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95842
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salamande(?): name of bread
Last weekend, I had a delicious bread, whose name was Sal-ra-man-d. Since English is not my native language, its name was written in non-english. It sounds like french. But I don't know its exact name. It is somewhat like a pound cake, with some cheese flavor. I think it is made of cream cheese. Is here anyone who knows its origin, or its original name. It is very hard to google what this bread really is.
Could you include the Korean name of the pastry (in Hangul)? I took my best guess (살라만ㄷ) and Google Translate told me it meant Salamanca - although I see that Salamanca should really be written 살라망카, so maybe Google Translate doesn't know what it's talking about. If it is meant to be Salamanca, maybe there's a pastry called Salamanca (though I've never heard of it), or maybe it's just someone's idea of a pastry eaten in Spain.
"cream cheese bread" doesn't tend to be an English thing ... I'd say it's probably from a Slavic or Scandinavian area, but I'm just finding a lot of recipes for "cream cheese bread" (eg, https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-cheese-danish-bread-breakfast-recipes-from-the-kitchn-162823 ) without what the name is in its original language.
@Juhasz As you said, its Korean name is 살라망드(your guess is nearly perfect, notice that a Korean letter must contains at least one vowel). But only Korean bakeries has this name of bread and it is little weird to me.
Thanks. I thought that ㄷ looked wrong on its own. I like Joe's idea about something Scandinavian. I don't know enough about those cuisines to wager a guess, though.
@Juhasz I'm Scandinavian, and that doesn't look or sound Scandinavian to me. Cream cheese is also not a Scandi thing, although there's a wide range of not entirely dissimilar dairy products like quark.
Note page 24 of this Korean baking magazine, dating from 2015; it gives a recipe for a cherry 샬라망드 (note the very slight difference in hangeul spelling) - it seems very much like a cream cheese cake.
Is this it? It's tough to tell what the topping is from your picture...
https://www.spain-recipes.com/orange-cake.html
it looks a lot like a cotton cheesecake. I found a blog discussing it, salamande bread... https://undodoc.com/12
According to this Korean blog post it is Salamande bread, and the packaging calls it "Taste of Europe". You know Koreans love a good European bakery.
Salamande is also covered in this blog post as well.
It seems the name is invented in Korea, because there is no post on Salamande outside Korea. Don't you think it is very strange.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.410570
| 2019-01-22T00:57:28 |
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|
41265
|
How to store clay dishes?
I’ve got some (partially glazed) clay dishes, the kind that are used often for Spanish tapas or as containers for some soft French goat cheese:
The problem: the clay draws in a lot of moisture when cleaning and they are continually damp. As a consequence, they mould very easily (both on the glazed and the unglazed surfaces). I’m already storing them on an open shelf and stack them shifted to let air enter but that doesn’t prevent the mould.
Surely there must be a way to store them safely – after all, they are used quite commonly in some kitchens.
Even though the countries where are mostly used are much drier than the UK, I can keep these in Germany (where mildewed bathrooms are common) without any mold or dampness. I can even store the unglazed ones, or one-side-glazed, without any problems. Not sure what the difference in handling them might be, maybe you are putting them through a dishwasher?
@rumtscho Handwash only, and my parents, who live in a dry place in southern France, actually have the same problem.
The trick is not storage, but washing. These types of dishes soak up loads of water if you dip them in. I wash these types of dishes in an empty sink and then try them right away. I would also never put them into the dishwasher.
If they get too damp you need to dry them our, the best way I've found is to warm an oven, turn it off, and then to put the dishes in leaving the door cracked open. The heat will drive the moisture out and the open door will allow the moisture to escape.
As for storage a dry cupboard should do just fine.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.410819
| 2014-01-19T13:07:50 |
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|
2877
|
Do bananas ripen better in rice sacks?
Okay, I know the title is a little ridiculous, but I swear I am not making this up. When I was a kid, my parents bought a lot of rice and a lot of bananas (among other things). They would get the big 25# sacks of rice, which seem to be made of several layers of kraft paper, and put them in a cabinet.
When they bought bananas that were a little too green to eat, they would put whole bunches into the rice sack for a day or two. Does that actually make any difference for ripening? If so, is it because of the rice? The paper bag? The cool, dry, dark environment in the cabinet? Something else entirely?
This question looks related, but I don't know if the extra conditions I've noted make a difference beyond what was noted in the answer there: Why does a brown paper bag speed ripening?
It's not just related; it's essentially identical. Every answer to that question applies here.
possible duplicate of Why does a brown paper bag speed ripening?
Same reasons. The porous material (Kraft paper) and shape of the bag are the important characteristics.
@hobo, I figured as much, but I wondered if the presence of the rice or the environment also had an effect that was not discussed in the other question.
I can't imagine it would have much significant effect. It's simply ethylene gas that causes the ripening.
I think we need to get bananas, rice sacks and brown paper bags and test it.
@LordTorgamus: Brown paper bags are made of Kraft paper, the same thing your rice bags are made of. Your parents probably used those for the same reason most people used brown paper bags...they are items that people commonly had around the house that served the purpose of concentrating the ethylene gas and yet were porous enough not to trap moisture from the respiration process.
Yeah, I would agree with the people in the comments, and make the assumption that it had to do with concentrating the ethylene gas from the bananas.
After a bit of googling, it looks like the rice bag trick might be popular because it apparently results in a nearly ideal, stable environment for ripening.
I imagine that the rice would keep the moisture level at a lower point, the bag would contain the gas, and the mass of the rice would decrease the temperature variants (assuming that is conducive to ripening)
I found an informative article which mentioned rice bags here:
http://monsterguide.net/how-to-ripen-bananas-quickly
The basic idea is - banana ripens fast due to ethylene secretion. As it ripens (and subsequently starts rotting really fast), it secretes ethylene, which not only fastens the ripening process but also leads to ripening of any other fruit kept close to the banana.
Placing bananas in bunches or in an enclosed environment like a sack means consolidation, which means more ethylene emitted in one area and faster ripening. Try placing a raw fruit near a banana which is ripening and see the magic :)
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.411026
| 2010-07-22T20:50:07 |
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|
2880
|
How can brown stains be removed from pots and pans?
I haven't been cooking for long — recent college grad — so I'm doing a lot of experimentation and making a lot of rookie mistakes. One of them is shown here for your viewing pleasure:
My mom gifted me this pan less than a year ago. She used it for over 15 years and kept it spotless the entire time, so I'm more than a little embarassed. I suspect that these stains were caused by stray drops of oil getting onto the bottom of the pan and getting burned on. Is that right, or were they caused by something else? I use an electric stove with resistive heating coils, if it makes a difference. And more importantly, how can I get this pan clean again?
I have a theory that what you've managed to do is cause the exact same reaction as what you're trying to do with season a cast iron pan -- effectively cook down the oil so it forms a tough, plastic-like surface. (I've done it in a few of my pans, and I find cleaning it whil fairly hot, and one of those free scrubby pads works pretty well)
I suspect that my 10 year old mention of 'free scrubby pads' was supposed to have been 'scratch free scrubby pads', like scotchbrite. Although the darker the color, the harder it is to remove.
I too use barKeepers Friend...love it. However, use a piece of crumpled up aluminum foil to scrub off the stain. It comes right off!
+1 for the aluminium idea! Steel wool will destroy the pan (small scratches, making it more sticky). Aluminium is softer than steel. Good idea.
BKF worked okay, but not great, on its own. Foil on its own didn't do much. But the combination really is amazing! Here's an "after" photo to compare to the "before" from the question.
Bar Keeper's Friend in powdered form and some elbow grease will solve this problem. The first time you tackle it, it can be a real pain to get the pan cleaned up, but if you keep up with it regularly after that, it's not to bad. Great cleaning supply.
thats what I use. works wonders.
This seems to be working... you weren't kidding about the elbow grease, though.
Will this work on non-stick cookie sheets?
@Malfist, NO. Unless by "work" you mean completely remove the non-stick coating, forever ruining your cookie sheet.
This is little off the beaten path, but try a solvent gun cleaner (not oil).
I recently (last week) caused a catastrophic burn on one of my skillets when I let it get entirely too hot before throwing a steak on it. After a few hundred cubic feet of smoke, a smoke alarm that sounded more like an air-raid siren, and a stubborn decision to let my steak cook anyway I was left with an interior that was about 100x worse than your picture. (The steak turned out perfect).
I tried the standard google recommendations of lemon juice, vinegar, and oven cleaner. They barely put a dent in it.
On a whim I grabbed a can of Birchwood Casey Gun Scrubber® Solvent / Degreaser, and decided to give it a try.
Wow! A thorough spraying, a steel wool pad, and a surprisingly little amount of elbow grease later the gunk was, I'd say, 99% gone. I still have a slight lightish brown tinge to my previously shiny surface, but I think that's as good as it's going to get.
Your profile says you live in Virginia, so there's at least a slight chance you have some of this. If not, you should be able to find some at a Wal-Mart.
Needless to say, wash it thoroughly after you've cleaned it.
Update
My pan was All-Clad stainless steel. Guns are steel, and typically devoid of any aluminum parts. If your pan is aluminum I wouldn't suggest trying this, because I don't know what would happen.
Another update
I didn't think this answer would end up getting many up votes. Since it has, I want to stress that you shouldn't just use any arbitrary gun cleaning product you have laying around. You should make sure that it's strictly a solvent/degreaser. If it indicates that it "protects" in any fashion, then avoid it. A great many solutions include an oil based protectant. This is most certainly not edible. You don't want anything that leaves behind a residue. This stuff very clearly strips everything off the metal and evaporates very rapidly. Regardless, wash your pan very thoroughly afterwards.
+1 For creative solution / Assumption that living in VA == owns a gun.
I grew up in VA :)
So, if I want a perfect steak, all I have to do is disable the smoke alarm and buy some gun cleaner. Got it. I have the same kind of pans, so this is good to know, actually.
I live in the progressive DC suburb-land of northern VA, so no gun cleaner... maybe after I move to Norfolk in a few days, eh?
Yes, these are from burned-on oil.
Steel wool should get it shiny again, with a little work. Note that this will scuff the finish of "bright" stainless steel.
This is the outside of the pan, though, so who cares? Even if you are careful, you will get similar stains again - they are pretty much inevitable. Consider them "battle scars" :-)
+1 for confirming that it's burned-on oil, -1 for opining that the exterior of the pan is unimportant.
Heh I missed the question asking if it's burned-on oil. It didn't help that he assumes so in the phrasing of the question title.
@hobo, yeah, I made an assumption when I was writing the title and I thought better of it by the time I finished writing the question. Will edit.
Wash. Dry thoroughly. Spray bottom with oven cleaner. Leave overnight. Rinse and wash again.
Edit: If the inside is non-stick, don't get any oven cleaner on that part.
+1 I have done this with the no heat oven cleaner spray can and it worked like a charm.
If your pan is stainless steel, I've had great luck getting really bad stains off with and electric drill with a rotary wire brush. It's best to do it outside, since it generates black dust.
i used Weiman Cook Top Cleaner and a piece of crumpled up aluminum foil to scrub off the stain. Worked great...
Oxi cleaner and members mark oven grill fryer cleaner soak in the sink overnight and next morning drill brush.
Use 1/4 cup of preferably stronger oxi cleaner
Responding; I brought a spray from the dollar tree. Spray it on bottoms of stainless steel pans, let set for about 15 min., scrub with a steel scrubber. It should came right off, with very little pressure. NuLife Stainless Cleaner.
I like using Bar keepers friend or Bon Ami along with some super fine wet/dry sandpaper. I then scrub the pan along the grain of the metal. In most cases the pan's grain is circular, so I put some old wet towels and scrub away. On super tough stains I use a Japanese rust eraser, which has a mild abrasive and start to rub the pan, this is quite effective in getting rid of the burn on oil. If all else fails, there is always the oven cleaner spray, but only as a last option, it is quite toxic. I would rather just leave the stain on if it gets to the last option. Not worth it in my option. But if you really must have it clean.
Baking soda and vinegar worked really well on a stainless steel pan I burnt some veggie sausages on a couple days ago. Highly recommend his as the elbow grease required wasn't very much.
I had the same problem, and used comet powder and a stainless steel pad. After scrubbing for an hour I got 50% of it off.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.411319
| 2010-07-22T21:06:05 |
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5815
|
Why does my food turn out poorly using an All-Clad Stainless-Steel Fry Pan?
I have an All-Clad frying pan, the precise one shown below:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005AL5F
I made this purchase out of curiosity after reading about the benefits of this professional grade cookware (from the above Amazon link):
Beautifully polished, magnetic stainless exterior layer.
Pure aluminum core that not only covers the bottom of the pan but also extends up the sides. This allows for great heat conductivity as well as an even heat distribution so you won’t have "hot spots" when cooking.
Stainless-steel interior layer/cooking surface.
Long, polished stainless, stay-cool handles.
Sturdy, non-corrosive stainless-steel rivets won't react with foods.
Polished stainless-steel lids fit evenly with the pan’s edges to seal in flavor of your foods.
The All-Clad Stainless collection is compatible with an induction stovetop (with the exception of a few pieces) in addition to gas and electric stovetops.
The Stainless collection is dishwasher-safe, excluding pieces with a nonstick cooking surface.
However, as a novice cook, I can't seem to cook anything as well using this pan compared to a non-stick teflon pan. Food seems to stick or become overcooked easily or just not turn out well.
Have I fallen victim to a weak product sold on marketing hype? Or am I simply too novice to properly utilize this pan? What cooking skills might I be missing to properly utilize this tool? What tools should I be using instead?
What reasons might there be for me sucking at using this pan?
You've got a great pan and in a short time I'm sure you'll come to love it.
When using a standard pan (one without non-stick coating), heat your pan dry over high heat until you can hold your hand about 6-inches above the cooking surface and feel the heat radiating upward. This allows the tiny cracks and crevices that are imperceptible to the bare hand to expand and when the oil is added, it will coat and create a more even cooking surface.
Add just enough oil to lightly coat the surface. Adding to much oil leads to pan-frying which is fine if you're frying chicken but not what you want when searing and sauteing meat. There should just be a thin film across the bottom of the pan. An additional benefit to first heating the pan is the fact that it will actually take less oil to coat the pan due to the decreased viscosity. When the oil hits the hot pan it will instantly heat and should shimmer across the bottom like water on a freshly cleaned windshield.
You don't put the oil in the pan first because the longer oils and fats heat the quicker they break down and smoke. If you were to add cold oil and cold food to a cold pan and then start heating, you just end up with a big sticky mess.
Make sure you're prepared to add the food to the pan once the oil goes in otherwise the oil will start to burn.
The issue with burning and overcooking is going to be a matter of controlling the heat. Start searing and sauteeing over high heat because as food is added it will suck a good deal of heat from the pan. If it isn't extremely hot to begin with you'll end up with a steaming mess of gray colored meat or vegetables that aren't doing much cooking. Once the meat is browned but needs further cooking you can always turn down the heat to prevent excessive browning and crusting before the interior is done.
Even if you aren't planning to do a pan sauce, or if you've burnt what was cooking in the pan, you'll still want to deglaze with some water while the pan is hot (you can reheat it if it has already cooled down) so that you can scraped up the cooked on bits more easily and have less scrubbing to do when cleaning the pan.
Darin, it has been weeks since I've read your response and incorporated your advice into my cooking. I owe a great thanks to you, as it has helped my cooking tremendously. Thanks!
Negative, you have not fallen victim to a weak product as far as I know. My all-clad pan works rather well, but I can't be certain it's as heavy as yours. Heft when it comes to a nice stainless pan is important.
"Food" seeming to stick, be overcooked, or "not turn out well" is a little vague however. It's extremely difficult to give good advice based on that info. Depending on what you're trying to cook in your new pan, you could have a number of different problems.
With the information given however, I would recommend:
Don't be a Nancy when it comes to the heat. If you're browning/searing things, that screaming sizzle is a good thing.
Use enough butter and/or oil. So long as the pan is hot enough, don't skimp on the lube. That's never a good idea.
Keep in mind a bit of sticking and near-burning is a good thing if you're planning on ending with a pan sauce. That's why you want a non-non-stick pan. There's nothing to deglaze if there aren't crispy bits on the bottom of the pan.
Practice, expect to screw things up from time to time, and don't be discouraged. Being a new cook sucks until you get the hang of it.
-><-
Make sure your pan is hot enough before adding the oil and food. You want it to be hot enough to cook the outside as soon as it lands, instead of letting the food cook to the pan by sitting on it and coming up to temperature.
https://rouxbe.com/tips-techniques/723-the-water-test
Heat the empty pan, once heated, add a drop of water. If the water stays in a single drop and glides across the pan, you're probably ready to add the oil. If the water splits into smaller drops, it's not hot enough. This is caused by the water that first touches the pan immediately vaporizing, the rest of the drop floats on the steam.
Great videos on pan frying:
http://rouxbe.com/how-to-cook/pan-frying
If you want to understand the physics behind it: The gliding droplets which are the reason for non-sticking are caused by the Leidenfrost effect.
You also need to use the correct oil. The poster that spoke of using a whole stick of butter was never going to succeed, butter burns at too low a temperature to saute, and for really hot cooking so does olive oil.
I've been using grapeseed oil lately with good success for really hot work, it has a really high smoke temperature. Chinese cooking uses peanut oil, which also has a high smoke temperature. Of course, some folks are sensitive to nuts, so that's an issue with peanut oil.
Olive oil is great for medium temperature frying tasks.
I agree that you need to get the pan hot before adding the oil, and be ready to hit the hot oil with the food almost instantly, before the oil smokes.
Chinese cooks just as frequently use rapeseed oil, which is more or less the same thing as canola oil.
Stainless is fantastic for sautéing. The trick is to preheat the pan (you can do the water test show n above - although avoid heating too high for fear of warping - this is outlined in the All Clad literature). I use regular olive oil (not extra virgin-smoking point is too low) AND butter. The oil raises the burning point of the butter. Plus if you are making a sauce from the fond it will taste better with the oil/butter combination. Furthermore, any meat you sauté must be a room temperature. This is called tempering. Meat will brown and cook more evenly. I have even fried eggs in my stainless pan. The trick is butter and eggs at room temp. One of the things I do if I am preparing a sauce with the fond is to heat the wine in the microwave ahead of time (not too long). Renowned chef, Raymond Blanc, recommends simmering your sauce-wine ahead of time to remove the alcohol but do only until alcohol has been driven off.
Hope that helps.
I bought a similar calphalon pan, and had the exact same experience. I could put a whole stick of butter in the damn thing, and everything stuck to it anyway. Omelette pan? In what dream world? Fricking fried chicken stuck to it, eggs were wholly impossible. I used it for a while, because I'd spent so damn much money on it, but eventually I gave up and threw it away.
These days I only use cast iron, and I'm much happier.
Although I use a combination of stainless steel and cast iron myself, all things considered I tend to prefer my cast iron over anything else in my kitchen too.
@stephenmcdonald: I have tons of stainless pots (including a wide shallow one that I now use for fried chicken). For skillets, I have three cast irons(small, large, massive), a stainless steel griddle, a stainless steel crepe pan, and a little cheap teflon number for eggs. My experience with the big stainless skillet is somewhat atypical (my mother had tons of 'em, and hers were fine) but it was traumatic enough to break me of the desire to ever buy another one for myself.
Wow, great to know, I'll have to keep that in mind as I keep experimenting with different stainless steel pans. I did have a bad experience with my first one as well, but it was a cheapo so I chalked it up to that. I have one that is ok quality right now, but because of my first experience I don't use it often enough to give a fair review. I think based on that and what you said, I'll make my next SS purchase only after trying the pan myself at a friends house or a place like Williams Sonoma where you can see the pan in use first.
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Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.411922
| 2010-08-23T08:56:13 |
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4621
|
Tips on cooking for people with different allergies
Most people have friends with allergies, and I wish to make a list with tips on how to make such a meal when there is different allergies at the same time. For example, it's a big problem making a cake without gluten, laktose and eggs, but this issue might come at hand. Often one don't wish to make three different cakes, so tips one how to assert this problem is that I wan't from this thread. Will also try to summarize the tips in this post.
Tips for intollerance, religion and personal choices are also welcome. Actually tips for cooking for everyone of us who tend to be a pain in the ass (I have celiaki myself, so not offence intended).
Make a list of can have ingredients for the possible courses.
Use substitute products (Not easy since they might behave a bit differently).
Make buffet where one have several gluten/laktose/egg/... free dishes (Can be a lot of work).
For tips on specific allergies, see: Fruit/nuts, Gluten
EDIT: I have specified the question quite a lot from the original by request from Ocaasi, since it started quite broad. The original question is removed.
Also, is there some food that everyone can eat, or food where it is easy to use other ingredients to avoid allergic reactions? Making buffets are always a possibility, but I'm thinking more in the lines of three course meals without making to much differences on the dish.
I'm very much in support of making this site a great resource for all kinds of allergy-conscious cooking. BUT, this thread will be way too open-ended for that. There are allergies about almost every kind of food--nuts, milk, eggs, wheat, shellfish... as well of other dietary restrictions on salt, sugar, cholesterol, fiber...so any given thread has to pick one and focus. If celiac is your concern, please edit your question to focus on just celiac. That way, the answers can really zero in on this issue and become a more definitive resource rather than just a survey.
Ocaasi - I agree to a degree (and started up a thread about fruit/nut allergy, as I have it), but combinations of allergies in your group of friends (that come over for eating) do happen sometimes. So some 'stock foods' that are cross-allergy friendly may indeed be useful!
I kind of agree with Ocaasi that it's a wide question. But the problem is not only tips for seperate allergies, but combinations as well. Like when you have people over with different allergies, it takes a lot to make food for everyone. I'll edit my question a bit to clear things up, but the question is meant for cross-allergies, and not only specific allergies.
I am not opposed to the occasional broad question, but this one seems to want both broad tips and very specific techniques. That mix, I think, is unlikely to yield great results. But what the heck, we'll see, it's just a post. It's not like we're wasting paper.
@martiert Would you consider removing your baking tips, at least? If you want to include them, you could add them as an answer (you can answer in your own post). That way your question will focus on the broader issue of menu-planning for a multi-allergy crowd, which is indeed a great topic for a post.
One last idea: You can make this a true community wiki, and once several answers have come in, you can pull the tips from each one into a single post for easy reference.
Are we just focusing on allergies? I typically cook for people with intollerances (dairy, nuts, corn), or other restricted diets by religion or choice (no pork, no meat, vegan), or just dealing with people who "picky eaters" (eg, no spicy heat)
Intollerance, religion, choice is ofcourse also relevant. Since they are, as well as allergies, a pain in the ass ;)
Maybe it's necessary to phrase this another way: is there any food that everybody can eat?
A few basics which haven't been mentioned:
Find out what people's allergies are before they come (they should tell you, but better to ask)
Make labels which list food ingredients and put them on your buffet.
Bring an epi-pen.
To label the ingredients is essential if you'r making buffet, hate when people don't do that and you have to ask the cook what's safe when your eating buffet. To actively ask people about allergies is something I don't actually do, if I haven't invited by e-mail, facebook and can ask everyone at the same time. Someone with allergies should always tell the host, and it's better to tell once to many then once to few times. Also guessing the people which have so severe allergies brings theyr own epipen, but nice to have a spare though.
I don't often cook for people with gluten issues; most of the problems I deal with when cooking for others are avoiding corn, milk from cows and nuts, none of which are allergies, they're all intollerances, so small amounts might cause GI problems, but won't cause anaphylaxis and kill someone. I also sometimes cook for people who have other dietary restrictions (preference or religious, such as no pork, no meat, no animal products).
To take the buffet idea one step further, consider something like 'assemble your own' dishes like fajitas or tacos. You can serve both corn and flour tortillas (or as a salad for those avoiding carbs entirely), beans for protein instead of meat, etc.
I also like items that can be assembled individually -- it's easy to designate a stuffed pepper as dairy-free or meat free; much more so than a corner of a casserole, particularly if you have to replace the binder for that portion. You may need to mark the special ones if you're trying to keep track of lots variations (color toothpicks might work). If you have enough ramekins, you might be able to make individual casserole-like items in advance, or be able to take items that are normally served family style and individualize them (eg, meatloaf into burgers, so you pull out a portion or two and don't use breadcrumbs).
Actually, intollerances might kill people two. The difference between allergy and intollerance is that allergies is reaction to food protein, while intollerance is everything else. I have a friend who is highly intollerant to fish fat, and will die in 10-15 minuts after he eats it. This is an intollerance, but can still kill. The idea of assemble your own dish is also quite nice, and less strain on the chef. Do you know any recipies for gluten free corn tortillas btw? They normaly contain some flour, and I haven't found any good without.
I've never known a corn tortila recipe that had gluten -- the problem with packaged products is that they're typically made in factories that also process wheat. You might have to check packages, but I know there's a few brands at my local store that are this way. You can also find lots of recipes online if you want to make your own (it's basically just masa and water, but you might add some lime juice or other flavorings)
If your friends are seriously allergic/intolerant to different items, then take a step back and think. Cross contamination could cause some serious problems here - nut allergies for example.
Go for rice as a base for every side. Create different types of rice dishes, and as mentioned above, use something like a color coded tooth pick, or chop stick.
Chicken can be a problem for some people, however, as long as you have another dish, possibly a vegetarian curry without any added yogurt then that should suffice.
Those of us with allergies/intolerances normally tell our host. I have in the past taken my own food, which takes the pressure off the host, and still allows for me to join in the fun.
Deserts for multi allergy/intolerance problems could be a simple fruit salad, with a choice of cream or yogurt (even the soy variety) at the side for people to choose.
The main thing is that in a domestic kitchen, cooking and preparing a meal for friends should be an enjoyable occasion, not a stressed out mind bomb. I guess what I am trying to say is, keep it simple.
Well, if you're having friends over for dinner, you're probably willing to put in some extra effort anyway. That may sounds like throwaway advice, but it's not meant that way: for instance when my vegetarian friends come over, I make sure to have vegetarian food (duh), or I go buffet-style: as longs as there are enough vegetarian dishes, not all of them need to be that way.
The same thing (buffet) could work for multiple allergies.
Some times, however, sure, you're tired, rushed, or you just don't want to 'rise to the occasion'. I get that. Apparently there are commercial products out there that may help you (one such example offering), and amazon has a TON of cookbooks on this issue as well. (One example, and one more) (Also note the 'Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought' section).
Good luck!
Yeah, ofcourse I always make food for all of them which is safe for all of them to eat. But sometimes this is hard, especialy for desserts. If one can't eat gluten, one can't have laktose, one can't have nuts, one can't have eggs, you basicaly have to make 3-4 different dishes which should be served at the same time, but have to be kept appart during preparation.
Yeah, that is bloody hard. Here in the Netherlands we have 'American style' buffets (Bring Your Own), which can of course also be used when multiple friends with multiple allergies are coming over. Not a fix, but a work-around, perhaps.
Another question: have you ever made a big chart of all your friends CAN-haves, and seen what the overlap was, for different courses?
Yeah, the buffet is a workaround, only problem for me when making that is that I'm no big fan of buffetes :P But of course, it's a doable workaround. Have made such a chart when figuring out desserts for new years eve. Worked quite well, but the problem with substitutes is to make them work well, since they most of the times does not behave exactly like "the real thing". I'll have a look at your books though. Have some allergy cookbooks myself, but many of them focuses on specific allergies.
Good luck, hope it works out for you.
@TobiasOpDenBrouw : for the buffet style stuff, see http://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/53817/67 for how we ended up dealing with it. (but what's also a pain is making sure that people don't decided that someone's moving too slow and use a spoon from one place to scoop stuff from another dish, contaminating both dishes once the spoon gets used in the right place. But in some way 'pot luck' (bring your own) is a benefit as the gluten free person will bring something gluten free, etc. You still might have to plan a dish for people w/ multiple restrictions, though.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.412695
| 2010-08-09T08:19:59 |
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|
75801
|
Can ambient humidity significantly affect the texture of pastry doughs?
There was some discussion on this question about dry, crumbly shortcrust dough about whether ambient humidity could cause a normally good shortcrust recipe to come out dry and crumbly.
Is this possible? How strong of an effect might be expected from going from "average" humidity to extremely dry? Would it affect all types of pastry dough similarly?
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.413575
| 2016-11-23T20:31:09 |
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|
75225
|
How do I label already-frozen bags?
We have a question about how to label things for the freezer in general, but that's for if you've managed to plan ahead. What if you have a bag in the freezer, already thoroughly frozen, so tape doesn't stick well and markers don't write well? What's a good way to label it at that point?
(Note: this was originally posted as an answer to that previous question, but it's a new question that seemed pretty useful, so I figured I'd go ahead and ask.)
If you can’t get the marker to work, just add another bag around the old one.
Get a piece of paper, preferably a bit thicker. Write on it with black marker. Wet small part of it with warm water and stick to the frozen thing. The water will freeze acting as a glue.
That's a fantastic idea! I was going to suggest using masking tape or painters tape and write on that... but it may not stick well to a wet/frozen bag.
I find that ice on the bag easily pops off. I think the paper would work the same way. If the bag can still flex, I think this would not work. Otherwise, it depends on the plastic. But generally, they are smooth and hydrophobic. THat is, the bag will not “wet”.
@JDługosz I guess this depends on the use case. I use this method and it works fine for me, but then again I don't move things around that much. I sometimes rearrange them, but most of the time they aren't moving.
Yeah, this seems like it'd work reasonably well for infrequently moved inflexible things (hard containers or bags filled with something frozen into a solid chunk that you'll use all at once) but less well for flexible things that get shuffled around and opened and closed (like a bag of loose berries).
I've used freezer bag clips labelled in marker or chinagraph pencil. You could write on a room temperature clip then swap it for whatever closure you use, or add it to a tied bag. To reuse, chinagraph comes off with a wet cloth (e.g. washing up), most markers come off with alcohol (surgical spirit for example).
Some marker pens do work so long as you wipe the bag immediately and write fast before condensation forms.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.413649
| 2016-11-03T05:29:30 |
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|
67511
|
How do I avoid carrot slices rolling away?
When you slice carrots, the slices tend to roll away. This previous question did mention this as part of a broader issue, but didn't focus on it enough to get answers that specifically address rolling. Sharp knives and a fluid rocking/orbital motion don't really help with this; the slices will still stick to the blade, then tend to roll when they fall.
So how do you keep sliced carrots (or any other small, round, and hard things) from rolling away as you slice them?
(I know cutting them in half works, but let's say I want to avoid that: round slices look nice.)
Simple answer: don't use cylindric slices. Imo they are too big anyway. Also, because of the shape of a carrot the pieces will unlikely having the same size when you slice it like this. Dices are better. If you want, use half-cylinders.
One option is to cut the carrots slightly diagonally instead of perfectly square. The resulting pieces are not perfectly cylindrical, but they tend to tipping instead of rolling all over the cutting board. (Note that this method only works if the diameter of the carrot is substantially larger than the thickness of a piece.)
This is also known as cutting "on the bias", and for whatever reason I find that bias-cut veg looks nicer than disks cut perfectly "flat".
I double bias my cuts. By that I mean I also tilt the blade slightly so that the top of the knife is angled away from the carrot. That makes any slices that stick and slide up the blade fall off away from the rest of the carrot, and it sort of helps knock slices off the blade at the bottom.
Another, imo more substantial advantage: This creates a larger overall surface areas and thus speeds up processing (cooking etc..) and enhances the taste.
@TaW Well, if you still want them to look close to circular, it's not really much surface area. If I wanted long oval slices, I wouldn't have the rolling problem :)
If you take a slender slice off the carrot (down the length), then your carrot is no longer round, and it'll nicely sit on that now-flat side. (You can do this with a sharp knife, or with a few passes of the vegetable peeler). Visually, though, it's hardly noticeable especially after cooking.
I know this will make the carrot sit in place, but does it actually stop them from rolling?
@Jefromi not 100% sure, I don't have problems with sliced carrots rolling away... So I guess it works for me. Or something else is different.
Okay, will try! There could be a knife technique thing that's different, though I'm not sure what it'd be... the main time they roll is after sticking to the blade, then getting pushed off by subsequent slices. Most of them just fall onto the board, but some inevitably fall onto something else then keep rolling away.
@Jefromi could be. Or might be something as simple as the counter isn't level.
One thing I've done in the past is use the tendency to roll to my advantage, rather than fighting it.
I position a shallow dish to collect the carrots at the "bottom" of the cutting board (the edge furthest away from me), and prop the cutting board up slightly at the "top" end (where I stand). I use a kitchen towel, since that keeps things from sliding around. As I slice, the carrots that roll have a natural tendency to roll into the collection dish.
Another strategy:
What I have been doing lately instead of propping up my cutting board on a kitchen towel, because I'm lazy, is to slice my carrots on a bias. They are still round slices, but they are slightly elliptical and don't roll as well.
Easy-peasy:
Use a mandoline: they'll fall mostly on their flat side
For the difficult ones that do not fall under the category mostly: place the mandoline over a bowl.
I recently discovered that if you put the carrot inside a stalk of celery and slice it, it doesn't roll around. Usually i add celery to whatever disk has carrots anyway
I use a reasonably large cutting board with a "drain" around it (the kind that would also be suitable for cutting meat and has a medium-thickness notch cut around the entire perimeter of the board). That way, when the inevitable freeroller happens, it rolls into the drain and stops.
Rotate the carrot a quarter turn and again cut at an angle.
This will prevent the slices from rolling off the chopping board.
I agree with many of the suggestions above. However, if your carrots are still rolling off the cutting board, consider putting one or more rolled towels around the edge of the cutting board to prevent the "rollers" from escaping their inevitable fate.
Hello Ernie, and welcome to Seasoned Advice! This answer appears to be an exact duplicate of the one you gave here: How should I keep the vegetables from flying off the board when I cut them?
It may be because you have peeled them. Did you know the relative majority of nutrients is in the skin, it is the most important part of the carrot. When it comes down to it, you don't ever really have to peel carrots. The friction is greater with the skin still on they don't roll far. As long as you wash and scrub them well to remove dirt and any debris, unpeeled carrots are perfectly safe (and delicious) to eat. Here are five instances that prove it, stock, roasted, stewed, pureed, juiced. But of course cooking also destroys a lot of the goodness. I also have a cutting board guard to stop any strays. I like cinnammon with cooked carrots, but most of all I like them raw with peanut butter. I have left some out for the Easter bunny.
Nutrition discussion is off topic here. Your answer is fine if you remove the nutritional statements.
I have sliced many an unpeeled carrot. Rolling, they will roll.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.413870
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39657
|
Why does my rice cooker's steam hole always clog?
The lid on my rice cooker has a small steam hole that gets clogged from bubbles forming and the quinoa gets stuck and then the whole thing boils over and makes a mess. Am I doing something wrong? How do I keep it from doing this?
Note: this was taken from a deleted answer to How do I keep the rice cooker from boiling over? I don't actually have a rice cooker, so I can't provide extra details; answers about all potential causes and fixes are welcome!
If the foam from your rice cooker is reaching all the way to the lid, it may be over-filled. At least for very small grains, like quinoa, you may need to prepare it in smaller batches so that it can't be carried up to the lid.
Quinoa also has a coating of saponins on the outside of the grain. These soap-like chemicals can cause water to foam and also impart a soapy taste, they should always be washed off before cooking.
In general, adding a few drops of oil to the surface of the cooking water can help to reduce the amount of foam produced.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.414399
| 2013-11-22T21:05:00 |
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|
39654
|
How do I render large quantities of fat?
Suppose I have many pounds of fat to render. (Sometimes people have 100 pounds!) How can I do this efficiently?
Should I use a pot on the stove, a slow cooker, or the oven? How many pounds should I render in each batch? Do I need to add water?
Unless you've got industrial type equipment, I wouldn't do more than about 1-1.5 lbs at a time. Here's a hint, cube the fat (1 inch cubes) and then partially freeze it. 45 - 75 minutes or so in the freezer will give you fat you can handle without it melting and that can be coarsly ground in a food processor or meat grinder without making a gross mess. Some people add water, I wouldn't. Just keep the flame (or burner) very low. Use a heavy pot, preferably cast iron. If you do it nice and slow you should get cracklin and tallow that barely needs to be clarified, or not at all. Figure about an hour on the low end up to two hours for the fat to completely render.
And why can't you do many pounds at once in a large heavy pot, especially if it's in the oven?
I've only ever done it on the stove, I've never seen it done in the oven. I've never done beef, only moose, but I'm sure it's the same. On the stove, more than 1.5 pounds is just too hard to handle. It doesn't melt/cook evenly without clumping up, trying to burn and just getting difficult.
According to this site, it is pretty easy to do in the oven, and he doesn't specify a maximum payload. http://intoxicatedonlife.com/2013/03/18/rendering-tallow-in-the-oven/
I don't know whether it's true, but I was taught to always go all the way to cracklin without pouring off the fat, that doing it partway then returning the solids to the pan results in cloudy tallow that doesn't taste right. I have no basis for that other than that is how I was taught by the old sourdough that taught me. Also, that was on the stovetop, not the oven. So, I dunno, other than what I know.
If I was to try and render the huge amounts of fat you have hinted at I would do it in water. You'd need a suitably large pan obviously to fit the quantity needed.
Fill pan with fat.
Cover fat in water.
Simmer slowly for a good few hours.
Leave to set in fridge.
Remove the now solid fat from the top.
Depending on the outcome of the above fat, re-melt and strain through a cheesecloth.
Most of the sediment will end up on the bottom of the pan but some may get trapped in the top layer.
Why?
Well if you think about when you're making a meat stock for example, you simmer the contents for hours. Fat floats to the top, you ladle it out then pass the result through fine sieve. All you're trying to do it the same but instead of a tasty bottom stock you want the fat.
This method is more likely to give a pure, clean and untainted fat. Roasting or frying is going to cause burnt bit's of meat etc, the flavor of which I'm sure will be present in the resulting fat. Also any smoke cause by the roasting method is again going to taint the end product.
