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73893 | Possible to make sourdough starter quickly?
I was hoping to use a recipe that requires sour dough starter tomorrow for dinner. When looking online for recipes I found several, but all of them required several days (examples here, here and here)
to make.
Is it possible to prepare a sourdough starter in around 24 hours or is it too late in the game for me to get something going for tomorrow night's dinner?
If you already have a starter culture, you can mix the starter culture (more for flavoring), all the normal ingredients, leaven it with regular yeast and maybe add some citric acid for extra "sour" - that's about as close as you can get, I think, without allowing for the normal "sponge" process.
You aren't going to be able to get a sourdough starter from flour to ready-to-bake in 24 hours. You could easily make a poolish or pâte fermentée in that time, and get some of the flavor. You might also be able to use some yogurt whey or another source of lactic acid to get some of the sour flavor. Unfortunately, a sour starter is something that you kind of need to keep going and have on hand.
You cannot establish your own starter, that would be like growing your own basil from seeds in 24 hours. A sourdough starter is a long-term project, and not worth it if you don't use it regularly.
Depending on where you live, you may be able to buy starter extract, or some other starter-based product which gives you the taste (but not leavening). Purists turn up their nose at it, but it's your best shot.
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16303 | What flavour can cut through salt?
I'm putting together an asian sauce to throw over some steamed greens & have made it a bit too salty (it contains soy, fish & oyster sauce).
What can I add to cut back the saltiness?
honey cuts through salt well, and also works well with Asian cusine, and adding greens like spinach could absorb it very well
The classic way to compensate for saltiness (especially in Asian cuisine) is to add something sweet (usually sugar), which tricks one's taste-buds into thinking that the food is both less salty and less sweet. (Ever wonder why a can of cola has 45+ mg of sodium? It's there partially to mask all the sweetness which gives you a sugar rush, and simultaneously make you thirstier!) I seem to recall reading a section on this phenomenon in On Food and Cooking, but my copy is back home. I'll try and post an excerpt later today. Update #2: I can't seem to find any mention of saltiness inhibitors in OFaC, however, there is a section on sweetness inhibitors (cf. page 663) so I must have been confusing it with that.
Update #1: I haven't gotten a chance to look at OFaC yet, however, I did find this study:
An overview of binary taste–taste interactions by Keast and Breslin. Journal of Food Quality and Preference, 14 (2) 111–124. March, 2003. Elsevier.
It is a survey of research on both perceived and chemical reactions between different tastes.
When compounds eliciting tastes are mixed many outcomes are possible, including perceptual enhancement and suppression, unmasking of a taste not initially observed, or possibly chemical synthesis of a new taste.
The survey notes (see Sections 3.2 and 3.3):
At medium and high intensities/concentrations
sweetness was generally suppressive of other basic tastes.
and also
Sweetness suppressed salty taste at moderate intensities.
It goes on to note that at even higher concentrations sweetness and other tastes are symmetrically suppressive (i.e., their tastes cancel each other out).
Sodium does not necessarily mean salt; as far as I know, there's no actual salt in coca-cola. Salt is sometimes added to tonic water (or other carbonated drinks) to mask bitterness but this is the first I've heard of it masking sweetness; my understanding was that it actually enhanced sweetness. Would definitely like to see this excerpt when you have a chance...
@Aaronut: I found a study that supports the claim. I've edited my answer to include it.
There are also a number of well-known sweetness suppressors that take the form of sodium (e.g., propanoic acid/Na-PMP). Coca-Cola's sodium comes primarily from sodium citrate, which is known to have a direct effect on the gustatory perception of sweetness.
Ah, that makes sense. Personally, I'd remove the comment about coca cola as it's actually the opposite that's true (sweetness masks salt [and other flavours], not the other way around), but the general advice seems to be sound.
Thanks for the detailed answer. I added some lemon juice and it worked a treat.
If you have (or add) spinach in with those greens I wouldn't worry. Spinach dishes can take a lot of salt before they taste over salted.
One reason for this is that 1 cup of spinach is about as sweet as 1/4 tsp. of granulated sugar.
@ESultanik there are a few reasons why I'm not convinced this is a good explanation. First off, spinach can hardly be counted as something that tastes sweet. It indeed has 0.25 mg carbohydrates, but not all carbs taste sweet, especially when bound into complex molecular structures rather than simple sugars which easily bind to receptors on the tongue (fructose, sucrose, glucose, maltose, etc.). Spinach also has a bitter flavor from its phenol and vitamin rich tissues. All bitter things need a little salt to make them palatable, but to say it can take "a lot of salt" invites dispute.
Many foods can absorb quite allot of salt and still be palatable. Many vegetables such as potatoes and rice are cooked in brine and people often add table salt to their potatoes on top of this. Other foods that we accept salty include sea food such as shrimp, fish, shellfish etc.
I live in China, and notice that people rarely add salt to foods. The condiments they use such as soy sauce and oyster sauce have sufficient salt in them already. So it is quite normal that your Asian style condiment mix will taste salty but it might not taste so salty once combined with the final dish.
In some places, however, even that "asian style condiment mix" will taste very salty.
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18392 | Can I re-freeze fruit?
I bought about 1.2kg of frozen raspberries with the intention of using them yesterday, but it turns out I won't need them for another couple of weeks. I had let them thaw but have put them in the fridge since I realised my mistake.
Am I able to refreeze the berries or should I find some immediate use for them?
What are the risks / consequences if I do refreeze?
Basically, you can refreeze the raspberries.
When a fruit or veg. is frozen, the water inside the plant cell expands, and bursts the cell wall, which is why there is so much 'juice' when you thaw. If you refreeze, you can be sure that the raspberries will freeze into a giant block. If you are using them to make a sauce or a jam, this is not significant. That being said, if you are using frozen raspberries in the first place, you are obviously not looking for a perfectly intact raspberry, you are using them for some other purpose. Therefor, refreezing is no big deal. I recently answered another question about freezing and refreezing, and how it is basically a myth that it renders the refrozen product inedible. Any time you freeze you know that you are not going to get 'exactly' the same product when you thaw it, and the same goes with refreezing, there is always a 'slight' degredation of the product with each successive freeze (do you like my liberal usage of quotes?) You won't poison yourself or anything like that, you should have no worries.
That being said, what are you doing with the berries? Certainly a refrozen raspberry should be no worse that a raspberry frozen once.
That's the reassurance I was looking for, thanks! I'm making a Raspberry Ale, so the fruit does not need to be intact at all.
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12440 | Food safety concerns regarding cooked steak stored in the fridge
I'm thinking of cooking some steak and storing it for later use in a cold salad. If I cook it to medium rare and cut it into strips and store it in the firdge, will it be safe to eat later? I know any bacteria mostly grows on the surface of the meat so that should be killed when cooked, but is there a higher danger of contamination on the now exposed, less cooked surface area?
If I put it in a clean container I'm guessing the pink parts are just as prone to further contamination as the outer surface.
If kept in this condition, how long should I expect this meat to stay good for in the fridge?
What would be different if we were talking about a partially eaten steak stored for later consumption?
I'd personally send it to the fridge whole -- it's easier to cut thin when it's been chilled down, and you won't get as much moisture loss (both from bleeding out after cutting, and evaporative while in the fridge).
As you mention, cooking the steak to medium rare does indeed kill the bacteria on the surface of the steak which is where most of the risk of contamination exists, so immediately after you've cooked the steak, if you eat it, you're probably pretty safe unless there happened to be bad organisms living inside the meat.
Assuming that you've got a good piece of meat, with nothing terrible inside it, after you cook the meat, what you need to worry about most is bacteria that you introduce to the meat, and so to answer your question, cutting meat shouldn't affect the safety of storing meat after cooking at all (as long as you use a clean knife/cutting board).
While cooking the meat does initially kill all of the surface bacteria, the fact that the surface was once cooked doesn't really do anything to deter new bacteria from moving in and going to town on the meat. What this means is that you need to be very careful to keep meat in sanitary conditions regardless of whether the exposed surface has been previously cooked or not if you're planning to eat it without cooking it again.
So, to recap, if you take a piece of meat where all bacteria has been killed via cooking, and seal it without introducing new bacteria, you should be safe to eat it.
The one remaining issue is that we're not talking about a steak that's necessarily had all bacteria killed. There's a possibility that some bacteria survived the cooking inside the meat. If this is the case, you may be safe to eat the meat right away if there are very few of these bacteria present (depending on what they are), but the longer you wait - even if you seal the whole thing up - the longer you're giving those bacteria to multiply into large enough quantities that they can destroy the meat and/or sicken you. To avoid this, you want to put the meat in the refrigerator, as soon as possible to slow bacterial action, and eat it as soon as possible. Like John, I've had success with around 3-5 days, but it really depends on what you're starting with, so I'd highly recommend that you have a good look/sniff before you eat to see if there are any signs of spoilage and discard if so. Again, this is a risk whether you cut the meat or not, so that isn't really a factor here.
Regarding partially eaten steaks, this is just introducing one more place where bacteria can get on the steak before it's sealed up and refrigerated. I could see this being no issue (if you're cutting off a piece of the steak, and sealing/refrigerating the rest while eating), or a significant issue if you're cutting the steak with utensils that have been in your mouth, or worse, trying to store a piece of steak that's been in your mouth. In those cases you're almost certainly introducing more bacteria and decreasing the amount of time you'll have before spoilage occurs.
So, in summary, cut the meat if you like - that should make no difference. Get it sealed up as soon as possible without exposing it to anything non-sterile. Put it in the refrigerator as soon as possible. Throw it out if at any point you detect spoilage. Following these steps you should be safe to keep your leftovers for 3-5 days and only rarely need to discard spoiled food.
I generally only cook steak medium-rare, and I am able to leave the leftovers in the refrigerator for up to 6 days or so (most recommendations say 3-5 days) and have never had any issues as long as it's wrapped properly. If you just put the meat on the plate and stick it in the fridge without any cover I imagine it would spoil quicker.
Whether it's partially eaten or not should not make any difference. What is important however, is to store the steak in the refrigerator right after you've cooked it and cut it so that it doesn't sit out at room temperature for too long.
My rule of thumb is 3 days in the fridge, 3 weeks in a small freezer compartment and 3 months in a freezer. In practice, a bit longer than those times is usually fine.
According to health regulations, bacteria doesn't grow at below 5 C, so you can store it there for a really long time without worrying about bacteria. But the meat will decompose in time regardless of bacteria.
It's just as safe if you've bitten it or dipped it in some sauce full of bacteria. The fridge doesn't actually kill them, though, so don't use it as a way to decontaminate.
Bacteria don't grow quickly... that is not the same as not growing.
@SAJ14SAJ they indeed stop growing completely at some min temp, for example Salmonella stops at 6 degrees celsius. They don't die, but they don't grow either. There are certainly bacteria which grow below 5 degrees, but these are not the most dangerous ones. This is the reason why there is the large jump between safety at 4 degrees and below (3-5 days safe) and 5 degrees and up (2-4 hours safe).
@rumtscho There isn't really a disconinuity safety or the growth curves of the pathogens at 4-5 C; that is an (intentional) oversimplificiation of the regulatory and advisory authiorities because it is much simpler to understand than the true curves, which do vary by pathogen. It is much akin to saying cook meat to 165 Fm, instead of saying cook it 140 F for 30 minutes, or 155 F for 2 minutes, or 165 F for30 seconds, or 180 F for 3 seconds.... Only the first recommerndation is generally made to consumers.
@SAJ14SAJ there is a discontinuity. Pathogens have a growth range, which starts around 5 C for the relevant ones. There is no growth below that. See for example http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/publications/Documents/Salmonella%20(non-typhoidal).pdf.
@rumtscho The only statement there that I found that seems relevent is "The temperature range for growth of Salmonella spp. is 5.2–46.2°C" which is insufficent in detail and context to support this statement as a general case.
@SAJ14SAJ the fact that they give a lower limit of a growth range is proof that growth ranges for bacteria have lower limits. What can be clearer than that?
let us continue this discussion in chat
@rumtscho Yes, bacterial growth stops completely below a certain temperature (lag phase) where bacteria are maturing not able to divide. Since bacteria are full units the asymptotic slowdown as the temperature gets lower has a hard stop (you can't have 0.3 of bacteria growing). see bacteria growth and the graph.
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6293 | How to cook a pot roast without it tasting like vegetables
I usually cook a beef pot roast by putting the meat and vegetables (potatoes, carrots, onions) in a slow cooker with a little bit of water and letting it go for ~8 hours on low. This works well int hat everything is well cooked, the meat is moist and tender, etc.
The one issue I have is that the meat tends to have an overly strong taste of vegetables. I don't really know how to describe it beyond that. Particularly from the carrots. I prefer my meat to taste more like meat. What can I do to accomplish this? Should I try browning the meat first to try and "seal" it up? Add the vegetables later?
I think you've answered your own question. Browning and adding veggies later will both help.
Browning doesn't "seal" the meat to keep flavor or juices in, but it does create a very nice flavor that's almost always associated with meat, caused by the Maillard reaction. I think browning could go a long way to resolving your flavor issue.
This is a little counter intuitive of cooking with a slow cooker, but you can start the meat with a bit of water (or wine, stock, other juices) and then only put the vegetables in much later in the process. Of course, then you have to tend your crock pot, which is often not the point. That would decrease the time that the vegetables had to affect the taste of your meat. You could even experiment with which ones to add later and which to add at the beginning. If it's just the carrots that are offensive, that may be the only thing you need to throw in later.
I like to add a few vegetables to the roast at the beginning because they bring a nice flavor. I cook most of the vegetables separately so they don't overwhelm the roast.
Put the meat in a sous-vide bag, and place that in your crock pot with the vegetables.
A good idea, but I'd also add that you should leave the bag open at the top ... if you don't, there's no evaporation, and the meat lacks strong meaty-flavors. It's like it's been watered down.
I would use a riser in your slow cooker. If you raise the meat out of the water above the vegetables, you won't have as much flavor transference in the one direction while still allowing your veg to absorb the juices from the meat. Since the cooking in a slow cooker is achieved by the low moist heat and not boiling, your meat will still come moist and delicious. I use a vegetable steamer in mine, but all you need is something that is porous and can handle a few hours in the heat (so don't use parchment paper, disaster awaits you down that path).
As for browning, it will add more flavor to the dish, but it will not cut down the flavor transference at all. Your pot roast will still absorb all those flavors. Adding your vegetation later will cut it down somewhat, but like yossarian noted, who wants to baby sit a crock pot.
Another suggestion for something to use as a spacer is chop sticks. I have used them a few times just laid between and they have worked just as good as the vegetable steamer.
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11037 | What's the best time and temperature for tenderness when baking red potatoes?
Lately I've gotten into baking Red Potatoes with butter and spices and I've found I enjoy them when they are nice and tender.
What's the best temperature for baking red potatoes for tenderness?
How long should they be baked for?
It depends greatly on how hungry I am. :-)
350F for about an 60-90 minutes, depending on how many are in there.
425F for about 40-60 if I'm hungry and impatient.
Microwave on high for a few minutes (few holes poked in it with a fork) if I'm really hungry and really impatient.
