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12250 | How to cook a pork sirloin roast?
I picked up a pork sirloin roast yesterday, it's a little over three pounds. I've never cooked one of these before and I am not sure what to do. My seasoning plan is salt, pepper, thyme, and rosemary, and I might poke a couple holes for cloves of garlic as well. My cooking plan is 8+ hours in the crock pot on low, with about an inch of water in there. Will this turn out OK? I'd like a tender and moist result, obviously. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
For what it's worth, the roast I have is short and fat. As opposed to being long and thin, like some other "tenderloin" roasts I saw.
I don't think a pork sirloin roast will stand up to that kind of cooking very well. That is a very lean piece of meat, which does not lend itself to long cooking times at low temperatures. That type of cooking is best reserved for cuts of meat with lots of fat and/or connective tissue. If you put a pork sirloin roast in your cooker for 8 hours on low, you're going to have one tough, dry piece of meat when you are through.
You would be better served by cooking it in the oven at higher heat, for a relatively short period of time, like 400F for an hour or so. Bear in mind, you're not going to get to a fall-apart tender state with a sirloin roast. This isn't a pork butt with which you're dealing, which you'd take up to an internal temperature of 195F or more. Rather, you're going to want to target the safe temperature, and no higher. You want the meat to be juicy. Cut into thinner slices to achieve maximum tenderness.
The cooking technique you are describing, braising, is good for meat that would otherwise be tough, with a lot of connective tissue, such as a shoulder roast. When you try to braise meat which is low on connective tissue, such as the sirloin, you risk drying the meat out.
I would recommend roasting instead. If you have a roasting rack (or a metal cookie rack, anything to elevate the meat and provide circulation), place the pork on the rack with a tray underneath to catch juices. (if you don't have a rack, no big deal). Preheated to 400 degrees; this high temperature will give your meat a nicely browned exterior. Immediately turn the heat down to 300 (or lower if you have time). Every half hour, turn the meat on the rack and baste the meat with the juices. Turning it will keep the juices distributed inside.
When your meat is finished (as decided by a thermometer), bring it out of the oven to rest for at least 30 minutes. Turn it every 5-10 minutes. While the meat rests, turn your juices into a nice pan sauce.
One of the best things to ever happen was when the USDA finally lowered its recommended internal temp for pork chops and roasts to to a minimum of 145F. YAY! That's medium rare! So it's really unnecessary to do a low, slow and moist method for a lean cut like the sirloin. Save your crock-pot for cuts like the shoulder, which will benefit much more from long, slow cooking because of all the fat and collagen.
You can get downright quick with sirloin, and still have tender, luscious meat.
Here is a great chart with guidelines for every cut of pork:
I agree. Roasting in a conventional oven is probably your best option. Keep in mind that a roast of that size could take a couple of hours to cook. Also, you'll want to baste it quite frequently - maybe every 15 mins or so. The last time I made a pork roast I basted with butter and whole grain mustard.
Heat the oven to 325ºF (162ºC) with a little water in bottom of the roaster (i.e. the pan used for roasting). Cover and roast, calculating roat time with f30 minutes per pound. Married 51 years...have been doing my roasts this way all my life and never had a failure!
I put the pork sirloin roast in my cast iron dutch oven with salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika. Then I cook it on 250 for about 2.5-3 hours. It is fall apart amazing, and so tasty. Better than a pork loin (more flavor and juice).
I wash my roast in cold water, let dry a minute or two, then place it on an aluminum foil lined lasagna pan. I do not put any rub or flavoring on the meat. If there is any visible fat, I put that side up. I loosely cover the pan with another piece of foil. I preheat my convection oven to 300. When ready I place the pan in the oven. After 45 minutes, I turn the meat over and leave the aluminum top tented only above the meat. I cook it for another 45 minutes. My roast always comes out with just a touch of golden brown and tender. I let it stand for about 20 minutes and then slice it into 1-inch rounds end to end. We add spices to the meat if desired at the table. We love lemon zest, light clarified garlic butter of BBQ sauce. We serve this as a main meal on day one; then as pulled pork sandwiches on day two. Yummy (very easy and fool proof…always good)
If you want it to be even more juicy, brine it!
Just get 8 cups warm water, 1 cup sugar, and 1 cup salt and whisk it to dissolve. Let the pork roast sit in this solution in the fridge, covered for 6-8 hours and then remove and pat dry. Then cook as you normally would, the result will be much more succulent.
I cooked a 3lb pork sirloin roast for the first time today and I loved it. I saw the above advice not too cook it in a crock pot but I was already 3 hours into it and figured it was too late. It turned out wonderfully after 7.5 hours of cooking. I fully submerged it in liquid made of chicken broth, Worcestershire sauce, Powdered onion soup mix, and chopped (fresh) garlic and chopped (fresh) jalapeños, and olive oil. Just didn't want people to be scared to use the crock pot (I think the fully submerged part is the most important). Oh! And I let it rest in a cool ceramic dish with a lid for about15 mins before cutting and serving.
We had a 10 lb sirloin. Cut in half. Injected with a mixture of apple juice, brown sugar and molasses. Then heavily coated with coarse kosher salt, lightly sprinkled with garlic powder and just a little pepper, Smoked for 5.5 hours on Apple wood chunks. At 200°F over tin foil. The fat side up over the foil keeping the meat in the juices. So awesome. Big hit! Love my little smoker.... enjoy
I think oven at 400 for 15min then turned down to 350 then add slits and baste with saucy susan garlic and even a little soy sauce but rubbed first with veg oil
I cooked a 4.5 pound pork sirloin pork roast at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour, then turned the temperature down to 375 degrees Fahrenheit for two more hours. Came out amazing!
If you'd like to try something different, the Szechuan recipe for Double Cooked Pork is a particular favourite of mine.
Dowse the joint of pork in boiling water for two minutes, drain and pat dry.
Prepare a basting fluid with mushroom soy sauce, rice wine (dry sherry will work as well), star anise, and chilli oil.
Then cut the pork joint into medallions half an inch thick and brush with the basting fluid.
In a flat bottomed pan, put a little groundnut oil and bring it to 180 C.
Place the pork medallions in the pan and fry for 3 minutes each side.
Serve with steamed rice, broccoli, snow peas, and french beans.
I cooked a 3.5 seasoned pork sirloin for a little over an hour in a 425 degree oven. Covered it with foil the first 15 minutes, then uncovered for the rest. It got rave reviews, yet so easy. Pared it with corn, baked potato and homemade garlic bread. Super easy and super good.
I do mine in a rotisserie. Perfect.
This isn't much information to go on. Care to share at least the time and temperature you would use for a three pound pork sirloin?
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74453 | Cooking rib roast for a large group with minimal time
We're having a decent sized party, and hoping to serve rib roasts (we're looking at 3 7-rib roasts). The problem is, we only have access to the ovens on site 2 hours before we want to eat. This doesn't give us enough time to do the full cooking on site. What's the best way to start them at home and finish them off on site? Would it work out to do a couple hours at 250 or so to warm them, transport them foil wrapped in a cooler, and then blast them at 450 on site? Or flip that around and cook at high heat first and try and hold them once we get the kitchen?
Tough call. Maybe experiment both ways. Ask the site to have the ovens preheated so you don't lose that time.
How big are the roasts and what's your target done-ness?
Full rib roasts, so around 15-20 lbs. Aiming for rare to medium rare.
This is a perfect application for sous vide cooking. I would pre-sear, bag, sous vide @ 58C (136.5 F) for 5 to 10 hours, then chill. All that can be done ahead of time. Bring to the site, re-therm for a couple of hours, crank the oven, and finish in a hot oven to develop outer crust.
pre-sear ? or sear (broil) just before serving ?
@Max : Sear just before serving, so there's a bit of texture on the exterior. (as that can get lost with a pre-sear); if you don't have a sous-vide rig, you can cook in an oven at low temperature to the desired doneness, then roast 'em at high heat (or broiler if you're not trying for a standing rib roast) before serving.
@Max Actually, both pre-sear and finish with either sear or high heat in oven. If you want a more traditional end product, the oven works well. High heat to reform crust
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22722 | Romano vs Parmesan in Cacio e Pepe?
I've tried making Cacio e Pepe a few times, using a recipe from America's Test Kitchen. In Cacio e Pepe, you boil pasta in a limited amount of water, then mix some of the hot starchy water with grated pecorino Romano cheese. The cheese melts/dissolves in the water to form a cheesy liquid which is poured over the pasta.
I've had good luck doing this with Romano, even using domestic cow's milk Romano. But one time I was short on Romano, and tried using about 1/4th Romano and 3/4ths imported Parmesan. When I added the starchy water, some of the cheese dissolved--the Romano, I assume--but most of it coagulated into a gooey, stretchy mass.
What is the difference between Romano and Parmesan, that would make them behave so differently when mixed with hot, starchy water? Are there other similar cheeses--asiago for example--that would work well in this recipe?
Asiago is probably too fresh to be used in cacio e pepe.
@nico: Cacio e pepe classically uses a much younger pecorino than what is generally available, at least in the US.
A suggestion regarding the America's Test Kitchen recipe . . . I've used that one a few times myself, and discovered that adding the cheese to liquid, a small amount at a time, then waiting for it to melt before adding more, works a lot better than adding the liquid to the cheese. Other tips: make sure the liquid is hot, and stays hot enough to melt the cheese; and make sure the cheese is finely grated.
Pecorino Romano is a heavily salted, aged cheese. As a result, it tends not to "melt", just as feta, haloumi, and queso fresco tend not to melt (all are also heavily salted cheeses). Presumably mizithra or ricotta salata would work equally well in the ATK recipe, although they wouldn't taste the same.
If you inadvertently purchase a different kind of pecorino (sardo, for example), or even a fairly young pecorino romano, you'll find that you have the "gooey mess" problem with that procedure.
Now, a comment: the ATK recipe for Cacio e Pepe sounds bizarre to say the least. The normal way of making Cacio e Pepe is:
Cook pasta normally.
Drain pasta, leaving it slightly damp.
Toss pasta in a room-temperature bowl with lots of grated cheese and ground pepper.
If you follow the traditional recipe, then you can use a wider variety of grating cheeses without worrying about it becoming a gooey mass.
The difference between Pecorino Romano and Parmigiano Reggiano (Parmesan) is that the first is made from sheep milk, the last from cow milk.I think this is the reason that they behave so differently, because they are made from milk of very different animals.The closest type of cheese to the pecorino romano might be the pecorino sardo.
There must be more to it than that. Like I said, American cows-milk romano also dissolved in starchy water when I tried it.
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15335 | Is my blue glazed crock safe to make wine vinegar in?
I have an urge to purchase a "vinegar mother" and make homemade vinegar with leftover red wine. According to what I have read, it is not a difficult process, and I have had great success with making kombucha, which is a similar technique, only uses tea and sugar rather than wine. I have a lovely dark blue glazed crock with a spigot at the bottom that would work charmingly, if I could verify that it would be safe to use. Is there any risk of the acid of the vinegar reacting with the glaze? Is there any way to test whether it would or not?
Thanks, and any advise on vinegar making is appreciated, as well as good sources for buying a mother.
It probably won't hurt you, but I wouldn't risk it, just in case. Glazes for food containers are unlikely to contain lead, but may have other metals that are harmful in sufficient quantities. These include cadmium, barium, cobalt, strontium, chromium, and in the case of some older orange ceramic, URANIUM.
Blue glaze is probably copper or cobalt based. I found a reference on ScienceDirect about high blood cobalt levels in association with lead poisoning from glazed Greek earthenware. This indicates that cobalt can indeed be leached out of the glaze and absorbed into the body. Cobalt is eliminated rapidly, but is moderately posionous, and copper is problematic in large quantities. Which brings this back to where I started: it won't kill you, and probably won't make you sick, but it's not really worth the risk.
File it in the same category as eating egg salad left out in the heat a few hours?
One other caution: prolonged contact with acid may damage and discolor your formerly handsome crock, in addition to leaching out these metals. To check for this, you can leave white vinegar in the container for a week or so, checking for change in color of the vinegar and the container every day.
I was thinking there was something about the blue glaze, I appreciate your caution, and will probably do my vinegar brewing in a clear glass container, and save my blue crock for something else.
Acid promotes the leaching of lead from pottery glazes.
Of course, not all glazes contain lead.
The FDA claims that hardware-store lead test kits work on pottery:
How can I find out if my ceramicware are safe?
one would hope that if it's a food-storage device, there'd be no lead!
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7262 | How long should I wait before I lift the lid of my sauerkraut crock?
I have 5 - 6 lbs of sauerkraut in a crock with a water vacuum seal. I read that the first 24 - 48 hours are crucial to the success of the kraut. I also read that the kraut should develop its own liquid during this time, and that one can pour boiled water on top if it doesn't. However, I also read that it shouldn't be disturbed for a fairly long period of time. I am a bit confused. Should I check on the progress after a few days, or not?
Don't check on it.
When I lived in Virginia I used to drive up to Pennsylvania every year to this little Amish farm to buy a gallon of the best sauerkraut I've ever tasted. They showed you how they made it, and I remember the farmer stressing two things: (1) sterilize the jars, (2) don't touch it for 2 months.
I am using a harsch crock, and sterilized it prior to putting the salted cabbage in. I think I will resist opening it as long at least for 4 - 6 weeks.
I allow mine to ferment at 65-70 °F / 18-21 °C for 7 weeks.
Do you want to add more detail to your process, e.g. quantities of salt, how you maintain liquid levels, and whether you seal the kraut or just cover?
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44498 | Raw sugar vs. refined sugar in making kombucha
Can one use raw sugar in making tea for kombucha? Most recipes recommend refined sugar, but I wonder if it is for any particular reason.
Absolutely you can. I typically use a Turbinado sugar when making mine because it's what I buy in bulk and because I like the robust flavor.
In my searches, I did come across this article indicating that you shouldn't use such raw sugars because they're more difficult for the scoby to digest, but as long as you start with a healthy one you should be fine. Maybe just don't go as far as using a brown sugar, or something very raw like muscovado.
I brew Kombucha and use Organic but refined sugar. This helps especially when cooler temps come and the brewing time slows down because of it. The harder you make food available for the scoby the slower the brew time. With a slower brew time comes a higher risk of contamination.
Remember that the sugar isn't for you, it's to feed the scoby If you flavor your tea in a second ferment, I would recommend adding your raw sugars then if it's for flavor alone. The refined sugars should be pretty much depleted during the first ferment.
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14154 | How to make Grape Must
I just bought some grape must - it's a must on spinach salad! I am thinking of turning some of my own homemade concord grape juice into the same. Any advice, other than to reduce by slow boiling? Can I can the results in a hot water bath? Will the acid level change by reducing the liquid?
I think if you're starting with juice, you've already gone past the must stage. It looks like must is just freshly crushed grapes and includes the stems, seeds, and skins. link
Thanks - yes, it looks like you have to start with the grapes. However I wonder what would happen if I did reduce the liquid from my grape juice, would it be similar to must? The concord grape flavor is so intense in the juice, I wonder if it could intensify even more.
Looks like it's time to use science! Try it and report back?
the reduced liquid is similar to a treacle, not to a must. I will include such non-cane treacles in one of my future preserve blog posts from this series: http://cooking.blogoverflow.com/2012/07/cherry-berry-nut-14/.
Based on the wikipedia article, it sounds like you want the pulp and skin as well. It sounds like you won't get the same texture, consistency or sweetness by only reducing grape juice.
However, I found this cool how-to page on how to make grape must jelly. I think the hand-crushing grapes part will be the most relevant to you.
You could use some kind of pressing machine, such as an OJ squeezer, to get the same effect without red hands. I'd stay away from blenders and puree machines, as cutting foods doesn't have the same effect as crushing them.
I don't think I've had grape must, so you'll have to be the judge on how much or how little of the pulp goes into your final product.
When grapes are pressed for wine, the results of the first gentle pressing go into the wine. "Grape must" is the second, more violent pressing, which may include adding a little water to get the "virtues" out. The must has a range of uses. The French convert the best must into a brandy-like distilled drink called "marc", which is rarely exported.
A lot of the Italian grape must goes into a condiment described as "aceto balsamico di Modena IGP" - it is not the true "balsamic vinegar that chefs love, and in my local "German supermarket" three varieties are sold, red, white and brown. Tell me that the brown color owes more to caramel than to balsam, and I will believe you. Whatever, the stuff is no substitute for "real" balsamic vinegar, but if you want to make a salad dressing it works well when involved with mustard and olive oil. I think that's what you've discovered.
More of the Italian grape must goes into fizzy wine-like stuff called Lambrusco. If Lambrusco gets above 9.5% alcohol, it has been made from grape juice. Below that, it usually is mostly fermented must that has been mucked about with to give a product of acceptable taste, and is usually about 5.5% alcohol.
I'm not saying what the Germans do with it beyond asking if you've ever tried Asbach brandy? That's the good stuff, it gets worse.
That's about as much as I must know.
A postscript - the point I was making is that the must is the second pressing juice. What I didn't mention clearly is that the concentrated must is formed in the same way that fruit juices are concentrated for transport, in large industrial plants fitted with pumps etc. to exclude the air.
If you try to reduce your grape juice by gentle boiling, I'm afraid that the flavour components will surely be oxidized.
The Italians also make grappa in the same way the French make marc; grappa is easy to find in the U.S. at least. As far as aceto balsamico, you may be thinking of mosto cotto, which is both the first step of making real balsamic vinegar (which carries the "tradizionale" designation) and sold on its own as a condiment (at various ages). The low-grade stuff is not generally made from boiled must.
@JoshCaswell - the stuff I'm referring to clearly states on the label that it is a mix of wine vinegar and concentrated grape must, although it is marked balsamic vinegar / aceto balsamico there's no balsam listed in the ingredients. It is cheap (€1.25/£1 for a bottle), and useful for salads. My main intent was to point out to the asker that the stuff is available for his main purpose of salad dressing. I don't think it fits into the scheme of making real balsamic vinegar, it is a "volume product" of itself - why it always says "balsamic" is a mystery.
Authentic balsamic vinegar doesn't contain the plant called "balsam". But I agree that these cheap little bottles aren't made by the traditional process.
You would not add a plant, anyway - balsam is a gummy extract from a plant, usually a tree. One might argue that there is a trace of balsam in authentic balsamic vinegar because at one stage of the process it is kept in a barrel made from acacia wood, and gum acacia (a balsam) would transfer from the wood to the vinegar. That really is splitting hairs, isn't it?
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8049 | Thermometers for high temperature ovens
Are there any thermometers that you can put in clay ovens, or under a broiler? Most of the thermometers have a temperature limit of 350 ~ 400 degrees.
I actually burnt one down last year by turning the broiler on by accident.
If you want to go even hotter than Robert's answer, look for industrial thermocouples. Type K or N, for example, will get you FAR hotter than you'd ever want to cook at (unless you're cooking clay)
@derobert - I think you should include your comment as an answer
You'll want a commercial oven or high heat thermometer.
This one goes to 750° F (about 400 C):
My Big Green Egg Temperature Gauge goes up to 750° F (about 400 C).
But if I want to monitor the internal temperature of what you are cooking in a hotter oven/broiler, I usually use a remote thermometer which has an all-metal wire and probe:
If all else fails, look up a scientific supply house (maybe Fisher Scientific). You'll be looking at more money, of course, and a lot of the stuff won't be certified as "food safe".
I was looking for a similar scenario, and I found this thermometer, which goes up to 550 C, so it would be apprepriate for a pizza/bread oven. It is designed to be installed in the door.
Door Thermometer for Wood Oven
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2627 | Beef Broth - What Went Wrong?
Home-cooked Phở is my white whale. Anyway, before I can cook Phở, I need to be able to make beef broth, and so far I've failed completely.
My broth is greenish-gray in color, mostly flavorless, and smells like a swamp.
Here is what I did. Keep in mind, this happened TWICE:
I purchased a few pounds of beef knuckles from the store.
I placed them in a stock pot, and covered them with water.
I boiled them for a half hour or so.
I emptied the pot, along with all of the scum.
I did my best to scrub all of the scum away from the knuckles (very difficult).
I re-filled the pot with water.
I brought it to a boil.
I added some chunks of beef.
I skimmed the top frequently.
3 hours later: disgusting pond water.
Since this process is so time-consuming, I am not keen on experimenting with it again until I have a pretty good idea of what went wrong. I've asked around for some advice. Some told me I should roast the knuckles first. Some told me I should start with cold water. Ok, this sounds like good advice, but these seem like small potatoes. They certainly don't seem like the sort of thing that could turn a pot of beautiful, delicious beef brother into pond water. I must be doing something horribly, horribly, horribly wrong.
I'm hoping to find someone who has had a similar experience, and has a pretty good idea of why this is happening to me. =(
Some of your 'shortcuts' are not good ideas. Definitely start with cold water. Definitely bring up the temp slowly. Definitely do not boil. Do add aromatics upfront to the broth, but remove them as they get mushy so they don't cloud it.
Standard ratio for beef broth would be: 8 pounds of bones to 6 quarts of water to 1 pound of veggies (onion, leek, carrot) to one 'boquet garni', essentially garlic, rosemary, anise flavoring for pho, and bay leaf, plus whatever else I forgot.
If you have 'pond water', which I interpret as thin-tasting, you probably put too much water in the second time -- this is fixable by slowly evaporating out the water until it gets to a good texture. If you skimmed properly, it will be clear as you do this. I will typically strain through a kitchen towel or cheesecloth as the liquid evaporates down.
I'm guessing you put in like a gallon of water, so you had like three or four times too much water.
As a warning which you probably already know, you are not going to be able to duplicate your local pho joint's broth -- the broth recipe is the thing for pho makers, and they probably have a bunch of tricks they use, including using a neverending supply of yesterdays pho, that you won't be able to do at home. That said, you should be able to get a good beef broth if you follow some basic rules for making stock.
Restaurant broth is a beautiful thing, strong and delicious. It basically sits on the back burner and reduces constantly, getting better tasting all the time. Very hard to do that at home, unless you're a real broth-a-holic.
Thanks very much, guys. I wish I could remember exactly how much water I used. You might be right, though. In addition to being thin, it also was off-color (a sort of grayish-green) and had a barely-perceptible, albeit unpleasant flavor and smell. Although there were no 'chunks' of scum (I was fairly diligent about skimming), I couldn't help but associate the grayish color to the scum I had been skimming. Quite gross!
I am satisfied that you have given me all the advice I need, and if I still fail, then as a last resort I'll have to invite my mother-in-law over to show me in person. =D
It might be that you released some marrow or other stuff with your bones; marrow makes for nice addition to soups, but it could cause a different look to the water. Still, I think it's worth trying again. You can do it!
There is no difference between starting with cold water and boiling water, I wouldn't boil the entire time but it's much easier to reduce a boiling pot to a simmer than wait forever for it to reach a simmer from cold and you are not making any appreciable difference in the product at those temps.
Also keep in mind that beef knuckles aren't going to smell like pot roast or a nice steak, they're much more gamey in flavor compared to much of the other parts of the cow and can be off putting to some who expect a certain aroma from beef.
Caveat: I'm now a vegetarian
Back when I made stock/broth a lot, I always browned the meat under a hot broiler before cooking. That makes a serious difference, because the browning reactions of the meet definitely have a big flavor impact.
I also added one or two brown onions (also quartered and roasted until somewhat browned), and two or three carrots (ditto).
I never did that rinse/scrub process. Skim the flotsam, but keep the heat down so that it's barely simmering and it shouldn't be a problem. You can get very useful fine-mesh skimmers at Asian grocery stores.
Finally, I cooked it for a long time - like 10 or 12 hours sometimes, adding water as necessary. When it cooled, I'd skim off most of the fat (sometimes saving it because it's great to use in vegetable dishes like Bubble & Squeak) then transfer to storage jars.
Don't season the stock with spices or herbs until you're ready to use it. That way it remains versatile.
I made a pretty successful beef pho recently. I agree with the other comments about the importance of roasting the bones first, bringing up the temperature of the water slowly, adding vegetables (onion, celery and carrot for a basic beef stock, plus a hunk of ginger root, along with cinnamon stick, star anise, and peppercorns tied up in a little cheesecloth bundle for pho.)The biggest thing I believe you did wrong though? Three hours is no where near long enough to make good beef stock. I let mine simmer (never boiling!) For...no lie... About 24-36 hours. Sounds crazy but the longer you can cook it the richer and better it will be. After only 3 hours any stock will look like pond water. Don't worry, you can turn the stove off when you leave the house and then turn it back on again so you're not a total slave to the stock for 2 days. But yeah, that's it I think. Just lots more time.
I'd probably also recommend a mix of bones including marrow bones, rib or neck bones with some meat on them, and maybe a foot for extra gelatin if you can get it, in addition to the knuckles.
I use a slow cooker when I want to cook a stock for that long, saves the trouble of babysitting an open flame(especially with curious cats)
Roasting the knuckles is a must, since the way the Maillard reaction affects anything animal-based is priceless for enhancing flavor.
Another important thing is to use vegetables when making stock. Add coarsely cut carrots and celery, whole or half onions to the pot along with the bones.
Straining the stock is important to remove congealed proteins from the end product. The thinner the filter, the better.
First, let me say I've never made pho.
However there is already some good advice here with regards to stock:
Should I roast meat/bones before making stock out of it? though I personally would also roast carrots, onion, celery with fresh herbs in with the bones.
Should I let stock cool with the bones/veg still in it?
Are the leftovers from making stock good for anything?
What are you skimming with? I'd pour the liquid through some cheese cloth, that should at least help with appearance a bit.
There should never be greenish scum in your broth. Bones are eather very old or from a sick animal. If you see greenish foam in your pot, it's poisoning, don't eat it. I was raised on organic farm. We had bone soups every day. Believe me, it has to look good in order to be good for you. The foam, if any, should be very light in color and very small in amount. Get bones from trusted farmers, if you want good quality broth.
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19881 | Are electric knives used in foodservice?
After learning several months ago that immersion blenders and many other kitchen gadgets/appliances have foodservice equivalents that are usually much more powerful and durable than the consumer equivalents, I've been on the lookout for a "foodservice-grade" electric knife.
However, after scouring several of my usual physical and online restaurant supply sources, it would appear that I'm chasing a ghost. "Electric [carving] knife" is a foreign concept. It's possible that they just go by another name (e.g. foodservice immersion blenders are often called "power mixers" or just "mixers") but I don't think so.
So for those who've worked at one: Are electric knives ever seen in professional kitchens? If so, do they just use the cheap consumer products or is there a commercial equivalent? And if not, then why not - is it deemed impractical over a good-quality "manual" carving knife or is there some other reason why they seem to be shunned?
I would consider the professional equivalent of the electric carving knife to be the meat slicer, i.e. the rotating blade device most often seen behind the deli counter.
At home, to break down a roast bird, take the meat off of a lamb-leg, etc., a good manual knife is most likely the proper tool.
If, on the other hand, I have a large ham (cooked or cold), or some other chunk of boneless meat that I want to slice more-or-less uniformly, then I will break out my electric knife. For the home user, it is a fairly practical device, not taking up too much space, etc.
But its uniformity and speed cannot compare to the slicer. As to a professional kitchen, you may or may not find one there. Certainly in deli-type restaurants you would have them. In a more traditional restaurant they are not as concerned with quick production of sliced meat, so any slicing is probably done by hand.
Meat slicer is definitely the keyword I was looking for - never really thought about before but I'm sure I've seen those at just about every deli. I've also only seen them used for hard deli meats (as far as I can remember) - are they supposed to work as well for (slicing of) softer, cooked meats, like a roast beef/chicken/turkey?
Pretty much anything boneless should work pretty well. Definitely seen them used for hot pastrami/brisket which is soft-ish.
A wonderful tool, but I loathe them. I swear cleaning one is the easiest way to get cut in the kitchen short of outright negligence.
@Aaronut: Never used one myself, but I've seen delis around here do roast beef and chicken slices on one. And cheese, too.
Alton Brown loves his electric knife!
Forgot about this question - this ended up being what I chose, and it's a lot more efficient than an electric knife.
@milesmeow - Alton is doing a show for home cooks. The elephant in the room is that home cooks typically don't keep their knives anywhere near sharp enough for proper carving and slicing. An electric knife is just a noisy encumbrance when you have tools that will cut quicker and more cleanly, like a proper chef's knife or carving knife sharpened regularly and steeled often.
I've been worked in the restaurant equipment and supply industry for 12 years, and have had many customers ask for these commercial electric knives. No such thing...why? Simple...electric knives are not NSF (National Sanitation Foundation) approved. All equipment and supplies used in a commercial food service application must comply with NSF standards. Hope this helps!
That makes some sense. Only seen them as a domestic item. But some sandwich places use domestic ones on commercial premises...
I once worked int the kitchen at a chain bar-n-grill joint in the US. They specified electric knives for carving sandwiches: supposedly they made a neater cut and didn't mush the bread so much.
Certainly it was hard to keep the main knives sharp enough to do a good job: cheap junk that you couldn't pay me to use in my kitchen. But teens on their second summer job don't have a lot of swing.
As far as I could tell the electric knifes supplied for the task were the same ones you'd use at home.
Yeah I doubt you would find any chef with a modicum of self respect that would even suggest it was OK to use an electric knife in a professional service. Professional knifes actually cut easier and better in my opinion than an electric knife anyway.
@Chad: Better perhaps, but not easier in the opinions of many. Electric knives, as cheap and low-quality as they tend to be, wouldn't exist if people didn't mind the idea of slicing up an entire 20 lb turkey manually.
I don't think they caught on here at all, professional kitchen or amateur. The closest thing you get here is the meat slicer at delis which sdg mentioned.
Where is 'here'?
UK, haven't seen them anywhere in Europe. They seem to be just a US/Canada thing.
I live in Belgium and we have one.
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8791 | Cassolette Pans - Cooking on the Stovetop and in the Oven
So, I'm a hobbyist and like to play with new recipes. Recently I've found a few recipes which want me to fry something, then put the pan directly into the oven and roast for a bit. Then maybe move it back to the cooktop a bit. It seems a bit odd, although deglazing seems a fairly common example.
Well, the problem with this is most pans intended for the stove are very thin and perform poorly on the cooktop. Most pans intended for the cooktop have plastic handles or other bits which seem like a poor idea to put in the oven. I can get along passably with a dutch oven (one without legs) but those tend to be round and often an oval pan is good for roasting things. What I've heard I need is a cassolette pan.
Unfortunately, I'm finding the same problem in the stores. Either pans don't have the weight for cooktop cooking, or they have plastic or rubberized handles. Although I have found a very expensive line of colored dutch ovens in a couple of stores.
Is there some way to determine if the rubberized bits are oven safe? Other than buying one and voiding the warranty? Any advice which would help determining whether a pan might survive?
A few ideas for you:
You can use cast iron. Depending on what you are cooking this works quite well - but beware what you deglaze with, you might take your finish off or impart a taste to your food.
You can read the label on your rubber/plastic handle cookware. Many are oven-safe to 350F or so, the label should tell you.
You can use stainless steel or other all metal cookware. Paderno is my (Canadian!) favourite. Alternately go to your local restaurant supply store - so-called professional gear can actually be quite reasonable, because a kitchen has to buy so much of it.
Good Luck!
As someone who's discovered what plastic smells like when you get it too hot in the oven (hint: it stinks), I wouldn't suggest testing to see what the limit is on the temperature ... although it did add an interesting texture to the handles.
The stuff I use that goes well from the stove to the oven is annodized aluminum and as sdg mentioned, cast iron.
Enamaled cast iron is nice too (which are likely the colored dutch ovens you saw), as it doesn't have the issues with acidic dishes like pot-roast (at least, it's acidic how I do it), but it can be rather pricy ... it's one of the collect a piece at a time over the course of a few years type investment, but it'll last for years.* I would never buy it from most stores, as the markup's horrible, but you can get Le Creuset from Amazon, and a few years ago I managed to get a rather nice set for a friend at like 60% off. There's also now more competition -- Lodge makes a line of enameled cast iron which is much more reasonably priced, as does Cuisinart which is not quite as inexpensive but still more affordable than Le Creuset, but I've personally used neither one.
(*) That is, unless you go to boil water, forget about it, and find that you've managed to melt the enamel on the pot, and it's now fused to the burner ... sure, my brother was 10 at the time, but I still have to bring up that he managed to fail at boiling water.
(and okay, I admit it ... I have a whole two Le Creuset pieces ... there's a baking dish that I use all the time (enameled earthenware), and but the other one's a bad size for the number of people I cook for these days, so doesn't get used too often)
I bought one of the Lodge dutch ovens for a friend as a Christmas present, and she's very happy with it. She's got several Le Creuset pieces, and says that the Lodge compares quite well with them.
Typically the pans or the packing have a marking on them to show if they are oven safe and ot what temperature. Like SDG said, it's a good idea to just go with an all metal pan as you have to watch out for the teflon coating. At higher temperatures the non-stick coatings can melt and give off some very toxic fumes, trust me on this one, talking from experience here.
Kitchen Aid makes a set of pans, with rubberized handles that is oven save, non-stick coating too, but only to 400 degrees. If you need to go higher than that, I would stay with all metal. http://kitchenaidcookware.com/hbn/hbn_feat.shtml
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18157 | How do you dry herbs?
We've had a container-based herb garden on our deck all summer, which has been wonderful. Unfortunately, the weather is predicted to hit freezing in the next week or so, and now I'm looking for ways to preserve as much as possible from the garden. I'll see if I have any luck moving the pots indoors and keeping them growing, but I'd like to trim the plants back and dry the herbs as I move them.
So... how do I dry herbs? Of course the goal is still cooking with them, so I'm concerned about food-safe handling. But honestly, I've never dried herbs, and have no idea how to approach this.
related : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/150/how-to-dry-oregano ; http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/3147/what-are-the-herbs-that-dry-the-best
also: What Herbs dry "best"
I've found that freezing herbs preserves their flavor better than drying them. Pick them, wash them, and chop them as if you were going to use them right away, but instead, put them in small freezer bags and stick them in the chill chest. You don't even need to defrost them before use.
@Joe, others: Is the technique really any different for oregano vs. other herbs? I think the original question should simply be generalized to herbs so that we don't end up with duplicates for every individual herb ("How do I dry basil", "How do I dry thyme", "How do I dry...")
@Aaronut : yes, because some like oregano you can just hang as sprigs, but the really leafy ones (eg, basil) don't work as well that way, at least not in my climate ... maybe it'd work for someone in a desert, but in my area, you risk it going moldy. I haven't tried too many other ones, so I don't know if there's other considerations.
@Aaronut: I was hoping this was a general question. In looking before I asked, I found http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/3147/15 (which seemed like a question aimed at the other end of the season) but missed the oregano question.
One of the most memorable times I've seen someone dry herbs was Alton Brown on Good Eats: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5GkD2GQ3Tg
He creates this large contraption with A/C filters and a box fan... I've never tried it myself, but it was fun to watch.
I typcially do it with a food dehydrator like this one: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=14099344
I would just get one with multiple temp settings as you don't want to cook the herbs (in the dehydrator).
AB's contraption works but is kind of gimmicky because 1- you will have problems if the air is too humid 2- You can't clean the filters well. Filters aren't that cheap. I also use a dehydrator. My grandma just dried such things in her oven on the lowest setting.
That was always my beef w/ his approach... The filters cost as much as a dehydrator... He doesn't buy a dehydrator because it's a multitasker, but putting "herb filters" in your A/C for the next 2 years is ok.
a) Separate the fresh herbs into small bunches and hang them up next to each other as done for washed clothes. Make sure to hang the bunches upside down. They should get plenty of air flow but NO rain, humid and direct sunlight.
b) Bunches or separated branches can be placed over a grid for drying and again plenty of air flow but NO rain, humid and direct sunligt. Changing bunches other way round time to time speeds up drying and prevents bunches getting mould.
A bunch of dry herb is also a nice decorative object that helps to create a healthy environment in the house!
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5772 | How to make Movie Theatre like Popcorn?
Any specific brands? so far, I could not find any popcorn that tastes like popcorn at movies.
Movie Theater Popcorn I've ever had just tasted like normal popcorn, with about 10x as much salt as normal
I think this is primarily going to come down to the method of cooking and the flavorings. I think it's unlikely that you can buy a microwave popcorn that will taste like the movie theatre.
You'll need a specific popcorn pan so that you can stir the popcorn continuously and that will also vent some of the steam from cooking (which a normal pot won't do. Whirley Pop seems to be a common solution here.
Next you'll need to find the right type of oil. Experiment with a couple of things to see what you like. Coconut oil seems to be commonly recommended (and not easy to find).
Finally you'll need flavoring. Try Flavacol. My work has popcorn on thursdays, and they use this flavoring. It's pretty dead on.
I don't think the actual pop corn kernels will make a ton of difference. It's more the cooking technique and other ingredients.
Here's my primary source, but further research and experience backs that up as pretty dead on.
Coconut oil is the main factor. Even using a microwave popper, just spraying a little coconut oil on the popped corn duplicates most of the local theater's taste.
I work at a movie theater and we do pop our popcorn in coconut oil. Also the popcorn popper that we use is basically a huge whirley pop, so any regular whirley pop with coconut oil should work. We also put the salt seasoning in the popper with the kernels, which is why they all come out with that orange color, although I don't know if you're supposed to put seasoning in your average whirley pop. As for the butter, I don't know what to tell you unless you want to melt clarified butter. The butter we use at the movies isn't really butter at all, just flavored oil.
You definitely have to cook it in oil. I like to use a wok to make my popcorn. As the kernels pop, they move up the sides of the wok, getting them out of the heat area. You get fewer unpopped kernels and less chance of scorching.
I think the type of oil, and the type of salt you apply may be the final pieces of the puzzle. I started mixing Molly McButter with salt to give the popcorn that buttery flavor. It's still not an exact replication, but it's a lot better than microwave, that's for sure.