Regarding the water at the bottom, an untested thought/thory would be to add a couple of pig trotters to the mix. The resulting gelatin will in theory set the water solid at the bottom also grabbing all the sediment's and other juices. Then allowing you to turn the entire pan over heat slightly with a blowtorch and remove the pan. Then with a warm knife slice the bottom(now top) layer off to remove all the unwanted stuff.
I see no reason why this method couldn't be done on an infinite scale only limited by pan size.
If you mean to do it on the stove, this definitely won't scale infinitely; you won't be able to keep the whole pot hot without overheating it at the bottom.
I think that is why when ever you See industrial kitchens on TV the big pots all have mechanical arms stirring... If you have a hob at home for a pot that big I'll be very very surprised. I wouldn't get one through my door.
Even a big (home use, not commercial) stock pot would give you trouble, I think.
Considering fat melts at 40-50 degrees Celsius, the emulsion stage of fat in water is between 90-100 degrees Celsius and the simmer point of water a sea level is 80-90 degrees Celsius, if you keep you're pot just below any form of a simmer I see no reason for over heating. The biggest pot I've used for beef stock/jus is 100L cooked over night (24 hours-ish) never had any issue with the fat from the bones emulsifying in my stock causing any form of cloudiness and a perfect layer of (dirty*) fat on the top. If you can fit a pot that large on your home hob I would be impressed.*Dirty because-
cont - when we make our stocks we are not interested in the fat, so all the flavors present in the stock remain in the fat. As I suggested in my answer, if you doing this with the intention of harvesting the fat instead of the stock you would presumably ensure there was nothing in the pan to taint the flavor of your resulting fat. Though thyme flavored beef fat may be appealing...
With a deep pot you can easily burn things onto the bottom while trying to keep the top at 80-90C unless you're stirring a good amount. Yes, the water won't go above 100C, but when a piece of something ends up on the bottom it's in direct contact with the metal, no water right there. I'm speaking from experience, not with rendering fat, but simmering is simmering I think. It takes a lot of heat to keep the whole pot hot, and it all has to go through the bottom.
I'm with @Doug here - I can't see any problem. From my experience, bigger pots are much easier to keep boiling once they have come up to temperature. I can have a 4 gallon pot on the lowest setting on my smallest burner and it will keep simmering away. Nothing bad would happen to your simmering fat
I regularly use 100L pots (3 a day usually) to make bone broth, and often in batches up to 1900L in one massive steam kettle. I also sell beef tallow, from rendering the raw suet fat . The boiling method is more pure, and freezing the raw fat before grinding it is way easier. With @Doug on recipe. Works on any scale.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.414528
| 2013-11-22T20:44:46 |
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|
65956
|
How does pineapple tenderize meat?
It seems to be common knowledge that pineapple tenderizes meat. Most sources say that it does so due to proteases (specifically bromelain). However, I've also seen suggestions that acid is an effective tenderizer on its own, and the Wikipedia article on bromelain in the meat tenderizing section says:
Although the quantity of bromelain in a typical serving of pineapple fruit is probably not significant, specific extraction can yield sufficient quantities for domestic and industrial processing.
which is sort of wishy-washy but might mean that there's not actually enough there for tenderizing.
It does seem that pineapple is effective, one way or another. (See for example Will a pineapple marinade reduce a beef roast to paste?)
So what's going on here?
Is the acidity important? Would something equally acidic tenderize just as well? It looks like lemon and lime juice have lower pH than pineapple juice, so how effective are they?
Is the bromelain important? Could you hypothetically neutralize the acidity of pineapple juice and still use it to tenderize, or do you need larger quantities of bromelain extracted for it to be effective?
Related (but about cooking, not marinating): http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/13424/1672
Interesting indeed. I always understood (or rather: assumed) that acidity was the major component in a tenderizer; In a way, it's predigesting the meat. I marinate quite a lot with tamarind, curious to see if there's something else going there.
By the way, if anyone wants to do side-by-side comparisons of marinating with fresh pineapple juice/puree, canned/cooked juice/puree, and a plain acid like lemon juice, I'd happily give a bounty for it.
Update: After reading a bit on this, (and also fully reading the question) I found that there have been papers written on the effects of acid baths on meat tenderness as well as enzyme treatment:
Acid: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=animalscidiss
Enzyme: http://www.brainromania.ro/uploads/papers/effect-of-marination-with-proteolytic-enzymes-on-quality-of-beef-muscle-2012-409.pdf
It seems that food grade citric acid doesn't affect tenderness that much, where as a solution of Bromalain does, and at a greater effect than that found mixed in with the citric acid of Pineapple. There's no study comparing pineapples to oranges (Eh? See what I did there?) but this seems to say that the citric acid in food may have less of an effect than that of the digestive enzymes in them.
Please see below for previous answer if you'd like to point and laugh at those who skim questions and don't read fully.
So, I think I found the answer: http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible-innovations/pineapple-enzyme-tenderize-steak.htm
Apparently, acidity aside, the enzymes found in the stem of the Pineapple: Bromelain can divide the proteins found in muscular fiber. I'm going to copy and paste the next part from the article that goes a bit deeper into how Bromelain works (and I'm lazy):
Bromelain works in these capacities due to it's ability to separate amino acids. Amino acids are organic compounds within living cells. Amino acids join by forming peptide bonds, a link that connects one amino acid's amino group with the carboxyl group of another amino acid. When amino acids join through peptide bonds, they form proteins. These proteins can carry out numerous functions in the structure and operation of cells, tissues and organs.
This breaks down the peptide bonds that hold together proteins in collagen, which is what makes meat tough. The enzymes stop around 158 degrees Fahrenheit, so once they start cooking, their work is done. That's why it's important to marinate.
TLDR: Pineapple stems have Bromelain, which aside from a fun nickname breaks down Amino acids and dissolve the peptide bonds in collagen, which causes the firmness in meat.
Unfortunately, the question is not what bromelain does to proteins/meat (though you're totally right about that) it's about how strong the effect is from that compared to any effects from acidity when using pineapple juice.
Ah, right. Well, that teaches me for title skimming.
The article that I brought up doesn't even bring acid into the mix, though. You'd think if it had a comparable affect that it would be covered or at least mentioned?
Hopefully! Sometimes articles like that can end up misrepresenting or oversimplifying, though. I suspect that the bromelain matters at least some, because there's apparently less of an effect with cooked pineapple than with fresh, but I don't actually know how much less, so it's hard to say whether there's still also significant effects from the acid.
"pieces of meat marinated in a composition consisting of 15 g of
pineapple pulp, 200 mL dry red wine, 2 tablespoons honey, 2
tablespoons grated horseradish, 2 teaspoons garlic, 1 tablespoon thyme, 1 tablespoon marjoram, salt and pepper" -- I guess they really wanted to be able to eat the results... and were really confident there's no significant enzymes in wine, honey, horseradish, or garlic??
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.415156
| 2016-01-27T21:48:26 |
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20433
|
Liquid made with cream and penicillium roqueforti?
In a comment on this answer, Wayfaring Stranger mentions something I'd never heard of before:
Incubating a walnut size chunk of blue with some cream for a couple days creates a lovely tasty thick blue liquid. The stuff has a fancy French name, but it's been too many years since I actually saw the recipe.
What is this? How is it used? Obviously cultures of penicillium roqueforti like the original blue cheese are safe when made correctly, but is this safe to make in a home kitchen? Are there any potential pitfalls to be aware of?
The gal who made the stuff had a degree in bacteriology, and she wasn't trying to poison me. The recipe came out of some commercial french cookbook from the early 80's, so again, it was likely safe. I'm not finding anything online this morning.
sounds delicious... I am definitely going to try this
I honestly doubt that growing blue mould in cream for a few days will have much effect, but why not try, it won't harm you either.
Why is it not going to work? Mould needs oxygen to grow. When making blue cheese (or generally cheese with "internal" mould), holes are punched through the curd to create air channels to supply the mould with oxygen. A Wikipedia image of Gorgonzola clearly shows how the mould grows around one of these punch holes. You can also see how the mould only grows around other natural cracks in the curd, while there are large solid areas of cheese with no visible sign of mould at all.
If you don't do this and the curd is without naturals cracks, the mould will only grow on the cheese surface, like for example on a Camembert.
If you soak a piece of blue cheese in cream, some spores may of course dissolve and reach the surface, but they will only be able to grow on the cream's surface. Another problem is that Penicillium roqueforti is not growing particularly fast. Roquefort is for example ripened at least four months under ideal conditions, so just a few days will not allow much growth.
Why is it not going to harm you? Using harmless or perhaps even beneficial moulds like Penicillium roqueforti to prepare food is not only done for the taste, but also for their preserving functions. Or more precisely, different species of mould tend to fight each other, so seeding food with a "good" mould will prevent the growth of "bad" mould. Anyway, cream will get sour and taste bad long before dangerous amounts of mould would grow.
It's possible that Wayfaring Stranger's recollection was inaccurate, and "a few" days is actually 60 days. I wonder how his friend overcame the air problem - it certainly sounds like she successfully made this.
Since cream is a liquid, she might just have stirred it daily.
The name -
There are hundreds and thousands of penicillia moulds which exist in the world. Mostly, they grow to form green colonies.
The ones which are used to give flavour to cheese generally grow to give blue colonies when cultured.
Those which grow under culture to give blue colonies with white edges are not useful for antibiotic production or flavour properties.
The name? The moulds that work only have names because they have been used to produce commercial products. Those which produce blue colonies are often used for cheese making. They are named because people use the moulds habitually for cheese production - pick your name with your cheese.
I said above that the penicillium is usually trying to indicate by producing an "off-flavour" that the food material is no longer edible for humans. It is not generally the truth that the food is inedible - the flavour is only a deflection tactic, the food is still edible. Within cheese the flavour is usually introduced from a known mould of traditional origin.
Safety concerns - if the "starter culture" comes from an acknowledged safe source, an approved food cheese, you're down to considering the possibilities from associated organisms, like Listeria. You need to think about controlling the "external aspects" of the preparation.
I am not asking about the name of the mold. I am asking about the name of the liquid made by culturing mold (almost certainly penicillium roqueforti) in cream.
When mould grows on your food, it often gives the food a flavour you don't like.
Mostly, that flavour is making a statement. The mould is saying "this is my food, not yours".
You could eat it, despite the "off flavour" - but people avoid taking chances -if it comes down to "can I eat this and live happily", they are mostly wrong.
People don't want to take that chance - and the mould is allowed to eat that food, not the huming beans. You could mainly still eat the food, the flavour is "off-putting".
NOW those of us with edificated palates are quite used to the flavors that penicillin moulds can give to cheese. If you have "cheese moulds" you could get them to grow on anything coming from a dairy - with the result that you have something that tastes of "blue cheese", as opposed to generally "mouldy".
Don't let that tiny fungal organism tell you what to do because it can influence your odoriforous sensibilities ...
I asked about the name, safety concerns, and culinary uses of this entity. I did not ask about why we perceive the flavor the way we do.
I feel like I may need to clarify: a downvote means your answer is not useful as an answer to the question. It's not any sort of personal attack. Your answer would be a good answer to a different question, just not this one. Your other answers have generally been quite good. Please don't let a single downvote convince you that I or the community dislike you, or think you don't know anything. You obviously do, and I hope you continue to contribute.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.415822
| 2012-01-14T01:54:19 |
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|
17529
|
Surface tension in food
Based on a related question, some of us are curious about surface tension in liquids commonly used in food and drink.
There's a table on Wikipedia containing a tantalizing amount of information, including:
The surface tension of water decreases from 76 mN/m to 59 mN/m as temperature increases from 0C to 100C. It's 72 mN/m at warm room temperature, 25C.
10% acetic acid (very strong vinegar) has a substantially reduced surface tension (55 mN/m at 30C)
Alcohol can strongly reduce surface tension, to 46 mN/m at 11% and 30 mN/m at 40%.
A concentrated sucrose syrup (55%) has somewhat higher surface tension than water, 76 mN/m at 20C.
Very salty water (6M, compared to seawater at .6M) has higher surface tension, 83 mN/m at 20C.
Of interest would be:
How does surface tension typically depend on temperature? (Does it always decrease with increasing temperature?)
How do various everyday solutes (e.g. sugar) and mixture components (e.g. alcohol, acetic acid) affect surface tension of water? Actual data on measured surface tension of liquids would be wonderful - for example, what is the surface tension of milk, tea, vinegar, syrup, various alcoholic beverages, or anything else we commonly cook with or drink? What determines whether something increases or decreases the surface tension of water?
Are there any more exotic (but edible!) solutes or mixture components with dramatic effects on surface tension? Especially interesting would be ones without flavor, which could be used to tweak existing liquids.
Note: I posted a related question on the physics stackexchange.
+1 for the nice question. For dramatic effects, try applying pressure to a starch slurry (for a slightly wide definition of edible).
I think this question is fairly irrelevant in the realm of cooking. Textural perceptions of a given liquid are going to be dominated it's viscosity.
@NickT: Sure, if you're drinking it - though still, I think that we notice things that seem slippery. But what if you want to turn it into a foam? What if you don't want it to foam? People do crazy things these days, and surface tension affects some of them.
@Jefromi 'slippery' would be a function of interface properties, not just one thing in isolation
@NickT: Sorry for the imprecision there. I'm aware that material properties are a complex thing. My point was that there were situations in which it could have a noticeable effect.
@NickT: Also, a recent question suggests that it could be relevant if you're trying to get a liquid to soak into something: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/18889/how-to-make-chicken-absorb-more-salt-when-cooking-a-soup
The real question is what application does the surface tension of these liquid actually have? Can we actually do something if we know the surface tension or is this just a morbid scientific food science curiousity?
Oh wow I totally missed the comment above me. It must have been hiding in the show more comment area ><
This article suggests that starch gives a significant increase, and oil emulsions a significant decrease.
The same principles should apply to any small nonpolar molecule (reduces surface tension) and large molecule (increases surface tension). Note that this generally correlates strongly with viscosity. Forces at the surface forces are generally related to forces in the interior of the liquid.
What about sugar and alcohol? Do they follow a generalization about polarity or molecular size? (Sorry for the very late question!)
@Jefromi: Alcohol is small, but has a non-trivial polarity. Like water, it contains an oxygen atom with a significant negative charge. But it's less polar than water due to the carbon atoms. Acetic acid is a lot more polar than alcohol, with two oxygen atoms. Sugar molecules are much, much larger than alcohol, but much, much smaller than starch. They're somewhat smaller than fat molecules, but far more hydrophilic. They've got oxygen atoms all over the place. Those allow the formation of many hydrogen bonds, even though individually those bonds are weak.
Hm, so do polar molecules also reduce surface tension then? And sugar is large enough to increase it?
Tricky, I initially overlooked that vinegar has a pH of just 2.4. That's not making things easier. As for ethanol, it's less polar than water. For sugar, I expect that the effect depends a lot on sugar-sugar interactions. Since it depends on the proximity of two molecules in solution, that means you'd expect the surface tension change to be a second-order function of the sugar concentration.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.416295
| 2011-09-06T20:55:13 |
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|
113870
|
Gochugaru powder vs paste?
I'm making Korean pork bulgogi and the recipe I am using calls for gochugaru powder but all I could find was a paste.
Can I use it and would it still be the same amount? The recipe asks for 4 tbsp. of the powder.
By "a paste", do you mean gochujang? (Sticky red paste, thicker than ketchup, sold in a red tub with a red or gold lid)
A quick scan of bulgogi recipes shows some use gochujang, some gochugaru & some use both. Quantities vary massively, depending on spice level.
Hey, folks, this is a NEW CONTRIBUTOR! Maybe don't close her post without explaining how to fix it?
@mantra is right on, but if you want to add the recipe you're following, you might be able to get away with it here. T struck he that bulgogi marinades typically include some sugar? So you might be able to fiddle around with the amount of sweetener and use gochujang for your bulgogi after all.
Thank you all.. on the label it states its gochugaru and yes it is thicker than ketchup and comes in a red tub. I am looking for that sweet spicy flavor!!
If you are referring to gochujang, gochugaru and gochujang have significantly different flavors (gochugaru is thought to impart a "cleaner" hotness to dishes, while gochujang tends to be a bit more complex due to aspects like added sugar and grain e.g. rice flour (which adds a thickening element) and some fermentation.
Thus Korean recipes will often use both, and as a rule of thumb gochugaru is the more flexible of the two (due to being mainly used for only hotness and color). In addition, while gochujang is reasonably replaceable with gochugaru + some sweeteners and thickeners, trying to replace gochugaru with gochujang is generally a bad idea. I'd recommend trying a different kind of relatively fine red pepper flakes - preferably a less spicy and less "aromatic" (i.e. one that has few flavors and aromas outside of "hot") variety, although your mileage may very depending on the type your local market has.
Aleppo pepper is actually a pretty good substitute. Ancho chile powder can also work.
I've actually used paprika and a pinch of cayenne in an emergency. Not perfect, but more readily available on my budget, sadlol.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.416637
| 2021-01-21T06:24:29 |
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120243
|
Botulism in regards to microwaving garlic, honey, ACV, lemon juice, olive oil and powdered ginger for 15 seconds
I am wondering if I mix 1 tbs of honey, ACV and olive oil with 1 crushed garlic with a squirt of lemon juice, then microwave it for 15 seconds (enough make the mixture bubble but not overflow) can that cause botulism if I immediately drink the mixture afterwards?
What is ‘acv’? If it's an acronym (e.g. for apple cider vinegar?), then capitalising it would make that clearer.
Does this answer your question? How to make garlic oil in a safe way...tomorrow
Welcome to SA! Questions about garlic, oil, and botulism have been asked multiple times, and I think you'll find that the answers to those cover what you need to know. That includes these questions: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/39432/7180 https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/15113/7180
No, but why would you do that? The mix seems very strange to me. What is this for?
Neinstein: from the ingredients, sounds like Greek ladelomomo dressing.
Just to note, you mentioned powdered ginger in the title but not in the body of the question. You can [edit] if you need to fix that.
No, of course not. Botulism is the result of bacterial fermentation over a long period of time. If the ingredients are safe, mixing them will also be safe.
I would suggest adding the corollary that if the ingredients were not safe in the first place, then microwaving them will not "kill the spores".
@FedericoPoloni That's not what the OP was asking about. None of the OP's ingredients are "suspect". (FWIW, though, boiling for long enough will inactivate botulinum toxin, which is all that matters for eating it.)
@FedericoPoloni The spores are not dangerous to >6 months olds, or we would all be dead by now. Bacteria and viruses, on the other hand, will suffer a lot from 15 seconds of boiling (if I understand the OP right). It's basically a flash pasteurization that just falls a bit short of industry standards.
Thanks @Sneftel and Peter for the corrections; this seems useful information.
Might want to clarify "a long period of time". Botulism can poison a mixture in as little as 72 hours. Much more than the OP is asking about, but folks may refer to your answer out of context.
@Sneftel Honey and garlic absolutely can contain C botulinum. It just is usually not harmful to adults.
@FedericoPoloni I've heard/read that you should avoid using fresh garlic in sous vide recipes because of the risk of botulin poisoning. But the time in question doesn't seem to be of concern.
@Peter-ReinstateMonica The toxin is destroyed by heat but the spores are heat resistant and the spores will turn into more C. botulinum over time in oil. That's why it's important to make the distinction that it's safe to consume immediately but storage is more difficult (microwaving does not make it safe to store).
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.416826
| 2022-04-05T07:48:45 |
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121167
|
What are "processed dates", are they ready to eat or just easy to wash?
I got a package of dates, an oval long one, with an interesting-looking spoon/stick inside of the package along with dates. It is not stated on the package if they are ready to eat or not, but they are called processed dates. Strangely enough, google search results literally gave no useful information on the matter. The only difference I see between these dates and normal vacuum packed ones is that they are much easier to wash. Are they supposed to be ready to eat? If not, what is the purpose of that spoon thing?
Edit: This is a package that looks similar to the one I got (the one I got was almost identical, but it seems to be from a obscure firm):
I can't tell if this picture includes a ready to eat indication, but, just to reiterate, the package I refer to didn't say if they are ready to eat or not.
spoon might be to remove the seed if they aren't already de-seeded.
Picture would help this question. [Edit] to add one - the "sun and mountains" icon above the edit box. All the dates I've ever gotten (USA locale) were ready to eat as packed (assuming you can manage spitting out the pit if not pitted.)
These are ready to eat, there's no need to wash them.
"Processed" means they're washed, dried, sorted, the ones with bugs removed, sometimes preservatives are added, they're rehydrated if too dry, etc.
The little plastic "branch" is intended to skewer them if you want to eat them without ending up with sticky fingers. However it is in the package with the dates, so the handle will be sticky with sugar anyway.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.417079
| 2022-07-27T18:21:58 |
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17846
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Dark barley water
I happened across the wikipedia article on barley water today, and it features a photo of some very dark barley water:
As far as I know, barley water is normally much lighter than that. Where does the dark color come from? Is that perhaps not just barley water?
Malted barley? The sugars from this can be very dark. Isn't "barley water" an euphemism for beer or whiskey?
It is unlikely that pure barley, however strong the malting, will produce such a dark color. I think it is safe to assume that it is colored.
In Germany, this (or a very similar) beverage is called Malzbier (See the English Wikipedia article on Malzbier) It is an alcohol free drink made with malted barley, and commonly colored with the food coloring E 150 (Look at the site of this popular drink, third FAQ item from the end). This is a coloring created by letting different types of sugar undergo a Maillard reaction, and can be considered a type of caramel. So it can be used in a malt drink in relatively high amounts without introducing an unusual taste or presenting a health risk.
If you have seen lighter barley water until now, this is probably because different producers use different amounts of coloring. It is probably a regional thing, the drink in the picture is produced in Spain, maybe they like their malted drinks darker.
It could be that the producer uses toasted or roasted barley as part of their process, which would impart the darker colors that you would normally see in various styles of beer. That would also give it different flavors. Toasted malts could provide nutty, toffee, caramel, or raisin flavors. Roasted malts would give it more coffee or chocolate flavors.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.417241
| 2011-09-19T01:01:20 |
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25014
|
Water content of salted butter
It seems to be common knowledge among bakers that salted butter has a higher water content than unsalted*. How much higher?
And if there's a different amount of water, why does this nutritional data say there's the same amount of fat in salted and unsalted butter? (I'm fairly sure I've seen the same on butter in the store, and I'll try to remember to confirm that next time I'm there.)
*I'm pretty sure I remember seeing the claim several places online, but the one I was able to quickly find is from Cook's Illustrated (click to expand the second-to-last question) via an answer here, saying that "salted butter almost always contains more water than unsalted butter". (It's possible that a lot of other people's knowledge ultimately came from there.) The nutritional information I've found, along with my own baking experience, does not back this up, but Cook's Illustrated is generally pretty trustworthy, hence the question.
I've never heard such a thing. Searching around is only turning up anecdotal evidence ("I was told by this pastry chef..."). Now you've got me curious.
Closest I've got so far is Land o' Lakes' FAQ: Salted and unsalted butter can be used interchangeably.
Makes no real sense. There is no standard anyway, water and salt levels vary by batch. Each supplier does it differently
The FDA definition for butter specifies only that it be made exclusively from cream or milk, contain a minimum of 80% butter fat by weight, and may include salt and coloring.
FDA Butter Definition
USDA Butter Standards
If you assume the butter in question is at the low end of the spectrum with exactly 80% fat and equal amounts of milk solids, then unsalted would have less water than salted. Since there is no standard that says milk solids must also be a specific percentage, or that fat content can only be 80% and no more, there is really no way to accurately make the claim that salted butter always contains more water than unsalted.
This is the best I could figure out too. I was really hoping for some explanation of that claim from Cook's Illustrated, though!
I have read that by French law, salted butter is allowed a lower fat content. From the New York Times: Butter With a Pedigree. Ah, the French:
The most obvious difference is butterfat: By law, American butter must contain at least 80 percent, while the minimum for French butter is 82 percent (unless it is demi-sel, or salted butter, which can check in at 80 percent and include up to 2 percent salt). Two percentage points may sound measly, but since butterfat affects butter's flavor, texture and workability, every little bit counts.
This is speculation, but perhaps the folk wisdom of unsalted butter having higher fat content may have some basis in fact, at least outside of the US.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.417392
| 2012-07-12T18:02:53 |
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14788
|
cooking vegetables for mashing
Inspired by some of the answers and comments on a recent question on boiling potatoes whole or diced, I'm curious:
What's the best way to cook a combination of vegetables to be mashed? I'm thinking of a subset of potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, parsnips, carrots, and anything else that sounds good. Obviously if boiling, one wants to avoid waterlogged vegetables, but the cooking times of the various vegetables are different. Is there a reliable way to cook everything together (at least for some subsets)?
Edit: As mentioned in the comment below, I know that the best one can do may be starting with the longest-cooking vegetables and incrementally adding the rest. What I was wondering was things like if some or all were better baked, or if boiling is good, if some besides potatoes are better boiled whole...
Are you looking for a reliable way to cook them together at the same time? I'm sure that the most reliable way is just to throw them in the pot at different times.
@Aaronut: If the best one can do is offset times like that, then sure - but I was also trying to ask about cooking methods, since at least one person on the other question suggested baking rather than boiling. I suppose the core intent of my question was: how can one make the best possible dish with the least possible effort? (Soggy or gluey food is bad; so is having to cook things separately.)
After trying steaming a few times as renegade suggested, I've decided I prefer roasting:
As with steaming, everything stays in the vegetables, they're pretty easy to test, and they don't get waterlogged.
It gives some nice caramelization, contributing a little to the end flavor.
It leaves them drier than steaming, which I like because it gives me the freedom to add plenty of other liquids (e.g. milk).
It's easy to roast large quantities of whole vegetables (which wouldn't fit in anything I have to steam in), so I can make large batches. And cooking them whole means there's less to sort through when pulling out ones that got done faster.
To each their own, but this works for me!
For mashing I've always found steam to give the best results. It makes fully cooked vegetables that are easy to test for doneness along the way, they don't get waterlogged, and most importantly their sugars and starches don't dissolve into the water so you get better flavor.
In a pinch if you find you miscalculated and one veggie is done before the other you can pull the basket off the pot and fish out whatever is done and then let the rest finish.
I recently had very good results from baking potatoes, turnips, and rutabagas - perhaps I will try steaming and see which I prefer!
@Jefromi - Good idea. I've done plenty of roasting of veg to get a nice caramelization, but hadn't though of doing it for mashing.
root vegetables will all cook at nearly the same speed given assuming the size of the pieces are equal. Root vegetables can be tricky to cut into equal sizes because of their tapered and oblong nature. I find a batonnet cut to be the best for this.
roasting in the oven at a low temperature (200-300F) will impart more flavor as well, but might dry the surface out too much for a consistant mash.
http://culinaryarts.about.com/b/2008/03/14/how-to-make-a-batonnet-cut.htm
I don't really have much trouble cutting things into equal sizes, but in my experience, they definitely do not cook at the same speed. For example, rutabagas seem to be substantially slower than potatoes.
-1 Most root vegetables have widely different cooking times!
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.417733
| 2011-05-14T18:10:11 |
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14590
|
What is liquid glucose?
Two days ago, I was making ganache as a topping for cupcakes. I needed, as expected, cream and chocolate. But '1 teaspoon of liquid glucose' was also on the list of ingredients (for 12 cupcakes). I didn't think I had that, so I used 'fondant sugar' (powder sugar with a bit of water, described here as poured fondant).
Is liquid glucose something specific you can buy in stores, or is it a collection name for all kinds of sweet, liquid stuff (honey, syrup, fondant etc.)?
If it's something specific, can you make it at home as well?
And yet another question: if I would have added (powdered) sugar to my cream, would I have accomplished ganache as well (after being poured over chocolate), since I think the sugar would dissolve in the cream?
(Just to be complete: my ganache was fine.)
See this question: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/7643/2001
First of all- glucose is a different sugar than table sugar. Corn syrup in the US is similar but has a few extra compounds. As far as I can tell it is used for similar reasons as liquid glucose in the EU.
http://www.ochef.com/784.htm
It is used for a couple reasons:
it is thicker than sugar syrups.
when making candy a little corn syrup can be added to the sugar solution to prevent crystallization.
in the US at least, it is much cheaper than cane sugar.
You can buy it in stores here- I can't say whether you can in Belgium.
I have, on occasion, been forced to use a very thick sugar syrup in place of corn syrup. The recipe used the syrup for reason #1 above and turned out well. If it had been in there for reason #2 it would have been less successful.
In general, if you can find it, it is probably better to buy than to make a substitute because of reason #3.
Liquid glucose is also commonly known as glucose syrup.
It's half as sweet as cane sugar, and does not crystallize easily. This makes it popular among pastry chefs.
Glucose syrup is almost always made from corn, but it can also come from potatoes, wheat, barley, rice, or cassava. When it is derived from corn it is commonly known in the USA as corn syrup. Be aware that this is distinctly different from high-fructose corn syrup which has been processed to be much sweeter.
I live in South America, and the product "Jarabe de Goma" lists the ingredients as water, glucosa, and goma arabiga*, so it looks like this is Liquid Glucose in South America at least.
*I'm not sure what this ingredient is, as it translates to Arabic gum!
Arabic gum is actually a real thing, and an ingredient that would not be in liquid glucose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gum_arabic ...and... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose_syrup
I believe you're actually describing simple syrup for bartending, which would make sense as it frequently does contain gum arabic.
Liquid Glucose, CAS# 8027-56-3, is an important form of glucose commercially available, available as Thick transparent liquid. Liquid Glucose is also know as glucose syrup, widely used as sweetener in food, beverage and confectionary. Glucose is also available in solid form as Dextrose Anhydrous and Dextrose Monohydrate.
Welcome to Seasoned Advice. The OP asked what it was, not where to buy it, so I'm editing out the unsolicited advertisement. Since you did take the time to provide a useful answer, I'm not deleting this entirely, but consider this a warning: if you continue to try to advertise here like this people will not take kindly to it.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.418032
| 2011-05-09T08:23:43 |
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14457
|
Odour removing metallic soap: what is it and how does it work?
When browsing for kitchen tools, I found a metallic soap. It's purpose is to remove any (food) odour from your hands. Here's a cheap ($2.55) example.
I am unfamiliar with this.
Does anyone have any experience with it? Does it really work? If yes, how?
Are there odours which it removes better/worse?
And does it last forever (This may of course depend on the brand and model) ?
These soaps are simply soap-shaped lumps of stainless steel. You'd get the same results from rubbing a spoon on your hand, or rubbing your hands on the sink.
There's a ton of anecdotal evidence that stainless steel works; unfortunately there seems to be very little scientific evidence backing it up. I've never read any in the past, nor was I able to find anything convincing while researching this answer.
Various explanations abound but should all be treated as speculation until some hard experimental data comes out:
About.com's Chemistry Ph.D thinks it's a chemical reaction with sulfur, but admits that it's speculation. I find that explanation dubious at best, because the whole point of stainless steel is that it's non-reactive, and not all of the odours that S.S. supposedly removes are based on sulfur.
Another cooking blogger references McGee and postulates that it might be due to static electricity, which is sort of corroborated by the Straight Dope's hypothesis of ionization. Follow-up comments to the former entry dispute his claim, as well.
Finally, the Straight Dope link above also suggests that the metal might simply be acting as an abrasive. This, to me, is the most plausible explanation, but there's still no specific evidence supporting it. Again, if you care about anecdotal evidence, someone did a little experiment on SD's discussion board and claims that rubbing with anything works - it doesn't have to be metal - which supports the abrasive hypotheses. Then again, it's questionable whether the experimenter here actually impregnated the skin or just got a little scent on the surface.
So make of it what you will; nobody seems to know for sure why it works, but anyone who's tried it can tell you that it does work.
But don't waste your money on one of those "metal soaps" - just use a metal ladle, or the handle of a knife, or any other metal surface, and rub it on your hands under cold running water.
I wonder, if it worked by abrasion, why are all these "soaps" polished to gleam? Wouldn't a rougher surface work better?
@rumtscho: You mean like steel wool? Even polished metal is probably porous enough to act as an abrasive, but if they went about it deliberately then I suspect the result would be like scraping thousands of tiny razor blades against your hand, i.e. not a lot of fun.
So does it only work with onion, garlic and fish?
@Mien: What I've read is that it works with just about anything. One of the anecdotes I read was about apparently removing the smell of bad cologne.
I bought one of these soaps, dead cheap (that's the reason I bought it) and it does work. Interesting answer.
I don't know the exact chemistry behind it, but I am sure someone else will, but it has something to do with a reaction/bonding between the stainless steel and sulfur (if I am not mistaken) in the onion/garlic/fish. After washing my hands after cutting up onions, I have just taken a bit more soap and rub my hands against the faucet since it is stainless steel.
See Aaronut's answer as it will give you a more defined answer at what is happening behind the scenes.
I can only say, that from my own personal experience, this does indeed work, i just dont have the foggiest idea how... So I can only base this phenomenon on, yes, you guessed it, my own use of stainless steel soap. It would seem that there does exist, a certain fraction of magic in the world, and this is one such instance :)
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.418311
| 2011-05-01T16:26:30 |
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20818
|
Should you freeze pastry lukewarm? If so, why?
I have a book about baking in general. In the chapter 'Preserving pastry in the freezer' is the following sentence (I translated it for practical reasons):
Pastry should be frozen as fresh as possible, don't let it cool
completely and put it in the freezer lukewarm (at 35°C = 95°F).
There is no information why you shouldn't let it cool completely. It's the first time I've heard this (and it's a pretty famous and often used book here; it could be wrong though).
While I was searching on this site whether the question was already asked, I've found this question. The accepted answer claims the opposite.
So, I want to know if the claim in my book is correct and why or why not.
I think it's because freezing tend to dry things out. At lukewarm temperature, it's still 'steaming' a bit, which means evaporating liquid, so losing moist. If you can stop the drying out process at that point, the pastry won't be as dry as when you let it cool completely.
Of course, a too high temperature can do harm to already frozen things, or would cause condensation in the package, so that there would be ice formed.
This could be the reason, and therefore, the statement can be true.
This was my thought as well.
Just want to note that the link you supplied is to a cake and your book is referring to pastry. It's quite possible these two type of baked goods require its own type of freezing.
@Jay, good eye, but my book is about pastry in a broad meaning. That's why I used a lot of tags. The statement also includes cake.
Ahhh my definition of pastry has once again warped into a monster that i do not understand.
It's a 'common' misconception that an item at some temperature will freeze faster than at some lower temperature. Physics does not allow for any doubt: an item at a lower temperature will freeze (arrive at an even lower temperature) faster than an item at a higher temperature (everything else being equal).
In short, unless the book gives a plausible explanation, it's incorrect.
Edit: The only explanation (that occurs to me) for placing the product into the freezer before it's properly cooled would be that it'll cool down faster, therefore remaining fresher. I'm not sure that would be noticeable. However, I'm guessing that doing that would create condensation and icing in the product and normally that would be considered a defect. So, I still think the reasoning in your book is incorrect.
It doesn't say that its because it will freeze faster
@rfusca, It doesn't say anything.
Where is this a common misconception? I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that a warm item will freeze faster than the same item when it's cold. Even a physics dunce can figure that out. Of course, if you're comparing two different items, then all bets are off; thermal stability plays a far greater role in cooling/heating time than initial temperature.
@Aaronut: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect - there's a lot of stuff on the internet about it, none of it terribly clear.
@Aaronut, I placed quotes around the word 'common' because it most probably isn't common, common, but only commonish. At any rate, I read an experiment about this misconception debunking it, however I can't find the reference... Sorry.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.418633
| 2012-01-26T22:15:40 |
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|
12749
|
Conversion rule: how to switch oil and butter?
Just a moment ago, I was making muffins. The recipe calls for 125ml oil.
As a footnote, it says that you can replace the oil with 125g butter.
Can you do so in every recipe (not just muffins or pastry)?
I've found this, but the amounts aren't the same (while my recipe says to use the same amount).
Butter and cooking oil are not interchangeable in every recipe.
Butter actually has water in it, while oil is a pure lipid. This can cause problems with water-sensitive preparations, for example a choux paste (where the proper ratio of water to flour is extremely important) or anything using melted chocolate (where the water in butter can cause it to seize).
Butter can also be whipped; oil definitely cannot (except coconut oil). You normally wouldn't use olive or sunflower oil in, for example, an icing.
Butter is a solid at room temperature, while oil is a liquid. When making something that needs to be relatively solid - for example, bread or pie dough or anything requiring a beurre manié - you do not want to substitute butter for oil. Shortening is a better substitute.
Butter has a much lower smoke point and will scorch at temperatures that oils are often subjected to. You have to be very careful when frying anything in butter, and you'll need to watch carefully if baking with butter at very high temperatures.
You have to understand the recipe you are making if you want to know how to do the conversion (or if a conversion is even possible). If the recipe is fat-dependent, you need to use more butter than oil. If it is water-dependent, you generally should use less butter. If it is both, you likely can't do a direct substitution and will have to add or remove something else. And if the recipe relies on the solid/liquid state of the fat, then you simply cannot substitute.
Muffins just happen to be one of those things where it really doesn't matter much. Like all quickbreads, you can vary the amount of fat substantially and all it will do is change the texture of the final dish; quickbreads with more fat tend to be richer, more moist, and less dense. The Joy of Cooking recipe for waffle batter recommends anywhere from 1/4 cup to 1 cup of butter, which is a pretty wide margin of error; in recipes like that, you can usually play fast and loose with the substitutions.
The water difference (and some of the smoke point difference) can be dealt with by using clarified butter or ghee.
Butter is composed of fat (about 80%), water (18%), and milk solids (2%). Aaronut's answer above is excellent and gives many times you can't substitute butter, but when you can, if you want to get it exact, you can use the above ratio and decrease the liquid in the recipe. For example, instead of 80g oil, use 100g butter and decrease the water in the recipe by 18g.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.418910
| 2011-03-03T12:53:10 |
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|
16047
|
How to get those professional looking peaks on top of tiramisu?
Most tiramisu-recipes end with the last layer of mascarpone mixture spread on the last layer of lady fingers/sponge cake (and some chocolate powder on top). So you have a flat surface.
I've seen pictures of tiramisu with a bumpy surface, like small peaks (picture of what I mean).