They're done when a fork goes in easily.
For roasted red potatoes, quartered at 450F on baking sheet, 20 minutes with one cut side down, flip onto other cut side, 15 minutes more. http://cookloose.com/index.php/Recipes/OvenRoastedRedPotatoes
@Doug That sounds like a good roasting recipe -- but the question is about baking.
@slim Pretty sure that 'baking' and 'roasting' are essentially the same thing..., although 'roasting' often implies a different texture and browning in the end...
@slim @Eric: Yep, they're essentially the same thing in modern language - http://www.ochef.com/637.htm
@talon8 @Eric: In the UK roasting potatoes means potatoes chopped in to large pieces with fat. Baking means straight in the oven in their skins whole. Very different.
@Orbling: Good to know!
Exactly as @Orbling says. Roasting involves sitting in fat/oil; baking does not.
For pretty much any potatoes, of what I'd call baking size (about the size of a fist), an hour at 180C is good, and another 20 minutes doesn't hurt.
A metal skewer through the middle ensures that the middle is done, and you also know it's cooked when the skewer slips out easily.
For a lovely jacket, wet the skin and grind some sea salt onto it before putting it in the oven.
Some people like to wrap them in foil. This makes for a less floury flesh texture, and a less crispy skin, neither of which are my preference.
I like to roast them in a roasting pan with a lid with olive oil over the top and salt and pepper. I add several cloves of garlic tossed in for an infused roasted garlic taste. I bake it at 375 for about an hour or until tender. I also do exactly the same thing but quarter or half them, put them into a pot with a tight fitting lid and add aprox. a half inch of chicken broth or water. Put the lid on, bring the taters to a boil, then turn it down with the lid on and simmer until fork tender in about 20 minutes. Drain and serve. I like to use a collapsible steamer in the bottom of the pan to keep the potatoes from getting mushy or water logged. They just seem to steam better. Don't let the pan boil dry.
HINT FOR PEELING GARLIC: Take the head of garlic or the cloves and with a knife cut across the top or bottom of the head or individual clove, just enough to make an opening in the skin. You can also smash it under a chefs knife to break the skin. Place the whole thing or the clove into the microwave and microwave just a few seconds UNTIL you hear it pop. when you remove the garlic it will be hot so be careful, it will also just slip right out of the papery skin.
The only problem with using a lid is that you're going to be steaming the potatoes slightly. Which is fine, but you won't get a nice brown crust on the upper edges.
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46896 | What is the correct mixing method for this kind of batter?
I made a pie according to the following instructions. While it did turn out good, I'm not sure if the mixing method is sound.
It called for beating two eggs with sugar until white and fluffy. Then, I would carefuly fold in flour. After that, they wanted me to beat in liquid ingredients - milk and a bit of vegatable oil.
My question is does it make sense to incorporate more liquid ingredients after the flour is in? While folding in flour, you take extra care not to disturb the air capsules created in the first stage, why would you subject your batter to more rough handling after all that?
If changes are neede, what would be the correct procedure? What is the name for this type of batter?
Hello VoY. Can you please specify what type of pie this is or give more details? This method sounds much like a method for some cake batters. However, I'm in the US and the terminology may be different.
On the website I used it was called a french pear pie. You beat the eggs and sugar until all white and pale, then fold in flour and into the mixture you are supposed to beat milk with the oil. Then you pour it into a tart pan, add sliced pears and pour the rest of the mixture over it. After 30 minutes of baking you pour a mixture of melted butter, sugar, cinnamon and one egg over. Sorry, I'm czech, so agreeing on the terminology might be a bit difficult here :-).
Can you give a link to the website or recipe, or maybe a picture? I have looked extensively and haven't found a recipe that adds the butter, cinnamon, sugar, and egg mixture 30 minutes in. It sounds delicious and I would love to try it.
The recipe is pretty standard and I don't know all of the scientific info as to why it works, but it does. I have learned from asking questions on this site that adding ingredients in a certain order does make a difference in emulsification and how everything comes together. I am not entering anything as an answer because, I know the process works but, I can't answer your question as to why it works. Re translation of terms, I truly value this site as I see posts from all over the world. We don't always need to use the same terms but sometimes need to clarify so we can address appropriately.
In France, that is a classic dessert called a Gâteau Fondant Aux Poires. In American English we'd call it a Pear Cake. Who can figure out the French and their dang desserts? What I can say, is that your instructions are fairly typical. In America we would call that a cake batter and wouldn't change a thing, except maybe to make it less fussy.
Still my question is would you incorporate liquid ingredients after all the cake to fold in flour? Doesn't that ruin your careful job of not disturbing the egg bubbles? Or maybe this only applies to batters which include egg white snow?
@VoY "Beating two eggs" will not make whipped egg whites, as in meringue. By beating the two eggs with sugar, the egg proteins are all broken up and the sugar is all dissolved and mixed in. It's not a fragile delicate thing now, like whipped egg whites would be.
Does it mean then that I can mix in my flour relatively vigorously? Altough I suppose more handling will lead to more gluten development and thus different end result.
You don't want to overdo it (as you say gluten is an issue, see :http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/1722/over-stirring-muffin-mixtures), but you don't have the super-fragility whipped egg whites to deal with, so you can stir normally to incorporate.
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62771 | What is the difference between more expensive cocoa powder and regular one?
After a lifetime of buying regular dutch process cocoa powder, I have purchased a more expensive Valrhona cocoa powder. It may be just me, but it seems like the more expensive one makes much better cocoa drink. Is there a principal difference between those two products that could account for the perceived taste difference? I can see the Valrhona powder is darker.
Just as with other agricultural products, there are different grades and qualities of cocoa beans, and the resulting product is also affected by handling. Valrhona does use very high quality sources and has high standards for processing, but it isn't the only high quality chocolate producer out there, so you may want to give a few other brands a try and compare. There are also different methods of processing the cocoa powder that affect how it works as a drinking chocolate or in different recipes.
On the topic of taste, Serious Eats did a taste test of bar chocolates and found Trader Joe's compared favorably with Valrhona (although they gave the prize to Valrhona). But the comments about the flavors of others in their top 10 may also give you some ideas as to other chocolates to try. They also did a taste-test for drinking chocolates. They were specifically looking at things marketed as drinking chocolate and Valrhona seems not to have been compared here, but again, the notes about the different chocolates might be of interest.
King Arthur Flour also has several articles about cocoa powders and what type works well in what sort of recipe. Of course, they want you to buy the ones they sell, but it's still interesting reading. :-)
This one compares 5 different dutched cocoa types and ghirardelli natural cocoa and how each one affects a specific brownie recipe.
You will also notice that many recipes call for cocoa made by a specific process. Ice cream recipes that name a process have usually said "Dutch process cocoa preferred". I make fudge with Dutch processed cocoa.
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53698 | Using low oven temperature to accelerate proofing
During wintertime it is often cold enough in my apartment that proofing takes much longer than in summer. I'd like to use my oven to create a warmer environment, in which the dough would rise faster. I can go 30-50 degrees celsius, the question is what temperature is safe and at what temperature will I actually start baking the dough. Is 50 degrees celsius still ok or not?
There's a question on here somewhere about what to do about proofing dough in the wintertime. (I stick mine on my radiator, but I have radiators, and they're not burn-yourself steam ones). Unfortunately, I can't find the question to link to.
nevermind, found it : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/2276/67
Also related : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/47590/67
Let me suggest a totally different approach:
Why not work with the cool conditions instead of against?
You could let the dough proof for a long time, e.g. overnight in the fridge. This allows for a lot less yeast and hence a less yeasty taste, which is usually desired. Also, more complex flavors develop during long proofing times. (There is a reason french baguette may wait for two days before baking.) For a start, aim for about 5% yeast1 and use cool instead of lukewarm liquid.
You might have to adjust your attitude, because this requires some planning ahead, but gives you more degrees of freedom on the other hand: Fresh bread / cake in the morning without having to get up before dawn and more tolerance with regard to proofing / timing - the dough can handle an extra hour or two in the fridge easily. (Especially nice if you have a baby or a crazy schedule...)
You could also dump the dough in cold water and proof it there. As crazy as it sounds, it works. See more here.
If you'd rather stick with warm conditions, I'd aim for 30°C for optimum (=quickest) activity. Yeast starts to die at about 45°C, completely dead at 55°C. Also, warmer dough tends to proof unevenly and have a "flat" taste (can't find a better word).
1 fresh yeast, percentage based on flour weight.
Adjust dry yeast accordingly: fresh to dry conversion rate is 1:3, so use 2% dry yeast.
Great answer, can you translate 1% fresh to active dry or instant?
Thanks @Stephie. That has come up here before, that in the US fresh yeast is hardly ever seen except in professional bakeries. Most of us are kind of clueless about it.
The difference is tiny. This is an excellent article: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipe/yeast.html I buy instant yeast in two packs of of one pound bricks at Sam's Club and keep it in the freezer where it lasts for at least three years. For like $6.
@Stephie this is an interesting calculation. Peter Reinhart gives a 1:3 ratio for dry yeast, so if the formula calls for 2% (as in classic French bread), I use 0.7% dry. The difference between instant and active dry used to be large, one would die off if you made a preferment with it, because it would go overnourished. But housewives didn't trust the package and made preferments, and it got bad reputation because it died so often. So they created the second type, which does not have this risk.
Thanks for the hint - I checked and adjusted the ratio for dry yeast. 1:3 is correct according to various sources (I do trust you, but better safe than sorry). I guess I mixed it up as most ("average", IMHO too yeasty) recipes use 1 cube of fresh yeast per 500g (even according to the manufacturer's website!) and the instructions on the dry sachets say "for 500g of flour". But finally, after rummaging in the back of my cupboard: One manufacturer of dry (vitavegan) did state "9g equals 25g fresh". So 1:3 is close enough. I usually don't bother with dry yeast, sorry for the mix-up.
Not always viable, esp if you want to set dough to proof to be ready in few hours (eg to bake it after taking a shopping trip, watching a movie etc...)
@rackandboneman believe it or not, but the proofing in cold water is pretty quick. And I wrote that refrigerator proofing needs pre-planning.
50C (122F) would be a very high proofing temperature. The thermal death point of yeast is 55C, and you'll definitely hit a point of diminishing returns if you get too hot (most likely, you will have really rapid proofing on the outside of the loaf and an underproofed "core").
I would recommend setting your oven to the lowest temperature, and then once it feels perceptibly warm, turn it off and use it to proof. If you're doing a long proof, you can turn it back on for a minute or two every so often, but I wouldn't ever let it actually get up to temperature.
In the winter, I usually get fine results proofing in a bowl with a second bowl inverted on top of it, and then putting the whole thing in the oven, turned off, and just the light on. The light bulb usually produces enough heat to keep the inside of my oven at about 90˚F (32˚C?), and that gives me a good rise.
A commonly quoted temperature to never exceed with warm ingredients or proofing environments is 43°C. If using an oven, cover your dough container, check oven with a thermometer beforehand, and be aware of radiated heat effects from the elements themselves.
Rise from chilled @ 32C and keep rising until around 80-85% of desired height has been achieved.
Return back to the chiller, it will continue to rise for a short time, keep in the chiller until dough is firm again and stable enough to take the weight of toppings.
I've done this a few times, kinda - we have a baking stone, and I'll preheat that, make sure it's cool enough to touch, and set the dough on the warmed stone.
It works pretty well to give a warm environment, the warmth lasts because the closed oven contains heat, and there's little to no risk of overheating the yeast. I have both gone with regular preheating for ~5min, and the lowest-temperature-preheating for a bit longer, the former is quicker to heat but more likely to overshoot (or needing time to even the heat out), the latter slower and more controlled.
Another potential alternative, depending on your oven, might be to turn the oven on (bake setting, usually) but keep the temperature set to zero. In our oven, that turns on the light, the machinery is humming, and the oven gets kinda warm - not hot, but just warm, preparing to heat but not doing so.
I've used this to dehydrate things before, because I can leave it going for quite some time without needing to re-check or re-warm. It wouldn't work for me with bread dough, since with aforementioned baking stone it would take longer to warm up than it would for the dough to actually rise (since especially the bottom of the dough, against the stone, will rise very differently from the top) . But if you don't have a baking stone it may work very well for you.
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59323 | How to make crispy crepes?
I make very thin crepes using batter made of 500 grams of flour, 3 eggs and 250 ml of milk. They turn out thin, soft and pliable. My wife on the other hand remembers fondly her mothers crepes, which used to be a bit thicker and had a bit of crunch.
How should I modify my recipe or technique to make them more like that? I'm guessing using more fat (I try to use as little as possible) could help, but then I run into problems spreading the batter over the pan surface.
As you mention both 'thicker' and 'crispy', you might want to not look at French crepe recipes, but at various other countries' pancake recipes: pancakes (England), pannekoeken (Netherlands), pannkakor (Sweden), pannekaken (Norway), pfannkuchen (Germany). Also see https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/72915/67
A crisp crepe is less about the recipe and more about the cooking technique. You simply need to leave it a little longer before flipping it, allowing the edges to crisp. A little more oil than usual will help, but it should still only be a thin coating wiped on with a paper towel.
To make a thicker crepe, simply use less liquid. You can also look at using alternative flours like buckwheat which alter the texture.
If you're not filling the crepe: just cook it a little longer.
If you are filling the crepe:
Depending on what you're filling the crepe with, you can put in the oven for a few minutes after it's filled. This way, it will be soft and flexible when you're filling it but will get crispier after it's filled.
Less eggs or none. Just as with cookies, eggs will make them cakier.
And lower temperature longer cooking time will help too as it gives time for the batter to spread out and evaporate moisture.
Corn syrup instead of sugar helps as granulated sugar holds water.
The easiest, surefire way, is to make them ahead of time, let them dry a bit, fill and roll, refry on hot griddle.
It's funny, because here in the Czech Republic we barely if ever use corn syrup. I am also pretty sure she would not skip the eggs, although the exact ratio could be put to question there :-).
I am surprised that you consider eggs to make them cakey. I have never seen crepe recipes without eggs (I would probably consider them something different like a tortilla), and my own recipe has more eggs and is certainly not cakelike.
In the US, people think because an immigrant made something it's "authentic" when it's just watered down pancake mix and the peculiarities of the pans they use and smelling spices used in other dishes coming from the kitchen. Also, today's much higher gluten flour provides a lot more bonding, hence less eggs.
Ingredients, cooking pans, oil/fat are different today than in grandma's time; what we are going after is the effect, appearance, the texture and essential taste (is it the crepe flavor or the syrup/jam?). 98% of people won't detect differences in ingredients.
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98746 | How does the process of tempering in indian dishes generally work?
I am trying to understand the tadka (tempering) technique or procedure Indian meals. Is the a specific order in which spices go in in order to avoid overcooking some which are more delicate? I understand that for example the cumin seeds will usually go in first. Some tadka also include cilantro - that would obviously go in towards the end. Is there a general procedure to follow? I would also be happy for some book tips that focus on the techniques used in Indian cuisine, not just concrete recipes.
