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83735 | Use non-inductive pans on induction cook top
I moved to new place with inductive cook top. But all the pans I have are the normal non-inductive pans (ceramic and stainless steel).
I tried using them with no luck. Cooktop shows error, keeps beeping and doesn't start. If I try an induction pan, it works.
Is there any way to make them work?
Stainless steel pans are expected to work with an inductive top. Are you sure it's steel?
@JimmyJames: Stainless comes in magnetic and nonmagnetic forms. Before induction stoves stainless was generally not magnetic. Nonmagnetic stainless will not work. Now some stainless pans are using magnetic stainless for this reason.
@RossMillikan Good point. Given that I recently purchased an stainless fridge that magnets won't stick to, I should have realized that.
@RossMillikan a pan does not need to be magnetic to work on an induction range. Induction heaters are used to heat up elements like gold and platinum in refineries without a hitch.
@tuskiomi, OP does not have an induction heater from a refiner, but an induction cooktop. Most induction cooktops do require a pan that a magnet can stick to to work. Typical induction cookers operate at switching frequency between 25 kHz and 50 kHz. In this regime, induction cookers are only able to couple with ferromagnetic cookware, such as cast iron and some alloys of stainless steel. http://aceee.org/files/proceedings/2014/data/papers/9-702.pdf However Panasonic has introduced an "all metal" induction cooktop that operates at 120kHz, http://business.panasonic.com/KY-MK3500.html
@RossMillikan AFAIK non-magnetic stainless steel contains chromium, which makes it more expensive and not really suitable for cookware because of carcinogenic properties of chromium.
@DmitryGrigoryev: it is actually about the crystal structure. All stainless has a fair amount of chromium, which forms the oxide coat. The most common magentic stainless has little nickel while 304 has 10%. I had a case of a 302, which is usually nonmagnetic, tank that had been cryostretched and changed to martensitic crystals. It was nicely magnetic.
You seem to be mixing up some things here.
The difference is not between "normal" and "inductive". The difference is between pans which happen to have a ferromagnetic body, and thus work on induction, and all others. All pans with ferromagnetic body also work on resistive or gas stoves, so they are sold as "normal" pans, just like the non-ferromagnetic ones. "Ceramic" has nothing to do with the pan body **, that's a coating which can be put over a body made of a variety of metals, some of them ferromagnetic and some not.
Most steel pans and all iron ones should work on an induction stove, regardless of how they are coated. You can test this with a magnet - if it sticks, it will work. If it doesn't, don't try it anyway - in the worst case it can be an aluminium pan, and melt on the stove bad things can happen - my memory is patchy about what exactly happens, but the general advice is "don't".
You are likely to already have enough pans to use on the induction. But if you want to keep using some existing pan which is not ferromagnetic, you can simply use metallic discs which are sold for this purpose. The downside is that the performance of the stove drops to levels comparable to old-style resistive stoves (non-glasstop). But you can continue with your existing pans, and ditto for pots.
** I assume here that you mean ceramic-coated nonstick pans. The word "pan" is ambiguous in English and can also mean e.g. a lasagna pan whose body is 100% ceramic. But these are not used on stovetop, so I think we can exclude them here. Another option is a series of solid ceramic pots and pans developed for the stove, like Arcoflam/pyroflam but they are quite rare. None of the full body ceramic will work on induction, no matter if intended for the oven or stovetop.
Are you sure aluminium pans melt? Induction works by causing electrical currents to flow within the base of the pan so the resistance of the metal to that current causes heating. I thought the point about aluminium was that the currents don't form, so there's no heating at all.
@DavidRicherby, the aluminium pans do not melt, but using one can melt the stove. Specifically aluminium and copper pans with their lower electrical resistance dissipates the eddy currents faster placing higher current draw on the stove. There are two ways to deal with this when designing the stove: the first is to design it to heat aluminum pans. One estimate was that it would increase the cost of the stove by ten times. The other method is to disable the stove when an aluminum pan is detected. This is cheap and included on all new stoves.
@DavidRicherby aluminium is a conductor, and you can induce a current in it. Aluminium foil melts because it is so thin. A sandwich pan with the aluminium on the inside doesn't melt because the induced current is in the "skin" of the conductor. A pan with an aluminium body will probably not melt through and through, but there can be damage, unless the stove has the protection hildred describes. Thinking of it, I guess that my own cheap portable single burner also has it, so it is probably a widespread feature.
All three of us agree on that. But I'm confused because you're saying that using aluminium can damage the pan and @hildred is saying that it can damage the stove.
I'm no electrical engineer and don't remember the exact mechanism, so maybe I erroneously combined "foil melts" and "something bad happens with pans" into "pans melt". But I am pretty sure in the general message; alu pans and induction stoves are a bad combination.
Arcoflam. Glass-ceramic that can be used over a naked flame
@ChrisH cool, didn't know of this. Now I want one, even though I don't have gas. Turns out they work on resistive glasstop too!
@rumtscho I've used them on various resistive types (the spirals that glow, the metal plates that don't, halogen, etc. as well as gas but mainly in the oven). You do have to heat them gently (put them on the stove then turn it on) but you can get them very hot. We've got 2.
@rumtscho As OP has described that his stove shuts down with "error" message, it's safe to assume that the protection circuit is in place and operational, so it's safe to try new pans.
BTW, on my cooker, foil doesn't melt, it flies upward in a split second before the stove shuts down.
see https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/324507/quick-introduction-to-induction-heating-for-cooks for details.
Short answer - no.
Longer answer - yes, but you don't want to.
Longish answer - yes, you can get steel gadgets (such as this one from amazon) that you can put on the cooker that will heat up, and transfer the heat to the non-inductive cookware. But you lose all the advantages of an inductive cooker, and have yet another thing to worry about.
My recommendation is to get proper cookware. Induction cookers are great to work with, and it's worth the extra cost. It's as fast as gas, yet easier to clean than a regular vitroceramic cooker.
(And, as rumtscho points out - most cookware is induction-compatible already. There are exceptions, though, such as ceramic fondue caquelons, glass saucepans and all kinds of solid aluminium cookware.)
Measure your various pots and pans.
Go buy cast iron skillets (etc.) they will fit inside. A flea market may be cheaper than other sources.
You may or may not choose to use the cast iron skillets as pans themselves, too.
Wow. Some real induction moralists here. So I’m at an AirBnB with a nice induction stove and a moka pot (stove top espresso maker). But the Moka pot must be legacy bc it’s not ferrous and doesn’t work on the induction cook too. But the owner does have lots of ferrous cookware that does work. And guess what? The moka pot fits nicely inside one of the ferrous pots. So voila, I just put the ferrous pot on the cooktop, put the moka pot inside, and turn on the cook top. The ferrous pot essentially becomes a hot plate. And my coffee is done.
Welcome to SA! Unfortunately, this isn't really an answer to the OP's question. SA is a Q&A board, rather than a discussion forum. Thanks!
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83989 | Which protein sources have the lower carbon footprint
I'm concerned about the climate change and I've noticed that the meat industry has a huge role in it.
I'm wandering which protein sources have lower CO2 footprints.
I know wheat gluten has lot's of protein and it has little effect on the climate change compared with beef.
I'd also like to know this footprints it in matter off "leftovers" protein sources. I.e. I suppose surimi is still a low footprint in CO2 because it is raw material is fish leftovers, which is abundant (at the moment). That wold mean (just guessing) that a rise on it's demand wouldn't imply the emission of more CO2.
This might be a better fit at Sustainable Living. Important and interesting, but I'm not sure it's a great fit here.
Beef has a huge CO2 footprint because methane a cow farts has a very high CO2 equivalent count. Replacing beef with anything already cut the carbon footprint by more than half.
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because, while this question is about food, it seems to be more related to the ecology/sustainability of that food, which seems like it's outside of our scope.
The lowest - actually, negative carbon footprint will be plant proteins - like legumes: beans, soy, lentil. (organically grown plants, produced without artificial fertilizer or heavy farming machinery break down more of CO2 than processing them afterwards creates.) To reduce it further you might pick up gardening and grow your own, organically - even the organic farming market has a bit of carbon footprint (cars bringing the foods, maintenance of the market, all the industry behind bureaucracy required, etc) but if you use simple hand tools, and grow a small plot by your house, the carbon footprint will be firmly in the negatives.
You may want to look at the source of your soy though. The fields are often replacing large swaths of the amazon forest. That would be heavily counter-productive. Other legumes don't require that sort of climate, so they have a lower impact on the environment.
The "leftovers" protein sources as you put it are actually a good choice too. They have a pretty large carbon footprint, but the problem is that this carbon footprint will exist whether you buy (provide demand, so incentive for production) or not - they will "happen" as byproduct of the main production regardless of demand, and the CO2 will be produced regardless of whether they are going to be sold, or just discarded (or redirected to animal feeder.)
Plant protein from modern agriculture doesn't have a negative carbon footprint at all. Fertilizer is used, which requires huge amounts of energy to produce. This is in addition to fuel for the machinery, and for the drying process. It's still the lowest carbon protein source by far, of course, just not zero.
Legumes are likely the lowest footprint of well known protein sources, but as @Carmi points, unless you are raising them yourself, they are not negative or zero, and maybe not then. Unless you are going completely off grid, there is fertilizer requirements, regardless of if it is organic or chemical, energy for watering and working the soil, storage, etc. and if you are not the source, transportation, and accounting for other items which may have been displaced by growing the item. Plant material other than legumes tend to go up, corn for instance tends to be a much higher feeder than most beans and peas so requires more inputs into the system. If you go with processed, such as tofu, then add in the costs of industrialized processing. Comparatively low, yes, but not free.
On meats, the dreaded broiler chicken, the nightmare to most who worry about carbon footprints, is likely the most efficient meat source readily available. They require small space, grow fast, and are much higher in efficiency in converting plant to meat than other major meat sources like beef and pork. This still makes them much less efficient that using the grains directly and will not go into opinions on the conditions that some commercial growers employ. You will pay a price to do so, but you can likely find local growers that use these birds and treat them in a manner you would more approve of it you are interested in meat in your diet. From my experience when I raised them, a regular chicken would take 6-8 months to mature and produce 3 lbs of usable meat on open pasture while consuming in a ballpark of 50-60 lbs of grain. A broil, on pasture not in those confined cages in buildings used commercially, would produce 6 lbs of usable meat in 7-8 weeks while eating 20 lbs or less of grain. Now, that is considered highly efficient protein conversion for a meat source, but makes it obvious why meat has a higher footprint than grain: The chicken required space to live, used the ground it was pastured on, produced waste product all of which cost, and still consumed up to 20 lbs of grain all of which also had footprint associated. One could have just consumed the grain and saved a lot. It is a trade off.
My numbers are anecdotal and very rough approximations from personal experience. Though I would prefer solid documented data in an answer, I agree with earlier comments that I do not really think Seasoned Advice is the place for that detailed an argument, but a light touching of a more general answer seems OK to me in this case. Veto my opinion and remove as appropriate.
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84174 | how many pints cooked cabbage from 3 pounds raw?
How many pints of cooked cabbage should I be able to get out of 2 cabbage heads (about 3 pounds each) ? I am wanting to cook and freeze the cabbage.
@Ecnerwal : not a duplicate, as extra moisture is expelled during the fermentation.
@JanDoggen we are fighting an uphill battle here: That's almost a whole continent that was culinarily trained by settlers women who had no scales, just some sort of cups. I doubt that we'll see that change in our lifetime.
@JanDoggen : likely because they're putting it into hard-sided containers, which are measured by volume not by weight. Eg, deli containers, tupperware, gladware, etc. Even freezer bags are measured in cups, pints & gallons.
@Joe this exact question is answered as part of the accepted answer, in addition to the sauerkraut answer.
@Ecnerwal : as I've said at least a dozen times before -- I don't care if they have the same answer, it's a different question. Would we claim that questions are a duplicate just because the answer for all of them is 'no' ?
It really depends on how much you cook the cabbage.
Less cooking not only means that it's firmer and it won't compact as easily, but that the majority of the water is still in the cabbage, adding volume.
The longer that you cook the cabbage, the more that the cell walls break down, moisture is expelled, and that moisture evaporates. (but evaporation is also a function of the surface area of the pan/pot it's being cooked in)
...
I've personally never paid attention to the volume of cooked cabbage, but I have for cabbage that's been salted, let sit and drained to make cole slaw ... and that's closer to 1.5 to 2 pints per 3 lb cabbage. (but again, it depends how much force you use to pack it ... and how much you cut out when removing the core).
I'll try to remember to get a measurement when I make a ~10lb batch of cole slaw for a gathering in two weeks.
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79159 | What is a good brand for parmesan to buy in Rome?
I'm soon going to Rome for vacation and want to bring back some parmigiano reggiano cheese. Could anyone suggest a good brand and a good place to buy this? Thank you
Welcome to the site @Cody. Unfortunately this question is off topic as you are asking for an opinion on which brands people like, and where a good place to shop is. Whatever you buy, remember to triple bag it when you bring it back as it will stink up your luggage like nobody's business.
It's ITALY !!! and every single wheel is regulated by the Consorzio di Parmigiano-Reggiano. Go into any shop, don't worry about brand, in the sense that it's all parmigiano reggiano: they'll tell you the farm that produced it and the age. Are you returning to the US (just a guess): if you are, for Customs, make sure that it is properly packaged/labeled (and that you declare it). Cheese producers and grocers in Italy, even small operations, typically have a vacuum-packing machine, but make sure that they include a label with the name of the farm, its location and the type of cheese.
@Dorothy: Uhuh. Their streets are paved with gold, there's a unicorn around every corner, everyone is obeying all the rules, in short, it's Cockaigne. Did I mention the unicorns?
@Dorothy: I'm happy you found your corner of the world :) But "It's ITALY !!!" just doesn't cut it, no matter how many exclamation marks you put after it ;)
@Dorothy: I never forgo a chance to be a gentleman. The pass is yours :)
@Dorothy not a prob, however what has the unicorn got to do with it?
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79238 | Can I separate cream from powdered whole milk?
Can I separate cream from powdered whole milk? I spend much of my time in the Philippines and milk is very expensive and cheeses are almost impossible to get. I am making pizzas and I want to make my own mozzarella cheese.I want to buy powdered whole milk in bulk for making cheese, butter, and ice cream. I want to remove some of the cream from the reconstituted dry milk to make butter and ice cream with and to use the milk with the cream removed to make cheese and buttermilk.
Hmm, isn't powdered milk just milk with the water taken out? And isn't cream just milk with less water?
@Doug No, cream is NOT just milk with water removed. It is the high-fat layer that separates from the milk if it is not homogenized. Whole powdered milk contains the same percentage of fat as regular whole milk once reconstituted (between 3 and 4 percent), whereas cream contains upwards of 40% fat (less for "lighter") creams. See: http://www.eatouteatwell.com/half-and-half-cream-ormilk/
"and to use the milk with the cream removed to make cheese and buttermilk" - Cheese has to be made with full-fat milk. Except for a few special fresh cheeses (ricotta, low-fat quark), cheese needs the fat and even sometimes has to start with cream instead of milk. You may be able to make cheese from reconstituted milk (I don't know that for sure) but if it works, you won't be able to reuse that same milk for butter or cream.
Yes, I know it can't be used for everything, but I am looking at buying it in bulk and maximizing the use. I am shipping it to the Philippines where milk is very expensive. I plan on making my own mozzarella cheez. I would also like to make butter and ice cream from it. I can make buttermilk, and of course milk. I would like to reclaim the cream from the milk that I use to drink and make buttermilk to use to make butter and ice cream. multi use of the powdered milk. I am buying 50lb bulk to get good pricing.
Butter does not come from buttermilk. Butter comes from cream; its the fat in the cream that is churned until it all coalesces into a mass. The liquid that remains after the cream has had all its fat removed in the butter-making process is buttermilk.
@senschen you have to be very pedantic when explaining this. The problem is that nowadays, most "buttermilk" sold in American stores is cultured milk from which the butter has not be churned out. So people would come across your definition (which is the older one and still used in some European countries) and be very confused.
@RoyLaFever you cannot maximize the use. If you make mozzarella, you cannot make butter. If you make butter, you cannot make mozzarella. The liquid left after any of the two is pretty much fat-free.
@rumtscho- your point is good but the example isn't. Mozzarella can be made from skim milk it just has a less rich flavor. You can make skim mozzarella and butter from the same whole milk. (Not necessary whole powdered milk of course)
I don't think you can get cream out of your milk - it would be homogenized by the process, and people would want their milk to be smooth and not separate out so they would take precautions against such a thing in the manufacturing. Also, a lot of the powdered milk I see sold is skim milk powder, you should be very sure you're getting full fat powdered milk even to try.
You might be able to get butter, but as far as I know butter from whole milk would be a lot of work for a relatively low yield (one reason cream is preferred, and butter was historically often made from soured milk - it was easier to get butter after culturing). Though it looks like powdered milk can be used in cheese-making (according to CMB92's link), for increasing yield of cheese or making fresh cheese (your mozzarella could qualify).
On the other hand, if you are buying in bulk, you might contact the seller and see if you can't get some packages of powdered cream along with the milk. They are likely made by the same manufacturers, and same processes, so it might be possible to substitute for part of your bulk order or else purchase additionally, or even inquire about other powdered products (buttermilk, sour cream, butter powder, etc). I've used powdered cream before...it can be a bit tricky to work with but, at least with the brand I got, you can make even whipped cream, and also butter - we almost did, from overwhipping the cream. And manufacturers recommendations usually include uses for ice cream and baking, although you will want to check by the brand you buy, since some recommendations differ. You can fortify your powdered milk for making cheese with, if you want higher fat.
And, heavens, I think it would be easier to have two or three packages to scoop out of rather than trying to reconstitute and separate the cream out of your milk (and store it up for separate uses). You might even be able to make skim milk powder work, if that is what is available, by supplementing it with cream powder to make a "whole milk".
No, it will not be possible. The cream will have been separated prior to the dehydrating process that turns the milk into powder1. You may be able to make some cheeses with it, but it is probably a gamble.
Use Full Cream whole milk powder?
Cream rises to the top of whole milk full bottles on front door steps on cold frosty mornings.
Make a pint of milk from full cream milk powder, put in freezer to semi freeze?
I have not tried this....
Just a (silly) thought, observation......
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84565 | Is convex surface normal in cast iron skillet?
I am new to cast iron skillet. I have cooked with it several times and found the Lodge 12" cast iron skillet has a convex surface which is not observable unless you pour oil on it.
When I cook, the oil move to rim of the skillet and makes the center short of oil. Is it normal?
EDIT: I added the photo of the stove and skillet for reference
Are you sure that it's truly convex? I've noticed that oil is much more likely to stay around the edge of the pan when the bottom of the pan's hot, but the sides aren't. (or maybe that's a sign that my pan's slightly convex, too)
@Joe I haven't measured it, I guess this is related to the induction heater I use. Obviously, the center would get hot quicker than the edge.
Lot of pans has its center higher than the sides, it is made that way because of physics. Manufacture say due to heating of the pan, the metal will expand and when heated the pan is supposed to become flat. In present time, I get the korean stone surface pans with flat bottom heated or not.
Pans should be completely flat, and producers are usually very good at getting it right. Even very cheaply made pans are usually sold properly flat.
What you describe sounds like you warped your pan. When you heat a pan on a burner that is too small, it becomes convex when viewed from above, if you heat it on a burner that is too large, it becomes concave. I have also seen lots of claims that heat shock (too quick heating by placing on an already hot plate, plunging into cold water right after cooking) increases warping. With thinner materials, you usually can see the warp easily with the naked eye.
I have never seen this happen in cast iron pans before (I assume here that it is really cast iron - some people call all iron pans "cast iron" although forged iron behaves differently and warps easily). Combined with you saying that you only notice it when heated, I wonder if it could be that your pan is not really warped, but only temporary developes a hump on the burner. Just try it on a fslightly large burner (which is supposed to bend the metal in the other direction) and see if it changes something.
If the pan continues to be warped when used on a different size burner, it has to be hammered flat. I have never done it myself, but the Internet is full of suggestions. They say that it can get "very flat", I have no idea if that means enough that there is no pooling, or simply much flatter than at the beginning.
Thank you for your suggestion, I might try it later but it is not convenient to try it on another burner because we only have one induction stove. I haven't measured whether my pan is really convex.
I'm not sure what you found on the internet, but I'd strongly recommend against trying to hammer a cast iron skillet flat, unless you're ready to destroy the skillet. Cast iron is brittle and easy to crack if hammered cold. And if you heat it to cherry red to work it, you can easily cause various damage that will make it less useful as a cooking vessel, if it even survives cooling without cracking after working. I've heard of people sanding down a minor warp in a pan. (And yes, cast iron can be warped; I have a pan I've abused that proves it.)
I am wondering the same thing.
I’ve noticed that new cast iron skillets are convex instead of flat, and it has nothing to do with getting them too hot or using the wrong size burner.
I have a set that I bought 30 years ago when I moved into my first apartment. They do not have that extra handle. They were perfectly flat when I bought them, and they are perfectly flat today, and I don’t know how many times I’ve accidentally overheated them, used a too-small burner, or ran them under cold tap water while scorching hot.
A couple of coworkers were impressed with my old pans and so they went out and got new ones. Those pans don’t cook the same as mine because they’re convex!!! It’s very frustrating to try to fry more than one egg at a time because the oil pools to the edges, and the eggs run all over the place when you try to keep oil under them.
I would like to know why Lodge no longer makes them flat; a convex surface is for a different style of cooking.
You should always use a hotplate at least as big as your pan in order to prevent warping. It's analogous to washing wooden cutting boards, you should always wet them on both sides, otherwise they will get warped as well.
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14887 | How long can a bottle of self-made basil sauce last without rotting?
I made a bottle of basil sauce by myself last year summer. It composed of basil leave, extra virgin olive oil, pine nuts, garlic and parmesan cheese.
It was kept in a glass bottle in the refrigerator, and I've add some lemon juice on the top of the sauce to preserve it.
It should be rotting already right?
That sounds a whole lot like pesto sauce - you sure there wasn't also any garlic?
Yeah, it is pesto, I forgot its name, so I called it basil sauce. I think there is garlic too.
Pesto is just Italian for paste or sauce. This is a basil pesto.
If it's older than a week or two, throw it away. Next time, freeze your remaining sauce.
Pesto will freeze better (or at least, it'll come back from freezing better) if you omit the cheese before freezing.
Last summer was a long time ago. The National Center for Food Preservation has this to say about herbs in oil:
Oils may be flavored with herbs if they are made up for fresh use, stored in the refrigerator and used within 2 to 3 days. There are no canning recommendations. ... Pesto is an uncooked seasoning mixture of herbs, usually including fresh basil, and some oil. It may be frozen for long term storage
Clostridium botulinum is a serious enough hazard with oiled herbs that I'd not trust a dash of lemon juice on top of the oil to protect me from getting sick after 9 months storage. You're much safer freezing the stuff as recommended. Ice cube trays produce nice pesto cubes that you can store safely in a freezer bag for at least a couple years.
Yes, and be especially wary if there was fresh garlic in that mix.
I think it depends on how cold your refrigerator is. I'd try smelling it, and if it smells okay you can try tasting it. If it tastes okay then you're all set, but even if it's not rotten it might have lost its flavor in that time!
In future a good way to go is freezing it in an ice cube tray. Lay it in and drizzle some olive oil over the top to seal out air, and freeze. As soon as it sets up put the cubes into a freezer bag and put the bag into some sort of storage container and back in the freezer. Then you can just pop a cube out when you need some (or cut in half if you need less). Keeps a year easily, and two is possible.
This method is quite impressive.......
I do the same (without the cheese, see comment above), but I keep a separate set of ice cube trays for pesto / stock / etc ... most people just don't seem to like the trace of garlic flavor in their drinks.
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19307 | How do I get a chewy crust from homemade pizza dough?
There's a local pizzeria that makes a crust I really like and I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong in reproducing it. The crust (under the toppings) is about a 1/4in thick. If you look at it as a cross-section, there's a thin layer of cooked crust topped by a more soft, doughy layer, almost like a "dumpling". Looking at the bottom, the crust is medium brown on average.
The dough is homemade, rises for about 2 hours, worked into a crust (about 1/4in thick), and only sets long enough for me to top it. I've tried cooking on a pizza pan, a stone, a cookie sheet, 350, 400, etc.
CLARIFICATION: The dough that I made is NOT from the pizzeria. It's from a recipe book on pizza doughs.
CLARIFICATION 2: The specific part that I'm trying to reproduce is the "doughy" part. If you look at the pizza from the side it has a layer of what appears to be "not completely cooked" dough. No air pockets/bubbles/etc, just dough. I know I'm not explaining this very well, I apologize.
Any suggestions?
You have the actual dough their using and you're having trouble cooking it? Or just reproducing it in whole? The last bit of your answer makes it sound like you have the actual dough.
I recommend starting with a chilled dough, puncturing with a knife or fork (see below), and cooking in a greased pan initially then bricking.
Cooking directly on the stone the entire time works better for thinner crusts than mid-dough. By mid-dough, I am referring to the ones that plump up a bit and finish between 1/4" - 1/2" in thickness. They can have both uniform, almost cake-y cross-sections, or air pockets and bubbles depending on how kneaded they are (more kneading means cake-ier, denser dough).
I worked in a shop that made a mid-dough similar to what you describe. It was a standard dough recipe (flour, water, yeast), but I have had success replicating it at home at 450'F with beer and less kneading. At home I use a pan and then finish either on the rack or a stone. In any case, you get a dough that tears nicely and has a good chew.
The dough itself was mixed in the morning and kept refrigerated for as long as 12 hours as individual shells in greased pizza pans covered with saran wrap. To prepare a pizza, we pulled the shell, punched it with a fork (puncture a ring around the edge to create a crust, puncture the inside to allow for air). Dress with sauce and toppings.
We had a stone-bottomed oven, but initially the pizza is baked in the oven in the pan until the bottom of the dough has hardened enough to get "bricked" (the dough should be rigid enough as to be removed from the pan with one spatula). At this point you remove the dough from the pan with a spatula and place it directly on the brick. Cook until the top of the dough browns, and the cheese and other toppings are evenly browned.
The chilled dough gave me close to what I was looking for. I think I need to experiment with dough recipes, thickness, and temperature now. Thanks a lot.
In general, you're going to be unable to reproduce pizzaria crust at home oven temperatures. They are most likely baking their pizza at between 600F and 800F for only a few minutes, which produces a crust texture you can't achieve at 400F or even 500F.
This is the reason so many people are trying things like turning backyard grills into ad-hoc pizza ovens.
However, these general tips will help:
use a pizza stone and put the pizza on the stone directly
heat the oven to 500F for at least 1/2 hour, with the stone in it, before baking
roll your pizza dough very thin
don't put a lot of wet toppings on it
You also might want to consider cultivating a sourdough pizza crust, which will be chewier than one risen with commercial yeast.
