
@Catija You're absolutely correct. I just noticed that myself. I have to retract my prior statement because Fair Life Skim Milk also has 12g sugar, so LACTAID is no improvement. I was hoping for like 4g of sugar or an artificial sweetener in sugar's place.
I've personally never seen a "low-sugar milk product"... Milk is inherently sugar-based. It's designed to nourish young creatures and be easily digestible. Sugars are a great way to do this. I think your only option will be a milk substitute like unsweetened almond milk, which has no sugars at all.
@Catija You may be right. I know milk of course always initially has sugar, I just thought that chemists would've found a way to extract it. Almond milk might work, except it's got fat.
I like the sound of this article but I don't have access http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673601824144
@Catija, it looks like you're right. Skimming Wikipedia suggests that lactase converts lactose to other sugars, and that lactase is how the lactose is removed from the products we were thinking of. Fat is also crucial in milk's original purpose and we remove that (but of course it's easy).
By the time you've removed the fat and the lactose, what's the point of the milk? You might as well just get whey protein and mix it with water. It would taste equally bad. Instead of milk you could look into fermented milk products - the fermentation should use up some of the sugar.
@ChrisH Thanks for the suggestion on the fermented milk products, I will check it out. Regarding the point, I'd respectfully say that until you've tasted it, you can't know that it would be as bad as whey protein shakes (of which I've had thousands and hated all of them). My thinking is that if you just take out the sugar and replace it with artificial sweetener, it will taste very similar.
@Hack-R : oh, if only artificial sweeteners actually tasted like sugar. Oh, and the article you linked to is from 1901 -- well out of copyright. It's available on Google Scholar. It talks about how they can only get people to eat about 4oz of butter a day, and that people can get 990 calories from sugar free milk w/ extra fat added. It's made by Mr. Morris, chief dispenser at the London Hospital. I'm guessing he's probably dead by now. And milk w/ effervescing water doesn't sound appealing to me. (even if it's only one ingredient short of an egg cream)
@Hack-R - I don't think artificial sweeteners will work the way you want them to. Even if, if they tasted like sugar - they would taste like refined white (cane?) sugar. Milk isn't made with, or of, this kind of sugar but more complex sugars with their own distinct flavors, and milk sugars (...and fats) have their own contribution to milk's overall taste - probably more like the sugars in maple syrup, or in apples, or in honey are generally not interchangeable. Artificial sweeteners may make the liquid sweet, but they won't make it taste like milk.
@ChrisH Lactose-free milk means the lactose was changed to sugar beforehand. Your first comment is mis-leading.
@MartinBraun yes, Catija corrected me on that 7 years ago, deleting the comment would have spoilt the discussion so I acknowledged the error at the time
So, there's no method to get sugar out of milk, as far as I know. You can look for milk products where some of the sugar is used up (fermented, like Chris H mentioned), but this will significantly change taste and texture - sugar is a major part of what milk is, fats and sugars and proteins, and you're removing most of the actual substance.
You're likely to do better with an unsweetened nut milk or rice milk, especially if you make your own so you can tweak to taste. These may have more fats, depending on your choice of recipe, but will likely have sugar closer to your desired range
One thing you might try, if you're really determined, is to dilute your milk (maybe up to half) and add artificial sweeteners. You'll still get some of the flavor components from the added milk, and some sweetening to make up the difference in taste, but there will be less sugar because the actual amount of milk is less. Hopefully the added artificial sweetener might make it taste less watery, but maybe add just a half a pinch of salt if it still tastes too thin. in the end, ~6g sugar per cup, I guess?
Another possibility is to use unflavored whey powder to flavor the diluting water (again, probably no more than half of your "milk"), then adding artificial sweetener to taste. The whey should have some of the flavors from the proteins in milk, and at least from the powder I checked it doesn't have much of the sugar or fat you're objecting to. It might help the diluted milk taste less watery. ~7g sugar, because I think the whey powder has a gram and a half per serving.
Final possibility I thought of - you can maybe grab some creamer powder and use that to flavor your diluted milk (again, not more than half and sweeten to taste). Or even use it on its own, if the flavor works for you. The amount of sugar isn't stated, but it has to be under 1g because that's all the carbs there are per serving - though it does add a half gram of fat back in.
If he wasn't avoiding fat, after a bit of digging I found that heavy cream has only 0.1g sugars per cup. Light cream has 0.3g per cup. So the answer to less sugar is more fat. I also found a place advertising 'sugarless milk', but it was for milk chocolate w/ no sugar added.
@Joe - Brilliant, that almost works :) Though when I hear sugar-less milk I think of my aunts who would always ask if I wanted (extra) sugar in my milk when they were asking if I wanted it hot or cold - it's common enough in some places.
There seems to be a widespread idea that the lactose in fermented products is "used up", but it is not. If you compare the nutrition labels in yogurt and milk, there is basically no difference in sugars. The bacteria stop multiplying long before there is a noticeable loss of sugar.
@joe that statement surprises me. Nothing in the production of heavy cream should remove sugars, and the USDA shows almost 3 g of total sugars per 100 ml of heavy whipping cream in the standard reference, with some branded products having a lot more. The nutrition label of the cream currently in my fridge is in the same range.
@rumtscho : it didn't make sense to me, either. But I didn't save the reference that I found
Lactose free milk usually contains 11.5-12% sugars! The less sugary is Barambah Organic but I am talking about Australia. I look for the less sugary full fat and I skim it at home by heating it to boiling point and leaving it to cool down then getting off the fat solidified on top. I save the cream for cakes, pastry made at home!
Are they just adding lactase to break the lactose up into galactose and glucose, then calling it lactose free?
@WayfaringStranger: yes. (it's lactose-free, not sugar-free nor low carb). Though I'd expect around 5 % w/w sugar in lactose free milk - the total sugar content should be basically unchanged. >10% to me sounds like close to condensed milk.
It seems only industrial processes can separate the sugars out of milk so the best seems to be to reconstitute milk at home and use allulose to recover the sweetness. Allulose is a sugar very similar to glucose that humans don’t metabolize. Tastes great, apparently bakes great, almost zero calories.
So.. I make my own milk as follows. The salts are just what I have on hand.. a more careful approach would more closely mimic true ‘milk ash’ (see http://www.milkfacts.info/Nutrition%20Facts/Nutrient%20Content.htm).
1 gallon keto-milk:
4000ml water
4cups plain protein, 50-80% caesin, remainder whey. Personally use 50% for simplicity of ordering ingredients.
1 cup heavy cream, preferably grass-fed for flavor profile. e.g. Naked protein or BulkSupplements.
1/2 cup allulose
16x 125mg/50mg/50mg magnesium/potassium/taurine caps, NOW brand. or equivalent, or custom salt blend.
2 tsp table salt
2 tsp buttermilk (optional. seems to improve flavor profile a little)
Add everything but cream, mix as little as possible to remove lumps using stick blender. (A tall narrow vessel helps to concentrate the lumps together for mixing). Then lightly mix in cream.
Voila. Keto milk that’s pretty close to original.
Costs $10-$15 gallon depending on the protein used. Perhaps could be made at $8/gal with some finessing.
Tastes pretty darn good on its own, makes a great ice-coffee and goes great with Magic Spoon brand keto-cereal. I haven't tried baking with it yet.
I am not affiliated with any brands.. just reporting my personal experience.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.823382
| 2016-12-02T21:27:53 |
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|
95098
|
Making Tuiles in a frying pan?
My parents' oven is having issues (the bottom element has stopped working.) One idea I had to keep cooking was to make Tuiles on the stove top. It seems to me like it might work.
I'm assuming that I'll have to either cover the pan or flip the cooking tuile.
I can't find any recipes for a stove top variation. Anyone have any experience or advice?
it’s very well doable on a stove-top. You can use a non-stick pan and it would work great.
My experience with pans is, due to surface curvature, it’s better to use a small pan and fry your tuile spread all over the pan.
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.824159
| 2018-12-24T04:01:20 |
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|
120113
|
What is the name of the tool which involves a ball inside a sealed container that is shaken to grind up spices?
I have seen a tool which is in two parts. In either part, you place both the plastic ball that comes with the tool and spices. You then screw the two parts of the tool together (it's plastic, it's easy). Now that you spices and the ball are sealed within the container, you can violently shake the tool to grind your spices to near dust. I've owned one, but because it was made out of plastic, the violent shaking smashed it.
What is the name of this tool?
I don't know the name, but I remember a similar device used to shake salad dressing from a while back.
What the advantage over a mortar and pestle?
@Redy000 The shaking motion may be easier for some people than the grinding motion needed for a mortar and pestle. If it were better designed you could probably also get more consistently uniform results with some things in a shorter time period.
The product name (as it says on the side) is the 'Flavour Shaker', and it is a (now discontinued) product marketed by the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. I read through a few reviews (e.g. here) from when it came out, and none of them use a more general term to describe it so I think it's fairly unique as an item – there is no widely-used general term for the type of tool for regular home use.
I'm getting the same impression: It's a unique item from Jamie Oliver. I didn't know that it was discontinued, but the prices suggest as much. Having read the Amazon reviews, it looks like I'm not alone in finding it fragile. It's such a shame. All they had to do was make the main container out of metal! An adequate replacement for this item would make for a fantastic gift. A shame that nobody has found a more general product.
Funnily enough, I "invented" something like that as a kid. Don't remember what I was intending to grind up (definitely nothing for the food) but I made the fatal mistake of having the "ball" be a heavy metal nut and the container a glass pill bottle. It cracked after like 1 second :-D
@J.Mini it would probably be very loud made of metal (steel) - but you could try it with a stainless cocktail shaker even though that's the wrong shape at the ends. TBH the ball probably isn't heavy enough to grind everything anyway
@ChrisH: In principle, you're not limited by the weight of the ball if you shake it vigorously enough. The lightness of the ball may have been an intentional consideration given the shaker's fragility.
You know, I could have sworn these were a thing before and after Jamie Oliver's product; I honestly remember them being briefly popular in the 90s and would have expected them to still be around now, but I can't find any evidence of either. And for heaven's sake be careful when using Google Image Search for "ball grinder", that's all I'm saying on the matter.
@Flater true up to a point, but fenugreek, for example, would probably require superhuman speed. Of course it's also probably harder than the plastic
@Spratty Google must know me too well because I mostly get lab equipment - as well as some sold for "herbs" and "tobacco" but they're a minority.
The problem with making it out of metal is that it's opaque, so you'd have to keep opening it up to see if you're done yet. A good sturdy thick glass might be a better alternative, though it would still be pretty noisy.
While this product might not hold up, there many types of plastic. Some can be used to make bullet-proof windows. The use plastic to make F-22 cockpit canopies.
@DarrelHoffman thick polycarbonate would be best - (Lexan) that's tough. Sometimes used in blender jugs. Not good with UV, but still used as a layer in bulletproof glass
I haven't seen this type of device as a home spice grinder, but in commercial/industrial settings, this type of device is called a ball mill.
Industrial ball mills will have a cylinder filled with balls. The item that needs to be ground is added, the the cylinder is then turned on an axis so that the balls & material tumble, with the balls pulverizing the material. (picture a laundry dryer, filled with steel balls, and using that to grind up "stuff".) These basically use the tumbling movement and the strength of the spheres (usually made from something like steel or ceramic) to pulverize the subject material (usually something softer than the spheres).
While ball mills traditionally use multiple balls, and a mechanized tumbling motion, the spice grinder you describe would work on the exact same principle.
I'm not sure if there is a specialized name for the specialized version of the ball mill you describe that is meant to be shaken & used for spices--but it would certainly be a derivative or subclass of a ball mill. I also suspect that a steel version would be much more durable--as you noted the plastic version would eventually shake itself apart from frequent use, or using it with very hard spices.
this electronic kitchen grinder seems to use the ball mill idea, except the balls are on a chain instead of free https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Grinder-Grinding-activated-KLR/dp/B07YFLRPPT?th=1
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.824278
| 2022-03-18T18:19:53 |
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|
87941
|
Black spots on cups from Cracker Barrel
I have a favorite cup made in China that has developed black spots inside the bottom. I'm worried about lead -- should I stop using it? It isn't crazing but seems to be a failed glaze. I bought 6 of these from Cracker Barrel restaurant a year ago as part of a set with serving dishes signed by Susan Winget -- the Nature Walk series for Cracker Barrel Old Country Store. The add picture function isn't working but I can send pictures to anyone who's interested.
I suspect cannot add a picture is a reputation thing.
If I remember right, you only need 10 rep to post an image, so you should be able to add it now. If not, you can upload it somewhere and add the url, and we can edit it directly into your post for you.
You can buy lead testing kits online or a hardware store. (You want test swabs, not a water-testing kit). Expect to pay $10–20.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.824742
| 2018-02-23T14:02:05 |
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|
65433
|
Jicama moldy on the outside but white inside, is this safe to eat?
My jicama has mold on the outside.
If I cut off the outside part, the inside part looks okay.
Can I still eat it?
Rinse it off after skinning it and you will be fine. mold won't be able to penetrate jicama very far.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.824950
| 2016-01-14T20:12:33 |
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|
119321
|
Is it safe if I use house hold scissors instead of special kitchen scissors?
I used scissors to cut a straw for my hydroflask, then I drank out of it. Is is safe if I used plain household scissors? I rinsed the straw before I drank out of it, right after using the scissors to cut it.
Using it on a straw is better than using it on chicken or other high risk food.
The problem is that we don’t know what you did with the scissors, how well you cleaned them before and the straw after cutting.
If you used reasonably clean utensils (using the standard you would apply to regular kitchen tools like knives), there’s nothing in the material per se that would be problematic if used occasionally.
Many even professional chefs use tools that came from a hardware store rather than a cooking supply store. Once the grease from manufacturing is removed, the metal should be fine. Note that they are probably not stainless steel and thus require special care to prevent e.g. rusting, but that’s doable. I would however warn you against regularly mixing uses back and forth, especially when working with unsafe substances - even good cleaning has a small risk of leaving hazardous materials behind, a mistake is easily made and nobody wants to garnish dinner with a bit of weed killer or something alike.
Assuming you wash and clean your scissors, there are no issues at all.
Kitchen scissors are just sturdier scissors.
If your scissors were just used to cut paper or cloth, there should be no problem
"Kitchen scissors are just sturdier scissors." That are usually more easily disassembled for cleaning than ordinary scissors.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.825339
| 2021-12-26T05:16:46 |
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|
94786
|
Can I buy cocoa butter squares for cooking?
In the 70's, I used to be able to buy cocoa butter squares - like unsweetened chocolate - made by Hershey's. They no longer make it. I made white chocolate fudge with it. Is there anything out there like that now? I'd really like to make some of this fudge again for my daughter and grandchildren.
Yes, you can certainly buy cocoa butter, from many different brands. I have seen more chips than squares, but the shape doesn't matter.
We don't do shopping recommendation for brands here, and suggesting single stores is also not looked upon well, especially since most people reading this won't live in the same place as you. So I won't send you somewhere special, I'll just say, if you can't find it in a well sorted supermarket, try in a specialty store for confiserie, and if you can't find that one, try online.
Just be sure it's food grade - it's apparently also sold for topical use, so when you're shopping on the web, make sure it's for eating, not makeup. :D
I'd have to buy it online as I live in the boondocks. I saw the chips online, but how much would equal one of those little squares?
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.825496
| 2018-12-13T15:41:00 |
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|
89401
|
Why all that sauce just sitting in the dish in these stuffed bell peppers recipes?
The recipes here and here each call for dumping a lot of a tomato & broth (+ onion) sauce in the baking dish. Like around .75 cup per bell pepper.
That's way (way, way) too much to want to spoon over the peppers at the end, so is this stuff just meant for pouring into a cup (or tipping a corner of the dish over your soup hole if you have no cups nor time for fancy "table manners") to slurp down alongside your pepper? Seems weird, so wondering if it serves an indirect yet essential purpose like adding flavor and moisture (these recipes call for covering the baking dish) to the stuffed peppers themselves.
I don't know if this is common in similar recipies. Both of the cited recipes are by the same guy, so maybe it's just his quirk...
It might be to keep from burning the peppers. That’s a really long time from my experience (but I also par cook my peppers before stuffing). I’d assume that you’d want the amount to be related to how large of a dish you’re baking in. (Basically, I’d fill to an inch or so)
@Joe thanks for the comment. I've experimented with it a couple times since. You're right about preventing burning although an inch deep of the liquid is way more than I needed for that (I did cover the dish with foil). You're also right about it being a really long time -- i've realized it doesn't take nearly as long. Some weird things about that recipe as given, for sure -- maybe its author likes really soggy falling-apart peppers? -- but it is delicious when I substitute seasoned sausage for half the ground beef, add diced onion, more black pepper, and maybe a blast from a spice weasel.
These recipes seem to be a misunderstanding how stuffed pepper recipes typically work. At least when we are looking at the Balkan tradition, where the dish originated - this answer focuses on it only. If there is by now a changed form in US recipes, it is not included in my use of the word "traditional".
Traditionally, stuffed peppers are made with sivriyas or other peppers with at least one small dimension, not the monstrous spherical things available in Western supermarkets nowadays. The rice is prepared in the pilaf way - it is fried in oil, then it can be slightly parcooked or just be used at that stage. It is mixed with the other filling ingredients (much more rice than meat) and stuffed into the peppers after they have been punctured in multiple places with a fork. They are placed in the baking dish and the liquid is added.
When you do it that way, the rice cookes in the oven. The liquid you mention is needed to cook the rice. The holes are needed for the liquid to penetrate into the peppers, the small dimensions are needed so that the liquid reaches even the middle, and the "small pieces of meat embedded in rice" texture is again needed for the liquid to get throughout the rice.
When the peppers are ready, they will still have some liquid left over in the baking dish. But after an hour or so, the rice will soak up the rest of the liquid, and you'll only serve the dish after it has rested.
Beside that, it is pretty common to eat the prepared peppers with an additional liquid - mostly yogurt, but I have also seen tomato sauces, but never something as thin as broth. These sauces are added at serving time, traditionally. For eating, you don't spoon the sauce, you break off parts of the stuffed pepper and mix the rice into the sauce before scooping it up. It is possible that the people who made the recipes in your link are using the liquid in that way.
It is also possible that they are just taking the peppers out of the sauce before serving and discarding it. Note that one of the recipes mentions as a last step "drizzle with a spoon of pan juices" - this suggests that you are only using a small part of it.
I've seen tons of stuffed bell peppers in the US, not sure we can really say they're nontraditional at this point.
Agree with @Cascabel. And also have eaten lots of them. I would say (from experience) the (southern-) Balkan area mostly uses the pointy variant, but would not be surprised to find the round bell pepper variants more eastwards in Europe or in Central Europe. But that's not to say the recipe might be maladapted for use with a different pepper.
@Cascabel the dish comes from the Balkans originally, and this is what I count as "traditional". The USA may have created a newer variation of the dish, which is not what I was referring to in my answer. I edited this in the text to prevent misunderstandings.
Ah, childhood memories.... The leftover stewing liquid is used for the roux–based tomato sauce.
I'm from the Balkans, and yes, stuffed bell (not cone-shaped) peppers in tomato & onion sauce is a traditional dish here, usually served with mashed potatoes and with a splash of yougurt or sour cream (optional, to be added when the dish is served).
Often, the sauce is made from diced fresh tomatoes and in such a quantity that it almost covers the peppers in the baking dish. The sauce reduces during the baking process and before serving the dish, I usually press it through a sieve or use a stick blender to get a more smooth texture.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.825617
| 2018-04-24T23:20:53 |
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|
95345
|
Why do frozen vegetables go bad more quickly after thawing than fresh cut ones?
I left a pack of frozen vegetables (brocolli, carrot, cauliflower, green beans) in the fridge so it thawed. It went sour and slimy after a few days, (maybe 5) -- why?
If I cut the same fresh vegetables and store it in a plastic bag or container, it will be fine in a week or more.
What's the science behind that? Why do bacteria grow more quickly in frozen veggies being thawed than in fresh cut ones?
A Chilling History of Frozen Food: https://www.thoughtco.com/chilling-history-of-frozen-food-4019667 Clarence Birdseye figured it out back in 1923.
Very simply; freezing breaks the cell walls.
As ice takes up more space than water, as the vegetables freeze all the cells rupture.
Once defrosted, each cell is then little more than a slowly-leaking bag of nutrient, exposed to the open air. Whether or not any bacteria gets in & starts to breed is almost irrelevant by this time, as your 'leaky bag' is going to dissolve into a pool of its own juices pretty quickly.
This is why frozen veg is cook-from-frozen not cook-from-thawed. An hour might be OK, a day is starting to get a bit much. By 5 days, I wouldn't do anything other than move it to the recycle using tongs.
thanks, i was going to accept this as the accepted answer, simple and clear, but the dlb's answer adds more detail which was useful for me.
@user65535 This is definitely the primary answer. The majority of the damage is definitely the cell damage that happens even with a brief freezing. The continued decay is more of a longer term storage issue.
In additions to Tetsujin's answer, know that freezing, at least of home temps, does not completely stop degrading of the vegetable. One of the main reason most vegetables are blanched before freezing is to stop, or at least slow down enzyme actions that decay and degrade the color, texture and flavor. This helps some, but of course also can contribute to cell breakage and add some water which compounds this, so even this attempt to help stall degrading may aid in faster decay after thawing. That is, the item may be better quality when first thawed that it would have been without the blanching, but the post thaw breakdown might be even faster.
ah.. i have thought that the frozen vegetables are kind of not so raw.. now i know that they are really blanched first.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.826049
| 2019-01-04T09:41:00 |
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|
102458
|
Can i use natralite butter in making puff pastry
I want to make puff pastry, can i use natralite butter for making the same?
Welcome! This is an international site and I am sure not all readers are familiar with the product you mention. Could you please [edit] your post with a bit more information? Then, while you wait for the community to chime in, I suggest you take the [tour] and browse through our [help] to learn more about how the site works z
Plus, are you sure you mean “natralite”? My google returns plastic sheeting if I search for the term. Did you mean “nutralite”?
Puff pastry can be made with any fat which won't melt while working the dough (or, at least, in the early stages of working the dough). The higher the softening temperature, the easier it will be to get good results.
I assume that "natralite butter" refers to a type of margarine. Margarine which comes in a tub is intended to be spreadable at refrigerator temperature and has a low melting point, and should not be used for puff pastry or for baking in general. Margarine which comes in sticks will have a higher melting point and is better. The best thing to use (assuming you can't use butter) is shortening, such as Crisco. Shortening has a reasonably high melting point, and a lower moisture content than margarine. Its main problem is that it tastes even less like butter than margarine does, so you may want to mix if the buttery taste is important.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.826264
| 2019-09-23T05:41:29 |
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|
76376
|
Can I simply soak fruit and vegetables in water for several hours to sanitize them?
To optimize my time as much as possible, I would like to know if I can simply put them in water and leave them there for a while. This would help if there are lots of fruits and vegetables to be washed. Would this help to remove bacteria and pesticides on them? How long should they be soaked in minimum to really be effective? How long in maximum to avoid effects on taste and nutrition? How long before they get spoiled? Should I put something into the water?
What's wrong with a quick wash? I don't understand what your concerns are.
This could have the opposite effect, and spread a contaminant everywhere...
There are sources that recommend vinegar and water for up to 1 hour to help dissolve pesticides. http://dailymom.com/nest/3-natural-ways-to-remove-pesticides-from-produce/
soaking in a salt solution or baking soda solution seems to help remove pesticides, albeit only on the surface: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.7b03118
Washing fruit and vegetables in water is less an exercise in sterilisation and more a case of simply washing off any mud or debris. Soaking in still water does nothing to clean, well, anything really. Even if you sterilise the water and container, the fruit itself will still be teeming with bacteria which would be perfectly happy to multiply in stagnant water.
Simply wash the fruit/veg under a briskly running stream of water to remove any major dirt. There is unlikely to be anything terrible on fruit or vegetables in any case, assuming you have a healthy immune system.
If you really want to reduce bacterial load, the only solution is thorough cooking.
Would the pesticide be washed under briskly running stream of water, or by rubbing them invisibly by hand? Is the practice of soaking them in salt water make any difference?
Washing/soaking in a 3:1 water/vinegar mixture can eliminate 98% of bacteria. 1 However, there is not a distinct improvement over washing under running water.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.826406
| 2016-12-12T10:34:04 |
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|
20297
|
Best way to hold deep-fried foods?
If I'm deep-frying foods and want to hold batches of them so I can serve a large amount all at once, or even prepare a couple hours ahead, what's the best way to hold them until ready to serve?
Should I put them on wire racks above a drip pan, or should I place them on paper towels? Or even in a paper cone?
Should I keep them warm or should I let them cool and reheat them in a very hot oven (450F)?
Or does it depend on the type of food, its shape, or the batter?
What I'm looking for here is someone who's done some comparison testing between different methods of holding over deep-fried foods. Some example foods: garlic & pepper shrimp, tempura vegetables, latkes, felafel, and french fries.
I can't imagine that a hot oven would be the right answer - the food would continue to cook at that temperature and would be inedible after a few hours.