Do they really include cilantro (i.e. leaf)? Or are you asking that from a translation of coriander, which applies to the seed as well (and the seed is commonly used in this sort of thing)
I've seen some that included cilantro, but it could have been a mistake on part of the recipe author. Also in some cases they make the initial mixture with diced tomatoes and ginger etc. to start cooking dal - might've been there I saw it. But it puzzled me like you, because things like cilantro leaves you normally only add only at the very end, otherwise almost all of the flavor is lost.
I know some rules of the thumb from central European cuisine, like for example only to briefly coat sweet paprika with oil, otherwise it gets bitter. I am looking for similar such rules for Indian to allow me to cook more with instinct rather than according to recipes.
The general rule of thumb is to put spices that burn easily in the end. Black mustard seeds are often added, in which case add the mustard seeds to hot oil first. Once the mustard seeds stop popping, turn the heat down, add urad dal (white lentil), dried red chillies, cumin, and turmeric. Of course, your tadka may not have all ingredients that I've listed (or may have others that I haven't). I generally add turmeric last because it burns the most easily. South Indian tadkas often add fresh curry leaves. Those can be added right after the mustard seeds (they splatter, so one has to be careful).
Thanks a lot for the insights. I am wondering, if you had to name 3-5 basic ingredients to use to make tadka, what would be the really indispensable ones? I know you can go really fancy and layer a lot of different flavors, but it is a little overwhelming for a beginner without anyone to emulate. Maybe something like cumin seeds,, ginger, garlic, coriander powder, garam masala and turmeric could already be a decent start? Roughly in that order?
It depends on the regional style of cooking. For example, north Indian cooking often uses cumin, turmeric, and garlic. South Indian cooking, on the other hand, almost always uses mustard seeds and curry leaves. Asafoetida is used throughout the country. You could add a combination of any of the other spices you've listed (ginger, though, is not common in a tempering). If there's a specific dish you want to add tadka to, I may be able to guide you better.
Right now I am just looking at adding tadka to my dal. I am not aiming at any specific regional style of cooking, I just want to have some really nicely and authentically flavored legume dish. Things like asafoetida or curry leaves are kind of exotic to me in a sense that I wouldn't have much use for them except this one dish. What I do have most of the time is jeera, garlic, ginger, garam masala, turmeric, chilli powder etc.
For dal, for a simple tadka, use cumin seeds, turmeric, and garlic. Heat a 1–2 tbsp of oil, add cumin seeds. Once cumin seeds sizzle, add garlic (preferably chopped), and then add turmeric. Let the turmeric sit in the oil only for a few seconds and then add the tadka to your dal. You can add garam masala and/or coriander powder to the dal directly, without frying it.
That sounds like a great start, thank you Avi. When you say into your dal, do you mean pulses cooked in water without additional flavoring or is the cooking process started with a similar ghee/spices mixture there as well? I mean, is dal a meal on it's own into which tadka is added or does that just mean essentially cooked legumes?
I meant dal cooked on its own, without additional flavoring. Tadka is added to the cooked legume + water mixture in the end.
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81352 | What to put underneath a polycarbonate sous vide bath container?
I am using a polycarbonate gastro container for sous vide cooking. The water is relatively hot and I prolonged heat can damage the counter on which it is sitting.
What would be a good and cheap pad to put underneath my sous vide container to protect the counter? I am looking for something cheap and easily obtained, ideally also non-slippery.
A trivet is what you want. Any store with cookery goods will probably have some. They run from about five to well over thirty dollars depending on quality, effectiveness, fanciness, and decorative appeal.
I prefer the solid ones with feet for really hot pots or continuous heating.
I often successfully use one or more folded tea or bath towels or even a wooden plank (6" x 6", e.g.).
thanks, i didn't know that word. one of those with feet and then maybe a kitchen towel would probably work best.
There are some people that use an old newspaper for that, cheap and easy!
thanks, that's actually a pretty nice and cheap solution :-)
I find that towels are the best especially when folded. They provide insulation for the water bath as well. If you use a large bath/beach towel, you can fold it once or twice and actually use it to cover the walls and even the top of the container to cut heat loss as well as water evaporation (assuming your container has no cover). You can always put a trivet under the towel to prevent sliding).
I use a large ceramic (stoneware) plate under my rice cooker or slow cooker. So far, so good.
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76648 | Procedure for sous vide potato salad prep
For the upcoming christmas eve I need to prepare a large quantity of Czech/German style potato salad. That involves preparing a lot of diced cooked root vegetables (carrot, celery root, parsnips) and potatoes. My question is how can I use sous vide to achieve a potentially superior result and time savings. Is using sous vide practical at all in this case?
It's my experience that doing sous-vide for some of those vegetables - carrot & parsnip in particular - can create a weird, spongy texture.
Me thing large quantity and sous-vide will not work well.
Carrot and potato can work well using sous vide. In fact, sous vide carrots are delicious. Cook at 90C. The issue will be timing, because it depends on the size of your veg. You are just going to have to check them until you achieve the result you like. Too long, and they will get mushy. For me, a whole carrot usually takes 45 min to an hour. So, a diced carrot could take substantially less time. The same holds true for potatoes...thin slices can take less than 30 minutes, for example.
I have not done them myself, but I assume parsnip and celery root would behave similarly. Use the same temperature, but time will have to be assessed as you go.
Additionally, all of these vegetables will float given that they contain a lot of air. Vacuum sealing will help, but may not keep them under water, as air is expelled during cooking. You will need to weigh down the bags or keep them submerged by placing something on top of them.
In the end, cooking them traditionally might just be the better way to go.
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6848 | How to safely grill meat/fruit/veggie skewers
This weekend we grilled kebabs with steak, onions, peppers, and big pineapple spears. No ill effects, but I noticed that the pineapple was still cool where it was touching the meat, and the meat still reddish where touching the pineapple. This made me wonder whether having the chunks all snugged up against each other is truly safe or not, it seems like any bacteria on either piece would still be safely alive and dangerous where they were touching. Any good knowledge on this, or recommended practices for grilling safely?
Honestly, while your typical "combination" skewer looks more impressive, I find it's much better to grill them in separate skewers. One for beef, one for chicken, one for peppers, one for onions, etc. That way, you can cook each to their preferred temperature and not have to worry about the exact problem you're running into.
As far as cross contamination, you'll definitely minimize any risk grilling them as separate skewers, but since you didn't have chicken in the mix you should be relatively safe anyway. Once you sear the outside of the beef, you should be safe.
I picked this method up from an Alton Brown recommendation on a Good Eats episode (Scene 10), and found that I get considerably better results when I do it this way.
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29463 | I'm making tomato sauce which never thickens
I tried the following recipe.
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5211/amatriciana-pasta
The result is tasty, but the sauce looks nowhere near the image. It is some red paste, yes, but with onions and bacon still clearly taking about half of the volume.
My guess is that I didn't let the onions caramelize long enough. Is this correct? Basically, the "sauce" I get didn't thicken much and the water from the tomatoes evaporated without leaving anything of substance.
Independently of the question whether you should have caramelized them thoroughly or not: Caramelizing onions usually takes much longer than most recipes tell you, with proper dark-brown color needing up to 40 minutes on mild heat. (If you try to speed it up by using higher heat, you end up with scorched onions).
Try this on for size http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/08/quick-caramelized-onions-recipe.html
I wouldn't worry too much about your results not matching the picture.* If you got enjoyable results, enjoy them. However, some notes can be made about your concerns.
The bacon certainly isn't going to disappear -- no matter what you do (short of blending), you will always be able to see those bits.
The onions in the sauce shouldn't really be caramelized, but they should be thoroughly sweated -- without coloring -- so that they are soft and just starting to be sweet. If you'd like the onions to disintegrate more, you can cut them differently: either dice them finely or slice them latitudinally. There are fibers in an onion which run from top to bottom, so if you slice from pole to pole, you get the whole length of it. If you cut across the fiber, the slice will break down much more when cooked.
the water from the tomatoes evaporated without leaving anything of substance.
It sounds from that like you may actually have cooked it down too long. You can cook tomatoes all the way down to paste, if you like, but in this case you want to stop before that happens, leaving a fair bit of the tomatoes' juice, enough to coat the pasta when you mix them. It sounds like the sauce did thicken, and then went past that, to drying out.
Keep the time that the recipe gives for the tomatoes to cook down in mind only as a very loose guideline. Much more important is the results that you see on your own stove. The person who wrote down that recipe has a different pan, different burner, different kitchen... Of course, to know exactly what is right (for both your equipment and your preference), takes repitition, and thus the time-based guideline to put you in the ballpark.
I'd suggest just trying it again, paying particular attention to the consistency of the sauce after you add the tomatoes. Taste and evaluate it frequently as it cooks, and take it off the heat when it looks and feels the way you expect.
As an aside, if you're interested, the official recipe for the sauce is available on the website of Amatrice (the town), although it's in Italian, of course.
*For one thing, the presentation is amateurish -- the cooked pasta should be mixed with the sauce, rather than just being topped with it. (And it's entirely possible that the picture is not even the product of this recipe.)
Ugh, thinking about pasta all'amatriciana always makes me want some. Alas, I have no pork belly in my house...
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14058 | How do you safely bring ingredients normally stored cold to room temperature?
Many recipes call for ingredients that are normally stored cold to be at room temperature at the time of use. One example is a cake recipe, which often calls for all ingredients (milk, eggs, etc) to be at room temperature.
What is the safe method of bringing these ingredients to room temperature? Do you just leave them out for a few hours?
Alternatively, what is a quick way to accomplish this? Heat them up? Place them in room temperature or warm water baths?
If it is something like the eggs for baking a cake then you take out the number of eggs you need for the recipe and let them sit on the counter for about an hour before you start putting your ingredients together. I've been baking for a great many years and even if the eggs are still a little chilly it won't do any harm to a cake or cookie recipe. It might make a difference for bread recipes but the warm water used to activate the yeast will usually bring up the temp of other ingredients to where you need it.
Eggs are actually pretty safe to leave at room temperature anyway; supermarkets don't bother refrigerating them, and you can be damn sure they're not going to risk losing any money through spoilage. I keep mine in a ceramic bowl on the counter top.
In general, simply take the required ingredient out of the fridge a couple of hours before use, keep it away from heat sources and out of direct sunlight.
FYI, in the US eggs for the retail market are refrigerated throughout the supply chain (required by law).
Thanks. I wonder how the rest of the world manages, what with our warm eggs! :)
I believe most countries don't wash their eggs. The protective coating keeps them from spoiling, and they have many days, if not a few weeks, worth of shelf life. American eggs are washed (to prevent Salmonella?), and without the coating are not shelf stable. At normal temps (65-75F), I would assume they would be ok for a couple of days if they are fresh. If you can get them unwashed from a farm (or from your own chickens), then you really don't have to refrigerate them at all.
Specifically in regards to leaving milk out, at one time I worked in an institutional kitchen. The milk we got had a table on it giving temperatures and the time it was safe to leave out in those temperatures. I don't remember the exact numbers, but the table went up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. There should be no problem leaving milk, and most other ingredients, out for an hour or two at room temperature.
I agree, but it's worth mentioning that most of the food safety timings are cumulative, so although it's fine to leave it to warm for an hour and use it, you want to measure out the amount to be using rather than letting a gallon of milk to warm up, use a cup, then try to chill it down, then repeat again the next day. Most large kitchens go through ingredients in such volume, they won't have this problem, but home cooks often do.
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12841 | What would be the difference between frying vs baking meatballs?
I'm sure the two techniques impart slightly different flavor profiles, but what are they? What are the circumstances where you would choose one method over the other? Would the recipe need to be altered at all between methods?
Never thought about boiling them? Just a few minutes in boiling water and they are done.
Conversely I only ever bake my meatballs for one simple reason: it makes a heck of a lot less mess.
Also with the effort that goes into making meatballs and the fact that making 6 or 30 is about the same amount of effort, I actually like to make a large amount and then freeze the extras.
But like @daniel said: there's no adjustments needed to the recipe or technique or anything.
Baked meatballs will not brown as well (if at all) and will not take on any of the flavor of the oil in which they are fried. To get that fried flavor you could add a little bit of oil into the meatball mixture and also lightly spray/toss the meatballs with oil before baking.
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10291 | What research is there on tea preparation?
I'm a fan of modernist cooking, and its emphasis on precise measurements and consistency. I'm curious how to apply this to tea preparation - in particular, several things:
It seems to be well established that different types of tea should be prepared at different temperatures - black tea and fruit infusions with boiling water, green tea at 80 degrees centigrade, and so forth. Where/when was this established? How do we know it's optimal for each tea?
Likewise, durations to steep tea seem fairly well established. Is there any research on this? People seem a bit fuzzier on this than on temperatures, with some variation.
There's a lot of variance on the amount of tea leaves per litre of tea, varying between 2 grams per cup (8 grams per litre) and 15 grams per litre! Obviously, this depends on how finely cut the tea is, too. Is there any way I can determine this more objectively than just trying different amounts and tasting?
There seem to be several theories on how best to prepare iced tea. Some suggest using more tea and steeping for longer, some suggest preparing it cold, and so forth. Has anyone determined objectively which are better?
I realize this my come across as rather pedantic, but given the huge variation in preparation suggestions, I'm interested in trying to figure out which work best. Most of the questions above could be answered to some degree, too, with an explanation of what it is - chemically - that makes one batch of tea better or worse, providing a foundation for making these sort of decisions.
I just checked On Food and Cooking (http://amzn.to/fcwQGL), and while there are quite a few pages on tea history and styles, there isn't a ton of info about ideal infusion technique. I'm know that Modernist Cuisine (http://amzn.to/f3qFWR) has a very in-depth chapter on coffee technique but I haven't heard whether it covers tea in detail.
@Michael Good point about Modernist Cuisine. Coffee tends to get a lot of attention on this front because it's hard to get right, while it's pretty easy to get an acceptable cup of tea. Still, I'm confident there's lots of room for improvement here.
I'm not sure if there's an "objectively best" way to prepare tea (since some people like different flavors). I'm interested to see what people have to say about this though.
Go visit a good chinese tea merchant!
There is an ISO standard for tea preparation.
To quote the summary:
The pot should be white porcelain or glazed earthenware and have a partly serrated edge. It should have a lid that fits loosely inside the pot.
If a large pot is used, it should hold a maximum of 310 ml (±8 ml) and must weigh 200 g (±10 g).
If a small pot is used, it should hold a maximum of 150 ml (±4 ml) and must weigh 118 g (±10 g).
2 grams of tea (measured to ±2% accuracy) per 100 ml boiling water is placed into the pot.
Freshly boiling water is poured into the pot to within 4-6 mm of the brim. Allow 20 seconds for water to cool.
The water should be similar to the drinking water where the tea will be consumed
Brewing time is six minutes.
The brewed tea is then poured into a white porcelain or glazed earthenware bowl.
If a large bowl is used, it must have a capacity of 380 ml and weigh 200 g (±20 g)
If a small bowl is used, it must have a capacity of 200 ml and weigh 105 g (±20 g)
If the test involves milk, then it can be added before or after pouring the infused tea.
Milk added after the pouring of tea is best tasted when the liquid is between 65 - 80 °C.
5 ml of milk for the large bowl, or 2.5 ml for the small bowl, is used.