A stone is the only way to go AFAIC. I would also add that pizza dough should be quite sticky and wet, not a dry, stable dough. This lets it bubble and crisp up.
I tried to roll the dough very thin, but I basically got a cracker. The part that I'm really trying to get is the doughy/soft part of the crust.
Putting the pizza in the smallest space you can make in your oven will also help heat it quickly. Cook's Illustrated recommends putting a stone on the top rack in it's highest position, so the heat reflection off the top of the oven will send it right back to the pizza.
I realize I'm coming into this rather late, however you may want to try adding molasses, instead of sugar, to the dough. This will make the crust more chewier/soft instead of crispier. It's what you put in the dough that will determine the end result.
On a 1:1 basis? Any particular kind of molasses?
Some additional notes referring to my experience;
When placing pizza dough in the cooking tray, make the sides of the dough a bit higher by pressing gently to the sides with your fingers in order not to let any topping’s juice to go underneath the dough.
The cooking tray should be slightly oiled beforehand.
Preheated oven is a “must”.
Pizza dough should be softer than bread dough.
When brushing pizza dough with tomato sauce (done before putting any toppings on) make sure not to use too much sauce.
I use bottom of the oven or the first grid depending on whether the pizza tray is stoneware or metal.
When the bottom still needs to be cooked, I place a thick sheet of aluminium foil on top of the pizza to prevent the toppings getting dried out/burned (not covering with foil, just covering it gently).
Another late answer here, but if you want that "raw" dumplingy layer under the sauce, and a crispy bottom, oil the pan (unless you use a stone) and use a sauce like that for spaghetti, instead of a thicker, pasty pizza sauce. I find for me I get that layer and it's my favorite part.
I usually stretch mine into an oiled pan, and bake 12 min exactly in a 450 degree oven and I get crispy golden crust, soft fluffy chewy inner, and that dumpling like layer you're looking for.
You need to develop the gluten in the flour to get a chewy consistency. Be sure to knead the dough until is smoothly stretches when you pull it apart.
I use a recipe using 1/2 cup semolina flour and 2 1/2 cups bread flour, called Cheri's Favorite Pizza Dough.
Nobody mentioned the flour, I use bread flour for pizza crust and add a bit of gluten too. The gluten and kneading help produce the chewy, elastic crust...
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113541 | How long can anchovies under olive oil stay in fridge?
I have some anchovies dipped in olive oil and parsley. How long can they stay in fridge before going bad?
Does this answer your question? How long can I store a food in the pantry, refrigerator, or freezer?
I don't think that the specific mix I asked could be easily found there
Fabio, there is no specific number for each and every possible combination and it’s not necessary. That’s why we have a generic Q/A. Your dish fits in multiple categories (previously canned protein, opened / herbs in oil / generic “cooked dish”), the shortest time of which should be applied, so 3-4 days. If you notice anything before that, discard anyway.
No you're wrong Stephie, that's why there's a website to ask new questions. That's how the new questions are made
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113345 | Does adding un chopped garlic add any flavor at all?
In Italian cuisine, garlic is put un chopped if not cut in small pieces. I personally doubt it could give a lot of taste during a short Sautee.
Is that correct and what are the actual differences of adding garlic in different conditions like chopped fine or with or without peeling?
https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/67383/67 . And maybe you just need to try adding more: https://altonbrown.com/recipes/40-cloves-garlic-chicken/
The more chopped-up you chop the garlic, the faster the garlic will return flavor when cooking it, but also the faster it loses its flavor.
At my household, we don't really use garlic whole; we either chop them up into a mince, finely chopped or roughly chopped.
We use minced garlic for raw consumption, in soy sauce based dips.
We use finely chopped garlic to flash flavor the oil we use to stir-fry in; first heat up the oil, dump in the finely-chopped garlic, use a spatula to shuffle the garlic around a little, and put in the stir-fry ingredients.
We use roughly-chopped garlic to flash flavor the oil we use to stir-fry in, while having it serve as a vegetable of the dish.
We use whole garlic cloves baked, to compliment baked dishes. And also for brines that take days to finish brining.
Of course, the way we use garlic in my household may be not-optimal, or what I listed above may seem random, but there's how we use garlic for ya :)
Garlic is an ingredient whose impact you can fine tune, depending on how you handle it. A clove used unpeeled, peeled and left whole, crushed, sliced, chopped, minced, or turned into a paste, all yield slightly different results, and depend on the impact you are looking for. So, yes, a whole, peeled clove, cooked in some olive oil, for example, does impart flavor (as well as cooking the clove of garlic...which changes its flavor). It really depends on the desired impact of the garlic in your dish. In general, the more surface area, the stronger the flavor...but also the easier it is to burn and ruin the flavor of the whole dish.
It also gives you one huge garlicky mouthful at some surprise point during the meal; similar to whole olives vs tapenade, a whole chilli vs fine-diced, whole cardamom.. etc.
Whole...or large slices..are also easy to see and remove, if you don't want them in your mouth.
That too! It's whole smorgasbord of potential delights (or bits left on the side of your plate) :)
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79263 | How does one cook Banh Su Xue?
I just got this from the Asian supermarket:
It says on the back "product requires cooking before consuming!", but nothing else. How does one cook frozen Ban Su Xue?
Somebody asked a pretty identical question to yours here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.food.asian/rUrwjMzLtgU and looking at the ingredients on your package, it sounds pretty similar to http://rasamalaysia.com/kuih-dadar-kuih-tayap/ which would make me think that yes, probably eat it at room temperature like the first link said.
The label might give great info. Can you show us both sides of that? At this point, I suspect that those are filled with mung bean paste or similar. If that is correct, steaming those packets is likely your best option.
Check out this video which I found from a Google search for "Ban Su Xue". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0GJbNMN7BU&t=308s I can see in your picture something that looks like a filling very much like the cakes in the video. I strongly suspect that these are very similar cakes. I leave this as a comment instead of an answer because I'm really just guessing. Let us know!
@Setek: the package says it needs cooking, and it doesn't look at all similar to the pictures in the link you posted :/ I think the answerer on that Google thread was just wrong.
@Jolenealaska: The label only has nutritional information on the back :/ I'll check the video.
I am suspecting that this is translation issue. I am wondering if the phrase "product requires cooking before consuming" is actually implying that the product has not been cooked already. just a guess. I also watched the video when saw this question first asked and my thought was the packed product looks like it has already been steamed. Open the package and see if it holds it shape. Uncooked or un steamed it would be a gelatinous pudding type of consistency. break one open. finding someone who speaks Vietnamese would be a good idea. take it with you to a Pho restaurant and ask the server.
It's hard to tell from your photo but if the báhn xu xê cakes were cooked, the outer green part would be fairly translucent since it's mainly composed of tapioca flour. Tapioca cooks clear. Yours looks cloudy still.
Báhn xu xê cakes are steamed for 15 minutes and then cooled. I've seen places where they're steamed in plastic wraps and I suppose that's safe but not what I'd consider appetizing. I honestly can't say how well they would hold together without some kind of wrapping while steaming. Traditionally, they were wrapped in pandan leaf folded into a box shape. Pandan leaves are used for flavouring as well as wrapping. My best suggestion is to rewrap them in double thickness parchment baking paper if you don't wish to use plastic wrap and tie with string to hold together. The paper will get soggy, of course, but should hold their shape.
By the way, báhn xu xê translates as "husband-wife cakes" and is traditionally served at weddings.
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99922 | Should you add specific garden-fresh herbs to a stew at the beginning or the end?
There are several questions about when to add spices and herbs to soup, but this one is more specific. I'm making a stew that is to be thickened with roux. A soupy tomato based soup will be simmered for a few hours, blended, chilled, then added to a roux to thicken.
I have a variety of garden herbs that I'd like to cut and add; specifically some combination of basil, oregano, thyme and summer savory.
Should I add these to the soup as it is simmered, so they will be blended and incorporated? Or should I mince the herbs and stir them into the thickened stew at the end.
Mind you, this isn't a bouquet garni situation where you flavor the stock as it simmers, I'm experimenting with incorporate a larger volume of fresh herbs into the meal itself as a principal component; something I picked up from the heavy use of dill and parsley in some spanakopita recipes. I want the herbs to provide a green bulk to the stew, but I also want the flavors to persist.
It depends on the herbs.
Something like thyme or rosemary or oregano can withstand cooking for a long time and should be removed before eating or blending (IMO)
Other herbs like basil will not withstand long cooking time and should be added raw at the end, or at serving time to have their full flavor shine.
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99260 | What, apart from gravy, can you make with chicken giblets?
I just smoked a whole pile of chickens for a Memorial Day BBQ, and have a whole tupperware full of giblets in the fridge. You can use giblets for broth, and for gravy. Is there some other way to use them? Perhaps as an entree?
Dang it King, its closed. And I invented an awesome giblet rhubarb meatball recipe for you! I want to make it now but not sure where I will find that many giblets.
@Willk And I threw out the giblets about an hour ago :(
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94624 | How to get intended taste using baking powder instead of acid + baking soda?
A coffee cake recipe calls for using sour cream and baking soda. I understand that acid + baking soda is a leavening agent and you can use them as a substitute for baking powder. But I only have baking powder.
If I use baking powder instead, will the taste of the coffee cake be majorly affected? It won't have the sourness of the cream anymore, but how important is that in a coffee cake?
Can I add something else along with the baking powder so I can get something close to the intended original taste?
Related https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/7821/substitution-for-baking-soda-in-pancakes, https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/68637/replacements-for-baking-soda-in-a-cake
If you use baking powder instead of baking soda in this recipe, you'll have an excess of acid. That's not too bad (an excess of baking soda gives a soapy, bitter flavour). The effect is likely to be as if your sour cream was slightly more sour. If you wish to tone that effect down you could replace a small amount of your sour cream with cream or even milk.
The rise may be slightly affected but this should be minor; with or without the acid in the baking powder you're limited by the alkaline component. Baking powder is usally double-acting meaning some of the reaction is delayed until it gets hot. Sour cream plus baking soda is likely to start reacting immediately, so substituting the other way would be worse.
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79502 | Tiny beads/flecks of uncooked dough all through my bread
I'm not sure exactly what aspect of my bread-making is at fault here, but this is close to my tenth loaf, and each one has turned out a bit differently as I've tried to work on my technique to produce better results. A couple of times the loaves have been perfect but the last three have consistently had these little doughy flecks all through the loaf, surrounded by a nice well-cooked texture.
Here is a picture of today's loaf:
I live in Brisbane, Australia, and most days during this learning curve have been at the very least in the high 20's, and often around the 30-31C mark (85-90F). The humidity can get quite high too, often 60-90%.
I'm using a crusty white bread mix from Laucke Mills, which is basically bread flour with some kind of bread improver mixed in. Here are the steps I take:
I activate the yeast by adding it to the specified quantity of water (tepid, roughly lukewarm) along with a teaspoon or so of sugar, mix it up and let the yeast activate (5-10 mins)
I add the specified quantity of flour to the mixing bowl and add the activated yeast and water mix a well in the middle, then mix with a large metal mixing spoon until a have a sticky hunk of unkneaded dough. It generally looks like the pictures in other guides I have read.
I flour the breadboard with a thin-ish layer of flour (I have a really large breadboard, so there's enough space), spread the flour around with my hands and then tip the rough, sticky doughy ball into the middle.
I start kneading, and have been trying to speed up the rate at which i fold, knead and turn, because, despite using the exact quantities of flour and water specified, I find the stickiness of the dough makes it stick to my hands really quickly, and if that happens, I end up having to rub my hands to uncake the dough onto the side (I'm not letting the caked bits get back into the dough, so that can't be the issue). Even then, it's hard to knead the dough to a point where I get that thin gluten window every guide out there claims that I should be able to see after 10-15 minutes of kneading.
Eventually the dough ball seems consistent enough, so I then proof it in a lightly oiled mixing bowl for 40 minutes or so, as that's how long it takes in this weather to roughly double in size.
Next I punch the dough down a bit and then upend it back onto the now-clean breadboard, flatten it out a bit to try and release the gas, then shape it into a roughly bread-like shape.
I allow it to rise in the tin (with baking paper) for roughly 30 minutes, as that's how long it seems to take to get a significant rise, then I put it in the oven, which supposedly should be around 220C by now. I also put a tray of boiling water at the bottom of the oven, as various guides seem to recommend.
After about 40 minutes, the result is what you see in the picture. On this occasion I tried to put it back and each time I pulled it out, I cut off a test slice to see if the extra time had been the issue. The doughy bits did cook a bit more by the third replacement, but eventually the crust got too brown and hard and I knew it was time for a postmortem.
Would greatly appreciate any advice.
Are you measuring the water by weight or volume? Too little water might cause dry clumpy bits like you observe. Another thing to try might be letting the flour + water autolyse for ~25 minutes before kneading it.
@thrig : an excellent point -- this sounds like a warm enough environment that the yeast might be overly active, and not giving the water and flour enough time to work. Letting it rise overnight in the fridge might be a solution. If it comes out this way again, I might be tempted to slice it and toast the slices lightly.
Does it only happen with this mix, or also with homemade recipes starting from scratch? The bread improver is usually an emulsifier, so I wonder if badly mixed grains of it could change the texture so that it prevents it from baking properly in spots.
Thanks for the comments; I think I've been kneading too much flour into the bread and being afraid of the stickyness, when in fact I should embrace the stickiness, allow it to stick to my hands, and remember that what's stuck to the board and my hands will work back into the bread as the dough starts to even out.
thrig - I am measuring the water by volume, as per the recipe;
Joe - yep that's basically been the only way to salvage it so far;
rumtscho - I haven't baked enough loaves yet to have a sense of that
Maybe a silly question, but are you cooling the loaf before cutting into it? I know the cut surface sometimes comes out tacky, sticky, or doughy if cut into hot - cooling quickly or steam condensing or squishing, that is, compression from cutting while the loaf is fragile. Moist and soggy patches in bread might seem under-cooked even if the loaf is actually well cooked (perhaps exacerbated by some other uneven texture?). It might not be the issue, but it might be worth trying to see if letting it cool before cutting helps.
Might not be your problem but you might consult this question regarding steam creation in your oven: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/21627/3772
I think the real answer is this: cutting into the loaf too soon is the problem. When it's straight out of the oven it's still very moist and soft inside. A bread knife hooks tiny bits of the bread and squishes them together into beads because it's still very moist and malleable until it's had a chance to cool properly. Once it's cooled, the bread knife will saw through it properly, but until then, it doesn't have enough strength in the texture to properly separate while being cut. On top of that, during the cooling, it's still finishing cooking a bit on the inside, and the cooling allows that process to complete properly.
Edit: I verified this yesterday when I cooked two loaves of bread together. The first loaf I cut into almost immediately after removing it from the oven and encountered the exact problem I described in the original question. Later on after it had cooled I cut further into the bread and there were no beads of dough. In addition, the other loaf, which I gave to someone else and so was able to cool before being cut, was also devoid of doughy beads.
Also, it may have helped that these two loaves were the first two that I forced myself to stop being afraid of stickiness in the dough, and which I improved my kneading to stop squashing the dough so much (it's not a pancake!) and instead tended toward rolling and massaging it, with some lift-and-slap thrown in due to the stickiness. The stickiness eventually lessened, especially as I added a little more flour over time, and the texture of the final dough ball was fine.
Keeping to the very simple - if the crust is too brown and the interior is not cooked, the oven is too hot. Reduce temperature, increase time (or reduce loaf cross section; thinner loaves cook faster.) Starting hot and turning down after 20 minutes is a common approach.
Is the water in the pan boiling off within 15 minutes or so? if not, either remove the water pan (carefully, it's easy to get burned with a pan full of boiling water) after that time or reduce the amount of water in it until it does boil dry in 15-20 minutes.
You can check the loaf by removing it from the pan and "tapping on the bottom and hearing it sound hollow." If it's not there, put it in for another 5-10 minutes and check again. Cutting the loaf is going to complicate any further baking considerably.
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79533 | Flourless cake didn't set
I made a cake with butter, eggs, caster sugar and 70% chocolate today. The cooking directions suggest 30 minutes in the oven in a bain marie. I followed the instructions to a tee (as I have done in the past). However, for some reason, the cake didn't set. I left it in the oven for an additional 25 minutes, and then let it rest on the side and cool down for 2 hours. It was still extremely moist and hadn't set as it had done in the past.
I cannot think of anything different that I did. The butter was fresh, the eggs were laid by my own chickens this morning and the chocolate was cooking chocolate.
Is there any way to salvage the cake? The oven doesn't seem to have worked this time!
Do you have an oven thermometer? Is your oven getting lazy? And for salvaging- that sounds like it would be a great syrup as a topping or to be made into mousse.
It's a bit more cooked than that (luckily). Just wondering what will finish the cooking off. The oven is only about 8 months old, and is a Gaggenau, so would be really surprised if it's letting me down. I'll check next time I use it.
Small variations in your ingredients can make a big difference, I'm thinking your eggs. Fresh eggs are great, however they are inconsistent on size. if your eggs were larger than normal it could explain it. I would suggest weighing the egg you use to get a consistent result
I think you are probably correct @GdD. Next time I will compare egg weights!
One other factor that might've been different, along with size variation in your eggs, is their freshness. Fresh eggs will have a higher water content than older eggs. The other times it set fine, did you use freshly laid eggs?
When I didn't use fresh eggs, it did set fine. Although as GdD mentioned above, I think that the fresh eggs weigh considerably more than the supermarket ones, which may have caused the issue.
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83121 | Expensive or cheap olive oil for pesto?
Usually if I'm sauteeing some veggies or cooking with olive oil I will use a cheaper bottle, but if I am making a dressing or a dish where the oil really stands out I will go with a bottle from a specialty shop. I am making pesto for the first time and wondering which way I should go.
It's really a toss up ... if you want more of the olive oil flavor coming through, you'll want an extra virgin ... but if you want the basil and other ingredients standing out, you go with the cheaper stuff (unless the cheaper stuff is spoiled or has other off-flavors, and that's why it's cheap)
The one you already own.
And then you make a small quantity of pesto so to taste it, learn it, understand it. This way you can decide which way you want to go, and choose oil accordingly.
It's not a matter of the price itself, but of the taste that it adds to the pesto, and the taste you want for your: it's your kitchen and your food :-)
Agreed ... until you make it once so you know what it tastes like, you won't know how to adjust it (or if it even needs adjusting).
It doesn't need to be "expensive," but it should be extra virgin olive oil, not just regular olive oil. You don't cook a pesto, so the flavor of the olive oil will definitely stand out. Also, when buying/storing extra virgin olive oil, always go for a dark bottle and store in a cool dark place, as the oil is sensitive to light (just like beer or wine).
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80920 | Do I roast leg of lamb differently when shank is still attached?
I am going to avoid using the terms american or frenched because I don't fully understand what they mean.
But I am going to be roasting a full leg of lamb, including the shank. Most of the recipies I am looking at don't really make any distinction, they just say leg of lamb. In general, do I need to prepare anything differently when I am roasting a full leg of lamb vs just the upper part of the leg?
Lamb shank (lower leg) is best served by long, slow cooking. (It is my favorite cut of lamb.) The upper leg is, in my opinion, best roasted until just pink, although it does not suffer unduly from longer and slower cooking than does, e.g., its beef counterpart. BBC Food, e.g., has a couple of brief discussions on shank and leg.
The trick with cooking both together is to marry the times and temperatures so that both are at their best. My suggestion (I have not tried this) would be long and slow braising with both, then, when the shank completes, remove the shank and liquid and finish off the leg at a higher than normal roasting temperature to give it a nice surface. I don't think it will quite the pinkness I like, but it should still be a tasty meal.
Interesting, I will need to give this a try next time. I cooked it all the same this time so the shank did come out a little more well done, but given that the upper leg came out rare, it was good to have some more well done parts to serve some of the guests.
No, just carry on as normal. If you find the 'shank' over cooking, cover it with tin foil.
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80928 | Can I increase cooking time of bread to make it less gooey?
I've been experimenting with gluten-free baking (due to Celiac, not because I think it will make me skinny). I've made great cakes and cookies, but recently tried to make rolls. In the process I've discovered how to make waffles and muffins, completely by accident. Today while "playing around" with my muffin recipe, hoping to make delicious oat bran muffins, I noticed that the insides didn't quite get done. Eventually they did sort of solidify.
So, what does any of this have to do with bread? Well, for some reason the "muffins" turned out instead to be bread. I don't mean "bread-like" I mean "bread" except in muffin tins. So, using this exact recipe I should be able make bread, but I'm worried about the bread not getting done all the way through since the cross section in a bread pan (which I'd have to buy) is larger than the muffin tins I was using.
My thought on how to "solve" this problem would be to lower the temperature a bit, and then extend the cooking time. The current muffins were cooked for about 30 minutes at 375 °F. I was thinking maybe 325 °F for 40?
It's very hard to answer questions like this without a recipe, could you post yours?
I actually considered posting the recipe, but decided against it to keep the question general, and any replies focused on my question instead of the recipe. From my experience with on-line communities I'm more likely to get my recipe picked over and told how idiotic it is, leaving my question completely unaddressed – can a recipe with the general description can be cooked more evenly by extending the cooking time and lowering the temperature?
I'm sorry if this is insufficient, but I'm not in the mood for being trolled, which is what seems to happen so frequently. I truly am sorry.
If there is some piece of information in specific that might help I can give that. I've just had a lot of exposure lately to toxic communities and am extra guarded right now.
Generally speaking, no I don't think you can.
I've had bread which has turned out sticky, gooey, or doughy in the center. Usually, when we see this, we stick it back in to bake longer - there's a difference between under-baked and gooey, though it can be hard to tell at a glance. Also usually, this doesn't work to make the center of gooey bread less so (except by drying out the whole loaf, which is not much of an improvement). Gooey-in-the-center bread is (for me) often caused by other texture problems, often not rising enough, not holding its crumb, being dense as well as gooey.
If your bread is under-cooked, then lower and slower cooking will help in that it lets the center cook longer without overdoing the crust. If that is the primary problem, your solution should help - though you should perhaps try baking to internal temperature or looking for physical markers of done-ness (like a hollow sound on tapping) instead of relying on baking time alone. I should note there is some difference in texture depending on when the loaf is cut into (the release of steam and temperature, see questions here and here). An under-baked loaf which has been cut into to be found gooey will likely not improve as much from further baking as compared to the same loaf cooked straight through, and a loaf which has been allowed to finish cooling before cutting will be dryer and sturdier than one cut into while still warm.
The sorts of things which usually do help gooey bread, or perhaps I mean the sorts of things whose lacking usually causes gooey-ness, includes using enough and strong enough leavening, making sure the dough is strong enough, with enough binders, to hold the air bubbles and let it rise well, and maybe trying a flatter, wider loaf (less pressure from the weight of the dough helps the dough keep its rise), or just smaller ones for quicker cooking to help set the crumb before the leavening is exhausted.
Thank you. That pretty much answered my question. Thing with this gooey bread was that the texture was other wise spot on and even the gooey parts had bubbles. It was weird. There was no lack of structure what so ever anywhere.
I bake a lot of sourdough bread, and I find that the higher the hydration percentage (the ratio of water to flour) the "gooier" the bread. You might want to try using less water in your recipe.
I've found that the amount of water is the number one means of controlling how much my gluten-free baked goods rise. It isn't that it makes them rise faster, it determines how much they will rise given any amount of time. I have no idea why, but that's how it is. I had to learn this that hard way. Thanks though. :D
I tried it out again today. I think this IS the issue. There were plenty of bubbles, so I think I'll add a bit more flour next time. Or rather, add coconut flour (just a bit). My bread sank in the middle as soon as I took it out. The typical cause, or so I've read, for this is too much liquid. Also, it had rather large bubbles, so I'm not too worried about it rising if I add a bit more flour.
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81243 | Is cast iron cookware from China safe?
I recently purchased a cast iron bread pan, and didn't see that it was made in China on the Amazon sales page. Oops. I saw it on the box and haven't opened it yet. I know there is a lot of concern when it comes to Chinese goods and heavy metals. I like heavy metal { \m/...(>.<)…\m/ }, but not in my food. So, is something like this safe? I Googled the question, but like with so many things it looks more like uninformed fear than anything else.
I should have spent a bit more time searching. One of the searched results that looked like a fear video was actually the opposite. Here is some stuff from that video and comments.
First: Lead boils at about half the temperature that iron melts. So even if you start out with a mix of lead and iron, it won't last long. Second:
A bit of arithmetic: - Cast Iron Assay can expect Lead content to be 0.001 to 0.15%. (By weight or volume is not significant, see below) My 26.5 cm Chinese skillet, as yet unused (which is why I am researching) weighs 2.1 kg. At 0.15% that is a total lead content of 3.15g. Realistically, how much of that can ever get into the food? Cast iron density is around 6800 - 7800 kg/m3. At the higher figure this works out to a volume for my skillet of 2.1/7800 m^3 = 2.7 x 10^-4 m^3= 270cc. Ignoring the handle and sides, let us consider only the flat cooking surface diameter 20cm, and assume a depth of say 1mm available to leach the lead. Volume of a cylinder = pi r^2 x h = 3.14 x 10cm^2 x 0.1 = 31.4cc. Thus 31.4/270 x 100 = roughly 11.6%. 11.6/100x3.15 = 0.37g = 370μg of lead available. Lead toxicity is at about 10 μg/dL of blood. Average human blood volume is 500dL. So, if ALL the available lead in the pan was taken out AT ONCE, and you managed to absorb it ALL, just into your blood, , you would have a blood level of 370/500 = 0.74μg/dL, about 1/14th the toxic level, before your system kicked it out at around half per 30 days. Go figure.
--flamencoprof
So no, I don't need to worry.
edit: Hmm. The video's figures were wrong. Iron melts at about 1811K and lead boils at about 1749. Close but not quite. Still, from this source it seems that a typical blast furnace should still boil lead.
There are commercially made steels in which lead is intentionally added, eg steels meant for turning on a lathe - lo and behold, not all the lead is boiled out when making it. Also, not every mixture of materials can be divided by simple distillation (see eutectic alloy, see azeotrope...)...
Sooo.... from that, is it safe or not, you just quoted the stuff but did not say decisively what it made you conclude. 'So I dont need to worry' but then an edit below.
Please test for lead instead of guessing. A home lead paint test kit should work.
You're right, guessing is bad, but I am not guessing. The boiling point of lead is lower than the melting point of iron.
The melting point of lead (621°F), a boiling point of 3,164°F and starts to vaporize The point where Iron is ready to cast is 2300-2500.F doesn't come close to the point of stratification of the metals. It's all about the metal you start with in the first place. Chinese Cast Iron? Who knows
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80937 | Problems with rising sponge in larger tin
For years I've made classic 6/6/6 and 8/8/8 Victoria sponges (and many variants) in two 7inch tins, with good results.