By "reheat in a really hot oven" I meant for 5-10 minutes, not for long enough to cook.
Highly related: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/96643/what-is-the-best-way-to-keep-the-quality-of-fried-food-while-being-delivered
The method I used in the past (which might not be the best way) is to lightly fry the food initially, drain it of all oils, and put it in the refridgerator until it is almost time to serve the large amount of food. Then you can finish deep frying the batches. The initial frying will dramatically reduce the time it takes to refry each batch. I found this was the best solution for myself as I was able to serve hot and (almost)fresh out of the deep fryer food to a large group of people at lot faster. I think the result is way better than if you had to store the fully deep fried food for 2 hours and had to reheat it up somehow.
+1 for the "prefrying first, finish later", I think it is the only thing that actually works. Once moisture starts to migrate, fried stuff will be soggy.
I haven't tested all of the methods you mentioned, but from my experience, there is some variation depending on the type of fried food you're making.
For latkes and falafel, I find that they turn out best if I fry them, place on a wire rack over drip tray or on a layer of paper towels, let excess oil run off for a few minutes, and then transfer to a low oven (100-150 F) to stay warm while I cook the rest. This works well for batches of dozens, but it probably not streamlined enough if you're making them by the hundreds (though it might work if you had help). Additionally, it depends on your hold time; I wouldn't do this if I needed to hold them for more than 45-60 minutes.
For vegetables (pakora is what I'm familiar with, which is similar to tempura but made with gram flour), I'd go with Jay's method. I actually double-fry them even if serving/consuming them immediately because I like that the second fry makes the veggies crispier, but par-frying, holding, and refrying is effective and scales well.
I would stay away from any method that lets the fully cooked food cool completely, so reheating in a hot oven is out. The only food I've managed to hold that way and not have it result in a gross consistency is a cornmeal-battered fried cod. Anything else retains a pretty unappealing mushiness.
The best and freshest/crisp method, would be the one Jay describes. Par-fry, refrigerate, and fry or bake to proper doneness. Freezing before frying is good only if you need your product to set correctly, i.e. breading mac n' cheese balls.
The only way to serve a large quantity hot and crisp all at once is to invest in mulitple friers. Otherwise, batch cooking is you're only option. That's why restaurants have designated fry cooks. Sorry, It's time consuming.
I prefer to pat them quickly on a paper towel to absorb excess oil and then put them on a wire rack over a sheet pan in the oven on it's lowest setting to stay warm. I think the answer to your question really depends on what your cooking though. The batter IMO makes a big difference. If your working with breading i think it generally stays fairly crisp in a low oven for a while but for something that is more batter-like (i.e. frito misto, tempura, fried fish) i find that it gets soggy no matter what I do to keep it warm since the point of a batter is to get as many bubbles as possible to make it airy and crispy.
I usually fry ahead (I don't like the mess or the smell), then let it cool. When guests start to arrive I warm up on plate at 225 degrees for 15 to 25 minutes and remove. Comes out fine. I don't believe in serving fried food piping hot. Hope this helps.
When I serve tempura for a large crowd I deep fry a few hours in advance, drain on paper towel on top of newspaper. When guests arrive I warm up tempura for 5 minutes in an air fryer and it comes out crisp. A convection oven should do the trick too.
Well, the absolute best way to keep deep fried foods is to deep freeze them BEFORE you deep fry them, than unfreeze and deep-fry away as you wish.
Out of my personal experience, you can't freeze or refrigerate deep fried foods after they have been fried - they loose their crisp or even become inedible. deep fried foods should be eaten straight after they have been fried! there's nothing more disappointing than eating a dry falafel ball (dry, cuz it was deep fried 2 hours ago...) or a shrimp tempura with rubber-like texture to it.
This doesn't answer his question which is asking how to cook/serve a large amount of deep fried goods at once.
Useful advice, but I wasn't asking about freezing or refrigeration. Just holding them for an hour or two.
oh, sorry than i misunderstood you completely! sorry :-)
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.826616
| 2012-01-10T06:20:51 |
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|
85149
|
monster egg . how to
I recently found a recipe for making a monster egg... i think it may have been medieval. The recipe required 6 eggs for yolk and white. the yolk and whites would be separated into 2 pigs bladders and respectively poached.
I would like to attempt recreating the recipe.
I don't have access to pigs bladders, or at least I have no desire to use one. Is there anything anyone could recommend? I wondered about sausage casings but they aren't circular/egg shaped.
It would also be very cool if I could make the egg a shell. I am unsure what material I could do this with... I’m imagining a savoury version of a thin meringue... is there even such a thing? or is there something better suited? and how might this casing be cooked or attached? (In my mind I'm imagining blowtorching the meringue, baked alaska style... however, I don't think this results in a crisp casing.)
On request from Jefromi, here is an edit:
I would like to discuss how a giant egg might be created in the simplest way possible, that looks and tastes like an egg, albeit large.
Does the recipe indicate what the final result should be like? Are the yolks and whites somehow reassembled after the separate poaching?
I can only assume that the recipe creates an impression of a giant egg, so that the hosts could prove their talent and prestige to their awe inspired guests, at their having attained or created this magical object.
Jefromi, looking at the answer, Fuzzy chef gave me , the poaching of the yolk in the whites seems more likely. (tbh i have not got the recipe on me, i read it while researching extreme recipes in history, this somehow fixed itself in my mind)
However, to avoid overcooking, and making something that might actually taste good. perhaps its possible, to boil the bag of whites and the yolk bag separately, and then cut the white open, when its set, and carve a hole in the centre to place the yolk bag.
Then somehow reassemble.... and adhere with tooth picks ?!
I would suggest finding a heat-resistant balloon of some sort, or a relatively spherical plastic bag, or even a round bag made from linen muslin. You steam the yolks in a small balloon, then cut it away once they're set. Then you immerse this yolk in the whites, in a bigger balloon, and once again steam/boil this until set, and cut away the outer balloon. This is based on one version of the Giant Egg recipe, where the egg parts were cooked in bottles which were then broken away.
If you want a shell, then your instinct for meringue, probably cooked with a blowtorch, might work, although it would be hard to avoid browning. If you want something white, I'd suggest piping (and smoothing) royal icing in coils until you shell the whole egg. This will dry quite hard and then can be cracked away for dramatic effect.
Note, though, that the monster egg won't be terribly good to eat. The yolk will be way overcooked, as will the outer layers of the white, and pretty much certainly the yolk will have sunk to the bottom of the whites before they set. And, ultimately, it's just a giant boiled egg. The purpose of this dish, like many other showpieces, is to be seen and not necessarily eaten.
Thanks for a fun and very original question, though! And if you make it, send me a picture.
Thanks FuzzyChef this is useful info. I did wonder about separately poaching the eggs. thinking about the consistency of a poached egg white its fairly, 'gelatanous', yet quite solid. I'm wondering if its possible to slice it in half, and carve a hole in its centre for the already poached yolk bag.
AND yes i must make this, I need it for a project in a gallery in london... for a larger meal filled with strange delights. So somehow or other it needs to work!
regarding the royal icing, Which i think is a GREAT idea, I had also wondered about caramelising sugar, like the top of a creme brulee. This isnt something I have tried to make myself, but the crack of a creme brulee surface is quite sublime, even if it would create a brown shell.
well,the problem with hard-carmelized sugar is that would require torching it on the surface of the egg. so first you'd need a thick layer of sugar to stick, and then you'd need to torch it without burning the egg or making it peel away. And then the resulting surface would have a gold/brown appearance with black flecks. Wouldn't be my first choice.
As for carving a hole in the whites ... try it and see? I'd be concerned that you wouldn't be able to get the two halves of the while to join up seamlessly. Maybe cut a hole from the bottom, hollow out, and then replace a plug?
Oh, one concern about the royal icing: it occurs to me that the egg white will weep a bit if it sits for a long time which could soften the royal icing. Not sure how to prevent that.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.827089
| 2017-10-22T00:50:15 |
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|
120409
|
How do I make a chicken cheesesteak that isn't dry?
When I try to make chicken cheesesteaks, this is what I do:
thinly slice some chicken breasts
saute some chopped onions and green peppers
put the meat in a frying pan with some olive oil
add some salt, pepper, and dried Italian herbs
chop the meat some more and cook it thoroughly
add in the chopped onions and green peppers
put slices of cheese on top of the meat/veggies and allow it to melt
The meat always turns out dry.
Then I read that chicken thighs are juicier and don't dry out like chicken breasts do (especially if you cook them longer and at a higher temperature, up to 195 degrees), so I tried doing the same thing except with thinly sliced chicken thighs. I monitored the temperature with an infrared thermometer and the temperature didn't get higher than 195 degrees. The meat still ended up tasting kind of dry. Also, a lot of liquid came out of the meat during cooking, before I added the veggies.
How do I make a chicken cheesesteak that isn't dry?
Your chicken is dry because you over-cook it. 195°F is far too high for chicken, I cook chicken breasts until they are 165°F and thighs to 175°F, but with thin slices it's very hard to get an accurate temperature with a probe so I'd check for doneness by cutting through it.
Thin slices of chicken won't take more than a couple of minutes to cook thoroughly, if you put the slices in first by the time your peppers and onions are done the chicken's had all the goodness cooked out of it. Try cooking the peppers and onions first, then add the chicken when they are just getting done. Cook until they are just about done, then melt your cheese on.
Sorry, I failed to mention that I do cook the peppers and onions prior to cooking the chicken.
Just cook it less then.
To try get quick-cook chicken, without water leaking out… and not done like pencil erasers, you have to juggle, & juggle fast. Chicken cooks last.
The issue is that supermarket meat contains added water [legally]. As soon as the muscle fibres contract through heating, then the water squeezes out & you end up boiling it rather than frying it.
This can only be 'fixed' by not buying meat from supermarkets - but finding a good local butcher with 'known-abatoir-chain-of-custody' in an urban environment is not easy. If you do find one in a big city, they will have a constant stream of rich folks to their door. They will be expensive.
If you live out in the middle of nowhere, you may never even discover this problem exists.
So, assuming you're stuck with supermarket meat like the rest of us.
Get the peppers & onions going first.
When almost done, throw in the seasonings & cheese, preferably grated or pre-made sauce, stir briefly until just about heated/melted then turn out into a bowl. If you wait around for big slices to melt, you'll over-do your veg.
Get the pan as hot as you can & fry the chicken, fast & constantly moving - stir-fry style. You might need practise to gauge this accurately, but you can cook thinly sliced chicken in a minute [ask a Chinese wok chef].
When it's very nearly almost done, throw the veg/cheese mix back on top - quick stir & serve.
The chicken will continue to cook for the few seconds you're mixing & serving, but it won't get chance to start to 'leak'. Once it does, it's already over-cooked.
People are always so worried that chicken is going to kill them that they normally pre-emptively murder it before they serve it. It's no good having skinny quick-fry chicken slices reaching 165°F/75°C whilst it's still being blasted in the pan. It will be completely over-cooked by the time it reaches the table.
May be dry-brining the chicken overnight can help draw extra water out?
@mustaccio - reasonable suggestion - something I've never tried. Seems like the main downside is you're turning a quick "Hey, let's have philly-cheese/fajitas/stir-fry for dinner" from a 10-minute task into a 12-hour one.
@mustaccio I thought the point is that we don't want the water to come out?
The unnaturally-injected water will come out, so I'd rather it come out before the meat hits the skillet, not after. You yourself said that "a lot of liquid came out of the meat during cooking", which might be in part what makes the meat dry in the end. Dry-brining removes extra moisture from the surface layers, helping to lock the remaining moisture inside. I'm speculating (although I try to always dry-brine chicken when I can), but it's easy to test if it works -- just brine one piece of breast and cook it alongside an unbrined piece and see which comes out better.
I also thought it's a meat quality issue. But I didn't know that it's allowed (in the U.S., at least) to inject water into the meat. As my process engineering teacher said: "If you want to get rich, sell water."
@Peter-ReinstateMonica - see this Wikipedia page on plumping - this is an entirely US viewpoint & doesn't include EU legislation at all - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumping
A dry chicken breast is overcooked. Some people actually like them that way which I personally don't understand but to each his own.
To avoid overcooking you cook it less - either by using less heat or less time.
Frying chicken breast (or indeed any piece of meat) is a matter of timing. You need practice to get it right. I personally don't have that timing instinct so I go by my (analog) wall clock. I watch the seconds hand go round the clock. To get a sense of timing do a test cook and cut the meat every minute or so to see if the insides have turned white. Once you know the timing cook the rest to roughly the same time, maybe add an extra 30 seconds or 1 minute because uncut meat take a bit longer to cook. But remember that the meat continues cooking while it's resting so sometimes all you need to do is let it cool down.
Experiment with your technique to get it right. Especially for cheap cuts of meat like chicken breast.
One other way of making this dish come together with more control is to fillet or pound flat the chicken and cook it flat, then after letting it cool to room temp, slice it up to add to your cooked veg in the pan for a quick toss before finishing with cheese under a lid without flame.
With practice on your stove this will give consistently great results.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.827589
| 2022-04-22T14:40:19 |
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|
78448
|
Plastic containers exposed to heat while cooking
I was making soup, and it involved removing some of it to reintroduce after pureeing. Not thinking, I just tossed the cooked mushrooms back into the plastic container they came in raw. After finishing everything in the pot, I tossed the mushrooms back into the soup, and noticed that the bottom of the plastic container they were sitting in was slightly warped. It is a #1 plastic (PET), and the mushrooms went into around 3L of soup. Do I need to just throw out the whole batch?
You should be perfectly fine. PET plastics do leach antimony, and the rate of leaching does increase with temperature, but it would take a much longer exposure time to be of any real concern. You would be putting yourself more at risk by drinking water out of a plastic bottle that had been left in the sun.
Here's a relevant study about water bottles:
Antimony Leaching from PET
The abstract adequately addresses concerns to do with high temperatures and PET.
That said, safety is always the highest priority, and if you notice anything unusual about your soup, it's best to err on the side of caution.
By "unusual" do you mean tasting? Or something more subtle than that?
@Dave In this case, 'unusual' would be anything- taste, odor, color, texture, etc. that might be a cause for concern. It is deliberately as broad as possible to encourage caution. In your specific case, honestly, I would probably eat it if there wasn't anything immediately off-putting about it.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.828097
| 2017-02-16T03:02:45 |
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|
76624
|
I accidentally added butter into flour/cocoa powder/baking soda without beating first
I am making cookies and accidentally added my butter directly into my dry ingredients. Now I have chunks of butter and dough that is basically powder.
Is there any way to salvage this even if the cookies don't come out perfectly?
But, but, but... that's how I make cookies. Add butter, chop chop chop. How else would you add your butter?
@Mołot random example: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/10281/chewy-chocolate-cookies-ii/
related : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/62951/67 ; http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/3141/67
Think shortbread / pie dough:
If you have a food processor, dump the butter & dry ingredients in, pulse until you have a coarse crumble. Add some liquid - either your egg (beaten!) or, even simpler, just as much milk as needed to help the dough to stick together. I personally would use milk instead of egg for lighter cookies. Eggs might make them too dense. Chill for half an hour or so, then roll and cut or shape otherwise.
If you don't have a food processor, a pastry cutter or two knives works just as well. Or rub the butter into the flour mix.
You might not end up with your planned cookies, but the result should be nice enough to eat. No need to discard the ingredients.
And remember:
Sometimes the best recipes started as accidents!
Egg often results in lighter baked goods, as it helps to hold gas from the baking powder or soda and acid and increases effective rise. In any case, there are presumably liquids in the recipe to be added, and those would be the ones to add, rather than adding milk when there might not even be milk in the recipe - unless wanting to deliberately go off and experiment with more difference than the mixing difference, and I think Claudia is trying to get as close as possible to the recipe...
Put the bowl into the microwave for 30s to melt the butter then stir. Butter as a fat absorbs all the microwaves! If you have already added baking powder, then it will activate so put in the oven immediately or wait for it to cool down and add a bit more baking powder, but not as much as before.
Alternatively, scoop the chunks of butter out and put into a bowl in the microwave and melt the butter only, then stir back in.
Alternatively, scoop the chunks of butter out, add a tiny bit more flour/cocoa powder/baking soda in the same proportion to make up for the powder stuck to the butter. Then use new butter that is melted.
Alternatively, scoop the chunks of butter out, and use slightly less new melted butter to match the powder that was removed with the old butter.
And to compare the two techniques recommended so far -- the shortbread approach will result in a more crumbly cookie, melted butter will result in a more chewy cookie.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.828254
| 2016-12-19T19:04:12 |
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|
125233
|
What is that Russian bread appetizer called that is really puffed up and then you touch it and it decreases in volume and then you can dip it in a dip
What is that bread appetizer that is served in restaurants in Russia called that is really puffed up and then you touch it and it decreases in volume and then you can dip it in a dip and eat it, it used to be on instagram a lot.
For example here: https://www.instagram.com/aidabaran_restoran/
If it was on Instagram a lot, a photo would be very helpful.
Sounds like a popover of some sort
You're going to need a photo for people to answer this.
Voting to close; the OP doesn't seem to understand what SA is for.
I don't think the identification of a food item is off topic. Yes, a picture would be helpful. Again, I'll say that the only result of down voting a question is to that it discourages new users. If the question is off topic, it can be closed. If it needs clarity, it can be edited. If we already answered it, i can be identified as a dupe. If the user is spamming the system, mods can remove them. Down voting questions does not help this forum. My campaign continues...
I was able to find the name. It's called "chebureki", a form of turnover originating from the Crimean Peninsula.
(Photo from Wikipedia)
Chebureki doesn't really fit the description. While it does puff up a bit during cooking, it doesn't "decrease in volume" when you touch it. It also wouldn't ordinarily be served with a dip.
@sneftel you can't see it from the current state of the question, but this is a self-answer. So this is indeed the food the OP meant, aven if they misremembered it's qualities while describing.
@rumtscho I know it's a self-answer. I think it's an incorrect one.
@Sneftel it appears to be the correct answer, even though the variation the OP is describing is not the same as the one in the Wikipedia photo. If you have an Instagram account, you can go to the link that was added to the question, and scroll down to the older pictures. You'll find a few clips showing exactly what the OP described, e.g. a video from 17. august where a blonde woman in a white corsage with shoulder straps eats it, and the restaurant itself titles it АйДаЧебурек, which is simply "cheburek" combined with the restaurant's name.
@rumtscho I was able to find a YouTube video https://youtube.com/watch?v=FOv92fF3f4M of nearly exactly this - it’s titled “Ayda Cheburek”
@Sneftel see the above comment (if you don’t have an Instagram account). Seems to be a particular variant of the dish
@fyrepenguin The restaurant in the original question is called "Ayda Baran" so it could be either a widespread variation but served at this place under their own brand name, like a "McRib", or something that this restaurant invented and is serving uniquely. I don't follow Instagram channels so I don't know which it is.
@Sneftel also it doesn't really "decrease in volume" on its own. The people in the instagram video actually had to press it down to squish it. The one in the question is rather large in size compared to the photo in the answer.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.828501
| 2023-09-15T03:39:35 |
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|
92998
|
What pasta sauces can I make that don't include cheese?
I've been making a fairly standard arrabbiata sauce for months, and I'd like to expand the number of sauces I can make.
However, many of these recipes involve cheese and/or milk, but I'm sadly lactose intolerant and would prefer to avoid these ingredients.
What others sauces could I be making, and what pasta should I use with them?
This is very broad. Apart from the many different tomato sauces there are loads of others, such as alglio e olio (garlic and oil). I'm told some vegan cheeses are good enough to melt into a sauce now as well
Consider some Asian-type sauces too. Won't go that amazing with egg noodles, but if you like noodles in general, a good Thai Peanut sauce, mandarin ginger, or others are great!
It's not a direct answer to what you asked, so I am commenting -- but I have successfully used soy milk in some pasta sauce recipes that call for milk. (Soy cheese, however, are more hit-or-miss.) Searching for "vegan saucename" can help.
Another option is to take a carbonara recipe and omit the cheese (carbonara shouldn't have cream anyway, the creaminess comes from barely-cooked egg) making sure you have plenty of other flavour in there
Sorry, that's a perfect example of a "big-list" question. They are not acceppted on virtually all Stack Exchange sites. Generally, if you wonder what you should choose to cook (which dish, or which recipe for a given dish), this ends up being a question we cannot answer.
Tomato Sauce
Putanesca
Pesto (omit parmesan)
Bolognese (meat sauce)
Squash Puree (maybe with sage)
Olive oil infusions (fresh herb/garlic/chilis/lemon zest)
Roasted Red Pepper puree sauce
etc
Adding a bit of miso to no-cheese pesto can add back in a bit of the Parmesan flavor.
Note that Many Bolognese recipes include milk (but you can leave it out).
Nutritional yeast flakes are another option for replacing the cheese in pesto. In either case, use a specific recipe for a cheese-free pesto — don’t just use a traditional recipe minus the cheese. A good cheese-free pesto will have the proportions of the other ingredients rebalanced: typically a little more oil and nuts (to make up for the missing fat from the cheese), and often a little vinegar or citrus for acidity.
There are very few pasta sauces recipe that actually uses cheese or milk products in their recipes.
The ones that use cheese are easy to spot (caccio e pepe, carbonara...) so don't do them.
You could use lactose free cheese or milk or cream.
Remember that real Parmesan contain very little to no lactose.
To add to other suggestions, have a look at any sauces that use seafood and shellfish, they mostly are based on oil and tomatoes anyway.
Depending on the degree of lactose intolerance, lactose-free dairy may still cause a reaction. (It also sometimes presents with milk protein intolerance or allergy.) Otherwise, though, good suggestions!
"There are very few pasta sauces recipe that actually uses cheese or milk products in their recipes." Actually, there are very many, and you haven't given one example of one which doesn't, which is what OP asked for.
Steven above list a few.
As an italian,
Amatriciana
Alla norma
Sauce "alla Fiorentina" (sage, garlic, capers, basil, chives)
Mushrooms and ham
Black Cuttlefish (nero di seppia)
Aretina sauce (sugo all'aretina)
Mushrooms, nuts and truffle sauce
And many more!
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.828801
| 2018-10-17T16:32:48 |
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|
90551
|
Is sour cream in olde recipes the same as sour cream today?
I have a really old cookbook (about 1890) that calls for soured cream or sour cream in some recipes. Is this the same as the stuff you get in a tub at the store or is it like sour milk where you put vinegar in say, heavy cream??
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I disagree that this is a duplicate, even though one of the answers to the suggested duplicate Question does imply an answer.
In a cookbook that old, the sour cream referenced is probably a home-fermented variety, used as a preservation method in the days before widespread home refrigeration. You can still do this with the appropriate bacterial cultures, but most of us now buy our sour cream at the store instead. That product is similar, but made in much larger batches with a highly standardized, refined bacterial culture, producing a product with a predictable sourness and texture. Home-cultured versions are more variable, but they use similar processes on a much smaller scale.
Whether you want to call this the "same" is partly a linguistic distinction that depends on how much you want to consider the differences in scale and equipment between pre-refrigeration and modern methods.
In contrast, the addition of something sour to cream is really a substitute, used when you don't have a proper sour cream available. A cook back in the 1890s could use the same substitution then as we might today. But the production of sour cream (and all sorts of fermented milk products, such as yogurt and kefir) is much older than that, and there would have been some variety of "traditional" sour cream available, though not universally or year-round in the days before mechanized food distribution systems.
You won't find things like Guar gum, locust bean gum, milk solids, etc. etc. etc. in old timey sour cream. Look to the ingredients list on the container. The longer it is, the further the stuff is removed from actual sour cream. It can be difficult to find the real stuff.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.829100
| 2018-06-24T19:32:22 |
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|
126098
|
Were nut-cheeses developed in Greek/Bulgarian/Turkish/Balkan cuisine traditionally?
Some vegan hard cheeses or cheese-like spreads made from nuts like Almond or Cashew are often marketed as "Greek style" or other "Balkan style".
Were nut-cheeses developed in Greece/Bulgaria/Turkey/Balkans, traditionally (i.e prior to demand from modern-day vegan consumers)?
Since cashew trees are tropical originating from South America, it seems somewhat unlikely in that case. OTOH, I'd expect almond/sesame/... pastes to be very traditional. I don't know these languages, so I have no idea whether such pastes (/"cakes"/pomace that one gets e.g. after producing oils) have cheese-like names - in my native language (German) cheese basically implies curdled animal milk, I'd tend to use e.g. cake or paste or puree/mush depending on the texture for the more traditional plant/seed based foods/ingredients. Not sure whether that matches your vegan cheese, though.
@cbeleitesunhappywithSX "cheese basically implies curdled animal milk" – well, maybe except Kopfkäse but that's definitely not vegan…
Although that does bring to mind the Dutch pindakaas which is literally 'peanut cheese', known in English as peanut butter.
who is making those claims in the first place?
@ItalianPhilosophers4Monica that's a good question which is hard to answer because you may often see "Greek style vegan salad cheese" or "Greek style creamy almond paste" and it's often vague or hard to know what is authentic and by what source.