Also of note from the same article is the Royal Society of Chemistry's How to Make the Perfect Cup of Tea.
@justkt: I actually like the RSC's version better because it attempts to explain a few of the directives.
I can't believe I wasn't following this process, and still managed to make tea! I'll have to get a white porcelain or glazed pot with a partly serrated edge....
@Aaronut - the full standard might explain some things, but the wikipedia summary certainly doesn't. The standard is here: http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=8250
An ISO standard is certainly more than I hoped for - thanks, and thanks justkt! '2g per 100ml of water' explains the seeming variance in recommended tea quantities, too, though I still wonder how much variance should be allowed for tea leaf size.
Hm, it's close-but-not-quite: "This standard is not meant to define the proper method for brewing tea, but rather how to document tea brewing procedure so sensory comparisons can be made." - so this would be an excellent resource for anyone wanting to make the sort of experiments whose results I'm interested in. :)
Let's emphasize that this ISO standard is for professional tasting, not a way to make the better tasting tea. Notably, the long brewing time will underline the bitterness (that pros learn to put aside).
Hey man, we should use different temperature and time for different types of tea! What's wrong with this "standard"?
I think the standard for everyday brewing. For professional tasting, you would make a distinction for what teaware to use for what tea, optimize the leaf-to-water ratio, and custom brewing times.
Tom Scott made a video describing and demonstrating an ISO standard cup of tea. He too makes the point that it's not intended to taste good, merely to be exactly reproducible for comparison purposes. He describes it as “a terrible cup of tea”!
The making of tea is a balance between three factors that affect how the flavours of the leaves are infused into the water: time, temperature, and the ratio of leaf surface area to water.
Generally, more of any one of those parameters is balanced by less of the others.
The temperature,however, has a specific minimum requirement, below which certain things simply won't occur. This is why black tea must be made with the water starting at the boiling point, and not at 70 degrees.
As for precision, the problem is mostly defining the result, not the conditions. How do you define a good cup of tea in a way that is measurable and repeatable?
Practically speaking, I find that the different traditions in each tea-drinking culture are a very good starting point to work from. After that, you can adjust and experiment all you want. Remember that traditions can vary from "one for each cup and one for the pot" to the intricacies of a full Japanese tea ceremony.
The standardizations are deeply cultural in nature, to begin with, not "scientific" per se (not the least because taste preferences are not scientific to begin with). They can be described or explained scientifically, but that isn't really the same thing.
The "standard" brew times you mention are from the western method of brewing tea, which is meant to efficiently extract the majority of available flavor compounds, and a minority of bitter compounds, within a single brew. The ISO tasting guidelines (or something like them) are an excellent place to start, actually, how it worked was people taking a standard amount (tea-spoon) and brewing the tea in hot water till all the flavor was soaked out of it, and then varying the time up or down and taste-testing to let people find a compromise time, where the flavor is balanced by bitterness... some place people could figure out as a starting point from which their own preferences could be mapped. This is not an absolute time, really, some will prefer lighter or darker, brewing times hotter or colder, using less tea or more - it's an average to begin with, and once people were making blends, it becomes an official recommendation "we tested percentages brewed at these times, for a standard product that you can expect XYZ from" (and blended their tea based what was extracted at those standard instructions). It works as a recipe, not a rule. Some science, and some calculations, can predict solubility of specific compounds over temperature and time for many of the flavorful components in the tea leaves - since the extraction of these compounds is one point to keep in mind - but that is more explaining after the fact why those points were chosen, not the cause. A western style cup of tea is hearty and flavorful, often with some bitter notes (strong tea) but avoiding most bitterness, drunk plain or with a modest dressing (a little bit of sugar and milk or honey and lemon). Typical flavorings are also brewed mild (to be extracted at the same brewing temp), flowers, fruit, and so on.
Of course, if you look at south asian-style tea (India, Thailand, Persia, etc), people used to western style will call it all wrong despite being an older and very well established tradition. South asian styles, which include milk teas and spiced chais, go for maximum extraction of the flavor compounds, heavy boiling and then diluting to palatable consistency. For this reason, it is common for the teas to be served with generous amounts of sugar, milk, and spices to mellow the bitterness. The bitterness, which is to be minimized in western style brewing, is a feature of this kind of tea (think how bitter coffee is, it isn't considered a problem). That maximum extraction is accomplished by boiling the tea for a long time (15 minutes, couple hours, something like that). This is also fairly standard and well established, by the way, the methods are culturally common. The extended boil also allows flavor to be extracted from any added spices, better dissolves the traditional sugars (chunks of rough jaggery, or flavored thick crystals or candies, which all take more time and heat than fine processed white sugar), and can allow for altering the orders of ingredients for different effects from differing times or interactions (from spices added at beginning or end, to whether the tea was added before or after the milk). A typical south asian cup is brewed dark and strong and bitter, served with a generous amount of sweetner, with milk and other strong, dry spices (cinnamon, clove, ginger, cardamom, saffron) frequently added. A lighter cup of tea would be lost in other flavors.
On the other hand, east asian style (japan and china) is very much the opposite - they brew very lightly and coolly, favoring a delicately flavored hot water. This is where the "precise temps and short times" brewing style came from, and some of this crossed over into the western style of brewing (accounting for the much lower temps accorded to green tea, for example). The ideal experience in this culture is multiple brews, and experiencing how the tea changes over its brewing time. The brewing therefore uses much more tea, uses much less water, and brews for much less time, per serving - since they expected that tea to last many servings. Some brew times are exceedingly short (I have seen 12 seconds) because the tea was already hydrated, hot, and extracting into the dregs of the teapot from the last round of brewing. Western brewing would therefore be ridiculously over-brewed by this standard, all the flavor meant for up to 20 infusions ending up in a single cup. They want a tea that's complex, slow brewing, sweet (not bitter).
Other oddball methods of drinking tea - Russia, Turkey, and southern USA boil a strong, sweet infusion and serve it either bitter and strong, or diluted (with water) to form a more palatable drink. Tibet serves a strongly brewed tea with butter and salt. Several cultures from China to Russia have toasted their tea before brewing, or smoke the tea, over the fire or in pans (partially left over from the tea brick trade). Another leftover from tea bricks was tea powdered and whisked, and not strained at all before drinking (very concentrated). Some of the info comparing cultures and tea is from here, and here, other parts I've seen over years.
Anyway, after all that, the answer is mostly no, there's no standard, no objective anything, no way whatsoever of judging one cup of tea better than another. You can pick a style and judge by those standards, which are discovered through centuries of trial and error. It might help to judge a tea by the cultural standards it is marketed to - western marketed tea will be measured, blended, and tailored to western brewing times, while east asian teas will have vastly different brewing conditions - although you can prefer a tea to be prepared by other standards than it's own. You can judge by your own standards, what you like better or not.
You can get consistency, kinda, by following the same brewing instructions every time - it should at least give you an idea for how to tweak each tea to your tastes. However, consistency in teas are artificially done - tea is a biological product (think wine), where weather, treatment, year, and grade can drastically effect the leaf's taste even from the same cultivars in the same plantations. Big tea companies have blenders (who test the all the available batches of tea, and mix blends of different teas to achieve their own consistent brand flavor - and must re=blend every year.
So if half of the reason for the western tea brewing time and temp recommendations is a version of the ISO guidelines, a standard to start from, the other half is these blenders. People had to taste tea brewed to these specifications to compare different lots of tea, so when they were mixing blends they were specifying, layering, planning each blend around the flavors and effects that were extracted at these times and temps.
Other specific questions - to get the amount of tea used, there is either blind guesswork, or official recommendations. Those recommendations will be specific to your tea, of course - the instructions on the package, for western style brewing. The amount used is not really supposed to depend on how finely cut the tea is (same amount of leaf to same amount of flavor, just quicker to extract), but it does depend on the leaf, when it was picked, how it was treated (fermented, oxidized, packed or rolled) - and also by the brewing temperature and time, since the three together will directly effect the strength of your brewed tea. More tea is extracted with each variable more/higher/longer, less is extracted with the variable less (and balancing one against the other is possible for strength, but not precise flavor).
But there's no objective way to tell where a tea will taste best, because there's no standard beyond "what the tea blender intended". It will also depend heavily on the brewing style - south asian style will use less (one teabag per pot, sometimes), since more flavor is extracted from the tea in boiling it to death, while east asian will use more tea (a lot more, like a third as much tea as water) since it is extracting very briefly each time, and needs to have enough flavor left over for a lot of infusions.
Iced tea also does not have objective standards. Sometimes a more concentrated solution is used, because it will be diluted with ice, or because it's easier to brew a smaller amount and add to cold water than to heat and let cool a large amount of extra water. Some people believe cold-brewing won't bring out the bitter flavors. Some people want those bitter flavors (southern sweet tea, for example). Some people dilute the tea because they want a light refreshing cool drink, sometimes flavored with lemon or fruit. Others make it strong because it's served with milk and spices, just like their hot tea. There's science behind what each method does and why, but the method used depends on what effects the tea drinker wants out of the tea - and that can very considerably.
I'm curious - what's, for you, the difference between something which is "scientific" and something which is "described scientifically"?
@rumtscho - Scientific is reproducible and consistent, it is an actual thing, a fact. A concentration of, say, capsacin can be scientifically measured. Spicy taste can't be measured scientifically, the difference is too, too much... the level I throw up for, is bland and tasteless to mom. You can't induce mom's experience in me or reverse, not with the pepper or the dish, not hooking into the brain for nerve impulses or skooshing around with taste bud receptors. Science describes what happens, but can't reproduce it - so science can't define amount of pepper for a spicy taste.
OK, so in your terminology, only entities which can be measured using objective measurements are called "scientific". But what do you call "can be described by science"?
@rumtscho - Science can describe what's physically going on, the chemistry - dissolving of compounds into water at different rates, alteration over temperature and time, those are constant. Perception of good or bad is not measurable, though, so no figuring out where in the dissolution process is the "objectively" best tea. You can scientifically measure what it tastes like to you, and pinpoint where in the ongoing process that occurs (internally consistent, repeatable, testable) - but since it doesn't translate to anyone else, so any "objective" hypothesis is perpetually not proven.
I'd venture that most of these standardizations came by tasting, tea brewing existing in its current form since at least 3 centuries. Try to brew a fine Japanese green (like a Gyokuro) with boiling water, and the bitterness will kill the pleasure. Similarly, try to prepare a rolled Taiwanese Oolong at 70°C, the leaves will never open up completely and the taste will be bland compared to the traditional way.
I should also emphasize that old tea making countries have different methods of preparation : in China, the Gong Fu Cha is quite radical for a western tea lover, and in Japan the Kyusu or the matcha bowl are also unheard of.
I would describe tea brewing to be something more loose and artistic. Of course there are certain rules that you need to understand such as:
The less oxidized the tea, the lower the brewing temperature should be. Take for example a green. Too high temperatures can possibly result in bitterness, which might cover the delicate aroma.
Steeping duration: the lower the temperature the longer the steeping duration should be to compensate for the low temperature.
Teas that require high temperature should be steeped in teaware that isolate heat better (Yixing teapots). Also teaware can be preheated by rinsing with hot water. In contrast, teas that require low temperatures can be steeped in less isolative teaware (glass teapots).
These are more intuitional guidelines that help one to find the best brewing conditions for tea faster. The reason that you can't have a perfectly written standard, because 'tea' itself isn't standard. The flavour and aroma will differ per tea region, tea type, year and season. So instead of using a fixed standard or fixed recipe, approach tea brewing as if you're performing art.
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10694 | Why isn't my mornay sauce smooth?
I've been reading the Geek Cookbook, and decided to try the Mac & Cheese recipe from it, making the sauce from scratch - seemed simple enough! I've never made a Bechamel or Mornay sauce before, though, so this was new to me.
I made the roux fine, and mixed in the milk, which produced a smooth sauce. Once it started to thicken, I added the recommended amount of cheese (200g, to 2 cups milk). I used a pre-grated mix of mozarella, cheddar and romano. After mixing in the cheese, the sauce took on a fine, lumpy consistency - something like pureed cauliflower. Bringing it back to a simmer caused some of the surface to start to resemble a more normal looking mac & cheese sauce, but stirring returned the sauce to its previous grainy consistency.
Once it was simmering briskly, I left it on the stove simmering for 5-10 minutes to see if it would smooth out, but it did not appear to improve.
What did I do wrong?
Pre-grated.
Don't use pre-grated cheese for any sauce where consistency matters. Pre-grated cheeses are almost universally coated with cellulose to prevent clumping. This will muck up a good sauce every time. If it's going into a lasagna or a mac & cheese though, chances are it will go unnoticed by any but the cook.
slowly adding will help as well, once you stop adding the anti-clumping agents as well.
Hm, it was definitely noticeable in the end product - very much so. But that would certainly seem to explain it - thanks!
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11096 | How do I adjust a baking recipe for fruits of different PH?
I just cooked some apple bread, and I'm curious about adapting it to other fruits. I'm led to believe that the acidity of a fruit will cancel out some of the effect of baking powder or baking soda by neutralizing it, so more acidic fruits will require more baking soda to compensate. Is this accurate? If so, where can I find a comprehensive list of PHs of various ingredients, and how should I calculate how much extra baking soda to add?
It would be nearly impossible to gauge the effect of a different fruit on a quick bread without knowing the types and amounts of other acidic things in the recipe. Milk or buttermilk are also acidic, as are some other things you're likely to find in a quick bread batter.
Your recipe is going to be calculated to have enough leavening action for the bread, using whatever acids are initially required. Most likely this is partly the fruit and partly things like milk or buttermilk (both of which are acidic, buttermilk being more so).
Using more acidic ingredients than intended will just leave your final bread slightly more acid--probably not enough to bother you, particularly if the fruit was to your liking to start with. You may find that a more acidic batter causes the baking soda to rise faster than you want, so you should watch for that. You will not be able to make the baking soda release too much carbon dioxide by acidifying more--it'll do as much as it can then stop.
If you use less-acidic ingredients, you risk making the baking soda underperform. What I would resist doing in that instance is adding more baking soda, however. You won't increase the leavening action and you may find you introduce an unpleasant metallic taste. Better in those cases to let the batter sit just a little longer to give it more time to leaven, or add more of another acidic ingredient.
Ultimately, I'd be more concerned about the varying moisture levels in the fruits used than the acidity. Apples are relatively dry compared to, say, strawberries or blueberries, so you may find that your batter is too wet to cook properly at the time and temperature prescribed.
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15498 | How to make a mustard sauce for salmon steak?
I'd like to make a sauce for salmon steak, using a whole grain mustard. I would make a roux-based white sauce but I'd like something healthier because the roux has a lot of butter in it. Any ideas of what else I could use to make the sauce?
Gravlaxsås is a mustard sauce for salmon, made with dill.
The one I bought reports the following ingredients:
mustard
vegetable oil
sugar
water
wine vinegar
dill
modified cornstarch
On this site, the ingredients reported for gravlaxsås are the following:
6.5 tbsp. oil
2 tbsp. vinegar
2 tbsp. prepared mustard
1 egg yolk
0.25 tsp. salt
0.25 tsp. dill
Preparing the sauce seems quite easy:
Mix all ingredients in a jar and fasten lid.