Now I've tried to bake the same recipe in one 8 inch spring form tin, and had to almost double the cooking time as the centre remained uncooked. Eventually the middle was still moist, while the edges were almost brownie-like in texture, and the cake hadn't risen much at all.
The same result occurred with damp towel around the tin edges, to even cooking pacing, and extra baking powder, so I'm concluding that somehow either something is fundamentally wrong with my approach, or the tin is cursed. Any insight would be much appreciated.
I see nothing wrong here. The two 7 inch tins have a total area of almost 310 square inches, while one 8 inch tin has a total area of 200 square inches. So your batter is 1.5 times thicker in the one tin.
Baking time does not increase linearly with thickness, so a doubled time is not out of the ordinary. Time is not a prescription in baking anyway, you have to bake it until done and not until the timer goes off.
The "hard on the edges, gooey in the middle" is a classic sign of too high oven temperature. Reduce the temperature to bake the thick cake.
Alternatively, make only 2/3 of the batter, or find a 10 inch tin (314 square inches area).
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80954 | Cooking time and temperature for one oven and two different dishes
I want to warm a 9.6lb spiral ham (275- 15 minutes per lb) and cook a macaroni and cheese casserole (375 for about 30-45 min) in the same oven and have them ready at the same time. How do I do this?
Possible duplicate of Cooking ham and scalloped potatoes
It's true that we'd probably benefit from a canonical question about this sort of thing, and at that point would be able to close many things as duplicates. But since it's not a one-size-fits-all thing (larger vs smaller temperature gaps, things that benefit from being served soon after baking, etc), individual specific questions like that proposed one tend not to make good duplicates.
Heat ham at 275.
Remove ham and hold. Covered with foil and maybe towels to hold heat.
Raise oven temp, bake mac & cheese.
Ham should still be warm when mac and cheese done.
If it were me, I'd return the ham to the oven for the last fifteen minutes or so to crisp the skin a bit with the higher temperature.
The ham (not a spiral) I did yesterday said 350 for 10-15 minutes per lb.
My Mac & cheese recipe (BH&G) bakes at 350 for 35-40 minutes.
I would cover the ham with foil, bake it at 350, and put the mac & cheese in the oven for the last 35 minutes.
I didn't do them both yesterday, but if I did, that's probably how I'd do it.
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81223 | How to make lemon powder using lemon juice like milk powder?
Recently I had a good lemon harvest , and I'm experimenting with it . I like to know if I can make lemon powder , so I can use them later . I tried heating , but it all went black and became unusable , is there a way to remove all the water in lime juice without harming the taste ?
Is powdered peel a viable alternative?
It's not powder, but there are ways to put them up for later. For example, Morocan preserved lemons (salt cured). I suspect you could can lemon juice, as it's acidic enough, but in recipies for canning lemon curd, they call for bottled lemon juice so they can be more assured of the acidity. (I'd get some litmus paper and powdered citric acid if it needed adjusting, once I knew what acidity level was needed)
Buy booze and make a bunch of limoncello?
The problem is that you likely cannot afford it. It is done by vacuum, so the machine (rotovap) will cost you about 10 000 dollars, or you can find a few Chinese noname suppliers for maybe 6 000.
It is an amazing thing to play with in the kitchen, but it will cover the cost of buying supermarket lemons for several lifetimes.
Any conventional ways of conserving the lemons will result in something entirely different. Certainly not lemon powder which can be rehydrated to something lemon-juice like. But there are other techniques for preserving lemons, which simply create a different end product with different uses. You could ferment them, or make jam, or preserve the peel only, etc. This is the more feasible way to deal with them.
You could use a freeze drier (Lyophilizer) instead of Rotovap, Vacuum pump and cold trap shouldn't set you back more than $500. I think either Rotovap or Lyophilizer might fail to give you a powder though, because some of a lemons flavor comes from compounds like limonene: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limonene which are liquids. I've never seen lemon powder, so I best you'll end up with at best a paste if you pull out all the water.
If we are freezing lemon juice then do we need to add anything to keep the taste as it is for a time?
I have placed fresh squeezed lemon juice in a Harvest Right freeze dryer. It does turn it to a powder. Within a short amount of time it changes to a sticky clump. I have been reading that you add Maltodextrin to it so it will not cake. I am interested in the ratios of this.
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112124 | Sombra Pumpkin: Is it known by other names?
I bought pumpkin from German Supermarket and its name is Sombra.
But I can't find any information about it in internet. Is it known by some other name? I want to know so that I can look for recipes.
Upon searching I found may be its called as Winter sweet Pumpkin, but I can't find any information about that either!
Are you sure it is a name of the pumpkin type? Supermarkets sometimes label produce with "brand" names, I've had a "dino melon" this summer (with a dinosaur on the sticker), and sometimes also with the geographic area where it grew.
With answers now starting to take guesses at all kinds of pumpkin based on appearance: there are resources on the Internet such as this one to check: https://www.ichkoche.at/kuerbis-lexikon. Apparently, this color is called "blue" in a pumpkin, but I don't think you can make an identification based on appearance only.
I love the squash naming site!
I am a vegetable farmer in Germany but I am from the U.S. originally. This variety is called Winter Sweet in America. I grow Sombra in the Pfalz and we actually order the seeds from the U.S.. “Winter Sweet” squash is an American squash variety and is fairly new to Germany.
Here's a link to the seeds: https://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/squash/winter-squash/winter-sweet-organic-f1-kabocha-squash-seed-3034G.html
The link indicates it's a type of kabocha squash, which seems to be related to a kind of Buttercup squash. It's C. maxima. It's also an F1 hybrid. Buttercup squash are really, really good with lots of flavor, by the way (although, I don't describe the standard Buttercup as sweet; Blue Doll F1 is the sweetest squash I've tried, but tastes quite different and is still excellent: https://www.neseed.com/products/blue-doll-f1-hybrid-pumpkin-seeds ).
Most winter squash is fairly interchangeable when cooking.
Obviously, there are differences in them (sweetness, density, size, flesh color), but if you're cutting it up and roasting it, then it's fairly universal (but you might need to cut up denser ones into smaller bits).
Tozer Seeds describes it as:
a combination of sweetness, flaky texture and depth of flavour
(Kings Seeds uses the exact same description)
I'm not sure what they mean by 'flaky', but it might mean that it can be treated like spaghetti squash, where the fibers are such that it can be cooked whole and then removed from the skin in long strands as a pasta substitute.
As it looks to be a smaller pumpkin, and they mention it's sweet, I'd recommend trying recipes for "acorn squash".
And, if you roast it and it's not quite right ... then you can always mash it with other flavorings, or blend it with some stock to turn it into soup.
Also worth noting -- I found the seed descriptions by searching for 'sombra squash' as pumpkin is a type of winter squash.
I agree with your statement that "most winter squash are fairly interchangeable", but I'm not sure I would go with your final recommendation of acorn, which are much smaller and do not keep as long. Additionally, the cooked skin of an acorn squash is edible, which may not be the case with a sombra. The hubbard squash seems a closer match, with thick skin, sweet flesh, comparable size and even color.
@BenjaminKuykendall : it's edible? Wow, that takes a braver person than me. And Hubbards aren't quite a close match on size. They're pretty large, and I think that picture is cropping off it being held in the palm of someone's hand.
Blue Hokkaido pumpkins would be a closer match in size/weight. However, those aren't exactly easy to find either.
If looking for recipes, try any recipe for pumpkin.
I bought this exact one at Lidl - very pleasant texture when baked (not at all like spaghetti squash and I am not sure how this would be called "flaky"). Not much fibre, taste sweet and reminiscent of chestnut. The skin is edible (if you must), but tougher than in e.g. Hokkaido squash.
Thanks for the reply. May I ask you, how do you know that the skin is edible? Did you find some online sources for this information?
Wikipedia's entry for kabocha squash (Johnny's says this is a kind of kabocha squash) says the rind is edible under the culinary use heading.
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81320 | What went wrong with these pots de creme au chocolat?
I baked pots de creme au chocolat yesterday following this recipe, but something went wrong:
As you can see in the photos below, the chocolate seems to have separated out, forming a relatively firm top layer, while the remainder underneath is lighter in color and has an unappetizing wet mousse-like texture.
I followed the recipe closely, but let me add some clarifications to avoid ambiguity:
I made the chocolate variant only, so doubled the quantities of dark chocolate (I used 65%) and cocoa
I beat the eggs and sugar in a stand mixer with a wire whisk attachment, then added the infused milk and then the melted chocolate while still mixing on low speed
I poured the resulting mixture into eight 4oz glass canning jars (~3oz per jar). At this point, the mixture appeared to be homogenous.
I arranged the jars in a 9x12x2" steel pan, placed it into an electric oven preheated to 320 degF, then filled the pan with boiling water to about halfway up the glass jars.
I baked these until the tops would hardly wobble when I tapped the jars, which was at the 29 min mark
Once I removed the jars from the water bath, the layering was immediately obvious in all eight pots de creme. Interestingly, the bottom of the chocolate layer seems to roughly align with the water level in the bath.
After cooling briefly, I put lids on the jars and refrigerated them for several hours. The photos above are after refrigeration overnight.
The only possibility I can come up with is that I inadvertently filled the pan with cold water. I used an electric kettle, and while I thought I heard it bubbling in the background, my attention was focused on another recipe. Maybe I never switched it on.
Is this a likely explanation for these results? I can see how a cold water bath would result in uneven cooking, but I haven't been able to find good reasoning for why the chocolate would separate out on top.
Have you made these before successfully? It took me about 10 tries to get my crème brulee the way that I wanted. Of course this was back in the early 90's before I had YouTube and this website to guide me. That recipe looks really good, I'm going to try it!
No, it's my first attempt, so it's highly likely this is down to a silly oversight on my part. I will definitely be trying again, but want to try and pin down the problem first so I don't repeat it!
For anyone interested, I managed to rescue these pots de creme by emptying the jars into a bowl, beating thoroughly with a handheld electric mixer, and pouring back into the jars. I then baked as above, making sure to use boiling water this time, until an oven-safe meat thermometer in one of the jars read 185 degF, which took about 40 mins. I then removed the water bath from the oven, at which point the water was at about the same temperature, so I let the jars sit in it for another 5 minutes to make sure the custard was heated evenly throughout.
After chilling overnight, the results were encouraging. The custard was homogeneous, cooked just about right, and tasted good! It was quite airy, perhaps due to beating with the handheld electric mixer. I'm not sure how close this is to how the recipe would turn out if done right from the start. I'll report back when I have a chance to try again.
I'm relatively confident I have figured out what went wrong with these pots de creme au chocolat.
I tried this recipe again, and this time I mixed the chocolate a different way to see if it solved the problem. Instead of melting the chocolate first and then adding it to the eggs, sugar and milk mixture, I chopped the chocolate first, then poured the hot milk over the chocolate while stirring.
I noticed that this chocolate and milk mixture never became completely smooth. There were many granules of chocolate (about the size of granulated sugar) floating in the mixture, which would not dissolve, even after prolonged stirring. Tellingly, when I stopped stirring, these granules floated to the top of the milk, forming a layer that was clearly visible through the side of the bowl.
In hindsight, I noticed these granules when I attempted this recipe the first time, but didn't appreciate what they were or that it was abnormal. I found a reference to this issue here:
If your recipe calls for melting chocolate with a liquid, such as
cream, again, the proportions need to be right. Too little liquid, and
your chocolate will separate and look horrible (this can usually be
corrected by adding more liquid). If you have too much liquid and
don’t add it slowly enough, however, you may end up with small
particles of chocolate suspended in it.
It looks like this applies to both methods I used to mix the chocolate with the milk, since a large volume of liquid was involved in both cases.
I was able to solve the problem using a handheld mixer on high speed to beat the chocolate and milk, which broke up the granules and gave a smooth mixture. I then added this to the egg and sugar mixture and proceeded with the recipe, which produced homogenous, perfectly-cooked pots de creme au chocolat!
So, to conclude, I'm confident the problem was that the chocolate didn't mix fully with the milk, resulting in chocolate granules that floated to the top of the mixture, forming this chocolate-rich layer on top of the pots de cremes. I It should be possible to prevent these granules forming by melting the chopped chocolate with a smaller amount of milk (but enough so that it doesn't seize), and if you get granules, they can be broken up by beating with a handheld electric mixer on high speed.
One side note, for anyone trying this recipe: pouring the mixture into the jars or ramekins through a fine sieve is useful remove any solids that would impact the smooth texture (e.g. chalazae from the eggs or overcooked milk solids).
You've answered your own question. The water bath should have gone all the way up to just above the crème in your pots. I'd also bet that you had this on the top rack of your oven, this type of water bath should be on the lowest rack to keep the tops from cooking faster than the bottoms which is what looks like happened. I've had the same thing happen with crème brulee before.
Once I removed the jars from the water bath, the layering was
immediately obvious in all eight pots de creme. Interestingly, the
bottom of the chocolate layer seems to roughly align with the water
level in the bath.
What would the mechanism be of creating darker cream where there is no water bath? I have never heard of such a thing happening, and if there was a water bath related problem, I would have expected it to be something else, like a curdled grainy structure.
Thanks @haakon319. I had this on a rack positioned in the middle of the oven. I've never seen a recipe calling for the water level to be above the tops of the custards. Can you cite an example or reasoning for this?
@rumtscho this dark layer on top is what I find very puzzling. It really seems like almost all the chocolate went into this top layer. It's not just a matter of the top being cooked more than the bottom.
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81486 | How to store crumble cake
I've just made a rather delicious raspberry "crumble cake". It consists of a thin layer of cake with whole raspberries, topped with crumble and baked. I get the impression crumble is more of a British thing, so for those that haven't come across it, crumble is basically a rich, buttery, sugary crumb topping that goes nicely crunchy when baked (flour, sugar and lots of butter).
After eating as much as we could today, there's still quite a bit left. I'm now wondering how I can store it so that:
It maintains the textures as well as possible (cake stays moist and crumble stays crunchy)
I don't give anyone a bad stomach
I've always been told you should store cakes at room temperature as putting them in the fridge ruins the texture and generally isn't necessary if they're eaten within a few days. Would the same apply to my crumble cake?
Also, will storing it in a closed container cause the crumble to go soggy due to absorbing moisture from the cake? I've stored some scones overnight in a tub before and by the morning their crunchy outside had gone all chewy.
Any thought appreciated.
I've not ever had an issue with refrigerating cakes... heck, people freeze them all the time with little trouble. Some cakes must be refrigerated depending on the type of frosting they have. I wouldn't want to eat a cake with whipped cream frosting that'd sat out for two days...
Yes, but if you refrigerated crisp sugar cookies (and in the end, that's what a crumble topping is), would you not expect them to get tough and moist?
A lot depends on the climate and your ambient conditions. It is perfectly fine and common to keep it under a bell jar in a NW European climate other than at the peak of summer whenever that may be, but it would not last half a morning in the tropics where a sealed container with silica gel is mandatory before you put it all inside a chiller.
Hey, I thought of silica gel as a possibility... so that is actually done?
Yes, just be sure you have food grade and there is no cobalt in the beads which is used as a wetness indicator for non-food types. For longer storage, and in a humid climate, I would also use oxygen absorbent to protect the fats in the cake too.
The main reason for the desiccant is to prevent condensation as the air in the container chills.
How would cobalt in an intact desiccant pack contaminate food nearby, as long as the food does not contact it and there is no condensation that directly contacted it dripping on the food?
I just prefer not to have colbalt and food in the same container. Also, the packs have to be permeable by necessity. I am not confident enough to assure myself of absence of bead dust. This is especially the case if you regenerate the beads/packs. Thermal cycles compromise mechanical integrity. Dust may not be so obvious with small sachets, but it is always there in large scale.
Just put in a fridge for 20 minutes.When it chills cake becomes harder.Then wrap it using a layer of wrapper and place it back to fridge.
Refrigerating crumbles needs some care. The main enemy is condensation, both initially when going into the fridge and coming out of it, and repeated cycles only accelerate the making of soggy crumbles.
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81517 | Why does my onion have very few, very thick layers, and a hollow center?
My girlfriend sliced into an onion this evening to find this,
…this is weird to me. There are very few layers, the innermost layer was exceedingly thick, and it's hollow. For reference, I'm used to an onion looking like this:
(apologies on the quality) Not hollow, many layers (probably like 10-12 as opposed to the weird onions 5), normal layer thicknesses.
What caused my "weird" onion to look the way it does? Is it safe to eat?
(Both onions looked about the same with the skin on. Not mushy, not too much damage to the outer layers, nothing to tip us off as to what we'd find…)
Was this onion by any chance purchased from a local farmer's market or grower?
I have grown onions that did this, experimenting with over-wintering onions and allowing them a 2nd growth, with onions that I thought too small to harvest in fall so let them keep going. The experiment was a failure. Most rotted, but some did this, produced an onion that looked fine, but few, leathery layers and hollow or growth in the middle. Taste was fine, a bit strong, but texture was less than pleasant. Some flies and disorders like milky rot will also hollow them, but a high share of the time will also result in goo or slime and I have not seen the thick layers associated with those conditions, but that is strictly personal experience. And, it could easily be an individual mutant or bolted plant.
Any stress while growing, too much or too little water, heat, light can cause a plant to bolt and go to full maturity before it should. In you case, to my personal eye, the onion looks like one that went to full maturity rather than a disease. We actually eat many items, like onions and garlic before they are fully mature. In both of these items, blooms are typically removed to try to delay the plant from fully maturing. This helps to produce bigger bulb and clove heads. In the case of onions, if the onion fully matures, rot occurs or a product similar to what you have. Only a guess, but what my thinking would be is an onion that was missed when top buds were removed, or one that fully matured without bothering to bloom.
"Was this onion by any chance purchased from a local farmer's market or grower?": Nope; both onions pictured in the question came from the same bin on the same day at the same Safeway (a grocery store chain in California).
That onion is definitely strange, a hollow center and fewer, thick layers are the sign that something has not gone right when it was growing. Often anomalies are the symptom of the different flies and rusts that can attack onions and other members of the allium family. This doesn't necessarily make them unsafe, unless they smell bad, are mushy or slimy they should be perfectly fine to eat.
On the other hand the idea of eating a nuclear mutant of an onion might not appeal to you, in which case I wouldn't blame you for discarding it and using another one.
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81807 | When was the garlic peeler invented?
I've just discovered today that there is an instrument used for peeling garlic - it looks like a simple tube made of silicone or rubber. Here's a sample video with it.
I have the feeling that this is something kind of new (decades), I think a century ago everyone was peeling their garlic manually, using a knife.
My question is: when, approximately, did this device first appeared in shops? If there was any other garlic peeling device before this one, when it was invented?
I've peeled a lot of garlic without one of those and never used a knife. You can squeeze/smush it and take off the peel by hand too, not just with the tube.
The tube does an ok job of leaving you with whole cloves, if you weren't planning to mince/chop/mash it (say, whole roasted cloves). But most of the time the smash-and-peel is more efficient than daintily removing the skin.
An article on Never Too Curious states that the silicone garlic peeler was patented in 1998.
From the article:
However, I have a neat workaround in my kitchen, a silicone garlic peeler. It is essentially a rubbery tube that comfortably houses a clove of garlic – roll it back and forward on the counter a few times, and the garlic skin slides right off. Genius. The thing was patented in 1998, and the invention “aims to allow the skin to be removed from the individual garlic clove in a safe, speedy, hygienic and odour-free way using, if necessary, only one hand.” I peeled my 20+ cloves in mere minutes. Thank you genius person who invented it. In fact, I know exactly who that is.
The silicone garlic peeler was invented by Ben Omessi, a retired American architect who had taken to designing home items for people with disabilities. When he was recovering from a major operation in 1991, he found he was too weak to stand and peel the amounts of garlic his wife used for cooking. This lead to the idea that handicapped people would have trouble with this task, too. A few years later the E-Z-Rol garlic peeler was born.
I have to admit that I thought it had been around longer.
Edit: Per this article in The New York Times from Feb 1996, the garlic peeler was available for sale at that time and had a patent pending.
Awesome! It's so nice to have a place where you can learn not only about cooking itself but also about the history of cooking and the history of the tools used in cooking! Thanks everyone!
It used to be common to get cheap kitchen drain stoppers made from rubber/cloth sheets. I remember then from the 80's, often they were give-aways with advertising on them. It was a common hack to use them in this way was well as to get a grip on jar lids. When I first saw one of the silicone peelers, my first thought was someone was bright enough to patent the hack and make a dedicated device to lose the worries of a dirty item being used. The 2nd or 3rd time I lost mine though, went back to smash and peel. lol
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117737 | What to prepare first, the fries or the burger? How to serve everything crispy and warm?
I'll be serving 4 burgers (medium rare, toasted buns, choice of cheese, onions, lettuce, etc.) with fries. I can use the oven to keep some of these things warm and crisp, how should I go about it? What sequence, what temp?
Thank you!
Proper fries, from scratch (double cooked..etc.)? How are you cooking both?
So, who's good with GANTT charts?
It would help to know the cooking methods you plan to use
Without knowing how you're cooking these, and your skill level (including your comfort with multitasking) there isn't really anything more that can be said beyond "think about how long each element takes, and work backwards from your desired finish time".
My instinct is that you should have everything cook at the same time. Cut all veggies and make sure fries are pre cooked so the second frying is for exterior crispness. You should be able to drop fries while burgers are cooking. I would put burger down, drop fries, flip burger, pull fries, toast bun and then plate everything. Working to your ability.
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82351 | Amounts of Potassium Sorbate, Calcium Propinate or Ascorbic Acid as preservative in dough
I bake homemade wheat bread, but after a few days it becomes moldy (dark), even the dough in the refrigerator. I understand that calcium propionate and potassium sorbate are safe preservatives, but I don't have any idea what amounts to use.
Normally I use to work with a whole bag (25 Pounds) of wheat flour in a Hobart commercial mixer. This SA question answers how much calcium propionate to use.
But: Can I use potassium sorbate as well? Can I change any of those two products by ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) or should I use all of 3? What amounts should I use then?
Before starting to add food preservatives, have you checked what's your room temperature / fridge temperature with a thermometer? Also, how much is a few days: 2, 3 or 10? Is the air perhaps too humid? Those factors might make a difference in the shelf life of your dough.
also, check this question https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/62280/bread-preservation?rq=1
No to the potassium sorbate, because it will inhibit yeast growth. (Use potassium sorbate as a preservative in chemically-leavened goods such as cakes, cookies... even non-leavened things such as pie crusts. Just don't use it with yeast.)
As for the calcium propionate, check my answer for details on the page to which you provided a link.
Yes, you can use ascorbic acid along with calcium propionate -- but be sure you want the effects it will have on your dough -- such as finer, softer crumb structure and shorter rise/proof times. If you're after a sturdier, more open crumb, ascorbic acid might not be for you. If you want to try it anyway, start with the bare minimum amount. I have read suggested amounts of anywhere from 15 to 80 ppm (0.0015 to 0.0080%) of the flour weight. I've had good luck with about 70 ppm (0.007 baker's percent) -- or roughly 1/16 of a teaspoon of the particular ascorbic acid per pound of flour that I have on hand. That would work out to just a shade over 1½ teaspoons per 25-pound bag of flour! I recommend weighing (especially when working with large batches that can become expensive mistakes -- and be careful; a little goes a very long way!
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82387 | At what temp does mayo and salad dressings spoil?
My compressor is going out and milk spoils. The repair man says it will take a week to 10 days to get a new one. It is still cool in there but not cold. I just opened a new jar of mayo and some salad dressings. I want to be safe but no wasteful.
...get a cooler and some ice?
...cook the mayonnaise to make a delicious mayonnaise chocolate cake. I don't have a solution for the dressing though. http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/chocolate-mayonnaise-cake
Hello Beverly, we only discuss strict food safety here. This means that we don't make guesses about temperatures at which something will spoil, which are 1) unreliable, and 2) not much related to the safe-unsafe distinction. If you want to go by "spoiled" then you have to trust your nose. If you want to go by "safe", see the linked question, and read https://cooking.stackexchange.com/tags/food-safety/info.
I'd throw it out (and everything else that is in the fridge), especially if you know your fridge will be out for days.
Better be safe and loose a few $ than risk of being sick.
"...If you lose electricity, keep refrigerator and freezer doors closed as much as possible. Your refrigerator will keep food cold for about four hours if it's unopened. A full freezer will keep an adequate temperature for about 48 hours if the door remains closed..."
https://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm093704.htm
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82399 | How are Boneless Wings Made
How are the bones taken out of chicken wings to get boneless wings? Is the meat in boneless wings even from chicken wings or a different part of the chicken?
Well; boneless wings cover a wide breadth of different styles; so no one size fits all answer.
Breaded breast meat or chicken tenderloin breaded; probably the higher end version.
The hotdog of chicken; chopped up leftovers formed into shape and breaded. Basically a big chicken nugget with more texture to meat.
Plethora of a mixture of above
Ironically they usually don't contain any chicken wing meat.
They're generally just breast meat, if they're nice ones as opposed to glorified chicken nuggets. If you google "boneless chicken wings" you'll find plenty of results corroborating this.
This recipe calls for "3 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2-inch strips". This one calls for "3 boneless skinless chicken breasts (cut into 1” chunks)". WingStop's menu says "Our boneless wings are 100% all-white breast meat...".
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127996 | What's the recommended method of cooling flan out of the oven?
I just baked 8 individual flans and want to know how to cool them. What is the best way to handle the cooling process so that I don't damage the flan and make it easy for them to extract?
I want to just put them all in fridge to set overnight (it's late in the night and making them took way too long). Currently, out of the oven they are too hot to handle and the hot water is hard to grab the ramekins. Can I leave them to cool the water bath for a bit, then transfer the ramekins over to a baking sheet? Do I need to cover them with foil in the fridge? What temperature should I wait for to move them to the fridge? Is there a reason to not put them straight in the fridge (ceramic ramekins). Does it affect the mixing or adhesion of the flan with the caramel if they go in the fridge too soon?
"Flan" means many things in different countries and languages. There's an implication that you're making a sort with custard and no pastry, but you might want to say exactly what you are doing
I'd put ice in the water, or dip out the hot water (or suck it out with a baster) and replace with cool water (since the hot water will quickly melt the ice) to get things started cooling faster.
My general custard experience (not flan specific) would suggest putting in the fridge uncovered, or else you get a lot of condensation on the foil or other covering that makes a puddle on the custard. Can be covered once cooled, but don't cover when hot/cooling.
