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90375
|
Home made beet gnocchi is sticky
First time I tried making gnocchi (or any pasta type). I followed the orders but my gnocchi are pretty sticky (maybe there's a better word?).
It feels like a pasta that was overcooked on a low flame and so it took a lot of time to be ready.
What can be the cause? Too much or too little flour?
The ingredients are:
3 medium-big beets
1 medium-big (white) potato
I think that almost 1kg of whole wheat flour
Salt
The beets and potato were wrapped in aluminium foil in the oven until soft, and then blended - then started adding flour until it reached a form that I can roll it to cut pieces.
I still have a lot of it, anything I can do to fix the dough?
And how long can I keep it (fridge/freezer?) in case I don't have enough of the ingredients to fix it at the moment?
Photos of the gnocchi and dough:
How the dough behave - (link to GIF, can't compress it more to upload it here)
The inside:
The rest of the dough
Thanks!
The problem may that you overworked the potatoes. When you say you ‘blended’ the veg, how did you do that? In a food processor? Also, can you link the source recipe, I don’t know what weight your veg came to, but a kilo of wholemeal sounds like a lot. This recipe for example only uses 1/4 kilo https://www.theironyou.com/2012/12/beet-and-potato-gnocchi.html?m=1
I blended them with a hand food processor, how can I know if I overworked them? I continued just until it became smooth. I also thought that it's too much flour, unfortunately I thought that it was to sticky before :(. The recipe is in Hebrew, so I don't think there will be much use in sharing it, but it said to add flour until I can create a roll from (even if it's sticky)
If you overwork then I believe it releases or changes the structure of the starch and makes it pasty and gluey. The recipe I linked suggests a potato ricer or food mill but specifies not to actually mash the potato.
Unfortunately, unless your recipe provides some reference weights/sizing for what "medium-big" means, it is difficult to say whether or not you got the ingredient proportions correct. I think it is possible that your idea of "medium-big" is larger than the recipe writer's idea, so your dough is too wet.
You should be able to freeze your dough for several months without issues. The longer it is frozen, the more moisture is likely to be extracted, which actually may help your situation. It's worth trying, as it doesn't require more effort at this point.
I don't think more flour is going to be a good option for the current dough. You might want to try this again with slightly smaller beets and potatoes.
Unfortunately keeping it for a long time is not really an option, since it will take too much room in the freezer, but maybe I can try a small amount to test it in the future and see if this method helps
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Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.123015
| 2018-06-15T20:26:47 |
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|
17960
|
nutrition facts: what does "as packaged" mean?
I was looking on a box of Hamburger Helper Cheeseburger Macaroni I bought. The nutrition facts read "as packaged", it only contains 0.5g fat, 120 calories per serving. I assumed this means everything in the box, including the dry mix. Now I'm having second thoughts about the definition of "as packaged", since macaroni and cheese is often around 4-8g fat per serving.
What does "as packaged" mean? Is it just the macaroni, or does it include everything in the box as its sold?
The recipe calls for ground beef, but surprisingly this doesn't add any protein to the "as prepared" numbers of the nutrition facts.
This is what the FDA says, but I just want to be sure.
As packaged” refers to the state of the product as it is marketed for purchase. “As prepared” refers to the product after it has been made ready for consumption (e.g., ingredients added per instructions and cooked such as a cake mix that has been prepared and baked or a condensed or dry soup that has been reconstituted).
I also sent an e-mail to Betty Crocker / General Mills, and they replied (via e-mail):
The amount listed before it is prepared includes every dry component in the package. The amount listed after the product is prepared includes the dry product and all ingredients added.
If an item of food is stored for a long time, the nutritional values might reduce. Other processes such as freezing, thawing and cooking will also have an effect on the nutrition. Thus the figures given on the box are correct at the time of packaging. The figures at that time might be different from when you actually get to eat the food. In the case of your macaroni, it could absorb or loose water while in storage so the % values would only be correct at the time of packaging. Thus "as packaged" is a reference to the time of packing not the packaging itself.
As to the low fat content, dried powdered foods usually are low fat as it is difficult to make the powder with fat. They will probably have used a hard, low fat cheese such as Parmesan, or a cheese flavouring, rather than Cheddar.
Thanks for explaining why the nutrition facts would show low fat even in the case of dry mix that includes cheese.
"As packaged" effectively means "what is in the package to be consumed, divided by the recommended serving size", so it would include the dry mix. (but they won't claim the fiber from the packaging, only the stuff you're supposed to eat.)
Now, if the package's instructions tell you to add 5 sticks of butter, and a quart of cream, they don't have to add that fat to the "as packaged" nutritional content ... only to the "as prepared" nutrition.
Many cereal boxes will give the "as packaged", but then also give the nutritional information when served with milk. (but they always seem to go with skim milk ... go figure)
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.123278
| 2011-09-23T23:12:50 |
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|
18195
|
Foods other than onions that can be caramelized for a delicious result
Is there a way to caramelize foods other than onions and produce similar results?
Milk. aka, Dulce de Leche.
@Joe Simmer a can of condensed milk (still sealed in the can) for several hours to get the easiest dulce de leche ever.
Onions are stars in this department, because they're sweet, but I have yet to find a fruit or veggie that doesn't roast or grill well. If you haven't tried cauliflower or broccoli yet, you really should. Cut into bite size pieces and roast with a little oil until brown and crispy all over.
I've closed this question as a poll. I think there's probably a decent question in here somewhere about what criteria to look for when judging if something will caramelize well or providing some slightly more detailed criteria than "orgasmicness", but as is it's just a poll (as evidenced by the answers). The question can be reopened if it is 'fixed'. See the [FAQ] if there are any other questions.
@yossarian A poll is a question that asks for votes. This is not a poll, since im not asking people to vote on the best food to caramelize. My question isn't "what criteria to look for when judging if something will caramelize well'' as you put it. It's a simple, answerable question: Which foods return delicious results if you caramelize them? That is a cooking method/technique question, and ive had great responses so far. As for 'orgasmicness', it's called humor and it makes reading more enjoyable.
I can appreciate that you're not accustomed to our definition of "poll", but for reference, poll questions on the SE network are those that primarily solicit answers and answer votes based on personal preference, as opposed to their thoroughness or overall quality/correctness. You didn't specify the options up-front, but it's still a poll. It's definitely not a question about technique. Please also keep in mind that not everybody will appreciate your humour; I didn't personally have any problem with it, but as a rule of thumb, it's best to keep your questions straight and to-the-point.
FAQ------If you have a question about:
Cooking & food preparation methods
Kitchen equipment
Food handling and storage
Ingredient selection and use
Recipe comprehension, improvement, and repairs
...then you've come to the right place - we want to help you! - FAQ----- @aaronut Where should i have asked this question? Another website? I understand you want this to be the best website it can be. How could I have asked this question better?
@Kewigro: A better way to ask this question might have been to give more specific context, maybe explain what dish your cooking. I see some people have answered "apples" and someone else answered "parsnips" and I'm sure that they are both good answers, but maybe not for the same kind of dish.
@kewigro, the key is that the question needs to warrant a definitive answer or two. The question you have asked could be an endless list of items. What you need to do is focus the question a little bit so that people can provide definitive answers. You could do this by asking about the criteria for caramalization (which would essentially answer your question) or providing a specific context on which to judge answers. As is, almost any answer is equally valid, so the question is not a good fit for our site.
Caramelized apples: http://www.seasaltwithfood.com/2010/10/french-toast-with-caramelized-apples.html or carrots: http://www.kayotic.nl/blog/caramelized-carrots-2 are delicious. Give them a go.
garlic, peppers, mushrooms, cabbage....
Parsnips are definitely one, in fact, I wouldn't eat them any other way than roasted. Put them quartered in the oven (coated in goose fat) at 220C for around 40 minutes until golden brown.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.123532
| 2011-10-05T06:58:38 |
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|
55560
|
Are bubbling preserved lemons a sign of spoilage?
I recently made preserved lemons using a recipe from Jerusalem: The Cookbook. Having poked around a variety of recipes online, it's pretty much the same as all the rest: Lots of salt, squeeze out the juice, fill up the container with more fresh juice, add some rosemary and a red pepper. Float a little oil on top. Let sit in a cool, dark place for 30 days.
I opened the lemons last night, and a considerable amount of gas escaped from the lemon juice, which bubbled for about 2-3 minutes before calming down. The cap on the jar wasn't distended, and the mixture wasn't malodorous in any way. My instinct is to say, "This is bad; throw this away", but I haven't canned anything before so I'm not sure what to expect. What little information I can find on google is either contradictory or tongue-in-cheek and suggest it's fermentation.
What's up with my lemons? Are the gas bubbles escaping from the mixture a sure sign of spoilage?
EDIT: After a week, I'm still not not sure which answer to accept, as this, too, contains contradictory information... I suppose time and votes will tell.
This is totally not a problem.
This style of lemon preservation relies on fermentation. The salt is not intended to halt all fermentation- it just restricts it to the tasty kind. Fermented pickles are a common and traditional way to preserve food because the salt and acid and thriving tasty bacteria make a very inhospitable environment for bad bugs.
The production of gas is just a symptom of the fermentation and not a problem. I regularly make Indian lemon pickle, which sounds like a similar recipe, and it produces some amount of gas. Recipes will typically call for the lid to be gently closed to allow some of the gas to escape- just to prevent the bottle from exploding.
This is not your typical canning. Typical canning uses acid or high temps to stop all bacterial growth. In that kind of canning gas production would be a very bad sign and you would have to throw it out.
It's probably fermentation, and as that requires microbial activity it's a sign your food has not been preserved. Unless the recipe specifically says this is expected and desired I would not eat it.
You didn't "can" anything this time, either. You made "SaeurLemon" ( a salt-fermented "cure" like sauerkraut, only with lemons, not cabbage) - Gas is perfectly normal.
If you HAD "canned" it, bubbles would be bad. There, you're sterilizing (or trying to) the food with high heat and vacuum sealing it. It should remain pretty much as canned, and there should be a vacuum seal until you open the jar. Anything making gas in "canned" food is highly suspect. That is not what you did...
The recipe you describe is a "wild fermentation" recipe.
So, as @Sobachatina said, the bubbles are a good sign, not a bad sign.
The strategy with "wild fermentation" is to create an environment that gives "good microbes" an edge over "bad" ones, in such a way that their advantage continues to increase over time. Salt gives the good ones an initial edge--most bad microbes are halophobic. Beyond that, most good microbes digest carbohydrates and produce CO2 plus acids and/or alcohols, and most good microbes tolerate acidic environments and up to moderate amounts of alcohol better than the bad microbes. At some point, the baddies have zero chance of making any progress.
Canning is a very different strategy: create a hermetic seal, then kill them all, good and bad, with heat. The challenge is that if you fail to seal it tight, or if you fail to kill them all, then what you have is a tabla rasa for whatever microbes wind up in there. And some of the microbes that enjoy a mid-pH high-moisture anaerobic environment can cause serious problems, like botulism!
So for fermented foods, bubbly = good. For canned foods, bubbly = bad.
PS I would discourage you from putting a float of oil on top of any ferment. Little bits of stuff suspended in oil can create just the sort of environment that botulism microbes enjoy. Lemons are acidic enough that it may not be a problem in this case, but it's a bad practice.
This sounds to me like a wild fermentation. Yeast will happily consume the sugars in your jar and create carbon dioxide (the gas you noted) and perhaps some ethanol and various flavor esters. This in itself isn't necessarily a problem, but where yeast can thrive so can many other organisms. The key to avoiding this in the future is to make sure everything that touches the ingredients is sanitized (the jar, spoons, juicer, etc). What you have many not be too bad (depends on what else is growing in there) but it probably won't taste good either. I'd toss it and try again.
The problem with a wild fermentation is you don't know what did it. It might not even be yeast at all, but some other spoilage organism that can make you very very ill.
Actually, wild fermentation is incredibly safe. It's one of the oldest preservation methods we have. By packing that jar with salt and lemon juice he's created a selective environment that keeps bad bacteria out. There is no oxygen in contact with the lemons and they're in a low pH, high salinity solution. The biggest concern is mold growing on the surface, where oxygen is in contact with the solution. We may not know which yeast caused the bubbles, but we can assume it's a good one. C. Botulinum is also not a concern. Although, it is heat tolerant, it is vulnerable to the low pH.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.123853
| 2015-03-09T16:27:22 |
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42586
|
What is Okinawan "yushi tofu" made from?
Here in Okinawa where I'm currently travelling, there is a dish called "yushi tofu" (Japanese: ゆし豆腐).
So far I've only noticed it offered as a variety of Okinawa soba. (Okinawa soba is different to regular soba made of buckwheat.) I tried "yushi tofu soba" tonight in Naha and enjoyed it - but I'm still not sure what it actually is or what it's made from.
Image thanks to the Japanese Wikipedia.
I've asked a few locals and none have been able to tell me what it is. English Wikipedia doesn't cover it and the mentions it gets in the Japanese Wikipedia do not translate well with Google Translate.
I'm pretty confident that "yushi" is Japanese "油脂", which means "fats and oils" - but that doesn't tell us very much.
In particular, apparently the word "tofu" is sometimes used for foods not made from soybeans so I would like to know if this is made from soybeans combined with fats and oils, made with the fats and oils that can be extracted from soybeans, or is made with fats and oils rather than soybeans. Or something else (-:
Food.com actually provides a recipe for making it, saying:
Yushi doufu is tofu that has not been pressed and formed, but simply scooped out after tofu coagulates...
The ingredients are soy beans, water, and nigari.
Perfect! I don't know why my Googling failed to find that (-:
Some days you are the windshield, some days you are the bug :-)
I finally found another website which describes this. The key part of its definition seems different to me (not very handy in the kitchen), and Stack Exchange encourages multiple answers. I've bolded the key phrase:
Blog: Okina Learning. Article: Okinawa Trip: Food
The last one and a bit special one is the noodle dish with traditional Okinawan tofu, ゆし豆腐そば (Yushi Doufu Soba). The ゆし豆腐 (Yushi Doufu) is the tofu made from adding the bittern into the soya milk before it becomes the tofu as we know. Just for your interest, the tofu or 豆腐 (Doufu) is regarded as the meat for farmers because its nutritional values.
Photo © Okina / Okina Learning blog. Used with permission.
Aha, it turns out that "bittern" and "nigari" are the same thing. Neither word was in my vocabulary until today. Another name for it is "nisho" or "nishou".
You tell me now after having had quite a struggle involving soymilk and a bird....
Yushi isn't 油脂. It is the Okinawan language equivalent of Japanese " yose 寄せ", which means "gathered" or "brought together", referring to the way it is made.
It is basically made the same way as regular tofu, except it is not pressed into a block.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.124284
| 2014-03-07T12:27:18 |
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17663
|
Can you identify this Serbian street food?
Yesterday in Niš, southern Serbia I bought this street food pictured:
It looked and tasted like deep fried batter, how fish from a fish and chip shop might look in Australia where I'm from.
It had no filling and I was offered a choice of sugar or salt. It was very inexpensive, maybe 25 Eurocents.
I'm interested in its Serbian name but also if it's more widespread I'm also interested in what it's called elsewhere, variants etc. And of course what it is made of: dough? batter? wheat?
Chinese bakeries i've been to (in, er, London) often sell 'fried dough', which looks just like this, and is hard and savoury, so quite unlike a western doughnut. The so-called experts have more to say on it.
I remember something very similar in preparation in Panama but it tasted different, possibly due to what they fried it in. It may or may not have been called carimañola or biñuelo and was one of the typical breakfast and street foods taking the place of tortilla, which doesn't seem to be used in Panama.
The Panamanian one may well have been a buñuelo (meaning from Buñol, a town which is internationally more famous for its tomato-throwing festival).
@PeterTaylor: I think you're right. In fact I even asked a question on spanish.SE about them a while ago because in Panama I kept seeing the odd spelling "biñuelo" for them!
That's not batter, that's yeast dough. It is called Мекица (transliteration: mekitza) in Bulgarian, Google Translate says the Serbian word is Колачи (transliteration: kolachi), which I find somewhat strange, as in Bulgarian, колачета is a different food. Maybe somebody can supply the correct Serbian word (or affirm that kolachi is correct).
In itself, it is a very simple food. You just take normal bread dough, stretch it thin (the Bulgarian version is flat and more round, this one may have been adapted to street eating) and deep-fry it. There are two types, the evenly thick as you have it in the picture, and the one which is transparently thin in the middle with a very thick edge (the styles don't have their own names). It is usually eaten for breakfast. The simplest way to eat it is with confectioner's sugar sprinkled over it, but you can also spread jam on it or put feta pieces.
I don't know about the geographical spread of мекици. Wikipedia suggests there is a Hungarian equivalent called lángos.
A similar food with much wider distribution is made from a softer, almost liquid yeast dough, which, unlike simple bread dough, contains eggs and fat. The American word is doughnut, in Germany it is called Krapfen, and many European languages have a word derived from Krapfen, e.g. the Serbian крофне (krofne). Note that the shape differs (the American doughnut is a torus, the Krapfen has an almost spherical lens form, and the French beignet is square), but the dough is roughly the same. There are too many variations to list, Wikipedia has a very long list if you are interested.
Great answer thanks. I asked my Serbian host but he lacked the English. He didn't realize I wanted the Serbian word and was trying to tell me it was a kind of bread.
The equivalent of this in Hungary is indeed called lángos, and it's a fairly common street food. However, it looks more like a pizza with a thick edge and paper-thin middle, like the second version you described.
The Serbian term is "mekika" (singular) or "mekike" (plural). It is in no way related to fish and chips...
I'm serbian and KOLACI means cake in Serbian. What you are looking for iz MEKIKE in balkan countries
and it is called USHTIPAK plural: USHTIPCI in SERBIA
Ah yes I do seem to remember the sign on the stall ended in "c" because I wasn't sure if I should pronounced it "ch" or "ts" or "k". Plus a Google image search using several spelling variants seems to be the right things.
The Serbian term is mekika (singular) or mekike (plural). This simple food is made from yeast dough - you just deep-fry pieces of it in a pan.
The size and shape depends on the person who makes them.
As mentioned above, there is another, very similar dish called uštipak (pronounced as "ushtipak") . The only difference between the two that I can think of is the fact that mekike can be made with less oil, while uštipci must be deep-fried... Ah and yes, ushtipak is typically smaller than mekika.
It is not Mekitza, but "mekika" - that's correct name. Pronouncing mekika (just like it is written)
Is this a Serbian version? I can assure you that in Bulgaria, мекица is the correct name, pronounced with the sound you can find in Russian czar, Italian mozzarella, or German Zoll, known as "voiceless alveolar affricate". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A6. I can imagine Serbians localising the name to "mekika", but your answer doesn't make it clear if that is what you meant, maybe you can edit it to provide more information.
I know from my travels that especially for foods the same word can mean different things in different places, or the same thing can have different names. Also of course for slight differences like mekitsa vs mekika - but yes please @zoza0503: please tell us a little more information about Serbian mekika.
@rumtscho - unless you prove the origin of the dish, which I honestly doubt you can, you can't really tell who "localized" the term...
@DejanLekic you are right, this was a bad formulation on my side. I meant that I can imagine that they are two variants of the same word, each one correct in its language. But if this is the case, I have no idea where the word (and/or the food) emerged first, so my grammar construction is indeed unfortunate. And tomato's answer makes me think that the prevalence of the word does not coincide with country boundaries anyway, but seems to be a regional term which exists in different languages.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.124538
| 2011-09-12T09:29:23 |
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|
88834
|
Why does tea with hard water (lime) taste different?
It seems that tea with lime water (hard water) tastes different.
Different enough that tea manufacturers have a different product to cope with the difference in taste.
My question is: Why does tea with hard water (lime) taste different?
Would you accept the answer 'hard water tastes different because you can taste the minerals that make it hard'?
Does a different type of tea fix the fact you can taste the minerals?
This seems to be answered directly on the Yorkshire Tea page.
Before we get cracking, here’s some background about Yorkshire Tea and hard water to bear in mind. When deciding which teas our buyers will select to put in the Yorkshire Tea blend, they taste every single one in both soft and hard water. This enables them to create not only Yorkshire Tea, but also Yorkshire Tea for Hard Water, a blend that’s perfectly suited to… you guessed it.
Seems to imply that there are different blends of tea that taste better in hard water and soft water that they are accommodating for.
To answer the question "Why does tea with hard water (lime) taste different?", it has to do with the higher concentrations of calcium and magnesium that your taste buds will pick up on. From the Yorkshire Tea page, it seems they make two different blends of tea with the blend for hard water stating:
The tap water in hard water areas contains lots of minerals, which can make tea taste darker and thicker. With a few clever tweaks, we’ve made a blend to balance that out – so you can enjoy a proper brew, wherever you live.
Source:
https://www.yorkshiretea.co.uk/brew-news/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-hard-water
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.125094
| 2018-04-02T15:10:30 |
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|
2765
|
Shiny side or not for foil?
Does it make any difference when you wrap food with aluminum foil for grilling or baking or making a steam pouch whether you put the shiny side in or the shiny side out?
I've seen at least one answer to a questiong about grilling that made mention of this.
I've been told that the shiny side should go on the inside for cooking, and the outside for freezing. In other words, do you want to reflect the heat into the food, or away from the food?
However, common sense (which fails very often) tells me that with the temperature ranges involved, any benefit is marginal, if it exists at all.
The only time it might matter, is if you were trying to warm something up in the sun. Then it might make a difference.
EDIT: From The Straight Dope:
The truth is that the shiny side is
not treated with a dangerous chemical.
Mineral oil is used as a lubricant
during the rolling process, some trace
of which may remain on the finished
foil--but it's not dangerous. The
shiny side is shiny because of the way
foil is made. During the last pass
through the rolling mill, a double
thickness of foil is run between the
rollers. The side of each sheet that
comes in contact with the polished
steel rollers comes out shiny. The
other side has a matte finish.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1135/should-a-baking-potato-be-wrapped-in-foil-shiny-side-in-or-shiny-side-out
ALSO
The official word from the Reynolds
aluminum people is as follows: "It
makes little difference which side of
the Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil you
use--both sides do the same fine job
of cooking, freezing, and storing
food. There is a slight difference in
the reflectivity of the two sides, but
it is so slight that laboratory
instruments are required to measure
it."
This is what I've been told. A nagging voice in the back of my head says: 'But if it doesn't really matter, wouldn't companies selling this foil go for the cheaper production method (presumably) of having identical sides to the foil?'
See edit. The shiny/dull side IS the cheaper method.
Also, even if it wasn't, public perception would play a role. Plenty of people think it matters.
I just cooked 12 baked potatoes; 6 shiny side out, and 6 shiny side in. Each potato was individually wrapped and all potatoes were about the same size. I cooked the shiny side out potatoes first, then turned off the oven and left the oven door open for 30 minutes before cooking the other six. I also unwrapped both sets of potatoes after sitting for five minutes out of the oven, sliced them in half and put butter in between. Both baked at 375°F for an hour timed by the oven; they cooked exactly the same. Neither was more done than the other nor had more crispy skin.
This sounds like a fair experimental method. Unfortunately, it's buried inside too much anecdote & too little formatting, making it a very difficult read.
I think with the foil's shiny side outside the food cooks a bit later because it reflects heat away from the food
It takes longer to bake with the shiny side out, I know this because i have cooked for years for large numbers of people and have to do it in about 2 hours max. Shiny side in cooks things faster.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.125249
| 2010-07-22T13:24:20 |
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|
90465
|
Do all cheeses change their taste during their shelf life, like Brie or Camembert?
Brie and Camembert go through 3 stages of ripening and changes in taste. Does it happen to blue, or any other type of cheese?
Of course, I'm not really sure if there are any real cheeses where it doesn't happen. Perhaps those American single slice thingies?
hmmm I haven't noticed really with hard or semi hard cheeses. At least the taste doesn't change that radically
I disagree. Some hard cheeses can ripen for months or even years and change their taste quite a lot.
All traditionally made cheeses (not "cheese food" or pasteurized processed cheeses like American slices or American cheddar that you find in the grocery store) contain enzymes and bacteria that impact the texture and flavor over time. Cheese makers call this "ripening". The amount of impact that you notice depends on a number of variables...type of cheese, age, storage conditions (temperature, humidity...), and packaging, to name a few. It's more obvious, and a quicker process in softer cheeses, but it also happens in hard cheeses. Storing cheese in a typical refrigerator drastically slows the ripening process, as it is typically too cold, and much too dry to promote ripening. However, with a few modifications, you can fairly easily create the correct conditions at home if you want to build a ripening "cellar". Most cheese makers will have a perfect ripeness in mind for a given cheese, but most are edible well before and well after this ideal state. Aromas of ammonia, or a rotting rind are signs that a cheese is well past its prime.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.125545
| 2018-06-20T12:34:50 |
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|
89739
|
mousse with liquid in bottom
I made 2 mousses. One typical and one was an attempt for something new. Both turned out with liquid in the bottom. I made both with egg whites. Did I not beat the egg whites enough?
The first was a simple passionfruit juice, unflavored gelatine, cream, and egg whites.
The second: Inspired by a chocolate mousse recipe, I made a base of cottage cheese blended for 5 min, stonyfield soy yogurt, and a pack of unflavored gelatine and slowly mixed with egg whites beaten in meringue with sugar. The next day the intended mousse was fine at the top but had a base of water. What did I do wrong? How could I improve it to make it better? Is the problem lack of fat?
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.125685
| 2018-05-10T19:36:16 |
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|
42456
|
How long should meat be steamed for?
I am told it's better to steam meat (over boiling) so that all the dangerous bacteria and parasites are killed but too many nutrients aren't lost in the process.
So how does one figure out how long to steam meat? (So that it doesn't get overcooked, but is safe and nutritious to eat.)
EDITED out the part that said it's for the dog, as the context is unnecessary here (as suggested by @rfusca).
There are charts for when bacteria and parasites die. You will just have to check the internal temperature of the meat with a thermometer. Once it has reached the minimal temperature which makes you feel safe, you can remove it from the heat. It doesn't matter if you are steaming or using any other method.
This is a safety-oriented chart from Jeff Potter's book Cooking for Geeks.
And this is a detailed protein chart from McGee's On food and cooking
Thank you so much for taking the time to scan the info. I plan to buy that book! =) BUT... isn't it missing the amount of time the food should be cooked at the recommended temperature?
@its_me there is no such time. There can't be, with traditional cooking methods. (There are separate charts for sous vide). You just stop cooking as soon as the thermometer reaches the desired temperature for thin meats, a few degrees earlier for thick ones where you expect sufficient carryover from the hot outside to the center so that the center ends up at this temperature. The exceptions are noted on the chart, such as the FSIS pork guideline.
Wow, that's a huge gap between FSIS and USDA for pork. Do you happen to know if FSIS has done anything similar for other meats, or if they just agree with the USDA?
@Jefromi note that they say "hold for 1 minute". It is perfectly normal that the temperature which achieves a log7 reduction in a given bacteria instantly is so far from the temperature which needs 1 minute to achieve the same reduction. I am not aware of 1 minute holding temperatures being published for other meats, but I have never actively searched for such information.
Steaming meat is much too fiddly, for little significant difference from "slow cooking". Steaming meat means it does not go above 100°C. This can be achieved through many simple and potentially better techniques
The higher the temperature, the more nutrients may get destroyed (when you cook something all the way through). Steaming does not recover lost nutrients from juice run off
Try making a plain casserole, and serve the meat with juices (sauce, gravy...). Then if any nutrients leach from the meat they will be in the juices anyway
Use a slow cooker or crock pot to make a large batch up, or better yet a sous-vide setup should give the ultimate results
Add brown rice etc to make a complete meal. Use a nutrient calculator to check the nutrient profile is what you are after. e.g. wolframalpha
1. As the context of the dog is unnecessary here, I removed it. 2. Not to be rude, but there's no such thing as much too fiddly for dog food. As the owner of a pet I love I care as much about my dog's health as I do mine. The reason why I mentioned the dog is that our recipes tend more towards taste over nutrition, which I wanted to avoid from the answers. 3. By "use a slow cooker or crock pot," do you suggest that it's better to slow cook food (i.e. less temperature, long time) vs. cooking at high temperature? Can you please provide some basis for this? And thank you so much!
@its_me It free advice, you shouldn't be rude! De-dogged anyway
I only meant to correct you; sorry if that seemed rude. =/ And wow, I didn't know about that wolframalpha thing, thank you!
@its_me It didn't seem rude. If you think something's wrong with an answer, especially to your own question, you should speak up like you did.
Again, the OP clearly meant it as "I know you could take my disagreement as rude but it's true for me, so here you are: ..." and did not take your reply as tongue in cheek. It sounds like originally it was just an honest misunderstanding on your part, but now you're deliberately sticking to your version despite two mods and the OP seeing it differently. To sum up: please try to be polite and expect some criticism on your answers. I'll clean up the comments.
|
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.125779
| 2014-03-02T19:17:32 |
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|
19141
|
What is the dish shown in the "Sunset Limited"
In the movie, "The Sunset Limited" Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson eat a dish which I'm dying to know what it is.
They say it has molasses, rutabaga, bananas and mangoes in it, and it's sort of liquid.
Can anyone try and say what that is, and where I can find a complete recipe to make such a recipe? (If you are up for the challenge, maybe you can create one yourselves to include the ingredients above.)
This is the bit I am talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfH9SclYNVg&t=13m20s.
Also including a readable text link to the novel transcript.
It's not clear from the clip that this is even a real food; it's certainly not shown, and Hollywood is prone to making a lot of this stuff up.
Yeah, like the whole story is fiction I suspect... :-)
@Aaronut, there is a strong chance you're right, but I saw this movie twice now, and this dish really intrigues me. It might be made up, but I decided to give it my best shot in finding out...
The question is really intriguing. I did a bunch of reading (too much, probably), and didn't come up with anything conclusive (so no answer). It is clearly a fusion food, with creole, Puerto Rican and North African influences. I'm inclined to try it, thinking sort of "thick stew". While the work is fiction, I bet the dish has a basis in reality - it sounds exactly like something someone would make, but not document (home-style cookin').
A synopsis of the play says this about the dish:
In the second movement, White agrees to eat a meal of multi-cultural
soul-food Black prepares for him, relishing it and Black's stories of
prison life.
In Black's description in the clip you linked, he says that he learned to prepare it "right here in the ghetto" and that "there are a lot of different influences" from people that come from all over the world. It sounds like the dish is a metaphor for Black's world, or perhaps for his view of the world. Black also says that it gets better after a couple days, that you have to heat it up a few times to get the flavors right, "like chilli." This may be a continuation of the food as life metaphor, but if you take it literally you'd have to guess that the dish itself is a kind of stew.
So, given those clues, if you wanted to make something similar to what Black prepared, I think you'd start by thinking of stew recipes. Ingredients include molasses, banana, rutabaga, and mango, so you've got a mix of starch and sweet. Black and White share this as a meal, not a dessert, so I think you'd want to balance that sweetness with something savory and salty, maybe a ham hock. Onion would also add a savory-sweet flavor that could work with both smoky ham and the sweet ingredients. From there you could add other ingredients, probably whatever you have on hand -- corn, okra, carrots, raisins...
I vote the dish is a hot dish, not a dessert. Samual L Jackson's character gives soul food to the man who is empty. I can't see soul food being cold, or a dessert. That shit is hot for your belly. This is amusing because I was looking for the same recipe after I saw the film. It seems that if the fruits and vegetables were all in chunks, and the molasses mixed with other chili like ingredients sort of provided the in between sauce you might be on the right track. Invent it. My friend once made chocolate soup on a Sunday afternoon.
It sounds middle-eastern. I've had a dish with turnip wedges that were stewed in a pomegranate molasses sauce, but you could do something similar with rutabaga in molasses flavored with mango and banana.
Can you devise a pseudo-recipe I could go by?
I don't know if it is a real dish; I couldn't find anything googling either.
What I gathered from the clip is that it's a spicy dessert.
The ingredients are: molasses, mango, banana, rutabaga, and chili.
Rutabaga
They didn't chew much on it so I assume that the rutabaga was boiled down. I have never eaten it before but according to wikipedia it is a turnip like vegetable, but slightly bitter.
but it looked as tho there was enough consistency for light chewing(could of been the fruits tho).
Chili
Tommy Lee Jones mentioned chili after the other ingredients, followed by a cup of water.
So it is spicy, but yet the "creeps up on you" kind of spicy. (So it is boiled in with the rutabaga.)
Ok, I would first dice the rutabaga in 1 centimeter cubes then salt them. (I don't know how bitter it is so I would salt them if I thought the bitterness was overwhelming the other flavors.)
After that, I would rinse the rutabaga (so the dessert doesn't become salty).
Boil it in water with molasses brown sugar and chili powder. (If rutabaga is like other radish types it will absorb flavors well.)
I would boil it until the flavors soaked in well, but the rutabaga is still firm enough, so that if I poked it with a chopstick and lifted it, it wouldn't fall apart.
Next, I would use cornstarch and creme to thicken it a bit, then turn off the fire adding the banana and mango. Then let it cool naturally. (Both fruits are already soft so I would want to keep the consistency but slightly soften them by adding it into the mix right after I turn off the fire-) Then again, Samuel L Jackson said he reheated it a couple of times to get the flavor right; maybe he wanted a bit of the fruit flavors in the sauce as well. In this case, I would have 2 batches of banana and mango, the first would go in the pot with the rutabaga (it will probably melt), then the second batch at the end.
Instead of salting, I'd maybe boil the rutabaga once, taste the water and rutabaga, and if it is too bitter, dump out the water and reboil with fresh water, molasses, and brown sugar.
After it is cooled, refrigerate and serve cold! (The dishes weren't steaming.)
Um... you clearly heard wrong, chili was not stated as an ingredient, the line was "like chili", as an analogy for something that's better after being reheated once or twice. I do not even want to imagine a dessert made from actual chili.
@Aaronut, I was introduced to chilli and salt on fruit by a Mexican friend, but it seems to be popular in SE Asia too...
@PeterTaylor: I think you're referring to chili peppers or chili powder, not chili. I suppose I could be wrong, but... either way, there's no chance that it's what's being described in the clip or question.
@Aaronut, I am, but I think kishfoo is too.
@PeterTaylor: Maybe. But the movie isn't. There's no way that this answer can make sense in context.
@Aaronut, you maybe right. Its difficult to say...maybe ask the writer of the film?
It's Tommy Lee Jones... Not sure he'll answer... But actually it's worth a shot
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.126161
| 2011-11-25T00:50:38 |
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|
123253
|
Do stainless steel sauce pots wear out and how can I tell if it needs replacement?
Perhaps a chef who has lots of experience with cookware might know when to or when not to replace a stainless pot.
I use the pot for cooking great northern beans and it has been used for maybe 60 years. It is a 4 quart Revere Ware stainless steel sauce pot with a copper bottom. I use a 3M scouring pad to clean. After cooking there is some dark discoloration and I can feel residue there but the 3M pad gets it shiny clean.
What prompts me to ask is that I have to clean it every time I cook the beans and that used not be the case so I thought I would ask before thinking about replacing it.
The same pot on Amazon used is over 100 dollars since they are no longer made and it could be worse than mine so it behooves me to at least ask.
I have a couple of those of the same vintage that are just fine.
Sometimes the copper coating on the bottom wears away but these are generally long lasting quality cookware.
Not sure about your cleaning assertion. I clean every pot and pan after using it, and as it is not a non-stick surface a little scrubbing with a scotch-brite, SOS or the like pad is not out of line at all, it will depend on what you cooked and what residue is left over.
And yes any pot or pan will wear out, it just depends on how well they are made and how they are treated. A well-treated, quality, pot/pan could easily last a lifetime or two, or more...
..thank you I am going to hang on to my vintage pot. A little muscle to keep it clean and spotless is worth the effort.
The age of your pot shouldn’t affect if your pot needs scrubbing on its own, but the longer you have it, the more chances that you’ve had to damage it.
If you’ve scratched up the surface, that might cause problems, but you may be able to buff them out. Adding salt before the water is boiling can cause pitting in some types of stainless steel which might be a sign to retire it. The disk underneath it delaminating (because you overheated it) would also be one of the other things that might be worth replacing it for.
I own Revereware that’s probably a similar vintage (I got it when my great uncle passed about 30 years ago). I’ve dropped it, overheated one piece (so it has a sort of rainbow effect), but it still cooks just fine.
It’s possible that something else has changed that might be causing your issues. Have you moved? Do you use hot water? (And when was your hot water heater last replaced and what’s the state of your sacrificial rod?). Are you still using the same recipe? Have you changed any ingredients?
Thank you . As an experiment I will cook the beans with distilled water to see what is left at the bottom. You also mentioned the pot can be buffed. If you don't mind telling me what did you use to do this? Thank you.
I wouldn’t try to buff it unless you can specifically feel ridges / scratches in your cookware. I’m no expert on this, but I’d probably start with fine steel wool to get any ridges down, and then use buffing compound on a rag (or get a buffing wheel that chucks into a handheld drill). There’s also clay bars that they use for automotive stuff that might work. (You might also try an automotive body shop to see if they could do it, but their tools might be too big). Unfortunately you don’t have too many ‘tinkers’ left in this world (people who repaired pots and other metal goods)
Oh… and distilled water can make food taste flat, as it has absolutely no salt in it. If nothing’s changed in your water supply, I wouldn’t bother trying to change your water.
Thank you for all the great input. It only requires a little cleaning so I am going to keep it just as it is and forget the distilled water. I was just worried about metal leaching into the food after I scoured it with the 3M pad but it's probably impossible to keep anypot from being scratched after repeated use. And love this pot, it's been with me for 60 years.
Scotbrite pads and similar are not as hard as metal, so they shouldn’t be able to scratch it unless it’s damaged somehow. They used to be my favorite way to clean pans until I found the hard plastic scrapers for cast iron. (Lodge and a few others sell them; I like the lodge ones because they have a different curve on every side, so they can work well on any pan I’ve tried)
@Joe Scotch brite pad are much harder than metal which is why they are, and originally made for, metal and wood working. Harder than steel wool but small particle size leaves finer scratches you are less likely to notice. Your supermarket will only have the gentlest kind. Industrial suppliers have the rest. Even these can be used to polish steel on a lathe. They have things like aluminum oxide (sandpaper particles) embedded in the fibers. It's also why they do not feel like a cheap scrub sponge or even the green scrubbing side of a two-sided sponge.