Shake vigorously until the ingredients are well mixed.
Gravlaxsås is the sauce used for gravlax, a dish prepared with raw salmon, cured in salt, sugar, and dill.
I began writing this as a comment to kiamlaluno's reply about gravlaxsås but it turned out too long to post as a comment. +1 for suggesting gravlaxsås, but the recipe does not have much to do with the traditional preparation that I am used to (I am Swedish). I found a more orthodox version here:
http://www.grouprecipes.com/45013/gravlax-or-dill-cured-salmon-with-sauce.html
A few tips if you want to try making this sauce: The dill has to be fresh. Do not even think of using the dried stuff. If you cannot get fresh dill, just leave it out altogether or make different sauce. The sauce contains some sugar, the amount of which you can adjust to your liking. The recipe in the link fails to mention the amount of dill. You should use a lot, like 1/2 cup or so of chopped dill. Regarding the mustard: If you cannot get to Ikea, just use any whole-grain mustard and adjust the amount of sugar and vinegar accordingly (the Swedish-style mustard is usually quite sweet, and so should this sauce be).
I'd make some kind of honey-mustard sauce, perhaps with either some horseradish or dill in it. Just honey, mustard, perhaps a little lemon juice, salt and pepper.
A mustard sauce is pretty much going to end up tasting like mustard, with possibly one other note if it's a strong underlying flavor. Other than that, you're just balancing texture. I'd go with a bunch of mustard, bit of white wine, bit of olive oil or grapeseed oil, and small bit of horseradish to taste (told you the second note had to be strong). A "bit" in this context means "an appropriate amount to make a sauce of desired thickness and oiliness" while a "small bit" means "enough you know it's there, but not enough to overpower anything".
You could also go with dill instead of horseradish but, well, I hate dill.
While I agree, this answer difficult to follow without some culinary background. Would you consider rewriting it some to make it easier for a new cook to understand? The discussion of notes, balancing texture, and vague quantities are particularly challenging.
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2960 | Use any part of an animal for making stock/broth?
I got a whole leg of lamb, removed all the big parts of meat for another dish, then scraped down the remaining pieces around the bones and the fat. Should I use all of it for stock or does the pure fat parts for instance make the stock too greasy?
Don't use the horns. It just doesn't go well. ;)
Don't they add more calcium? ;-)
Stock is made from bones only and broth is the liquid that meat has been simmered in.
A well made stock should be clear without particles or cloudiness. Broth will usually be somewhat cloudy due to containing more dissolved proteins.
Bones for lamb stock (and any brown stock - veal can be made white or brown but lamb is usually brown) are typically first roasted. The roasting will melt fat that may still be intact. After roasting bones for stocks such as lamb, veal, and duck you would then remove the bones from the roasting pan and roast the vegetables. You can use the residual fat for coating the vegetables prior to roasting. (Just put vegetables in roasting pan and toss to coat with the fat). Fat from the bones will congeal on the top once the stock is chilled and you can then easily remove it.
I wouldn't add or purposely leave chunks of fat attached to the bone as you just have to remove it later but what is there isn't a problem.
In my case I just used bones and meat (and fat) to make something in between stock and broth, I guess. I suppose I just have to skim of the fat from the top and it should be fine. Thanks.
It will be much easier to degrease the stock/broth if you first chill it to allow the fat to float and congeal on top. If you need to use it right away then yes, you'll have to skim it off.
Just from experience, it's much better to let it cool slowly, if you're trying to remove the fat...If you chill it quickly, then the gelatin from the leg collagen is likely to seize up the whole mess before the fat floats to the top.
The fat will already be on the surface because it has a lighter density than water.
Re chicken stock vs. broth = this is in addition to the other great explanations. When well chilled do not skim off congealed fat on top of either chicken stock or broth because that is where the flavor is - without that it will taste like warm dishwater. But Yes, always skim off fat layer on beef, ham etc. broth & stock or all you will taste is the grease.
When I saute boneless chicken breasts, or roast bone-in chicken breasts, I always deglaze the pan and pop that great liquid in a dated freezer bag and stash it in the freezer. Then when I want to make chicken & dumplings or chicken soup I bring out all my little bags full of great flavored frozen gold!
If your animal is a lamb, you can use any part of it. However to answer the question in the headline, some animals (of which the moose is the most likely to be cooked) have poisonous levels of vitamin A in their livers, and you should therefore not use their livers for any culinary purpose.
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2968 | 'Lighter' version of American breakfast
(I'm neither English nor American so I might mix some things up.)
At home we usually have cereal or bread for breakfast. I really like English/American breakfast with eggs, beans and bacon, though. Do you have any suggestions about how to make a lighter version of that kind of breakfast for people who think that such a heavy/greasy meal is too much in the morning?
Consider that American breakfast is done that way because they usually eat breakfast, a light lunch, and dinner. American breakfasts doesn't match well with European lunches.
Never heard of beans as an american breakfast item and I've lived all over the U.S.
I think he's talking about the 'traditional' English breakfast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_breakfast
Sacrilege! There is no such thing. Plus, we don't eat beans for breakfast.
@hobodave : he mentions English/American breakfast in the question (not the title), which often includes beans : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_breakfast ; I'd have replaced the beans w/ potatoes or even just toast for it to be more "American".
Beans is a New England thing. In the Midwest, the typical "two-egg breakfast" is eggs, toast, meat (bacon, sausage, or sometimes ham slices), and hash brown potatoes.
But...that's how we got to be Americans =). Some suggestions:
Turkey bacon is (comparatively) light
and very little grease.
Use one egg and mix in some
water/milk, use a non-stick pan so
you don't have any excuse to add in
butter.
Substitute beans/whatever else with
some fruit
That's some really good suggestions, exactly what I was looking for. Some of the things (like the Turkey bacon) are not obvious to everyone.
+1 I've been using turkey rashers almost entirely in place of bacon for ages, and would recommend at least trying them.
I don't know about "lighter", but one of the thing missing from what you've listed are vegetables. Even a British or Irish "Full Breakfast" sometimes includes grilled tomato.
I'll often cook up some potatoes with onion and bell peppers and garlic ("home fries"). The trick is to pre-cook the potatoes, so you don't have to fry them on the stovetop for too long. (I bake up a couple of extra whenever I make baked potatoes; let cool, wrap in foil, then shash in the fridge)
You can also add vegetables to your eggs -- an omelet or scrambled eggs with mushrooms, onion, bell pepper, etc.
If you're scrambling the eggs, you can remove some of the yolks if you're trying to reduce fat -- I'm not a fan of all whites, but one whole egg + 2 egg whites is about the same amount off food as two eggs without affecting things too badly.
You could also substitute out the beans for toast (whole wheat for the goal of being healthier), if you wanted to be more American.
Counterintuitively, substituting Canadian bacon (peameal bacon) for regular bacon will reduce the fat and calorie count.
And tastes excellent!
Not sure that you will get what you like from a "lighter" version. I wouldn't. My favorite breakfast is a couple of eggs over easy, 1/4 lb of kielbasa sliced, browned for a moment then steamed, and "home-fried" potatoes. I use very little butter for the potatoes and the eggs because I don't like them greasy.
The point of the traditional Anglo-Saxon breakfast is to be hearty and filling, because lunch for the working class is typically light because it is carried into work in a lunch pail.
To answer your question ..
Reduce the amount of food .. that might reduce the "heaviness", but will also miss the point of the good, filling breakfast.
Poach or scramble the eggs rather than frying them.
Scramble "egg beaters" or egg whites only instead of whole eggs.
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4939 | How to calibrate Polder instant read thermometer?
I have a Polder instant read thermometer that is uncalibrated since changing the battery. I have tried and failed to calibrate it and I don't have the owner's manual. Does anybody know the proper procedure? This is a model with a digital readout of the temperature on the face, and 4 buttons: on/off, hold, max, and calibrate. I've tried putting the stem in boiling water and pressing the calibrate button. I've also tried holding it down for 10 seconds. I've also tried the same thing, but with a glass of ice water. Help!
You can download the manual for your particular model on the polder website.
The instructions for the model 574 (not sure if that's yours) are:
Calibration function: Put the probe into iced water (32 F); wait until the reading value stabilizes. ␣ If the value reads between 23 to 41 F (-5 to 5 C), press the “CAL” key for 2 seconds. “CAL” will appear on the display for 2 seconds: the unit will then be calibrated automatically and return to its normal state and display 32 F.
You can always give them a call too.
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81786 | How to sequence better while cooking
I often struggle with sequencing specific cooking activities in the kitchen, and either panic, screw something up, or more often than not the dish takes a lot longer to cook. I've tried prepping more, but I find that takes long and my cooking is delayed. If I follow a recipe, things usually turn out well, but when I'm free-cooking I tend to run into trouble. I know this problem is relating to something called sequencing. Does anyone have any good basic pointers that I could start with for sequencing so I can be more capable in the kitchen?
I am a bit confused by what you want. You say that if you prepare the main problem is that it takes "a lot longer" but if you don't prepare, it "takes long"? Also that you have most trouble when you are "free cooking"? Methods which shave time off of the cooking process rely on planning it well and preparing it. You can't use them when improvising. Also, if the time spent on organizing yourself is not somehow "extra time", you either have to spend it in preparation or during cooking, and this is what you report. Could the problem be in your expectations? What makes the time "too long"?
I actually routinely peel thing 2 while thing 1 is frying. To me the key is to work out your critical path. But you don't have to plan as I do. Just work out what your goal is:
get everything done in the least time possible
get everything done as calmly as possible
make sure nothing burns, dries out, overcooks, or cools and gets gluey
Say you want to make a piece of panfried meat (steak, chop, chicken etc) that needs to rest, along with mashed potatoes and some steamed veggies. So work out all the steps and how long they take:
sear meat 3 min each side, 10 min in oven (oh ooh, need to preheat oven), rest 10 min
peel potatoes 5 min (or however long you need), water come to boil 10 min, boil 10 min, mash 1 min
prep veggies 5 min, heat up steaming water 5 min, steam 5 min
(You can adjust all these numbers of course.)
Now you can sort it out into order so that you take as little time as possible and end up done at the same time.
dinner - 26 minutes: start searing steak. Preheat oven.
put potato water on to boil
peel potatoes (partway through, turn steak)
should be about dinner - 20 minutes now. Put steak in oven.
wait 5 minutes (tidy up?)
dinner - 15 minutes put potatoes into water
turn on steaming water
prep veggies
dinner - 10 minutes, steak out to rest
dinner - 5 minutes, put veggies into steam
dinner - 1 minute, mash potatoes, put into serving bowl, put veg into serving bowl, put steak onto serving plate, dinner is ready
The exact order will be different every time but you work it out by finding the longest chain and starting that first. For each thing you want to end up serving, you need to work back the steps to get you there and therefore when you want to start that chain. Keep in mind that an oven can preheat or a pot can boil for a few extra minutes without consequences.
Now this approach keeps the overall time the lowest and gets it all on the table at once. But you might find that too stressy. So you could do it like this:
preheat oven
peel potatoes and put them in a pan of cold water.
prep the veggies and put them in the cold steamer.
pan fry the steak, focusing on nothing else for 6 minutes
put the steak in the oven
turn the heat on under the potatoes
after 10 minutes, take the steak out of the oven to rest
turn the heat on under the steaming veg
after 10 minutes, everything should be ready
This takes 10 minutes longer because you "get your mise en place together" (that is do all the peeling and prepping) before you do anything else. But it spares you doing two things at once, and if your peeling takes 7 minutes instead of 5, all that happens is you eat a little later, you don't throw other timings off because you haven't started anything else yet.
It doesn't matter which of these approaches you take, you can still work out the order and the times when you just need to wait for a bit. As you get faster at prepping and more confident in your prep time, you may naturally start to take a more overlapping approach.
"water come to boil 10 min" This is what electric kettles are for. Bringing cold water to the boil on the stove is slow and energy-inefficient.
@DavidRicherby not arguing (and I've done it lots of times) but not relevant to working out the timing either. What matters is knowing how long a potato-pot-sized or steamer-sized pot of water needs to come to the boil on your stove or with your kettle or however you do it.
If you really want to speed it up you can put half of the water in the pot on the stove, and more in the kettle...
The short answer...This is mostly about timing and organization. Most important is, mise en place, that is, prep everything you are going to need so that you are ready to actually cook. For example, you don't want to be peeling something as another ingredient is frying. When everything is prepped, start with the item that is going to take the longest to cook...timing things so that everything is done at about the same time.
Agreed, it's all about being prepared for what you are going to be cooking. Another thing you can do to help yourself out is to use a sous vide machine to cook your meat/fish. Sous vide will cook your proteins to the correct temperature slowly and allow you to finish your other side dishes while keeping it the correct temperature.
The first sentence seems un-useful. That is restating the question which is "how can I be better at organization and timing so that ...?" It is not a short answer -- be better by being better
Actually, @LyndonWhite, the question was "how do I get better at sequencing." In fact, organization and timing are critical elements if one wants to improve their ability to efficiently get the steps in the right order.
Ok, I know TV cooking is not "real" cooking, but every time I see them put something together, everything is prepped ahead of time. I can't multitask too well in the kitchen, so this mise en place approach seems to work better for me.
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33059 | What do I do with one cracked egg?
I just fumbled one of the eggs I was going to hard-boil for dinner. It's just a slight crack, but enough that there's a bit of albumen seeping – I definitely can't hard-boil it now.
I have no plans for one raw egg. What's a quick and simple way to use it so it doesn't go to waste?
In case it's not obvious, this was closed because of the 'polling' part of the close reason - there are just way too many simple ways you can cook eggs on their own (scrambling, frying, poaching, baking...) and still more ways to use them in things. You can often get good answers in [chat] for things like this though!
@Jefromi Thanks; right, of course. I should have known better too, since this isn't my first Stack… I guess that's egg on my face. *ducks*
If you didn't originally plan on using the egg out of shell, there is no reason you need to do it now. The egg if put in a sealed container can last 2-4 days out of shell according to stilltasty.com.
If you don't plan to use the egg within that time frame then you can extend that time farther by freezing the egg: Can raw eggs be frozen?.
You could break open the egg into a ramekin or coffee mug and place it in the microwave for 2 minutes. Enjoy it then or the next day.
A little tip if you want it to come out in one piece, spray a little pan release inside the mug or ramekin.
Lightly stir it (to break the yoke but not mix it all together).
Throw it in a pan with some butter, spring onion, capsicum, and cheese and ham if you have it.
Season with salt and pepper, and either eat it like that, or put it on buttered bread.
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12275 | Is there a spice that is hot and colorless?
I want to prepare a drink that is hot (spicy) but I don't want to use regular hot sauce because it will affect the color. Is there anything like "clear" hot sauce?
I assume this is for the purposes of some sort of practical joke.
No, I just want to spice up a drink without affecting it's color.
Let a hot pepper (jalapeño or habañero, perhaps) soak in your liquid for however long it takes to achieve the desired hotness.
It worked very well. All I had was a long green pepper (not very hot). I perforated it and soaked it in vodka for 6 hours. The vodka got quite hot. There is a noticeable smell and taste of green pepper though.