If the water bath is deep, a baster will take a long time, but you could start by syphoning. You could also start adding cold as the level gets low, rather than emptying fully. The flowing cold will get some heat out of the ramekins quickly. Admittedly plastic tube isn't a utensil in every kitchen, but it is in mine, from brewing.
Another option is to prop the tray with one corner overhanging the sink, on a very slight tilt, so you can pour cold in the top and displace the hot to flow into the sink. It's useful to have trivets or heat-resistant mats made of something with plenty of friction, like cork.
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82513 | What would happen with food stored in a sterile environment?
Imagine I get a heat-proof plastic bag or other convenient container, put a chicken in it sealling it completely and bake it. All bacterias/living thing should be dead and the food should rely inside a sterile environment, right? Could I be able to store it on my kitchen shelf and leave it there for a long period of time without spoiling it? I have a feeling it's not possible otherwise we would be using this technic for a while, but why itsn't it?
You could just blast it with some form of radiation and be done with it .. A la McDonald's.. - http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/kao2/
You would need to use fancy pressure canning techniques to get the entire contents of your container up to the temperatures required to kill botulism spores (et al?) that could begin to thrive later in the anaerobic environment inside. But given that prerequisite, what you describe sounds like the canned meat products that you find in the grocery store. You can certainly find canned cooked chicken meat there (near the canned cooked tuna in supermarkets near me).
As for a whole canned chicken, no, I don't see that in my area. Maybe the effort required to achieve this isn't cost effective for the consumer market. Doing it at home as you describe doesn't seem worth the trouble to me. Perhaps NASA is working on it.
I can't imagine it would sell well. The skin would be soggy. Not that that stops people from buying rotisserie chickens.
Whole chicken in a can is a real thing (I even bought one once). Chopped has used chicken in a can for a secret ingredient more than once. The dark meat is edible, the broth is OK, the white meat is terribly overcooked and the skin is a soggy mess.
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86997 | Do I need baking powder/baking soda for my flourless corn bread?
So I completely forgot to add the flour into this corn bread recipe:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup sour cream
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup butter, melted
Fold wet ingredients into dry until just moistened,
bake in an 8x8 pan at 400F for 20-25 minutes
Everyone liked it and wants me to make it exactly the same way going forward.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My questions is: Do I still need the baking powder and baking soda?
Need? no. But it does help to leaven it, so unless you want to eat a corn brick, I suggest keeping it :p
I assume from the ingredients you didn't end up making a corn flatbread. The raising agents will give some rise even without gluten from the flour to form a structure, and the egg will help bind the cornmeal into its raised shape. But its probably rather crumbly (the similar cornbread I make is quite crumbly even with the flour).
One important point though: if they (and you) liked what you made before, I suggest you don't change it.
Baking soda is a base and reacts with acid, neutralizing it. When it does so it reduces the acidity of the result, changing the flavor, also the reaction creates flavor compounds you'd lose.
Baking powder is a mix of powdered acid and baking soda, it supplies its own acid and reacts with it, so the flavor balance remains largely consistent. It will still leaven the bread you make, how much it's hard to say.
So you might be able to get rid of the baking powder while getting rid of the baking soda will change the flavor. Who knows, it may be better or worse. I'd suggest leaving it alone unless you want to experiment, in which case reduce one thing at a time and see where it gets you.
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84386 | Hard anodized wok without scratch-resistant coating?
After many years our current wok is dying. It did not have the non-stick coating, and we continue to not want non-stick coating on our wok. But every time I search for "hard anodized wok without non-stick coating" I get 10,000 listings for hard anodized woks WITH non-stick coating.
Can anyone give me some suggestions for what we are looking for? Does it just not exist any more?
Have you tried changing your search? something like - hard anodized wok -nonstick ? Search engines can't always tell that when you say "without" they mean "does not have", but if you say -nonstick it will exclude results that include the term "nonstick"... it won't necessarily catch everything but it should help somewhat. When I use that search, I get results that include: https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Diamond-Nano-Anodized-16-8inch/dp/B01CJ9Q5WQ
Catija, thanks but not helpful, I think all the negatives got you confused -- saying "nonstick" will search for woks with a nonstick coating. That is the opposite of what I want. Saying "not non-stick" just brings up more nonstick choices, the search just ignores the word "not".
No, adding a - before a term excludes it from the search. so if you search "hard anodized wok -nonstick" (without the quotes) it will exclude any page with the word "nonstick" on it.
Try searching for traditional woks instead.
Catija, thank you, didn't understand (or see) the - sign.
Did not have time yesterday to do more searching. Will try again, and report back.
Your title and question body don't match. The title doesn't make sense
Chris H... there is non-stick, and there is non-stick coating. Maybe? I don't know, what I do know is we just have put to rest a hard anodized wok without the non-stick coating that didn't cause us problems with clean up.
you can remove the coating with sandpaper and elbow grease, steel wool to repolish.
I'd strongly recommend getting a good steel wok over aluminum.
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84467 | Sauerbraten with a 1.1 pound beef rump roast
The recipe I'm using says to roast a 3.5-4 pound sauerbraten roast at 325F for approximately 4 hours. I'm making the recipe quite a bit smaller with a 1.1 pound roast.
Should I change the cooking time/temperature? I'm new to roasts, so I really appreciate any insight!
Sauerbraten is meant to be cooked low and slow (schmoren), not like an American roast which has to be removed from the oven as soon as it reaches a target internal temperature. Keep both the oven temperature and the 4 hour time, do not remove it after it reaches the target temperature.
For some background, read SAJ14SAJ's answer to How can you tell when a roast is done?. It is the section on low and slow roasting that applies to Sauerbraten.
Plenty of low and slow cooks use thermometers. It is possible to overcook this (and any) cut. I am not sure what is not applicable in my answer. I did not make any reference to American roast. I did correct a typo in the temperature range that I found.
The American roast was an assumption on my side why you are suggesting the wrong method for this dish. It is made in the oven and without liquid, but nevertheless cooked like a stew, so 4 hours are normal even for smaller pieces.
I spent some time on Google comparing temperatures for sauerbraten. I then simply suggested using a thermometer to check for doneness. With all due respect, all else is assumption on your part.
@moscafj The point here is that to the best of my knowledge, "using a thermometer to check for doneness" is wrong in the case of a Sauerbraten. So I think that any assumptions here are not really important - you and I simply have a different opinion on which method is appropriate for it. I can still remove the comparison to the roast, if you wish, or also the reference to your answer. I will still insist that it shouldn't be removed when the target temperature is reached, but kept for the full 4 hours.
how about removing reference to me from your answer? That way the community can just value the responses as they see fit.
@moscafj done. Sorry about the whole issue, sometimes I can have amazing blind spots as to how my formulations come across. I hope I plan to learn from it this time and not repeat the same mistake, but if I make another one with similar consequences, don't hesitate to point it out in a very direct way and also suggest a correcting action outright.
Maintain the original oven temperature. Use a thermometer. A quick Google of recipes indicates a target temperature of 145 - 185F... 165F seems common. Figure it will take a less time then the recipe you are following.
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84493 | Butterscotch Sauce consistency
I keep getting quite a mixed bag when it comes to butterscotch sauce; sometimes it's runny, sometimes it's thick (as I want it). Other times it gets lumps in it, or simply clumps to the side of the pan while having a runny consistency in the middle of it.
I tend to start with 7 muscovado : 2 butter : 5 cream.
I melt the butter, dissolve the sugar thoroughly, then stir in the cream, allowing it to bubble lightly, not boil, though I have tried this, also (I don't use a thermometer - I don't have one!).
Why should I get such varied results on the consistency?
It's the fact you aren't using a thermometer. Consistency comes from a consistent method and consistent temperatures and times.
@GdD: Should I be using a thermometer for a simple sauce? It's not as if it's toffee or similar that I'm making.
I'd recommend it yes @Paul. Butterscotch is easy to make, but if you want really good consistency then you need to weigh the ingredients and control the temperature.
@GdD: Okay, thank-you. If you put that in an answer I'll credit you...
I'm not going to put that as an answer because I don't think it covers your case completely @Paul. A good answer will cover why you are getting lumps, i.e. what's going wrong.
unless you're an old pro, you basically need to use a thermometer.
@dandavis: I must admit, I'll have to buy one, anyway, as I'm going to be making sweets and toffee at some point. May as well bite the bullet-hard toffee.
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86778 | Using double cream in icing
I'm looking at a recipe for icing that uses double cream as the substrate for the icing.
How well will the cream be preserved on a 1:4 (or better, given its application) mix?
Also, how well would such icing set? I'm looking for a fairly stiff mix that will retain peaks; can I expect such with cream as the substrate?
Well, I abandoned the double cream recipe and went, instead, for royal icing. It has the solidity I need and the added advantage of being used as a 'glue' for other bits of the cake. It all worked out well. (Just hope I haven't poisoned anyone!)
Just simply use whipped double cream only:
add a knife point of starch and a few grains of vanilla per ¼L of double cream
whip it (not too much or it'll turn into butter)
pour into a piping bag
refrigerate overnight
and it'll remain stiff enough so you can create anything you want including flowers:
That's beautiful. Is that one of yours? I'll give it a go.
Nope, that's a pic I got when looking for "Piping bag"... Also: Don't whip it too much or you'll end up with butter easily.. @Paul (answer edited)
Now I am confused. I thought that "1:4 mix" and "I ended up using royal icing" meant that the OP wanted to make something of the consistency of royal icing, but whipped cream has the consistency of buttercream. Are you sure you are talking about the same thing?
Refrigerated whipped double cream is not identical to royal icing indeed, but my understanding of OP's question was that he wanted something different from royal icing and so I gave him the alternative of something simple like double whipped cream with a bit of starch added (I use corn, but potato works too) and can take some sugar if the vanilla in itself isn't "sweet" enough for him. Up to him to try out next time and come back and accept the answer or not... @rumtscho
Thanks for posting. As stated, I went for the royal icing - it worked very well for the application. This answer doesn't give me everything I was after, really - I was primarily interested in the longevity of the product, and whether it would last a reasonable amount of time (2 weeks plus, though I never specified a time limit). As pointed out by @rumtscho, I was looking more for specifics than alternatives.
Sorry to have been of absolutely no help then, though I hope the creamy flowers made you smile so you got something out of this answer... ;-) :-) @Paul
@Fabby: Ha! No, it's not like that. You've certainly given me ideas for future ventures, and yes - the pic was great! ;o)
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85086 | What is the best method for stick-free cooking of bacon in a stainless steel pan?
I recently made the switch from the non-stick pans to stainless steel. If it helps, I also have a natural gas stove-top.
I began cooking bacon and did not add any oil to the pan as I figured the bacon grease would be enough to prevent any sticking. Knowing sticking is a problem with stainless, I started out with a lower temperature. But as the bacon started to cook, more and more 'residue' built up on the bottom of the pan. I tried to frequently move the bacon around, but between that and the low temperature, it was taking forever to cook.
I should also add that as the bacon was close to being finished cooking, there was a good amount of grease in the pan, so I threw in some thinly sliced potatoes, onion, and pierogies. Have done this before in the non-stick without any issues. What ended up happening in the stainless was that the residue began to build up more and more, and it was tough to get the food to cook. I managed to get the food to turn out pretty good, but I was left with a thick layer of stuck on food. It was at the point where the food was cooked just enough to my liking, but if it needed more cooking the residue would have burnt and probably ruined the food.
So, I know throwing all that other stuff in the pan didn't do me any favours, but even still if I had just cooked bacon there would have been stuck on food. What could I have done to avoid that?
I've never done this before but I would try non-stick paper and change the paper on the go to bring out some of the residue, since your goal is not only make the pan easy to clean but also to make the oil clean for subsequent cooking.
How much time is “forever to cook”? Parchment paper on a cookie sheet in the oven at 375 degrees is the way to go IMO
Try a little cooking spray, cooking hotter, and still move around.
First of all, it is difficult to get right. Don't be disappointed if you need some time to learn how to do it well.
As for your method, there are two things in your description you can improve on. One is the fat. You need a lot of fat to fry in a stainless steel pan. The bacon grease is unreliable even if you have the rest of the process perfected, and makes it much more harder at the beginning. So adding fat will be a good place to start. And you probably need more than you think - at least 3 mm thick, better 5 (assuming we are talking thin slices of bacon and not cubes or slabs).
The other thing is that you lowered the temperature. This was the wrong thing to do. You want a heating rate at which your bacon's proteins start shriveling up as soon as they hit the fat, as opposed to slowly gumming up against the bottom. This tends to be higher than most people first try, and certainly higher than the heat you can use with a nonstick. Sadly, you can also overshoot and have the bacon burn and stick at the same time - that's one of the major difficulties with getting it right, learning how to recognize if you are in the proper range of heat - but if in doubt, you probably have to go up rather than down. And preheat for a good long time before laying the first strip in.
Another thing to consider is the bacon itself. Some brands are sweetened, and the sugars stick like crazy. They also burn at temperatures where the meat does just right. So, look at the ingredients, and if you notice any kind of sugar - could be fructose, corn syrup, maple syrup, or something else - choose another brand. Also get something which is packaged dry, these which are wet enough to have something marinade-like in the package will stick more.
Just to elaborate on my question more, I actually put the bacon in the pan before it was heated, so that was probably one wrong thing to do. Just a habit from non stick. Also, this was just regular bacon, not a maple flavoured that would have more sugar. But, I think it may have been the lower fat skew, so based on your answer I'm thinking the regular would be better.
I cook bacon without any fat added to pan and it does not stick. The key is to place the bacon in the pan when it is very hot and to not touch the bacon until you want to flip it over. It might stick a touch sometimes, but very little sticks to the bottom. I can then scrape some of the bits away with my spatula and add eggs, which also do not stick.
3mm to 5mm of fat/oil in a stainless steel skilet is more than 1.5 cups of oil. Is that really the right amount?
@gman I never calculated it, but if that's what it takes to cover your skillet to the right depth, then yes, it's the right amount.
@gman I was also surprised to the idea of it being that much, so I calculated it - I came up with 75 ml (1/3 cup) for 3 mm, which sounds very reasonable. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=volume+of+cylinder+diameter+18+cm+height+3+mm.
My pan is 22cm cross at the deepest part and 29 at the widest, calculating from the 22cm part with 3mm to 5mm, that's 114ml to 190ml which is a ton of oil. Cooking oil in my country of residence typically comes in 500ml bottles so you're saying to use 1/5th to 2/5th of the entire bottle.
@gman Then yes, use 1/5 to 2/5 of the bottle. No matter how people package it, if you want to have your food shallow fried on stainless steel, you do need a sufficiently deep layer of oil, and 3-5 mm is what works well.
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84824 | Pie with 2 different fillings
Good evening all. I am going to try something tomorrow night, I wanted to see if anyone had done anything similar to give me some hints.
Background:
I enjoy making a buttermilk custard pie.
I enjoy making shoofly (molasses) pie.
I enjoy eating them together- they sort of give a "buttermilk biscuit with molasses" flavor combination which is tough to beat.
However, serving 2 slices of pie at one time is tough. If they are big enough not to fall apart, then they are too big to eat in one setting.
Solution:
Tomorrow night, I am going to make a deep dish buttermilk/shoofly pie, but keep the fillings separate...? The theory is that both pies are cooked in a partially prebaked shell, at the same temperature, for the same amount of time. When I prebake the shell, I am going to
Build an internal circular wall in it, approximately the height of the pie dish (so I have an inner "crust" circle inside the shell).
Figure out some way to arrange the pie weights and bake it off
Cool crust, leaving 2 separate locations for filling.
Pour a half batch of the custard on the inside, a half batch of the molasses on the outside (or vice versa), and cook
I imagine the very tops of the 2 fillings will sort of merge into each other, but if all goes well most of the fillings will stay separate.
This is a wild experiment- thoughts and suggestion (especially if you've tried anything similar) would be appreciated! I'll update this thread tomorrow with pictures.
Welcome! We do prefer that questions are, well, questions - it might be nice if you rewrote this slightly, perhaps to ask how to get the two pies in one, and whether your method seems likely to work. (But I think people will get the idea, anyways.)
Can you compare the fillings' liquidity to each other? That is, if one is thicker or stiffer in consistency, or if they're about the same - some recipes can be more or less moist before baking. Also it would help to know how liquid they are in general, a solution working for a thicker filling (like molasses texture) may not work as well for a thinner one.
How important is it for you that the two fillings are clearly (or "cleanly") separated?
You must, Must, MUST update this Q with results!
As @Jefromi points out, like Jeopardy, we like things in the form of a question. But you get extra credit if you pose a question...then, with an "experiment", answer the question by sharing your results. We will all applaud...you will feel good.
Frankly, I'd be too lazy to fiddle with a "separating wall" shell - partly because unless very well supported its likely to collapse during blind baking anyway.
My tool of choice would be a small cake ring or, in a pinch, a strip of aluminum foil, folded a few times and shaped into a circle.
Place the ring on the prebaked shell, pour the fillings into the inner and outer compartment. Then you have two choices:
Place the pie in the oven, carefully lift the separating ring, bake. The key is that the pie shouldn't be moved after you took out the separation. (Unless you are ok with some "merging"). This is the method I'd choose.
Bake the pie with the ring in place, remove just before it sets. This will give you a clearer separation, but may leave you with a "scar" on the pie. And depending on your filling, it might stick to the ring.
As for the fillings, I recommend that you put the "less runny" one in first, that will prevent a more liquid filling from "creeping under" the ring too much. For very liquid fillings, you might have to hold the ring down a bit, but don't "cut through" the shell!
Finally, note that geometry plays a role: if you use equal parts of fillings, the outer ring will seem narrower than the inner circle.
For equal amounts of filling, the diameter of the inner circle should be 70% of the whole diameter.
Alternatively, you could use 1/4 + 3/4 of a recipe to get an inner circle that's half the diameter of the outer.
For every other case, do the math yourself, remembering that the area of a circle is Pi times radius2. Or that the area grows squared - twice the radius means four times the area or volume. (Height can be ignored, if we assume that this should remain the same.)
The hacky solution would be to bake two pies and swap the position of the fillings - no math, no need to find or craft a specific ring size. And possibly a nice gift for a friend or neighbor.
Not slicing them until tomorrow, will post pics Sunday. Thanks all, especially @Stephie for the math help!
Pre-filling:
Filled:
Sliced: (sorry for poor quality, most of pie was eaten before I got this)
So... worked okay. The internal wall did a good job keeping the fillings separated, but did seem to cause the slice to want to split down the middle. In the future, I'd just do the shoofly custard on the bottom, pull it out and completely cool it, then do the buttermilk custard on top. BTW, the fillings were very good- both came from "Pie" by Ken Haedrich.
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84881 | curdled 1/2 & 1/2 in Keurig-type coffee
When I buy coffee (either decaf or regular) at the convenience store and add 1/2 & 1/2, it lasts for several days and several re-heatings without curdling.
BUT when I make Keurig-type coffee using ANY of several different brands I buy at the supermarket, my coffee won't last until the next day and reheating. It will curdle overnight.
So, does the coffee in the Keurig-type cups just end up having a lot more acid in it from their manufacturing process?
Might it help with my Keurig-type coffee at home if I used the little 1/2 & 1/2 containers that a typical convenience store carries? I know the chemistry in those little containers is different so that they don't curdle as easily when left out. (Hence the difference in taste vs regular chilled 1/2 & 1/2). Maybe they are made with an intentional alkali Ph?
The little 1/2 & 1/2 containers are ultra-pasteurized, so that they can be stable at room temperature. Ultra-pasteurized milk products will not curdle. This is why you cannot make cheese with them.
It is also possible that the Keurig coffee, being better roasted and sealed, is more acidic, but it is far more likely the UP milk. You can test this by finding UP 1/2 & 1/2 at your supermarket in a carton, and comparing.
As a side note, I do find it pretty horrifying that you are making coffee, putting cream in it, and reheating it several days later. Maybe you could consider making a fresh pot?
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100581 | How to cook perfect meringue in a gas oven?
The lowest temperature my gas oven goes to is 130C. I have yet to find a gas oven that goes lower than that, which is weird. Is that the case with everyone? I know meringue does better with lower temperatures like 90C, so I was wondering: can one make perfect meringues at 130C, if yes how? Would a fan be of any use?
Do you live in a hot country? In summer in Iran, my mother used to make meringues in full sun, on the roof.
@RobinBetts hahahah, yes I do. Lebanon - but it's just too humid for that to work.
I usually go with residual heat.
But I use Pavlova meringue recipe (with teaspoon of potato flour) which call for baking for 30 minutes in 120 degrees (I adjusted time to around 18 minutes to compensate for the 130 temp).
Then I open it a little for around 2 minutes to lower the temp and keep closed for another 2 hours.
When I was making typical meringue I just put a tray in the oven when the temp dropped to around 100 degrees on gauge (old type gas oven with gauge in the middle of the glass) and just let it sit there for 5-6 hours.
I will try that method out, but isn't humidity an issue though?
@user29568 I would say that humidity was good because the temperature was making the outside dry and glazed while the inside was perfectly gooey
When faced with an oven that is slightly too hot, I just prop open the door with a wooden spoon. This allows both heat and humidity out.
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104075 | What type of flour is this?
I asked for "brown" flour at my bakery and they gave me this but I am not sure if it is whole wheat flour since it isn't white enough like I thought it would be. Is this whole wheat flour or something else, it's also pretty coarse compared to other flours. Any thoughts?
Rye maybe? Does it smell like anything, what's the texture when you wet it? Do you have receipt-- what does it say on there?
@Dugan No receipt, it smells earthy and maybe roasted.Tried wetting it and it got mushy, pretty soft when I touch it no rough pieces.
@Dugan Could it be everything but the white flour, so like the germ and the bran?
@user29568: Well, it could be anything, but I wrote my answer based on the idea that you asked for flour and that the bakery gave you flour. It seems unlikely that a bakery would give you a mixture of germ and bran if you ask for "flour," as it won't work well as flour in recipes. (Plus the texture of only germ/bran would likely be quite coarse and probably not turning immediately "mushy" and soft upon wetting it.)
Could that be bread crumbs? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_crumbs
Where are you in the world?
What did they say when you called and asked the bakery?
@GdD Lebanon, do you know it?
@Rob The people who work at the bakery aren't well-versed with the details of types of flour. They serve white baguette and brown baguette, so I assumed that their brown baguette is made of whole-wheat flour and asked for that, which they refer to as "brown flour" in Arabic. I received what is shown in the picture and was surprised by how brown it was because when I get organic whole-wheat flour it's whiter. Any of you worked with such flour, does it look good?
I'm not sure what you mean by "whole wheat" flour. If you truly mean wholemeal flour where all the germ and bran are left in, then it can definitely look this color and texture. The variety of wheat can also influence the color (e.g., harder wheats are sometimes darker).
The term "brown flour" is ambiguous, but I know it can sometimes refer to a ~85% extraction flour (see here and here, for example). 85% extraction means that 15% of the "whole grain" elements are removed (like bran and germ), compared to normal "white flour" which is typically around 70-75% extraction. Such "brown flour" is sometimes referred to as "whole wheat" too, but it's generally lighter in color.
Assuming they gave you wheat flour, my guess is that it's just a higher extraction rate than typical 85% "brown flour" and/or a different wheat variety. If you asked for "whole wheat," they could potentially have given you a 100% extraction (wholemeal) flour, which could definitely be this color.
As for the coarseness, that just depends on the milling. Frequently whole grain flours are milled somewhat coarser (even "stone-milled" in a more traditional manner). Aside from a rustic texture, it's more practical, as finely grinding the bran and germ requires more effort, and it's counterproductive as it causes the flour to become stale faster. (The bran and germ will spoil faster than the endosperm/white flour portion, and increasing surface area through fine grinding will increase the rate of staling.) Also, even in a relatively finely ground whole wheat flour, the rough edges of the bran and germ can make the flour feel coarser, even with a similar particle size.
It's just the color that threw me off. It does smell very much like bran too, so that's why I was thinking where has all the white flour gone. I guess I'll test it and see how it works in breads. You sure do know a lot about bread-making, so thanks again, Athanasius.
@user29568: Yes, I'd just try making bread with it and see what happens. As I said in my other comment, it could be lots of things, but if they make baguettes with it, it's probably just a wholemeal flour. I suppose it could also be a blend with other grains too; now that you say you're in Lebanon, I don't know what local practice is there.
It turned out to be fine bran by the way.
It may be buckwheat flour, which in my experience looks a lot darker than wheat (even "whole wheat") flour. It also has a nutty or "earthy" smell to it, and a more robust flavor.
(I've never used it for bread, but it make fantastic pancakes!)
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85015 | Why do some recipes call for kneading pie/tart dough?
I've have read many times that pie dough is meant to be held sparingly to avoid creating gluten, but kneading the pie dough does exactly that. So, what is the motivation?
Recipes usually specify lightly kneading pie dough to help it hold together better (especially when fitting it into the pie dish) and to orienting the gluten and fat into flaky layers instead of crumbly crumbs. Over kneading blends the fat and flour into a mortar/paste that takes longer to cook through and is tough and cardboard-like.
So if you don't knead the dough you get a crumbly crust? If that's the case then why do some recipes completely ignore lightly kneading it. The science is here is pretty much unclear. Do you always knead your pie dough?
"Gently knead dough into a solid mass.Unlike bread dough, which you work in order to develop the gluten (protein in wheat that creates the structure in a loaf of bread), when you make pie crust you want to develop as little gluten as possible. So while you want to make the dough come together as one, you want to work it only just enough to make that happen. So when you "gently knead" the pie crust dough, you're really just sort of squeezing it lightly into a ball, ideally kneading just a few times until the comes together" From: https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-make-homemade-pie-crust-2216886
@dlb Interesting remarks. Thanks for the reference. I have made pie dough without kneading to flaky results so I have yet to see what gentle kneading does to the crust. I'll try it out next time.
@user29568 Tossed that on as I thought it gives a good idea that "gentle kneading" in pie dough is what for things like pasta or bread would be considered not kneading at all. You are just trying to form a dough. You can apply a little pressure, just to get it to come together, but no actual working. Ma Kettles's answer is dead on, just trying to add what I find a good definition of gentle kneading to it. I myself am terrible at pie crusts, so I make cobblers. ;)
@dlb I think just using the word knead in pie recipes is confusing. A simple "work into a ball" is easier to understand. Your pie crust can't be that bad, what's going wrong?
@user29568 I had that quote handy because I have used it for ref trying to get pie crusts to turn out. I had the same issue with the seeming contradiction between kneading and not over-working. My Grandmother was a master pie maker and tried to teach me years ago. I can produce rubber, crackers, cookies, sand.... The verdict was I should use graham cracker crusts or make cobblers since I liked them better anyway. 45 years later, I try. Then go back to cobblers. The quote is good, my implementation of it is bad. The cardboard Ma Kettle mentions, that is usually a good effort from me.