I want to replicate the peaks, but I'm not sure how to do this.
I already tried to form them when the last layer of mascarpone mixture was on top, but this didn't turn out well.
My next attempt will be with a piping bag. And the one after that will be with cold mascarpone mixture, so it's a bit more firm.
However, I'm not sure any of those will work, so in advance of making two batches of tiramisu, I'm asking if anyone knows how to form the peaks, or if anyone knows that my two next attempts will fail.
I've seen also this question, but I don't think that would help me. If you think otherwise, please say so.
Never done it, but I would definitely do the peaks with a piping bag, then with a knife mark the squares.
@nico, yeah I think that'll work, but it would be nice to know if someone here had done it :)
A bit OT: another very nice (IMO) way to present tiramisù is in little glasses, such as this: http://www.lookapatisserie.com/images/L2939_vTiramisu_l.jpg
An iSi whipper will have no trouble with this.
I think the iSi would add to much air. Maybe because it is thicker than cream, the air would just serve to push the marscapone and egg mixture out. It is an interesting idea I'll have to try it. Perhaps it will add some air and make it better. Who knows, that is the fun of it I guess.
You probably wont be able to get that exact result with a pastry bag because the almost perfect square grid they are divided into. I still think a pastry bag will be your best bet.
I am not sure were you got that picture but my guess is that the tiramisu was machine made and the marks and peaks are from the tooling that was made for the machine to deliver the mascarpone topping.
I would try a good sized round tip on a pastry bag and make my dot and slowly raise up and cut it off by stopping the pressure on the bag and pulling straight up. It has worked for me in the past.
My background is not in pastry though so you may also just go to a local bakery or wedding cake designer and ask how they would do it. They will probably tell you.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.419151
| 2011-07-09T11:39:05 |
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|
21061
|
Why should dried mushrooms be soaked in warm water?
I was looking at some recipes online that included dried mushrooms (mostly porcini). All those recipes and this question mention soaking them in warm water.
Why warm water? Would there be a difference if you would use cold water?
Some instructions I've seen call for hot water.
Rehydrating dried fruits and vegetables in warm water is fast - mushrooms might take 15-20 minutes, though some varieties take longer, and it of course depends on how hot your water is. It would take a lot longer with cold water. You can still do it, and possibly more of the flavor will remain in the mushrooms (since you're not effectively cooking them slightly), but it'll take hours - not the kind of thing you can do without advance planning.
So why do people soak dried beans in cold water (or should I ask another question for that)?
@Mien: Because whether water is initially warm or not doesn't make much of a difference if you soak for as long a time as you soak beans - the water cools down after a while anyway. If I flavour the bean soaking water with garlic or other aromatics, I never let it cool down before soaking beans in them.
@Mien: If you want to soak beans in warm water, you can - it's often called "quick soak". You just cook them for a couple minutes and then let them soak for an hour, and it does approximately what a long cold soak does. (Sorry, I somehow missed your comment.)
@ErikP., soaking dried beans in cold water takes hours. Soaking mushrooms in hot water takes a few minutes. If you would soak mushrooms in cold water it would take (according to Jefromi's answer) hours. So I just drew the line further.
What about the food safety concerns of reconstituting mushrooms in cold water?
@JeffAxelrod I suppose that could be an issue too, if they're wet and at room temperature for a sufficiently long time (not in the fridge), but given that it's so easy to just do it the right way with warm water, seems like kind of a moot point.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.419353
| 2012-02-04T17:13:21 |
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|
21761
|
What's the difference in baking bread in a loaf pan vs. in a Dutch oven?
When I bake bread, I always use my loaf pan. Recently, I've seen some people who bake bread in a Dutch oven (or something similar). Why is this? What are the differences between the two?
There's two important distinctions:
The dutch oven is preheated, so the oven conveys a lot of heat, rather quickly. This causes some steam to be pretty much immediately made.
The dutch oven is covered. This traps the steam previously made. This is trying to replicate steam injection and the goal of most methods that cover the loaf.
Steam keeps the crust from hardening and promotes better oven spring and crisper crust. The steam basically allows the bread to 'swell' more in the oven. Steam also gelatinizes the starches in the crust and formes a better 'shine' and 'crisp' on the finished product. The dutch oven is then uncovered after awhile and the crust hardens.
Protip: Don't forget the uncovering part >.>
In addition to rfusca's quality points, the dutch oven is very helpful for eliminating hot spots in the oven, leading to a more even rise across the loaf.
Another difference is shape. A loaf pan directs the dough into a specific shape as it cooks (and as the oven spring makes it expand), while loaves cooked in a dutch oven are free to expand outward. This results in a lower, broader loaf.
I believe that the loaf pan's restriction may also result in a tighter crumb, and I would be grateful to anyone who can confirm or refute this.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.419532
| 2012-02-26T21:42:24 |
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|
23537
|
How do tomatillos differ in taste from under-ripe tomatoes?
I can't get access to tomatillos, but I would like to know what they taste like.
This helped me a bit, but it's not entirely clear to me what would be different between tomatillos and under-ripe tomatoes.
Or are tomatillos closer to something else?
Botanically they are closer to Other things. But I still think that the best sub would be a green tomato. One problem I have found is that smaller green tomatoes can for me be a little bitter. That being said if you access to green tomatoes you should be able to get pretty close by using them and adding a little lemon juice. It wont be exact but subs rarely are.
Under-ripe tomatoes definitely seem to me like they weren't exactly meant to be eaten like that. There are certainly still things one can do with them, but the flavor isn't always what you'd like (see tastefive's comment); they were selected for their characteristics when ripe. Tomatillos, on the other hand, have always been used like this. They're supposed to be tart and bright green (unless they're a differently-colored variety). I think tastefive was pretty on-target with the mention of lemon juice; they have a nice bright tartness to them but definitely no bitterness. They're quite pleasant to eat fresh, if you're the kind of person who likes tomatoes and fruit. (I just ate one to make sure I wasn't lying to you.)
A much bigger difference, though, isn't taste: tomatillos aren't really juicy. You can slice and dice all you want and your cutting board will still be dry. This is pretty clear from pictures - here's one I found with Google image search:
This makes them very well-suited for the kinds of Mexican sauces they're traditionally used in, more so than a green tomato would be.
I always see tomatillos in the larger grocery stores (Safeway, Whole Foods) and decided to try them for the first time today (5/18). I found them to be delicious. They were sweet, not tart as one answer stated; nor were they juiicy. I just sliced and ate them with no salt, pepper or dressing and enjoyed them very much. I did not find them to be like an under-ripe tomato, just a sweeter, less juicy version. Will definitely buy again.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.419794
| 2012-05-02T20:27:23 |
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|
24648
|
How can I save this vanilla extract?
I tried making my own vanilla extract a few months ago. Normally, it should be pretty dark (almost black). Mine isn't, as you can see:
(full-size image)
What I did was (after sterilizing it) filling a 250 ml (about a cup) bottle with vodka. I also cut up some (mostly seeded) vanilla pods, I think 4-5.
My guess is that there isn't enough vanilla in it. I'm planning on putting some more in. Is that the proper way to save this half-extract? Are there any downsides to adding new pods now?
Originally, there was maple syrup inside!
You can definitely improve the extract by adding more vanilla beans to the bottle as well as allowing the alcohol more time to extract the vanilla essences from the beans. Most references I have seen say you need to allow at least 2 months with daily agitation to get decent extraction. You can leave the beans in the alcohol as long as you want, but the vast majority of extraction is complete after 6 months.
As a guideline to start from, in the US the FDA requires anything labeled as vanilla extract to have at least 13.35oz (380g) vanilla beans per gallon (3.8L).
FDA Vanilla Bean Definition Title 21 Sec. 169.3
FDA Vanilla Extract Definition Title 21 Sec. 169.175
I can't think of any downsides to adding more. The recipe I use calls for at least 8 beans per cup (more is better).
Usually it's recommended to cut the beans in half and scrape out the seeds, adding both the beans and the seeds to the vodka - at least, this is what I do, and I think it probably allows more flavor to be extracted.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.419987
| 2012-06-23T13:06:21 |
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|
21454
|
Should flax seeds be crushed to be a good egg substitute?
When I'm looking up egg substitutes, one of the easiest (for me) is making a slurry of flax seeds and water. However, I noticed there is a difference between using the flax seeds whole and breaking them up. The slurry is thicker if the seeds aren't whole. Or at least, that's what I think I observe.
So, should you only used broken or whole flax seeds, when using them as an egg substitute? Are there (dis)advantages of using flax seeds whole vs. broken up?
I've seen this question, that mentions to break them up, but it isn't specifically about substituting eggs.
Note: I can imagine it also depends if I mind pieces in whatever I'm making, and I don't mind about those.
Yes, for all practical intents and purposes, for flax eggs to congeal they need to be milled or ground to a powder and slurried with water, then introduced to the dish. After stirring and then letting set you should have a nice gloopy mess if you let it stand for a few minutes.
I typically use a 1 part milled seed to 2.5 parts water, but typically ranges go from 2-3 parts water. You can use a mortar and pestle or coffee grinder for fast, thorough results.
The exception to this is that you can boil them(this link will teach you how to use them to make hair gel, if you're so inclined). This will cause the soluble fiber (the congealing agent) to dissolve, leaving behind the seed husks. Milled flax seeds don't seem to be any less effective and no more distracting in terms of taste so, unless you're doing up your hair, I just don't see the payoff on boiling them.
Another exceptional means to an exception to this is letting the seeds soak for approximately 6-8 hours. As I recall the person who tried this said it didn't congeal much, and was less sticky than a milled flax egg.
To grind flax seed quickly to a fine powder, use a cheap electric coffee grinder (dedicate it to the job)
you can buy them pre-ground.
then, keep them in the freezer so they stay fresh/edible for as long as possible.
they're best when the taste is sorta granola-y; earthy; according to isa chandra moskowitz.
I use them in zucchini bread.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.420128
| 2012-02-17T14:00:34 |
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|
21815
|
What causes curdling and how can you prevent it?
Some sauces are more at risk to curdle than others. What exactly (ingredients, techniques, temperature...) causes this curdling? What can you do to have the curdling risk at minimum?
I'm not asking for ways to fix this, that's already asked here.
Related: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/14811/what-causes-yogurt-in-sauces-to-split-how-to-prevent-it
In most cases, curdling occurs because proteins in the sauce are denatured and bind up with each other forming clumps.
In cooking, proteins are denatured by excessive heat, acid, salt, or enzymes.
Heat and acid are the usual culprits for me. For example, when making a hollandaise sauce- the egg yolks are slowly cooked to allow them to set. In most recipes the lemon juice is added later. If the sauce is heated too abruptly or too high then the egg proteins will curdle.
To prevent curdling you have a few options-
Don't expose the sauce to as much heat.
Be careful to not overcook egg rich sauces. If possible add the protein rich ingredient later in the process- for example adding yogurt to a sauce just before serving.
Heat the sauce gently.
Heating too fast will also make proteins denature. Many sauces are cooked in a double boiler- not to keep the sauce from overheating but to ensure that it heats gently.
Don't expose the proteins to too much salt or acid.
Dropping a couple tablespoons of lemon juice into warm milk is a recipe for paneer not sauce.
Take out some insurance.
Proteins bind with each other after denaturing when there are a large quantity of similar molecules all together. One solution then is to introduce a lot of dissimilar molecules that will interfere with the protein's ability to bind to itself. Common candidates for this are starch or fat.
It is difficult (but not impossible) to curdle the milk protein in cream based sauces with just heat because the high concentration of milk fat gets in the way. This is why reduction sauces can add cream to a very hot liquid and let it reduce. However, adding acid and heat can still be enough to curdle so be careful if your reduction sauce is very acidic.
Many otherwise fragile sauce recipes will call for a little bit of corn starch as an insurance policy. In the related question that you posted- yogurt sauces are particularly susceptible to this because low-fat yogurt is very high in protein and low in fat, and starch.
+1, I think you hit all the major points. Sugar is another good inhibitor (though only appropriate in some sauces).
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.420325
| 2012-02-28T15:55:28 |
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|
24071
|
How can I get my bacon less salty?
I was reading this question, and there's a solution to the OP's answer. I'm not fond of salt and this is a drawback for bacon (to me, that is). I do want to end up with pieces of cooked bacon (so mixing in milk or less bacon won't work), but less salty. Where I live, we also don't have 10 brands of bacon, so choosing the brand with the smallest amount of salt isn't good enough.
Is there a way that I can reduce the saltiness of bacon?
I don't care about the actual salt percentage. I'm curious about salt perception, so masking up the salt would be nice.
Related: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/17141/is-there-a-method-for-desalinating-bacon
Despite your disclaimers, this question seems like a duplicate of those... Just because you don't like the answers, re-asking won't necessarily get you a better answer? shrug
@talon8 that wasn't my intention. I'm not asking how to get rid of the salt itself. I'm asking how I can cover up the saltiness. It can be either something with the bacon itself or with a pairing of the bacon.
Ahh, my mistake then, I appologize. I understand now... You could try "rinsing" it, or soaking it in water? shrug I'm not sure what that would do or if it would work. Sort of a reverse-brine?
Buy pork belly instead? Then you can salt it to taste.
Try Panceta (Italian bacon). I find it much less salty.
Soak and rinse... completely immerse the side of bacon for a few hours in clean, cold ice-water, drain, rinse, and repeat. A cooler is best for this, as it keeps the meat cool and offers lots of water for the salt to dilute into, otherwise a use a large pot in the fridge.
The downside is that this may also affect the "cure" - the smoke-flavor that many manufacturers add in lieu of actually smoking the bacon. Higher quality bacon may not have this issue (but then again, higher quality bacon won't be so salty).
The saltiness can be reduced by blanching. You will probably need to experiment with blanching times to find what you prefer.
Method:
Bring a shallow pan of water to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low.
Place bacon in simmering water for 30-60 seconds.
Blot it dry with paper towels.
Cook it however you would normally.
If you just want to mask the saltiness you could try cutting the saltiness with sweetness by making bacon candy, or just eat it with a little bit of maple syrup. You can also cut the saltiness by adding a bit of acid by spritzing it with lemon juice.
I get "fresh side" from a local farmer. It's basically bacon that hasn't gone through the curing process to actually turn it into bacon. Since it doesn't have any salt or anything in it, I typically salt the meat as I'm eating it. This would be an easy way to get the exact amount of salt you want. It doesn't taste exactly like bacon, but it's delicious!
Sounds like you're talking about pork belly, mentioned in the comments on the question too.
We have just finished curing and smoking a pork belly. We tested a slice and found it was extremely salty. We had rinsed and rinsed, and then let it soak in cold water for 2 hours. Still it was so salty we couldn't eat it. We decided to rinse and soak again even though it had been smoked. We took a scraper to it to scrape off what we could. I was thinking we'd have to re-smoke it, but another test strip revealed it still held its smokiness. We were able to save the bacon!
Bacon when well cooked loses a substantial amount of it's sodium content. just cook it well and be sure to drain it properly on paper towel. Remove as much of the bacon grease as possible as it will contain much of the sodium from the bacon. Some manufacturers will even tell you in the nutritional info on the package how much sodium is removed after cooking
Blanching or just soaking in water helps remove salt. I cure my own bacon and smoke it. I make a practice of washing off the salt cure, then soaking it for one hour in water prior to smoking it. That gets rid of salt and I get a less salty bacon.
You can also add potato chunks to the water as potatoes love to soak up salt....
Unfortunately, this is a kitchen myth that has been proven wrong.
@Stephie I don't doubt it at all, but I'm interested in a reference for that?
@James see http://www.genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/potatosponge.html and http://www.thekitchn.com/can-a-potato-really-fix-a-toosalty-soup-putting-tips-to-the-test-in-the-kitchn-214650. In short, potatoes can reduce the percieved saltiness a bit, but can't "draw out" salt.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.420556
| 2012-05-29T19:43:06 |
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|
25217
|
How do you wash fruit and veggies effectively?
When eating or preparing fruit and vegetables, you should wash them beforehand to get rid of pesticides, bacterias, fertilizers, etc. However, I notice that I (and others I know), just put the thing for a few seconds under cold running water while rubbing it softly.
Is this quick rinse enough to remove those unwanted things or at least some of them? What big of a proportion are washed away by this?
I've found this question, but I'm not satisfied with it.
Pesticide reduction by simply rinsing with tap water is significant, but doesn't remove everything. Of those tested 75% were removed with plain tap water. http://www.ct.gov/caes/cwp/view.asp?a=2815&q=376676
You can quickly blanch your fruit or vegetables to sanitize the outer skin. http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze/blanching.html
A mild vinegar solution can help fruits and vegetables last longer in the fridge. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14540742
People generally wash fruit and vegetables to remove dirt. Most of the dangerous "dirt" is post cropping
The rain washes away pesticides and fertilizers. In many growing operations pesticides and fertilizers are not used after the crop has significantly sprouted anyway
The main hard to remove dirt from the growing cycle is bird crap, and I an not convinced this is a major health hazard anyway once it has been sun dried
Accumulated dirt from the distribution and sales process is the big unknown. If you buy fruit and vegetables from you local farmers market this may not be such a big issue. Big city auction and supermarket sold fruit and vegetables will have gone through many hands and shipping processes, and should be washed to removed unintentional contamination
If you are concerned; wash as you would hand wash dishes. Agitate and soak in warm water and a little dish soap, brush hard surfaced fruit and vegetables, and then rinse fully in running water
Do not use strong solvents as these may actually draw contaminants into the fruit and vegetables.e.g. Ethanol dissolves heavy metal oxides which will be absorb-able by the fruit and vegetable skin
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.420918
| 2012-07-23T21:17:31 |
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|
14367
|
What is the purpose of using ping pong balls on top of a Sous Vide Bath?
I recently saw a picture of expert Douglas Baldwin with his sous vide equipment in this article. One of his immersion circulator baths was covered with ping pong balls.
What is the purpose of covering the immersion circulator bath with ping pong balls?
It is to lower the water evaporation from the bath, and keep the temperature of the bath even.
The concept has been used in chemistry labs for years! But normally, the balls are smaller and made of polythene - those are a bit big.
Wouldn't the circulation pump from the I.C. keep the bath temperature even?
The balls form an insulating layer on the surface, which is where most heat is lost if the bath is not covered. That makes the circulating heater work less hard than it would do otherwise.
Then why isn't there a lid or something?
You see the ones on the left and right do have lids. The middle one just doesn't have one, so he improvises. Plus, you don't have to take off the lid to add or remove food, this way :)
@Ray: The item on the right is a chamber vacuum. It needs to have a lid or it can't make a vacuum seal. But your other points seem valid. I have a plastic lid for my sous-vide bath that has a cut-away for the immersion circulator. Since Mr Baldwin seems to have the same kit as me (in the center with the plastic tub and the PolyScience IC) it seems he must prefers the ping-pong balls to the lid.
@Sinan: My kit came with a lid which I use. It works quite well and since you don't really add or remove food often, it's not really an inconvenience to use.
Oops, you're right. Wasn't really looking, I guess :)
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.421100
| 2011-04-26T21:42:54 |
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|
26053
|
How can I make my crinkles less dry?
I just made chocolate crinkles for the first time and I really like them, but they are a bit too dry, making them slightly crumbly. It's possible I over-baked them a little bit, I'll try to bake them a minute less next time. Is there something else I can do to get them some more moist?
I halfed this recipe, resulting in:
41 g cocoa powder
75 g sugar
60 ml oil
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
130 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
I followed the recipe closely for the preparation and I let the dough chill overnight.
I have made this recipe several times and they were definitely not dry (though they do dry out somewhat faster than other cookies). It uses melted chocolate instead of cocoa powder and oil, so it's a little hard to see how to modify yours by comparison, though, and I haven't made any others. (My guess would be a bit more sugar and oil and a bit less flour, but I'm not an expert here.)
You could try replacing part of the sugar with a liquid alternative: molasses, maple syrup, honey, et cetera. You don't need to modify it much to start with, try replacing 10 grams of the sugar with 10 grams of an alternative.
Volume conversions can be found in section 1.2 of
http://realfoodliving.com/faqs/sweeteners-faqs
but I can't find any weight conversions.
I would add a small piece of butter the next day when I'm preparing to bake it ..
Then after its out the oven cover it so the hear keeps it a bet more moist !
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.421264
| 2012-09-08T08:23:54 |
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|
22029
|
Improving tomato sauce in beef liver recipe
Possible Duplicate:
What kind of sauce can I make for beef liver?
I boil the liver in order to be healthier but a own variant is to heat it on a pan afterwards or fry it with little oil from the beginning. I made sauce using garlic, a bit of onion and tomatoes. However, the tomato puree is too bland and I am not sure if the tomato puree is the best fit. Maybe I should use diced tomato. What can I do to improve my recipe in the sense already described?
Please do not repost questions. What can I add to X questions are also not generally permitted here.
A few finely diced mushrooms or olives can add a lot of extra flavour, Worcester Sauce is of course an option too for quickly adding flavour.
There are quite a few 'proper' recipes which recommend fried and blended celery but I've never found it to work that well, it can add body if thinly sliced but doesn't do much flavour wise.
Personally I'd add a good helping of coarse black pepper and some dried parsley. I've always found simply adding more garlic can add flavour too so you may want to experiment with that too.
If it's specifically more tomato flavour you want then really the only thing you can do is reduce it more.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.421390
| 2012-03-06T01:08:29 |
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|
24723
|
What is the best technique to put icing on plastic?
I'm going to attempt to do is bake a cake for my daughter's first birthday. The cake is going to be based on this recipe, but I want it to look more like this one.
Now if you look at the 2nd link, it seems as though the icing has been put directly onto the doll. I can see a problem here, how will it stick to the smooth plastic of the doll.
What would be the best way do you think? Create some sort of base layer which is more tacky and then ice over that?
Edit
The recipe which I have linked to is incomplete when it talks about the Icing. So I would probably use this Butter Cream recipe.
Update
I took all your comments and suggestions on board. Spent a few weeks trying out different sponges, and then did a rough prototype.
Then the day before her birthday, I made this
I am happy with it! Hope you approve :P
Have you tried it already straight on the doll?
No not yet. I haven't bought the doll yet until I have done some research :) But I just thought straight away that this could be a problem.
It might depend on the frosting itself. If it's hot, the butter would slip off more easily I think. But what frosting will you use? The one listed on the first recipe isn't complete (0g sugar is most likely a typo).
Yeah I noticed that the recipe for the Icing the link is incomplete. I would probably use something like this Butter Cream recipe http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/6110/buttercream-icing.aspx
+1 For being a creative dad. Make sure to take pictures and post a url in the comments so we can see the result :) (Plus I'm sure your daughter might want to see it and appreciate it more when she is a bit older than just 1 year old)
@Jay O yeah don't worry I will share some photos once I have made it.
@Jay I have attached some photos :)
@Mien I have attached some photos :)
Are you sure you want to use icing? The barbie cakes I have seen all have the skirt made from rolled marzipan, not from icing. The bodice can be a normal fabric top or dress (inedible, can be washed after the cake is eaten) or also molded from marzipan. I agree that it isn't as tasty as buttercream icing, but it surely makes a more beautiful skirt.
This recipe has 196 pictures, you can see different variations of the bodice.
If you insist on using icing, I would try to smear something sticky onto the doll first, for example honey or syrup in the softball stage, then apply the icing on the sticky layer. I haven't tried this myself (nor have I tried applying icing directly to plastic, so I don't know if it will hold).
On another note, don't forget to put the barbie's legs in a cut-off paper towel cylinder, so she doesn't get damaged when the cake is cut, and doesn't fall when pieces of the skirt are missing. Also, if you bake the layers in a guggelhupf pan, you don't have to cut a piece out of the middle, which is hard to get right.
+1 for the tip on putting the doll in a tube to keep it standing after cutting the cake. Is guggelhupf the same thing as a bundt pan?
@jay I mean http://www.backform.de/de/artikel/gugelhopfform.html. Now I search around, it looks like there is a difference between bund and gugelhupf, but nobody says what the difference is.
Thanks for the link, I will take a look. I like your idea of the honey or syrup, I think that would be the best way to get a tacky surface first.
I would prefer to go with the butter cream as my wife isn't a can of marzipan (even though I love it!). I will experiment a little first though :)
@rumtscho I have attached some photos :)
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.421507
| 2012-06-28T12:36:45 |
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|
24788
|
Would a fruit cocktail flavoured cake work?
I am baking a Cinderella Princes cake for my daughter's first birthday party. I have now had the crazy idea of having a rainbow cake under the skirt of the dress.
Not only this, but I had another crazy idea of making each layer of the rainbow cake taste fruity, in the thought that it would make a fruit cocktail taste.
e.g.
Red = Strawberry
Orange = Orange
Green = Kiwi
Yellow = Lemon
Blue = Blueberry
Purple = Blackberry maybe?
Would this fruit flavour combination work? Do you know of any similar cakes?
While you can probably create the layers and have them look and taste well, I am afraid that the combination of 7 tastes in one cake will be too much of a good thing. Also, shaping the layers is going to be a bit hard.
Orange and lemon cakes are classics, so there shouldn't be any problem making those layers. I'm not entirely sure how you'd go about making the others, but there should be a way to incorporate fruit puree into cake batter so that the cakes still rise and set.
Blueberry, blackberry and raspberry can all be added whole or slightly chopped into a cake (think blueberry muffins), although they do make it moister so you'd want to be careful it doesn't end up too wet. This might work for kiwi and strawberry but I've never tried it with anything like those.
You might need a bit of food colouring if you want to emphasise the visual aspects of rainbow layers.
Yeah I would use food colouring to get the vivid colours, then add the flavouring. Good idea with the blueberry, blackberry and raspberry ( adding chopped bits ). Do you think the mix of flavours would go though?
You could supplement the fruit flavours with Tutti Fruiti mix or your own hand-chosen mixture of candied peels and fruit and pistachios etc.
Pistachio would make a better green layer than kiwi
@ElendilTheTall really liking the idea of a pistachio layer. I'm going to have to make a pistachio cake this weekend I think.
@5arx yeah I had thought of Tutti Fruiti flavouring, but not sure if this would taste cheap?
@ElendilTheTall O yeah Pistachio would be an idea. It would add a different dimension to the cake. However I am still unsure whether the mix of flavours would blend together.
Fortuna iuvat audentes :)
@TimBJames I would generally say that fruit flavours do blend well, and adding one kind of nut flavour would probably work because fruit and nuts generally go. But as ElendilTheTall says... you have to try it.
@TimBJames some commercially available tutti-fruitti mixes do taste cheap. But you could always try making your own (http://www.ehow.com/how_3910_make-candied-fruit.html makes a reasonable starting point). Things like angelica and maybe a liqueur add much 'class' to the mix ;-)
Well if I were to attempt this I'd try to use jello for the flavor and the color.
Realistically though, the icing and ice cream on the cake are the real flavor aspects.
Lids don't care that you slaved over the oven; put ice cream on anything and they are happy.
After separating the white cake mix into four seperate bowls, add a teaspoon or so of
the jello mix and stir it in till you get the color you want, then pour the first color in the pan, and each color carefully over top til you get all four layers. Put yellow on top so the icing looks lighter. If I wasn't worried about layers, I'd drag a knife through it and marble it.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.421799
| 2012-07-02T09:34:18 |
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|
20251
|
What is a pressurized filter, and should I use it for my espresso?
I've just started out really using my Gaggia Classic espresso machine, and so far I've been pretty satisfied with my results – but I'm no expert. Yesterday, I lost the black plastic thing that goes between the portafilter and the basket (is that the right terminology?), as shown below:
Now, when I tried to make espresso without it, I noticed that the liquid would spray from the portafilter and, well, ruin my kitchen. When I researched further, it seemed that I didn't even use a normal filter, but something called a "pressurized filter", where there's only one hole in the bottom for the coffee to come out.
Here's what I found out about it on coffeegeek.com:
[…] a crema enhancing device is built into the actual filter basket, usually through the function of channeling all the brewed coffee through a solitary pin hole. This action creates a jet-like effect that boosts crema production, even in stale coffee or coarse ground coffee.
People on the internet seem to hate this thing though, and I start wondering whether I should get a replacement for this bolt, or just buy a "normal" filter. Here are my questions:
What exactly is the purpose of this "enhancement"? How does it work?
Why should I use it, or why shouldn't I? Does it matter for me as a non-professional?
I'm also using a Classic, and it's a pretty neat machine. Make sure you replace your steam wand with a real one (no 'auto frother tube thing') and get a good grinder to match it, and you'll be able to make fine espresso. (if you aren't already, that is :) )
@Max Although I was getting good results, I'm looking into replacing it anyway — have you got any recommendations?
@slhck why do you want to replace it? I have had my Gaggia Classic for 18 months, and love it. The only real problem is the POOR steaming capability. I fixed that by installing a PID kit from Auber Instruments - at $200 it was much less $$$ than a new espresso machine.
@RickG I tried the steamers of "real" machines and found them a bit better to use than these plastic auto frothers. Do you mean this kit? How exactly does it help? I'm a poor noob when it comes to espresso, I have to admit.
@slhck uhhh my bad - I thought you were replacing the entire machine. I actually bought the PID-GGS kit from Auber, which includes the ability to control the steam boiler. It replaces the thermostats for both the steam and the brew temperature, which gives you much more consistent temperatures for both. The result of installing the PID kit is two-fold: better espresso, and better steaming capability.
This is called a pressurized portafilter. As you found on coffeegeek, it is designed to enhance production of crema. The Coffee Geeks look down on this device, since it produces what is essentially "fake" crema - even with old, stale pre-ground coffee.
If all you want to drink are lattes, it does not make much difference. If you want to taste decent espresso, then you must use a non-pressurized portafilter - even if you are a non-professional.
Making espresso is not a slam dunk - especially with a consumer machine like the Gaggia. You will learn to improve your espresso shots by analyzing your technique. This often is based on the appearance of the crema during and after the shot is drawn.
Since the pressurized portafilter gives you misleading information on the actual crema, you will have difficulty learning how to make a good espresso.
By the way: Got my new "classic" filters today and I think I did pretty well. Maybe I'll try a bottomless portafilter next for learning.
i have given this topic much thought and research too..
at the end of the day, it depends on how you like your coffee, how frequent and how much you make weekly too..
if you go through the trouble of getting fresh beans.. freshly roasted... with a great burr grinder.. then sure it would be best if you had a non pressurized portafilter...
also u gotta ensure ur machine has consistent temperature.. pressure and a bunch of other technical stuff...
let's not forget the right steps to preparing and pulling a great shot! preperation, descaling etc etc..
on top of all that.. you need to use the beans you buy within weeks.. as non pressurized pf really exposes the beans qualities.. so if it's not fresh.. it's probably going to taste bad..
you finally end up with great espresso shots (hopefully).. and you can enjoy it black.. americano.. or a tiny bit of milk..
if you are going to milk it up.. and make lattes etc.. add sugar and syrups... then my suggestion would be to stick to a simple pressurized setup where u don't have to worry too much about age of bean (to a certain extent)... you also don't have to get the grind size perfect or the tamping...
anyways just my two cents..
i like a pressurized for a home setup.. and at work where i run restaurants we have professional machines to play with..
cheers! don't forget.. most importantly.. enjoy you coffee!
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.422479
| 2012-01-08T17:08:01 |
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|
42346
|
What are these small long narrow yellow things?
In a food market, on the street, I bought a Masala Dosa, and it had some small yellow narrow long things in it that were delicious. I snapped a picture:
Any ideas what they are?
What was the dish?
@SAJ14SAJ It was Masala Dosa.
Don't know the name, but my Indian boss says it's a fried lentil noodle.
Just curious to know where you got this Masala Dosa from, because I have had it in so many different cities of India, and never found this 'sev' inside the masala!! :)
They are fried chickpea noodles called "sev".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sev_(food)
Usually they are added to street food snacks such as bhel puri and pani puri, for example see what a nice look they add to this panipuri
http://food4yourmood.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/pani-puri.jpg
I usually buy them in Indian grocery stores, though I would think it's also possible to dry roast wheat vermicelli as a substitute.
This answer seems the right one, as they were crunchy, so it makes sense they were fried.
The " small narrow long yellow " things you are referring to, is called "sev" in India.
It is made up of fried black gram flour. And yes black gram flour is yellow in color.
So, basically you make a batter out of the flour and it is passed through a very thin sieve and directly in to boiling oil.
The objects pictured are thin pasta which is sometimes sold as angel hair, pilaf noodles, fine egg noodles, chayreyé, or broken vermicelli. Generally, one would sauté them in oil or butter until lightly browned then add them to a stew, curry, or soup so they can absorb some of the flavorful broth. The sautéing helps keep them from falling apart.
It's similar to what you get in Bombay mix
And what are the yellow things in Bombay mix then? I'm afraid the answer doesn't get us much further.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.422882
| 2014-02-26T21:10:26 |
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|
7186
|
"Cooking" with acid (ceviche)
At a tappas bar, I had shrimp ceviche. In this dish, the shrimp is "cooked" not by high temperature but by the citric acid of its marinade. This would be really fun to make at home. For such dishes, should you stick to tested recipes? Or is there a way to figure out: what kind of acids will work, what kinds of meats will work, and when the meat is sufficiently "cooked"?
Edit: Added quotes around "cooked" since, as Bob pointed out, the meat is not cooked per se.
Ceviche is not exactly "cooked", but the acid causes the proteins to become denatured in a similar way. It may not kill all bacteria and parasites as effectively as cooking (with heat), so like sdg said, it's safest to use food that you would eat raw.
"Sushi grade" can refer to the fat content of the fish (like the USDA grades for beef marbling) rather than an assurance of its safety, so don't rely on that to pick out ingredients. Saltwater fish should be frozen at sea both for freshness and to kill parasites, and I prefer to get individually quick frozen (IQF) shrimp both for their freshness and convenience. Saltwater fish at your local supermarket has been previously frozen, so you're usually better off just buying frozen fish and thawing it yourself, unless you're really pressed for time.
Freshwater fish should not be used in a raw preparation, including ceviche.
@Chris - Raw salmon is usually frozen and then thawed before being made into delicious sashimi, as it is a vector for human-host parasites, similar to purely freshwater fish. Cite.
Whether or not you should stick with a tested recipe depends on your expertise and the food in question.
In this case, if you are an experienced chef, and the food you are preparing you would be willing to eat raw (i.e. sushi grade), then no worries, just go ahead and experiment.
On the other hand, I tend to stick to a recipe pretty closely for the first few times. Once I understand how the dish should turn out if I "follow the rules", that then gives me guidance as to how I can break them.
Good Luck
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.423081
| 2010-09-12T16:24:37 |
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|
4957
|
What Side Dish Sauces Should Be Promoted To Their Own Sauce?
We all know about the typical main dish sauces: gravies, cream sauces, marinara, vinaigrettes, bbq sauces, etc...
However, I find that many side dishes have their own great sauces that you don't typically find as an entree sauce. For example:
Baked bean sauce/juices are great on meat.
Glazed carrots' glaze is great with light/mild fishes.
I could absolutely see these sauces being used on their own - that is, without serving the beans/carrots. What other side dish sauces do you think deserve to be bumped up to entree sauce status?
Good usage of CW Chad.
Interesting concept. I'll have to give that some thought from the vegetarian perspective.
Chad it looks like this interesting but very open-ended question is going nowhere. Can you rephrase it? I think the problem is that everyone makes different sides, with different sauces, and thus there isn't any direction for people to take it. It's like asking, "what sauce can I make that's not typically made?" or "what accidental sauce can I make from a dish's leftovers". The latter might work, but the former is a non-starter.
I make a sort-of-vinaigrette that I usually use as a salad dressing, but it'd probably be good with other things.
My usual recipe is to halve a few pints of cherry tomatoes, toss them with some sugar and salt, then drain them into a bowl for a while. After they've drained, I reduce the tomato juice with honey, shallot, dijon mustard, and cider vinegar, let it cool, then add a little olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Great idea! I think you're right that vinaigrettes are under used in main dishes. Chimichurris are used a lot with chicken or steak, but they're not really a pure vinaigrette. Your vinaigrette sounds like it would be really good on steak and chicken as well, maybe even pork. Oh, and I'm sure it would be great on some light, white fish. Thanks!
For me there is one item I frequently purchase just for the "side sauce" it contains: Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce. The adobo sauce is an ingredient I practically incorporate into everything I make that I would want to add heat to. (I wish they sold it outright, but cutting up the peppers and adding them is just as satisfying.)
Frequent uses: Barbecued/grilled anything,Chili,Tomato sauces with smoky meats, (anything smoky), Queso dips, Mac & Cheese with poblanos
Wish I could give this answer more that +1. I use Adobo Sauce all the time too.
That does sound good - I'll have to try some of those ideas. I haven't used adobo sauce before, though I've heard about it plenty. Thanks for the recommendation.
Absolutely love Chipotle in Adobo, that sauce is amazing. I also wish you could buy it straight up...sounds like a million dollar idea if someone were to jump on it!
Why not all of them?
That may sound like I'm taking the p*ss, but I'm not. There will be millions of sauces out there, and almost all of them will work with some main dish. We could try to list all of them. We could also try to reverse the question and see whether there are any sauces that disqualitfy themselves - and why they do so.
@Roux & @Tobias: There's a real question here, but only if we give specific answers like I demonstrated. The point is so that users can try these new sauces or that it will spark a thought for a recipe. If you generalize the question you, not me, are making it too general. I specifically listed examples so that others would list examples and marked it as a wiki so that we could all contribute and help each other. Hope that makes sense.
It makes sense, Chad. I hope however, that you'll agree to disagree on this one.
I'm looking to see this question resolved, so I've put up a bounty. Don't like loose ends that involve me.
I think this answer represents the (only) possible right one. Since there are no restrictions on what qualifies as a main dish, there will be no restrictions on what will work with some dish as a sauce. It's still interesting to explore specific examples though.
I agree that this is a reasonable answer, but because of its point, it would probably be better as a comment on the original question.
I will presumably select the answer that gives the most number of examples and/or that gives some very original ideas as that is what I was looking for.
@Ocaasi - fair point. We'll see what happens.