Most of the capsaicin is in the seeds and pith (white stuff inside the pepper). You could try just soaking those parts. They might not have as much pepper flavor.
Hmm, I'd look for pure Capsaicin if all you want is the heat. It's colorless/odorless so could work, but I'm not sure where you can find it.
I've heard of white, hot sauces which may work for you, here is an example
The vinegar (and possibly the salt) in the sauce you linked to might make it a bad call for drinks, but good thought!
@Jefromi: Depends on the drink. Tobasco is regularly used in drinks and that has a substantial amount of vinegar and some salt.
A note regarding capsaicin: pure crystalized capsaicin is ridiculously hot. I can't stress enough how intolerably mind blowing it is. A spec the size of one of the commas in your answer in a can of tomato soup renders it inedible. I have a very high tolerance for capsaicin too.
As @hobodave hints at, pure capsaicin is 15-16 million on the Scoville Scale, which is over 10 times hotter than the infamous "ghost chili". If you actually manage to get hold of it, don't even try to measure it out directly; you need to dilute it first.
The brand 'Pure Cap' comes in a dropped bottle inside a child-proof container. I've seen people dip a tooth pick into a drop of it, then touch it to their tounge and decide it was too much.
Cajohn's Frostbite it is a clear hot sauce and pretty good for making mixed drinks
I took the liberty of adding a link. It looks interesting! The reviews on the page suggest that it's a pretty good product and might be ideal for the OP's purpose so I upvoted too. Welcome to Seasoned Advice!
Szechuan (Sichuan) pepper husks can be brewed/simmered in hot water and results in a relatively clear broth that can be very "hot" and a much more interesting taste than refined or artificial capsaicin
It also has that numbing effect that most people find rather interesting
I have some habanero powder that has a beige color. I would imagine that wouldn't discolor a clear liquid too much. And believe me, a little bit goes a long way.
Fresh uncooked Ginger paste has quite a kick to it, as does fresh ground Horseradish.
The tastes are not much like capsicum, but can be eye-wateringly potent.
There's a style of hot sauce that is basically whole peppers soaking in a vinegar solution; it's probably work, but it'd give a sour note from the vinegar.
You could always make your own ... it tends to be made with green peppers; I'm guessing green or yellow would impart less color.
Also, a quick search suggests that there's at least two brands of 'clear hotsauce' out there -- Panola and Frostbite.
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9119 | How do I make my roux taste less like flour?
When I make a roux for soups and sauces it always ends up tasting like the flour. What is the correct way to make roux? How long does the flour need to cook out of it?
Cook it longer, and watch your proportions. If it's too dry (not enough fat), it's hard to cook through without burning it. You want to get to a golden brown color throughout. You can cook it until it's darker and it'll add more caramel/nutty flavor (don't burn it), but it has to be at least a golden color before it's cooked enough to not taste of raw flour. When in doubt, taste it. If it tastes raw still, go a bit longer.
A good start for proportions is 1 part flour to one part fat--by weight, not by volume. Start with your fat in the pot, and get it nice and warm but not blazing hot, then add your flour a bit at a time, stirring (or better yet, whisking) for a couple of seconds to incorporate it smoothly before adding more. Stop adding (no matter how much flour you've used) when you get a slightly soft paste. Not too runny, but not as stiff as toothpaste either. I've yet to find a common thing people can agree on that has the right consistency to describe it, unfortunately. When you get the right consistency you need to keep stirring it over the heat until you get that golden brown color.
I admit that it's a little imprecise, but it really is a thing I do by feel and experience, based on what I said above as my original starting point. I've learned how I like it over the years, but I started with that.
I've found that using whole wheat flour to start with reduces that some as well... it gives a slightly more nutty flavor.
Are there any negatives to using a lot of fat?
@Cocowalla, Too much fat and some won't be bound to the flour. If nothing else in the sauce will emulsify it an oil slick will form.
A very good way to make roux is as follows:
Cook meat with a high fat content in a pot or pan on low or medium heat. If the meat is lean, then add vegetable shortening. Use a lower temperature so that after the meat is removed, there should be brown crispy bits instead of black charcoal.
Do not put soap or anything unpleasant into the pot or pan.
Add a very small amount of water water (less than three cups) to the "dirty" pot or pan.
Boil the crispy dry meat pieces in water.
The resulting brown broth will taste like roux, even though it contains almost no flour.
If you want the roux to be thick, then simmer the roux on low heat for a very long time until half of the water has evaporated.
This makes a fond, not a roux.
Add butter until the floury taste is gone. Good Luck
Butter does not mask the taste of flour.
Welcome to Seasoned Advice! I have to agree with Sneftel here, simply adding butter will not fix the taste of uncooked/undercooked flour in a roux (or anything else, for that matter.)
When answering a question on the site, please stick to the guidelines for How to Answer (https://cooking.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer); one good tip is to try to answer in such a way that is helpful to both the person posting the question as well as any others who might come across the question in the future.
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37969 | How do I get crispy but thin bread crust?
On a handful of occasions I've had bread in a restaurant where the crust is thin but very crispy, almost as if it had a couple layers. It looks crackly and gives easily to pressure. It's not a thick hard-to-chew crust. The inside is wonderful and soft. I'd call it "Italian bread" but I don't think that necessarily describes it.
My crust tends to turn out nicely colored, but 1/8"-thick and sort of soft/damp (like leaving bread out on a humid day) but also not terribly easy to chew.
Does anyone have any tips on how to get a crispy thin crust like this at home?
Bonus: What do you call this kind of crust? (It seems like "crusty" usually means hard thick crust, which is not what I want).
Are these breads with a uniform crumb or some time of laminated or layered roll or croissant?
Specifically, I'm thinking about breads similar to an italian or french bread, not a layered pastry crust sort of thing.
Assuming that this is what you want:
This kind of crust is made with steam injection. Normal household baking methods will give you a thick crust, which is usually also hard. Wetting and covering it right out of the oven will give you a chewy crust. If you bake the bread in a fitting pan and tweak the recipe, you can get thin, almost non-existant crust, but also soft, like sandwich bread.
For what you see in the picture, you need standard French bread dough (60% hydration, AP flour) and a blast of steam in the oven at the beginning of baking. Sadly, homemade steam methods which rely on evaporation won't work, because there is a limit to the amount of water which will evaporate even of high temperatures, and you need to get more steam inside than that. So, you'll either need a pro oven or a steam modding (which only works on an oven with vents, unless you are prepared to drill a hole into the oven cavity).
For extra tweaking the crust, you can use a glaze. We had a question explaining the different glazes and their results.
In some breads, a thin crust can be achieved by brushing the dough with oil and baking at a high temperature. Wetter doughs will also frequently have more crisp crusts.
At restaurants where the bread is really crackly, there's also a chance that the bread had been frozen. Par-baking bread, freezing it, and then baking it to the correct color tends to give bread a very (sometimes excessively) crisp crust.
1. Enclose the bread
An easy way is to trap the bread's own steam while it's baking. Some options:
Wrap or otherwise enclose the bread in foil while baking.
Place the bread on a cookie sheet. Place a metal pot, upturned, over it so that it is completely enclosed. Further enhance this by placing the bread on a piece of tin foil, then on a rack or grill (or anything that will keep it off the hot surface), before covering with the upside down pot.
Place the bread inside the pot and seal the top with foil. Again, if you can keep it from touching the bottom of the pot, you can get an even thinner crust.
Bake the bread while enclosed, and then for the last 5 minutes, remove the pot and let it bake uncovered.
The first stage (enclosed) will give you a bread with virtually no crust, and then in the second stage (not enclosed), a thin crispy crust will form.
Note that this crispy crust will not last long in any kind of humidity! Re-heat to dry it out again if you want to eat it crispy.
2. Freeze the bread
Another way is to let your bread rise to the point a little before it should be baked (depends on side of bread). Place it in the freezer in a freezer bag. Once frozen, wrap it in foil and bake it directly. Don't thaw it. You'll achieve the same effect—zero crust, then bake another 5 minutes to get a nice crispy crust.
Note
If you want a very fancy crispy crust that cracks and sings coming out of the oven, you will need to use fancier techniques or get a steam injection oven. Lots of people achieve this without a steam injection oven, however. I recommend www.thefreshloaf.com as a spot to read from / talk with people who are really into this and have thought of all kinds of crazy ways to get maximum crispiness out of their crusts. Check out Txfarmer's bread here. She doesn't use any special oven and still gets amazing results, probably by placing bricks/oven stones in the oven, and enclosing the bread somewhat as I describe above.
When you suggest keeping the bottom of the loaf off the hot surface, is that to prevent the bottom from getting a crust too early? And, for that last 5 minutes, would you move the loaf to be directly on the pizza stone after uncovering it?
Yes, the idea is to keep the bread "in the air" and away from direct heat while the inner dough is heating up. You should be fine just exposing the bread and letting the steam escape. If your oven is relatively airtight for some reason, leave the door ajar.
You should also note that most crackly crust breads are high hydration (ie >75%) and baked at high temperatures (450°-500° F)
I wasn't aware you had a pizza stone. I don't have one, so I don't know what result you'll get. To be quite honest I bake 90% of my bread on tin foil!
I know this is an old question, but I make a wet dough, wetter than usual, and then cook it in a dutch oven, taking the lid off for the last 15 mins of cooking. Thin crust and crispy, every time.
I’ve been experimenting with trying to get a supermarket type French stick crust. So far I’ve identified six key prerequisites that will produce results. 1. Quality French flour, supermarket bought flour, in the words of a industry baker who worked on developing bread in the 60’s at the UK baking research centre, “supermarket flour is the sweepings from the mill”.
2. A very hot oven. 3. Steam all through the bake(I squirt a water filled syringe in at the very start and then every 10 mins), apart from the end. 4. A crisper tray with holes in it. 5. Oil glaze. 6. A wet mix.
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2070 | How long does tahini last past expiration date?
I have a jar of organic tahini which expired one year ago.
It smells good and tastes ok. I don't know how it was stored, it was however always sealed (but already opened).
Is it safe to eat in large ammount ?
How far past the expiry are you at the moment?
About one year.
For what it's worth, you can safely store opened sesame oil in a refrigerator for one year (stilltasty.com).
Peanut butter can be kept for 3 months in the cupboard, then another 3-4 months in the refrigerator.
To be safe, I'd say keep it refrigerated once it's been opened, and use it within 6 months. I've had some for about that long, and it's just fine still.
Remember: bad odors indicate bad food.
I've had the same giant can of peanut butter for over a year. I took it on a road trip for a month, and it has been sitting in my cupboard since. As best I can tell, nothing bad has happened to it.
Oh, I personally have kept peanut butter for much more than 3 months in the cupboard... just quoting more official "safe" practices. I'm sure the temperature, quality of product, whether or not there's preservatives, etc. make a difference.
To the best of my understanding, Tahini is a lot like honey in this respect. It has no moisture in it, and will therefore suck the life out of anything that tries to land on it.
Theoretically, as long as there's no water there, it'll basically last forever.
I usually keep mine in the fridge, not for temperature control but to keep the humidity away. I do live in a swamp though.
I'm still using some I bought about 7 months ago, and it's fine.
Once it's been prepared (i.e. mixed with water) it's good for 3-4 days.
It contains lots of unsaturated fats, which can go rancid if exposed to air, and will pick up 'fridge flavors'.
Maybe. I don't think that it would support botulism, so you probably won't die (unless you have a deadly sesame allergy). I don't imagine a lot of bacteria will grow on it, either. The only thing I can think that might happen is that is oxidizes or picks up strange flavors, at which point it would just taste bad.
This is mostly guesswork. Proceed at your own risk (I'd eat it).
As long as it's kept in an airtight jar, it can hold for more than one year after opening. However, as time passes Tehini tends to lose its flavor, so it's best used as soon after opening as possible.
Just tried some in a tightly sealed jar. Just as good as the day it was bought,except it was hard to scoop some out. Neede a fork. Jar was filled with oil. Delicious for 10 year old tahini. Price was 3.29 for about a 500 ml bottle
Tahini is sesame seed paste, which means it's mostly an oil emulsion. That much oil, without other preserving intervention, will harbor bacteria and oxidize. If it isn't giving off any funky flavors or odors, it might be fine. Still, tahini is cheap, why chance it?
I'm fairly sure that bacteria can't live solely in oil. It lacks any moisture, which I suspect is necessary for bacterial growth.
Nothing is completely void of moisture. Still, even without the bacteria it will oxidize since it is mostly fat. Also the existence of an expiration date itself suggests that the product may contain an ingredient that has a finite shelf life.
Lots of possibilities here, to which I reiterate that tahini is cheap.
True why chance it ? Thing is I really don't like to waste food and am curious if it's really unsafe.
Fats spoil by rancidity. They will smell and taste bad long before they (even if they really can) become unsafe. See: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/45054/is-smell-a-bad-way-of-determining-whether-meat-is-still-good/45055#45055 In the case of a product that is virtually all fat, I'd go as far as to say that it's safe to "follow your nose". That's advice I usually consider very unsafe.
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2856 | Is it possible to extract the allergens from shellfish?
What exactly is it in shellfish that people are allergic to, and is it possible to extract those chemicals from them?
Allergic reaction to shellfish is typically caused by the protein tropomyosin. Since it is present in basically all of the muscle tissue of shellfish, extraction is not possible outside of a chemistry lab. Said lab extraction would destroy the food and likely render it inedible.
Update
Just found this recent article which indicates that myosin and sarcoplasmic calcium-binding protein (SCP) are also responsible for some allergic reactions.
I'm allergic to most shellfish and fish, but there's something that's part of the canning processes that has let me eat canned tuna fish. (I've been allergic since I was about 2 years old and have been eating canned tuna for many years now.) I'm guessing the similar processes in making things like fish sticks or canned crab or other heavily processed food products may let me eat those, too...but I don't like to gamble in this arena.
The process of canning tuna or salmon
sometimes changes the fish protein
enough that fish-allergic individuals
can tolerate these canned products.
Via http://www.allergicchild.com/shellfish_allergy.htm
Fish allergies are caused by a completely different protein than shellfish allergies. Despite your particular case, an allergy to both fish and shellfish is rather uncommon. More often than not it's just an assumption or misunderstanding of the allergy. This is even stated in your linked article.
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2103 | Cutting Sushi Rolls
I am new to making sushi and have gotten the hang of rolling it with the nori on the outside. The problem is when I am trying to cut it into individual pieces, I often end up mangling it to the point where it looks like it would be unpleasant to eat it. Is there a trick to getting a nice smooth cut through the roll? The first one of the day seems to always be the worst.
ok get a very sharp knife (straight blade)
put the blade under water
tap the blade on the counter to rid of excess water
cut roll in half
repeat the process on the two portions
make sure that you're using a long knife, and when you're cutting, don't seesaw, rather it should be one fluid motion
EDIT
or do it as the comment below says :P
I was taught by a sushi chef to do it in two motions. One slice forward which brings you halfway through the roll, then slice backwards to complete.
@hobodave - reflected in the edit :)
Thanks a ton, I never thought to water the knife so often. I was doing it only once per roll.