Handel the least amount possible. You mix pie and Quiche dough, puck it then let it (the gluten developed from mixing) rest in the fridge for 30 minutes, then roll it out. Otherwise you are developing the gluten (like bread or pasta) and working all the cold fat out in turn you are unable to trap the cold fat between the flour and wont have the flaky layers needed for a Clark crust
What is a Clark crust?
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90514 | Why do Americans have butter in their rice?
I just read a few articles about cooking rice targeted at Americans ("take one cup of rice...") and in many comments people mentioned adding butter when they cooked rice. Why? Basic rice is cooked with just water and salt.
"Because everything is better with butter." I actually have heard this on cooking shows in the US a number of times. I also think many Americans would consider plain cooked rice boring in a diet filled with fat, sugar and spices. But seriously, rather than make a general statement regarding Americans, you should add some references to back up your claims.
@user3169 https://steamykitchen.com/22048-how-to-cook-rice-microwave.html - five mentions of butter in the comments. https://www.reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/comments/7lv7a2/rice_in_microwave/ - three mentions.
One of my Persian friends made rice for me before. He put butter in it at some point. I believe that pilaf rice can also be made using ghee, which is a form of clarified butter, so it's not just Americans
-1 As written this question seems more like a dig at Americans than an actual good-faith question about cooking. I recommend editing out "why do Americans do this" and ask instead what benefit butter adds to rice. I suspect the answer for most people who use butter in rice is that they like the flavor butter adds.
@Jolenealaska I suspect, after some reflection, that the answer is that Americans eat inferior rice (processed or something like that) and therefore needs butter to make it taste anything. I've never seen butter added to regular rice in any European country, nor on any "ethnic" restaurant from typical rice eating regions (India, China and so on).
You're missing a couple of minor things in the sentence "I've never seen butter added to regular rice in any European country, nor on any 'ethnic' restaurant from typical rice eating regions" - the Chinese don't eat dairy in meals as a general rule and because this has been a thing since, well, who knows how long, they never looked for alternative dairy free options for anything, so don't use butter in anything. The Indians do use clarified butter (ghee) in some of their rice cooking (pilaf) and similar recipes exist throughout the middle east
Besides mithrandir's excellent point that many cultures cook rice with butter or other fat, this question has an inherently flawed premise. Some Americans sometimes use butter in rice. In any city of reasonable size you can find Americans preparing rice using any technique you can think of. The Americans running the Mexican or sushi restaurants down the street might take issue with that flawed premise.
Well, because they like it, that's it.
In another form, it's like cooking the rice with tomato sauce - it absorbs better the taste compared to adding it at the end, there's no other benefit for the rice itself.
For example, sometimes I prepare whole grain rice with tomato sauce / vegetables broth and some chopped vegetables - it's much better than adding it all at the end of the process.
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103629 | Are there green tea variants that can be made with 100 °C?
Green tea is usually prepared with 80 °C water. However, I found some variants in a supermarket (they are pretty cheap), where there is 100 °C written on the box. Is it some kind of fraud made by the companies, or there really exist such variants?
Dear all, if you have an idea that might explain the discrepancy, please post it as an answer, not as a comment.
I'm no expert in this, but some googling lead me here.
Excerpt:
[...] the naturally farmed tea contains much more poly phenols as compared to the ordinary tea. In addition, the tealeaf of naturally farmed tea is not bitter, even if we chew the raw tealeaf we can hardly taste the bitterness. For the naturally farmed tea, it is highly recommended to use boiling water so as to extract more poly phenols. In order to maintain the freshness of the brewed leaf, we can brew tea at higher temperature for a shorter time, such as 100 degree C for 10 seconds instead of brewing at 60-80 degree C for 1 minute, unless you prefer less flavor and thin taste.
Also, there's another product on amazon which mentions the preparation temperature to be 100 °C.
That said, there's another resource, advocating for that 80:80 rule (80 second in 80 °C temperature), but it also mentions:
[...] If you still want to steep at 100 degrees, then just buy a cheap green tea.
Looks like you've just found that variant.
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85078 | Store homemade kefir with paper towel on top or close the lid normally?
I made my first batch of kefir with a paper "breathable" towel over the top of a glass container. If I want to store the output in refrigerator, do I have to make it "breathable", or normally close it with solid lid?
Thanks
If you'll drink it quickly, you can store it with an airtight lid, but this will make it "fizzy". Personally, I'd store it with a breathable lid to avoid carbonating it, and possibly causing it to explode. There's still live/active cultures, even when you remove the kefir grains.
Edit: quickly, as in a day or so
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85322 | Making Sourdough starter in the UAE
I live in the UAE where the climate is hot and humid.
I started making a sourdough starter on the 28th of October and today, 30th October it seems to be doubling quickly. It has a strong acidic sweet smell. Even though I made a stiff dough when I fed it in the morning, the starter seems soupy now.
Does this mean that my yeast is growing rapidly?
Do I need to increase the feedings?
temperature currently is at 32 deg C. we use airconditioner at home. so the temp is at around 25 at home
One of the main differences from sourdough to standard bread yeast is that it is composed by a complex fauna of bacteria and yeasts that do lactic fermentation as well as alcoholic fermentation. Therefore acidicity is indeed a positive sign of activity in your sourdough.
The tricky part is that as the pH of the dough lowers, it triggers the digestion of the gluten network, 'destroying' the protein structure that holds the air and making the dough look like pancake dough. So when baking with sourdough one needs to be careful with how long you ferment.
This will depend on the initial quantity of sourdough you use, the temperature of the place you leave it resting, the strength of your flour (protein/gluten content) and the humidity of the flour (typically 15%).
If you are in a very hot place I would recommend either letting the dough in a colder spot (e.g. top part of your fridge, or a wine fridge) or using a smaller quantity of sourdough. By trial and error you can gauge the initial quantity for the time you want to leave it unattended.
25C is pretty mainstream as far as temperature goes - a warm kitchen in other places of the world is probably in the same range, +/- a few degrees.
If your starter is quite active, it’s a good sign, overall. Note that it’s still very young and especially in the first few days one sometimes observes „hyperactive“ yeast. That’s totally ok, just give it time.
You don’t mention what ratios you are working with when feeding and the amount of starter you add to the fresh flour/water mix varies depending on the recipe or method you follow. But if you are using „a lot“ (half, for example), the yeast & bacteria culture may grow fast enough for two feedings per day. If you are using a low ratio of, say, 10% starter, one feed per day should be just right. The general rule of thumb is that you can feed when the foaming starts to collapse - glass jars can be a great help for novice bakers. But overall, sourdough starter is quite forgiving and your growth conditions are pretty “normal”.
As for the texture, yes, what you are seeing is normal, even pasty mixes turn more liquid as the flour is broken down.
Thanks a lot Stephie. I use the proportions mentioned in the website of the perfect loaf https://www.theperfectloaf.com/7-easy-steps-making-incredible-sourdough-starter-scratch/ It starts with 40g flour with 40g water and everday from then removing 40g of the starter and adding 40g flour mix and 40g water. Yesterday I fed my starter three times and it seems to slow down the growth. the bubbles are minimal and the smell is kind of sweety acidic. So i guess I have got it under control. will try and feed it twice today to see how it fares.
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85405 | Homemade Dressing
I made a homemade pasta salad dressing. These are the ingredients:
- Mayo
- Sour Cream
- Fresh Lemon Juice
- Dried herbs/spices
I'm just wondering if mixing the lemon juice together with sour cream and mayo will cause it to go bad sooner than the expiration dates call for on the items separately.
Does anyone have any experience with this?
Thank you!!
A bit of an extra basic knowledge, because the linked question has a slightly different angle on the first glance: shelf life is not calculated based on the shelf life of the ingredients. It can be shorter, or longer, or the same as that of any ingredient (or the most perishable ingredient, or whichever you want to choose as a behcnmark).
Lemon juice contains citric acid which actually is used as a preservative in other preparations (like jam, for example). Lemon is also used in some mayo recipes to help stabilize the emulsion. So I believe it won't accelerate the spoiling.
However, it can have two undesired effects:
it can curd the cream, which will still be safe (although yours being sour-cream I believe it won't happen).
after some days in the fridge it can get very sour and give an unpleasant taste. Happened once with me when making hummus.
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85493 | What natural preservative to use to prepare homemade tomato paste for a 2 year shelf life?
I make homemade tomato, chilli and curry pastes and I am thinking of selling them. I need a natural preservative that can increase the shelf life to at least 2 years.
What can I use?
Opened or sealed shelf life?
How to make bitter citrus taste less bitter? Have you considered sweet citrus?
I regularly make passata (tomato puree) home, and use a simple hot bath sterilisation (instructions below). I can usually keep it for about a year, but the result is not consistent and not 100% reliable: every 20 bottles I make, one leaks and gets spoiled. There are more sophisticated sterilisation methods that use a pressure pan (similar to an autoclave in the lab). Both of these methods rely on killing the bacteria naturally present in the preparation as well as in the residual air inside the can / jar.
However, as pointed by @Jefromi none of these techniques are 100% reliable for home preparation.
To be certain, you should use an acidity regulator. Lowering the pH of your sauce will prevent
a big class of bacterias to develop. A cheap option which is commonly used in the industry is citric acid, which you might find in supermarkets and surely in brewing shops. If not available, you could also use vinagre or lemmon juice (less ideal). In any case, note that acidity alone will not do the job. Always use together with sterilization.
For a reference, see this link for tomatoes in general, and this one for tomato paste specifically (thanks @Jefromi for these references).
Simpler water sterilisation process:
Before putting your mix in the jars, wash them carefully with hot water and soap.
After they have been filed, put your jars in a large pan.
(optional) Put a towel between the jars to avoid them hitting each other.
Pour water until the jars are completely covered.
Bring to boil. Low the fire so boiling is not violent. Boil for 30 minutes minimum.
Remove the jars and leave them to cool with the lid down. Turn them once cooled.
For this to work well, you need to be sure the lids are tight and no air can enter/scape. Be attentive to any leakage and use good jars.
It's not actually safe without the citric acid, and it has to be the right ratio of citric acid to be safe. See http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_03/tomato_intro.html for tomatoes in general, and http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_03/tomato_paste2.html for tomato paste specifically.
@Jefromi, thank you for pointing that out and for the references. If you don't mind I will add to my answer. I must say however that at least in the UK there are many brands in standard supermarkets that do not use acidity regulators. Proper pressure autoclaving is a safe technique for sterilization and is widely used in labs. This said I agree with you home sterilization might not be so reliable. Indeed for every ten or twenty bottles, I make, about one leak air and spoil.
Yes, of course, please do edit! I think it's still consistent with your note about UK brands: commercial canning always uses pressure, as far as I know, so it doesn't need the acidity. Don't have a source off the top of my head for that though.
Also please note that this is for tomatoes specifically. The requirements for acidity based on other vegetables can be different, and for some there is no known safe canning process at home, for example for pumpkin. The way the OP wrote it is a bit ambiguous - maybe she only uses curry and chilli pastes based on tomatoes, or maybe her curry and chilli pastes are separate from the tomato ones.
@rumtscho, totally agree with the point on acidity. Indeed there are many bacteria that survive a low pH environment. Sourdough and Kombucha are actually two edible colonies that rely exactly on that. But I got curious about the pumpkin example. Correct me if I am wrong, but is the claim that if I get a piece of boiled pumpkin, put on a jar and autoclave (with or without an acidity regulator) it will spoil anyway over time? What would be the driving mechanism? Thanks!
@greedyscholars simple bacterial spoilage. The problem is that pumpkin butter is denser than other vegetable pastes, and home pressure canners have a certain upper pressure limit. The FDA says somewhere (I don't have a link right now, sorry) that from all recipes it has ever tested, none of them has consistently reaached the needed minimal temperature in a home canner, so there are no approved cannable recipes for pumpkin. For other food, it has published guidelines on what combination of acidity, temperature and pressure is sufficient for canning.
In Italy we do conserva. It is a thick tomato paste with lot of salt in it. Usually diluted prior cooking with a little of red wine. It is nowadays used to fortify tomatoes "sugo" . But likely it is not what you are looking for.
Interesting @rumtscho! Thanks for sharing! Had never heard about that.
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85536 | New cast iron skillet came out rusty after seasoning
After looking them up for a long time, I finally decided to take the plunge and buy a cast iron skillet.
After it arrived, I cleaned it in hot soapy water and scoured it, to remove the wax coating, as per the instructions. I wiped it dry, then popped it in the oven quickly to fully dry it.
After this, I took sunflower oil, and coated the entire skillet. I then let it sit in the oven for an hour, at 200ºC. When I took it out, the coating was uneven (I now know I put too much oil), and was reddish-brown!
I think I managed to get it rusty within the first day of owning it (pictures below)!
How do I resolve this, and ensure it does not happen again?
It's probably not rust but burnt oil; and 200 deg. C reported by your oven's thermometer might be too low.
Is it possible you used unrefined sunflower oil that has a smoke point of 160c or that your oven is not properly calibrated and it got above 232c
It's possible that the oven was badly calibrated- I have not tried cooking anything in it yet. I don't think the oil would be unrefined, it's standard off the shelf supermarket olive oil.
So is my best option to add an extra coat of seasoning all around, and bake at a lower temperature? Do I need to remove the burnt oil?
That looks a lot more like cooked oil than rust on the inside. Either way, probably not rust, and definitely not enough rust to cause concern. Scrub it off.
When I season my cast iron, I just do it on the stove. I heat the pan until it's smoking, and carefully add a little oil and swirl it around. Let it cool, wipe it out. Then, use it. When you do use it, clean it gently. Avoid using soap, just use water and a spatula or something. It's a good idea to heat it on the stove top to dry it well after cleaning. Over time you get a good thing going.
But either way, rust with cast iron is no cause for concern. Even if it was completely covered in rust, you can brush it out and re-season.
Nice pan! Remember that these things can easily last over 100 years, so they're really hard to ruin. It doesn't look like you've rusted your pan; it does look like you had too much oil in it, and it partially polymerized.
Polymerization is what makes seasoning durable, so you're on the right track, but the trick is to get it to form thin, even layers. On the next go around (after scouring it down to bare iron again), heat the pan to 150-200 Fahrenheit. Then rub oil over the entire pan, and with a fresh cloth or paper towel, wipe all the oil off. I wipe mine twice to make sure it's all gone. There will actually be a very thin layer remaining, and this won't form any undesirable drips. Put it in the over upside-down, and bake for an hour at 450-500 Fahrenheit.
If you really want to ultimate in cast iron seasoning, use flaxseed oil. Cooks Illustrated tested it, and it survived a run through the dishwasher! They give their complete directions here.
Temp is too low and the oil you used has too low of a smoke point for seasoning, that is soft half dried gummy oil. Scrub off all oil with steel scrubber, if you need to strip it, use a lye bath or oven cleaner then scrub with soap and water and let dry in a warm oven. To re season: Instead, use either pure lard like a block of crisco or a very high smoke veg oil like sunflower or safflower oil (I prefer lard for the result) Rub lard over whole pan and set upside down in oven, then heat the pan just to 200 to open pores, dry, and melt oil best. Take out and rub off all excess oil with paper towel to prevent blobs and runs and put back in the oven face down. Turn the temp up to AT LEAST 400, preferably 450-470 leave for AT LEAST an hour, let cool. Repeat several times.
Here is a el-cheap-o Cast Iron 10" pan I got at the PX, way back when I was active duty. I recently polished inside the pan with power tools, until I got a mirror finish, ( bare cast iron) . I then seasoned it 5 times using "Flax Seed Oil" in the Oven @ 430 degrees for 1 hour for each seasoning. That shiny coat you is isn't oil, but a finish that rivals that of teflon ! This pan is "Bullet Proof" ! Mine has the pinta of old world copper !
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86717 | How to find/properly cook fresh Baby Squids?
So, I've had some difficulties with Squid. I think my favorite style of squid is the type you can find at a Chinese Buffet - big chunks of squid, where a slice of a tentacle can be the size of your pinky.
I've had some great luck finding fresh, already cleaned squid at H-Mart, a Korean supermarket which typically stocks a lot of good Seafood. It was properly cleaned, no guts, came to the supermarket already frozen (Some on display were thawed, but there was a whole pile of still-frozen whole suqid to pick through). I deep fried it in some seasoned flour, and it came out really well.
People say you shouldn't cook squid too long or it gets rubbery - well, I fried it for a decent amount of time and it DID get chewy - but that's ok. The flavor of the squid still came out really well, and chewing it wasn't really that unpleasant. Actually, when I briefly deep-fried it, there was a more "springy" bite, but the flavor seemed milder as well.
I came back and saw a cheap bag of baby squid. I left them overnight, and realized that I had to clean them the next morning. They smelled...well...I couldn't tell if it was a natural ocean smell, or if something was wrong (something was definitely wrong). I cleaned all of them, took the guts out (I am assuming that squid typically lose freshness a lot quicker if they are being sold and sitting around with innards) - The flesh was slippery, and actually felt like it was sandy/gritty - there was no sand, so I can only assume that this meant that the flesh was somewhat decomposed by bacteria already. Anyway, I cleaned all of them, sniffed them, and decided that there was a really stank ammonia-oceanic smell that wasn't worth it.
So today my mom brought in some baby squid she bought from the market. I just spent a while cleaning them. They smelled just faintly sweet - some ocean - but not really like a nasty ammonia. It took me a while to clean all 20-30 of them, and I didn't leave them on ice, so when I was ready to batter them there was a bit of an ocean smell that did come through. Still, they were definitely fresher than the other ones - the last batch actually gave me a bit of a gag reflex when I really tried to sniff out if anything was wrong.
Anyway, I deep fried them for a while. It took them longer than I expected for the batter to get crispy.
The batter was crispy, but the squid was...well, it wasn't chewy - actually, the flesh didn't really give much pushback - it wasn't quite MUSHY but it definitely was not SPRINGY. I very lightly cooked one, and it did have a bit of a springy bite, so is this because I overcooked them? Or because baby squid have tender flesh that breaks down quickly - through heat OR just sitting around on display?
Does baby squid have a milder flavor than mature, huge squiddies?
How can I make sure baby squid is fresh? Is it supposed to have a flavor at all?
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86314 | Why does the crust of a freshly baked loaf of bread become less crunchy/hard over time?
Something I noticed - I bought fresh bread today from a Polish bakery/deli. It was still warm when I bought it, so it probably just came out of the oven. When I got home and tried it, it was amazing. Just this incredibly satisfying CRUNCH with every bite. Same thing with a fresh baguette, really.
I have a hard time not downing the entire loaf, because in a few hours the crust stops being so satisfyingly crunchy. Why does this happen? Does freshly baked crust become more elastic? Absorbs water?
It is not absorbing water from the atmosphere, rather, moisture is migrating from within the bread. Basically, as soon as a loaf of bread is removed from the oven, moisture migration begins to happen. It doesn't take long (hours-days) for that moisture to impact the crustiness of bread. Moisture migration accelerates staling (which turns out to be more complicated than simply drying out, but that was not your question). The good thing is that heat can effectively and temporarily delay or limit moisture migration. Just reheat your bread in the oven or toaster, and it should regain much of its crunch.
I believe the humidity in the air is causing your bread to become elastic. I have lightly wet the surface of baguettes and reheated in an oven to bring back the crunch.
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85707 | Soufflé the day before?
http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/sweet-potato-souffle0-2200751
I typically make this for Thanksgiving when we host, but I'm not hosting thus year. Could I make this the day before, but skip baking it, and just pop it in the oven the next day to finish it at our hosts house?
I usually make it the same day, but since I'll be traveling I'd need to make it in advance, and I've heard soufflé s typically can't be prepped a day ahead of time.
The problem is that you want the soufflé ingredients to be room-temperature or above when you put them in the oven, so the soufflé will puff up. But this sweet-potato mixture would have to be refrigerated if you make it in advance (especially because it contains eggs), so that won't work well.
Here's what I would try. (You should check with your hosts to see if they have room in their kitchen and oven to do this). Make the topping in advance. Bake the sweet potatoes in advance. Take the other ingredients with you, allowing them to come up to room temperature. When you arrive, microwave the potatoes to reheat them, beat in the other ingredients, and bake.
Or bake the soufflé at home just before you leave, letting it rest before you transport it. It will be completely collapsed when you serve it, but it will still taste just as good.
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85741 | Proper use of a honing steel
This question is similar to Honing Steel Forward or Backward, however the answers to that question don't really get to what I want to know.
When honing a knife I see many places online indicate you move the knife into the steel as if you are cutting it (where the knife moves toward the edge of the blade). When I watch Gordon Ramsay's video on how to hone a knife (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBn1i9YqN1k) he moves the knife out of the steel (where the knife moves toward the spine of the blade). This makes more sense to me as the purpose of honing a knife is to straighten out the "bent" edges of the blade... moving toward the edge could further "bend" the blade whereas moving away would only be able to pull the blade back inline.
So the question here is: when honing a knife, do you move the knife along the steel toward the blade or the spine?
As a quick clarification, honing is going edge first, stropping is going heel first.
Honing will help to straighten the edge. Stropping will help to polish the edge (after honing).
In every other video I've seen (and on the Wüsthof website) they say to hone the blade. Stropping is more of a finishing method, so I would say to hone the blade first, and, if desired, strop the blade after.
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88287 | Preserved Lemons: is it ok if they are above the liquid
I started a jar of preserved lemons yesterday and today I noticed that the top of one lemon is above the liquid, is this ok? Should I try to press it down, or add water?
For the process to occur, the lemons should be covered by the sugar/salt/liquid. There is a little time frame where being partially exposed is OK, and the other lemon pieces will start to soften and break down, but the lemon should be pushed down a little to be covered.
The preservation happens because the sugar and/or salt 'dry out' the cells of the lemon through osmosis, causing water to be expelled from the lemon's cells. This both creates the desired texture change and prevents bacteria from spoiling the lemon while this process occurs.
There is also fermentation by desirable bacteria, that can survive in these conditions, so the entire quantity should be covered.
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85832 | How can I use self made cream of celery as a replacement for mushrooms in green bean casserole?
I follow Alton Brown's Green Bean Casserole for the most part and have had great success making this recipe. My dad always complains about having mushrooms in the dish and he would have to pick them out. But this year I would like to try making without mushrooms.
My goal is to use another vegetable to replace the mushrooms when making the creamy sauce. From what I have heard you can use cream of celery soup but I would still like to make the cream myself. Can I use cut up celery as a replacement in Alton Brown's recipe? Do I need to alter cooking times? I think I would use 1 cup of chopped up celery.
The wide open question of what to substitute is too broad and would have to be closed: it allows any vegetable, and "tastes good" is more about personal taste so it doesn't really help. (From past experience, questions like that get a steady trickle of "I'd use this other thing!" answers forever.) The celery-specific question is fine for the site. So if you want to edit and so on still, keep that in mind.
After reading your original question, the revisions, and the comments, I have what may be an option for you. As noted in comments, you can use just about any vegetable you want.
To keep the flavor profile the same, make the creamy sauce as you usually do and then strain it well through a colander to remove the mushrooms. (You can also do this with celery.) By doing this you will have the flavor of mushrooms, celery, or whatever vegetable you choose in your dish.
The other option would be to purée your sauce.
Then, if you want a vegetable (of your choice) to add for texture, sautée them in a very small amount of butter to your desired consistency and add to your casserole.
If you don't feel the need for adding another vegetable, simply don't add any.
Thanks Cindy, I like your idea of pureeing the mushrooms. This year I ended up making the sauce with mushrooms and then use tongs to take out the mushrooms when I am done with the sauce.
Yes, you can substitute celery.
This segment of Alton Brown's recipe is actually making homemade cream of mushroom soup:
Melt the butter in a 12-inch cast iron skillet set over medium-high
heat. Add the mushrooms, 1 teaspoon salt and pepper and cook, stirring
occasionally, until the mushrooms begin to give up some of their
liquid, approximately 4 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic and nutmeg and
continue to cook for another 1 to 2 minutes. Sprinkle the flour over
the mixture and stir to combine. Cook for 1 minute. Add the broth and
simmer for 1 minute. Decrease the heat to medium-low and add the
half-and-half. Cook until the mixture thickens, stirring occasionally,
approximately 6 to 8 minutes.
So instead of cooking mushrooms in the butter, cook celery, and you have created cream of celery soup. How much celery and how long to cook it is largely a matter of taste (do you like lots of crunchy celery, do you want it to be unobtrusive?) -- the important part is to keep the butter and flour ratio the same, since that makes the roux which thickens the "soup" that will form the creamy base of your casserole.
And you could also just leave out the mushrooms or celery :)
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76627 | Can I refrigerate the stuff left over on the baking sheet?
I made some--delicious--dinner rolls and decided to put the rest in fridge. Is it safe to put the leftover along with the baking sheet in the fridge? Not sure what material the baking sheet is made of, non-stick carbon steel I believe.
Did I reas your comment below correctly? Your rolls are filled? If so, with what kind of filling? This may mean storing at room temperature isn't safe. Please clarify, you can just [edit] your post.
Yes, I have eggs, spinach, bacon, ham, cheese, and other seasonings. I am not trying to store them at room temperature. It's why I am trying to put them in fridge
Yes, it'd be safe to put the sheet in the fridge. But you might not want to if they're just plain rolls:
Refrigeration makes bread go stale faster, so you may not want to refrigerate your rolls at all.
It's important to get things airtight in the fridge, and often it's a pain to wrap up a baking sheet to be airtight.
If the coating on the sheet isn't perfect, and it collects condensation in the fridge, it might rust a little faster.
Baking sheets can be bulky and awkward in the fridge.
If you want to keep bread long enough that room temperature storage doesn't work well (more than a few days), the freezer is a better option.
On the other hand, if they're filled with something perishable, you'd need to refrigerate or freeze. In that case, you could use the sheet if you really have to and can wrap it reasonably airtight, but generally it'd still be easier to transfer to a bag or smaller container.
As long as you've let it cool, yes. You want to avoid putting hot things in the fridge, since it risks raising the temperature into the danger zone. It won't react or do anything bad.
Though I can't imagine why you'd want to. It will take up a lot of room. Why not just take them off the sheet and into a plastic bag or other container?
For that matter... dinner rolls will be just fine at room temperature for a day or two. Better, in fact; they tend to get stale faster in the refrigerator.
all the goodies fall out when I take the rolls out of baking sheet xd
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78918 | Do I need to seal the food with food wrap before put them in the fridge?
I've always seen friends putting leftover, cooked food in the fridge with food wrap. I asked them why they are doing it and they don't even know why they are doing it. It is necessary to put just cooked food in the fridge with food wrap?
If you often have leftovers, reusable containers are probably a lot easier than using plastic wrap for everything.
Wrapping food in plastic wrap before refrigerating has a few obvious benefits:
1) keeps the food from drying out in the fridge.