I see. Oh well, if one wants to be cynical, one can always look at the very long ingredient list for many processed vegan products and seek "traditional ingredients" in that list. As in Polan's "stuff your grandmother knew". Or judge their health benefits from their sodium contents ;-) To be fair though: "Greek style" would carry more implications about expected taste than implied messages of authenticity.
I'd add that the fact that Greece has so many different regions and islands makes it harder to trace back possible special traditions than with say a place like England or Morocco.
@dbmag: nor is Leberkäse
"Greek style" may just mean thick (e.g. what American companies call greek-style yogurt) or it may mean that an attempt was made to imitate feta. "Greek-style salad cheese" sounds very much like the latter.
This question needs a source, and some criteria. "Is it true" implies that there is some origin for this rumor. If you're just investigating whether nut-cheeses existed before the current vegan movement, then please remove the "is it true" to make it clear that you're researching, not confirming a rumor. Also, you need to define what would qualify as "cheese based on nuts" because Eastern Medditeranean food has a large variety of dishes made with nuts, some of which could be considered vaguely cheeselike.
@FuzzyChef I have tried to edit the question as concise as I could.
Can you add a link? I'm not finding these "greek-style" vegan cheeses with a web search.
I don't have a link. I base the question on products I have come across through the years primarily from boutique businesses. I intend to keep this question simple and not add any more data.
@Yorik "Greek style... cheese" normally (at least in the UK) refers to something they can't call feta (with "salad") or halloumi (with "grilling") for legal reasons
Voting to close, because not enough detail is given on what a "nut cheese" consists of.
Regarding Greece, nut cheeses are produced mainly for people who participate in religious fasting, rather than vegans.
There are multiple fasting periods on the Greek orthodox calendar, including Lent, the 40 days before Christmas, and also Wednesdays and Fridays of each week. Since fasting requires abstaining from milk and dairy products, nut cheeses were developed and marketed as "fasting cheese" rather than "vegan cheese". (e.g. one of the biggest producers of vegan cheeses is Evlogimeno, literally translated as "blessed").
That said, Greek-style cheese probably refers to some imitation of Feta.
Source: I'm greek : )
without demand from modern-day vegan consumers
No, they weren't.
I grew up in Bulgaria, and these products are entirely new. They appeared basically at the same time as they started becoming common in supermarkets in Western Europe, so after 2015 or so. I'm quite certain that my grandmother or mother wouldn't know what they are even if I tried explaining them.
Some somewhat related products have been around for longer, but never as a local delicacy.
Tofu might have become available with the first Western supermarket chains in the early 2000s, although these took until the end of the decade to get a decent market share, so most of the population may never have noticed it in the beginning. Today, it's recognizable, but regarded as an exotic import.
Manufacturers in the 90s started using large amounts of vegetable fat (and I suppose other kinds of plant-derived matter) when making standard kinds of cheese. This was a cost-cutting measure, the flavor was intended to mimic all-dairy cheese, the product was not vegan or suitable for people with dairy alergies, and when the news outlets made a point of reporting about this, the labeling laws were changed. In that sense, there used to be a common cheese-like product containing a lot of plant matter, but not as a food in its own right, but rather as an imitation product which the public considered a deceptive practice.
Traditionally, any use of non-cultured cream was rare in Bulgaria. In the 90s, stores started carrying liquid "cream" which was in fact a non-dairy substitute that kinda works like half-and-half in sauces. This remained the only kind of "cream" available for a long time. As late as 2018, I knew of exactly one supermarket chain in Sofia which carried exactly one (imported) brand of real dairy cream. So the substitute product is still very common, but not as a local delicacy, but rather because people don't even realize that the "cream" they read about in Western recipes is supposed to be dairy-based.
Nuts and legumes are widely eaten in Bulgaria, including some uses which aren't widespread in the West (e.g. dry roasted chickpeas as a snack), but I have never encountered anybody processing them into a nut milk, much less curdling them.
As others have said, the labeling on these products has nothing to do with local food customs. Rather, the producers wanted to provide a dairy-free imitation of the dairy cheese that Western customers know under the moniker "Balkan style" or "Greek style", so they put that name on the packaging.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.829322
| 2023-12-14T17:12:55 |
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|
126358
|
Can alternative greens like kale or spinach be used in place of escarole in the Italian Wedding Soup recipe
Can alternative greens like kale or spinach be used in place of escarole in this Italian Wedding Soup recipe, and if so, how might this change the flavor of the soup?
Welcome to SA! We don't answer questions about nutrition here, so I've removed that part of your question.
If you can find it, I would prefer the flat-leafed lacinato kale (aka Tuscan kale or cavolo nero) to the curly-leaf varieties. In soups, I find curly-leaf kale can be bulky and stringy, while flat-leaved kale has a much more appealing texture.
Yes, you can easily substitute for it. I'd take the kale over the spinach, because you want a green that has some tooth to it after boiling. For the kale, you'll need to remove the thick parts of the stems because they won't cook in time. Swiss chard would be an even better substitution, and would allow you to use the stems.
No changes to the rest of the recipe are necessary.
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.829940
| 2024-01-14T01:00:34 |
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123047
|
How to ensure that potatoes disintegrate in stews or casseroles
I am not a very good cook.
I have tried making stews or casseroles. I put meat, vegetables and potatoes in a casserole dish in the oven, a slow cooker, or on the hob in a low heat.
Sometimes the potatoes dissolve, and give me a delicious thick sauce. Very nice. Quite often, though, I'm left with tasteless white lumps in water. Not nice at all.
I can't work out what I did differently. Maybe the variety of potato, or the other ingredients.
Any suggestions?
Welcome to SA! You're going to have to share more details of what recipe(s) you were following in order for people to offer useful advice.
how long do you braise it all for?
I've tried various recipes, and various cooking times. How long SHOULD I braise it for?
If you're really only after potatoes-as-thickener, maybe look into instant mashed potatoes, aka potato flakes?
The effect you are looking for is not congruent with typical preferences. Most cooks and eaters, on finding that the potatoes have disintegrated in their stew, would call them "overcooked". So you cannot rely on recipes to produce this result - most are geared towards having potatoes remain in distinct cubes.
There are a few factors you can tweak to get closer to your preferred kind of stew.
Acid. Make sure that your stew doesn't contain any acid, or the potatoes will stay firm. For this purpose, you should count not only acid seasoning such as vinegar, but also any form of tomato, and any milk, cream, cultured dairy and fresh cheese. Semi-hard and hard cheeses (cheddar, gouda or firmer) are OK. For taste, you can add sourness after the cooking time is over.
Potato variety. Potatoes come in three broad categories - "firm", "mealy" and "mixed" or "all-purpose". Use the mealy ones.
Cooking time You have to cook for a really long time until the potatoes fall apart. If your recipe suggests a cooking time, start checking at that time and after that every half hour until you see the result, for maybe up to 5-6 hours - if it hasn't happened by then, I don't think it will happen later.
The temperature shouldn't have any direct effect on the disintegration part, but for purely practical purposes, such long cooking is done with low temperatures, as low as you can get while still having your food gently simmering.
Size As Greybeard said, if you cut them up smaller, they will fall apart quicker.
Heat source Once heated, the oven is great for low and slow food - but it does take a long time until the food is heated enough to start cooking. I have stopped using raw potatoes in potato-based casseroles, since it frequently takes 3+ hours to get them to cook through (in the "distinct pieces" sense). The hob is a better place, but more difficult to manage over the long time. As you mentioned a slow cooker, it will be easiest to learn how to do it consistently there. If there are oven recipes you really like, give them even more extra time, or parboil the potatoes before assembling the casserole. I would peel, then boil - skin-on potatoes have always seemed to soak up less water to me, and you can make use of the "cut smaller" effect too.
On a side note, if you like this kind of sauce, you might consider ranging out into recipes that use more conventional thickeners for stew. It will be a different taste, but will allow you more flexibility, both with shorter cooking times, and with the ability to add sour ingredients.
Thank you for your answer. Which varieties of potatoes are considered to be 'mealy', then? Or I sometimes see potatoes being marked as good boilers, good roasters, good bakers, etc. Which should I choose?
@Pete This must be a language/cultural difference. Here in Germany, they print (literally translated) "mealy", "firm-cooking" and "mostly-firm-cooking" onto the label. "Firm cooking" is sometimes called "waxy" in English. I have no idea how the terms map to "roasters", "bakers", etc. especially since different people prefer different textures in their baked, roasted, etc. potatoes. Look for potatoes marked for mashing, if you can find them - they are probably not the only ones that will work, but they are the ones I am sure about. And don't use very young "baby" potatoes.
For the record, I'm in the UK.
Potatoes meant for "baked potatoes" are likely to be of a mealy variety. (In the US, I'd tell you to look for russets, but I have no idea how that translates to the UK.)
/more conventional thickeners for stew/ if you want thick because of potatoes, instant mashed potatoes work great in this role. Add them when you are done cooking until it is as thick as you like.
If you want the potatoes to not be solid chunks in your stew, don’t use chunks.
Stew everything else, and then when you’re about 20-30 minutes away from everything else being cooked, add grated potato.
The extra surface area will help them break down quickly (assuming you don’t have acid in there) and thicken the liquid. I typically hold back a potato or two to do this, even when I’ve added larger potato chunks in the stew.
‘Floury’ is what I believe they call baking / mealy potatoes in the UK, and those will break down easier than waxy / roasting / boiling potatoes.
One thing I've done in the past, when slow cooking stews (either in a slow cooker or an oven) is to mash some of the potato and return it to the sauce.
This would have been a meat, veg, and potato stew, with no tomato or just a little puree added after browning the meat and veg. The liquid was stock and quite possibly ale. Towards the end of cooking, if it was a bit runny, I'd take out a few chunks of potato and possibly other root veg, mash them with a fork and stir them back in. Obviously this doesn't get rid of all your white lumps, but it does fix the sauce. You can taste at the same time, adding herbs and black pepper, or other seasonings to suit. But you might want to be more generous with the initial seasoning if you find the potato tasteless.
Depending on the cooking heat level, variety and size of potato you are using, the time taken to cook potato will vary enormously, from 20 to over 40 minutes. As a rough guide, about 1½ inch white potato cubes will take about 20 minutes at a gentle simmer, much longer in a lower temperature slow cooker.
One of the benefits of cooking vegetables in a liquid is that they will absorb some of this cooking liquid as they cook, and you can use this to your advantage in judging the "doneness" of your veg etc. For instance, as the colour of a white potato gets closer to the surrounding stock, this is a good indication that it is cooked.
So for best results, I would stagger the timings when adding ingredients to the pot, adding the toughest, longest cooking items first and the most fragile, quickly cooked ingredients last:
Meat with bone in
Tough root vegetables (e.g. carrots, swede, parsnip)
Potatoes, onions etc.
Shelled peas, individual sweetcorn pieces etc.
Depending on the cooking method, the size of the veg, the gap between adding each item may be as short as 20 minutes and as long as an hour or more. It is important to note that size will have a major bearing on cooking times as well, thickly sliced carrot will take longer to cook than finely chopped which will take longer than grated carrots.
So, as a general rule:
Smaller pieces cook quicker, larger pieces cook longer
Higher temperatures cook quicker, lower temperatures cook slower
What is being cooked will differ considerably as well, sweet potato will cook differently from white potato for instance.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.830064
| 2023-01-16T17:47:41 |
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123652
|
What lentils did I buy?
I'm new to the forum and new to cooking lentils. I bought a bag of lentils at the store and all it says is "lentils". Now understanding that there's different kinds of lentils, with different applications, I'm not sure what I'm working with here.
Is there a standardized lentil sold in American grocery stores? Mine are an undescribable color of greenish/yellow, some around round in shape, while some are flat on one side and round on the other.
Could anyone help me identify what type of lentils I purchased?
Welcome to SA! To get a reliable identification, you're going to need to share a photo.
Thank you for letting me know. The best I could do was change my pfp to a photo of my lentils as I couldn't figure out any other way to share a picture. Please forgive me, I'm obviously very new here.
I added the photo to your question.
@SalmonBellies: When you're writing or editing a question or answer, there's a toolbar with various formatting options -- bold, italics, etc. -- immediately above the field where you're typing. If you click on the 'image' button in that toolbar, it will walk you through uploading a picture and including it in the post.
@SalmonBellies Welcome to seasoned advice! Regarding the images, ruakh's directions should work for you now, and if they don't, tell us, and we can see how to help you, maybe we will invite you into a chatroom (the site has those, you don't need an IRC account or anything) to work it out in person. For other places on the Internet, you can upload your image on a sharing service such as Imgur, add the link in your post, and ask the moderators to convert it to an actual image - many sites will oblige.
Those are standard "brown" (or "grey") lentils; they're what most Americans mean when they say just "lentils". They are called "whole masoor dal" if you're Indian.
Confusingly, they are also sometimes called "green" lentils. I say confusingly because lentils de puy are also called green lentils, but have a different cooking time, texture, and flavor.
If you skinned them, you'd find that the inner lentil was vermillion in color, which are known as "red lentils", or "masoor dal".
They take 35-55 minutes to cook, usually, depending on how soft you want them.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.830643
| 2023-03-16T20:49:30 |
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|
123205
|
New Samsung range temperature fluctuation
My Samsung range (still under warranty) fluctuates as much as 50 degrees Farenheit in my personal experience. The technician has been here 3 times. He claims it is normal for the oven temperature to drop as much as 60°F while baking. I called Samsung and they claim the actual range is 90°F. I am a baker and this is too wide a range for baking cakes! (The range has a gas cooktop and electric oven). I can't believe they can sell a range with such a wide range, and I can't bake with this. To get a successful bake on a cake, I have to reset the temperature every 3 to 5 minutes.
How are you measuring? Are you using an analog oven thermometer or some other method? When you open the oven door the temperature will naturally drop, how long does it take to get back up to temperature?
This will happen even if I don't open the oven. When my first cake failed, I started checking the temperature after the oven was on for 15 minutes by raising the temperature five degrees. The display then shows the current temperature inside the oven which sometimes drops by 35 to 45 degrees - all without opening the oven door. This range is under warranty.
Hey, I think we all share your opinion that this is a terrible oven, but what's your actual question? You don't make one.
Hi, I also have some trouble seeing what the exact question is. The closest that comes to mind is to ask if this is within normal for ovens, and we already have an earlier question on this topic.
You may be able to help even this out by adding thermal mass (pizza stones, bricks) to the oven and preheating with them in there (add them cold). 90 degrees seems like a lot though, my GE doesn't swing that much.
Temperature fluctuations like that are not normal. You have one of two things going on:
The oven is faulty. This is simple in principle, Samsung need to diagnose it and fix it. In practice this isn't so simple as my own experience with Samsung's support was absolutely terrible
You could have a problem with the electrical supply. The oven could be fine, it may not be getting enough power. There could be several reasons for this like bad wiring, a faulty outlet, or a setup problem at the electrical board. None of these are good, and some are dangerous: bad wiring + high draw appliance = fire risk
I highly recommend getting an electrician in to test your system as it will ensure safety and give you a definite answer as to whether it's a problem with the oven or not.
Not an answer, but too long for a comment:
Older ovens basically had controls so that the oven shut off after it got some point above the set temperature, then let itself cook off to below that temp, then heated back up to the higher temperature. This type of oven will almost always be off from the desired temperature, but +/- 90°F sounds… not good. You might be able to get the oven to cycle less with the addition of thermal mass (pizza stones or similar), but that also means that it’s going to spend longer times at each extreme.
It wasn’t until we got ‘fuzzy logic’ controls that instead of just off/on, they’d do things like ‘set the heating to 50% when you’re close to the desired temperature’ or similar to try to maintain a specific temperature rather than just bounce around near that temperature. But those require microchips which have been in short supply the last few years. (If the oven has an LCD screen to set the temperature or even as a clock, it has microchips, but may not always have fuzzy logic)
It’s also worth mentioning that there have been reports of some ovens that set a timer for preheating, rather than when the oven is actually up to temperature, so may need extra time when the kitchen is cold. Adding thermal mass makes this even worse, as the oven might not be close to the desired temperature by the set time.
There’s also the possibility of a bad sensor or calibration issue, and the oven is consistently off on its temperature. This might be able to be adjusted by a technician if it always skews 50°F colder than normal. Of this is the 90° of error that they consider acceptable, I would be very worried about their products.
It’s possible that the 90° is cumulative between those two types of error. If it’s 30° inaccurate (always cold, for instance), and has a 60° precision issue (swings as it stays near the set temperature), then together they add up to 90°. But that still seems like a huge error rate to me.
You might think that you could get a probe thermometer to monitor this from outside the oven… but from experience I can tell you that a kitchen thermometer often aren’t rated for these temperatures. They might list ‘high’ when they get significantly above the boiling point of water. (And they might melt parts if put into a very hot oven (without being in food) for long times)
are there actual ovens sold for home use with fuzzy logic? I suspect not
@Agos I don’t know, but there have been rice cookers that claim to have it for years now. And I assume that the electric pressure cookers would use them to maintain a constant pressure… so it’s not a huge stretch to assume that they exist in higher end models. You can buy controllers individually for ~$60 these days and I would assume less in bulk, so it wouldn’t be a huge cost to add into a $1000+ oven
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.830853
| 2023-01-30T12:11:43 |
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|
53639
|
How to prevent Meringue from turning chewy/gummy-like?
My attempts at Meringue-making are driving me a tiny but crazy...
No matter what I do, at first, they are still wet on the inside, and if I leave them standing longer to dry out, they get a chewy/gummy-like consistency when bitten into (this is really the best way I can explain it).
I am currently working with 50-60 grams of granulated sugar per eggwhite (depending on what size of egg I have), a slightly heaped teaspoon (not the measuring-kind, just a regular, european teaspoon) of cornstarch per eggwhite.
I add a pinch of salt to my eggwhites before whipping them up, then slowly add the sugar. Temperature-variation of the eggwhites did not seem to do much about the chewiness-Problem.
I have tried drying between 70 and 100 decrees Celsius (most recipes seem to call for 80).
How do I get them to dry all the way through without burning them? I SUSPECT the fact that I seem unable to get them all dried out is the actual problem!
EDIT: For size: I usually strongly heap a teaspoon (mostly because the whole issue with a piping bag seems futile to me if the texture does strange things anyway...). They are not overly large, I'd say, and I even have the chewyness-issue when I make very very flat ones.
How big are your meringues? Isn't that chewy bit the best part anyway?
Hehe, with the right chewyness, I'd agee, but not when it turns MY chewy... it is not fluffy-sweet chewy, but "stick to my teeth" chewy... I wish I could share them online to explain just what is wrong with them! Will update the post about the size :).
I'm pretty sure the problem is in using too much starch. Try less, or even learn to whip meringue which does not weep - you need to get both the speed and whipping time just right - and then skip the starch altogether. You can also try making Italian meringue, it's much easier. It also doesn't need starch.
Also don't use salt, it interferes with foam formation. Use a pinch of acid for more stable foam, but don't overdo it.
Good point about the starch! I had actually increased it because... actually, I think because my brain went floppy and weird on this. Now that you mention it, adding starch to reduce wetness and chewiness sounds ridiculous. I had NO idea about the difference acid vs. salt could make! And I will definitely give the Italian version a go :).
The starch makes your meringues similar to a cake. But because you bake them at so low, they don't become truly cakelike, their interior is similar to unbaked cake batter. This is why they stick. The explanation of salt vs acid is more complicated, it has to do with the microscopic structure of protein foams, especially disulfide bonds and hydrogen bonds.
I will definitely try this when I am having another set of eggwhites left over (happens often enough, somehow) and will hopefully remember to give final feedback :). And rumtscho is definitely right... of course starch will create something dough-y. Sometimes, one just is blind to ones own sillyness ^^.
@Layna such blind spots happen to everybody. There usually is a viewpoint from which the solution of a problem is obvious, but there is no guarantee that you (or anybody else) will find it. Good luck with your next batch.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.831288
| 2015-01-15T10:54:15 |
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46942
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Chosing 2 pans - the most versatile solution
I'm mot a noob cook, but it's the first time I'm buying myself a proper kitchenware. I have a hard time deciding which frying pan would be the best form me. In fact I'm pretty much set on buying 2 pans, as it seems there is no one pan that cover all the situations.
I cook pretty lot of italian food. I don't do meat too often (and I plan stopping eating it at all very soon), rather many vegetable/flour dishes. Usually I cook for myself (sometimes for 2), but often do big portions of the dish that will last me for 2-3 days. Of course sometimes I fry myself an egg or just need to fry some onion for some other dish.
I want a solid and versatile solution. I can and am willing to take care for it, so I don't mind if it needs seasonig or cannot be cleaned with soap.
Though I don't want to pay only for a brand name, budget is not that big of a problem, as I think it'll be a profitable investition.
After doing pretty extensive reading on my own it seems stainless steel, regular (non-enameled) cast-iron and enameled cast-iron are the most commonly advised. I'm pretty much set on that one of the pans I'll be buying will be cast iron, as it's said to be very solid and good for everything other than acids.
Questions:
Which one do you think would make a better addition to a cast-iron pan: stainless steel or enameled cast-iron? If stainless steel, then pure steel or one with non-stick/copper coating?
What sized do you think would be the best? I'm thinking about 26cm (10 inches) diameter. Should I go for a slightly bigger 28cm? I have even bigger problem with the depth. Should I buy a shallow frying pan (like this one: http://www.skeppshult.com/en/sortiment/professional/frying-pans/0260-2/) or deep pan (like this: http://www.skeppshult.com/en/sortiment/professional/deep-pans/deep-pan-25-cm/)?
Do you think a lid for the pan is a must-have?
What are the best materials for handles? Many manufacturers do wooden handles, but I doubt it being a good solution, as you cannot put a pan in the oven then. Are steel handles okay?
What brands would you recommend? (I'm living in Poland, so no US-only brands please) I heard Skeepshult makes very good cast-iron, but I also read that it's not use in buying expensive brand cast iron pan, as the cheaper solutions aren't any worse. For enameled cast iron people recommended Chasseur and Le Creuset (this one also makes stainless steel pans). What would you recommend for stainless steel?
I'm a bit unclear...so you have a cast iron skillet (or have one in mind) and want to add 2 pans? Or do the 2 pans you want include the skillet? In other words, do I get to add one more pan to my answer? :)
I corrected my post to clarify that. I don't have any pan right now (or rather have a few that are of little use - they were in the flat I'm currently renting) and want to buy 2 new ones.
Alrightly then, I would choose the two options in my answer.
If I could only have two pans, those pans would be a high quality 12 inch stainless steel skillet, and an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven. Both pans would have a lid. Tempered glass lids are nice on the skillet/fry pan, but the quality of the skillet is more important.
Fantasy Skillet
Fantasy Dutch Oven
Dutch ovens come in a huge range of sizes. Consider the size you want carefully, this pan should outlive you. Are you likely to be cooking for a larger number of people at some point in time? For someone to whom both are available, there is no way I would recommend paying $300 or more for the Le Creuset brand, when Lodge makes virtually the same pan for $60. I'll have some more info for you in a bit (note: we later discussed it at length in chat), but I probably won't recommend a specific brand unless I happen to find a credible source for such a recommendation.
Thank you for your answer. As for cooking for a larger number of people at some point in time - sure, it might happen. And I may have a family in few years in time (I'm only 25), who knows. But for now I cook mainly for myself. Sometimes have a girl friend come over for a dinner : ).
BTW do you mean any different when you say "skillet" instead of "pan"? I read on the web that pan has this sloped sides, where skillet has it straight. I figured out that there isn't much of a practical difference. Is there?
Then you probably would be fine with the 5-6 liter/quart size for the Dutch oven.
@Robert Yes, there's a difference between the terms fry-pan, skillet and saute pan; but they're pretty silly. A saute pan has straight sides, a skillet has sloped sides. For the vast majority of home cooks, it makes no difference.
I like the versatility of a Dutch oven here, because it can double as a sauce pan or a stockpot. Also, in your situation, everything you consider should be oven and stove safe.
So I assume I shouldn't be bothered with those differences and just look for a quality pan, is it a skillet, a fry pan or a saute pan. I must say I also like your idea of a dutch oven.
6 years later I can say from my own experience: The combination of stainless steel and cast iron skillets works super well. I don't have dutch oven, as the answer suggests, and that might be even better solution, but I have 5 pans now: 2 stainless steel skillets (big and small), 1 stainless steel saute pan, and 2 cast iron skillets (big and small). I could easily get rid of the saute pan, but all other 4 I use all the time. I use cast iron for sticky things, and stainless steel for almost anything else. They all work great and look like they can last me years or even a lifetime (cast iron).
I have been cooking for 30 years, and 10 years ago bought the 12" Calphalon everyday pan:
http://store.calphalon.com/department/everyday-pans/1949-4294966178-1982-1957
I checked and they do ship to Poland, and ironically, it looks like the founder is of Polish descent, though born in Ohio, US. I seriously love this pan. I always get a pan with metal handles, wood breaks down and I like my pans to be able to go from stove top to oven. Although some of the black handles claim to go in oven, I hate risking it. I do use it nearly daily. I don't have any trouble with sticking, and sometimes the "sticking" is necessary to creating a nice crust or brown on foods, also critical to the best sauces or gravies. Wish I'd had one of these pans years ago. A lid is critical for me to keep food warm, moist, or to melt cheese, keep spatters down, etc. I don't usually end up using the lid in the oven as I'm often baking or roasting.