Anything covered in lots of salt and artificial butter flavour will probably taste good
Not sure what your local movie theatre uses, but try this: Salt and raw (unprocessed) sugar (50/50). Use a food processor on max to turn it into a very fine dusting powder
Pop your popcorn with a little peanut oil, shaking the pan often. When all popped add a small teaspoon of the powder. Shake the pan a bit to mix and eat, yum
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16363 | Pan-frying marinated meat without making a huge mess?
I love marinated meat, I love the extra flavor that the marinade adds to it. However, I don't always have the option to BBQ it, so sometimes I have to use a frying pan.
However, this always creates a huge, huge mess. The oil in the pan seems to not like the marinade, it immediately starts to crackle and boil, spilling hot oil everywhere.
I thought that I didn't use enough oil, so today I used a bit more, but that made it even worse. Using less oil seems to make it hard to actually get good meat, that is meat that is NOT a lump of coal on the outside and raw inside.
So I thought I'd ask for advice here :)
Oil does not like water. That is universally true. Hot oil really doesn't like water - consider the temperature and the boiling point.
Another option is to use a broiler if you have one (instead of stovetop in the frying pan).
As others have said, the issue is the hot oil and water interacting. You need to reduce or eliminate one in order to prevent the splatter or find a way to mitigate the damage.
Remember the basics - allow the meat to warm up to room temperature before cooking and pat it dry before you begin. That should allow you to use less oil without it turning into a charred lump with a raw center. You can use a lid or a screen to prevent splatter (you might need to adjust cooking time with a lid that will trap more heat).
Putting it between some kitchen towel for a few minutes indeed did do the trick, thanks!
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30770 | Can Rum-balls be made without alcohol?
My wife and I enjoy a recipe for rum-balls that she has made in the past, but we have friends that choose not to consume any alcohol.
Is there any hope for non-alcoholic rum-balls? What could be substituted?
Have you thought in removing the alcohol from rum?
@J.A.I.L. : the answer to removing alcohol was 'no, you can't remove it all', so that wouldn't work if there's a requirement for no alcohol in the final product.
rum reminds me of burnt sugar and nutmeg; bit of those flavors? Mmmm clove and cardamon too. reminiscent rather than a true sub
It also seems to me that some people choosing not to drink any alcohol may also want to avoid their associated flavors; For a recovering alcoholic, even the taste has the potential to trigger a relapse
Can you make rum balls without rum? Well... I suppose you could use rum extract, which has a very intense rum flavor. You would also want to add some sugar syrup or water to make up for the lost moisture in your recipe. However, you would not get the exact same outcome due to the lack of the evaporative effect of the alcohol when eating the confection, and due to the lack of alcohol as a flavor carrier.
I surveyed a number of rum ball recipes. For yields of about two dozen to five dozen, none of them used more than 1/2 cup of rum. This means that the rum per serving is on the order of a tablespoon teaspoon or so, or less. You and your friends might feel this is a level of rum consumption that is fine. I don't drink alcohol myself, and this level would not bother me.
There are many, many, many desserts and confections that you could make. If your friends are strongly opposed to any alcohol at all, why choose this one, where you are trying to substitute for the key ingredient that gives the dish its identity?
There’s a pending edit suggesting “teaspoons” instead of tablespoons. (1/2 cup divided by 2 dozen). Maybe you want to check...?
Just use artificial rum flavoring in the recipe instead of rum.
With respect, I think this is only part of the answer--the volume of liquid the rum provides to moisten the cake or cookie crumbs and help them stick together will have to be replaced as well.
well ok, here you go. Rum is mostly water, some alcohol, plus a variable amount of sugars depending on the type of rum used. What I'd do is put the same volume of water as rum into a measuring cup, minus 1-2 tbsp to account for alcohol evaporation. Then I'd add sugar and rum extract until it tastes as close to rum as I can make it.
Most rum extracts have alcohol as an ingredient. You need to make sure that you're specifically buying an alcohol-free extract.
I made rum balls and substituted orange juice. These were for the kids so it worked out great. Since you can substitute Baileys, I made peppermint balls using peppermint coffee creamer, instead of rum, with a dash of mint extract. I rolled them in a combination of powdered sugar and finely crushed peppermint candy. Delish!
I have a "Watkins" recipe that uses rum flavor. its easy and the rum balls taste great.
This answer isn't especially helpful without the actual recipe, or even a link to it.
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81488 | Do liquids continue to "boil" when full-pressure cooking is reached?
Liquids in a pressure cooker can reach higher temperatures because the boiling point increase as the internal pressure rises.
But do those liquids continue that "rolling boil" once the cooker is up to full pressure? Or does the increase in pressure keep the liquids from continuing to actively boil?
Background: When I cook meats in a pressure cooker, I place them on a cooking rack to keep them from being submerged. I was wondering if the liquid is boiling enough internally to effectively baste the meats in that froth.
I am using an Instant Pot electric pressure cooker which reaches about 12 psi.
It would be very difficult to reach a rolling boil. See my answer for details. (As you note, increased pressure raises the boiling point, and so it becomes self limiting. If well insulated, the extra energy input would be stored as pressure, until the safety valve opens).
For as long as it is plugged in and the power setting is appropriate, it should keep boiling as if it was in a normal pot. Imagine if you were to take a normal pot deep underground where you get the same atmospheric pressure and watch it boil, it would look the same as boiling as sea level.
It is the water vapor that sustains the higher-than-outside pressure inside the pot. The lid has a valve that impedes the release of vapor. So, without continuous boiling, pressure would decline gradually (like once you turn off the pot).
As more things become dissolved in the water, boiling point inside the cooker would change somewhat. Even then, for as long as there is enough energy supplied to the pot, it would continue to boil regardless.
I'm sorry, that's not correct. The closed lid makes a big difference. The extra energy goes into building pressure. Boiling in a sense, is self limited. See my answer for details.
At 12 psi, water boils at 243.7F. That said, it would be difficult to maintain a rolling boil.
The rolling boil is easiest to establish in an open or well vented pot where water vapor can escape as fast as it is produced. In a fully closed pot, adding heat raises the temperature, which increases the pressure, which raises the boiling point and in effect inhibits boiling. The pressure cooler, with a safety valve, is intermediate to these two extremes. Even so, the heat required for a rolling boil would still have to be in excess of what is needed to maintain the elevated temperature and pressure plus lift the valve plus replace the heat carried away by the super heated water vapor. We can see that maintaining a rolling boil in the pressure cooker is going to be challenging compared to an open pot.
There are a few concepts that help us understand what is happening in a little more detail.
Vapor pressure - is the pressure exerted by a vapor in equilibrium with its condensed phase. Vapor pressure generally increases with temperature.
Partial pressure - the pressure above the liquid in the closed pot, has a contribution called the partial pressure, from each component in the gas phase. The partial pressure due to the liquid in the pressure cooker, is identically its vapor pressure.
Boiling occurs when the vapor pressure is equal to (or exceeds) the pressure in the environment, the ambient pressure.
Equilibrium - occurs when opposing processes are in balance. Examples can include evaporation and condensation to establish a vapor pressure, or heating and cooling to establish a temperature.
With that preamble, lets consider what happens in an open pot compared to what is happening in a pressure cooking.
In an open pot, pressure above the liquid remains close to that of the surrounding air. Once it reaches the "boiling point", adding more heat results in more steam being produced which then carries away more heat and so the temperature stays close to the boiling point. Adding enough heat, can bring us to a fast rolling boil.
In a pressure cooker, we have a closed pot (up to some pressure where the vale opens), and the steam cannot escape to carry away the heat. Even before we reach a boil, adding heat increases the temperature and thus increases pressure inside the vessel and thus increases the temperature needed to reach boiling. Over this range, boiling in effect is self attenuating and energy is stored in the increased pressure.
If pressure becomes sufficient to open the valve, boiling might pick up from that point, but holding the valve open becomes part of the energy budget along with the extra heat carried away in the super heated water vapor and again, it is energetically expensive to maintain a rolling boil.
If heat is being added to the system (by the burner), but not being removed (by boiling), where do you think it's going?
@Sneftel The heat is stored as pressure, and some is lost through the walls, unless the safety valve opens! I edited the answer to make it more complete and hopefully more clear. It is pretty obvious that it would be very hard to reach a rolling boil. The subject is taught in the regular coursework for chemistry and chemical engineering, four times - general chemistry, p-chem, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics in grad school..
And when the pot reaches full pressure and the release valve start venting steam? The boiling is depressed to what can vent but it is still boiling.
The pressure can not build indefinitely to the point of equilibrium- that would just be a bomb. In an instant pot the temperature is controlled to allow an equilibrium at a target temperature (and thus pressure) without venting but this is not a normal pressure cooker.
So, I suppose your answer is correct that it will reach equilibrium without boiling only in an instant pot- not because the pressure will keep building- but because the pot will control the temperature and apply less energy when it reaches equilibrium.
@sobachatina Your first comment is true in so far as venting will let it boil more (or a little). But (a) the OP asked about a "rolling boil", and (b) you are trying to make a quantitative argument without having the numbers on which to base it. We don't how big is the pot, how much it vents, or the several numbers that go into losses through the walls. Don't forget also that at equilibrium there is no net increase in temperature or pressure.
@sobachatina I wrote that it will be hard to reach a "rolling boil" and that boiling will be self limited, or suppressed if you like. I did not say that it will not boil at all.
If you are defining rolling boil as a boil with no back pressure then your argument is a tautology. I think we've come to an agreement of terms though. We are both saying that for (not an instant pot) pressure cooker at full pressure will boil. We seem to be implicitly disagreeing about how vigorous of a boil constitutes a "rolling boil" which probably doesn't matter.
@sobachatina No, again, rolling boil means a fast boil with production of bubbles of sufficient size and rate as to disturb the surface in a certain recognizable way. It is not at all clear that it will even boil in all cases. For example, it is easy to conceive of a case where it might approach boiling but never get there.
I do think you should edit the answer a bit to be specific to the question. The question was if an instant pot will boil vigorously enough to bath meat in liquid which is a resounding "no"- not because of infinitely increasing pressure but because the instant pot will stop heating as vigorously.
@DrM I assume you have used a pressure cooker? There is a weight to regulate pressure through a small orifice. You know it's at pressure because the steam lifts the weight and vents. It can be quite violent if you don't turn the stove down. I will agree with you that it's hard to observe how vigorous the motion of the water is inside but it is definitely boiling.
@sobachatina Read it again. The part you refer to is labelled "background". The question specifically asks whether it will maintain a "rolling boil". Read my answer again too, it is very specific and speaks to exactly what was asked. Boiling has to work against the build-up in pressure, and rolling boil will be even harder to reach.
Let us continue this discussion in chat.
@DrM- That's true. You are free to answer the question posed in the title in an academic sense if that is your intention. I was suggesting that the alternative is to take into account the context of the asker's problem.
An electric pressure cooker actively senses pressure (generally through the deformation of the pot), energising the heating element only when the pressure drops. So while it definitely boils while being heated, the majority of the time it's not actively boiling, just at boiling temperature.
As for whether that will "baste" an object inside the pressure cooker: No, but that doesn't matter. The relative humidity in the pressure cooker is 100%; pouring liquid over the object won't have any effect on how moist that object is (not that basting has much effect on the moistness of meat in any case).
pouring liquid over the object won't have any effect — It does if it's washing away dry rubs or sauces, or other effects of physically immersing food in water.
That will definitely happen, and would even if there was no rolling boil, because of droplets of water condensing on the lid and falling on the food.
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13764 | Do some fish smell "fishier"? Why?
I've heard some say that fish only smells offensive if it's old. But my experience suggests that some fish, like salmon, are simply "fishier" and that the smell can put some people off. Is that right? If so, is there a simple explanation for the smell, or does it vary according to species? And which fish smell the least and most fishy?
Fish smell when alive too as they, just like all living things, have an external surface which is made of layers living and dead cells
Certain people who are "super smellers" who have a heightened sensitivity to smells. Assuming you aren't one of them: fish smells "fishy" when it's starts to age. If you can find a reputable fish monger, that would help.
That said, if you're sure you have fresh fish, and some fish just simply smell more, you can cut down on the smell, by a quick rinse and a marinade with an lemon juice.
As for why fish smell fishy... it has to do with amines contained in the fish. Amines get released as bacteria work to release them. Salmon, Tuna, others... are higher in amines, while fresh white fish, tend to be lower. You'd have to do a bit more research to find out more specific species...
I agree with "some fish just simply smell more." I would suggest that it also depends heavily on preparation as well. Freshly caught trout, cleaned and cooked by the lake seems to have more "fishy" smell than when I take the fish home and clean it and scale it more carefully.
Sure, some fish are smellier than others.
The fishy smell arises from the production of various amines in the dead flesh.
If you let your fish sit out on a warm counter for a day, it will get quite reeky.
Here's a nice little explanation of the reaction between these stinky amines and lemon juice:
Why fish is served with lemon juice.
I've never had salmon that had a fishy smell. I think it may be time to find a new fish monger or start buying a different brand if you buy frozen.
I imagine that oily fish (like bluefish) would have a stronger fishy smell and taste. It's very much not to my liking so I stick to 'white meat' fish like fluke, flounder, black fish, ling, sole, Nile perch, tilapia, etc.
Having said that, I also LOVE tuna steaks and salmon. It's just a small fortune here so I don't buy it often.
Oily fish like salmon, tuna , mackarel are kind of oilfish type, rich omega 3 oils, smell more fisher than other fish /white fish like snapper, cooking methode for this kind of fish to reduce the smell is grill, cold sashimu ... Panfried cooking methode make the smell become stronger
I have never had mackerel that didn't smell. And I've had it all kinds of ways, from all kinds of restaurants. Raw-cured in saba battera, canned in brine, grilled, baked, pan-fried, even in ceviche (marinated in lime juice)... doesn't matter. Mackerel has a REALLY pungent fish smell to me. It's the strongest-smelling of all the edible fishes by far. It's in a league of its own. I don't mind it to eat, but make sure not to get any on your skin, clothes or furniture.
Fish should not have any "fishy" smell at all, as this indicates the fish is beyond peak freshness.
Fresh fish should have no smell at all, or a clean icy smell.
Regardless of just how fishy it smells, if there is any "fishy" smell you should not eat it.
Source: On Cooking textbook
The main problem is that "peak freshness" is "alive". Breakdown of proteins (which produces the amines mentioned in other answers) starts very quickly after death.
Be that as it may, I think it is fairly dangerous to tell someone that eating fish with a "fishy" smell is OK. You probably shouldn't eat it.
I'm one of those "supersmellers" mentioned above. Any fish has a fishy smell to me, even straight from the boat. There's unfortunately no objective answer here.
Are the effects of aging, irrespective of smell, always undesirable in a culinary sense?
Part time commercial fisherman and fishmonger most my life. Whoever started the fish shouldnt smell like fish is full of crap. The eyes the smell everything it all depends on how it is stored. I will tell you straight up as delivering fresh fish to stores nobody knows wtf there talking about. For example, if you take 100 pounds fresh sardines just off loaded from the boat and put them in a cooler with ice. In a matter of hours the eyes will be glazed, they won't look fresh. If you put them in cooler with fresh water and ice, in a matter of minutes the gills will be bleached looking. I would never eat fish that doesn't smell like fish, or the ocean. Some fish natural smell, for example halibut, lingcod. If there isn't a distinct fish and ocean smell to it I wont eat it. If the fish you buy doesnt smell like fish I would seriously start asking question.
I think the best thing to do is to not buy it until you are ready to eat it that day. Because when you buy it, its already as fresh as it will ever get in your hands short of catching and cleaning it yourself. But, most sea food should never have a fishy odor. It should always smell fresh and neutral clean. If that makes sense?
In my experience the mucus covering the body of bony fish can have a fishy smell even fresh from the water. I've caught tench that definitely had a fishy smell to them while they were still alive. And, in addition to that the mucus deteriorates very quickly, enhancing the odor.
as a side note:
For some fish, including the tench and the carp there are recipes in Germany called Blaukochen (cooking blue) where the whole fish with the mucus intact is prepared in water with vinegar. That results in the mucus turning blue.
In the shop the mucus is normally washed off and thus should not be the reason for the smell.
Salmon starts to deteriorate as soon as dead. Why you gill them as soon as you bring then into the boat. Put on ice. Tuna is a oil fish. I think the pink has a stronger smell. Fish caught on seaweed can have a stronger smell. Over those caught on the reef. But fish should not have a strong smell. Or be soft to the touch. Fish spoils fast. If buying fish look at the eyes they should be clear. Look at the gills they should be pink. If not do not buy the fish it has been out to long. Then they start to smell.
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13820 | How to organize a walk-in fridge for a mid-size kitchen?
I have worked in two kitchens which served about 50-75 clients a day. Each had a walk-in fridge that was about 8 feet square with metal racks, and neither had thought much about the organization of the space. For instance, they both tried FIFO, but always had difficulties keeping it straight between the cooks. Are there any ingenious organizational strategies you've encountered for fridges of this size?
community wiki?
It really depends on what you're keeping in the fridge.
In my Navy days, we basically had areas for different type of products, which were organized differently.
What we used to do was more or less this:
Vegetables: This is more or less per vegetable, but worked for us. For instance the carton of tomatoes or cucumbers next in line was on a middle shelf, next to all the other vegetables next in line for their type. The other cartons were stored right at the bottom of the rack, basically on the floor. Once a carton was finished a new one was moved up in its place.
Peeled vegetables: We occasionally peeled enough potatoes (or carrots, or onions) for 2-3 days. In this case, the potatoes were stored in a kind of bin with water. Unpeeled potatoes were in sacks in the back of the fridge. Once the peeled bin was empty, we'd change the water and peel more potatoes.
Meat: Most meat was in the freezer for reasons which are obvious once you're carrying supplies for more than a few days. However, every afternoon the next day's meat was moved into the fridge for defrosting. It had it's own cabinet in the fridge on one side.
Dairy: Dairy products usually came in trays for us, and there were never too many of them as we were a 100 person galley. These are generally light enough so that when a new shipment arrives, you can just lift the old things and place the new ones under them. At worst, you take the old stuff out, put the new in, and then put the old back in on top.
Prepared dishes: Sometimes we'd make a coleslaw or something in the morning to serve for lunch. Obviously, it needs to be refrigerated during the wait. These things had their own shelf, and were put there until needed. We'd only ever have those for the next meal, though, so not much of a queueing issue.
Special items: Anything that was particularly special (rare or expensive) was kept in a 3foot cubed locked cabinet in the fridge, where prying hands couldn't reach. Hopefully, that's not a concern for you.
That's it. The only other adivce I have is to use big (gallon, half-gallon) modular boxes that stack well, if you need to keep a lot of prepared things.
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13430 | How are chemical leaveners affected by moisture and cool temperature?
This is maybe a more precise way of asking, "what happens to left over batter in the fridge?" This question might have to approached per leavening agent.
Chemical leaveners all work the same way. You have a basic salt (like sodium bicarbonate) and an acid (incorporated in baking powder, like cream of tartar, or coming from the dough itself, like a baking soda leavened cake with yoghurt in the batter). You have probably seen the reaction at some point in science class, but if not, go mix a teaspoonfull of baking soda with a teaspoonfull of vinegar and watch.
In this reaction, the acid reacts with the base, creating new compounds. Some of these compounds are gaseous, so they make a foam in your baking soda - vinegar experiment. When baking, these bubbles of gas stay in the batter and get trapped there when the batter sets, resulting in a sponge-like structure.
To start the reaction, you need both the base and the acid. When using baking soda, you have no reaction before it is added to the acidic batter. Baking soda is a mix of baking powder and what I called an acidic salt, but in reality, the salt itself is not acidic. It forms acidic solutions with water. Remember, an acid is a proton donator. pH is a measure for the amount of protons swimming around free, waiting to react with something non-acidic. A salt has a firm structure, it is an ionic grid. No protons are swimming around in a salt, they stay at their places. Dissolve the salt, and they start swimming and become available for reactions. So with baking powder, too, the reaction starts once you mix the baking powder with the moist ingredients. This is the effect of moisture and the reason why batter goes flat.
The coolness in the fridge doesn't have much of an effect. If anything, it probably slows down the reaction somewhat, but not enough to stop it.
In a nutshell, what happens with the batter in the fridge is exactly the same thing that happens with the batter in the oven. Only as you are not baking it, the bubbles don't get trapped in the setting dough, but swim around until they reach the surface and leak into the air. This continues until the reactive compounds are exhausted. When you take the batter out later, the reaction is over, because there is nothing left to react, and it does not rise in the oven, because the rising is already over.
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13841 | Sardines without the nasty breath?
I recently tried to do more with small canned fish. Despite the stigma, they're cheap and healthy and underutilized--what's not to love?
More than 3 hours later, I was mortified to find out that I was still burping up an ungodly fish smell. Clearly, this was not about oral hygiene, but rather the chemistry of the fish in my gut.
Suffice it to say, I would not want to put anyone else though this. Are there any ways to somewhat neutralize the bad breath with a cooking technique or food pairing?
How do you usually eat them? Straight out of the can? If not, how do you prepare them?
@ESultanik I usually drained and tossed them with vinegar or lemon juice. But now I am remembering that I didn't wait very long, so maybe that would have helped.
Adding some chopped fresh parsley to your sardines will help neutralise bad breath as well.
IMHO, it would be useful to know what the canned sardines were immersed in — Olive oil? Other oil? Brine?
My favorite way of preparing canned sardines, which hasn't yet caused me "fish burp", is:
Boil some whole yukon gold potatoes in heavily salted water.
Meanwhile, make a vinaigrette with red wine vinegar and the oil of the canned sardines (assuming they were packed in oil). I prefer to make the vinaigrette quite acidic.
Toss with parsley and fine julienned shallot and season to taste.
Plate the potatoes smash them into an even layer.
Put the sardines over the potatoes.
Cover with the parsley salad.
Optional: Cover with sriracha to taste.
If there is any credence to the belief that lemon juice will cover up the bad breath, you could alternatively use that instead of the vinegar in the dressing. Furthermore, the acid from the vinaigrette will help cut through the fattiness of the fish. Finally, the potatoes will help "dilute" the fishy contents in your gut.
The parsley may also help with breath, as it is a traditional breath freshener.
@Martha, you are correct, as @KimbaF mentioned above (I forgot to add that part when I was writing it)!
Put drops of lemon over the sardines to avoid that smell.
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13510 | How can I add more "chew" to veggie burgers with only vegetables?
I, like many, have been on the search for the perfect veggie burger. And to my mind, there is a difference between "burgers" derived from a combination of legumes, grains, and/or fungus (ex. tofu, tempeh, and seitan) and "burgers" that are recognizably and predominately vegetables. In other words, there are burgers that qualify as vegetarian, and then there are vegetable burgers. It doesn't mean that these other foods can't be part of the mix. But when you rely too heavily on them, it stops feeling like you are showcasing the vegetables.
The problem is the lack of "chew." You know, the satisfying gets-stuck-in-your-teeth-like-grizzle experience that's hard to replicate without meat--and even harder if you bar the usual meat substitutes. And then there is the related problem of veggie burgers always falling apart.
So can it be done? For instance, I've tried incorporating shredded potatoes and carrots into the mix, trying to create a kind of mesh, but no dice.
Why would you want to eat a historically meat based item? The world is full of amazing vegetable based food. To me burgers represent all that is wrong with modern cuisine
@TFD: People like what they like, and when ex-omnivores become vegetarian, sometimes, they want to eat items they were fond of, burgers inclusive. I am vegan, I eat meat-substitute items all the time, no poor reflection on vegetables, just I liked meat, I don't eat it because I consider it wrong and environmentally detrimental, not because I dislike the taste. Can't see anything wrong with replicating the taste/texture, there is no moral problem there.
I ate a riced cauliflower/egg/mozzarella cheese mix recently that had a very nice mouth-feel. I don't know if egg and cheese are options for you though.
Globe artichokes can be quite meaty for a vegetable, as can sundried tomatoes.
@TFD- my thought exactly. More specifically- Why would you want to showcase the veggies and yet make them somehow meat-like. Do one or the other.
@Orbling- the sun dried tomatoes are an interesting idea. I wonder if you could partially dehydrate veggies until their flavors concentrated and they became more solid but stop before they get tough? I want to try that sometime. I wonder what that would do to yellow squash.
I've never tried it, so won't put this as an answer ... but dried mushrooms can still be chewy after rehydrating; I'd think they could give you what you're looking for.
I always grill some aubergine, to the point it gets a little chewey, and then add that. It gives a nice amount of 'bite'. I often add some green lentils as well which adds some texture.
@TBD, @Sobachatina: I think y'all might be missing the point a little bit too. The OP is looking for a texture like meat, but it's not necessarily because they want a meat substitute. Why can't vegetarians like a sandwich with a patty which has a substantial texture like that?
@TFD, Burgers are blasphemy? That's insane. I love burgers. If that's blasphemy, then we worship different gods. And my god doesn't have such silly rules. ;o)
cooked brown rice. a small amount (preferably short grain) will absorb some steam given off by juicy veg and still have a nice chew -burritos add it as a mop too
Vegetables are mostly water. Water isn't chewy, protein is. What has a lot of protein in the vegetable world? Legumes, grains and fungi. Your "usual substitutes".
I feel like the requirements that you have laid out are self defeating.
Instead of not allowing the known chewy foods you should instead figure out how to use them for bulk and still showcase more flavorful vegetables.
I prefer white wheat that has been boiled until it bursts. Lots of texture but the flavor is easily overridden by whatever else is added.
As for a binder- the easiest is an egg if you don't need vegan. Otherwise you can use starch such as flour but you have to be gentle.
no love for tilting at windmills, huh? I wonder what you would say to the suggestion @Orbling of sundried tomatoes or artichoke. Or, what I have been thinking of trying next, certain roasted root vegetables, which can be pleasantly tough if you ask me.
@Matt - I actually responded to Orbling's comment above. I like the idea of using dehydrated veggies to toughen them up a bit. I was trying to think of vegetables that would work for. Obviously tomatoes, perhaps sliced squash. Just don't accept my answer and we'll be fine. :)
This is tricky. The best vegetable patties I have ever made are based on India style recipes (Pakora, Bhajya, Pakoda etc)
Basically shards of vegetables bound with leavened pulse flour and deep fried
Change the spice mix to match the burger (cumin and pepper, no turmeric or aromatics)
Agreed. Mushroom pakora can be quite meaty. One of the best vegetarian burgers I've ever had was simply a big field mushroom roasted with garlic butter. The butter was mopped with the bun, which was smeared with good mustard. Even for a confirmed carnivore like me it was fantastic.
Pakora and Pakoda are same things.
My wife and I made these black bean burgers once and they were actually chewy enough that they resembled meat enough that she didn't want them again. (She hasn't eaten meat in over 20 years, so she's easily grossed out by texture like that. I'm a much more recent convert and I thought they were fantastic.)
If you don't want to follow that particular recipe, you could try mixing in the flax seeds and chickpea flour along with sun dried tomatoes. I felt like those were the ingredients that were most responsible for the texture, though I haven't had a chance to experiment with it since that first time.
diced Carrots?
Whenever I make anything vegan, these are the chewiest bits.
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1651 | Should tomatoes be stored in the fridge?
Storing tomatoes in the fridge tends to make them last a bit longer, but I've heard that the flavor is negatively affected. What is the best way to store them?
Tomatoes will last longer if kept in the fridge, but I actually recommend against keeping them there. Tomatoes lose much of their flavor when their temperature is brought below 50 degrees F. Keep them in the pantry. They will still last a few days at least, and they'll taste a lot better.
I found some further information which agrees with Electric Monk below, that it is the texture, rather than the flavor, that is affected by refrigeration:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/19/AR2005071900347.html
For the lazy: 50 degrees F = 10 degrees C.
From the great Harold McGee, they may last longer in the fridge, but they will taste like cardboard:
Tomatoes came originally from a warm
climate, and should be stored at room
temperature. Their fresh flavor
readily suffers from refrigeration.
Tomatoes at the mature-green stage are
especially sensitive to chilling at
temperatures below about 55°F/13°C,
and suffer damage to their membranes
that results in minimal flavor
development, blotchy coloration, and a
soft, mealy texture when they're
brought back to room temperature.
Excerpted from "On Food And Cooking", by Harold McGee
Exactly. Michael Ruhlman and Lynne Rossetto Kasper recommend the same thing. I keep tomatoes in a wooden bowl on the counter. And agree with Electric Monk that it's the texture that suffers most by storing in the fridge.
This depends on the shelf life of the cultivar of tomato you purchased. Some varieties of cherry tomato, for instance, can stay fresh for over two weeks in room temperature, others less than a few days.
My advice: experiment. Try separating a batch of tomatoes into two groups, store one in the fridge and the other outside and keep track of their state after a few days.
As for the flavor thing - I find that it is the texture that's most affected from refrigeration.
And most of all it depends on how ripe the tomatoes are when you're getting them. And if they are not very ripe, you should of course never store them in the fridge.
According to CargoHandBook ripe tomatoes should be stored at 8-10°C at 90-95% humidity, for optimum shelf life. Reduced oxygen/increased CO₂ also helps.
It also adds that
tomatoes stored at 10°C were rated lower in flavour and aroma than those held at 13°C.
The quote from McGee refers to the mature-green stage, not fully ripe. The quote continues:
Fully ripe tomatoes are less sensitive, but lose flavour due to the loss of flavour-producing enzyme activity. Some of this activity can come back, so refrigerated tomatoes should be allowed to recover at room temperature for a day or two before eating.
Putting them in a wine fridge (~16°C) is probably not a bad idea. You get stable temperature and high-ish humidity. But take them out a day or so before eating.
Where do you live though? if you live in a hot / humid climate with no air condition, then put them in the fridge.
It also depends what are you using the tomatoes for. if you're cooking salads with them, then fresh and not in fridge is great; however if you're making sauces out of them, or cooking them, then I don't think it really makes that much of a difference.
Some might argue that it does, but how noticeable is the difference, especially if the above mentioned tomatoes are store bought and not home grown
Tomatoes do well when stored in a place with good air flow and out of direct sunlight (I keep mine in a mini-colander). Tomatoes that are refrigerated lose their flavor because their flavoring compounds shut down (and won't turn on again even when the tomatoes are allowed to return to room temperature).
Can you elaborate on flavoring compounds shutting down???
Foodland Ontario, the consumer facing arm of the Ministry of Agriculture has this to say:
Store at room temperature, away from direct sunlight, to prevent uneven ripening.
Only in extreme heat, or if overripe, should tomatoes be stored in the refrigerator butter compartment. But to ensure full flavour, allow them to reach room temperature before serving.
http://www.foodland.gov.on.ca/english/vegetables/fieldtomatoes/buy-store-prepare.html
Put em in the wine cooler at 57 degrees.
Could you please explain why we should do this?
According to me, it's better to store ripe tomatoes outside the fridge, stem-end down to keep them from rotting too quickly. And I found great tip on storing unripe tomatoes and making them ripen faster: http://www.listonic.com/protips/get/ozhdfpuszg <--I can only add, that you should put tomatoes and banana in paper bag.
No. However obviously they will take a bit longer to ripen (probably what is affecting the taste) if you put them in the fridge, but they do not need to be stored in the fridge.
Try to buy only as many as you will use so you don't need to keep them for too long.
10-13 degrees optimal temperature for ripe tomatoes
On what temperature scale, and is there a citation or reason for this recommendation?
@SAJ14SAJ hopefully not Kelvin!
Ripening is an oxidation process and is slowed down by lowering the temp. As for flavor to me there is no difference only the temp difference. They are always stored in cool temp in the market.
But not nearly as cool as a domestic refrigerator (1 to 4°C). Markets control the temperature so as not to spoil fruit
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1616 | At what point is eating left-overs or perishables not just daring but dumb?
I am a college student who is sometimes a foodie, sometimes a garbage disposal. There is plenty of good food that some of my peers would turn their noses up at. But sometimes I wonder if this is not just disgusting, but actually bad for my health.
Food service standards are not what I am looking for here. Those are already clearly too stringent to me. Rather, I am looking for some rules of thumb about when I should not just cut or scrape the bad parts but trash the whole thing.
Depends on your preference. How much do you dislike food poisoning?
This is too vague to answer clearly. If it were about a specific type of food, that would probably be OK, but just asking about "left-overs" isn't objectively answerable. Note that the top-voted answer recommends exactly this; find out what you need to know about individual foods.
Agreed that this is vague. Though, to me "there is no general rule of thumb because didn't foods have different standards" is a decent answer.
The website http://www.stilltasty.com has a lot of info about the shelf life of foods, and the best way to store.
When in doubt, throw it out. It's cheaper than a hospital visit.
If you are wanting to save money, be proactive and find out the best way to store each food, and how long it can be stored.
Some things lose taste and texture as they age (even in the proper environment), while some things begin to grow dangerous kinds of bacteria or molds. For example, hard dry bread gets turned into french toast. Moldy bread gets thrown away.
If you don't remember when you got it, throw it out.
My general rule is 1 week.
Controversial answer, but: if it doesn't taste good. Spoiled food is disgusting in texture (mealy, slimy), taste (pungent, bitter, chemical), and smell (rotten, sour, noxious).
Any food more than a day old should really be reheated anyway. But don't reheat something that doesn't taste good beforehand.
In short, don't go by rules. Go by looks and your senses.
p.s. Don't smell or taste more than necessary to test the product.
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2246 | How to prepare pie dough in bulk at home?
Common knowledge dictates keeping the fats cool and the tools chilled. But when you are preparing more than 8X quantity, this poses some difficulties, or at least some stress. The ambient air, the size of home blenders and food processors--it’s all a mess.
I worked out an answer a week ago, so I'm posting it. But I would love to see a better answer.
Keep the fats as cold as possible before you start. Done right, it will more than compensate for the warmth of hands, blender/processor parts, and ambient temperature.
Having somewhat chilled your choice of fats, separate them into small, 1 inch sized pieces, working with copious flour to keep them from sticking to one another. Place this in the freezer overnight. This allows the blade to chew up even near-frozen bits. I haven’t noticed much degradation with this method, though I wouldn’t the leave fats in for much longer than that.
Mix your dry ingredients together.
Put the thoroughly chilled fats in a blender/mixer, leaving some room. Then, using only as much dry ingredients as necessary, pulse the fats until you have pearls slightly smaller than fish gravel. This works especially good for blenders where the ingredients tend to get stuck at the bottom. If you get the chance, stow the blended stuff in the freezer while you work with the next batch.
Once you have completed the blending en masse, you can add the rest of the dry ingredients. You should have a uniform texture to the whole mixture. Add water until the dough comes together with limited kneading. Wrap and return to fridge as soon as possible.
Freezing butter is fine, it doesn't affect the flavor or quality at all.
I would suggest dividing the dough into individual pie sized chunks, and returning those to the fridge while preparing one at a time.
I always mix pie dough by hand. And... I don't chill anything until half-way through the process. Sacrilege, I know.
Adam and roux nailed it in their comments above, you absolutely want to work in batches: I've never gone over four crusts in one batch without finding the results a bit too tough from over-mixing.
I aim for about three good-sized crusts per batch, mixing flour, salt, and half the lard until well combined. Then I throw in the rest of the lard, mix roughly, and into the fridge or freezer it goes (which one depends on how much time I need to work on fillings or whatever), along with the water and vodka mix for later hydration. The next batch goes in when the first one comes out, to chill while I quickly work in the now-firm lard, add the cold liquid, mix briefly and return to the fridge (always the fridge) to let it rest and hydrate. So on and so forth...
Even if I have someone helping me, there's only so much dough that can be rolled (much less baked) at any given time, so I don't find this process terribly annoying, especially if I'm par-baking the crusts or using a filling that can be prepared in parallel with the dough. Once going, there's a new batch of dough ready every 20 minutes or so, which usually means I have several chilling while waiting to go in the oven.
Call me a rude youngster, but I have since tested both your and my own approach a couple of times and, honestly, I can't tell the difference (I did both with lard, per your suggestion). Freezing avoids the fat bleeding into the dough. And somehow, I don't seem to run into overworking problems with the water when I use a big bowl. Since I also make the filling en masse, having all the dough ready made a considerable difference in time.
@Matt: if you can pull it off, good on ye!
A technique in sausage making, where the fat also has to be kept really cold, is to freeze the mixer parts for at least an hour before mixing.
Also sausage makers might grind into a bowl in an icebath; not sure how practical these methods are for pastry, but it can't hurt to know them, right?
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47826 | Compensating for extra moisture from cold flour
I've been baking Hallah of late from a high-precision recipe: weights and percentages provided for all ingredients. I store flour in the freezer. Typically, the dough comes out considerably stickier than intended. End result is OK, but process is messy. So, based on other reading, I assume that my chilly flour is busily absorbing atmospheric moisture. I'm wondering if anyone can offer a rule of thumb for how much water to subtract or flour to add to compensate for this effect over 795 grams of flour?
No, it has nothing to do with atmospheric moisture. It is the temperature itself. You get much more gluten with cold dough, and it is also very sticky and inelastic. If this is the effect you want, continue doing it. In fact, some authors (e.g. Corriher) recommend making very high hydration doughs with substituting some of the water for crushed ice, to make them more manageable.
If you don't want this (and most recipes are developed for room temperature ingredients), then you can't get the standard condition of your dough except by using room temperature flour. If you don't mind the different gluten texture in the baked product, but want to make the dough less sticky so you can handle it better, you should be adding water, not removing it. This will dilute the dough, so it doesn't end up so tightly cramped. I can't give you a rule of thumb for how much, you'll have to decide for yourself what feels comfortable to you.
Interesting. I got the 'frozen flour hydroscopic' notion from another answer here. I think letting it warm up might be simplest.
I don't see why cold flour would be any more hygroscopic than flour at any other temperature. I can imagine water vapour from the air condensing on your cold flour but that's condensation, not hygroscopy.