I tend to use the same water that I've been using to wet my fingers with when laying the rice, which has a splash of sushi vinegar in it. I can't remember the reason for the vinegar off the top of my head, but there was a reason according to a sushi chef.
I would just like to stress the word SHARP!
A damp towel also works in my experience, if you need to cut away from the sink. Just make sure you rewet the knife every single cut.
And don't rely on the yanagiba being the best roll cutter of all the knives around, even if it is the one knife everyone associates with sushi. It is not designed to cut dense foods well.
I had similar stuggles at first. Sharpness is first, test it on your thumb nail - it should have a decent bite. Second water, I dip my blade in water for a roll, not each piece, the other is when you dampen the nori to seal it, don't overwet it. Then, if possible, allow it to sit for a bit, maybe 15-30 seconds, with the sealed area on the bottom, that will help a lot.
If youre in a rush to get a hosimaki or futomaki out (nori on the outside) then when cutting, position the roll in the direction you will finish the cut, so as you pull towards yourself to cut the final bit of nori, you pull it tighter.
Take a paper towel, oil it, wipe your SHARPEST NON-SERRATED SUSHI BLADE with a very lite coating of olive oil (just enough to slicken it). Then, cut your roll exactly in half. Then repeat until you have 8 equal sized pieces. Don't forget to sprinkle your roll with sesame seeds or masago (fish eggs) BEFORE you begin slicing.
The oil is what keeps the rice from sticking like paste to your knife.
I cover my roll with a sheet of plastic wrap, then hold it gently while cutting. (I tend to make inside-out rolls, and the plastic helps with keeping the rice together but also helps with the roll's overall stability while slicing.)
I use chef Tony's Miracle Blade... that's not a joke, it really works for me - but any other quality toothed knife should work. Of course the trick is that you just have to lean the blade on the nori roll, and then move the knife without any pressure! The slice has to be cut only by the teeth of the blade!
I would recommend that you use a sharp knife and try not to put too much filling and make the cut in one motion also dip the knife with water
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2654 | How does food cook differently on an open top grill than a covered one?
The title pretty much says it all, how does food cook differently on an open top grill than a covered one?
I believe it is kind of like the difference between broiling and baking. "Open top grill" only cooks from underneath (kind of like broiling but not from above). Baked or "covered" grill will distribute the heat more evenly.
For more information see: http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/howtocook/primers/grilling_lightingandgrilling
That's where I double checked my assumption and got the metaphor of broiling and baking.
It's the difference between radiant heat, and convective heat.
Radiant heat is great for searing, and is produced by your charcoal/burners. You're always going to have (approximately) the same amount of radiant heat, regardless of whether the top is up or down.
Convective heat is just as good for cooking, but you're not going to get the delicious crust. When you have the grill covered, you're going to get a lot more convective heat, and uncovered, a lot less.
So radiant heat is uncovered and convective heat is covered?
Well, there's radiant heat in a covered grill, too. It's just coupled with indirect heat.
@NickLarsen: You're going to get some of both, either way, but if it's covered you're going to get a lot more convective heat, and if it's uncovered you're going to get a lot less convective heat. You'll get about the same amount of radiant heat either way, but if you're cooking steaks, you're probably going to want to cook it with the top up, so that you don't get over cooked meat, and if you're cooking chicken, you're going to want to cook with the top down, so the outside isn't overdone before the inside gets cooked.
I won't go into the physics of it, because it's not terribly interesting.
Basically, on an open grill, you're heating up one side of whatever it is you're cooking, and letting heat escape from the other side. The flame itself is also hotter, because of the better airflow.
When you close the grill, the fire itself is cooler (still enough to burn you though), but the heat remains locked in the grill. That way you get a more even cooking, and it's actually a bit faster, because the environment of the food is much hotter than it would be in open air.
There is also a secondary effect, where closing the grill traps some of the smoke in, and gives a smoky flavour to the food.
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4415 | Is bacon fat supposed to congeal at room temperature?
My grandma told me its a good idea to save the bacon drippings in a sealable container to cook with later. I remember when I used to watch her cook with it, it was always solid. I have started saving the fat from my bacon, only the bottom of the can is the only part that ever congeals. The top always seems sort of semi-liquid. Is that ok? When cooking with it, what part should I use and what is the difference between solid and merely viscous bacon fat?
@user22560 A) because why waste food you already have? B) Because USDA and FDA approved or not, animal products you buy in the store likely come from animals that are mistreated and normally poorer quality. Depending on where you source your animals, it might not be "cleaner" and is almost guaranteed to be less environmentally friendly (what with freezing and trucking literally thousands of miles between feed lots, slaughter houses, warehouses, store distribution centers and final retail store). C) Because the bacon that was cooked is already USDA / FDA approved anyway.
I keep a jar just for bacon drippings, and I keep it in the fridge, for the most part, but when I take it out, it's much softer, especially in the summer time. Gotta agree with @JaminGrey about buying bacon fat/grease online. Seems kind of frivolous and unnecessary when you obviously have a bacon grease source in your kitchen.
How warm is your room temperature? I often have solid fats, and the same jar can be slushy, or soft and partially translucent, or partially or fully liquid sometimes, and completely hardened, brittle or flaky or lumpy at others - depending on the time of year, temperature (local, indoors, and storage area temps all relevant), storage area, frequency of use and stirring habits, and a couple other factors. Something as simple as a warmer room or storage next to the stove (vs, say, in a cabinet) may make the difference
To answer what I think is the question (you put all of the grease into a container and there's a residue at the top), bacon drippings are not 100% fat. There are also solid pieces of bacon in there and other "impurities" from the curing process.
When rendering bacon fat, you should line the container with a paper towel first (or cheesecloth if you have it). Pour the bacon drippings onto the paper towel and the fat will drain out the bottom; the solids will be left behind and you can dispose of them. You'll be left with (mostly) pure fat.
The rendered fat will most definitely congeal; the vessel, once cooled, should contain only a solid, off-white substance.
Also depends on the ambient temperature. Up where I live, if I had a jar of bacon drippings out on the counter, the physical consistency would be markedly different in December vs July.
My observation is that Hormel bacon is about half saturated fat and half liquid oil when cooled to room temperature. The bacon I was buying at Aldi produced a completely solidified bacon grease like my grandmother used. I think I'll be switching back to Aldi bacon.
Pure bacon fat is always solid at room temperature. For a while, this was part of the nutritional justification for why all saturated animal fats were unhealthy, because they would be 'solid' inside your arteries as well. That picture is much more complicated today, but suffice to say that the physical trait of solidness at room temperature hasn't changed.
I found that when I buy bacon from pasture raised pigs, the drippings are solid at room temp, from regular store bought bacon it remains mostly liquid at room temp. Now that is interesting
I'd just keep the solid part of any drippings, if there's too much liquid I'd worry about what's in the bacon.
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62035 | How do you french trim a lamb shank?
I could only find a couple of written tutorials and they weren't very good. Can anyone explain it to me or provide a good tutorial?
Top video result on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD0UCd-IeZY
Check this link clearly explained the chef style frenching.
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12095 | What to do with an aubergine (eggplant) that has gone brown inside?
Sometimes an aubergine that looks fine on the outside has brown meat in the center.
Is the aubergine still edible and will it taste ok? Or should I cut away the brown bits or chuck away the whole aubergine.
If I see a few little brown bits, I'll cut them out and go ahead an use it. If it was, say, 20% brown, I'd throw it out.
If the meat in the centre has a bit of a brownish tinge to it, I just use it as is. I don't think it affects the flavour at all; it might make the texture a tiny bit more mushy.
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3225 | How can I tell if a mushroom is poisonous?
Assume I have found and want to eat a to me unknown kind of mushroom. Is there some way to find out if that mushroom is poisonous by looking/smelling/soaking it?
I voted to close as off topic. Seems like this belongs on a survival site. Buy your edible mushrooms from a store.
It's a food safety question. It has merit. Just because you can buy something in a store doesn't mean it can't be poisonous.
No as per: "There are no outward characteristics that all poisonous mushrooms have in common, so picking and eating wild mushrooms requires the utmost caution. To be absolutely safe, the only mushrooms you should eat are those found at supermarkets and restaurants!
All the old wives’ tales about how to tell if a mushroom is poisonous – such as whether it tarnishes silverware or turns blue when bruised – are dead wrong.
There’s a saying that there’s no such thing as an old, bold mushroom hunter."
+1: If you aren't experienced, don't forage. There are a lot of plants that have toxic cousins...Hell, I know a guy who gave himself cyanide poisoning from eating wild almonds.
There's a process in the US Army Survival manual on how to determine which plants are suitable for eating and/or hygiene purposes, but even it states:
WARNING
Do not eat mushrooms in a survival situation! The only way to tell if a mushroom is edible is by positive identification. There is no room for experimentation. Symptoms of the most dangerous mushrooms affecting the central nervous system may show up after several days have passed when it is too late to reverse their effects.
Also mushrooms have so little nutritional value they aren't worth the risk in a survival situation
You cannot tell, and there is no specific single method.
This is definitely one of those things that cannot just be described on a Q&A site like this.
Start studying, without eating.
Find an expert and train your eyes and other senses.
Graduate to gathering and have someone else confirm your identification prior to cooking.
Even those experts do sometimes make mistakes, there are just so many kinds of fungi.
As my Scout-master used to say "You can eat any mushroom you want. At least once..."
Good Luck - be careful
There is no general rule for all poisonous or non-poisonous mushrooms. The way you tell is you learn what each particular edible mushroom looks like, and how to tell it apart from any and all similar-looking poisonous mushrooms. If you're unsure of your identification, you don't eat it. Basically, you assume a mushroom is guilty until proven innocent, never the other way round.
It's not a skill that's impossible to learn - people have been gathering mushrooms for centuries, and still are. But it is a skill that takes a lot of practice. And it is better learnt with an expert, rather than with a book.
In particular, a young mushroom can look quite different from the same mushroom when mature, with a poisonous mature mushroom looking similar to an edible young one, for example. You'd need to learn to tell the difference.
Sometimes the surest way to distinguish a poisonous mushroom from its edible cousin is what tree it grows under.
Etc. Some signs are non-trivial. I wouldn't trust my life to "what I learn from a book with OK-ish pictures".
Also note that a mushroom expert would very often be an expert only in their local forests. Edible mushrooms in Europe might have poisonous similar-looking cousins in the US, and vice versa.
Finally, there are mushrooms that are only edible after cooking, as they contain toxins that are destroyed by heat. That's not outlandish - potatoes are the same. But it is yet another thing you need to be aware of.
The only way to know if a mushroom is poisonous is to have a mushrooms book, or (better) to be an expert.
There are some methods that allow you to distinguish two similar mushrooms, but there isn't a method to know if a mushroom is poisonous/toxic.
Or eat it and see if you die?
@MartinBeckett - Makes you wonder how so many mushrooms have been identified previously... maybe fed to prisoners in pre-history?
Feed the unknown mushroom to someone you don't like. After they die and you get put on trial for murder, the prosecutor will put some fancy biologist on the stand to recite some long string of latin sounding words that are the name of the mushroom. Ta-da! You now know the name of the mushroom and that it is poisonous.
Would I go in jail too? ;-)
True. But then the problem is, how do I get the person I don't like to eat food that I have prepared? ;)
"Here, eat this as a token of our mutual non-aggression. As far as you know."
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1859 | Caffeine content of cold-brewed coffee: higher or lower than hot-brewed?
I recently rediscovered the joys of cold-brewing coffee. (One level cup of rough-ground beans, 4-1/2 cups of cold water, steeped overnight and strained, produces a rich coffee concentrate. A shot or three of concentrate in a mug topped with hot water makes a cup of coffee; poured over ice and milk makes a fantastic iced coffee drink.)
The information I've found online is contradictory. One site says this method produces a drink with less caffeine than traditional hot-brewed coffee; another says it actually contains more caffeine.
On the one hand, there's the heat in the traditional method. On the other hand, the beans are in contact with the water for twelve hours in the cold method. It seems as if the caffeine content could be identical? While the beans used will, of course, alter the outcome, does anyone know for certain if cold-brewed coffee has more or less caffeine than hot-brewed?
I agree that we can't find an answer here. Most brewing methods don't extract all caffeine from the bean, therefore the caffeine content of hot-brewed coffee varies between all different methods: grind, steep time, water temperature, pressure, coffee to water amount and the amount of soluble stuff in the bean (not only caffeine!) all play a role. With such a difference, there can't be a blanket statement that cold-brewed always has more or less caffeine.
This article has a section on caffeine content with some useful links.
According to the Wikipedia article on caffeine, its solubility is drastically different between room temperature and boiling (2 g/100 mL room temperature to 66 g/100 mL at boiling). I assume this means it's easier to get caffeine into boiling rather than cold water, but the drastically longer steeping time may counteract this. It's worth noting that the solubility is far higher than the actual amounts of caffeine that's in coffee.
Farther down the page it mentions caffeine per liter of liquids like coffee (386-652 mg/L). If you can find similar information about cold-steeped coffee, it might help.
Solubility of solids is generally higher at higher temperatures; what matters is whether caffeine decreases in solubility more at low temperatures than the flavor compounds do.
Its interesting to see all of the responses. At Kohana Coffee we make cold brew coffee concentrate commercially. Our caffeine numbers come to about 80 mg of caffeine per oz of cold brew concentrate. Our mix ratio for use is 1 part concentrate to 2 parts milk or water. Typically, a 16oz cup of iced coffee would be 3 oz concentrate, 6 oz milk/water plus ice to fill cup. 240mg of caffeine. It is, however, totally dependent upon the user and how they make their drink.
What we've found from years of watching consumers (that is in no way scientific - but more of a user variable) is that cold brew is normally ingested much more quickly than a hot cup of coffee. The user feels the caffeine faster and thus believes there is more caffeine.
Its a simple perspective but one that we've seen repeatedly through the years.
I work at Peter Larsen Kaffe in Denmark, where I make cold brew.
I used 1 kg of coffee and 10 liter water, letting it stand for 17 hours. Then I sent it to Steiner Laboratory, where they measured the content of caffeine to be 920 mg per liter of the cold brew.
Welcome to the site! While I think your answer is informative, it is not very useful to the OP without comparison of hot brew. Do you have any numbers on that?
Typically the listed numbers are 100-200mg per cup, 425-850mg per liter, so this suggests that at least this particular cold brew has more caffeine than generic hot-brewed coffee.
I still think that this is a very useful answer even without the comparison - I don't think we have a better way to get at information about the lab-measured content for a specific process.
Based on Starbucks' published numbers, their medium (Pike Place) roast has 690 mg per liter. So his cold brew would be 1/3 stronger, but based on the count from Kohana above, their cold brew concentrate has a ~4x higher caffeine content per ounce than a cuppa joe from Starbucks, which is why they suggest diluting it with 2 parts water/cream, which would make the diluted beverage the strength of Mien's cold brew.
You can pull most of the caffeine out of a bag of tea by steeping in 180F water for 10 seconds.
Combining this knowledge with Brendan Long's excellent research, I interpret this to mean that all the caffeine available will get pulled out of the coffee long before a 12 hour cold brew steep is finished.