I still have my cast iron pans, but don't use them often anymore, mainly because they're 10" and care can be challenging, I cook with lots of tomatoes which is bad on cast iron. After getting married I started using toxic Teflon again b/c my MIL used it and it is handy, but after learning of how very toxic it was, switched back to my stainless steel. If I had to have one pan, it would be this one--it's a skillet, a casserole, etc. I love having 2 handles, I love not having the long handle sticking out, it stores/stacks better, cleans up great. I suppose you could put in d/w, but I hand wash this pan, as I do all my pans and loved items, and I use Barkeepers Friends scouring on occasion, but not necessary. After 10 years, it's still shiny and nice. If I could try another pan, I would go for an enameled cast iron. I'm very happy with my 12" Calphalon everyday pan, and size is perfect for family of four.
I can't argue at all with your choice of a 1st pan. It's a beauty.
Welcome! I'm going to start by saying that you may get many different answers as a lot of information will be based on personal experience.
Glad to read that you are going to choose cast iron for one of your pans. If I were going to add one more pan, I would choose enameled cast iron over stainless. I personally find it to be much more versatile and it heats up quicker and more evenly than stainless. I have two sets of SS cookware and many enameled cast iron pans. Without fail I will grab an enamel pan first.
Regarding size, I would go larger and deeper. This will give you more versatility than a smaller or more shallow pan. You can put less in a larger pan (and sometimes this is a really good thing) but you can only put so much in a smaller pan.
As for a lid, I do like glass lids, but don't think it's a must have. The important thing is to have a lid that fits properly.
Regarding brands, I don't know all of what may be available to you. I can tell you that almost all of my enameled cast iron is Le Creuset and I love it. It is quality made and extremely durable. We actually have a dutch oven that was handed down from my husband's grandmother and it's over 100 years old. Because it's such a perfect size for us we use it almost daily. You can tell it has been used a lot but the enamel interior is fully intact and the outside looks like new. You really can't ask for more than that! :)
Just wanted to note that if you have accessibility to a Le Creuset outlet store you can sometimes find great bargains on what they deem to be "seconds". I have never seen any inferior quality in these pans on the cooking surface. Usually a blemish on a handle or something minor. Prices on these items are usually 1/2 to 1/3 off, at least at the store we visit. My all-time win is an enameled pan for $28. Once in a lifetime! :)
Thank you very much for the answer. Unfortunately there isn't an official Le Creuset outlet in Poland - only few stores that import their products.
So you say that I should buy 2 pans that are wide and dig?
What do you think about Jolenealaska's idea to buy a dutch oven isntead of a second pan?
I agree with @Jolenealaska. While I didn't specify, I have several Le Creuset Dutch ovens and they do get the most use. Very, very versatile so that you can use for many different applications. Re your question about size, since you are basically starting out with two go-to pans, I would go with wider and deeper. This will give you more flexibility. Always better to have a little more room/capacity than you need than to not have enough.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.831587
| 2014-09-07T17:07:53 |
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|
125361
|
Added too much cayenne to my spice mix, how to fix it?
Added too much cayenne powder to my spice mix, now it’s too hot. What can I do to fix it and tone down the heat?
The mix contains sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, kosher salt, pepper, allspice & cayenne (of which I used twice as much as required).
Just to be absolutely sure: You mean “cayenne” (as in the spice), not “cyan” (as in the blue-green color), right? I edited the post for now, in the unlikely case that I made a mistake, feel free to [edit] again.
Tweezers and a magnifying glass
The best thing to do is add enough of the others to make it up to double quantity, then use half and save the other half for another time.
… or see if you like it hot ;)
@Tetsujin that's the other option, but it did sound like too much for their tastes.
When I overdo the “ heat” I add a bit of sweetener as I find it makes your saliva glands more active and that seems to make the heat a little less intense ..I use maple syrup for thee sweetener in my hot sauce.
Welcome! Let me give you some advice for new users: this is not a forum, where there are ongoing threads of discussions, but one specific question at the top and only specific and individual answers below. In other words, each answer should be written as standalone post, not a commentary on another answer. I would very much encourage you to read [answer] and, if you see fit, [edit] your posts. It seems you have a lot of experience which would be valuable and appreciated, let us help you get started with the formal rules.
Thanks , my writing has degenerated over time to bullet points . I will take your comments under consideration.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.832704
| 2023-09-26T15:17:16 |
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125380
|
Using Zucchini juice in bread recipe
I was freezing some shredded zucchini yesterday and squeezed out the juice. Made me wonder whether you can substitute zucchini juice or other juice for water when making sandwich bread in bread machine?
You can. The difficultly would be that any vegetable or fruit juice will be at least slightly acidic, as well as having a small amount of multiple nutrients in it. The juice's actual effect on the bread would be unpredictable, and you'd just have to try it and see how it goes.
In most cases, I would expect that the juice has no real effect on the resulting bread. But you might discover a great new recipe.
It’s probably more challenging in a bread maker (which the asker plans to use) with pre-programmed timings. Judging times via visual and haptic clues may be better in this case. Nevertheless, I‘m also in favor of just giving it a go and see what happens.
Yah. Our breadmaker is pretty tolerant of messing about, but I realize that not all are.
Zucchini is alkaline until cooked.
@Abion47 huh! Do you know any more trustworthy source for that information? The linked article isn't, and I can't find any scientific authority that gives pH for raw zucchini.
@FuzzyChef I was thinking the same thing, but every other source I can find seems to be pulling up pH for only cooked zucchini which strikes me as odd. I might need to go to the store and get a zucchini to test myself.
Well, raw zucchini is not frequently eaten.
It's not something that I personally like, but I thought that raw zucchini was a somewhat popular addition to salads, particularly in Mediterranean cuisines.
It's a thing. It's just not that common. And most of these food stats come from the US FDA or USDA, and a lot of those are based on how Americans ate foods in the 1970s. So they didn't cover raw zucchini because they didn't think of it as a food. The FDA nutrition lists are full of weird ommissions like this.
FWIW, shredded raw zucchini with pecorino cheese and black pepper is delish. But I don't know if it's alkaline or not ;-)
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.832885
| 2023-09-27T15:21:57 |
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|
117246
|
When to add fresh basil to homemade pizza
I've made pizza from scratch (dough and sauce) a few times, turns out great. I want to try fresh basil on it. Current recipe: Oven, 425° F: blind bake crust 10 minutes, add tomato sauce & fresh mozzarella, cook another 10 minutes. When would be a good time to add fresh basil? With the cheese? 5 minutes later? After it is done?
Basil is quite heat sensitive. Unlike e.g. thyme or rosemary.
Since the same recipe will produce different responses almost from identical twins, why not try it for yourself and ask your companions to judge?
Make several pizzas, with basil added at each stage… make one with extra basil added at every stage, why not?
For those who mentioned that my temperature was too low, I just realized I put in the wrong temperature in my original post. I have updated it to the correct value.
I cast fresh basil leaves immediately after removing the pizza from the oven. I have found that cooking them with the pizza tends to reduce some (a lot) of the basil scent and flavour.
For dried basil, I can't say as I don't use it.
I actually posted the question... when the pie was in the oven. I put some on 5 minutes before it was done, and some on fresh out of the oven. Definitely best after it is done; looks much better, and more flavor. Thanks!
That's how good pizzerias do it as well. Out of oven, throw fresh basil on top, serve.
@MaxD Basil usually goes on before baking in the traditional Neapolitan style, so a "good" pizzeria would usually put it on before, but those ovens run at 400C+ and the pies only bake for about 90 seconds - a home oven can't reach that temperature so it's definitely an after in that case. Some pizzerias also add additional fresh basil after cooking, but there's usually some that goes on before as well.
Basil goes black and crisp very quickly when it's cooked, so it looks much more appealing if it goes on after cooking, as well as having more flavor. (If finely chopped and mixed with sauce, the aesthetics doesn't matter as much.)
Fresh basil on a pizza absolutely can't go in the oven - at that point you have dried basil, which is of course still fine, but loses the point of using the fresh basil. As ChalkTalk mentions, if you have basil that is not really able to serve as "fresh basil" anymore, then that's fine, but I encourage you to use fresh, sweet basil if possible.
I use both dried and fresh in pizzas:
Dried basil in the sauce (added when cooking the sauce, or if using a prepared sauce from the store, added to it before applying to the pizza). Adding dried basil to store-bought sauces is often a good way to make them a bit better!
Fresh basil, cut in thin strips (roll the basil, then cut across the roll in the shorter dimension - this is called chiffonade), scattered on top of the pizza immediately before serving. This was the style of one of my favorite lunch places a decade or so ago, and I do it at home as a result. Adding it to the top just as you serve it means you get the aroma of the basil as you take your first bite!
You can also use fresh in the sauce if you have it
You can, but I find dried (good quality dried!) is better in the sauce.
I put fresh and dried in the sauce, and then fresh on top. I've yet to eat anything that I felt had too much basil in it.
I like to cut it with scissors and mix it into the sauce so that it gets cooked a bit. The heat releases the classic Italian flavours and aroma.
Also: it depends on the age of the plant, but mature basil has a stronger aroma and can have a bitter cinnamon-like flavour before it's cooked. I'm just guessing by the current time of year that your basil might have reached this phase.
If it has, I would definitely make sure that it's cooked with the sauce, either on the pizza itself during bake or before the sauce goes on.
The answer is, it depends on the cooking method and the type of oven being used.
If you are using a woodfired oven at 400c + then you absolutely can put the basil on before it is cooked, the pizza will be in the oven for around 60-90 seconds and the basil can remain relatively fresh.
In a home oven at 200c (or thereabouts) where you are cooking the pizza for longer then you could add it at the same time as the cheese so its mainly covered up or close to the end of the cooking time to let some of the flavour infuse with the pizza toppings.
10 minutes pre-bake plus 10 minutes afterwards seems like way too long for pizza. After ten minutes the cheese will be brown and cooked to a texture something like chewing gum.
The crust+sauce can cook together (on the top shelf) for ~3 min @ 280C (550F), which is as hot as a domestic oven usually gets. For good pizza you want the oven as hot as you can possibly make it. The cheese can then go on for another 2-3 minutes afterwards. For a home oven, add the basil at the end - the cooking time, even at 5-6 minutes, is too long for fresh basil to survive.
You can even shorten the cooking time somewhat (to ~4 minutes) and put the cheese on at the start - then finish the top with a blowtorch (and add basil afterwards). This is about as close to a real pizza-oven result as you can get with nothing but a regular domestic oven.
Sorry, I didn't put the temperature in my original question; I've edited it to mention it bakes at 350° F. Good tips on timing and temperature.
@MarkStewart Yeah, crank that temperature up. You're not reheating a frozen half-cooked pizza here - it needs to be hot and fast.
@j Well, the first several times I made it, I did 425° F. and the last time I accidently did 350° F. and wondered what was taking so long! It actually turned out pretty good regardless. I updated my question to be the correct temperature.
For a pizza neapoletana the official recipe of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN) and the nearly identical EU traditional specialty registration leave no doubt that the basil needs to be placed on the pizza before baking. Stating: "The basil, garlic and the oregano will develop an intense aroma, and will appear brown, but not burned" after baking.
Nice links! I'll try to ensure my next pizza is 35 cm in diameter... and the other requirements... I actually do use Tipo 00 flour, so I got one thing right.
fresh leaves should go definitely after bakingor they'd dry out. Another option can be to pre-cook your tomato sauce with your favorite flavors (the stems of the basil itself for example and/or garlic according to taste) that are eventually removed before topping your dough.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.833102
| 2021-09-19T19:25:14 |
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|
65287
|
Gas stove + Wok Vs. Induction top + Skillet
I have two questions regarding woks:
Can I achieve close to the same result with an induction top and either a kettle or high edge frying pan, or is a wok pan and gas stove paramount to achieving a great wok result?
Is there any point at all in using a wok on a flat cooking top, since they are initially designed for using on a gas stove with flames coming up along the sides and everything?
EDIT: Split food preparation part of question into separate post.
A wok is designed to put food in heat at the center and relax some of the heat as you move away from center, and you keeping the food moving in and out of that hot spot so you get an even sear all around.
To mimic this, use a wide 12 inch or larger skillet (depending on your quantity of food) with high walls, and make it hot. Continuously flip the food over and over and stir is so you get an even seat in the same way. This is called stir fry.
The reason why a wok is desirable is you can manage a lot of food in a wok and move stuff into and out of the hot center quite easily. You can do the same thing in a skillet, but you have to take greater care to not burn your food nor to make a mess throwing the food around.
Thanks! Specifically, is there any point in using woks on induction tops at all? Or will the heat simply not be high enough?
Sure, there are woks that can work great on induction tops. Because of how the heat dissipates in this circumstance, you want something with a lot of inductive and thermal mass on the center bottom like the Lodge Cast Iron Wok.
I think a simple answer to your question is yes, one can make the same dish in both a flat bottomed pan on an induction cooker and a wok on a gas flame. I might say that it might be easier in the wok, as it was intended for this style of cooking. I might also add that what makes stir frying different from other types of cooking are essentially two things: heat and movement. Stir frying requires high heat and continuous movement of the food to avoid burning at said heat level. As long as both of these requirements are taken care of then I would say you are stir-frying.
Now cooking in a flat bottomed pan will raise some slight difficulties. Depending on how high the sides of the pan are, will make it easier/harder to move the food around. Having high enough heat is another issue when stir-frying. If the sides of the pan are too low, then moving the food will be a challenge, and the food will burn easier or be outside the pan. If the heat is not sufficient, one is not stir-frying but rather steaming the food. But this would also affect an underpowered wok as well.
The use of the induction cooker, with sufficient amounts of wattage or heat will take care of the heat requirement. As I find most induction cookers directly heat the pan enough to fry the food, compared to a regular gas stove,(not professional or home chef professional burner), with anaemic heat output.
As a note, there are now induction cookers that designed for wok usage. I have one, and I find it better than the average gas stove in heat output, but lacking in the actual cooking surface area needed to cook food efficiently and quickly. Smaller batches of food need to be cooked in the wok for it come out right. I also find you need a certain sized wok to fit inside the wok induction cooker for it to work properly. If the wok is too small it will not fully utilise the already small cooking surface and will not be stable either. Too large a wok and it will be stable but the cooking area is also reduced. The ideal wok for my induction cooker is a 36cm wok.
Now onto your second question which is more the logistics of cooking with a (round bottomed) wok on flat cooktop. I would answer this with, yes you can with some modifications. If the range is gas then it's less of an issue, but if the range is electric or induction, I would say it might not be worth the effort. With a gas range, the wok would only need to have a wok ring to make it work. The ring takes care of the stability issue, so long as you have enough BTU's.
With an induction or electric range, the wok ring would provide stability but it might not provide the needed contact to the cooking surface to generate the amount of heat needed to stir-fry. Even with contact, the induction/electric cooktop would only contact the very bottom of the round wok. Not providing enough cooking area for efficient and quick cooking. So it may not be worth the effort.
I think this answers your questions.
Detailed and good answer. I really appreciate this!
I bought a flat bottomed Cantonese-style carbon steel wok with a wooden handle at a local Asian shop. And let me tell you it's the best single item I've ever got for my kitchen:
It cost nothing
It weighs nothing
It works with induction
It heats insanely fast (burning heat in 30 seconds)
It cools similarly fast (thus, total control of heat)
It prepares a meal in 5 minutes
It washes easily
After just a few trials, I get the same result as the seasoned Vietnamese guys down at the local restaurant. I now understand why every Asian household has one of these lifesavers.
Things to note:
I discovered my specimen has a slightly bent bottom, causing a small gap to the induction top. This doesn't affect heat exchange, though. Be sure to check the bottom prior to purchase.
I seasoned it over a gas flame prior to normal use. Don't know if this was really necessary.
Experiment to find the optimal heat setting. I set to 12/14, add meat first, then vegetables, then reduce to 11 before adding the rice noodles so they won't stick.
Does the wok release toxic metals?
What will the expected lifespan be?
An 1800W induction stove can drive a light, flat bottom cast iron/carbon steel wok to smoking quickly. From my experience, MORE quickly than the gas camping stoves some people recommend to drive woks - likely because the gas will only heat the outer surface while the magnetic field will penetrate the metal and heat it to a certain depth. If you adhere to usual home-wokking practices - do ingredients that have a lot of moisture or need a lot of browning in separate batches, and never fill the whole wok with bowls worth of raw ingredients in one go - that setup will work quite well. Seasoning a wok well is hard on induction though - too uneven, heat too concentrated in the low end, so getting a pre-seasoned wok or doing the seasoning on gas is preferrable.
First off gas will always be better for a sear, it's the flipping of the wok and letting the food actually be placed within the stoves flame. Induction has no flame so you will never be able to "sear" the meat as in an oriental restaurant. Say for shaken beef.
gas you need extremely high btu output(+20,000btu)is above normal gas ranges. There burners are configured for the western flat bottom pans. American range, Bluestar and Capital have units rated more than this. Side note propane you will have a loss of about 25% of the btu's going from nat. gas to lp so your 20k burner is really working at 15k, but again burner design is a draw back.
I would suggest cooking outside on a deep turkey fryer base with a better burner for a truly asian style meal at home.
remember a commercial wok range's btu's are in the neighborhood of 105,000 btu's you can find new for about 500.00 but the hood and ventilation will be a bit pricey, your normal ventahood is not adequate. you will also need a 3/4" line, if your line exists its probably 1/2".
PS I do have an American Range on lp with 3 burners rated at 25k (nat gas) I can get a decent sear but I still will do batches. I believe Capital range has one unit that has a wok burner rated at 28k, but that was a couple years ago when I was looking at replacing the piece of crap viking range I had.
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.833630
| 2016-01-11T14:48:02 |
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|
90140
|
Getting rice noodles evenly distributed in wok
I use rice noodles for woks. I simmer them in hot water, then drain them in cold water and leave them in a bowl. Then I start frying the meat and vegetables in the wok.
Now the problem is:
The noodles easily clump, making it difficult to distribute them evenly into the other foods.
The noodles are quite long to begin with.
To cope with this, I've tried the following workarounds:
Perfect the cooking time so the noodles don't get soggy.
Add a little oil to the noodles after draining them.
Give the noodles an occasional quick stir while they're still in the bowl.
Cut the noodles in half with a pair of scissors before adding them to the wok.
Try to lift the noodles to their full length using pasta fork, thereby separating them.
Can someone share good advice how to get the rice noodles evenly distributed?
Is the brand relevant? Are there types of rice noodles that are better in this respect?
I suggest avoid simmering or blanching before frying. Soaking till soft should be enough as the subsequent frying will soften the noodle further, assuming you will be adding a little more liquid as you fry.
Soaking, as in cold water? Is this sufficient? (I also used different noodle types and some seem to need longer time in the water than others. The "Oh Ricey" brand, though, almost instantly softens...)
Yes, soak in cold water. If your rice noodle instantly softens, you absolutely don't need hot water at all.
A quick Google search offers suggestions that match with this answer. The first one that popped up was just a quick dunk/blanch in hot water, then a cold rinse (to partially cook, but I'd imagine that's not much different than soaking).
David Thompson says in one of his books that very little oil should be used when stir frying rice noodles - the oil actually encourages clumping.
I have tested this myself and found it to be true.
I usually heat only about 1-2 tsp of oil in a wok until very hot
Ensure the noodles are relatively dry (they should obviously be soft, but not actually wet - this would create a gummy layer of rice paste on the outside when you cook them, which would definitely cause them to clump together).
Do not stir the noodles more than you have to, and, when you do, use more of a loose 'flipping' motion than stirring in circles, which can cause them to tangle into a large lump. If you have good technique with the wok you can fling the noodles around just with a flick of the wrist and almost without using a spoon/stirrer at all.
Contrary to the what the other answer says, I don't think blanching the noodles before hand is a bad idea (though I normally steam them for a minute or two instead of boiling so they don't get too wet). They then become beautifully soft and tender when cooked, which gives you a much more refined result, and I haven't found that they become more likely to clump.
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.834298
| 2018-06-03T08:37:19 |
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|
89924
|
Excess oil / holes in cheese when baking pizza
I'm making a simple pizza using:
A regular water/flour/yeast dough wo/oil, raised, kneaded and flattened thin with a rolling pin
High quality minced meat (<5% fat), pre-fried in a pan without oil, drained of excess fluid, added a little ketchup
Topped with white cheese (an European gouda type, 27% fat, whereof 17% saturated fat)
Baking at the bottom of the oven on a thin silicon mat on a wire rack at 225°C, a lot of small holes form in the cheese, maybe 1 cm apart, and there is a lot of oil(?) simmering around these holes.
This gives a somewhat strange end result, and makes the crust hard because the top seems to finish much slower because of all the excess oil the pizza is baking in.
Can someone explain the formation of these holes and the excess fat? Does it come from the cheese itself? How can I test / change things to get a uniform baking without the holes and oil.
Maybe post a picture? Are you using a pan or cooking on a stone.
What's the hydration of your pizza dough? Can you post the recipe? How thick is your crust?
US? It seems cheese formulae changed around 2012 or so. What used to work now often leaves an oily mess. Try changing brands, or even cheese types, if possible.
@WayfaringStranger: I'm not in the US, but I guess you're right. Trying different cheese is probably the best thing to try first. I'll do so and post back. I suppose baking temperature is not an issue, since those authentic Italian pizza ovens run at lava temperature.
As I mentioned in my joking comment, if I didn't despise ketchup in any form, I might be on board with you for that. The sauce recipe include with overall one for thin crust pizza is good (Cook's Illustrated generally is a lot of work for a great result, but this sauce is pretty much instant, so just take that part, if you want.) https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/01/cooks-illustrated-thin-crust-new-york-ny-pizza-recipe.html
I agree that cheese is very likely the culprit - here is an article on the scientific approach to Cheese on pizza (with an interesting graphic) that can prompt some informed expiramentation:
(Huffpost) The Best Mix Of Cheeses To Put On Your Pizza, According To Science
James and her colleagues analyzed the properties of seven different
types of cheeses — mozzarella (which is the most often used in pizza),
cheddar, Colby, Edam, Emmental, Gruyere, and provolone — and how they
affect these cheeses while baking.
What did the researchers find?
Since cheddar, Colby, and Edam cheeses have “small elasticity,” they
didn’t easily form blisters when baking. As for Gruyere, Emmental, and
provolone, their large amount of free oil prevented moisture from
easily evaporating and so resulted in less browning. Meanwhile,
mozzarella easily blisters.
So, the researchers concluded in their study that mozzarella can be
combined with any of the other six cheeses to create just the right
amount of browning and blistering you prefer on a gourmet pizza — for
instance, try cheddar for less blisters or provolone for less
browning.
Very interesting article. I've tried a couple of different cheeses, and it does indeed seem that the cheese type is to blame for the weird behaviour (holes, oil). The best one I've found so far is a bagged, grated mozzarella (not the watery Italian balls) that has "unique melting and stretching properties", 21% fat, and made from pasteurised milk, potato flour, salt, milk acid culture and microbial rennet. (I think this "mozzarella" is made by regular ol' cows, as there are no buffalos around here, but the end result is predictably good every time, and that's what matters.)
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.834607
| 2018-05-21T11:25:06 |
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|
69070
|
What is in a Jamaican Chocolate Cheesecake?
I'm interested in making a variation of this baked Jamaican Chocolate Cheesecake from the Cheesecake Shop. The description from the website is not terribly useful in identifying what the possible ingredients are:
A smooth, baked chocolate cheesecake crowned with mouthwatering
chocolate shavings, and lightly dusted with icing sugar.
I've searched the internet fruitlessly for a "Jamaican Chocolate Cheesecake" recipe. There are a few other Jamaican Cheesecake recipes but they mostly seem to involve ingredients that are Jamaican (e.g. "Jamaican mangos") so I'm under the impression that the chocolate is Jamaican and it isn't a style of cheesecake. (Is "Jamaican chocolate" a thing? I couldn't find that either...)
The closest I can find is recipes for "Jamaican Hot Chocolate" and "Jamaican Chocolate Tea" which involve some cinnamon and maybe nutmeg and other flavours.
Short of getting the people at the shop to give me the ingredients, which I doubt they would do, I'm at a loss as to what goes in this cake. This website has a non-promo photo of the cake, including the inside after it is cut: http://blog.stillaslife.com/food/jamaican-chocolate-cheesecake-from-the-cheesecake-shop/
Has anyone heard of this type of cake before and know what goes in it?
Unfortunately I haven't tasted the cheesecake. A choc-orange variety was requested so I'm just left guessing what else could be in it. I was mostly hoping it was a more common recipe than it is...
I ended up contacting them and it is just a normal chocolate cheesecake with a chocolate biscuit base. I inquired if it had rum or cinnamon or anything and they said no they just add cocoa to the normal vanilla cheesecake mix.