@Sedumjoy See above. If you want a scrub pad that is more than plastic but doesn't scratch it needs to have something like walnut shells as an abrasive instead of aluminum which you won't know unless you go to specialty suppliers.
@DKNguyen There are pads made out of thin strips of copper. Should be next to perfect for stainless steel: The sharp copper edges are harder than most stains, but copper cannot hope to scratch steel of any kind. The downside is that they corrode over time, and I guess the resulting copper compounds are neither healthy for you nor the environment.
@cmaster-reinstatemonica That would scratch less than scotch brite. Brass wool too. Although, they may still scratch the stainless steels passivated oxide layer. I don't know how hard those are. And in case anyone is thinking brass: most brasses have lead added to it unless otherwise stated. Brass wool for kitchens shouldn't but suspect brass in other forms.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.126707
| 2023-02-02T22:38:38 |
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|
104049
|
Microwave cooking time with porcelain/stoneware container rather than plastic
Would the cooking time change if I microwave some food in a porcelain or stoneware container rather than plastic?
More details (if you have time to waste)
I generally do not like to put plastic in the microwave. I had some accidents in the past where the plastic softened or even melted. In those cases I had to throw the food away because honestly the idea of accidentally ingesting plastic scares me. And this happened even when plastic containers were claimed to be microwave safe.
Therefore, recently I decided to move food from plastic "microwaveable" packages to my own microwaveable porcelain and stoneware containers (dishes or mugs with lids).
Would this mean that I have to cook the food for longer time or shorter time, compared to the cooking time suggested on the package?
It depends entirely on the structure of the alternative - if the bowl heats up before the contents, then you are dealing with shielding & most 'simple' calculations go right out of the window. Instead invest in higher temperature plastics… These are given away free with instant microwaveable meals & if looked after will last for decades.
Related: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/57323/which-materials-used-for-plates-absorb-microwaves and https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/54228/should-i-cover-food-while-reheating-it-in-a-microwave/54232#54232
@Tetsujin thanks and two questions:
(1) would the cooking time still change if I use these alternative plastics, since it's still not the original package?
(2) Is there a way to know for sure that these higher temperature plastics never release invisible toxic substances (like dioxin)? The packages you find at the supermarket also claim to be safe for the microwave, but they still soften and melt, so I don't know how much I can trust these claims in general.
The things they sell microwave meals in are to all intents & purposes 'microwave invisible'. They don't slow the process at all. They're made of HPET if you want to do some health research, but practically I've had some of these things maybe 20 years. They don't really soften with heat & even hot fat doesn't scar them. I don't buy much microwave food, so I don't pick them up often & then reuse them until I manage to eventually break them. They're great for a can of beans, or leftovers re-heated for tomorrow's lunch etc, or as plate covers if someone gets in late & has to mike their dinner...
PS I think that overall the info you are providing can be considered as an answer :) You may consider copying and pasting it in an actual answer...
Yes, it's likely to change the time. There is no way to predict how it will change it, though, since it is a combination of the material, mass and shape of the vessel. So you'll have to test it for each vessel you use.
For a properly microwave-suitable dish, you're likely to need to add a small but almost constant time. This is because in such a dish the food heats up, but transfers some of its heat to the dish (much more than to a plastic dish). I would expect to need up to about a minute extra on reheating a dish of 1-2 servings, to take into account the thermal mass of the container, but this is a guess because I haven't tested your dishes.
Some ceramics don't work well in the microwave: they absorb the energy and heat up, before transferring the heat to the food. It's not a good idea to use these; they can get extremely hot while failing to cook your food well. They're not very common IME.
You can tell the difference by placing the dish you want to test in the microwave next to another dish of cold water, and heating for a minute or two. The dish being tested should stay cold while the water warms up.
In all cases, and even if you use plastic containers, you need to check the food is actually hot through (or develop your own reliable methods to ensure it does get hot right through). The distribution of heating is very variable.
& rather irritatingly, even crockery from the same set isn't the same. We have soup-, side- & dinner-plates & cereal bowls from the same set, all ostensibly 'porcelain'. All the plates are microwave invisible, the cereal bowls get red hot without the contents heating much at all.
@Tetsujin more irritating than surprising. I've had supposedly identical sets of crockery bought from the same shop at the same time that didn't even look or weigh the same (both were matched the photos on the box well enough, but the difference was much more than different shades of glaze). Mass supply will do that
I like your answer, especially the part about the test to see how much heat is absorbed by the container rather than passing through...
Posting comments as answer…
It depends entirely on the structure of the alternative - if the bowl heats up before the contents, then you are dealing with shielding & most 'simple' calculations go right out of the window. Instead invest in higher temperature plastics… These are given away free with supermarket instant microwaveable meals & if looked after will last for decades.
The things they sell microwave meals in are to all intents & purposes 'microwave invisible'. They don't slow the process at all. They're made of HPET[1] if you want to do some health research, but practically I've had some of these things maybe 20 years. They don't really soften with heat & even hot fat doesn't scar them[2].
I don't buy much microwave food, so I don't pick them up often & then reuse them until I manage to eventually break them. They're great for a can of beans, or leftovers re-heated for tomorrow's lunch etc, or as plate covers if someone gets in late & has to mike their dinner…
& rather irritatingly, even crockery from the same set isn't the same. We have soup-, side- & dinner-plates and cereal bowls from the same set, all ostensibly 'porcelain'. All the plates are microwave invisible, the cereal bowls get red hot without the contents heating much at all.
[1]I once did a fair bit of research on this, when I was trying to find replacements for old, cracked plastic-ware without having to buy the bloody awful meals they contain, but my research was a dead-end. I had to eat the damn stuff to get the dishes, or buy them by the pallet in 10,000s.
Here's a beginner's guide to plastic types, by 'embossed symbol'. My newer ones class themselves as 'PET PP 05' [& no, I don't know what that really means.]
Hunker - What Are the Numbers That Say That Plastic Is Safe to Use in the Microwave Oven?
[2]Conversely, some of my expensive 'tupperware' [not by brand, just by type of 'permanent long term freezer to microwave or keep food in the fridge] type dishes & bowls are permanently scarred & discoloured if there is any kind of oil or fat on the food being microwaved.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.127188
| 2019-12-11T19:50:16 |
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|
90251
|
Bread is too moist in a humid climate
I live in Florida, it's extremely humid here. Store bought bread and home made (bread machine) bread is always too moist for our liking.
I've read on the internet to never keep bread in the refrigerator because it will make it get stale more quickly.
I'm wondering if this might actually help our situation. What do you think, will it dry out the bread somewhat?
Do you have any suggestions? I bought a linen bread bag, which was a mistake, as the bread got stale within one day (because it was sliced I guess).
Thanks in advance!
No solution, but bread going stale is at least in part due to the starch recrystallising. And 4°C (fridge) happens to be close to optimal for that.
Suggestion: can you explain what's special about diabetic bread? Because I have solutions for normal bread, but I think that at least part of your problem is related to the alternate bread ingredients.
The diabetic bread doesn't use any flour. I use milled flax seed, vital wheat gluten and oat fiber. Here is my full list of ingredients. https://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe/view/54457910808429 this is made in my bread machine.
@Maddy, this might help: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/57267/effects-of-elevated-storage-temperature-on-bread-quality
I've edited your question to include that the bread is flour-free, which affects the answers you get.
I edited my question as well because it was heading in the wrong direction. It is all bread that is too moist for our liking. Not only the low carb bread.
Flour-free breads are, in my experience, very hydroscopic: they absorb water from the air even faster than regular bread. However, since the bread you're using is presliced, there's a simple solution: store the bread in the freezer. Just separate the slices (so that you can pull them apart after it's frozen), and put it in a ziplock freezer bag.
This does mean that you'll need to toast, or at least thaw, the bread before using it. However, I've found that freezing bread results in less of a "stale" flavor than refrigerating it.
We do exactly this. Thawing suffices, takes minutes. If you want the bread to even less moist, pop in the microwave, each side 10 seconds, and finally another 10 seconds if it's not good enough.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.127765
| 2018-06-08T19:34:43 |
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|
90576
|
Is Ciao Bella's "Rosemary and Olive Oil Gelato" savory?
I am about to make ice cream (for dessert) from The Ciao Bella book for Gelato and Sorbetto and was thinking about trying the Rosemary and Olive Oil Gelato. It says something about being savory, but it has the same amount of sugar as most of the other gelatos there. I have tried (sweet) olive oil gelato elsewhere, and it was very good (though unusual).
Is this Gelato fit (as an ice cream) for a normal dessert? Is it eaten as if it is sweet?
Edit: Does "savory", in this case, mean it's not sweet?
I can be both savory and sweet; that is the point of that gelato.
It is one of those dessert component that needs to be served with something else to balance it out.
I'd serve it with a lemon biscotti or a lemon pound cake.
Ok, I was wondering about that (first part). It's just that normally, when I hear savory ice cream, I think of something that has no sugar (like cheddar or crab gelato).
Also, what's stupid is that I need 15 reputation to upvote answers to my own question
Problem solved it looks like @bob.
@bob welcome to our site! You are not the first one to stumble over that rule. We do have a whole "parallel" site called Meta, with questions and answers about how the system behaves, and feature requests, and somebody has asked for a change there. You can read the conversation here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1661. Also, I am writing this 14 hours after you posted your quesiton, and you already have more than 15 reputation, just from that one question you asked, so it's not a high bar.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.127979
| 2018-06-25T22:31:14 |
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|
90986
|
Can you roast soybeans directly in a popcorn popper or microwave?
Howdy, I just wanted to ask if it was possible to roast this type
of soybean directly in a microwave popper contraption or a dedicated popcorn popper without any prior water work, just straight out of the box? And If they'd be edible if I did such a thing?
Edit:
Honestly what confused me was this video, because the guy just threw them in the frying pan without any preparation or water usage and roasted them.
https://youtu.be/aFt60REeLIk
No, you can't cook dried beans just by roasting them. All this would do is it dry them out even more and that wouldn't make them more edible. Indeed, dried beans are used as baking beans to weigh down pastry during blind baking and they don't pop like popcorn.
All recipes for roasted soybeans require some combination of soaking and/or boiling before they can be roasted.
(Note we're not talking about fresh soybeans here, those are green and succulent.)
You can roast them straight out of a bag - you don't have to soak them. I've had loads of them for years when I was a child in my native country (Romania). The same we do with sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds - which people eat at football matches (at stadium). If you want to splash some water and a bit of salt on them, so be it, they're even tastier.
Are these dried soybeans? I had never considered it before your question, but it seems to me that if you had an air popcorn popper (like the famous Poppery II), you could probably roast dried soybeans effectively this way, because it's similar to roasting green coffee beans, and that's what I use to roast green coffee beans.
They wouldn't have been put in water previously, so I'm not sure if you'd call them dried soybeans, unless that's what this type of soy bean is called, they're basically soybeans that are mature and raw, but yeah, I was wondering, it seemed like it could work haha
@ToniTooly I'd call them rehydrated soybeans, since they are neither fresh or dried anymore
@Luciano I'm not sure if you'd say rehydrated, because they've never been hydrated, unless they were on the tree or plant, most likely these are fresh soya beans
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.128136
| 2018-07-13T00:15:20 |
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|
91290
|
What are the small yellow things on my cooked bacon
I cooked some bacon medallions yesterday, it was in date, didn't smell, and I had some of it, putting the rest in the fridge - by all accounts it was fine. This morning however, when I opened the container, at the very bottom on the last piece was a cluster of little, narrow yellow things.
As best as I can tell, they weren't moving. Weren't particularly furry, and neither changed shape when I mashed them between my fingers, nor melted when I put them in the microwave, so I'm reluctant to believe it's just oddly shaped fat.
Has anybody got any idea what they are? I don't want to throw away perfectly good bacon but I also don't want food poisoning.
Hello, and welcome to Seasoned Advice. What was the source of the bacon? How was it packaged?
Did you leave it uncovered at room temperature for a bit, e.g. to cool down? How long are the “things”? We need some kind of scale, please.
I left it semi-covered (with lid, but gaps for ventilation) for about 30 mins to cool, but my kitchen window was open as it's been super hot where I am.
This looks like your meat was discovered by a female fly (probably something like a blow fly) who thought that the protein-rich “carrion” would make a great spot for her offspring and subsequently laid a cluster of eggs. During summer, it may take as little as a few minutes for an uncovered piece of meat to become a fly nursery. Especially in the height of summer, the females will sometimes be so desperate that they will lay their eggs on about everything that is available.
The eggs are just one to two mm long, opaque white to pale yellow and are laid in clusters, often dozens in one spot. If left at room temperature, they can hatch in as little as eight hours, giving you a wriggling pile of maggots. I am not sure whether the eggs can still hatch after their stint in the fridge, but just leaving the “unknown objects” out for a while could confirm my answer.
As far as food safety is concerned, I recommend you discard the rest of your meat. Flies do carry pathogens and transfer them to food by simply walking over it. (Remember, they consider dog poop, the decaying squirrel in the forest and your dish equally attractive and visit them indiscriminately.) And that’s not even including the “yuck factor”.
This sounds like the most likely cause. Wow that's super annoying, I was looking forward to that sandwich, and I hate to waste meat. But at least I won't spend lots of time mass-ejecting it later. Thanks a lot!
I share your sentiment about discarding meat. I guess the food would be perfectly safe you fried the bacon, but not everyone is willing to potentially eat insects. For me it would be an especially hard choice because I've eaten all sorts of bugs in the past, but unintended fly eggs, yuck :-/
@JohnEye Heat kills living things but doesn't necessarily destroy any poisons they might have produced.
@DavidRicherby Of course not, there's all the toxins produced by bacteria and so on, but let's be realistic, these are just some random fly eggs or something. If the meat was stored properly, it's pretty much impossible to be toxic. Valuable additional protein, maybe.
@ZeroGodForce - Please leave your bacon and eggs out of the fridge as an experiment, and report back what lifeforms you have incubated!
Usually these things are super hard to guess, especially without scale, but yes, those do look distinctively like fly eggs. And this time of year can happen in minutes. I have even seen in happen in the refrigerator when food go covered and put away, but the fly went in with them. One would be tempted to say congealing fat, but the uniform size and shape yells no.
@NigelTouch I wasted them pretty much as soon as I'd concurred with Stephie's assessment, and proceeded to clean the hell out of my fridge, surfaces, and microwave. No sense in making a failed bacon sandwich worse. My kitchen is my lab.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.128579
| 2018-07-27T10:08:57 |
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|
108744
|
What is the real temperature to caramelize sugar?
A lot of web pages claim that sugar caramelizes at ~160C. But also a lot of recipes caramelize sugar in a simmering water. The boiling point of water is only 100C. So how can these recipes succeed so well in practice?
see this excellent video by Minutephysics on why there's no single melting point for sugar
Are you truly trying to caramelize the sugar or are you trying to melt the sugar to make caramel?
a lot of recipes caramelize sugar in a simmering water.
Calling the solution "simmering water" isn't a good characterization. The boiling point of pure water is 100C. But the boiling point rises as the concentration of sugar in the solution increases. Once you're above 75% or so, the boiling point increases significantly. For 90% sugar (still 10% water remaining), it's up to around 120C.
As the water evaporates, the sugar concentration, the boiling point, and therefore the temperature all increase. When you reach 160C, there's probably less than 1% water and the decomposition of the sugar (carmelization) rate starts to increase significantly.
There are some charts/tables for different concentrations here, but they only goes up to 90%
Incidentally I started from solid sugar. It boils just fine.
Recipes that call for water to be added to the sugar for making a caramel do so to help all the sugar melt, by dissolving some or all of it in the water. This prevents premature crystallization of the sugar. When you keep heating the mixture, all the water will evaporate, at which point the temperature of the (now pure) molten sugar will rise above 100 °C and will go through its different cooking stages. The sugar will caramelize when it reaches a temperature of 160 °C.
A process sometimes described as “wet caramel”. “Dry caramel” heats the sugar crystals directly in the pot or pan.
But from my personal observation, the caramelization (coloring) starts before the water is entirely evaporated, which can be told from the volume change?
@Fermat'sLittleStudent, why would you assume anything has a uniform temperature, especially when it has a heat source on one side (stove) and a heat sink on the other (atmosphere)? Here is a exercise to prove that a temperature gradient exists in your pan: Heat a greased pan on high until water will dance, add frozen meat, cook until lightly burnt. Notice that the meat is still raw in the middle and probably frozen. Same thing.
@hildred Not quite the same thing, as in the sugar-water mixture convection helps to equilibriate the temperature, especially as the stuff is boiling. There will still be some effect, though.
@Fermat'sLittleStudent for the same reason, I am a little sceptical of determining whether there is water left by change in volume, as the boiling mixture will expand some due to the bubbles. A much more accurate way to tell if the water has evaporated is to look at the size of the bubbles, which will change when the water is gone.
@LSchoon, you don't have a convection without a temperature differential. But yea I picked an extreme case. I just have spent too much time calibrating thermocouples to believe anything has just one temperature.
@hildred Perhaps convection was the wrong word. I was trying to say that, because the liquid is boiling, the constant movement will mix up colder and hotter temperatures.
@LSchoon, Yup. That is convection. Heat on the bottom moves up creating a more even temperature. But even though it's a homogenizing action it is driven by a temperature differential. But even assuming the bottom of the pan is hot is a simplification, not only is the top of the pan hotter than the bottom the top of the pan is not just one temperature. Look at the oil when you are getting ready to fry an egg, often you will notice that there is a pattern in the oil reflecting the shape of the flame or the element under the pan. This is a difference in viscosity of the oil caused by uneven heat
While the other answers are right, it should be pointed out that caramelisation does not happen at 160°C - not only at that temperature, at least. Thermal decomposition happens as both a factor of temperature and time. In fact, it is possible for sugar to undergo thermal decomposition well under 160°C: Stella Parks over at Serious Eats does it at 150°C, and Harold McGee has done it at 125°C
Dry carmelization is a colour thing. Melt all the sugar and watch for colour changes. Dry sugar can not and will not prematurely recrystallize as crystalization is a function of sugar coming out of solution in water. Melted sugar is not the same as sugar dissolved in water.
To start wet and keep heating is where crystallization can happen. Indeed you can cook till all moisture is gone at which point you have no more dissolved sugar but melting sugar at which time you can proceed to raise the temp till it colours.
You need to stir so vigorously with dry melted sugar that taking temp would be awkward and dangerous. Some make caramel wet and stop at a pre determined temperature to determine the finished firmness but this is not caramelization but the mallard reaction. Real caramelization of sugar happens 150 or higher.
Try cooking dry sugar (which will require vigorous stirring) till it colours like old copper. Off heat slowly whisk in heavy cream until it is good and fluid and then boil to your terminal temperature of say 118 for caramel for apple dipping and see the difference in flavour.
My point: many confuse the colouring of dairy products in a caramel with the caramelization of sugar which happens way up there in temperature.
There will not be significant Maillard browning in a sugar water solution. The Maillard reaction requires amino acids, which are only present in trace amounts in white sugar.
Like Agos says, thermal decomposition definitely starts happening below 160°C
I spent a lot of time playing around trying to make Caramel a less dangerous process (ever try making 20lbs of caramel when you're doing it at 160°C? Good luck :D)
In 2017, I came up with an alternative caramel process that never goes above 125°C
It takes hours instead of minutes, but ... it's really easy to do, and doesn't require any thermometer.
https://fearthecowboy.medium.com/caramel-3-0-a-new-beginning-a9a132c87900
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.128962
| 2020-05-30T15:19:39 |
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|
23866
|
Defrosting chicken breasts in marinade
I want to defrost chicken breasts and would like to marinate them. Since time may be an issue, can I place frozen chicken breasts in zip lock bag with marinade?
As long as your normal marinating time isn't significantly less than the defrosting time, then I believe that'll work fine. If the normal marinating time is much smaller, then you'll end up over-marinating your meat; if the marinade is acidic that would produce undesirable results. If it's the same or longer, then you'll be marinating for the right amount of time, and it'll be defrosted when you're done. Note that you should expect it to marinate a bit more slowly, since the outer part of the meat will have to thaw before the marinade can start doing its thing.
Jay suggests in the comments that extra water from the chicken thawing could be a problem. If it really is a large amount compared to the volume of the marinade, I guess it could be. Your options at that point would be: make a more concentrated marinade, increase the volume of marinade, or compromise and thaw partially, drain, then marinate while it thaws the rest of the way.
(I've not actually done this, and don't cook much meat, but since time is an issue, hopefully this answer is better than nothing.)
I think a pertinent aspect of the question that you didn't address is the excess water from thawing the chicken and what it would do.
@Jay: I kind of assumed the chicken wouldn't be horribly icy, and the OP didn't say anything about extra water, but I'll add a note.
Well naturally when I think defrosting chicken, there's going to be water. And not only was I think about the concentration of the marinade but also if the marinade is oil based I wonder what would happen. Would the bottom not marinade as well since the oil is going to float near the top?(This is of course depends on how you marinade your chicken) I marinade using a ziplock baggie(and it seems so is the OP) which i can see having that issue.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.129504
| 2012-05-20T18:55:42 |
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|
25020
|
Can I use a waffle iron as a Panini press?
I have a basic but serviceable waffle iron I bought at a charity shop for a fiver. If I don't mind a waffle pattern on my sandwich, is there any real need for a Panini press?
I use my cast iron waffle maker, unhinged, with a brick
@rfusca Whats the brick for?
@Jay: Giving it weight to press with, without having to push down on the top of a hot waffle iron.
You mean you guys don't have heat resistant skin? That's too bad.
check if your plates switch over to a smooth side: my sister's charity shop iron did. I noticed a sm lever/clip thing and voila
Personally, I use a grill pan and a bacon press. Works great.
Maybe! There's one big potential issue: panini presses are hinged differently. There's a bit of variation exactly how, but the effect is that the entire top can lift up, so that it can press down flat on whatever you stick in there. Waffle irons are just designed to be filled, so they hinge at the back. If your sandwich is much smaller than the waffle iron, you can put it in the front part (as far from the hinge as possible), and it won't matter too much, but if it takes up a decent fraction of the area, it'll be squeezed pretty tight at the back compared to the front. This will probably make it cook unevenly, and depending on what you've got in there, might squeeze things out.
Some panini presses also have better temperature controls than waffle irons, but that's probably not as much of a concern.
So I'd give it a shot and see how it works, plan on possibly flipping your sandwich around halfway through, and don't be too upset if it's not pretty!
(rfusca's comment above is also good - if you're able to take off the hinge, you'd avoid the whole problem.)
I'll try mini-paninis on those round sourdough loaves rather than full-sized sandwich bread :D I could just make twice as many sandwiches at half the size
I have a small waffle maker and I easily made a "waffle" toasted sandwich using two buttered pieces and bread, chopped tomatoes, cilantro and slice of mozzarella cheese. It turned out great. I slowly closed the lid and gently pressed until the bread was toasty and done. Had to wait a couple minutes for the cheese to cool but it was crunchy and yummy. I think this would be great for a quick meal anytime.
Sure, you can this. I use fresh croissants, sliced lengthwise, fill with scrambled eggs, your choice of sliced cheese and meat. Place in waffle iron for 4-5 minutes. Absolutely delicious!!!!
Your answer is acceptable, although I would provide a concrete answer to the question. For example in this case you could say: yea I do this all the time or sure you can, this is what I do. People like to hear that you have actually tried it or that you have seen it done or know website that depicts the act or such.
Pillsbury croissant roll dough, two triangles pinched together to make a "slice" put your cheese meat and cheese layer between two squares of dough and put that into your waffle maker.
I set mine on high, took it about 4 minutes to make it golden, another minute super crunchy and delicious.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.129724
| 2012-07-12T22:23:10 |
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|
24486
|
Is there anything gained by butterfly cutting a hot dog for grilling?
A friend of mine butterfly cuts (in half lengthwise without separating) his hebrew national hot dogs before grilling them.
I don't notice a difference in flavor and didn't perceive a decrease in required grill time. Is there anything gained by butter flying a hot dog for grilling?
@rumtscho that's exactly what I mean.
More area for scorching, which some people prefer. It'll get done faster as it has a higher surface to volume ratio than a round dog.
Butterflying a hot dog (or any similar sausage) has two effects. First, as the moisture inside the hot dog expands during cooking, causing the casings to frequently burst due to the pressure that builds up. When you butterfly a hot dog the this is prevented. Such blistering does not 'harm' the hot dog but are somewhat 'unsightly', so I would call this an aesthetic effect. The second effect is that it allows the hot dog to cook through more evenly. Particularly for those who prefer their hot dog well done butterflying can get the insides cook through without charring the outside.
[Edit: found something interesting to add...]
If you want to impress your friend with something different, try spiral cutting your hot dog.
Butterflied sausages can also be served on rolls like a sandwich instead of needing hot-dog buns.
Blasphemy! Blistering is a positive aesthetic :-)
Beauty is in the eye, and the mouth, of the beholder. ;)
You could also cut skin-deep'vents' along the side, for similar reasons (usually two or three, diagonally). But agreed w/ derobert - a little blister and char builds character.
Butterflying also exposes a greater area of the surface to the grill's direct heat, leading to browning and smoky flavor.
Butterflying a hot dog or sausage increases the surface area available for the Maillard reaction (all the awesome taste sensations that come from browning and burning. It also decreases cooking time and allows for more even cooking; a thick sausage cooked whole will often be dry on the outside in order to get it fully cooked at the center.
The trick to effective butterflying is to put the open side down on a hot pan (a bit above medium will usually do it) for a minute or two. Do not press down as you’ll lose juices. Flip the sausage or hot dog and lower the heat to a little below medium. You’ll see juices rise to the top like when you cook a burger. Again, do not press down and lose the juices.
Total cooking time should be less than usual. When you take it off, place it flayed side up on a dish and let it sit for 3-5 minutes so any juices soak into the meat and aren’t lost to the plate when cutting. Enjoy the lovely burnt/browned umami!
Some people slice hot dogs lengthwise in an effort to make them a little safer for children. Hot dogs are a choking hazard for kids, so the idea is to make the pieces in each bite smaller and easier to chew. I don't know of any research that demonstrates that slicing lengthwise is effective, but since pediatricians recommend cutting hot dogs into small pieces for little kids, it seems a step in the right direction even for not-quite-so-little kids.
For quicker cooking or to for on tost. Just don't cook to long. You also can put a piece of cheddar down the middle.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.130170
| 2012-06-16T00:53:18 |
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|
28079
|
Cooking a chicken and vegetable curry using a curry paste
Can I substitute green Harissa paste for Thai green curry paste in a chicken curry and in what proportions?
No, those two things don't taste the same. They may have a few ingredients in common, but there are plenty of differences too. (Just look up a few recipes and this should be abundandly obvious.) You could certainly use harissa as a base for some kind of soupy dish similar to curry, but it wouldn't be Thai green curry.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.130486
| 2012-10-28T23:42:16 |
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|
25685
|
Yellow Hot Dog Relish
I can not find my favourite hot dog relish sauce recipe but it included cucumbers, cabbage, peppers, and onions. I know it had tumeric as it was yellow but I am not sure of the ratio of vinegar to sugar. I think it used brown sugar. I also remember putting in a bag of spices that I removed after I had cooked the relish. So I would like to know what the best ratio of sugar to vinegar is as I don't want it too sweet and what spices and ratios should I use .
Thank you.
Hi Caroline, welcome to this site. We don't do recipes here (see the FAQ), so I propose you edit the question a bit. Your question(s) are valid.
You can discover your own personal 'best' ratio by adding sugar and vinegar little by little. First add the sugar and when it starts to become too much, add the vinegar. Weigh the sugar and vinegar before and after cooking, and you'll know how much you used.
http://www.cooks.com/rec/search/0,1-0,cucumber_hot_dog_relish,FF.html
I am considering closing this as a recipe request. While ratio questions are allowed, there is no optimal ratio in this case, as @BaffledCook mentioned, it is a matter of personal taste. Any thoughts for/against?
Do you mean piccalilli?
@rumtscho I suspect while there may not be a "one true ratio" for sugar:vinegar in hot dog relish, there is probably a fairly small range where the vast majority of recipes fall. That'd be a useful answer. So would BaffledCook's suggestion of how to find the right ratio.
I believe what you are looking for is Chow-chow. There are many variations but the basic seasoning are generally the same. There are recipes all over the web.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.130575
| 2012-08-16T05:56:17 |
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|
27905
|
What is the best substitute for Provolone?
Having recently bought the Frankies Spuntino Cookbook I want to have a go at making braciola. The recipe calls for pork steaks to be stuffed with pecorino romano and provolone.
However, in the UK provolone is hard to come by outside of Italian delis, and Italian delis are relatively rare. I understand that it's similar to mozzarella but drier.
So, what is a good substitute for provolone? Is it usually used for flavour or for its melting texture?
You can order online in the UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/Provolone-Piquant-Pasta-Filata-Cheese/dp/B00URTKJXW/ref=sr_1_2_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1479144468&sr=8-2&keywords=provolone+cheese Sharp provolone is pretty hard and dry so it last quite long even without refrigeration
There are two main types of provolone: piccante (sharp) and dolce (sweet). Most braciola recipes I've seen call for the sharp version. Sharp provolone tastes very similar to cheddar, which I assume is abundant in the UK. The issue is that "real" cheddar is a hard cheese and provolone is only semi-hard. Here in the US, we have a softer version of sharp cheddar-style cheese that is made in Wisconsin. If a similar semi-hard sharp cheddar variant is available in the UK, I would recommend that.
It should also be noted that the term "braciola" (or sometimes "braciole") means a lot of different things to different people. To most Americans, likely including the author of your book, it takes on the Sicilian meaning of an involtino. Sometimes the meat will be filled with a soft cheese mixture like mozzarella mixed with grated pecorino romano. However, if the recipe calls for a harder cheese like provolone, it is likely referring to a variant that is very popular in the US in which the provolone is cut into thin slices (usually using a deli slicer) and layered on the meat before the meat is rolled. Therefore, any substitute for the provolone should ideally be thinly sliced.
The recipe is for involtino braciola, calling for aged provolone, which i assime is 'sharp' as you suggest. As it happens I am near an Italian deli at the moment, I will try and find some provolone and see how cheddar like it is. Generally the more mature the cheddar here, the harder and more crumbly it is, so I'm thinking a medium cheddar would give the right texture and flavour.
I managed to find some Provolone and I would say it is closest to a medium/mature cheddar.
Aged provolone is very sharp and dry, I would use a quite mature and dry cheddar.
When limited to supermarket cheeses, I would try 1/3 mozzarella and 2/3 muenster. Braciole is served hot, so mozzarella would have lovely Italian flavor but would liquify too much, while muenster would have the right texture. The pork would not have to cook as long as beef, but you run the risk of cheese seeping out into the sauce rather than remaining as an intact layer of the meat roll.
Definitely not mozzarella. Provolone, especially aged one is a very tasty cheese and the texture is completely different from mozzarella. That said, mozzarella would also be very good in the dish, it just won't give the same type of result.
If the only issue were flavor, an aged provolone takes on a similar characteristic of other italian hard cheeses such as parmesean, and so I'd have replaced the provolone with a dry mozerella augmented with extra parmesean, or pecorino romano. (and at least in the U.S., dry mozerella is what tends to be sold, not the fresh stuff)
As we're dealing with melting characteristics as well, as Kathi's pointed out, mozerella's just going to melt wrong. I'd likely go with fontina, a young asiago, or manchego (a young one, not manchego viejo).
To emulate a younger provolone, use less of the aged cheese and use a better melter, like fontina, monterey jack or even a mild swiss.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.130758
| 2012-10-20T15:15:03 |
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|
24884
|
What is the meaning of reconstituted juice?
The following is written on a packet of Juice by a renowned company:
ingredients: water, red grape juice concentrate 24.7 % *
*reconstituted 100% grape juice
1- What is the meaning of reconstituted (100%) grape juice?
2- What is the meaning of juice concentrate 24.7%? Does that mean it is having only 24.7% original juice and rest added water?
3- How much diluted is this juice
Kindly help me understand.
Update:
My main concern is: are they cheating me because they call it 100% Juice?
Your update seems already to have been addressed: unless there are local laws permitting essentially lying on packaging, all they've done is take out water and put some back in.
It's cheaper to ship juices in a concentrated form. so they either send the raw juice through a cyclone dryer: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cyclone+dryer+foods&t=ffsb&iax=images&ia=images or lyophillize, pull vacuum, to get rid of most of the water.
What they mean is that they took some grape juice and concentrated it by evaporating some of the water contained in it (a concentrate is juice in which the sugar content is increased at least of 50%).
This is good for producers because concentrated juice has a lower volume, is easier/cheaper to stock/transport etc.
When they bottle the juice, they then reconstitute it by re-adding the water to the concentrated juice.
24.7% means they originally removed 75.3% of the water to make the concentrate. Because they added it back, at the end you are back with reconstituted 100% juice.
EDIT: fruit juices are regulated by the Codex general standard for fruit juices and nectars (PDF) which lists the minimum Brix Level (=sugar content) for various juices. Reconstituted juices must oblige to these minimum standards, although local laws may vary.
What is 24.7% here, when they are saying reconstituted 100% grape juice?
24.7% means they originally removed 75.3% of the water to make the concentrate. Because they added it back, at the end you are back with 100% reconstituted juice.
Is it clear from the ingeredients that it has has no extra water added to it (apart from reconsituted)? (means is it really not diluted)
@gpuguy: I guess that could actually be legislation dependent: they may have added more water than they removed from the concentrate. Not sure if they are allowed to do that.
@gpuguy: I edited my answer with an interesting link
The idea is very definitely that it was concentrated to 24.7% of the volume then reconstituted to the original volume; that's what the "reconstituted 100%" means. I don't know if laws anywhere allow for shenanigans, but at the very least it'd be misleading labeling if they aren't doing what the packaging says.
@Jefromi: I would also imagine that is the case. Probably the thing would be different if instead of saying reconstituted 100% juice it said 100% reconstituted juice (in the sense: we did not add anything else apart from water). Again, I would bet local legislation comes into play for things like these.
@nico, since it's exactly what the OP is asking, you should edit your answer and add what you explained in the comments about what the 24.7% and 100% reconstituted means.
@Jay: added, although my doubts on the exact boundaries of the law still stand.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.131075
| 2012-07-06T15:48:00 |
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|
36312
|
Would pastes made from vinegar and seeds other than mustard seeds be palatable?
I've started making mustard at home recently and wondered if I could make similar preparations from vinegar and other seeds, for example fenugreek.
The result I'm trying to achieve is a palatable paste made from vinegar and a seed or seeds other than mustard seed. The paste might be used for purposes similar to those for which mustard is used, for example as an ingredient in salad dressings, a spread in sandwiches, or a dip for sausages.
Have you tried this, or do you have an opinion on whether the resulting preparation is likely to be palatable? Are there any culinary seeds that are more or less likely to be suited to making this type of preparation?
This is way too broad, you can use many seeds for many things. What is the result you are trying to get?
The result I'm trying to achieve is a palatable paste made from vinegar and a seed or seeds other than mustard seed. In order to achieve this result, I'm seeking advice on which seeds might be best to experiment with. The question is not 'what are some things I can do with seeds', which I agree would be far too broad to answer succinctly or canonically.
I would add more detail to the question. I assume you want a mustard-like paste that would be used in the same scenarios, e.g. with salad, sausages, etc. I would help you formulating, but I lack the terminology.
I added some more detail to the question. Perhaps it's clearer what I'm thinking about doing now? If not, please let me know.
"Palatable" seems too subjective to get good answers, and I agree with the comments that the question is too broad.
Palatable is a very vague term. I think that some seed and vinegar preparations would have promise (sesame seeds and rice vinegar, perhaps lightly sweetened?), but others would be horrible (I can't imagine a caraway & vinegar paste being good for most things). Even a condiment that would normally be gross (the caraway one mentioned) could be good in the right applications, for instance in a sandwich tailored specially to use it.
I'd think this would be a good instance to just try out some formulations based on known flavor combinations and see how they work for you.
One would also have to ask, given the wide spread availability of vinegar, why other such condiments have not already been invented and become popular....
@SAJ14SAJ: I'm guessing it has to do with vinegar's ability to arrest the development of spiciness in mustard. If you prepare a paste of ground-up flavorful seeds (including mustard) in water, the result is likely much too, uh, flavorful. But what happens with mustard is that, if you add vinegar, it stops getting spicier. Add the vinegar at the right point, and you have a paste that is better than the plain seed. This isn't true with any other seed that I know of.
@SAJ14SAJ That is a good point. I know of a few condiments that use both vinegar and seeds, but most are very different from mustard in that they also have several other key ingredients.
I think you're probably right that experimentation is the only way to go here. @SAJ14SAJ also makes a good point; if there were good combinations to be found it's likely that someone else would have already discovered and popularized them.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.131340
| 2013-08-26T11:06:17 |
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|
108909
|
Dough failed to rise
To bloom the active dry yeast as part of my recipe, I had to substitute 1 cup whole milk (which needs to reach 110F) with organic evaporated milk (0.5 cup) mixed with 0.5 cup distilled water - this mixture was mixed and then brought to 110F. After trying to bloom (no noticeable blooming) occured and mixing with 3 cups of bread flour and 1 cup AP-flour, the 1-hour resting period resulted in perhaps a ~0.1-0.2 increase of the initial dough size, which is unacceptable and confusing.
All things considered, what possibly resulted in this failed attempt at this ingredient substitution? Also, what are some options to mitigate this situation?
EDIT/UPDATE
Using organic whole milk (same volume/temperature), blooming occured! So, do not use (just) evaporate milk for uses as I described it.
What yeast did you use? How old is it?
per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporated_milk : Evaporated milk generally contains disodium phosphate (process aid to prevent coagulation) and carageenan (to "stabilise", i.e. prevent solids settling) as well as added vitamins C and D.
Any chance those would impact anything?
@Jeffrey Unlikely, I think.