I find that many fruit glazes can be put into the spotlight. Simple sugar glazes with tweaked additions. To me vinaigrettes can be some great sauces for meat, especially pork.
Mmm, so right. I love pork with apples because that apple gel/sauce is a great sweet and sour taste. I wonder how it would be with chicken or veal?
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.423302
| 2010-08-12T04:00:46 |
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5509
|
How would I measure Bouillon Cubes compared to the actual powder
Is there a standard measurement that can be used?
There are so many types of both... so I'd choose a general workaround (see the answer). Considered downvoting the question but didn't.
The bouillon cubes I am familiar with are equal to 1 teaspoon of powder.
I'd figure it backwards. You need x amount of Bouillon. You can see (from the specific powder AND the specific cubes) how much you'll need of each to make that x amount.
Then calculate the ratio based on those numbers.
Then cook, and discover there's a taste difference, and correct accordingly. :)
Generally, they tell you that one cube should be combined with X cups of water. Powdered boullion is 1 teaspoon per cup, usually. If a boullion cube says to dissolve in 2 cups of water, then it's the equivalent of two teaspoons.
The bouillon cubes I use (Wyler's) states on the jar that one cube makes ONE cup of broth.
Crushed one to see how it measured up and it came to one teaspoon. Also the reliable sources I've checked all say one cube = 1 teaspoon (tsp). Hope that helps.
I checked the Wyler's website under "tips". They state that one boullion cube = one teaspoon of powder.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.423708
| 2010-08-19T01:40:47 |
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|
5839
|
What heat should I use to BBQ red/green bell peppers?
What heat should I use to BBQ (gas/charcoal grill) red/green bell peppers?
Should it be:
direct or indirect
high/medium/low
duration?
Roasting
I use direct heat, medium-high to high, specifically I use my grill but I've seen people set them directly on a gas stove burner (this seems like a fire hazard, so don't walk away). You could also broil them very close to the broiler, or roast them, but roasting will take longer than direct heat methods.
To easily peel them, you want to go until they're as black as possible. The blacker, the easier they are to peel. On my propane grill on medium-high flame, this takes about 4 minutes per side, my grill burns a little hot so you might need 5-6 minutes per side depending on how your grill works. edit: I also keep the lid closed so the flame climbs a bit more, especially important on a windy day.
You can find a picture on the top of this page, I actually let mine get significantly darker than that, but it's not required.
There are some great general roasting tips in this thread as well as peeling tips in this one.
Grilling
For grilling peppers, instead of keeping them whole, seed them and then cut them into quarters and lightly coat them with a little oil. I still use a higher, direct heat, but I flip the peppers more often so they will char a little without completely blackening. Since you're just going for a light char, this will take a little less time than roasted peppers would, about 8 minutes compared to 12.
There is a good step by step guide with pictures here.
You are correct about it being a propane grill
BBQ = grilling here @stephenmcdonald. Roasted peppers are typically different, as you describe. Grilled peppers are simply grilled, like grilled peppers & onions for fajitas.
@hobodave: thanks for the clarification, I figured with the recent posts about roasting peppers this had to mean something different, but I wasn't sure exactly what he meant.
Edited to include grilling instead of just roasting (left roasting info in so comments would make sense)
Use a medium-high direct heat until they look how you want them to look.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.423862
| 2010-08-23T18:09:38 |
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2958
|
How do you make paneer?
I've seen the ingredient list of a brand of paneer with an ingredient list of: Milk, Citric Acid. Ok, so what is the process from there? I have a few specific questions:
What kind of milk do you need?
Can you use pasteurized & homogenized vitamin D milk (whole milk)?
Where do you get citric acid? I've seen some suggestions to use crushed children's aspirin. Is there a better, easily accessible source?
Are there regional variances in paneer? The paneer I am used to, and love, states that it's from the Rajasthan region of India.
How do you actually make it?
This is a recipe that we used for the concierge lounge when I was a chef in the main kitchen of the Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa:
Paneer
5 cups whole milk
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Bring the milk to a boil, add the lemon juice so that the milk separates into the curds and whey.
Add a bit more lemon juice if necessary. Let set for approx. 5 mins.
Line a strainer with a cheesecloth and strain the milk.
Reserve the whey to use in curries instead of water.
Squeeze the excess whey out of the curd and fold the cloth around
the paneer to form a 4-inch square. Place the paneer on a
plate and place a heavy weight on top to squeeze out excess whey.
Leave for about 4 hours to set.
Any kind of milk should be good.
Homogenized milk doesn't make any difference; you make curds because you add a food acid.
Citric acid is contained in lemons; you can also use vinegar or even yoghurt.
Paneer is typical of countries like India (northern India), Pakistan, and Bangladesh. All those countries use different methods to obtain paneer. For example, in some countries, the curds are kept under a heavy weight for less time, and the paneer becomes fluffier.
I forgot the main question, which was how to make paneer.
Heat the milk, and add the food acid to make curds.
Dry the curds in cheesecloth, and press out the excess of liquid.
Put the paneer in chilled water for 1 − 2 hours.
By food acid, I mean any acid that can be used with food; it excludes nitric acid, in example. :-)
If you want some pictures, you can see my post http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/405/making-or-substitute-for-ricotta-cheese for a link
I use whole milk, which usually is vitamin D fortified. Ordinary whole milk also works. I bring about 2.5 litres ("liters" in the US) milk to a boil, switch off the flame, and then add about 2–3 tbsp ordinary vinegar. As soon as milk curdles, I pour the contents into a cheese cloth-lined colander. Next, I squeeze out all the water from the curdled solids and put a heavy weight on top of the paneer. The paneer is hard enough after about an hour.
Regarding queso fresco and queso blanco, they may be made like paneer, but they melt when heated, because they are not acid-set cheese.
I have tried substituting those two Mexican cheese varieties for paneer but the end result was not satisfactory.
Queso fresco is made identically to paneer: acid-curdled with lemon juice or white vinegar. I've never encountered Queso Fresco in Houston, TX that melts well, but then again it's rarely stated on the label how they made the cheese and could easily vary from region to region.
A bit more research: queso fresco can be acid-curdled or rennet-curdled. Acid makes a less melty cheese. If the ingredient label lists "enzyme", then you know it was set with rennet and will be more meltable. So look for an enzyme-free queso fresco when substituting for paneer.
This question is old but I have a bit more information to add:
I agree with kiamlaluno that any milk will work. The more fat the more flavor of course. I often use powdered milk to make cheese because it's inexpensive and easier to store. If the cheese needs more flavor - like paneer or mozzarella then I will mix in a little cream.
Around here citric acid is readily available in upscale/organic grocery stores. It is, of course, easily had all over the internet.
Using buttermilk as the acidifier makes a paneer with a lot of depth of flavor. I highly recommend it.
Lastly- Mexican Queso Fresco or Queso Blanco is made with almost identical technique as paneer and can be substituted perfectly. Queso Blanco is found in any grocery store here in Texas and is only slightly more expensive than making it myself.
Queso fresco and queso blanco are not acid-set cheese varieties, hence they tend to melt when heated. This is why neither is a good substitute for paneer.
@Avinash- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queso_blanco They are acid set and don't usually melt. I use them frequently as drop in replacements for paneer with perfect results.
I tried substituting queso blanco for paneer in a couple of dishes I tried. Queso blanco does melt when fried. Maybe it was this specific brand I tried, but I found that when heating in the sauce (palak of palak paneer, for example) the cheese retains its shape; however, when microwaved or fried, queso blanco melted, unlike paneer.
@Avinash- I'm sorry that you had a bad experience- I haven't tried frying them for an extended period of time. I simmer queso blanco in Rasmalai and saag paneer and it worked just fine. Additionally a quick google search shows dozens of people on the first page of results doing the same thing. Finally- you seem to be ignoring the fact that the only difference in the manufacturing of queso blanco and paneer is that in paneer the milk is brought to a boil. They are identical in every other respect.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.424072
| 2010-07-23T03:19:59 |
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4996
|
Ideal coffee grind for a French Press?
I recently picked up this Bodum "French Press" style coffee maker and so far, I'm really enjoying it for its simplicity. But I'm curious how I should be grinding my coffee.
When I bought it, I grabbed a bag of pre-ground coffee at the grocery store and this worked well. But recently, I bought a can of beans and put it thru the coffee grinder at the store and I may have chose too coarse a grind as I seem to be getting very weak cups of coffee now.
The manual said pick a "coarse" grind, so it turned the dial all the way to the left labeled "coarse". I'm thinking it should have been somewhere in the middle, like "Percolate".
Any advice on the optimal grind?
EDIT: Also, What ratio of Tbsp to oz of water? (or grams to ml, if you prefer metric.)
We've gotten weak coffee with a coarse grind in our French press also, so I don't understand why the manual insists on a coarse grind. I'm curious to see what others say.
@Rebekah: How long are you steeping it? How coarse is the grind?
I know this isn't really relate to the question but, I used to dig the french press coffee makers, but since I got a [Moka](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moka_(coffee_pot%29) I've never looked back. They make much superior coffee in my opinion, and I'd never go back. plus they are much stronger and won't smash, which happened to a french press I had.
@Sam Holder: I have one of those and I have never been able to produce anything but extremely bitter coffee. Maybe I should start another question to ask this, but how do you make palatable coffee from one of those? I drink my coffee black, so adding milk to the final result isn't an option. I have modulated grind size, temperature of stove, etc. all to no avail.
@Kevin Selker: we've steeped it anywhere from 4-15 minutes (ok, probably longer--sometimes I forget). We've only gotten weak coffee with a pretty coarse grind; we ground it at the grocery store on their French press setting. Since then, we just gave up on coarse grind and grind it more finely.
@Rebekah: There's a "french press" setting? My store doesn't have such a setting. Where did it fall on the scale? (iow, what settings were on either side of it?)
Realistically, if you use a french press because you want fuller bodied coffee. I couldn't stress more to you the importance of 1)grinding your own beans directly before brewing them 2) Use a fresh roasted coffee. Check you're local coffee shops, otherwise tonx has great coffee that you can subscribe to.
Serious Eats has a nice article on French Press brewing: http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/07/how-to-make-better-french-press-coffee-tips-technique-grind-timing.html where they also suggest to start with a coarse grind and move to a finer grind for a stronger cup of coffee. I also find the strength of the coffee to be correlated with the granularity. I don't think any granularity is wrong per say; instead, just expect a different cup of coffee (e.g., more "sludge" or bitterness from finer grinds -- neither of which is necessarily bad).
You do want a coarse grind for french press coffee. The key is letting the coffee steep for long enough to make a strong brew. I have good results with a 5 minute steep time. Be sure to use a timer, and compare different times to find the optimal brew. As a general rule, if you are at altitude, then you need to add time because boiling water is cooler. (Note that I am at 5000ft, so 5 minutes may be too long for you.)
Below is a picture of the coffee chunks in a coarse grind on top of a US 5 cent coin (21.21 mm in diameter).
The picture is from this article.
EDIT: The reason to use a coarse grind for a french press is that finer grinds will get stuck in the filter and/or push their way through. This has three potential problems: 1) it will be harder to press down the filter, possibly leading to spillage or breakage; 2) your coffee will have grinds in it; 3) the coffee may become bitter, as the finer grinds that passed through the filter remain in contact with the coffee for too long.
I'm inclined to pick your answer so far, but the thing is I have been doing what you describe. Also, my GF made the coffee this morning. She used 5 heaping Tbsp to 18oz of water. Should we just up it to 6 Tbsp? (3oz to 1 heaping Tbsp ratio) -- We chose 18oz because that seems to produce exactly 2 cups of coffee.
@Pretzel: You could try using more coffee, but that sounds sufficient to me. I would start looking for other factors that may be causing the problem (has it been a long time since the beans were roasted? Is the roast not dark enough?). Also, make sure that the "coarse" grind at the store is really giving you the proper size chunks--it's possible that the grinder is just bad, so try using other grinders. If you use a finer grind and still avoid problems 1-3 above, then it's coarse enough!
Oop! You probably meant 25 cent coin, not 10! Other than that you nailed it!
I've used a French press for many years and use a coarse grind. My grind looks like Kevin Selker's pic above. One thing I do though is to stir the grinds just after adding the water to the French Press before inserting the screen.
Stirring and a 5 minute steep is what I do with my little French press at the office.
I do the stir at the beginning and also swirl the grounds around at the halfway point in the brewing process, to redistribute the grounds that have floated to the top.
I have a $10 French press that serves me well. on my grinder, I set the dial right smack down in the middle for medium.
A BIG HOWEVER
I find that my grinder's medium is comparable to the grocery market's Light coarse or even coarse.
What i do sometimes if my grinds are too small is actually i put a coffee filter under the sieved area of the press
+1, this is also a reasonable answer. I may try going back to a finer grind and see if I get grinds stuck in the filter. Your suggestion about using a coffee filter isn't bad, but I'd like to avoid buying coffee filters. That's one of the points of a french press, right?
THE COFFEE HOUSE FRENCH PRESS BREW METHOD: The Hows and Whys
USE CLEAN, COLD WATER. Brewing with a French Press is simple and easy. You have to know how to do it and WHY you are doing it to extract the most flavor possible. Essentially, your water flavor must be good so you begin by using cold, filtered water. You fill your kettle with TWICE the water needed: half to pre-warm your Press and the other half for brewing.
USE THE RIGHT DOSE OF COFFEE BEANS. Dose coffee beans at 55-65g of coffee beans per liter of water, or 70 grams if you "break and clean" (rather than stirring the bloom, you break the bloom foam cake and spoon out the surface grounds to reduce the fines, in which case you sacrifice some brewing grounds, so you need to over-dose a bit). Use a kitchen scale to measure.
BEGIN GRINDING THE BEANS JUST BEFORE THE WATER BOILS. Once the bean husk is cracked open favor immediately escapes, so wait until the last minute to grind, just as the water begins to boil. I can recommend Baratza grinders, by the way.
BREW AT THE CORRECT TEMPERATURE. As the water almost boils, start your grinder, pre-warm your Press with half the off-boil water, empty the Press and fill with the grounds weighed on a scale. Then pour in the other half of the water, using a scale to measure, at about 205-208 degrees F so as the temperature drops during the brew you are NEVER brewing lower than 195 degrees F. NEVER begin at 195 degrees F or flavor really suffers as the temp at brew's end can even drop to 185 degrees F...not good!
BREW FOR THE CORRECT TIME. A four-minute brew cycle is highly recommended. Anything less gives you a raw, under-extracted cup, anything more gives you an over-cooked, over-extracted, bitter cup. At Brew's end, ALWAYS pour out coffee into cups to terminate the brewing. NEVER store coffee in any coffee brewer as it will continue to brew! Even with drip brewing coffee is stored in a carafe...do that same here. A coffee brewer of any kind is NOT a coffee storage carafe. That is a job for a thermally insulated carafe. The insulation in a French Press is there to keep the brew at the correct temperature DURING the brew cycle.
BREWING IT: An Up-close Look at Brewing French Press Coffee
FILL KETTLE with at least TWICE the water needed to brew. Use only fresh, never-boiled, COLD, FILTERED water, not the nasty tasting, mildly rusty hot water sitting inside your hot water heater. Now begin heating your water at high heat.
WEIGH YOUR BEANS. While the water heats, place your grinder's grounds-collecting bin on your scales, then tare to zero. After weighing, pour the beans into the grinder's hopper, then place the grounds bin in the grinder to catch the grounds when you grind.
GRIND YOUR BEANS. Set your grinder to a mid coarse setting, as coarse as coarsely ground pepper, and experiment to get the dosage just right for your taste...I like the finer side of coarse. When your water almost boils, at about 210-211 degrees F, turn off the heat and start your grinder and let the water temp drop a bit in the meantime.
WEIGH WATER AS YOU POUR, THEN STEEP. While the grinder is grinding, pour hot water into your Press to warm it. When the grinding is completed, pour the warming water from the Press into your cup(s) to pre-warm them, discard remaining water from the Press.
Then pour your coffee grounds to the Press and place your Press on your scales, tare the Press to zero. To monitor heat place a thermometer in your Press. Now pour in the kettle's remaining 205-208 degree F water into the Press as shown on your scale (I use 870-900g in my 1 liter Press). Place the lid on the Press with plunger extended upward to begin the brewing cycle. Set your timer to 4 minutes.
STIR, SINK, OR SCOOP OFF THE BLOOM. After after one minute, either gently stir, or sink the bloom with a spoon, or remove (break) the cake "crust" with a soup spoon (or two) to gently scoop to remove (clean) the bloom off the top to reduce the amount of fines in the brew. Be sure no grounds remain above the plunger or in the spout as those grounds will end up in your cup.
REPLACE THE LID AND FINISH BREWING. With the lid on, continue to brew until the timer beeps, then press the plunger down VERY SLOWLY to the bottom (to reduce agitation of any fines present). Pour out the warming water from your cup(s), THEN pour in the hot coffee from the Press to replace it. Serve and enjoy. This is the ambrosia people are talking about...properly made French Press.
Also see my blog on How to buy a French Press, and The Frieling French Press: thegoodstuffreviews.blogspot.com
Consider buying a grinder and grinding the beans as you need them. As soon as they are ground (at the supermarket), their flavour diminishes fast due to the increased surface area. That's why it smells so good when you grind them! Wouldn't you rather that flavour be in the coffee you brew?
For french press, you can get away with using a cheap "whizzy" blade grinder like this one. For most other types of coffee, you should really use a conical burr grinder like this one, which makes for a more even grind and doesn't heat the coffee as it grinds.
If you really want to geek out on this, read How to Use a Press Pot on CoffeeGeek.
yeah, I know about the whole "don't grind your beans at the store or it will lose its flavor" phenomenon. Truthfully, I go thru coffee too quickly for it ever to go bad or lose its flavor. Perhaps if I didn't consume as much coffee as I do, I would grind my own, but I've found that doing that requires yet another gadget and practicing until I get the grinding perfect. Plus its noisy.
+1, now that I think about it. This is still a good recommendation despite the caveats I just listed...
I've become such a coffe snob since using my French press about a year ago. It truly makes the best coffee. I grind the beans as fine as dust and then I wrap a paper towel (as a filter) around the screen before plunging. I steep for 5min and I check my water temp to between 195-200 Farenheit before adding it. Any hotter and it tends to burn the coffee. I have a $10 press I bought at IKEA and it works just fine, it gets a lot of use to. I used to use a coarser grind but the flavor is just not the same.
I also grind the beans as finely as possible. No paper filter though.The result is very flavorful if a little sludgey, reminiscent of Serbian Turkish-Style Coffee.
French pressed coffee is currently my favorite brewing method. I used to use a hario hand grinder but it was tough to dial it in and required a lot of elbow grease.
I upgraded to a baratza encore and am pretty happy with it. It cost me $130 and I definitely noticed a difference in taste. My ideal coffee grind setting for this is 28.
The coffee to water ratio I have been using is:
30g coffee to 450g water for a 16oz travel mug and
50g coffee to 800g water to make a full 32oz sized bodum french press.
*adjust to taste of course! :)
I actually recorded my process here, so please critique or let me know if you have any tips/advice to add, thx!
The Best Way I found to Brew French Pressed Coffee
If you have more detail in your video than what you summarized here the convention around here is to summarize it in point form here. We don't like to assume a video will always be available, and there are reasons why a person might not want/be able to view it.
Ok, thx @talon8.... I added more details from the video to my answer above... specifically in regards to coffee to water ratio, thx.
Our press is a smaller version of yours, and we use 1 TB of whole beans for every 4 ounces of water. Our pot makes a maximum of 12 ounces.
We have our own coffee grinder, a Black & Decker SmartGrind. There are no settings for the grind; it's a matter of holding down the button. I pulse the button about a dozen times, and that works well.
When the coffee has turned out too weak, the problem has always been that I did not grind the coffee enough. I have not had a problem with too many fine grounds missing the filter. Just don't drink that last sip of coffee, and you'll be fine.
My Bodum Bistro grinder has a French Press setting which is all the way coarse. I've just brewed my best press pot yet (I'm a press pot newbie) with a grind two steps finer than that, a brew time of 4 minutes, using one rounded tablespoon of coffee per cup. This pot was very rich and satisfying. I saw your argument for not having a grinder and have to ask you to reconsider. Most people I know would agree that once you start grinding your own you can never go back to (even one day old) pre-ground.
It is important to get a conical burr grinder. Yes, they're the '3rd' tier in terms of price, but through the years I've had blade and regular burr grinders and I can definitely say that the one I have now makes quite noticeably better coffee. The difference is in the consistency of the grind. Different brewing methods require different grind sizes and when the grains are all different sizes you don't get the benefits of the particular type of brew. For instance cappuccino requires that no large grains be present because they'll form channels in the 'puck' which allow steam to pass through too quickly. Similarly a drip process requires that no super-pulverized 'coffee dust' be present as this leads to bitterness.
+1 for explaining that conical burrs gives a consistency in size that others simply cant.
I've been using a french press for a few months now, Bodum brand... the 'Brazil' model I think. Since I had read to use a coarse grind, that's what I've been doing, and it's worked well ('coarse' being what the coffee grinder at the store designates as 'coarse').
Recently though, I was given as a gift a bag of coffee ground in filer-brew or coffee pot style - i.e. finer than 'coarse.' But I decided to try it in the french press anyway, and it turned out well. No clogged filter, not too much leakage (as in coffee grinds getting through the filter), and it made quite a stronger brew as well. A little bitter - if you 'steep' coarse grind for about 5 minutes (I do, to good effect usually), then maybe this only needs to brew for about 3 minutes at most. Or maybe I just used too much ;P
The larger grind, as I have observed, simply makes the french press easier to clean. The little grinds really get stuck at the bottom of the glass and it takes three or four rinses to get them all. With the larger grind, I get just as many grounds making it through the screen, but I can clean the press with just one rinse.
I cannot agree that the roast roast must be as specified. While the size of the grind matters for how the brew goes in a French press, you can get a quality brew for various roasts and beans, depending on your preferences.
I too have had poor success with coarse grinds.
I've settled on telling the coffee-slave to grind it for a basket filter. Conical is too fine. Perc could also be successful.
I only use coarse when I'm camping, and brewing it up cowboy style. (Coffee in pot with water. Boil, Strain through moustache.)
You could try a grind for percolator. It is a little less coarse.
But that grinding size is still too small, isn't it? Wouldn't it give an overextracted coffee?
I work at a fairway coffee department. You would like to use number 13, which is French press, percolator basically. Type thick coffee, the less you go, the finer it is.
If the coffee is being ground for you at a coffee shop or supermarket, my understanding is to ask for a No. 13 grind. Alternately, if you are grinding it yourself at the supermarket, set the grind for No. 13.
On what scale, for what equipment? Is this standardized in some way?
Ground coffee begins to go stale within 30 seconds. My advice, purchase whole beans, get a grinder with a coarse setting, usually can find one for about $20, use about two tablespoons of beans for 8 ounces of coffee, as soon as the coffee finishes grinding pour it into the French press and give it a stir. Let it steep for about 4 minutes and youll see why French press is the way to go =).
"with a coarse setting" doesn't sound especially helpful. The OP is interested in knowing exactly what size grind is needed, and I doubt that all grinder with a "coarse" label produce the same size.
I must add to this thread.
Problems with other posts...letting your coffee sit for a long time is NOT a good option if you like hot coffee. Trying to get more flavor by sitting longer is a fail unless you like your coffee only warm.
Fine grinds getting through the filter is not so much a problem nor is the pushing pressure. Get used to grinding your coffee just they way that allows for a firm pressure to squeeze the water through the grinds. I know that with my grinder, it is a 10 count to get the grind just right every day using the typical handheld spinning blade grinder.
If you are worried about getting bitter flavors and like a robust flavor, do what I do...
-Water from kettle just before boil begins (the loud bubbling becomes quite, but not a full boil)
-Immediately pour the water into the press with the grounds in it already
-If you use enough beans (I like it strong and perhaps use more beans than most), you can press immediately. Think about it. Typical coffee makers just pass water straight through the grinds without soaking for a long time.
-Press the grinds and then immediately pour coffee into mug and carafe to keep hot. Afraid of grinds that may have passed through the filter...well then, use a paper filter to pour your coffee through to catch anything so small.
Done. Strong, good tasting coffee, ground simply and fairly fine. Not bitter. Not Cold.
Trying to turn a presspot into a bad version of a drip pot gives it all of the disadvantages of both. You will find, if you search, many documents on optimal extraction time, and it certainly isn't "instant". It is on the order of several minutes.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.424664
| 2010-08-12T13:41:39 |
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417
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I want to make my own cheese. How do I get started?
I've seen people do their own mozzarella and it seemed easy. Any tips on how to get started (equipment, ingredients, recipes)? What about blue cheese and other stronger cheeses?
Making Mozzarella is not fantastically difficult, but certain things during the process are critical, probably the most important is temperature.
If it's your first time making cheese, you might find the buying a 'starter kit' the easiest way to get up and running. These will provide you with all the important items you needm such as rennet. If you feel brave, then you forego the kit and dive right in.
For Mozzarella try to find Buffalo milk, which is what 'proper' Mozzarella is made from. It's lower in cholesterol than cows milk, has more protein and makes a much richer cheese. If you can't get Buffalo milk use the best full fat, non-homogenized milk you can find.
Here's a recipe I've used before MOZZARELLA
Here's a link with the differences between Buffalo milk and cows milk
Cow Milk vs Buffalo Milk
Whilst it's quite possible to make virtually any variety of cheese at home, some cheeses, such as blue cheese, require a place to develop at the correct temperature and for quite long periods of time. ideally, this would be a temperature around 10c with a humidity around 70% and a time for maturing at around 2 to 3 months.
Here's a good place to start:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/cheese/blue_cheese/blue_cheese.htm
Ricotta would be a good first cheese to make. It is a fresh cheese so doesn't need any aging, you can make a batch in all of about 30 minutes with very simple ingredients and the taste difference with store bought is spectacular.
There is a question that has several answers with ricotta cheese recipes (including one I've used) Making (or substitute for) ricotta cheese?
I've actually had success making a soft cheese using kefir fungus to turn the milk instead of rennet; this has the advantage that you don't need to keep buying more.
After you've fed the fungus, keep the produced kefir in the 'fridge for a night. Dilute with fresh milk, no more than 4:1 milk:kefir, and keep the mixture at room temperature for another night. Heat to ~30 degrees, and keep at that temperature, stirring occasionally, until it turns - could take as long as half an hour or so to start, but once it goes it goes pretty quickly. Drain through sterile cheesecloth or muslin to separate the curds, then proceed as usual.
Doing mozzarella at home is quite difficult.
The hard part is doing the curd (coagulation of milk with rennet or an edible acidic substance). This is a common requirement for doing almost any kind of cheese, and although it may seem not so difficult, it is actually very hard to do a satisfactory curd. This is the reason why the most easy cheese to do at home (ricotta) is actually not a cheese!
You can however try to buy from a dairy some curd to "practice" at home.
I disagree with this answer. I have never had any problem at all forming a nice curd for any cheese. Acid set mozzarella is actually one of the easiest because there is no bacterial inoculation. It just works. The hard part with mozzarella is kneading the cheese to the correct texture.
@Sobachatina: I'm happy for you not having any problem, but this does not mean that it is a simple task for a newbie. Then, it is not enough to just make curd, you have to do a good one. It's not just milk acidulation... it is a delicate process. Doing curd, good curd, is actually enough difficult and troublesome to discourage many people from doing it at home, but of course it does not mean it is impossible.
@Sobachatina: and, by the way, traditional mozzarella requires indeed bacterial culture (at controlled temperature) in order to do the curd. This is the reason why whey from previous coagulation is used to start the production of the curd (then also rennet is added).
I agree with you on both counts of course. I am saying that I personally have had no problems doing either acid set or traditional mozzarella and if even I can get it to work then it can't be as hard as its reputation implies. -- Where can you find buffalo milk? I've been forced to use other milks.
@Sobachatina: since few months I can get buffalo milk at my nearest convenience store, however in northern Italy (where I live) it is not so common. If you use cow milk you'll get "mozzarella fiordilatte", I like it even more than "mozzarella di bufala".
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| 2010-07-10T06:26:52 |
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834
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What are the advantages of a Santoku over a French Chef's Knife?
When it comes to general cooking knives the santoku and french chef's are generally the ones most often mentioned. Is the style of use very different? The only real difference I'm aware of is that you can use a "rocking" motion with the french chef's but not with the santoku. What is the difference between them and when would you use a santoku over a french chef's assuming quality between both was on par?
Both the Santoku and French knives will work for the same types of things, so a lot of it comes down to preference. Santoku knives are lighter, so this can lead to less hand strain and quicker cutting. One thing that the Santoku are very good at is very thin slicing of vegetables, for two reasons: first, as you point out, you do not use a rocking motion, but rather chop down in one motion, which with practice can be quicker and more efficient. Second, Santoku knives usually have a much thinner blade angle (around 15 degrees vs 30-40 degrees on a French knife). This is because one side of a Santoku is flat, and the other side is beveled (like a chisel), so you only sharpen one side. To accommodate this thin blade the Santoku knives will be made with a harder steel, which helps maintain blade sharpness, but may increase the propensity for chipping if misused, and also makes them harder to sharpen.
Still, personal preference dictates which knife to use. Many people prefer the Gyuto style of knife, which (roughly speaking) combines features of both Santoku knifes and French knives. They are made of a hardened steel, are sharpened on both sides, but maintain edges around 22-26 degrees. The Gyutos, like the Santokus are fairly light. Gyutos also have a rounded belly but it is less pronounced than on a French knife.
There is much more to be said, but basically the thing to do is get your hands on some knives and start experimenting--see what you like!
I own a santoku that is sharpened on both sides. I'd bet that most widely available santoku knives (Wustof / Henkels / Shun / Mac) available in big retail outlets in the US anyway would be santoku shaped but have a double beveled edge. You might be able to find imported single bevel santoku at specialty cutlery stores, but those would be rare and I don't know what the benefit of seeking one out would be unless someone was doing extremely detailed prep work (like making sushi). Also, the other answer about the handedness of single bevel knives is a good thing to watch out for.
Good answer kevins. I completely agree.
Gyuto and French chef's knives are basically interchangeable (for use). Eastern vs Western styled blades. The main difference is in feel and small construction details, which aren't that relevant for use but very relevant for sharpening.
In general, western-styled chef's knives are a little easier to rock with. You can get a nice circular motion going; you just have to adjust your technique a little. It's a comfort thing.
One thing to note about santoku knives though: they are also used interchangeably with chef's knives, except when cutting hard things like squash or potato. It's the fact that the blade is flat on one side and beveled (angled) on the other. One side will push on the product while the other doesn't. this means that the cut will turn towards one side, usually to the left. this is important since you can easily cut yourself (left fingertips) because the knife has a tendency to cut to the left - which is VERY pronounced with hard products. Be careful!
Western chef knives are optimized both in blade profile and material choice for rock chopping (not: chopping rocks), cross chopping, guilloutine-and-glide and similar techniques that are done by rolling the edge across the food and/or with the tip resting on the board (tip-pivot technique).
Santoku are derived a lot from japanese vegetable knives (nakiri), and are optimized - flatter though not completely flat profile, harder material on a quality knife - for techniques where the pivot point is the hand/wrist of the user and the knife is lifted off the board in its entirety between cuts. Chef knife techniques can be done too if needed, albeit less comfortably and/or efficiently (though more comfortably than if you were using an actual nakiri).
Japanese-influenced modern chef knives are, by material choice and blade profile, often more suited to santoku style techniques than western technique; care has to be taken not to use excessive force when using these, because while they are designed to wear less from within-specification use, they will take more serious wear and/or damage from abuse.
Hybrid shapes are best judged by their edge profile: For example, there are common Thai knives that look like a japanese bunka (a style of santoku) but which are by material, profile and function short chef knives.
I'm a professional cook and have been for some 30 years. I used mostly a 10 inch chefs knife, a decent one will work for almost anything in a pinch (although purpose knifes will work better for boning, filleting).
Ten years ago I purchased an inexpensive Henckels Santoku and I've started using it exclusively for most vegetables. It's a nice, sharp light knife, it keeps it's edge (which is really about the metal rather than the style), is bevelled on both sides, has a reasonable curve for rocking but can also be used well for slicing (like mushrooms, I don't rock I just slice which is easier and faster with a light narrow knife).
The first one I got broke at the tang just at the first rivet after the second day, it was obviously cracked from the rust I could see, and was replaced free of charge.
One thing I like about the Santoku is I find it's easier to sharpen than a chefs blade. It doesn't have the curved tip nor does it have a guard that so many chefs blades have. I find they get in the way of sharpening, which eventually produces a hollow in the blade just before the guard.
The down side of the Santoku is it's thin, (like many inexpensive chefs blades) so pressing down on it can cause pain.
From a not too great home cook:-
I had both types of a very very cheap brand. Those multicoloured ones.
The blue coloured Chef's knife and the green Santoku were most used.
The cutting surface came to my naval level and the board was, again, a cheap bamboo piece.
I used the rocking and crosscut motion, almost always. (It was possible with the Santoku, as well)
Repeatedly, I found the Santoku to be easier to use.
The wider blade was better for scooping up the chopped onion, ginger, garlic.
I never tested them deliberately, but, now that I see this question, it just crops up in my mind.
I am just reminiscing.
The longer Chef was the obvious choice, initially.
There were times that it was not at hand and I had to switch to the Santoku and almost always it was a better experience.
I am going to buy a Wusthof Santoku, today and shall let you know.
Specific advantage could be of the lack of a point. I don't remember using the point on that knife for anything at all! Lack of it makes the Santoku much easier to handle.
Rest, methinks, is snobbery.
Santoku knifes are thinner. One advantage of this is that it will do a little more cutting and a little less crushing as it goes through a food. As an example, a Santoku knife should cause less tears cutting an onion because it won't be breaking as many cells as it goes through.
I found this review on amazon, which does a good job of answering this question:
If you only own 1 knife, it should be a 10” chef. The 8” chef’s knife is the most common size, but the 10” is usually preferred by professionals and experienced home cooks. Most block sets include the cheapest knives that can still function for most jobs, which is why sets usually include 8” chef’s knifes, 8” bread knives, and 8” slicers, even though 10” knives usually do a better job. For chef’s knives, the extra two inches make tip-work a little less precise, but have many advantages. The longer blade means easier cutting since it gives more leverage and weight. More importantly, the two inches are essentially added between the end of the blade and the bolster. This means that the front 8” of the 10” perform all the functions of an 8” knife, plus the extra two inches create a much longer straight area near the handle, which gives a 10” knife the same slicing length as a santoku. This means the 10” chef does everything both these knives do, and usually does it better. The reason santokus are popular among housewives and not professional chefs is that housewives compare the santoku to the curved 8” blade. Professionals are usually trained with 10” knives, so they see the santoku as a crippled 10” knife which is of value only to people who don’t have the knife skills to use the more versatile and capable 10”. These days, you can acquire knife skills by going online, reading through a free tutorial, and practicing for a few hours, so a 10” is a good choice for anyone who likes to cook. (emphasis mine)
This seems to be in agreement with other opinions I have read as well. Although I cannot speak to this directly, as I'm still shopping, and have never used anything but a European-style chef's knife.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.426522
| 2010-07-13T13:09:06 |
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|
74470
|
What nutritional changes occur to vegetables when you roast them?
Quite often I can't 'stomach' veggies because I find them rather dull, but if I roast them (huge variety of types used) in oil and a pinch or three of sea salt, I can quite easily eat a very large portion of them.
But how for instance does potassium (veggies are a good source) get affected by roast heat?
How does roast heat affect their glycemix index?
Do any positive effects occur to vegetables' nutrition if exposed to high heat with oil?
After roasting, if I let them go cold in the fridge, does this increase their resistant starch? (Would it greatly depend on the type of veggie being roasted?) Thanks a lot for any thoughts.
As a personal comment, why do you care so much about the micro nutritional value differences? What is the link to health here?
Whoops I've asked this question in the wrong stack exchange group! I meant to ask in the "Seasoned Advice" group. However, as it's been answered, I'll leave it, unless a moderator wants to move it.
@JJosaur nutrition is off topic on this site.
I stand corrected. Nutrition appears to be off-topic on every SE site then.
Nutritional content (what something contains, as opposed to whether that's good for you) is on topic though, so this is.... mostly okay maybe?
@Jefromi I thought questions had to be more specific than this? This is asking about general nutritional properties, not about a specific nutrient.
@Catija Most of body is specific, title isn't, hence "mostly maybe".
I'd like to ask another question on SE, but can't decide on the most suitable group to post on; Health or Seasoned Advice. It's - "What happens biologically in humans if you mix fat with sugar? I was watching a video on youtube, and the presenter said that it's a bad idea to mix protein with sugar (or starch), because it spikes insulin. Does anyone know what effects (negative) occur if you mix fat with sugar, for example say you ate an avocado with a piece of fruit?"
@user2911290 If you need help figuring out whether a question is okay on a site, please ask on that site's meta. But nutrition/health things are definitely not on topic here. This one is veeery marginal - we'll talk about the chemistry of food, what's actually in it, including nutrients, but as soon as you start thinking about what effect it has on your body, that's out of scope.
1. The main nutrients destroyed by heating are vitamins from B complex and vitamin C (possible loss 50-70%). (NutritionData: Nutritional effects of food processing). The extent of this effect depends on the temperature, so roasting in oil can have more negative effect than cooking in water.
2. Minerals, such as potassium, are not destroyed by heating, but they can leak into the cooking water. So, boiled potatoes can have less potassium than roasted.
Boiled potatoes, in skin (1/2 cup, 78 g): 296 mg (USDA.gov)
Baked potatoes, in skin [should be similar to roasted, I couldn't find]: (80 g): 440 mg (USDA.gov)
A side note: sodium partially counteracts the effects of potassium in your body, so if you worry about potassium intake you may also worry about salt intake. (Advances in Nutrition)
3. Oil slows down stomach emptying thus slowing carbohydrate absorption and therefore lowering the glycemic index of a given roasted vegetable. Anyway, this sounds as overthinking to me. From the other viewpoint, roasted foods are heavier for the stomach, so they can increase the discomfort after meals.