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5834 | Non-stick griddle frustration
I like to make pancakes. I like to make them on a nonstick surface.
I know that nonstick surfaces don't last forever, but my specific experiences with griddles, both electric and stovetop, has been ridiculous. A few sets of pancakes, even with careful plastic utensil usage, and the sticking commences.
Can anyone suggest either (a) a brand of griddle with a half-life of over a year, (b) anything I may be doing wrong in managing the object, or (c) some alternative approach to cooking pancakes that requires neither a nonstick surface or a lake of lubricant?
Are you greasing the griddle at all?
I use a large non-stick skillet for pancakes and have never had this issue. So don't have an answer. What is your process? My pancake batter has butter as an ingredient and I use ~ 1TBSP of canola oil in the skillet. When done I wipe down the skillet with a paper towel.
One thing you might be doing that will severely reduce the lifetimes of these pans is overheating them. Anything over 260 °C (500 °F) will cause the coating to deteriorate. Usually this happens when you leave the pan preheating on high without any food on it.
Your question doesn't indicate that you are using any fats when making your pancakes. Many people make the mistake of thinking that just because it's nonstick that you can get away with not greasing the griddle. This is just wrong.
I always run a stick of butter over the heated griddle a few times, then rub it in with a paper towel. You want a really thin layer of butter on your griddle. After cooking a few pancakes you will need to do this again.
I've used really cheap electric griddles just fine with this method, the problem you usually have with a cheap electric griddle is hot spots, not sticking.
Indeed, my expectation was that, given a batter with butter in it, and a nonstick griddle, that I had no need to supply any other fat.
So far, my best pancakes come off stainless steel. The method is pretty simple--if the recipe calls for shortening or oil, I substitute the same quantity of unsalted butter. I melt the butter in the stainless steel pan at very low heat, then add the melted butter to the mix. The pan goes back on the stove at medium low heat.
After the first pancake, I give the pan a swipe with a paper towel to get the excess butter off and prevent smoking. This is producing very good pancakes and there's no sticking at all. I expect that the same basic method would work with a cast iron skillet.
You can use well seasoned cast iron with very little fat. My cast iron skillet is actually slicker and less sticky than some of my teflon non-stick ones. It's also more tolerant of having metal utensils used on it. So if you have helpful housemates like me it's perfect. It is just NOT dishwasher safe in ANY way.
I have had the exact same experience over and over again. Someone told me not to ever use Pam Cooking Spray on a non-stick surface, which I had done. So I stopped. But it seemed to happen again.
We found the most incredible results from this Presto unit "Presto 07061 22-Inch Electric Griddle with Removable Handles". So much so that I shipped overseas with us! It is finally available on Amazon.ca, and I assume Amazon.com as well.
This has consistently given me perfect results, with no need for grease, butter, or anything else. I think it is a combination of the non-stick surface, and a very fine sort of grid pattern stamped onto it. It produces golden pancakes that seem to be dummy-proof. I love it, and I highly recommend it.
This looks rather like a thinly veiled attempt at a commercial.
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16858 | Why is my Pizza Dough always too sticky to knead?
I have tried to make pizza dough by hand a couple of times now but every time after mixing the ingredients the dough is far too sticky to knead, it is more like a batter than dough. I have watched videos on youtube of people making it and it is nothing like how mine turns out.
The ingredients I am using are:
225g Bread Flour
140ml Water
1 tsp Dried Active Yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp olive oil
I have tried just mixing everything together at once, and I have also tried mixing the water, yeast and sugar together first then adding.
Can anyone see anything wrong with the quantities I am using in this recipe or is there something else that I should be doing to actually get dough that I can knead? As I said, it is so sticky that it will just stick to everything it touches unless I constantly add flour (on my hands and board).
I find it helpful to flour my hands and the surfaces I'll be working on as well. But if the dough is too tacky to start with, this can be a lost cause
Working with heavily hydrated dough was always very frustrating for me as well.
Have you tried a different brand of flour? There are types of dough where this can happen, but at the ratio posted here (140*100/225=62, so in baker's lingo "62% hydration") this shouldn't be happening, especially with bread flour. Or do you live somewhere so humid that the flour is practically sucking humidity out of the air?
Its more like batter?! As @rumtscho says, that's 62% hydration, and getting bread flour like batter would be far higher than that—closer to 100%. Assuming you're not storing your flour in the sauna, you either (a) have cake or pastry flour, not bread flour; (b) are measuring wrong. (b) may be caused by faulty equipment, of course; are you sure your scale works? Does your 140mL water weigh 140g? Are you sure you've mixed in all the flour—there isn't a bunch of dry flour still needing to soak some water up?
The flour I am using is http://www.allinsonflour.co.uk/products/strong-white-bread-flour.html and I live in Scotland, so not exactly a humid climate.
I am an Indian and we make dough for everyday bread at home. It's easy to knead dough; you just have to take care while adding water. Do not add all the water you have, and add water slowly and steadily. For pizza dough I follow these steps:
Mix yeast in warm water, add sugar to this water. Observe this mixture - as soon as you see bubbles, it is ready to be used for kneading dough.
Add oil and salt to flour along with the yeast you have prepared.
I use a spoon to keep mixing the flour and add spoonfuls of water, I keep some flour handy in case I have accidentally added too much water.
I keep kneading the dough gently and add water or flour as needed. This does require some practice.
Thanks for that, I guess I am too much of an engineer, I expect to be able to just take a recipe and add the exact amounts specified and it will work every time. I guess I'll hold off on some of the water next time.
Dave, am a code monkey, and "cooking good food is a scientific art", don't google the quote, I made it myself
You don't need to add all the water slowly. You should be able to add 1/2 to 3/4 right away, and then add the remainder more slowly.
At 62% hydration, you should just be able to add all the water. Mixing may be a little worse, and it'll be a tacky when hand-kneading, but doable. And, @DaveJohnston: if your flour is stored in fairly consistent humidity, that should work.
how do find that hydration is 62%?
@Kumar: 140g water/225g flour = 0.622222
Thanks, I added the water gradually and didn't use it all, so I ended up with the perfect dough. :D
Bad, you can't share your pizza on internet, I am not sure if you can use reddit to send me a pizza :P
So far, I have noticed that the way that you knead the dough makes a big difference. I think there seems to be 2 basic approaches, one is to keep all the surfaces/hands/tools dry using extra flour to prevent sticking, the other is to keep all the surfaces/hands/tools wet (I usually use a bit of olive oil) to avoid sticking.
For your roughly 60% hydration pizza doughs: in both approaches what you end up with is the outside of the dough being different to the inside (either because it is covered in flour or oil). Adding too much additional flour or oil to a recipe will potentially damage it. What I try to do is to knead the dough so that the outside stays on the outside as much as possible. I do this by rolling, squashing and stretching the dough rather than folding or tearing it. Trying to keep the inside on the inside and the outside on the outside.
For very wet doughs: neither of these approaches will really work if you use your hands. For these doughs I use a small amount of oil on the surface and repeatedly fold the dough into thirds using a tool such as a dough scrapper or similar. You can hold back and use a small amount of the water to keep your dough scrapper wet during this process to avoid the dough sticking to the scrapper.
After the initial part of the kneading process, the dough will be more developed and hold together without sticking so much. And you can change to other kneading techniques as you like. Generally though, if you want to keep your dough wet, the solution seem to me to be not to just keep adding flour.
You might also try looking at incorporating an autolysis phase into your dough preparation, this can help reduce the amount you have to touch the dough.
best so far. wet kneading can really incorporate good amounts of air which make for those iconic pizza crust bubbles! Also, easier with dough cold (long slow fridge rise) to wet knead.
Is the 60% hydration by weight? E.g.: 0.6kg of water to 1kg of flour?
If you are doing this by hand then let the dough autolyse; meaning let dough rest so the flour an fully hydrate. Just mix the water, flour and olive oil until the dough just comes together. Cover with a damp towel or plastic and let the dough sit at room temp for 1 hour. Just incorporate the remaining ingredients when fully hydrated. There is no need to refrigerate in this process because there is no yeast in the autolyse mix that needs to be controlled. Plus you want your dough to be warm and at good working temperature. This process will also start a good process in the development of gluten. Good luck.
This tends to work really well for difficult doughs. It's amazing how much gluten you can develop just by letting the dough sit.
If you're working manually with a heavily hydrated dough, its just going to require a lot of flour if you're going to knead manually. Sometimes that's even anticipated in the recipe - that extra flour will be incorporated into the recipe during manual kneading. If that's the route you want to go, it just takes lots of flour and patience. Putting the dough fridge for a couple of hours will also help, it will fully hydrate the flour and generally make it a bit easier to work with.
That said - its also possible you could be using a different flour (even brand matters!) than your recipe is intending for and you're over hydrating that recipe. The proportions in recipe seem on par (at least the flour to water ratio) for a pizza dough - at least the ones I do (I checked in BBA just to double check and its about the same as well). If its too slack to work with at all, try reducing the water a bit. It may take a little experimenting, but once you figure out what works for the taste/texture you want and the ingredients you use - you'll get a 'feel' for the dough. Just by looking at and handling the dough, you'll immediately know if you've got the right amount of water. Its takes a bit of time to develop that - but not much.
Additionally, if you find you like the texture of that recipe, but the extra hydration makes it difficult to knead, then just don't. If its that hydrated, just give it time like a 'No Knead Bread' and the dough will form the gluten for you. Reduce the yeast in the recipe and give it time. Googling 'No Knead Bread' will elaborate, but generally its just letting it sit for an extending period on the counter (or a bit longer in the fridge).
This advice is generally sound, and good to know by beginners. But I must add that it isn't the case here. The OP includes the recipe, which works out to a 62% hydration. This is nowhere near high, and in fact should be nicely kneadable even with a low gluten flour (AP or pastry flour).
@rumtscho - Perhaps there's a climate difference then (I do live in a rather humid place) because I often find myself in the same boat as the OP - 60%+ hydration yields a rather wet dough.
The moisture content of flour varies with the environment you store it in. Hence the amount of water you need to put in your dough also varies.
If it is too sticky: add more flour.
The dough is probably too wet for kneading to develop the gluten and give it structure. The solution is a trick called "double hydration" which is used in professional baking.
Hold back about 1/4 of the water, allow the dough to be kneaded easily. When the dough is fully kneaded, you can gradually mix in the remaining water until you get the consistency you desire. This bypasses the problems of trying to knead a very wet ("slack") dough.
Note that pizza dough should still be somewhat wet and stretchy.
Not all flour can absorb the same amount of water, you should always add water up to the point when the dough is properly hydrated, don't pour the whole amount of specified water into the dough. The pizza dough recipe that I use calls for 3 1/4 cups of water, but I never use more than 3 cups. A friend of mine also noticed that when he switched from normal supermarket bread flour to a bread flour from Italy, it needed more water to get the dough to the same consistency.
I appreciate the responses shared; because I was looking to solve this same problem when I came upon this site. I was about to take the advice to add more flour; however, before doing so, I was so determined to fix my dilemma of tacky and sticky dough that I placed it in the freezer for a few minutes and it worked! My dough's sticky and tacky texture was gone. I Whether this would work without compromising on the outcome is something that would depend upon each and everyone's recipe. I made biscuits and the texture was far better than I expected considering I had over handled the dough looking to solve this problem.
The short answer: Try putting the dough in the freezer for a few minutes for over tacky, sticky, or moist dough in an air tight container.
Freezing yeast dough sounds counterproductive.
biscuit dough yes, yeast no.
You might find that just leaving it on the bench for the same amount of time also works?
I always start my dough sticky, gradually dust flour top and bottom and knead until it's sticky again. When it no longer adhere's to your hands, but feels as if it might your where you want to be. It's better and easier adding flour to dry it up than it is to try adding water into the mixture.
I have found that you need to just keep adding flour to make the dough very soft, normally 15 minutes in kneading. For pizza dough the dough should be soft but slightly sticky. Check out Fleischmann's Pizza Dough. That will help you. :)
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3836 | Baking zucchini bread without egg yolks
I'm trying to reduce cholesterol in my diet and have switched to using egg whites (from a carton) instead of whole eggs. This substitution usually works out OK, but when I make zucchini bread -- and other quick breads -- the loaves don't rise as well as they used to, and they tend to be drier.
I'm doing a 1:1 substitution using the guide on the carton (1egg is approx. 2oz), so I assume that a lot of the problem is that I'm missing the fat from the egg yolks. Is this correct, and if so, what can I use instead that will be low in cholesterol?
Genetics is actually the greatest affect on cholesterol. Consumption of dietary cholesterol has very little correlation to serum cholesterol in your body and the amount of cholesterol you're going to save by leaving out the egg yolks vs. the impact it has on the resulting bread will hardly be worth it.
However, if you wish to proceed then I'd recommedn simply adding about a tablespoon of vegetable oil in replacement of the egg yolks that are being omitted.
The fat in the egg yolks is going to assist in minimizing gluten development. Since you've omitted the fat there is probably a bit more gluten formation taking place and thus the fact that it doesn't rise as well. Egg whites have a drying effect on baked goods so that is why the bread is drier than before.
Thanks for your detailed answer. I just took a batch from the oven and it's a lot closer to how I remember it. My original recipe called for 3 eggs (for 2 loaves), and I used 1 today, with flax seed (per Rebekah's answer) and egg white replacing the other two. I also upped the amount of zucchini in the batter from 2 cups to 3 (per AttilaNYC).
I've read that you can substitute 1 tablespoon ground flax seed mixed with three tablespoons of water for 1 egg quite successfully. Here is a list of options containing that one.
Thank you. I tried this in the batch I made today and the results were promising.
Smash up or blend about a half a banana or 1/4 cup applesauce to use as an egg replacer for each egg in baked goods such as muffins, pancakes or yeast-free quick breads, such as pumpkin bread, or your zucchini bread - they will add a good amount of thick moisture, like eggs, but they won't help your dishes rise, so include a bit of baking powder or baking soda to help it rise if needed.
I've done this in other recipes, but I decided to increase the amount of zucchini I use (it is zucchini bread after all :).
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25681 | What is the difference between a biscuit and a roll?
Most restaurants in the US bring either biscuits or rolls to the table with your meal.
What is the difference between the two?
I think you might need to clarify about regions? It's definitely not true that most restaurants across the entire US do this. Maybe you're talking about the south, where biscuits are pretty common?
I'm not sure I understand your question, could you please clarify which meanings of roll and bisquit you are using? The two I an thinking of are completely different things, it is like asking what is the difference between apples and parmesan.
Additionally, if you're basing this on having eaten in enough restaurants to say most of them served biscuits or rolls, could you not tell the difference? Are you asking about how they're made? What are you asking that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biscuit and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_roll don't answer?
I think there's a certain European perspective that might provide clarity here - does the questioner actually want to refer to "bread sticks" versus "crackers"?
Biscuit = English scone?
@klypos - I live in the US and have traveled extensively throughout the country, this is not looking for a European view - unless it can provide some good clarity :)
@Jefromi - perhaps "most" is inaccurate, but I eat out a lot, and have almost always gotten rolls or biscuits with my meal when I have gone out. And yes, I can tell the difference - I want to know what the difference is.
The principle difference between dinner rolls and biscuits is how they are assembled not how they are risen.
Dinner rolls are normal glutinous bread
With this method, wheat flour is mixed with water to form gluten. The dough is kneaded to align the gluten into sheets which can be inflated. Developing the gluten is essential to this type of dough.
When baked, this dough produces a springy sponge that is chewy and easy to slice.
Biscuits are assembled using the aptly named "biscuit method"
With this method, solid fat is cut into flour. The fat is not fully incorporated but is instead left in small pieces. Liquid is added and mixed in only briefly. Only a very small amount of gluten is formed and the fat is not homogeneously distributed in the dough.
When the dough bakes, the pockets of fat and lack of gluten produce a flaky, fragile product which is the characteristic biscuit texture.
Notes
Dinner rolls often have more fat and sugar than regular bread dough. This makes them more tender and richly flavored than regular bread.
Gluten also caused rolls and biscuits to be formed differently:
Rolls are made from balls of dough that are rolled to give them a tight skin
Biscuits are either cut into shape or spooned onto a pan
Rolls are risen with yeast, and biscuits with baking soda/powder. This does not cause the differences in texture but is a result of it.
Yeast acts slowly and, if used in biscuits, the rise time would allow gluten development which would make them less tender.
Conversely, baking soda doesn't have as much lift and wouldn't inflate a springy glutinous dough as much.
I have to disagree... If I take the ingredients for a roll and 'assemble' them 'like a biscuit' it is still a roll, using the ingredients for a biscuit and assemble them 'like a roll', it is still a biscuit. Why...because of the leavening.
I feel like doing the experiment to prove it to you. If you take a high fat roll recipe, cut in the fat, don't knead it, and let it rise with yeast, you will get a tough biscuit. If you take a biscuit recipe and knead it thoroughly you will get a not-too-fluffy roll. The leavening type is important for the quality we expect but it doesn't define the recipe.
Also, biscuits, with the same name and similar to modern biscuits except less fluffy, existed before the invention of chemical leavening.
At the risk of laboring the point... It is easy to find recipes for chemically leavened dinner rolls. Not as fluffy but quite clearly not biscuits. https://www.giverecipe.com/no-yeast-quick-dinner-rolls/
Just because you call it a 'biscuit' or a 'roll' doesn't make it so, especially when we cross culture and languages (see other conversations regarding marinade/brine). Looking at the recipe you link to when I look at the photos and examine the crumb I'm inclined to say that is a 'biscuit', but would say that those (and others) are in a "between space" where neither term is completely accurate. FWIW Webster's says a roll is "a small piece of baked yeast dough"
Fair enough. I think we've accurately distilled the difference of opinion. I agree, it's difficult to nail down definitions for terms as people understand them differently.
In the U.S. biscuits are made with chemical leavening, they use baking powder to cause them to rise.
Rolls (or dinner rolls) are yeast bread.
There are obviously other differences in the recipe(s) but baking powder vs. yeast is the essential difference.
the baking powder vs yeast must be the ticket - thanks
Depending on what kinds of biscuits the OP has been having, they may also have a lot more fat, which can have as much an effect on flavor and texture as the leavening.
@Jefromi, true, The fat-flour ratio is also significantly different for biscuits. Good point.
Biscuits, in my experience, tend to be more crumbly (i.e. cannot be successfully sliced), while bread it more... bready?
This answer is a little misleading. Yes, rolls and biscuits are risen differently but this is not what makes the difference. The difference between them is how the fat is incorporated and how much gluten is formed. The leavening is a byproduct of this difference, not a cause.
While the two are visually characterized by their structure, one homogeneous and the other layered, those structures are dependent on the methods of leavening.
Rolls and biscuits were developed over time to optimize the combination of ingredients and technique. Change either one and you would have something different.
A roll is alive with yeast that persists and continues to live after baking.
A kneaded roll made with chemical leavening would require much leavening be used. The flavor and texture would both be different. It would look more like swiss cheese than angle cake, be drier and have a bitter taste. After baking it would rapidly dehydrate.
A biscuit is the result of a chemical reaction that ceases when baking is complete. If yeast were simply mixed into flour along with butter, the yeast would be unevenly isolated from contact with the carbohydrates that it digests and the oxygen it requires to produce CO2. It wouldn't rise nearly as much, or as evenly. After baking yeast would survive and continue to digest flour where it was exposed to air, and quickly mold.
So rolls and biscuits are different methods of combining ingredients with different leavenings.
I'm pretty sure that the average baker's yeast doesn't survive the baking process as they die at 60c/140f.
And if it didn't, the yeast wouldn't cause it to "mold"; yeasts and molds are distinct organisms. In fact, certain live yeasts would likely inhibit the growth of certain molds.
How does this answer (ignoring the blatant errors) add anything that wasn't in other answers already?
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11526 | Is "until juices run clear" a valid test for poultry doneness? Why or why not?
I've come across this particular recommendation many times in various recipes and cookbooks and probably even given it out myself once or twice. Poultry is sufficiently cooked when the juices run clear, not red or pink.
In recent months and years, as I've grown more interested in and knowledgeable about the science of cooking, I've learned to be skeptical of such simplistic claims. This one is repeated everywhere - even the Ontario Ministry of Health says it - but I've also run across various claims that it is dangerous advice.
What I'd like to know is this:
What does it actually mean - chemically or biologically speaking - when poultry juices run clear? Is it actually a reliable indicator that the food is safe to eat?
P.S. I am quite well aware that the way one is supposed to test for doneness is to use a thermometer and ensure that the internal temperature has reached 165° F / 74° C. I always do this, but thermometers can break, run out of battery, etc., so I think it is still helpful to know if the juice test is ever a viable alternative. But most importantly I am interested in understanding what is happening to the meat that causes the juices to change colour, and under what other conditions this can happen.
Chicken juices contain a soupy mix of proteins including haemoglobin (which gives blood its red colour when mixed with oxygen), and some myoglobin (which gives red meat its red colour when mixed with oxygen). Up to about 140F, they are unchanged, but heat them to between 140F and 160F and they lose their ability to bind oxygen and so their colours change. So if your juices are running clear, you know the temperature is at least higher then 140F and probably closer to 160F if they are indeed clear.
The question of what is 'doneness' is an interesting one. For most foods, doneness is a question of taste. After years of eating my chicken at 'at least 140F', I really like that taste. We usually cook foods to improve their taste, texture, nutritional value; very few foods traditionally kill or harm us if they are not cooked (cassava, certain beans are notable exceptions). Heating to 165F is recommended not for taste but to kill organisms such as salmonella - a tricky blighter that lives inside the cells of some other creatures and so can't be washed or peeled off.
I'm pretty sure that I'm the first generation cook in my family to own an instant-read probe digital food thermometer, so why is this now necessary? Well I may also be the first generation where salmonella in store-bought chicken is considered a saleable product and something to be cooked out by heat, rather than designed out by good farming and food handling practice. The 165F statement from food safety bodies was brought in to deal with such issues.
In France, there are still plenty of people who like their chicken very pink. With my own grown chickens, I will cook them till a skewer pierced into the deepest part of the thigh (but not near the bone), shows clear juices and on deep-breasted old breeds that can leave a tinge of pink towards the bottom of a (deliciously juicy) breast. I'm personally comfortable with that particular risk/reward balance.
But store-bought chicken? From an unattributed source? At $1:15/lb? Pass me the probe, please.
Chicken is cooked when it reaches the temperature necessary to denature (break down) most proteins, which kills any salmonella or other disease-causing agents and changes the texture of the meat.
The juices that come out of meat as it cooks should be fat or water, both of which are colorless, but they could pick up color from the materials they pass through, such as the hemoglobin protein that gives muscle tissue its pink or red color. I suspect the denaturing of the proteins prevents them from leaking out, thus the juices become clear. Once the hemoglobin has been broken down, you can safely assume that the proteins that pathogens rely on to survive have been destroyed as well. So yes, the color of the juices coming from inside the meat should be a reliable indicator of doneness.
SIDEBAR: There are in fact a few bacterial spores that can survive to much higher temperatures, as can the toxic chemicals produced as a waste product of some bacteria. These are relatively rare, and can be easily avoided by eating fresh, clean food and refrigerating any leftovers promptly.
EDIT addressing @Aaronut's comment: Most bacteria that live in, on, and around plants and animals require the same fairly narrow temperature range. 165 degrees F is enough to reliably kill salmonella and just about any standard pathogen (anything that would thrive inside the human body) in a minute or so, by also denaturing many of the proteins that make up the bacteria's cell walls and internals. This site suggests that 165 F is also the temperature at which juices will run clear - so yes, if the juices are running clear, the pathogens should already be dead, and probably for the same reason.
ANOTHER SIDEBAR: In fact, poultry can be cooked at a much lower temperature if you're sufficiently careful. 40 minutes at 140 degrees is just as effective at killing salmonella. (I don't know whether this would also make the juices run clear, but I would guess so.) The catch is that in a traditional oven, there's no way to get the middle of the chicken that hot for 40 minutes without drying out the outside. Sous-vide cooking addresses this by cooking smaller pieces of food at very precise temperatures for long periods of time. The USDA publishes charts indicating how long you need to cook poultry at a given temperature to destroy bacteria at specified levels of lethality.
Ah - this sounds like a great explanation for at least the first half of the question (what makes the juices turn clear). One thing I'm not certain of is whether or not salmonella bacteria require those specific proteins to survive; cooking doesn't break down every protein so this then becomes an issue of whether or not the salmonella bacteria either (a) starve as a result of this or (b) die at roughly the same temperature required to break down the hemoglobin.
Hemoglobin is concentrated inside red blood cells and gives them the red colour. If the heat is high enough red and other cells, including bacteria, are destroyed. The red juices contain intact red blood cells and turn clear as the haemoglobin spills out of the destroyed cells and is diluted by the other juices. If you can destroy all red blood cells it is assumed you are also destroying the bacterial cells.
What if you overcook it and there are no juices? You'd have to leave it in the oven until it caught fire.
While this is, indeed, how my grandmother cooked poultry, I prefer a thermometer if anyone but me is eating it. (If it's just me, I actually test for doneness by pushing on the breast with my fingers. Don't recommend that method though...I cook a lot of chicken, and usually just sort of know.)
It'd be awfully hard to leave a chicken in the oven until it caught fire. I'm pretty sure once it turned entirely black that'd be good evidence it might be overcooked :) But if I ever cooked a chicken that somehow had no juices at all, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't eat it.
@Josh: I don't know, I've known some cooks who seemed to be able to produce dessicated chicken without even wanting to.
My mum "overcooks" chicken. She prefers the texture of drier meat, and the rest of the family have inherited that preference. You can get all the moisture you need from the gravy!
Toronto Portugese churrasqueira chicken seems to be routinely roasted until the outer extremities are blackened sticks, yet this cooking method is apparently very popular. Why else would they continue to sell this affront to chicken lovers everywhere?
Hemoglobin is concentrated inside red blood cells and gives them the red colour. If the heat is high enough red and other cells, including bacteria, are destroyed. The red juices contain intact red blood cells and turn clear as the haemoglobin spills out of the destroyed cells and is diluted by the other juices. If you can destroy all red blood cells it is assumed you are also destroying the bacterial cells.
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103716 | Can a frozen turkey be "fresh"?
In the US, turkeys labelled "fresh" can't be held (by the retailer) below 26F. The idea, as I've understood it, is that fresh turkeys aren't supposed to be frozen.
Well, one that I bought last year was definitely frozen in the middle. And yesterday, I was shopping for a thanksgiving turkey and all of the ones labelled "fresh" were suspiciously firm to the touch.
My question is, Will a turkey held at 26F freeze? Or at least become what a person might think of as frozen?
You do realize that 26F is 6 degrees below the freezing point?
@wumpusD'00m Well yes, but turkey meat infused with turkey goo may depress the freezing temperature, like salt does.
Good Eats actually had something on this many years ago, as effectively turkeys aren't just water, so it doesn't freeze at the same point at water.
Copying/reformatting from the Good Eats Fan Page transcript of Romancing the Bird:
Chuck: Just look at this. The USDA recognizes three distinctive market varieties of turkeys. The first is frozen.
Alton: Meaning below 32 degrees?
Chuck: Only turkeys cooled to zero degrees or lower can be labeled frozen.
Alton: Well, uh, set me straight here, Chuck, but I thought 32 was the freezing point.
Chuck: For water, sure. But the moisture in meat isn't just water. It's full of all manner of dissolved solids that effectively reduce its freezing point.
Alton: You don't say. Okay. Thanks.
Chuck: Oh, next at 1 to 26 degrees—although most manufacturers shoot for 24 to 26—are refrigerated birds.
Alton: But frozen are so great, why bother?
Chuck: Because refrigerated birds aren't as rock hard as frozen so they don't require as much thawing time. And grocers don't need as much freezer space.
Alton: Is that it?
Chuck: Oh, no, no, no. Fresh turkeys are a whole other thing. Fresh turkeys can never go below 26 degrees.
Alton: But that's still below freezing.
Chuck: Not in turkey.
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1600 | How to make my chicken noodle soup thicker?
Online chicken noodle soup recipes contain mostly the same things - chicken, noodles, stock, vegetables - and for the most part taste the same. However, they taste completely different from the soup in many restaurants (such as Old Country Buffet or my favorite, Perkins'). I can't figure out how to make my soup taste like that.
It seems like the main difference is how thick the soup is... but simply adding less water doesn't do the trick. How do restaurants make their broth so thick? (should I be making my own broth?)
related : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/9555/why-did-my-turkey-stock-turn-into-gelatin ; http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/8879/add-gelatin-to-soup-as-a-replacement-for-stock ; http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/2995/stock-vs-broth-whats-the-difference-in-usage ; http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/3226/i-would-like-to-make-my-own-chicken-stock-any-suggestions
Adding corn/tapioca starch and mashed potatoes always thicken my broths.
None of the answers so far mention collagen -- specifically, using a stock made from roasted and cracked poultry bones.
You don't have to roast the bones, but you do need to crack them -- use a large, heavy knife or cleaver (not a chinese vegetable cleaver, you'll screw up the edge) to chop the bones up into about 2" to 3" pieces (5 to 7cm). Put them in cold water, and slowly bring it up to a simmer, and just leave it simmering for a few hours. You can add vegetables, too, but you'll want to pitch them, as they'll have been overcooked by the time the simmering's done.
Then strain everything, and use that as the base of your soup.
If your refrigerate stock that has enough collagen in it, it'll set up like jello, and hold its own shape. Starches can work, but they're not ideal for soup -- flour (unless cooked as a roux) leaves a raw flour taste and cloudy soup; tapioca leaves little granules in there; corn starch will break down if you cook it too long.
Can I use the precooked chicken from the deli, or does it have to be uncooked chicken (where do I find it with bones)? I get pretty grossed out by uncooked chicken :)
@BlueRaja : yes, you can. In fact, whenever I cook a whole chicken or turkey, after we've picked the meat clean, I'll throw the whole carcas in a pot, cover in water, and whatever sad vegetables I have on hand (I bag & freeze 'em when they're getting sad looking, before you have to pitch 'em), and set it simmer for a few hours ... then strain, cool down, strain the fat and move to suitable containers for freezing
Awesome! I've been using store-bought chicken broth (which I have now learned is not the same as stock), but I'm actually really excited to try this. One question: Do you or don't you need to cut open the bones? You said yes in your answer, but you and others have also said "just throw the carcas in a pot and simmer for a few hours." Also, should I use a lot of water, or only just enough to cover the chicken (I have a 1-gallon pot and an 8-gallon pot)?
@BlueRaja : If making stock, you don't have to crack the bones ... but if you're specifically going for the gellatin to release and the associated mouthfeel, the bone marrow is where most of it is, so it reduces the cooking time and improves the final product. If you don't have a cleaver, just use the back of a heavy knife on the larger bones (eg, leg, thigh, each of the wing segments) ... if you have kitchen sheers, you can just cut through the ribs near the spine, but don't bother cracking those otherwise.
@BlueRaja : As for amount of water, it depends on how strong you want it. I cover it by a few inches; and you're better off using a narrower pot, so you don't loose to much to evaporation; Also see : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/3226/i-would-like-to-make-my-own-chicken-stock-any-suggestions
I'm pretty sure bone marrow is composed mainly of fat and contributes little or no collagen that is then converted by heat into gelatin; the vast majority of collagen resides in the bones themselves and the only thing you're doing by cracking them is increasing the surface area which will speed up this conversion to gelatin.
I don't see any starch on the list. Starch is generally how you thicken stocks and sauces.
Corn starch is probably the most common and the easiest to find, and you should see results with no more than a tablespoon. Just be sure to add it while the soup isn't too hot and stir very thoroughly, otherwise you'll end up with lumps.
A more reliable approach is to use a roux, although that will give you a more "creamy" end product. If you just want a little thickening, use a starch like corn starch or tapioca flour.
To avoid the possibility of lumpiness, mix your cornstarch with a little bit of cold water first, then slowly add this liquid to the soup whilst stirring.
You can consider the thickness to be the ratio of dissolved starches to water. The more starch, the thicker the sauce. The less water, the thicker the sauce.
0 dissolved starch / 2 liter water = 0 thickness
Just reducing the amount of water by half doesn't fix the problem.
0 dissolved starch / 1 liter water = 0 thickness
Starches can be found in the ingredients of the soup/stew. For instance, if you cook the soup long enough, the noodles will start to dissolve into the broth, making it thicker. Of course, if you are making chicken NOODLE soup, this probably isn't the desired result.
One option would be to add one batch of noodles at the start of the cooking process. Wait till they dissolve and the soup is nearly done before adding the rest of the noodles.
Another option is use a different starch food ingredient like some chopped up potato or navy beans at the beginning, and then adding the noodles near the end again.
Both of these options require a long cooking time, but in my opinion, add nutritional value to the soup.
There are also fast starches like plain flour, or corn starch that can work in anywhere from a few minutes to a few seconds. The easiest way I've found to add them is to mix them with a little bit of cold water to form a slurry, and then pour the slurry into the boiling soup while stirring rapidly. Using the right amount takes some practice, but remember that they both thicken a bit more as the soup cools, so don't add too much when it's boiling.
For sauces, I like to reduce the amount of water a bit first through boiling before adding a quick starch. For stews and soups I prefer a nutritional starch at the beginning of the cooking process.
Two things to consider. They get their soup in a bag. It sits around all day cooking off starch from the noodles.
This is not a criticism, per se, of old country buffet, just something to realize about restaurant products. That soup they served you almost definitely has been sealed in plastic for days if not weeks. A lot of the starch from the noodles will dissolve into the stock and thicken it. Also, as it sits all day and cooks, to be ready for service, this process continues.
I think the corn-starch theory is right (although I wouldn't be surprised if restaurant soups used a more nefarious chemical treatment), but cooking your soup on a low simmer for 10-12 hours would probably have some starch-releasing effects as well.
I suspect this is the key. Over-cooking the noodles will definitely release starch into the broth, which will thicken it. Personally, that sounds like a flaw not a benefit to me! But you can get a similar effect by cooking the noodles in the broth, and maybe adding additional starch as others have said... (bleah...)
@Harlan: I'm honestly not so interested in the thickening as how to get that tiny spicy(?)/tangy taste that Perkins' soup has, but such questions ("Why is Perkins' soup kind of tangy?") are not allowed. I noticed that Perkins' soup is much, much thicker than my homemade soup, so I thought this might lead me down the right path.
Who knows what's in their recipe, and yes, recipe questions aren't allowed here. I doubt the spices/MSG that they use would have anything to do with the thickness of the broth.
@BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft, restaurant mimicry is definitely allowed (there's even a tag). You just need to be specific about current recipe and what you feel is missing. Just asking for a recipe is off topic. Fixing something specific in an existing recipe is decidedly on topic.
@BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft, the slightly spicy/tangy taste might be horseradish.
as an ex professional chef,can I weigh in ??
In the trade, we used to get whole, gutted chickens. After we had removed the breasts and thighs, and some times, the wings also, we would end up with a couple of 100 carcasses, which would go into a big stock pot, bones, bits of meat, skin, fat, even the occasional feather !
To that you would add carrot, leek, celery, onion and herbs, rosemary, thyme, parsley stalks & bay leaf, whole black peppercorns, but NO SALT. Cover with cold water and bring to a rapid boil. As the water heats up, it liquefies the fat, which rises to the top, along with other 'crap' that has to be skimmed off and thrown out. If you don't do this, your stock will taste horrible, and by extension, your soup will too.
Once your stock has come to a boil, turn down the heat to a gentle simmer, and let it alone for at least 4 hours, but 6 is better.
PLEASE BEAR IN MIND THIS IS INDUSTRIAL QUANTITIES. I WOULD SUGGEST 90 MINUTES FOR DOMESTIC.
Continue to skim off any scum that comes to the top, and add cold clean water to keep the level of liquid above the bones.
When you come to sieve the stock, DON'T STIR IT, you'll make it cloudy, and you don't want that. Ladle it out, through a muslin lined sieve, or chinois, into a clean pan. What you are looking for is a light amber colour, with no bits in it. Rapidly boil this down to about 2/3 d's its volume. This concentrates the flavour, and helps to thicken the soup a little. Once reduced, taste, and adjust for seasoning. NOW YOU CAN ADD SALT, if needed.
Now then, there are several ways of doing 'phase 2', which is prepping your meat & veg for the soup. I shall instruct you for the easier, and quicker way, because I'm sure you're hungry! Dice the meat up into what-ever sized pieces you think fit, but really no bigger than an inch (2.5 cm), and peel and dice all the veg that you want in the soup. Pour some of your stock, about 2 pints is enough, into a small boiling pan, and place the chicken meat in it. Add the diced carrots next (If you're using them), and let it simmer for 10 minutes. DON'T FORGET TO SKIM. Add the rest of the veg, and heat until all the veg are cooked. Obviously, your chicken and carrots have to be roughly the same size, or your timings will be out. Strain the meat and veg from the stock, and set aside, keeping it warm.
Now comes 'phase 3'. Assess how much soup you are going to serve, because you are going to thicken-ever so slightly-that amount of soup. Use cornflour (corn starch) about 1 heaped tablespoon is right. Mix with a small amount of cold water, enough to make it runny, and this is important...NO LUMPS !!!.....if you have lumps, sieve it. In fact,sieve it anyway, last thing you want is lumpy soup. Switch off the stock, and gradually pour in the cornflour...STIRRING ALL THE TIME....DO NOT BOIL...
portion out the soup, and garnish with the diced meat and veg. IF you have thickened the soup too much, you can let it down a little with the meat cooking liquor.
The stock you have left over can be cooled and fridged, as can the left over meat and veg.
If you made the stock correctly, it will solidify over night, any impurities rising to the top, which you'll be able to remove and throw away. That stock is now, basically, an un-refined consomme, a good base for many other dishes, if you don't fancy making anymore soup.
This is a recipe for basic chicken soup, you can take it much further: consomme; broth; veloute; cream; enriched or chowder.