Could be that your yeast was simply not alive.
You could simply try to bloom the yeast with water and sugar. It should become visibly active within a few minutes.
There could be a two reasons why you're not noticing any blooming. 1. The yeast could be dead due to not being stored properly.
2. Your altitude and climate can affect baking and cooking so you may have to experiment a little with temp. ( I am in a very high altitude with a very dry climate and the best bloom I've achieved from the yeast was with a temp of 100°f.)
As the answer above states: you can try giving your yeast a pinch of suger to eat to see if that will wake it up.
Could the evaporated milk have its sugars in a form that the yeast couldn't digest? I wonder if adding a teaspoon of sugar to the yeast might now have aided blooming.
I think the heating process associated with the generation of evaporated milk may denature protiens, enzyms, and lower or altogether the effect of the natural sugars (I assume they are altered in some way). It's quite interesting to see just how deep we need to dive into this topic to answer it with chemistry!
Brewers/Bakers Yeast can't process lactose, so this is a good point.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.131626
| 2020-06-07T17:05:53 |
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|
120005
|
Compensate for low-performance gas stovetop
Disclosure: this question and topic relates strictly to kitchen gadgetry rather
than anything else.
My range is horribly lacking in multiple ways, and it has (despite my best efforts to accommodate for it) compromised countless baked/cooked resources.
Specifically, the entire stovetop component retains burners that supply a low-output BTU (the value of which I'm unsure of and wouldn't really trust if I could find it anyway), and this situation results in many dishes being destroyed or made too complicated, which in turn manifests in all other async operations being made avoidably difficult. For example, I have an All-Clad 8QT stockpot that takes ~20 minutes for 6QT of pure water to come to a boil, and that's unacceptably long. Moreover, it's made worse during thermal recovery when I plunge meats or pastas/dumplings into said pot (forget how awfully this gets when I'm working in batches, it's like scuttling your own ship), and the boil takes (at a minimum) 1-2 minutes to regain the boiling state, at which point (especially for pastas), the resource is totally ruined.
Without purchasing an entirely new range (or stovetop), what are some smaller, portable options I can use that will resolve my issue described here?
I've researched induction and other gas options like this but want some SME insight on a recommended path forward here.
I wanted to avoid asking this but (now that there's 3 currently) may I please receive some theories, reasons, and/or feedback in regards to why this question is voting to be closed (2 more are needed)? I believe that is indeed more than just opinion-based. I really want to add value to this SE channel and am unsure where else to communicate this point properly. please advise.
I don’t know anything about your stove, but when I’ve been in a similar situation, I use more burners or alternate methods of heating large volumes of water.
For instance, if you have an electric kettle or even a microwave, you could use that to heat some of the water, while you only attempt to heat half of the water directly from the burner.
You might also want to check to see if any of your burners are more powerful than others. I had a similar issue at a friend’s house, and it turned out I was using the ‘simmer’ burner, and should’ve used the rear burner which had higher output. If they’re all having issues, you might want to get your stove serviced. There might be some sort of issue with it, such as a place that’s using LP but the stove is set for natural gas (which has a different amount of energy per volume)
Gas stoves normally make it pretty obvious which burners are more powerful. On most they're physically bigger (in diameter) but if not they'll have more or bigger flames. The design can be quite dumb though: mine has the 2 medium ones at the back (used for most things, including most tasks needing a lot of stirring); at the front it has a little one for simmering and the big one meant for a wok. So if bringing a huge pan to the boil, it ends up in front of the thing I'm trying to stir
As well as Joe's excellent suggestions, you should aim to leverage the heat capacity of your equipment and ingredients as much as possible. If you are boiling something and you will be adding a cool ingredient, bring a greater volume of water to the boil before adding the cool ingredient so that the overall temperature drops less. If you are frying or sauteing, use a heavy-bottomed, possibly cast-iron, pan (giving it lots of time to come to temperature) which holds more heat so will cool down less as ingredients are added. Lids will also make a difference to keep heat in, and starting with room-temperature ingredients rather than fridge temperature will also help.
You could also make greater use of your oven (if you have one) to keep things hot while cooking.
Finally, since you know how responsive your equipment it, aim to cook things that don't require rapid changes of temperature or precise short cooking times. You can avoid frustration by cooking things that your equipment is well suited to.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.131835
| 2022-03-02T13:50:24 |
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|
103103
|
What cut of beef is "plat nerveux"?
The cut is 'plat nerveux' and was purchased at a Parisian (French) market. It is beef, long-ish, round (like a sausage), and boneless. The meat is deeper red than most beef cuts I am used to. Deep red, but not liver or other organ color.
This cut is not even listed on https://tasteofsavoie.com/2018/10/23/french-meat-cuts/
Plat nerveux means "nervous dish" literally translated, which isn't helpful. What you describe sounds like a filet, but then they'd just call it that. A picture may help a lot.
I would add one, but my wife already cut it up and put it in marinade. And yes, the literal translation was not very helpful to me either. Reminds me of "mystery meat".
What were the general dimensions? When you say 'sausage', I suspect it's the tenderloin, but if it was larger, then AMtwo is likely correct with the eye of round.
@GdD Like English, French words have many meanings. In this context 'nerveux' means {En parlant de la viande de boucherie} Qui présente des ligaments, qui est coriace, tendineuse. (Of cuts of meat - to be tough, having ligaments, tendons).
Different countries can have very different names for their cuts of meat, and in some cases, there isn't an obvious/direct equivalent from a French cut to an American or English cut. If you look at a French butcher's diagram, you'll see the lines and cuts don't correspond directly to a US diagram.
I believe that what you saw labeled as "plat nerveux" is likely "gite de noix" which in the US is "eye of round roast". "Nerveux de gite" is a braised beef dish that is kind of like an American pot roast.
Eye of round can have a shape similar to a tenderloin, but is a tougher, less expensive cut of meat.
I think 'eye of round' is usually called 'rond de gîte'. I don't think 'gîte à la noix' has an American or English equivalent - it's one of the individual muscles that make up the rump and the French tend to take them apart rather than cross-cut through them as a unit. see : Gîte à la noix, rond de gîte. Il comprend le gîte à la noix, la semelle, le rond de gîte et le nerveux de gîte à la noix.
From your description- maybe its a hanging tender also called butchers cut. It's the muscle that supports the heart. Long (9-20 inches), cylindrical, no bones and very red like a liver or heart. May have a lot of silver skin if the butcher didn't clean it. Normally its costs mid range for beef. I can find it for $8-12 depending on the age. Tastes like a filet mignon if cooked hot and fast (and older). (It's my personal favorite cut). Hope you liked it
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.132259
| 2019-10-27T14:10:15 |
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|
97135
|
Yeasted rye starter immediately doubles!
I'm making a yeasted sourdough starter per the directions in my bread-machine book, but with rye flour instead of whole wheat. It's supposed to sit for 2-5 days, but it doubled almost immediately and is doubling again in my largest bowl! I can stir it down to keep it from overflowing, as it did the first time, but is it OK if I let it stand for another 6 days, when I plan to make the bread?
Could you please add the instructions you are following? Yeasted seems to indicate that you are using store-bought yeast?
2 c. 100 degree water, 2-1/2 t. Active dry yeast, 1 T. honey - stir together and let stand for 10'. Then add 2 c. whole wheat flout (I used dark rye) and beat until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature. Per George Burnett, The Breadman's Healthy Bread Book.
As another commenter asked, are you using store bought yeast or a sourdough starter? If you're using a starter, you can store it in the fridge, covered and then take it out a day or two in advance and give it feeds every 12 hours or less depending on its doubling speed. If its store bought yeast I wouldn't take the chance and would throw it out.
It's store-bought yeast - I'm making a yeasted starter for my bread machine, and the yeast itself is OK (I use it regularly, including just the day before). But the "doubling" problem resolved itself after I stirred down the mixture once or twice.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.132478
| 2019-03-27T21:18:59 |
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|
25068
|
How to Make Canned Coconut Milk Separate
My friend wants to make coconut milk separate so that she can use the cream for whipping. Can anyone suggest a way of accomplishing this?
Edited to add: I asked her to confirm that it was full-fat and she said 'yes, I'm not that dumb'. She's storing it at room temperature (rather hot lately in NYC lately) but is going to try chilling it to see what happens.
I don't know about how well it whips up, but canned coconut milk is usually already separated just from sitting. Is that not enough?
I think that's her problem. It isn't separating in the can.
is she keeping it cold? I think it separates when the coconut fat solidifies, but I'm not sure enough to make it an answer. But try a fridge, it might help.
My coconut milk has always separated a good amount even when it was stored in fairly warm places (probably >80F a lot of the time in the summer). It might inform the answers if you mentioned what kind of coconut milk it is (not low fat/light, I hope), and how she's storing it.
I have purchased some brands of coconut milk that won't separate even upon chilling. Some contain emulsifiers and stabilizers that will inhibit the separation. I would recommend looking for one without these; in all likelihood, switching brands should work (i.e. regular full fat Taste of Thai brand didn't separate after 3 hours in freezer, organic did)
Yeah, mfg is right, the canned stuff they have in my supermarket has xanthan gum in it which is a stabiliser so that could be it.
Could someone please explain what "separating coconut milk" means? What is separated from what? And what would be the respective uses of the separated components?
Sorry, I was pretty vague when I asked this question. It means separating the cream from the liquid. The cream is useful for whipping. The liquid -- I'm not sure, I guess you could drink it like coconut water.
What, you don't have a laboratory centrifuge in your kitchen? You could probably rig something up with two cans and some rope, but be safe! :-)
Put the can in the fridge overnight or for a few hours. After it's sufficiently cold the cream will be on top and the water on the bottom. Just make sure not to shake the can when you remove it from the fridge!
(In a pinch pop it in the freezer but not for too long or else the can will warp due to the water expansion.)
Addressing the comments on the original post, I am assuming @James means full fat coconut milk, which is what I always use for making coconut whipped cream or vegan ice cream. I have only experienced (rarely and not consistently) separation at room temperature when my cans have been sitting in my pantry for months.
America's Test Kitchen gave the same recommendation in an NPR article : http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/07/24/334424736/with-help-from-americas-test-kitchen-why-buy-when-you-can-diy : "With a little more experimentation, we came up with two tips for success. First, the creamy part of coconut milk isn't always separated from the watery part; we found that refrigerating the can for a few hours helps form two distinct layers. ..."
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.132625
| 2012-07-17T14:57:36 |
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|
40354
|
American Potatoes vs. Spanish Potatoes
I just watched a commercial for Idaho potatoes that said they're special because they're especially 'dense'. When I was in Spain my señora told me that when she came to American she couldn't make proper potato omelette because the potatoes didn't act right. Does anyone know enough about potatoes to know if potatoes in America are any different than the ones you would find in central Spain?
Do you know the name of the variety of potato your señora uses?
There are a couple types of potatoes available in the US with fairly different properties (and varieties that fall in between). See for example this answer: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/16855/types-of-potato-for-making-gnocchi/16857#16857
@Jolenealaska I can't remember, it's been years.
@wootscootinboogie, well if she ever again comes to America and wants to make her "proper potato omelet" lead her to this question :)
What are sometimes referred to as Idaho potatoes are generally russet potatoes, a variety of mealy potato commonly grown in Idaho. Mealy potatoes are one of the two broad categories of potatoes: Waxy and Mealy. Mealy potatoes are more dense, higher in starch and lower in sugar and moisture than waxy varieties. Mealy potatoes are used in dishes such as baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, and french fries as they maintain a lighter, mealy texture and don't brown too quickly.
Waxy potatoes include most red skinned potatoes and are less dense with less starch and more sugar and moisture. Waxy potatoes maintain their shape better when boiled so are preferred for that preparation method as well as sauteing and roasting.
Some potatoes exist near the middle of these two extremes and are sometimes referred to as all-purpose potatoes as they will work in a wide variety of preparations. Yukon Golds are probably the most widely available example of all-purpose / medium density potatoes in the US.
There are a huge variety of potatoes grown throughout the world. The trick is to figure out if your senora's recipe requires mealy or waxy potatoes and then purchase the a variety from that category. If you don't know whether the variety in question is mealy or waxy you can check by placing the potato in a brine made of 1 part salt to 11 parts water. If the potato floats it is waxy, if it sinks it is mealy.
for the Brits -- 'mealy potatoes' are 'floury potatoes'
dang pommies :)
Potatoes first came to Spain via Peru in the 16th century. Conquistadors brought potatoes back to Spain since they didn't find the gold in Peru they were looking for. Well, Peru has a very, very long history with the potato and more varieties are found there than anywhere else in the world.Potatoes of Peru This link highlights some of the varieties of potato that are in common use in Spain today: Potatoes of Spain
The history of potatoes in The United States is somewhat shorter, one variety was originally thought to be native to the east coast of North America, but it too was actually brought to North America from South America. Potatoes in the US really took off when Scottish and Irish immigrants started to plant their potatoes. Guess the origin of Scottish and Irish potatoes? You guessed it, South America around Peru.
What is the point of this history lesson? It's simple. Potatoes everywhere have the same origin, and therefor similar characteristics. Spain and the United States both have many varieties of potato, unquestionably any potato known to Spain can be successfully substituted with an American potato (and vice versa). The trick is knowing the characteristics of the potato you know, and finding a variety in the other part of the world that shares those characteristics. Level of waxiness is probably the most important characteristic to try to match. The variety and age of the potato determines it's waxiness. Here's a link to get you started. Characteristics of Common Potatoes. Respond here with a comment including more about your señora's preferred potato, and I'll help you find a match.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.132911
| 2013-12-18T04:32:26 |
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|
28772
|
Can I use my oven for sous-vide
I have an electric oven which has a temperature setting, starting at 50c and goes up in 5 degree increments; [50,55,60,65,...]. It also has a fan to circulate air. (pictured below)
Will this be accurate/stable enough to do sous-vide? I'm asking about modern domestic electric ovens in general as opposed to my particular brand (whirlpool).
If I put my bagged meat in to a pot of, say 65deg water, and put it in the oven set for 65deg. Will the water ever get more than a degree or two above 65?
I suspect that even if the oven fluctuates +-10deg, the thermal mass of the water won't allow it's contents to fluctuate in temperature change so much, assuming of course that the oven will average at 65deg.
Has anyone tried sous-vide with their oven, or are the thermostats so inaccurate that it not likely to work?
Accuracy of the temperature is going to vary by oven, so there's no definitive answer there. As GdD said, you'll just have to get a thermometer and try it.
However, I think this will probably work fine for most sous vide applications. While sous vide is all about precision, a couple of degrees fluctuation isn't going to make a huge difference for most preparations (eggs are a notable exception), particularly given the thermal mass of the water. You could also throw a pizza stone or something in the oven too to help keep a more constant temp.
I wonder if the extra amount of time needed to cook using this method is a concern. I seem to remember reading a USDA recommendation saying that it's not safe for food to remain in the 40ºF-140ºF (4ºC-60ºC) for more than four hours. USDA mollycoddling aside, food cooked using this method is going to take longer than regular sous-vide, so whatever awful effects the USDA is trying to protect you against are presumably going to be much pronounced.
@ChrisSteinbach why do you say this will take longer than regular sous-vide? Surely this is just 'regular' sous-vide, the only difference being using an alternate tool to regulate the temperature? Or am I missing something?
@Ken Immersion circulators will cook faster than your oven since the heat transfer mechanism is convection rather than conduction. Even a non-circulating sous-vide machine ought to be faster since the heating element will be directly adjacent to, or immersed in the water. With an oven, heat is transferred from the heating element via radiation or convection through the air (which has a lower thermal conductivity than water) and then via conduction through the cooking vessel and cooking water to the food. The heat transfer mechanism is less efficient and cooking will, I believe, be slower.
@Chris see http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Convection_Steam_Ovens for timing for steam oven sous vide, not sure why you would use a pouch for steam oven sous vide, but that is what they tested. Normal convection oven should be even slower I think.
Of course you can use your oven for cooking sous-vide, though you will not get very precise temperature control and will pay a higher electricity bill than if you use a water bath. I would not use it for long cooking periods at a limit temperature where safety can be jeopardized (around 55ºC) or when high precision is required (e.g. eggs), but otherwise it's perfectly doable.
You must play with your oven model until you find the best settings, usually 10 or 20 degrees C higher than the desired water temperature. Using a heavy pot such as a dutch oven will also help to maintain the temperature.
The technique is analyzed in detail here: http://sousvide.wikia.com/wiki/Give_Sous-vide_a_try_without_buying_expensive_equipment
Great link, the temperature data in this experiment showed how constant the water temp can be in an oven. Very encouraging.
Also remember the larger the quantity of water your using the more constant the temp is likely going to be. So when in doubt use a bigger vessel.
As for accuracy that's not something this forum can say. If the oven is accurate and the temperature does not fluctuate more than a few degrees then yes it would be accurate enough, but if the fluctuations are more then no. The only way to find out is to get a very accurate oven thermometer and test it.
Sous vide cooking requires water to be flowing around the food which is why sous vide machines have a water pump to keep the heat evenly distributed. In an oven pot you'd likely got hot spots and cold spots as there won't be any circulation besides convection, which may not be enough. Without some sort of pump you'd probably get uneven cooking.
You shouldn't have hot/cold spot problems much in an oven, since the heat is coming from all around. As long as you keep some space between the bags. And keep a lid on, else the water will be much cooler on top.
@derobert, keeping the lid on seems like a good idea. But if the top was much cooler, wouldn't that set up convention currents in the pot and even out the water temp? Or am I being to optimistic?
@GdD, I guess I was asking the question about electric ovens in general but hoping that someone would know about my particular oven. I've edited the Q, to make that more clear
No experience of that one myself. I've got an electric fan-assisted oven and it's pretty consistent, if a bit hot.
You don't need the water flowing around the food, you just need the temperature to be consistent.
In order for the temperature to be consistent water must circulate.
That's patently untrue, given that one of the sous vide machines on the market doesn't circulate the water and works just fine.
@GdD Water (and most fluids) actually spread heat fairly well, given as long as you don't overcrowd the pot. If the sides of the pot are all at 60C, and the lid is on (so there is no evaporation), it'll take a bit to reach steady-state, but once it does, the water will be at 60C too. All of it; there won't be a thermal gradient, because there is no cool spot for there to be a gradient to. It will take much longer to reach steady-state than with a circulator, though.
Also, this is easy enough to test: put a pot of water in the oven, leave it for a while, and then gently remove it. Test it at various points with a good thermometer. Make sure its the same temperature throughout the pot.
Both of you are correct. If the food is heated all through and the water is heated all through, there is no cool spots (except outside the pot). No circulation required. But normally (at least in the beginning) the food will be cooler than then water, therefore the water closest to the food will be reduced in temperature, therefore you get a cool spot and you need circulation to heat the food effectively. This is an issue with e.g. PID/rice cooker and sous vide supreme. But it still works, just not as fast as with circulation.
While it's true that water can hold a very specific heat in large quantities, the circulating water baths will rebound from heat changes and fluctuate less than baths that are non-circulating. The water closest to the heat source is always going to be hotter than the water furthest away from it. In my DIY immersion circulator the water heats more evenly and stays more constant when the circulator is running.
I'd love to see details of that @Brendan !
@GdD check here for pictures of my build https://plus.google.com/photos/101252166566980706005/albums/5813072530864862177 I generally followed this for the build http://seattlefoodgeek.com/2010/02/diy-sous-vide-heating-immersion-circulator-for-about-75/
Oven thermostats are very inaccurate, and by design allow very large temparature swings. A heavy pot full of water is a pretty good buffer ... it will even out the temp a bit.
There are precision ovens designed for this, called c-vap and combi ovens. They are expensive and power-hungry and complex. Even these have issues with precision. They are more than good enough for low-temperature cooking a roast, but the imperfect temperature stability causes problems for small things.
Of corse you can use your oven and the physics do make sense. This type of cooking is different, because you cook in sealed bags that retain all the FOID’s moisture and natural juices. These specialty bags placed in a Pyrex bowl works exactly as the bags placed in a smaller container with circulating water. The “physics are the same. Enjoy.
I believe the answer is you can't use your oven like a sous vide because the physics are very different. Air is a terrible medium for heat transfer while water is one of the best. This is what makes sous vide work.
Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.
Creme Brulee disagrees with you ! Certainly it is less efficient and nowhere near as accurate, but as others have mentioned you can fashion a very crude approximation.
If you can, get a digital thermometer that has a long probe wrapped in steel wire with a magnet on the back. They are designed to attach to the external door of the oven while measuring the temperature of a roast in-situ. Firmly clamp the probe so that it rests floating in the water (but not touching the dish itself) and attach the thermometer itself to the door or any surrounding metal.
That way you can a) calculate how far out your oven thermostat is and b) see how quickly your bath responds to temperature changes. As a guide, my water circulator increases at ~ 1 degree C per second (when the water cools from set temperature) in a 10 litre bath without insulation at ~ 22-25 C ambient. Your oven I suspect will be a lot slower to respond than this due to the factors others have mentioned. This way it will give you some idea as to how much longer you need to keep your recipe in the bath to compensate.
Once you have conducted these tests, I'd also suggest looking to acquire an enameled pot that you can unscrew the handle from the lid. That way you can insert and place the probe centrally while reducing evaporation. When using the lid in the oven it will assist in keeping the temperature stable.
The problem with this suggestion is that there is no means to circulate the water, which is what your circulator does. That is what allows for the consistency in temperature. Without circulation, you will have different temperatures in different places. Depending on the desired cook temp, this could be unsafe.
Totally agreed, the oven method really is a major compromise and I certainly would not recommend using this for any recipe at the lower end of the spectrum. I would be very wary of using this technique in a regular gas or electric oven, as a fan oven would help distribute the temperature more effectively. I know people have had reasonable results with steak using a similar insulated cooler method, as to other ingredients (minced meat etc.) I would concur that this could be unsafe especially if the meat was not seared afterwards.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.133253
| 2012-11-30T14:51:05 |
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20558
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Sausage roll pastry - how do I achieve a smooth shiny effect?
I came across this on the net and would love to be able to make them for a party next week.
http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/296105_10150312607032555_324958872554_8041834_494890086_n.jpg
I've seen pastry like this on sausage rolls in France but don't know how to get the effect.
Is it just puff pastry they use with egg yolk? How is this effect achieved?
I wonder what those are? Sea creatures of some kind? They seem suitably alarmed at their impending death-by-being-eaten.
Those are darling!
No, this is not puff pastry at all. It is a rich yeast dough, similar to the dough for an unsweetened brioche. The dough has a low hydration (around 50% or maybe 55%), so it can be rolled out into a sheet, similar to a pizza base, without being sticky. In Europe, these are made with AP flour, not bread flour, they are supposed to be soft and not chewy. If you are looking for a recipe, search for brioche recipes with a low amount of sugar which are intended for kneading by hand instead of a mixer.
From the rolled dough, you have to cut a stripe, maybe 1 cm wide. You also need molds for baking. They look like a long cone, maybe 8-10 cm in height and 2-3 cm in base diameter. (You can roll your own from tin halfcircles, if you have the tools to cut a tin sheet into halfcircles). You wind the strip of dough around the cone and bake it with the cone still inside. Afterwards, you have to remove the cone with care, and so you have the hole where you can put the sausage.
I haven't made or seen the variation with eyes. Obviously, you have to add the pips before baking. I am not sure how the white/dark blob is achieved. It looks like something was piped on before baking, maybe normal and colored eggwhite "snow".
The shiny effect of the crust of this picture seems to be due to baking with steam in a commercial oven. You can't replicate it at home, if you want them to be shiny, you may consider using a glaze or wash.
You can get some steam with boiling water poured into the oven onto a preheated pan. Not as much as a commercial oven but enough to make things shiny. I agree that a simple egg wash would be the logical way to do this.
To make a stuffed cone, you use a slightly tappered former (roll up some plastic from a milk bottle), and wrap it with a tappered strip of dough. Either cut it from a slab, or roll it out like playdough, about 50 to 60cm long. Go from just over 1cm down to nothing over it's length
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.134110
| 2012-01-18T12:46:48 |
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20939
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What can I do about scratched pots?
I have a pot that is really nice, and I was silly enough to use a metallic spatula. It is not Teflon but looked ceramic, and it has scratches now. Can any repair be done?
Edit: I am including an image below
Any chance you can post a picture? Or, if not, add some clarifying details: are they just cosmetic scratches? Are they more like chips where you can see the underlying metal of the pan exposed? Is there any way you can find out for sure what the coating is?
@Laura: Thanks, so I have now an image included for you to see and tell me your opinions on any salvaging which can be done.
Hm...that looks like it's maybe enamel-coated cast iron, but since it seems that the scratches are cosmetic (just marks on the surface), I don't think any "repair" is necessary. Those scratches don't look like they'll affect the performance of the pan.
@Laura, but the scratches do not look very aesthetically appealing. I would like to do any repairs . Care to post it as an answer to give you credit?
I realize that this is an older post, but from the photo posted, these don't look like scratches at all. Instead, the marks look very much like the marks you would see on a ceramic sharpening rod.
Because ceramic is usually much harder than the mild steel used in your average metal spatula, your ceramic coating is actually putting scratches in your spatula instead of the reverse. So those marks that you see are probably microscopic bits of mild steel that were scraped out of the spatula and deposited into the tiny pores in your ceramic coating.
Since that mild steel was probably very quickly converted to iron oxide (rust), I would suggest using something acidic, but food-safe to dissolve out the particles. Oxalic acid should be perfect for the job, making a product like "Bar Keeper's Friend" a good choice.
amazing answer, thanks! very in depth and too true, thanks for this.
Laura is spot on on this one. Those scratches seem entirely superficial, and if they don't affect your ability to cook with this pot, you are best off doing nothing.
Enameled cast iron is a great material to cook with, but once it becomes seriously chipped or deeply scratched, you're pretty much SOL. There isn't a food-safe high-heat enamel paint or coating that would perform the same as the original coating, as far as I know. Luckily for you, your pot still seems completely usable.
I understand that the scratches may be "unsightly", but the best advice I can offer is to keep using it. If there's food in the bottom of the pot, you can't see the scratches! Problem solved!
You'll want to be careful with cooking "staining" foods like beets though, since the colour will take up residence in the scratches and resurface the next few times you cook with the pot.
A 'patch' for teflon pans would be to heat salt in it, throw away the salt, swipe and use. That would give you a one-time anti-adherent coating for the hassle.
You could try that on your ceramic (?) pot, but even so, if you can afford it, buy another pot. Look at this question for some advise.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.134445
| 2012-01-31T15:06:59 |
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20798
|
Can I use flour to make a carrot soup more thick?
I made a carrot soup without the use of a blender as described in previous question link. Which was to chop the carrots and onions really small. The problem is that the result is quite watery.
In the recipe for goulash, I use flour to thicken the soup, in the frying stage. Can I do something similar here? Or will it ruin the taste. I was imagining throughing in some flour with the carrots and onions as they fry.
The result doesn't have to be watery when doing it that way - cook the vegetables, mash, add a bit of liquid, mash more, and then just add as much liquid as you want to get the texture you want.
How much flavor the flour adds will depend largely on how long it fries with the veggies.
The longer it fries the nuttier it will taste- until it starts to burn of course. If it doesn't cook for long enough (it doesn't take long) it will taste raw which is not pleasant.
You should cook your veggies until they are done and then add your flour and cook just until it starts to smell nutty. I assume this is similar to what you do with your goulash.
Overall- I think that the flavor of even a fairly dark roux would work well with an onion and carrot soup. You could even use this to salvage your already watery soup by making a roux separately and wisking it in.
I was thinking perhaps adding starch would be a better idea than adding flour.
@Jay- it's the starch in the flour that does the thickening anyway. You could use a different kind of starch but that wasn't really his question.
When I make my carrot soup I thicken with rice flour but potato or corn starch should also work
Add a roux to your soup. And/or use corn starch. Adding just flour would make for a pretty unpleasant end product, I think.
Roux is certainly a good recommendation, but it's not necessary. You can do exactly what the OP said - mix flour in during frying. It's like making a roux while also cooking the rest; the flour gets distributed over the surfaces of the vegetables, and mixed with a little bit of oil. It's not at all unpleasant - I've done it.
Agreed. I do this all the time with stews and soups. As long as you cook out the flour a little it's fine.
Ah, I missed the part of adding during frying. My bad.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.134979
| 2012-01-26T14:22:10 |
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10296
|
Cast Aluminum Vs Cast iron Dutch Oven
I have seen a lot of meat roasting recipes that require using Dutch ovens, most of the cooks doing the presentations have enameled cast iron Dutch ovens.
When I looked into what a Dutch oven is I noticed some internet sites are suggesting that there are cast aluminium Dutch Ovens as well, They are popular in the Caribbean and are sometimes called Dutch Pots.
I have seen the question: What to look for when choosing a dutch oven?, with an answer suggesting two material options. Plain (seasoned) cast iron or enameled cast iron. Cast aluminium was not mentioned at all. I would like someone to talk about cast aluminium Dutch pots a little because pots made from that material are much cheaper and easier for me to get. The only reason why I would not bother with cast aluminium is if it does a very poor job with meat roasting and caramelization of sugar.
Here are some of the things I already know or at least think I know:
The thermal capacity of the cast aluminium compared to that of cast iron will lead to a cast iron pot having superior temperature stability for the same thickness and size.
Cast aluminium is lighter than cast iron, volume constant hence lighter pot for same size.
Cast aluminium Dutch pots are durable and cheap and easier to care for
Cast aluminium will probably react with some food items while enameled cast iron will be safer in this regard
The melting point of cast aluminium is lower than that of cast iron
Have I left any key issues out?
What are the likely problems with my output if I choose the aluminium pot given the above points where aluminium does not do well and the fact that I need the pot mainly for meat roasting and sugar caramelization stove top?
Where did you read that cast aluminum was durable? That's not generally one of the characteristics of aluminum, especially as compared with iron.
P.S. I changed the title to say "aluminum" - I know that aluminium is the correct British spelling but want to make sure that this shows up in search results for the former, so please leave that particular edit.
@Aaronut, Under certain conditions there is a tendency for cast iron to crack while cast aluminium will just slightly deform, cast aluminium is more malleable than cast iron unless some new metallurgical process has changed this. Cast iron will rust,enamelled cast iron will chip,I have not said cast aluminium is more durable than iron, under some careless use conditions cast aluminium will fare better than cast iron,there are other abuse cases where the cast iron material will fare better.I am not referring to normal low gauge aluminium which is more susceptible to warping.
American English is OK with me.
To make it show up in search results you need both spellings. Google for reasons best known to itself differentiate them
@Aaronut: To explain the 'durability' aspect -- Aluminum is one of the stronger metals, in that it'll absorb energy without breaking (ie, it'll dent rather than crack), which is the definition of strength when dealing with materials science. When bikeboy talks about scratching and such, that's related to hardness.
The biggest practical differences are going to be:
Nothing sticks to a well-seasoned cast iron pan. Everything sticks to cast aluminum, even the brands that call themselves non-stick. (I know because I've tried a few of them.)
While it's true the cast iron can crack, rust or chip if not properly cared for, aluminum is reactive and scratches easily, and even if you get one of the newer anodized ones, you lose the benefits of that as soon as the surface starts to chip and peel (which it will). Cast iron will last much longer when properly maintained; I've seen some that are decades old and heard about some that are more than a century old.
Aluminum has better conductivity and will, in theory, provide more even heat than cast iron. However, every cast aluminum vessel I've ever used has had major problems with hot spots. Basically, both are poor choices in this respect, except in the oven, where hot spots are essentially a non-issue; if your oven is like mine and the element turns on and off to maintain temperature, you'll get much better results with a cast iron dutch oven because it will hold its temperature while the element is off.
Cast iron also works great with induction cooktops, aluminum doesn't work at all. [Cast] Aluminum really works best on standard metal cooktop stoves, although it's okay for glass as well. I say okay because most glass cooktops tend to have elements that go on and off, so depending on your particular stove, this might lead to uneven heat when using any kind of aluminum.
Cast iron is heat-resistant. You mention the melting point, but it's more complicated than that; make sure you check the specifications on whatever cast aluminum you're thinking of buying, because a lot of it isn't even oven-safe (and if it is, it's only safe up to 400° F or so). The term "dutch oven" can be quite a misnomer for those pieces as they can easily warp or crack at high temperatures. Spun aluminum is obviously much worse but cast aluminum is only marginally better.
On the plus side, cast aluminum is obviously much lighter than cast iron and requires less care. Enameled cast iron is also easy to care for but is obviously much more expensive than both regular cast iron and cast aluminum.
In your case, it would seem that your two primary requirements (caramelizing sugar and roasting meat) are at odds with each other. For roasting, you want a very steady, even heat. For caramelizing sugar you need precise control, you need to be able to reduce the heat very quickly when you hit the melting point. Cast iron would be absolutely terrible for caramelization, but is a far better choice for roasting.
Personally, I use a regular (non-enameled) seasoned cast iron pot as a dutch oven and just use a small light stainless steel saucepan when I need to do something like caramelize sugar. I'd suggest you do the same, unless you're really low on space and genuinely need one piece of cookware to do it all.
Honestly, the only thing that cast aluminum really has going for it is its price. The ease of maintenance is overshadowed by the fact that the pieces don't tend to last that long, and everything else it's good at is handled equally well or better by stainless steel with an aluminum or copper core. The few pieces of aluminum (or cast aluminum) cookware I still own tend to sit at the bottom shelf at the very back and gather dust, but YMMV.
I think I will go with what you suggest, I will get a Lodge seasoned cast iron for roasts and find something from Cuisinart for sugar caramelization, thanks.
When one talks about a cast Aluminium dutchie scratching and sticking then they are not familiar with their topic of discussion.
A cast iron pot either iron or aluminium has a rough texture and is not bought for its smooth aesthetic appearance.
Neither cast iron nor aluminium will be non-stick from the start. A non-stick coating on these utilitarian pots is silly. They need to be seasoned well over several uses before they become non-stick. Mine does not stick, unless I want it to! They are not frying pans.
There has been health concerns about cooing in aluminium pots but I have seen the arguments both ways. The lower thermal capacity can be an issue with the aluminium dutch oven. The only disadvantage of this is a greater variation of temperature from the bottom and the sides of the pot.
Aluminium Dutch ovens today have been used in West Indies (and throughout the developing ex colonial world) by generations of cooks for stews, soups and rice dishes. In the West Indies caramelising brown sugar is the start of most dishes and the slow long cooking of tough cheaper cuts of meet always necessary.
Some burning of the contents on the bottom of pot is sometimes required eg. when cooking rice. Tobagonians call it “bun bun” in their pelau the Spanish call it “socarrat” in their paella.
They both work; cast iron is better and more expensive but the best cooks often cant afford it. If one can cook anything creole in cast iron better than my grannie did in cast aluminium I will be surprised. So before you splash out, note the British school boy jibe “all the gear and no idea”.
For many years I have been using both cast iron and cast aluminum Dutch ovens to prepare everything from main courses to desserts on river trips. I have thousands of hours of cooking time experience with both types, and I have seen no differences at all other than weight - the aluminum oven weighs about one third to one fourth less than the cast iron oven.
At first, I just used the technique my mother taught me for cleaning cast iron - while the oven is still hot pour salt into it and then rub it out with a clean, dry rag. This removes any residue of food or flavors and prevents needing to re-season the oven before the next use, as would be the case if you ever use soap in a cast iron or aluminum oven unless it is anodized.
Over the years I started using turkey-sized oven bags to prevent having to clean my ovens at all, and now have moved to aluminum Dutch oven liners, which are far superior and easier to handle, especially when dipping food out of the oven. Now, I never have to clean my ovens and they never have any residual taste, neither do I have to be concerned about ferrus or aluminum particles coming off in the food.
Frankly, about the only difference I have seen between the two oven materials is that the cast iron ovens stay hotter longer, and may work a little better in colder temperature conditions. But, all things being equal, I cannot say that I have ever experienced any significant differences between cast iron and cast aluminum other than weight, which is a consideration when loading them into an already heavily loaded canoe for a 7-15 day wilderness trip.
As to durability, I have never had either a cast iron or cast aluminum oven warp, crack or break other than a leg breaking off a cast iron oven when it fell to the ground from the back of my van. I regulate cooking temperature by the number of charcoal briquettes places under and on top of my ovens (1 briquette equals about 15 degrees fahrenheit temperature) with one third of the briquettes under the bottom and two thirds around the edge of the lid. I do NOT place my ovens directly in or over an open campfire because doing so offers no temperature control at all, and that could lead to cracking, warping or breaking.
If you use oven bags, doesn't that prevent the nice browning effect that food gets from being in contact with the hot metal surface?
Cast Aluminum is different from cast iron in several ways. Not necessarily better or worse.
Aluminum conducts heat better than iron. This means that for pans of approximately the same size and thickness, the cast aluminum should heat more evenly than the cast iron.
http://www.chowhound.com/post/measuring-practical-heat-conductivity-cast-iron-aluminum-738175
Fewer hot spots would generally be a good thing in my opinion, though I doubt they would have much effect on searing meat or caramelizing sugars. I hadn't noticed the difference myself.
There's also the weight issue... I recently traded out my 10 inch cast iron dutch oven for a 12 inch cast aluminum, and a 10 inch cast aluminum... and the two aluminum pans weigh less than the cast iron. If you need to move your pans around any, that can be a good thing. Mine are for cooking on the road.
Some people claim that cast aluminum is more likely to break. I'm suspicious about that claim.
Aluminum does have a lower melting point. Pure aluminum melts at about 660 Celsius... which can be achieved in most kitchens, if you really try. I managed to melt an aluminum pan once, but that was sort of intentional, and involved putting the pan upside down on a burner with a sheet of aluminum foil on top of it.
Now... there is an issue of chemical reactivity, If your aluminum pot is bare aluminum, then acidic foods can oxidize the aluminum, it's supposed to change the flavor, etc. etc. That's a big issue with tomatoes, vinegar, citrus juice... none of which is meat or sugar, although I've heard that meat and sugar with the right additives may be acidic.
A lot of foods also stick to bare aluminum. This is especially true of starchy foods, and meats.