4. Heating disinfects foods and makes them more digestible. I'm not aware that roasting in oil would be better in this regard than boiling in water. Roasted potatoes will retain more potassium than the boiled ones, but this alone is not already a "beneficial health effect." On the other hand you may consume more calories than intended vegetables roasted on oil.
5. Cooking, cooling and reheating can increase the amount of resistant starch in the food; this would, obviously, have a significant effect only in starchy vegetables (potatoes, red kidney beans, chickpeas) rather in greens (Nutrients Review). I have not found any reliable information about significant health benefits of resistant starches, anyway.
My conclusion:
I do not consider roasting healthier than cooking in water (boiling): more vitamins destroyed, heavier stomach after meals, greater unnecessary calorie intake from oil.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.427393
| 2016-09-28T15:25:53 |
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6943
|
How can I clean dark non-stick pots (e.g. Calphalon)?
We have Calphalon non-stick cookware and it seems, after 5 years, not to want to get clean. Even the best scrubbing leaves kind of a hazy look on them. Additionally, the exterior of our most used pan is darkly stained, kind of like a well-seasoned cast iron pan. Is that okay, or do I need to clean it better too?
@Jay - please consider refining the question a bit. There are many varieties of Calphalon cookware, ranging from Teflon-coated to stainless steel and more, and the care instructions will vary pretty greatly depending on which set you mean. You can find info about product lines on their site if you're not sure - http://www.calphalon.com/Category/Pages/CalphalonProductLines.aspx
We have questions on how to clean: anodized, unanodized aluminum, non-stick, cast-iron, stainless, and brown spots. This is a duplicate of one or all of them.
@hobodave: I couldn't find the non-stick question, although I could have sworn there was one - if you know where it is, could you link to it? (and maybe also add the [cleaning] tag...)
added 'non-stick'; unsure whether that is the same as 'anodized'
@stephenmcdonald: thanks for the link, I believe it to be 'Simply Calphalon Nonstick': http://store.calphalon.com/productline/simply-calphalon-nonstick/4294959930-1982
@Jay: Anodizing is a technique for increasing the thickness of the oxide layer that naturally forms on aluminum - it lets you bang your pans around without the scratching and pitting that would normally result. The inside of your pans is additionally coated with a non-stick substance (Calphalon doesn't specify what exactly, but it's probably similar to Teflon) - this substance will wear away over time, and the anodized layer beneath won't have the same "slippery" release (although you can certainly still use it). BTW: I found this
@Knives: Well this is as close as it gets it seems: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/2564/how-to-look-after-non-stick-cookware-so-it-lasts
I'm gonna assume you're talking about pans with a hard anodized exterior and non-stick interior...
The anodized exterior will pick up stains over time, and you probably shouldn't worry too much about trying to get them back to factory condition. That said, you can find some tips on How should I clean anodised cookware? - I use baking soda and elbow grease for routine jobs, and occasionally resort to Ajax (scouring powder) for touch-up around the handle.
The non-stick interior is probably just wearing out. AFAIK, some Calphalon non-stick pans have a texture to them that is supposed to improve browning, but over time even smooth non-stick surfaces develop pits and scratches that create opportunity for residue to hold on to. I use a bit of baking soda and a bit of salt to scrub these clean, but once something gets stuck on to the point where serious scouring is necessary to remove it you'll just have to give up (since that would take the non-stick coating with it). Non-stick pans - even well-made ones - do tend wear out faster than ordinary pans, and there's no getting around that.
Sweet, thanks Knives (trying to figure out how to make a joke about Knives being the enemy of my pots, but here you are offering assistance...ya know)
In my opinion, water spots, lecithin, sometimes burnt oils, and micro scratches can affect the non-stick surface reducing its non-stick ability.
I have found that a bit of elbow grease with some brown heavy paper (like a piece of a paper bag) can do wonders to regain much of the non-stick properties.
I normally do this with a bit of water and a few pieces of paper bag. In a swirling and rubbing manner, reversing directions a few times, scrub the surface with a couple of fingers and good pressure. With time you will notice that the water will start beading again! The color may be restored or not, but if the water beads again it will also be non-stick.
I used to use 1200+ grit sand paper with light pressure, but that only works for a while until it actaully wears away the ptfe. The paper of the bag has very fine clay in it that is abrasive enough to remove the food particles, lime, lecithin, etc. but is quite gentle to the ptfe. After cleaning I usually let it cool and use another piece of the paper with a bit of veg oil or clarified butter to scrub in some oil into any remaining scratches.
Hope someone else finds this useful. I've saved more than a couple of old pans from the trash.
Clean your pans before they cool.
I recently purchased the Calphalon premiere space saving hard anodized non-stick cookware set. Sorry to say, it is going back! While nice to cook in, and a great space saver - the shape of the handle and more importantly the front handle, name plate, whatever is impossible to clean, It is 3D, textured, scalloped and collects residue in every spot. After one week it looked very bad. I scrubbed with a toothbrush and could not get into every crevice. The bottoms also stain easily. Going back to my good stainless steel, and medium priced (disposable) non-stick pans.
This is a comment, not an answer.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.427738
| 2010-09-07T20:42:10 |
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14228
|
Where did hot dogs get their name?
Were they orginally made from real dogs?
The term "dog" has been used as a synonym for sausage since 1884 and accusations that sausage makers used dog meat to at least 1845.
According to a myth, the use of the complete phrase "hot dog" in reference to sausage was coined by a newspaper cartoonist in 1900, but there were several earlier references, but no specifics on the origination of the phrase.
http://www.hot-dog.org/culture/hot-dog-history
Thesaurus.com has an article on the name. Their explanation is that the long sausages got compared to dachshunds. With time, people started calling them "dogs" instead of "dachshunds".
They don't list a source for the information, but I hope that, being language experts, they have fact-checked it.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.428473
| 2011-04-21T18:26:21 |
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2641
|
How best to pan-fry tofu?
I love fried tofu, but I don't want to have a deep fryer in my home (I'll use it too much!).
I've tried a few different techniques for pan-frying tofu, but it always comes out unsatisfying - too dry, too thin, too wet; I'll admit, I'm not a genius when it comes to tofu, but I'd imagine there is some way to prepare it that will give me decent results consistently.
Note: I do have a large wok, but I generally fry my tofu in a frying pan. I've had poor results in my wok.
I tagged it for you
For best results, fry it in a generous amount of bacon grease!
@Knives, lol, even as a vegetarian, I think I must vote your comment up on principle alone :)
@knives - avoid that kind of comments, though. I mean, it may be fun once or twice, but not any site is Meta-SO. I think you should probably tone down this kind of comment, at least during the beta, while the tone of the site is still being defined. But that's only my opinion.
@Gnoupi: I would sincerely hope that a comment recommending bacon grease on a question tagged, "vegetarian" would be immediately recognizable as tongue-in-cheek. But as with the other sites, offended readers need only click the "flag" icon to make it go away...
The site would just be too... Dry, without these comments. :)
@Knives: +1 — another vegetarian here who loves being teased with bacon comments :-P
For pan frying you probably want to start with a firm tofu. It's a good idea to press the tofu to remove excess water: wrap the tofu in a cloth and place it between two cutting boards, weighting the top cutting board with a heavy book or other similar object. Wait at least twenty minutes (you can prepare the rest of the vegetables/onions for the stir fry at this point.
Once the tofu has been pressed, cut it into the desired pieces. It's a good idea to fry it at medium-high heat in only oil first, then add sauces (soy sauce, vinegar, whatever) only after the tofu begins to brown slightly.
Note: the above won't simulate deep-fried tofu. For deep fried tofu, you may want to use a softer tofu, still press it before using, and coat the cubes in corn starch before frying. Of course you probably know you can deep-fry at home with just a large pot of oil.
For a different texture you can freeze the tofu before frying.
Although not fried, I would also recommend that you try baked (marinaded) tofu to see if you like that texture/flavor better. You would still want to press the tofu, then slice it rather thinly. You can reapply the marinade during baking for more flavor.
What is your approach for flipping the tofu during the frying? For me, it browns a lot more on one side and I always miss a few sides on a few pieces.
@unforgiven3: If you keep the oil hot and use a good cast iron pan, you shouldn't get much sticking, in which case you can just flip the tofu continuously with a thin, flat spatula while they brown, or just pan-flip them. You will never get them all exactly the same on all sides, but I haven't found this to be an issue. Once you add the sauces/seasonings (after the initial oil-fry), the appearance and flavor becomes uniform.
Interesting. Sounds like I need to find a good cast iron pan. Thanks!
@unforgiven3: Absolutely! A good cast iron pan is indispensable; you will not regret the purchase.
Having pan-fried about a zillion pounds of tofu in my life, I can help you out here. Kevin is on the right track with getting the water out, but you don't need to get it out of the whole thickness of the bean curd, just the surface, so that it will brown and get crisp. Here's how I do it, works every time:
(1) Cut the tofu into the desired shape - cubes, slabs, rectangles, triangles... the best thickness is about 3/8".
(2) Preheat a big cast iron skillet to scorching hot.
(4) Just before you are ready to fry, pat the tofu dry with paper towels.
(5) Pour a pretty generous amount of a purified oil in the skillet (one with a high smoke point), say 3-4 tablespoons.
(6) Carefully add the tofu in a single layer.
(7) Fry for a couple minutes until well browned on one side, then flip and cook the other side.
This works way better than dumping in a double-layer of tofu and stirring, hoping it will brown. If you are making a stir-fry, you may need to cook 2 or more batches of tofu, reserve it to the side, then put it back in after the vegetables are cooked.
Bacon grease makes almost anything it is cooked in taste delicious, but most won't eat it because it is bad for the heart or they don't eat meat. I roll the tofu in corn starch, then fry it in olive oil using seasoned salt on the tofu. Sometimes I use Dash because I can't eat a lot of salt and dash has a variety of seasonings to choose from.
+1 for corn starch - potato starch works too. Makes the tofu nice and crispy on the outside.
A cast iron pot and a good thermometer should serve you fine for deep frying the tofu. Unlike a dedicated deep fryer you will have to monitor the temperature of the oil more.
There are two methods to prevent the either too dry or too mushy issue.
Use a batter with a fair amount of oil (1 quarter inch or deeper). Cornstarch will create a nice batter and prevent the tofu from having a 'wet/moist texture'. It will still be wet on the inside, as mentioned do drain it well.
or
Use very, very little oil (mere drops) and focus on searing it. This will give the outside a nice texture. This is a saute, low oil, high heat and keep it moving by flipping the pan (don't use a utensil).
The texture is an important part of taste and having a firmness on the outside of tofu is quite important when nomming. Yet it should be mushy on the inside.
What makes this task so tricky is that while cooking tofu, it is constantly bleeding moisture (the steam is forced out and collects on the outside). Unfortunately this moisture evaporation is a very powerful coolant and can prevent a seared texture from developing. In fact it will remain mushy as though it were never cooked for awhile. Once it looses enough moisture, the heat is no longer buffered into the moisture and/or the evaporation is no longer cooling the tofu. At this point, it begins to very rapidly burn and hardened completely leaving it inedible.
pan-frying is indeed so tricky that I often cheat by oven-roasting instead! tofu pieces/slices then can be held at low oven temp til rest of ingredients are cooked and just added in at the last moment -often layered on top (pad Thai for instance) so as not to go soggy
When I make Pad Thai, I usually crack an egg into the wok while frying the tofu, creating a nice tasty coating for the tofu. It interacts nicely with the rest of the dish, actually making some people think it's chicken.
It's not vegan, but it's good..
I've tried some of the methods mentioned in other answers - and perhaps will again as it may just take practice - but the one and only way I've ever gotten tofu to come out palatable is to truly stir-fry it in a large wok. That is, put in some oil (sesame oil, preferably), crank up the heat to at least medium-high, and stir your heart out. Do that for 5-7 minutes with plenty of wrist action and it should turn out well - as long as you have extra firm, quality tofu that can take all that action!
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.428599
| 2010-07-21T17:06:15 |
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6616
|
What are safe, effective practices for smoking salmon in a commercial smoker?
We have been smoking salmon in an electric smoker (a Master Built) for about 6 months now, using a dry rub brine recipe containing salt, brown sugar, garlic and other flavorings (sometimes brandy, sometimes smoked red pepper powder). We have tried to adjust the temperature and time to gain a safe, but moist and smoky tasting end result. We have been using mesquite wood chips. I have read that the authentic way to smoke meat is very slow over a smoky fire and can last longer than what is possible in a commercial smoker. How can I achieve the best results with my smoker?
Great question!
Welcome. Good question. A link to the type of smoker you have might be helpful to some people who are familiar with smoking, but not the type of smoker you are using (like me). When you say commercial do you mean for consumers or professionals? Are you trying to hot smoke or cold smoke your salmon? Cold smoked would be like the salmon you'd traditionally put on a bagel or buy at the grocery store as smoked salmon.
Some what similar question with interesting book link in an answer: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/6409/hot-smoked-salmon-on-big-green-egg
The type of smoker that I have is a Master Built. I used the recipe from http://www.salmonuniversity.com/rs_htss01_index.html
this site. I am hot smoking for hours, rather than for a short period of time as suggested by the answer given. I wonder - does the brining for 24 - 36 hours along with the 20 minutes of cold smoking suffice for adequate (safe) cooking time? Also, it seems that this type of smoked salmon would be very perishable. Roux is correct that I want more moist and succulent salmon.
I think you are cooking your salmon for too long. When I hot smoke salmon, I'll do a 1 1/2 lbs salmon fillet at 180F to 200F for about 35 - 45 minutes. Depending on the size of the fish you may need shorter or longer. This is sufficient to get a nice smokey flavor and properly cook the fish. Cooking for hours will make the fish very dry. It sounds like your only real issue is the length of time you are cooking it for.
This assumes that you are smoking the salmon to serve and not as a preservation method to keep for a long period of time. I don't know how long this method will preserve the salmon, but my guess is no longer than normal cooking methods.
Of course, you may still prefer cold smoked, the end product is quite different. But I don't think it's time to write off hot smoked yet.
There is no need to cold smoke to get juicy salmon. The trick is to properly dry it after brining overnight. I put the salmon in my fish dryer till it has a nice pellicle forms, then it's ready for smoking.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.429224
| 2010-09-02T19:33:05 |
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|
8845
|
Is there any way to avoid grease splatter?
I often cook fries in a skillet. I put about 1/4 cup vegetable oil into a large skillet and heat on high, then I toss in some frozen fries.
As soon as I toss them in there is an explosion of grease that makes a huge mess. After it simmers down though, I can cook the fries without spilling anymore grease.
Is there anyway to avoid the initial uproar?
Unfortunately, to get a good high temperature cooking and the browning that adds flavor, the splatter is unavoidable. Good suggestion below with the screen, and there are many varieties. Just accept it and enjoy the nicely browned food.
Use a deeper dish. Fries shouldn't be fried in a skillet. Use a 4+ quart pan.
Then cover with a metal screen to reduce the splatter.
Other considerations:
1) You can buy a splatter shield - it's a very fine wire mesh on a long handle. It works very well.
2) One of the things that can cause splatter is when water or ice hits the oil -- make sure your fries are as dry as possible before putting them in.
Ahh ha, do I feel dumb. I just looked up "splatter shield" and I have seen those before many times but I always thought they were drainers. I wondered how they worked being flat.
There are also silicone splatter shields, which tend to be a little more reliable and easier to clean than wire ones (YMMV of course).
We fry so rarely that the wire one works just fine. I've had the same one for about 10 years. When it dies, I'll probably replace with silicone.
You shouldn't be 'tossing' the fries into the pan. Put them in slowly, using a tray or slotted spoon. Make sure to have the container no more than halfway full of oil. I learned this the hard way working in a cafeteria, the results can be messy and painful :(
Agreed -- slowly lowering them in will mean if there's any surface water left, it's only going a short distance up through the oil, rather than from deep in the bottom of the pot ... which lead to the grease fire, destroying the stove, etc.
It's a rather unavoidable part of cooking things like bacon or sausage. I would advise against a lid, and instead use a splatter screen.
The lid will keep the spatter in, but it will also change the cooking time and even method of your food. Putting the lid on can effectively begin steaming your sausage, which may not be desired. The splatter screen will let steam escape but catch the little grease pops which are unavoidable.
Frozen fries often have a lot of water at the surface too, which is why restaurants that serve fries from frozen often let them sit out for 10-20 minutes before dropping them in the fryer. This does two things:
Lets the surface ice melt and evaporate
Brings their temperature up
That's a great point for previously frozen ... do they do it in the package, or spread them out to improve air circulation and evaporation?
They usually do it in the fry baskets (open air). The fries would get soggy in the bag (I assume).
For fresh potatoes, patting them dry helps a lot too. I often let mine sit out while I make the rest of the meal, tossing them and patting them down until they're really dry on the surface.
We let our fries sit out in the bag for a few hours. They cook about 10 seconds faster that way, and the ice melts so it doesn't make the horrible explosive noise. But really, there's no difference - the only reason we let the fries sit out is it's more convenient that constantly reaching into the freezer.
Put a lid on your pan. It's physics really. The downside is that you will end up with a lid that needs washing.
-1 because covering will change the heat profile of the pan, make the whole area hotter, promote steaming. All things that will change the way you are cooking. A splatter screen won't do that.
No worries. I cook sausages on a low heat in a cast iron pan with a lid all the time. I like 'em that way. Judging by the down votes, I'm the only one who does. Have a nice day.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.429579
| 2010-11-04T18:43:32 |
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|
3486
|
What can I substitute for dairy products in kosher meat dishes?
I have converted a number of traditional dishes to kosher (cannot mix meat and dairy ingredients) but have trouble finding substitutes for dairy ingredients that have the correct consistency or flavor. I have tried a number of soy-based products, like sour supreme, work great if you are not cooking them but I find that many of them don't handle high temperatures well. Does anyone have any other suggestions so I can make beef stroganoff or veal parmesan.
Shouldn't these be called 'dairy substitutes'? Or 'Substitutes for dairy?'
One cautionary note: very strict adherents to kosher rules may avoid even appearing to violate kashrut (e.g. refusing to eat turkey bacon or use soy-based cheese on a hamburger). Most who keep kosher are not this rigorous, but it is something to be aware of when cooking for others.
In regard to the issues you've had with the Toffutti Sour Supreme...wait until you take it off the heat and stir it in right before serving.
If it still breaks, then try stirring arrowroot powder, tapioca starch (avail. in Asian markets), or potato starch (about a tablespoon per cup of sour supreme) into it before adding to the stroganoff. These starches (amylopectin) have a lower gellation point than grain-based starches (flour, corn, rice) which are higher in amylose and require heating to a higher temperature for the starch granules to swell and pop, releasing their starch.
OR
Try this recipe for kosher beef stroganoff where they're using coconut milk for the kosher cream sauce and say that the coconut flavor doesn't come through in the finished dish.
In the Israeli Army I've had a veal "parmesan" made with a tahini sauce. It's a very different dish, of course. It's also common to get beef/noodle recipes that don't include the dairy component.
In general you're often better off substituting the meat (for fish, or a vegetarian patty like seitan) or working off of different recipes. Trying to make kosher cheeseburgers (and putting margarine on the shabbat table) are the hallmarks of the newly religious.
Margarine still contains milk (although at a lower amount than butter) is it considered exempt from the proabition?
@sarge_smith Not kosher margarine.
It really depends what you are trying to do with the dairy.
Is it for taste, consistency, moisture?
I keep kosher and often see recipes with dairy products.
If its baking often cream can be substituted with non-dairy coffee creamer or unwipped whip cream and butter can often be substituted with margarine of vegetable shortening.
For making a tempura batter just put water instead of milk.
I make corn bread (to be eaten with meat) and I use part soy milk and part mayonnaise to substitute butter milk. In the case of corn bread the butter milks main objective is moisture thus the mayo.
Anyway it is individual and like @spolsky said just don't try to make a cheese burger and never! touch things like vegetarian pepperoni! (just ask anyone who did)
First ask yourself if the Dairy Ingredient is significant to the dish, some dishes can go without the dairy item. Olive oil for butter is the easiest example. I make Beef Stroganoff often, and I always put sour cream as an optional ingredient - garnish. My brother is lactose intolerant and he loves Stroganoff. Also, review some Kosher cook books, Joan Nathan comes to mind.
Vegetarian cookbooks often have intriguing substitutions for animal proteins
I've had some luck with rice or almond milk, although you may need to also address technique. Stroganoff, for example, might require you to prep the sauce over different heat. I'd recommend flipping through a few vegan cookbooks to see if there's any analogous recipes that you could steal a preparation technique from.
BTW - I'm not super familiar with Kosher food prep, but does "dairy" include all animal milks (such as sheep or goat?) Does "dairy" also encompass yogurts, kefir, etc?
Dairy includes all milk products from all animals.
Beware most soy milk and almond milk is Dairy - they have milk in them or milk by products!!!!!
Welcome Kate, can you share your source for this information? I don't believe most soy/nut milks contain dairy.
No, dairy-free milks (soy or almond) do not have milk or milk by-products. There may be soy-dairy or almond-dairy blends out there, but milk will be clearly labeled in the ingredient list.
Debbie M...Kate is correct it might say non dairy but according the the laws of Kashrut there is something in it that is a milk derivative and that makes it dairy. The kosher certification on the package "ouD" of KD are the deciding factors. It is is the same with non dairy coffee creamers Coffeemate is KD
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.429984
| 2010-07-27T21:18:15 |
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|
7397
|
Why would cooked spinach contain more iron than raw?
I've been researching the nutrient content of various foods and I've found that cooked spinach appears to have more iron than raw spinach (3.57 mg / 100g vs 2.71 mg /100g). Intuitively, I would have expected the opposite.
Is the data I'm looking at wrong?
Maybe, it is just that it is easier to aborb the iron from cooked spinach rather than raw.
Can anyone explain the difference?
Iron is simply an element, so it cannot be destroyed by cooking (or generally temperature changes), as vitamins and other organic structures potentially can.
Cooked spinach inevitably has a much lower water content, thus the relative density of all other components must increase. So gram for gram, it makes sense that cooked spinach should have a higher concentration of iron (and possibly some other things) than raw. However, the actual process of cooking does nothing to change the amount of iron.
Also, cooking makes more of that iron available to the human digestive tract. So in effect - as our digestion sees it - there is more iron.
@Daniel: I suspect it's slightly more complicated that and depends on the specific food - though I'm sure you're right in many (most?) cases. ('Cooking' raw iron wouldn't make it more digestable of course!) I gave the physicist's answer, heh.
@Daniel: That what I suspected. After some more research, I've found out that spinach contains high amounts of oxalic acid which combines with the iron and inhibits its absorption. Boiling the spinach breaks down the oxalates making the iron more easily absorbed. (note: the iron in spinach and most other vegetable is more difficult to absorb. Vitamin C helps increase the absorption.)
@Mark: Interesting. I would not deny that's a significant factor.
@Noldorin It's not about making the raw iron itself more digestible, but about releasing it from its biological container. It's probably wrapped in or affixed to one protein or another in the spinach. Cooking causes those proteins to breakdown (as does digestion) releasing the iron. When you cook it, you're basically predigesting it a little.
This is true. I don't know enough molecular biology to comment on how iron manifests itself in foodstuffs, but as a physicist, there is a much more obvious answer that accounts for probably most of the change in iron concentration. :)
I would guess that cooked spinach has lost a lot of the water content, so cooking doesn't add more iron, it just increases the percentage or iron by reducing the total mass.
I.e. if you had 100g of raw spinach and you cooked it (and drained it probably) you would end up with less than 100g of cooked spinach.
Spinach contains oxalic acid which inhibits the absorption of iron. Cooking destroys the oxalic acid therefore more iron is absorbed from cooked spinach. We absorb other vitamins and minerals from spinach. We absorb different nutrients from cooked and raw spinach, so.it is good to eat it both raw and cooked. (nutritionist knowledge)
As far as I'm aware, labels include all the nutrients in a meal, not the bioavailable nutrients (which are much harder to calculate). So the effect you are describing should be totally irrelevant to the question. Or do you have evidence about labeling based on bioavailability?
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.430410
| 2010-09-17T13:00:51 |
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10923
|
What is the best approach to cut carrot into thin strips?
So I went to Subway™ and saw that their carrots are cut into thin strips. I can never do this with any knives. So what is the best way to cut carrots into thin strips (like french fries)?
Are you asking for a way to do this with a knife, or for a more specialized tool like a mandoline?
The style of cut is called julienne. True, a mandoline can make a julienne cut, as well as thin slices. However, you can also use a knife to achieve a julienne cut.
First, cut the carrot into manageable lengths--2 or 3 inches. Cut a piece into 1/8 inch slices lengthwise. Stack several slices on top of one another and cut lengthwise through all layers to make "matchsticks" or julienne-cut carrots. It works best to have a large slice on the bottom of your stack, not a small one or the round side of the carrot. A large slice on the bottom is more stable, so you're not as likely to julienne your fingers. Yes, cutting carrots this way is a lot of trouble, but this is the way to do it with a knife.
There are also other ways to get a similar result without a mandoline. If you have a food processor, try the large grating disk. You can also use a salad shooter or other slicer/shredder--there's even an attachment for the ubiquitous Kitchen Aid mixer. Even a plain old box grater can be used to grate carrots. Grated carrots may not be as neat and tidy as the ones done commercially, but they're still a good addition to a salad.
Oh, if all else fails, you can usually buy the shredded carrots in the produce section, near the bagged salads.
And to do this, you need sharp knives -- a dull knife won't bite into the carrot as well, which means an increased chance of the blade slipping and cutting you. (and for gratings vs. slicing -- it has its place, but it breaks the cell walls, resulting in much more water loss)
Plus one for grating. It's not exactly the same as a true julienne, and it's harder on the vegetable, but it's a quick and easy approximation using a cheap and readily available tool.
If you're talking about fast food, you can rest assured that their carrots arrive that way from the distributor, who is probably using industrial machinery to do the cutting.
If you want to achieve this at home with minimal effort then your best bet is a piece of equipment called a mandoline. Normally it has a top piece that you use to pierce the vegetable or fruit (AKA a guard), and you just slide it along the surface as it gets sliced by the slightly-raised blade, which you can usually adjust to get your desired thickness. It looks like this:
Most of them have julienne blades but make sure you check before purchasing one.
Safety note: As contributor Chef has pointed out, you can give yourself an extremely nasty cut on one of these if you get careless (and who among us doesn't have those days occasionally?), so do yourself a favour and buy a pair of safety gloves if you don't already have them.
Gloves are not expensive - the most expensive pair on Amazon costs under $25 - so just go and get yourself a pair, even if you have a really high-end mandoline. It's better to have a good pair and never use them than it is to slice half a finger off because you couldn't spare the time or expense to get some. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience here.
I have friends who worked at Subway in high school ... I don't know about their carrots, but in the case on onion and lettuce, those arived in the stores whole, and they had various devices to quickly dispatch them.
That's interesting, @Joe. I guess there may be some places that do their own chopping/slicing, perhaps to keep them fresher. I do know that most food service distributors sell them pre-cut, as in this page but in larger quantities.
I've never used it for carrots, but http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000KKNQZ6 is good for slicing stuff thinly in general. The safety note above still applies :)
Just want to show support for the safety note. I made the mistake of trying to catch a falling antique mandolin slicer when I was a kid. I nearly lost 3 fingers. Like all kitchen equipment, show it respect.
There is a relatively cheap kitchen utensil for julienne cuts. It's basically a vegetable peeler with teeth. I use it to julienne carrots and other vegetables a lot when I'm making all sorts of dishes.
It takes a bit of getting used to, but is a good compromise for the amateur.
Subway uses specialized electric appliances to do such cuts. The closest thing at home is the food processor, but that doesn't cut that thin. In resraurants, we get things thin by using a mandoline, as others have pointed out. What they haven't pointed out is how dangerous thy are. Thy are probably the single largest contributor to cuts- nasty ones too. It is VERY easy to slip, or have the product slip ( soft/old carrot?) and cut your fingertip. Cooks really should use a guard- they never do. I wouldn't recommend using a mandolin for most home cooks- you will cut yourself eventually- and badly. If you DO use one, make sure you use a decent guard. The plastic piece of junk that comes with the benriner mandolin isn't very good. Another alternative use a peeler, not as nice, but it can work.
If one is concerned about kitchen safety (and I agree that one should be), then what's even better than a guard is a pair of cut-resistant kitchen gloves, or even utility gloves. It's not like you need much dexterity for mandoline slicing, and good gloves are useful to have around anyway (e.g. for chopping garlic, hot peppers and so on).
Like using woodworking equipment, being distracted is the main danger with mandolines. Cut before cooking so you're not tempted to rush and also rinse immediately to make cleaning easier and safer if handwashing.
When in a hurry and not feeling up to julianning carrots, I often have success using a vegetable peeler to peel off thin strips of carrot. It'll look a bit different, but it makes even, thin strips.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.430728
| 2011-01-10T23:02:54 |
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|
2678
|
How should I clean anodized cookware?
I'd been bought an anodised wok as a birthday present a couple of years back, but recently, when using a honey/mustard marinade, I managed to burn some of the excess marinade, and now can't seem to get the wok clean, not even when putting it through the dishwasher (it is dishwasher safe). What can I do to clean it off that won't affect the anodised coating?
We love to using Baking Soda and water to gently clean cookware. A little bit of hot water seems to work best.
This is my standby - perfect for anything greasy or sticky, and a mild abrasive for others. I'll resort to Ajax for seriously cooked-on scum, but Ajax on coated metal might be a bad idea.
How do you use this? As a paste cold, or some other way?
In cookeries that use woks, they immediately put water into the wok (from a faucet built right into the stove area) and boil it, using a bamboo whisk to clean up the junk. Possibly some type of oil or one of those new orange based cleaning solvents (have heard of something called goo gone) would work. Wouldn't suggest oven cleaner, as I think most of those contain lye, which dissolves aluminum. Anything abrasive will also take off the very thin layer of anodization. Good luck.
Actually, it's a question of how abrasive -- don't take a steel brush to it, but you should be able to get away with a plastic scouring pad, as the anodization process hardens the surface so it can take extra abuse.
To get the marinade off I would fill the wok with water until all of the offending marinade is covered, then I would boil the water in the wok. This will probably be enough to get the marinade off, or at least loosen it so you can wash it off.
In general though hard anodised cookware should be cleanable with a scourer and a bit of elbow grease.
I never underestimate the power of a good, long soak (1-3 days) in some hot, soapy water. It seems to work it's magic slowly, enhanced by a good scrub along the way. I'd hesitate to use ajax, although baking soda is a nice abrasive.
I'd also suggest 3M's Dobie sponges, available just about everywhere kitchen supplies are sold. They've got a good plastic coating that's safe on non-stick and anodized cookware, but tough enough to remove stubborn burned bits. My parents have been using them for years on their pans, and I've been using them for a shorter number of years on my own.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.431234
| 2010-07-21T20:49:02 |
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|
8090
|
Is "quick brining" as effective as an overnight soak?
I recently came across this article, Quickly Brine Chicken When You Don't Have Much Time, which suggests 2-3 hours in a 10% brine, followed by a 1-hour rest. Does this work? If so, are there any trade-offs over compared to using a longer, weaker brine?
@user1575 - could you clarify what information you are looking for further, please?
@user1575: I've tried to flesh out your question a bit... If this isn't what you were looking for, please clarify!
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.431451
| 2010-10-13T21:34:24 |
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|
10439
|
How to cook a fish to make its bone as soft as those in sardines?
When eating fish, accidentally swallowing the bones is a nightmare for me.
Currently, eating sardine is the only solution due to its soft bone.
I am worried that my health may suffer in the future if I continuously eat sardines that might contain "not so friendly" chemical substances.
I want to learn how to cook fishes to make their bones as soft as those of sardines.
Is there anybody here who knows the secret of making soft bones without "artificial and dangerous" chemical substances?
Do I need a special cooking apparatus to make fish bones soft?
Whatever gave you the bizarre idea that there are "artificial and dangerous" substances in sardines???
and why are you swallowing so many bones? buy boneless fish fillets
My initial reaction, reading this question, was that the "not so friendly" chemical substance of which the OP speaks is mercury. If so, s/he should be aware that sardines have lower mercury levels than most other fish. Large predatory fish, which live a long time eating other fish - and therefore absorbing those fishes' mercury - tend to have much higher mercury levels by the time they're caught and eaten. Small fish like sardines don't live long enough, or eat enough other fish, to build up dangerous levels. If the OP is concerned about additives from processing... for that, I got nothing.
Sardines are canned, which means the high heat of a pressure canner. That is what softens the bones. If you are wanting softer bones for other kinds of fish, you can either cook them using a pressure cooker or can them. However, this will only work for smaller fish that have smaller bones.
If your main concern is that you will swallow a bone and choke, then buy your fish as fillets only. Most fish fillets have no bones at all. The pin bones that are in salmon fillets can be removed with needle nose pliers, and are so small that you couldn't choke on them if you tried.
Thanks @Doug for answering. I will search for and buy a pressure cooker soon.
You don't have to buy whole fishes. Tilapia fillets are not very expensive, and they are a great mild-flavored fish. You can also purchase salmon, tuna, and many other types of fish. My favorite place to purchase these are Aldi and Walmart, as they are very affordable.
additionally, you can buy whole fish and fillet it yourself.
also, i have never eaten canned sardines (but, ok, i live in portugal and near the sea, we have access to a lot of fresh fish). how do they compare with fresh fish?
Not just small fish: salmon and trout are canned bone-in as well.
The USDA released a paper on the effects of cooking on 'fish bones softening', and you can find it if you search online...they tested pressures of 15, 20 and 25 psi (which gave them temperatures of 220 to 270 degrees water temp under pressure)...and found that even tuna and rockfish had 'gelatinous bones' at the highest temp-pressures.
The only way to cook fish to 'soft bones' (gelatinous) consistency, and not destroy nutritional or flavor values, is to do so with a GOOD pressure cooker capable of 20-psi or more, and cook times from 30-to 120 minutes, based on your own personal tastes.
Raw Sardines do not have soft bones. If they did they wont have a strong skeleton.
All canned fish that have bones in them have soft bones be it large fish or small fish because they are cooked. You will know this because bone in canned salmon has soft bones
Its not about chemicals. As organic canned fish with bones have soft bones. It is because once inside the can the cans are heated to kill any germs, and at the same time cooks the fish like it is in a pressure cooker.
You can cook fish in many ways to make its bones soft and edible. You can cut fish into slices with your favorite spices and use a pressure cooker and cook for 1 hour.
You can also cook it like you would cook pot roast overnight. 8 hours is enough. Use whole fish if you do so.
The spices you put are your choice. I personally like yogurt, chili, lime, cumin and little oil on mine. But you can use anything. Its not the chemicals or spices that make it soft but the cooking method.
I totally do NOT agree with your point number 3. The cans are definitely NOT made to withstand the pressures of a pressure cooker. Not only that they would change their shape badly (nobody would buy them after that), but they also have the risk of (bigger or smaller) explosion.
cook the whole fish with pressure cooker for 30+ minutes depending on the size of the fish to soften the bones. Here is the article about the popular Indonesian Milkfish dish cooked with high pressure cooker. As we know, milk fish is known for being much bonier than other fish :)
http://presto-milkfish.blogspot.com/
Here is the recipe to try :)
http://lelakimemasak1.blogspot.com/2011/07/high-pressure-cooked-smoked-milkfish.html
If you can go with picking out big bones from fish before cooking/eating then there is this Chinese (as far as I know) method to soften smaller bones - like smaller bones in a Carp's back.
I've tried this method with roasting stuffed carps in the oven. The carps were rather big - 2-3 kg and spent like an hour and a half in the oven.
I suppose this approach won't work with frying or boiling. Haven't tried it, though.
Before cooking the fish, cut its skin in several places (not very deep just to make sure the skin is cut). Then rub it with salt, soak in wine, and let it rest for about 15 minutes. After an hour and a half in the oven smaller back bones should be soft enough to go down unnoticed.
I have cooked salmon and all of the bones were soft enough to be edible. My method:
Put butter or oil on the cooking surface of the cooking dish or pot.
Lay the washed fish on the oiled surface.
Slice an onion and lay the slices on and around the fish.
Put on salt, pepper and a dash of powdered garlic.
Cover the cooking dish/pot and put in an oven at 200 degrees F.
After three hours, the fish and onions are well cooked. And the bones are as soft as those in a can of sardines.
Fillet the pickerel, lay it on table skin side down. Make cuts about one inch apart on the whole fillet. Make the cuts down to the skin. Use flour or bread crumbs or how ever you cook you other fish fillets. Put the fillets in hot oil. The hot oil will run through all the cuts and cook the fine bones in the fillet. You can eat the fillet and not have to worry about bones. Use enough oil so it runs through the cuts.
One time I made a mistake making fish stock. I put it on and fell asleep thinking it would be a short nap. Some hours later I woke to find the stock simmering. All the bones and heads were GONE. This is not even a hard boil!
I believe everyone who says fish bones can soften with pressure cooking. Think: When has a fish ever had to live in boiling water? Never. The bones never have to survive this. If Darwin is correct, you need only bones that are good for water that is not boiling :-)
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.431548
| 2010-12-23T00:23:48 |
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|
66071
|
What should I look for when choosing tomatoes for pasta sauces?
What factors should I take into account when selecting tomatoes for sauces?
Background: I'm growing my own tomatoes, and I need to start germinating soon. Taste and production are my 2 first concerns. We usually can about 30 to 40 qt. a year but want to buy less from the stores to do it.
Vendors are pretty good about listing a dizzying array of growing factors and expected results... But I'm not entirely clear on what I should be focusing on when it comes to making sauce.
As Joe mentions, you may wish to ask follow-up questions on [gardening.se]: folks here can tell you what to look for in a variety, but you'll need to take many additional factors into consideration when deciding what you can and should try growing.
Cross-linking to the Gardening SE question: http://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/23020/what-are-some-of-the-top-producing-tomato-plants-for-use-in-sauces
From a production standpoint, you might actually be better off asking this question on the gardening site.