I'll be round later, to help with the washing-up.
Bye.
I've just read through some of the previous suggestions.As for cracking the chicken bones...NOT NECESSARY..The bones are small, porous and pliable enough, that 90 mins is waaayy long enough to get any gelatin, and flavour out of them
My sister made her soup with the packet of the seasoning mix from a box of macaroni and cheese. I know this is kind of going against the natural homemade idea, but it was absolutely delicious.
Most restaurant soups for chain restaurants also contains MSG or flavor enhancer as it is sometimes called. Corn starch is also in the list of ingredients. Unless you have small restaurant type place that makes its own soup it is precooked and plastic bagged. Some Denny's use it correctly others water is down pinching penny's and driving away customers
As to the taste part of your question: high-quality chicken stock/broth, simmered a loooon time, reduced (evaporate water), will start of your soup with a much richer flavor.
In other words - I wouldn't just look at thickness. Do try your own broth, or start from a more high-quality prepared base.
Edit: See Joe's answer (+1) as well about this point.
Interesting. How long do you think I should let the broth simmer on the stove before cooking the rest of the soup? Also, do you have any recommendations of a "high-quality stock/broth" brand? They all look the same to me. Should I be making my own (that thought intimidates me)?
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7353 | What is the purpose of vermouth in potato leek soup?
I have taken elements of a number of different recipes and have developed my own recipe for potato leek soup. The ingredients are:
Potatos
Leeks
Vegetable and chicken stock
Butter
Garlic
Heavy cream
Salt, various herbs and spices
Vermouth
Quite a few of the recipes I built mine from included the dry vermouth so I built it into mine as well. In an 8 qt stock pot I use 2/3 cup (specifically Martini & Rossi Extra Dry). It's not enough for me to notice a flavor difference between batches that I make with it and without. That leaves me to wonder what it's there for. I guess it could provide a touch of sweetness. Would it be for the acidic factor as well?
If you need more detailed information on the ratios of ingredients I'd be happy to share, just left it out for brevity.
Vermouth is a fortified white wine that has been infused with herbs, spices and fruits. You should expect it to add those flavors to your dish.
Have you tasted the vermouth on its own? Are you sure you can't identify it? If you still think you can't, I'd suggest tasting your soup as you add each ingredient and concentrate on what flavors each ingredient adds.
For what it's worth, Cooks Illustrated has reviewed Martini & Rossi Extra Dry and classified it as "not recommended" due to tasting medicinal and harsh.
Gallo Extra Dry California and Noilly Prat Original French were both recommended, in that order.
They used a pan sauce as well as straight tasting for their reviews. Perhaps you could try that yourself and see what flavors vermouth gives to a pan sauce, as compared to a white wine. You might find out that you're overpowering or masking a flavor in your vermouth with some of your various herbs & spices.
Interesting. Yes, I've tasted it and could appreciate the medicinal tag placed on it. I have not tasted other dry vermouths, though. I will definitely try tasting after each ingredient is added. That's something I have to work on anyway, is tasting more often. It's quite possible that other spices are overpowering. There are only a few of them but 2 are cayenne and white pepper. Cumin and bay leaves are the others. I'll give those other vermouths you listed a shot as well!
@squillman: It's a funny coincidence that I just read the vermouth reviews this morning.
heh, I was going to salute you on your memory on that one considering what I found was from 2003 http://www.cooksillustrated.com/tastetests/overview.asp?docid=9801 :)
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53576 | Using Cheesecloth for Pancetta
I am making pancetta for the first time and I've just taken it out of the cure to dry. I have rolled it and am ready to hang it. Before I hang it, what are the pros and cons of wrapping it in cheesecloth while it dries? The recipe I am using says to cover it in cheesecloth when laying flat to dry, but nothing about wrapping it in cheesecloth to hang it.
I've made pancetta many times. When rolling, I just tie with a string. Traditionally, it is just tied off. Personally, I prefer the results when I just hang it without rolling...poke a hole, loop a string, hang...but that is just personal preference. The only downside I can see to the cheese cloth, is that it might slightly slow the drying process. Other than that, as long as you are working clean, I can't see a problem with it, but I am not sure it really helps you in any significant way. Perhaps you could get a tighter roll with a sheet of cheesecloth?
Cheese cloth would actually be great as it will inhibit some bugs getting to the meat while still being porous enough as to not let the meat sweat.
If your hanging in the summer it is a good thing to cover the meat with something. You just need a substance that lets the meat breath. If it is just a regular bag the meat can sweat and this could open the door for spoilage bacteria to enter.
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10724 | How does red wine butter impact the flavor of dishes?
I was looking for some ways to use up some older wine and red wine butter came up as a possible use. I see that it is supposedly pretty tasty on many meat-based dishes; how does the wine change the butter so as to make it a more attractive alternative than just using butter or oil?
well you're adding wine flavor to butter, if that taste is more attractive to you than butter or oil, you've answered your own question.
The main point, IMHO, is to make an easy to use and flavorful compound butter. It can be put on top of grilled meats, tossed in with a sautee of meat/veggies/pasta, etc.
I would finely mince some onion or shallot and garlic. Lightly sweat them, then add wine and reduce. Add some fresh herbs and the butter and melt to combine. I then cool this until lightly set, then roll it in a tube in some plastic wrap and freeze it. It can then be sliced off, like tubed cookie dough, and placed on top of grilled/baked meats, etc...
The wine and herbs add a rich, deep flavor that can be used in a variety of ways.
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7948 | Effects of making smoothies in advance
Generally for breakfast I eat a smoothie containing 8oz soy milk, 1/2 cup berries, 1/2 banana, and 1 scoop protein powder. Unfortunately, however, my blender is very loud, and I will soon be moving into a smaller apartment with someone who is a light sleeper. If I make my breakfast the night before, and then put it in the fridge for the next morning, what will the effects be? I'd be concerned the protein powder would settle and get grainy, or that the ingredients would separate and lessen the overall flavor of the drink.
I make smoothies every morning for my wife and myself (and have for over a year now), and when working out also added protein powder. The only difference between our recipe and yours is an inclusion of a few ounces of greek yogurt.
On the days when I knew the workout would run long (and potentially make me late for work), I was making them the night before with no problem. As yossarian said, as long as you make sure the protein powder is fully blended/dissolved you'll be fine. I've noticed no graininess/texture difference between night-before and morning-of.
The ingredients do separate a little overnight, but a quick shake or stir and they're back to normal.
I would say to try it and see how it works with your exact combination of ingredients.
Something to watch out for: my wife swears that sometimes, making them beforehand would cause a bit of a "sharp" edge to the taste of the smoothie - if this is true, my guess would be the interaction between the acid in the fruit and the base in the dairy. But, not being a chemist I can't speak to that. I can, however, say that I personally haven't noticed a difference based on whether it was made the night before or not.
I see that you're not using ice; I don't know if you're using frozen berries or not, but if you're used to a chunkier ice-like smoothie from frozen berries, you'll lose that texture of course.
I think you're probably right, the ingredients would settle / separate, however I bet you could fix that with a spoon and a stir. I can't talk to the protein powder, but if it fully dissolves, I'd think it would be ok. If it doesn't fully dissolve, try using a bit less of it. If you were using ice, it obviously wouldn't work.
So I think you're fine. Go for it!
I make protein smoothies (whey protein, fresh fruit, yogurt, ice, almond milk) the night before and notice a big difference in taste. It obviously does not taste as fresh if drank the same day and not as good.
I've read that some of the nutrients will start to break down the longer a smoothie sits around, but "If you want to prevent oxidation, blend in some lemon juice or part of a peeled lemon." (from smoothie-handbook) to minimize the loss.
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1595 | Should meat be seasoned before or after cooking?
When should meat be seasoned?
I heard that salting meat prior to cooking draws out the moisture but I have noticed that a number of chefs season their meat prior to cooking.
There are different 'camps' when it comes to seasoning but essentially If you season meat too early before cooking, the salt will draw out the moisture, meaning a less juicy piece of meat, however if you season just before cooking the seasoning will help to impart flavour into the meat. If you seal the meat and then season it, the sealed meat will not release any juice. Hence the two theories.
Indeed it would, which is why overcooking meat tends to lead to dryness.
Salt is a very unique "spice" (technically it's a rock). You could literally spend an hour just learning the various ways it affects foods.
A general rule of thumb is that the longer the meat is exposed to the spice, the more it will pick up the flavor, but there are many variables in how fast this happens, how deep the flavor penetrates, etc.
For example, in brining (soaking the meat in a salty liquid), first the lower salt juice is drawn out of the meat, then the saltier water is drawn in along with the other spices in the brine mixture. The salt actually helps the meat retain the moisture better during cooking.
Covering a raw steak with salt for a while before grilling will draw out the moisture and change how the steak is seared.
To add to that last bit: salting before searing meat helps draw protein to the surface, making for better browning.
I am hooked on Dario Cecchini's seasoned salt. I have found that grilling the steak first and then seasoning just before removing from the grill gives me better clarity with the subtle flavor of his very fine grind seasoned salt. And I use much less which is good because trips to Chianti are rare. Also, I do not grind pepper on the steak which would compete with the seasoning. Bottom line I am now in the season after camp (only when grilling) because I like the pure steak meat taste combined with the mouthfeel of the seasoning as a power chord from the outside crust of my steak as opposed to the melted in flavor of a seasoned and slow cooked braised meat like short rib that carries the same flavor throughout the meat.
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1646 | What is freezer burn?
What causes freezer burn?
How can I tell if meat has freezer burn?
See this question for an example of freezer burn.
Freezer burn is just the food being dehydrated. Most meat will change color, and it becomes very obvious if you defrost it. It's not unsafe: just yucky.
If it's just dehydrating it, why can't you just add water back in (eg. cook/soak it in liquid)?
@DoubleAA no you can't. The surface gets dehidrated, its texture changes in an irreversible way.
Leaving foods unwrapped or directly exposed to the air in your freezer/refridgerator will contribute greatly to freezer burn - try to put leftovers in containers or wrap them to ward against freezer burn :)
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3881 | Interesting use for Okra as the main ingredient in a dish?
I had a few handfuls of fresh Okra delivered with the last CSA delivery. I'm looking for an interesting way to cook a dish featuring it. I also have:
One eggplant
Some pumpkin
One leek
Lots of tomatoes
Cilantro
Dill
Potatoes
If you do some poking around online, you can find people who blog about how they use the produce they get from CSAs; maybe you can find one in your area, so it'll be similar produce they write about.
Okra is great in curry. I'll do an okra and tomato curry, but you can find plenty of recipes online.
I ended up making my own Garam Masala and using it along with tomatoes and garlic as a base for a tasty curry
Okra + tomato is halfway to gumbo and other similar dishes. In fact, this is what I intend to do the next time I can get okra.
Okra is a magical vegetable whose texture varies dramatically depending on how it's cooked.
BBC has Okra recipes and information
Main course
Light meals & snacks
Starters & nibbles
Some of Okra recipes from India
http://www.nandyala.org/mahanandi/archives/category/indian-vegetables/okra/
http://www.physiology.wisc.edu/ravi/okra/#recipes
http://hubpages.com/hub/Okra-Ladys-Finger-Recipes
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11592 | Stripping seasoning from cast iron
After reading this article, I want to try to re-season a skillet with flaxseed oil; I'm fairly certain I did a terrible job when I seasoned the skillet several years ago. Is it possible to do this with steel wool or vinegar? (I don't have a self-cleaning oven, so that method is out.)
i don't think you really would want to season a skillet with flaxseed oil. flaxseed oil has a really low smoke point. Wikipedia has it listed as 225F
I remember reading something last year talking about different styles of seasoning -- basically, there's the rock-hard style they talk about in the article you linked to, but also another style where the pan's kinda sticky when cool, but gets really slick when heated up. (so just saying; even if flax seed gives the rock hard finish, it might not necessarily be the best style of seasoning)
@Chicken Pie, actually flaxseed oil is a good oil to use depending on the kind of finish you want (as Joe alluded to), read the linked article for some more details as to why. The low smoke point is a benefit when seasoning (Sheryl goes into detail as to why it's not detrimental and you actually want to exceed the smoke point of any oil when seasoning)
In the article/comments she writes "I use oven cleaner with lye."
Some of the answers allude to this, but nobody has said it explicitly: There is a big difference between "stripping" the pan, and simply cleaning it. Most times, you just want to clean it off, and on occasion you will re-season it. Stripping the pan down to bare metal is much more drastic measure, that you generally only want to do when a pan is in very bad shape as a result of poor cleaning over a long period of time.
+1 Thanks for the article link, the follow-up is also interesting.
Do you need to remove a bunch of burnt-on stuff as well as the season? If the pan is clean but not rust-resistant or non-stick like you want, I'd suggest just treating it like you were doing it for the first time and just season over the old. It's not like you care about hurting the old season--you'll just be thickening it and filling in gaps.
If you need to get it back to day zero, there are definitely questions here with good answers about how to do it.
But the first thing I'd try, since the day zero cleaning methods are fairly drastic, is to make sure it's as clean as you can manage, then just go ahead and season. I have had good luck rehabilitating pans that were poorly seasoned but otherwise OK by doing this.
Based on your response in the comments, I would definitely heat up the pan in the oven as high as it will go, and let it go until it stops smoking (put the cold pan in the cold oven to start). That should burn off/dry any excess oil, which it sounds like you have. Then I'd let it cool enough to handle, then season as if it were new. I don't care for the "tacky" seasoning because it's too easy to get a buildup of unseasoned grease. So I'd cook that down/off and start over. And I always rinse with the hottest water my sink makes, to prevent buildup--no soap, though.
The existing surface is a little tacky and definitely not non-stick; I generally scrape it clean with a spatula after use, then gently wipe it with a wet sponge (maybe a little touch of soap, maybe not) then rinse and dry the pan.
Do you recommend cleaning the pan again after it comes out of the oven and cools?
@Neil: It wouldn't hurt to give it a rinse after. Just make sure you dry it very well--towel dry then heat it a bit.
Wouldn't there be residue from the stuff that burnt off? Or am I misunderstanding the process?
It depends. When you overheat oil, you don't always get burnt stuff like ash--you just burn on the oil by cooking away any water. This is what's at the heart of seasoning a pan. Now if there are biological elements (food, for example) stuck on the pan, they might well burn up and leave some ash. And you'd want to get rid of that.
From what you're describing, you probably just need to clean it (maybe a little scrub; I use some coarse salt and oil) and re-season, not fully strip it ...
... but you have a nasty, disgusting pan ... the sort of thing that's found when cleaning out someone's barn or otherwise neglected for years, first start with one of:
self clean cycle of an oven
fireplace (once the fire's going well, just set it in the hot coals, and leave it 'til the next day)
campfire (pretty much the same thing)
grill (if charcoal, follow the fireplace rules; if gas, just crank it as high as it'll go)
Next, you'll need to scrub. A wire brush is your friend for this. (I have some finer steel wire brushes and brass wire brushes; the heavy duty steel ones for scrubbing paint off of concrete block might be a little rough on the pan; a grill brush might do okay).
Then wash, dry, heat and just season it as if it were new.
I'm going to try bikeboy's answer, then do this if the above doesn't work for me.
@Neil : good plan -- if the pan's not in bad shape (trust me, I've seen some pretty ugly pans), you can just keep adding layers of seasoning ... stripping the seasoning is a last resort.
Scrubbing is hard. In general, burn it off.
You have to get the pan super hot, and it will have to stay hot until the carbon (oils and food bits) turn to ash (white). This takes awhile.
You can stick it in a fire. In my restaurants, we stick it over a vey big flame.
For the home, you can flip it upside down and put it in your oven on a self cleaning cycle. The clean mode is HOT (800 edges?) and your pan will come out clean. Easy.
Just remember to REMOVE the racks, otherwise they'll get destroyed.
As I said in the original question, I don't have a self-cleaning oven.
You could also take your pan into a sandblasting company and get it sandblasted. That will leave you with the grey/silver cast iron like when you get it new.
To strip seasoning just heat it up real hot, or throw it in the fire for a couple of hours
You should be able to re-season a pan as often as you like
You should have to ever do this unless you don't look after it (let it rust, or use vast amounts of vinegar etc
The best seasoning is one that is built up from many thin layers over many years
Flax seed oil is fine, so is practically any oil, the oil gets converted by the heat into a polymer of sorts, so the exact type is somewhat irrelevant
If you seasoning is sticky, just heat it up hotter till it either sets or incinerates off
That's the beauty of cast iron, you cant go wrong. More heat will always fix the problem :-)
My preferred method is lye. Strips the seasoning without hours of playing around with sandpaper. Soak the pan in strong lye overnight, then wash with lots of water.
Take precautions while working with lye (NaOH), the stuff is very corrosive.
Don't use acids on an iron pan, they rust the surface in seconds. (So no barkeeper's friend!)
Oven cleaner, a very heavy black plastic bag, preferably a warm day.
Get bag. Home Depot sells Contractor Bags.
Spray a bunch of oven cleaner in the bottom of the bag.
Drench the Cast Iron in oven cleaner.
Put in bag.
Leave it in the sun all day, sometimes 2.
Clean it very well.
Re-season it.
I have put a pan in the bag this way and left it in the back of my truck. 2 days later it came out of the bag looking like it was just cast.
I read the same article and immediately stripped and reseasoned my #7 Griswold. I mainly focused on stripping the cooking surface (not caring as much about the sides). I alternated between
scrubbing with Barkeepers Friend and a scouring pad
letting it sit on the burner on high heat until all the crap turned to dust.
Sandpaper, works like a charm. Just takes a little persistence, and then a thorough washing to get the fine bits of crud/iron out.
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24581 | Is there such a thing as pumpernickel flour?
I've recently started making my own bread, and would like to try to make pumpernickel bread. A friend of mine once mentioned that this uses pumpernickel flour, but I'm unable to find this. The recipes I've seen for pumpernickel bread use rye flour and molasses (or other additives).
Is there such a thing as pumpernickel flour? If so, is it a darker flour that gives its color to pumpernickel bread? Or is traditional pumpernickel bread made with regular rye flour, and is dark because of a very long baking time?
Pumpernickel is made from rye flour. If a recipe refers to "pumpernickel flour", they are probably referring to coarse-ground rye flour, which is coarser than you'd use for regular rye bread. Coarse ground rye flour allows you to make the superdense pumpernickel breads you may be familiar with from Germany and Skandinavia. This style of pumpernickel, which is the traditional variety, is dark colored not from molasses or other additives, but from very long cooking (as in 8 to 16 hours).
If you want a lighter pumpernickel, more like the pumpernickel sandwich bread sold in the USA, use regular fine-ground rye flour combined with wheat flour, plus coloring agents. This is also the mix used for pumpernickel bagels.
As a personal recommendation, I suggest using dark malt syrup as your sugar and coloring agent for American-style pumpernickel rather than molasses. Dark malt syrup can be obtained from brewing supply stores, and some food stores with large "natural foods" sections.
@Goldfish That's one of the things this answer suggests. And I don't think it's made from a different part of the berry, it's just whole-grain and coarsely ground like the answer says.
@user40141 That page says exactly what I did: it's just whole-grain. That does mean that it includes parts of the rye berry (the bran and germ) that regular rye flour doesn't. But all rye flour, including pumpernickel, includes the the endosperm. So it's not a different part of the berry, any more than whole wheat flour is a different part of the wheat berry from normal wheat flour.
King Arthur sells a Pumpernickel Flour which is made with whole grain rye.
Think Whole grain wheat flour vs regular wheat all purpose flour. Pumpernickel has the "bran" ground in. If you mix 1/2 rye to pumpernickel it will be a little lighter. Freeze any left over pumpernickel flour as it will go rancid quickly. Check kingarthurflour.com for flours and recipes if you do not have a Wholefoods or health food store near you
King Arthur brand "Pumpernickel flour" is how that particular company labels their wholemeal rye flour. It's not a general term. "Dark rye flour" is more common, though something simply labeled "rye flour" is also likely to be wholemeal.
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860 | What should I check when buying a pineapple?
I live in middle Europe so pineapple (so called "ananas") is an exotic fruit for me.
What should I check when buying a pineapple to make sure it would taste well? Should it smell specific? Should it be soft or hard? Should it be big or small?
I believe this questions is valid for other regions as well. Is it?
It should be firm, not mushy, but not rock hard either.
The most important thing, however, is smell. An unripe pineapple won't smell like anything. An overripe pineapple will smell vinegary. A ripe pineapple will smell sweet.
you can test if a pineapple is ripe by trying to pluck out one of the leaves near the centre. If it comes out fairly easily then the pineapple is good to go. if its hard to get out its not ripe yet.
Inspect to make sure that it doesn't contain gnats. Else you will have a ton of these critters flying around your home for a week (more if they find more fruit to lay another nest in).
The pull-off-a-leaf test has never failed me. Moreover: look at the pineapple up close and smell it. Seeing some yellow is good, a lot of brown is not good. The smell should be strongly sugary, pleasant and with a touch of alcohol. Avoid if the alcohol smell is very strong or, worse, if there is a note of vinegar. Pineapples are high in sugar and they can start fermenting.
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865 | How to peel hard boiled eggs easily?
This is one of the most annoying duties in the kitchen, for me.
What are yours tips and tricks to peel hard boiled eggs easily?
Beside the protection, I would like to point out: I cleaned up about 10 answers all repeating the same simple advice. If you want to answer, please read first if what you are saying is not already covered.
Buy almost-late eggs.
The worst-case scenario of egg-shelling is a farm-fresh egg. That annoying film that sticks to both the shell and to the egg will detach, the older the egg gets. The bubble at the fat end, too, will get bigger as the egg ages, which also makes the bottom cap pop off more easily.
Obviously, we don't want rotten eggs. We want the almost expired but not expired ones.
Roll the egg against the countertop, cracking it along the "equator".
This will give you lots of starting points, and it will weaken the shell in enough directions that the rest of the peeling becomes easier. Usually, the top and bottom caps come off in large and clean pieces, so don't bother cracking that part unless it sticks.
Start from the fat end of the egg.
After much experimenting, I've determined that starting from the bottom of the egg (the fat end) is the best way to do it. Give the egg one good whack on the countertop, and the bottom caves in quite easily. This gives you a really nice starting point. Now peel out from there in a spiraling pattern down the rest of the egg. The top cap still comes off quite easily in one big chunk, if the egg is old enough.
I'm not sure I agree that we want the almost expired but not expired ones .. fresh eggs are best, imo.
For everything but hard-boiled eggs, if only because they're so damned hard to peel, I agree. :)
Have to agree with the "old eggs." I am lucky to know someone who keeps chickens and we sometimes get eggs the day after they are laid. Experience says that hard boiling them when they are fresh makes them impossible to peel.
Though it's infuriating to try and peel the eggs I buy, it does make me feel better about them overall to know that it's because they're fresh :-)
There's a great article by Harold McGee in this quarter's Lucky Peach magazine: the reason old eggs are easier to peel is because their pH increases as they age, you can replicate this with fresh eggs by adding baking soda to the boiling water. The article goes into much more detail but unfortunately I don't have it at hand.
Peel them under running water. This helps to separate the egg and the skin under the shell.
Cold running water seems to be best.
After boiling the eggs—and note that boiling them longer helps to make them easier to peel—let them sit for a while in a pan of cold water. I add ice cubes to the water and put the pan in the refrigerator.
Once cold, crack the "bubble" at the flat end of the egg by knocking it against the counter or the edge of the sink. Tap a few more times around the rest of the egg to get a few cracks in the shell. Next, gently roll the egg between your palms, applying just enough pressure that you can hear the shell cracking. You want to be distorting the shape of the egg enough that the now-solid part in the middle flexes away from the skin and shell.
Finally, starting at the cracked "bubble," work on separating the skin beneath the shell. The idea is not to peel the shell, per se, but to peel the skin, which will also slough the shell.
The only challenge arises when the skin won't separate from the solid inner part. Once you're down to picking bits of the shell off, you've lost. It's then very difficult to maintain the integrity of the egg's surface.
I haven't found running water over the egg to be helpful. It makes the shell sticky. Better is to cook the eggs a little longer and soak them afterward, so that there's still some moisture sitting beneath the skin. If the skin remains moist (and, hence, thicker), it will separate more easily from the solid inner part of the egg.
Always boil a few more eggs than you'll need, and, if the intention was to present the eggs as, say, deviled eggs, use the rejects for egg salad.
Apart from Sam's answer, the only important aspect of peeling a hard boiled egg is moisture. When the skin under the shell is dry, it sticks to the egg-white.
The best result (100% success) is to crack the shell and place the egg in cold water (I've never tried warm water, but wouldn't be surprised if that works fine as well). After a short while (one minute), start peeling. Whenever the skin is still dry, just dip it in the water.
This method is 'better' than Sam's because you use less water :-)
I recently watched a friend use a spoon to peel the shell off very easily. She turned the spoon so that it cupped the egg and gently used it like a chisel, neatly scraping off the shell. The shape of the spoon is important, so try various sizes and shapes if necessary.
Also it helps to peel the shell when the eggs are still warm after boiling.
I like to slice the egg lengthwise (while still in the shell) and then scoop out each half with a table spoon. This takes only few seconds with some practice.
You can use an "eggies" - egg-shaped plastic vessels you crack the egg into, close up, and boil.
I found these in our area 99¢ stores. They consisted of 4 major pieces. After OILING each part of each eggie (this is absolutely critical), assemble the eggie completely except for the top section (like a lid with a handle). This opening is just the right size within which you pour your cracked open egg. This can happen with the smallest amount of wasted white. Seal this translucent little contraption well (pressure DOES build up in them), but do not over-tighten the little lid. Boil as usual, making sure they float a little. Take them out and let them cool (so you can handle them). When you open them, voila, the boiled egg just falls out.
I have done thousands working as a cook
With a spoon using only the weight of the spoon slightly crack the fat end.
Put warm water in the pot stack with fat end up (it lets out air).
We always added salt but not sure that helped.
Slowly bring to simmer. Cook for like 10 minutes.
Don't drain run cold water in to cool. Then add ice.
Roll gently on a hard surface to crack the shell and then the shell just slides off. Or can roll / squeeze in your hand.
Store in water in a seal container.
TLDR
Steam them instead of placing them in boiling water.
How much does egg age matter?
The most common answer people give regarding the "hard to peel" problem is that the eggs aren't old enough. This is rubbish. If you live in North America and are buying your eggs from the store, it is impossible for the eggs to be fresh enough to impact the ability to peel them.
I have a small flock of chickens in my backyard. I've done multiple experiments regarding fresh eggs. I already knew from other backyard chicken owners that steaming was the way to go for fresh eggs, but how much does it matter?
When the hens first started laying, it was the middle of winter and I was only getting one egg per day. If I wanted to have 3 eggs for breakfast, I had to wait 4-5 days because the eggs didn't get laid until well after breakfast and I was only getting small and medium eggs at first so I needed an extra egg to compensate.
I would typically have 1 egg that was softer and more difficult to peel than the others. When I started putting dates on the eggs, it became clear that it was usually just the freshest egg (ie. the egg laid yesterday) that was a problem. Sometimes I had problems with the second freshest egg (ie. the egg laid 2 days ago), but never had any trouble with eggs any older than that.
What's the texture of a "too fresh" egg like?
An egg laid yesterday has a white that is exceptionally soft, making it feel like it's undercooked. What makes it hard to peel without damaging it is because it is so soft, not because the white sticks to the membrane.
This is much different from the odd store bought egg that's been sitting in my refrigerator for a month and is difficult to peel. These eggs tend to have a rubbery texture and the membrane strongly resists separating from the white. It almost comes apart in layers.
Process
wash eggs (stored at room temperature, unwashed eggs have a natural coating that keeps them fresh)
put a half inch of water in a pot
add a steamer basket and the eggs
cover and turn on the heat
when I hear the water starting to come to a boil, reduce heat and set a timer for 15 minutes
transfer eggs to a small bowl of cold water (our well has exceptionally cold water) and let them sit just until they're cool enough to handle (1-2 minutes)
How much easier are steamed eggs to peel?
I don't wait for the eggs to cool very much before I start peeling because I'm impatient. There's usually still steam coming off of them. Once I get them started, the membrane separates very easily from the white.
I don't have to peel them while they're hot, either: eggs I steamed yesterday and put in the refrigerator are about as easy to peel as freshly steamed ones. Water is completely unnecessary.
I've had to resort to store bought eggs on occasion, and steaming works even better on them than my backyard eggs.
Boil them according to your custom, then let them sit in that hot water for a few hours. If you happen to forget about them all the better. Then when you remember, or lunch time has arrived, drain and peel. They should peel lickity-split. I eat a couple of eggs a day and boil a week's worth all at once. After I reclaim and refrigerate them, they peel quite easily. Figured out that beastly problem all by my lonesome, Grandma!
Old question, but I fought a lot with this recently. Here's the technique which I found works best. It's an old technique, but seems to work well even with fresh eggs.
Most weekends, I boil up a dozen eggs and put them in the butter compartment of the fridge. They make a great, lightweight, snack whenever I'm peckish - and are zero-points on weight-watchers :)
Place the eggs in an empty pan
Cover with cold water
Bring water to a rolling boil
Immediately remove the pan from the heat, and leave for 15 minutes
Transfer eggs to an ice bath and leave to cool completely
Put them in the fridge.
Peel under running water for best results.
It's fairly tolerant of variations such as letting them boil for a minute or two, or leaving them for a bit more than 15 minutes. So that makes it very easy to do while you are pottering around with other things in the kitchen.
Add cold eggs to already-boiling water that has salt added.
Let boil requisite amount of time.
Once you're done boiling the eggs, immediately place them in a cold water/ice water bath. Let them cool down before peeling.
Once they're cool, peel the eggs. Or store in the fridge to be peeled later.
I've tried adding eggs to cold water and then bringing the water to the boil. No amount of cool water or cooling the eggs at the end makes them easy to peel. Steaming eggs - not much luck there, either. Pressure cooking eggs - that comes a close second.
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1537 | How to make pizza crust thin and elastic at the same time?
For the title: I'm not sure if "elastic" is the perfect word here, so is anyone knows better one - put it in the comment.
I like thin pizza crust, but when I've made it myself it was hard and stiff - not very pleasant to eat.
I know that making a dough isn't an easy task, but I would like to hear your tips. What should pay attention to avoid hard and stiff crust?
I've heard about putting a pot with water into the oven to increase moisture.
How about existence of oil in dough, does it change anything?
How about flour type?
I generally use a fairly wet dough and add oil as well. One of the keys is to keep kneading to a bare minimum. This makes for a lighter dough because it has more air bubbles - kneading kills them. As for flour type, I like '00' type, but there are advantages to other types of flours - as 00 absorbs less water.
If you want to read a completely comprehensive guide to a lot of the factors, this is worth a read...
http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm
+1 for adding oil. Be careful though, I accidentally made my pizza crust taste like biscuits once by adding too much..
No, kneading creates the bubbles by aerating the dough. Of course, degassing (after the rise) should be kept to a minimum, but this is a different thing.
An egg might help keep things moist, and therefore more elastic. I suspect oil won't help much, but I haven't compared.
A great pizza tip is to heat a cast iron skillet on high until is starts to smoke, slap the pizza in it, and shove under the brolier for just long enough to melt the cheese. This cooks the crust like a real pizza oven, which is usually something like 600-800*F.
not sure about egg in the dough but I like the cast iron idea
Be careful with temperature and baking time. Bake on the highest temperature available (250C in my oven) for around 10 minutes. Look for golden color. When it gets nice, brownish tone, it's to late.
I can't say this enough: you need to have a strong gluten structure in your dough, or else it will rip/tear/etc. A thinner (more viscous/wet) dough can help with this, but it is not usually sufficient. The gluten structure is what gives dough its stretchy, strong, elastic nature.
Oil helps because it helps the crust fry evenly and keeps it from sticking. Don't include too much because it breaks down the strength of your gluten structure.
If you want the dough to be strong and stretchable before baking it:
What works best for me is to use a high-gluten flour (such as bread flour, and sometimes I even add more gluten) and to knead the heck out of the dough. That builds a very solid gluten structure that can pass the windowpane test.
If you want the final, baked crust to be softer or "springy" and more bendable:
You probably want bubbles in the dough. To do this, make a yeast dough and let it rise for a little while before baking (as opposed to quickbread, using baking powder or baking soda to make bubbles). Knead the dough a lot. Adding too much oil can cause the crust to "fry" in its own juices, but you want enough to keep it moist. One thing I do is I partially bake the crust before putting on toppings (about 5 minutes -- just to make it a little firm). Then I add the toppings. If you wanted the crust to be softer, put a little oil or butter on the outsides of the crust (the edges and even the bottom, but not where the sauce will be). This will help keep it from drying out. You could also try baking the dough at a lower temperature to make it more like a bread and less like a cracker -- but you'd have to experiment with this.
As for kneading the dough: knead it a lot, but let it rise. Then you can use a rolling pin to keep it flat. Bubbles aren't bad -- small bubbles can help your dough bend.
Why the anonymous downvote? How can I improve the answer?
I haven't voted on your answer, but your first paragraph is not good. And I am not sure if baking soda and pizza should be in same sentence!
@TFD: I mentioned baking soda as something not to do! :-) One can make quickbread pizza crusts, but I agree that yeast bread crusts are far superior...and won't give the results the OP wants.
I also use '00' flour along with a pizza stone, preheated in the oven for about 30- 45 minutes at the hotest the oven goes.
I've heard terracotta plant pot saucers can be used as cheap pizza stones but mine was a present and works well - the only difficulty I have is getting pizzas on it without sticking
roll your pizza on parchment paper, put it in on said paper, and pull it out with said paper, removing to cool on a wire rack. It won't stick that way.
I actually experimented last night - my method was to use a floured plate (not oiled as I first tried) and build the pizza on that, which was easy to transfer to the hot stone. Once it is cooked a wooden spatula can get it off easily. Thanks for the tip though
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27641 | Soaking pulses overnight: safety vs refrigeration
When soaking pulses for long periods, is refrigeration required?
Specifically: I have a large volume of dried red kidney beans I will be cooking with tomorrow. The refrigerator is already filled with other ingredients (mostly meat). Is it safe to leave the beans out on the side to soak (ambient temperature +19C) or should I be looking more refrigerator space?
I eat a lot of beans. I typically boil them for a minute and just let them sit on the stove. That way they soak more evenly and don't sprout.
Ideal breeding conditions. I've noticed that in rare cases, when it is really hot (25 C), they start to ferment a bit after half a day or so and the water gets foamy. From my empirical evidence this happens about 1 out of 30 times and I just change the water and boil them again.
One point to keep in mind is that sprouts are a very common vector for food borne pathogens and have caused many deaths.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10511518
These cases were always caused by external contamination, and not by the product itself going bad.
Either the seeds got contaminated by nearby agriculture, or the water used in the sprouting process wasn't clean.
So you should not be concerned by your pulses going bad, they would sprout or ferment, but by bacteria from the nearby CAFO sticking to them. One more reason to boil them first.
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2266 | What is boudin made from, and how is it made?
What is boudin made from, and how is it made?
See http://tinyurl.com/36fp4uv
nice url.. since lmgtfy is filtered :P
Indeed. I'll be trotting out a few of those myself now ;-)
I'll attempt to expand upon daniel's answer above.
Boudin describes a sausage that is generally created from a blend of beef, rice, and/or pork ("What is Boudin", Cajun French Blog 2009). Sometimes other types of proteins are added to create variations: Gator, Shrimp, crawfish, etc.
Boudin is widely known to be used in Cajun cooking. Other various types of Boudin exists. As wikipedia defines various different types of boudin:
Boudin blanc: A white sausage made of pork without the blood. Pork
liver and heart meat are typically included. In Cajun versions, the
sausage is made from a pork rice dressing [...] In
French/Belgian cuisine, the sausage is sauteed or grilled. The
Louisiana version is normally simmered or braised, although coating
with oil and slow grilling for tailgating is becoming a popular option
in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
Boudin noir: A dark-hued blood sausage, containing pork, pig blood, and other ingredients. Variants of the boudin noir occur in French, Belgian, Cajun and Catalan
cuisine [...]
Shrimp Boudin: Similar to crawfish boudin, it is made by adding the shrimp to rice [...]
[4] Boudin rouge: In Louisiana cuisine, a sausage
similar to boudin blanc, but with pork blood added to it. This
originated from the French boudin noir.
Brown Rice Boudin: Taste is very similar to traditional pork boudin, except this boudin > is made with a brown-rice substitute for those looking to cut down on white rice intake.
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2269 | What is tasso made from and how is it made?
What is tasso made from and how is it made?
Having myself originally written most of the Wikipedia article on Tasso (which isn't really that extensive anyways), I feel justified paraphrasing it here:
Tasso ham is a specialty of Cajun cuisine. It is not a true ham, since it is made from the front shoulder, rather than the rear leg, of a pig. The front shoulder is a fatty and well-exercised (thus very flavorful but also somewhat tough) cut of meat. To prepare Tasso, the shoulder is boned out and sliced across the grain into fairly thick (1-3"/2.5-7.5cm) sections. The pieces are dredged in a salt, sugar, and nitrite mixture, then left to cure for a very short time (as little as a few hours). A spice mixture containing Cayenne pepper, garlic, and perhaps other spices or herbs is applied, and the meat is hot-smoked until cooked through.
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1083 | How do I cook scallops?
I like my scallops caramelized a bit, but every time I fry them I make an enormous mess. Oil splatters everywhere. Any tips? Should I grill them? Can I use the oven? (I try to use scallops without any sodium tripolyphosphate).
Most people I know who cook scallops actually overcook them. I always buy sushi-grade diver's scallops from my fishmonger. These can be eaten raw, and are most delicious when done so. However if you want to add a little extra flavor, and liven up the appearance of these then sear these briefly on a high heat. If you can get these from a quality source (probably not a supermarket) and you're not hung up on eating raw/rare seafood you'll never look back.