So... since I know nothing about Caribbean aluminum Dutch Pots... if your aluminum is bare, that could be a bit of an issue.
In most places, there's some Teflon coating on the inside of aluminum pots. I don't like that crap because it melts in my food, and I have to find wooden utensils so that I don't scratch it.
Sometimes, you will find aluminum pots that are all a greyish color, and feel kind of powdery? papery? Those pots have been hard anodized, and I like hard anodized pans. They still can scratch if you use steel, and then you've got bare aluminum, but other than that, they're pretty good. They will stick a bit more than Teflon of course.
If your aluminum pot (bare aluminum, or hard anodized) gets too much food stuck to it, you can season it, just as you would with cast iron: coat with thin oil, and cook the pot at low heat (225 if you've got an oven.) Seasoning on aluminum pans doesn't stick as well as with cast iron, so it may cook off from time to time. This is a bigger problem for bare aluminum than for the hard anodized aluminum, which tends to hold onto a seasoning pretty well.
So... unless there is something acidic (sour tasting) in your meat or sugar, I'd think that aluminum pots will work just fine.
The things you noted are what I would also note about cast aluminum. For my money, the biggest downsides would definitely be high reactivity and low thermal mass. I might question the durability also--cast aluminum nicks and scratches really easily.
It's up to you whether you think reactivity is particularly bad for your health, but low thermal mass runs fairly directly counter to what you want in a dutch oven, and cast iron is going to be far more resistant to damage if you maintain it properly.
I can't speak to availability in your area, but in my experience the difference in price for cast aluminum vs. plain cast iron just isn't enough to put up with ANY downsides. Yeah, cast iron's probably twice as much, but with 7 qt. plain cast iron ones going for $40 US, I can't see the issue. It'll last you forever if you look after it (keep it seasoned, dry fully after washing and store in a dry place).
I have seen cast aluminium pots abused badly and have still remained in use for long times but that was before I became involved with cooking so I did not examine these close up or ask any questions or checked the performance of them afterwards so I will not argue too much about that, you have been helpful, thanks.
I know this is an old thread but I found it looking for some more cast aluminum cookware. My favorite pot/dutch oven is a 5Qt enameled cast aluminum that I've had for a couple of years. I also have a cast iron dutch oven and the enameled cast aluminum wins hands down in my experience. Cost, weight and non-stick since day 1 and still looks brand new. As far as the fear of cooking in aluminum, the enameled aluminum never touches the food because of the enamel.
Cast aluminum is better in the tropics or near the sea. It don't rust.It does need be 2 times as thick as cast iron. For even heat. Food does stick more to cast aluminum. Cast aluminum being softer is easy to clean over burnt on food .Than cast iron. Aluminum takes on a fine blacking when used over open cook fires on the outside. Will soon look like cast iron on the outside.
If you buy a cast aluminum Dutch oven I have one caution for you. Be careful with it around the campfire. Do not place it in the camp fire to burn off the leftovers before cleaning it up. That was the common method of cleaning the cast iron ovens in our Boy Scout Troop. Someone did that with a new cast aluminum oven and a while later someone noticed a glowing mass in the center of the fire. The aluminum oven melted. On another occasion someone put an aluminum oven lid upside down on a cooking grate over the fire to use it as a griddle. We do this frequently with the iron ones. The handle melted off the aluminum lid. If you understand the limitations of any product you can use it successfully.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.135228
| 2010-12-19T14:36:46 |
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|
103046
|
Does the size of chilli pieces affect the hotness
If I'm chopping fresh chillis to use as an ingredient, does how fine I chop them affect the heat of the dish in any way?
Logically, smaller pieces would expose a greater surface area, however, I have experienced greater heat from a dish when using larger pieces.
How are you planning to use them? Are you adding chopped as a garnish or to raw food, or cooking them?
@GdD I was thinking of a garnish to raw food specifically, but would be interested if it makes a difference in either case.
It really does depend how you're cooking them.
Logically, smaller pieces would expose a greater surface area, however, I have experienced greater heat from a dish when using larger pieces.
The small pieces give an even heat that permeates the dish, but the big pieces give a burst of heat when you encounter them. Even using both wouldn't be unreasonable.
The difference will be reduced in long slow cooking, especially with some fat in the sauce, as the capsaicin (i.e. the heat) will have more chance of dissolving and spreading into the rest of the food.
Thanks for the edit @AlexM; I seem completely incapable of typing today
No worries, thanks for approving the edit. It's a good answer
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.136476
| 2019-10-24T09:24:14 |
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|
109094
|
Can I use this air fryer basket with a non-stick coating as a grill basket?
Scenario
For (reasons), I have an extra inner basket for this model of air fryer. I have completely removed the handle assembly; what I'm left with is a single piece of non-stick coated metal. I've been grilling a lot recently and experimenting with ways to cook different types of veggies on the grill I came across the concept of a 'grill basket'. I was wondering if I could use this air fryer basket on the grill. I use a Weber kettle charcoal grill and I'd have the basket on top of the grate, not directly in the coals.
The air fryer itself maxes out at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, but I couldn't find any information about the temperature rating of the actual basket or even specifics on the coating used.
N.B.
I couldn't find any good information about this online except for fairly common assertions that 'one shouldn't use non stick cookware at very high heats' without much in the way of specifics.
Looking through this stack I found Why would a portable barbecue warn against using pots on the grill? which actually didn't include any info on my topic and also Cooking temperatures with non-stick cookwear which (surprisingly) didn't either.
Question(s)
What potentially deleterious effects might result from using this air fryer basket with a non stick coating on a charcoal grill?
Specifically what might be the possible negative outcomes from simply throwing some veg in there and trying it at least once?
Nonstick vessels don't mix well with grills. First, it is likely to get overheated - I assume the basket is PTFE, which starts deteriorating at a little bit over 200 C (compatible with your fryer temp rating). Second, with grilling, you frequently have a situation where a tiny amount of oil (e.g. from a marinade) gets smeared on the rack (or basket, in this case) - that small amount then polymerizes in the heat and, on a nonstick surface, becomes a sad, useless version of cast iron seasoning.
If you really want to try grill baskets, search for a stainless steel solution, or try repurposing something else like a collander or steamer insert.
Also, note that we cannot answer your question on "definitely dangerous, probably safe, or something else". Any potential health effects (or lack of those) of overheated teflon are off topic on the site.
Thank you for the pointer on topicality for this stack - I've edited my question to reframe the ask, which may invalidate part of your answer as currently constituted - thanks again for taking the time.
While not the specific info I was looking for, this seems to be the correct - and is certainly the best - answer, so I've selected it. Again, I appreciate your effort in response.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.136603
| 2020-06-16T18:41:31 |
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|
122108
|
How can I fix a liquidy choux pastry (Gougères) dough for piping?
Last week, I attempted to bake Gougères for the first time. It was my first attempt at baking with Pate a Choux. The recipe I followed called for six large eggs, but I knew adding the last egg would make the dough runnier than the optimal consistency. When I added the mixture into a piping bag, it was watery and didn't hold shape. Is there a technique or something I can add to the dough mix to correct the dough from being so liquidy? May I add flour to the runny dough and mix it in an electric mixer to tighten the consistency, or is that not recommended because I already mixed the eggs into the dough in a previous step?
Suggested title change: "How can I fix a liquidy choux pastry dough?" Gougère is a specific pastry made with cheese added to the choux pastry, but I don't think it matters too much in that case, and your question applies also to other scenarios (eclairs, profiteroles, etc).
Most of the sources I've seen online say that you absolutely shouldn't add more raw flour to liquidy choux dough.
The recommended solution seems to be to make half a batch of dough without the eggs, and mix that with the overly-eggy dough, either a bit at a time until the correct consistency is reached, or all at once, and then add more eggs to the combined doughs if necessary.
Another solution is to put the dough back into a pot, and cook, stirring constantly, over very low heat until the dough thickens to the proper consistency.
I would be terrified of heating it on the stove at that point. Even a runny choux would be quite viscous and difficult to keep stirred up, and overheating the bottom by just a few degrees would turn the stuff to chunks.
@Sneftel I totally agree - knowing me, I might make it way more toasty than it needs to be, and it might taste really funny from the char. So will be careful if this ever happens, and I have to actually attempt back on the pot and reheat suggestion
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.136843
| 2022-10-25T18:11:49 |
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102823
|
How long do I have to submerge an egg in a specific temperature water to boil it?
Living in a dorm, I am severely limited by my cooking options. I have a non-microwave safe bowl, which I'm using for the noodle soup (that will be accompanied by said egg), and a highball glass.
There's a water dispenser which pours out hot water of exactly 70 degree C. If I fill up the glass with that, then after putting the egg in that glass, how long do I need to keep it there to make sure it's hard-boiled? (Note that I have no way to heat the water, so once it's poured into the glass and placed on the counter it'll start losing heat)
If a hard boiled egg isn't possible, a soft boiled will do. (as long as the egg doesn't remain gross in the whites or get me sick, I'm good)
Just wanted to comment that you can pour out the cooled water and replace them with new 70° water.
Good point. hadn't thought of that. So 70 is the highest I can go
Consider buying a portable hob, It can be as small as 20x20 cm, and will give you a lot of cooking options when combined with a single small pot. Hint: if a recipe is intended for a pan, it can usually be made in a pot too.
That's restricted by dorm rules. I would use the microwave, but my bowls are not microwave safe, and there's a (unreasonable?) fear of the egg exploding
A sous vide circulation cooker might be an option? Get a bowl or pot, fill it up with water of any temperature, and insert the circulation cooker and plug it in. There's no flame, or exposed heating element. -- Also, consider you can buy pre-made hard-boiled eggs at most warehouse-style grocery stores pretty cheaply.
At least buy a microwave safe bowl (or microwave in the glass you've got). That will open up a lot of options
As others have said before - try to get some microwave-safe containers. Apart from thrift stores and garage sales, Craigslist,... see what you can get from other students moving out and don’t forget that trusty workhorse of container recycling: the good old glass canning jar. What stood up to hot processing in a factory will be fine for the microwave and comes with a tight lid for storage and transport.
In theory you should be able to reach your goal, sort of, borrowing from the Japanese Onsen egg and the Sous Vide technique. Serious Eats has an article detailing the results of slow-cooking eggs at different temperatures just around your given 70 C for further reference. You should aim to keep the water around the egg as high as possible and do so for the better part of an hour.
But let’s be honest - even with constant re-filling of 70C water you won’t end up with a solid egg and every degree lower will give you more and more watery whites - which I suspect you mean when you write “gross”. So while you can safely eat the egg, it remains to be seen whether you want to. And it’s a huge hassle, just for a soft egg.
But let me suggest an alternative, using the microwave you mentioned. Eggs in a microwave are doable, if you take the egg out of the shell. If you are really limited to a glass - assuming it’s a plain and reasonably heatproof one, otherwise it shouldn’t be used in your original setup either - use the glass. Pour about half a cup of water into the glass (or small bowl, if you can find one, for a nicer shape), add a generous sprinkle of salt. Crack your egg into the water and microwave the whole thing for about a minute to the desired doneness - no need to actually boil the water, actually you want to rather avoid boiling, but it’s not the end of the world if you do get bubbles. This should give you a nice poached egg. Zapp it a bit longer for a solid yolk. Of course, each microwave is different, so a bit of experimentation is in order, but this method should get you closer to your goal than the water dispenser one you were considering.
You cannot. 65 degrees Celsius is needed for sof boiled egg. I omitt the time as it don't play a role. For hard boiled you need higher temp to affect the yolk.
Now, you can't even make a soft boiled egg the way you describe as your water temparature will drastically drop after introducing egg (with assumed much lower temperature. Could be even 4 degrees if from fridge).
For boiling an egg you need constant supply of certain temperature. When you put an egg into water with a certain temperature without suppling the heat to keep that temp then the water temperature drops until it will be in equilibrium with surrounding one.
If the water is 70 degrees (and can be refreshed to keep it around that temp), and you only need 65 degrees for a soft boiled egg, then why is this impossible? It might take a long time, but it seems like it'd get there eventually.
@Kat Yes, eventually. That time might be after the egg becomes unedible.You might be able to make soft boiled with temp around 70. For hard boiled the transfer of energy might be not enough.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.137145
| 2019-10-11T12:48:58 |
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|
112148
|
Sourdough bread uncooked from inside
My sourdough starter is 9 days old. Today it doubled in around 6 hours.
Following this recipe, I performed following steps:
I mixed 400g AP Flour, 160g starter, 230g water and 10g salt.
Kneading: I kneaded it for about 20 minutes until I observed window pane effect.
Proofing-1: I left it for proving for around 3 hours. It significantly increased in size, although not doubled.
Shaping: I shaped the bread and put it in a container with tea cloth.
Proofing-2: I left it for proving for around 5 hours. It significantly increased in size, although not doubled.
Baking-1: I preheated the oven at 230°C, kept the dough on tray and put some boiling water on a small container beside the dough. I baked for around 20 minutes.
Baking-2: I removed the water tray and let the rest of the dough heat up for 20 more minutes at 230°C.
First of all, the bread is barely edible. The bread developed a tough layer of crust on the top which is really hard to bite on. The inside is soggy and barely has any bubbles. Also, the exterior colour is blackish instead of brownish.
Also, the crust developed a crack below and expanded around it. It didn't expand around the scar I gave it on the top.
I'm adding some images for enhancing the context:
What can I do to improve my bread?
Although it looks brownish, really it's very burnt color.
The crack that was developed on bottom.
EDIT:
According to Chris's recommendation I made following changes:
Baked bread for 230˚C with steam for 20 minutes and then baked the bread for another 20 minutes at 180˚C.
Didn't cut the bread immediately, let it cool for about 1.5 hours.
I did one more thing, kneaded bread for around 40-50 minutes. I think this is a bit too much, but I did this since I couldn't see the window pane effect as described in the video.
Below I'm stating the improvements and lacking's the bread has.
Improvements:
The resulting bread, although on the edge, is edible unlike the earlier one.
The crust is no longer rock hard but it isn't a delight to bite on either.
What it lacks:
The bread didn't expand around the score I gave it.
The crust seems to be a bit disintegrated from the rest of the loaf.
The bread isn't as fluffy as I would like it to be.
The dough developed a huge crack in the bottom after the shaping phase. I think every shaping will have a weak corner, how do I prevent it from opening up? The crack is visible in the bottom image of bread. Same happened before as well.
Observations:
The top of the crust still has a burnt texture. To steam, I put a container with boiling water beside my bread. Usually it get split around the bread which might be the reason my bread has a nice colour on the bottom. I think the steam is not reaching the crust. Should I spray the bread for steam creation next time? (So that it reaches crust as well).
I'm attaching pictures for reference:
^The bottom of the crust can be easily peeled off from the rest of the bread.
Not a full answer, but: 40 minutes at 230° C seems a bit too hot? Did you bake on a tray or a stone?
@Stephie I baked it on a tray, it could be seen in the photo (black color).
Oh, and at nine days, your starter is basically a “baby” - it will probably develop its own character more over the next weeks.
Your video link is coming up as unavailable, could you check that you haven't accidentally missed off part of the link or something? Cheers
@Spagirl I'm really sorry. Have updated the video link now. It's by Patrick Ryan on channel ilovecookingireland.
Mine takes 40 minutes for 500g flour, just under 70% hydration. That's in preheated cast iron, with the lid on (and wetted inside) at 240C for the first 20 minutes, then down to 180. The hard crust seems like too hot to long, possibly too much top heat too.
Did you let it cool (almost) fully before cutting and tasting? If I'm impatient, it seems doughy and underdone. The absolute warmest it should be when you cut it is just warm enough to soften a little butter. The inside looks OK to me - a closer crumb than you might have been aiming for but better for sandwiches. I'm prone to handling mine too much or too roughly and knocking some of the air out as I transfer it to the pan, with this effect
Next time try turning the oven down a bit when you take the water out. To avoid wasting this loaf, if it still seems underdone when cold, toast slices of it (probably leaving the crust) and eat hot with butter.
Hi Chris, I'll try the temperature setting tomorrow. I didn't let it cool, cut it just after I took it out. The inside does look OK in the picture but it's not really edible (sticky). Thanks for the last advice, clever!
Once it's cool it should be less sticky, but it takes a couple of hours, during which you have to resist the wonderful smell
I think you are pretty much spot on - falling heat, cooling down to let the starch stabilize. And sourdough is a bit softer and stickier than pure yeast bread because some of the gluten gets broken up by the bacteria during the long raise.
Hello @ChrisH, I tried your suggestion and have posted an update.
I make a sourdough with a very similar recipe to you, perhaps fractionally drier. I bake mine at 230C for 25 minutes covered and 20 minutes uncovered at 200C. On the occasions I forget to turn it down it is verging on burnt.
Mine takes a full 24 hours from mixing to baking, so I think you may be rushing the bread.
If I knead mine at all, barring the bare minimum to render it mixed, I end up with a sticky mess that fails to rise much. That's partly due to how long mine ferments, but you can overdo the gluten development, leading to stickiness. I followed all the tutorials, setting timers to knead for 20 minutes, doing 300 'slap and fold' movements, stretching the dough every 20 minutes... all of them rendered the same overworked mess for me, although they seem to work for others.
Now I generally mix my dough until it is 'shaggy' then cover and leave it for 15 minutes or so and then give it a few turns in the bowl. That is usually all it needs to create a smooth dough, though it is far short of 'windowpane' at that stage. This isn't technically an autolyse, because I have my starter and salt in with the flour and water, so you might want to experiment with a proper autolyse.
I would suggest you read up on 'stretch and fold', but also be prepared to experiment with being more 'hands-off' your dough.
You let it prove for a total of 8 hours. That might be fine, but it might also depend what temperature the space it was proving in was. My kitchen in Northern Scotland tends to the cool side, so my bread always gets left overnight, despite many sources saying you can make sourdough in 4-8 hours I have never found that to work in my circumstances.
This site gives a table of fermentation times by temperature, suggesting 6-12 hours for 'room temperature'. However their 'room temperature range is 21-24C, which is warmer than my kitchen typically is for most of the year, tending to hover at about 19C unless I have the oven on. So be prepared to experiment with both temperature and timings to get the best out of your dough.
and have patience while you wait for your starter to mature and come into its own, it's only a baby yet. My bread was much like yours when my starter was new, but as the starter and I both found our feet the results improved and became more consistent.
+1,more detailed than mine, and interesting. With a similar kitchen temperature to you I can bake after about 9 hours at room temp if I don't fold many times, but 14 hours fridge prove is better. In a month or so lol be back to overnight proving out of the fridge
Thanks for the answer. I'll try baking a less kneaded bread soon. Today I kneaded for about 40 minutes but didn't observe any window pane effect :(. The temperature in my city varies between 27˚C to 35˚C. Today my starter rose to more than double in 3 hours since it was very humid today.
How long will it take for a start to be decently mature?
@Spagirl I've updated the answer with information about my baking session today.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.137574
| 2020-10-15T17:14:07 |
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|
99074
|
Why does stock lose flavor in the freezer?
When storing chicken stock in the freezer, a lot of sources say that it should store up to 6 month and will lose some of its flavor after that.
What are the lost flavors and what chemical processes are responsible for this loss?
Sources:
How to Store Your Homemade Chicken Stock
Food storage - how long can you keep...
How long can I leave chicken stock in the fridge?
How to freeze chicken broth
How Long Does Chicken Broth Last?
How to freeze stock and other liquids
Could you provide a source for the claim?
@canardgras Done :)
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.138277
| 2019-05-20T08:36:10 |
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|
92677
|
Is it ok to refrigerate almond milk after I add honey to it?
I bought a pretty big container of vanilla almond milk. I would like to add some honey to it, and shake the container. After I use it, I'll store it back in the refrigerator. Will this be ok, or is it bad to mix honey and almond milk and refrigerate them?
The reason honey shouldn't be kept in the fridge is that it crystallises easily at low temperatures (even that's just a change in texture, not a spoilage problem). Once mixed with plenty of water so the sugars are dissolved, that won't be an issue.
I would expect the addition of what's essentially sugar to have no negative effect on the keeping properties of a water-based mixture, but this is where we can't be certain. If you stick to the use by date, and in particular the "once open use within..." instructions (which are probably to use within a few days) you should be fine. There's a slim chance you might reduce the margin built in to these dates, but that's probably all. What's more important is to avoid getting it warm for a long time while mixing
Should probably also mention that honey crystallizing isn't really a big problem either and can be reversed.
@orlp well my kitchen gets cold enough that it crystallises in the cupboard, and I never seem to get it stably runny again -- but I'll certainly mention that it's not spoilage.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.138379
| 2018-10-05T05:09:55 |
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|
46247
|
Can I substitute green cardamon for black cardamon in curry?
There is a curry recipe I am following right now and it says i need black cardamon. I live in an area that is a little difficult to buy all the indian spices.
My local market only sell ground cardamon (I don't know what colour) and green cardamon.
If you are curious, I live in Hamilton, Ontario.
Also, just another cultural question. When an indian recipe lists "curd" as a ingredient in curry, is that just regular greek yogurt?
I should also mention that the recipe is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrMoYBNnLmY&list=WL&index=11
She doesn't actually state if it is green or black, but I assumed it was black.
There is quite a difference in the tastes of black vs. green cardamom. In fact, they come from different but related species of plants.
Try asking your Indian grocery store for badi elaichi or badi welchi. It is the Hindi name for black cardamom.
Green cardamom has a minty flavor and is highly aromatic. It is also slightly sweet. It pairs well with spicy-sweet dishes as it enhances the taste. The ground cardamom in the store is probably green cardamom, because the powder is often used in recipes for masala chai (tea).
Black cardamon has a stronger flavor. It is more smoky (kind of like cinnamon - only kind of). It is best used in meat and savory dishes. So that's probably what the recipe uses.
As for Indian curd, also called dahi, it is closest to Greek yogurt in consistency and taste. However, dahi usually has a more tangy, sometimes sour taste. You may want to consider that while pairing up your dishes.
Where do you buy dahi…?
@sidht you can get it at most Indian grocery stores, if you have one near you.
In the video, is she using green or black cardamon? Are they interchangeable?
Is there powdered black cardamom sold anywhere anyway - it seems the parts you would care about are too oily to grind, and it is rather tasteless when dried out...
The names of green and black cardamom are very misleading. In fact, they're not the same species of plant, nor are they closely related, nor do they have a very similar flavor (though they're both very nice).
Furthermore, the black cardamom is smoked over an open fire, that's what gives it the smokey flavor. Black cardamom is also very strong (and pretty expensive). I'm betting the cardamom powder is green...black cardamom is too expensive, they would've specified what it is.
That said, in a curry, or any recipe with a bunch of different spices, it's not a big deal if you skip, or switch, the ones you don't have. You can use green cardamom (pods), or nutmeg, or ginger, or all of them, instead. Just don't add too much...less than a quarter of cardamom or nutmeg, maybe even just an eighth, of the amount of pepper you're adding to the curry mix...because they're very strong.
Also, there seem to be varieties of the black stuff again - what is typically sold packaged by vietnamese brands is larger and less potent than what is usually sold by indian brands...
She is using green cardamon in curry. And regarding curd/dahi you can use plain Greek or regular yoghourt with a splash of lime for sourness.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.138536
| 2014-08-09T21:31:43 |
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|
99785
|
Fully submerged water bath for stove top baking?
So normally, stove top cooking never results in all around heat like in an oven but what if you were to submerge (underwater bath instead of just around the sides) a dish in simmering water and then cover it completely (to prevent water from getting in) until it's cooked? Would this work for cakes and breads?
I think you may have just reinvented Sous Vide cooking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide
@SteveChambers : I'd argue it's older than that. It's a variation on steamed pudding.
I was mostly kidding, gently ;-)
Beyond steamed puddings, boiled puddings are also a thing that used to be popular. The result is quite close-textured, though — note that the traditional recipes were unleavened.
As soon as they guys figure it out for fusion, shmaybe expect a fancy plasma oven 20-40 years later :) https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1865052
Unlikely. Without even getting into the mechanics of how it would work, simple physics dictates that you can't get the temperature of this "immersion oven" above 100 degrees Celsius. Most cakes and breads are cooked at temperatures above 170 degrees Celsius. A second issue is that moisture can escape when baking in a normal oven. Your "immersion oven" would not allow steam to escape whatever you're cooking, which would lead to the contents being a bit steamed as well as baked. Sometimes this is desirable (see eg making bread in dutch ovens), but not for the majority of breads and cakes.
But the internal temperature of bread is less than 100C when cooked. This could be an attempt to bake crustless bread, but it would result in a different crust, overcooked but not burnt. Steamed sponge puddings are quite close, though they're only partially immersed
@ChrisH I imagine there would be issues with getting the bread to rise properly at such low temperatures. I don't think a "normal" recipe for bread could be cooked at such a low temperature and you would obtain anything close to bread.There are recipes where it might work, but not as a general substitute to an oven for baking.
Definitely not a general solution, I agree. Yeast breads don't rely on heat to rise, and the sponges I mention indicate that chemical leaveners can work in a similar system. Bagels of course are boiled then baked, suggesting a recipe could be devised
Would it then be possible to use a pressure cooker to reach the needed 170C? Though I suspect that would make the steaming issue significantly worse.
@ChrisH On the contrary, yeast breads very much rely on heat to rise. That's what oven spring is, and depending on the exact procedure it can account for the majority of the overall rise.
@Vality Typical pressure cookers only reach around 120C.
Given that the dough would create its own steam as it cooked, the result for bread would probably be very similar to Mantou or Baozi, just taking much longer to actually cook.
@Konrad that's fair. They don't rely on high heat though
So normally, stove top cooking never results in all around heat like in an oven but what if you were to submerge (underwater bath instead of just around the sides) a dish in simmering water and then cover it completely (to prevent water from getting in) until it's cooked?
This sounds a lot like sous vide which is currently becoming commonplace after having been niched to large-scale kitchens and avant-garde restaurants. There are lots of resources online (just Google it), Douglas Baldwin has a bit of the science behind it.
Would this work for cakes and breads?
Depends on what you mean by "work", but yes, you can cook dough or batter enough to turn it into something that isn't just dough or batter; proteins coagulate at simmering temperatures. Here's a recipe for bread rolls using this technique, for example. The one thing you won't be getting is a nice, hard, brown crust since the Maillard reactions behind it requires temperatures above water's boiling point (100°C).
Fully submerged is going to be a problem, as you'd need an airlock to allow air to escape so you don't end up creating a pressure cooker. (which would prevent the bread from rising). If you were going to try this, I'd look into fermentation airlocks and grommets to install on a mason jar lid, and then use the largest straight-sided mason jar that I could find. You could then submerge the jar fully, but leave the top of the airlock out of the water.
You'll want to place a rack or something at the bottom of the outer pot to ensure that there's water under the jar, so it's not getting heated directly from the stove. You may also need to weight the jar down, so it doesn't float on you, as the bread will be less dense than the water.
If you're not up to investing in quite so much supplies, and don't insist on fully submerged, there is a style of bread that's cooked on the stovetop, in a water bath -- Boston Brown Bread. Mind you, that's a quick bread made with part cornmeal and often rye flour, so it doesn't rise quite as much as a yeast bread. It also doesn't need oven spring like most yeast breads do.
There are also plenty of "cake" like British puddings that are steamed stove-top ... Figgy Pudding and Spotted Dick come to mind, but I'm sure any of the Brits on here could give us a longer list of names for you to look up. You could also search BBC's Good Food for "steamed pudding"
Sussex Pond Pudding is well worth a try. So simple but so effective. I prefer the version with a whole lemon inside. Delicious!
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.138879
| 2019-06-27T10:43:50 |
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|
100700
|
Creaming butter seperately on its own, then adding the sugar and beating them together vs simply creaming butter and sugar together (the regular way)?
Would there be any difference in the end result? Usually you beat both the sugar and butter together but what if you instead, were to start by creaming the butter on its own at first, then adding the sugar to the whipped butter and beating them both together? Thanks!
Please take a look at the answer to this question and see if it answers your question as well: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/3141/what-is-the-purpose-of-creaming-butter-with-sugar-in-cookie-recipes?rq=1
Possible duplicate of What is the purpose of creaming butter with sugar in cookie recipes?
I'm not sure if it answered my question. My hypothetical method (cream butter seperately and then add sugar and continue beating) was not specifically addressed. Is there something I'm missing? I appreciate your help by the way.
From the accepted answer: "It has recently been discovered that cookie dough is different from cake batters. Sugar is part of the structure of the cookie and not just a sweetener, tenderizer, and browning agent. It forms the base upon which the fats and the starch granules of the flour are embedded. The sugar needs to dissolve for the matrix to form."
Now, if you're asking about cake, then it is a different question, but if so you need to edit your question.
Sorry, I should have clarified. I meant in terms of the amount of leavening provided.
So .. cream the butter and then add the sugar later, but still cream the sugar with the butter? So the only difference would be whether you add the sugar when the butter is still cubes? Is that what you're asking?
Yep, that's correct.
Seems very unlikely to make a difference; I agree that's not a duplicate question, though. Please edit your original question to make it very clear what you're asking.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.139365
| 2019-08-12T17:47:35 |
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|
110594
|
What is the optimal way to remove salt from cooked meat?
I want to remove salt from marinated chicken thighs. What would be the most effective way to do this "reverse brining", if flavour does not matter?
I have seen these two questions:
How deeply will the flavors in a brine penetrate chicken? and How does rub or marinade actually seep into meat?
It seems like small molecules like salt penetrate throughout the meat, whereas larger molecules like food colouring stay on the surface. Since my main goal is to remove salt, would soaking or boiling the meat be most effective? I assume cutting the meat up smaller or even grinding it up will speed up the process, but with small quantities I would prefer not to have to break out the meat grinder. Also, the meat is fully cooked. Do changes in the protein affect how (much) salt can be drawn out of the meat?
I would suggest to put the food in the freezer and it at a later point. Get the doggie some doggie food. All you can do to remove salt now will end up in something the dog won't like.
The meat is just a supplement to the dog food. I will remove the dog-related section of the question, and just ask about ways to remove salt from cooked meat (if taste/palatability is no object).
Boiling in a large amount of water is probably the most efficient method. The water should be boiling to avoid spoilage and to promote fast diffusion, and there should be a lot of it to maximize the rate of diffusion. (Alternatively, you could replace the water one or more times during the process) Cutting up the pieces will speed up the process, but if time/texture/tastiness are not important then you can boil the stuff as long as you like.
As for the cooking process having affected how much salt can be drawn out: Possibly a bit. Chloride ions are known to bind to certain muscle proteins during the brining and cooking process. I would expect this to be a very minor effect, though. If you've ever tasted the meat left over from a long-cooking stock, you'll note how bland it can get.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.139580
| 2020-09-08T03:13:31 |
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|
107359
|
Is folding with a spatula really necessary?
In most recipes involving whipped egg whites or whipped cream, you are instructed to fold a the whipped mixture in parts (thirds) into the non-whipped mixture using a spatula. For example, angel food cake or souffle.
But, it is easy to deflate the mixture too much when using a spatula, especially for someone inexperienced, so why not use a whisk? Other than scraping the sides/bottom of the bowl, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't, and you could also use a folding motion while also preventing the mixture from deflating, and combines them faster. Personally, I prefer a whisk.
Is there any other reason to use a spatula over a whisk, or is it just conventional practice?
In other words, is convention correct (based off your experiences)?
The mechanism of a whisk is very different from a spatula. One is able to very gently fold the ingredients with a spatula while minimizing mixing. A whisk's tines will cause much more damage to the whipped mixture, deflating the fragile bubbles you worked so hard to create. It's really worth practicing with the correct tool. It won't take you long to master this.
Simply cut through the ingredients with the spatula and lift about 1/3 of the mix from the bottom and gently fold over the top, then turn the bowl and repeat. Fold as little as possible to just combine the ingredients. In some recipes complete mixing is not even necessary.
Yes, but I don't see how the whisk's tines can cause more damage? The egg whites or cream will have been whipped using a whisk beforehand, whether by hand or by machine.
A whisk does mix anything unless you move it very quickly, which you need to create the air bubbles in the whites. Once you mix other ingredients in being vigorous with any implement will just crush the bubbles, so you need to be gentle. It doesn't have to be a spatula, I use a large spoon, but using a whisk will ruin it very fast.
@GdD I use a folding motion to mix with a whisk as well, which avoids vigorous mixing. Using a whisk eliminates the possibility of deflating the mixture whereas with a spatula the risk remains.
@mestackoverflow, you asked whether you need to use something other than a whisk, and have a good, reasoned answer: using a whisk doesn't give good results. If you like using a whisk by all means do so, but you may want to consider that the answer here is correct, and try practicing your folding with something other than a whisk.
It's optimistic to assume whipped material stays whipped, as in "been whipped ... beforehand." Whipped egg whites fall as you look away - well, in minutes. That's why you need two beaters, one for the yolks first, the other for the whites (without washing and drying well). If you use one, you can go from whites to yolks - while watching the whites fall.
@GdD apologies, I sounded like I was trying to convince you to use a whisk! Yes, this answer and your comments are correct according to conventional knowledge, but the main question was whether convention is correct according to your experience. Perhaps I should edit the question to reflect this.
I can't edit the comment, but by "your experience" I meant people in this community.
While the conventional wisdom is to fold with a spatula, several online resources suggest that folding with a whisk actually deflates less.
Epicurious prefers a balloon whisk to a spatula
That rubber spatula seems to take forever to incorporate flour into whites and the whole while, you watch as all the lovely volume you've whipped into your eggs slowly deflates (...) Luckily, there's an alternative to the flat and oomph-killing rubber spatula: the balloon whisk. (...) And thanks to its wide, balloon-shaped wire coils, it preserves the beautiful airiness of whipped eggs while quickly helping you blend in other ingredients.
Cooks Illustrated suggests starting with a whisk and finishing with a spatula
In the test kitchen, we like to start the process by lightening the heavier ingredients with one-quarter or one-third of the whipped mixture. A balloon whisk is ideal for the task: Its tines cut into and loosen the heavier mixture, allowing the whipped mixture to be integrated more readily. Next, the remaining whipped mixture can be easily incorporated into the lightened mixture. For this round of folding, we preserve the airiness of the dessert by using a rubber spatula, which is gentler than a whisk.
I've had good results with whisks especially in the initial process of lightening the batter.
Thank you for posting these. The first article genuinely is recommending a balloon whisk, but then is blatantly selling one at the end of the article. The second article is suggesting using the whisk just for the 1/3 mix (which always gets deflated a lot and is a technique used to make the batter softer to minimize deflating the other 2/3, for which they suggest using a spatula. I've tried both and have better luck with a spatula. But there is no cooking technique on the planet where you won't find different opinions from professional chefs and bakers. Have you tried both & what do you find?
P.S. I missed your last line but can't edit my comment. Do you prefer a whisk for folding or have you simply been able to make it work?
I used a whisk in my last souffle recipe and I found it blended the mix more throughly than a spatula with less lost volume. But I am not a frequent souffle maker, so this is not taking from a large number of trials. It would be fun to do a side by side comparison.
I would highly encourage you to do a controlled test and then post your results here. Find a way to measure the volume of the batter and also measure the baked results. You might also take a video of your technique as that could be useful.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.139889
| 2020-04-07T04:44:52 |
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19874
|
Omelet help.... gah why is it so hard?
Possible Duplicate:
How to succeed with making omelette
Omelets continue to elude me... It appears to be such a simple concept, but I always end up making scramble eggs with the mushrooms and cheese. Here's what I do
Mix egg and milk
Pour into skillet on low-med heat, and it fills the entire bottom
let it cook a little, then throw on the extras (mushroom, or meat and blackbean)
Then it goes awry... i see uncooked egg so I'm hesitant to fold it over, and if I leave it to cook i'm scared of burning the egg. I'll eventually fold it with runny egg, then i think to flip the whole thing to cook it some more and then i breaks apart. or i'll watch it then it gets really questionable in the area of over-cooked, so I mash it up into scrambled eggs..
What should I be doing? Any tricks or secrets to the basic task of making an omelet?
This looks like it's just going to turn into a list of everybody's favourite recipes/techniques for omelettes, which would make it essentially a duplicate of How to succeed with making omelette. Would be nice if the people answering would actually focus on the specific issue at hand, that being achieving a more uniform cooking of the egg or (as slim's answer briefly suggests) simply tolerating a bit of uncooked egg.
It is a duplicate of http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/4464 - there is no "specific issue at hand" (uncooked egg is only mentioned in passing), so I think this should be closed.
I agree that it's a duplicate. Close it.
OK, it's got enough answers by now anyway; this might be a merge candidate later on.
@Aaronut - Agreed, who would have thought omelettes where so popular? The answers in the dupe question are mostly old cooking school class answers, apart form one decent answer from Europe (Thifa). Not a lot of experimentation going on!
@TFD: Well, a lot of people even struggle with scrambled eggs, mashing them around at low heat for 10 minutes and turning them into slops; omelettes are actually kind of hard to get right if you're doing real French omelettes as opposed to buffet-table omelettes or granny omelettes. (FWIW, I also cheat a little and steam them for a minute or two just before adding the filling)
Cover it!
The secret to omelette not having a runny middle, and being able to handle it without it breaking is to use a loose fitting lid (or another pan, upside down) as a cover for most of, if not all of the initial cooking
This in effect steams the top of the egg, ensuring it is cooked before the bottom burns
This also increases the fluffiness of the egg :-)
You will then be able to fold or flip with ease
Addressing specifically how to not get that raw egg...
I either cover it like @TFD suggests...or simply stick it in the oven for a minute or so under the broiler, it finishes nice and quick and you can visibly see when its done quite easily.
To minimize the uncooked egg, as soon as the egg starts to set, use a spatula to push the edges away from the sides of the pan. Tilt the pan to drain some of the uncooked egg into the gap. Continue doing this along the edges as uniformly as possible, until the majority of the runny eggs in the middle are gone.
The process of pushing the edges towards the middle should help avoid your center from becoming too thin, and should add some extra structure to it to avoid having it fall apart when you fold it.
When I started making omelets I had a hard time with the raw egg in the middle so I would flip the whole egg like pancake and cook it inside out. now I have come to terms but try that so you can get past the raw egg thing.