2) prevents odors (garlic, onions, fish, etc.) from transferring between the item in question and everything else in the fridge.
3) keeps crumbs, extraneous particles from falling into the food. If there were a lot of mold/microbe life already proliferating in the other refrigerated goodies, it might even serve to slow down slightly their penetration into your new leftover food on intra-fridge air currents (...ovbviously I'm reaching here)
But no, you don't have to use the plastic wrap; it's just a custom.
"Custom" is a rather weak word for something that, as you say, provides really clear benefits. And (3) isn't really a reach at all. Airborne contamination may not generally be that rapid or severe, but it's real, so leaving everything uncovered will increase the odds of faster spoilage. The FDA specifically says to always cover things, in the context of safety.
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76771 | Reheating Prime Rib
I am cooking an 18 lb. prime rib Christmas day and then traveling an hour and a half to serve the meal. At what temperature and for how long should I reheat the prime rib before serving. I don't want to overcook it.
It's really difficult to give good numbers for this, as it's a factor of the shape of the item, what temperature it was when you started, etc.
If you're okay with losing a bit of the crunchy exterior, wrap it in foil and put it in a low oven (200 to 250°F ~ 95 to 120°C) until it's back up to the temperature to serve it at.
If you want it re-crisp the outside, you can either unwrap it as it's almost at the right internal temperature, and turn the heat up some ... or you can put it under the broiler (grill ... whatever you call heat from the top only)
Another option, if you're serving it au jus (in its drippings) is to heat up the drippings, then put slices in the juice to warm it up ... but at 18lbs, that might not work so well. (although it might be worth trying to heat it up sliced, rather than one giant roast, if the interior has cooled down significantly)
Also consider removing it from the oven before you typically would and how you pack it for transport.
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76833 | pork shoulder roast roasting question
I have 2, 10 lb pork shoulder roasts that need to be roasted in my oven and done by noon. What is my start time? I certainly don't want to cook them as if a 20 lb roast, but don't feel certain that only cooking as a 10 ob roast is sufficient. Any help is greatly appreciated.
The biggest factor in cooking time is how much of the food you are cooking is composed of surface area. Assuming there is space between your two roasts in the oven, the time needed to cook both of them simultaneously should be roughly equivalent to the time needed to cook one.
Pork shoulders should be cooked low and slow, which is great because it gives you quite a bit of wiggle room. I'd recommend 12 hours at 275 with a lid on each roasting pan. I'd also recommend searing them on high heat before roasting in the oven.
Here's some anecdotal evidence to back me up:http://eggheadforum.com/discussion/1143833/how-long-to-cook-two-10-pound-pork-butt
Glaze. cook at 200f for 12 hours. Last hour turn heat up to 375 to brown. Make sure done at bone. Low & slow is best. but cook below 212. If glazed. 275f he is pan roasting with lid. That would hold in more moisture than my way with a lid.
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76845 | Egg substitue in enriched breads
I'm making Kolaches (a Czech semi-sweetened dough with a sweet filling), but I'm challenging myself to cook vegan, and therefore can't use an egg. I've got a bunch of recipes, but all of them are semi-enriched, i.e. have egg, milk, and added fat. I've got replacements for everything else, except the egg.
What are things people have used for eggs in yeast breads. It shouldn't need to be a binder or leaven, just enrich. I've seen suggestions for sweet potato, just add oil, tofu. Anyone have any experience with enriching yeast doughs without eggs?
I ended up using sweet potato with a little bit of oil, and another time pumpkin puree. They both worked well.
I use ground flaxseed and water, which is a common egg substitute - I prefer the flavor of the "golden" or yellow seeds .vs. the brown ones (and unlike the brown seed grower's propaganda, I do taste a difference) but either will work for the egg substitution - chia seed is evidently another common substitute.
I consider it unsafe (or unwise) to assume that the only function of the eggs is to "enrich" - I find that the "same" bread made with or without eggs behaves quite differently in terms of how it rises, so I would suggest sticking to a substitute that gives you more complete functional replacement, rather than, say, "add some oil."
I'm not myself a vegan but I have baked things with keeping vegans happy in mind. As such I have worked with eggs and with ground flaxseed and water, and so far I consider the flaxseed mixture as good of an egg substitute as I have used, though still not the same as (nor indistinguishable from) actual eggs.
We generally use milk as substitute for eggs in eggless cakes. Maybe you can try that.
Milk won't work as a vegan substitute, though.
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77246 | Vietnamese Sandwiches - Spread Identification?
A short while ago, I was on vacation, and ate several times at a Vietnamese sandwich shop (in North America) that served what were presented as traditional Vietnamese style sandwiches.
While most of the ingredients were self-explanatory, one of them was something I've never tasted or seen anywhere else: it was a sandwich spread with a light(?) grey color, and a slight texture similar to a thin sort of pate. The pate was a bit sweet to taste, but otherwise didn't taste familiar (not obviously fishy/beefy/chickeny, etc.).
From what I understand, pate and similar spreads are common in Vietnamese cuisine, but I'm having a hard time narrowing the possibilities down further to ones that match the above description.
Pate can vary in color depending on what you put in it, so I'd say what you were eating was pate!
Here's a pate recipe with a resultant gray hue: http://berriesandspice.com/vietnamese-banh-mi-pate/
Hmm, so based on that, it's probably a chicken liver based pate, with possibly another meat mixed in. Works for me, thanks!
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104083 | How to tell pre-sliced, raw mutton from beef?
Given two plates of raw, thinly sliced meat (e.g. hot pot or Korean BBQ), how can one reliably disambiguate beef from mutton?
Both appear as thin slices of red meat, with similar texture and marbling. Tasting them is not an option, nor is asking someone involved in preparing the meats.
Can you smell it ? beef and mutton/lamb smell different.
@Max hot pot meat is served extremely chilled or frozen, and would often be near much stronger-smelling ingredients. Under those circumstances, it could be very difficult to distinguish the two by smell.
Are you specifically trying to distinguish beef from mutton (from older sheep, an uncommon meat in some areas), or from lamb (from younger sheep, and the most common form of sheep meet in the US and Europe)?
@Max - Smelling is possible, but not really ideal given the context, as Sneftel indicated.
@Sneftel - Specifically mutton as the term would be used on a menu for a (small, local) hot pot restaurant in North America. They have separate menu items mentioning lamb, so I can only presume they mean actual mutton.
What you are asking for is a classic task for learning pattern recognition, also known as the "chicken sexer problem" (derived from the people whose job at a farm is to throw recently-emerged chickens into one crate if female and another if male). The way to learn this is only one: practice. And not being able to taste is making it much harder.
Note that this is not a case where somebody could get you a description of how to recognize the difference and you could go through it and make checkmarks. Even people who succeed at the task will not be able to tell you how they know which it is (they may have a subjective explanation for it, such as "one of them smells faintly like a barn, the other doesn't", but it is not necessary true). The way to do it is to sit together with somebody who is adept at it, and watch their process intently over several hundred to thousand samples, until you realize you can tell the difference yourself. If there is no such expert available, the other way is to have those several hundred to thousand samples prepared by somebody who knows which is beef and which mutton, and you will have to start doing the process on your own, getting a correctness feedback after each sample. It will be slightly slower than sitting with an expert.
The task is likely to be rather context-dependent: you will probably have to go through a separate learning process for hot pot, and a separate one for Korean BBQ. The number of samples you need is also likely to be context-dependent, for example it is much easier to tell apart beef and mutton when grilled (there you will probably need less than one hundred samples) than when presented as salami.
Distinguishing beef from mutton when you know you have one sample of each in front of you is probably an easier task than distinguishing beef from mutton when you're only given one sample at a time (the chick sexing problem). However it's not clear which problem OP wants to solve.
Sheep are raised almost exclusively on grass, whereas beef cattle (particularly the kind that will be turned into thin slices, rather than overpriced steaks) will be finished on grain feed. Grass-fed beef and mutton will have yellow-tinged fat while grain-fed beef will have white fat. So if one of the meats has a slightly yellower fat, that's almost certainly the mutton.
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88708 | Gritty White Chocolate
I'm making white chocolate following this recipe and it had a couple issues:
The sugar didn't fully dissolve, so some of it tasted overly sweet at the bottom of the mold, rest was basically cocoa butter
It had an extremely strong and awful alcohol-y after taste. I used Bourbon Vanilla extract and Liquid almond extract
I tried again later with using granulated sugar and it also didn't dissolve, remaining quite gritty. Is there some secret (or obvious) step I'm missing to help the sugar dissolve?
Also, is using alcohol based extracts in chocolate a no-go? Cause that after taste was positively awful. Multiple recipes online don't seem to say anything against using alcohol extracts though.
Couple final notes:
I used both a double boiler and microwave melting for chocolate
I used the vegan version of the recipe (soy milk powder)
I don't suppose you've taken the temp of the cocoa butter before you add the sugar to it?
No, recipes I used just said "head until melted" is there an important temperature to hit or not pass?
I don't know. I've never done it but if you really want to dissolve sugar, warmer will be more effective, sooner. It will work at lower temps (and you definitely don't want to burn your cocoa powder) but I wonder if that was part of the problem?
1/3c Sugar is never going to dissolve in the ~one tsp liquid from the extracts, and sugar simply does not dissolve in fats - so your cocoa butter won't dissolve it either.
This is a known problem in chocolate making, both white and not... commercially sugar and/or milk powder is mixed in by a process known as conching, where the sugar is mixed into the chocolate by grinding, often for days, to the result is smooth to the tongue. Many "homemade" confections either start with premade chocolate, or add liquid to dissolve the sugar... which ends up making a fudgelike confection (you have to add other ingredients to prevent the chocolate from seizing, and end with the confection not only softer but with other flavors), some try using butter for its water content.
If the cocoa butter is just melted to or cooled to sludgy, before adding the sugar, the powdered sugar might be folded rather than mixed in and the result cool quickly enough not to settle. It still may have texture issues, though.
As for the alcohol-based aftertaste, it may be the extracts were too much for the amount of chocolate, or that your particular extracts had a heavier alcoholic taste. I believe extracts intended for candy making are different from those intended for baking, for this reason among others - they have less liquid, they are rated to higher temperatures, they balanced differently since they are less likely to be mixed into larger volumes to dilute tastes.
Many recipes start with chocolate melting discs, etc, for this reason. If you really want to make your own, or you want a flavor profile with a higher % cocoa butter and/or less sugar, you might have some success with adding cocoa butter, milk powder, and flavorings to lesser amounts of white chocolate (essentially, you'd just be using it for the amt sugar needed for the larger batch, the cocoa butter and milk powder already there would be "extras").
Would adding liquid sugar, like agave or maple syrup "solve" the problem?
@joeyfb - kinda-ish, if you only add a little, tiny bit you could make a confection but it would be less like white chocolate and more like a pale fudge... between a softer, fudgier texture and the syrup flavor possibly crowding out the cocoa butter flavor (which is on the subtle side to begin with). chocolate, white or cocoa'd, can really only take a little liquid before it will no longer solidify (or it separates out and solidifies), I'd guess a straight substitution of syrup would make a chocolate sauce instead.
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88742 | Artisan sourdough bread
We buy artisan white sourdough bread from a baker. when we first got it the loaves were lovely for sandwiches. Lately for a couple months now the loaves having been coming with large holes maybe in the middle on the top side or even lacey big holes making it hard to use and sell to customers. I have talked to the bakery about the issues we are having and tryed asking why this is happening. One double large loaf I could only use 6 slices to make sandwiches from. Help I really want to support local and we love the flavor of the bread. They say its just how artisan bread is but why was is so good for 6 months and now for 2 months so different. The holes are about 2 to 3 inches I don't even mind 1 inch every now and then on the bread Its the 3 inch and lots of 2 inches like lace that I just find hard to serve my customers. Any explaination for this big change and difference in the bread. If I bought whole wheat sourdough would I have these problems.
Thanks so much for taking the time
It seems to me that this is a question to be answered by your baker, rather than the Seasoned Advice forum participants. It appears that their formula/process changed. They can either change back, or you can find a product that meets your needs.
As moscafj mentioned in comments, the baker likely changed something in the process or recipe. If the general question is why big holes happen in lean artisan breads sometimes, there are several possibilities, some of which I enumerated in answer to a previous question.
In very general terms, the more bread is "handled" during the process of a rise, the more even the crumb will be. (That is: "even crumb" = very fine small even holes.) This can involve additional kneading or folding or "punching down" periodically during the rise. The most relevant, of course, is handling and shaping before the final rise where the final air bubbles develop.
The baker is correct that many "artisan bakers" value a texture that has large (often irregular) holes. And many consumers like that. It may not be great for sandwiches, but that is not the only use for artisan bread. If, however, the holes are not evenly distributed but are gathered in certain places (like the middle of the top of the loaf, as you mention in the question), that could indicate inferior kneading or shaping technique, as well as perhaps an overproofed final dough before baking.
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88779 | Making Easter Bread
I made a recipe for Easter Bread. It had to rise for 12 hours. This morning it was a sticky mess. I added more flour and kneaded again. I am allowing to rise again. Have I screwed up my bread by doing this?
With a recipe we could perhaps give more details. Please consider an [edit] of your question.
It's very possible.
I have some easter breads that are very sticky (eg, a ham & cheese bread), and others that would be a problem if too sticky (eg, ones that you braid)
I'd stop the second proofing as soon as possible, form the loaves, and then let it rise in the shape you're planning on baking it (aka 'bench proofing').
If you overproof before shaping, you might not get the necessary rise when bench proofing, so it ends up being a very dense loaf
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122276 | Is there a formula for adjusting water when scaling a recipe?
I do the cooking for a large event once a year and this year we're unable to purchase cranberry sauce in large quantities, but cranberries are freely available. I always make cranberry sauce (whole berry and jellied) for my own Thanksgiving dinners, but have never made it at this scale.
Increasing the cooking isn't really an option as extended cooking times damage the natural pectin in the cranberries, so as less water will be boiled off and therefore I'll need to adjust the amount I add. Given the expense, I'd really like to have a good handle on the scaled recipe without experimentation.
I found this question, which talks about a reduction. Along with another that talks specifically about water in soup, but it lacks a formal definition of how to derive an answer.
I expect it to be some function of the surface area, but can't find anything specific on the subject. Worst case scenario, it won't work and I can always make my normal sized batch 15 times.
Of course, if anyone just happens to have a recipe for 5 or 10 lbs of cranberries, I'd appreciate that too.
No generic formula exists or can exist. Even if you just look at jams (given that cranberry sauce is a kind of jam), it varies according to the cooking time, how much sugar, and how much water is coming from the fruit as opposed to added water. So you'd be better off asking about specifically scaling your cranberry recipe.
@FuzzyChef, Can you enlighten me, it seems to me it should be possible, so I assume I'm missing something. Jam setting is a function of ratios between sugar, pectin (natural or added), fruit and water remaining at the end of the cooking time. All chemical reactions should occur at the same rate at a given temp regardless of volume, so the only factor remaining is the quantity of water. So if we can determine how much water remains at the end of the first recipe, all we should need to do is multiply that amount, plus whatever will boil off in a larger vessel used for the scaled recipe.
But you're asking for generic rules on "if I quadruple the quantity, how do I adjust the water". There's no way to make a generic rule for that; it would be a multi-dimensional matrix.
@FuzzyChef, I didn't expect it to be unidimensional, or even simple formula, I figured it would at the very least be a function of the volume and surface area, and probably have at least one or two other variables to consider. Most likely requiring me to dust off the corner of my brain where all the calculus is stored.
Start by scaling your current recipe's water up by 80%. So if 1# of berries uses a cup of water, 10# would start with 8 cups. Then, as the berries pop and cook, you can add water as you deem necessary. Another solve is to have dry pectin ready to add if you need them to be thicker.
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89082 | How do I peel garlic in bulk?
I want to make some garlic and jalapeno infused oil. Maybe not jalapeno but some kind of Chile.
Good ol' Chef John has a solution right here.
Basically, you want to enclose your garlic in some kind of container that lets them move around fairly easily. He uses two bowls, a commenter suggests a jar, I suppose it depends on the number of garlic cloves you want to peel.
Close the container then start shaking away, maybe for 20-30 seconds or longer once you get the hang of how long this method takes for your chosen clove count.
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89405 | Peanut butter becomes dry
I tried to make some peanut butter at home in a blender. It worked as expected, resulted in a somewhat smooth butter.
But after keeping it for about 30 minutes, it became too dry. The smoothness was all gone and started to appear powdery. How can I avoid this?
I had added some honey and a little bit of coconut oil.
It's a natural process in homemade peanut butter (and in 100% peanut butters). The fat from peanuts is stratifying from the rest. This is assuming you keept the mixture in the machine for longer time. So A) you squished the fat and b) mixed the fat in again.
If you stopped blending right after you "buttered" it then the fat is still not homogenised. Just toss it again in blender and blend for another few minutes. The mixture should be homogenous but when you take little on finger or spoon and shake it off the oily film should be left.
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89542 | Does Lemon juice change acidic level when frozen?
I used frozen lemon juice in a lemon icebox pie. It had egg yolks and sweetened condensed milk as additional ingredients. It failed to set up. Does freezing lemon juice change the acidic property?
Acidity does go down with temperature and bring temperature back up does not always bring it back up to the the prior acidity. I don't have data on lemon juice.
@paparazzo Where d you get this information. I do not think that is accurate at all. Perceived sourness may change, but pH will not.
@MarsJarsGuitars-n-Chars Where do you get it will not? Google water ph versus temperature.
pH is determined by acid content. For a chemical acid like citric acid in lemon juice, low temperature will cause a veeerrryyyy slight reduction. Different for WATER, which you refer to , which is not an acid.
PH goes down but I am seeing data that acidity may not. I am not sure.
@MarsJarsGuitars-n-Chars I said I did not have data lemon juice. PH is the negative log of the hydrogen ion concentration. No going to argue with you.
@paparazzo No worries. It does appear you are not clear on acidity/pH/acids, etc.. so probably shouldn't bring it up then.
The acidity, ie. the amount of chemical acid in the juice, will not change when lemon juice is frozen. Acid would need to be neutralized by a base, or in the case of citric acid and other organic acids, very high heat.
Was the lemon juice completely thawed? If not, that could be an issue, all the juice must be liquid for the acid to be free and work on the yolks.
Perhaps there was something else happening in your recipie. If you can edit in basic proportions and method. AS I understand it an icebox pie is mixed and chilled to set, usually no cooking, like to set a custard?
It is a reach but the freeze and thaw of some of the non-water components could release and as acid or base.
@paparazzo I would kindly ask that you not just 'hypothesize.' There is no pathway for freezing to make other chemicals release acidiity.
Freeze can crack a solid and expose components. Freeze and thaw does not always return to the same composition.
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89508 | How can I remove surface rust from a cleaver and keep it off
I was in Amish country in Ohio last weekend and found this in an antique shop. It seemed interesting and reasonably priced so I bought it. I did notice the surface rust. The cleaver is 9" from heel to toe on the blade and weighs almost 3 pounds.
Can someone tell me how to remove the surface rust and how to keep it from rusting? Does anyone know what kind of cleaver it is and what it is good for?
Thanks
At 3 pounds it's probably very good for cleaving things ...
For the rust you can try an oxalic acid cleaner like Barkeeper's Friend (try it on a small spot first!). It's worked great for my bakeware's cooked-on spots, and should be useful for rust as well. Using it will be a bit of trial-and-error, because leaving the metal exposed for too long will etch it, and not long enough won't clean much.
For rust prevention, just clean the cleaver after each use and thoroughly dry it. I'm not sure what it's made of, but those steps should suffice to prevent rust formation. If you're obsessive about this, or don't cleave often, you can coat it in petroleum jelly afterwards (I do this with my straight razor. It's probably not feasible for a kitchen tool unless you're storing it away).
Probably not wise to advise using petroleum jelly on a kitchen knife
I just apply ordinary cooking oil to my carbon steel before putting it away ..the minimum amount, with a paper towel. But then I use it quite often.
For later maintenance, once the coarse rust is gone: Attack small rust spots with a cloth and a bit of toothpaste as soon as they appear. If you want to keep the cleaver oiled, use a food safe oil of the kind that is also sold to maintain cutting boards (eg food grade mineral oil. Not a cooking oil that could become rancid, not a non-food grade oil like gun oil or WD40, not any oil that easily polymerizes into a sticky resin).
Do not obsess too much about the blade face, a brut-de-forge finish like this on a non-stainless steel is supposed to be rustic.
Since the edge area already looks reasonably polished, polishing it even smoother should help building a patina instead of developing rust spots.
Both Quito's answer (but NOT using non-food grade petroleum jelly = Vasoline?) and rackandboneman's gave sound advice
From what I can see in the picture (enlarged) though, you are not dealing with a simple surface rust. The face of the blade, however, appears to be pitted. You are not going to be able to remove these pits without use of machine tools. Don't even try!
Remember, you are dealing with a carbon steel TOOL, not a sterling silver tea service. It is never going to look like it did when new
As anyone familiar with antiques will tell you, the most sure fired way to devalue your antique is to refinish it. The value of your $38 cleaver will be about $0.50 to $1.50 in seconds at a fea market, even before you finish.
Uses? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleaver or Google 'What is a cleaver used for'
Hi Cynetta. thanks for you answer. I did not buy this to be an antique, but so that I can cook with it. As long as the surface rust doesn't affect my food, I don't really care if it is on the cleaver. I am planning on having it professionally sharpened. Maybe they can do something to remove some of the rust.
As a tool, just use a steel wool soap pad to remove visible surface rust which will come away easily. Wash in dish water, rinse, dry and oil as rackandboneman recommended then use it
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89521 | Cheese crackers
In a recipe using butter, flour, and cheese, what difference will it make to combine the cheese either first with the flour, or later after the butter and flour have been combined?
Assuming the butter is rubbed into the flour (as when making pastry), and the cheese is grated firm cheese there will be a difference.
By trying to combine all at once, you'll struggle to rub in all the butter without trying to rub the cheese in as well. With cold butter it will be really quite awkward.
With a fine grated hard cheese like parmesan you'll be trying to rub the butter into the cheese, but this may still work better than trying to rub the cheese into the flour.
Probaly none to very little, but why temp screwing it up?
You are probably not saving time or effort
Anyroad, the real answer is to try and see what will happen (using a greatly reduced batch size - maybe one quarter?. If it doesn't turn out as expected, you should have learned for the future
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89528 | Better way to make Iced Tea
Should I brew at full strength, allow to cool to room temperature before refrigerating, or should I brew at a higher strength and “shock cool” over ice?
Welcome to the site, could you give more details about what you mean by shock cooling over ice? Do you mean add ice to the tea?
What is your standard for "better"? Shock cooling tends to get you to the 'fastest/best' (IMHO) ice tea. Sun Tea will give you a depth of flavor that some people prefer. Sweet or Unsweet? If you like your tea "Southern-Sweet" then you almost have to brew it hot to dissolve enough sugar to get it 'sweet enough'.
Where I work, we are told to brew iced tea Measure 150% more tea on “TEA” setting for commercial coffee maker, and let it drip directly into a ice-filled canister. I find this makes the tea bitter. I prefer to brew it at a drinkable strength and let it cool to room temperature before putting it in the fridge. I was told the tea oxidizes as it cools. If this is true, what is the detriment to this?
The advice I have heard is for stronger tea use more tea. Do not steep longer as it can get bitter.
If you are in a hurry a stronger tea with ice could work but if you want to come from brew temperature to ice temperature it would need to start very strong.
Maybe experiment with double strength and let it cool to like 100 F. You would add as much ice as tea. If all the ice melts then you need to let is cool more next time. If almost none of the ice melts then you need to let is cool less next time.
Tea goes bad like just about every other food and drink, so the faster you cool it the better it will be long term, especially if you're adding sugar to the mix. However, by adding ice directly you water down the tea. Making a super strong tea isn't a good solution as you end up with a higher proportion of bitter compounds, your best bet is to brew the tea normally, add your sugar and flavorings and then cool it as quickly as possible using methods that won't add ice.
My favorite rapid cool method is to stick a load of cutlery in the freezer for an hour, then make the tea and put the ice cold knives, forks and spoons into it for a few minutes. I then remove the cutlery (using tongs, they're hot) and put the tea into the refrigerator to cool the rest of the way. You can also put the pot in an ice bath and stir the tea. I've heard of people using re-usable ice cubes, personally I wouldn't because most of them I've seen are not high temperature plastic, they also tend to leak apparently.
Ideally, if you have the time, try 'cold brewing'. The name suggest you should brew the tea with cold water, and compensate by allowing for a very long steeping time. Basically you can pour water at room temperature over the tea and then let it sit over night. The result is that you still extract all the flavour and leave the bitterness in the leaves. I've tried this before with a dragon well green tea as well as some Yunnan blacks, and it works very well. Never tried it with tea bags though.
It does work very well with bags; I've done this many times with regular Luzianne or Lipton bags in a pitcher or jug in the fridge, with excellent results.
What I do is brew a concentrate. I know the number of teabags I need for a 2 quart pitcher of tea, to suit our taste. I steep them in .5 liters of water. (I don't use sugar but, for someone who does, I would add it immediately after steeping.) I then let the concentrate cool slightly for safety reasons.
I then put ice in my pitcher, the amount depending on how soon I plan to drink it. I then pour the concentrate over the ice and fill the rest of the way with water.
This is how I learned to make iced tea growing up. It certainly is much easier than trying to start with the full amount and then adjust to get the desired results. And using this method, the results are always consistent.
I would think the best (and safest) way to achieve this using the coffeemaker would be to use the correct amount of tea for the whole pot, but only half as much water. When brewed, add sugar if you are going to. Then fill the pot the rest of the way with ice and water. This should give you the right strength and consistent results.
How about just cold brewing your tea ?
Cold brew
Not the fastest way to brew tea, but it will get the job done.
Also, I think that making a strong(er) tea will result in a bitter tea; that even with sugar added will not clear the bitter taste.
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99840 | What is the difference between using only yolks and whole eggs in a curd?
So, i've been searching for an explination of why some curds use only yolks and others the whole egg while making a curd (for example a Lemon Curd). How can i exchange them ? How does it thickens while using only Yolk if the protein is in the White ? Thanks
The yolk also has a fair bit of protein but it is combined with a huge amount of fat as well. Whites, on the other hand, have only protein.
When egg whites cook in a custard they have to be mixed very well, cooked gently, and usually still strained, in order to avoid blobs of scrambled egg messing up the texture of the dish.
Egg yolks are much easier. Some recipes will still call for straining them, I expect to deal with the albumin and chalazae that cling to the outside however, this is not nearly as difficult to work with. Egg yolk have enough protein to gently set a custard and they mix and emulsify into the batter easily.