I'm going to award the answer to LoganGoesPlaces for the useful info and because their idea is very creative and sounds tasty.
I'm unclear from your question—have you tasted this cheesecake? If so, any comments on the flavor?
Have you considered contacting them to see what sort of ingredients it contains? Perhaps ask how it differs from a standard chocolate cheesecake?
No, unfortunately I haven't actually tasted it. It's intended to be birthday cake and that flavour was requested.... Well a choc-orange variation anyway.
You should add the actual answer from the company as an answer not as part of the question.
While I've never experienced this cheesecake personally and the photo doesn't show anything at all "Jamaican" about it, I'd hazard a guess that the recipe involves rum. The traditional go-to cake in Jamaica is a black fruit cake. It involves soaking dried fruit in rum for an extended period of time and making liberal use of molasses for color.
If I were making it myself, I'd soak some dried fruit such as dates in rum for a few days. Then I'd add rum to the cheesecake recipe and I'd chop the dates fine to put on top along with the shaved chocolate.
I have a difficult time believing that the company would include alcohol without telling consumers.
That doesn't mean there isn't rum flavoring.
You don't say rum flavoring. And according to the update to the question, there isn't any anyway.
I'm just approaching it from the perspective that if you want to prefix a product name with "Jamaican," the product should probably at least make use of an ingredient that is common in Jamaican products.
If someone knows that they cannot consume rum or they know that someone they are serving to cannot consume rum, I'd make the assumption that they already know about things like rum flavoring as an alternative.
Whether or not someone can consume rum is beside the point, what I am saying is that, as a corporate entity, it would be unlikely for them to omit the fact that there is rum (or even rum flavoring) from the description of the cake... I'm saying that your statement "I'd hazard a guess that the recipe involves rum" is unlikely to be true.
"I'm interested in making a variation of this..." - Mike D. While Mike was generally asking if anyone knew about that specific companies cheesecake, he was obviously open for suggestions. Every cake I've had while in Jamaica involved rum in some way. Including it makes more sense than the company's actual recipe, if what they told Mike was accurate.
When I recently had this cheesecake, I was pretty sure there was rum flavoring and shredded coconut in the biscuit base.
Well, according to the company, there isn't...
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.835035
| 2016-05-18T03:41:35 |
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14174
|
What is the sous vide botulism risk if storing meat post-cooking at home?
So I understand that cooking sous vide has a potentially high risk of botulism due to the anaerobic environment (vacuum). As such, you need to be careful with time and temp combinations. If you are storing food for service later, you need to flash chill it and then keep it in a fridge below 4C. This is easy enough at a restaurant with a walk-in, but is somewhat difficult in a home fridge as opening the door creates wide temperature swings.
Douglas Baldwin proposes the following temperature / time guideline for "safe" wrt botulism:
[S]pores of Clostridium botulinum, C. perfringens and B. cereus can all survive the mild heat treatment of pasteurization. Therefore, after rapid chilling, the food must either be frozen or held at
below 36.5°F (2.5°C) for up to 90 days,
below 38°F (3.3°C) for less than 31 days,
below 41°F (5°C) for less than 10 days, or
below 44.5°F (7°C) for less than 5 days
So a couple of questions about those guidelines:
How big should I expect the swings in my home fridge to be with normal usage?
If I have a second fridge and the door rarely opens, what will the temperature swings be there?
Since the botulism concern is due to the vacuum, am I correct in thinking that this concern will disappear if I remove the meat from the vacuum to store it? Obviously, this approach would reintroduce all the normal safety concerns with storing cooked meat.
yo, this dude should answer this question :) http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/14147/ideal-fridge-temperature-accounting-for-temperature-spikes
Good point, @sarge, I left him a comment asking him to chime in.
When I've collected it all I'll be happy to share the data with you in CSV format. I'll let you know my fridge type etc.
Final results and data here: http://kenmankoff.com/data/fridge/
Flash chilling is very simple. Just make sure you have a fairly large ice bath (ice and water that is at least 50% ice) and put the meat immediately from the heated bath into the ice bath. This will rapidly chill the meat prior to refrigeration. Make sure you leave the meat in the ice bath long enough for it to chill to the center if it's a thick cut or a roast.
1 How big should I expect the swings in my home fridge to be with normal usage?
The mild swings from opening and closing your refrigerator door a couple times a day aren't going to really make big difference. Just make sure you don't leave the door open for extended periods of time.
2 If I have a second fridge and the door rarely opens, what will the temperature swings be there?
There are a lot of things that influence the temperature of a refridgerator besides opening and closing the door. A refrigerator goes through cycles for chilling (and for defrosting) etc where the temperature varies. Some brands of refridgerators (i.e. Samsung) have separate cooling systems for the freezer and fridge portions so freezer defrost cycles do not cause swings in temperature in the fridge section.
Also, an empty refrigerator loses a lot more heat than a full refrigerator when the door is open. Storing plastic bottles of water or cans of soda and beer on empty shelves will actually make the temperature more constant over time since they retain more heat (or "cold") than air. Of course, if you turn a fridge into a beer-fridge, chances are that the door is gonna get opened a lot more.
3 Since the botulism concern is due to the vacuum, am I correct in thinking that this concern will disappear if I remove the meat from the vacuum to store it? Obviously, this approach would reintroduce all the normal safety concerns with storing cooked meat.
Sous-vide cooking should pasteurize the meat if it was cooked long enough and kill most . Keeping the pastuerized food that is sealed at a controlled temperature is going to preserve it for much longer than breaking open the seal and allowing any pathogens in before keeping it at the same temperature.
The most important thing is to follow the established safety charts for cooking times, temperatures, using correct flash chilling and then following the safety charts for storage temperatures and duration as well.
It already is a beer fridge, but we are doing a detox this week, so it's safe.
I'm not sure about your question 3, but as I thought about 1 and 2, I figured the swings would not be too big if you don't open your fridge for extended periods of time: how much air is really exchanged between the inside and the outside if you open your fridge door for 5 seconds - which already gives you plenty of time to get something out?
I figured the internets would have to know something about this so I set about searching for some graphs. Turns out Berkeley has a class that includes an experiment where students measure the temperature in their fridge over a 24 hr period. Most graphs look somewhat like the one on this page, where indeed the swings in temperature from the hysteresis window are larger than occasional increases because of opening the door.
I found two outliers. The first one is from a fridge catering to a large group of students, and the article suggests someone might have put a warm dish in the fridge. The second one is potentially very interesting - the author says she thinks the big upswing is from a wall defrosting cycle in the attached freezer, but that meal time opening of the fridge door didn't do anything to the temperatures.
So it looks like there are only two potential causes for raising the temperature of your fridge by more than a degree or so:
putting hot or warm food in your fridge;
having your fridge do a wall defrosting cycle for the attached freezer.
Other swings are negligible when compared to the natural operating cycle for your fridge.
FWIW, some brands of refridgerators (i.e. Samsung) have separate cooling systems for the freezer and fridge portions so freezer defrost cycles do not cause swings in temperature in the fridge section.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.835405
| 2011-04-20T14:03:07 |
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|
73937
|
Does brown rice or white rice expand more when cooked?
Which expands more when cooked: brown rice or white rice?
Why do you want to know? Context might help you get better answers. And do you mean by volume, or by weight, i.e. how much water they take on?
@Jefromi Expand would be a volume thing by most people's use of the word.
Okay, sure, weight is unlikely, but with no context it's hard to be totally sure. I should've asked whether it's about aggregate volume or individual grains, though. The latter will probably be more correlated with weight increase.
I'd say the answer will depend a lot on the exact type of rice, as well as cooking method, and how much you might "fluff" it afterward. I've seen internet sources that claim brown rice expands more, and other internet sources that say white rice expands more.
For a more precise measurement, I went to the USDA food composition database. There you can find measurements of nutrients by volume for cooked and raw rice. Although volume measurements are difficult for things like cooked rice, I figure if there's any resource that attempted consistency in measurement, it's probably something like this.
Anyhow, what I did was compare the calories listed for 1 cup raw vs. 1 cup cooked rice in various instances from the USDA nutrient list. I assume there aren't a lot of calories randomly lost during cooking (or at least any minimal loss is at similar rates). Note that the standard USDA preparation seems to be to cook until all water is absorbed (for example, in data sheet here), rather than methods like boiling in excess water and draining, which could result in more nutrient loss.
So, by comparing the calories per cup in raw vs. cooked, we can get a sense of the relative expansion of each variety of rice. Here's the data for calories per 1 cup portions, along with my calculated expansion ratio.
Brown rice
Long-grain: raw 679, cooked 248 = ratio 2.74
Medium-grain: raw 688, cooked 218 = ratio 3.16
White rice
Long-grain: raw 675, cooked 205 = ratio 3.29
Medium-grain: raw 702, cooked 242 = ratio 2.90
Short-grain: raw 716, cooked 266 = ratio 2.69
Glutinous: raw 684, cooked 169 = ratio 4.05
Bottom line is that the shape and type of rice grain seems to matter just as much as whether it's brown vs. white. Again, there are bound to be inaccuracies here, so I'd only take these figures as estimates. But there doesn't seem to be a significant trend that brown rice always expands more or less than white.
My instinctive answer is that brown rice expands more than white. Because my family made rice a lot while I was growing up, and I'm really sure I remember that brown rice is made with a lot more water per cup than white (half to a full cup more water per cup of rice), and the grains after cooking are plumper and fluffier - that is, there's more volume in cooked brown rice, and the grains look more similar before cooking than after so it isn't just a question of different starting points.
So I would guess there's extra water being absorbed by each grain, even if some extra is also being lost to evaporation, and more water being absorbed by the rice means more volume where the extra water is, in brown rice rather than white.
|
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.835870
| 2016-09-14T01:16:50 |
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|
77802
|
How much do egg yolks and whites weigh, in grams?
I have an Italian recipe that has been translated to English. The recipe calls for 360g egg whites and 240g yolks. Can anyone tell me how much this is?
The rule of thumb to divide an egg is:
60% egg-white
30% yolk
10% shell
So it depends on the size of egg you use (note that the size definition varies between countries).
Example:
For a 60g (middle of the weight range) European M / American L egg, that's 60*0.6 = 36g whites and 18g yolk.
-> So you'd need (about) 10-11 whites and 13-14 yolks.
Of course, not all eggs have the exact same weight and therefore I recommend you use the estimated number of necessary eggs as a guideline and weigh the whites and yolks.
I raised birds and held an egg handlers license so will back up the guideline statement. If the recipe is delicate enough to be giving egg quantities in weights rather than egg counts, then I would definitely separate and weigh. Eggs will vary substantially, for instance shells will be thinner or thinker time of year and age/health/diet of bird that laid it. In US weight requirement for eggs are by the dozen even though listed as individual egg, so can vary in size within the dozen. Should you use non-chicken, the ratios change. Duck eggs for instance are a higher percentage yolk.
Your best be would be to get a small kitchen scale.
In general
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_egg_sizes
1/3 Yolk
2/3 White
So, for a Medium egg (49.6g), if my maths do not suck this morning.
White = 2/3 * 49.6g = 33g
Yolk = 1/3 * 49.6g = 16.5g
For 360g of white : 360g / 33g = 11 medium eggs
For 240g of yolk : 240g / 16.4g = 14.5 medium eggs
You are ignoring the shell....
remove the shell and recompute. (thus using a scale makes thing easier)
@Max It's nice to know the answer before you have to break any eggs though!
Canonically speaking, this is the answer.... get a scale, tare and weigh the egg fluids.
However, I doubt the OP's recipe requires "gram" precision. Probably, medium eggs would suffice for his/her application.
Nominally 15 eggs open one up and weigh is an excellent answer. Maybe open 3 and use 3 whites and 2 yokes would give you a better average.
@Paulb recipes from a professional context typically give eggs by weight, not number.
Average accepted weight for a large egg in Canada, (w.o shell) is 50g, 30g white and 20g yolk.
For 360g of white, that would be 12 eggs. For 240g of yolks, also 12 eggs.
You got lucky! Just seperate 12 eggs.
If recipe calls for the gram, try to respect that as it is important, but you could get away with just separating 12 eggs. Happy baking!
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.836146
| 2017-01-26T15:18:12 |
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|
85308
|
How can I extract menthol powder from fresh mint/peppermint?
I have peppermint/mint growing in my garden backyard. I want to make Ice Cream for children and they are asking for some flavour paan ice cream in Hindi (mint ice cream) and for that I want Menthol powder to mix into plain ice cream. How can I make Menthol Powder from Mint/Peppermint Leaves?
Why is this the solution you have chosen? Why not just extract the mint into your sugar solution?
i have Mint/Peppermint Leaves pls tell how to do it i have no idea how to do it ? @Catija
Google a recipe for mint ice cream that uses fresh mint. Stop trying to make menthol powder.
Do you have an ice cream maker? Or are you trying to get this powder so that you can add it to plain ice cream?
add to plain ice cream
@Catija Your not answering this persons question. They want to extract menthol, not buy it from the store or put fresh mint in there.
@JosephCasey You're correct - and that's why it's not an answer.
@Catija well then why are you "recommending" to them to use fresh mint, when they want to extract menthol powder themselves?
One option would be to make a syrup.
Heating water and sugar with the mint, and straining the mint leaves out would be enough to make a simple syrup - altering the ratio of sugar to water will control thickness and shelf life, altering the mount of mint will change intensity.
Such a syrup can be used as-is on ice cream, flavored syrups often are, but if you're set on a powder the syrup can also be dehydrated through a candy-making process (like rock candy or like hard candy) to give a minty crystalline powder, with a texture somewhere between crushed hard candy and sugar crystals. It'll absorb water and become sticky easily, maybe a silica gel pack or something like would help keep it dry.
Another option would be to skip the syrup step and go directly for mint infused sugar - bruise and tear the mint, layer in a jar with plenty of sugar, stir occasionally. The mint oils will rub off into the sugar crystals, and the spent leaves can be fairly easily sifted from the sugar for use. This is simpler and will give a fairly dry result, but it will take more mint leaves for the same amount of sugar, and extract less of the oils (only what seeps from the surface) - the mint leaves will still hold a lot of their flavor.
A third option would be to try making the powder from dehydrating a tea, without the sugar. This is not an easy option, though the powder it would produce would be strong and purer than the sugared options. You would want to make a strongly brewed tea, reduce it as much as possible, and then dehydrate it down to powder. The extended heating may change or alter flavors, and the amount of powder reclaimed will be very less - enough less that it may be physically difficult to dislodge from the surface it was dehydrated on, as it would tend to form a very thin residue unless the amount of tea (and thus volume of the mint residues) is very large.
Please be aware that these options will make a mint powder, or a mint/sugar powder, which may have different flavors or textures than the menthol powder you're used to.
I'd probably just dry and grind mint before I'd try dehydrating tea.
Note that these all answer "how to get mint flavor in an ice cream" which is a different question than "how to extract pure menthol", which was the original question.
This is a fun question, but your plan is not very practical.
If you indeed insist on doing it, you have three steps in the process of menthol extraction:
Extract the essential oil from the leaves
Separate the essential oil from the solvent you used
Freeze the menthol out of the essential oil.
For the essential oil extraction, the only method doable at home is a steam/water distillation. (OK, there are also absolue methods, but they are less practical, and not necessary for mint). So you are left with a mixture of a hydrosol and mint essential oil.
Here is where it becomes difficult: the second step is to separate the oil from the hydrosol. Most methods I know of will produce something which is not food-safe. The popular ones are to use a nonpolar solvent and then boil it off (I hope you don't plan on handling diethyl ether in your kitchen!) but I also found a reference to "passing it through a bed of anhydrous sodium sulphate". This is probably your best bet edibilitywise, but getting the supplies and learning the process won't be easy.
In the end, you have to freeze the essential oil to a sufficiently low temperature (the source with the sodium sulphate uses -60 C but I also found references to -22), then keep it for a few days and harvest the crystals.
If you are brave enough to do it at home (and live in a place where it is not illegal to have a distillation still, and found a freezer that goes to -22) you will need time, space for the apparatus, and mint. Lots of mint. Here I found an article for a portable still which weighs 635 kg, has a 500 l distillation tank, can process up to 9 kg dried mint per distillation (you'll first need an area where you can hang 72 kg of fresh mint to dry out for a month or two, or find a dehydrator and pay for the energy to process it) and yields about 100 ml of essential oil from peppermint, half that if you use spearmint. The oil consists of about 50% menthol, but I couldn't find references for the actually recovered amount when using crystalization only (chemists tend to follow up with a boric acid distillation) but let's say you can recover half of the contained menthol, this would be 15-25 grams of pure menthol crystals.
If your children want just a few portions of ice cream, you should be able to downscale this to 1/10 or less, and get away with a much smaller still. But you'll still need several square meters worth of mint plants, and your children will have to wait a few weeks for their ice cream.
As an aside, owning a still in the US is not illegal in and of itself, it’s all what you do with it. It is perfectly legal to own a still to produce essential oil extracts or distilled water. Once it is used to rectify spirits, you cross the line.
one more Question is Menthol Crystal and Menthol powder are same thing ?
@KevinNowaczyk there are different rules everywhere. In Germany, owning a still above 0.5 l is illegal, but I found a coppersmithery saying that they have a special still which can produce essential oils at this volume.
@AkhilJain If "menthol powder" really means menthol ground into powder, then yes, all you have to do is to grind your menthol crystals to powder. If locally the name "menthol powder" is used for some other edible powder which is flavored with menthol, then no - but I have no idea how people are using it where you live.
@rumtscho Couldnt the same thing work with steam distillation? As in boiling the mentol out of the mint leaves after cutting the stems off, and then possibly dehydrating the menthol/water mix, to get the water out, then just freeze the menthol into crystals?
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.836403
| 2017-10-29T12:27:03 |
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|
87790
|
How can I fix my caramel sauce?
I just made caramel sauce using 1 1/2 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cup butter, and 1/2 cup milk. I was supposed to use 1/4 cup milk but i poured in extra by accident so I doubled the other ingredients. But my caramel sauce came out grainy and buttery, it also crystallizes as soon as it cools. What can I do to fix it?
Did you cook it to a specific temperature or did you do everything based on time?
I didn't check the temp but I cooked it for about 15 mins maybe less
It is possible that you have stirred the caramel. Never stir a caramel.
Okay. Yes you can save your sauce if it's crystallized without seriously impacting flavor. You can always start over with sugar, so to speak. Unless you burn the whole dang pot, candy can always be saved.
First of all, take your caramel (assuming you've tasted it and it tastes okay) and put it back in a pot with a fair amount of water. How much isn't important really because you'll be boiling it all off. But you do need enough to dissolve everything, and get all those wannabe fudge crystals back in solution. It will take some time to boil off and because of the butter and milk in there you will want to stir occasionally to make sure it doesn't burn. Because burning is the only real way to ruin things.
Stirring can indeed cause crystallization, but its not instantaneous and frankly it's... Not even a problem? I made walnut caramels for Christmas and they all decided to crystallize and turn into fudge after a couple days. They're still delicious. So there is literally no reason to throw away a batch of candy that's crystallized. Even if you can't turn it into what you wanted, it's still good stuff that's nicer than what you'll get at a store. (I am hurt by how many stories I hear of "ruined" candy being thrown out.)
But how do you keep crystallization from happening here? There are several methods to help prevent crystallization. People attach supernatural importance to "not stirring" but... I stir my caramels a lot and don't get crystallization. Stirring won't help you as much as reducing the heat and rotating your pot to prevent hot burny spots, but if it's stir or burn, stir, friend. Stir with my blessing.
That said, the more reliable method to prevent crystallization (where I am) is to add some corn syrup. Literally just add a tablespoon or two of corn syrup to your new pot of dissolved caramel liquid, cook it up to the consistency you want, and you probably won't get crystals again.
You can use any inverted sugar syrup in place of corn syrup though. So glucose syrup and rice syrup and golden syrup and honey (and more) would all work to keep it from crystallizing, but they all have their own character both texturally and flavor wise, so you might want to play around. Honey might be the best texturally, but has a pronounced flavor. Corn syrup is second best texturally in my opinion, but has a very mild flavor. Rice syrup has a lovely maltiness but tends to be stiff and stretchy.... So, playing around is a good idea here.
You could also add a little acid to the mix, but I would say maybe a teaspoon of lemon or preferably a pinch of cream of tartar. You will taste the addition of acid, but in a small enough amount, it would add a tang reminiscent of dulce de leche. Just be careful since you won't be able to take the acid back out.
The other thing I would emphasize is not to heat too high. Use the pot with the thickest bottom you have to try and prevent hot spots, and be willing to use a lower heat and take more time. If you have a glass top stove, you may well have more trouble with crystallization because the glass top doesn't actually keep a good steady heat. A coil top stove or open flame are both better if they're an option, but you'll probably want to stay on low or medium low heat with them. If you use a lower temperature, you'll be able to avoid stirring as well, for any good that actually does.
In short: you can always fix candy. Adding some corn syrup helps prevent crystallization. Acid does too but affects the flavor more obviously. Use a lower heat to prevent hot spots and avoid stirring if you can. If it's stir or burn, just stir. Haters gonna hate. If it stubbornly insists on crystallizing, so what? Let it be fudgey. Dissolve it in coffee. It's still good.
You might be able to save the sauce if you continue to heat it on low to medium heat, but I'm going out on a limb here. It will eventually turn into hard toffee, which you can let cool and eat as it is, or if you need a "sauce" you can process the toffee to a powder and mix it with whipped cream.
My recipe called for a cup of sugar 6 tbsp. of butter and a half cup of heavy cream. My sugar turned into a mess while heating on medium heat. It never melted but seized into little chunks. Then I began adding my butter and it got worse. I took it all out of the pot and added a splash of water to the pot first and let it heat up and put the chunky little bits back in the pot and let it boil for a few minutes. I added half of the heavy cream and it began to smooth out. It was still somewhat grainy so I poured it through a sieve. Voila. It worked fine. I have smooth caramel sauce. Just plain water did the trick.
The "grainy" look I guess would be crystallisation, which has a couple of causes when making caramel sauce. The recipe you are using is new to me (gee there are a lot of recipes for caramel sauce), the biggest difference being lack of water to sugar (or in another way, too much sugar to water ) for the dissolved sugar to stay "invert." Total cooking time is also a factor.
I suggest you could bring your "grainy" mixture to a simmer and add quarter cup of lemon juice, mix slowly by moving the saucepan around from side to side, front and back. Do this carefully — caramel can cause awful burns, and using a spoon or whisk will cause crystals to form. This should cause "invert" sugar to occur and remain stable — but not for long, perhaps a few hours.
That is a LOT of lemon juice for the recipe amounts as stated. Adding a little acid could help, but that much would seriously impact the flavor.
I don't think you can fix it because you would have to liquify the sugar to correct it. And the butter/milk would burn at those temperatures.
The only caramel sauce recipe I know is:
Boil sugar with a little water until brown
Pour in a splash of cream (which stops the cooking) and whisk until dissolved.
If I were you I would strain what you have, and use the liquid to make hot chocolate or something. Then start again. Maybe use my recipe, if yours is very different?
also for your recipe, does the caramelized sugar stay liquefied or does it harden again?
the cream bubbles and loses a little moisture, and then the sugar dissolves into the cream. It would stay liquid while warmer than room temperature.
Like this, but stop at 1:30 before they add the butter :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acYlitB1LH4
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.836973
| 2018-02-17T00:41:55 |
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|
88622
|
Do I put vinegar in the water when poaching an egg?
Does the water need to boil or just be hot? Do I need to put salt and vinegar in the water or just salt? And if it needs vinegar, what kind? How long do I leave it in the water to get the white solid but not the yolk? I do not like raw egg white, so this is very important for me. But the tricky part is to have the yolk nice and runny though...
Hi, Anja, and welcome. Perhaps write this as a bulleted list. A paragraph with a bunch of questions might get less responses.
By far the most important factor in a nice poached egg is the freshness of the egg.
Fresh eggs shouldn't need vinegar to help them set, but It can help with an older egg, whose white has started to go a bit runnier. Vinegar does leave a flavor, but if you're poaching your eggs ahead of time and putting them in iced water to stop them cooking, that does seem to wash it out.
Salting the water will toughen an egg, better to season it after it comes out.
A large egg, starting at room temperature, in barely simmering water (trembling) will take 3 1/2 minutes to just solidify the white, and leave the yolk very fluid. If you want your yolk more viscous, another half minute.
In my experience, while vinegar will hold the whites together a bit, it can toughen the egg, and adds what I consider to be an unpleasant taste. If your concerned about keeping the whites from spreading and streaking, use a fine mesh tea-strainer to get rid of the excess moisture from the eggs. This will also help the egg white solidify faster without affecting the cooking of the yolk.
As for the water, it should be barely simmering.
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.837608
| 2018-03-25T13:54:21 |
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|
7959
|
How do you smoke water?
Roux mention in this answer smoking water. How do you do this? What does it taste like? How do you use it?
Sounds fascinating!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1sAkZF7SCQ
The link you posted is broken, what was the question you're referring to?