Unless your scallops have been soaked in a brine, and you're buying the quality scallops I recommend you don't need to rinse them. Otherwise, rinse them thoroughly and pat dry with a paper towel.
To sear these properly I simply melt a Tbsp or two of butter in a non-stick pan. I use as high a heat as possible (med-high to high) you want to put the scallops in just as the butter begins to barely smoke. I've often seen people suggest using clarified butter, but I'm too lazy to try. Place your scallops in the pan and cook them for 30-60 seconds per side. Don't move them around in the pan, otherwise they won't sear as nicely. This is for scallops that are the size of a small childs fist. If you have smaller ones you might need to cook them less.
Just a brief update because I feel I didn't stress this enough. Fresh, quality scallops are absolutely not intended to be cooked well done. They will be chewy, period. If you are used to them this way, well you're really missing out.
When you cook scallops use the fresh variety and not those that come in brine. Once you've cleaned and removed the foot, make sure they are dry or at least not dripping with water, as this will cause the oil to splash.
An alternative would be to wrap a each scallop in bacon and skewer then with a cocktail stick or a sate skewer, add a little lemon juice and cook in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes.
I'd suggest you have too much oil. I've found that with a non stick pan you don't really need oil, or just a smidgin. Just get the pan nice and hot put the scallop in leave it alone to sear for a couple of minutes, time will depend on the size of your scallops, then flip and finish the other side, usually for a little less time. serve with the side you seared first facing up.
Making sure they are dry before you put them in the pan is a good idea. and if you have a lot to cook you can do them until the are almost done on the second side and then remove to a tray. then when you have seared them all and are ready to serve you can blast them in a hot oven for a couple of minutes or so to finish off all together, then everything is ready to go at the same time.
Make sure to heat the pan with oil in it. (heating a dry non-stick skillet can ruin it and kill any pet birds in the house)
If it's also about making a mess, you can use a splatter screen to lessen the oil splatters everywhere. I recently bought one and it helps a lot.
Agree totally with @Hobodave re fresh scallops. You can also buy frozen scallops, and these I dip in light egg, then coat lightly in panko, sea salt, chilli, and crushed black pepper. You have to cook / coat from frozen, so get really tasty scallop morsels with a slightly spicy coating. The smaller scallops come out amazing using this method, and they are a more sustainable produce.
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15146 | Only recipe I can find for Anacini says "as much as plain flour as the mixture will need"
http://tuscanity.com/?p=96
What does that mean - they say "until the mixture becomes an easy workable smooth dough" - but how do you know if you haven't added enough or added too much?
Do you have a better recipe?
Biscuits require 3:2:1 flour:liquid:fat. Cookies are 1:2:3 sugar:fat:flour. (from Michael Ruhlman's book Ratio)
I'm guessing based on the description you'll fall somewhere in the crack between there around 5 cups flour. However, you will simply need to develop the dough maker's intuition by trial and error. I'm guessing a strict cookie dough ratio will be too inelastic, but I've never had these "cookies"before, nor have I made any with wine in them. All the same I think that you'll be toward the cookie end of that ratio spectrum (biscuit v. cookie). Just be patient adding tablespoon by tablespoon.
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469 | Fresh basil storage
How should fresh basil be stored? The packaging suggests that the optimal temperature is around 50°F, but I can't think of anywhere in an average kitchen at that temperature. A pantry is too warm, and a fridge is too cold. So which of the two is lesser of two evils? I recently had a whole pack get moldy after one use, and it was in the pantry. I think I'm going to start storing it in the fridge now and deal with whatever quality loss I get, unless there's a better solution.
Fresh packet herbs, if not taken care of, will only last a few days, at best. There are two things you can do. If you have a South facing window and the herb is in a pot, place it on a dish and give it lots and lots of direct sunlight and just enough water.
When you pick the leaves, take the outer growth and leave the smaller, inner leaves to come through. If you don't have a South facing aspect, you could purchase a full spectrum light to supplement the requirement.
If you don't have a pot I'd suggest drying or possibly freezing the leaves. Personally, I've never gad a great deal of luck with freezing.
To dry the herb, place it in a brown paper bag, and tie it off at the top. make several small holes in the bag, then hang it somewhere warm and airy.
From StillTasty. This site has done wonders with helping us extend the life of our fresh herbs
To store fresh basil: (1)Trim the ends and place basil in a glass containing about one inch of water; (2) Cover with a loose-fitting plastic bag and leave at room temperature; (3) Replace water when it gets cloudy.
Refrigeration of fresh basil is not recommended, as it can cause the leaves to turn black.
Here's one method I've used successfully in the past:
Cut the stems slightly, remove the rubber band, then put it all into a vase (a regular glass is fine too). Fill it with a few inches of water, then cover it all with a plastic bag with several holes poked into it.
Keep it out of direct sunlight and maintain the water level, and it will actually start to grow. It will keep for weeks this way. There's a more detailed description of this technique (with pictures!) here.
Note: These days I tend to go through basil so quickly that I don't even worry about storage. I prefer to buy fresh herbs in small enough quantities so that I don't need to store them, but I realize that not everybody has this option.
mince it, add large amount of it into a small amount of stock of choice (the stock that you use most commonly, or the most innocent stock that you can think of, e.g. chicken stock), throw it into the ice tray, freeze it, remove from ice tray into resealble bag, then serve PRN.
How much basil are we talking about, and for how long?
I don't tend to keep fresh leaves in the fridge, as it's the one thing that grows well in my garden, but you can take a length of paper towel, lay out the leaves, roll it up, then put it in the fridge -- it'll dry out rather then rot, so you won't have to pitch the whole if you forget about it.
If you have a massive batch of basil (that last harvest when they call for frost warnings on the news), I make up a large batch of pesto, minus the cheese, and freeze it in ice cube trays or muffin tins. (don't use plastic ice cube trays that you also use for water, or you'll have garlic ice ... I keep a set for freezing stock, pesto and such)
You can also blanch the basil in boiling water for a few of seconds, cool in ice water, drain, then place it into a pot with cold olive oil, and bring it up to just below a simmer and hold for um ... maybe 10? 15 minutes? Strain, bottle, and if strained well it'll keep in the fridge all winter.
This really works... Cut stems just before emmersing in a cool water bath to remove sand and to generally wash the leaves. This also refreshes the basil. Place in a tall glass with water sufficient for all stems to be immersed. Don't immerse leaves if possible. Keep on counter until most of the liquid on the leaves has evaporated. Place a clear plastic bag over the greens and either tuck under the glass or use a rubber band to secure to the glass. Place on the top shelf of the refrigerator, but not on the back wall since it is often too cold there. The leaves will become erect and fresh while they wait for your gentle hand to call them to your recipe. Replace water if it clouds. I wash in advance because I prefer to have clean, dry basil ready-to-go rather than cleaning and drying them when I am busy cooking. This method keeps basil serviceable for nearly a week. Try that on the counter!
Oh, if you're not using your basil over a few days, it's a good idea to take it out of the refrigerator and take off its 'ventilator' bag for an hour or so. This will evaporate any condensation on the leaves that can accelerate spoilage.
I bought basil at a farm market in Florida.
The farmer said to wrap a wet paper towel around the stems and then put it in a brown paper bag and it would keep for days....up to a week.
I did it and it works!
Now I have fresh basil at my finger tips.
The best choice is obviously to grow it yourself and only cut of as much as you need at a time. :-)
Other than that, storing it in the fridge works well for about a week. For storing it longer than that, you might want to try the freezing method bubu suggested, but i never had much luck with it.
In my experience, fresh basil is froze the best using the following method:
Cut the leaves and put them shortly in cold water to refresh.
Let the leaves dry
Chop the basil up
Mix the basil with olive oil
Freeze basil mixed with oils as ice cubes :-)
Lasts for ages like this and the leaves don't get brown because of the oils protecting the basil.
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9305 | What can I do with chicken rib meat?
When I buy packaged chicken breast at the grocery, I get the untrimmed ones because they're significantly cheaper, and trimming fat isn't a problem for me. But the rib meat that comes attached is connected by a rather large chunk of fat. I always end up cutting the whole thing off and throwing it out, with the rib meat. Is there anything I can really do with this meat so I'm not wasting it? Once in a while I'll throw it in the pan anyway, and then eat it myself when it cooks (which is way before the rest is done). But could I save them, maybe freeze them in a bag until I have enough to do something? Are there any other ideas?
Make soup stock!
You may also consider the fat for preparing schmatlz! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmaltz
Save in a bag in your freezer along with all chicken bones you come across. Cleave through the bones to expose some collagen before freezing (consider roasting all ingredients before hand). Add whatever vegetable bits you don't use in your cooking - including things you wouldn't eat (but nothing poisonous) to your bag, especially onions (including skin and root), celery, and carrots.
When you have a good amount, put in a pot and just cover with cold water. A bit of vinegar helps promote a nice gelling of your broth. Tomato paste, peppercorns, and a bay leaf will add to the flavor. Simmer gently for around five hours. Remove. If you had fat still on your meat you may want to chill until the fat rises to the surface to remove the fat.
Your broth will keep 3 to 4 days in the fridge or it can be frozen until you have a recipe which calls for chicken stock or broth. Your homemade broth will be an excellent addition to sauces, a great base for soups, or an excellent liquid for cooking rice, couscous, or quinoa.
A couple of allspice berries go well in a stock pot, as well.
Quick fry appetizer. Put them on skewers, baste with a peanut ginger sauce, sauté or grill and serve while everything else is cooking.
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64996 | Why is my bread falling flat?
I've tried baking bread several times and I seem to always have the same problem. The dough seems fine, until I shape it and let it rise a second time, and then when it rises, instead of forming a nice tall round shape, it flows outward into a pancake shape. It bakes fine, not the best bread but reasonably fluffy crumb with a crisp crust.
Yesterday's recipe:
150 g whole wheat flour
350 g white AP flour
300 g water
10 g salt
2 tsp dry yeast
I mixed it with a dough hook on speeds 2-4 for a few minutes, then covered the bowl with a warm wet dish towel and let it rise for about 6 hours at room temperature. Then I lightly reshaped it by hand into 2 long strips and put it on a baking sheet into a warmed oven (turned the broiler on for about 30 seconds). When it came out of this proofing 2 hours later they were shaped like long pancakes, about 5 inches wide but only an inch tall.
Is this because of the whole wheat flour? I'm seeing other posts about it destroying gluten / surface tension. I tried to use little enough to minimize any problems. Do I need to knead longer?
How are you shaping it? Just rolling/stretching out into long loaves?
related : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/54913/67 ; http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/63517/67 ... there was also a similar question about rolls recently, but I can't find it.
@Joe found it: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/42936/prevent-brioche-buns-from-spreading-during-rise
Could you please give details: what is "room temperature" for you and how long is your second rise typically?
And as you write "two long strips" - are you aiming at a baguette-type of bread?
@Stephie room temp is 72 but I had the bowl in a second bowl of warm water, second rise was 1-2 hrs, and yes about the strips.
Ok, this is going to be a long post, so patience, please.
Ratios and gluten
Your dough has a pretty mainstream ingredient list, meaning average hydration and a rather high yeast content. Whith the whole wheat you could go a notch wetter, but that is a question for another day.
As you are not using any slow-raise / stretch-and-fold method, you need to develop your gluten by mechanical kneading. A few minutes in a machine sounds like the minimum of time, not like overkneading. Go by the appearance of the dough: It should go from lumpy to homogenous to very smooth, or at least mostly so if your whole wheat is very coarse. (How to handle this would be another question.) Only after that stage would you get to "overknead" and the dough tears. An overkneaded dough would have serious trouble rising at all, because the glutem strands are torn and can't hold the CO2.
Timing
I'm actually surprised that your dough is even willing and able to rise after a six hour first raise. My gut feeling, reading your ratios and with regard to the fact that you put the bowl in warm water, would be one hour maximum for the first rise. Whether such a fast rise is desirable is again another question. The general rule with yeast is to use visual clues, not a timer. Unless your recipe states otherwise, go for
first raise = double volume.
As I am currently baking, let me share a few photos:
(Please ignore the bad quality, I had originally snapped the first photo only as visual reminder for me...)
This is also true for the second rise:
Ideally you want to bake your bread when it's slightly underproofed to maximize oven spring. Oven spring is not only a funny show to watch, but it means a light and fluffy loaf.
If you greatly exceed raising times, two things will happen: First, your yeast will be "spent", loosing the ability to "lift" your dough, second, the gluten structure that you created while kneading, can weaken, causing the dough to fall flat.
Tension
When shaping your loaf, you want to keep the gas bubbles mainly intact. This does not mean that you can't touch the dough, just that you shouldn't knead in the sense of "mixing thoroughly" (there are exceptions).
What you do want, though, is a taut surface of your loaf: Just like with a balloon, this will help your loaf to expand in all directions instead of flowing outwards. You are not destroing gluten here, but actually using it.
There are many techniques, most are either based on a round "ball" which can then be pushed into a longish loaf, if desired, or start with a "roulade" of dough. The latter is typically used for baguette.
For a boule (round loaf):
First fold the dough towards the middle or slightly off-center (above: after three folds) until the surface (= the underside) of the loaf is taut. Then turn it over and rotate the loaf a few times on a non-floured surface, pressing the edges "down and under" with the edge of your hand.
For a baguette:
First gently flatten the dough in a somewhat rectangular shape. Pull the far end up and push hard with all ten fingers down to seal. Repeat until all dough is rolled up. Hold your thumb parallel to the long axis and pull the dough over your thumb towards you. Work your way along the loaf, creating mainly crosswise tension. Roll gently to smooth out and shape the edges.
Normally I use this only for real baguette, which is way thinner than the loaf here, but for the sake of a better explanation, I used the "baguette technique".
Tools
Note that I am using two different bannetons here - basically because I have them and because I can maneuver the loaves easily. If you look at the photos of the second proofing, you will notice that the loaves are quite "stable" per se. For (softer) baguette, a couche or, in a pinch, a floured linnen towel helps keeping them in shape. Place the baguettes between raised folds like I did with these breakfast buns:
Rise times seem very long (overproofed) - just let it rise to double in size, and "lightly reshaping by hand" sounds very far from a reasonable approach to loaves on a baking sheet, where you really need to engage the structure of the dough in being committed to not falling flat - or, you need to rise in one of those fancy floured-towel-lined baskets (which I know barely anything about, never having gone that way.)
I doubt I can fully convey how to effectively shape a loaf (and if I I do manage to I'll no doubt be dead wrong in 3 different ways by 3 different factions each of whom does the one true way, and all others are wrong) The good news about the factions is that there are many ways that work, actually.
One that is actually simple to describe, which stands up pretty well is the method I use when making Stollen, where the dough is rolled, patted, beaten or pushed out flat into a rectangle, and then rolled up (after adding various things when making a stollen, but you can do it that way without adding anything.)
The only "gentle" aspect of this is not going so far, so fast that you tear the dough. Other loaf-forming techniques I find harder to describe in a way that will convey the process effectively.
With eight hours in total and that yeast-to-flour ratio? Certainly overproofed. The best-shaped loaf in the world couldn't hold that any more, especially sans banneton!
So after the first rise I can be more forceful and try to get some surface tension going?
Your 2 tsp yeast + 6 hour rise is the issue. Reduce the yeast & time by ½, pay attention to the look of the dough. Experiment. You'll get it.
I'd do a rest/first prove of nearer an hour or so - just double the size before knocking back / shaping. Then another hour or so for it to rise, before baking. If you can't give it the time because of work, you can try chilling the dough; a six-hour prove in the fridge will slow the yeast and might help you avoid over-proving.
Since you asked about flour -- look at the protein content of your flour (it's a good proxy for the amount of gluten in the flour). If you look at the nutritional information, the protein content can vary from around 10% for AP/plain flour to 14-15% for a strong bread flour, which holds structure better. More gluten will make it easier.
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67093 | Why did my chocolate tempering fail?
I just tried today to temper dark chocolate for the second time. I used about a pound of Toll House dark chocolate chips. If the quality of that chocolate is my problem, that would help me a lot.
My first attempt, I heated 3/4 of the chocolate to about 115 F, took it off heat, and tried to cool it by adding the remaining chocolate as a seed. The instructions I used said it should cool and almost melt all the seed. Wrong, it all melted in about 10 seconds. I'm guessing all the temper in that seed was lost and my chances were ruined right then. All my test parchment failed to set up. I also noticed the thermometer I was using was awful so I went and bought a fancy infrared gun thermometer. I put the failed bowl in the fridge to set up.
I just tried again with the new thermometer. Having no tempered seed, I figured I'd try the melt, cool, reheat method. I put the chunks of chocolate into the glass bowl over a pot of a water on very low heat, and melted it up to 115 again. Then I took it off the heat, and spent over 20 minutes stirring and waiting for it to cool it down to about 82.5 degrees. Then I put it back on the heat for 10 second increments, heating it first to about 85, and keeping it there for a few minutes, then heating it to just a fraction over 88. I held it at that temperature for a few minutes to make sure the form IV crystals were gone, and then dipped some parchment strips. Again, they never set, even in the fridge. Like before, they looked ok, with good gloss, but stayed soft and smeared to the touch.
Rather than getting discouraged I tried heating it back up to about 90 degrees, held it again, and then did more tests. Still nothing. It's back in the fridge now.
I have no idea what to do next except get a different batch of higher quality chocolate to try.
I would think that "chocolate chips" would generally be a poor choice for chocolate making due to the extra stuff added to make them keep their shape. Have you attempted this using baker's bars or discs?
@Catija there's not really anything else in there, but I can try bakers bars next. The chips are just real chocolate with cocoa butter, sugar, a little milk. it's 53% cocoa.
The infrared thermometer will only measure the surface temp, so I'm not really sure how useful it will be to you (see "myth #2" here). Personally, I recommend returning it and buying a good instant-read digital thermometer or a candy thermometer.
@Catija That sounds like an answer to me - it totally explains why nothing worked.
@Jefromi Thanks for the vote of confidence. I'm not that knowledgeable of chocolate making so I wasn't sure.
Every "instant read" thermometer I looked at said it could still take up to 30 seconds. The delay was my problem the first time. It looked like I'd have to spend $150 to get a thermometer that could actually read quickly and accurately enough.
I'm going to blame your thermometers.
The one you used for your first batch you believe was a bad one, so it likely was measuring the temperature incorrectly, so you got poor results.
Then, you bought a really fancy infrared thermometer... which is great for measuring surface temperature but is pretty useless for anything else. Note that surface temp is usually much different than internal temp. Generally, if you're heating something up, the surface will be hotter than the inside and if you're cooling something down, the surface will be cooler than the inside.
This means that all your temperature readings were wrong!
Here's some info about the internal temperature reading myth:
2. An infrared thermometer will tell you the internal temperature
This is another myth worth busting. An infrared thermometer is a surface temperature tool – period. If you’re grilling, baking, smoking, or roasting you’re going to need a penetration probe to tell you the internal temperature of the food you’re cooking. An infrared will only give you the surface temperature of the food, and depending on your optical range, the temp of the surrounding grill, skillet, oven, etc.
I think you should try your chocolate tempering again but with a good-quality instant read thermometer (make sure the temperature range goes low enough) or a candy thermometer (again, some of them start at 100 F, so make sure it goes to the temps you need).
Yeah, tempering is very temperature-sensitive, e.g. from On Food and Cooking: "Once chocolate has been tempered, it must be handled so that it stays in temper. It should be kept warm, in the tempering range of 88-90°F/31-32°C." The kind of error you'd get from just measuring the surface temperature could easily be large enough to mess all that up.
I'm well aware of the limitation of that thermometer being surface only. My old thermometer would take over a minute to reach a correct reading. I actually almost burned my chocolate the first time because I thought I was at the right temp, but when I took it off the heat, it continued to rise another 10 degrees.
When I tested with my IR themometer, I made sure to mix thoroughly, bring warm chocolate from the bottom to the top, and measure the chocolate dragged behind the spatula. I didn't trust the reading until it was constant all over the bowl.
@Tesserex that sounds like you're heating too fast as you approach the target temperature. I'm no expert on chocolate (except eating it) but I'm not aware of any urgency at this stage.
Did you check whether it was real chocolate? If in the ingredients there is written "cocoa butter" than it's real chocolate and is the one you should use for this procedure while if there is written "vegetable fat" compound chocolate which doesn't behave as the real one.
I found this video very useful to learn how to do temper hope it helps you too :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGlMoNs4qlM
Yes I made sure it's real, ingredient list says "Dark Chocolate (Chocolate, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Milkfat, Nonfat Milk, Natural Flavor)"
Does the video give any advice that's different from what the OP did, or otherwise suggest what might have gone wrong?
While tempering chocolate it will seize if so much as a drop of water or other liquid gets in the mixture. Make sure your tempering bowl or pot is completely dry, don't let stirring utensils get wet, and you can even put a clean dish towel between boiling water and chocolate bowl to ensure not water is not introduced by the steam. The last problem is usually not an issue however.You can double check the proper temp by placing a small amount on your inner wrist. It should sting slightly, but never burn. Follow the rest of instructions and double check it is done when it falls just below body temperature using the wrist method. It should feel very slightly cool. You can also touch chocolate just below the upper lip for the same effects, but the wrist is just as sensitive and far less dangerous. Good luck and happy eating!
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70605 | Homemade mustard is bland
I've tried two somewhat improvised recipes for mustard, and so far they've both seemed pretty lacking. I did small batches to prevent waste.
#1 was:
1 tbsp water
1 tsp white wine
1 tbsp cracked brown mustard seed
1 tbsp mustard powder
(wait 10 minutes for heat reaction)
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tsp grated horseradish
salt
#2 was:
2 tsp water
2 tsp white wine
1 tbsp cracked brown mustard seed
4 tsp mustard powder
(wait 5 minutes for heat reaction)
1 tsp cider vinegar
1.5 tsp grated horseradish
salt
Both times, after about 6-12 hours in the fridge, they tasted like almost nothing. I got a bit of the horseradish heat, but very little of anything else. It was plenty thick, so it's not like a too high liquid / mustard ratio.
I really just wanted to check here, but I have a strong suspicion that 12 hours is not long enough to wait to judge the true flavor. I've heard that it can take a few days for it to be good, but I've never read anything about what's bad about it right away (too hot, bitter, etc). Is that my only problem here or does my recipe need further tweaking?
When you make an acidic mustard paste it can take a long time before you get the pungency of mustard, but the benefit is it will last longer in the fridge.
If you used just cold water and not wine or vinegar, it will get mustardy more quickly, but the product will also have a shorter shelf life.
Escoce, if you wanted quick mustard, could you make your recipe with just the water until the mustard flavor develops then add in the wine and or vinegar?
@DebbieM. that's actually the idea I was going for based on something I read. Start with just water or other non-acids to get the flavor reaction going, then add vinegar after the waiting period to lock it in place by slowing the reaction down. I read that the longer you wait the milder it is.
@DebbieM. I don't see why not, keep tasting it until it has the pungency you want, then stabilize it with acidics.
@Tesserex you may not have waited long enough, this is where tasting is important. It can still take quite a long time depending on your mustard. Yellow (or white) mustard takes less time to fully express, but brown or black mustard can take hours or days.
I don't count mustard time to being ready in hours, but rather in days, usually 3-5 for brown mustard. And I leave it on the counter at room temperature until it's where I want it, then it goes in the fridge. Homemade mustard at 12 hours is pretty awful.
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10615 | For baking, is there a common "done" temperature across different kinds of breads?
I'm pretty new to baking, and it seems like the toothpick test is pretty subjective. I'm wondering, can I use my Thermapen instead?
At a fundamental level, are all breads "done" at a certain temperature, or are sweetbreads done baking at one temperature, yeast breads at another, etc? Is it common enough among recipes to have a chart, like for beef/chicken/pork/etc?
Or is it totally all over the map based on the recipe?
It depends on how "heavy" your bread is. White bread is done at around 202 - 205 degrees Fahrenheit. Darker bread, 208 - 212. And definitely use the Thermapen if you have one. There is no point in guessing if you don't have to.
+1 on the temperature ranges AND the confirmation on the Thermapen...or any instant read thermometer. I use mine every time I make bread.
I always pull any baked good out before 210. It's going to keep building tempture after it comes out of the oven for a few minutes and after 212 degrees you start loosing moisture and the bread starts to dry out.
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914 | How do I pick a watermelon at the supermarket?
Lately, every watermelon I bring home form the organic section of the supermarket has not been sweet. Among the small, seedless varieties, I try to pick the densest. How do I know if it is ripe? Can I ripen them at home? Should I keep them in the fridge?
The watermelon and the melon I got today were great. Thanks to all.
One comment I haven't seen in any of the answers or comments. Seedless watermelons are usually less sweet than watermelons with seeds. Also the center of the watermelon where the seeds normally reside whether seeded or seedless is the sweetest part of the melon.
You should make watermelon rind pickles with all of them, but particularly with the ones that are a bit under-ripe, where you'll get a bit more usable rind for pickling.
I don't believe there is a fool-proof way to determine 'ripeness' without taking a slice out of it. The best you can do is look for certain signs:
Ripe melons have a hollow sound when you tap or slap the outside
Look for the patch where the melon would have been on the ground (called the field spot). If it's a yellow colour its probably ripe, if it's white, it's probably not.
It should feel relatively heavy when lifted
Weird areas on the skin aren't necessarily bad. insects may have tried to start eating the fruit because it is ripe, but have only marred the surface.
Unfortunately, melons don't continue to ripen once picked, unlike fruits such as apples, bananas etc. which contain ethylene. As a tip don't store melons with these kinds of fruit, they may well go 'soggy'.
Extra: NYtimes video on picking the right watermelon.
Thanks for mentioning the storage; I just moved my melons away from the apple-containing fruit bowl!
Thanks @Michael Pryor for the NY Times video link. For the record, this summer I've had nothing but great watermelons.
Some melons do ripen once picked, cantaloupe and honeydew, for example. What is your source for melons not ripening after picking?
As pulse said, colour is a good indicator and give them a tap and they'll have a nice hollow sound.
The other thing I do is pick them up... I don't know why, but ripe melons tend to feel "heavy" for their size.
+1 for weight comment. Better melons have more water in them, so when choosing between two equally sized melons, pick the heavier one.
For melons other than watermelon, always smell them, they should have a good aroma. Unfortunately this does not usually work for watermelons. The color and weight are usually the best indicators.
I just saw a post on rulesofthumb.com that says:
A watermelon is ripe when you hear "punk" rather than "pank" or "pink" when you tap it with your finger.
What does that even mean?
@SAJ14SAJ: That means he's trying to approximate the effect that a complex sound (i.e. composed of a whole bunch of different frequencies) has on your hearing by comparing it to certain vowel sounds (as spelled in English) which are also composed of a lot of different frequencies. The analogy obviously doesn't work for everybody, but short of a spectrum analyzer, can you think of a better way to describe something like that in writing? All that said, my produce guy left me feeling that "punk" was overripe, "pank" was perfect, and ... he didn't really mention "pink" ... great method, isn't it?
Knock on it lightly. If someone answers, you've got a very special melon! Actually, if it sounds somewhat hollow, it is ripe. As a child we would "plug" the melons by cutting a 2" x 2" trianglebout of it. That's a fool proof way to see if your melon it ripe.
I don't recommend plugging a melon at the supermarket ;) but the knocking is spot on.
I have found that if you look on the bottom of the watermelon, (where it sits on the ground), if it is yellow and the lines are straight and yellowish green then the watermelon is sweet and ripe. If the lines are a light green and wavy then the melon is not sweet or ripe.
Hmm, interesting. The yellow/green thing makes sense to me, but I'm not so clear on the straight vs wavy thing.
For a sweet melon it normally takes a high sulfer soil for a sweet melon. So you may not find any sweet ones to buy. Thump or knock on the melon it should sound hollow. Melons can not be picked ripe. They bust to easy to ship in totes. So set them in the sun for a few days. Once you wax them to hold in moisture.
"They bust to easy to ship in totes"? What are "totes" in this context?
In some stores they have cut melons, check the cut ones out. During sales they will cut them often. Looking at them will help you make your choice.
Tote's are big box's 4 foot tall. 4 by 4 foot square. Melons go in them then are trucked to the store.
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7431 | How can you prepare turnips to make them less bitter?
I peeled and quarted turnips, then roasted with carrots and onions in olive oil and maple syrup, but the turnips were really bitter. Is there a way to roast them (or even another cooking method) to remove that bitterness? How long should they be roasted?
Or do I simply need to pick a better batch of turnips?
Yeah, maybe you just had some bitter turnips. It sounds like you did all the right things to hide the bitterness.
If you want to try a different cooking method, I tend to like turnip boiled and mashed. If the turnip is old (and likely bitter) you can add an apple. I've also read that you can stir in baking soda after the turnips have boiled to remove the bitterness. You would then need to rinse thoroughly. I've never tried this however.
I don't think there is anything you can do to remove the bitterness, though as you attempted, you can mask it somewhat with sweetness and salt. And yes, some turnips are distinctly less bitter than others. Try to find some "baby" turnips, they tend to be milder.
I did happen to find some smaller "baby" turnips at the Farmer's Market, and they were much more appealing. Thanks!
I discovered that cooking them with tomatoes made them less bitter. Pondering this - I thought it might be the acid. So I cooked them about half done in VERY salty water with a couple of tablespoons of vinagar or lemon juice. Then I rinsed them well & finished cooking them in plain water. I used them in a 50/50 mash of cauliflower in place of mashed potatoes. Much better!
By the way I raise my own & have done so is several different locations with different types of soil, watered less, watered more, planted in shade, in full sun -- 'nuut'in hepped' as my Granny would say!
My granny used to put a slice of white bread on top after they were nearly done, let it sit two or three minutes and remove. I don't remember any bitterness.
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6928 | When "sorting" lentils, what exactly am I looking for?
When a recipe calls for lentils, sorted and rinsed, what am I looking for? I've heard debris, such as leaves or sticks, but also "bad" lentils. Is there anything else I should be looking for before rinsing and using lentils?
Also, does the same hold true for dried beans?
It is not unheard of for small pebbles, or pieces of the pod the lentils came in to find their way into the drying process.
There is also occasionally a lentil (or bean) that was a bit dodgy before it was dried. These usually appear as discolored lentils, which should be thrown away. It is rare for more than three or four to appear in a pound of lentils though, and the drying means that one bad one doesn't affect the rest.
The same is true for beans and chickpeas too, but is rarer the larger the beans get.
Exactly. It seems like a tedious task, but I've found a few pebbles over the years. And you certainly don't want any of your dining companions to bite down on that. One fast way to do it is to dump them out on a sheet pan and just push a "cleared" handful at a time over to one side.
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9282 | Storing potato water: how long can it be refrigerated?
When boiling potatoes, I like to use the leftover water for soups, sauces, etc. Does anyone else use potato water, and if so, how long can it be stored in the refrigerator? I am wondering if it has a "shelf life" similar to homemade stock.
Never did it, but I'm curious! Isn't it too "starchy"?
In my experiences, it is similar to pasta water...so it is a little "thicker" than plain water. I tend not to peel my potatoes, so it is also a bit darker.
Yes, shelf life would be similar to homemade stock. It has the same potential for cross-contamination, and natural contamination (with a slightly reduced chance for contaminates from ingredients, as there is no meat).
Be sure to cool and refrigerate quickly (cool pot in a sink of ice + cold water). If left to sit out, warm + starchy water is a great breeding ground for un-fun microbial life.
My Mother-in-law uses it frequently. She uses it for soups, etc... She also uses it when making it bread. She tells me it's cause it gives the dough a nicer texture.
She'll stores it for a couple weeks sealed properly (in canning jars) I think.
Although as I'm thinking now, I don't see why you couldn't freeze it...
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7636 | What is that gooey stuff from okra?
When cooking okra in a bit of water, the water becomes gooey. What does the okra release that makes the water slimy? Would the goo have other culinary uses (as an additive to thicken sauces or improve the texture of ice-creams)?
The slime is called mucilage. It is around the seeds on the inside of the pod. It is made of protein and carbohydrates including fiber.
The mucilage is (as you alluded in your question) used for thickening gumbos and similar stews. Besides this, I've only ever seen it referred to as an annoyance and avoided by leaving the pod whole or dry cooking like frying.
I imagine there could be some creative halloween uses of mucilage but those would be off topic for this site. :)
EDIT
I was embarrassed that this answer was the accepted answer. I don't like answers that are (as mine was) "no that isn't possible because I've never heard of it." I was hoping someone else would shatter my world with some amazing new use of okra slime.
My curiosity piqued I used some of my copious free time while code compiled to do some more research.
I was able to find a couple of non traditional okra recipes that seemed interesting- such as candied okra slices or using the seeds from pickled okra as a caviar-like dish. But none of them took advantage of the mucilage- they all avoided it.
Carbohydrate based mucilage is used in ice cream and for other reasons. I found the following study about food health that did experiments with replacing milk fat with specifically okra mucilage (they refer to it as "okra gum")
Okra gum is acceptable milk-fat ingredient substitute in dessert
Two pertinent quotes:
"Although not currently produced by food manufacturers, previous studies produced fat-free chocolate bar cookies with acceptable sensory characteristics using okra gum as a fat ingredient substitute."
"Specifically, color and smell of frozen dairy desserts containing okra gum replacement for milk fat did not significantly differ from the control product. Texture, flavor, aftertaste, and overall acceptability ratings also averaged five or higher (neutral to like) for all products."
The study was about replacing milk fat where I think it would be more interesting as an enhancer as you asked in your question.
It seems perfectly reasonable that okra mucilage could find a place in more modern recipes.
But I couldn't find anyone doing it.
"free time while code compiled" = http://xkcd.com/303/
Thank @Sobachatina for the detailed answer. That must have been some ginormous piece of code.
No need to post a competing answer, but I think the canonical use of the goo is as a thickener in Creole dishes like gumbo. (The okra is also part of the gumbo.)
@Jefromi- And in fact many scholars believe that the word "gumbo" itself is from an African word for okra.
Mucilage is also a glue (in the US) https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3480/3841991000_cd71bee03e_z.jpg?zz=1
While researching okra for an article (I'm a freelance writer) I came across this page by seridipity and thought I'd share what I've found (so far) in my quest: The mucilage in okra is a desired trait in West African (and, by extension, Brazilian, Caribbean and southeastern U.S.) cuisine. Baobab leaves also produce mucilage when cooked. It is used as a thickening agent in soups, stews and some stuffed okra pod dishes (also in South and Southeast Asia).
The only other use I've found is as a hair conditioner, which is a traditional Indian treatment that has become into some use in the United States.
There's some investigation into using it industrially as a low-friction lubricant.
Bryan Johnson
I am experimenting with using okra goo as an organic "sticker" or adhesive, used to hold the inoculate on pea seeds.
I boil the sliced okra, cool it, then strain to get the goo.
Hey, it looks like you've found an interesting use for the okra. Can you expand what you meant by "inoculate" held to pea seeds, I didn't understand that part?
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222 | How can I make cheap, smooth homemade Alfredo sauce?
I've tried making Alfredo sauce several times based on a few online recipes.
It generally comes out pretty tasty, but also with one flaw: the sauce is grainy or gritty because the grated Parmesan cheese doesn't fully melt. Doing searches online, most people seem to recommend starting with block Parmesan cheese and grating or shredding it at home. However, at least at the stores around here, block Parmesan is much more expensive than the usual dried/grated stuff.
Does anyone have a technique for getting the cheaper stuff to melt smoothly into the sauce, or alternatively a cheaper source for the more suitable types of Parmesan?
Are you absolutely certain that the "grittiness" is caused by the cheese not melting, and not because the sauce is curdling? If you cook it too long or too fast, that is what will happen.
If you must use the Kraft stuff (personally, I think it has no flavour compared to real Reggiano), try melting the cheese on low heat in a very small amount of cream first, before you add it to the main sauce pan. If it's still gritty, either it's curdling or you need to use a better cheese.
I think this might have been what was happening. I'm learning pretty much everything about cooking from scratch as an adult; before reading this and putting the pieces together, I didn't know what curdling was precisely or how one might recognize that it was happening. (I'm still not completely sure, but I suppose I have a better idea.)
The real stuff is expensive because it's still actually cheese. If you're gonna use the canned stuff, you're probably better off just leaving it out entirely (or sprinkling it on top at the table as-desired...)
It doesn't take a lot of cheese either - it's pretty strong stuff. You can probably get away with just a few ounces...
The cheap canned cheese is still cheese. It's cheaper because it is only briefly aged instead of for a year a more like the real stuff.
Cheap grated cheese is LOADED with anti-caking agents that make it pour out of the container easily. I'm not sure what these additives are, but they don't melt, and they taste like eating a spoonful of dry flour. If you use that sort of stuff to cook, it will ruin your sauce.
My rule is that I only cook with cooking ingredients. Products in the store that are made to be eaten as they are packaged are not for cooking with. Using that Kraft grated cheese in the table dispenser package as parmesan to cook with is like using a snickers bar as the chocolate in a truffle recipe.
I should add that some grocery stores do sell quality pre-grated parmesan. It is often located with the real cheese, not with the condiments or pasta sauce. This stuff is perfectly acceptable, although usually not top-notch. The grocery store near me (Wegmans!) grates their parmesan at the store from the same blocks of parmesan that you can buy.
Ahh, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the extra information about the anti-caking agents.
I miss my wegmans :(
This is an old question, but for the sake of completeness: Parmesan, even the high-end stuff, really doesn't melt well. I've found that in any sauce containing it, it's got to be grated as finely as possible, or you get little globules of it that won't ever dissolve. That's tough to do with pre-grated Kraft cheese, but if you can find a good price on block parmesan, use the finest holes on your grater, or a Microplane. Then incorporate it slowly into the sauce.