In general, however, for canning purposes you'll want to select a 'determinate' variety -- they tend to have all of their fruit ripen around the same time, rather than having it be spread out across many weeks. Indeterminate tend to be better for tomatoes that you might want to use for salads or other purposes, as you won't suddenly be stuck with a glut of tomatoes that you can't use all of.
Your other gardening considerations are if the plant is more bush-like, or more vine-like, as it'll affect how much you need to do to manage them. The vine ones you have to keep checking them every couple of days to make sure the vines are fed back through the tomato cages so they don't start drooping against the ground when they're laden with fruit.
In general, you're going to want to select a plum-style tomato. Sometimes they also label tomatoes as 'sauce' or 'paste' tomatoes. Other varieties of tomatoes tend to be a bit more wet and can require more cooking down, although other varieties may have some advantages.
As for the specific variety, San Marzano and Roma are two well known varieties, but there are now a large number of hybrids that I'm just not familiar with. I would personally select for varieties that do well in your local climate, and can deal with the specifics of your garden (eg, how much space you have to work with) ... but again, ask that on the gardening site.
In the article that I linked to above, they actually recommend blending multiple varieties, but this is more difficult in a home garden unless they all ripen at the same time. You could always plan for the bulk to come from a determinate variety, and blend in some from one or more indeterminate varieties, or plant a couple of determinate varieties, or stagger them some to try to get batch sizes that will be easier to deal with.
And I probably should've mentioned -- 'plum' refers to the oblong shape. It's possible that there are sauce / paste tomatoes that aren't plum. (I get most of my tomato seedlings as the ones my step-father can't fit ... he's the expert in tomatoes & peppers)
San Marzano and Viva Italia make very tasty sauces if you grow your own, and boil down the seed-strained mash using only the ripe fruit. It doesn't take many green ones to make the taste too sharp.
Yes, we cook the tomatoes for a few hours then stain the seeds and skins before adding spices then reduce.
I wasn't familiar w/ Viva Italia, and found this page comparing it to Roma : http://allthingsplants.com/ideas/view/Newyorkrita/1720/Which-Paste-Tomato-Should-You-Grow/ . The important thing to remember is that you want a determinate plum tomato. Plums (aka 'sauce' or 'paste' tomatoes) have better meat to seed-gel ratio, and 'determinate' means that you get a single harvest vs. having then ripen over a period of many weeks.
@Joe that explanation makes for a very good answer. You should consider posting it.
Surely almost any decent tomato variety (of the appropriate type anyway) will make good sauce if you grow it yourself and only use nice ripe ones? Seems likely overspecific to only recommend a couple well-known ones.
@Jefromi Have you every tried boiling down Better Boy, Big Beef, or Celebrity? It takes forever as the things are mostly water. The product tastes nice, but proper sauce tomatoes give a much better yield of thick tasty sauce with much less effort.
@WayfaringStranger Of the appropriate type. Yes, you need a paste tomato, not a beefsteak. No, it doesn't have to be San Marzano or Viva Italia.
@Jefromi Of course it doesn't have to be only those, but I've had good luck with them.
Okay, well that was the point of my comment: your answer would be more useful if you suggested a broader category, or at least explained what about those varieties makes them work out well. (Also note that the "what's best?" question was pretty opinion-based and has been edited to ask for that kind of thing.)
Gardening might be a better place to ask this. There's a nice thread over there now, which includes several sauce variety tomatoes: Which tomatoes grow the best in high temperatures? http://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/20138/which-tomatoes-grow-the-best-in-high-temperatures
Yes, I think we all agree that details of varieties are best there (see Shog's comment on the question). Nonetheless it does seem fair to ask cooks about what they require of their ingredients.
I know this is a gardening comment, but San Marzano suffer terribly from flower end rot if the soil lacks calcium. Ask about growing tomatoes in the gardening and landscaping community. I am there too.
I've got high calcium soil and the things grow like weeds. With regard to San Marzano being determinate, I regularly get two goodly sized crops out of them, with a smaller, but steady amount of ripe ones in between. That's likely because of where I live, but it should be remembered that "Determinate" can be a fuzzy term with respect to tomato growth and fruiting.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.432227
| 2016-01-31T18:42:54 |
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245
|
How can I keep meringue pie-topping from falling?
Nothin' better on a hot summer afternoon than a slice of cold pie... And nothin' says "summer" like a great big fluffy meringue topping over that slab of rhubarb/lemon/banana custard.
Unfortunately, mine haven't been turning out that way. They bake up nicely, but fall within a half hour of baking.
I whip egg whites mixed with 1/8 tsp cream of tartar (per egg) until they reach soft peaks, then mix in 1 tablespoon of sugar (per egg) while continuing to beat until it gets stiff - then spread over the hot pie filling and bake for 10-15 minutes at 400F. Topping doubles in size, then falls as it cools, ending somewhat less impressive than it started.
Any suggestions?
See similar: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/748/making-my-meringues-form-peaks
You can use lemon juice. The juice let the egg white swell and should make the meringue more stable. I've never tried this myself though.
See problem notes for pav http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/9860/what-is-the-best-way-to-making-a-great-pavlova-base
Piet Huysentruyt (a famous Belgian chef) advices to break and split your eggs, keep the egg whites in the fridge for a day or two, get them out and use them if they reach room temp.
And yes, in meringue, moisture is your enemy!
It can help you, if you bake the meringue, to put a wooden spoon between your oven door,
so that the vaporized moist can escape through the narrow opening.
Ironically, it could be precisely because you're trying to enjoy the meringue on a hot day that is causing it to deflate so quickly. Meringue are extremely sensitive to moisture, and a humid day can wreck your meringue's volume. It's best to make meringue on a dry day.
However, there are a few things you can do to achieve better stability:
Use fresher eggs.
Fats are the enemy. Make sure you have zero egg yolk in the mixture. Also, avoid hand contact, as your oils can rub off.
Make sure the sugar is fully dissolved, because otherwise it attracts moisture.
Good luck!
And because fats are such a problem, you'll likely have problems with plastic bowls (which are made from oil, and are very difficult to remove oil from). You should stick to metal or glass when whipping egg whites.
I struggle with this same problem; if I omit the cream of tartar (or cornstarch), then it stays nice and fluffy, no falling. Of course, then I have the problem of it "weeping," as discussed here.
I let the pie cool before topping with the meringue and baking.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.432716
| 2010-07-09T21:36:32 |
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|
14595
|
How can I cut lots of cherry tomatoes in half quickly and evenly?
Is there a tool to cut cherry tomatoes in half? Since they are so regular it should be possible to build such a machine.
Alternately, what can I do to improve my speed and accuracy when halving them with a knife?
Yes: http://www.ftnon.com/en/processes/slicing/slicing-fresh-salads-vegetables-and-herbs/ (but maybe out of your price range...)
@jeffromi, 300kgs/hr....AWESOME! Take that salad.
@yossarian: Don't be bamboozled by hourly measurements, that only comes out to about 4 tomatoes per second. ;)
...of course, if I really needed to cut 15,000 tomatoes, I'd probably still go for the machine.
Yes there is. It's called a knife. I use a Shun 10" chef's knife, but you could certainly make do with a much cheaper one.
Damn it, you took the words right out of my mouth!
Now I want to design a cherry tomato size guillotine.
@Soba: I have a cherry tomato sized trebuchet.
I don't think that a trebuchet will cut them, unless it hurls them straight through a big upright blade... and then how do you account for factors like wind resistance?
@Aaronut- build it in a vaccuum.
@hobodave nice answer, but the OP uses the word machine, I think he want to cut a lot of them! Such as @Jefromi mentioned
@hobo: and the tacit implication is that everyone realizes you mean "a properly sharpened" knife. But, indeed!
Oh, a knife! I never seen one in my life! Don't you think that if I'm asking this question it's kind of obvious that I'm looking for an alternative to a knife?
@J.PabloFernández If you're looking for an alternative, try asking on Lifehacks; but be warned that you'll have to explain why a knife doesn't cut it for your question to be on-topic there. ( pun intended )
When attempting to slice a lot of regular sized items, if you're not all that picky about the orientation of the cut (eg, if it's through or perpendicular the line between the blossom and stem), you can do the following, if you have a well sharpened knife that isn't going to slide on the skin of the tomatoes:
place a few together on your cutting board.
place your hand on top and arch your fingers up
slice horizontally through the group of items, between the counter and the palm of your hand (no need to rush this, go slow)
If you're nervous about cutting yourself, and you have plates that have a bit of a lip if you flip it over, you can put a plate down, upside down, fill the center with items to be cut, place another place on top, then while holding the plate down with light pressure, slice between the two plates.
"slice through the group parallel to the counter and the palm of your hand" - careful how you parse that!
@LarsH : hopefully it's more clear now.
Yes, very clear now. Though not as entertaining. :-)
I've found here:
http://www.biggirlssmallkitchen.com/2012/06/streamlining-tomato-halves.html
great advice to
take two take-out plastic containers (shape of plastic plates)
fill with tomatoes - put tomatoes between them like sandwich, so they will not go out thanks to containers/plates boarders
cut through
+1 : This is effectively daniel's addition to my answer, but much better explained.
Take two lids off any size food storage container you find fitting. Fill one with as many grape tomatoes your heart desires. Place the second lid on top facing down. Take a serrated bread knife and cut the tomatoes in half between the lids. Mine is in fact a 13" so I can cut about 12 boxes of cherry tomatoes in half in under 2 minutes.
It was hard to imagine your solution at first, but after figuring out the picture in my mind, it's brilliant! Can you add a photo?
@ElmerCat: this is basically Grzegorz Wierzowiecki's answer from two years ago, minus the link to the blog post where he got the idea. And Joe's 5-year-old answer contains much the same idea.
Even better for any tomatoes a Serated Knife (one with ridges such like a bread knife).
Try sharpening a good, non-serrated knife and slicing some tomatoes, you may find you never need a serrated knife for the task again.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.432978
| 2011-05-09T13:56:09 |
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|
11529
|
Sautéing big batch of onions
So I like making pasta sauce with lots of sautéed onions, but to properly sauté, at least as far as I understand it, I can only put a limited amount of onions into my one medium sized pan.
I am fed up with using half-steamed onions in my quest for making large amounts of sauce to freeze, and I don't have patience for ten-thousand rounds of sautéing. Surely, there has got to be a better way?
I have not personally tried this with onions, but whenever I need to cook large batches of something (for example, bacon) and I don't have enough space on top of the stove, I try to find a way to work it in the oven.
Although it's not going to be a true sautée, I think you could probably achieve what you want with a few sheet pans of onions (mixed with oil) in the oven.
This recipe would probably be a good guideline for time and temperature.
If that doesn't sound like something you'd like to try, do you have a grill? What if you laid out a large amount of foil across the grates of your grill (put a lip on the edge, basically make an impromptu baking sheet out of foil) and do them on the grill over low to medium heat until they're the texture you want?
We do a french onion soup that uses the oven method. The onions come out absolutely beautifully with minimal work. This is the recipe we use for the soup: http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/detail.asp?docid=11811
The oven idea sounds similar to baking larger batches of bacon in the oven, which definitely works well. I'd give it a shot if you have more oven space than pan space. A convection setting might be most effective if you plan to put in multiple trays.
The onions will steam if there is not a sufficient amount of space around them for the water they release to evaporate, so short of a larger pan, doing multiple, smaller batches is the best way to ensure that.
I attempted 'oven sauteing onions' until I finally got it to a science!
What you need: olive oil (if you're out, use vegetable oil), onions, garlic (optional), and a flat baking pan
First, understand there's some kind of chemical reaction when we oil a cookie sheet, coat the onions and put them in the oven. In as quickly as 18 minutes, they are worthless, flavorless onions. All the water is leached out of them, they are just a wilted little pile of about 1/3 the amount you put in! No joke, I almost thought someone stole half my onions. But, I was still in the trial stage.
As soon as this recipe gets out, some chemist online will come along and explain this oil oddity.
And the flip side is if you don't coat all sides, they dry up too bad in the oven.
1) Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees
2) Chop or slice all the onions you want to sautee.
3) Prepare your baking sheet by only putting the barest amount of olive oil in your palms and oil the pan especially to the sides. The onions placed on the sides and ends of the pan sometimes get browned and a few burn (but it's so very little, it's no loss).
4) When you're done slicing or chopping, leave them in the bowl. Put just about 1 - 1/2 tbs olive oil in the bowl. Coat your palms with olive oil. Then just toss and mix thoroughly until all onions are coated on all sides. (the amount varies by the amount of onions you're sauteing). The key is to use as little oil as possible and you'll have exceptional results.
5) I found that depending on the amount of onions, they are done in 15-20 minutes on my stove. Yours may be different so check frequently the first time. Chopped onions only take 15 minutes while slices can go another couple minutes.
You CAN pile them on the baking sheet since all of them have the oil they need. I piled slices and chopped both. There's no problem with it.
If you don't coat all sides, they dry up and shrivel.
I worked at this in stages until I got the oven temp and the issue of the oil figured out.
Now, I can have fabulous sautee'd onions or onions & garlic any time I want to grab it!
Wow! And only for the cost of some onions. It's gonna make my cooking easier day to day.
This really works great. I've got 5 frozen bags of them.
When the water comes out and the onions wilt, they're most certainly not flavorless. Pretty much all they've lost is water - the flavor is still in them. And... I can't tell the difference between the process you say doesn't work (coat the onions, cook for 18 minutes) and the process you say does (coat the onions, cook for 15-20 minutes). If you want to say you've got it down to a science, I think you need to be a bit more specific.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.433328
| 2011-01-27T19:14:47 |
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|
10056
|
How can I make an Überfood?
Each day, you're supposed to get a certain number of servings of grains, vegetables, fats, etc. You know, the food pyramid.
However, instead of going to all the trouble to prepare three meals with several courses each and every day, I'd like to just have the same thing to eat, all the time. I'm hoping this isn't considered sacrilege for this site!
What I'm describing is an Überfood, as it has a near-perfect balance of all of the daily intake requirements. They make it for cats, dogs, and other mammals, so I'm sure it's possible for us primates. Like cats and dogs, I'd of course have the occasional treat, but it would always be above-and-beyond and not part of my daily nutrients.
What considerations should I put into making an Überfood? Ideally, it would be shelf-stable and not need refridgeration. Texture and taste are less important.
Clearly, I don't know much about cooking or food preparation... But I think there's a better way than just buying an industrial blender, throwing a bunch of vitamins, vegetables, protien, etc., and seeing what turns up.
PS - I don't consider this a recipe request or nutritional info question, but a request a unique entry of [food-science]
I think you may be mistaken in your impression that there is some perfectly-balanced combination of nutrients that a human can eat every single day and remain healthy. Humans are omnivores, we are evolutionarily programmed to eat a variety of different foods, with a number of internal biological processes that regulate our nutritional intake far more accurately than any diet, and different people have different nutritional needs depending on their environment and lifestyle. If such an überfood could be made relatively easily (and shelf stable), it would probably already be on the market.
That said, have you considered gruel?
Be sure you use the freshest possible über, from a reputable supplier. Über quickly degrades into unter if stored, and no one likes unterfood.
Reducing nutrition to what current science knows about nutrition has mostly been a fool's game. By the time science understands all we need to synthesize this "perfect food", we could have eaten a lot of very nice, very simple, very varied meals.
I am also interested in something along these lines. I usually eat the same thing for many days in a row, doing all of my cooking on the weekends. Even if it needs to be supplemented with some fresh fruits or vegetables, a concoction that supplies me with most of what I need would be great. I'm not really concerned about flavor or allergies.
@Aaronut Wow, didn't know gruel was a real thing; sounds close to what I was looking for, but Nutraloaf is definitely the winner.
Have you considered eating dog food, or soylent green?
Soylent's now an option. Sort of. https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body (I heartily recommend real food instead, though, since nutritional science is still rather blinded by necessarily reductionist methodology).
I keep being baffled at the marketing-decision of calling the drink Soylent...
Sounds like you want Nutraloaf. If you search google you will undoubtedly find recipes for this abomination. It is designed to meet nutritional needs while minimizing the need for utensils. You did say taste and texture weren't important.
AKA prison loaf. Yum! The only thing is, I'm not sure if prison wardens are considered a Reliable Source when it comes to nutrition, so I'd do some research before making this the staple of my diet. Then again, I can't seriously imagine anybody voluntarily eating it.
+1 it sounds just like the thing @jj is looking for. Horrible, but nutritious.
This is exactly what I was looking for. I'm sure adding some salt will make it taste acceptable.
From wikipedia:"In one common version, it is made from a mixture of wheat bread, non-dairy cheese, various vegetables, and mixed with vegetable oil, tomato paste, powdered milk and dehydrated potato flakes." Sounds like pizza delivered from hell.
Pizza and Salad.
You don't have to prepare every day, maybe once a week or twice for salad. Salad cutting can be easily accomplished with one of those slap dicing things.
Pizza: make four large doughs with some whole grain in them. Add ingredients to optimize fat, protein, etc. Cook one pizza every two days, fridge the rest. After a few weeks, you'll be able to do your weeks cooking in a couple of hours, and your food will be DELICIOUS.
When I was single, though, I ate nothing but beef, some bread, and lots of fresh fruit at home, which seemed to work just fine for me. Didn't have to think much, didn't have to cook for long, and had meals that were hot, fresh, and delicious.
Another option is to add a crock pot to your life. Buy some stuff on sunday, chop it up, fridge it, and then make a big pot of whatever (beans and rice, red lentils and couscous, beef stew, etc) and eat it until it runs out. Then set another big pot to cook overnight and eat it in the morning. Repeat as necessary, again supplementing with fresh fruits and vegetables as desired/convenient. Beef Stew is pretty damn close to an überfood if you use the right recipe, and so are beans and rice.
The best advice I ever heard on cooking and eating was this: "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
That is THE BEST food advice ever.
I'd like to add pad thai - considered unhealthy by some, but ... lots of veg (garlic chives, beansprouts and fermented radish by the cup just for starters!), protein (peanuts, tofu, shrimp, eggs), some starch/sugar (the noodles and the sauce) and some fat (peanuts and cooking oil - your choice of cooking oil) ... sounds like high-caloric food for active people (if you ever made it in a non-nonstick wok as you should, it even comes with vigorous physical activity built straight into the recipe :) ) but not unhealthy to me :)
Do a search for Pemmican recipes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemmican
Done correctly, you can balance the proteins, fat, carbs, etc. needed for a high calorie diet required for living in the cold outdoors. Does it taste good? It really depends on the recipe used.
One thing I've learned recently with regards to food is that there are some things your body needs that simply must be alive shortly before you consume them. If you have money, find a service/store with prepared & nutritionally balanced food. If you have time, study up on the kinds of things you can make. If you have no money or time, now you see how the US got mired in this fast-food culture.
That said, oatmeal & stirfry can take care of 2 meals a day and wrap up most nutritional needs. As was mentioned in comments, variety is important (in large part to hold off various health problems that may crop up due to factors too complicated to predict).
Fun reading, check out some of the studies done on populations with the best health, and what their diets consisted of.
Weston A. Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration would be a good place to start. It's fascinating!
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.433714
| 2010-12-13T00:28:09 |
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|
2225
|
Thick, moist, fluffy, flavorful pitas
Are there tricks for baking thick and fluffy pita bread?
The ones I make come out fine, with an even puff and nice pockets, but they are on the thin side. I would really love to be able to make thicker ones, like those common in the Middle East.
I accidentally made a thick pita by simply rolling my pitas thicker. In my experience, technique is king with pita. The temperature of the oven (I bake at 450 degrees) and making sure to roll smoothly without any punctures in the dough, then place directly on the rack make perfectly puffy pitas every time. The thickness of the dough surrounding the pocket is entirely dependent - in my case - on how thick I roll. I use the lavash cracker recipe from Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice as my dough.
When using a pan on a stove top, cook bread for about 20 seconds to crust, then flip to start cooking. The crust helps to "hold onto the air" and get a pocket. Granted it won't puff like in an oven, but you will get more of a pocket.
As justkt says, roll the dough a bit thicker. It also helps to cook the breads on a pizza/baking stone (or unglazed tiles from the local hardware).
I use the recipe and method from bakers (Alford and Dugard, I believe) from an old episode of "Baking with Julia." You can probably find it online somewhere.
Mine have been coming out thicker and fluffier, but without a real pocket. The differences were using half bread flour, half all-purpose flour, and cooking on the grill on medium high heat with the lid down.
2 cups flour
1/2 cup warm water
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp yeast
1/2 tsp flour
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.434384
| 2010-07-20T01:43:49 |
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|
3827
|
How long does raw ground meat last in the fridge?
Does it make a difference if it's raw ground pork or raw ground veal? There is no sell-by date since I got it at the butcher.
If it's raw, stick with the best-before date on the label. If cooked, you have at least 3-4 days, regardless of whether it's pork, veal, or regular beef.
The store kept it at 30°F (-1°C) or less, at least in the US. Since your fridge is probably warmer, you probably want to use (or freeze) within two or three days, regardless of the sell-by date.
Depending on your refrigerator (Europe has them at +4 Celcius) your meat should last no longer than 3-4 days. This assuming it did not spend more days in the butchers' fridge before being given to you.
Remember tho -- your nose is always the best teller. You will know if it smells funny instinctively; and een if you eat meat that is not 100% fresh, you might as well feel sick for a day or so, and learn the lesson for the next time. We evolved along with our sense of smell, and if we are still here there is a reason* :)
*simply put, those who had a decent sense of smell survived and had childrens
Your nose cannot detect bacterial contamination, only rancidity. Don't follow this advice.
Three days is pushing it, in my opinion. Best use on the second day.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.434562
| 2010-07-30T20:23:26 |
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|
17719
|
Would it be alright to substitute white balsamic vinegar for wine in risotto?
I'm really craving risotto but I don't have any wine in the house at the moment. I do have white balsamic vinegar, however.
yes of course it would - might even be better
related : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/1332/what-is-a-substitute-for-red-or-white-wine-in-a-recipe
Risotto generally refers to cooking short (or sometimes medium) grain rice, such as Arborio, in some kind of broth/stock until the base becomes creamy. Anything after that is strictly whatever flavors you prefer. There are classic additions past that - such as white wine, hard cheeses, mushrooms, etc - but the sky is the limit.
If it sounds good to you, take a small bit of the risotto base, mix a little of your desired ingredient in and the sample it. If it tastes good, expand on it! At worst you've messed up a small portion of the dish, at best you look like a culinary genius!
Would white balsamic vinegar taste good? Sound good to me!
Actually, I think he is speaking about the wine you put at the beginning, BEFORE adding the stock to deglaze the pot.
@nico The wine at that point deglazes the pan and rapidly reduces because of the heat of the pan and lack of other liquids there. There's no particular reason (that I'm aware of, I've done it by accident before to no particular detriment) that you can't deglaze with your stock/broth and add the wine at a later time (its not as if all the alcohol cooks out anyway).
sure, but what I mean is that the wine is not generally considered an "addition" to risotto, you would add wine (or other type of alcool) after roasting the rice no matter what you add later (mushrooms, cheese, bacon, asparagus, etc etc)
@nico sure, but I'm saying since it doesn't really matter - if you're going to experiment with a flavor, move it to a later step so that you can still do something else with the majority of the dish if it doesn't work out. I'm just suggesting its another thing you can play with, and a method by which you can do so. Hmmm bacon in risotto....yummy
Really, the wine step is just for the purpose of deglazing the pan after you sautee the rice in the butter, so the specific liquid doesn't matter very much. I use whiskey sometimes, depending on what kind of risotto I'm making (whiskey and scotch are both amazing for mushroom risotto).
One thing to consider: balsamic is quite high in sugar, so don't wait too long before you start adding broth, or it will stick to the pan.
I've made a mexican style risotto and deglazed with tequila before - quite tasty.
Good balsamic vinegar has no caramel added though ;)
It should work fine, and be quite good. I'd go easy on it, though, as it has more flavor and acid than white wine. Try cutting it 50/50 with water or some of your stock.
I have tried using dark balsamic and red wine vinegar at the deglazing stage and have gotten totally acceptable results. I'd agree with @adam to use half the amount called for of wine and stir continuously until the vinegar dissolves.
White wine is always better though, in my opinion.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.434971
| 2011-09-14T01:12:29 |
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|
58849
|
Pork Belly - served with soft fat
I have been to two restaurants now and been really disappointed with their pork belly as I was expecting the fat would come crispy. When it didn't, the waitress said "Chef said it's slow cooked, so supposed to be like that."
It really puts me off ordering it in the future. Restaurants don't seem to do it right and then lie about it. Is it ever acceptable to serve like this or are they fibbing?
Slow cooking pork bellies is actually quite a nice way to prepare them, provided it's done right. I would personally always crisp up the outside under a grill though.
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's about restaurant management, not cooking.
They are not lying, slow cooked pork belly is supposed to be soft and tender. It's perfectly acceptable to serve pork belly this way and there are many people who prefer it. If it's not to your personal taste then it's best to avoid it and order other things from the menu.
Or ask whether the fat comes the way you'd like it. Pretty much all pork belly will be slow-cooked in some way to make it appealingly tender. The crisping step is an extra one that some chefs will use if that's the texture they're going for.
There is an actual Chinese steamed pork belly dish named after a famously drunk poet. The dish is called, Dong Po Rou, Dong Po's pork. Su Dong Po was the name of the poet, who is famous in China for being such a great poet, but also being a super alcoholic. So the dish named after him is slow cooked until super soft, almost to the point of being a pudding in texture.
The recipe calls for nearly half the liquid to be wine in some recipes. Also taking quite a while to prepare. But the end result is super soft, like silken tofu but all the porky flavor. You should be able to actually cut the pork with chopsticks. Very delicious I might add. So not all pork belly recipes have a crispy top.
If you are looking for that texture, you want the aptly named, "crispy roast pork". At least if you are going to Chinese restaurant. Just FYI. Also very delicious but with that super crispy top layer of crack, I mean crackling.
The meat and fat will be soft and tender (and tasty).
Some chefs will crisp out the exterior prior to serving depending on the recipe and the intended texture.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.435246
| 2015-07-07T10:26:14 |
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|
128071
|
How to produce a dough in 1 day instead of 2?
We have a recipe of Whole wheat dough with the following ingredients:
Whole wheat
Sunflour Oil
Milk
Water
Salt
This dough we mix for 20 minutes, then let it rest refrigerated at 1'C for 12 to 18 hours. After 18 hours we put it back in the mixer, and stir it with hot water between 15 to 20 minutes. This is the only way we have achieved a great dough to insert into a intrusion machine.
If we do not do this process of 2 days, but put the dough in the intrusion machine same day, the final product will come out with a very broken finish not a compact well done finish. We have tried a lot of combinations to achieve great dough to use in the intrusion machine with no success on end product.
How can we reduce the process from 2 days to 1 day, and have a great final product result? This 2 day process is taking a toll on our machines and our time to produce.
Do you mean "extrusion?" What type of dough? What is it that you are making?
have you attempted to let it rest at room temperature? in bread making, this would be a "warm" ferment or "room temperature" ferment stage, which happens a lot faster and develops really nice flavor. an extrusion process implies pasta or something to me, but perhaps you can leverage the same technique and speed up your process.
I have no idea what sort of machinery you are talking about or how to make dough to suit it, but when in a hurry with bread dough, warmer is the way to get there, generally. But your dough has no yeast, so presumably it is pasta or somehting like that...
It's unclear what process or machines you're using. However, with dough there are somethings you can try:
Autolyse dough: After your 20 minute mix, let it relax at room temperature for 20-30 minutes. Then mix for a brief period (less than a minute). Repeat this process 3 times. Then place in the fridge for shorter time than 12 hrs (I'd start with 4hrs).
Use dough relaxer or conditioning enzymes. There are chemicals you can add to the dough to make this process go faster. An example would be dough strengtheners by novozymes or I've heard of Bromelain being used to relax dough. [I'm not a food chemist].
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.435482
| 2024-04-11T17:37:06 |
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|
123429
|
Why would a cake mix call for the same number of whole eggs or just whites?
I have a Betty Crocker white box cake mix and the box says to use either three egg whites or three whole eggs. This doesn't make sense to me: if I used whole eggs wouldn't I use less, more like one and a half?
Think of the recipe as needing 3 egg whites, and optionally 3 egg yolks. Often if you have a cake mix that calls for oil, somewhere on the package will be a "light version" which is the very same additions and quantities, just not the oil. No extra water or milk or whatnot to make up for it.
The liquid volumes for most cake mixes are not as precise as they seem. Just leaving out the egg yolks, or just leaving out the oil, doesn't require adding some other liquid to make up for it. The cake may end up with a slightly different texture, but it will still be cake.
Well, as it turns out, no...
I don't know where you are from in the world or what eggs you are using, but I found a scientific paper that studied the ratios of egg components over age in Leghorn chickens (the type Foghorn Leghorn is named for) in the USA (Ahn et al., 1997 you can read the abstract for free at the link, I can access the full paper). It seems that:
When calculated on the basis of interior contents, 65% of egg content is white and 35% is yolk.
But, what you are getting from the egg in this case, is not the water/volume that matters, but instead it is the protein content that is critical. Eggs overall are about 88% water:
The major constituent of egg white is water, approximately 88% of total
weight.
However, protein makes up:
The total solids content of white is approximately 12%, and protein is the major component of the solids at 11%... the major constituents of yolk are
protein (16%) and lipid (32%).
So, by adding the whole egg you are getting a little extra protein (16% of 35%) relative to using just the white alone. You also get a bit of extra fat (lipid), but in such small amounts it won't matter for the recipe and calorifically is pretty insignificant compared to the cake mix itself.
Edited to add:
You might also be concerned about the water content of the eggs, though you are most likely also adding either milk or water to the boxed mix. I had a look at a couple of recipes from the Betty Crocker site and it looks like somewhere between 1 and 1.5 cups (USA measurements as Betty Crocker is a USA company) of water/milk per box, depending on the recipe. This is equivalent to 8-12 fluid ounces (240 - 360 ml). A large egg is about 46 ml (3.25 Tbsp), which is a reasonable amount of extra liquid, but the yolks being about 50% water and only 30% of the volume only adds about 15% extra (20 ml or 1.3 Tbsp). The fat content of the eggs is also insignificant compared to the oil added in the recipes.
Ref:
Ahn DU, Kim SM, Shu H. Effect of egg size and strain and age of hens on the solids content of chicken eggs. Poult Sci. 1997 Jun;76(6):914-9. doi: 10.1093/ps/76.6.914. PMID: 9181628.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.435672
| 2023-02-17T02:14:48 |
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|
114340
|
help understanding this recipe gluten free and vegan
The recipe is:
75g nut flour
55g rice flour
1g xantham gum
100g water
120g coconut sugar
30g coconut oil
20g cacao
1g salt
6g cake yeast
10g vinegar
125g sweet potato
I don't understand how this recipe works (and it works because I baked it) without potato starch or other ingredient that provides moisture to the cake. Can someone please explain to me the thinking behind it?
Welcome to SA! It's not terribly clear what you're looking for from this recipe that you don't understand. Why would it need to have potato starch?
You have several oily ingredients like coconut oil and nut flour. Oil is one of the 2 ingredients that make a cake moist and it helps retain the moisture. The other is simply water.
In addition to plain water there is xantham gum in the recipe. Xantham gum binds a lot of water and retains it, keeping the cake from drying out. That's why only 1g of it is needed to incorporate 100g of water into the cake. If you leave the xantham gum out of the dough, the cake would probably be very soggy if it wasn't baked long enough or too dry if it was baked for too long. Hitting the perfect spot between soggy and dry would be much harder and the cake would dry out within a day or two after baking.
And lastly there is rice flour and sweet potato. Both of them contain starch (and the sweet potato also adds a little more water to the cake). When starch gets cooked (or baked in this case), the molecules swell and can retain moisture much better than uncooked starch. You can see the effect when cooking a pudding / flan / blancmange.
You seem to be under the impression that only potato starch can replace the wheat starch provided by wheat flour in standard recipes. This is a misconception - any starch will do, and besides, the more other carbohydrates you have (sugar, fibre), the less starch you need, as they also store moisture and are to some extent interchangeable in this function. The other ingredient that gives cakes a moist mouthfeel is fat.
So, to look at your ingredients:
nut flour: has starches, fibre and fat
rice flour: that's pure starch
1g xantham gum: a fibre, but not directly connected to moisture (it is used for the leavening to work)
water: beside liquid-retaining ingredients like carbohydrates, you also need the liquid
coconut sugar: sugar
coconut oil: fat
cacao: starch and fat
salt: doesn't contribute to moisture
cake yeast: doesn't contribute to moisture
vinegar: same as the water
sweet potato: not only is it full of starch, sugar and fibre, the fibre is in the form of already-hydrated hemicellulose and similar, which is excellent for a moist texture in baked goods.
So, at the end of it, most of your ingredients work the way you assumed potato starch should. In fact, some of them are also used in wheat-based recipes in order to make the cake moister, since they work better than pure starch.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.435912
| 2021-02-16T21:13:39 |
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|
93214
|
What is this "spatula fork" utensil's actual name?
We used to have this exact fork-like spatula but it recently broke. We are looking to buy a replacement but we don't know what it's called so it is difficult to look up to even know where to buy it.
It's like a cross between a fork and a flat head spatula, slightly arched, and tapered at the tip. Non-stick pan safe.
Did the stock photo you just copied, above, have a caption giving a name?
it just said "Food serving kitchen spatula fork" and that's no use really when we're trying to buy this particular tool
Yah, I've never seen anything just like it. There's a number of pasta forks, serving forks, and fork-whisks that are similar, but not quite the same design.
This is a modern day version of a Foley Fork. Authentic ones are very rare and collectible. My Aunt swore she could not make her (Best in the world) yeast rolls without her Foley Fork for the dough.
The closest things that I could find were called 'whisking forks' (which I like the idea of ... I use a fork to whisk as I hate cleaning balloon whisks)
https://smile.amazon.com/Kuhn-Rikon-Silicone-Whisking-Flexible/dp/B06Y1B4Y82
https://www.amazon.com/Kuhn-Rikon-Silicone-Wrapped-Whisking/dp/B07JYDFCP9
Not all are good as a spatula, though. This one has balls on the end so it's more like a flat whisk:
https://smile.amazon.com/Calphalon-Nylon-Whisking-Omelette-Turner/dp/B00JTUG6ZK
I once saw an ad for https://whiskwiper.com/. Never tried it myself, but if you hate the cleaning so much, maybe it is the thing for you?
It looks like a spatula that could double as a spaghetti fork. I don't see the particular utility of this design, but I can imagine stir-frying and removing something like pad-thai with this utensil.
I think the image title in your comment, "food serving... spatula/fork" is pretty accurate.
This exact fork is available from IKEA under the name GNARP in a 5 piece set. I have it however it's already peeling after eight months of light use so I don't recommend it if you're looking for longevity.
It appears that the GNARP set on IKEA's site right now (US) has 3 pieces, and none of them is this fork/spatula.
Same on IKEA UK site - a three piece set, one of which IKEA labels a 'turner', and is sort of like the pictured item but not actually the same
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.436155
| 2018-10-25T08:11:44 |
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|
88454
|
brunch for sixty people - how to estimate amounts?
We will be hosting a buffet brunch in our home for about 60 people, serving bagels, lox, tuna salad, egg salad, kugel, and farmer's salad.
How do I determine many eggs I need for the egg salad, and how much tuna?
You probably need to share your egg and tuna salad recipes to get a firm answer. I'd suggest about 3 oz of each finished salad per person. So if you know the yield on your recipes, you should be able to easily scale them
There are two parts to your calculation: how much egg or tuna goes into a "helping" at your buffet brunch, and how many helpings you are likely to need.
For the first part, you probably know how many egg salad sandwiches you can get from a certain number of eggs. Let's say one egg makes one sandwich. Are people likely to put that same amount on a bagel? Or will it be more? Less? Let's say a can of tuna makes two sandwiches. Same questions.
Next, how many bagels-with-something will a person eat? Maybe two, right? Especially since there is kugel. So 120 bagels would be a LOT of bagels. You could then take your guesses from the first part and estimate what you need for 60 bagels of egg and 60 bagels of tuna. Sure, one may be more popular than the other, but some people may eat only the lox, right?
If you've never done this before, I wouldn't make up 60 bagels of egg salad mix in advance. You can make maybe 20 worth, and as it disappears, make more. That is assuming a relatively informal get-together where you are the host and friends and family are happily gathering, and will watch you stir up some more egg salad (using eggs you hardboiled in advance, and veggies you chopped in advance) as needed. Things would be different if you were the paid caterer. Not doing it in advance means that if you don't use all the eggs or veggies, you'll have a chance to use them in something else instead of egg salad. Same for the tuna - open the cans as you need them after some initial inventory of tuna salad is made.
The best approach would be to test it out on a few people.
Get a batch of like 5 people together, make it for them with them. See how much they actually eat of each item. Make more of each items as it runs out with them. Do it on a weekend when you have tonnes of time. Keep track of how much is eaten by item.
Then multiply by 12.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.436365
| 2018-03-20T13:02:05 |
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|
84194
|
Making Banana bread but short on flour: can I use pancake mix?
I'm making banana bread I am a half a cup short of flour what can I use to substitute? I have pancake mix could I use that to replace the half a cup of flour I do not have?
How much flour does it call for in total?
Me think you could do it.
A banana bread is more a cake than a bread, and the additional ingredients (mostly sugar) in the pancake mix will not impact that much in the result.
The recipes called for 2 cups of flour. I just had 1 1/2 cups just used what I had it turned out fine.
Hello Colleen, your answer is unusual, as pointed out in Divi's comment, but I think it's OK. You not only clarified how much flour in total (which normally would have been an edit to your question instead of an answer), but you also reported what you did and how well it worked, and this is an answer to our standards. So thank you for coming back to share that info. You can even mark your own answer the accepted one, no problem there.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.436664
| 2017-09-06T19:34:48 |
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|
49795
|
Leaving the lid open in a soup
I've heard from some that soups should be left with the lid slightly ajar when still left on the stove (heat off) because the soup can spoil when the lid is left completely closed, so you need to 'air' it out by leaving it slightly ajar.