The link Seth refers to is to a now-deleted question asking for a list of suggestions for adding to pasta. The entire answer read "If you have access to a smoker, smoke water and use that for making your dough.", and was written by the same person as the accepted answer here
With a water pipe?
This is a dupe of Could you smoke a sauce?
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.837776
| 2010-10-08T23:16:13 |
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|
125205
|
Can I pressure cook nested containers?
I have some tutoring in pressure canning, and an engineering background, so please don't judge me for what is about to be a naive question.
I understand that pressure canning uses a sealed liquid environment at higher than atmospheric pressure at 250 F for a measured period of time to create a sterile environment.
I want to pack small containers of food samples fully submerged in liquid in thier respective half inch cube closeable thin glass boxes (microscope slide thickness) stacked next to each other inside the jar, to occupy the space within the jar.
They would be separateable thusly so the flavors would not mix.
These cubes would occupy the nominal headspace limit of the jar, then the jar filled with water per jar requirements.
On other words, the ingredients of the mason jar would be fully but individual sealed.
The mechanism would be an electric pressure canner.
Questions:
Would the pressurized water bath properly heat the cubed through thier in glass envelopes?
Would the mason jar do its job of maintaining a sterile environment until opened, just as it would if the ingredients were tightly packed?
Would the heat and pressure conditions still transmit to within the contents of the sealed cubes, given sufficient cooking time?
The purpose is to make a bento-box in glass.
Hi, you seem to not be aware how food safety works. The questions you're asking are just a prerequisite for something being declared safe. The next steps have to be done by specialists, and involve doing risk modelling, gathering empirical proof that the food conserved this way really doesn't harbor pathogens, and then having an official body write up the method in foolproof terms and declare it safe. So, even if somebody here would know the answer to your exact questions and would tell you a confident "yes", that still wouldn't result in safe food.
I expect you're going to have a major problem with this scheme even before you get to "did it seal or not", which is that the interior glass containers will likely break. Pressure canning is pretty tough on the containers involved.
@rumtscho valid point and good to emphasize food safety concerns, but the question is not asking about food safety, but the physics of the setup. At least that’s how I read the question.
@Stephie I also read the literal part as being about the physics only. I still suspect that the OP is concerned about the food safety and may interpret a "yes" or "no" answer as being equivalent to "is safe" or "is not safe", that's why I left the comment.
Well, they're not getting a "yes" or "no", so that won't be a problem.
You might want to look at autoclave-able culture tubes as a "very small canning jar" where your samples would not be double-wrapped.
Any container can be pressure cooked to recommended temperatures given enough time in the cooker. This may cause the food inside to become overcooked. But that's not your main problem with this setup.
When you're heat-treating a jar in a water bath, it is not completely sealed. Instead, the lid is just a little loose so that pressure, in the form of air, can escape. Then, when the jar comes out of the bath, one tightens the lid to form a tight seal.
It is clearly not possible to do this with a nested container. This means that the inner containers would either need to be unsealed (resulting in potential leakage into the other container), or would need to be tightly sealed before going into the pressure canner. Tightly sealed inner containers would have major issues with unequalized pressure between the inside and outside, particularly when they go above 100C. The "microscope slide thick" glass would certainly break, and might even explode.
If you think about it, you don't see commercially for sale foodstuffs packaged with both inner and outer canned sealed containers, and these problems are likely why. You're trying to solve an engineering problem that nobody in the industry has yet solved satisfactorily, so expect it to be very hard.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.837876
| 2023-09-11T08:33:11 |
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|
94036
|
Why is the English word "curry" used for all these different dishes?
More like meta-cooking question, but I believe it fits here better than on travel stack.
Why is English so poor at differentiating all those different things hidden under one common name: curry?
Is there a historical reason for that, such as similar (for the sailors in XVI century) food from different exotic countries? Or do they have similar basis, like set of spices, flavors?
Background
There are at least few different dishes (or even dish families) from different countries that western people call curry, even if they are not similar:
India curry, which is I think the general name for multiple versions of thick sauces with meets, including butter chicken, masala chicken, etc.
Thai curries based on more watered-down sauces with notable taste from coconut milk. There are at least 3 of them (red, yellow, green), and in Thai language they are called ngang which is also the general term for soup (I can be wrong on this one).
Japanese curry
Filipino curry
The spice called curry - in stores in Europe you can buy this spice (in packs like black pepper, cumin, oregano, etc.) which is essentially mix of simple spices.
There are probably more things that are translated as curry in English.
So, how to differentiate it all? Do all of those have something in common? Or is it just a lack of distinct wording?
While on topic here, you might find that English.se is a better fit. Related: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/458870/when-was-the-word-curry-first-used . You might also consider how "orient" was used to refer to anything east of about Athens around the same time, as an indication of the prevailing attitudes
Also 5 actually splits into two: curry powder/paste and at least two aromatic leaves
There's also "curry" as in "to curry a horse" which is spelled and pronounced the same but has a completely different origin.
I think my answer for 'quick breads' applies : https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/91697/67
"Curry" is based on the Tamil word "Kari", which refers to any of various highly-spiced side dishes intended to be eaten over rice. Englishmen from the British East India Company encountered the Tamil word in their first explorations of the subcontinent, applied it more broadly to pretty much all Indian dishes, and used it in preference to words in other Indian languages.
By the early 19th century, "Curry houses" were established as restaurants in London. As a result, when British travellers encountered highly spiced stews in Siam and Japan, they called these "curry" as well. Many of these dishes were descended from Indian cuisine in any case.
If you're interested in this, I highly recommend getting a copy of Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors. It'll give you a history of the last 600 years of "curry", and recipes besides.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.838199
| 2018-11-19T11:59:10 |
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|
96882
|
Do I need to boil flax seed egg substitute?
Most recipes I've seen for flax “eggs” simply say to mix 1 tbsp of ground flax seed with 3 tbsp of water and chill, but I read a recipe (I think it was for vegan cookies) that said to boil the mixture before chilling.
Does this improve the chemistry of the egg substitute in any way?
I don't know if it improves things, but I've just let it sit and it's worked fine. I don't tend to refrigerate unless I'm mixing up a large batch (to make it easier when baking many types of christmas cookies)
Heating the water will speed up absorption. The question is by how much and if it’s worth the extra time?
I have made many recipes with flax as an egg substitute. I don’t ever recall boiling the water. I can’t think of any of them that didn’t turn out as intended.
Do you have any links for the recipes that recommend this?
Nope. I can't seem to find it. Your experience matches mine though, so I'll probably accept this answer. Any references for the claim about absorption?
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.838703
| 2019-03-12T20:28:21 |
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|
55906
|
Bread and using a proofer
I have a bread proofer machine and would love to make Sourdough bread.
I have no idea if I'm supposed to use active yeast or follow a recipe that calls for basic Sourdough Starter, and if so, what is the difference?
What purpose does the proofing machine serve? And when do I use it during the bread making process?
I'm very green at bread making, as you probably have ascertained.
The bread proofer machine serves mainly one purpose:
Keeping a choosen temperature.
This comes to play whenever you want to let yeast grow and multiply. Yeast can develop at very different temperature ranges, from fridge to warm room. But "cosy & warm" is usually the temperature where it's most active.
The most obvious use is:
proofing dough, both during bulk and final rise
But looking closely there are other yeast-related uses:
refreshing sourdough
brewing (don't ask me for details here!)
And even non-yeast uses like
making yoghurt
Now, you are asking for a sourdough bread. I won't give you a fixed recipe, but encourage you to choose something nice from the vast realms of the WWW. Try The Fresh Loaf, Wild Yeast or whatever strikes your fancy. I'd assume a Sourdough bread to be made with - obviously - sourdough. But that doesn't exclude yeast, some recipes use both.
The main differences are that sourdough (which contains yeasts and strains of lactobacillus in symbiosis) is more the slow-and-steady type of dough with rather long rising times (as in hours up to days) whereas pure yeast-based dough may be ready to bake after only one to two hours or so. (But there are yeast-only recipes like baguette which take days of proofing in the fridge.)
Choose a simple recipe to start and use your proofing machine whenever the recipe says something along the lines of "let dough rise in a warm place / oven with pilot light / ... for X time / until doubled in bulk.
Remember: When you start baking, it's a good idea to follow the instructions, note what you didn't like and work from there. Perhaps you'll be back here with a more specific question after a few trial-and-error runs - we'll be happy to answer again. And: Have fun!
The big difference between a sourdough based bread and one made with what you are calling active yeast is the sourdough yeasts are wild and take a while to develop into a starter that is as strong as purchased yeast. The biggest difference is in the flavor and texture of the bread. As I understand a proofer just adds another level of control to the environment and thud ultimately the taste. Making bread from scratch (sourdough) requires more time for the starter yeasts to develop the taste(longer cooler fermentation = better taste and texture).
A starter that is"new" won't produce the same bread as one that is older and more robust. My first loaves were like hockey pucks, but I love what I am able to do today (5 years later). I usually start my bread process the day before I plan to bake, so if a quick loaf is desired use commercial (store bought yeast), and if you can wait, the sourdough is the best way to go, BUT you have to have an active starter which at the beginning is a time investment of days into a week.
Bread making means that you are tending a culture of live yeasts - and, in sourdough, also bacteria. Just like the lizard in a terrarium, they thrive best when given optimal temperature, humidity and food.
Your dough already takes care of the food and pH of the environment, but if you want your bread to rise either with a given speed (to fit your schedule) or in a given manner, you can use a proofing machine. "Given manner" means that the yeast colony will create different byproducts depending on growth rate and the presence of overpopulation stress. These byproducts taste differently, so your bread will have a different taste depending on the circumstances under which it rose. "Proofing" is a synonym for letting the bread rises.
When you know have determined which temperature and humidity produce the colony growth pattern you like best (or the recipe has this info for you), you can use a proofing machine to achieve it. It is simply a controlled environment when you set up your preferred temperature and humidity and the box maintains it for you.
So much for the theory. In practice, I'm surprised that somebody so new at baking bread has this piece of equipment, as it is quite uncommon. It is something which can give a specialist the last 5% of quality which are hard to achieve any other way, but until you have arrived at that point, it is unlikely to give you much advantage over proofing on the counter or in the refrigerator.
Still, now that you have it, the way to learn to bake bread is to first learn the right process. There are many extensive books on this, but you can also find shorter resources on the Internet, Stephie linked some sites which have articles on bread baking. After that, you'll know when the proofing step is, and then you will be able to use your machine when a recipe says to proof on the counter.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.838823
| 2015-03-21T13:54:47 |
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|
94349
|
White residue after putting bacon grease laden cookware in dishwasher
I scrape off most of the bacon grease then put it in a dishwasher. The residue doesn't feel very greasy, it has kind of a powder feel to it. There is only residue on the cookwares, and no residue on all other plates. The cookwares are a nonstick pan and a silicone coated turner. It happened with two different brands of bacon. I'm using finish powerball tablets.
I used to cook gammon /bacon joints in a slow cooker and find the same thing (cheap or expensive DW tablets). But it came off quite easily washing up by hand (does yours?). I assumed it to be protein but never looked for a definitive answer (hence this comment, I'd like to know too).
I don't understand completely @dennis97519, is the residue on all your dishes or just some of them?
@GdD It's only on the things I used to cook bacon or used in (presumably heated) bacon fat. So the nonstick pan and the silicone turner.
@ChrisH Yes, it comes off easily washing by hand washing. It's just that it's somewhat annoying. Also iirc the residue doesn't come off from rewashing in dishwasher.
@dennis97519 just the same as mine. I often ended up putting thing through the dishwasher, then taking the residue off with a sponge and washing up liquid and rinsing cold (my hot water takes ages to run hot and I very rarely wash up by hand. Not the best solution though.
Nonstick pan and and silicone coating are hydrophobic. They'll like to stick to bacon grease.
I don't have a dishwasher, so I do dishes by hand, but there is something I've noticed that might help--when I have something very greasy, I sometimes find it hard to get it comepletely clean after the first washing, washing it a second time right away doesn't work much better, I have to wash it, let it completely dry, and then wash it again. Perhaps putting the items with residue through a second cycle will work.
Instead of applying soap to a sponge and then scrubbing the dish apply liquid dish soap directly to the pan and massage gently with your hand. This should help remove remaining residue.
I always use a liquid dish soap that is a degreaser to remove or help remove grease from any type of dish I place in the dishwasher. I rinse them some so as not to be adding a lot of extra soap to the dishwasher. And I haven't seen any problem with my dishwasher when using liquid soap. You just have to be careful how much you use. I hope this helps. Happy cleaning.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.839237
| 2018-11-29T03:53:16 |
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|
45603
|
Cooking beef for pepper steak
From American-"Chinese" restaurants, I usually order a dish called "Pepper Steak with Onions". This seems to be a simple enough dish, mostly a straightforward stir-fry, except for one unique characteristic: the beef comes out soft and easy to chew, much like chicken.
How is this achieved? Is it a certain cut of meat? A certain cooking technique?
possible duplicate of How do Chinese restaurants tenderize their meat?
Disagree that this is a duplicate: OP is asking about which cut to use in addition to any tenderization technique (which may come before or during cooking).
Meat in stir-fries is often velveted. That makes for a supremely soft chunk of meat, and it can be done with any type of meat. This answer actually addresses chicken: How to cook extremely soft chicken?, but it applies just as well to beef. It's usually done with egg and cornstarch, but sometimes it's done with a small amount baking soda instead, as in this recipe for Beef and Broccoli.
In addition to @Jolenealaska's answer the beef is cut across the grain, and very thin. It also helps to start with a tender cut like sirloin or rib.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.839472
| 2014-07-15T22:46:55 |
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|
71647
|
can one use a toaster oven to bake cakes and cupcakes?
I am an amateur chef that has passion in cooking.m looking for a small affordable oven to use for my baking but I am not sure which one to go for. i.e a toaster oven,a microwave oven or a mini oven. please advise.
I don't know what a "mini oven" is, so I will skip this one.
You should not, under any circumstances, get a microwave. A microwave is not suitable for baking. There are models which are supposed to be a microwave and convection oven at once, but I have frequently heard of them not turning off the microwaves when in convection mode, despite the manual saying otherwise. If you happen to get such a model, you will not be able to bake cakes in it.
I have a toaster oven of this type:
It serves me well for all kinds of cake and bread baking. Whatever has gone wrong with my cakes, I never had the feeling that it was the oven which was the obstacle to them getting better.
As far as I am aware, you cannot use the tiny toaster ovens which are only about 15 cm deep. I have never tried it, but I would be afraid that the heating elements are too close, and also you cannot fit a cake pan in there.
thank you thank you soooooo much. This really helps me coz I was stuck@rumtscho
I'd call that a mini oven (but toaster ovens aren't really a thing here in the UK)
Look for a mini oven with quartz heating elements for the best results, but that may put it outside the "affordable" range depending on your limits. Breville makes one with quartz elements for about $250 on Amazon. Yeah, it's not a $50 toaster oven, but it does a much more reliable job.
A good combi microwave can do it, but the top might cook a bit quickly.
The one we have is a Panasonic, and has microwave, grill and convection functions, as well as combinations of microwave with the other two. The convection mode uses a top element and a fan hence the top of the food may brown too fast. Foil should help. The controls, cooking in metal, and power consumption data (both in the book and tested by running it off a 6A circuit breaker) rule out the microwaves coming on when they're not supposed to, unlike some models which rely on turning down the microwave component to zero with an imprecise dial.
This wasn't cheap but cheaper models are available. Look for the manual online to find out more once you've identified a model.
I surely will @chris H
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.839604
| 2016-07-25T05:02:52 |
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|
108268
|
What kind of cloth is OK for cooking glutinous rice and how to handle it?
I got myself some glutinous rice, but it's suggested that I use a cotton cloth in order to cook it. Thing is, I take food safety quite seriously and I wanted to know what kind of cloth specifically is OK to use and what isn't. For example, would a washed piece of a white t-shirt with no print be okay? If not, what to look for? I'm from Poland and I looked for "steam cooking" results on allegro.pl, but found nothing made for steam cooking. Also, how to properly clean it afterward in a food-safe way?
Use corn husks or bamboo leaves?
I would look for cheesecloth, it should be widely available.
If not, yes, a white cotton shirt should be good enough, make certain it is not a blend of different fabrics; and I would wash it in boiling water before.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.839910
| 2020-05-10T20:15:41 |
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|
21573
|
What should I cover bread dough with while it's rising?
If you let (bread) dough rise, the recipe always asks to cover it. Years ago, I read to cover it with a wet towel. Nowadays, I see more and more recipes that ask for plastic wrap (aka saran or cling wrap).
The towel lets air through, the wrap does not. What is the difference between the two in the end result? What is best to use and why?
I'm talking about the first as well as the second (proofing) rise. If there is a difference between the phases, please inform me.
The goal is to keep the surface of the bread from drying out.
A wet towel works fine but plastic wrap is cheaper and easier than constantly cleaning wet towels.
I have used both methods and haven't noticed a difference in the bread produced. In very dry climates, when I made bread with multiple rises I sometimes had to redampen the towel which was an added inconvenience.
Lately I have been proofing large batches of bread in a large stock pot and just use the lid of the pot as the only cover.
I'd like to add my opinion on using towels - multiple times I've had a problem using towels when fermenting / rising using sourdough - since it takes about 4 hours at its fastest, and as much as 8+ hours when fermenting at cold temps. The towel dries and after that the dough dries, creating an unpleasant skin. Using lightly misted plastic wrap instead is IMO much better. :)
Ah yes, I also let dough rise in a pot once but the recipe asked for plastic wrap, not the lid (but that was waffle dough, not bread dough).
Put a serving plate over the bowl. Normal way up so it doesn't slide off and doesn't need washing. Easy!
A small amount of surface drying is not going to ruin a bread dough. Think of the millions of bread making machines out there, no plastic wrap required with them, just a reasonably fitting lid that stops air drafts, hence why the towel method worked fine
+1 it really has to dry out pretty significantly to do much harm.
A good alternative to either a towel (which you have to wash and is prone to sticking) or plastic wrap (which ain't cheap or good for the environment) is a clear plastic shower cap. It does the same job as plastic wrap, but is reusable. The elasticated edge stretches around even big bowls, providing a snug fit.
I work with quite wet doughs and bake in a moist environment, but
first rise - in a large Tupperware container, lid on but ajar at a corner to let gases escape.
second rise - simply dusted with flour.
No noticeable skinning at all or loss of oven spring.
Much the same process I use as well. I often dust with flour or cover loosely with a floured couche.
I've been letting my pizza dough rise in reusable plastic containers with plastic lids (I coat the bottom and sides of the containers with a bit of olive oil so that the dough doesn't stick). Seems to work just fine, and it's incredibly easy.
I just put a sheet of baking paper on top of the mixing bowl (in which I mixed the dough) and rest a wooden cutting board (which I used to knead the dough). I'll use the baking paper in the baking tin later, so nothing got wasted and there's no extra mess :)
I prefer not to introduce plastic into my baking where feasible. I spend time and money and love on baking, using nice organic flours and all natural ingedients, and the plastic shower cap, although very effective, makes me think there are unhealthy hydrocarbons dripping on to the lovely dough. I vote for clean white flour sack lint free tea towels, dampened aNd even re dampened if needed. I like the dinner plate over the bowl technique too.
Personally, I spray plastic wrap with oil, then use that. Doesn't stick, even with very high hydration doughs, and completely prevents the dough from drying.
Another method is to use a food-grade plastic bag. Tie it shut inflated with air (so it isn't touching the dough). The humidity in the bag will stay high enough to prevent drying, and since the dough doesn't touch the bag, the bag stays clean and can be re-used.
The food-safe bag is the most environmentally friendly (washing cloths isn't so environmentally friendly).
You put the wrap on top of the dough, not on top of the bowl?
@Mien when its doing its second rise, I put it on top of the dough (because its not in a bowl anymore). When its in a bowl, I put it atop the bowl.
I use shower caps especially kept for this purpose and just lightly oil the inside of them. Either normal ones or the thin, clear sort you get in hotels work fine and saves the hassle and waste of clingfilm.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.840020
| 2012-02-21T18:53:56 |
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|
59312
|
Substituting red beans for adzuki beans?
I've recently gotten into making mochi and really wanted to try my hand at daifuku (red bean paste-filled mochi) and I'm finding that there is an upsetting lack of adzuki/azuki beans available in my area.
I've seen suggestions for using dark red kidney beans as a substitute, but I want to know if I could possibly use the small red beans I have in my pantry already.
possible duplicate of Substitute for red bean paste?
Well personally I would not substitute red beans and definitely not kidney beans. But why not buy them online? You should be able to find whole beans or bean paste easily. Google search or checking websites of Japanese grocers in your area should turn up many options. I can't imagine that whole beans or canned paste would have any shipping issues.
I don't think this is a duplicate, because the other question asked for any possible substitute, and never addressed this particular possibility. But the link's helpful!
I don't recommend red kidney beans, but I've proposed some other alternatives here http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/27495/azuki-bean-substitute-for-anpan
Is there a Chinatown nearby ? Red beans or red bean paste will surely be sold in any Chinatown...
My experience is that adzuki have a very different taste and texture than red beans and I wouldn't substitute one for the other. If you've really gotten into mochi, it will be worth the effort to find adzuki - I've bought them in natural food stores, Whole Foods and on line And I buy in bulk so I never run out. Beans seem to last forever.
Yes, you can use them, and you can also use black beans. It won't be exactly the same but as long as you make it properly it will work.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.840406
| 2015-07-24T04:40:03 |
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|
89158
|
Is it safe to consume microwaved Campbell’s chicken stock?
I often pour a bowl of frozen veggies and a cup of chicken stock (straight from those 1 litre boxes) in a bowl and microwave it for 12 minutes. It comes out fairly hot.
Is this safe to do? Or am I risking food poisoning by not boiling the chicken stock?
Since this is about a specific product, why don't you ask the company directly instead?
12 minutes is a long time in a microwave oven1!!
@Raditz_35 I selected a specific brand as an example, I realistically use a few but assume they all share the same properties.
Aseptic packaging which is what the Swanson's and anyother brands products in those coated carboard-like packing 9a.K.a Tetrapaks) broth are safe. The aseptic processing has killed thhe harmful bacteria. So long as it was kept refrigerated below 40 deg F after opening it is still safe.
Your frozen veggies if notdefrosted then refrozen are safe.
Combining the two and heating in the microwave in a clean vessel is safe so long as you've not introduced bacteria from another source, your food is as safe as it is going to be.
Almost correct: “... kept below 40 F for 3-4 days or less”. After opening, the safety rules for cooked food apply. See our generic post for details. And you can safely thaw and refreeze food, it’s quality, not safety that will suffer (unless the cumulative time above 40F gets too large).
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.840587
| 2018-04-16T09:41:10 |
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|
61927
|
Cooking steak in frying pan, problem with oil splatter
I was using canola oil and put the stove top setting on "high - 9". I read plenty of guides suggesting there will infact be oil splatter, but it was pretty excessive and burning my arm with one drop getting near my eye before I stopped. I turned the heat setting down to "medium - 4", where the oil splatter seemed to drop substantially. Before I try to make steak again I'd like to get some clarification
So my questions are:
Which heat setting am I supposed to use?
Is that type of oil splatter normal or should I try using a different oil, and if so, what oil?
Should oiling the meat instead of the pan help the problem?
Stephie's answer is the right one as to why it is spattering. Additionally I would say you are using too much oil when cooking your steak. You only need a small amount rubbed directly onto the meat, not a pool of it in the bottom of the pan.
I'll just link this question here: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/8845/is-there-any-way-to-avoid-grease-splatter. If we start getting more questions about splatter, each for a different food item, we should consider making a single question and closing the others as duplicates
Try frying your steak without oil. I've been doing this for years without problems.
I made a seasoned butter and fry it in that - no problems with splatter and better taste! Good luck!
You need to realize that oil doesn't splatter, water does. In fact, you could heat oil until it catches fire without any mayor movement.
But the moment water reaches the oil, which in a hot pan is way beyond the boiling point for water, it will instantly turn into steam, expand and pull oil drops with it.
So apart from lowering the heat - which is not what you want to do for a well-seared piece of meat - you want to make sure your meat is as dry as possible on the outside. Kitchen towels to blot off your meat would be my first choice.
In cases of wet marinades, remove the marinade and either grill your meat or lower the heat of your pan a bit. But not because of splatters, but because the marinade may burn.
The more oil you use, the more can splatter. A thin layer, possibly even just brushed on with a silicone brush will suffice in most cases. You may also oil the meat instead of the pan. For the type of oil, just stick with an oil that can handle high heat (save your extra virgin olive oil for a salad), canola is fine and so is peanut and some others.
And finally, there are splatter-guards on the market that can catch those propelled oil droplets. They are made from a fine metal mesh and placed on the pan like a lid. My prefered "hack" is using an inverted round cooling rack with a single layer of kitchen towel for these "will certainly splatter" cases. It lets steam escape better than many of these fine-mesh splatter guards and the towel absorbs moisture, which then can't drip back into the pan. Besides the rack can go in the dishwasher while at least some splatter guards need hand washing (if only because the mesh tends to catch debris from the water).