The longer the cheese has aged, the better cooking quality, that's why Italian restaurants, at least the decent ones only use Reggiano to cook with. Things like Grano or less expensive cheese should be used as garnish. You need to take the cooked pasta, add it to the cream over high, until it is almost reduced to what you want, pull it off the heat, add a knob of butter, and a handful of shredded reg. The cheese will tighten the sauce so don't over reduce cream.
Different types of cheeses have different melting characteristics. Processed cheeses like American cheese melt more quickly and easily than most natural cheeses because they have low meting points. Among the natural cheese, the driest ones - if finely grated - tend to melt better than their moist counterparts because their protein is less likely to separate from the emulsion and coagulate into tough, chewy strands that diminish the appearance and texture of the dish. This is why knowledgeable cooks prefer to use "cooking cheeses" like Parmigiano-Reggiano (authentic Parmesan) for preparations like sauces, where the cheese must become well integrated. The longer this cheese has been aged, the better its cooking qualities.
OOOH! I finally get to share the alfredo sauce recipe I developed for low fatness and good flavor, adapted in part from bechamil sauce out of Joy of Cooking:
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup X virgin olive oil
Preheat oven to 250 degrees F / 100 degrees C
Set your oven proof pan (use one that has a good cover) corning ware can be used for this, on a burner set to medium or less, depending on your stove, when the temp has stabilized add the oil, when the oil has come to temperature, add the flour, stirring well until the mixture is homogeneous. Make a white roux, cooking the flour in the oil without browning it, the roux is finished when the raw flour taste is gone (um let it cool before tasting...hot oil and all). Note don't ever use wooden cooking tools to make roux, the wood will char and bits will break off making the roux bitter.
Now add milk (I use skimmed milk) and bring the temperature of the mixture up until the roux and milk have consolidated and the consistency is what you want. Take pan off burner for a bit whilst you make the next step.
Take a large onion, peel it and cut it in half, then stick 20 - 30 whole cloves into the onion near the flat base of the onion and place the onion in the white sauce (after it has cooled a bit, don't want to burn the onion or spice in the hot oil). Mince up fine garlic to taste, I usually use a half of a medium head of garlic but suit yourself, and add a by leaf. Put your ovenproof pan, covered into the oven for 3/4 hour. After time, take the pan out, remove the onion, bay leaf and any bits of clove which have broken off.
Turn oven down to 100 C / 212 F.
Season the sauce with what ever you like, I use a bit of Tabasco, salt and white pepper. Next take very thin slices or finely grated cheeses (thin slices work best) in smallish quantities and of various types and add them in to white sauce, carefully; DO NOT OVERWORK THE CHEESE if you do, you will wind up with stringy glops of cheese which will need to be fished out before this last step can be restarted. The last one of these I made had 1 ounce /28 gm of aged cheddar, 2 oz /56 gm of manchega, a bit of parmasan, and a bit of smoked gouda.
Put your pan back into the oven, checking in 1/2 hour and every 10 minutes after that to see if the cheese is disintegrating and becoming as liquid as the white sauce. Once this has happened, stir in the cheese gently, pulling any stringy globs off your mixing device, adjust seasoning and serve with whatever you want, parsley or cilantro on top is pretty, so is paprika, saffron, etc.
Not a true alfredo sauce, but has all the characteristics except the enormous saturated fat load.
Oh yeah, it isn't very expensive to make either.
Enjoy
As stated above, it only takes a cup of cheese per half quart of heavy cream. That makes a lot of sauce. Gratting it yourself is the best way. Be sure to use the long grating side of your grater. One wants to have the bigger shreedds, it makes for creamer melting and better blending. You kinda have to plan a little a head. Once you grate the chesse, for best results let it stand for twenty minutes or so to allow it to come to room temperature before adding it to the heated cream and melted butter. Don't be in a hurry. Slowly let the cheese disolve on low heat into the cream mixture. And remove it before it is completely melted but keep stirring this allows the finishing blending to happen without over heatting the cheese which causes that grainy texture. Try this and you'll never go out to a resturant for alfredo again.
I make this sauce quite a bit, it never turns out the same twice, i don't measure stuff! The secret is butter and grated not shredded Parmesan. If your sauce is clumpy add flour it does sometime fix it. I made it this evening and it was clumpy, but it was only because i couldn't find decent grated parm...
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124305 | How do you cook chicken breast in a gas oven evenly?
Most recipes tell you to place chicken in an oven at X temperature for Y minutes (e.g. 400°F for 20 minutes), and stress that the internal temperature should reach 165°F on a thermometer (example).
I placed the chicken breasts on a large baking sheet, and baked them in a gas oven. I then checked the temperature, and noticed something odd.
The top of the chicken is undercooked (e.g. 150°F), the middle is perfectly cooked (e.g. 165°F), and the bottom is overcooked (e.g. 180°F). I'm guessing this is because the heat in gas ovens comes from the bottom of the oven. (I'm getting the temperature of each part of the chicken breast by inserting the metal probe vertically from the top of the chicken downwards towards the sheet, holding it in place for 1 second for a reading. I'm also assuming that the thermometer reads temperatures at the very tip of the metal probe.)
If it really is the case that the top of the chicken is undercooked while the bottom is overcooked, how is it recommended to cook chicken breast in the oven?
Are there any tricks such as flipping the chicken breasts once the middle reaches say, 150°F degrees? (I just randomly chose 150°F as a number less than 165°F, since the middle will overcook if you flip at 165°F and continue cooking.) Should I switch to broiler at any point? Any other tips?
May have been that the "large sheet" that you used was too big for the oven and prevented the hot air from circulating around the oven to bring the oven up to temperature evenly.
Chicken breast is hard to cook well which is why overcooked chicken is such a cliché of large catering contexts. You can give yourself an easier time by switching to thighs, or changing cooking method – for example to sous vide at the opposite end of the spectrum.
But if you are cooking breasts in an oven, you can help reduce overcooking by things like:
Starting with thinner pieces, which cook faster overall so there is less time to overcook. Making sure each piece is the same size so you can treat them similarly.
Preheating the oven fully to reduce the effect of the directional heating.
Moving/flipping the chicken as you suggest.
Covering with foil so the outside is less subject to intense heat while the inside cooks.
Monitoring the internal temperature closely and taking it out as soon as it is ready, bearing in mind that the internal temperature will keep rising for a few minutes when it is out. I would usually take chicken out of the oven at 70°C, which is a bit below the safe target temperature but that will be reached as it rests and the temperature equalises across the meat.
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419 | What's the best way to store potatoes and maximize their shelf-life?
What's the best place and way to store potatoes so they keep fresh longest?
Best thing to do is to keep them out of the light in an cool dark dry place. I usually put them in a hessian bag to try and keep the moisture away.
Don't store them in the fridge or anywhere that gets direct sunlight.
Also don't buy potatoes that were washed. Unwashed potatoes are dirty, but they last longer and there's smaller chance that they will start to rot or get a mold. And you should always wash your potatoes before you use them anyway.
Potatoes should be stored at temperatures between 7 and 9 degrees C (45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit). The starches in the potato will start to break down into sugars at temperatures below 7 degrees making for a darker, more bitter tasting result after frying or roasting.
Many people say that you shouldn't store potatoes in the fridge. If, like me, you have a compartment in your fridge that goes above 7 degrees, I believe it is reasonable to keep them there despite common misgivings.
Air circulation is important according to one internet source to "remove the products of respiration". A cool, well ventilated cellar would be the ideal place to store them.
The first article I linked to seems to suggest that you can store potatoes at lower temperatures for a few months.
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2749 | Vinegar Alternatives and rice combinations in making sushi rice
What are some of the alternatives in vinegar for making sushi rice? I know it's best to use rice vinegar, but has anyone ever tried it with white wine vinegar, or apple cider vinegar for example? Follow up on that question, would you put or more less vinegar?
What are some rice combinations that someone can use? I'm thinking for a next batch, I might do 80% sushi rice, 20% basmati, or 70% sushi rice and 30% arborio. Has anyone tried any such combinations, and if so how did it turn out?
I have never made, but I have eaten Arborio sushi, with Italian flavors and here in DC I have had latin-flavored sushi. It was all great. The Arborio sushi seemed like plain Arborio rice to me.
The rice vinegar is sweet and less acid (4% versus 6%), so if you try different vinegars you may want to dilute it a bit first and then compare for sweetness. Say you have 2 tablespoons of vinegar at 6%, then add add one tablespoon of water to it to bring it down to 4%.
Further to Papin's excellent comment, you might also need to adjust for sweetness - so, e.g., if you decided to use white wine vinegar, as well as diluting it I'd add some sugar to taste.
With respect to your first question, there's a big difference between long-grain and short-grain rice. So Arborio is OK as a substitute if you want; however, Basmati grains won't stick together nearly as well, so your sushi will be more likely to fall apart if you take this option!
Oh, if you're /good/ at rolling up the sushi, and cook the basmati rice suitably (use slightly more water), it'll still work, just won't taste as good. (Specifically, it tastes bland)
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9225 | How to veganize and improve this cake recipe?
I have the Build-a-bear cake pan from Williams-Sonoma. The cake recipe is as follows:
3 cups (470g) all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
16 tbs (250g) unsalted butter
2 cups (500g) sugar
4 eggs
1 1/3 cups milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Sift together dry ingredients; cream butter, sugar, eggs; combine milk+vanilla; add flour to butter mixture alternating with the milk. Bake at 325F for 45-55 mins.
This cake made in a cake pan with two wells. Each well is a vertical half of the seated teddy-bear. When it is done you trim the cake with a knife then glue the halves together with icing. This recipe makes a basic vanilla flavoured cake which is a bit on the dry side. When it's slathered in mocha icing the dryness is ok but when I use fondant icing to decorate it's too dry overall.
This year I want to make a bear cake again, however there are two changes I need to make. First, I'd like to make the cake moister without sacrificing its physical durability (it needs to be able to sit up without crumbling apart). Second, I need to replace the milk, eggs, and butter with non-dairy/non-eggs because my new son is allergic to milk and eggs. I'd ask two separate questions but I think they both need to be addressed at the same time.
How can I make this cake better tasting AND vegan?
Veganizing it and improving the quality are pretty much contradictory goals: cake recipes are tricky and finely tuned. I wouldn't try to adapt an existing recipe. Instead, take a recipe that was developed to be vegan from the start and make that instead. You'll probably have a superior product in the end.
To make it vegan is simple:
Replace the milk with any other kind of milk (soy, rice, hemp, etc.)
Replace butter with some kind of margarine (I recommend Earth Balance, but just pick anything that doesn't have trans fats)
Replace eggs with either commercial egg replacer, or apple sauce
As for making it moister, I have no idea.
Actually, apple sauce can be a great way to make the cake moist.
I basically followed this advice and used pureed pumpkin instead of applesauce. The cake "worked", in that it was delicious and moist, but the resulting cake was almost completely unlike the original cake. Specific problem: after coming out of the oven it deflated and no longer filled the pan properly, which makes assembling the finished 3D cake a challenge.
A second try: I replaced the milk with soy milk, the butter with half margarine, half shortening, and the eggs with 1/4 cup pumpkin puree each. Then I tripled the baking powder. Result: awesome. Maybe my best cake ever.
I would replace the butter with a butter-flavored vegetable shortening (like Brendan said, it's best to avoid trans fats). However, butter is only about 80% fat and 20% water, so you may want to slightly reduce the amount of fat you're replacing it with and add a bit of extra liquid.
For the egg, you can see the answers to this question: With what can I replace eggs?
In addition to egg replacer, making a flax seed egg is a fairly common way to vegan-ize a baking recipe that uses eggs.
Mr Shiny and New you have a real problem here to replace 4 eggs in a 3 cup flour mix. I have successfully made a cake with half the flour and replaced the eggs with 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate soda in with baking powder and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar and if this was unsuccessful my next trial would be to use the egg replacer with the vinegar and bi-carbonate of soda together in the cake. The amount of flour is the reference point requiring the balance of ingredients for a normal cake to be produced. My cupcake recipe uses 1 1/2 cups of self raising flour and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, my mango cake recipe is the same flour but mango fruit and juice replaces the acid and the bicarbonate soda (same amount) works to give the cake lift even though there is a lot of dried fruit in the mix. The recipe is on the net and the only thing I do not add is the eggs, all other ingredients are the same. My next option would be to halve the recipe and make an egg replacement as I have suggested. I would also use any of the other advice above myself as it has worked for me in baking without eggs in the past.
Baking a cake is more chemistry than cooking, all about proportions.
The success rate of making cake recipes vegan depends highly on the suitability of the recipe for conversion. Dairy components are not too hard to replace, good soya milk will usually replace regular milk without issue providing curdling issues are not too great and butter can usually be replaced with a decent vegan block margarine, and there are decent vegan soft margarines about. Eggs are always tricky and have to be replaced with something suitable, one size does not fit all, it very much depends upon the recipe what is the best method.
Eggs add air, they bind, alter the shelf-life and effect the moistness of the cake. If there are a lot of eggs in a recipe they can be making up a strategic part of the dough in a texture capacity as well as altering the taste too. The strategy to adopt is to work out what primary purpose the eggs are serving in the recipe and replace them. In fruit cakes where the egg is binding, a date syrup or mashed banana can work with a little more raising agent. But this significantly effects the flavour obviously, so is usually reserved for rich fruit cakes where the flavours sit comfortably. In sponges, soya flour and raising agents (or a cake-specific egg substitute which is usually soya protein isolate and raising agents) can aid softness and binding. When there are a lot of eggs the recipe will usually be too hard to adapt.
Your recipe looks about 2:1:1 -- flour:fat:eggs, which would usually be suitable for a cake egg substitute. Particularly given the plain flavouring of the cake, the egg will be contributing flavour there as will the butter substantially. A hard recipe to make acceptable.
3 cups (470g) all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
16 tbs (250g) unsalted butter --> coconut oil (gives a better flavor/texture than margarin)
2 cups (500g) sugar --> turbinado sugar or sugar in the raw. (Bone Char free sugar)
4 eggs --> Flax Seed (perfect egg replacement for baking, perfect cake texture)
1 1/3 cups milk --> Almond milk or Rice Milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Most mainstream sugars on the market are bleached with bone char made from cow bones. You will need to find a vegan sugar. Sugar made from evaporated cane juice is generally ok. There is a good list of companies here: http://www.veganproducts.org/sugar.html#Brands
I have found that Flax seed is the very best egg replacement in vegan baking recipes. The texture of baked goods comes out exactly the same as recipes using eggs. The cake crumb is perfect and holds together wonderfully. There is a great article on using flax seeds as egg replacements here: http://www.veganbaking.net/recipes/egg-replacers/flax-seed-egg-replacer
Another alternative to eggs would be to use tapioca flour, you can mix 1 Tbsp with 2 Tbsp water per egg.
Potato flour- a small amount can add moisture to the cake
Potato flour would seem to be pretty dry, can you explain how it works, and how much I should add? Do I need to take something else out?
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm pretty sure the idea is to replace some flour with potato flour. I'm not totally sure, but I think that might get you a more tender crumb?
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18413 | Oil/Fat substitutes in bread
I have a bread machine and make bread using margarine (I need to avoid all dairy). The problem is the margarine doesn't always mix properly and sometimes ends up on the outside of the dough, leaving shiny dark crunchy spots. The recipe I am following is
1 1/2 cup water
3 tbs margarine
1/2 tbs salt
1/2 tbs + 1 tsp sugar
4 1/8 cups A/P flour (Canadian A/P flour)
1 tsp bread machine yeast
Can I substitute some kind of oil instead of margarine? I suspect this will mix better but I'm not sure about how the chemistry works.
Have you tried making the bread without the margarine?
Ya, you don't need the fat in all bread (or the sugar). Most of my breads (and breads around the world) are just flour, salt, water, yeast. Whether that recipe for that machine does...eh?
@Mr.Shiny, sugar in bread? You must be Asian - from which part of Asia you are? I had a big trouble in Asia, couldn't buy bread without sugar. At least it was without a margarine! :-)
Well, it sounds like the answer should just be to soften your margarine first. Either your margarine is ice cold or your machine doesn't need very long if you're ending up with little studded bits of margarine in your crust - that's very unusual.
Can you add oil? Sure. Try adding some olive oil instead or just vegetable shortening . There's a little water in margarine and butter, its an emulsion - about 16% of it - so if you're going to add pure fat then technically you'd need to add about 1 tsp of water as well. Will 1 tsp of water matter overall? Probably not...but its there.
(Overall that recipes looks a bit low on water to me also - I'm not sure how that would effect the margarine mixing though.)
The margarine is very soft already coming out of the fridge. You could easily spread it on bread without tearing the bread even if the bread was very soft. I think what happens is a bit of margarine gets stuck to the side of the machine and clings there without getting incorporated by the paddles, which are on the bottom of the machine. It doesn't happen every time but it does happen often.
Try premixing it a bit first then.
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10352 | What do I do with mildly fermented maple syrup?
Our organic grade A maple syrup, bought in bulk, has gone slightly fermented in the fridge. If I were still in college, this would be great, but I am a bit older. What do I do with this stuff? Can I assume it is fine in baked goods? How can I accelerate my usage of it?
Mmm, Dendarii Mountain Maple Mead...
can you describe the fermented syrup? How does it smell / taste / look?
just like regular maple syrup, but a little bit like wine. We keep it in an airtight bottle with one of those ceramic stoppers. When we open the bottle, there is some pressure released: it pops. So I believe there is some fermentation going on. This is in the fridge, so it cannot be going wild.
"airtight" bottles and gas production indicate anaerobic bacteria, which are not Good Eats. Of course, "airtight" may not actually exclude much oxygen, particularly if you open the bottle frequently.
/@kdgregory: the point behind airtight storage of syrup makes sense when it is bottled: namely finished syrup is at 219 F at sea level, so the hot syrup helps to keep the bottle sterile. (w/ home bottling you're supposed to put the bottle on its side for a few minutes after sealing so that the top of the bottle gets heated up) After it's been opened, the bacteria can get a start, if the sugar content is low enough. If you buy in bulk (are you talking 1 gallon qtys?), I'd seriously consider rebottling in smaller canning jars: minimize the amount of syrup you have "open" at a time.
Yeah, syrup can ferment + convert sugar to alcohol. It has more of a tendency to do so if the sugar content is lower -- I tend to err on the side of overconcentrating my syrup.
You can try boiling it for a while to see if the alcohol boils off + if the flavor is OK then use it... but I'd boil down a bit more first, to make sure the sugar content is back up to standards. Either boil until the boiling point is 7 degrees F higher than the boiling point of water at your altitude, or boil until the syrup "aprons" (e.g. starts to drip in a sheet rather than discrete drops; a flat edge of a metal spatula works well), with the former being more accurate if you have a good thermometer.
If the flavor remains after boiling, then try using in recipes -- perhaps in brownies/blondies or with ice cream.
+1 for the idea to reboil. Based on what I learned while helping a friend with his annual boil, it sounds like the producer did not take the syrup to the correct gravity.
That sounds like it would work well for glazing pork or maybe smoked chicken/turkey.
There is just one thing I can think of. Maple Sugar Candy :-) The alcohol ferment will cook off some and leave behind the sugar.
It is hard to correctly answer your question, without knowing all the facts. Was/Is this Canadian Maple Syrup? Vermont Maple Syrup? Or Maple syrup from another part of the US? Vermont's regulations for the production & labelling of Maple syrup, are similar to those you find in Canada. Canada has some of the most stringent laws concerning the collection, processing, bottled and labelling for Maple Syrup in the world. If your Maple Syrup is from Vermont or Canada, I would throw it away, as it has become contaminated with something that most definitely would be toxic if consumed, and no amount of boiling it will help, it would actually concentrate the toxin even more.
If your Maple Syrup is from another part of the US, (or another country all together) then you might not have 100% maple syrup &/or the concentration of the maple syrup could lean itself to fermentation, which would make a lovely mead like liqueur. In Canada they actually use Maple syrup to make liqueurs, wine, etc. However to do this they have to adjust the maple syrups sugar concentration to allow for the fermentation to take place.
I would say better to be safe then sorry, and ditch it. If you do in the future decide to buy the larger container & try re-bottling it, be careful that you get your bottles extremely hot & boil the maple syrup to get it extremely hot as well, prior to pouring the maple syrup into the jars to seal. Good luck!
Hello, and welcome to Stack Exchange. This doesn't make much sense; you say the Vermont and Canadian standards are the most stringent, but only keep the syrup if it's not from them?
I believe the implication is that because it is made to such stringent standards, regular alcoholic fermentation should not be possible due to the low water activity. If it's not from those places, it might be sloppiness in production, and therefore it might be alcoholic fermentation and A-OK. I'd like to know what other kinds of fermentation can occur in maple syrup though.
I think there is WAY too little water and oxygen in maple syrup for a yeast fermentation, so anything that grew in this syrup is probably bacteria or worse. Don't drink it.
There is evidence of there being alcohol. Based on that, the OP could research whether there is anything that could have happened that left toxins in there while alcohol was produced.
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6319 | gas range hack for greater power output: does it work?
In the documentary, 'I Like Killing Flies,' Kenny Shopsin describes how he drilled bigger holes in his gas range to increase the power output. Ignoring the possible safety issues, would this work on a standard home gas range? It would seem that the gas output is somehow limited by the knobs. Also, increasing the gas output could potentially change the gas/air ratio, which, I think, might change the flame temperature. Has anybody tried this?
This seems nonsensical to try with your home stove. You are correct, the rate of gas output is directly controlled by the knobs. In a typical home stove, drilling holes will not increase the gas output. It would affect the gas to air ratio, but I doubt it would result in an increase of temperature, and more likely a decrease.
See below; it isn't necessarily non-sensical if the output is ultimately limited by the burner holes when the knob is fully on.
@Michael: The burner holes on the typical home stove do not limit anything. The gas is merely released into the burner. If they were limiting the gas output, that would result in a buildup of pressure, which would cause the gas spill out of the bottom of the burner assembly.
Shopsin's stove isn't a typical home stove - go read the excerpt I link to in my answer below. And assuming Shopsin isn't an idiot and his change actually did have the effect he claims it has, doesn't this have to be the explanation?
@Michael: Huh? I know Shopsin's isn't a typical home stove, as does the questioner who indicates that he read the book. The question is "would this work on a standard home gas range". That's what I'm answering. I'm not simply quoting back to the OP what he's already read. :P
The OP indicates he saw a related movie, not read the book. But you are right, I misread your initial answer - it may well be nonsensical on a home stove if you are correct that the holes can't be the limiting factor because it would spill out of the burner assembly otherwise.
@Michael, heh I just noticed he said documentary
I'll take the answer as 'home stove is different; will not work'
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, unless you are prepared to put out a big fire. I have tried this at home and it does work. I love to cook in a wok, but traditional stoves don't make this easy. Traditional western stoves are made to cook with traditional flat bottomed pans, not round bottomed woks. So to make wok cooking more enjoyable I have modified my outdoor, dirty kitchen stove.
The stove I have outside is hooked up to the same gas source as the one inside my indoor kitchen. What makes this stove a bit different from the one inside, is one can take off the cast iron covers to the burners. Thus allowing the gas to come out as one big flame instead of being spread out for a flat bottomed pan. The problem is that the fire is not really controllable and is very easily blown out if too high, too low or just a sudden gust of wind blows the flame out.
The pro is that one can cook in a round bottomed wok, on a western gas stove with just a modified wok ring and a ton of fire coming out. It really puts out a lot of heat, but since it is outside, I don't worry about too much smoke or being too enclosed that makes the oil vapours dangerous. I also have my trusty fire extinguisher, wok cover and water at the ready to put out any unwanted fire. I'm not encouraging this particular modification on your stove at home.
The point that bears repeating is that YOU are responsible for making such a hack safe, and that should come with the reminder that creating more heat than the stove was designed for also makes you responsible for ensuring other parts of the stove (tubing, valves...) are not overheated to unsafe levels.
Shopsin talks about this in his book, Eat Me, The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin. You can see it in this excerpt on Amazon. On his custom stove, described in that excerpt, it is certainly possible that when the knob is turned on all the way, the volume of gas coming out was still limited by the size of the flame holes, so that drilling it out allowed more gas to flow and thus a higher flame. And this is probably an extremely dangerous thing to do on your home stove.
To sustain very uniform heat you probably want a certain amount of back-pressure from the apertures, so this is probably true on most devices. And any modification may (or may not) cut into some designed-in safety factor. Think a bit before embarking on a project like that...
Couldn't agree more. I think this would be a really bad idea to undertake.
It would most likely be unsafe, but, most stoves do have a small brass nozzle which limits the flow of gas at the point before it mixes with air, under the the aluminum disk which has the multiple holes where the gas/air mixture comes out.
If you are not adverse to the risk, and you are careful enough to make a very slight change when you increase the hole size (presumably by drilling it out with a drill bit very slightly larger than the hole) - well then the answer is that you could probably increase the flame size/BTU output on a home gas range.
This is the sort of thing that I would try myself, but not recommend to others.
Before I do try it, I think I want to order a "replacement" of the little brass nozzle so that I know I have a spare before I potentially ruin a burner on my nice new stove.
I've read about people doing this and succeeding, but, one guy said "if I try to run the stove with the burner turned up all the way now the flames are about two feet high". Most people's range hoods are not going to be safe with 2 foot high flames shooting out of their stove!
I really hope nobody burns their house down trying something like this. There are laws limiting the output of the burners on "home" stoves and there are safety codes regulating the installation of higher capacity "professional" stoves that home buyers do sometimes purchase for home use. For one thing, the higher output commercial stoves are supposed to be installed further away from the back wall, require certain types of ventilation hoods, etc. The law may even require some type of automatic/emergency fire extinguisher equipment also be installed wherever such stoves are installed.
My Samsung gas range came with a second set of gas flow limiting tiny nozzles that screw in to adjust the range for propane (it comes setup for natural gas). I'm not sure which set has larger holes? But, at least I know I have a second set and now we know that some stoves come with two sets of the nozzles. I may have to lookup the formula to calculate how much to change the diameter of the hole to increase the flow rate by 10%? However, the "power burner" on my stove seems too wide to be good for use on small pans. I'd like to find a "power burner" that's not wide.
Propane is smaller. It's delivered at higher pressure, so you need less gas to get the same amount of heat. For only 10%, just find a drill bit that's the same size and run it in/out of the hole a few times while slowly turning it in a drill. It'll enlarge the hole slightly.
Tried it, it works. You need to disassemble the burner. In my case, there are porcelain-coated metal disks which sit on an aluminum piece (which contains the sparking ignitor and has slots to distribute the gas). The metal disk lifts off, and two screw can be removed, freeing the aluminum piece. This reveals a small nozzle recessed in the stove top. In the center, you can see a brass nut with a small hole in the center. Using a drill bit that is almost the same size as the hole (it's really quite small, so small changes are significant), bore the hole. Reassemble the burner, and ignite. Carefully.
There are probably some limitations on how much gas you can efficiently mix with air, and the way my burners are designed, at high flow, flames shoot out horizontally. This causes the flame to spread too much to use on anything but really big pans.
I think the next step is to fabricate a better metal plate to better direct the flames, especially around the center of larger pots/pans. On the plus side, using a wok works fairly well, although I think the flames spread more than is ideal. I can brown steaks pretty well though.
There is a mathematical formula called "The Hanson Theorum" basically it's the calculating the area of a circle, very accurate without the use of Pi.
Imagine a pipe with a 10cm in diameter bore, well the calculation is 10 x 10 (to get the square of the bore) and multiply it by "The Hanson Theorum" which is 0.78.
The calculation is 10 squared x 0.78 to get 78 square centimeters of bore area.
If your gas jet is say 0.3mm we can create a higher gas flow, by boring that jet out to a slightly larger size with either a specialist drill size or some fine guitar wire... This will increase the gas flow, but at the same pressure. The regulator, should be able to cope with a 20 - 30% greater flow....
So lets assume the jet is 0.3mm - so .3×.3×.78 = 0.07mm square of jet bore area
Now if we want to increase the flow rate, by 20% - that means we need to figure out what a jet bore 20% larger is IN AREA, not diameter, the simple maths.
(10 + 2) x 7 = 0.084 of area, and converting that back to diameter, it's 0.084 =
0.327×0.327×.78 =
My brain is tired.... So you have to increase the jet size from 0.3mm to 0.327 mm in diameter.
OK you can drill them out - with a special drill or you can scrap them out with a piece of 0.009" or 0.23mm steel guitar wire... with a diagonally cut end, and a small drilling machine etc.. and just scrape away - you will get the technique... or you can hammed the wire into a square or rectangular shape....
Since you really are ONLY reboring it by a hair or two's increase in diameter.... it's not much and then you can see if your stove works well. Try to make the issue of small shavings in terms of rejetting the stove, rather than way too big.
If you go too big first go, your regulator may not flow that amount of gas AND OR your you may need to enlargen the air mixing stage, to get a hot clean flame, instead of a sooty yellow flame...
Yellow flames also produce Carbon Monoxide which is lethal in significant amounts in confined spaces.... and people under some conditions - like it's freezing cold, they are in a snow storm and the only place to cook is inside the little tent...
My little butane can single burner portable camping stove - on cold days like 10C, the burning rate which is based upon the boiling rate of the gas, which slows down as the evaporating gas, chills the liquid gas, so it cools and boils off at an incrediby slow rate, which means cooking a big meal in a pot takes 10 x as long as cooking on a 35C day.... So I need to fiddle with the jet a little to increase the rate of gas flow and not fiddle around much to make the stove improvements into a major engineering project, rather than a simple improvement.
Stoves are different, our frigidaire has removable jets below the burner plates((propane or natural)). You could increase them slightly however you may lose the ability to simmer if drilled out to large.
First, one can purchase small drill bits for very little money that should be used to drill increasingly larger holes in your brass "jets". Second, once the jet is drilled, you will have a richer fuel/ air mixture resulting in a yellower flame. To adjust that mixture one must locate and slightly open the air shutter on both the cook top and in the oven so the flames are burning blue again. The result is more max heat while the valve is on high/full. This is not going to burn down your house if you do it in baby steps until the max heat output you desire is achieved. What may happen however is that you will over heat the stoves components which can cause blueing, charing, cracking of porcelain etc. So be prudent.
Those small drill bits are known as "number bits" will sizes ranging from a hair to about 3/16" in very tiny increments
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39969 | What is the difference between Orbit Gum and Orbit for Kids
If this is not the right forum for this question, please let me know where to post it.
We answer questions about food in the context of cooking, not just arbitrary questions about food - things like restaurants and already-made food are indeed outside the scope of our site. I don't think there's a stackexchange site that covers this sort of thing.
I don't know of any reason to say it can't be asked here. Orbit for Kids is available in "kid friendly" flavors (Bubble Gum and Strawberry Banana). I see nothing at all different in the formulation beyond the flavor. For the most part it is a marketing gimmick. The "for kids" flavors have xylitol as the second ingredient. The adult flavors have it as a 3rd or 4th ingredient. That probably just means that the kid's version is somewhat sweeter.
The reason, FYI, is the same reason we don't take questions like "what can a vegan eat at McDonald's?", "how do I grow potatoes?", or "which side of the plate does the fork go on?" - we're just about cooking, not everything to do with food.
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29513 | How do I cook with bay leaves?
I am an amateur hobbyist cook. So a lot of the time I will toss in a dash of something, taste the dish, and add a bit more. Experimenting sometimes with disastrous results... but I learn :)
One spice that I am having a hard time figuring out is the bay leaf. I use it when called for, and have sometimes experimented with it, but I can't seem to place the "effect" it has on the dish.
So my questions:
What is the general flavor of a bay leaf, is there a dish that exemplifies this?
How long do I need to cook with a bay leaf before it has an effect?
I think part of my quandary is that I can't simply add some to a sauce, stir it in, and taste it to see the difference. Am I wrong to believe that it takes awhile to permeate the dish?
I couldn't agree with you more. I've never found that bay leaves add anything to my cooking and have stopped using them. With the one exception of Indian Bay leaves (Tej Patta) that do impart a cinnamon flavour to cooking and I use those in Indian dishes. The standard European or Mediterranean bay leaf is too subtle to bother with in my opinion.
You may be using bay leaves that have lost all their flavor -- even dry, you should be able to detect some aroma. You could try crumbling a leaf and it in a cup of hot water (as if making tea) to get an idea of the flavor. Also, you may be able to find fresh bay -- either someone with a bush in their backyard, or in the produce section of one of the ritzier grocery stores. That will give you a clear picture of the taste.
The medieval spice mix "poudre fort" often involves bay leaf ground to a powder. That could be a good way to get a real handle on what it tastes like.
I don't know how you would describe the flavor of bay--I would call it a subtle savoriness, with a complex aroma.
Bay is very tough--almost sharp. It is generally not eaten directly. Instead, the whole leaf (or several whole leaves) are put into a dish or sauce to cook with it, then removed prior to service.
The shortest recipe I have for using bay is in a rice pilaf while it cooks, which is 15-30 minutes depending. I am not aware of an upper time limit.
Here is a Miami Herald article offering some other perspectives on using bay leaves:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/30/2823923/cooking-with-bay-leaves.html
As they Herald points out, many folks prefer Turkish bay rather than California bay, because it has a more complex, subtle flavor.
. . .
I believe custard in Britain had bay as a traditional ingredient--you might make a custard with a single bay leaf to get some sense of what it tastes like without lots of competing strong flavors.
. . .
Update: Serious Eats Food Lab has just published an article, What is the point of bay leaves? with lots of good information that may be of interest.
I've also seen it in a lot of American rice pudding recipes; that might be even easier than custard as a way to try the flavor.
I find bay goes very well with beef. I always put a few in beef stew, even in unusual situations like camping. I also crumble them into beef chili. My husband adds them (whole) to tomato-and-meat sauce for spaghetti.
If whatever you're cooking won't have at least half an hour of simmering, I wouldn't bother with the bay. It takes time to infuse a flavour.
Doesn't the crumbled bay leave get caught in your teeth? I would think for a more intense bay flavor, you could use a garni bouquet (mesh) bag for the pieces to make them easier to remove when the chili's done.
I crumble it very very small in the palm of my hand. You could also use a mortar and pestle
I bet that really ups the bay flavor! Yum!
As Josh Caswell suggested in his comment, you could make a bay infusion.
I find that 'pasta' (spaghetti, etc.) cooked with bay will give you a good flavour profile.
If you can get your hands on the tree, you could cut a branch and use that as a skewer to BBQ fish. They do so on Madeira to stunning effect.
Don't stop using bay, it's one of the most amazing ingredients ever! It gives depth and soul to anything you cook. It tastes like it smells when it's fresh. If you pick it fresh (you might as well pick a good lot of it to make it worth the effort), soak it in water and bicarb of soda, leave it to dry for 2 or 3 days and store in a jar. Use 1-2 leaves in your average pot of soup/ stew/ whatever. If you just want to taste the difference with and without bay, use it when cooking peas, fresh or frozen (not microwaved). They're a very good match and it should give you a pretty clear idea of the taste change.
Interesting, I'll have to try the peas. Thanks Kate!
Very interesting! I'm a very experienced cook, but I'm puzzled by bay leaves too. I love peas, so I am totally going to try this. Welcome to Seasoned Advice!
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22410 | What can I substitute for vegetable oil in a recipe?
Is there something that I can use as a substitute for vegetable oil in a recipe? I'm actually making cornbread (I think it matters), and normally the recipe calls for 1/3 cup vegetable oil. Unfortunately I just realized that I'm out. Can I use butter or shortening instead? If so, roughly how much would I try?
On first blush, you will probably want a fat or oil with similar qualities as the "vegetable" oil you're replacing, such as olive oil. Butter has a much lower a smoke point, however, cornbread recipes exist that use butter or lard. I'd be willing to experiment, particularly if you're used to cooking with butter. (Just be careful with heat.) As far as quantity, I'd use a bit less than 1/3 of a cup, but that's me being defensive as I don't know the recipe you're using.
This ended up working great for me. I actually ended up using butter flavored shortening. I heated up 1/3 of a cup. The consistency was maybe a little thicker then normal, but tasted great. Thanks staticsan.
Oh yes, butter will make it taste much better than vegetable oil. I should have said. :-)
Note that you can't necessarily do a one-to-one substitution of butter for oil: Oil is 100% fat while butter has a lot of water content, which will affect many baked goods. Shortening is 100% fat, though, so that's fine to use as a substitute.
@Esultanik Yes, that's what I meant by finding an oil with similar qualities. Lots more information about oils and fats at http://www.clovegarden.com/ingred/oils.html (which is not my site, BTW).
I've been making cornbread for decades, and quit using oil at all about 20 years ago.
Corn meal, flour, a little sugar, rising agents, salt, milk, an egg...
It comes out fine. A little bacon fat can make it tastier.
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5263 | does white sugar have a shelf life?
i have had a sealed container of white sugar for about 5 years now, we have been using it slowly, but is it safe/healthy to continue using it because of its age? or should i replace it?
I think we can more or less all agree that sugar has no shelf life, from the biological point of view. However, I wonder if, when used in a professional kitchen, there are regulations forcing one (although I think that no professional kitchen will keep sugar for such long time to have this issue anyway)
White sugar was commonly used as a preservative in the past, in much the same way as salt. It's wildly hygroscopic (like salt), and an excellent desiccant, so if you packed something in it, it would accelerate the drying process. This is actually the origin of fruit jam and fruit preserves, which are still common today, even after better methods of preservation are available.
Salt was more common simply because many things like eating/living in WET sugar, so you had to be careful with how much water was in the thing you were trying to preserve. But as long as the sugar was dry it's an extremely hostile environment for bacteria and little crawly things.
Kept dry, it will last forever.
It is even used to fight infections on the battlefield amazingly enough. It has antimicrobial properties when made into a paste.
Various references, including this one from Lantic sugar note the shelf-life of granulated white sugar as indefinite or effectively forever.
Presuming, likely, that it is stored as you note in a sealed container.
As long as the sugar is dry, there is nothing that can go wrong with it that will not be immediately visible.