Is this a myth? If not, what is the purpose of this?
I personally don't believe it and cannot find any reasons for that being the case, which is why I am asking everybody here, as there may be a culinary reason that I am not aware of.
This is a myth. Soup will NOT spoil faster if the lid is left on normally after cooking. In fact, leaving the lid ajar may make it easier for contamination to enter the pot and lead to faster spoilage.
I assume there may be two reasons behind this myth:
(1) Before the days of modern refrigerators, many people would leave food to cool on the counter or stovetop before refrigerating it in an icebox. Leaving the lid ajar would allow faster cooling through evaporation, thereby allowing the food to spend less time in the warm "danger zone" where bacteria grow most rapidly. (Note that this is NOT a safe practice. Small quantities of food should be refrigerated as soon as possible, and larger quantities may be cooled in an ice bath if necessary before refrigerating.)
(2) Lids of pots tend to cool faster than the rest of the pot, and they thus accumulate condensation which will drip back down into the food. The liquid may be at a cooler temperature and may introduce contaminants. Leaving the lid ajar at a slight angle will both decrease the amount of condensation which occurs and will cause more of it to run directly back into the soup, rather than cooling and remaining for a long time on the interior surface of the lid.
In any case, even if both of these are somewhat true, they are likely trumped by contamination which may be introduced by exposing the food to air: hence, it's a myth. Also, do keep in mind that cooked soup is NOT sterile -- many harmful bacteria have spore forms that can even survive boiling and will begin to grow in leftover soup once it gets below 130-140F.
Again, the safest course to prevent spoilage for leftover soup is to refrigerate as soon as possible (or at least as soon as its temperature gets below 140F). If quantities are especially large, use an icebath or cold water bath to get the temperature down faster.
If by leave lid ajar you are talking about after cooking and into the 'cooling stage' I pretty certain the advice to leave the lid ajar is to help with the cooling process.
The longer food is kept between 5 and 63 degrees bacteria is growing. With the lid on heat struggles to escape as easily meaning it will stage in that 'danger' zone for longer. You could leave the lid off completely but then you are increasing the risk of debris falling in. Obviously you can't stick it straight in the fridge as the temperature of the soup will raise the temperature of your fridge putting all food stuffs inside at risk of being in the danger zone. -(See comment below)
FYI, regarding hot food in fridge, basically all food safety organizations agree that it's better to put it in there warm/hot than to leave it cool more slowly on the counter. My answer to a related question summarizes standard advice; if you allow space for air circulation, hot food in a modern fridge won't heat up other things significantly.
Lid open, lid closed, lid ajar...this all controls heat and evaporation. Evaporation = concentration of flavors. So it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. One caution, if you season your soup (with salt for example), then cook with the lid off, you will lose water to evaporation and concentrate the seasoning (or saltiness, if salted to taste before cooking). So, for me, stock is what is cooked for a long time (unless using a pressure cooker) with the lid off (no seasoning). Soup is a much shorter process, either simmered with the lid slightly ajar...or covered. Once the heat is off, cooking is finished, either serve or cool and store.
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Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.436776
| 2014-11-15T12:29:12 |
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|
125983
|
How can I alter this brownie recipe to make it chewier and more moist?
I started with the original recipe on the back of the All Bran box:
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup Kellogg's® All-Bran® Buds cereal
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup margarine or butter, melted, cooled.
"Stir together flour, salt and cocoa powder. Set aside.
In large mixing bowl, beat eggs until light. Add sugar gradually, beating until fluffy. Fold in cereal, vanilla and margarine. Fold in flour mixture and walnuts. Spread evenly in 8 x 8-inch pan coated with cooking spray.
Bake at 350°F about 30 minutes or until wooden pick inserted near center comes out clean. Cool completely in pan."
I've made this recipe twice and added walnuts both times. The first time I left the 'buds' whole, which resulted in a very dry brownie with an off-putting texture. It seems the 'buds' absorbed any moisture like a sponge and turned them into little sawdust meatballs floating in chocolate sand. On my second try, I put the cereal in a food processor to make 'bran bud flour' and added it into the dry ingredients. Brownies came out with a slightly better texture but were about twice as dry - think substituting gypsum for flour - terrible.
The reason I want to use this recipe is to add all the fiber I can - 17g per serving - so I don't want to substitute anything else for the cereal. Can I add anything to this recipe to make the brownies more moist and chewy? I like the taste of these brownies, but need about a gallon of milk to wash them down.
Eat a bowl of bran cereal and have a brownie without bran cereal in it? Problem solved?
Newer made brownies so I am not going to answer, but isnt the purpose of the "dry toothpick check" to make sure the thing is completely dry to the core? Seems counterproductive for things which are suposed to stay moist in the middle.
I'm not putting it as an answer because I've not tested it, but what about "pre-soaking" the bran powder? Add a bit of milk to it, sufficient that it turns into a sort of thick porridge like mess, and add that to the brownie batter?
You do realize, that unless you eat the whole pan of brownies, you're only going to get about 2g of fiber per brownie (assuming 9 brownies)? Seriously, just eat a normal brownie and have a tablespoon of cereal on the side.
350 for 30 minutes seems like a likely source of at least part of the problem to me. If you like a chewy brownie, those happen by not baking them to death (where you get cakey, dry things they call brownies, but I don't agree.)
You could also experiment with adding another egg or two, since the only liquid here is eggs and butter.
e.g. Alton Brown's recipe for an 8x8 pan uses 4 eggs and cooks at 300°F for 15 minutes, then cool for 15, then back in until an instant read gives 195°F internal temperature.
I'd probably go the other direction, increase the butter and reduce to one egg. More eggs will add moisture, but will also produce a more cakey texture.
Two excellent answers already, but a couple of other things you can try rather than using the bran buds to add fibre to your diet
You can buy bran flour, AKA wheat bran. This will behave a bit better than the bran buds in baking. I'd look for recipes aiming at using this rather than following the Kellog one.
Bake using wholemeal flour. This will up your fibre quite a bit just in itself. It absorbs a bit more water than plain flour, so pays to use recipes designed for it rather than substituting for plain flour directly.
Make recipes that incorporate fruit or vegetables into the mix. Zucchini is excellent in chocolate cakes/brownies, as are beetroot/beets, and apples (separately). Carrot cake is also a delicious alternative to chocolate. You can use these with wholemeal flour too.
Over baking the brownies will lead the dryness issue, although you might be able to counteract this with either oil or some sort of vegetable or fruit purée. (But those can also make it a bit more cake-y). I typically cook until the toothpick test results in moist crumbs and no longer a wet batter. A fully dry toothpick is too far.
For the chewiness, I would stir the flour into the liquid portion so that you develop some gluten. Folding in the flour is specifically to avoid this.
I'd approach the problem from a different direction. I'd start with a good brownie recipe and modify that by adding your All Bran. This looks more like a fairly rich chocolate cake made as a traybake than a proper brownie.
It's hard to tell with the use of cups rather than weight, but an almond-based brownie recipe might have more fibre anyway, as the nut flour is a much greater proportion of the mixture. Generally adding nuts, seeds, and dried fruit will up the fibre content while still being nice even in large quantities and not absorbing moisture from the rest. If that didn't get you all the way, you'd still need a lot less All Bran.
Two more suggestions from me.
First, there's a fairly straightforward substitute here. It's not only the bran that sucks up your water, but also the cocoa powder. You can substitute dark chocolate instead - melt it without overheating, mix it with the butter and start your wet mixture that way. There are many brownie recipes which are made with chocolate, and they are quite good.
Second, if the bran is extracting your moisture, just give it that moisture before baking. You can pre-soak your bran in water, and then bake with it. People sometimes soak in more flavorful liquids, but as the chocolate is quite overpowering in a brownie, I think you want notice the difference flavor-wise, so water should be sufficient.
Beside that, the typical culprit in too-dry recipes is not lack of moisture, but lack of sugar and fat. In this case, it's obviously also a problem with the bran, since it's an unusually "thirsty" ingredient, but if soaking the bran turns out not to be enough, start using more sugar, and if that's not enough, also additional fat.
Also see our question on how to make good brownies in general: What makes a chewy brownie?.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.437126
| 2023-12-02T21:11:04 |
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|
44407
|
How can I reassure myself a given food is not a botulism risk?
Ever since a man has died (in my country) because of eating home-made ham contaminated with botulism, I'm really concerned about it and I see risks everywhere.
I have 2 questions related to it, and I hope someone can enlighten me.
Assuming I'm making a soup and I have a canned jar of tomatoes, and somehow it's infested - if I boil them for 20 minutes with other ingredients, the toxin will die, right? But what about the spores? I know they won't die because the temperature is not high enough, but does this mean they are safe to eat?
I'm concerned when it comes to airtight sealed food, like mozzarella, feta, cheese and ham. How safe are these?
You may start by reading an excellent short story "Pate" by Karel Čapek (a great czech author). https://archive.org/stream/FablesAndUnderstories/Karel-Capek--Fables-and-Understories#page/n109/mode/2up
Virtually every case of botulism ever recorded in the past 50 years is due to improper home canning. The risk of botulism from a commercial product is so low that you literally have a better chance of being struck by lightning and almost as good a chance as being struck twice in the same year.
There are 145 cases reported in the U.S. each year and 65% of those are infant botulism, 20% from wounds. It's hard to get statistics on infant population, but there are 314 million people in the U.S., so I estimate the chance of getting botulism from food there to be 0.00000692675% in any given year.
You may not live in the U.S., but unless you live in a country with extremely poor or nonexistent safety standards (in which case you have more important things to worry about anyway), I'd advise you to stop worrying. You are about 20 times more likely to die in a fire and 200 times more likely to die in a car accident.
As far as the spores go, they generally aren't dangerous to healthy adults, they affect infants and those with depressed immune systems, hence the heavy proportion of infant botulism cases (often from honey). That's why the WHO warns people not to give honey to infants under 1 year old, but doesn't advise any similar precautions for adults (The reason for no advice for adults is that their stomach is acidic so the bacteria cannot grow and produce the toxin. But infants have lower acidity in their stomach and botulism bacteria from honey can grow there. Honey always has the bacteria. )
Botulism spores can only be killed at extreme temperature, i.e. above 120° C. Boiling water is 100° C, so don't even try to kill them this way. You would need a pressure cooker at very high pressure, and this is why low-acid foods must be pressure-canned; simply boiling is not enough. On the other hand, the botulism toxin is denatured at 80° C, so boiling anything for a reasonable time will make it safe from botulism, but not necessarily from the many other bacteria and/or toxins that can be in spoiled food, such as those produced by certain e.coli strains.
There are plenty of things to worry about with commercial food - salmonella in peanut butter, listeria in lettuce, listeria in spinach... the list goes on and on, but one thing that's generally not on it is botulism, and I think the constant attention here on it actually makes matters worse by taking attention away from other, more common and equally serious issues. Seriously, one person died from contaminated homemade ham and now you're afraid to eat commercial mozzarella cheese?
If you aren't an infant, don't do home canning or home food preservation, and refrigerate your food properly, you're not at risk for botulism. Period. You are, however, at risk of so many other things, and really should try to learn more about food safety in general - from which you'll definitely learn facts such as boiling for 20 minutes won't make spoiled food safe.
Excellent general safety/storage thread here: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/21068/how-long-can-i-store-a-food-in-the-pantry-refrigerator-or-freezer
+1 for reminding us that there are so many other horrifying things to worry about in modern life!
"Virtually every case of botulism ever recorded in the past 50 years" -- worldwide or restricted to the US? The rest of your answer largely clarifies this but it's best to avoid making geographically specific statements without saying what region you're talking about. Remember that, when you say "You may not live in the US", what you actually mean is, "You probably don't live in the US, since only about one person in 23 does." (Admittedly, on English-speaking internet sites, the proportion of American residents is higher.)
@DavidRicherby: I don't live in the U.S., so I'm really not sure what your issue is. I picked the U.S. simply because statistics are very easy to find and tend to be roughly on par with most other developed countries. If you have evidence to suggest that there are marked differences in certain countries, feel free to elaborate.
Do you make home-made ham?
While home-curing of meat isn't rocket-science, it isn't trivial either. If someone got botulism from home-made ham then quite likely either it wasn't ham at all, because it hadn't actually cured the pork correctly, or it was too long in a wet-cure fluid that even though that fluid is pretty much designed to kill bacteria like clostridium botulinum (the cause of botulism), it was no longer doing so.
Now, not to put people off home-curing; it's mostly safe and is a rewarding craft to practice, but it does have a different set of risks and concerns when it comes to bacteria than cooking from store-bought ingredients, home-grown fruit and vegetables or even home-hung meat. If you're home-curing then you are the person in charge of making sure that it actually is cured meat, and there's a reason why there's a lot more precision in the mathematics of putting together a curing brine than there is in putting together a soup. (If you cook and bake but don't cure, then you have probably noticed that on average baking gives less leeway to imprecision and "that looks about right" in a recipe than cooking. Curing is a little bit less forgiving again than baking is).
To come to your specific questions:
Assuming I'm making a soup and I have a canned jar of tomatoes, and somehow it's infested - if I boil them for 20 minutes with other ingredients, the toxin will die, right? But what about the spores? I know they won't die because the temperature is not high enough, but does this mean they are safe to eat?
This study heat-treated fish deliberately infected with 5,000 LD50 mouse units of botox per .5ml. That is to say, they took 5,000 times more botox than you would need to have even odds of killing a mouse in every half-millileter. Hence every teaspoon full had 50,000 times as much. That is probably way more botox than the bad ham that killed your compatriot had.
And the results were that normal cooking is more than adequate to denature the botox.
It won't kill the spores, but the conditions in your gut are not conducive to their growth, so this will likely not be a problem (you've almost certainly eaten botulism spores if you've eaten honey, but not the poisonous botox they can produce, because honey isn't conducive to it either).
Unless you have extremely poor hygiene when it comes to later going to the toilet, you will not be at risk.
And this is before we consider that the risks of botulism being present in tinned tomatoes is extremely low.
There is a folklore about tinned foods and botulism, but that arises from risks of canned meat that existed many decades ago. Tinned tomatoes were never a big risk, and even tinned meat isn't today unless the tin is visibly damaged.
Really, you can just eat those tinned tomatoes raw and you'll likely still be fine.
I'm concerned when it comes to airtight sealed food, like mozzarella, feta, cheese and ham. How safe are these?
Extremely safe if stored correctly and eaten within their stated time limits and when they have no visible signs of spoiling.
Even of the risks that do exist, botulism is pretty far down the list. The main ways you are likely to get botulism aren't food at all, but infected wounds (especially if you are using intravenous drugs without clean needles, though it can happen from other wounds), industrial accidents while working with botox, or being under about 1.5years of age and having been born with a colony or eating untreated honey.
There are other diseases to worry about more, though they would vary according to just where in the world you are and where your food is sourced from (I'd be a lot happier eating something containing raw eggs in Europe than in the US, for example). Basic food safety practices will suffice to keep you healthy.
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.437590
| 2014-05-25T15:15:22 |
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|
57834
|
What are good counter-top oven settings to reheat french fries soggy from refrigerating overnight?
I have yesterday's French Fries (Chips for those of you across the Pond).
They were stored in a refrigerator overnight and now are cold AND soggy.
What's a good technique to reheat them in a small counter-top electrical oven?
E.g. temperature? bake/broil/convection setting? How long?
Constraints:
I must heat them on a sheet of thin wrapping aluminum foil (over a loose grill, no tray)
I would prefer a method that takes less than 5 minutes, but that's not a cut-off
The main goal is to have them somewhat crispyish on the outside, and tasty (not hard, not soggy) on the inside
The fries/chips size can be either McDonalds size (1/2 cm^2 square cross cut) or slightly larger diner size (~0.5cm x 1 cm cross cut)
The amount is such that - evenly spreading them on an aluminum foil sheet the size of the oven's tray - they cover pretty much the whole sheet, in single layer
this is at work, so I am unlikely to have access to any ingredients (e.g. any answer that starts with "sprinkle with xyz oil" is less desirable.
The fries are fully-cooked, from an order from an eatery, not home-cooked. So while I don't know the ingredients/coating/what they were fried in, a safe assumption is that the fries are either standard McDonalds recipe, or some sort of generic US Diner or midrange restaurant recipe, assuming one is known.
I think you mean "constraints," not "restraints." This probably depends (largely) on the composition of the fries, in particular, the coating (if any).
I think the only good answer is "Fresh Fries"...
@CosCallis - that most certainly is not a good answer, by virtue of not being an answer at all. A funny quip an answer does not make.
And I'm sure that's why @CosCallis wrote a comment, not an answer... Honestly, "fresh fries" was my first thought, too.
related: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/9301/67
Do you have a stove? I reheat French fries in a dry non-stick pan and by the time they're hot, they're crispy enough.
@KateGregory - Work doesn't have stove, sadly.
They won't be as good as when fresh (of course) but generally:
You want the oven pretty hot. How hot depends on the oven, size of fry, etc., but a good first guess would be 425°F–450°F. On most toaster ovens I've seen, that'd be as hot as it goes. Let the oven preheat. Unfortunately, heating the oven is going to take longer than your five minutes, probably ten to fifteen... But as long as you stay nearby (just in case) you can do something else while its heating.
Spread the fries evenly on your piece of foil. Fold up the edges of the foil a little to keep them from sliding off when you move it. (Note: A plain, uncoated aluminum quarter sheet pan probably fits in your toaster oven, and can be had for under $10.)
They won't take long. Listen for them to start to sizzle. Once they've sizzled for a little bit (say, 30 seconds) pull them out and flip them. Put them back in and let them sizzle a little longer. Take them out, sample one, put back in if not done yet. I can't give you a time (other than "a few minutes") because it's going to vary a lot based on the fry, and even how much it has dried out in the fridge. Judge when they're ready based on the sound (sizzle), smell, color (browning), and taking one out and tasting it.
Notes:
You may find adding some salt helps them a lot. Same with some finely ground pepper. Or other powdered seasoning mixes like Old Bay.
If the center isn't warm enough by the time the outside is browning, use a lower temperature next time. If the center is overdone (e.g., dried out) before browning sets in, use a higher temperature.
If you are not trying to reheat small scraps, they will be better right on the grill/rack, rather than on foil; foil or a pan help to promote "one soggy side", though you can turn them to help with that. Not using foil means they get to dry all around.
I would stay at 350-375F - that's where the fry oil typically is.
I make baked "fries" from raw potatoes this way in 15-20 minutes - reheating should be considerably faster.
The question very explicitly stated "I must" in the foil part. I didn't put it there just for giggles. Also, not sure about this specific site, but on other SE sites "should" isn't really a basis for a good answer - if you never reheated them, guessing isn't very helpful.
@DVK - to my ears, your sentence could also mean "I dont have a proper baking sheet, only a makeshift one", at least that's what I read. Besides, the "should" is correct here - without previous knowledge of a) the characteristics of your specific oven and b) the amount and temperature of the fries plus some extended kitchen math it's impossible to give a precise time. In cooking, should is not guessing but the application of extensive experience to a new situation. Only someone who solved your exact problem could answer exactly - and be wrong b/c he likes his fries softer/darker than you.
@DVK I have, in fact reheated fries this way, but only rarely - "fresh fries" is, in fact, always better. I certainly didn't take notes for the time.
In medium-hot skillet (fry pan) add a little oil. (not cooking spray)
Add fries in serving size batches to hot oil.
Stir & flip often until outside is crunchy & inside is hot, but not over cooked.
Drain on paper towels & salt to taste. (if needed)
I find this works best with room temperature, leftover fast food fries like McDonalds or Burger King fries.
The OP doesn't have a skillet or any oil. Just an oven. And the fries are fridge-cold, not room temperature, though I suppose "let them sit out to warm up for an hour" is a possibility.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.438268
| 2015-05-28T16:02:21 |
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38141
|
Problems with my technique in making a Belgian Liege Waffle
I have been following a very nice recipe to the dot. However, I encounter some problems. My final texture is more similar to a bread than a waffle.
Is this because I use trimoline instead of honey? Some recipe use baking powder / diet sprite, what is this for?
Also, could I freeze the dough after I mix it with the pearl sugar? How long could the mix dough stay in the freezer?
I don't see the problem, Liege waffles are supposed to have a bread like texture. Anything with baking powder is not real Liege style.
Normally, I think you should use fresh yeast, but I've seen recipes with baking powder. Could you give us more details (the whole recipe or pictures)?
The reason why your Liege waffle has breadlike texture is that it is supposed to have a breadlike texture.
While currently in America, waffles tend to have a uniform texture with small variations, and everybody has come to expect waffles within this range, in Europe waffles are any dough or batter baked in a waffle iron. I have waffle books which contain waffles made from batter, cookie-dough-style dough, bread-dough-style dough, and others. They are all baked in a waffle iron, but their final texture ends up being similar to bread, cookies, etc., becasue this is how dough works.
Traditional Liege waffles are a type of waffles made from firm yeast dough, like bread. And the texture is more similar to bread than to a standard American waffle. You didn't do anything wrong, you got the result intended by the recipe author.
If you don't like this type of waffle, you should search for a different recipe.
Sift flour baking powder and salt, seperate eggs, beat yolks add heavy cream, keep beating, stir in flour combo until smooth. in seperate bowl beat egg whites until stiff, fold into batter, refrigerate for half an hour. pour into preheated waffle iron serve with butter and honey. mmmm yummmm, thats just me though
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.438853
| 2013-11-04T12:50:37 |
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32687
|
What is a good bread recipe for light bread, but able to be shaped?
I've started this thing for Easter where I bake bread and mold it into the shape of a bunny. Last year the bread turned out really hard and was hard to eat.
How can I be able to shape it but have the bread soft when it's cooked?
Do you want to use (more or less) the same bread recipe for flavor reasons? If so, coating the outside with oil or butter can help maintain softness. Also, adding or increasing oil/butter to the recipe itself (in place or in addition to moisture from water/milk) can make it more generally pliable.
Alternatively, perhaps a challah loaf may work better. I make it frequently, although I'm usually just braiding it instead of making a more complex shape like a bunny. It will get a crunchy crust on it when baked, but the inside should be quite soft. (Plus it's an egg bread, which seems nice for Easter.)
Welcome to Seasoned Advice! Those sound like great ways to make a dough more pliable.
I came here to suggest Challah. I've been making it for Easter for quite a few years. It's got a lovely, soft crumb.
My grandparents make braided cardamom bread for Easter. Mmm. http://www2.worldpub.net/images/saveurmag/633-128_braided_cardamom_bread_400.jpg
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.439025
| 2013-03-15T00:53:46 |
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|
63650
|
Any way to reduce the tangy taste of homemade coconut milk?
I make different kinds of non dairy milks (nut, rice, etc). I rather like coconut milk, but would like to reduce the natural tangy coconutty flavor.
I was looking at the following question:
Homemade coconut milk in coffee compared to store bought
Someone was suggesting that the industry adds tri-calcium phosphate. I have no idea if that is available to the public or even if that would work. Any thoughts?
Edit: I believe my question is somewhat different from the one above as it doesn't specifically relate to coffee. I think this small factor might influence the answers. This question has generated different answers to the question.
So... your question title sounds like a duplicate of the question you've linked to. Is your actual question "can an individual buy tri-calcium phosphate?"
Your partly right, but there might be other options too. If not, then the question would be "can an individual buy tri-calcium phosphate?"
Possible duplicate of Homemade coconut milk in coffee compared to store bought
Best method is simply to heat the coconut.
My current method:
Heat shredded coconut and water (1:4 ratio). No need to boil.
Let the mixture cool. I usually forget about it and come back a few hours later
Blend and strain
Although someone had pointed out to me that tricalcium phosphate is used in commercial brands, today I would tell them this is a bad idea.
I have now tasted about every brand available to me and they all taste pretty awful. The worst in terms of taste have tricalcium phosphate.
Homemade is truly the best. Just use a bit of heat to mellow out the taste.
I have experimented with baking soda. This works rather well, however it does leave a taste/sensation of its own. Although I didn't put much I will try to use less the next time. Nonetheless, I am submitting this as an answer. I will try to get my hands on tricalcium phosphate -- if I can -- and report back.
In Indonesia (and I assume neighbouring countries too) they simply adjust coconut milk (they call it santen) to the level of coconuttiness they want.
So:
Soak coconut shavings/scrapings in hot water and squeeze and filter it through a muslin (santen asli/murni). You want less coconutty? Soak the previously soaked & squeezed coconut shavings/scrapings again in the same amount of hot water (santen cair). Repeat until satisfied. There's at least two levels down from "santen cair" that I know of: "santen kedua", and "santen ketiga", the last one would we soaked-squeezed-resoaked-squeezed-resoaked-squeezed-resoaked-squeezed coconut milk. The water to coconut meat ratio they use is about a liter per kilogram of scrapings, roughly a cup of water per 250 grams.
Thanks for your answer Willem. However, one this that doesn't appeal to me is that you are effectively watering down the solution and reducing the nutritional value.
No worries, I understand. Made this way, it is probably indeed more of a flavoring ingredient than a nutritional one. In stores here you can also buy a thickened down variant, but it tends to be too greasy. Out of curiosity, how do you make yours?
By hand with muslin like you suggested, but only the first extraction. However, I am looking into building a hydraulic press for better extraction.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.439161
| 2015-11-19T16:01:17 |
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|
56563
|
Could malt used in bread show up as dark brown "grains" in the finished loaf?
I get my daily brown bread from a bread outlet down the street. In the last two weeks I found, more than once, torpedo-shaped dark brown objects, approximately the size of a swollen grain of rice in the bread. I was concerned these might be mouse droppings. When I retuned to the outlet, the shop attendant contacted the baker and they told me that it was from the malt they use to darken the bread. I was really surprised and never expected to hear such a thing.
When I cut the bread open the dark brown grains were as soft as boiled rice, and when I rubbed them between my fingers they looked and felt like paste, and after a day or so left out in the open, they hardened.
In the context of bread baking, "malt" probably refers to malted barley, but it doesn't fully make sense for what you're describing (unless this is whole-kernel bread or so). It could be malted barley powder or syrup, or even something like molasses; but it shouldn't end up as a coherent mass. Is it a homogenous blob, or something whole -- like a cereal grain? Could you post a picture? Or the ingredient list of the bread, if available?
What exactly is the question here? There is no question mark anywhere in your post. Are you asking if malt is used? What kind of malt? What it looks like? What it does?
I think I'd buy different bread if I were you. There are plenty of ways to darken bread without leaving weird lumps of stuff in it. Like hoc_age said, the explanation given doesn't really make sense. It's probably harmless, but I'm sure you have many other options for bread that aren't so weird.
@Sobachatina Please read my comment again. I never said anything about malt being weird.
@Ross- Fair enough. It sounds like it to me but you are the final say in what you meant. :) Retracting my pedantic comment.
@Sobachatina Since I never even used the word "malt" in my comment, I didn't think it would be necessary to point out that I wasn't describing malt as being weird. I'm saying that the pasty brown lumps, whatever they actually consist of, are weird. There are plenty of ways of darkening bread, including using various things that could be called malt, that don't require leaving these weird lumps in the bread. I've had "pumpernickel" rye bread darkened with things like caramel colour, coffee, and malt syrup but I've never found them containing anything that could be mistaken for a mouse dropping.
Without pictures, it's hard to say for sure, but that doesn't sound like malt. Malt syrup (barley being the standard grain used for malt) is fairly dark (between honey and molasses in color), but it's also transparent and would be dissolved in the dough. Malt powder isn't significantly darker than flour, and should be distributed evenly through the other dry ingredients. Neither are used as a "darkening agent", aside from occasionally being used to darken the crust of bread slightly. As rumtscho points out in the comments, there is a "rye malt" which is used as a darkening agent in some traditional breads. If this is used, it could be a lump that didn't get mixed in? A much more common darkening agent would be caramel color, which is still very unlikely to lead to dark lumps, as it dissolves easily in water.
Depending on the type of bread, it could be a kernel of some type of grain (rye maybe?) or a lump of unhydrated flour. Without more details, there's no way to give a definite answer, but it doesn't sound like malt.
@sourdough apparently there are types of bread which need the malt to get a properly dark color, see http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/21578. Sobachatina confirmed later in chat that malt gave the desired result.
@rumtscho That recipe calls for "rye malt", which I guess makes sense. Rye is darker than wheat or barley, so it follows that the malt would be darker. It's my understanding that "malt" alone usually means barley malt though. I'll edit for clarity.
Could be; couple different possiblites;
barley malt syrup; adds flavor
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/organic-barley-malt-syrup-16-oz
Diastatic Malt Powder; gives your bread an extra yeast kick; similar to using yeast nutrient.
After re-reading your post; sounds like some form of DMP...
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.439455
| 2015-04-10T16:26:39 |
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|
58500
|
Fixing a beef broth with too much celery seed
I cooked a large crock pot of beef bone broth. I didn't have any veggies so I used garlic salt, onion powder, celery seed and bay leaves with my beef bones and about 4 quarts of water. I didn't measure anything, just poured spices in.
It has been simmering now for 18+ hours. I decided to taste and it is very bitter from all the celery seed. Now what can I do to try and fix the taste from all,the celery seed? I really hate for the broth to go to waste.
Related: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/44314/23376
Bitterness is generally corrected with a combination of salt, sweetness and/or fats.
You mention that don't have any veg at the moment -- perhaps put the stock aside or freeze until you can pick some up. Some sweet veg like parsnip and carrots could probably rescue this stock for you. Sweet herbs like basil or spices like cloves might also work, depending on what you like.
References for flavor balancing:
- http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/nov/19/balance-flavours-salt-sweet-bitter-sour-umami
- http://lifehacker.com/learn-to-make-any-dish-you-cook-better-with-the-science-1477864259
- http://academiewines.com/blog/2010/05/14/strategies-for-fixing-your-dish/
A herb and spice reference that might give you some ideas:
- http://www.thekitchn.com/quick-guide-to-every-herb-and-spice-in-the-cupboard-108770
Thank you. I will definitely try adding some carrots or parsnips. I added some salt, but still not where I could drink like a cup of broth if needed.
@Christine -- good luck with it!
Firstly, for me the first time, I forget to roast the bones before making the stock. It is a completely different product without the roasting. It resulted in a beef broth that was unpalatable.
The deal with the celery taste, strain the liquid to get the celery seed out.
Then dilute with more water, to hopefully tamp down that very strong taste.
Lastly, I would add some vegetables if possible. I’d suggest carrots and onions. They should impart some other flavors to offset the celery seed taste.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.439823
| 2015-06-24T12:09:49 |
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|
58817
|
What baked good involves crushed digestives, peanut butter, and marbled chocolate?
Recently i found a recipe for something I was interested in baking, but I cannot remember the name of it and my computer isn't accessible for a few weeks.
Can someone help me identify the name of the item being baked, or even point me towards something similar.
The recipe was along the lines of:
Crush digestive finely
Mix with peanut butter
line baking tray
Then something was poured over the top and 'messed up' with a spoon to give marble effect. (I assume chocolate)
Can anyone supply me with more details and suitable ways to find a recipe for this type of dessert?
Hi Terry, direct recipe requests are off topic here. But it is perfectly OK to ask for the name of a dish or more information which will help find recipes by yourself. I changed your last sentence so it won't invite people to start listing recipes, but to focus on the identification part instead.
Apple Mousse Cheescake: http://www.grouprecipes.com/129716/apple-mousse-cheesecake.html Local library probably has a computer you can use, or borrow a friend's cellphone for a few minutes.
'digestive biscuits' are a typical substitution for U.S. graham crackers. Searching on "graham cracker peanut butter" led me straight to peanut butter bars, which match your description : http://allrecipes.com/recipe/peanut-butter-bars-i/
Possibly some form of cheesecake, substituting peanut butter for the butter in the base?
I made these Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars consisting of those ingredients and methods you talked about. Here is the link to a video demonstrating how to make this:https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PL0k8v-V15rKtQFicZQl4hcxldjvW7mbDH&v=GG581Dvf39w
We discourage link-only answers for a good reason: Imagine the link going bad or the original poster taking down the video. Now what information remains? The essential points should always be right there n the answer itself. Any links giving additional useful information are of course welcome.
@Stephie : In this case, the link provides supplemental information -- the answer is 'Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars'.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.440031
| 2015-07-06T11:07:38 |
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|
81861
|
Slow cooker tips when on high and others remove the lid
I cannot use my slow cooker as designed, as I try to cook for my elderly parents. They do not rise before 11a.m., the kitchen is located upstairs with them, so they will hear or feel everything-and waking them at 8a.m. is NOT what I want. I end up preparing a lot of their food AFTER I eat brunch so I am forced to use the high setting.
And then, if I turn my back for a moment to do something else, they take the lid off! Apparently, it just had to be stirred - so I lose a good 1/2 hr. right there - each time! So really, it only slow cooks a couple of hours, in reality.
What can I do the able to use the slow cooker as I want?
Can you help us figure out specifically what would help you here in a culinary sense? We're very sympathetic to your living/kitchen situation, but it's going to be hard for us to help a whole lot with that side of things.
what would help specifically is how to use a slow cooker [that is supposed to be used on low and slow] when I only have 5 hours at best-
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's not about cooking. Rather, it's about finding a solution to others' interference with a cooking process.
Five hours is still a pretty long time for low and slow. Many recipes will work within that time without modification.
For ones that won't, the best way to cut time off is to heat things through in a pot on the stove first. Slow cookers are pretty good at the low and slow part, but that means they're really slow at getting to the point where they're actually cooking. Depending on your recipe, you may be able to skip right past a couple hours of initial heating by bringing things to a simmer/boil before dumping in.
Also, don't worry too much about the lid getting taken off. If it's left off, yeah, that's not great, but if it's just opened to stir and it's full of food/liquid, the temperature is not going to decrease that much.
If after all that, it's still not enough, I'd look to suggestions like those in Kate's answer - sidestep your timing constraints by prepping the night before and finding a better place for the slow cooker so you can start it earlier and avoid the lid getting opened. If you can get a small fridge outside the kitchen, you really could do it all without ever going into the kitchen in the morning.
pre-prep, and a mini fridge sounds good-maybe a dumbwaiter? to take it upstairs? maybe use their stair chair? never would have thought of the mini fridge. great answers. it cut me off when I tried to thank Kate. the slow cooker is heavy for me to carry anymore, but I can sure make a rolling cart easy enough. sure glad the first thing I did when I moved back in was to eliminate the stairs. building that wood elevator is the best thing I ever did. again, thanks for your answers.
My suggestion is that you do two things:
move the slow cooker out of the kitchen to somewhere they do not normally go, such as your room
do the noisy prep (such as vegetable chopping) the night before, keeping the prepped food in the fridge, possibly in a little water, until the morning.
At 8am, slip quietly into the kitchen and retrieve the meat and veg. Put them in the slow cooker in your room and leave it there. At 4pm or whenever they are going to eat, use oven gloves to carefully bring it into the kitchen and finish your prep. This approach will give you longer overall slow-cooker time, since you don't need to wait until noon, and it will be undisturbed time too.
that will work! I have a mini fridge downstairs, by me. as for taking it up
Put up a sign next to the slow cooker to not open it (explain that there will be a spoilage risk, or risk of damaging this model slow cooker)..
If that doesn't help, secure the slow cooker lid with something that is inconvenient to undo - rubber bands, clothespins, cable ties, a bicycle lock, F clamps... and find an explanation (maybe something about overboiling stuff driving the lid off...)...
that does not work. their house, their rules and their stuff. they know best! I am just the help-I know nothing! and with their dementia progressing, I am....S.O.L.. nice try-wish you were here to help!, but I would not wish this situation on my worst enemy-well, maybe the WORST.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.440238
| 2017-05-21T15:25:28 |
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|
81899
|
Goldenberry Storage Conditions
I have a question about goldenberries (aka Cape Gooseberry, Physalis, ground cherry.) Is it better to keep goldenberry in the fridge or not and for how many days maximum? My berries rotted in 3 days in fridge.
Were yours dried fruit?
I used to grow them years ago so I could have some summer fruit in an area with little fruit other than strawberries (that I also grew) and crab apples in an empty yard. I had hoped to grow enough to make jam and pies but we ended up eating the fresh. The nearest grocery store with fresh produce was over 1 1/2 hours away.
Since you grow them, you'll know they're similar to tiny tomatoes but their skin is very thin. I've found that with soft fruits (vegetables which are technically fruit too), the thinner their skin, the less keeping quality they have. I left our ground cherries on a large shallow bowl on the kitchen counter and never refrigerated them. They were never heaped in a pile the way grapes are naturally since they were soft.
I can't see why they couldn't be refrigerated for a few days (2 or 3 only). But I can see a couple of drawbacks that might increase the chances of them rotting though.
Did you wash them first?
Generally softer fruits/vegetables shouldn't be washed until you're ready to eat them. Most already have some natural waxes or such (?) on their skin to protect from fungi. Mind you, I always wash grapes I buy from the store to remove dirt and possible/likely pesticides. But they're thoroughly rinsed after and then laid on a towel for a couple of hours til completely dry. They last much longer that way for me.
Did you put them in a container where they'd be 4 or more layers thick?
The weight of the top layers could easily have broken the skin or crushed the bottom layers. Even a small break or bruise would be enough to start decay, especially if any already had a small unnoticed break.
If your ground cherries are yielding lots, faster than you can eat them, you could try drying them instead. There are videos on YouTube showing how to as well as multiple blogs and different sites explainin. I had no idea ground cherries were now so popular. I grew them simply to have fresh fruit.
In answering, I assumed the OP grew them. I had no idea stores sold both fresh and dried ground cherries. I've never seen them sold in any stores around where I am (fairly close to Vancouver Canada). Now I'm curious if the OP grew or bought them. If bought, I doubt they'd last as long as fresh from one's own garden.
If you mean the dry Goldberries that you get in packages (read later on for information about fresh Cape Gooseberry ground cherries), I got some of those a few times, and they kept dry, after opening, for a very long time (I just ate a few a day or so until they were gone, and kept the bag zipped up). I never attempted to refrigerate them. So, they lasted much longer than three days. In this case, it would appear that they store longer when dry.