I will sometimes also include whites when making a recipe that calls for yolks- especially if I have a yolk break while separating and I don't want to throw the egg out. In this case I will mix the batter more thoroughly to ensure there are no undissolved whites. Don't mix the egg whites alone or they will foam and never dissolve. I will also heat the mix more gently and stir more often to prevent scrambled eggs.
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89590 | Pizza dough keeps breaking through plastic
When storing freshly made pizza dough in the fridge, I use your everyday plastic wrap, two sheets, to wrap around the dough. Sometimes, when the dough expands, it breaks through the plastic and the bit exposed outside the plastic dries up. Not the end of the world, but annoying. Anyone know a better, more foolproof way to store dough in the fridge? Thanks.
I did, I've since wrapped it more loosely, which helps.
Use a 'big enough' baggie or 'big enough' rigid container. Most dough recipes call for the dough proofs (rising of the dough) to be double in size.
Use a baggie or container 2-1/2 to 3 times the pre-rise size of the dough ball
Many recipes call for an oiled/grease vessel covered with cling film (plastic wrap), kitchen towel or damp kitchen towel to allow for the dough to proof/rise.
I have never encountered a yeast dough recipe or anyone's recommendation to 'wrap it in plastic' film
From experience, I'd recommend 3x ... maybe even 4x. And I advise against the kitchen towel .... if it's not oiled/floured well enough, you'll end up with a mess of a towel.
I'm not going to claim it's foolproof, but there are some possible approaches:
Use a recipe that's intended for refrigeration. High hydration doughs in a sufficiently sized container will slump before it gets to the top of the container. Others will specify what size container to use.
Reduce how easy it is for the dough to climb up out. A well-oiled dough ball and bowl will have a more difficult time climbing out of the container. You also want to make sure the container is sufficiently large (3 to 4 times the size of the dough ball for typical pizza dough)
Restrain the dough from climbing out. A completely sealed container won't work (the lid will pop up after a while), but you can place a plate or loose lid on top of it, then something else heavy on top.
So, my typical technique:
Put some oil in a container at least 3x the volume of the dough ball, then turn the dough ball over in it 'til it's well coated ... then smear it all over the sizes of the container so both are well coated.
Press some plastic wrap against the dough ball
Put a large enough plate on top of it to cover the container
Put the container in the oven, then something else on top of it to take up the space between the plate and the shelf above (or top of the fridge)
Foolproof way: lightly oil the dough ball and place it in an empty bread bag. Remove all excess air from the bag, then twist the end of the bag closed and tuck it underneath the dough ball as you place it in the fridge.
This has numerous advantages: in a cold ferment (CF) dough, you generally want it to be cooled as quickly as possible. This method maximizes surface area exposed to the cold air without the insulating walls of a plastic container getting in the way. It also removes all excess air space which prevents condensation from happening. Additionally, it allows for expansion to take place (the bag will simply untwist slightly), yet the weight of the dough ball itself assures that it remains sealed.
Avoid using a ziplock bag, as you generally can't remove enough air before sealing it to prevent condensation from occurring.
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89600 | Energy usage of an oven
Does it take more energy to heat an oven to 350 degrees from cold or to leave it at 350 degrees for one hour?
It's complicated and depends on how and where your oven is installed and how much insulation there is on the front, back, top, bottom and sides. As Wikipedia says "The heat equation is a parabolic partial differential equation that describes the distribution of heat (or variation in temperature) in a given region over time." IOW, figuring out the answer to your question is going to hurt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_equation Engineering Toolbox has the equations if you want to think of your oven as a Building: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/heat-loss-buildings-d_113.html
I will assume that your question is really "My oven is at 350 degrees, but I won't need it for another hour. Should I leave it on for the hour, or turn it off and then back on when I actually need it?". (This is more physics than cooking, but since you asked the question here, and I like physics...)
The answer is that you will use the least total energy if you turn your oven off, and then reheat it back to 350° at the last minute. Here's why.
If the oven temperature is 350° at the beginning and end of the hour, then the only thing the heating element needs to do during the hour is to replace the heat lost through the walls and insulation of the oven. The higher the oven temperature, the faster heat leaks, so having a lower average temperature (as it cools off during the hour) will reduce the heat leakage, and thus reduce the energy.
Calculating exactly how much energy you'd save by doing this would be pretty complex, although my guess is the answer would be "not all that much, electricity-cost-wise".
Edit (to add way too much information on this not-all-that-important topic, but as I said I like physics):
Think of your oven as a bucket with a small hole at the bottom. Fill the bucket with water (heat the oven) and the water (heat) will leak out the hole (insulation, door, etc). The deeper the water (higher the temperature), the faster the leak (rate of heat loss).
Say the bucket is full, and you need to have the bucket full at the end of one hour. Since you want to save water (heat/electricity), do you want to keep adding water to keep the bucket full (leave the oven on), or stop (turn the oven off) and refill it at the end of the hour (turn the oven back on)?
The key is the leaking water: whatever amount leaks is exactly what you'll have to put back into the bucket. So, the less that leaks, the less you have to put in. Since the lower the water level, the less that leaks per time; keeping the bucket full (leaving the oven on) will always leak more total water (heat/electricity) than if you let the bucket drain and then refill it (turn the oven off, and then on at the end of the hour).
The size of the leak (how good the insulation is), and the size of the bucket (how much heat mass the oven has) will affect how much water (electricity) you save, but in the end you will always save at least some water (electricity) by stopping and then refilling at the end of the hour (turning the oven off, and then on).
(OK, I'm done.)
I leave it on if it's cold outside (gas furnace) and turn it off if it's hot (AC).
I agree. In your home it is cheaper to turn up the thermostat when you leave for the day and cool when you get back home.
I would note that some ovens have a built-in ventilation system that cools them rather quickly when turned off. So its not simply a function of their insulation in all instances.
@Norm If this is an active system that discharges more heat when the oven is turned off than when it is left on, then that changes everything. I'd say, though, that it would be very unlikely to find such a system in a home oven.
Actually they are becoming more common in the home.
@Norm I'm curious: what make/model(s) have you seen that do this? (I like learning about new consumer technology.)
I can't give specific makes and models - I learned about this when looking at a method for cooking roasts where you cook for 3.5 minutes per pound at 550 degrees, then turn the oven off and let it finish in the cooling oven for two hours. A number of users noted that the method only worked when they completely removed power to the oven, otherwise it cooled down too fast for the meat to finish properly. Apparently my brothers oven may have this feature as his cools too quickly to use this method.
@Norm Interesting! I've never heard of a recipe where one step is to unplug the oven...
Well, the instruction is to "turn it off" to be precise.
I suspect this discussion relates to the cavity cooling fan for built-in oven, which is meant to stop the surrounding wood from overheating. It tends to come on after the oven starts warming up, and run for a while after turning off the oven. This will slightly increase the rate of cooling , possibly enough to make a difference, but it's on the outside of rather a lot of insulation so won't have a huge effect. That's the only common device that could possibly be considered active cooling
I just tested this with my home oven.
Conditions:
Oven - Large Dual Range 2017 General Electric
Ambient temperature - 75F
Target temperature - 375F (cooking salmon)
Measure: Smart meter
Cost to heat:
3.5 kW for 15 minutes = ~0.875 kWh
Cost to maintain
1.0 kW for 1 hour = ~1.0 kWh
So for me it was cheaper to heat than maintain but not by much!
Way cool: nothing like reality to guide decisions.
It would depend on the oven.
More insulation would equal less heat loss.
More thermal capacity more energy to heat. Most of the thermal capacity is in the metal and glass. The air alone in the oven does not take much to heat. More insulation has some more thermal capacity but by its nature insulation is low thermal capacity.
It would be close. Rather than try and calculate measure. Put a meter on the line or just time it. An oven has an on off controller and some you can hear the click. Or you can just observe the element. During heating it is on the whole time. Watch the oven for an hour and time how long the element is on.
A cheap oven with thin metal and little insulation will use more electricity to stay on.
A higher end well insulated oven is going to be a close call.
It will depend on your oven's insulation and its efficiency. But it will likely be pretty close. The way to figure this out for your specific oven, would be to first time how long it takes for your oven to preheat. Then wait by your oven for 15 minutes with a stop watch and turn it on when you hear your oven click on, and stop it when it stops heating. Take the total amount of time measured, multiply by 4 and you should get a reasonable estimate of which uses more energy.
Plenty of ovens use multiple elements in preheating but not in maintaining temperature. That would invalidate this approach
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89665 | Want to bottle and sell a marinade/sauce
I have a marinade recipe I want to sell to local small stores but I don’t know the logistics of how to make the product last with shelf life and I’ve read about oils causing botulism. I’m not sure where to find this information or how to go about it .
Check the colleges near you as they may have a food incubator program. There are several in Louisiana both affiliated with colleges and privately owned. They have programs to teach you the basics, professors to help answer questions, staff to help take your recipe from small batch to larger quantities, and commercial kitchens for rent.
You can also contact the Department of Health. they were quite helpful when I was starting my company, especially with label reviews.
If you are planning on making an acidified product, you should look into a Better Process Control course. These are offered at some universities (some have online options) and are a requirement of most food incubators. Hope this helps.
From what I understand it's all about how acid/salty, low water is the food
(Shelf stable acid preserved foods and Food Processing for Entrepreneurs Series)
It is also about how the food is packaged, you need to have a sterile environment (as sterile as possible); hot packaging, pasteurization,...
I suggest looking at local regulations for commercial kitchen.
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96777 | Sear pork belly before or after cooking in a pressure cooker?
I've been trying different pork belly recipes, after trying a few using a pressure cooker and a few that only call for pan-searing, I think I'd like to try a combination of both, since that works really well for beef.
Every time I've done any sort of beef in the pressure cooker, the consensus appears to be that you should sear before putting it in the pressure cooker. After all, it usually comes out too tender to sear afterwards, anyway.
However, recipes for pork belly appear to call for the opposite: to sear the pork belly after it comes out of the pressure cooker.
I know that pork belly has a lot of fat & connective tissue, so is this perhaps the reason why the recipes call for the opposite? Will searing it before pressure cooking affect how that breaks down? Or is it really bound to not make that much of a difference?
If you sear the meat in the pressure cooker before putting the lid on, then the flavoring from the seared tidbits and caramelization will assist in bringing a fuller flavor to the finished recipe.
This is the same technique I use when I cook something in my Dutch Oven (as a substitute for my slow cooker). Instead of trying to transfer everything into the slow cooker, I simply slide my Dutch Oven into the oven and set the heat (for the equivalent of high or low).
I don't see any reason that the same principle shouldn't work for you with your pressure cooker.
Yes! that's what I normally do, albeit some things I still prefer using the skillet, even though it is some extra work... But would you say that searing the pork belly before pressure cooking would add more flavor than searing after?
I did try the sear-after method last night, and I got a much more even browning doing after the fact... which makes sense, but I don't think it did much for the flavor.
I think before is better, absolutely! You get a darker browning, which is what creats all the flavor. (IMHO) It's what I do.
This depend on how you are going to serve the pork belly. If you want to slice it into smaller pieces, say to place in a pork bun, for example, I would carefully remove from pressure cooker after cooking. Wrap and chill with a weight on it. Once chilled, slice/portion and sear individual pieces.
that's a good point! But assuming that the pork belly is already chopped into chunks, would you say that one way would make any difference over the other?
@rm-vanda I assumed one large piece of belly. It really depends on how you are going to serve. I generally like a smaller piece with a seared crust, so I would portion and sear after cooking.
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89710 | Home-made soy milk
Yesterday I went to a chinese supermarket and bought a bag of dried, white and unprocessed soy beans because I wanted to make my own soy milk.
I took about 100 grams of them and let them soak in water for about 20-22 hours.
Then I put them into a blender with around 400ml of water. The result was a creamy and thick liquid (maybe a bit too much water) with some tiny chunks of beans.
I was a bit disappointed because at this point the mixture smelled really nasty kind of toxic to me but I kept going.
I put this mixture into a kitchen towel and strained it to get the raw soy milk.
Afterwards I cooked the raw soy milk for around 10-20 minutes (didn't really measure the time) on low heat. At the beginning it nearly overcook because of all the foam, just like all the recipes mention.
The result was a yellowish, watery liquid.
The result still smelled quite bad, just like I mentioned above. Not as strong as the paste I got after mixing the whole beans but still a weakened version of this "toxic" smell.
Yet I tried a tiny portion of the cooked milk and beside the fact that I might have used too much water it still didn't really taste like soy milk from the supermarket, not even close.
I know that the milk from the supermarket contains some sweeteners and other additional ingredient but really, I wouldn't be able to recognize mine as soy milk if I would blindly taste it.
Is there anything I could have done wrong?
Is the smell I mentioned just normal?
Any further suggestions?
I believe that the ground up soy slurry is typically boiled before being strained (and not the other way around as you did it). I don't know what difference that would have made though.
@brhans- You are describing the difference between Japanese and Chinese methods of preparation of soy milk. It is done both ways.
thanks for your comments, learning never stops :) Do you have any experience making soy milk and can describe the smell? Is it rather neutral or good-smelling or like I described above?
Uncooked soy milk is mildly scented. The scent matches the flavor, fresh, slightly sweet, nutty, and grassy before it is cooked. It starts smelling more sour and loses the fresh nutty notes after a few days.
I make my own soymilk regularly. The method I use is from Yoshiko Takeuchi's book Cooking with Soy.
She explains that traditional Chinese soymilk is made by grinding the beans with cold water, while the Japanese method involves heating the beans to reduce the strong bean flavour. "Western" style soymilk, she says, is made using a process that includes dehulling the beans and soaking them in an enzyme-deactivator. So, I don't think you will be able to get the familiar, more neutral taste of commercially-produced soymilk at home with basic equipment.
I use the soymilk I make for cooking and making tofu (though I'm still working on getting that right), but I don't usually use it, for example, in hot drinks, as the bean flavour is too strong.
If I use organic soybeans, I find the flavour is better and I can use the soymilk in more things without finding the flavour too strong.
The smell is mild at all stages. I certainly wouldn't describe it as toxic! The raw mixture has a fresh, sweetish, slightly grassy smell as mentioned by Sobachatina. It's very similar, I think, to the mild but quite distinctive smell of split black gram (sweeter) or green gram (more earthy) that has been soaked for an hour or more. After cooking and straining the smell is like that of tofu.
The method I use is this:
Wash 100g soybeans in hot water
Soak for 20 hours (in the fridge if climate is hot) in plenty of water
Grind the beans very well with water to cover (in a blender - rinse the blender right away, otherwise washing it will be a pain)
Transfer the mixture to a large pan and add 300-500ml extra water
Bring the mixture to the boil over a medium-high heat, stirring constantly (or it will stick really badly). Skim all the foam off and discard.
When it boils turn the heat down (or it will boil over very fast) and continue to cook on a low heat, stirring constantly, for 10-15 minutes, skimming foam if there is any.
Transfer to a sieve or colander lined with a cheesecloth (please don't use paper towels!) sitting over a large bowl or jug (easier to pour the milk out of) and allow to cool (meanwhile rinse the pan immediately as with the blender!).
Squeeze the cheesecloth to get out as much soymilk as possible. (The solid remnant is okara which tastes of very little but has a good, soft and crumbly texture, and some nutritional value - useful for some recipes.)
+1, I have read that the milk had to be cooked either way to reduce toxins and the off-putting grassiness. I thought it was just whether the beans were cooked before or after being ground/pressed.
thanks for your detailed description. in the meantime i did further experiments and noticed that if i take 50g beans per 1l of water the taste gets way better and the strong smell i described is nearly gone. the smell now is more like the one you described so i guess everything is fine :)
I liked this answer because the method given also produces cooked okara. (I've heard that okara should never be eaten raw and pan-frying it is not enough.)
Hey @Zanna, does 3-500ml extra water mean "somewhere between 300ml and 500ml" ?
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117016 | How to avoid/overcome seized tahini
I’m reading a recipe for hummus online: throw in chickpeas, tahini, garlic, lemon, cilantro, salt and jalapeño. Process to a paste. The. Add water while processor is running to smooth out mixture.
Prior recipes using tahini called for just tahini and water in the processor first, and then adding additional ingredients. I’m concerned that the recipe above will seize up and will be hard to undo when the tahini is already incorporated. Is this a valid concern?
Probably not quite a duplicate, but definitely related: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/116821/why-does-peanutbutter-become-dry-when-mixed-with-orange-zest-and-juice
Tahini "seizes up" when a small amount of water-based liquid is added but the emulsion has not yet inverted. It's not really a problem. As more liquid is incorporated, the emulsion will invert and things will become smooth again. Particularly if using a food processor, this is not something that you'll even notice (just like you didn't notice it happening with your previous hummus recipe.)
I don't know why you anticipate seized tahini, but it is a ground paste, and undergoes no chemical changes in hummus. It won't seize.
This is not only theoretical reasoning. I have made hummus frequently enough, by throwing everything together and processing, and never had any issues.
I suppose the kind of recipe you are using might have initially been intended for manual mixing. Tahini tends to separate when sitting, and the solid part is really hard to mix. So if you get this one softer at first, you will avoid having a big lump of tahini sediment in the hummus later. But the food processor doesn't care about that, it is perfectly capable of mixing the hummus when everything is thrown in at once.
See Sneftel's answer: tahini "seizing" is actually a part of the tahini-sauce-making process. You don't see it if the tahini is mixed 1:2 with chickpeas, though; it only happens if you're mixing tahini, lemon juice, and water by itself.
That’s not what the question is asking about. Tahini has a very weird tendency to seize into a very thick paste when some water is added and then thin back out as additional water is added.
From my personal experience: when I make hummus, I blend tahini, garlic, salt and lemon juice first into a smooth paste with some cold water and liquid from the chickpeas (aquafaba). Then, I add the chickpeas and blend again, adjusting the liquid content until I get the desired texture. Finally, I adjust seasoning to taste. The result is a very good and consistent hummus,
In your case, I would add the jalapenos and cilantro together with the chickpeas in the second blend step.
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90175 | Egg freshness--stale eggs at market?
What's the best way to tell if eggs are fresh when you don't have access to a glass of water (I.e at farmers market)? The teaching has been eggs from the farmers market are fresher than those at the store. I recently hard boiled eggs from both the farmers market and the store. The farmers market eggs had a big air pocket at the bottom ( conveniently making them easier to peel). I was always told that this is a sign they are not as fresh. I fed my baby the ones from the store instead.
The farmer probably took his "Grade B" eggs and boiled them, making them last longer than if left raw and unsold. Nothing wrong there... I do the same at home too with eggs that are sitting too long in my fridge.
@SnakeDoc I think you misunderstood. If I'm reading this right, the OP boiled the eggs, not the person who sold them.
I get what "bad" egg is, but what is a "stale" egg?
I used to raise chickens for fun...hundreds of them over the years, and processed many thousands of eggs (considering my biggest 'haul' in one day was 227 eggs, I feel safe to say thousands.)
There were methods based on where an egg floated in a temperature gradient bath, etc., but the most reliable (to me) was what you saw when you cracked it open. A fresh egg should have a rounded yolk domed well above a second domed albumin structure; the third level is a cohesive flatter mass of albumin. Buy an egg and crack it. If it's fresh, it will look like the picture. If it doesn't, it's not fresh (the color of the yolk is not an indication of freshness. It varies by the feed.)
Above, there are three distinct "layers" to a fresh egg. As the egg ages, these distinctions fail in degrees every day.
This is a fresh egg next to an older egg.
A hard boiled fresh egg is very hard to peel when boiled; you wind up tearing chunks of egg white with the shell. We would wait about a week before trying to hard boil them.
Individual eggs may have large air cells and still be fresh, but in general large air cells equate to old eggs, and possibly eggs that were stored at too high of temperatures. At higher temps, the air cell grows faster.
To test, use a small flashlight and shine it through the egg, and you can find the outline of the air cell. It is a bit more difficult with colored eggs, and you may have to use shadows to see the air cell in bright conditions.
For the record, eggs are often stored incorrectly. Properly stored eggs should be placed with the air cell up, not down. The rounder side of the egg should have the air cell, the more pointed side should be placed down. The reason is, the air cell breaths through the porous shell as nature designed. Putting the air cell down, slows this breathing. Not only does this slow the growth of the air cell, sometimes making the egg look fresher than it really is, it also increases the chance of the egg trapping gases and going bad. Stored flat is also fine as again, the egg can breath, it is in cartons and such that orientation matters, and for some reason many believe the pointed side goes up and that seems to me the more common orientation when put in randomly.
There's no foolproof to check the egg's freshness, even with a water bath.
If you feel the eggs were not fresh enough, go back to the market and tell the egg seller that his eggs were not fresh. Ask him when the eggs were laid.
If he's proud of his eggs, he will make certain that you get fresh ones.
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94226 | Seasoning pasta water
Is it possible to oversalt pasta water? Will the extra salt be unabsorbed or would the pasta be noticeable too salty? Is there anything people add to pasta water for seasoning (I.e ground pepper or anchovies)?
I think this question should be closed for being too broad. Stick to asking one thing at a time. The question about salt is possibly a duplicate of https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/8934/when-cooking-pasta-in-salted-water-how-much-of-the-salt-is-absorbed?rq=1
Possible duplicate of When cooking pasta in salted water how much of the salt is absorbed?
It is definitely possible to oversalt pasta water. I managed it when cooking soup noodles. I used a very small pot with to little water and then lost more water to evaporation, increasing the salinity.
This isn't to hard to avoid though. Generally one should make pasta in lots of water, and the water should taste like the ocean water.
It is very difficult to salt your noodles later.
According to gimmesomeoven the proper amount is
1 pound of pasta : 1 tablespoon salt : 4 quarts (16 cups) water
This sounds similar to what I have heard from others as well.
This answer says the relationship between salt in the water and the uptake from the noodles is linear, more salt = saltier noodles.
One thing I add to pasta water sometimes (especially for some one pot dishes where the noodles are boiled with a lot less water, which means you can't salt as much as it will all end up in the dish) is soup boullion powder. Another recipe is drunken noodles where the pasta water contains red wine, turning the noodles red.
I think that if something is added in significant amounts and is dissolved into the water then it will flavor the pasta. Pepper is probably not dissolved into the water and I don't think it would bring much at this stage.
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94209 | Need Binding agent ideas
I need help getting cooked grains (I.e. sorghum, barley, farro) to clump together but maintain a relatively dry texture. I’m cooking for my 18 month old and he likes grains but picks up a single grain at a time. I want them to clump together so he gets more per bite (preferably without a sweetener or low sugar option). I would love to use eggs for the nutritional and caloric value but would need to cook most of the moisture out of it—and I can’t get away with a frittata-as he does not like scrambled eggs or things with wet/mushy texture. Eggs alone were a fail in binding.
The answer likely depends at what temperature you're going to be serving it at, but my first thought would be to add some rice flour and see if you can get it to stick like a risotto, but it might need to be cool or cold to get it to clump like you want
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105173 | Salting ground Turkey
I am vegetarian but cook meat for my husband. As such, I don’t know much about seasoning meat. I know salting foods is a matter of taste, but if I am sautéing 1 pound ground turkey with onions and herbs would a tablespoon of salt be in the ball park of what I would need to use? I am talking about table salt, not kosher salt. Would one use less salt on ground products vs whole meat because it would penetrate the meat so much easier with ground?
Is there a rough guideline one can provide such as for xx pounds of xx meat suggest xx amount of salt?
A tablespoon is far, far, far too much. As asked this can't be answered because it's partly personal taste: how salty does your husband like his food?
For raw meats, poultry, fish, and seafood: 3/4 to 1 teaspoon Kosher salt per pound (and even that varies, depending on the type and the size of salt flakes). If using table salt, cut back to 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoons per pound or even less.
I would start with the lower amount, and see if your husband thinks finished dishes needs a bit more. Then you can adjust up or down over time.
I would only suggest no more than a teaspoon. Table salt has much more sodium than kosher by almost 2X. In addition, if you are using store bought ground turkey, there is a good chance it may have also been processed with sodium. Best to stay low.
A teaspoon sounds too much. You haven’t really said what you’re making, but I’d just be adding a “healthy pinch” as you cook it and then adjust it at the end by tasting. In your case “tasting” will mean dragging your husband into the kitchen (if he is reluctant then he just gets whatever comes!)
Table salt has about the same amount of sodium as kosher salt. One difference is that the size of table salt crystals are smaller than kosher, so more of them fit into a given measure (tsp, for example). So if you measure a tsp of each, you are actually using more salt if you are measuring table salt.
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107532 | Quality of Garlic
Is grocery store garlic as good as it gets or are there places to get higher quality garlic that will elevate ones cooking?
Would better quality garlic last longer? I don’t cook much and often find the center of the clove has turned green when I go to use it.
Where are you storing it? By 'green' do you mean it started to grow, or it's gone mouldy?
I suppose by green they mean how the cloves develop a green centre before they're about to sprout. Also, side note: if you're cooking it, you can use sprouted garlic normally, but if it's raw you may want to discard the green centre as it can be slightly bitter.
Garlic lasts a long time, how long depends partly on variety. Hardneck varieties have fewer, bigger cloves and generally do not last as long, softnecks have more and smaller cloves and last a bit longer, but they both last a very long time. I grow garlic and I'm usually still using my last year's batch when my next is ready, so you should be able to keep yours for weeks at least. If it is sprouting most likely you are storing it in the refrigerator, this is a common mistake as most people do not know that garlic germinates in cold weather. Store it at room temperature instead.
I've lived many places in the world and there's no single answer to the quality aspect as it varies from place to place. In most of the US and UK the garlic you get at the supermarket is pretty tame, bred for quantity over quality, whereas in Italy and France the garlic you get at the supermarket is far stronger - one clove of Italian garlic is equal to a whole bulb of typical US supermarket garlic. Organic varieties in supermarkets tend to be much better, you can also order online if there are no good local farmers markets or other sources nearby.
If you like good garlic and you have the space you could grow some yourself, that way you can pick a strong variety. It's actually very easy, tolerant of a variety of soils, you just need to make sure its well fertilized and not to let it get dry. Of course, depending on where you are in the world it may be too late to plant out as it needs cold weather to germinate.
I can back what GdD says about US commercial garlic. Until recently, most was grown in California, now much comes from there, Mexico or further South and it is a variety known as California White. It is a mild, mass produced variety that is grown in a climate that is easy to grow in, but poor for garlic quality unless you like mild, bland garlic. If you want potent stuff, it needs to over winter in cold weather but not cold enough to kill it. About the only heavily grown stuff around here more mild than California White is Elephant garlic, which is actually a leek, not garlic.