Although of course you should make omelette to suit your own taste, the archetypal gourmet omelette has uncooked egg in the middle, so I personally fold it over quite early.
Here's what I do.
Crack a couple of eggs into a measuring jug, add salt and pepper, and give it a very gentle stir; enough to break the yolks, but not to make it completely homogeneous. Don't use eggs straight from the fridge; they need to be room temperature. Milk or cream is optional at this point.
Heat the frying pan on medium-to-high. When it's hot, put in a knob of butter, and wait until it begins to smoke.
Tip in the mixed eggs; there should be an immediate sizzle. Swirl the pan so it covers the base of the pan.
Don't touch it until you're ready to fold, which for me is as soon it's solid enough for that to work. If you don't like uncooked egg, maybe leave it longer.
If you're adding a filling, do it now (I like gently fried mushrooms).
Two ways to fold:
By taking the pan handle, shuffling the omelette up the pan side, and flicking it up and over onto itself.
With a spatula
Give it a few seconds more on that side, then flip the whole thing over to brown the other side.
It's ready!
For technique like omelet making a video is worth a thousand words. You will find an excellent presentation of omelet making from Alton Brown's show "Good Eats". In the episode "Zen and the Art of Omelet Maintenance" you will learn the secrets of Omelet making.
(link is to part 1, there you will find a link to part 2)
In culinary school we spent HOURS on Omelets. This is by far the easiest way to prepare a proper french omelet (as an aside a proper french omelet should not have any color and should be just barely finished cooking on the inside).
Start with well beaten eggs, milk is not necessary. Season with salt and pepper. Place a liberal amount of clarified butter (clarified not necessary but helps) in a very clean nonstick pan (we would do a salt treatment - place cup of salt in pan and heat over flame for 20 mins - on our pans to ensure all impurities are gone). Get your fat hot over medium high flame. Now pour in your eggs and using a small plastic fork start scrambling the eggs. This will get as much of the eggs on the heat as possible. This part should take about 20-30 seconds if your pan is hot enough. Now add your ingredients (my fav is shrimp and avocado). At this point if you have any cheese in your ingredients you can cover to help it melt for another 30 or so seconds. Now using a thin spatula, fold over one side and tip the pan over onto a plate.
When we were making them in school the chef had a stopwatch and as soon as we took longer than like 2:30 he would take the pan throw it away and make us start over, if it had any color, same thing. It also is rather helpful if your other ingredients are already warm so you're not having to heat them through the egg barrier and only really just melting the cheese.
Needed Items
2 Eggs
2 onion cut it in to small pieces
needed salt
some butter
Mix eggs onion needed salt
Make sure the skillet is hot,put some butter in the skillet and also pour egg mixture in the skillet
lat it cook for 20 seconds
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.140380
| 2011-12-21T21:23:45 |
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|
109187
|
Why does meat dry out in high heat despite being submerged in liquid?
My understanding is cooking over long periods will break down collagen and other proteins. Won't the breakdown of protein cause the meat to lose structural integrity, thereby letting liquid in?
Maybe the down-voter could explain? It seems like a reasonable question to me.
Meat being "moist" or "dry" is an oversipmlified description of the texture. It is not a straightforward measure of the amount of liquid, and also, meat is not a sponge.
When people say that a piece of meat is "moist" or "juicy", they mean a specific texture that includes muscle fibers at a very specific stage of denaturation - they have some elasticity when bitten into, providing resistance, but are also relatively easy to crush during mastication. There is also lubrication from cell plasma (which is not pure water, but a mixture of water and proteins, gaining some colloidal properties) and fat. Even if you could produce a squirt or gush of water (or sauce) similar to what would happen if you were to bite on a wet sponge, that wouldn't really contribute to the texture people seek.
Dry meat means meat in which proteins have been denatured to a quite advanced stage. They harden and become chewy, the actin and myosin no longer slide against each other, and I'm not entirely sure what happens to the cell plasma, but I suspect that part of it oozes through the damaged cell walls, and another part seizes due to the dissolved pieces of protein, just like overcooked egg custard seizes. If you have fat left, it will provide some lubrication, but today's meats are produced with extra low amounts of fat, due to customer preference and cost efficiency.
Even if water were to enter the meat in its "dry" state, it won't turn it into a pleasant texture, because, as explained above, this is not about actuall wetness. But also, liquids don't penetrate meat that well. Take, for example, a piece of meat from a stew that has been stored for 2-3 days in the fridge. There will be stew liquid on the surface, but if you wash it, you will find little evidence of that liquid, maybe only within the first 2-3 mm. If you cut it in two and lick it, it won't taste like stew liquid. If you squeeze it, no stew liquid will come squirting out. In short, it turns out that the physical structure of meat with heat-damaged cell walls doesn't really permit for soaking up liquid.
Combine the two effects, and you will find out that most mental models that the public has about meat texture ("moist" having to do with adding moisture, or browning to "seal in the juices") are wrong. What you are trying to do is to get the proteins to the state in which we expect them, and that is achieved with some, but not too much, heat.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.140949
| 2020-06-21T03:40:35 |
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108729
|
Does putting pandan leaves' stems in water prolong its freshness?
I live in a tropical area where Pandanus amarylliforius is a common cooking ingredient, usually for making rice smell better, or baked into bread. We have a pandan plant in our garden, usually we harvest it when its the right size to be a rice aromatic but then we'd have to keep it fresh. Would leaving the stem in water suffice?
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.141175
| 2020-05-29T08:12:53 |
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|
110338
|
My bagel recipe calls for 1 tbsp of barley malt syrup. I have diastatic malt powder. How much powder would equal the tbsp of syrup?
My bagel recipe calls for 1 tbsp barley malt syrup. I have diastatic malt powder. How much powder would equal the tbsp of syrup?
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.141240
| 2020-08-22T17:48:55 |
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|
58350
|
Wok patina; when to redo seasoning?
This is a new carbon steel wok, seasoned on a gas stove with oil and had one stir fry made in it:
I've seen other posts where advice was given to let the scratches repair themselves over the many dishes to be made. While others said to scrub the whole patina off and redo the seasoning.
In the case here and referring to the condition in the pic; would you scrub/scrape off and redo seasoning? Or just let the fat from all the cooking do the work?
(Also, is it normal to get so dark from just the seasoning alone and one stir-fry? I thought it would take at least a few months to get to this)
A new patina is vulnerable to scratches and even washing off into liquid boiling on it. I've found that even a well-established patina is vulnerable to washing off this way.
If I were you, I'd would NOT bother to remove the remaining patina and start over.
Rather, I would re-season the wok on top of the existing patina at least once. Actually, I'd probably re-season it about three times.
But that's just me.
Perhaps others will have more authoritative suggestions.
Good luck
nello
That is exactly what I did today . Also before I heated the wok, I started feeling the surface with my hands for any lumps, and sort of rubbed them off before re-seasoning. Then did another stir fry, washed afterwards with hot water and a soft brush only, and so far so good. Patina looks very consistent (albeit very thin I'm sure).
The dark layer on your wok, which can be rubbed off with fingers, seems to be the burned oil. If you keep cooking, the burned oil will gradually disappear, and you'll get the patina. The very new patina is only slightly darker than the surface of the wok. Do not worry, the wok is very sturdy, keep cooking, and your less oil for seasoning. I usually put 1 teaspoon of oil on the inside and outside surface of my wok, and I do not let the wok smoke too much. Too much smoke while seasoning means the temperature is too high.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.141287
| 2015-06-18T22:22:02 |
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29345
|
How do I make a Leek foam from Agar or Egg Whites?
I have tried 4 times now and either the foam never truly stands up or there is too much agar and the thing starts to harden.
I only have agar or egg whites. I don't have any lecithin powder. What I am doing first is creating a leek juice. I have tried it a couple ways. One is to stick a bunch of leek bottoms in a Cuisineart. Then I cook for a few minutes, strain through a cheese cloth and let cool. I take about 100ml of that "juice" (once it is cooled) and add in about 1 gram of agar. I have tried 1.) beating it in a bowl by hand 2.) mix it, then heat it, then beat it by hand. Both ways fail.
I also tried with egg whites. Same procedure for the juice, but I added in 1 egg white per 100ml. Way too runny. Would never foam. I then added in 2 egg whites. Still never foamed. I even added a 1/4 tsp of sugar. Nothing. I also want this to taste like Leek, not eggs ;)
Hi Mike, welcome to the site. You'll need to provide a lot more information for folks to help you out. Tell us a bit about your procedure, recipe, equipment--the more information you can give, the better the answers you'll get.
Have you tried making it with lecithin or just agar? How are you whipping it? If you're making it with egg whites you need to make sure there's no fat contamination in there.
what temperature are you trying to do this at? that will make a difference. Do you have a stick blender? You may need more shear force to get this to work, hand whisking may not do the trick if you don't have enough emulsifier to work with.
Agar is basically just a gelatin. Lecithin is a surfactant and emulsifier, which is what you ideally need for your foam. The agar probably isn't sufficient to create the necessary tensions between the oil and liquid and when you introduce air into the mixture it isn't being held in suspension, which is why your foam isn't 'holding up'.
I'd strongly recommend trying lecithin along with a more vigorous air injection method such as an electric hand blender.
I don't believe it's anything do with your leek jus, but your method of foaming.
There's a useful article on this here.
The Wikipedia article does not really do much more than define foams. I am looking for personal experience here. Has anyone made a solid foam from egg whites and some sort of jus? If so, please do tell.
Well I've made foams, but only ever with lecithin, I can't really comment on agar or egg whites. As you rightly point out, you want your foam to taste of leek not leek and egg white.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.141505
| 2012-12-20T17:12:27 |
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|
54716
|
Slow roasting potatoes
Is it possible to slow roast potatoes?
I am slow roasting a pork belly in the oven at 130c for 4 hours, can I add whole (small-medium sized) potatoes as well? Would they need the full 4 hours? How would it effect the end product (texture/taste/etc)?
Cover them with hot oil, or pork or duck fat, then in the oven with the belly... you will have awesome confit potato. Add herbs or spices to the oil if you like...You could cut them or do them whole. Creamy and delicious.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.142052
| 2015-02-14T02:45:53 |
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|
29637
|
Steam "nature" of cappuccino steamers
Is there a difference in the "nature" of the steam being produced by the steamers in the espresso machines?
I have a decent espresso machine, but apparently even a professional barista who I know can't make the foam needed for cappuccino art - so I was wondering if professional espresso machines produce a steam that is different in nature compared to home ones (at least, midrange ones).
Is your question regarding the ability to make the froth that allows foam art?
yes! (filler filler)
There are two major differences between frothing with a home machine versus a professional machine.
1- A professional machine will have hotter and more forceful steam.
2- A home machine will often have a "froth assistor" on the wand.
The composition of the steam, though, should be the same and you should be able to create a decent approximation of the correct kind of foam for latte art with a mid-range home machine.
There's a very nice tutorial about halfway down this page on CoffeeGeek.
I think it will also have more consistent steam flow (which is a consequence of of the hotter temperature of the boiler); in my machine, the steam flow is not continuous, which I think contributes to creating larger bubbles in the milk.
I'd say from my experience that most espresso machines cant really do anything good in term of milk froth. I mean, the quality is not bad, but not good either. I personally own the Aeroccino milk froth plus model and it does wonder for me.
If you want to check out for other models, there is a great list right there about the best milk frother on the market.If you plan on making latte art and stuff like that, I strongly recommend a good milk frother. Else, it is not mandatory.
commercial milk frothers on the built in barista machines of varying types have a far more powerful steam nozzle and its also way hotter. The home milk frothers, while ok, are far far less efficient at frothing up milk. Still can be worth getting though as we can't always get to the coffee shop!
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.142155
| 2013-01-01T15:59:34 |
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|
3429
|
What's the difference between Red and Panang curry?
I love Panang curry and Thai food in general. However, whenever I try to make curry at home it always comes out as indistinguishable from Red curry. What's the distinction between these two dishes? I feel like I'm probably just missing one or two ingredients that make the difference, but my trusted recipe books and google haven't been of much use.
Always wondered this as well. Panang curry is delicious!
I have just looked in the book "Thai Food" (by David Thompson).
Both are very similar. The main difference I can see is that there are souring agents in the red curry (fish sauce and shrimp paste). These are absent in the panaeng which has peanuts as a major ingredient in the paste (and nutmeg).
The panaeng is also usually made with beef which is simmered in count milk until tender.
At least as it is made in the many Thai restaurants in Seattle, the peanut component of the sauce is very pronounced in Panang curries, so I think this is the most relevant answer.
Being a Thai, it's always confusing when I hear the term "red curry" because I am not sure exactly what kind of curry are being referred to. Red curry (Kaeng Ped or literally "spicy soup/curry") is a very general term and includes most spicy curry-based soups without specific names. The most common form of red curry in Bangkok restaurants is one with roasted duck.
Panaeng can be categorized as a thicker kind of red curry but it is never served as soup in a bowl. Often it's served with rice in a plate. Ingredient-wise, Panaeng curry paste is sold separately and I don't know how different it is to normal curry paste. However, without that specific paste, I think most Thai people will say the normal paste does fine and may not notice the difference.
Panang curry has an additional ingredient which isn't used in Red or Green curry paste. It's ground peanuts and Panang is usually seasoned to be less spicy but much sweeter than the red curry. As for the green curry, translated directly from its Thai name, it's not just green curry. The actual translation is "Sweet Green Curry" while the red curry is "Spicy Curry". Among the three, Panang is the sweetest. The green curry is sweet but not as sweet as the Panang. It's spicier than Panang but not as spicy as the red curry. Basically, Panang is the sweetest and mildest curry of the three. The green curry is in the middle while the red curry is the spiciest and the least sweet of the three and saltiness is the prominent flavour. Traditionally, the ingredients for the pasts were also different. Nowadays, it's just the colour of the chilies.
I was trying to make a chicken curry this evening and hoped it would taste like the yummy panang curries I've eaten in various restaurants. Not so much! But I got on line to try and see what the differences are and seeing other recipes, I added a teaspoon of sugar and a large teaspoon of chunky peanut butter. Tastes more like what I had hope for!
Red curries have a much stronger kaffir lime leaf flavour.
Penang curries contain crushed peanuts.
According to the first google link for Panang Curry its supposed to be thicker and drier than a Red Curry - which is supposed to be soupier and runnier. Other places suggest that it's supposed to be milder.
Having lived in Thailand for the past month and a half, I feel like I should know this. I'll ask some of my Thai friends and get back to you.
While it may be milder, I feel like there's a more fundamental difference in taste than just the level of spice.
Honestly, it's entirely possible that Panang Curry is just a local name for Red Curry. Or a localized very slight variation on the same. It doesn't have to be a terribly fundamental difference.
Panaeng curry should be milder.
I took a cooking course in Thailand and the recipe book says to take Yellow curry paste and add roasted ground peanut to it.
Sorry, I don't understand this answer. Is this the technique for Red or for Panang curry? And whichever it is, how does it differ from the other one?
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.142466
| 2010-07-27T13:35:50 |
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23884
|
extracting banana flavour for an iced coffee
Now that the sun has started to shine in the frozen north I can start thinking on using my espresso machine for some cold drinks. I was thinking of a banana iced coffee. But I would like a more natural flavour than most of the syrups I can buy in my local coffee shop. Do I was wondering if it would be possible to extract the flavour from a banana, without getting the texture/consistency from the fruit?
You'll need an appropriate solvent for this. The main flavor component in banana, isoamyl acetate, is not water soluble, so you will probably have to use alcohol. As a banana fruit doesn't have much flavor, I guess that you will need a large amount of your banana extract to bring enough flavor into the coffee, giving you the problem of turning the coffee into an alcoholic drink - more like a cocktail of banana liqeur and coffee than like a flavored coffee. Unless you can find some good method for concentrating the liqeur without losing heat-sensitive aroma compunds.
Isoamyl acetate should be solvable in more than alcohol as far as I know. Perhaps the oil in milk and or coffee could be of help. Although it sounds like a good starting point for a drink. "Chimpanzee Coffee"
Banana milkshake syrup is probably the simplest way of achieving this.
@daramarak even assuming that it is fat-soluble (but be aware that most of the flavors of bananas probably aren't), you would have to create your flavoring by destillation, not infusion. And banana essential oil isn't common - there must be a reason for this.
Consider making a banana consomme via gelatin filtration. As described in Harold McGee's 2007 NYT article, this technique produces liquids with the taste of all sorts of foodstuffs that are otherwise full of texture and color. A tomato consomme, for example, is clear and watery, rather than red and pulpy, while retaining the flavor of a tomato juice. The same technique can be (and has been) done with breads, meats, vegetables, fish, etc.
The process is to make a loose banana gel by mixing a banana with water, adding gelatin, and heating until the gelatin is dissolved. The mixture is then frozen until solid, then suspended in a strainer over a bowl in the refrigerator for a couple of days until the liquid essence distills out and the solids are left in the strainer trapped in a gelatin net.
The particular advantage I believe gelatin filtration will give you in this case is that it will give your coffee a full banana flavor without making it thick, pulpy, or cloudy.
This assumes that the flavors he wants are soluble in water - and the main one, the abovementioned isoamyl acetate, is not water-soluble. Others will evaporate or be destroyed when heated for the gelling. The technique sounds interesting, but I think that it will work with other stuff better than with a banana. Still, worth a try and an upvote.
Definitely worth an upvote. Could try a vodka-banana gel, to trap that isoamyl acetate also.
@rumtscho, I'm not sure of all the mechanics here, but by experience, the flavor does come through regardless of solubility. As you're aware, a substance need not dissolve in another in order to be transported along with it.
@daramarak, that might work, but I'd be a hesitant as the alcohol will counteract the gelatin. Perhaps simply increasing the gelatin concentration will make up for that effect.
Yes I would probably have to use more gelatin, like in vodka jello.
There is a more modern method of this technique, invented by Dave Arnold. Unfortunately his blog is down now. But the basic idea is instead of letting the gel slowly drip, you wrap it in cheesecloth and gently knead it to release the liquid while trapping the solids. You can also try putting the cheesecloth bag in a very clean salad spinner and using it as a low-tech centrifuge to extract the liquid.
Also, if you start with super ripe bananas and cook them sous vide for about 2 hours at around 74 C, a delicious though cooked flavored liquid will extract itself right into the bag. Tastes like the purest banana bread ever. More here: http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/simple-banana-custard
Let the bananas turn as brown and spotty as you dare. The banana flavor improves as they ripen and over-ripen. Then freeze them and thaw them again. This will bust up the cell walls and turn them into a gloppy mess. Use a colander or something to separate the liquid.
Will this not add some sort of texture? I know you're straining it but won't it still have a certain texture?
done that to use up over-ripe B's for bananabread. Does indeed weep clearish liquid. Very golden flavor
Although isoamyl acetate is the most commonly used bannana flavoring commercially, this is usually produced artificially (like banana milkshake powder) and so isn't what you want.
I would make a 'natural' bannana syrup to flavour the coffee. I would try layering halved bannanas with sugar and leave it for a few day to let the water be drawn out. Then I would discard the bananas and add enough water to make a syrup and heat it to dissolve. Having not tried it I don't know if it would produce a strong enough flavour; I don't know if anyone else has any other ideas...
Interesting, I'll give it a try. But you are right in the fact that I don't want the artificial flavour.
Using barely-soft-enough-to-eat bananas (green at ends) gives fruitiest flavor. Counter-intuitive but that's what banana chips are made from.
I would try steeping the banana peels in alcohol. The peels actually contain quite a bit of flavor but aren't generally usable, and they should impart minimal texture to the final infusion.
That might be interesting. I have tried to infuse the bananas in alcohol, but never the peels. I would need organic bananas then I guess.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.142870
| 2012-05-21T13:41:41 |
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|
20947
|
How to dress sushi to better enhance all its flavours?
I would like to know what is the better way to dress sushi and sashimi. What I am looking for is how it was thought to be eaten and what are the ways a sushi piece is supposed to be dressed with soy sauce and wasabi to obtain a balanced taste!
From what I understand, wasabi is meant to be put on by the chef - a little dab under the topping but above the rice, to hold it in place.
If that is the case, why do many Sushi restaurants give you a little tray with wasabi and ginger? Am I supposed to hand that back to the chef and ask him to put a little dab under the topping for me? I don't think so.
I don't think you'll find any big-t truth exists to this quest. Might find some answers when Jiro Dreams of Sushi is released ;-)
@djangodude Presumably because it's done one way in high-end sushi bars in Japan and quite another for American audiences.
That was not my personal experience when I visited Japan, but I'm willing to accept the conclusion that there are considerable variations in how sushi is prepared and eaten in Japan and around the world (like pizza, hamburgers, burritos, and many other foods whose popularity has expanded well beyond the borders of their original/traditional locales).
I remain extremely skeptical that there is a right or wrong way to dress, pick up, eat, or otherwise deal with sushi. A Google search for "is there a right way to eat sushi" turns up hundreds of pages, many with contradictory information.
If there is a "right" way, it's most certainly dictated by the locale or restaurant you're in or the people you're with. My advice is to do whatever you want, particularly if you're paying for the meal. If you're a guest, follow the lead of your hosts. But don't sweat it. Enjoy it!
UPDATE since the original question has been edited...
what is the better way to dress sushi and sashimi.
"Better" is still difficult to define for everyone, and will vary by each person's taste. Something that "enhances" flavors for me may be completely unacceptable to you, and vice-versa. There's no accounting for taste! But since you made an effort to clarify your question, I am updating my answer accordingly.
Sometimes the "better" dressing is none at all. This is particularly true for Unagi or others that have some kind of sauce already applied (though I know some people who dip Unagi in soy sauce and claim it is great). I have a daughter with soy allergy, so she cannot use soy sauce at all and doesn't like wasabi. She enjoys eating salmon and tuna nigiri pieces completely plain. I've tried it myself, and with good, fresh fish it is really good.
I have heard of people dipping the pickled ginger in the soy sauce and using that as a kind of "brush" to gently apply soy sauce to the topping. That may be "better" if you are adept with chopsticks and enjoy pickled ginger along with soy.
Some people dip only the topping into the soy sauce, to avoid getting the rice saturated. This is a little easier to do if you use your fingers to pick up the sushi pieces (and according to some accounts this is perfectly acceptable for sushi) (but not sashimi).
Some people mix wasabi (sometimes, copious amounts) in with the soy sauce and dip the sushi into that mixture. Some suggest that soy + wasabi should be reserved for sashimi only.
Well, thanks. But then again if I like ketchup, supposedly I could dip the sushi piece into it. That's wasn't my point really. I like soy sauce, but I don't drink it from the bottle. I wasn't looking for the "right" way as you say, but how to dress the piece in order to better enhance its flavours, instead of just tasting a chunk of wasabi or soy sauce.
Consider rephrasing the text and title of your question, then. "Proper" implies "correct" or "right", and the remainder of your question sounds like a complaint about how other people eat sushi.
Thank you so much for updating your answer. You gave me the tips I was looking for!
Soy sauce, wasabi and grated ginger.
If you are eating sashimi, you can mix a bit of wasabi and/or ginger with the soy sauce. If you are eating nigiris, the chef probably put wasabi in it, so you may not need to put more.
But remember that the point of eating sashimi and nigirizushi is to feel the taste and the texture of the fish and the rice. So be really gentle when dipping the fish, or you will kill all the taste. Only a touching one corner of the fish should be enough... and for the nigiri, don't touch with the rice, or it will get damp.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.143363
| 2012-01-31T18:53:13 |
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|
21027
|
How do I freeze and defrost lemons?
Assuming that once defrosted, I'd most likely use them for their juice (but not exclusively; I occasionally use the peel for zest, whole slices for cooking with fish/poultry or preparing vegetables in brine).
Is this even possible?
Why not juice them first and freeze the juice?
Sorry; edited the question to clarify why I'd like to keep the lemons mostly whole.
After a quick Google search, I found chowhound topic that deals with this exact matter. They'll grate well and it's handy when (just semi-defrost them) you need some grated zest as you can just pull out a bag from the freezer and sprinlkle them into your recipe. They'll juice but you need to defrost them which I'm told is best done by 'zapping' them in the microwave for 30 seconds. Apparently you get more juice after they've been frozen as it bursts the cell walls releasing more juice.
Hope this helps!
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.143733
| 2012-02-02T22:16:02 |
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83453
|
what to do with fish steaks that still have scales on?
I am in Montreal and the Portuguese community here has a few grocery stores; Portuguese frozen fish is also for sale in quite a few places. It's very inexpensive and I think I now know why. I bought a kilo of redfish (with some research I think it's most commonly called ocean perch*).
It's described as bland fish and apparently best to cook in a sauce, but the steaks still have scales on them! I hate scaling, and during scaling the scales get all over the meat, I can't see them and after adding butter and orange juice and poaching the fish in the oven, they made it to the final dish and the sauce.
Obviously, the fish with scales is best to cook whole, but I have the steaks. Any advice on how to cook them unscaled and still use seasoning/sauce?
[*edit] apparently also known as rockfish
Personally, if I were going to use them in a sauce I would go ahead and remove the skin and with it the scales. If I were going to do something like grill it, then I would likely leave the skin, with scales and then remove it after cooking. Poaching is a bit more problematic because skin is nice to help the steak hold up through cooking, but I would tend to lean toward removing skin and taking my chances that it might flake apart.
Great ideas. Fry with skin on, or poach with skin off. I'll just put the sauce on AFTER frying.
Assuming you're cooking the the fish in a sauce, cut the meat away from the skin, liberally (it sounds like you really don't like the scales). Put what remains of the skin in cheese cloth (like a bouquet garni) to get the flavor out of them. The cloth should keep the scales out. You may need to layer the cheesecloth. You can remove it toward the end of cooking.
Thank you! The best way to remove skin is to do while the fish is still semi--frozen, right?
@Natalia partial freezing is a common technique used to help cut meat very thin. It should help you more precisely cut the skin off.
You could try peeling the skin off if it's partially frozen as well, there's less mess that way if it works.
First cook them flesh side down on a grill. Then finish cooking skin side down. Have the sause as a side dish to dip them in.
Fish steaks don't have a skin-down side.
A fish steak is cut perpindicular to the spine of the fish. Top and bottom have flesh, skin is along the edge. Contrast with filet, here:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_steak
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.143857
| 2017-08-02T20:29:19 |
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|
93894
|
How can I use bitter or hard water for cooking and specially in soaking beans?
How can I use hard water (with a bitter taste) for cooking and especially to soak dry beans.
Normally beans do not soak well in hard (bitter) water. In that case, what should I do?
Possibly soaking raw beans??
In most countries, hard water is caused by Calcium and Magnesium Carbonates.
These can be easily removed by using an ion-exchange apparatus (best results) or can be converted by adding an acid to the water. In the case of vinegar:
2 CH3COOH + CaCo3 → Ca(CH3COO)2 + CO2 + H2O
So the Calcium is not gone: it's just converted to Calcium Acetate but that is much more soluble in water than carbonate, so it'll seem softer.
The same is true for MgCO3.
How much vinegar and how long does this take?
Overnight should do the trick unless you live on one of the poles. ;-)
How much??? I cannot tell you over the Internet so experiment:
Start with 20 drops per Litre
Use less if that's satisfactory until it becomes unsatisfactory.
then go back up one drop and that amount will be the best volume for your water...
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.144095
| 2018-11-14T14:01:14 |
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92489
|
Chocolate cake recipe requires both baking powder and baking soda?
Here is the recipe I am using.
For batter:
2 cups Sugar
Flour 1 3/4 cups
Cocoa 3/4 cup
Baking Soda 1 1/2 tsp
Baking Powder 1 1/2 tsp
Salt 1 tsp
2 eggs
Milk 1 cup
Oil 1/2 cup
Vanilla Extract 2 tsp
Boiling Water 1 cup
For icing:
Butter 1 cup 227g
Cocoa 1 1/2 cup
Powdered Sugar 2 cups
Milk 2/3 cup
Vanilla Extract 1 tsp
I can't find baking soda at the moment so can I just double the amount of baking powder? Could that make the cake taste too acidic?
As you have pointed out, baking powder is simply baking soda + acid. I've always, found recipes calling for both baking soda + baking powder a bit questionable.
Since you only have baking powder, you should try to cut down the acidity coming from the other ingredients, most specifically cocoa. Try using Dutch Processed (neutralized) cocoa powder; as cocoa is naturally acidic. I assume the recipe is calling for white sugar, but if you plan to use brown sugar, you should also not do it as that's also quite acidic as well...
Taking these into consideration, I think you can then simply substitute baking soda with slightly more baking powder.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.144210
| 2018-09-26T21:15:38 |
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92638
|
Is the aluminium foil usable in this condition?
As the title says, is the aluminium foil still usable in this condition?
If you notice, there's a very obvious white portion in the center of the aluminum foil and the entire roll is like that. Usually when I buy it from the store, it is pure silver without the white line. However when I keep it for some time, this white line appears which appears to me that the foil could be "spoilt"?
May I also ask what is the name of the condition of this aluminum foil and what causes it to be like this.
What potential problem do you see? It just looks like it have been formed to a pan.
@paparazzo it's the whitish line in the middle.
the horizontal non-shiny stripe looks like it may be oxidation (aluminum oxide), which is the aluminum equivalent of rust. I have no idea if it's an issue for food safety.
@Joe Now you do (see answer) ;-)
Odd looking stripe. Are you keeping The Al near a volatile acid or base?
@WayfaringStranger no i did not. i just kept it like how i bought it from the supermarket.
That's just aluminium oxide (Al2O3) and it's harmless as:
it's insoluble in water
it's nearly insoluble in alcohol.
is very hard (Basically the same material as a ruby or a sapphire)
it's chemically nearly inert
Is basically the same substance as the non-shiny side of the Aluminium foil
So it's definitely useable for all intents and purposes. (including cooking ;-) )
It's also just a thicker layer of what all aluminium foil has on the surface.
not doubting you, however i can't help but to ask if there's any studies or sources to prove this? My parents are health freak but i have so much of such foils at home. If i can't convince them, they are all going to waste.
@Astralis if you want scientific proof: send the foil off to a chemical lab and have it tested and provide the test results to your parents. From where I am across the Internet, that's what it looks like with a high certitude, but without a sample, I cannot test this in my lab... ¯\(ツ)/¯
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.144326
| 2018-10-03T20:56:40 |
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|
96657
|
Duck breast; Trouble crisping skin
I scored skin, started in cold, cast-iron pan, but as skin and breast contracted the major center of breast seemed to rise a tad from griddle and would not brown, even after 15 minutes. Only the edges seemed to brown.
How can I cook the Duck Breast so that all the skin browns without drying out the edges?
Without knowing exactly what's going on (i.e. looking over your shoulder), I can only answer in the general (some of which I assume you know, but will add in anyway).
Water / Moisture is the enemy of browning. I usually use two temperatures when cooking duck, which may just be a more extreme version of what you're doing. I'll cook low and slow until I've nearly gotten the internal temp where I want it, then I will remove the duck, wipe the pan clean, and crank the heat. While the pan comes to temp (which takes about 5 minutes or so), the juices are redistributing in the meat, which helps keep it juicy. If there is any moisture on the skin, I pat it down with paper towels. Then I will reintroduce the duck to the pan (skin side down, of course).
Also, added weight can be quite helpful to force the not-flat breast to smoosh up against the flat pan more. If you've got a second cast iron, while the main pan is getting ripping hot, you can heat the other - not to get the same temp, just to get warm enough not to cool the duck. When the duck goes back in, the second pan goes on top to press down and help get added skin-to-hot-surface contact. (If you've got enough good heat protection, you can pressdown on the top pan, too. Obviously, be careful.) I find the dual-pan trick to be only of limited usefulness. No matter what I've done, I've never had a pan heavy enough to completely flatten the breast, so I usually let the top pan sit for a while, then I end up taking it off and turning the breasts to a side that missed some browning, and trying to get all the bits brown that I can by moving around in the pan. It sort of works.
That's kind of the downside with any frying pan method to get duck breasts (which ain't exactly pancake-shaped) to brown as nicely as an all around method (like baking) can do.
Thank you for the kind advice. I had previously started the duck breast in a pan and finished on a bbq, briefly giving the skin side a quick browning over the grill, then finishing to 130 indirectly. I may throw in the towel per trying to do it all in the kitchen. I have a 3 courser coming up and was trying to avoid running outside every course... but it may be the easier solution. Thanks again, Van!
This happened to me today; the meat contracts when it starts heating, so the center of the skin side never browned. I came here to find out what was up (I have pics!) but I don't want to make a dupe; what's the protocol around here for asking for more context on an existing question?
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.144522
| 2019-03-02T15:24:42 |
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94904
|
What are these chocolate meringues called?
I've picked these up at a swiss/ french patisserie and I'd love to try making them myself, but I can't find anything online similar to this.
They are dry and crusty on the outside and have a soft mousse like texture on the inside. They are not chewy or squishy
What was the name they were sold under??? "Méringue Chocolatée" ???
When I make traditional Swiss meringues I don't get that fine crust on the outside and a chocolate mousse like paste on the inside. Maybe I'm getting the timing or the temperature wrong, but the always come either crispy and fully cooked or chewy (even if small) . I'll keep trying
Getting the desired texture in a meringue based dessert is not easy. I think this is a valid question, and suggestions should go into answers.
Did you upload a pic? I can't see but I have connection troubles. Look for "baci di Alassio" . They are similar to what you have described.
Yes, there's a pic uploaded. They're not baci di alassio but those look delicious too . I'll probably try making them. I'm starting to think that if I make French meringues, then freeze them and then cook them I might get something similar as the photo I uploaded
There is a 'merenguitos' recipe online and these look pretty much identical.
Ingredients
4 large egg whites without any traces of yolk
1/2 cup Dixie Crystals Extra Fine Granulated Sugar
Pinch salt
1/2 cup Dixie Crystals Extra Fine Granulated Sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 200°F.
Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Prepare a pastry bag fitted with a large star tip and set aside. (If
a pastry bag is not available, merenguitos can also be spooned onto
cookie sheets.)
Whip egg whites and first listed sugar to very stiff peaks. Add salt
and stop whipping.
Add second listed sugar and gently fold using a rubber spatula until
well combined.
Fill pastry bag with meringue and pipe large rosettes onto cookie
sheets. If using a spoon drop two tablespoon amounts onto paper.
Sprinkle generously with unsweetened coconut. (Sweetened coconut may
brown too quickly!)
Place in oven until merenguitos are very crisp. A good way to
determine doneness is to break open a meringue and allow to cool for
2 minutes. If the interior feels dry and is not sticky it is done.
If not return to oven.
Obviously you would not use coconut and you would adjust this recipe to be more chocolate.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.144897
| 2018-12-16T22:18:29 |
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8303
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Making gelatin from scratch
I found on Wikipedia that it is made from animals' skin and bones. The article describes the steps of gelatin production from a technical perspective:
The manufacturing processes of gelatin consists of three main stages:
Pretreatments to make the raw materials ready for the main extraction step and to remove impurities which may have negative effects on physiochemical properties of the final gelatin product,
The main extraction step, which is usually done with hot water or dilute acid solutions as a multi-stage extraction to hydrolyze collagen into gelatin, and finally,
The refining and recovering treatments including filtration, clarification, evaporation, sterilization, drying, rutting, grinding, and sifting to remove the water from the gelatin solution, to blend the gelatin extracted, and to obtain dried, blended and ground final product.
How can you make gelatin from scratch in your own kitchen?
Interesting question. Even if you didn't end up with a powder as a result- how can you make a stock or consume so pure that it doesn't taste like meat anymore?
It's the refinement that's the real issue: anyone who's braised a big joint of meat knows that a couple of hours of low-temperature stewing will net you large amounts of gelatin. Hooves and antlers were the preferred media, but anything that's got a bunch of collagen will work. Talk to your butchers shop, and see if you can buy some bones.
Refinement was done the old fashioned way: by hand. You skim the top to remove the scum, you add egg whites to degrease and to clarify the "broth", and then you strain and strain and strain and strain.
And strain. And strain. And strain. The skimming/straining process is similar to rendering sugar from sugar cane, if you've ever done it (slightly less esoteric, because people still like molasses). They obviously don't use egg whites in rendering sugar.
It's a huge amount of work (and OMG it stinks...do it outdoors if possible), and the end result is probably not going to be on par with the stuff you buy from the store. Unless you're hankering to re-invent an ancient technology just for the fun of it, I'd just buy it.
Edit: I dug around, and there are a number of products for straining jelly that might make it easier, and they should be able to deal with the viscosity of the gelatin soup. Unfortunately they seem to be made for smaller batches, and that may not be helpful if you're doing a huge kettle.
I asked some of my relatives from Colombia about two traditional gelatin-based desserts usually made from scratch: gelatina negra (black gelatin) and gelatina blanca (white gelatin). The recipe is very similar to your description. I found a blog post with the recipe in Spanish. I provide a rough translation from Google Translate.
I've seen to get very clear consummes and so forth, freezing and/or straining through ice can help to get it super clear.
That sounds as though they are speaking about how gelatin is made for making commercial, powdered gelatin. I actually have a "recipe" method in an old cookbook from the early 1920's that tells how to do it. Unfortunately, I am not at home, so I will have to post it later tonight. It was very interesting to read, but I got a little grossed out when I read one of the steps. It actually said, "Remove the scum."
Community policy on placeholder answers: http://meta.cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/769/how-should-an-active-member-of-our-community-respond-to-placeholder-answers
@daniel you know the place for that discussion is on meta... justkt already helpfully posted the link to the pertinent discussion.
Juju, please use answers for answering the question. Comments are intended to be used for other things, including "I'll answer this later".
Juju, it would still be nice to see the recipe to compare it with SatanicPuppy's and the gelatina negra recipe I linked.
@Juju - also, after editing the downvoters can remove their downvotes.
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.145114
| 2010-10-19T18:25:20 |
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42739
|
Making Roux when Flour is Missing
I like making sauces from scratch, starting with a roux. Today, I discovered there's no flour in the kitchen. A quick trip to the store is not possible.
What could I use instead?
(Note that my question is similar to but not the same as Flour alternatives for roux. I have no reason to avoid wheat flour; I just don't have any around.)