A suggestion based on this -- brush the meat with flavoured oils if you're marinading for flavour. Home made flavoured oils are particularly good for this. I wouldn't bee too keen on kitchen towel that close to a gas flame, but it should be fine on electric as in the Q.
@ChrisH Good point - I cook on an electric stove. Should be ok on gas if you don't let the flames get high up on the sides of the pan (which you shouldn't anyway) and trim overhanging paper.
"Should be OK", yes, but I'd still rather not.
Ahhh, thank you! That most likely explains my problem. I forgot to mention I thawed the steak in a bowl of water (I mistakenly took the plastic wrap off before thawing), so the meat was in fact soaked.
I just cooked another piece and made sure to dry it. Very minimal splatter this time and it came out great. Thanks!
To reduce the splatter further, reduce the oil. One technique is to coat the steak with the oil (you don't need much), and not put any oil in the pan at all. This works well (especially on a griddle). Also note that freezing meat can burst cells which may cause further liquid to ooze out.
@user3262272 - Speaking as a professional chef, this should solve 90% of your problem. The rest will be fixed if you buy one of the splatter guards shown below. I just wish I got here before Stephie did, because she said exactly what I would have said.
In Scandinavia we have this thing:
The "lid" is a thin wire mesh that allows steam to escape and keeps most of the oil in.
I have no idea what it is called in english :-)
"frying pan splatter guard" (or "...splash cover" or similar permutation. +1 because it's good in this situation, but it doesn't help the underlying issue.
A pro tip how to easily translate names of furniture items using a Scandinavian web site: Open the IKEA web site, navigate to the item you want to translate, and when you are on e.g. http://www.ikea.com/se/sv/catalog/products/10112530/, replace se/sv with us/en or gb/en ;)
@Alexander For non-furniture/household items, essentially the same trick works with Wikipedia (e.g., Swedish for aardvark seems to be jordsvin.
Get a griddle pan. Not only will it stop splashes from the water / juice as it is trapped in the grooves, it caramelises the meat and leaves a beautiful criss-cross pattern if you turn it 90° as you cook it. Make sure you season the steak well too.
Bonus: deglaze the griddle with Jameson whiskey, add the juice to reduced cream & pepper for the nicest steak sauce in the world.
yes, if it looks wet on the surface then it will splatter. One of the best investments I have ever made in the kitchen is to buy decent kitchen towels that don't turn to slush. I use them to thoroughly dry a steak or the skin side of a fish so that it can be brushed in oil cooked on a medium heat and crisp up nicely rather than char and splatter of the highest heat.
Mix a spoon or two of wheat flour into the frying oil and wait until it gets brown. Then put your steaks in the pan and fry then as usual.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.840757
| 2015-09-22T06:53:55 |
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|
105307
|
Soggy Italian calzones
Why are my calzones always wet after I cut them? If I let them cool, the bottom is wet. Other then runny or soggy they're so good.
On what sort of surface are you cooking your calzone, and on what sort of surface are you placing it after taking it out of the oven? I find that if I place a calzone on a wire rack (or a wire pizza pan) after cooking, it's less likely that the bottom gets wet from steam trapped underneath as it cools.
Possible causes of soggy calzones and their fixes.
The oven is too hot. It seems counter-intuitive, but this browns the crust to golden perfection before the internal temp of the stuffing reaches an ideal point. It won't get hot enough for long enough to steam out the sauce and ingredients. Cook at a lower temp for longer and broil to perfection if needed.
The ingredients have too much water. If you're tossing a ton of onion, mushrooms, green pepper, tomatoes, etc into the diaper, you'll have to adjust your cooking parameters compared to drier protein stuffings. You might want to saute the ingredients before incorporation to give them a head start on temp and water loss.
The sauce is too runny or under-cooked at the start. Make sure to use a thicker sauce, even than with pizza. Pan-heating commercial sauce before baking will help. You can even turn spaghetti sauce into calzone sauce if you simmer it long enough.
The crust is too greasy. While it tastes and looks great, if the crust is too greasy, it can seal in steam instead of allowing it to permeate and escape. While eventually the moisture will find a way out with swelling/bubbling and "geysering", a lot of water vapor will condense on the non-leaky spots and drip to the bottom; think about the sweaty lid of a rice cooker. You can also simply add vent slits in the crust (like buttery pie crusts often sport) if you have otherwise-good results with your current recipe.
Generic methods of reducing moisture include baking/resting on a rack instead of a plate/pan, opening sooner after cooking to allow poofs of steam to escape before it becomes liquid (many restaurants serve them split in half), and resting them upside down to hide some of the juice in the thicker less-soaked top crust.
Hey, this is an excellent answer, so instead of supplying another answer, I wanted to add one more common problem and solution to yours: No Vents Cut in Top. Per Cook's Illustrated, unless you cut vents in the top of the calzone, it will trap steam -- even with relatively dry ingredients. You kind of mention this in the Greasy Crust problem, but it would be better to call it out as a separate issue.
Thanks @FuzzyChef, i've added your suggestion to the crust part. I must confess, for some reason i find myself opposed to slits, it's almost cheating, but I do appreciate how they can produce a better result with less prep and effort.
@FuzzyChef I feel like that's worth putting as a separate answer, as it's really a different thing - dandavis is explaining how to adjust the recipe, while you are explaining a different way to solve it. Great answer here, too!
As one additional point, both I and CooksIllustrated suggest (paywall, sorry) cutting vents in the top of the calzone in order to allow steam to escape. I've personally found that it's difficult to avoid sogginess without slots.
Depending on the size of the calzone, you'll want 2-4 cuts, each 2-4cm long.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.841278
| 2020-02-13T18:45:09 |
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|
102704
|
Do gel spheres hold up to heat?
I want to plate a carrot sphere, made using reverse spherification, for a hot entrée. How do carrot spheres hold up to heat?
Alginate gels are heat-stable up-to 150C. So you can easily serve them on a hot plate at the serving temperature.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.841561
| 2019-10-03T22:31:38 |
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|
108059
|
Cracked egg leaves egg white residue. Should I worry about the other eggs?
I had an egg crack in the carton and cover the other eggs with egg white. I consider the cracked egg a lost cause, but what about the splash damage? Are the eggs that have received an inadvertent egg white wash safe to eat? Particularly, for someone who may be very vulnerable to infection?
If the egg actually exploded as in the title, then no, that egg is probably highly contaminated. Not only is it bad, but nothing its contents have touched can be considered safe to use and should be discarded.
I assume however that you actually have an egg that was broken in handling. In that case, only the broken egg is a loss. Other answers and comments have addressed that, choice by location and your own personal sense of safe for you. I hate wasting food, but eggs today are a relatively inexpensive commodity for most of us, so if you feel uneasy, error on the side of safety.
When an egg is only partially cracked, but the membrane is intact, that egg is normally safe for use for several days. You have lost some protection, but not the immediate integrity of the egg. One issue though is you do not know when it was cracked. In your possession can be safe, my personal rule being about a week. But if it already was cracked, I do not know if it happened before washing (in the US) or after. If before, the egg is compromised. Now, this is one spot that the EU with non-washed eggs are at a slight, very slight, disadvantage. IMO, unwashed, a cracked egg is compromised even if the membrane is intact. That paragraph is not exactly your question, but could be for people searching that find their way here.
Whenever an egg cracks so that egg white gets to the outside both the inner and outer membranes are broken and there is an entry path to the inner parts.
+1, although personally I hate to waste eggs even more than most other foods and don't consider them an inexpensive commodity, depending on how you measure the cost.
@cbeleitesunhappywithSX That was well beyond what the OP asked, but was strictly included as people come here via web search engines. It does not apply to the details asked by this question, but related searches get here too.
Edit after the question was substantially changed. This answer wasn't initially concerned with the fate of the broken egg itself, but the others around it.
If the white 'exploded' bin it. If it 'leaked' then that egg is compromised. If you broke it, eat it today. If you don't know when it was broken, discard & treat the rest of this answer as it stood before you changed the question.
Don't wash European eggs.
US eggs already have had their natural protective layer washed off, so this action would be sensible to prevent further contamination.
EU eggs still have their natural protection, so should be left alone. Wash right before use if you're worried.
This is often also true with farm fresh eggs in the US. I have a small flock and some of my customers want pristine shells, so those get washed. Mine, and some other customers want the bloom in place for its natural protection, so those are not. With eggs that still have the bloom in tact, if dirtied in the OP's way, try to still use within say a week to reduce risk
idk how it would work for a small farm, but here it's just not allowed to wash eggs before sale, because here it's "well known" that eggs don't need refrigeration. If the eggs have been washed, that no longer applies, so you just cannot do it, you'll poison people.
US rules are all over the place and vary by state. No washing, must wash but moving water, I forget which one, but one state you actually must use dry sand paper. It is sad that EU is sane and requires Salmonella vaccination, but in the US you have to jump through hoops to even get chicks vaccinated which immediately makes eggs shelf safe. The vaccination costs pennies (US) per bird and increases safety immediately. But our massive factory farms get the rules set. Sorry for the rant, but we all pay the price for the shortsightedness. USDA puts out guides, but then states set their own rules.
Once you wash an egg you have to assume it is no longer safe, hence my initial warning. It's less important what happened to the broken egg as it is to the remainder. Unwashed eggs are unrefrigerated. Once washed they lose all natural protection & have to be treated as a much more 'perishable' item.
Despite the answer being "neutralised," I'm glad that it's on the post - the reminder on the distinction between how to treat eggs differently based on context feels like super-useful information!
@EvangeliusAg I fully agree. I hobby farm now but for a few years supplied farm fresh to some high end restaurants. Frankly, and this is personally only, after a lot of research on US rules, I will no longer buy eggs other than direct from small farmer or eat those I raise.
@Tetsujin in danger of straying far off topic, but my personal preference is to use duck eggs. They have some very nice baking qualities, plus a very heavy bloom. When dirty, as long as you do it with care, you can even wash them and keep most of the protective bloom in place.
Sure. Wash them off with a little cold water, rub them dry carefully with some paper towels in case you want to keep them for longer and not have sticky old egg whites on the outside.
I am new to your site so I may not understand how to view all the answers or the entire discussion, but I did not see the solution my mother taught me. You can use the same "trick" to test for freshness that you can use to test for potential contamination in your egg, so I will give the answers to both. (I noticed some people do not like you deviating from the original question but, hey, I'm old. I figure it is NEVER too late to learn something that may come in handy some day.)
Place your egg in a cup or bowl of cold water - cold tap water, not cold as in refrigerated.
Make sure there is enough water that the egg can stand up on end in the container and still be covered with water.
If the submerged egg lies flat along the bottom, the egg is very fresh. ENJOY! If it doesn't but was sold as fresh, you might want to mention that to the vendor.
If the egg stands up on one end it is not so fresh, up to maybe a few weeks, but still good to eat.
If the egg floats, it contains air and should be tossed. It is not only old, but air can contain contaminants and air is how contaminants get into your egg.
Believe it or not, I have had eggs that have been in the refrigerator for months that stand on end in water and are just fine. But remember ALL pre-washed eggs can contain air and contaminants that can cause Salmonella-and-such so always thoroughly cook your eggs. If you must drop a raw egg in a drink, you might want to make sure it lays flat on the bottom of a glass of water first.
I am sorry, but I have to disagree. The “submerge in water” method is solely based on physics. Over time, some liquid evaporates (note that eggshells aren’t airtight, so that the chicks can breathe) and the air bubble at the end gets larger, which leads to the various sinking/floating behavior. Bacterial contamination need not influence the size of the air bubble and with that the behavior in water. The only connection of the two is that older eggs are more likely to be spoiled, especially as the eggshells get more porous over time. The water test says nothing about bacteria in fresh eggs.
Nevertheless, welcome to Seasoned Advice! If you have a moment, the [tour] and the [help] will explain more about how the site works and if you have questions, there’s [chat] and detailed discussions on the site’s scope are on [Meta].
Does this answer the original question about whether egg residue affects safety of uncracked eggs?
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.841636
| 2020-05-02T13:45:50 |
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|
104411
|
Fingernail can scratch cooking board = too soft?
I was using a lot of elbow grease to sand down my cheap cutting board to remove the deep grooves caused by my knife. Then I questioned myself if it's even worth the effort and just get a new better quality cutting board. I recently realized can scratch my cutting board with just my fingernail. Is that sign that it's too soft?
American Test Kitchen recommends the Proteak cutting board because it's not too hard or soft. I will get this board if it's truly worth the money.
Can you clarify your question?
Was the board wet when you scratched it?
Since it's not all that clear what your question really is, I'm going to go with the question in the title:
If you can mark your dry cutting board with a fingernail, the wood is softer than you want for a good cutting board. In fact, your cutting board would need to be a very soft pine, fir, or similar wood to be that soft, none of which are ideal for cutting boards. This explains why you have "deep grooves".
I own a teak cutting board (it was a gift), and I don't know that I'd recommend it. Teak is hard enough to dull my knives faster than a softer hardwood like beech or maple would (bamboo has the same issue). Beyond that, there is quite a bit of debate about which wood is best for cutting boards and instead of trying to reproduce it here I'm going to give you some reading:
Tasty Kitchn's Best Wood for Cutting Boards
Serious Eats Recommendations on Cutting Boards
Brooklyn Butcher Block's opinion on various woods
There's definite downside to knife-dulling bamboo. I tried one, and quickly went back to making my own boards out of maple with cherry striping. A boa4d that's too soft will likely have sanitary issues, as bacteria find good homes in all those scratches knives, and finger-nails make.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.842371
| 2019-12-28T00:05:38 |
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|
119328
|
Can I use frozen fish in a fish pie suitable for home freezing?
In the UK (and probably elsewhere), frozen fish is considerably cheaper and more common than fresh fish. In an ideal world, I would use fresh fish along with a cream or milk based bechamel sauce, spinach, cheese and potatoes then freeze any leftovers, but this is really expensive. How would a reheated frozen dish using fresh fish compare with one made using frozen fish? Assuming there are no intrinsic food safety issues associated with this practice, would the quality of the dish suffer from using frozen fish that was reheated twice? I've heard that most "Fresh" fish in UK supermarkets was already pre-frozen then defrosted, which would make it pointless purchasing it specifically for this dish.
I live in the US; here fish has to be labelled as to whether it was defrosted at the market. According to what I can find online, it does in the UK as well. No?
I've not seen anything obvious like that @FuzzyChef, but it may be in the small print somewhere. With the premium prices charged, my guess is that they won't want to advertise that fact too clearly.
Ah, here fish markets have to have "previously frozen" clearly marked next to the price.
I think your question needs clarifying, and better limited to a single question. However, freezing and thawing, repeatedly, particularly with fish, generally impacts texture in a negative way. There is not safety issue, per se. Given your preparation, you might not be too concerned about the texture, but that is probably the main issue.
Thank you @moscafj. I was thinking more along the lines of what ingredients (or techniques) would freeze best, last longest and be closest to a "Gold standard" FP made with 100% fresh ingredients. If the "Fresh" fish is already frozen, there seems little point in paying a premium for the supermarket doing it!
Suffice it to say that if you want "100% gold standard fish pie made with 100% fresh ingredients", well, then twice re-frozen products will likely let you down.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.842557
| 2021-12-26T17:08:39 |
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|
20248
|
Is it necessary to rinse Chinese or other tea before first brew / steep / infusion?
I've been told that I should be rinsing Chinese tea with the boiled water before the first full infusion intended for drinking.
I make the occasional very-expensive tea from Taiwan and I feel it is a waste to throw away a first pot simply for "rinsing". However, my mother-in-law insists it is correct to rinse the tea first :-)
Is this practice of rinsing always advisable, or are there specific cases or kinds of tea where rinsing is necessary? What are we trying to rinse away? Is the practice only for Chinese tea, or for other kinds of tea as well?
Looking for some enlightenment from some tea experts. Thank you!
Update:
Since I asked the question, my mother-in-law came across a newspaper article, in Chinese, describing pesticides found on some teas from China, and so it is advisable to rinse before consuming.
Here's a scan I made of the article:
Something in English...
Essentially, the article references a 2012 report by Greenpeace. You can read a press release about the report, and here's a link to the report itself: Pesticides: Hidden Ingredients in Chinese Tea Report (PDF). Press release summary:
A Greenpeace investigation has found pesticides banned for use on tea
in the products marketed by some of China's top tea companies. Some of
the firms, which include China Tea, Tenfu Tea and China Tea King,
export tea products to Japan, the US and Europe.
For that reason, I accepted the answer below which suggests rinsing for reduction of pesticides.
Of course, I don't think I'd want to drink a tea with 17 kinds of pesticides present, even if rinsed! Caveat emptor ... I plan to ask more questions when I buy my tea.
i have had hundreds of tea-drinking experiences with chinese people, in chinese houses, and i have never heard of doing this.
@ixtmixilix Were you paying close attention during the tea prep? It can be quick and easy to miss. Often the "rinse water" is then used to warm the tea cups, then discarded.
Buy organic tea if you are worried about pesticides.
Usually the first infusion is to remove pesticides and some dust that accumulates while aging the tea. Another reason is to let the dry leaves "breathe" to bring out their taste in subsequent infusions. You're supposed to drain out the water in seconds; so it shouldn't take away the taste.
visited tea plantations: needs rinsing for reasons of hygiene at the very least
Accepting this answer primarily because it mentions the practice is helpful to remove pesticides. See also my update in the question itself, above.
Is there any scientific merit to the common claim of "opening" for better taste? Couldn't you just steep the 1st infusion slightly longer? It appears tradition is the only reason for this practice and it has no scientific basis at all.
I think it is a myth that you can get rid of pesticides by giving it a rinse. Pesticides are not always easy to dissolve and are present not only on but also inside the leaves. For all other reasons, there are workarounds that do not involve throwing away precious tea.
Yes, this is something you almost always want to do with fine Chinese (or Japanese) tea. It is not necessary, or useful, with inexpensive tea.
The purpose of the first rinse is to rinse away some of the bitter compounds which will be present on the outside of the tea leaves, so that more of the full flavor of the tea can shine through when you actually steep it. The lighter and more delicate the flavor of the tea, the more important rinsing is; on spring green teas, for example, the initial bitterness can completely overwhelm any other flavor if you don't rinse.
It's not necessary to do this with all teas; for example, teas which come in ball, flower, or other artistic forms have usually been rinsed before shaping and drying. If I get a chance to research later I'll give you some categorical advice on which other teas usually don't need rinsing.
EDITED TO ADD: I asked a friend of mine who's a tea buyer about this (Silk Road Teas). She said that rinsing is really only required with Oolong teas, and it's more to open the leaves than to wash away any bitterness. The reason I needed to rinse the Spring Tea, for example, is that it's an oolong and not a green as I'd thought.
i see the point of doing this with black tea. but with green tea, i daresay you're ruining the health benefits if you do that, and there's absolutely no need. that 'bitterness' is the catechins breaking down. http://www.hc2d.com/content.php?contentId=14728 green tea simply needs boiled-once water that's just above being tepid (cooled for 20 minutes maybe).
When I was in China (July 2012), we visited a tea merchant. Our guide said that if we bought any tea we should throw out the first brew to get rid of the pesticides. Since I couldn't see how the government would benefit by giving out that info (and I think most professional guides are affiliated with the government), she seemed pretty credible. I've been looking on web sites for more precise directions, since I don't exactly remember the process she suggested. Given China's record for other environmental abuses (e.g. their coal pollution problem and the Three River Gorges dam), I'm not surprised about Greenpeace's findings regarding pesticides.
As far as rinsing of tea leaves goes, it does help remove the pesticides to a great extent.
Teas made by fermenting, like the Darjeeling tea and Chinese teas are often rinsed to 'wake' the leaves. A quick rinsing is required preferably less ten seconds.
Caffeine is removed to some extent because of rinsing but to remove the optimal level of caffeine one has to discard the tea got from more than 5minutes steeping.
If the intent is to remove caffeine than one has to compromise a bit on tea flavor and aromas.
To minimize the flavor and aroma loss one should always choose high quality tea leaves which produce consistent tea quality over multiple infusions.
Thanks for your answer. I notice you included a link for "Darjeeling tea" which has nothing to say about removing pesticides, but rather appears to be strictly promotional, i.e. link spam. Please be aware of these guidelines about mentioning sites or products in your answers. Thank you.
You have to rinse pu-erh tea at least once. http://www.teavivre.com/info/brew-an-enjoyable-pu-erh-tea/
Welcome Mark - While the content you linked to might answer the question, it’s much better to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference. If you have a few minutes please take the tour http://cooking.stackexchange.com/tour to see how this site operates.
I did. One sentence, I thought, was enough though you are right, I should have elaborated. Thanks.
Washing your tea is useless in my opinion.
I get rid of impurities by using a strainer instead of throwing away the baby with the badwater. I wake up the tea by warming up the gaiwan (reusing the bottle water I use for it) and putting the tea in the empty pre-heated gaiwan for a while. I try to buy tea with little pesticides, but keep in mind that organic etc. also contain pesticides. They are not always easy to dissolve or wash away, and they are also not only on but also present inside the leaves.
Washing tea is like buying a good wine and spitting it out because it contains alcohol. Tons of people drink bad teabag tea every day and never rinse it.
Your good quality loose tea, that you spent hard earned money on, deserves to be consumed, not thrown away.
that doesn't explain if it's necessary to do it or not, you're merely expressing your opinion. Check [answer] for more info.
as this is very opinionated matter I found it important to add my opinion because I think it is all there needs to be said about it
OP is not asking for opinions, but for a reason behind the process.
OP is asking "is it necessary" and I give the reasons why people usually want to do it and what workarounds can be applied to make sure you don't have to
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.842785
| 2012-01-08T14:46:26 |
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|
9625
|
Does vinegar increase the iron we can digest from Spinach?
I heard tale of people using vinegar to break down or concentrate the digestible iron in spinach. Is this true?
If it's true, the key things to know would be:
What vinegar do you use?
How do you prepare it?
Does it impair the flavour?
Is the benefit measurable and significant?
My thoughts are there is something in it in a similar manner to this question.
You know, I have always liked to eat spinach with vinegar. Just steamed and with a splash of plain white vinegar. It is a very common way to eat spinach around here.
Anyway, I suppose it could have some affect on iron absorption. Large amounts of vitamin C can increase non-heme iron absorption by as much as 200%. This article, http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf0203040, seems to indicate that acetic acid, the main component in vinegar, may also increase iron absorption.
Perhaps the vitamin C content in the vinegar is making the iron in cooked spinach more digestible?
There are quite a few recipes online that simply combine sauteed spinach and balsamic vinegar- evidently it's a popular side dish. I see some people use other types of vinegar as well. You can also make a wilted spinach salad with a bacon dripping-and-vinegar dressing. That makes a delicious lunch if you add grilled chicken, red onions, and some bits of bacon.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:56.843479
| 2010-11-30T19:38:37 |
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|
18759
|
Yellowness of egg yolk
Related question: Why are Italian eggs so yellow?
Occasionally I get served a fried / poached egg with a deep yellow/orange yolk. I find it extremely appetising and visually attractive.
Sometimes eggs have very weakly coloured yolks, which is less appealing -- but I couldn't swear that the flavour is affected.
Is there a correlation between the colour of a yolk and its flavour?
When shopping, how can I increase my chances of getting a richly coloured yolk?
Does free-range / barn / battery make a difference?
Is there a correlation between price and yolk colour?
Do egg producers and/or chefs use dirty tricks to effect a yellow yolk? Dye? Food additives?
I'm in the UK, but please feel free to give answers for other parts of the world. If you suspect they're not universal, make sure you point out your location.
The color of the yolk is based on the chicken's diet. I eat vegetarian fed eggs from the grocery store and they have deep yellow yolks. If I go back to buying standard white eggs its a bit disconcerting because they have very pale yolks.
In the fall is when the eggs are the orangest for pasture raised eggs, again something about what is available to feed. The only way I can find these eggs is to get them from the farmers market or from a coworker who raises hens themselves.
Two comments: (1) There are chickens that eat meat!?! (2) "standard white eggs" -- here in the UK, white eggs are quite hard to find. Generally, eggs have brown shells.
A vegetarian fed chicken is not a natural situation. In the wild chickens are omnivores. My chickens will gladly eat anything smaller than they are- In addition to the weeds and bugs that they eat I've seen them catch and fight over snakes, lizards, mice, etc. I agree that diet determines the egg color. All my chickens' egg yolks are almost orange.
a vegetarian fed chicken is definitely more natural than ones that are not marked vegetarian. I most often buy my eggs in a grocery store where "cage free" and "free range" labels have been reduced to being almost meaningless. For sure, a pasture raised chicken is going to have the best eggs because of the omnivorous diet.
Of course, silly me -- a chicken with a worm in its mouth is an archetypal image.
@Manako- "a vegetarian fed chicken is definitely more natural than ones that are not marked vegetarian" Good point for store bought eggs.