However, there are many varieties that are much more pungent, especially if they get a nice winter chill. Many hardneck varieties have much stronger flavors, and nice big easy to separate sections, but unfortunately have the shorter shelf lives. Some Polish varieties are some of my favorites when I lived where I could grow them because they were flavorful, and nice looking with purple and red paper, but many of the European and Amish varieties in the US are nice if you can grow them yourself. They actually are pretty easy if you have a little room and patience. Farmers markets are always a good bet to be able to find varieties and often you can get smaller quantities like 2-3 heads.
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91728 | Imparting flavor to steamed vegetables
What flavors, when added to the steaming water can impart its flavor to vegetables being steamed? I know ginger has some water soluble compounds. What else is similar?
Possible duplicate of How to add flavouring ingredients to steamed or boiled veggies?
Water solubility isn't enough - that gets the flavour into the water but says nothing about whether the flavour gets to the food. Consider salt as an extreme example.
You may get somewhere by putting the source of flavour on top of the food being cooked. There are recipes that do this with mint for example, though they normally add more mint at the end.
The ginger you mentioned may work in a similar way, but testing is difficult as this approach tends to scent the kitchen or even the whole house, so you perceive the flavour even before the food is served.
Perhaps I can suggest a different cooking method.
I have recently tried and grown fond of frying our veggies. Yes...frying!
Use a medium heat with a nonstick pan and some oil(I use avocado oil). I use a lid for a couple of minutes so the moisture in the veggies helps cook as it becomes steam. The last couple of minutes, I remove the lid and add seasoning. The seasoning can be salt, spices or a combination of. Soya sauce, oyster sauce, worechester sauce . Whatever you want to try.
Never any veggie leftovers anymore!
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91299 | Refrigerator Fruit/Vegetable Bins
Is there anything that makes the bins in the fridge particularly good (or bad) for storing fruits and vegetables. Previous refrigerators had a moisture control slide that altered humidity in the bins. My new fridge does not have this. I would rather store bread, meat and cheese in the bins and have my fruits and vegetables accessible on the shelves. Any reason not to do this?
You can store whatever you want in these bins - I regularly use one of mine to store bottled drinks.
However, depending where the cold air outlet is in your fridge, placing relatively fragile items such as fruits and vegetables on the shelves could cause them to freeze or form ice crystals internally, damaging the item.
Things like bags of apples or oranges tend to take up a lot of shelf space, so a bin helps contain them a bit by forcing them to stack vertically more-so than a flat shelf would.
So, pay attention to where the air vent is and your fridge overall temperature, as well as what's next to the items - otherwise it's OK to store fruits and vegetables on the shelf.
The bins are actually called crisping or humidity drawers, so they do help with things like lettuces, celery and carrots. They also control the gases the produce emits that can affect spoilage and over-ripening. The use of two drawers is to keep fruit in one, and vegetables in another. Their gases don't usually mix well and can cause spoilage. Also, the drawers work better when full, so stock them up.
Storing produce on shelves for quick use should be fine, but in excess their gases can spread and affect other food.
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91495 | Chappati flour (Indian store flour)
Can someone elaborate on chappati flour from an Indian grocery store. Is it considered a hard wheat or soft wheat? And is it really whole wheat because it looks more like white flour to me. Could I use it for muffins or pancakes?
You will find enlightenment in the answer to this question: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/10157/using-chakki-atta-instead-of-whole-wheat-flour
Which, alas, means that your question is a duplicate. Have fun baking!
Possible duplicate of Using Chakki Atta instead of whole wheat flour?
@FuzzyChef: I know next to nothing about Indian food, but the question you link is about chakki atta, which based on the answers to that question is a different thing than chappati atta. It seems like chakki atta is coarsely ground, while chappati atta is finely ground.
Er .. no. "Chakki" just refers to a finer grade -- it's properly stone-milled, whereas something marked "Chapati Atta" is the same wheat and flour, just hot roller milled so that it's drier and supposedly inferior. It's like "cornmeal" vs. "stone-ground cornmeal".
Here's a link that talks about that: https://www.kannammacooks.com/why-my-atta-flour-doesnt-work-in-bread-loaves/
From what I understand chappatti flour (atta) is very finely ground whole wheat flour, so it does appear to be more white than regular whole wheat flour, but it does have a noticable difference if you compare the two flours side by side, both in texture and colour.
You could definitely use it for muffins or pancakes if you're so inclined! Just as you can sub whole wheat flour, you could sub atta.
It is difficult to say whether chapatti atta is soft or hard wheat. Mainly because that kind of characterisation is not really done for this product. I would place it on par with whole wheat flour to the characteristics. For pancake it is ok, but for muffin it might be too tough. (Am Indian)
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90518 | How to make homemade cooking spray
I think I tried to put oil in a spray bottle before and I don't recall it working very well. how can you make a cooking spray that will not gum up a spray bottle?
Related: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/11401/constructing-your-own-oil-water-sprayer/11403#11403
Why not just buy Pam spray at the store? I know its a mixture of oil and aerosol, just dont know how the process goes.
For several years, I've been putting canola in a plastic squeeze spray bottle and using that.
I do not recommend 'vegatable' oil, which in the USA is usually 100% soy oil and I have found that it gums up and can leave a difficult to clean residue
Yes, my system can apply too much and do so unevenly too. just use a paper towel to wipe off ecess and even out.
Far cheaper with canola priced at about $5 per US gallon versus 8 oz of generic aerosol spray at $1.99
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89889 | Substituting birds eye chilli with carolina reaper
I like to cook asian dishes. I recently found some carolina reapers on the supermarket and bought it on impulse.
What can I do with them and can I substitute them in place of Birds eye chilli in asian dishes(e.g. Pad Thai)? I am well aware that reapers are much much spicier, but apart from that how similar do they taste?
Hello, and welcome to Stack Exchange. My guess is that the dishes will taste different; it's anyone's guess whether you could tell through the tears.
Capsicum chinense chili peppers tend to have far more pronounced smoky/fruity aromas than small capsicum annuum types like bird's eye - whether this aroma works well with the rest of the dish is probably a case-by-case matter.
Recipes/cuisines that use mixed fresh green and dried or fresh red chilies in their flavor profile (eg many indian dishes, some hunan chinese dishes...) can probably gain from using that kind of pepper - recipes that only use dried red types might rely on the peppers not adding unexpected aromas.
Another rough thought experiment to categorize dishes: Would the dish gain, or be ruined, if you added sambal oelek into it (which tends to also have a somewhat smoky/fruity note to it)?
Mind that distributing the heat through the dish is an important matter with peppers that hot - so infusing the fat and cutting the peppers very finely is advised. However, these actions both have their own dangers with extremely hot peppers: Frying them in oil can suddenly surprise you with releasing a lot of capsaicin into the air, teargassing/choking you; cutting them finely usually means touching them a lot. Keep a wet towel handy, expect to have to dash outside for fresh air, and use gloves if inexperienced.
Mind that fresh red chilies seem to be uncommon in making thai curry pastes (except some recipes for kaeng pa ... which, however, due to the lack of coconut milk, could end up truly hellish with a 2+ million scoville pepper in the paste), a bit more common in indonesian-style pastes...
Quick pickling them as a condiment to a pad thai, or using them in a som tam, is probably ill-advised - that kind of heat is usually just plain unpleasant in lean preparations...
Thanks for the detailed write up. Since you mentioned sambal oelek, I was also thinking of using the reapers in it, any thoughts? I generally like really really spicy food, however If it will ruin the dish I would rather not do it.
Then only comparison point I can give is the anglo-indian "Mr. Naga" chutney sold in some markets, which is not entirely unlike an industrial strength sambal oelek and made from Naga Morich (which is in the same ballpark as your Reapers). Using some in sichuan-style dishes (which often call/allow for pickled, chopped fresh chilies in addition to tobanjang- eg mapo dofu, eg fish fragrant eggplant) yielded surprisingly tasty results. Actually, making either a chopped pickle or an indonesian curry paste might be the most constructive (towards actually tasty food) uses for these peppers...
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103661 | Cooking with sugar makes pan very difficult to clean
I was improvising with some scrambled eggs, and decided to put a spoonful of white sugar in while cooking them. The recipe was good, but the subsequent coating of egg on the teflon pan was very difficult to scrub off. I suspect that the sugar made it "stickier," perhaps, or maybe was more inclined to burn onto the pan.
The food was good, is there a way I can avoid making the pan so difficult to clean?
Did you try soaking first?
@moscafj i didn't
Strange that you have this problem with a non-stick pan. I regularly make Kaiserschmarrn which requires camarelized sugar and if the drops of sugar stick I can just scrape them off with my fingernails (or soak, as others have recommended).
Wow, thanks for the responses everyone! This received way more reception than I was expecting. I'll accept an answer once discussion stabilizes.
@MartinZeitler: To quote Wikipedia: “Kaiserschmarren is a light, caramelized pancake”. You pour sugar over the pancake pieces while they are still in the hot pan and let it melt and caramelize. It gives the pieces a nice, crispy exterior (only works when served fresh). I should know, I’m Austrian.
Is it safe to assume that your pan is in perfect condition and has never been scratched by a metal utensil (spatula, knife, fork, etc...) nor cleaning tool (steel wool pad)?
Somewhat related I think: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/89208/how-to-address-this-burnt-sugar-conundrum
@MartinZeitler: I think there are two variations: First one is where you make it in a pan only and roll it in sugar while it’s still hot. The sugar will caramelize and it’s best served fresh so that it’s still crispy. Powder sugar is optional. The second variation is more fluffy, without caramelized sugar, can be made in an oven and requires powder sugar on top before serving. I think the second one could be more common in restaurants because you can re-heat it.
Melted and re-hardened sugar (including caramel) is very difficult to remove through mechanical action, but trivial to remove by soaking. Just pour in enough hot water to cover the sugar and wait an hour or so. (If oil was used, add some dish soap.) For a quicker turnaround, you can simmer the pot with the water on the stove; 10 minutes should be enough to remove even a thick coating.
This trick also works for quite extreme cases. I once thought I ruined a pot by forgetting it on the stove until a sugary liquid inside had evaporated completely. The brown, sugary mess inside was hard as rock and centimeters thick. It was possible to clean it by reheating it with water inside.
to my knowledge one of our "TV cooks" showed a method where you reheat the contents including hardened sugar / caramel . then add some jar to it - the acid in the jar helps to clear the pan's surface and keeps the sugar from sticking on it again.
@eagle275 What is 'jar'?
did I misspell ? .. vinegar sorry mate, smelly sour stuff .. in concentrated form even used for cleaning purposes
@eagle275 Yeah, that's a completely different word. I understand vinegar, lol. I guess we can blame autocorrect.
Add the sugar at the very end.
When heated the sugar turns into sticky caramel that then cooks onto the bottom of the pot. If you wait until the very end to add the sugar there is no time for this to happen. One the food is ready add the sugar, give it a quick stir to incorporate, and serve.
Note: Usually the residual steam coming off the food will dissolve the sugar so there is no gritty texture. For food like eggs where there is little steam you should dissolve the sugar in a little hot water before adding.
If sugar starts caramelizing, it'll get stickier and harder to clean. (especially once it cools down.)
Have you tried deglazing the pan before you're done cooking? You just need a little bit of booze to throw in there to dissolve the sugar into some semblance of a sauce.
Honestly, throwing a bit of wine on the bottom of a pan that's stained all different shades of brown hiding behind some frying onions to clear it up is like magic the first time you see it.
Find something that works for you if wine doesn't go with the flavor you're looking for.
The reason booze (of moderate alcohol) - or wine, or juice, or simply water - works is largely due to the water content in it, not the alcohol, as the wording of this answer implies. It's the water used in deglazing that the solids dissolve or loosen into, moreso than the alcohol. Water by itself works fine but booze is reduced in volume more quickly and adds flavor.
It's my understanding that the ability of ethanol to dissolve non-polar things is also a big part of the reason it works so well at deglazing.
@Suncat2000 You got a source for that? I did limited testing when trying to clean a pan a while ago and came to a different conclusion. (I assume you imply water would work just as well, and %ABV doesn't matter)
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90323 | 3+ egg omelette in a pan
I want to make thick omelettes and everywhere online I saw that you start with decent heat and then turn it down all the way after a while, until its thoroughly cooked.
While making 2 eggs, it just reaches the edges of my frying pan. So I put 3-4 eggs to make it thicker as it kinda fills up the pan. However after I turn down the heat from 500-600 to 200-300, I notice that after very long time too, it still stays mostly wet on the top. In this time the bottom is overcooked brown. I cannot flip it as it just breaks and leaks from the top.
My Induction temperature ranges from 200-1200, I think it must be Fahrenheit. I don't really have other options since I rent new rooms, and move - a little more than comfortable.
Is it possible to create that golden colored omelette but with a thicker body?
Am I failing because I'm using an Induction stove? Is such a feat possible? If so what must I do to get it done?
Thanks!
Are you using a lid? it might help to keep the heat in so it sets on top
I think it would help to know what style of omelette you would like to make .. is this a classic French omelette, or more like a Spanish tortilla?
Megha, I did not try a lid, thank you I will try it.
Robin, I wanted a French omelette but thicker/with more width. Spanish Tortilla looks a little like a cake, it might also be the right direction I guess. Somehow I wished to fit in around 4 eggs so that I don't have to make two small omelettes and will be done in one shot.
I've found adding a couple tablespoons of cream to the eggs makes them softer and less prone to breaking when you fold it.
I'm quite new to making omelettes, but when I make a thick/Spanish omelette on the stove (gas) I do a few things that help. I don't want to turn the grill on just to finish an omelette off, and the handle of my frying pan couldn't really take the grill anyway.
Push the edges in at first as if cooking a French omelette (to make a thicker, stronger layer quicker).
Turn the heat down and put a lid on, but not for long.
Slide it out onto a plate bigger than your frying pan.
Invert the frying pan over the top of the plate. Wearing oven gloves hold them tightly together and flip.
Continue cooking.
I usually make these because I want them chock-full of onion, potato etc. -- otherwise I make French omelettes, which can be thicker than they traditionally should be (and in that case may be called English).
Alternatively I often precook a filling (onion/peppers/garlic/herb/chillies) and reserve, adding it hot along with some cheese just before folding, while the top is still runny. It finishes cooking through quite quickly at that point. Turning is tricky as I tend to overstuff them (it's a favourite quick dinner at the moment, with freshly-harvested new potatoes so I don't want to be mean with the filling).
Ohhh that flip is genius! I should be able to slide it after using a lid, I hadn't yet; and it would always have to be folded because it was just kinda raw on top.
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92044 | Lasagna won't cook properly in oven with no lower exposed element :(
My new wall oven with the hidden lower element will not bake lasagna properly, no matter what I do. The cheeses and sauce don't meld into the pasta well. It takes forever to get the center of the lasagna hot but the pasta noodles toward outer pan are cooked to mush. The middle remains cold for entirely too long. The edges of the lasagna turn very dark before middle gets warm. This is so upsetting because I make a wonderful lasagna but can't cook it correctly as I have many times before in double exposed element ovens. The instructions in the manual simply say you may need to turn up the temp alittle when using pyrex. Does anyone have any advise on rack placement and temperature adjustment with this type of oven? I cooked it according to recipe which calls for 30-40 mins, covered at 375. Then uncovered for 15-20 mins. I've been using the middle rack. I miss my old school oven! Thank you in advance.
First, purchase an oven thermometer so that you can verify your oven temp. Ovens can easily be off by 50 degrees or more. Lasagna is pretty forgiving. So exact temperature and time is not all that important. My process is similar...cook covered, then uncover. Pasta turning to mush might be a result of overcooked noodles before the bake, or the lasagna being too wet. It also sounds like you might be getting uneven heating. Try rotating the pan halfway through the bake.
Thank you for your speedy response. I do have an oven thermometer and tested the temps. It seems pretty accurate. The outer noodles did overcook because I had to keep cooking longer to get the middle warm which took forever. I will try turning the pan midway, as you suggest. Thanks again!
One possible solution might be to use a baking stone.
This will work best if the main issue is uneven heating, which the element being covered vs uncovered might suggest. If the oven temperature itself is too low, well, it might still help but would require extensive preheating to get the stone up to temperature.
A baking stone, or clay tiles or whatever, acts as a heat sink... the stones heat up as the oven preheats (and the oven then requires more preheating as it takes a while to fill the stones with heat, often 30min extra or more) but it holds, and re-releases the heat during baking to help keep the heat even. It can serve as a buffer against heating cycles or unidirectional heat.
In your case, you would need the baking stone to be underneath your lasagne. Since you started with comparing it to double-exposed-element ovens, it would be the most similar if the stone could be held underneath the rack you're cooking the lasagne on... on the next rack down or even on he bottom of your oven, depending on the oven's layout and construction.
Direct contact will allow heat to transfer more rapidly and can have other effects on food being cooked - like much shorter cooking times, more browning (or scorching) on the bottom, etc - which can be good for some uses, and not so good for others. I tend to use direct contact a lot more, but it's a personal preference.
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94431 | Taste of pre-frozen lasagna
I want to assemble a lasagna with cooked noodles and freeze to be thawed out and cooked for Christmas. I am concerned that taste will be compromised because of not being completely freshly made. I am stressing about this because it's for such a special occasion but I'd love to free up time for that day, if possible. Anyone have any thoughts about your experience with final taste results?
Side note: Making sure that the dish is wrapped well will prevent off-flavors from the surrounding freezer (and fridge during thawing).
related https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/35644/should-homemade-lasagna-be-frozen-cooked-or-uncooked?rq=1
I have done this, and it seems to come out fine.
Note, though, usually I will cook a lasagna almost all the way without a layer of cheese on top, and just put the top cheese layer on to melt in the last little bit of oven time. For this reason I freeze the unbaked lasagna without the top layer of cheese. I just mention this in case the freezer might do some harm to a top cheese layer (don't know if it will, just that I didn't try that experiment).
I've frozen it with a cheese/cheese sauce layer on top, and it's fine so long as you don't brown the cheese - take it out at the slightest hint of turning golden
I make lasagna ahead of time quite often. I have actually made them two weeks early and frozen. I have frozen both "cooked" lasagna and "uncooked" lasagna and they both turn out great for reheating.
I placed quotes around cooked and uncooked for this reason. Everything in my lasagna at the assembly stage is basically cooked already. The meat was cooked and added to the sauce, the noodles are cooked. So what we are doing after assembling and putting in the oven is more like heating( aka melting the cheeses). This said, my favorite technique with the best results for us are to assemble the lasagna as you normally would, and instead of putting in the oven you will put it directly into your freezer. Make sure there is no heat left in the ingredients you are assembling with. If there is just place in fridge until residual heat is gone. Wrap tightly to prevent any flavor transfers from other items. I always have sauce and cheese layer on top. 24 hours before you want to bake it you will need to take it out and place in fridge. You dont want the inside frozen and the outside to burn. Before you cook it, spray the foil you are going to cover it with in the oven with cooking spray or oil it lightly to prevent any cheese on the top layer from sticking, so you can easily remove it to brown during the last 20 min of cooking.
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90471 | Two different gynostemma teas taste completely different, why?
So i've ordered 2 different brands of gynostemma (or jiaogulan in chinese) and they each taste very differently. The first one I've ordered tastes extremely bitter, the second one I've ordered tastes light and sweet, even though I can detect somewhat of a similar bitter after taste.
According to the boxes they are both 100% gynostemma leaf, and the tea bags appear to be exactly the same in size. Why does one taste very bitter why the other one doesn't? Is it possible the leaves from the first box were older when i ordered them?
"However, it is known that the chemical constituents of GP planted in different areas are very different in composition.17,18 Furthermore, there are two taste variants, sweet and bitter, for GP herbs, which have different clinical application in folk medicine in China.18-21"
Chemical Differentiation of Two Taste Variants of Gynostemma pentaphyllum by Using UPLC–Q-TOF-MS and HPLC–ELSD
Jing-Guang Lu†‡, Lin Zhu‡, Kate Y. W. Lo‡, Alexander K. M. Leung‡, Alan H. M. Ho‡, Hong-Yang Zhang§, Zhong-Zhen Zhao‡, David W. F. Fong‡, and Zhi-Hong Jiang*†‡
J. Agric. Food Chem. 2013, 61, 1, 90–97
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jf304154d
You might want to explain more in your own words, which will be easier to understand for many people. Also, no need for the entire citation, a link is enough here ;)
Age won't change the flavour of gynostemma tea much. The difference in taste can be due to 2 reason:
Raw material: the picking is a different grade (younger leaves versus larger leaves). There's also a seasonal and regional difference in taste.
Processing: given the extreme difference in flavors, most probably it's the processing that makes the taste differ so much. Producers use different techniques to drying and roasting. With very bitter gynostemma, there has been no regard for taste when they're produced. Most likely, the goal was for such gynostemma to be part of a final medicinal blend for just for medicial use. Tasty gynostemma teas are often made with optimizing the taste in mind, and are meant for pure drinking. A technique that is often used is by brushing the edges of the leaves as well as rolling the leaves. This allows the sweet flavors to come more to the surface allow for a nicer taste experience. Other things that are considered are how much water content should be left in the final product and to what degree the leaves are first left to oxidize before the oxidation is stopped ('fixing').
If they come from 2 different brands, there can be many reason why they taste different.
Could be harvested from different areas; picked at different time/season and/or mishandled.
Could have been badly stored and packaged.
Might be sun grown vs shade grown or sun dried vs shade dried. Those make for flavor differences.
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119696 | cooking dried legumes
most recipes I've tried say soak legume overnight and then cook for hours. with chick peas I found cooking for minutes was right and hours far too long. with lime beans even an overnight soak is too much. why is there a huge discrepancy between recipe and actual? are some dried legumes pre-processed even though the packet doesn't say?
Not all legumes need soaking, and soaking is basically just a hands-off method of starting the softening process.
Soaking and cooking times also depend on freshness. Additionally, soaking is not necessary for any dried beans. It simply speeds the cooking process. If you don't soak, you can often jump start the cooking/rehydration by boiling hard for 5 to 15 minutes (depending on the type of beans). Of course, lentils are an exception to this.
Split peas are processed they are split. Oil dhal is processed also.
The variation of cooking time is simply based on the specific plant. Legumes have an outer skin around a starchy center. This protects what is essentially a seed (and only when they are in the right environment with sufficient water will they start to germinate). To soften, water has to permeate the skin and get inside the seed, giving us the soft mushy inner part after cooking.
The rate at which this happens depends on a few factors, the thickness of the skin being one of them. Ph level of the water can also be a factor. As a rule of thumb, true beans with their thick skin need a long time to soften, peas (whole) are kind of in-between and the thinner-skinned lentils or chickpeas are amongst the fastest. From a culinary perspective, removing the skin (often done for red or yellow lentils) or opening up the seed (split peas) will change the time significantly.
You may also want to consider that while the legumes (fabaceae) are related and occasionally used interchangeably in cooking, they are diverse enough to have different physiological characteristics, so that soaking and cooking times have to be adjusted. (This Wikipedia entry on “beans” gives a nice overview.)
And lastly, storage time can be an factor. While legumes can be stored for a long time (often multiple years), the skins will get tougher and it can get difficult to get very old beans to soften up at all.
Just like Stephie, I believe that the largest factor here is simply that there is no single recipe that fits all legumes, and that you have to use different times for different plants.
But I also wanted to point out a second factor influencing your observation. Many people prefer their legumes very soft, and work from a "more is better" attitude. Even if chickpeas are edible after some minutes, they are much creamier when you cook them for a couple of hours, and this is considered a plus by many eaters. On the other hand, undercooked legumes are frequently considered unpleasant, so cooks prefer to have a good-sized time buffer against such an occurrence. Then there is also the problem with too-old legumes: they never grow soft, but people sometimes mistakenly think that they are undercooked instead of too old, so based on these experiences, they tack on extra cooking time on their legume recipes, "because last time I boiled it for X time and it wasn't enough". And then, note that traditional recipes come from kitchens in which there was always a fire going, so holding the pot longer was not causing any additional cost or inconvenience, and even today, there are only a few cultures where cooks are interested in shortening cooking time.
These factors together combine to recipes where the recommended cooking time is considerably higher than the minimum sufficient cooking time for legumes, and if you are accustomed to check for doneness and turns off when ready, you might have noticed the discrepancy, while others just follow the recipe and don't give it a second thought.
I have had some really nice crispy fried chick peas as well. You could probably make chick pea crisps if you really wanted.
You don't really need a recipe for this you cook it for as long as it takes to get to the consistency you like and then you spice it like you want it to taste. One thing people who are new to legumes don't realise is that if you add salt or acid to it when it cooks you can cook it until the rapture comes but it will never be soft.
Salt leads to cooked and hard beans. Something which is akin to chewing on car tires. Same for any citrus. You can add spice but make sure it does not have salt in. You are probably best served to just cook legumes in water and when it is soft add the flavour at the end. It really is a very good neutral tasting plant protein. You can flavour it really just like you want.
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90747 | Keeping an aluminium dish in a convection microwave
Wanted to know if I could use my aluminium tray in my Onida convection microwave.
On convection mode or microwave mode?
This is more of an Electrical Engineering question than a cooking one, but answer posted anyway.
A combo oven acts no differently in each separate mode, than they would as single separate appliances. Metal in a microwave = light show and ruined oven. Metal in convection oven is perfectly ok. Just don’t use any microwave AT ALL when cooking in any metal pan
It's not as clear cut as that. In mine the manual states you must use its round metal dish on combination modes. No arcing takes place. These modes use reduced microwave power but there's no arcing if you leave it in on full power
According to the manual I found on-line first item on Page 8, section
MATERIALS TO BE AVOIDED IN MICROWAVE OVEN
[As per manual: All caps, Red.]
Aluminium Tray: May cause arcing. Transfer food in microwave-safe dish.
So not in Combined nor Microwave mode; but Page 7 of the same manual does not warn against doing the same in convection mode, so that should be safe.
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105483 | Do you have to drain all the sugar water from water kefir regularly?
I know that water-kefir grains need to be fed sugar and minerals every 24 to 48 hours, but my question is whether I can withdraw just 25% to 50% of the sugar water, and leave the rest of the sugar water as a sort of "starter" to speed up the next fermentation, and add enough sugar and dried fruits or sea salt for the total amount of liquid being fermented or according to taste or need?
Meaning, is there a problem with leaving a lot of old sugar water regularly and just adding sugar and minerals with minimal water every 24 to 48 hours?
Please note that I'm not asking about taste or for any subjective advice; I'm asking whether old sugar water creates any problems for the kefir grains, from lingering yeast or anything like that, or compromises the grains' health or activity in any other way.
Thank you.
Technically, you can.
The advantage of cleaning is that you can start with the right amounts of kefir, water, sugar and whatever you add. If you are aiming for a certain taste, starting from scratch makes it easier to match again.
If you don't, there won't be a problem (at first), but as time goes by the chances of contaminations in the residual water will grow. Those contaminations can affect the grains.
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