It would help if you listed what you actually have available that could be used, and what you need to make a roux for.
That would vary from one time to the next. I'd like to have a list: if no flour, try xxx. If none of that, try yyy, If that's not around, try zzz...
It's possible that what the roux is for might be more significant -- if you're making a gumbo where you need a really dark roux the options may be different than for a blonde roux.
What I actually did was grab some fancy crackers and grind them up. The powder was pretty much like coarse flour. The end result came out good, though with some interesting flavor due to the seeds or nuts or whatever additive was in the crackers.
Technically, you can make roux with any starch and any fat, per Harold McGee.
So use cornstarch or arrowroot or whatever you have. Just avoid something with strong flavor like cornmeal.
Of course, the flavor and thickening properties will be those of the starch you use... And you probably don't want to make a brown roux with anything but flour because of the flavor difference.
As I recall, in Germany potato starch is sold for brown roux, so I don't think the flavor warning applies.
@JasonTrue While you can certainly brown non-flour based roux, without the wheat protein the flavor is going to be very different, and may be dissonant in the dishes (I am thinking mostly of the New Orleans cuisine) which expect brown roux.
Not substantively different in my experience, but I am more likely to use wheat flour because it's usually more convenient.
I use cornmeal all the time to make roux. It takes longer but I use it for powerful cheese sauces for pasta so I can never taste any corn flavor. Of course don’t try to make Thanksgiving dinner gravy with cornflour but it works great in many other dishes. Ever hear of polenta and cheese? It’s actually popular in many countries and not just called grits. I just made a cheese sauce for pasta using 5Tb butter and cornmeal, milk, sharp cheddar, Colby Jack, Pecorino Romano DOP, and Danish blue. Dash of Worcestershire sauce and Dijon. Salt, pepper, a fee dashes of homemade Italian seasoning and lastly garlic powder. No corniness at all.
Instant corn masa works. The commercial stuff around here is mild enough in flavor that it doesn't overpower, and it thickens as well or better than white flour.
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.145466
| 2014-03-14T06:17:54 |
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52251
|
What to add if low-carb muffins don't rise and are crumbly
I followed this recipe for low-carb lemon poppy seed muffins. I only substituted coconut for almond flour and granulated monk fruit for splenda. The mix was really loose and dry when I put it in the tins. I baked it for the max specified 20 minutes and they didn't rise (I didn't swap baking soda for powder, like some do). If I want to make these again, what do I modify to get these muffins to look like actual muffins?
Also, I saw these posts (1 and 2) but I'm doing low-carb and the answers don't fit as I'd expect.
Your recipe has no gluten in it. Baked goods without gluten tend to have a crumbly texture; muffin batter usually contains at least some wheat flour, which contributes gluten toward the muffin's structure. The Kitchn has a good blog post about using vital wheat gluten, which can be added to a recipe that is in need of a more bread-like structure (assuming no dietary restriction on gluten). If you add too much, you'll have to adjust the other ingredients in the recipe to compensate (mainly liquids, but possibly fats as well) but a little goes a long way; for your recipe, one tablespoon might be a good starting point.
Vital wheat gluten does contain similar carbohydrates to those found in regular wheat flour, but much less; where regular flour is almost entirely carbohydrates, vital wheat gluten is mostly protein. Consult the nutrition info before you buy it if you're worried about adding carbs to your recipe.
Adding gluten can also affect how the muffin rises, so you might find that's enough on its own; but it's not directly a leavening agent. More good info here: What does gluten "do" in baking?
is right about gluten and rising. There are other additives that are often included in gluten-free flour mixes to mock the structure that gluten provides. I would have been amazed if an all almond flour muffin rose like the one in the picture. If you Google other recipes for almond flour muffins you will see pictures that display a not-so-generous muffin rise. Also, the recipe you chose excludes egg - a recipe that included egg might have provided a little extra structure for some rise. Don't blame the monk fruit. Perhaps you should consider using a low-carb gluten-free mix?
@Stephen I see two eggs in the linked recipe.
And you're absolutely right about that. I apologize. I read through the recipe several times and totally missed seeing the eggs there.
Also, I had attempted to link your name (@AirThomas) to my message - that is why my first sentence starts with "is" - I had included your name in front of that to be sure you were notified. I wanted to make sure it was clear that my intent was to support and amplify your response.
@StephenEure the link to the name has a technical function. When a comment is started with @ name, it creates a notification. The owner of a post is always notified, so the system removes the superfluous link even if you type it out. This is what probably happened this time.
I'm gonna pick up some of the vital gluten and see what happens; I'm also a little concerned that the 'batter' doesn't seem wet enough
Most muffin-method recipes do not rely on gluten to provide structure--in fact, the complete opposite is true: directions often stress the fact that you should not overmix, lest you actually begin to develop gluten structure. The reason his muffins were crumbly is because he tried substituting coconut flour in place of almond flour without compensating the amount of moisture. I've created many muffin method recipes which use almond flour and work without using vital wheat gluten.
@NSGod I don't have much experience using coconut flour but your explanation seems plausible. You should consider submitting an alternative answer, it might be helpful to future readers.
Coconut flour really soaks up moisture, so it can't just be substituted for other flours. You should use a coconut flour recipe, but if you can't find a coconut flour recipe for what you want to bake you need to (approximately) double the liquid in the recipe.
When swapping coconut flour for almond flour, you use only one third the amount. Coconut flour is EXTREMELY absorbent, so if you use one cup of almond flour, to swap with coconut flour would be one third cup, not a full cup. Otherwise, you're going to have one dry, crumbly mess.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.145733
| 2015-01-03T22:55:26 |
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21574
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What is a German potato grater called?
I know of this grater via German cooking, but it may NOT be specific to Germany. Regardless, I am trying to determine the name of this kind of grater so I can purchase one. The grater is actually raised up on the side you rub the potato on, exactly like I have nutmeg graters.
Here are some pictures.
Can anyone tell me the name of tis grater? Bonus if you can point me to a website that sells them.
Thanks
They used to refer to this style of grater as a 'rasp', but these days when you search for that, you also find the 'microplane' type graters.
Curved grater - there ya go.
Kartoffelreibe
Is the German name for it I just try to find one to buy but they on ebay and the shipping is unexplainable high, for the Kartoffelreibe about 10 they charge 80 for shipping. Would settle for a used one.
Polish name is "półokrągła tarka do ziemniaków i warzyw"
I have known this grater since childhood, so I use it and for me it is irreplaceable.
It is a semi-circular potato grater, look for it on Polish websites, it is very popular in Poland, look for it, for example, on Allegro
https://allegro.pl/oferta/tarka-do-ziemniakow-szatkownica-do-warzyw-snb-polokragla-ostra-14415360528
or
https://allegro.pl/oferta/tarka-polokragla-metalowa-do-ziemniakow-warzyw-12725842404
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.146084
| 2012-02-21T18:59:20 |
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24596
|
Bar ware - What kind of glass is this?
I'm trying to purchase some of these cocktail/martini glasses, but I can not find a name for them. If you search martini, you get a traditional martini glass (straight sides). If you search for a cocktail glass, you get high balls and low balls.
Anyone know the name of this glass?
It looks a champagne coupe, like this.
Did you ever see pyramids of glasses where a butler fills the top one and let the champagne flow? I think that's the type of glass used, like this.
I have seen those, and that was my first thought. But - I wonder is there a difference between a champagne glass and an old school cocktail glass? Maybe I'm just being too specific and that's exactly what the glass is...
The savoy champagne coupe/saucer is a nice refinement on this.
They're also referred to sometimes as Coupettes. They're more or less interchangeable with straight sided martini glasses, assuming the volume is comparable. Some people find it easier drinking from coupes. In my opinion, it's easier to drink faster from a coupe. For any drink you want to sip and savour slowly (Martinis, Manhattans, and other stirred, strong drinks), the straight edged glass is probably better.
I think it may be just a matter of scale but your pic makes me think of a margarita glass. Of course there are many styles of margarita glasses that look similar (but not quite the same...)
Margarita was the first that came to my mind too, however the champagne coupe looks identical, it seems...
@huzzah: Pretty sure there's a huge size difference. Margaritas are usually much bigger than a normal quantity of champagne (think of a champagne flute). I found one picture of a champagne coupe alongside a flute and a wine glass that would seem to back this up. The OP's picture looks much more like the size of a margarita glass to me.
@jefromi, actually, the OP's pictured glass, with the boston shaker in the background gives it a size that seems in line with a champagne coupe. You are correct that a margarita glass is much bigger...if you look at the boston shaker in the OP's pic, the glass in question is shorter than the shaker...probably wouldn't be the case with a margarita glass. You could be right but I am at this point assuming it's a champagne coupe.
Its a Coupe, or to use it's original full name: a Champage Coupe. As you seem to be suggesting, you want glasses of this kind for drinking cocktails out of, rather than Champagne. And you're not alone.
Coupe's were the traditional choice for drinking Champagne, reaching a peak of popularity in the early 20th century. However they aren't really ideal for Champagne, as the large surface area encourages loss of bubbles, and fails to hold on to the aromas (whereas a Champagne Flute steers the lovely smells toward the nose more easily).
More recently, quality cocktail bars have reverted to using these Coupe style glasses in place of Martini glasses. This is partly because they are more practical than straight sided Martini glasses, that are easy to spill from. More importantly its been a way for craft cocktail bars to separate themselves from mass produced, syrupy cocktails, churned out in massive Martini glasses in mainstream bars. The Coupe has a more old fashioned feel (the Speakeasy trend has been around for a few years now, with few signs of dying out) and Coupe glasses tend to be small. The craft cocktailarians point out that a cocktail "served up" will warm up quickly, as by definition it doesn't have ice in it. So it's better to serve these drinks in small traditional glasses (so you can drink the drink before it warm's up) rather than the massive Martini glasses that are so popular in retail outlets.
A quick search for Champagne Coupe, should find you a few sources to buy from.
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.146228
| 2012-06-20T20:56:55 |
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21543
|
Where can I buy Glico Curry online in the United States?
My wife and I brought back a box of Glico Medium Curry that we purchased on our trip to Canada this past year. I think we bought it at the Daiso store in Vancouver. After trying it for the first time just recently, we both fell in love with it and now can't imagine not having it occasionally. Unfortunately, I can't find anywhere to purchase it, either locally, or online. There are many other brands of Japanese Curry that are available online, but I'm afraid they might not taste the same as the one we had from Glico. Is there somewhere where I can buy this product online, or would any of the other brands that I could get locally be any bit similar? (Such as Vermont Curry, or S&B Golden Curry?) I live in Arkansas.
Thank you!
Meta on closing: http://meta.cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/1292/what-types-of-sourcing-questions-should-be-allowed-revisit-march-2013-plea
Wow, this is hard to find. I know I've seen it in some asian grocery stores, but none of the online groceries that I could find seem to list it, even the venerable H-Mart. No Amazon sellers (usually a good source for odd groceries) right now, either.
Fortunately I found one source for you, eBay seller "hirokojapan" has a persistent listing for Glico Curry Sauce, $5.99 each, $3.95 shipping to the US from Osaka, JP. You select the flavor you want, from Curry, Curry Sweet, Curry Hot, Stew or Rice.
The individual listing link will expire eventually, but future readers can look up the seller directly and see if they are listing a similar item (or message them with a request).
Thank you! These are quite expensive. I've purchased some alternate brands locally from an Asian grocery, and I will try them first to see if they are similar to the Glico. If they are close enough, I won't bother with the added cost, but if they aren't I guess I'll just have to spend the extra money.
While not exactly the same, S&B Brand Golden Curry is a very similar product, and one that, in my experience, is more common in America. Even if it's not 100% identical, it will be very very nearly so — the rich, thick, stew-y style of Japanese curry.
Also, I know that your question was about where to buy Glico curry, but it can also be easily made from scratch, and with ingredients that are often easier to find than the pre-made curry roux bricks. http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/06/how-to-make-japanese-curry-rice-from-scratch-recipe.html is a good recipe that I have used before.
I did end up trying the Vermont Curry, and it tasted close enough to the Glico Curry to be an acceptable substitute. I see no need in spending the extra money to import something when the Vermont Curry is good enough. Thanks!
Vermont curry tasted very similar to Glico, I definitely recommend you try it first before you try splurging on internationally shipped Glico or anything like that.
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.146519
| 2012-02-21T03:05:21 |
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22648
|
Why do some powders clump in hot water?
Why do some powders like flour or matcha green tea causes lumps in hot water while other powders like sugar or cocoa or wheat grass (triticum aestivum) readily dissolve? Wheat grass powder is green and easily dissolves in cold water.
Cocoa: https://i.sstatic.net/CQPhy.jpg
In my opinion, I'd say that cocoa powder clumps as much as flour...
I just made hot cocoa this morning and it was very easy to dissolve. Some little clumps, but they went away when I pressed the back of the spoon against the cup. It's very hard to de-clump green tea or flour.
@Chloe: was it pure cocoa? Or was it a preparation for hot chocolate? The latter may contain anti-clumping agents.
@chloe are you sure it was cocoa powder? A "cocoa drink" like Nesquick is not cocoa powder.
@nico, the preparation for hot chocolate here, is about 2/3 sugar. I don't know if anti-clumping agents are even necessary then.
@Mien: wow, 2/3 sugar! Anyway, that was my point, there may be something else that prevents clump formation (whether added specifically for that reason or not).
@nico Yes it was pure cocoa. I add sugar separately.
http://imgur.com/ncmN1ki.jpg
Water is a great solvent for polar molecules. Sugar, table salt, and other small polar molecules are water soluble. When you put them into water, you get a sugar resp. salt solution.
Other molecules are not soluble in water. Most organic molecules with a carbohydrate tail are insoluble (unless they have a strongly polar active group, like the shorter alcohols). Starch and cellulose are not water soluble. Most plant matter is made mainly from starch and cellulose. (The exception are fruits, which can have more fructose than starch, but still lots of cellulose).
When you put non-soluble powder into water, you are not making a solution. You are making a colloid known as sol (solids dispersed in a liquid). If you wet salt, the water will dissolve the first layer, and the second layer will be exposed. If you wet a random non-soluble powder, the water will have to wash away the first layer before it reaches the second layer, so it is hard to make the suspension without vigorous stirring.
There are some special molecules which absorb water and swell. Starch, some proteins (gelatin) and some polysaccharides (xanthan gum) are common such molecules in the kitchen. When you wet them, the water gets absorbed by the first layer. This changes the viscosity of the layer, making it thick and clingy. This forms a clump. In the core are the dry layers of powder. They are held together by a bubble of the water-swelled substance. Outside of this bubble is the water. It can't wash away the bubble, because it is so viscous, it doesn't flow into the water. And the bubble protects the core of the clump from contact with water. This happens with starchy powders like flour, or also real cocoa powder. Tea powder is mostly dried cellulose, so it is also hard to dissolve.
You mention cocoa as easily solved in water. In fact, cocoa is very hard to dissolve, so I think you are speaking of a cocoa flavored drink. A cocoa flavored drink is a mixture of dextrose, cocoa powder, and other things (but mostly dextrose). In such a mixed powder, the water dissolves the soluble molecules (the dextrose), and the insoluble particles (the cocoa powder) which were suspended in the dextrose are now suspended in the water. No neighbouring cocoa particles to cling to. So, no clumps, but an instantly homogenous drink.
Nicely explained! I would also like to add that because of this, sugar and salt are larger particles without problems dissolving, than flour or cocoa powder. If you would have flour particles that large, you surely would notice.
@mien yes, particle size matters - large particles don't cling to each other as much, and the water can flow around the particles and separate them from each other. But still, if you compare powdered sugar and flour (which are about the same size), you will find that powdered sugar dissolves easy while flour clumps.
@rumtscho Great Answer (+1)... Perhaps you could add to this an explanation about why some starches (corn starch in particular) mix with water much better at cold temperatures?
@CosCallis it has to do with gelation. Starches hydrate in cold water, but cook (form a sticky gel) in hot water. But this is going too far from the question above and is enough material for another answer.
Usually because there's a thickener / simple starch present in it.
This doesn't add anything beyond the other answer.
No, these are pure powders without additives.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.146774
| 2012-03-29T17:16:41 |
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94141
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Poppy seeds tough after a long simmer
I was trying to boil some poppy seeds in some milk, along with some sugar and some lemon juice. After more than 1.5 hours of simmering this mixture, the seeds were still tough and crunchy, when some recipes I found online suggested simmering for ~20 minutes.
What do you suppose I did wrong? Are there several kinds of cooking poppy? Did I need to soak them beforehand? I have bought the seeds at a market about one month ago and kept them in a jar in a dark, room-temperature place.
There are actually three types of poppyseeds, the “blue”, the “grey” and the “white” kind.
The “blue” is the more common one in Europe, it’s dark blueish-grey as grains and produces an almost black mass if prepared as described below. It has a robust, assertive, earthy flavor that is used both in sweet and savory dishes.
The “grey” is a local specialty of the Austrian Waldviertel, and is milder than the blue type, often used in desserts.
The nutty and mild “white” is a staple in Indian cuisine where it’s used ground and used as binder like flour or nuts.
From your comments I can conclude that you were aiming for a poppyseed pastry filling which is common on the Balkans and other European regions. For this, ground or rather crushed seeds are cooked with a little liquid, often milk, and sugar to create a more or less thick paste. With ground seeds, a short boil and steeping is sufficient. Some preparations skip boiling the poppyseeds entirely and just pour hot milk over them and let them soak up the liquid.
In any case, you need to remember that poppy seeds contain a lot of oil, so many regular mills can’t handle them properly without creating an oily mess. You can also buy the seeds pre-ground, but you shouldn’t store them too long because of the aforementioned oils, which can get rancid quickly.
These have a bluish colour to them. Unfortunately, they haven't been ground. As I said in a comment to the George M's answer, I supposed that they need to be ground. Is a small blender okay for this? I'll mark this answer as accepted as soon as I try grounding them!
@NMilev I never tried a blender, sorry.
I'll let you know! :) Grinding*, btw.
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.147235
| 2018-11-21T20:31:04 |
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95131
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Is food safe to eat with grey or black residue on it?
I noticed that every time I leave my food over night in my stainless steel caserole dish, there is this grey/black residue on it.
I ate some of the food but after I saw this residue, I got scared the food is poisoned.
It it?
Welcome to [cooking.se]! :-) Without chemical analysis it's rather difficult to ascertain whether the food has been poisoned (or not) and without a picture totally impossible. Please [edit] your question and provide more tangible data.
It would also really help to know some detail about both the cooking vessel and the food.
I wonder if the stainless is really stainless. That sounds like some electrochemistry is going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemistry
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.147441
| 2018-12-25T20:58:43 |
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56961
|
Everyday drink that won't destroy my teeth/shoot up my sugar
I have this weird thing where I find it very hard to drink still water, as in it scares me to do so (yeah I know it doesn't make a lot of sense but bear with me) so I drink anything but. So to down food everyday I drink coke, fizzy water, beer and especially juices. Now, my dentist complains to no end that this is bad for my teeth and she's even threatened not to treat me unless I fix the root cause. Which I understand 100%. However in the meantime I have to drink something, so...
I barely drink coke as it's extremely sugary and acidic which is terrible for the enamel (and can't be good for my overall health either). So I switched to fizzy water (fizzy drinks go down easily, water or otherwise, for some reason) but that's bad for your teeth as well. Fruit "juice" isn't good either. (note quotes, stuff from the shop isn't really juice, it's probably more like sugary water). Tea is hot and anyway it's meant to be had afterwards, so it's out as well.
So, my question is, is there any drink at all besides still water that can be had everyday which won't destroy my teeth and/or get me killed earlier than necessary? Preferably something that can be bought, though I'm not sooo lazy that I won't prepare it myself if I have to.
EDIT: the main reason I'm asking this is that I can't really drink plain water. as in, it kind of comes back up when I try to drink it (but only if it's plain water and only when I am not 1000% thirsty) (yeah it's weird). it's not quite that I'm addicted to sugar and I want to knock it off.
Hello! It seems a tough situation indeed, but I'm afraid you are in the wrong place to ask about it. First, we are not qualified to give advice on the healthiness of food or drinks, we are neither medical specialists nor nutritionists. Second, questions which are basically "what should I eat/drink" are not a good fit for the site, as they are too broad to have one good answer. I'm sorry, and I hope you'll find a community which can answer such questions. I'm sorry I have to close it, I know it's a hard situation to be in (my own father cannot drink water either). Good luck finding a solution.
Agree with Rumtscho, but perhaps a small tip from little old me: I usually drink 20% juice - 80% tap water. For me that is enough juice to get rid of the just water.
Just go cold-turkey. Your body will readjust within a day or two.
Have you tried flavouring still/low-fizz water? There are so many more options than lemon juce!
Cucumber: A thin slice or two per glass or use a peeler and dump a few long, thin strips in a pitcher. Looks cool, too.
Lime or Lemon: Same as with the cucumber - and less acidic than the juice.
Herbs like a sprig of mint or lemon balm. Let it "steep" a bit, similar than you would do for sun tea or "muddle" (crush gently) them a bit like for a mojito.
Flowers if you can get your hands on non-toxic, organic ones. Elderberry, lavender and rose petals come to mind.
Fruit like berries or apples are not totally acid-free, but if used within reason should be mostly harmless. They are good for the "transition" from juice to water, because you can start with juice-water mixes, then gradually decrease the juice content. If using berries, gently crush them to release some juice.
Or mix-and-match: cucumber-mint or lemon balm-lime, whatever you like.
And of course most herbal teas are really delicious cold and can be prepared in advance - but stay away from the "red" ones like hibiscus, because they can be quite acidic.
Ah, I'd say that lemon/lime is okay every once in awhile, but not as an everyday drink. The acid will eventually wear your enamel away and cause cavities. This actually happened to my sister, she though she was being healthy and detoxing by drinking tons of cucumber/lemon water everyday and she did this for months, only to end up with cavities on the front of her teeth. She didn't realize her enamel was being eaten away and it took her awhile to notice the cavities.... so just beware, moderation is key.
Almost all of the stuff that you can buy is sugary, so you might actually have to make things yourself, unless you're a coffee drinker.
I found plain water to take some getting used to when first giving up sodas, but having it very cold does help. You can also cut fruit juices with water (about 50/50) so to reduce the total amount of sugar, as you ween yourself off sugars.
Personally, my main drink these days is unsweetened iced tea. Unfortunately, as I said to start -- almost all bottled teas are sweetened (sometimes with zero calorie sweeteners, which I avoid as most have a nasty aftertaste, and there are some studies suggesting they get you to eat more total calories).
I've taken to making it in the fridge, as you have a longer window to deal with it -- just take a few tea bags and put them into a container (I use a large (4c.) glass measuring cup), top with water, and leave in the fridge for 8-16 hrs. I make it extra strong (6 bags for 4 c. water) and then dilute it into a pitcher.
You can make sun tea, but it's rather unforgiving in its timing -- at somewhere around 10 hrs, you'll start to leach out some of the bitter flavors in the tea, making it undrinkable in my opinion.
If you're in a rush -- just microwave a cup of water, put the tea bag in for a minute or two, then pour over ice. If you go through a lot of it, Mr. Coffee and some other companies make 'iced tea makers' which basically just warm up water slightly and pour it over the tea. They're easier to use if you can find a place that sells the 'family' sized tea bags.
And, if even that's too much work ... try a squeeze of lemon or lime in your water to make it more palatable.
thank you! I added an edit at the bottom, please read if you want. I'm thinking a squeeze of lemon ought to do the trick (and it won't look weird if there's people around heh).
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.147548
| 2015-04-26T15:18:30 |
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65115
|
Steel honing rod vs ceramic honing rod
I got a fairly expensive Kramer/Zwilling knife as a present and so now I am forced to learn how to at least hone a knife (or keep it on a shelf and never use it). I think for now I'll let a pro actually sharpen the knife since the knife sharpening sets are fairly expensive and I don't want to ruin the knife.
Anyhow, I was wondering if i should go with a ceramic or steel honing rod? If it makes a difference the blade is damascus steel. Any other considerations I should look at when honing this blade?
If you keep your knives honed properly you should never need to sharpen them.
Well, I would think I'd not want to remove material. So should I go with a smooth steel rod? Or ceramic?
Actually honing steels may or may not "remove metal". It depends on what the grain structure of the metal honing rod is made of, and whether there is a file pattern on the metal. The ribs visible on some honing rods serve to change the pressure profile of the rod against the edge at the point of contact...increased pressure does increase odds of metal removal but it depends on the other factors above
Just repeating opinions found in various knife forums: ceramic rods have a place near japanese/damascus knifes, steel rods, especially rough ones, generally do not.
@Optionparty unless he overheated it, corroded it extremely badly, broke out a significant chip, or broke it in pieces, it ain't destroyed. --- To the OP: Either find a professional sharpener NOW because sooner or later you will need - ask a sushi chef if possible who he recommends. OR get a J1000 to J3000, a J6000 to J8000 stone (or combination stone having one of each category), and some stropping material (leather+paste or v.fine cushioned abrasive) and practice with it on whatever beater knife you can beg borrow or steal (probably a 500 or sth. stone too if practicing on blunt knives)
It depends on how often you want to hone, what steel and edge geometry your knife uses, and how you use it.
Generally, for the vast majority of kitchen knives -- even Kramer knives -- the following apply:
The knife is made of stainless or light carbon steel, to hardness of below 62HRC
The knife is double beveled although not necessarily symmetrically
The cook uses primarily slicing or light chopping action, which reduces the chipping damage to the blade that comes from chopping bones and other hard products
If these conditions are true, I would recommend using a ceramic hone and honing frequently.....ideally before every session with the knife. Failure to hone will cause the edge to soften, fold or burr in a way that a hone cannot restore, which is when you'll need to send it on for sharpening.
Some notes:
Make sure you have a good cutting board. Stay away from brittle hard surfaces like marble glass or stone, and use wood or plastic.
FWIW I like the Epicurean boards because they're hardy, they don't splinter like bamboo, don't need the conditioning required of butchers blocks, and are better looking than plastic..... But this is a separate and more subjective topic.
If you are using high carbon, very hard steel then a ceramic hone will have limited effect so you may need to use a leather strop, fine wet stone or even steel to hone that edge. Contrary to popular opinion, very hard blades are not necessarily better and can be a real pain to maintain.
If you have a single beveled edge typical of some Japanese knives, then honing is more difficult....in this case learn where the bevel is and be careful of your honing angles to make sure you don't fold or dull the edge accidentally
If you're using your knife as a chopper with bone or hard products then honing will have little effect since the chop impact will be damaging the blade. Get a separate chopper!
i believe this is the same knife i have. so its stainless, 15 degree angle and hardness 63 rockwell - i dont know if its double beveled
@merk that's a very nice knife. Read the above answers and comments. They all have value.
I actually had to send the knife in to be repaired/replaced. I can't tell if i did something wrong honing it - i only used the rod once. But i happened to take a closer look at the blade edge and noticed some very small chips in the edge. I don't know if they were there before i honed or not. I can't imagine i could have screwed up honing the blade that badly to cause it to chip.
If you accidentally impacted the hone, or bore down on it sideways with much force, maybe with some existing chips - yes, that could chip the blade. And you can safely assume it is double bevelled and symmetric, anything else would be sold as a right or left handed knife explicitly. 15 degrees (per side. 15 degrees inclusive would be extremely sensitive, the domain of a sashimi knife and not a general purpose chef knife!) sounds pretty solid for SG2@63 - for comparison, typical edge angle on non stainless japanese knives of that hardness will be 12 per side.
I thought i used fairly light force pressing the blade against the honing rod, but I can't be sure since this was a few months ago. I haven't used the blade since I got it back since now I'm paranoid I did something wrong and I don't want to mess up the blade again.
Observations after using a typical "swedish carpenter's" hone for a while:
These are indeed lightly abrasive, so it will never only hone, but sharpen/polish. This means that:
you have to observe all the cautions that would apply to actually sharpening, be more careful with getting the angles correct - too shallow can scratch (or even remove an intentionally set microbevel), too steep will microbevel the knife (which you might intentionally do). You could even raise a burr and hone it into a wire edge by accident.
a fine edge polish will be degraded if the effective grit of the hone is lower than that of the finishing stone used in sharpening.
tired metal will slowly get removed - a good thing. Especially with steels where the burr will be brittle, and become even more brittle when being bent back (very hard pure carbon steels can pull nasty tricks on you that way).
the ratio of honing vs abrasive action will be quite dependent on steel hardness and toughness (a very soft steel might be found to mostly hone - haven't tried; same with a very hard one (AS@65+), as I surprisingly found).
What is a swedish carpenter's hone? I suppose you mean either a ceramic or a steel rod, but as I have never heard the term before, I have trouble associating it with the ones in the question.
IKEA :) Sry, gotten too used to obscuring vendor names being good practice :)
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.148025
| 2016-01-06T19:38:44 |
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|
61599
|
Issue starting a sourdough starter
I'm making my second attempt at a sourdough starter. I tried once in the past and I now know that I just didn't stick with it long enough and had a bad bread recipe, but with a little more knowledge, I've had the urge to give it another try.
I came across a tutorial when browsing instructables.com, by user name ItsJeremy. He uses half AP flour and half of another flour, but said you can use straight AP. That's what I had, so that's what I used. I spaced out on the very first start up. Instead of using a 2:1 ratio, I used a 1:1, but since many other people use this, I figured it was okay. I went to the 2:1 every 12 hours after that. If my starter got too thick, I'd add a little extra water and if it got a little thin, I'd add a some extra flour. I tried to keep it pancake batter consistency.
After a couple of days, I started seeing bubbles forming. Not like you'd expect of a good starter, but it was a start. I started it on Sat morning and on Monday, I had made it a little thicker that day and when I got home from work, it had risen about 1/4". That wasn't much as in the container I had it in, the starter had begun at ~1" deep. So I got a 25% rise.
However, the next feeding haven't risen at all as far as I can tell. I'm still getting some bubbles, but not a massive amount. I haven't tasted it, but I have been smelling it and I don't smell an odors besides flour and water. Now, at 4 days into it and 7 feedings, I'd expect more progress. We do have the AC on in the house, but I imagine daytime temps are around 75deg. Nighttime probably gets cooler.
I do live in the south east and temps are hot and humid. I don't know that I shouldn't stick it on the covered front porch in the shade. I have a couple of extra containers and I might try that as well as another I saw a chef on youtube.com do, where they did a 1:1 ratio, put plastic wrap on it and let it sit 24-36 hours with no feedings till it bubbled.
I'm just looking for some guidance here. Is it not taking, do I just need to keep with it, should I find somewhere warmer. I mean I'd at least expect some sour smell after 4 days. It's not like I'm adding bleach instead of water. Thanks for the help.
Edit: I didn't mention it above. I'm on well water, so there is no chlorine.
AP flour's not the best choice - the microorganisms which you want are in the parts that are removed in processing. You'd get better results from rye or whole wheat flour.
@GdD From my knowledge, I thought most of the yeast "harvested" in a freshly made sour dough starter comes from the air.
That was what I thought too @Jay, but I've since found from several sources that you get much better results from whole grain. One source suggests grinding whole rye berries as the best way to go.
@GdD Ah I see where the misunderstanding might come from. You get better results from whole grain and whole rye due to that enzymes commonly found in those flours which promote yeast growth. The enzymes increases the break down of the starches into simple sugar which directly increase yeast production. A little diastatic malt powder in AP flour would get similar results.
http://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2012/04/05/creating-your-own-sourdough-starter-the-path-to-great-bread/
For a long discussion of the science and art of bread fermentation, I suggest finding a copy of "In Search of the Perfect Loaf: A Home Baker's Odyssey" by Samuel Fromartz.
Some of his suggestions for developing a starter:
Use water without chlorine
Use a bit of raw honey
Use organic whole rye flour
Raise the acidity level with pineapple or apple juice
I found a copy on amazon that's currently $11.99 for a kindle version. I may have to pick it up. I am using well water, which I don't think I mentioned above. I'll have to see if the local grocer has whole rye flour. They very well could have it, but I've never looked for it. I might also portion off my starter when I feed and add some honey and apple juice to see how it affects it. If I notice a large change, I'll post back here.
I bought a copy of the book and picked up the honey and whole rye flour while I was killing time in town yesterday. I got home to make it and I feel like I'm having an issue with it. The author calls for 3 tbsp. flour, 3 tbsp. water, and 1 tsp honey. Upon mixing these ingredients, I've ended up with a very thick starter. Thick in the sense that you can scrap it into the middle of the container and it doesn't settle back to the sides. It's like tomato paste thick. I followed the directions exactly. Every other starter I've seen has been much more liquid. Do you think this is an issue?
Bubbles can be less prevalent with a fine-ground flour (e.g. most store bought flours). I observe more bubble formation using fairly coarse fresh ground flour (hard red wheat and a little triticale, at present). For unchlorinated water, let the water stand in a jar for a day before using (a smell test may make the chlorine in tap water fairly obvious). If your municipal supply adds chloramine, that may take more effort to remove (Katz, "Art of Fermentation", p.44).
You said you used AP flour, and although I will use that occasionally, if I run out of a good, name brand bread flour, it is not really advisable. Even unbleached AP flour doesn't have enough protein and ash in it to get a good starter going. also, I know most instructions say to 'discard' some after a suggested amount of days...3-5, if it is now 'bubbly' and active, but I caused my initial effort to make a starter to quit on day 4 doing this! had no action at all on day 4, 5, and then I changed my plan of action.
I too was seeing my starter be about the consistency of about a pancake batter, and noticed that right after feeding, it would thicken a bit, but then, it would go right back to the consistency of a ...kinda thin pancake batter, with no to few bubbles or action.
I decided to thicken it substantially, to what I would call a pancake batter that was too thick to get onto the griddle, at which point, it began to be extremely active and alive!
I live in Arkansas, in the south, and although it is winter, we keep our house rather warm, due to a wood furnace that always seems to either cause us to open a window or grab extra blankets. Average temp in the house is 70-78, summer or winter, as we are either heating or cooling. Hope that helps get a good strong starter, as I quit trying in my initial effort 3 years ago!
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.148778
| 2015-09-09T12:54:33 |
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|
96130
|
Stodgy crumpet-like crumb in overnight white
Over the weekend I made an overnight white loaf, methodology was something along the lines of the following:
Activate yeast in water, mix with the bread until well incorporated. Leave for 30 minutes.
Add the salt, mix in with the dough. Leave for 30 minutes.
"Knead" the dough in the bowl, mixture was very wet and recipe said not to add more flour so this possibly wasn't sufficient kneading. Leave for 30 minutes.
"Knead" again, cover and leave overnight. As it was a Sunday and I'm lazy, was left for roughly 12 hours.
Place on floured work surface, knock back and shape. Place in oiled bowl. Leave for 2 hours to rest.
Oven to 200 Centigrade, container of boiled water at the bottom to make the oven steamy to get a nice crust.
Bake for 45 minutes, leave to cool.
The crust was lovely and I'm happy with it, but the interior was rather stodgy, and reminiscent of how it feels to eat a crumpet.
Which steps that I took from the above are likely causes of the crumb being sub par, and what is the correct approach to avoid "crumpet crumb" in the future?
Quantities were:
500g Strong white bread flour
390ml warm water
10g yeast
1 tsp salt
Could you please add the whole recipe (ratios are important) and what kind of flour did you use?
Recipe was from a book so I can't directly link to it, but I remember the ratios off the top of my head, so I added them.
200C is pretty hot, is that what the recipe called for? Did you do fan or non-fan?
Recipe called for 400 farenheit, which is roughly 200c. Oven does have a fan option if that's better to use in future but I didn't use it.
There are two likely causes:
Insufficient gluten development.
Wrong quantities (probably too much flour): you don't mention how you measured the flour. Measuring by volume is notoriously inaccurate. It is best to use weights for everything, including water.
Weak flour: AP flour has less protein than bread flour, so there is less gluten development.
Strong white bread flour needs a lot of kneading, or, for no-knead methods, several shorter kneads with plenty of time in between for the yeast to act and the gluten to develop. If you only knead once, I suggest at least 10 minutes. For very wet doughs, pouring the dough out of the bowl and using a stretch and fold technique works well. (It is almost impossible to overknead by hand.) But the autolysis and overnight fermentation should have helped here.
Not enough heat in the oven. Did you use a preheated baking tray or a pizza stone? If the bottom of the loaf was particularly gummy, it may be that not enough heat got to the loaf. Generally it's better not to use the fan in a fan oven when baking bread. You want humidity (hence the container of boiling water), and the fan will disperse the water vapour. An alternative to messing around with boiling water is to use a preheated Dutch oven. This ensures all-round heat gets to the bread, which also cooks in a moist environment.
For more advice on trouble-shooting bread dough, I recommend the serious eats article.
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.149283
| 2019-02-04T09:47:24 |
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|
95510
|
Why does my chopped beef come out too tough?
Whenever I try cooking chopped beef for stews or curries, I can't seem to get it right: It always comes out too tough and tastes like dog food.
I usually get beef labeled "for stir fry" or "for stew". It comes pre-sliced, and it seems like it's pretty good quality.
I pat it with paper towels to get excess liquid off, season with salt and pepper (like one would with a steak), put it in a pan over medium high heat with oil until it turns brown. At the end of this, I try tasting and it comes out inedible.
Is there some trick to cooking beef like this - is the important thing here how long it's cooked, or the seasoning, or how lean the beef is? Or is it a combination these?
In response to comments: I live in the southern US. I buy meat from the supermarket; the quality has been very good for steaks and burger patties, but with stew beef I am somehow having this issue. I haven't tried just buying a good steak and chopping it up myself, I'm asking here about beef that is already chopped in the package.
Seems to me as if you are buying low quality meat that can only be eaten maybe after hours of stewing and you are trying it for a couple of seconds. I don't know where you are from, but where I live (continental europe, experienced this in multiple places) you cannot buy edible beef at a super market. Perhaps specify where you are from
As Raditz_35 mentioned in his comment you prepare the meat in different way than you want to. Yes, in curry and stew/gulash you use low quality (it's not actually low quality per se, it's just more dense and more chewy onto itself) meat. And then you STEW the meat for few hours.
You try to fry it for few minutes.