If ants, flies, cockroaches get at it, it'll be pretty obvious.
Invisibles like bacteria or virii can't live on dry sugar, and the same goes for fungi, as it tends to soak up al of the moisture from anything trying to live on it.
Basically, as long as it's white and nothing is crawling on it, it's fine.
Sometimes I think that food manufacturers put a best before date on stuff just to make people feel better, or buy replacements every so often.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, bacteria can't grow really well in an environment that's pure sugar. Just keep it dry.
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12567 | Is it okay to salt beef before or while cooking it?
I recall reading that you should not salt beef until after it is cooked or it will dry the beef. Yet I see recipes that call for salt in a beef marinade.
Is it true that you should only salt beef after it is cooked?
Several sources as Cook's Illustrated, Alton Brown, and Anita Lo practically insist that you salt steaks before cooking them. I don't think McGee experiments with or discusses exactly when to season/salt a steak in his books, but he has reportedly stated that he is also in favour of pre-salting. The fact that so many people seem to prefer this technique would seem to indicate that there's at least some merit to it, even if the science isn't well-understood.
All of the arguments I've heard against salting steak (or beef in general) before cooking seem to be anecdotal in nature. When pressed for an explanation, many of these people claim that the salt draws out moisture which will subsequently dry out the cut.
In practice, the amount of moisture it draws out is practically negligible unless you actually cure it, which means using lots of salt and letting it sit that way for a long time. I don't know anybody that does this. Well, hardly anybody (warning: do not follow the advice on that page unless you are fully prepared to ruin a perfectly good steak).
When pressed, most of these people (including Anita Lo, above) say that the water it draws out to the surface will inhibit the Maillard Reaction. This is true - the presence of water does inhibit the Maillard reaction and any significant quantity of water will give you a steamed gray steak instead of a delicious seared brown one. But the key word here is significant. No reasonable amount of seasoning will draw out so much moisture that you actually end up with a puddle of boiling water underneath the steak, and even if it did, you would simply pat the steak dry before searing it. You do pat your steaks dry, don't you?
Also note that this applies to dry seasoning. When marinating a cut of beef it is another story entirely. Salt in a marinade really does create brining and that will tend to make the meat juicier. When meat brines, it absorbs extra moisture - the meat still loses moisture when cooked but the added moisture from the brine helps to offset it (this, again, is all in McGee). A saline solution also dissolves a portion of the tougher proteins in the meat, resulting in a more tender result. Salt is a great thing to have in a marinade, which is why some of the simplest of marinades - soy or teriyaki sauce - are so effective. Just, again, make sure to pat that beef dry before pan-searing it if you want to get any sort of browning going on.
Anecdotally - for what little that's worth - I find that there's very little difference in tenderness whether seasoning with salt briefly before or shortly after cooking (before resting). I've done both and I honestly don't think I could identify which was which in a blind test, except perhaps for the consistency of the "crust" that forms when you really pile on the salt - this is a favourable result for many, and I'll often do this if I'm in the mood.
But all in all, the scientific data on this subject is scant; the results are very inconclusive. And it just doesn't matter that much; the debaters seem to put entirely too much emphasis on this point when there are far more important factors in preparing a great steak or roast, such as additional seasonings, what it's seared in, temperature and heat distribution of the pan, and let's not forget the cut and grade of meat. These things have profound effects on the final result, and if I were obsessive about beef to a fault, then I would concentrate my efforts more on finding better quality ingredients and equipment rather than fussing over the salt issue.
Jaden Hair's technique is to salt curing like a rowboat is to the QE II. I really don't think that even salting for an hour could have much of an effect, especially if you rinse well and pat dry. Cut, hang time, cooking style and seasonings would make far more of a difference.
@Brett: Oh, it has an effect. Coating meat in koshering salt and letting it sit for an hour is exactly what the kashering process does. If you also soaked the meat first, then the only practical difference between your steak and a kosher steak would be how the cow was slaughtered. Now I don't know if you've ever had a kosher steak, but let's just say that it does not have the same reputation as kosher chicken.
Would it mar the flavor with a tough cut, at say an absoloute minimum of 1 inch thick? I'm still skeptical. I would never, ever use her technique on thin steaks, or a tender cut like a T-Bone, Porterhouse or Sirloin, but if you cut strips from the chuck or were using the brisket, I think the technique would make a difference. I guess I'm being so stubborn about this because I used to use a similar technique when I was a starving student to tenderize stew beef to make it edible enough to enjoy in my ramen-noodle stir-fry. I have not had the chance to try this out on a tough cut (graduating FTW)
@Brett: I don't think salting at any time would really mar the flavor, unless you seriously over-salt it. The issue is one of drying it out, so despite what she seems to say, you're just going to end up with an even tougher, drier piece of meat. The inexpensive kosher steaks tend to be so tough that you can't even use them in stir fries after tenderizing them and leaving them in an acid-based marinade for several hours.
Salting beef is no problem at all. The salt can extract water from the meat, but in a marinade it might act slightly like a brine, taking water out and pulling some of the marinade in.
Even outside of a marinade - pulling water out of the beef simply increases its beefiness (umami) flavor. This is the same principle (although different approach) in dry aging beef. For an extreme version of using salt as a tool to pull water out and increase meat quality, see my answer on Rinse the salt off a steak before cooking? Water is generally steamed out of the meat during cooking anyways so you're probably not losing much in terms of juiciness.
The reason we select prime meats is for its marbling of fat. Reasons for ageing beef are to allow it to dry out (remove water). Water in beef serves no purpose other than extending cooking time and steaming the beef. My objective in preparing an expensive cut of beef is to preserve and enhance the flavor and develop the optimum texture. Water makes that difficult. Beef does not get juicy from water but from that expensive fat marbling we look for. In my opinion any technique that removes water from the beef is worth the effort. Salting hours before cooking and then removing the salt before preparing is the best method I've found.
After getting advice from this site, and experimenting on my own, I've settled on a technique I like for cooking a good steak.
I'll marinade tougher cuts of meat in something acidic for about an hour or less. Then, no matter what cut of meat, I pat it dry and add a little salt. Then it sits for 30 minutes to absorb the salt. I might add a little pepper before I cook it, but usually not.
I cook it in a cast iron skillet. Start off with the skillet CRAZY hot and sear both sides of the steak, then lower the heat (but it should still be pretty hot). Cook until an instant-read thermometer tells me the internal temp is about 135.
Take it off the heat and let it rest for about 20 minutes. During this time the internal temp should continue to rise until it hits about 140 or 145 -- perfect medium rare.
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7655 | How do I stop the pressure cooker from clogging up when cooking lentils?
When I cook yellow lentils at home, the valve of the pressure cooker seems to clog up. How do I prevent this? By clog up, I mean that the pressure cooker sits quietly on the burner and then all of a sudden there is a gush of steam coming from the valve. My pan is ten years old. I soak the lentils for a few hours, rinse, and add some oil and salt to the cooking water. The lentils and the water only take up the bottom quarter.
You may need to add more oil, say a generous tablespoon. Also, I don't think you should need to soak those lentils first, the pressure cooker should be more than able to take them apart without any advance soak. Also be sure to use plenty of water. At least 8 cups for 1 pound of beans.
Even in a regular pot, lentils do not need to be soaked before cooking. (They'll take about 30-40 minutes to cook in a non-pressurized pot.)
I started soaking hoping it would reduce the foaming. So it doesn't really help? Do I need a new pressure cooker?
@papin I know this is an old question but I'd like to point out that you are right to soak lentils before cooking. Lentils usually cause gas / bloating when eaten if they are cooked without soaking (for a few hours) as they contain oligosaccharides. Soaking it for a few hours gets rids of it and makes it more digestible (make sure to throw away the water). Please see Lentils: Here’s Why You Should Soak This Protein-Rich Food Before Cooking.
make sure your pressure vent is unclogged. I take a bamboo skewer and shave it down with a pen knife to be able to clean it.
make sure the regulator is clean. I prefer the simple weighted regulator but the types do vary. One cooker I have you need to rotate, push down, and rotate further before it comes apart. (and on the one I bought used, it was filthy with old dried red lentils underneath.)
Are you over-filling the pan? On a six quart/liter cooker a pound of lentils doesn't even require the cooker to be half full of water, even if you don't presoak. Never go over 2/3 full on any cooker when cooking any bean or pulse.
I use a "dash" of olive oil, which may be a over a tablespoon.
Don't have it on the stove on full blast. My cooker has a pin that comes up to lock the lid on sign of first pressure. Turn the stove down a bit before the weight starts to lift, and come up to full pressure a bit more slowly.
One of these will surely work for you.
I have noticed that if I cook the lentils with the seasonings and salt that the dish requires, the foaming is reduced. The more the seasonings, the less foamy the lentils will be.
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10688 | Why does horseradish paste "curdle" when cooked?
I once made a tuna marinade that included some imitation wasabi paste. Usually when I cook like this, once the fish is done I cook down the marinade into a thicker sauce. In this case, the sauce quickly clumps when heated into a goop with a similar appearance and texture of cooked chicken fat. Obviously then I can't use it, so since then I just throw out this marinade since I can't use it without heating it (it had the raw fish in it.)
Why does horseradish do this? I'm assuming that's the culprit ingredient since it's the only unusual thing that I don't have in others that don't have this problem. And in any case, is there something I can do about it, or do I just have to throw this one away?
What other ingredients are in the sauce? Relevant because some of them might help stabilize the marinade if treated in a certain way...
Not sure what else is in your marinade that could be reacting to the horseradish, but since it's an imitation wasabi paste it may have things like corn starch or arrow root in it which will clump if not mixed well and then heated. You might want to just try whisking the heck out of it while it's cooking or using an immersion blender on it when it's done.
I'd say the thing is to heat it gently and stir constantly. Once you get the lumps (if they're from starch), you're not likely to be able to get rid of them effectively, even with a blender.
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4095 | Is it possible to make Sour Cream at home?
I use Sour Cream in several recipes, is there a way to make it from scratch?
YES! it is possible to make Sour Cream at home. I find that the taste isn't that much different than store bought, especially since sour cream is cheap; however, I suggest you start making Plain yogurt. The taste difference is immense
Sour cream is just cultured cream. You want to take fresh cream and then add the correct culture, then let it sit.
One way is to add a small amount of cultured buttermilk (with live cultures) to the cream. Put the mixture in a clean container and leave it in a warm place. In a day or two the cultures will have turned the cream "sour." and it's ready to use. At this point, you can use your fresh sour cream to start other sour creams as well.
Presumably you could use storebought sour cream or yogurt for starter too, right?
Yogurt would probably work, as would, of course, sour cream so long as the cultures are still alive. I'm not sure if they pasteurize those products after they have been cultured, in which case it wouldn't work.
Cultured buttermilk + cream = creme fraiche, not sour cream. The two are related, but sour cream has a much more pronounced sour tang. You need the right culture to make the real sour cream, I am not sure whether it's available for home purchase (but feel that it must be, with all the local farmers and artisan cheese makers). I grew up with real sour cream, made from only cream + added bacteria, and it's a very different animal from what's sold in stores in the U.S. To start with, its fat content is 30-40% (because it's really just heavy cream) and the consistency is much more liquid than store bought, sort of like homemade yogurt, but a little runnier. My mother's old recipes all call for "pouring" sour cream over dishes and adding starch if the dish needs to be thicker.
I'm pretty sure the OP and most people would be happy with something similar to the sour cream that's sold in stores in the US, even if there does exist something better.
How would you know what OP really meant? Amusing that the initial comment was an advice to start making yogurt "because the difference in taste is immense." Well, it's no less immense between homemade and store bought sour cream, but it seems so few people tried it, they wouldn't even know the difference. The texture of the U.S. commercial sour cream comes from carrageenan gum, which is neither here nor there (and I do like it well enough). However, those who go to the extra effort of making their own yogurt will probably find it useful to know what the real thing should look like.
The vast majority of people have only had storebought sour cream, and most people who are familiar enough with the kind you've had also already know how to make it. It's almost certain the OP is talking about typical storebought stuff, and essentially all other readers will be thinking of that too. I'm not saying the difference is small or anything, just that what you think is "real" sour cream is almost certainly not what the question was about, even though many would think it's much better.
Yes, make yogurt instead. I make yogurt only in my clay pots. It comes out really different, very tasty and silkier. And in a day it becomes so thick that i can use it in the place of sour cream with all the recipes.
You don't need clay pots to make thick, silky, tasty yogurt - likely there is something else going on here.
The best way I prefer is just take some properly hung curd and add some double cream to it and ur done....
-1. I don't know what the final product of that would be - some kind of cheese-cream mix - but not sour cream.
I believe this would be the recipe for cottage cheese.
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3899 | How do you fillet fresh salmon?
I want to buy a whole piece of fresh salmon, head to tail intact, and fillet it. Is there a technique that can be shared for a novice?
Filleting a roundfish is really quite easy but is better explained in person or through pictures vs. text. Here's a link that will provide step-by-step photos.
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36717 | Will the ingredients of "baking powder" store indefinitely?
I don't bake as frequently as I used to, so if I decide to bake on some random evening, there's a good chance my baking powder has already lost much of its leavening ability — another trip to the store.
If I just keep baking soda and cream of tartar on hand, will they create "full strength" baking powder, even if they're left to sit around for months or even years (sealed, dry, etc)?
Baking Powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
For all practical purposes, yes. Just don't let moisture get near them.
Both are a single chemical compound which does not react with air. The only thing you have to worry about is entropy, and it will not do anything bad for the next few decades. It doesn't matter if you mix and use the day after buying or years later, unlike the mix, which ages because the components do react over time.
But you still will have suboptimal results when compared to commercial baking powder. In baking, you want a slow and even leavening action, which continues to happen after the cake has started baking. This is why today's baking powder uses multiple ingredients, some of which react at once, others at high temperatures. You cannot do this with your simple mix here. It will still work reasonably well (a century ago nobody had slow-release baking powder and they still made cakes), but you should try and see if the result is good enough for your standards. Also you will have to be more stringent with the baking directions (working very quick once the powder is moistened, not leaving a batch of batter stand around waiting for a free place in the oven, etc.)
You can certainly make your own from the recipe given and it will not begin to react until both ingredients are present along with water, but the issue is that the smaller the quantities, the greater percentage wise the error you get for small measurement errors.
Also, the recipe you have given is for a "single acting" baking powder which begins to expend its strength as soon as it is moistened; many commercial powders have a third ingredient, making them double-acting: part of the leaven occurs when moistened, and part only when heat is added, giving more and more reliable oven spring.
For these reasons, you will probably have better reliability and results with the commercial products.
Under perfect conditions, baking powder will store essentially indefinitely, as the components will not begin to react without the presence of moisture.
In the practical world, once the tin or container is open and begins to be used, small amounts of humidity will condense, and some reactions will occur, slowly weakening the baking powder over time.
Still, this is very slow. If you don't open it much, and keep it in an airtight container, it should last a very long time indeed, at least a year, perhaps more.
I would recommend:
Buy the smallest container.
Store it in a small zip locked bag to keep out air (and humidity)
Don't open it or leave it open when you are not using it.
You should get one, and probably several, years of use from it.
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835 | Is there any difference between bakers yeast and regular yeast?
I'm looking at this bread recipe and it says to use "Bakers Yeast" but when I make pizza dough I just use regular yeast (which I also have in my cupboard at the moment). So I'm wondering if I could just use my regular yeast instead of bakers yeast?
There is certainly a difference between different yeasts. Different kinds of yeast react differently, are "happy" at different temperature ranges, produce different amounts of gas, live for different amounts of time. In my little world, however, it's better to use a yeast that you use commonly and understand than it is to experiment with a different yeast that may not behave the way you expect.
The thing is "baker's yeast" is a generic term. If it called for rapid rise yeast, and all you had was active dry yeast, I'd say to go out and buy some, or your bread would become flat. Chances are, you have one of those two kinds. They both work in most recipes, but each have their peculiarities, and you need to adjust.
I'd give it a shot, and see how it comes out. If your bread ends up "whacky", then try something else.
I would propably give it a whack with the most common yeast in the country, in Denmark that would be "compressed yeast" I think the english term is.
Probably what you have in your cupboard is Baker's yeast. Baker's yeast is a pretty generic term and could refer to instant yeast or active dry yeast. I'm not sure what your recipe is asking for.
There is a brief explanation of types of yeast here: Beauty and the Yeast
I hope this helps.
According to wikipedia, bakers yeast comes in many different types, one of which is active dried yeast, which I think is 'regular' yeast. So to answer your question, no i don't think there is any difference save for the moisture content, and therefore how you might need to use it.
'regular' depending on where you live, see comment on Satanicpuppy's answer
indeed, which is why I quoted it. according to wikipedia danish 'regular' (compressed yeast as you said) is one of the forms of bakers yeast as is active dried, which would be 'regular' yeast in the UK, and I think America. I assume that anyone referring to it as 'regular' is from the US.
per SF baking institute: Active dry can be used at 50% of the weight of fresh yeast and instant dry can be used at 40% of the weight of fresh. Based on the recommendation of the yeast manufacturers, most people are under the impression that 33% is the proper conversion for instant yeast. This is true for an industrial process, but 40% is better in the artisan process, when dough temperatures are generally lower
I have found unless specific, receipes use active dry in the US. Instant requires no proofing but I do it anyway, if it bubbles its still alive
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8683 | What's the difference between Greek and Bulgarian Feta Cheese
I went to buy some feta cheese today and noticed that there was both Greek and Bulgarian feta. I was wondering what the differences are between the two and can they be suitably substituted for each other?
I can't speak to all the Bulgarian feta style cheeses (technically called sirene as others have noted), but I can speak to the ones commonly available in NYC - they are softer and creamier, the texture is somewhere between feta and unripened goat cheese. The taste is also milky sweet with a bit of a lemony tang. It's not as hard as Greek feta, so the crumbles will eventually turn into a paste. They're somewhat interchangeable.
Having worked for some time as a cheesemonger, I found that Bulgarian Feta was generally saltier and more assertive than many Greek fetas. I also found the texture to be a bit grainier with the Bulgarian feta and a bit more dense. However, my experiences are limited in that while I sold five different Greek fetas, I only sold one Bulgarian Feta. I'll also point out that while Feta is historically made with goat milk, it can also be made with sheep milk or cow milk as well, so one has to take the milk source into consideration also (for a quick overview, cow feta will generally be mellow and creamy, while sheep, and particularly goat feta will be more acidic. But even then, the brine can completely counteract these generalizations!).
A deli near me also carries "Hungarian Double-Cream Feta", which is delicious. It's much softer and smoother than most other fetas, with a very strong flavor. If you can find it anywhere near where you live I recommend it.
@JSBangs, ooh, that sounds lovely. It would probably make an out-of-this-world kőrözött... damn, now I'm hungry.
In my experience, the only difference is country of origin. There can be bigger differences between different brands of Greek feta cheese than between any given Greek feta and Bulgarian feta.
The difference is that Bulgarian Feta simply does not exist. There is Bulgarian cheese similar to Feta and it's called Sirene, which has several different variations, depending on the milk used : originally it was made with sheep's milk, but nowadays it's mostly made of cow's milk, with the sheep's milk and buffalo's milk versions being considered delicacy.
(Real) Bulgarian Sirene is usually greasier, less crumbly and with more full-bodied taste than Feta, especially the Feta that isn't actually Greek. Sirene is known under the name Bulghari in Lebanon and Bulgarit in Israel, where they easily make difference between Sirene and Feta.
To sum it up, the difference between Sirene and Feta is just as the difference between Brie and Camembert - they are different kinds of cheese made in different geographic areas.
Interesting point. But international cooking terms are more complicated than that. For example, Dutch has no word for Gouda-style cheese; they only use the word "cheese" for gouda. Still, the correct English way to refer to a Stolwijk cheese is "gouda", because it was made by a process shared with other gouda cheeses, even though the final result differs from a Beemster in taste. Similarly, while Bulgarians call Bulgarian-style feta "sirene", which means just "cheese", it is still correct, in English, to call it "Bulgarian feta" even though it is a different subtype of feta than the Greek one.
In the Balkans they have what they call "white" cheese and feta. The white cheese is more consistent with American style feta cheese (although less salty and not as dry) and Bulgaria is very well known for producing this style of cheese. The feta cheese produced in the region is nothing like American feta and is smooth and creamy (almost the consistency of cream cheese) and therefore you would never crumble it. Feta is typically sliced and eatin on the side or cubed and placed in salads. Also, feta can be made from cows milk, this was my favorite
I suspect when importers sell these two cheeses to foreigners they don't differentiate between the two types of cheeses. American feta isn't even similar to Greek style feta cheese. To be honest, I don't even remember seeing Bulgarian feta cheese, only French and Greek.
This question has become difficult to answer due to the politics that the EU plays with it's member countries. As you can guess EU countries are patriotic to their own countries interests much more so than to an actual "European UNION". The EU is an economic construct. Keep that in mind when asking this question, as some answers will come from patriotic Greeks, and Bulgarians, and even from people with those heritages even though they are not citizens of those countries.
On to the question at hand. The political answer, which is relevant to EU countries, is also an answer based on the legality of using the word "Feta".
Why? Because Greece finally received "protected" status for the cheese called "feta", and with that, the only country that can produce this type of white cheese and call it "feta" is Greece. Other EU countries that also produce this very same cheese, even when using the same ingredients and processes, can not name their product "feta".
How is Bulgarian "feta" different or similar to Greek feta? The differences will lay in the base flavor profile of the milk used.
Basically both of these cheeses are "feta", as they use the same basic recipe and process, as long as they are using at least 70% sheep mile and 30% goat milk.
Cow milk "feta" uses the same process, but it's flavor profile is quite different.
Then again, which is a truer feta, a Bulgarian or French cheese using 100% sheep milk, or a Greek cheese using 70% sheep and 30% goat milk blend?
The truth is that this salty white cheese, that the world has come to know as "Feta", has been made in the Balkan region for centuries. Bulgaria is in the Balkans as is Greece, as are all the countries formerly part of Yugoslavia, and Albania.
In Slavic speaking Balkan countries feta is simply called "sirenje/sirene". This word literally translates to "cheese", yes, simply "cheese". That's due to how old and indigenous this product has been to the whole Balkan region. This cheese is cheese to this region as the peoples of this region.
For Greece to claim that all "feta" style cheese is Greek in origin, and can only be truly called "feta" only if made in Greece, is simply putting politics and patriotism in front of historical reality. The word "Feta" came into the Greek language and lexicon only since the 17th century, not the thousands of years that Greece claims. And, it's largely agreed upon that the word "feta" comes from and Italian word "fetta" meaning "slice".
Thus, even the word "feta" is relatively new compared to how long this type of cheese has been made in the region.
Greece is playing politics, rather successfully, in order to now corner the market on "feta" cheese, as it's become a very popular cheese around the world. In the USA, many restaurants serve "Greek salad". This salad comes with various ingredients as there is no universal "Greek salad" in the US, but the reason why it's "Greek" is because of the inclusion of feta cheese. I've seen "Greek salad" that is basically iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and olives, with some crumbled feta cheese, and that inclusion somehow makes it "Greek". Global marketing is the reason why "feta" has become known as being "Greek".
I think the EU was wrong when they made their decision. But, if they feel compelled to throw Greece a bone, then they shouldn't exclude other Balkan countries who also have historical claim to this type of cheese. Let Greece keep and use the word "Feta" for this cheese made in Greece. But also allow other countries that also make this cheese call it
"Feta-style" cheese. Forcing them to use a completely different word will also hurt their economies. Why should Greece's economy be any more important than the others?
I've eaten a lot of feta cheese in my 47yrs, and began eating it as a stable food in my diet since I was able to eat that type of food.
Not all Greek made feta is identical. Not all French feta is identical. Not all Yugoslavian feat is identical, and not all Bulgarian feta is identical.
Great, I say. This is how it should be, as long as the basic recipe and procedure is followed, the resulting texture and flavor profile differences is what makes it great to actually try different feta's. If all we have for feta is a Greek government mandated recipe, think how boring this type of cheese would be.
Having various levels of sheep to goat milk, or all of one or the other, adds it's own unique character to this type of cheese. The different grasses and varying minerals and content in the water the sheep and goats consumer will directly translate to the flavor profile of a particular feta. Why limit this to only one country, especially since a whole region has claim to it?
Even French feta adds it's uniqueness to the world of feta. I really like the creaminess and sweetness of French feta. But, it's not the best feta for certain recipes and uses.
That's the beauty of allowing variation.
I'm all for the product having a specific base that must be honored so that it can be called a "feta", like using only sheep and goat milk. There's even room for cow's milk feta as long as the producer clearly shows on the packaging that they are not selling a true sheep and goat feta, but a different cow milk type feta.
Again, the problem is politics, patriotism, and protectionism where it doesn't belong.
I will start by saying that the term "Feta" can only be used for a certain kind of cheese produced in the greek mainland or the island of Lesvos. Feta is a white cheese produced from a mixture of goats' and sheeps' milk (30% and 70% respectively) and then cured in brine for at least two months. There are lots of other things that have to hold true for a cheese to be considered "Feta" and to be able to have this name legally.
It is true though that because of the different diets of the animals in different parts of Greece, they can vary a lot in how they taste or on their texture (softer or more firm.) In addition the duration of maturing can make a huge difference in how they taste.
In the European Union the only cheese that can be legally called Feta is:
1) Greek
2) Adhere to the rules I stated at the begining.
That doesn't mean that there aren't other excellent white cheeses (made from goat, sheep pr even cows' milk.) But they cannot be called "Feta"
I suspect this doesn't apply outside the EU. Here in Britain the supermarkets stock "greek style goat's cheese", where in the US they can probably legally call it feta.
This is part of the Protected Geographical Status framework (PSG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Geographical_Status). It is only enforced within the EU. The US is heavily opposed as they make their own products using those names already. Feta in particular has PDO status (Protected Designation of Origin) which is the most strict criteria, it would be illegal to sell anything called Feta in the EU unless the criteria specified above hold. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2002:277:0010:0014:EN:PDF
@slim : correct, the US doesn't enforce (and for the most part ignores) European PDO status ... they might accept a copyright on the name, though. The only PDO-like term that I'm aware of in the US is Bourbon. Vidalia Onions are actually handled through trademark.
It originated in the geographical area of Macedonia and was made by then Bulgarians living in that geographical area which today is divided between the Republic of Macedonia, Greece and Bulgaria.
So you can call it
1. Siren(y)e
1. Bulgarian White Cheese
2. Macedonian White Cheese
3. (Just)White Cheese
So are you saying that there isn't a difference between them?
There is a difference but my comment was edited. The difference is that the "greek feta" is a bad copy unknown to the local peoples living in the region. The sirene as local balkan peoples know it is far superior to the "greek feta" version that is available in the USA. The only reason that made it popular in the west is that Greece was on the other side of the iron curtain. None of the local Balkan peoples would touch the "greek feta" as it is not salty, not grainy and not flavorful enogugh compared to the "sirene" (bulgarian or maceodnian feta as you know it).
The real Bulgarian sirene and yogurt have another very small ingidient that makes them specific and different. This is Lactobacillus delbrueckii subspecies bulgaricus the bacteria that turns the milk into cheese or yougurt.
As I read the facts, the name comes from the fact that the bacteria was identified by a Bulgarian. It doesn't seem to be the case that it is only found in Bulgarian yoghurt.
Being a great fan and quite familiar with both kinds - Greek Feta and Bulgarian White Sirene (spelled as " 'sireneh "), by eating them both with great pleasure for decades, I could say, that there are so many kinds of these cheeses, depending on the region, process/producer, season, breed/breeding, grass/grazing, etc., that sometimes even the best professional can't make the difference between the Bulgarian and the Greek version.
My opinion is that Feta and Sirene are just two names in different languages of two same things. Yes, Bulgarian sirene is a little more greasy and non-crumbly. And I prefer the taste of Bulgarian sheep white cheese Balkan than every Greek Feta. Cow's cheeses are almost the same.
I remember the times thirty years ago when white Bulgarian sheep sirene in tins and especially the more famous Bulgarian Yellow Cheese - the legendary Kashkaval, or in Greek - Kasheri, branded RODOPA - the single Bulgarian state producer at that time, was sold more or less legally on Bardari Market in Salonica and other markets and all Greeks used to search and buy them as the best quality cheeses at incredibly low price. Greek tourists in Sofia used to go back home oftenly with one or several blocks of kashkaval each. Now there are many Greek producers who managed to achieve the taste of these popular cheeses and to fill the market with high quality production, though at ~50% higher prices than the Bulgarian ones.
These two cheeses are the most popular on Bulgarian and Greek market, and also in all other Balkan countries, thousands of tons are been eaten, and the great Bulgarian Shopska Salad or Greek Horiatiki or Tirokafteri Salads are impossibly to be made without a goodly piece of white/feta cheese, seasoned with a cup of olive oil, though there are lots more great and expensive cheeses produced by diaries from both countries as types of Gruyer/Graviera, Mozarella, Parmigiano, Blue and Green Roquefort, Brie, Camembert, Gouda, Cheddar, Gorgonzolla, etc.
My beloved Greek friends are very sensible, emotional and jelaous when they patriotically defend their confidence that the white cheese is invented by ancient Hellens, but the truth is that there are no certain evidences where exactly the first feta cheese has been produced - on Greek, or Bulgarian or even on Turkish territory. Some evidences show Thracians and Slovians and even the Huns, as ancient producers of cheeses as well, so speaking without hard evidences in hand, is nonsense.
Let's just sit all together around the rich table near the beach of Kassandra and to meet the sunset with icy divine wines, wonderful cheeses and sweet talks.
Well, cow's milk is a no-no for me - this is a Balkan cheese, so whether greek or bulgarian it should be made with sheep and/or goat's milk. Sheep and goat's live in mountains, not huge industrial scale cow herds.
The worst are the cow's milk 'feta' style cheeses made in denmark. Too soft and foamy, none of that fresh fizz or tanginess you get with sheep and goat.
In my opinion the Bulgarian sheep sirene is the most consistently good, but some Greek 'aged' goat/sheep feta are just as good.
Is there an answer to the actual question that was asked in here somewhere?
First, in Denmark, the word "feta" is used for a completely different kind of cheese, it is a homonym. Second, there are lots of cow herds on the Balkan peninsula, and at least in the last 70 years, cow feta has been more common in Bulgaria than sheep or goat.
As a Bulgarian born and living in US, I can say that the white cheese we all know is just WHITE CHEESE. FETA is a name imposed by the Greek companies in US already years, so everybody accept that all white cheeses are FETA, or all "Greek Yogurts" are "Greek", although the original yogurt comes from Bulgaria (check Whole Food, $5, glass jar). There is a slightly difference as the Bulgarian one is more smooth as a texture (buy from local Bulgarian or Arabic markets but insist on Bulgarian made). Some say that is salty, the all you need is to keep it in tap water a night and the next day will be smooth as cream cheese but with much more less fat, 12%. The White Cheese is known as one of the less cholesterol cheeses in the world along with the Parmesan and the Fresh Mozzarella.
The question is about feta, not yogurt, and it's really hard to tell what you're actually saying about feta - it's certainly not the case that all white cheese is feta.
My experience has shown me that the main difference between Bulgarian and Greek Feta cheeses is that the Bulgarian is more creamy and tasty than the Greek version. For example, a week ago I went to the grocery store in Grand Cayman to look for Greek Feta cheese, in order to make the famous Bulgarian "Shopska" salad. Well, I just made the salad and ate some of it, but the salad does not taste authentic. The only reason why I bought Greek Feta is that there isn't any Bulgarian Feta sold here. As I had done several years ago in the U.S., I will never repeat my purchase again, because I just find the Greek Feta as having a fake (not as strong) taste compared to Bulgarian Feta. It looks the same (well - drier), but I can't seem to taste the aroma as I can with the Bulgarian. Normally, I can eat "Shopska" salad every day, but it turns out that I would rather not eat it at all, unless made with Bulgarian Feta. I have to mention that I am a Bulgarian so I might be biased, but my wife is from the Carribbean and she feels the same way. She just never even wants to taste the "Shopska" salad I make if I don't use the Bulgarian Feta for it. The same goes for all my friends that have tried both kinds. Again, this is just my own experience and it is mostly based on the Greek Feta sold outside of Europe and the Bulgarian Feta sold in Bulgaria and the U.S. (specialty stores).
When it comes to Yoghurt, I have similar experience, except for the fact that I like Greek yoghurt better than Greek Feta. I just don't understand why they always strain it. Bulgarian yoghurt is the best tasting one in my opinion as well. I have tried many different kinds of yoghurt since I now live outside Bulgaria, but none of them compares, save the Greek one. However, when I make yoghurt using Greek one as a base, it does not become as tasty as when I make yoghurt using Bulgarian one as a base. Not to mention that there are some specific things prepared from yoghurt in Bulgaria, such as, Tarator (cold summer soup) and Airyan (cold drink made by mixing water and yoghurt), that just do not taste right if prepared with yoghurt other than Bulgarian. Bulgarian yoghurt just seems to be a bit more sour and flavorfull.
And just so that I don't come by as bashing all things Greek, I would like to mention that I love Greek food and the country of Greece as well! Just try both types of Feta and make up your mind which tastes better for you and you will be set. In theory, they can be used interchangeably.
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8512 | What is the best oil to use when cooking in a wok?
I like cooking a lot of stir-fry which I generally cook in a wok at high temperature. I generally use vegetable oil but I've also heard peanut oil is better for wok cooking because of it's high smoking point.
Is peanut oil the best option for wok cooking or are there better oils to use?
Frying in a wok doesn't necessarily imply a single particular oil for all foods you cook. It may vary up to the ingredients, the technique (yes, there is more than one wok technique), the recipe, personal preferences, price etc.
As a general rule, as you've mentioned in your question, wok techniques require relatively high temperatures so oils with reasonably high smoking points should be preferred, for sure. Depending on its type and the temperature you want to reach, peanut oil may be or may not be suitable for the task.
This table and this list reveals that peanut oil is not the one with the highest smoking point and there are significant differences between the smoking points of the types of peanut oils.
As a result, I don't think that a "best oil" can be named, but I believe -some type(s) of- peanut oil would be fine for many purposes --and it is a must for some recipes. Still, some other oils can be used in the light of what I mentioned above. For example, I prefer sunflower oil in many cases.
peanut oil is considered the "best" oil to use in the wok because of its high smoking point. We buy large containers of it from our local asian market.
I also use grapeseed oil because it also has good smoking point qualities, and you don't need to use as much oil where you would with other varieties.
Look at this question and answers. Beware of health issues with saturated fats.
This question (http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/701/what-oil-or-fat-to-use-for-different-purposes/) also adds value.
My typical goto oil for my wok is grapeseed oil. It has a fairly neutral flavour and is supposedly good for you.
I use either vegetable, ground nut or peanut (think they are the same/simliar).
I also add a splash of seasame oil at the end of cooking for flavour.
If in doubt, grapeseed oil is your best bet for any high-heat cooking for 2x specific reasons:
Grapeseed can be heated to a higher temperature before it begins to smoke, allowing you to use it at a higher temperature before imparting a burnt flavor.
It has a very mild flavor that blends easily with whatever you're cooking.
It's perfectly suited for stir-fry, pan-frying, sauteing. Add to that that it's a healthy oil and the only reason not to use it is that it's more expensive--but nothing crazy.
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38098 | Why cook green plantains?
Many cookbooks and chefs recommend cooking green plantains before eating them. Is it just because of all the starch? Or are there any toxins as in sprouting potatoes? Does the ratio of amylose to amylopectin have anything to do with the recommendation?
Have you ever eaten a raw green plantain? YUCK!
Cookbooks and chefs would probably recommend cooking potatoes before eating too.
In my experience, both amylase and amylopectin taste bad when uncooked. It is probably more the ratio of sugar to starch which is important here. (Starches turn to sugar while ripening).
I stumbled on this page while looking for solution to stomach upset after eating a meal of unripe plantain. I now suspect that it was not well cooked. I had indigestion all night. Thsnks for your response.
According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) "Banana and plantain do not contain significant levels of any toxic principles." Raw, unripe plantains can be difficult to digest, especially if eaten in large quantities. Doing so can lead to upset stomach. This may be due to the fact that they contain starches resistant (RS2) to digestive enzymes, compounds that inhibit salivary amylase production, and significant quantities of amylose.
Raw, unripe plantains and bananas also have a starchy or waxy texture and a bitter flavor which can be unpalatable.
If you eat a brown very ripe Plantain, they taste just like a banana. Any plantain that is green or yellow, will taste better peeled and cooked.Be sure to use a peeler for this as it is almost impossible to take the skin off of an unripe plantain.
@JanDoggen how so? The question says nothing about flavor.
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81793 | What is French couscous?
In the US some supermarkets carry several varieties of couscous in their bulk sections, one of which is labeled French couscous. How does it differ from the other varieties of bulk grains called couscous? Is it just a matter of shape?
It's not a grain. It's actually a form of pasta. And no idea on the French stuff. "Israeli couscous" is the only named variety that I'm familiar with, and it's not really couscous.
You don't mean something like this do you? http://img.21food.com/20110609/product/1211847925968.jpg
French couscous typically refers to the style in how it's cooked, not a difference in the grain. Do you have a brand or picture available? Are there any added ingredients or is just sold as plain bulk?
Our local Whole Foods stopped carrying what they call French Couscous in the bulk section and I wanted to order it online. The obvious difference with the couscous in the other bin was the size of the grains but maybe there is also a difference in how it is manufactured. The semolina can be soaked with different liquids (water, eggs whites, milk) and a variety of flours can be added or not before the rolling and forming. Before I can order it online I need to figure out what I used to buy and I have very little to go by except the name used by Whole Foods.