Regarding the last question:
Do egg producers and/or chefs use dirty tricks to effect a yellow
yolk? Dye? Food additives?
Yes, they do!
In fact scientists have experimented with food additives in order to control the color of the yolk. Interestingly enough the preferred color of the egg yolk differ between countries and even between regions within countries.
One study examined the red and yellow additives from marigold flowers and paprika fruit.
Note that artificial coloring additives are banned in the US, thus the interest for natural colorings.
Details can be found in: Egg Yolk Color as Affected
by Saponification of Different
Natural Pigmenting Sources
My local farmer tells me that the color of the yolk (and the color of the chicken fat) is directly related to how much fresh grass they get in their diet. They scatter the feed on the ground and the chickens pick up some grass as they eat. The chlorophyl in the grass is the specific thing that affects color.
If there has been a drought, causing the grass to brown, or if it is winter and the chickens go outside less, the eggs (and fat) become paler. So, the color of the yolk suggests whether the chickens are in a real free-range environment, which also affects flavor.
I think diet is the most important factor, but the breed of the hen may have an effect as well. We buy eggs from a local farmer, and a carton will have blue, green, white and multiple shades of brown and tan eggs. The blue and green eggs almost always have more yellow/orange yolks. And this was the case with our previous farmer as well.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.843643
| 2011-11-04T13:01:08 |
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|
68108
|
How long do "quick" pickles last unrefrigerated?
I'll be opening a fried pickle concession stand in the next year. I want to make my own pickles because I'll be cutting them a way you cant buy from a store. I am using a quick pickle method right now that is 100 percent vinegar (along with spices). I've noticed they fry better being cold. My problem is I won't have enough storage to refrigerate them all. I'll be storing them 5 gallon buckets. How long can I keep them out before they have to be cooled or used?
What spices? What flavoring agents?
Please do not use code formatting for text, without manual linebreaks it is virtually unreadable. Thanks.
@Stephie I have a feeling that this was an attempt to indent the paragraph that got caught up in markdown. Looks like the code used was the four-space code rather than the tick marks.
Dill seed, mustard seed, pickling salt, tumeric. And I'm confused about what stephie said about the formatting of the text.
@DarrellStrandberg : re: formatting. If you start a line w/ a space, it assumes that the text should be displayed as fixed-width and not line-wrapped (as you'd do for displaying computer source code). Your post originally looked like http://cooking.stackexchange.com/revisions/68108/1
When I make quick pickles, I leave them out for a few days (~3-5 days) to get sour before storing them in the fridge. I use a standard, diluted white vinegar solution for mine. If you're using 100% vinegar, you should be fine keeping them out for at least 3-5 days. Vinegar is very inhospitable to pathogens (just make sure that the pickles are completely submerged). Good luck!
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.843994
| 2016-04-07T20:53:10 |
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|
55277
|
Microwave rice cooker vs low-end electric rice cookers
So, at my parents home we had a two part microwave rice cooker which created relatively dry rice in my experience (though I only used it myself a couple of time), but I actually like it better than traditionally boiled rice on a stove (which in my experience turns out quite wet-ish no matter how you make it). Now, I am not a huge fan of rice either way, so I am not planning on investing much into a rice cooker, but I was wondering what advantages a low end electric rice cooker would give as all comparisons I was able to find were comparing electric rice cookers to traditional boiling methods.
PS. To keep the question generic I didn't include a semi-answer, but what I have deduced myself is that electric rice cookers have a keep-warm function and that they might (!) be easier to keep clean?
I never used a microwave rice cooker but if you are getting dry rice then it's a matter of the amount of water used. The same goes for electric rice cooker, if you don't like wet-ish rice then use less water.
The main drawback of the microwave cooker is you can't use the microwave while making your rice.
Electric rice cooker can keep warm, you can turn it on and come back the next morning if you want to (a decent model).
Some have time counters, clocks and other similar features.
The rice never sticks since it is a non-stick pan.
You can most likely make more rice with a rice cooker than the microwave container (googled an image).
Also when you have guests, some people might not like the idea of rice made in a microwave even though it might taste and look the same. Some rice cookers also comes with steam baskets so when cooking the rice you can steam veggies at the same time. A rice cooker can also be used to cook other stuff as well.
I might be doing something really wrong, but creating dry rice when boiling it without making a huge mess at the bottom has eluded my skills for ages. But fair enough, you covered a couple of points I hadn't noticed before, so that's nice to keep in mind. And honestly, you're right about a stigma against microwaves... so weird actually.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.844159
| 2015-03-01T23:45:34 |
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45355
|
When making chicken soup, should I reuse the vegetables I used to make the broth?
When making a chicken broth I'll chuck in some onion, carrots, celery, leeks, whatever I got lying around.
When I make the soup, I usually strain out all the bones and veggies in the broth and put in new vegetables along with the meat. Should I be transferring any of the veggies from the broth into the soup or putting in all fresh veggies?
Just personal choice. There is no right or wrong with this
One thing you might want to consider is pureeing the cooked vegetables just to give the soup a bit more body.
It's definitely just a matter of preference. I'd expect the vegetables from the stock to be overcooked for my tastes, I like a little texture in my soup.
Yeah you can reuse the vegetables just fine. I mean why waste food. Reusing the vegetables shouldn't alter the taste of the soup in an adverse way.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.844361
| 2014-07-06T04:11:43 |
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"lapak wd"
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|
119580
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Spice blends have no flavor?
I recently purchased a local taco spice blend (basically: chili pepper, paprika, garlic, cumin and oregano) but it tastes bland when I cook with it. In fact, I often find this when I try to use spice rubs (even mixing things from my spice cabinet) on meat.
What is the right technique to maximize flavor?
For example, I will take my chicken breasts, coat it in the spice mix, and add a little bit of oil and salt. From there, I'll cook in the pan. Food comes out under-seasoned, and I don't really get any of the flavors/aromas that I'd expect.
When I use store-bought seasoning, like this one, I always get a better result: good flavors, good "stickiness" to the food. Or, when I use a glaze (eg, a char siu sauce) then I'm able to get great stickiness, coating, and flavor.
Is there a trick to getting home made blends and seasonings to "work" on meat? Seems like just mixing and sprinkling on are not sufficient!
The maltodextrin in that mix will caramelise - do you add anything like sugar that also will? I'm not sure if MSG could be called natural flavor - probably, depending on how it's made. That's an easy cheat, though the yeast extract will have a similar effect. Do you use anything like that? How much salt do you use compared to the mix?
At first I thought this was going to be an inadvertent Covid diagnosis.
Given what you are describing, you still need a binder of some sort to get the seasoning to stick to the meat instead of ending up in the cooking oil instead. Masa is usually the traditional option for taco seasoning, but regular corn starch is a decent substitute if you can’t get good masa. I regularly do my own taco seasonings, and whether or not I remember the corn starch is a huge part of how good the result tastes.
This sounds more like old spices than a problem with technique.
Don't buy pre-mixed spice blends. Often the cheap ones are mixed up with old, low-quality ingredients. Figure out what you like, get your hands on quality ingredients and mix up your own concoctions. You'll be much happier with the results.
@MonkeyZeus at first /I/ thought OP had burnt himself out with excessive chilli input until he explained that "store bought" blends worked for him. However I do think we have to ask what the background and experience of the people making up the various blends is: the "local" one might have been made up by somebody who (still) had much more discrimination than the average consumer.
Salt
TL;DR,
The ingredients you list in your local spice blend doesn't include anything that would primarily hit the salty, sweet, sour, bitter, or umami tastes. The commercial product you link to has ingredients that hit four of those five tastes. Primarily, you probably need to use a bunch more salt, and maybe a touch of something sweet, sour (acidic), and/or umami. In nearly all cases, commercial products taste better because they are heavily salted--but depending on your personal taste & palate, you might also be missing some of the "background" flavors brought by other ingredients.
The product you identified as consistently giving good results has this ingredient list (Ingredients are listed in order by the amount of each item--that's important to remember):
Yellow Corn Flour, Salt, Maltodextrin, Paprika, Spices, Modified Corn Starch, Sugar, Citric Acid, Yeast Extract, Natural Flavors, Silicon Dioxide.
You can look at this ingredient list to get a better idea of differences between what you might be putting together at home, compared to this product that you know you like. Hopefully, by looking closely at the one you do like, it will help you identify what you're missing (and why) from the other mixes that fall short.
Yellow Corn Flour
You'll notice the first ingredient is corn flour (corn starch is also listed separately further down). In the context of taco seasoning, this is a binder & thickener for the "sauce" that coats the meat. But you'll often see starches & flours used as a sort of binding "glue" to help seasoning stick to the (wet) surface of food.
Salt
The second ingredient is salt. This means that there is more salt than any other spice or seasoning. Salt is a fairly critical ingredient to make food taste like itself. This is why "a pinch of salt" is so ubiquitous in recipes, even for non-savory things. If you're finding that you use a bunch of spices, and it still tastes bland, my first guess is always that you didn't use enough salt. There are some alternative methods, but when comparing homemade spice blends to commercial spice blends, it is almost guaranteed that a major taste difference is that commercial spice blends have a lot of salt.
Maltodextrin
Maltodextrin is another bland-tasting ingredient that serves as a binder or thickener, rather than a flavoring.
Paprika, Spices
Finally, the 4th & 5th ingredients represent the actual "spices" that make up this taco seasoning. These two ingredients alone represent the entire list of ingredients you noted on your local taco seasoning mix (chili pepper, paprika, garlic, cumin and oregano).
Modified Corn Starch
More binding/thickening.
Sugar
Sweet is another "base" taste, where a little bit of sweet can make other flavors "pop". This is another spot where adding just a little sugar to homemade spice blends can help them taste more like commercial products you love.
Additionally, it seems that Americans love sweet things, so this pops ups in most commercially available products in US groceries, especially seasonings & condiments. Sugar can also help with browning, and as it melts (around 367°F), it will get sticky.
Citric Acid
Salt, sweet, and acid (which is sour) are three of the main "base" flavors, and this item in the ingredient list brings the third one into the packet. Having all three in the right proportion can help food taste well-balanced or "well-rounded". At home, a squeeze of citrus juice, or splash of vinegar can replace citric acid in commercial products.
Yeast Extract
This bring umami to the party. Umami is another "base" flavor, which is usually described as "savoryness" or sometimes "meatiness" (many sources of umami are not meat, so while I don't love that description, many people find it helpful). Yeast extract has glutamates, which are the food science word for the compounds that taste umami (like the way sugars taste sweet). Another popular glutamate is monosodium glutamate (MSG), but many manufacturers shy away from including MSG on the label because of it's (IMHO unfounded) reputation. You can get yeast extract or MSG for your home spice cupboard if you're missing that background hit of umami from this.
Natural Flavors
There's a long list of things that this could be, but most likely they are just very small quantities of things that are tasty.
Silicon Dioxide
This is another utilitarian ingredient, rather than a flavorful one. It is an "anti-caking agent," which just means that it keeps your spice blend from clumping together. Spice blends that don't contain anti-caking agents tend to stick together, and you get one big lump, particularly when the air is humid.
Maltodextrin has a milky flavour, hence it's use as coffee whitener and in soy milk.
I wonder whether the corn flour is, or contains, masa harina too. That has a whole heap of flavour all to itself & definitely says "Mexico" big & loud, in anything. idk whether they would have to declare that specifically. I've noticed they don't in the UK - it took me years to find what the 'secret ingredient' was in a spice blend I used to use. Masa harina is a speciality mail-order ingredient here & so I'd never had it until just a few years ago to be able to identify the flavour.
@unlisted Masa isn't usually used as a spice or seasoning - a thickener maybe, like flour would be. It's otherwise a staple - it's used to make tortillas, pupusas, etc.
Great answer for the info content on all the ingredients! Though I must admit I'm a bit lost regarding your opinion on the actual question OP had. I mean, you mention that the ingredients hit 4 of the 5 tastes, but then go on that OP should add more to the tastes (why? they are already in there as you said?)... as far as I can tell OP is primarily asking why that mixture doesn't taste like much in the first place. Can you elaborate more on that?
@J… - however, "yellow corn flour" is listed as the main ingredient. You can certainly taste a tablespoon of masa in a kilo of chilli.
@AnoE -- The OP listed this product as one they like, compared to one they had a problem with, so I took the perspective of going through the product they like to explain what those ingredients do. That way, OP can better identify what they are "missing" from other mixes, including homemade.
Thank you for this! If I were to use this spice mixture, and then add my own corn starch, sugar, salt, and either MSG or knorr chicken dust, perhaps I'd have better results?
@poundifdef -- yes, if I'm using low- or no-salt seasoning mixes, I always salt the food, then add the seasoning mix. Depending on how that works the first time, I'll then reach for other things in my cupboard to try to fill in the gaps. You probably don't need all of those additions, so trying to change just one or two things at a time will help you dial in to the mix you love most.
At least at one point, "Modified (any) Starch" could also mean MSG (which is also a starch product, usually); is it possible that that's the case here also? (Not sure if they've changed the labelling laws to make that illegal, or enforced it, since this was true decades ago).
Just an update: it worked! I took the spice blend, added a bunch of salt, a bit of corn starch and sugar. Much less excess oil and seasoning in the pan, chicken (pre-cut chicken tenders) didn't dry out, and retained a bunch more flavor. Appreciate your breaking this down!
Grind or rub herbs spices with the salt, I would add, to carry the flavor. We made our own herb salt at my training bakery; I stupidly tried adding pure herbs directly a loaf and got no flavor whatsoever. Gotta have a carrier.
...and the difference between "cooking" and "stirring things around over fire" is illustrated once again.
Spice blends are made from ground spices (which oxidize and lose volatile aromatics very quickly), occasionally salt, and a lot of fillers..sometimes yeast extract and/or MSG for umami...maybe some sugars. They are not really "home-made." Since those mixes are often mass produced, the raw products are frequently inexpensive, and so not of the best quality, and who knows how long the spices have been in their ground state. They are further made more affordable (profitable) by being bulked with additives like maltodextrin, which is harmless but doesn't add flavor.
If the spices in your cabinet are already pre-ground, you might experience the same blandness. Ground spices simply lose their flavor and aroma very rapidly.
You will usually have much better results purchasing whole spices, grinding them yourself as you need them, and mixing your own blends. The flavor difference can be quite dramatic. In fact, you might be surprised at how well they "work", as you put it.
To keep it short: you cannot reproduce the taste of a lab-made seasoning product at home.
The seasoning you are referring to is not made from spices. When you look at the ingredients, you will see:
Yellow Corn Flour, Salt, Maltodextrin, Paprika, Spices, Modified Corn Starch, Sugar, Citric Acid, Yeast Extract, Natural Flavors, Silicon Dioxide
Most of the aroma you are smelling in the commercial seasoning was made in a lab (the "natural flavors"). It seems that this is a common misconception, but by legal definition, they can take basically any living being (plant, animal or microorganisms), and use a number of chemistry techniques (although, apparently not de-novo synthesis - corrected from a previous version of the answer) to get any compound that they are interested in, as long as it changes the flavor/aroma, and this goes on the label as "natural flavoring". For detail, see CFR Title 21, section 501.22 (a) (3) for US law; European law is very similar here.
From the look of things on the ingredient list (plus your observation that how the flavor differs from actual spice blends), they created compounds which have extremely strong aroma, and used maltodextrin as the solid "foundation" onto which to load the aromas in a concentration that is edible, but still much higher than what is found in actual spices. Not only do you get a higher concentration that way, but my layperson impression is that the aroma is more readily released from the maltodextrin (into which it is just soaked) than from actual spices (where it is usually behind layers of desiccated membranes).
There isn't much you can do to achieve this effect. You can always use larger amounts of standard spices, and make sure that you are using the freshest possible spices, but the aroma will always be more muted.
The other relevant ingredients are the yeast extract and the salt. The yeast extract is used because it is rather rich in MSG. If you want to get closer to the commercial seasoning, the easiest way is to buy pure MSG and add it. The other ingredient is the salt, which you are probably already adding anyway - but you will have to experiment to find out what amount is optimal for your taste.
I don't think that the sugar and citric acid are especially relevant here. They are rather minor by amount - each of them is less than the sum of all non-paprika spices. I don't know if they are used for taste or for other purposes, but if it is for taste, the contribution will be rather minor. I wouldn't try to add them when making a homemade rub.
If it says "natural flavors" then I don't think those can be chemically synthesized, unless you live in a country where lying on the ingredient list is tolerated.
@towr It isn't lying. By legal definitions, as long as you start with a raw material that is of animal, plant or microbial origin, you can call the result a "natural flavor". An artificial flavor is something that has been synthesized from nonliving matter, e.g. from petroleum. But there are no restrictions on the living raw material you use - it is fully legal to cultivate a microbial strain that creates a strawberry-smelling chemical, extract it, use it in yogurt labelled "strawberry", and list "natural flavoring" on the label.
Hmm. But petroleum was made from ancient plants and animals. I have my doubts. But you're right, it will be defined in legal terms somewhere.
The FDA has a definition: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=501.22
@towr I now see that for the USA, the legislation is somewhat more restrictive, https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=501.22. It states which methods are allowed for a flavoring to be called "natural", and it doesn't include de novo synthesis. The strawberry scenario is still allowed by it though (and a widespread practice). It also defines "artificial" as everything that was not gotten from living things, but I can't find a statement on how to treat something which was derived from living things, but not with the methods listed in "natural".
@towr anyway, the exact method of derivation is not central to my answer. The point is that, with the given ingredient list (including the relative amounts, which are given by its order), it is clear that the "natural flavoring" is something highly concentrated, that uses the maltodextrin as a"vehicle" substance. Even if it was created by, say, a distillation process instead of a synthesis, the same result is unobtainable by mixing ground spices.
I'll just add some suggestions on top of other excellent answers.
(1) You may want to try mixing seasonings (including "flavor enhancers" others have mentioned, especially salt) with corn starch, using it to coat some meat (the smaller the pieces the more surface area you'll get), and frying it. I personally love to do that with this on chicken. Note that this seasoning packet contains a LOT of salt. Experiment to get the balance right, but I would go for something like 1 part seasoning to 3 or 4 parts corn starch. Too much corn starch will dilute it too much. Too little and it will come out too salty.
(2) Try coating your meat with a bit of fish sauce. This stuff is pretty easily accessible at most major grocery stores. Note that not all fish sauces are the same. It will smell very fishy out of the bottle but that smell will go away once cooked, leaving plenty of umami and saltiness (most fish sauce is very salty). I find thinly sliced pork marinated in a bit of fish sauce and stir fried is great.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.844519
| 2022-01-20T17:29:06 |
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125326
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How to get tofu to absorb flavour?
Tofu is always being touted as a "flavour sponge" due to its texture. Yet, I have never been able to get it to actually absorb any flavour.
People talk about marinating it, searing it, invoking sacred incantations, yet nothing works (for me).
Is there a genuinely tried and tested method that works?
For what it's worth, I generally tend to use extra firm tofu, however I get pretty lazy with the drying process: I just quickly squeeze the little guy between some towels using my hands until it has lost a significant amount of water.
‘Quick squeeze’ might be the problem. A lot of recipes call for putting it under some heavy weight for a while to remove a lot of water
Maybe "flavor sponge" is a misnomer.
I just saw a short video about how to make your own tofu from soymilk , can you put seasoning when it's curdling?
@Joe I would agree. I had trouble with Tofu until I started drying it more thoroughly. Squeeze it gently over a sink, then sandwich it between two plates or chopping boards lined generously with kitchen roll. Put some cans or bottles on top to give it weight and leave it for a few hours. The result takes up flavour better and stays firmer in the pan.
In most Korean food, my understanding is that you don't expect tofu to absorb too much flavor - generally it is expected you will eat it together with the broth it is cooked in (which will tend to be pretty salty) - you can see this in various jjigaes in particular.
That said, the tofu in day-old jjigae tend to get fairly salty, so just cooking it for a long time might be a viable option.
Speaking from personal experience:
The only kind of tofu which is genuinely a "flavor sponge" is deep-fried tofu, which is sponge-like in several ways. Frozen and thawed tofu has a similar sponge texture.
Tofu is 85-90% water. Drying it doesn't change that more than 2%, and is essentially a waste of time (if the purpose is to marinate it). For this reason, tofu will not absorb other liquids, either as a cold marinade or even cooking in a liquid, unless braised for a long time (which is a thing in some traditional dishes). If anything, tofu is less absorptive of liquid flavors than meat.
The reason that tofu is portrayed as a "flavor sponge" in Western recipes is that, in general, the tofu available in Western markets is extremely bland and fairly low quality, so that any added flavor will overshadow it. A Japanese, Chinese, or other East Asian person could tell you that tofu is supposed to have its own flavor.
Freeze and thaw will make a significant difference (to texture/mouthfeel as well, of course.)
While you're probably right that drying the surface of tofu pieces won't help it absorb flavour, I do find that it stick to my pans less and browns more readily if the surface is dried somewhat. So I'd dispute the idea that it's a waste of time.
"tofu available in Western markets is extremely bland and fairly low quality"
I sometimes get my tofu from Chinese supermarkets (Wing Yip in the UK). Any particular brands you recommend?
As a Korean, I will say that most packaged tofu I've had were fairly flavorless - It was only with freshly made tofu with high quality beans that I could really experience the subtle nutty flavor they can have, and tofu shops where you can get fresh tofu are becoming more and and more of a rarity, unfortunately.
MIchael: it's a waste of time if you're going to immediately stick it into a wet marinade.
@turnip no ... as mantra says, the real difference is scale of production. I'm lucky enough to live in a US city with two local tofu producers. But even in Asia, there's a lot of flavorless mass market stuff. So ... try to find out if there's a small/local tofu factory in your part of the UK?
Option 1: Press the tofu
The idea here is basically to squeeze out as much of the water that it's packaged with as you can before cooking. You place the tofu between two towels, and put something heavy on top of it for a few minutes.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-press-tofu-3376642
Option 2: Freeze and thaw it
The water in tofu expands when it’s frozen, thereby destroying the original structure. When the ice crystals thaws, they seep out in the form of water, leaving the holes they formed behind. A star different tofu product with an entirely distinct consistency is born.
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/freeze-your-tofu
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.846101
| 2023-09-25T12:47:53 |
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124367
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How long does it take to boil fresh spinach?
I am going to cook a cream of spinach soup but I am confused about cooking time:
Starting with the point that I am going to cook fresh, full-grown spinach in broth, that is boiling it in water.
While recipe says I have to cook it for a couple of minutes, the spinach package says much more time: 10 minutes!
How long should I cook it?
Can you share the whole recipe? Is the soup blended after cooking? Is there additional cooking time after the "couple of minutes" you mentioned?
Are these baby spinach leaves or full grown spinach leaves?
You can easily share a non-English recipe; we all have access to google translate.
@FuzzyChef done!
It depends on what you want for your recipe. Spinach leaves can be eaten raw so they are safe for consumption with any cook time. Short cook times lead to more crunchy leaves and more texture. If you want a smooth mush you need to cook it for longer and blend the soup afterwards.
The recipe is correct, and the package is wrong.
Yes, how long your cook your spinach is a matter of taste, and people do cook spinach for longer in order to break it down further. However, 10 minutes is excessive, particularly for anything that is going to be pureed afterwards. If you do a search on "how to boil spinach" you will find that 90% of recipes recommend cooking it for 3-5 minutes.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
The only reason I could see cooking spinach for longer than 5 minutes would be if it's an unusual type of spinach, such as Malabar Spinach or Orach, which need longer cooking times.
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.846530
| 2023-06-04T14:16:15 |
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125978
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Can Yudane method be used when making cookie dough?
Can Yudane method be used to make cookies more chewy and moist? Assuming the cookie dough is a recipe that is made with some amount of milk and other enrichments like egg yolk, butter etc.
EDIT: I'm not referring to cookies that do not incorporate milk or other liquid into their dough. This question only relates to those recipes that use a small amount of liquid, usually milk, that can be used for the scalding process.
That sounds like a slightly chaotic idea? The principles of bread and cookies are pretty much opposite, from preparation over gluten development to expected texture… can you elaborate, please, what your line of thinking was and what gave you the idea?
@Stephie from what i've read, its supposed to make the bread more soft and moist for longer period. mixing the hot water with flour gelatinized the starches enabling them to take in more water, and I think it also denatures the gluten. cookies are also made with flour so why wouldn't the effects of Yudane also carry over to that as well. Of course I'm referring to cookie recipes that use a small amount of milk that can be used for the scalding process, not recipes that don't have a liquid component.
Can’t phrase it properly, but my baking instinct says “no way”.
Today I learned that you apparently can use tangzhong in extra soft cookies:
King Arthur Flour published their Cookie of the Year 2024 which does so and based on the ratings, it works.
As yudane is close enough to tangzhong, it should work as well. If you are planning to modify your own recipe, you’ll possibly need a few tries either way.
So good luck and feel free to self answer with more practical advice.
That's a good idea but am afraid that is possible can their ingredients are different. Water can't be used to replace air but they are both important.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:56.846705
| 2023-12-01T23:20:08 |
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"Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
],
"sort": "votes",
"include_comments": true
}
|
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