However, if you're talking about Cape Gooseberries you've grown yourself, and that haven't been dried, they tend to keep well while still in the husks, fresh, unrefrigerated (for at least a couple months). If they're like tomatillos, I imagine they could keep a long time in the refrigerator (not dried) without their husks—probably a comparable length of time to unrefrigerated Cape Gooseberries (I could be wrong). However, as they're much smaller than tomatillos, I would take this idea with a grain of salt. Most people tend to think tomatillos should always be stored in the husk, but I've had them store for several months, after husked and washed, in the refrigerator. (Tomatillos I grew myself.)
If you peel the husks and keep them unrefrigerated, they'll dry up really fast, just like other ground cherries do (and I imagine they'll stay good, although hard, for quite some time). I'm not sure what the company does to keep them from going hard when dry, but they must do something. I've grown the Giant Cape Gooseberry ground cherry from Baker Creek (so, that's what my experience is with). It's giant as in a giant plant (not as in giant fruit).
For fresh fruit (not dried), you may be interested to know that ground cherries can be frozen, and they taste the same frozen (except that they're cold, which can be pleasant when it's hot). I haven't tried this with the Cape Gooseberry, but I have with other ground cherries.
Three days sounds like a very short time for any form of Cape Gooseberry to spoil, but I haven't tried refrigerating the whole, husked or unhusked, or even dried fruits. Maybe they're trying to dry out, but the moisture in the refrigerator combines poorly with that.
If you bought them fresh and they were pre-husked, that may be the problem. I would just freeze those (and eat them frozen) if you want them to last a long time.
Anyway, my advice for the dried berries is not to refrigerate them. My advice for the fresh berries is not to refrigerate them; but, either freeze them (husked in a bag), or keep fresh ones unrefrigerated in the husks (they're not as pleasant when you husk them and they dry out, as they get really small and hard).
Why would you assume dried fruit? Most dried fruit doesn't have a short life span... and won't rot after three days.
It may not be common everywhere, but they can absolutely be bought fresh in stores.
I assume it's dry because that's the only form I've seen Goldenberries sold as. Goldenberries aren't the real name of the fruit (it's just a term that a certain company is promoting, and I don't know that that company does fresh fruit; maybe they do). If the questioner had asked about Cape Gooseberries (without the mention of Goldenberries, I wouldn't have assumed they'd be dry).
But as they are trying to get others to adopt the term, it's possible the fresh market may be using the term Goldberries instead of Cape Gooseberry (to avoid confusion with gooseberries, which are not the same thing as the Cape Gooseberry ground cherry).
But everything about the question suggests fresh (people don't usually refrigerate dried fruit, dried fruit doesn't rot after three days, and the question doesn't say dried), so it seems a bit odd to make an assumption based on what you've seen in your store. And yes, I've seen them labeled "golden berries" when sold fresh. See also wikipedia: "...marketed in the United States most commonly as goldenberry..."
I'm not saying that the rest of your answer is not helpful - it looks good. It's just that there's not any need to begin it by making an assumption that's pretty likely false, and giving advice that's pretty unlikely applicable for the OP's situation. Why not start out with fresh fruit, and if you want to give advice about dried too, do that at the end?
@Jefromi It's just an assumption. I addressed fresh fruit in the answer, too (so, my assumption isn't a pivotal issue). I upvoted your comments, because they add helpful information about how the term is being used, and that you can get them fresh in stores. (This comment belongs before your previous one; I had to delete and repost it to edit it.) I can edit my answer (the assumption isn't necessary).
Yes, it's pretty much always best to just edit. I'm not sure I really get what you mean by "it's just an assumption" - surely assuming something contrary to the question is never ideal? And it does affect your answer, which is the salient bit - you still have dried first, fresh second.
Let us continue this discussion in chat.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.440595
| 2017-05-22T19:50:18 |
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102951
|
Find out what spices were used
I have recently been ordering food from a place that has a fried rice that I like a lot. A lot a lot. The ingredients are pretty basic, which makes me think that the spices used in this dish are what makes it taste so incredibly good (though of course things like the method of preparation may also matter quite a bit).
I should really go to the restaurant and ask them about this dish. However, this does make me wonder:
Is there a way for me to take a prepared batch of this dish and find out what spices were used? The spices I do not know yet are the ones I care about the most.
(I'm very much afraid the answer will simply be no, but it doesn't hurt to ask, does it?)
There are non-spice possibilities too. Chinese restaurant cooking, for example, benefits from commercial stoves whose heat output exceeds residential stoves. This is described as wok hei (qi), or breath of the wok.
A way to find out besides tasting it, smelling it, or asking someone else to do the same? Do you mean something like measuring the chemical composition?
It's seems to need "experience" and "taste sensitivity" to identify the spices without some chemical inspection methods.
Long time ago Japan has a challenge TV show. The challenger needs to identify total 20 ingredients in a prepared dish after looking, tasting, smelling. However only 1 or 2 can achieve it and get rewards.
@Juhasz I don't know the method. I'm looking for a process that can identify the spices even if I don't know them. Asking someone else to taste it isn't even all that bad an idea. Tasting with a theoretical decision tree (think of those decision trees you have for identifying birds or plants) though I don't really think such a thing exists. If there is a good "chemical" way, that would be an answer as well. I know I might be asking for magic, but how would I know if I didn't ask?
@mattm Definitely. The number of ingredients (aside from the seasoning) is minimal (rice, carrot, scrambled eggs and peas) and the taste difference is very big, which is why I'm looking at the spices. The grain of rice used is also something I could look at. I did also do some research on google, and I have one or two ideas to try based on that. The complicating factor is that most Chinese places here make Indonesia-inspired fried rice (we even call it nasi, short for nasi goreng), and this restaurant has Chinese nasi alongside the "normal" one, which makes the terminology pretty complicated.
From your dscription I would say that the main part of the taste is MSG
That's essencially experience and knowledge of ingredients (that also comes with experience and exposure to different cooking styles). Spicing is also very much about proportions, and if there were a method to accurately define which ingredients were used in which proportions, there would be no secret Coca Cola formula anymore
The one thing you haven't mentioned which is likely to affect the flavour is what oil of other fats they are cooking in. So if you are going to ask the place how they cook it, be careful that you don't unnecessarily narrow the scope of their answers by asking about 'spices'. There may be more than one oil, one to actually do the cooking and one to flavour near the end, like a toasted sesame or something.
And there's cooking method -- how hot the wok is, how much oil is in it, how much they're cooking at one time, how often they toss it, etc, can affect chemical changes that change the taste.
Yes, theoretically, and no for practical purposes.
Here's the Yes part:
If you have access to a chemistry lab, you can certainly analyze the dish for the presence of specific molecules that would indicate the presence of specific spices. For example, the presence of "cinnamaldehyde" would indicate that cinnamon was used.
Here's the No part:
First, you would need to do individual tests for each possible distinct seasoning molecule. Given the universe of spices, that's only feasible if you already have a pretty good idea of what's in the dish and are just verifying.
Second, some seasoning molecules are changed by cooking, making them less recognizable. Sugar particularly can change into dozens of different compounds depending on the cooking process.
Third, some seasoning molecules are just not that indicative of what the original seasoning was. For example, the presence of salt, glutamate, and various soy compounds would indicate the use of soy sauce, oyster sauce, or miso, but which kind of sauce exactly? That's leaving aside the difficulty of distinguishing various starches and sugars. Also, some spices come from the same plant (e.g. coriander seed and cilantro) and thus will be biochemically indistinguishable, even though their effect in a recipe is distinct.
So: ask the restaurant. It'll be way easier.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.441475
| 2019-10-17T21:20:53 |
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|
18605
|
Is a "typical" jam sweeter today than the typical jams of centuries ago?
I have a new early morning snack this week - toast and jam, but after putting the (fridge temp) jam on the toast, I put the whole plate of toast and jam in the microwave for 20 seconds to warm the jam. It's delicious, but some of the jams in my fridge are just way too sweet for me this way. That got me thinking - hundreds of years ago, jams were eaten at room temperature. But now they are eaten cold from the fridge as often as not. I wonder if the sugar level has been increased as a result - either by adding more sugars or by reducing the fruit more than before which would also intensify the flavours.
Has anyone compared modern and very old jam recipes to see if this is a real trend? Or the sugar levels in supermarket jam compared to jam recipes in older books?
The good news is that I collect old cookbooks, so I might be able to answer if there's additional added sugar. (and, I found out in a recent trip to New Orleans that there's a used book store that only sells cookbooks ... But that will not tell us if fruit has been bred sweeter and could be affecting the final product.
On the contrary, most of the older recipes that I've seen for jams use more sugar (60g per 100g or higher is common) than is popular in some of the newer products, because sugar has a preservative effect. But most likely pre-refrigeration and pre-iceboxes you simply wouldn't have kept multiple jars open at the same time; you'd use one at a time as quickly as practical, and keep your reserve stock seals unbroken.
Industrially refined pectin has actually reduced the amount of sugar necessary to make a good preserve. A number of companies also now make "all fruit" spreads, but they're controlling the sugar ratio with knowledge from food science, by analyzing how much sugar is in the non-primary fruits like grape and apple juice.
60 grams of fruit per 100g or more are available but by traditional standards are quite a luxury, even though I would agree that such products often taste better; they owe their existence to better food science, however, and a little to refrigeration.
A lot of widely-distributed brands still use sugar ratios that are pretty high, including Welch's and Smucker's, but you may find higher fruit ratios in boutique brands.
Cane sugar or corn syrup is a relatively modern invention. Prior to these people did not have such sweetness available (other than fruit or honey), or used beets, carrots etc. for increased sweet flavours
Many cultures simply boiled fruit in an earthenware pot until it reduced to a sufficient thickness, and then put on the matching earthenware lid and seal it with wax, pitch, or animal fat. In a cool climates this lasts through the winter. This method was used with wild fruit during WWII in Europe due to no sugar being available
Roman and Greek records cite fruit jams made with fruit and fermented honey (melomel = marmalade). They also used pure honey, strong wine, and even vinegar!
melomel is mead (honey wine) made with fruit and honey, rather than just honey.
In going through my cookbooks, I found in a 1970 reprint of the Mrs. Rorer's New Cook book (originally from 1898) a discussion of the different sugars when making jelly. She specifically mentions cane sugar (sucrose) in with the saccharoses, along with malt sugar (maltose) and milk sugar (lactose); In the glucosses, dextrose, grape sugar and fruit sugar (levulose); In the amyloses, starch, gum, dextrin, insulin and cellulose. In the text (the above was a table), "Under the head of
@Joe ...what?...
@Joe: Interesting list, but, if it includes "insulin" (discovered in 1921 and originally called "isletin"), then the list most definitely did not originate in an 1898 cookbook. Even if it was added to the list in 1970, something's seriously wrong, as insulin would not appear naturally in any kind of vegetable matter and has never been used as a food additive. Not to mention that it's absolutely not an amylose, saccharide, sugar, or carbohydrate of any sort.
Likely Insulin is a typo on the plant polysaccharide Inulin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inulin Inulin is about 10% as sweet as sucrose.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.441942
| 2011-10-27T15:50:30 |
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|
44848
|
Can home-made mozzarella be made in small batches (quart of milk instead of gallon)?
I've spotted a couple of articles (http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-homemade-mozzarella-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-174355, http://www.simplebites.net/the-best-party-trick-ever-how-to-make-thirty-minute-mozzarella/ )about making mozzarella at home in 30 minutes or so, using milk and some ingredients that are easy to order online. It sounds like fun and I'd like to try it, but a gallon of milk? And doubtless half a gallon of whey to sneak into random meals for the next few days? It seems like a big commitment.
Is it feasible to just divide everything by 4? How accurately do you need to do that, because 1/16th cup of water to dissolve things in seems a challenge, as does 1/8th tablet of rennet. Or is it ok if you use twice as much rennet as you should and you're just wasting a little rennet? How do you adjust the microwaving time? Should I just accept that there's a reason all the online recipes involve a gallon of milk?
I've done this and it'll work, but your yield will be small. With a gallon of quality milk, my yield is about one pound of mozz. Divide that by four and it ends up being about 4 oz.
Use an appropriate size pot and microwave container... And use a thermometer.
I've only used liquid rennet and I don't think there's much difference in dissolving the tabs.
I've also found the process to be somewhat forgiving on close but not exact measurements of ingredients when using good quality (non UHT - NOT ultra high temp pasteurized) whole milk. Other milk not so forgiving and UHT milk just ended up as ricotta.
The microwave process heats the curds to extract as much water out of them as possible, then they become soft and stretchy and can be pulled and kneaded like dough. Heat, extract, pull, knead, repeat.
Don't be discouraged if the first batch isn't quite perfect. It'll take longer than 30 min. your first time - you're going to keep wondering if your doing the whole microwave process right or if it's hot enough.
A great site for questions and instructions is http://www.cheesemaking.com.
Their FAQ addresses reducing the quantities in half (#5) and how to dissolve and reduce the rennet tab - http://www.cheesemaking.com/store/pg/242-FAQ-Mozzarella.html.
Their 30 min mozz instructions with pictures to see how everything looks along the way http://cheesemakinghelp.blogspot.com/2010/12/making-mozzarella-with-anya-age-10.html
You do need to be quite accurate with proportions if you were to try this in smaller quantities; the rennet and acid interact to cause the milk to curdle and produce the final texture. If you throw that balance off, your results may differ in unpredictable and possibly unpleasant ways. Times will need to be adjusted as well because everything will move faster, but you shouldn't have problems if you use temperature as your guide.
It's probably feasible to divide the recipe, but the reason for using this amount is that it's easier to press and pull the cheese with a critical mass than it is with a tiny little ball. Plus, the technique is relatively simple, but it still involves multiple steps and takes some effort. It's quite a process to go through to end up with a relatively small amount of cheese. If you don't think you could use the entire batch, have some friends over and send them home with a mozzarella ball, it's a great party favor.
In my experience, I don't think it would be worthwhile to do less than a gallon of milk at at time -- the yield would be too small. Add to that the tricky conversion of proportions of the other ingredients, and it just doesn't seem worth it.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.442304
| 2014-06-13T14:21:22 |
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|
73011
|
How do I get paper-skin duck breast?
I want to make Cantonese-style roasted duck but a whole-duck is too much for me and I have only a small oven so I want to try using the thigh or breast only.
My problem is I can't make the layer of fat underneath the skin melt down. With a
whole-duck recipe you roast the duck at medium-high temp for 2-4 hours,
but because I use only part of the duck, if I do that the meat-side will dry out.
Here is what I tried:
Using fingers, separate skin and meat (still intact end-part), stripes diamond pattern
Brine duck part for 1-2 hour (with salt, sugar, water, soy sauce, ginger, garlic)
Boil water with distilled vinegar, honey, red coloring then pour over skin-side, skin tighten up
Rub with baking powder, uncover in fridge to dry the skin
I tried this step two ways:
first time I roasted with convection oven 140 c, still fatty skin
second,used aluminum foil wrapped all over meat-part, uncover the skin-part in fridge 48 hours, roasted, not better than first one, skin still thick but cracking (skin too dry?)
How can I get the skin to be thin and the fat to melt?
Does your oven have a setting for top heat only? It may be called 'broil' or 'grill'. You typically use them at high heat, but you can often set a lower temperature as well. My only other thought is to put something in with it to help insulate the bottom or otherwise regulate the temperature (eg, setting it in a pan with a bit of liquid in it ... but you'll want to put in something so it's not actually sitting against the bottom of the pan ... a few carrots generally works).
If you can get the fat to melt the meat shouldn't dry out. I used to cook duck under the grill on the grid of a grill pan with new potatoes underneath, which then roast in the duck fat. This didn't take all that long. You might need to slow it down a little from what I did.
i have 2 ovens convection one only top heat and another can do top only and top-bottom heat
So from suggestion above i should place carrot or potato in the small tray or rack?(which one?? so fat can drip out?) and place brined duck breast on carrot/potato directly?
The secret is in varying the temperature. Toss the pieces in baking powder or corn starch and fine salt, with or without other dry seasonings. In a non-convection oven, bake first at 120°C/250°F for 30 minutes to melt the fat and thin the skin layer, then at 220°C/425°F for 40 to 45 minutes to "crispy it up."
|
Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.442599
| 2016-08-10T11:25:45 |
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|
73146
|
Bread and butter pickles without mustard seed?
I'm making bread and butter pickles and I ran out of mustard seed. What can I use instead? Or do I just skip it?
I've had good horseradish pickles before. It wouldn't be bread & butter, but it might add a little extra flavor to make up for the loss of the mustard.
@Joe Interesting idea. That might be really good! OP - Careful though if you try it to not overdo it. Horseradish (in any form) will permeate more and increase in strength over time MUCH more than the same quantity of mustard seed (by volume, anyway).
You can put whole peppercorns, you can put allspice, you can put cumin seeds. Do one jar with and one without and see what you like.
if you have any really chunky deli mustard just throw a spoonful of that in there.
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.442822
| 2016-08-14T22:51:55 |
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|
21185
|
What savory flavors would pair well with chocolate pasta?
I want to experiment with making savory homemade pasta with cocoa powder. I think the earthy flavor and dark color will be striking.
I have been thinking about what kinds of flavors could be used for the sauce.
I considered how to get chili powder in there as I love those flavors together.
What flavors (or sauces) would pair well with chocolate in a savory pasta dish?
I did see this question: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/4786/what-common-or-uncommon-flavors-pair-well-with-chocolate
It is more broad and does not answer my question.
The latest issue of Food Network magazine contains a recipe for a savory chocolate pasta dish, however I do not have the magazine with me at the moment.
I purchased chocolate pasta once. It came with a sauce recipe but tasted awful, so I won't bother reproducing their failure here.
@Yamikuronue- what was in the failure? At least I would know something to avoid.
@Sobachatina I don't recall exactly, I think basalmic vinegar? http://www.hotelchocolat.com/src/valcomp_chocbytes/Our-Top-Ten-Gourmet-Cooking-Ideas-ATopTenCuisine/ are the suggestions the company that made it gives. Their chocolate food products were uniformly subpar, however :|
I recently did a bitter cocoa chili with hominy and tart, dried cherries and the combination worked very well.
http://meta.cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/1645/should-we-close-questions-structured-like-what-compliments-does-not-work-with
This question appears to be off-topic because it is about flavor pairings
Hmmm, I would turn to cultures that use cocoa as a savory ingredient. There is quite a bit of Mexican cooking that does this and you did mention wanting to incorporate chili powder. How about looking at the ingredients in Mole sauce for an inspiration. Not sure I can provide specifics but just trying to give you some ideas. Mole is pretty intense so maybe temper it with a cream?
Just some idea suggestions for a starting point.
I second this advice. I personally really enjoy smokey chili flavors with cocoa. Chipotle peppers immediately come to mind or maybe poblanos.
I've seen very old recipes for rabbit in which you add bitter sweet chocloate to the sauce that also had the blood from the rabbit added for thickening (Think it was from an Elizabeth David book where I found it).
However seeing that Mexican dishes use cocoa as part of the mole dishes they are famous for I'd start looking for inspiration there.
What you'd be looking for is the depth of flavour you would get with the addition of the cocoa to the dish. It will give a nice base note but you wouldn't want to be tasting an over powering chocolate taste IMHO.
I don't think I could get my wife to eat rabbit blood pasta sauce.
I really like the Mexican angle. Maybe something like carne asada over pasta with some pepper-based sauce would be interesting. I may have to try this on my own.
I bet this pulled pork taco recipe (which is delicious, I might add) could be adapted to work with a chocolate pasta.
I've made a chocolate freeform lasagna with roasted butternut squash, ricotta cheese and a sage & brown butter sauce that was to die for.
Other candidates would likely be be something along the lines of braised beef or pork. Ingredients with the strength to stand up to the cocoa in the pasta. Cream sauces and cheeses are perfect accompaniments. Salt and chili pair wonderfully with all of the above.
Best thing is to play with your food and have fun.
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Stack Exchange
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.442926
| 2012-02-08T21:52:42 |
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|
24825
|
Why pressure cook rasmalai?
My wife loves rasmalai and we make it often.
I have used several different recipes and both made the paneer from scratch as well as using paneer purchased at a local Indian grocery store.
Some recipes call for the paneer balls to be cooked in the syrup for some time, sometimes even in a pressure cooker. Any time that I have tried to do this my paneer has completely melted into a sweet, foamy, butter slick. I stopped trying the pressure cooker recipes because it was too wasteful.
Other recipes, including those from Indian coworkers, don't pressure cook the cheese and only briefly simmer it before chilling the dish.
Is rasmalai traditionally cooked in a pressure cooker? If so what does it accomplish and how do I keep my paneer from melting?
Is that paneer melted into cream, or a puddle of partially melted cheese? Either way it looks artery-clogging delicious!
Is that crushed pistachios on top? Yum, invite me over some of that Rasmalai? (Once you perfected the recipe?) :)
@BobMcGee- this picture is not mine, just an example of what it is supposed to look like. Rasmalai is smooth cheese balls floating in a sweet reduced milk sauce. It is delicious.
@SObachatina: I have gone and effed up by doing mostly North and South Indian cuisine. Clearly I need to venture East and see the desserts they have to offer! If rasmalai is representative, they are delicious
East is where it's at! The best Indian sweets are made in Kolkata, West Bengal.
@5arx In India there are several cities where you will have best Indian sweets and deserts according to their culture and religion, kolkata(West Bengal), Varanasi(Uttar Pradesh), Jaipur/Bikaner(Rajasthan)...etc not particularly kolkata
+1 Perhaps. But I am of Bengali heritage. I have to say Kolkata ;-)
Not something I've ever come across, but you have to remember that paneer is a vague word meaning cheese, not very specific, and it runs through a range of IndoAsian languages with slight variations in meaning - like in parts of the US "gravy" means any kind of sauce, but in UK gravy is always brown.
Go to the end of my street and ask for paneer, you will be given a prepacked piece of something with a texture somewhere between soap and parmesan that tastes like cheddar. That's what you get in West Yorkshire, which is like the Punjab/Kashmir border with buses.
Cut into cubes, serve with sauce and peas, it makes a perfect motar paneer.
I did a search for recipes and the first one I found used a pressure cooker, and made the paneer from scratch, with a video. I could see that the process worked for those cooks. But it doesn't work for you, and I think the reason is that you don't have a local herd of buffaloes.
Buffalo milk is preferred in most parts of India, they use it without specifying it. You will not get the same results with cows' milk. You might get good results if you start from mozarella, the best types of which are also made with buffalo milk. Remember how hard it is to get mozarella to melt when you put it on pizza, and you might begin to understand why I'm suggesting it.
Referring to the pressure cooker - that is used to establish a high starting temperature for the syrup. The cooks I saw made a syrup, added the pieces of paneer, heated the cooker until the weight lifted, then switched off the heat and left the pieces to soak for exactly five minutes before removing them. I would guess that the start temperature would be around 122 degC, but that really is a guess. You just have to establish a procedure that gets enough syrup into the pieces without them falling apart - trial and error must be your guide, because it is evident that there is a big variation from the source of the curd.
Once you've established something that works, you might find it interesting to try flavouring that "soaking syrup" by adding rose cordial or similar ...
Postscript: I went past the end of my street to the supermarket around the corner. They cater for Indoasian tastes and Jamaican tastes. The cheese selection is very boring, the best pick is a very expensive mature red cheddar/dunlop cheese from Jamaica, and they sell the "soapy" paneer pre-cut into cubes in packets. They also sell half a dozen forms of mozarella style paneer, mostly canned in brine, and a strange French product in rectangular cartons labelled in squiggle - Arabic or Urdu, you guess, but it shows the product being sliced on the pack. Most are labelled as being made from cows' milk, one is goats' milk, but nothing marked explicitly as buffalo milk - then again, that doesn't surprise me.
You can buy pre-prepared rasmalai, rassmalai, and rasomalai in there. I bought the rassmalai because it is locally produced by Mumtaz, a company who have a restaurant I have visited without being poisoned. The rasomalai is produced by Royal, who have a nationwide reputation as a supplier of Indoasian sweets.
I was disappointed - the cardamom and saffron were undetectable, there were only two pieces of swollen curd in a sauce of condensed milk and cream with just enough pistachios added to give visual evidence, as opposed to flavour. £1.85 might be a fair price in a restaurant, as a street price it was a rip-off.
I can see why Sobachatina's wife would like the stuff, but I know I could do better, so I understand why he wants to put some effort into the dish. I don't have the time right now, but I will put some exertion into this in the future.
I am very interested in the idea that the problem might be because of using non-cow milk. Thank you for this answer. I have some more experimenting to do.
The quick cook in the pressure cooker is about getting the paneer to soften and expand (steam pressure) without melting. So once the pressure has been reached (weight lifts, whistles etc.) you take it off the heat and let it cool down. If your local paneer type keeps melting, run the pot under cold water to stop the cooking process after it reached presure
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2025-03-21T13:24:58.443228
| 2012-07-03T16:35:24 |
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|
25155
|
Can water cause fermented pickles to spoil?
I recently learned about Indian lemon pickles.
There is a lot of variation between recipes but the ones I am trying consist of chopping lemons or limes, adding salt, and letting them ferment for a period of time before adding spices.
A large number of recipes have included a warning that the lemons, utensils, and jar must be completely dry or else the pickles will spoil quickly.
Here is one example
"Even a small drop of water makes this pickle spoil soon."
This doesn't make sense to me for several reasons:
There is, of course, already water in the fruit
A tiny amount of water won't be enough to significantly dilute the acid or salt
I have never seen such a warning in fermented pickles from other cultures
Admittedly none of these recipes have come from an authoritative food chemist. They are all traditional recipes.
Can water actually spoil fermented pickles or is this an Indian old wives tale?
ANY amount of water on the jar or the ingredients does result in the formation of whitish fungus at the affected spot. This will later turn black and the pickle will sour giving off a fermented smell.
The only exception is if that spot is well immersed in oil- but no guarantee it is off!
The "water" in the fruit, being juice, fights formation of fungus and mold.
I'd tried to cheat but the punishment by the pickle is heavy!! -and I am a cookaholic going on 60 years.
Note: This precaution applies especially to hot climates where the reaction is in hours and max in a couple of days--- hv observed it in u.s in Florida and California.
Try your bravery.
@param- Thanks for your experience! I tried to clarify your post a little but there were a couple sentences that I didn't quite get.
The keeping qualities will be dependent on the combination of the salt/acidity of the product (preventing growth of some micro-organism) and the heat treatment that it and the packaging receives (removal of others). However it is possible that if there is a small quantity of water introduced in a particular area of the product or packaging - for example condensing on a cold lid - it may interfere with this balance and lead to localised spoilage. So the jars and lids should be clean and dried in the oven before use and filled while hot. For what it's worth, my grandmother used to put a disc of greaseproof paper on top of her home-made jams to avoid condensation.
This sounds like an old wives' tale to me. The only basis I can think of for it is that a certain amount of not-especially-clean water, especially fermenting in a hot region, would promote undesirable fungal growth before the juice from the fruit has a chance to form an inhibiting brine with the salt (the acid also, of course, has anti-microbial possiblities). The chance of that happening has grown into a universal proscription against any water contacting the fruit.
I've seen and used fermented lemon recipes that put the lemons into a brine, rather than just covering them with dry salt. The water is boiled to create the brine, so tiny organisms that were in the water should all be dead. I have seen no mold or fungal growth when using these; the water itself can't be the issue.
I suggest science (or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof): sterilize some water by boiling and set up three batches, one with a sprinkling of the boiled water, one with tap or rain water, and one scrupulously dry.
If the pickle is allowed to dry in hot climate uner sun light for a long period i.e., for more than 10 days , the growth of fungi can be avoided. Rajan
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.443827
| 2012-07-20T21:06:35 |
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|
66836
|
Reproduce Korean BBQ Pork Jerky
Costco sells a Korean BBQ Pork Jerky with the brand name Golden Island
It's delicious- it's soft but chewy, smokey, sesame-ey, moist with the sugars but obviously also dried enough to not need refrigeration.
I've tried making it myself with mixed results. The marinade is easy: ginger, sesame, brown sugar, etc. The flavor is good but my texture isn't quite right. I tried my normal jerky method which is to marinate and dehydrate. As you would expect, the sugars didn't caramelize correctly and the meat didn't take on the soft, chewy, candied texture that I crave.
The labeling and the texture imply that the meat is cooked. A Chinese pork "jerky" that I learned about from this question is only cooked. I want the meat to also be preserved so only roasting/grilling is insufficient.
There are several questions here:
Does this product represent a dish in Korean cuisine or is it a fusion variation? If I could find a name I could find a recipe.
How could I both cook and preserve my pork?
The options that come to mind are:
Smoking until dehydrated (requires much more effort as I think it would have to be a cool smoking over a long period of time)
Grilling briefly for flavor and then dehydrating until done. (does partially cooked meat still dehydrate?)
Is there some other method that I haven't thought of?
I don't know if it'd be related or not, but there's "Pork Fu", which is shelf-stable. It's described as "made by stewing pork in soy sauce and sugar until the collagen in the meat breaks down, and then pounding the meat until the fibers separate and drying the result in an oven; the difference is that the fu isn't pounded quite as much as sung, and consequently is more fiberous".
@Snowman- Not necessarily. You can dehydrate meat with cool air if it is dry enough. Modern dehydrators use heat to speed the process but I can do a cool dehydration or smoking if it would produce the result I want.
I don't have it with me, but the "Chinese" method for making jerky is quite different than the western style. It is definitely a moister, softer end-product. I'll dig up my Sunset cookbook where they talk about it, and post back later. I'm guessing that it has more to do method than ingredients. Korean BBQ marinade better have soy sauce as a (the) main ingredient as well as a lot of garlic, BTW, moreso than sesame, brown sugar or ginger (all of which are fine as ingredients).
Does this product represent a dish in Korean cuisine or is it a fusion variation? If I could find a name I could find a recipe.
It does not appear to be a korean dish, rather a version of the chinese pork jerky, which has been seasoned with a korean bbq style.
How could I both cook and preserve my pork?
If you are trying to replicate the product, it doesn't appear to be a cooked and dried product. Unless you are trying to extend shelf life of your cooked meat.
The options that come to mind are:
Smoking until dehydrated (requires much more effort as I think it would have to be a cool smoking over a long period of time)
Grilling briefly for flavor and then dehydrating until done. (does partially cooked meat still dehydrate?)
You could hot smoke the meat to be completely/partially cooked, before considering a preserving process.
Similarly grilling/broiling/roasting, before preserving. Of course you can dry/dehydrate most things that have water content.
Is there some other method that I haven't thought of?
If following the chinese jerky process I have seen, either:
Raw meat is cooked, then brined/marinated in a meat tumbler
Raw meat is brined/marinated, then cooked
You also need to consider whether you wish to have mince & reform the meat, or slice the meat thinly (eg meat slicer).
I marinated the meat for 24 hours in the Korean No1 Marinate and I added more brown sugar sesame seed and 1/4 can of coke and sprinkle of salt when I put the meat on the dehydrator. The dehydrator is with the heater and fan. I still rotate the trays every hour. The meat stayed soft, chewy and very tasty.
I'm going to try this shortly. I'll bet all the extra sugar was enough to keep it soft during dehydration.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.444165
| 2016-02-25T17:35:37 |
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|
55589
|
How do I make dosas smooth and shiny?
I tried my hand at making dosas for the first time this weekend.
I was following this recipe for the dosa batter.
I soaked the dal and fenugreek seeds together and the rice by itself. The rice and dal were then blended together. They were then fermented.
At this point real life happened and I didn't have time to actually make them. They fermented for two days. By this time the batter was very aerated and fragrant.
I then used non-stick spray on an electric griddle and cooked them similar to crepes- spreading them thin with the back of the ladle.
They were delicious! More sour and nutty than restaurant dosas but they had entirely the "wrong" texture. Where restaurant dosas are smooth, shiny, brown, and crisp; mine were much paler and, although they could get somewhat crisp, they were never smooth or shiny and didn't stay crisp for long.
Indian coworkers have told me that there are variations in traditional dosas and just one style is used in restaurants.
Is there a tradition style of dosa that ferments longer and is more sour?
I would like to perfect this recipe and make my dosas more like the restaurant style. Obviously the batter fermented far longer than required. That would account for the aeration, acidity, and minimal browning.
Is the fermentation also responsible for the lack of shine and crispness?
There are a few variables that could also come into play:
Cooking on a griddle is not traditional (I think). Could the cooking temp be wrong?
The pan is usually oiled with an onion dipped in oil. I used non-stick spray.
I was unsure of the batter thickness.
At one point I thinned it with water. This may be hard to answer, but what consistency should the batter be? Would thinner help?
I've read that the ratio of rice to dal greatly affects the texture. I followed the proportions from the recipe. Is the ratio in the recipe to blame?
I'd say they look a little thick - when you spread it out, you should be able to see through it in places. The batter itself is quite thick - it should certainly coat the back of a spoon. This video illustrates the consistency of the batter, the heat of the cooking surface, and the thickness of the dosa quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63_0EsvKBfo
Very interesting! They used Channa dal and said it was important. I used Toor dal. They cooked it in an oiled cast iron skillet. Undoubtedly hotter than my non stick griddle. They did also mention that there are many styles.
I agree with @ElendilTheTall. The dosa looks somewhat too thick, tending toward utthapa. After you thinned out the batter, were you able to spread it out more? Also, toor dal is not generally equivalent to chana dal in recipes, though I can't say what difference it would make in this particular situation.
The crispness comes from the very high heat of the very thick cast iron skillet used in restaurants. The usual non stick pan, unless it is made of heavy cast iron, cannot produce that crispness. Kind of the American reason why oven pizza does not come out nice and crusty like the stone oven pizza. The ingredient is the very high heat that is missing here.
I'll try it in my cast iron next time.
The crispiness also depends on your rice to urad dal ratio. If its 2:1 or 3:1, and the batter is thinner, you can get crispy dosas at home as well. I use a heavy non-stick pan which doesn't require oil coating, but you can add a tiny amount of oil, especially around the edges to get extra crispiness.
Here's a video which show what I have suggested: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k06aod-gprg
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.444488
| 2015-03-10T14:22:26 |
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|
8147
|
What is a poolish starter?
I asked a question about what I could add to homemade bread to stop it going off so fast and someone suggested trying "a poolish starter". I've never heard of this before, so what is it?
Maybe a link to the original question would be useful?
Thank you all for these answers - I asked out of interest, and you have certainly satisfied my curiosity! I don't think I will actually use a starter in my bread as we make it in a machine and although the science makes sense (in Julio's answer, which is why I chose it) I don't think the benefits in this case outweigh the extra time it will take me! Thanks everyone!
Poolish is a type of sponge. You prepare it before mixing your dough. As in 16 hours before. Then, you mix it with the rest of the ingredients.
What I usually do is mix 150g of flour and 150g of water with a pinch of yeast (less than 1g) and no salt at all the night before the day I'm going to use it. The idea is to use the same amount, in weight, of flour and water, and the least amount possible of yeast and let it work as slow as possible.
This will depend on many factors. I'm giving you my quantities, but it changes from winter to summer, you will have to experiment. That's half of the fun. For the mixing I use a fork and a 1 litter/quarter container and 30 seconds of work, it shouldn't take you more. The poolish usually gets almost to the top in 14-18 hours. Once I put 5g of yeast and got to the top in 1 hour. This is not bad but defies the purpose of the poolish taking a lot of time. Some people even put in the refrigerator to make it take longer.
Why would you want it to take time? This is what I was told and makes sense to me: when you mix water, flour and yeast two things happen: the yeast transform the sugars and some good bacteria starts creating acids that will determine flavour. The yeast work depends on the temperature and amount of yeast (among other things, like water, salt, fat, etc). The bacteria doesn't. Also, the bacteria and the acids help preserve the bread.
Once it has reached the top you have 1 hour approx to use it. If not, it will collapse and you better start with a new one. If you think you are not going to use it in 1 hour, use a fork to degass it before it collapses and let it rise again. It will rise faster this time, but that will buy you some time. You can see what it looks like.
If you have a recipe you like, try replacing 150g flour and 150g water with the poolish and see what happens. You may replace between 10% and 50% of the final dough. You'll see changes in color and flavor.
I'm not sure what you mean by "stop it from going off so fast."
A poolish is a pre-ferment that is made of equal parts flour and water. If you are familiar with a biga or sponge, it is a close relative.
You can learn more about starters in general from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, one of the best books for learning about the science behind bread out there. He covers pre-ferments, bigas, and poolish as well as sourdough starters. Poolish is a more wet starter than many of the other kinds.
A poolish is somewhat similar to a sourdough starter that isn't strong enough to provide the yeast all on its own.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.444809
| 2010-10-15T07:38:35 |
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|
8613
|
How can vanilla essence and vanilla extract be used interchangeably?
This question has answers which explain the difference between vanilla essence and vanilla extract, and which tell you when you may want one over the other - if I am correct in thinking that "vanilla essence" is the same as "vanilla flavouring"?
My question is - in baking where colour is not an issue, how do I substitute one for the other? For example in a recipe that asked for 1tsp of extract, how much essence would I use in it's place?
Imitation vanilla extract is meant to be used in place of the real stuff, and most recipes probably assume you're using the fake stuff anyway, so you would use 1 tsp. You only need to adjust the amount if you're using something like twofold (2x) extract.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.445083
| 2010-10-28T06:50:50 |
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|
10160
|
What is the difference between cake flour and AP flour?
Possible Duplicate:
What is the difference between various types of flour?
I am baking a Yule Log (Buche de Noel) for solstice and the recipe I generally use calls for a lot of coconut and pecans and I have people who don't like those things coming to dinner, so I am looking for another recipe. The recipes I am finding though all call for cake flour and I don't bake a lot of cakes so I didn't want to buy it just for this recipe, can I turn AP flour into cake flour or what is the difference between the two? I have bread flour and AP flour in the pantry.
|
Stack Exchange
|
2025-03-21T13:24:58.445171
| 2010-12-15T17:04:21 |
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