If you want to have a stir-fry you need to cut the meat even thinner. Think paper thin. Then you fry on very high heat with high smoking point fat.
If you want to make a stew/curry you need to follow the recipe. Almost all recipes I've encountered counted the time of in hours or stated "simmer until beef is tender".
Browning the meat on pan before stewing is important part as it keep all moisture inside the meat so it' not come out dry.
I upvoted for the first part. However, your last paragraph contains a common cooking myth. Browning does not keep all moisture inside the meat: it's simply done because the browned bits are tasty.
@Johanna I find baked steaks to by obviously dryer than their pan fried counterparts.
That's probably to do with other factors, such as the time it takes to cook them and how long they get to rest before serving. The first reference here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searing debunks the 'sealing in moisture myth'. Also, logically, unless you think that browning the meat turns the outer layer waterproof, there is no way it could seal in moisture.
In fact, the first answer to this question: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/42907/should-i-brown-meat-for-stew discusses how browning meat for a stew might even reduce the perceived moistness of the result. (Steaks should be browned, always, but meat for stews can either be browned or not depending on the desired result.)
Debunking the debunkers https://www.thespruceeats.com/does-searing-meat-seal-in-juices-995432 :) Personally I've found out that gulash meat that have not started Maillard reaction get dry during stewing.
What specifically does quality refer to in this context? How would you determine it when selecting the beef, if it's sold diced?
@Larry it refer to amount of fat and different muscles also the muscles are usually more dense. Kind of meat like in this question https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/95295/what-would-you-call-this-cut-of-pork/95311#95311 It's also depend on cutting. For example in Europe the meat is rarely cut to get T-bone. We usually have "hip meat". Which is good for stew but bad for making steaks.
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.149651
| 2019-01-10T05:04:40 |
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|
23362
|
How do I steep mint for mint ice cream?
My garden is brimming over with chocolate mint, and I want to make mint chocolate ice cream with it. The general plan is to use cocoa, as opposed to melting chocolate, and steep the chocolate mint in the cream. I have two questions: 1) how long should I allow the mint to steep in the cream, and 2) is it preferable to steep it cold or hot (over heat)?
Thank you in advance :)
Chocolate mint? I've never heard of that. Sounds like a great addition to mint chocolate chip ice cream!
You want to make a "mint infusion". Googling this will give you many recipes.
Basically you brew the mint like herbal tea:
Remove stems,
Bruise the leaves a little,
Add the leaves to a cup of very hot water,
Let steep for a few minutes,
strain and throw away the mushy leaves and use the liquid for your flavoring.
The liquid will be brown as you are destroying the chlorophyll that makes the leaves green. In most applications I add food coloring to fix this. As you are making chocolate mint ice cream this should not be a problem.
Save some of your mint leaves to use as a garnish.
I love chocolate mint and I am very excited for you having a bumper crop of it.
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.149977
| 2012-04-26T12:51:56 |
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|
21005
|
How can I replicate authentic German potato dumplings?
I lived in Southern Germany (Bavaria) for 5 years and while over there, my family fell in love with potato dumplings. I’m talking about the ones that are the size of a baseball. Here is a picture I found by searching for “Hofbrau potato dumplings” from Munich.
Since moving back to the US, I have not been able to find, nor make a dumpling that is remotely close. Here is what I have tried so far:
100% raw potatoes, shredded, with flour and egg
50% raw, shredded, and cooked, chilled, then put through a ricer, with flour and egg.
100% cooked, chilled, then riced, with flour and egg.
Both tried with russet and yukon gold potatoes.
The results are:
100% raw = these things are like eating marbles and stick in your belly forever.
50/50 = these boiled apart, and the flavor tastes more like flour than potato.
100% cooked = these boiled apart and the flavor tasted more like flour than potato.
Additionally, I have tried using farina to help bind them - still boil apart and don’t really taste very good.
Here are a few recipes I have tried:
http://www.grouprecipes.com/70225/german--potato-dumplings.html
http://germanfood.about.com/od/potatoesandnoodles/r/kartoffkloesse.htm
Also tried the recipe from the Hofbrau haus cookbook - still, same problems.
Can someone(hopefully someone from Germany who knows what I am talking about) help me reproduce the authentic German potato dumplings I had in Germany?
What kind of potatoes are you using? See http://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/16857/1672 for example.
Good comment. I've tried russet and yukon gold. Will update my question. Thanks.
I never made them this big, but I always use: 1:1:0,5 raw shreded potatoes (partly strained!) : cooked mashed potatoes : potato flour. Plus, of course, eggs. I add a bit of wheat flour, but too much of it makes them hard.
I am German, let me try to help, I've made many dumplings:
There are four types of potato dumplings. They are called Klöße in northern Germany and Knödel in the south, both words mean the same.
-Rohe Klöße (Raw Dumplings). These are made from raw grated potatoes. They are the most difficult to make. The surface is shiny and a bit slimy and you have pieces of potatoes sticking out, which gives them a rough surface texture, see image below. The inside is chewy and you can just barely feel the individual slices of potatoes.
They are soft, when you cut them they flatten and the surface is gluey and sticks to the knife.
The basic recipe is to grate raw potatoes (1 kg) into a bowl filled with water. Then pour the mixture through a cheesecloth and press the cheesecloth in your hands till the mixture is very dry. Let the drained off water stand for a few minutes, the starch will collect at the bottom. Mix starch and potato mixture.
Boil some semolina (grieß), maybe 10% of the potato weight, in milk till it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot. Mix semolina with potatoes and one egg and form dumplings.
Some people use sulfur to give the dumplings a whiter color
What’s the sulfur in dumplings for?
-Gekochte Knödel (Cooked Dumplings). These are made from boiled potatoes that are mashed while hot. Add about 10% starch and one egg yolk per 500g. These are simple to make.
-Halb und Halb, Thüringer Klöße (Half and Half). Mixture of grated and mashed potatoes.
Do as for the raw knödel with half of the potatoes. The rest is boiled and mashed while still hot, I have something that looks like a huge garlic press for this
Mix the mashed potatoes and the dried grated potatoes and the starch. These dumplings don't use eggs or semolina, but you might want to add some extra starch if the dough is too sticky.
-Quark or Topfenknödel (Dumplings with fresh cheese (Quark))
Made from mashed potatoes with fresh white cheese. Tastes wonderful when filled with plums or apricots or with strawberry or rhubarb sauce.
Unfortunately Quark is extremely expensive in the U.S.
The picture you showed looks like Rohe Knödel or Thüringers.
*Many people buy a mixture that comes in perforated bags that you throw into boiling water.
These are ok, but the ones you make yourself are more fun.
*In Germany potatoes come in three color coded varieties, firm, mostly firm and starchy. For all kinds use mehligkochende Kartoffeln (starchy). These often have irregular shapes and break apart when you boil them. It won't work with firm potatoes.
*Often Knödel are filled with roasted pieces of bread.
*You always have to prepare a Probekloß (Test Dumpling) first to check the composition and maybe add some flour.
*In general the dough has to be sticky, use wet hands
*Some use egg yolks and some entire eggs.
*I am to lazy to get the starch out of the water, I use regular bought starch.
Make sure that you are using the right potatoes (starchy). To me it sounds you are using too much flour and the wrong potatoes. Better use starch instead of flour.
Disclaimer: I have eaten them often (I live in Germany), but never made them myself.
The versions with raw potatoes exist, but are uncommon. When you say Klöße in Germany, everybody assumes the cooked-potato variety. I checked the biggest German online recipe database, and the most popular recipe there uses starch, other popular recipes include flour.
Jefromi's comment is important: you should use mealy potatoes. Cook them well, then put them through a ricer - it is important to not blend them, you want to smash them instead of cut them, to preserve the cell walls. One recipe specified that the peeled potatoes should be left overnight in an open bowl before ricing - it makes sense, because it will give the starch time to regelatinize (this is the same process which makes bread stale).
The process is to mix the mashed potatoes with the flour (or starch), the seasoning, and (optionally) yolk, and shape them into balls (roughly 3 cm diameter). Then bring salted water to a simmer (not to a boil!) and throw in one kloß. It is ready when it rises to the surface. If it falls apart, knead the others together and add more flour/starch, then test again.
The ratio given in the recipes in the database varies wildly - from 130 g flour per kg potatoes to 1 kg flour to 1 kg potatoes. As you complain of floury flavor, and the high-flour rations are rare, I would recommend to start with the low ratio and test your klöße until you reach a ratio at which they don't fall apart, then note it down for next time. Also, consider using pure starch instead of flour. If you insist on flour, AP flour (gluten content around 9.5%) will be authentic.
Lastly, you should consider that Klöße are not supposed to taste like pure potatoes. They are quite far in taste from what e.g. a spoonful of mashed potatoes tastes like. Also, they don't have a strong taste on their own, they are a cheap and filling side dish for a slice of roast, eaten simultaneously with another, stronger side dish, usually blaukraut (pickled red cabbage).
Edit I looked them up in Dr Oetkers Schulkochbuch, an established cookbook in Germany. They didn't say anything special about klöße falling apart, but their advice was 1) to mash the potatoes hot and leave them to cool after mashing, not before and 2) to never crowd them in the pot. I don't know if the first is better or worse than mashing them cold, but from my experience with other dumplings, not crowding is important.
I have one of the most popular German cookbooks at home, I'll check tonight if it gives more specific tips too, but I doubt it, it isn't technique-centered.
Thanks for the reply. Why have you never made them? I've heard that from other Germans. Is it because they are too labor-intensive?
@mikebmassey I'm indifferent to the taste, and dislike the traditional pairings (blaukraut, fatty haxe) so there is always something more interesting to cook.
I didn't know it was called blaukraut! Doesn't pickled red cabbage tend to keep the red color, because of the acid?
@jefromi It is purple, and many languages call this shade of food "blue".
Okay, cool, that makes sense - I just thought maybe it suggested that there was more of a color change than I realized.
I grew up eating these and longing for more, they were a special 'treat' : My mother had special muslin sacks that she had made to help "drain" the raw potatoes that she had put through a meat grinder after they had been peeled washed and set on a tray to dry off . We would hang them to let the excess moisture weep out and then twist them to squeeze out remaining moisture.
None of us recall reconstituting the starch. Because we doubt she washed the starch out of the ground potatoes. The finished food product was golf ball sized "solid" ball not falling apart, and then braised in browned butter before being served.
Sadly the entire recipe and process was lost to the family during a sister's house fire. All 7 of us have tried for 30 years to reproduce the exact recipe and process, we have been close. We all recall the straining process, the flour, the egg, the salt, the slow cooking of them in not boiling hot water and they rose to the top when done. They were cooled and settled before being braised in the butter.
I remember them being in a warm oven until served. We did not have all of the whistles and bells that are called for in all of the variations that have been presented. The "potato starch" use does not come to any of our memories, neither do the bread cubes, the half raw, half cooked etc. The ones we recall were a simple "DELICIOUS" treat, not just a side dish "filler". We struggle most with the ratio of flour, egg, salt.
You may want to format this answer with paragraphs in order to make it easier to read.
My Kartoffle Knoedel:
I cook my russet potatoes with the peel. Make sure they are done but not overdone. As soon as they are done, they dried in a bowl. Or you can make baked potatoes.
The secret to kartoffel knoedel is that the potato is as floury as possible. When they are cold I put them through the potato ricer, add pepper, salt and nutmeg, add potato flour and only a little white flour. (Actually I heard that egg is not added, but I added a egg yolk and it didn't hurt.)
The knoedel make big balls. Put them in slow cooking salt water, and when they swim they are done. You can test them by using two forks to tear the dumpling apart; in the middle it should be a fluffy well done batter showing.
With that I serve roast and a roast sauce, and green salad on the side.
Short answer:
There should be no egg in Kartoffelknödel.
It's usually 50% raw and 50% cooked potatoes.
Grate the raw potatoes. Squeeze out the juice with a dish towel. Let the juice sit. Then mix the potatoes together. Drain the excess water from the juice and add the starchy rest to your dough. Add some more starch and semolina (i imagine breadcrumbs might work too). . Boil water, add Knödel, turn down the heat so it's just before simmering and let them cook for 20 minutes.
Source: grandma
By semolina, do you mean farina or do you mean durum flour?
I just searched for the englisch translation of "Grieß" which is coarsly milled wheat (about 0.3 to 1mm pieces) that should probably the same as farina
I gave this a shot tonight. I ordered some Grieß from an online retailer (the package was German, so authentic, right?). I used 50/50 cooked to shredded potato, added some grieß to make it less sticky, then dropped them in. They stayed together much better this time, but texture still was not there. They were almost doughy inside and the raw grated potato still tasted raw (boiled until they floated, then gave it another 4 minutes before I pulled them). The search continues.... Thanks for the suggestion though.
@tliff in Germany, there is "Hartweizengrieß" which is coarsely milled durum and "Weichweizengrieß" which is coarsely milled wheat. I think that "semolina" is "Hartzweizengrieß" and "farina" is "Weichweizengrieß", but I am not 100% sure.
My mother (from Vienna) used to make these. We called them "gummi" knoedeln.
You've inspired me to try to make them again.
I don't have exact quantities, but here's basically how she used to make them.
She put the RAW potatoes through a juicer and collected the potato "meat" left behind in the juicer.
To this she added egg, semolina, salt and sour cream. It's difficult to describe the consistency she aimed for, but basically just thick enough to be able to roll them into balls about the size of a medium orange that would stick together on their own.
These went into simmering salted water for about 45 mins and then served warm.
I hope this helps.
To get started, follow these steps:
Cook the potatoes in their skins, and save the water they were boiled in.
Peel while hot
Use a ricer in a large enamel dish
Sprinkle potato starch over the mix, but not much too (it is easy to get potato starch during the Passover season)
The trick then is the "quill", a German wooden spoon that has a star shaped wooden bottom. It's great for mixing.
Put a wet towel under the bowl and start pulling the spoon towards you. It's hard, takes some muscle! We take turns in our house. You might have to add some potato water, a teaspoon at a time. Mix, mix and mix until the mixture is shiny (can take ten minutes or even more). Keep turning the bowl (you will need someone to hold it)
Start making baseballs. It will be hot to touch. Have the potato water handy and dip your hands in there to mold the balls tightly so they hold together.
Make them smooth and drop them carefully in a pot of boiling water. They will sink at first, and when they rise to top they are done.
Make sauerbraten, red cabbage, and a nice brown gravy, and pour it over.
Proper sentence structure and paragraphs are a courtesy to your reader that are likely to make it more likely your answer will be read and appreciated.
Welcome to the site! Mat has done you a big favor by cleaning up your post, as SAJ14SAJ suggested. You might want to have a look over it and make sure everything's as you meant it!
My Oma and Opa came over from Germany after WWII and brought my mother and her siblings. My husband and I just sold our house and are living with my Oma until our new home is finished. So, I have been on a German food binge. My Opa passed away several years ago and my Oma doesn't cook for herself anymore so I have been trying to soak up all of the German food info I can get. She was a teacher and taught cooking and what she calls handicraft. I have found her German cookbook from 1950. She was from Bavaria and the Black Forest area.
Last night, I made the potato dumplings from her cookbook after some confusing translation. The recipe was successful as far as I know because this is not something we ate as kids and not something she ever cooked. I used:
1kg Russett Potatos weighed before cooking and peeled, cooked not all the way but soft, drained and riced, then COMPLETELY cooled. After cooling, they were very dry. No water in the bowl.
30-40gr plain flour
20-40gr butter
1 beaten egg
2 pieces of completely toasted cheap white bread (recipe calls for "old rolls")
salt and saltwater
AND Greiss- It took me awhile to figure out what this is. It is like farina, but finer. So, I actually used Cream of Wheat. The regular old cooks in two minutes red box kind from the grocery store.
Anyway, you mix all of the ingredients, except the saltwater. For me, I cut the butter into the flour first. I crumbled the toast into crumbs. I ended up using equal parts flour and cream of wheat. You mix the flour, butter, egg, toast, and cream of wheat until it is a dough. Very dry but not crumbly. I assume this is why there is a range as far as the ingredients go. Then, I formed the dough into balls and put them into STEAMING saltwater until they floated. The length of time will depend on the size of your potato ball, but I made eight balls about the size of a baseball and it took about 30 minutes to cook in the saltwater. That is the time the recipe calls for too.
When done, the balls were not smooth on the outside. Some of the outer part came off in the water, but they were still balls and I could still lift them from the pot with a slotted spoon and they didn't fall apart. I think this has to do with the consistency of the dough. I probably could have put more flour and cream of wheat in, but I wanted them to stick together. The recipe says to form the balls with lightly floured hands so I know they are supposed to be sticky.
My kids LOVED them. We had them with beef rouladen and used that gravy on the dumplings. The only thing I changed about the recipe was using the Griess. I'm not sure if what is marketed as Griess is the same as what they had in 1950. I just know Oma and Opa ate a lot of Cream of Wheat, so I thought I would try it.
I hope this helped. If anyone needs a recipe I can try to find it in that cookbook. It's a bear to translate though.
I just wanted to add that the recipe also says if you use cold potatos, from the night before to run them through a Fleischmaschine (meat grinder). Evidently, these were some tough potatos.
I think your main problem may be the cooking. Once you have the consistency right (sticky and firmish) then if they fall apart it is because you are boiling them.
Never ever use boiling water. Use water that is barely simmering. The water must hardly move as the dumplings are cooked.
Alison Sauer (English and married to an Austro-Bavarian!)
I am 65 years old. My husband is German and every year I make Sauerbraten and Potato Dumplings for his birthday dinner. I always used the box mix and he loved it. One year I got energetic and enthusiastic and made them from scratch. I made the kind with grated potatoes and with mashed potatoes. He did not like the grated potato type. I said to him "I really want to make them the way your grandmother in Germany did". (She had passed away a few months earlier) He laughed at me and said "my grandmother used the potato dumpling mix". He did like the mashed potato dumplings I made and since the dumpling mix is a bit pricy for us I sometimes make them from scratch. if you just Google potato dumplings you will get excellent recipes. Much easier, faster, and just as good you can go to most major grocery stores and get 'Panni Bavarian Potato Dumpling' mix.
http://www.worldfiner.com/panni-german-potato-products/german-potato-products.html
I used a compromise for some time. I took shredded raw potatoes and added dumpling mix powder until I had the desired consistency. That way you don't have to go through the pain of shredding and squeezing so many raw potatoes (I had no food processor back then) and do not use up so much of the mix. And for me it tasted better than the mix.
I watched my German neighbor make them and she ground raw potatoes, poured milk over the raw potatoes, and then squeezed all the starch and milk out. She added some cooked potatoes, eggs and breadcrumbs, boiled them and froze them. Then when she made a pork roast she put them in with the roast and cooked and browned them and they were THE BEST!!!!
Interesting -- about how long would you estimate they were in the freezer?
My grandfather is from bavaria, he uses a recipe like Thuringia Klose.
boil and mash 1/3 of the potatoes
juice the other 2/3 (separating potato flour and starch)
mix the potato flour and mash, adding some of the starch to bind
Add some bread if you are making them bigger, as this allows the inside to cook fully.
What kind of bread should it be? And bread or breadcrumbs? Thanks
Plain sliced bread, white or brown are both ok, the bread should be broken into chucks, maybe finger-top sized.These allow the water (and heat) into the middle of the Knodel
A very good German cooking website is chefkoch.de
I think the Google Translator result is not perfect, but quite understandable:
Potator dumplings
If you have problems with the translation, feel free to ask, but due to license concerns I don't want to add the whole smoothed out text.
I wouldn't call it very good. It is a very popular site, consisting of user-submitting content. It has some great recipes which have a very high score, and it also has some terrible recipes (wedding cake from prefab layers with sachet pudding for icing) which get a very high score, presumably from users who don't know better. Still, while there are functioning recipes there, I don't consider it a reliable source. Most of them are oriented towards everyday easy-cooking, not best-taste cooking, too.
I think it depends. For the question asked, I think it is a good source. Generell for questions related to "How do I cook [German meal]", the highest rated results are not the worst choice.
My grandfather was German and my grandmother was Swedish and she made potato dumplings when she would make a beef roast. It was made something like this: Put (uncooked) potatoes through a meat grinder along with raw (peeled) carrots and peeled onions and strain excess liquid through a sieve. When strained thoroughly, add some cracker crumbs, two raw eggs and cayenne, yes, cayenne, to the mixture. Mix and form into whatever size balls you like, usually rather large ones are common. She, then, put them on top of the roast and alongside, taking them out with a big spoon when done and serving with the meat and gravy. It has been one of my most memorable childhood meals. I've tried to recapture the taste and have come pretty darn close with this recipe. I also did find a recipe in a Swedish cookbook which is where I found out about the cayenne. I would think that this is a combo Swedish/German potato dumpling.
My favorite German dumpling we called Klub. We simply ground raw potatoes, mixed in flour until you just plain could not add more. Form into baseball size balls. Using your thumbs, open the center of the ball and add diced piecies of ham. Close it back up and boil for 1 hour. Many in my husbands family ate it with Karo syrup. I preferred mine with butter. Sliced Krub, fried , as a leftover is fantastic also.
I was born in Bavaria and I live there now after having grown up in other parts of Germany.
My version of raw potato dumplings is quite easy (in theory).
All you need is raw potatoes, white bread and some clarified butter or other fat.
Slice the bread into cubes about the size of sugar cubes or a little smaller. Heat a pan, add the fat and roast the bread in there. Let it cool.
Meanwhile shred the potatoes, put them on a cloth. Grab the corners of the cloth on one hand and the part containing the potatoes in the other hand, then twist. Collect the water that comes out. If you think you can't twist any more take an additional half twist. Let the water sit until the starch collects then pour out the water and add the starch to them now rather dry potatoes.
Please do not add anything else. No flour, no eggs, no salt, nothing.
Now form dumplings of baseball size. Make a hole in it using your thumb and add 2 bread cubes.
Using a big pot bring water to boil. Add salt as if making pasta. Carefully add the dumplings and reduce heat and do not cover the pot. Do not boil the dumplings. Leave them in near boiling water for 30 minutes. Because of the bread (and the air contained in the bread) they can start rising before they are finished.
For an easier version shred raw potatoes and mix them with potato dumpling mix powder until the consistency is right (hard to explain when it is). That way you don't have to do the twisting to drain the water out. Continue as above. The result tastes similar to the scrap made stuff because of the ratio fresh to dumpling mix.
An important thing: As long as the water doesn't boil you nearly can't overcook the dumplings but you CAN take them out too early. If in doubt just remove the pot from the fire and set aside while you finish the rest.
http://www.schallerweber.com/product/potato-dumplings/
They are the real deal. Powder stuff is terrible. Just found their product at Zabars in NY so was looking on line for vegetarian recipes to go with them (I was a meat eater when I first had them in East Berlin (way back then). Verdict will be a Marsala mixed mushroom sauce with perhaps some grilled fennel on the side.
But that said I saw your site and thought I would help you out since I had a 20 year search for a proper one. Not sure Zabars still is carrying them. But I plan to go directly to the distributors if the stock runs out at Zabars. Get a case. They freeze easily.
The recipe on this Epicurean Table link is working well for me using russet potatoes. I have had disasters in the past before finding this...fell apart, too mushy etc.
http://www.epicureantable.com/recipes/holrec/dumplings.htm
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.150189
| 2012-02-02T03:22:58 |
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18837
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How long does bicarbonate soda (baking soda) keep?
I am thinking of baking biscuits for presents for Christmas.
However, the recipe calls for baking soda, and I cook from scratch fairly rarely, so I'm worried the leftover bicarb will go strange in my cupboard. And since people use it for all sorts of purposes, it's one of those products generally not available in the small quantities called for in cooking.
If I do buy a packet, how long is an expected shelf-life for it? Based on this question I probably should find an airtight container to store it in, which may assist.
(Note if relevant: I live in Sydney Australia; Christmas here is mid-summer, and often fairly high-humidity and 35-40 degree C heat.)
StillTasty provides a very conservative answer: 6 months at best quality. In my personal experience, it can last much longer and be just fine, though I think the longest I ever kept a box was a couple years, not 5 years like riotburn. StillTasty suggests that the concern after more than 6 months is lost potency, but I believe the potential to take on odors from the surroundings is much more of a concern; store it in something airtight like you said, and you should be pretty safe from that.
So I'm sure it'll last at least until next Christmas. And if you do get into baking, you might go through a box faster than you'd think. Otherwise, it's fortunately pretty cheap, and it does have other uses (e.g. cleaning) so it won't hurt you too much to just go for it.
Sodium bicarbonate is stable at room temperature. Above 70 or 80 degrees C, it will degrade into sodium carbonate, water and carbon dioxide. Keep it in a sealed container (esp away from the oven and acids such as vinegar) and it should last indefinitely.
Baking Soda (Sodium bicarbonate) is often mined from the ground, it's been there for millions of years, so a few years in a closed container in your cupboard should not be a problem :-)
A chemical will behave differently when exposed to air compared with its original state. Plain old baking soda isn't simply dug up - it is manufactured; one way is by dissolving soda ash in water and then bubbling that with carbon dioxide.
@KatieK that depends on where you live. "Natron" has been dug up in African and Middle Eastern areas for millennia. In the USA, they have been mining it for years in Colorado etc
I don't know if this is technically correct but I've had the same canister of baking soda in my house for at least 5 years and have not had any problems cooking with it.
What have you been using the baking soda for? After 5 years, I'd wonder how much leavening power it has.
Baking soda starts out as about 99% pure sodium bicarbonate. After 5 years on the shelf, interaction with atmospheric components will have the purity down to about 99%. It is the sodium bicarbonate which provides the leavening power. So baking soda will have the same leavening power new, and after 5 years.
Even though the baking soda won't decompose into hunks of salt and carbon within a year, it will lose the leavening power (potency and performance) that many baking applications (such as in cookies and quickbreads) rely on.
Baking is chemistry. To get the same outcome as the recipe intends, you need to use precisely the same proportions and ingredients as the recipe states. If the baking soda you use doesn't give the same rising power (leavening) at the same times as the recipe expects, then you will have different results.
Some resources suggest testing the efficacy of baking soda by putting some in water or vinegar and looking for fizzing. You can do this at home to see a difference between old and new baking soda. But there is no way quantifiable to quantify how much fizz occurs. Without quantifying the decrease in efficiency, you have no way of knowing how much more baking soda you might need to get the expected result.
When I bake cookies with baking soda older than 6 months, they are definitely flatter than when I use newer baking soda. Here are some cookies that I baked with new baking soda, and baking soda from last year.
(You can read more about my science experiment here.)
But, if you're just using baking soda to absorb odors or clean, you may not notice the reduced efficiency.
How will it lose leavening power without decomposing?
A reasonable explanation would be via caking. As clumps form, the reaction rate will slow.
This may be true, but if stored in an closed container, how does the moisture get in to form clumps? Normal shelf life at full purity is 2 years, and for baking purposes full purity is not really required http://www.solvaychemicals.us/static/wma/pdf/6/7/5/8/Shelf_Life_Bicarb.pdf
Um, is there a reason the cookies using the 2011 batch are so... splotchy? Truthfully, I didn't notice the difference in thickness you mention, being more distracted by the difference in color. Perhaps there was some change in recipe or technique?
I realise you're asking about baking soda, but not being happy with the rise I was getting on American-style pancakes, I bought some new baking powder and instantly got that good ol' rise back. I'd had the previous baking powder for 6 months and it still had 6 months until expiry. I now keep the new powder in an airtight container now, not the cardboard cylinder it came in.
I did the fizz test KatieK talks of (but I think I used lemon juice), and the new powder easily fizzed twice as much.
It's dirt cheap and has so many other uses, I just wouldn't take the chance.
I'm also in Sydney, near the ocean.
Baking soda causes a flattening of baked goods. Baking powder gives baked goods a rise. So the older baking soda in the picture did exactly what it should have and there is no reason to discard the Nov 2010 baking soda.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.152325
| 2011-11-08T20:16:41 |
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10810
|
Brick of Brown Sugar
Possible Duplicate:
How to store brown sugar without it becoming hard?
If I don't use brown sugar quickly it gets hard. I mean brick-hard. I've tried re-sealing bags, and putting it in crocks, it didn't make any difference.
Any suggestions on how to keep this from happening?
Any way to un-brick my current bag?
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.152830
| 2011-01-06T17:01:05 |
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57279
|
Why does my dough always need more water than the recipe calls for?
It seems that every dough recipe that I try ends up needing more liquid than the recipe calls for. This applies to pasta dough as well as bread dough. I don't think I've made but one recipe where the ingredients worked out.
Typically, I'm using a recipe from something like a youtube video, so I know what the dough should look like. Theirs might be soft and pliable, where mine "tears" when I try to knead it and won't come together.
I occasionally have to add flour, but mostly I end up adding water which makes a slimy mess on my hand till it absorbs into the dough. I'd like to get the amount correct from the get go. I know that the amount of required liquid can vary with certain factors, like cooking times varying at different elevations, but it shouldn't be a problem where I live. I'm just tired of trying a recipe and following the directions to the letter, only to find out my dough needs more water.
Am I going to have to deal with this every time I make a dough recipe and write down my adjustments for the next time? Is there enough liquid there and I just need to let it absorb into the flour? What do you think is going on? I do realize that recipes usually need a little tweaking, but I don't run into this consistent problem with any other recipe I make.
EDIT: I live in the South East, USA. One recipe example is the one off of youtube.com from 'America's Test Kitchen' that if for pasta. I can't remember the recipe exactly, I don't even think it calls for water, just eggs and flour, but the issue with too little liquid happens every time I make it. If I can find a bread recipe that calls for water, I've used, I'll post it as well.
Edit: (5/12/2015) I tried to make a recipe I had for Ryan's Rolls. It wanted 1 cup of water and 1/4 cup of honey for the liquid and wanted me to add 3 cups of flour and use the paddle attachment till it came together in a sticky mass, then add an additional 1 cup of flour. I did as instructed, and while it was a sticky mass, I'm not sure it came together in the way they were thinking. I went to add the additional flour and knew it wouldn't take it all, so I added half a cup. It was so dry I took a 1/2 cup of water and added it a little at a time. The dough finally started to do right, but was very tough. I ended up having to stop the kitchen aid a few times and kneed by had to help pull it together. It was easier to work after resting a couple of hours, but my rolls still ended up with weird layers where I was kneading and it wasn't coming together, because it was overly dry and/or tough, and that was leaving out flour and adding almost 1/3rd again the liquid. I also pulled out my scale for this and measured everything by weight to get it exactly right. It's a good example of what I was talking about.
Where are you in the world? Where are the recipes from? Could you post one you are using?
How are you measuring the flour? If using volume (eg, cups) instead of weight (grams, ounces), how you measure can make a huge difference with flour.
I edited my post to include where I am. I included where you can find one recipe I use and I'll try add one where the liquid is water. I typically measure my flour in a measuring cup. I do have a scale, and I use it, but most recipes are by cups and not weight. I could make the calculation and try it, but I tend to follow the recipes and use the measurements they call for. @GdD
If you're using an America's Test Kitchen recipe, most - if not all - of their recipes are by weight, particularly for things like this. The Cook's Illustrated (same company as ATK) recipe for egg pasta is 10 oz (2 cups) unbleached all purpose flour and 3 eggs. That's it.
I am very surprised by your last addition. 3.5 cups flour and 1 cup water make 57% hydration, which is quite standard (classic French bread is 60% hydration), and the honey should have made it even softer. You say you used a scale - what were your exact weights?
With this one, I started the recipe on the principle that 1 cup = 8oz. So I used 1lb 8oz of flour, with 1lb being 16oz, so that was 3 cups of flour. I used 8oz of water and 4 tablespoons of honey, since and oz is supposed to be 2 tablespoons. It did seem fairly soft at that point, a little dry, but I figured it hadn't evenly absorbed the water yet. I let it come together and eyeballed about half the remaining 8oz of flour. I let it run a little, but it was just crumbly and wouldn't come together, so I measure out a cup of water by the mark on the measuring cup and added a little at a time.
check water temp. Ive heard to check you flour temp. If you store the flour in the fridge and its cold and dry that could impact
There are at least four likely causes that could be factors:
I'd say the most common problem for your issue is measurement error. If you aren't measuring flour by weight, it's nearly impossible to be consistent. And many recipe sources will assume different methods for measuring flour by volume. You could use the "spoon and level" method where you use a tablespoon or something to gradually add flour loosely to your measuring cup and then level off with a knife or straightedge. You could use the "scoop and sweep" method where you stick the entire measuring cup into the flour and sweep it against the edge of the bag or bin of flour to level it. The latter one will pack the flour more and result in more flour per cup. Or, you might not be leveling the flour at all, or shaking it off until it's roughly level. You could be packing the flour in tight or scooping it from a tightly settled bag, or you could be using flour that was loose after being poured or even put through a sifter to aerate it further.
In any case, different volume measuring techniques can produce an error of 30% or more in flour measurement, which can make the difference between a dough that's stiff and dry vs. a dough that's so sticky you can't handle it. Most recipes that use volume measurements assume either a "spoon and level" or "scoop and sweep" method. If your source doesn't specify, try using a measurement method that won't pack the flour down as much -- which might solve your dry dough problem.
As already mentioned by ElendilTheTall, flours can vary significantly in terms of the amount of water they absorb. There's the issue of type: high-gluten vs. bread flour vs. "all-purpose" vs. pastry vs. cake. If you are using a high-protein/high-gluten flour like bread flour but the recipe requests all-purpose, your flour will likely absorb too much water. Similarly, some brands of flour are made from harder or softer wheats, even they are all termed "all-purpose." In the U.S., for example, King Arthur all-purpose will absorb more water than Gold Medal all-purpose, and both will absorb a lot more than "southern" all-purpose flours like White Lily. Flours in other countries may vary in their processing and content in other ways (ash content, extraction, milling size, etc.). And even flours from the same company will vary by batch, age, etc.
In general, try using the type of flour recommended by the recipe. If that isn't working, you might consider a different brand, a "softer flour," or simply use less.
Kitchen environment can make a big difference, particularly temperature and humidity. Flour will absorb or lose moisture over time when stored in conditions with changing humidity. Dough will also absorb or lose moisture at different rates depending on your kitchen conditions. Thus, even if you measure flour by weight, you can sometimes see significant discrepancies from batch to batch. If you're using recipes that were designed in a place which was much more humid than your kitchen, it could explain some differences in outcome.
Bad recipes. It's perhaps obvious, but if you've mostly been using one or two sources for recipes, it's possible that there are consistent errors or problems. (Or, it's possible that the cookbooks/chefs/sources assume specific measuring techniques, flour types, etc. from what you're using.)
Regardless of what the problem is, if you're noticing a consistent error, then the most obvious solution is to try to quantify how big that error is, and then plan for it. For example, try reducing your flour measurement in every recipe by 10%, and see what happens. As you point out, it's often more annoying to add water to a dough than to add flour, so it's better to start out a bit moist and continue adding flour until you get the right texture.
If the error is consistent, and you can always fix it by reducing your amounts by X proportion, you've solved the issue. The alternative is to consider the various potential causes I mentioned above and see whether you can vary them until you find a solution.
Thanks for the answers. Just to answer a few of the points, I get recipes from multiple different cooking sites and a lot from youtube. I always use the type of flour called for, but probably not the same brand (ie: all-purpose, self-rising, etc...). What you suggested about cutting back on the flour is actually what I've been doing. I'll add most of the called for flour, but I'll cut back and add the rest if it looks like it needs it. I try to go for the look andfeel the cook talks about if they do. I just worry about over kneeding and that kind of thing. I don't like to go too far off recipe
@Dalton - Just to briefly respond to your edit of the question - you mentioned a pasta recipe which only includes eggs. Pasta dough can be VERY tough, depending on the recipe. I've made recipes involving only flour and eggs, and sometimes it seems like I'm kneading a hard, dry dough ball. Most bread doughs should NOT be like that, though. (Bagel doughs might be one exception, though even they aren't usually as tough as pasta dough.)
That was just the only recipe I could remember off the top of my head. The others were bread dough recipes, though, such as baugettes, hamburger buns, and others.
Different flours have different levels of absorption. I'm in the UK, and whenever I use a US recipe for bread, I always, without fail, have to use considerably more water in order to get a proper consistency. Absorption will vary between brands and even between batches within brands. Baking with flour (especially baking bread) is part science, part art, and part experience.
The wheat cultivars/species (winter, spring, red, white, hard, soft...) used for flours of a certain type seem to differ between the US and Europe...
I always buy King Arthur flour. I had some whole wheat flour stored out in the garage through cold and heat. It was 5 months past expiration, but it smelled OK, so I started making loaves of bread with it. Same recipe, flour, and measuring technique as always (scoop and level), but I had to add an extra 1/4 cup of water to every loaf.
I just go by feel and appearance of the dough. As much water as I can add without the dough getting too sticky (smearing around the stem of the paddle), and a smooth look, not shaggy. It's a lot easier to use a bread machine. Just watch the dough as the machine kneads. If you can tell right away that the dough is way too dry, you can add some water immediately, but don't put in the final amount until after the rest period (where the flour absorbs water), especially for whole wheat.
I guess my flour dried out a lot with temperatures in the 90's, even though the paper sacks were enclosed in plastic bags. But if you get a bread machine, you don't have to worry. It will be slimy when you first add water, but you won't feel it! You won't have to worry about figuring out the exact amount of water in advance. You just stand there and look at the dough, give it a push with your finger, and then add a tablespoon of water if needed, waiting for it to be absorbed before adding more.
I only use the machine for kneading. The dough is not always risen enough before it starts baking in a machine. I also don't like the oddly shaped loaves of a machine. You can get new old stock of bread machines on ebay rather cheaply. Somebody got one for Christmas, never used it, then cleans out the attic years later.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:57.152910
| 2015-05-07T14:49:06 |
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87403
|
Beef Bourguignon Wine Question
I'm hoping you can help me with an issue I have. I had a co-worker whose spouse made a very large pot of Beef Bourguingnon. It was delicious. I found out she had used Ina Garten's recipe. You can find it here Ina Garten: Beef Bourguignon.