Seems like it might be a name unique to Whole Foods perhaps, maybe used for marketing purposes (remember 'asparagus water'?) - Seems the safest bet is to ask your local Whole Foods (they were always very accommodating when I asked my local).. note the basic types of couscous here: https://www.thespruce.com/types-of-couscous-1809217 - maybe they had a subform of one of those, perhaps manufactured in France and they just labeled it as such.
French couscous (as in couscous sold in france) is normally quite small and quick cooking (in fact you can just pour on boiling water, cover and leave for a few minutes). This is the default here in the UK too, where larger types are often called "giant couscous". I can't answer for American terminology though
My guess is that what they call French couscous is really Lebanese couscous in marketing disguise. The Lebanese speak French, and calling it Lebanese might put people off due to their political leanings. French is probably just more palatable. Kind of like creating the term canola oil in favor of trying to market rapeseed oil.
Canola can also be trademarked, which is how people protect food names in the US (eg, apple variety names). And it's specifically rapeseed oil low in erucic acid. that's the 'la' at the end (Low Acid))
Couscous is balls of crushed durum wheat semolina, essentially a pasta. It is a staple in the countries of North Africa, but has also become common in many countries in Europe and North America. I have found no indication that "French" couscous differs in any way from traditional couscous.
Okay yes canola also has other aspects for its name. Other examples of renaming are nyjer birdseed and orange roughy fish (aka pacific slime head).
The bag of ‘French’ couscous I made last night went wonderfully with the braised lamb with vegetables, clementine, and kumquat stout stew. The balls were about the same size as lentils, bigger than Israeli couscous.
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7102 | Can lemon juice concentrate be used after the use-by-date?
My lemon juice concentrate's use by date passed a few months ago. It was kept it in the fridge the whole time. Is it still safe to use it?
I didn't realize those things had use-by dates... Just checked the bottle in the back of my fridge: Sept 26, 2009...
I also typically use bottled lemon juice, as my budget does not allow for fresh lemons.
Stilltasty says you should use the bottle within a week, but I've had success with keeping it much, much longer.
That said, this is one item that will not usually work well past its best-by date, I've found.
Maybe in the future, you could freeze it in cubes if you can't use it soon enough?
I just used lemon juice concentrate 1 1/2 years after the best-by date to cook with fish and it was fine. Citric acid is literally a preservative. Why not? What is supposed to preserve the preservatives?
With any food, when you are getting to months past the use by date, it would be wise to throw it out. Odds are that it is more an issue of the taste deteriorating, but why take any chances?
Agreed! Why take chances on ruining a dish? +1 once I can vote again.
Even if it is more acidic and concentrated... in the end it is a fruit juice, and fruit juices tend to spoil comparatively quick even in the fridge (very high water activity that anything that can deal with the acidity can take advantage of).
While that's true of fruit juices in general, lemon juice is significantly more acidic than most juices, which prevent most bacterial growth (or slow it significantly). Food safety organizations like state agencies will generally recommend that it can be stored safely in the fridge for up to a year or so.
lemon juice is the ingredient used to preserve fruit juices.
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6691 | Sautéing vs Frying vs Caramelizing -- what's the difference?
What's the difference between sautéing, frying, and caramelizing?
When I cook chopped onions in a pan with oil until they are brown and have a slightly sweet taste, which of the above is the correct term for what I am doing?
Almost a duplicate: What's the difference between pan frying, sauteing, and shallow frying?.
To answer the second part of your question, you would have to define what you mean by "cook". What exactly are you doing to cook them?
I've never really considered there to be a real difference between sautéing and frying. They both mean to cook in a hot pan with a little bit of fat. However there isn't a lot of consistency online. It doesn't look like there's any sort of definitive answer here. Some points of view:
They're the same, although frying might involve slightly more oil. The terms are essentially interchangeable. This is the top hit on a google search "sauteing frying" (although this question is on the first page!).
As Aaronut says, sautéing involves jumping the food while frying involves a little more oil and less flipping or stiring of the food. Here's another source for this definition. This definition makes a delineation between pan frying and shallow frying.
Frying is the same as shallow frying and involves partially submerging the food in oil. Food is normally breaded first. There's no distinction between frying and shallow frying. This is Martha Stewart's definition.
As you can see, it's really all over the map, and that was just from the first page of the google results. I think we're getting in to issues with language changing beneath us. However, I think the safest bet is probably that sautéing involves a lot of stirring, frying doesn't, and I should consider refining my own definitions.
Caramelizing (which fortunately doesn't have any of the same confusion) is a process that happens during cooking when sugar oxidizes. There are many different ways that you can achieve this effect. One of the ways is to sauté or fry (depending on your definition) something until the water sweats out and the remaining sugar heats up.
So the answer is that you are caramelizing the onions by sautéing (or maybe frying) them.
Also, great description in the last sentence. I didn't really make it clear in my answer that you're still technically sautéing/frying when you caramelize. +1 again if I could :)
@stephen, I'm pretty sure you get all your rep by following me around and quickly copying my answers. I'm on to you! ;o)
@yossarian: Hmm...I am a programmer...maybe I wrote a quick script that follows you, rewrites based on a dictionary, and posts quickly enough that it looks legit! ;)
...my mission today is to bend the laws of space and time and beat you by a minute on at least one answer :)
@stephen, I like the way you think! Can you write me one of those for hobodave?
@yossarian: BANNED!!1
You're banned, @yossarian!1!
@hobodave, sweet. The script even works for comments!
@aaronut, I've updated my answer. I'm not convinced that either of us was correct (or that there even is a "correct" on this subject) and I've reflected that in my answer.
Looks good to me.
That was a fast script write @yossarian...mine doesn't do comments...think you can toss me a copy on the sly? :) Also great updates to your answer. It really is a confusing set of terms.
I would argue the difference between sautéing and pan frying is in the movement of the pan.
Sautéing comes from the french, sauté meaning to jump. So sautéing is very much a western form of stir-frying.
For pan-frying I generally think of eggs, steak, etc, where the food is put into the pan and left, perhaps being flipped once or twice, but otherwise static.
To me, frying can be two things, pan frying and deep frying. Deep frying is using a lot of fat to completely cover the item in question. Pan frying usually implies larger items such as meats (imagine a breaded chicken cutlet or a nice steak). Sautéing usually implies smaller items (onions and peppers). Some people differentiate the two by the amount of fat used - sautéing would have less, and pan frying slightly more. In most cases, you can use the terms pan frying and sautéing interchangeably and get your point across. Both need relatively high heat.
Caramelizing, on the other hand, is what you're doing. Caramelizing is generally "low and slow" - low heat, for a longer period of time. If you're extracting a sweet flavor from the onions, that's almost definitely from caramelization, the extraction/oxidation of the onion's natural sugars.
Edit: As yossarian pointed out, caramelizing is a process that can occur when you sauté or pan-fry.
In my opinion, "Frying" is the term used when using oil (canola, olive, corn, etc.). and "Sauteing" is the term used when using butter. The heat differences are valid points, but I believe it comes down to the type of fat used.
Do you have sources? The type of fat is never a factor anywhere I have looked, including professional cooking textbooks.
There might be a correlation - authors more likely to say "fry" when using oil, and "saute" when using butter, but this is definitely not a definition. It's very common for recipes to say "saute" when using oil.
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12163 | Why do some instructions tell you how long to preheat an oven for?
Why is it that on some directions it says something like "preheat an oven for 400 for 10 minutes"?
Is it not enough to preheat the oven until the oven signals (i.e. usually with a beep) that the desired temperature has been reached? Are there any advantages to waiting longer even though the oven remains at the same temperature?
There are some ovens out there that beep after a given amount of time, if they've hit the correct temperature or not.
Most of the residential ovens I've dealt with likely aren't at 400F within 10 minutes. It's possible that the recipe writer wants the dish going in before preheating is finished, but they have no way of knowing how long it takes your oven to heat up, so those instructions are going to give inconsistent results.
Indeed, my oven does this. I finally got an oven thermometer the other day and tested it at 400° F. It set the timer for 6 minutes and beeped at the end. Going by the thermometer, it took nearly a half hour to actually come up to temp.
@Aaronut: I am always astounded at how few people seem to realise the degree of need for the preheating of ovens. Your experience of half an hour is not unusual at high heats, and I regularly see people bung high-heat needing food in after 10 minutes or less.
Many ovens, particularly older ovens, do not beep.
Indeed it is not uncommon that they have no temperature indication at all, particularly on gas ovens.
So the preheat timing for an oven is usually an indication from the author of the recipe that the oven needs preheating with a guide to how long you might wish to wait, usually intended as a minimum.
I have known some recipes to instruct food be put in the oven before temperature is reached for various odd reasons, that's not common, but does happen.
I should've said 'indicate they're at temp' ... mine (electric) has a light (that goes off, to make it even more confusing), no beeping involved.
@Joe: My oven has no temperature gauge, indicator, or any other form of notification. There is obviously a control for the temperature, but no external notification as to whether or not the oven is at it. A thermometer has to be introduced to determine current temperature - this is not at all uncommon in gas ovens.
@Joe: Also. Shame, quite handy if it beeped for that. I use the timer clock on my oven a lot!
Not really, as most of 'em can't be trusted ... it's really safer to keep an oven thermometer and check .. as some go by time, if you have a pizza stone in there, they'll always be wrong.
@Joe: Aye, too true. Why they bother including such a feature if it is timed, is a mystery. I suppose electric ovens usually have a fairly reliable heating profile. Gas ovens vary on local pressure, which varies depending on what other people in your neighbourhood are doing! Part of why I prefer electric ovens, but always gas hobs mind.
When using a baking stone, for example for artisan breads and pizza, there are some additional reasons for the long preheat time.
With a baking stone, the recipe might advice you to preheat the oven for as much as thirty to sixty minutes. The reason is to heat the stone properly and to dry out the air inside the oven.
If, like mine, your oven hasn't got a light, sometimes you can twiddle the temperature nob down until you hear a faint tick - that's the thermostat inside the oven clicking off. Where your temperature nob is at is the current temperature of the oven (at the thermostat, obviously). I keep checking using that technique every couple of minutes (remembering to reset the nob to my target temp between), until the tick is on or near the target temperature.
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56804 | Cleaning a moldy Ninja Blender so it is again safe for use?
I have a ninja blender that was left in the fridge for too long and has a mold problem.
When I found it, I washed it with piping hot water heated by our gas water heater. I've read some other places you have to use bleach and then let it dry out; but I want to know what to do for sure, so I'm asking the question here.
Bleach is safe to use, rinse well and air dry. I would be sure to use diluted bleach so as not to damage any rubber parts.
You can also use vinegar but it will not remove stains as bleach does.
Can you be a little more specific? For instance how many parts bleach or vinegar?
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92524 | Should I use raw beets in my smoothie recipe?
I have a smoothie recipe which requires beets, and having never prepared raw beets, but only ever pulled the, from a pre-canned jar, I'm wondering how to proceed.
I'm reading the cookbook "100 Best Smoothies & Juices" and making Beet, Pear and Spinach juice from page 96.
The part I don't understand is the ingredient named 1 beet, trimmed, peeled and chopped.
No where does it say to cook the beets; but everyone I've asked about this has said that you have to biol them first.
It sounds like this a juice recipe, not a smoothie recipe. It may work if you put it in your blender, as I've seen recipes for smoothies with similar ingredients like this one but it will probably need some more liquid.
When you juice, you definitely use raw fruits and vegetables but you need to run it through a juicer which will remove most of the solids, which is why you generally don't see any liquids added to the recipe.
We use raw beets in our juices all the time and, while they sometimes have a very earthy flavor, they do add a lot of sweetness. I've found the earthiness can be balanced with a little lemon juice.
... Anyway, if you want to make a smoothie with these ingredients (though I can't see the entire recipe), you can certainly follow the one I linked to earlier, which very clearly states that you use raw beets.
If you do want to follow this recipe, I can tell you that it pretty much is guaranteed to be calling for raw beets, simply because it doesn't say to cook them. Canned beets are generally already trimmed and peeled, if not chopped, so these steps don't make much sense to list.
While I wouldn't want to eat a raw beet like an apple, you don't need to cook it to consume it in a liquid form.
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113394 | What should I use to clean out a plastic bucket I am planning on using to store food in?
I want to store some rice in a plastic bucket with a lid that I picked up at the hardware store.
But the plastic bucket hasn't been cleaned out, and I don't know what is safe to clean it with given that we would eventually be boiling, but then eating the food. What cleaner would be safe to use on this? I thought bleach would do the trick but I'm not sure.
What, if anything, was in the bucket before?
I prefer to stick with food grade buckets, most easily found from foodservice operations that get food in buckets.
For those, hot water and baking soda are key for removing the smell of the previous food if it was smelly, after washing with soap for basic cleaning. i.e. olive kegs are handy, but I can wash them by hand repeatedly, in the dishwasher repeatedly, and still tell that they were olive kegs by sticking my nose in and sniffing. But a few iterations of hot water and baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) left to soak and they don't smell like anything any more. Also works for peppers, pickles, molasses and other odors that soak into plastic.
A hardware store new empty bucket that wasn't used for anything, but which is not marked as food grade (such as the "fork and wineglass" symbol being molded into it) is probably OK for storing rice, but I would not use one for wet food storage (pickles, etc.) and would prefer a food-grade bucket even for rice, myself.
A bucket that had non-food chemicals stored in it I would not use for food storage at all, no matter how well cleaned out it was, barring some sort of post-apocalyptic scenario where I could either starve or use a cleaned out paint or grease or detergent bucket to haul food in.
Another option is to put the food in food-safe bags, and put the bags in the (non-food-safe) bucket for ease of moving and protection from damage, rodents, etc. The food only touches the bag, not the bucket.
Yes, it's a fresh bucket from the hardware store, nothing else has ever been stored in it to my knowledge unless they did something at the hardware store.
The rice we have is stored in plastic bags already, but the weevils that are around seem to be getting into the plastic with the rice (and dying) which is why we bought the bucket. I'll have to look for the food safety symbol on the bucket; We did not intend on storing any wet food in there.
@leeand00 what about putting the plastic bags full of rice into the bucket?
"In plastic containers, over and above the prescribed resin identification codes (viz; ♳, ♴, ♷, ♸), the food safe assurance is required because the resin identification codes do not explicitly communicate the food safe property (or more significantly, the lack of it)." – Food contact materials ... So, not 4, 5, or 7, and it has to have the "food safe" logo. (if those symbols are unclear, they're 1, 2, 3, and 6)
If you are worried about the virus, then soap or dishwashing soap is better rather than using bleach for washing plastic buckets, the smell from bleach would stick your plastic bucket.
If you aren't convinced it is safe using only soap, you can try to disinfect it with alcohol, just spray it or swap it.
There’s a great cleaner and disinfectant that kills 99.9 percent of Bacteria and fungus and it’s called spray nine. If you’re concerned about the coronavirus any cleaner that you have that will do the right job will be having a DEP number on it I do believe and that’s because of the chemicals used to disinfect. Any cleaner that has the two sets of government regulated numbers on the bottle is more than ready to kill any bacteria or virus
If you are worry about the virus, the soap or dishwasher soap is better rather than using bleach for washing plastic buckets, the smell from bleach would stick your plastic bucket.
If you didn't convince using only soap, you can try to disinfect it with alcohol, just spray it or swap it.
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117941 | Cresomo 101oz Stainless Steel Vacuum Airpot plunger stuck after cleaning?
The plunger or stem in my Cresomo 101oz Stainless Steel Vacuum Airpot is stuck after I cleaned it once after receiving and taking out of the package to wash it.
I've heard it suggested that I could get it out of there by heating it up; and I've also heard that I could use a pair of tongs to pull it out; but neither has worked, and the rubber plunger remains lodged below the hole in the middle of it.
Both of the people I talked to who gave me the advice above, work in the Food and Beverage Industry.
What else can I do to pull that plunger out of it so that it can be used for the first time?
It sounds as if it's broken to me, wend it back under guarantee and get a replacement.
are you able to provide a picture that shows where it is stuck?
I fixed it; I used a pair of needle nosed pliers.
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58405 | What is a mild detergent?
I recently obtained a dehydrator, and the instructions say for cleaning you have to:
"Simply soak the trays in warm water with a mild detergent for several
minutes"
Can someone please define the term "mild detergent"?
I'd presume they just mean dish soap and not some more powerful cleanser. With regard to additives, etc. I guess whatever you are okay with normally should be okay. Obviously you have to rinse the trays thoroughly to get the soap off.
I've had a few dehydrators and there is nothing special about the plastic trays. I doubt they are dishwasher safe but I've never put that to the test (I suspect it would not work that well anyway). The trays can be pesky to clean if you've used a marinade. The best thing I've found for this is a small, soft circular brush.
I know this is an old post, but if anyone comes across it wondering. The answer is that mild detergents are dish soap like Dawn, Palmolive, etc.
To the contrary, my mother-in-law's CPAP technician told her Dawn is too harsh to clean her hoses and nozzles with and she should use Joy instead so, even among dish soaps, there are levels of mildness. I always prefer Dawn because it gets everything out while Joy sometimes misses a spot.
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121447 | Are Brussels Sprouts and Brussel Sprouts the same dish?
Because one implies "Sprouts from Brussels" and the other implies the vegetable that children stereotypically hate.
@Juhasz no answers in comments, please, including half-answers.
@downvote Why did someone downvote this?
The veggie is correctly spelled brussels sprouts. I assume spelling it without the "s" is just an error or being unaware of the proper spelling. Wikipedia suggests the vegetable got its name because of its popularity in Brussels, Belgium. So, in a sense, they are "sprouts from Brussels."
“Brussel sprouts” is an example of rebracketing.
And (certainly in British English) the two versions are pronounced identically so it's a very natural change. Degemination across a word boundary, like the term prime minister: https://improveyouraccent.co.uk/double-consonants-in-english-geminates/
@moscafj Thank you for your answer sir! I was working on a menu and it was driving me crazy, so I had to ask.
The Dutch spelling of the Belgium city is Brussel, without the S at the end, so maybe someone used that instead of the English spelling. But in the Dutch of the Netherlands the vegetable does not have the name of the city in its name.
What do Dutch people call brussels sprouts?
@FuzzyChef Going by the Wikipedia entry, it's spruitkool which I think breaks down as 'sprout cabbage': https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruitkool
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24173 | Can string cheese be frozen?
Is it okay to freeze individually packaged string cheese?
I'm less concerned about what it does to the taste of the cheese, and more concerned about the safety of freezing the cheese with the plastic. I heard that there are certain plastics that should not be frozen, which is why I'm concerned.
If I had the name of the plastic being used, I'd probably be able to search for its safety online. However, the manufacturer does not list the type of plastic being used.
I've tried several searches online, but nothing yielded anything useful.
Never heard of a plastic that can't be frozen (other than obvious things, like a bottle full of water may burst, because water expands). The string cheese is probably in PE, or possibly PP. If you're lucky, there might be a resin code (recycle symbol) on it.
Likely Polyethylene / Polyethylene terephthalate
Despite internet rumors, freezing should be safe.
Your string cheese will likely be far more 'brittle and crumbly' than 'stringy' after thawing.
You should probably note that plasticsinfo.org run by the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade association, so isn't an unbiased source.
I froze once string cheese.
Despite the plastic bag freezing, the cheese tasted as it was, with no changes in its taste.
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8200 | Reheating a Pretzel
I bought a large soft pretzel at a pretzel shop yesterday. When you buy them, they are warm and soft. What's the best way to reheat it so that it's as though I just bought it?
It'll never be the same as when it's new. The closest I've ever seen is a method often used for good bagels: put in paper bag with a bit of water and nuke it. Basically just reheat it with a lot of humidity.
I have always wrapped it in a damp paper towel, then nuked it for about 30 seconds.
Do you close the paper bag? Where do you place the water? On the pretzel? At the bottom of the bag? (This last method seems like it would cause a mess.)
Try wrapping in foil gently and heating in a toaster oven until warmed through.
Actually, you can make your pretzel as nice as it was when purchased fresh. First set it on a piece of tin foil large enough to completely wrap it. Second, add about 1 table spoon of water per pretzel then wrap as tightly as possible.
Proceed to place pretzel in oven at 250 degree for about 20 minutes.
There you have it. Your pretzel like new.
Is that 250°C or 250°F?
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7988 | How can I make a quick bread mix less sweet?
I have one of those quick bread mixes to which you only need to add water, oil, and eggs. The problem is that it is too sweet for my taste.
Are there any tricks to make it less sweet?
You can change the flavor profile of mixes by adding more flour to cut the sugar. In the case of quick breads, I would suggest using self rising so that your quick breads will still have enough leavening.
Another way to cut the sweet would be to add ingredients that are savory, such as nuts or vegetables. Depending on the mix, additions could vastly change how sweet it tastes. They also make mixes that have reduced sugar in them that you could try. Some of the health food mixes and specialty diet mixes (things like gluten free and vegan) might be more up your alley.
Adding savory ingredients sounds like a very good idea. I think I'd be slightly concerned about losing some of the flakiness/mealiness with the addition of more flour and ending up with a rather glutinous quickbread (and the prepared mixes already tend to be more glutinous than a quickbread ought to be). Depends on the quantities though, obviously.
@aaronut as long as the leavening (read baking soda) maintains the right level the crumb shouldn't be affected to much. The structure of a quick bread is created by the proteins in the egg combining with the flour, as the gluten in the flour doesn't have time to form in those types of recipes. That;s why you aren't supposed to let them sit for an extended period of time or they get tough. At least that's how I understand it...
Al of the above :-) Make your own mix with more flour, less sugar and a pinch of salt. Combine your mix with your pre-made mix and then cut in half for 2 batches.
Add a pinch of salt. Modern breads are very low on salt.
Salt will actually enhance the sweetness, not eliminate it.
Depending on the amount of salt. Modern breads and bread mixes are low on salt. For 0,5 kg of flour, add 0,5 teaspoon of salt and it should be salty (as the question is about bread mixes) go down from that.
Maybe a small pinch of salt will enhance sweetness, but believe me, as you add salt, it will become savory in the end.
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8645 | Which container to use for combined milk?
My local supermarket was out of 1% milk today, so I decided to get half a gallon of 2% and half a gallon of skim milk and combine the two at home. Now I'm wondering in what I should store the combined milk...
I still have a 1 gallon container from the last milk I purchased which I can use. There's a tiny bit of milk left in there, but it will be finished by today. The only thing I'm worried about is that, even if I wash the container the best I can, it will still have traces of bacteria in there from the old milk. Does this mean, then, that I should treat the expiration date of the combined milk as the same date printed on the old container?
Should I store the milk in some other container (e.g. a pitcher)? Should I temporarily combine the two in a pitcher, then put them back in the two half gallon containers they came with? Any other ideas?
Don't reuse an old milk jug for storing the new, combined milk. The standard plastics used in milk jugs in most areas cannot be properly sanitized for reuse (even with standard sanitizing solutions).
Instead, use a properly sanitized and covered glass or plastic container, preferably one that you clean in a hot water dish washer. Milk stored in a properly cleaned container will have the maximum shelf life (and reduced chance of other contaminants).
You may find it useful to buy milk from time to time in glass jars (many supermarkets carry it). These glass jars sanitize and reuse nicely, and are handy for storing mixed milk, powdered milk, or chocolate milk!
Thanks for the answer. What about using the two new containers? Or should I avoid those as well?
Using the original containers will be fine, as long as they don't sit out for any extended period and the bits you use to mix and refill with are clean as well.
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43097 | Is US flour significantly different than it used to be, or than flour outside of the US?
I encountered this statement elsewhere:
The wheat in the US has been genetically modified to be much higher in
gluten. People who live in other countries and then come here cannot
use their old recipes because our flour is so different than theirs.
Is the second sentence true for a non-professional cook purchasing all purpose flour in a US grocery store? Would a bread recipe calling for AP flour used by someone from outside of North America need to be modified to work with the AP flour typically available in the US?
Please address the first sentence only if it's relevant to your answer regarding the second sentence.
@Optionparty Understood and I agree. I'm really not concerned with GM wheat (or any food crop) as long as the method of modification is hybridization rather than direct DNA manipulation. In any case, the question is about baking, not the politics of GMO foods.
The summary would be that there is a larger variety of flour (measured by gluten content) in the US than in Europe.
SAJ14SAJ described the gluten categories of American flour, although exact figures for the category limits are hard to pin down. Peter Reinhart says
cake flour has 6 to 7 percent gluten, pastry flour has 7.5 to 9.5 percent gluten, all-purpose flour has 9.5 to 11.5 percent gluten, and high-gluten flour has 13.5 to (rare but possible) 16 percent gluten.
(From The bread baker's apprentice, section Types of flour). I measure exactly my gluten percentages and can confirm that these are good for recipes of the respective categories.
These flours are all made from the same flour grade, with about 50% of the grain removed and only the soft center used for fine bread. The difference comes from the grain type used, hard spring wheat (high in gluten) or soft winter wheat (low in gluten). In Europe, where only soft winter wheat is grown, all the flour is in the 9-11% range. But mills will sometimes enrich certain types of flour with added gluten, or by blending with imported flour, or by milling more of the bran (wholer flour always has more protein) in order to make some specialized high-gluten flours, e.g. Italian pizza flour. These flours are, aside from whole wheat flour, not widely available to home bakers.
I can well imagine that a European trying to bake a European recipe with American bread flour will get bad results. But if they get the AP flour, there will be no problem in the gluten.
There are many other properties of flour which differ, beyond the gluten content. But recipes are never so sensitive to them that they'd fail. If you can't tell the difference between two brands of flour in your home country, then you won't be able to tell the difference between flour with the same gluten content from the other continent either, if both are unbleached and of the same grade (= amount of bran included and particle size).
All in all, this claim sounds like an unfounded emotionally-loaded attack. It is possible that the person who made it indeed failed because of gluten content, because they didn't know that they should be buying AP and not bread flour. Or that it failed for another reason and they were looking for a scapegoat, and garbled some half-remembered knowledge (by the way, while the American wheat is genetically different, the gluten level difference was achieved centuries ago by selective breeding) to excuse their failure.
Re your final paragraph: The person who made the statement was claiming that American wheat is genetically modified (in labs, not by hybridization) and therefore evil. I'm not too concerned about that claim, but the claim about higher gluten content was one I'd never heard before.
There are a variety of flours here, ground from different varieties of soft and hard wheat with varying protein levels. You can find low protein and high protein flours. Grocery stores commonly carry:
Cake flour, about 7-8% protein
All purpose, about 10-12% protein
Bread flour, about 14-16% protein
These variations are created based on different strains and blends of wheat.
So a flour with an appropriate level of gluten for almost any purpose can be purchased, or blended from the available choices.
Different brands and millers formulate their all purpose flour differently. The the two most common US nationally distributed brands, Pillsbury, and Gold Medal, have about 10.5% protein in their all purpose; a third, King Arthur, has about 11.4.
Professional bakers have access to a wider array of products, with different particle sizes as well as protein content.
I edited the question to be more specifically tailored to AP flour and non-professional cooks.
I don't know the characteristics of flours around the world, or what parts even call their flour "all purpose". Maida recipes in India, for example, work fairly well with AP according to some sources. You would need to give characteristics of the flour being compared. However, I suspect much like the supposed superiority of San Marzano tomatoes, much of it is simply regional pride: woe unto him who tries to make pizza without genuine Italian 00 zero flour.
The statement is false, no country in the world commercially uses any form of GM wheat, there is no need too
Most GM plants to date has been of a very basic nature, and mostly simply making the plant herbicide resistant. We aren't that clever yet to do things like make higher gluten content. The best we have is rice with a higher vitamin A content
I doubt if there is much of a market for higher gluten content wheat that can already be sourced from natural seeds. So I would be surprised if any laboratory is even playing with this
Living in a country where there is a lot of research in GM plants, the one obvious conclusion is that it is easier to use GM to identify what genes you actually want, and then use traditional plant hybridisation techniques to get the plant with that gene naturally. This has a more successful outcome in many ways. Again we aren't that clever yet!
All well and good, but your answer doesn't address the actual question.
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29498 | Thoroughly cooking stuffing in a Turkey
I like to cook stuffing in the bird because I think it imparts flavors you just can't achieve cooking it out of the bird. The problem is, it's virtually impossible to get the stuffing to 165F/74C without way overcooking the meat. I read one suggestion to cook the bird until the meat is done and then remove the stuffing and finish it in the oven. That makes sense, but is it really a safe method? Is it possible the lining of the cavities also aren't fully done yet since they've been exposed to cooler stuffing and not hot oven air?
If so, would a good alternative be to remove the stuffing when the meat is, say, 10 degrees short of being done and then putting both the stuffing and bird back in the oven to finish?
What kind of stuffing are you referring to? I often stuff a chicken with sausage meat and onion stuffing but that is pre-cooked before stuffing the chicken.
It's a simple cornbread stuffing with onions, celery, butter and spices. The onions and celery have been sauteed, but it's not hot when it goes in.
IF your stuffing doesn't involve meat I wouldn't be concerned about it and I agree that it adds flavour to the turkey being roasted. I'd concentrate on ensuring the turkey is correctly cooked at the correct temperature and for the correct amount of time and not worry about the stuffing.
@spiceyokooko I've highlighted the gist of my question. I'm not really concerned with the safety of the stuffing so much as ensuring the linings of the cavities have been fully cooked if I remove the bird before the stuffing is fully to temp.
If the stuffing is really causing that kind of a temperature gradient between the surface of a 20 lb bird and the cavity, then that would mean that parts of the turkey are actually undercooked, and removing the stuffing for 10 minutes out of several hours is not going to fix that. Better to use a thermometer, though, than to make assumptions.
@Aaronut I do use a thermometer, but it's not easy to measure the temp of a cavity lining. My question boils down to whether people believe there could be that much of a gradient.
The temperature of the inner surface of the cavity is going to be essentially equal to the temp. of the outer surface of the stuffing. Since neither is in contact with any of the heating modalities in the oven (radiation from the hot oven walls, conduction from air contact, convection from circulating hot air), that interface will only heat by conduction through the outer turkey. You want cooked stuffing without overcooking the turkey--that is tricky. But the short answer is yes, the stuffing prevents the turkey from getting convection/conduction heat on the inside.
You say you discount the safety issue--that is fine for you personally. But for reference of future people looking at this question: the stuffing is soaking in raw turkey juice while the turkey comes up to temperature, several hours, and then slowly moving through the danger zone to the kill temperature, providing a near ideal environment for pathogens to multiply for an extended period of time. It doesn't matter if the stuffing has no meat given the turkey juices. The safety concerns are real.
@SAJ14SAJ I only discount the safety issue regarding the stuffing itself because I can easily put it back in the oven and bake it until safe. The question is the cavity lining. How do I know when it is safe?
The temperature of the inside of the turkey will be approximately the same as the outside of the stuffing. Take the temperature of the stuffing, at the edge of the cavity. It will be safe at approximately 155 F (there is some variance depending on your assessment of risk, and which source you look at). This only indicates the turkey is safe, not the center of the stuffing, which you should also check.
@SAJ14SAJ Add this to your answer and I'll accept it. I did find Alton Brown's method interesting, if perhaps a lot of work.
I am firmly in the "stuffing is evil" camp... but lets take that as read :-)
If you absolutely must have in the bird stuffing, here is a link to a (I hope legal) excerpt of Alton Brown's Good Eats, showing his technique for doing turkey with stuffing:
http://www.aol.com/video/alton-browns-turkey-with-stuffing/444711017/
He uses a food-safe cotton bag, and pre-cooks the stuffing in the microwave. Then, he uses what looks like a flexible plastic cutting board to guide the bag of stuffing into the turkey.
The summary of his technique is that the stuffing is partially pre-cooked, so that it is hot when it goes into the bird, and comes up to temperature together.
. . .
In the abstract, independent of the pre-cook the stuffing method aluded to above:
The temperature of the inner surface of the cavity is going to be essentially equal to the temp. of the outer surface of the stuffing. Since neither is in contact with any of the heating modalities in the oven (radiation from the hot oven walls, conduction from air contact, convection from circulating hot air), that interface will only heat by conduction through the outer turkey. You want cooked stuffing without overcooking the turkey--that is tricky. But the short answer is yes, the stuffing prevents the turkey from getting convection/conduction heat on the inside.
To assess the temperature at the inside of the turkey, take the temperature of the stuffing, at the edge of the cavity. It will be safe at approximately 155 F (there is some variance depending on your assessment of risk, and which source you look at). This only indicates the turkey is safe, not the center of the stuffing, which you should also check.
Added info from question comments, as requested.
The problem with your premise is that 165f must be reached for the stuffing to be pasteurized. However, pasteurization begins at the top end of the "danger zone." The USDA spec sets that bar at 140f (in reality, you are out of the danger zone at 127f, but we'll use the USDA spec for the purposes of this discussion).
There is a time component to pasteurization, in addition to a temperature one. 165f is considered "instant kill," i.e. nearly all bacteria are killed in under 10 seconds. That is not the only way to achieve that kill level, though. 1 1/2 minutes at 155f will result in the same pasteurization level. As will 5 minutes at 150f. Or 35 minutes at 140f. As long as you can get the temperature of your stuffing out of the danger zone in a reasonable time, and it spends the requisite amount of time for pasteurization at whatever temperature it reaches, then the stuffing is safe to consume.
The safety of the stuffing isn't really my question. The last sentence of my first paragraph is the heart of my question.
To get an Outside the turkey flavorful stuffing: I cook the stuffing covered in a separate dish in a water bath. To get the turkey flavor, I add chicken broth and will cook with chicken parts on top (and some melted butter). I also add turkey drippings. It usually requires about 1 hour, but check your temp. You still get the flavor, the turkey cooks much more quickly as the heat comes from the inside and out. I pre-cook the vegetables (like celery) and sometimes caramelize the onions (this adds a wonderful flavor, I do two separate batches [caramelized onion and regular onion for those who prefer traditional stuffing].
Or place the stuffing under the skin over the breast. Separate the skin from the breast using your hand. Be careful not to rip the skin. This method protects the breast from drying out, but can compact your stuffing.
I have cooked the stuffing in the turkey for 30 years. My mother did the same for 70 years. Neither of us ever had an issue. I am doing that as we speak. Both are at 160. Waiting a few minutes more
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34463 | Does a long marinade time matter for chicken, shrimp, etc?
I have no doubt that a long marinade makes a difference for coarsely striated meats like beef, pork, lamb and some fish. But I've got my doubts that marinating, say, chicken or (peeled) shrimp for several hours makes any substantial improvement over a brief marinating of 15 minutes or so. It doesn't seem to me that the marinade penetrates the meat deeply and rather simply coats it. If you use a dark marinade you can see this with beef, pork and lamb. The longer you marinate, the deeper you can see it penetrate. But not so with chicken and shrimp. I see no evidence a long marinade makes any difference.
Am I wrong?
No marinade penetrates very deeply in unless:
The marinade is quite salty, as the salt can diffuse past cell membranes into the meat
The marinade contains an active enzyme or acidic component which will denature the meat over time, allowing deeper penetration
Marination is by its very nature a surface treatment, although one that can add considerable flavor.
Kenji Alt at Serious Eats says (in regards to flank steak):
In reality, a marinade is mostly a surface treatment, and not much
benefit lies in marinating for more than half a day or so. If you'd
like the flavor of the marinade to completely coat your meat, your
best bet is to reserve some marinade and simply toss your meat with it
after it has been cooked and sliced.
I am more partial to the dry rub or wet rub myself.
See also:
Washington Post article
New York Times Article
UGA Thesis on Vacuum Marination Penetration
Amazing Ribs with experiment showing limited penetration into beef
Most marinades I use do contain significant salt and an acid, but even those don't seem to penetrate chicken and shrimp at all, whereas they clearly do penetrate red meats and pork.
If anything, I understated the case. See new references in answer.
OK, I get your point, but note that Kenji Alt talks in terms of a half day or so. From what I've seen, a piece of beef will absorb some marinade during a half day, but chicken and shrimp will absorb nothing at all.
What I'm asking is, is it worth marinating things like chicken and shrimp at all? Is just tossing them with the marinade equally effective?
I am not a big fan of seafood, but my experience with chicken is that it doesn't matter much after about 15 minutes--but doing it farther ahead may be convenient for things like doing prep the night before.
I find that Lime or Lemon Juice will penetrate any meat or fish particularly fish or shellfish. In fact lime in its self is used very often in South America for preparing or curing dishes, for example Ceviche or Tiradito from Peru and when mixed with other ingredients such as ginger, garlic or chili the lime seems to act as vehicle to share these other flavours. As prawns are relatively small though I wouldn’t see any advantage in marinating these though unless as SAJ14SAJ suggests it it just to save on prep.
www.food.com/recipe/simple-peruvian-ceviche-111154
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28826 | How much bones can be used in an 11 liter stock pot?
I just bought a nice 11 liter stock pot. From your experience, what is the maximum weight of veal bones I can add to one veal stock batch in order to have enough volume left for my veggies and water? I'm starting with 2 kilograms, which should hopefully be ok, but wondering if perhaps I could use even more? I want to maximize my yield.
Variations in bone density depending on the individual animal, its exact age, which bone it is, etc., are probably going to make this very difficult to pin down to a specific weight. I just fill the pot about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way up and freeze whatever won't fit...
2kg of veal bones cut up for stock use from your butcher should need around 5 litre of water to cover. If you use more then you're just thinning the stock and that'll mean you need to reduce it more later to get the same flavour you would have had if you started with the correct amount of water.
Why does this matter you may ask...well, along with the longer reduction time you'll taste changes to the flavour more as time goes by. You're cooking it longer and the heat changes things, sometimes for the bad, sometimes for the good. Mainly it's just wasted time reducing something that didn't need to happen.
When all is said and done after simmering for around 6 hours, you'll end up with about 3-4 litres of quality stock if you went with a 2kg:5L ratio.
If you use more water to start then you'll end up with more stock but of low quality. Then you'll spend your time reducing the stock down until it starts to taste like the stock that you could have made with 5L of water.
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