I made it to the recipe, with the exception that I couldn't find pearl onions, so I used regular. My co-worker's batch was excellent and there was just a hint of wine. Mine tasted extremely boozy. I think I even let it cook a little longer than the recipe called for, hoping the alcohol would cook out, but it didn't. It was very strong.
I'm not a wine guy. I don't drink it and don't know anything about it. The co-worker didn't know which wine his wife bought. I probably grabbed something red colored, possibly a cabernet sauvignon, because I know a guy that drinks it and I probably recognized the label.
Can you guys tell me if a different red wine would taste less boozy or do I just need to reduce the amount of wine in the recipe and up the amount of stock? Thanks for the help.
Edit: By 'boozy' I meant it had a strong alcohol flavor to it. It could partially been stronger because of the tannins one of you guys said was heavy in the cabernet. Also, I attached this recipe, because the co-worker told me the one they handed me was Ina Garten's recipe. I just read through this one and the one I was handed uses much more wine. I know I've experienced in the past where a chef will have two version of a recipe posted around the internet, where they've improved it. The one they handed me and it said it was Ina Garten called for adding all the ingredients back to the pot and then adding a small bottle of wine. I think it was 750ml. You're supposed to then add beef stock to bring the level of liquid up to right below the top of the beef. I didn't have to add much beef stock. Looking at this recipe, it says 1.5 cups. So the version I had basically adds 2x the amount of wine. That could very well be the issue, though the co-worker made the same version with the same ratio of wine I did, so I guess it's also the type of wine used. I probably need to use one of the types you guys suggested.
I honestly think you are confusing boozy with something else. If you followed the directions of the recipe, it would boil for at least 30 minutes. I'm not sure how this 5% thing works since you are starting with a wine that's probably only 13% alcohol. I think if you make this again, use a light bodied wine like Pinot Noir (aka Burgundy) or Chianti. Do a little looking at the bottle before you buy. Heavy tannic wines like Cabernet do not make good cooking wine.
Cooking for longer may actually have concentrated the wine flavours in the sauce. Adjusting the proportions of the liquids in a recipe like this to suit your taste is a very normal part of cooking.
I think we need a clarification on the term “boozy”. Do you mean a strong alcoholic taste or do you mean the wine flavor was very intense?
By "boozy" I mean there seemed to be a strong alcohol flavor coming through. It's potentially wine flavor, because I don't drink wine I wouldn't know, but it had a stronger alcohol flavor that the other batch.
Julia Child uses 3 cups of wine. I know recipes that use a whole bottle of wine. https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/member/views/julia-childs-beef-bourguignon-50159695 I think it has to do with the strength of the wine and how long you cooked it afterwards. I would cook it more and sample it along the way.
After Deglaze the pan with the red wine and cook on high heat for 1 minute, scraping the bottom of the pan. but prior to adding the beef stock, reduce the wine to almost a syrup. Most of the alcohol will be driven off, along with most of the water. When the, relatively large volume of beef stock is added, the concentration of alcohol will be greatly reduced. You may need to add additional liquid to make up for the missing wine and You may need to adjust how the garlic is handled, so to not over cook at high heat.
Edited to remove wrong chemistry.
The 5% is true but not true. If you drive the volume of liquid below 5% you won't just end up with 100% alcohol, it will probably remain 5% of the total volume of liquid until it's all gone.
@SteveS, edited to clarify, I'm talking about 5% concentration in remaining liquid. I am unclear why you thought I was talking about ending up with a 100% concentration.
I'm confused by this 5% claim. In this article, it looks like it can go way below 5% but never completely to 0% https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878450X16300427
@Steves, According to MaxW, I don't understand azeotropes and am wrong about the 5% (Probably true.) However quick read of your link, those percentages are after preparing a dish, and dilution figures predominantly in some of them, not just cooking it off. For example the first recipe for the vinaigrette with no cooking, the reduction below 5% is just dilution of ale with oil, water, and other ingredients.
@SteveS. The steamed fish and braised beef both appear to support the contention that evaporation alone can drive alcohol content well below 5%.
+1 Almost every time I've run into the 'too boozy' situation, it's because someone was in a rush and didn't reduce the wine before adding another liquid
Temperature and cooking time affect alcohol levels
When cooking with wine or other alcohols, no matter the recipe, the important thing to look at is the temperature when applying the alcohol, and/or the temperature at which it cooks for a long period of time.
When applying the alcohol
In your recipe, since it isn't a very long cooking process, you will want the alcohol to leave early on in the recipe (when you apply it). When applying alcohol, I prefer to be an aggressive cook and raise the heat of my pan before adding in the wine for it to instantly puff and simmer, removing most of the alcohol at the application.
Reduction
I prefer early high heat to raising the heat and then reducing the wine because it's harder to get a level of heat needed for evaporation once the wine is in, and it's harder to judge of the alcohol level too. You can cook until reduction, which will take care of most of the alcohol too as it will simmer, as mentioned by others in their answers.
When adding large quantities of wine to a stew or other oven-cooked recipes with long cook times, the cooking temperature must be above the temperature required to evaporate alcohol, and it should go a long way in keeping only the wine flavors.
Conclusion
For me, the benefit of an initial high heat is keeping the flavorful liquid while having a fast evaporation of alcohol. (Side note: When you see pans "flambéing" on TV, it's because high heat makes for fumes susceptible to burning, especially with gas elements.)
Naturally, removing all of the alcohol isn't possible, you will always have a certain amount left, whatever the method. For your Beef Bourguignon, I would advise both high heat before incorporating the wine and then some simmer reduction. Hope this helps!
By reducing the liquid contents you should boil off virtually all of the alcohol.
The phase diagram for water-ethanol is shown below which I copied from here. The ethanol-water ratio is on the X-axis and the temperature of the liquid and vapor is shown on the Y-axis.
The gist is two-fold.
First by distillation you can't get more than about 95% ethanol. Ethanol and water form an azetrope which is about 95% ethanol and 5% water and boils at 78.2 degrees C (173 Fahrenheit).
Second for liquids with much more water than alcohol than water, the evaporating vapor will have more alcohol than water. So the more you boil the liquid contents down the less ethanol will remain in the liquid.
So for your recipe to reduce the alcohol follow the recipe till the part where it says
"Deglaze the pan with the red wine and cook on high heat for 1 minute, scraping the bottom of the pan. Add the beef stock..."
At that point you can boil down the liquid by 1 cup to say 2.5 cups get rid of most of the ethanol. Then add 1 cups of water to replenish the total amount of liquid and follow the rest of the recipe.
If you boil off more than 1 cup then there will be even less alcohol remaining.
Note that the alcohol is also further decreased since you simmer uncovered with the onions and carrots in a later step until the liquid is reduced.
I think this is really more of a comment. This doesn't actually answer the question, "Can you guys tell me if a different red wine would taste less boozy or do I just need to reduce the amount of wine in the recipe and up the amount of stock?"
I assume that less boozy means less alcohol. There shouldn't be any appreciable amount. (A great chemical analysis could probably find a very very tiny bit.... ie a drop of ethanol in a bathtub of water. )
-1, for many reasons. 1) assuming that boozy taste and amount of alcohol are linearly related, 2) for attacking the other answer. 3) for wording it in a way where readers have to look twice until they realize how it is connected to the question. 4) because according to most sources, your assertion is incorrect. At normal cooking times, a lot of the alcohol stays in the food, and even at very long times, some of it is retained. See https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/659/.
@rumtscho but if you boil off most of the liquid, you boil off most of the alcohol. And of course most of the water. That's not a reason to support this answer, but to support the one it comments on, which suggests doing that then diluting with stock
@MaxW with the wine forming less than half the total liquid it's highly unlikely that the boozy sensation is actually due to alcohol content (which would be around 6% assuming it doesn't reduce at all due to evaporation, which it will a little).
If you'd like to respond to another answer, please comment on it - but do so respectfully. ("...is just confused." is probably not the best phrasing). I'm removing that portion of your answer. As for the rest... it's unclear if it answers the question, as noted by Catija and rumtscho here, and also comments on the question.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.153865
| 2018-01-30T19:16:55 |
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41269
|
How to reduce the taste of horseradish in hummus?
I followed The Pec Shef's hummus recipe and I am getting a strong horseradish after-taste in my hummus. I only used 6 cans of chickpeas instead of 8, and a 9.25oz jar of horseradish. Is there anything I can add to the mix to reduce or neutralize the strong horseradish taste?
That is a huge batch of hummus! Is it supposed to be the only thing you eat? If you make smaller batches (and taste test before you add all the seasonings) you won't end up with a huge wasted batch if you make a mistake like this.
Horseradish in hummus? Someone needs to talk sense into that Pec Shef guy.
Yes. Make it again and don't add horseradish. I'm totally serious - no traditional hummus recipe in the known universe has horseradish in it. There is nothing you are going to be able to do to your existing batch to remove that flavor, other than diluting it, but I don't think you'd be able to dilute it enough to be worth the effort.
Agreed, leave it out, or if you like some of the flavor, use less. I expected that the recipe must provide some dubious health/nutrition reason for the horseradish, but there isn't on - it really does look like it's just for flavor. Maybe it's better for you if it tastes bad? (And "one jar" of horseradish and "one can" of tahini - hope yours are the same size as his!)
+1 I mostly second the part about the whole "known universe" ^_^
I should have looked up some other recipes first. Must have been hypnotized by the pecs.
One way you could reduce the potency of the taste is by adding more chickpeas, but that assumes you like the taste of horseradish and just want it to be more subtle. (It also assumes you have a more reasonably sized batch that doesn't already have a whole jar of horseradish in it.)
Once you're using more than one or two cans of chickpeas, you should consider buying a bag of dried chickpeas and making them from scratch. A typical sized bag (16oz) makes a lot of chickpeas, they taste better, and it costs less money.
Third, when adding ingredients with a strong flavor, or a flavor that could find disagreeable if having too much, add a little bit at a time and taste it as you go. This is a good rule to follow with any dish, especially when salting.
If you want to try horseradish again, just make the hummus without adding the horseradish. Then when you have a meal, set aside a portion of the hummus and add a little horseradish to taste.
A suggestion I'd make next time, is using a few cloves of garlic (raw) instead of horseradish.
Last, maybe it's opinion, but this recipe is ridiculous. I'd make a serving size this larger if I were having a party. Be prepared to have nothing but hummus for every meal for the next week if you want to use it up before it goes bad. If you are going through the trouble of making hummus, unlike "The Pec Chef", you should also try to use as many fresh ingredients as possible. No bottled lemon juice, no canned chickpeas.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.154746
| 2014-01-19T17:29:20 |
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24811
|
What kind of pan works best with a waterbath?
Whenever I bake cheesecake or flan, my springform pan always leaks into the water bath or vice/versa. Is there a better type of pan to use when baking with a water bath?
See also http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/16208/how-do-i-wrap-a-spring-form-pan-in-foil-so-it-doesnt-leak-when-i-bake-in-a-wate/16330#16330
You pretty much have to use the sprinform pan with cheesecakes, otherwise you can't get the cheesecake out of the pan. If you don't care to remove the cheesecake from the pan whole, then you can use anything you want—a deep cake pan would work well, for example.
There are two ways to help keep the springform pan from leaking:
Wrap the sprinform pan (the entire bottom, and up the sides) in aluminum foil. Use two layers of foil, especially if you're using the cheap thin stuff.
Find a round cake pan slightly larger than your sprinform pan (say, a 10" wide, 3" deep pan with a 9" springform). Sit the springform pan inside the cake pan, then put the cake pan in the bain-marie (so the water isn't actually touching the springform pan). This suggestion comes from Cooks Illustrated (sorry, paywall), who tested this and found the small gap doesn't matter.
If you're doing a lot of cheesecakes, then you can get a 10"x3" cake pan on Amazon for $10–15.
Consider a round silicone baking pan.
It'd be impossible to get the cheesecake out of it.
@derobert no, it is really easy to get the cheesecake out of it. This thing is flexible and non-stick, you just peel it off the cake.
@rumtscho Interesting. You can do that without smashing to sides of the cheesecake?
@derobert Yes. They work very well. Here is a random site confirming this: http://www.favoritefreezerfoods.com/best-cheesecake-recipe.html
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.155258
| 2012-07-02T23:35:31 |
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36249
|
Is there a food that is halfway between a cheesecake and regular cake?
While living in Korea, there was one special bakery I found that had a cake that I can only describe as being halfway between cheesecake and regular cake. It was creamy like a cheesecake, but had a density somewhere between an actual cheesecake and the airy texture of a regular out-of-the-box cake.
It had the wonderful flavor of a cheesecake, but was lighter and fluffier. I would love to bake something like this so I can try it again. Is there a name for such a cake?
The dessert looked like cake from the outside: it had tiny holes everywhere, albeit smaller than what you would see in a regular cake. It was also shaped into a loaf, and the top would rise a bit. It was more dense than a regular out-of-the-box cake, and definitely had a flavor similar to cheesecake. I would have called it a "cheesecake flavored cake" at first impression. It also had a bounce to it, if I pressed it down, it would bounce back up to a degree.
Perhaps you're looking for the soufflé cheesecake, which has a moderate amount of flour in it. This style is also popular in Japan.
The other style popular in Japan is the "rare cheesecake", which is set with gelatin instead of being baked. I think this is probably denser than what you're referring to, so I left it out of my first edit, but worth considering if the soufflé style doesn't match your expectations.
In Germany, some quark cheesecakes have flour in them as well, and those often have a more sturdy texture with a bit more air than the New York style.
Ooh, this looks like it may be it!
In America what you're calling "rare cheesecake" is just called "no-bake cheesecake".
The no-bake cheesecake I usually encounter in the US eschews gelatin in favor of lemon juice and sweetened condensed milk, and requires no heat at all other than for the crust, so I consider it a slightly different beast than the sturdier gelatin based "rare cheesecake" popular in Japan
Japanese cheesecake is a good option since it's airier than regular but with the traditional flavors of cheesecake (minus the graham cracker crust).
It sounds like it was just a fluffy cheesecake. You didn't describe anything that sounds like it was regular cake, no mention of crumbs or any texture that'd indicate flour and leavening and such. There's plenty of room for variety among cheesecakes; they can be dense and rich, or light and fluffy like the one you describe.
Generally, cheesecakes are fluffy simply because there's some air beaten into them one way or another. I've seen hacky low-effort recipes that use things like marshmallows or cool whip to achieve this. The more traditional way is to beat egg whites to soft peaks before folding them in, thus incorporating air. I don't have a recipe to recommend, but if you search for "fluffy cheesecake" you'll find plenty of starting places, like this one apparently taken from Cook's Illustrated.
I wasn't sure how else to describe it, but your answer has helped. It was crumby. If I just looked at it, I would have thought it was cake but with much smaller and finer holes. I'll update my question with this information.
@CoryKlein It's definitely possibly for a light cheesecake to have a crumb-like texture - if those crumbs were still creamy and melty in your mouth, it still sounds like a cheesecake to me. And with a decent amount of egg for structure, the springiness can happen with cheesecakes too.
In Mexico, a popular desert is called Pay de Queso (which would translate to Cheese Pie). it is similar to cheesecake, but less dense, and less sweet. It, like Cheesecake, can be eaten plain, or with fruit or other toppings as well.
In my experience, it's also common that the terms Pay de Queso (Cheese Pie) and Pastel de Queso (Cheesecake) are used interchangeably in Mexico, so finding a recipe for proper Pay de Queso could prove challenging.
Some (untested) recipes can be found here (in Spanish), and here is one in English
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.155443
| 2013-08-23T17:25:37 |
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87660
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Frying donuts split along the sides
So, I rolled out some lovely old-fashioned donuts and cut them out... got my oil to 340... and proceeded to fry them. Instead of lovely “blistering” at the top of the donut, mine seemed to split along the sides... looking like 2 halves of a donut held together in the middle.
What could have caused this? This is my first foray at frying donuts.
Out of curiosity, what recipe were you using, or did you figure out what was happening?
I was using the ChefSteps recipe... and when I was done mixing, i didn't realize that the dough was indeed that sticky... so I kept adding flour... It was definitely too dry
I'd guess your doughnut dough was too dry.
I've seen doughnuts with a pale ring around the sides, I'd guess it came from either less contact with oil (if floating fairly high) or from the sides stretching as the heat made the dough puff up, which meant less direct oil contact for the newly stretched dough surface.
For dough to split instead of stretch while cooking, I'd look to similar reasons this happens, eg, in bread - which can include being dry (and especially the surface drying to form a skin, which doesn't stretch), not rising enough beforehand so the "oven spring" is overenthusiastic - which might be a cause for yeast doughnuts though not other varieties, and so on.
With the information that those who tried the doughnuts found them "dry" and "crunchy", I'd go with my first guess of there not being enough moisture, so the dough wasn't flexible enough. If they sat out long enough to form a dried skin, this would be especially likely to cause splitting. Moister dough, or keeping covered better, or brushing with water, etc just before frying, might all work to ameliorate this problem.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.155796
| 2018-02-10T16:24:36 |
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107600
|
Fermentation Brine Percentage and Tannins
This is probably a 2 part question.
When determining how much salt to add to my brine... what is the best method? Is the percentage based on the weight of the veggies or is it the weight of the water into which the veggies will be fermenting?
Where the heck can I find things like grape leaves, oak leaves, etc to add tannins to keep my veggies crisp?
Edit:
So... to further clarify... would it be "advisable" to determine how much water I need to cover my X grams of "things to be fermented"... the weigh that water and calculate salt percentage... or, can I just take 1L of water... weigh that... calculate my salt... then cover what's in the vessel?
Calculate your brine percentage by dividing the weight of salt by the weight of water, then multiply by 100. Most vegetable ferments are in the 1.5% - 5% range. It appears many people find the 2-3% range ideal. If you can't find oak or grape, I have seen that some folks use tea leaves for added tannin.
Thanks for the reply! I guess my question was more esoteric than that. I am good with calculating percentages... I guess I was asking (and I'll edit) do I base my salt percent off the weight of the "stuff being fermented" (e.g. I have 500g of cucumbers, I'll put them in my vessel... cover them with water... remove the water... then weigh it... then calculate my salt percentage). I've seen some people do that... and that seem very cumbersome.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.155965
| 2020-04-15T11:11:17 |
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95344
|
Food Rancidity Question
Since rancid oil produces free radicals, would that rancid oil if mixed with fresh oil cause the fresh oil to go rancid as well?
Hi Ricky and welcome! Just wanted to say that the best way to thank someone for a good answer is to upvote their answer.
I doubt about the needing of an answer as it is self-contained in the question but it seems worth a chemistry clarification.
Oxidative rancidification goes indeed via radicalic pathways.
In "fresh" oil, the process will be eased by, e.g., peroxides already formed in the already rancid oil that you would eventually mix.
Peroxides are relatively unstable and the homolitic breaking of their O-O bonds leads to two radicals that re-initiate the process.
This is how the chemistry goes.
However I can't judge how faster will be the rancidification of the fresh oil as compared to that of the same let alone. There should be a difference but perhaps indecteable from an organoleptic stand point. Except for the following...
Beside the fact that new rancid products form or not, a small amount of deteriorated rancid oil can certainly ruin the fresh oil depending on how it will be used in the kitchen. Some mixing could be done to fry probably but should be strictly avoided to season a salad, isn't? This is the only part in which I do agree with another answer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancidification
That's interesting. Thank you. I assume if one were to introduce a tiny amount of rancidity into a large volume of 'good' oil then the antioxidants within the good oil would stop the rancification process?
Correct. That is quite possible.Still you ease the rancidification of the new oil as for antioxidants get consumed upon mixing. It will really depend on the antioxidants conc as well as the mixing ratio as well as the rancidity level of the spoiled oil.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: No - because the free radicals are very short lived and highly reactive - each free radical will generally only interact with one other molecule before being destroyed. This could cause degradation of reactive nutrients such as vitamins and other nutrients in the oil, but is unlikely to cause much problem with other foods (I would guess). They also have a very limited interaction with the food which the oil is covering (surface area only), so they have a limited chance of causing damage. You are much much more likely to have bacterial or fungal degradation of the food than free radical.
I would have thought that you are more likely to throw the other food out because it is coated in unpleasant tasting oil rather than be worried about the degradation of the food.
Note that rancidification is the production of smelly compounds, mostly aldehydes, from the long-chain fatty acids found in fats and oils. This is a property peculiar to fats and oils and is generally not a problem for other food types as they do not contain large amounts of the fatty acids, so can't get "rancid" as such, though they can be considered spoiled if the fats within them (e.g. fat in meat) go rancid.
Thank you for the information. So if rancid oil mixed with fresh oil, it wouldn't make the 'fresh' oil rancid, I would guess.
It would not cause the fresh oil molecules to become rancid - however, you would not be able to distinguish the fresh oil from the rancid if fully mixed. What you would have is a diluted solution of rancid oil. It would still taste and smell bad.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.156098
| 2019-01-04T09:03:23 |
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92106
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Olive Garden ‘Spicy Calabrian Chicken’ Recipe
I recently had Olive Garden’s ‘Spicy Calabrian Chicken’. They were spicy chicken tenders. They were great. Lots of heat, but I could still taste all the flavors and the heat dissipated, leaving me craving more.
Does anyone, especially anyone whose had it, know how to make this dish?
Thanks.
Edit: a couple of people seem confused and think I duplicated my question. I've gotten fussed at before on these forums for asking multiple question in one post. This question was about a recipe using a pepper. My other question is about identifying a pepper.. Thanks.
Possible duplicate of What type of chili in Olive Garden ‘Calabrian Chicken’
Not “possible” — same question asked by same person.
@Fabby It's not a duplicate question. One asks to identify the pepper and one asks for a recipe.
@Dalton unfortunately, we are not a recipe sharing site. You can ask questions about ingredients or techniques, but we avoid recipes.
@moscafj : restaurant mimicry questions are allowed. There's even a tag for them. "what can I make using (ingredient)" or "does anyone have any recipes to make (generic dish)" are the ones that aren't allowed, because those don't have a definite answer.
@moscafj : and they're also frowned upon when you can easily find it w/ google, but it's a new enough recipe that it's not yet up at https://olivegardenathome.blogspot.com/
@Joe recipe comprehension and improvement are on topic. "Do you have a recipe for..." is not on topic. If the OP wants to give a starting point, and ask for improvements, that would work. But my interpretation of the policy is that "does anyone know how to make this" is a recipe request. That's why voted to close.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.156377
| 2018-09-06T00:36:20 |
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100083
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its harmful to eat not very well cooked beef?
its harmful to eat not very well cooked meat? i have noticed in youtube some recipes, that the beef is half cook, with the inside red or pinky, and the outside browned, i know that eating raw animals like beef and other meats existing could be harmful because the bacterias that it might contain. for example maybe when making for example a beef wellington, that its baked pretty thick to get cook well and it does have in the inside that pinky color after baked, well i dont know if is there a posibility that the meat does really cook well in the inside killing bacterias such like salmonella for example?..if yes that which means it doesnt matter if it looks pinky inside?. i accustom to cook the meat very well and longer enough, same as other meats that might be white or red ones...
Asking about meat this generally won't get you great answers. Are you asking about beef, pork, lamb, fish, chicken? Also, a lot of how well meat gets cooked is cultural so what country are you living in? As dyes and hues of spices can colour meat quite drastically.
@JCrosby i mean specifically beef, but this also can apply to other known red meats, even white ones.
so I'm guessing you have never tried steak tartare...
@Luciano lol never i would try something like that xD, egg yolks are passable to eat but nore meat xDxDxD
If you open up your mind and try new dishes you'll be blown away by the flavours. Or not, but at least you'll learn something new :)
I am not a doctor, and this is not medical advice--just my view of the current best practices recommended by sources I trust.
It depends on the kind of bacteria or parasites commonly found on the food in question. Chickens are often infected with Campylobacter or Salmonella, and those bacteria can get into the flesh of the meat. So cooking chicken thoroughly is strongly recommended. And in my opinion, raw chicken isn't that palatable anyway so there's no reason to take the risk.
It used to be common for pork to be infected with Trichinella (a parasite) which also made its way into the meat, so it was recommended that pork be cooked well. Nowadays that's actually pretty rare, and you can even find irradiated pork that is free of parasites and thus safe to eat semi-rare.
Fish harbor parasites. Sushi bars kill them by hard-freezing the fish to kill the parasites before thawing and serving the fish raw (at least in the US--Japanese often just take their chances). It is not recommended that you try this at home--cook your fish thoroughly and save sushi for a night out at a bar you trust.
Beef contamination (such as E.Coli) is generally found only on the surface of the meat and not on the deep interior. So a steak well-seared on the outside and rare in the center is generally safe (and delicious--rare beef is juicy and flavorful while well-done beef is leathery and bland). Grinding moves all that surface around, so ground beef should be cooked well, unless you take special precautions like irradiation or sear-then-grind.
Lamb is similar to beef but current recommendations are to cook to 145, which is distinctly medium. I personally like my lamb a little pinker than that, but that's my choice--I don't have a lot of information on the specific risks there.
Fruit and vegetables are similar to beef, in that contamination is generally found only on the outside. Some are washed with chemical disinfectants; others can be simply peeled. Pre-packaged pre-cut fruit mixes and salads are notorious for being overhandled and contaminated by grocers. Buy whole, and make the salads yourself.
If by "very well cooked" you mean "charred to death on a grill", there is some evidence linking over-charred meats to some cancers, but it's not definitive at this point.
Of course nothing is completely safe, and food-borne illness can happen regardless of best intentions and practices. You must decide your own practices based on your health and level of comfort.
Great answer! Another thing that could be added: It is strongly suggested, that pregnant women in particular shouldn't eat any kind of raw meat! This is in part because of the above mentioned possible infections which could endanger the unborn child, but in particular the toxoplasmosis parasite. It is not dangerous to a healthy adult human, but can be devastating to an unborn.
The short answer to your question is simply, “No, eating ‘not very well cooked beef’ will not be harmful to you.”
That said, there are a few mitigating factors that should be considered. Bacteria like to live on the surface of beef, so on cuts like roasts or steaks having it not cooked all the way through (so it would be pink to red, varying degrees of “rare”) is fine and in fact some people prefer this taste to having it well done all the way through. However, when cooking ground beef (or beef mince) you should cook it all the way through as this cut is made up of tiny pieces of other cuts of meat (and potentially other cows) so the chance for contamination is higher. The same logic can apply to mechanically tenderized cuts (so a machine tenderizes the meat by force or injection) and as a result of the machine coming into contact with so many cuts of meat in rapid succession there is an increased chance of contamination there as well.
I have included a link that I think would help you as well.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.156548
| 2019-07-09T17:30:00 |
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|
100070
|
What are the Purposes of the Types of Meringue that are used for Pastry?
i have seen a lot of recipes, which calls french meringue mostly in spongy cakes in the japanese cheesecake for example and other cake recipes, but for the decoration and filling of them are used another kind of meringue that could be swiss or italian meringue, also even a mix of buttercream with italian meringue, or heavy cream with meringue, or just cream with something, or just buttercream, but what i want to know is what are the purposes of each type of meringue in pastries,cakes, even in ice creams for a more creamy texture maybe. i know the different and delicate as well preparation of those, specifically about how the sugarr its join together. something that i know its that the french meringue its more weak to keep stand and firm for while than swiss and italian ones or not?.
great question.
first of all, each meringue originated from a different culture and as such is more prevalent within recipes of that culture. more modern recipes might choose to use a different variant of meringue to get a more nuanced texture than in classic recipes.
I would like to refer you to a great article about this issue. here is an excerpt:
French:
sometimes referred to as "ordinary"—is the most basic of the trio and the least stable until baked. Egg whites are beaten until they coagulate and form soft peaks, at which point sugar is slowly incorporated until the mixture has attained full volume; is soft, airy, and light; and stands at attention when the whip is lifted. French meringue is customarily spooned or piped into different forms, including dessert shells (such as vacherins) and cake layers (as in a dacquoise), and baked, later to be topped with fruit, mousse, or whipped cream. It is also often folded into batters (for lady fingers, sponge cakes, soufflés, and the like) and baked.
Swiss:
is prepared by gently beating egg whites and sugar in a pan that sits above boiling water, without touching it. When the mixture reaches 120 to 130 degrees Fahrenheit and the sugar is completely dissolved, the mixture is pulled off the heat and beaten vigorously to increase and attain full volume and then at a lower speed until cool and very stiff. Swiss meringue is smoother, silkier, and somewhat denser than French meringue and is often used as a base for buttercream frostings.
Italian:
is made by drizzling 240-degree Fahrenheit sugar syrup into whites that have already been whipped to hold firm peaks. Whipping continues until the meringue is fully voluminous, satiny, stiff, and cool. Italian meringue is often used to frost cakes (alone or as a base for buttercream frostings), to top filled pies, or to lighten ice creams, sorbets, and mousses.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.157091
| 2019-07-08T21:29:36 |
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100262
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How long should I let my new sourdough starter ferment until I can use it?
I am making my first sourdough starter (and bread of course). I started it 2 days ago, and it looked quite good while in the fermentation process. I only made a small quantity with approx. 1/4 cup of all purpose flour (as I didn't have any Rye Flour) and about less of 1/4 cup of water.
I then let it rest for 24 hours in my kitchen cabinet. I don't want to discard any of the starter, so I want to know what is the minimum time-frame I should wait and leave it to ferment until I can use it. The first day the fermentation seemed very good, with that frothy consistency, and with that ugly fermentation smell, I however, didn't test by floating it by the way.
EDIT: seems already dead my starter after the third day, so i gonna try to make a new one again :P, its my first time making this though...
To make a sourdough starter work you have to create an environment where tasty yeast and bacteria will succeed and harmful or gross microbes will be either crowded out or unable to tolerate the acidity.
This environment is created by continually feeding the starter. That is, adding a consistent ratio of fresh starch to consume.
I read an analogy, perhaps Peter Reinhart's, that feeding a starter is like mowing a lawn. The big weeds won't get the upper hand if the lawn is kept consistently mowed.
Your sourdough recipe will have a ratio of starter to feed for each feeding. If you choose to not discard any starter then Everytime you feed you will have to use more and more flour to maintain the ratio. Depending on the recipe this could double everyday. It's not sustainable.
It sounds like you aren't feeding the sourdough at all. Depending on the temperature it will take only a short time, perhaps a day or two, before nasty microbes get the upper hand and your starter will rot. Believe me, this is an unpleasant experience.
If you are determined to not throw away starter you can collect the discarded portion in the fridge where the fermentation will be slowed. This can be used as filler in other baked goods but will not provide much sourdough flavor or lift until the starter is ready.
At first I hated throwing away starter but I realized I was costing myself a great deal of hassle to save pennies worth of flour.
When feeding a new starter, the amount of time depends on many variables including the feeding ratio and schedule, floor, present microbes, temperature, and desired pungency. Most recipes seem to call for around ten days and that matches my personal experience.
well mine its not frothy anymore in the third day...looks like the microbes won this time :_v ,so i cant do anything if this happen? if so i just gonna throw it away and start a new one, its my first time doing this lol...
It's a little difficult to give specific advice not seeing your starter. In general if the starter goes bad it will change color, grow mold, or smell terrible. If any of those are true then throw it out and start over. Otherwise just keep feeding it.
ok i am starting a new one with 5 tbsp of all purpouse flour + 5 of water, and i put this in a glass jar. so how should i feed this and how many days are enough to wait till i use it?
Recipes and timing vary and produce starters that vary in pungency and rising power. Kind Arthur floor is a good resource. https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sourdough-starter-recipe
There are many things you can do with discarded sourdough, you don't have to throw it away. It's half flour and half water, so you can substitute in onto your usual recipes, and get an interesting taste as well. I make; pancakes, crumpets, other kinds of bread, crispbread...
A stable sourdough will need some time to develop. During the first one or two weeks, fluctuating activity is perfectly normal, in fact, a vigorous initial activity followed by a lull is a frequent pattern. The rule of thumb is that unlike you see mold or other discoloration and the smell is somewhere between floury, yeasty or pleasantly acidic, you are probably on a good track, in the first days, the smell can be even a bit strange. Start over if you see mold, for low activity, check your recipe and environment (e.g. temperature), continue feeding and see if it perks up.
After a week to ten days, you should notice a “behavioral pattern” in your sourdough - raising and deflating in a similar time for a given feeding ratio and ambient temperature - which indicates a certain stability of the culture. That’s your cue and I recommend you wait until that stage before actually baking with it. If you want to use it sooner (e.g. to use up discard), adding bit of yeast to the dough can support a good raise even if the sourdough isn’t fully mature.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.157311
| 2019-07-18T17:43:56 |
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|
88790
|
What is an appropriate water to yeast ratio for hydrating yeast for bagels?
I've been doing a lot of bagel making lately... my bagels are "on point", except they aren't rising as much as you would see in a typical bagel shop... in fact, I've noticed they kind of "deflate" a little as time goes on.
Is there a liquid/yeast ratio I should consider when "hydrating" or "waking" my yeast? I'm thinking about adding another gram or 2 of yeast, but I don't want to "drown it"... I don't even know if that makes sense as a thing, but I thought I'd ask before I start wasting flour.
540g High Gluten (12-14%) Flour
140g Cold Water
7g Malted Barley
7g Fine Kosher Salt
-- Yeast Mixture--
7g Active Dry Yeast
20g Sugar
150g Warm Water
I let the yeast, sugar, and water "activate" for 20 minutes.
I put the "dry ingredients" into the mixer and mix them up... then I up the speed to medium and add the yeast mixture and the cold water... I mix for up to 4 minutes... then when a cohesive ball is formed I put it on a granite counter top and knead by hand for a further 3-5 minutes...
After that I let it rest covered with a damp dish cloth for a least an hour...
After resting... I punch down the dough... measure out equal portions... then I make rings...
I boil each bagel on each side for 1.5-2 minutes...
After boiling... egg wash, toppings, bake for 25-30 minutes on 425.
Could you [edit] your post to include the ratios and methods you are using at the moment, please? You have a very specific question (which is good), but with yeasted doughs, it’s good to look at the whole picture even when modifying only one aspect.
Btw. when I read “deflating” I immediately think “overproved”.
Ok... I've added ingredients
At what stage are they deflating, are you letting the shaped dough rise before boiling?
Yes... I put them into the refrigerator overnight... they just don’t ever get really “puffed up” like you would see at a bagel shop... then after we put them “away” maybe a couple of hours they start to “deflate”... don’t get me wrong they are still “bagel-like” with some “height”, but I’m looking for really thick bagels
You're missing a step. You have to let them proof after forming them into rings. Just like how for bread making you always have to double proof, or else it'll be like pizza or pita dough.
After that they should be fine, just take care not to handle them too aggressively while moving to and from the boiling water (Again, just like bread. You deflate the first proofing intentionally but after the second proofing you have to maintain the air bubbles that make up your crumb)
Your ingredients ratios are on point, same as I use. Be careful not to over-proof, it causes deflation. Also, you might not be kneading quite enough. I ran into these issues myself on my quest for the perfect homemade bagels.
Knead 15 minutes and proof at room temp (70° F) for 1 hour. Portion into nice rubbery balls and pinch them into rings. I find this technique easier with a drier dough. Let rest 10 minutes then stretch them a bit. At this point you could either put them in an airtight container in the fridge over-night, remove and go straight into the water bath. I do 20 seconds on each side otherwise they get too tough and also might deflate. I always leave overnight for morning bagels. Or you could leave on the counter to raise just a bit then into the bath. If left out on the counter for second raise, only let raise to 3/4 of full raise, otherwise they will deflate from the bath. I personally find they are more forgiving if left overnight in the fridge. In either case, after the bath they should go straight into a preheated oven.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.157685
| 2018-04-01T02:54:04 |
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28083
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Substitute for Kirsch in Leckerli (Basel Lackerli) cookies?
With the U.S. holiday season soon upon us, I've been anxious to start making my annual batches of Leckerli cookies (a Swiss cookie, flavored with cloves and candied citrus!).
However, disaster has struck. I am out of Kirsch, and can't find another bottle locally! I think I bought the original in Boston, when I lived there... but rural Maine doesn't offer the same grocery opportunities.
So, my question is, does anyone know of a reasonable substitute for Kirsch? It's basically a cherry liqueur, just not sweet like a liqueur. "Cherry brandy" might be a better description.
I haven't tried real Kirsch and so I don't know if the taste is close, but you could try soaking dried cherries in brandy - you'll end up with cherry-flavored brandy and brandy-flavored cherries.
Rumtscho's answer reminded me that for my Christmas Stollen, I soak my raisins and candied fruit in warmed Southern Comfort to bring out the fruit flavors.
I would use any uncolored brandy made from distilled fruit. Himbeergeist, sliwowitz, or what you can lay your hands on.
Kirsch doesn't taste much like cherries, and I suspect that it functions more as a solvent for some of the aroma in the spices than for adding its own taste. Even though it does contribute a bit, the taste will be subtle, and other slight fruity notes from a different fruit brandy will blend with the heavy spices just as well.
In a pinch, you could use a colored brandy too, like Chantre. But it will add more of its own flavor, and while it can make a good combination, it will be further from the original than a random obstwasser.
I would avoid any liqueurs, they will add way too much foreign taste, and also won't have enough alcohol to solve the spices in the same way.
Ah, thanks! I'm pretty sure I can lay my hands on some good brandy. I was worried that I'd miss the cherry, but now that your answer makes me consider it, yeah, you don't really get cherry tones, you get more of the candied citrus. Thanks for the explanation, too.
On a second thought, I removed the grappa suggestion, as it will probably bring in too much of its own sharp flavor. A milder flavor will be better in this case.
Maybe Maraschino liqueur? not the stuff that comes with clown nose cherries in it, but the real stuff. If your local liquor store sells kirsch, they might sell this. Luxardo is the brand I buy.
if his local liquor store sold kirsch, he wouldn't be asking this question!
The question is a substitute for kirsch that his local store may have. Luxardo fits the bill.
I haven't tried it, but I have a cherry Grand Marnier that tastes divine. Let me know how you liked it. I live in Paris. I'm not sure you can get it in the U.S., but if you can you should try it.
the closest thing to Kirsch is domestic Moonshine.
No, not at all.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:57.158013
| 2012-10-29T00:46:04 |
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