Conversely, it's very unlikely that a cold brew significantly increases the amount of caffeine available in coffee.
That tea decaffeination method is a myth.
There are so many conflicting opinions on this, but I have noticed that there are also many "recipes" for making the original coffee concentrate. One recipe calls for a coffee/water ratio of 1oz/12oz (1 part to 12 parts) and another recipe says to use 1/3 cup of coffee to 1 cup of water (1 part to 3 parts). The Toddy company tested their coffee, made with a specific amount of coffee/water. Someone else makes the concentrate stronger by using a higher ratio of coffee to water, which results in a higher percentage of caffeine. It makes sense to me!
Think you're conflating weights and volumes. With the 1 oz to 12 oz, they could mean weight, while with 1/3 cup to 1 cup, it's definitely volume.
Fooduniversity.com puts the weight of a cup of ground coffee at 3 ounces.
The Jamie Oliver recipe that came up #1 when I googled "cold brew recipe" was 8:1 by weight, which would be the same as your 1/3 cup to 1 cup ratio, but the next recipe from the New York Times was 1/3 cup to 1.5 cups, which would be 12:1.
Caffeine is much more soluble in hot water, true. But 100mL of room temperature water will still dissolve 2000mg of caffeine, so carrying capacity of water isn't a limiting factor.
The better determinant of caffeine content of brewed coffee isn't temperature at all! It's... the caffeine content of the roasted beans. Roasting decomposes caffeine, so lighter roasts (of the same beans) are higher in caffeine than darker roasts. Also, different varieties of beans have differing caffeine content (too much variation to go into here).
Grinding the roasted beans more finely will cause the water to leach the solutes more quickly, but in a 1+hour cold brew process, there wouldn't be much difference in product between coffee that was ground to a Turkish grind (very fine/powder) vs a drip machine grind.
As far as flavor, there is clearly a difference between cooled hot-brew and cold brew. This has to do with the relatively varied solubility curves of the flavor-producing compounds in the coffee.
If the question is which brew method results in a higher per oz caffeine content, the answer is that cold brew coffee brewed at a 1:5 coffee to water has significantly more caffeine per ounce than hot brew brewed at a 1:17 ratio. http://www.caffeineinformer.com/the-caffeine-database
If the question is whether cold or hot brew extracts more caffeine per oz of coffee, the answer is that neither method is significantly better at extracting caffeine.
While it is true that hot brew was shown to have 30% higher caffeine contents with the same coffee weight, this difference is mainly because cold brew is brewed in batch, so soluble caffeine is still trapped in the grounds. When the hot-brew caffeine content in the side-by-side test, mentioned in http://toddycafe.com/toddy-news/15/My-coffee-is-cold, is adjusted to the amount of caffeine that would yield from a french-press (~70% of drip-brew http://www.coffeeconfidential.org/health/cut-down-caffeine/), the 61 mg of caffeine in hot, drip-brew caffeine drops to 44 mg per 100 g. This is nearly identical to the 40 mg of caffeine found in the cold-brew.
Caffeine is a water soluble compound. Naturally decaffeinated coffee and tea is done with cold water. Cold water brewing of coffee usually takes at least 12 hours to extract maximum flavor. I would suggest that it also extracts as much caffeine as hot water brewing. The difference in the brewing methods is primarily the amount of acidic oils released. My cold brewing method involves starting out with 110 degree F water and stirring the brew several times during the steeping of the grounds. I also use a fine grind and do not refrigerate the brew until all of the grounds have saturated and sunk to the bottom of my brew vessel. I prefer as high of a caffeine content as possible in my coffee and tea.
Cold extracted, or filtered, or press coffee contains significantly less caffeine and significant less oils that hot brewed coffee.
Now if you choose home methods, by using your French press for instance, then this will be less the case. The caffeine percentage is because of the sponge filter. As cold water is the major method of decaffeinating coffee, it makes sense that as the coffee steeps in the water, the caffeine is extracted. Then when the plug is pulled and the coffee in solution runs through the sponge, the now-in-solution caffeine is extracted, as are the oils. Cold water or hot water doesn't matter, it's the sponge filter.
Source: as the ex-wholesale VP at Starbucks, married to the woman who as F&B Director at Starbucks, developed Frappucino and devised the system for the Gold Standard of food & beverage.
Let's be logical. If you're comparing how much of the caffeine is extracted in each method, you shouldn't try to deal with what's in the cup.
As @user4620 pointed out, the amount of caffeine in a cup of cold brewed coffee depends not only on the caffeine in the concentrate, but also on the amount of the concentrate used per cup.
I wouldn't characterize this discussion as "apples to oranges," but instead, "apples to an unknown," the "unknown" being the amount of concentrate used per cup. Two things cannot be compared when one of them is unknown.
One toddy recipe instructs the user to use a specific ratio of concentrate to water when preparing a cup of coffee; but then follows with the expected qualification to alter the ratio to taste. My guess is that all toddy directions contain that qualification.
I drink cold brewed coffee because I like the taste. Also, I enjoy cold coffee in the summertime. Whether there is more or less caffeine per cup is not an issue. I can always drink more or make the drink stronger, or if I get drowsy while driving, I can always swallow a No-Doz tablet.
At one point, I HAD to have 11 shots of espresso per day to stay "normal." Bad times. Anyway,The iced coffee brewing method at Starbucks varies based on the laziness of the barista. Essentially, half a pot of coffee is brewed using twice the normal amount of grounds, then quickly poured over ice in a pitcher. Caribou cold presses theirs, don't know or care how. (TEAM STARBUCKS!) Here's what I found from their respective websites:
Starbucks Hot Pike Place Roast - Grande 16oz - 330mg caffeine.
Caribou Hot Coffee of the Day - Medium 16 oz - 305mg caffeine.
Starbucks Brewed Iced Coffee - Grande 16 oz - 190mg caffeine (unsweetened).
Caribou Cold Press Iced Coffee - Medium 16 oz - 230mg caffeine (unsweetened).
So based solely on this, cold press results in more caffeine. From what I know, the roast of the beans is similar in both stores (medium roast for iced coffee) but don't quote me on that. Either way, if you're making a concentrate instead of drink-straight iced coffee, it's going to depend on you using more or less to get the desired affect.
sorry that popped up GIGANTIC. I was trying to just quote it, but it kept lumping the lines together.
Doesn't this show the cold press actually having less caffeine than equivalent hot brew?
Per the bottle, Chameleon cold brew coffee has 240 mg caffiene for 4 ounces (though this is meant to be mixed with equal parts water, so 240 mg for 8 oz).
Last I checked, stabucks was amongst the highest in caffeine content at around 220 mg for this serving size of 8 oz.
In brief, from my research into cold-brewing in preparation for selling 1000 gallons of cold brew at a festival:
Like most teas, if you soak the beans for long enough at any temperature, you will get about the same solubility as a few minutes at high temp... this varies per bean of course, and per what chemicals you're interested in dissolving, but 48 hours is plenty of time for cold brewed coffee. The health and flavor advantages of cold brew are many, but outside the scope of this OP.
I smile at all these responses, as no science is really quoted throughout to confirm anything. Diane's response is closest to reality because she is correct...cold brew has less caffeine than hot brew, all things remaining equal. A coffee bean has the highest caffeine content before it is roasted, and loses caffeine content the longer it roasts. Thus a medium roast bean will contain more caffeine than an espresso roast bean.
Caffeine loss in the brew process is a factor, as is caffeine loss in the filtration of the cold brew process, as was stated. Keep looking, and you will find someone who may have taken this to a scientific, granular level to confirm that cold brew offers less caffeine than hot brew, all things remaining equal.
"All things remaining equal" means using the same roast, the same amount of coffee bean to brew, the same amount of water to brew, and then finally, a comparison based on an 8 oz. cup of coffee using various dilutions ratios of cold brew to hot water.
Understand that Diane used twice as much coffee for her cold brew than for her hot brew and still presented caffeine withdrawal from the cold brew coffee.
I grow and process coffee, but claim no scientific expertise.
I can tell you that physiologically cold brew has less. Here's how I know. When I do cold brew I will soak one pound of coffee in one gallon of water over night. I will typically soak for no less than 18 hours, but no more than 24. I limit the soak to this time frame because if its less, the coffee is too weak and tastes bitter and any longer it will be too strong. Here's my math. It takes 16 ounces of coffee cold steeped in one gallon of water to produce 16 8 ounce cups of coffee. It takes about 8 ounces of coffee steeped in hot water to make the same amount. Half the coffee for hot steeped. Follow me so far?
Here's where the physiological part comes in. If I drink one 8 ounce cup of hot steeped coffee every day for one week, then immediately go to same amount of cold steeped coffee every day for a week, I will always get headaches. The headaches are the number one symptom of caffeine withdrawal. I have had the same symptoms three separate times. I have never had the typical jittery symptoms with increased caffeine when going from hot to cold steeped coffee. Always the headaches. So in my estimation, I believe it is at least the noted 30% less caffeine that I have read online, but I actually believe it to be even less. Both Caribou and Starbucks are listed as having about 25% less caffeine in their cold drinks, but I believe Caribou uses cold press and Starbucks Ices their hot press so I question the validity of the Starbucks values.
I'm not sure if the latter part is hard evidence or a case study...
"According to the Wikipedia article on caffeine, its solubility is drastically different between room temperature and boiling (2 g/100 mL room temperature to 66 g/100 mL at boiling). I assume this means it's easier to get caffeine into boiling rather than cold water, but the drastically longer steeping time may counteract this. It's worth noting that the solubility is far higher than the actual amounts of caffeine that's in coffee."
Someone answered with this above, this means that 2g of caffeine is soluble in water at room temperature per 100mL, no cup of coffee is ever that high so that means at room temp you should be able to get the same amount as in hot water, just takes longer.
However caffeine is very volatile, so hot water extracts and eliminates it more than cold...which implies that in a cold brew, more caffeine is retained in the brew and not boiled off. For this reason esspresso actually has less caffeine than traditional brew coffee because of the high heat and pressure..it's a stronger flavor but not a higher caffeine content.
Espresso has less caffeine because the portion size and for no other reason.
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23348 | Pre-mixing liquor -- any downsides?
I love Long Islands. In fact, all I make are Long Islands. Yet every time I make one, I have to independently mix the four liquors I use: Vodka, Tequila, Gin, and Rum. (plus I add lemon juice and splenda)
It seems to me it would be easier for me if I could pour all four bottles into one container and just pour my drinks out of that. (and store this container in the fridge indefinitely until ready for use) That way I don't have to worry about proportion (since I always mix them equally anyway). Is there any downside to doing this (aside from the obvious downside that I can no longer pour any other mixture)?
Search the Cooking Issues blog for great info about cocktails. For instance this article.
There should not be any problems with mixing alcohol as long as you don't introduce organics. I would suggest mixing the alcohols and leaving the lemon juice and splenda out until you pour a drink. Keeping alcohol cool and in a dark place. As for indefinitely, no. The amount of time it stays good is dependent on the amount of air in the bottle. Glass is always preferred if possible.
Thanks for your answer! But are you saying that liquor in general doesn't last indefinitely (once opened)? Or that once I combine it, the shelf-life shortens?
@KirkWoll: Liquor lasts a very long time, but once opened it doesn't maintain its original quality forever. I think that exposure to air is the big deal - so the best way to store it might be a spare liquor bottle.
The only thing that typically needs to be dealt with in pre-made cocktails is the ice.
When making a cocktail fresh, you are normally using room-temperature liquors, and then adding ice. The ice will not only cool the drink but, in the process, some will melt and dilute the drink to the expected level.
If, on the other hand, you are mixing your liquors in advance, and refrigerating that, adding ice will not have the same effect. As the drink is already cold, the ice will not melt as readily and you will have a much stronger drink. Typical recipes for make-ahead cocktails recommend adding water to compensate. More on the subject here, but you should shoot for a 1:3 ratio of water to liquor, or, in other words, about 25% of your final product should be water.
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2193 | Does brining a chicken/turkey before roasting really make a difference?
I've tried brining a chicken (brine = 1 cup salt to 16 cups water, over 10 hours) and couldn't taste a difference.
Assuming you don't normally buy pre-brined / injected birds, you should notice a difference... As roux notes, it should be noticeably moist and tender, especially the white meat.
A couple of things to try:
Increase the time in the brine. 10 hours is plenty for breasts or quarters, but a whole chicken may take longer. A whole turkey will definitely take longer!
Check your salt. A cup of small-crystal table salt per gallon of water should be fine, but if you're using flakes (kosher and some sea salt), you may be producing too weak a brine! If in doubt, weight it out.
See also: What are the basics and options of brining meat, for example chicken?
We almost always brine our chicken breasts. 1/4 cup Salt and 1/4 cup sugar to about a quart of water. Keeps the meat moist and makes it difficult to over cook.
I've tried brining turkey, and wasn't satisfied with the results. The main problem is that the skin comes out too salty, no matter how well I rinse the bird. Another major issue is that the gravy comes out pretty close to inedible. Thirdly, you can't stuff a brined turkey.
So I've developed the following technique which gives me a moist breast, almost as good as a brined breast, but also allows for the traditional brown skin and succulent gravy.
The secret ingredient is ONIONS.
Slice several onions and line the bottom of the pan with them. The idea is that the onions don't allow any of the skin to touch the metal of the pan, so that skin won't stick.
Also add about two or three tablespoons of water/wine/stock/ just to cover the bottom of the pan to prevent sticking until the juices start flowing.
Stuff the bird if you are going to (Use a hot stuffing, it will help the bird cook faster, and you have less worries about undercooked stuffing). Otherwise, just stuff a couple of onions and celery stalks in. (Or stuff with mirepoix)
Assume a 3 hour cooking time, roast BREAST DOWN for 2 - 2 1/2 hours. Basting as needed.
When the bird is about 120 degrees (Still needs about 40-45 degrees more). Flip it over carefully, clean off any onions stuck to the skin, and bring the oven temperature up to 450. Leave it about 20 minutes, until skin is brown and crispy, and take it out at about 140 degrees. (if it's getting too warm, turn on the broiler to speed up crisping.)
Let stand out of any draughts for at least 20 minutes until the carry over takes it to 165 degrees.
Turkey has a huge thermal mass, and will continue cooking for at least 20 minutes.
This is also probably just the right amount of time to do the rest of the meal.
Cooking the bird upside down will result in a moist, succulent breast, without the oversalted skin and gravy that brining produces.
I've never found things salty with brining and I've stuff brined bird many times.
If you want to get the flavor of brining without all the work of trying it, you can buy kosher turkey. Part of the preparation for kosher meat is to pack it in kashering salt (where the term "kosher salt" comes from) to draw out all the blood. This means that the meat is essentially already brined. The most common brand in the U.S. is Empire, and they have both fresh and frozen meat.
See here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/21836561
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8111 | How much salt does brining a turkey add?
I want to brine a turkey for Thanksgiving, using Alton Brown's recipe for brining. My wife is concerned that this will increase the amount of salt and sugar in the turkey, making it unhealthy. How much salt and sugar from a brine would end up in say a 12 pound turkey?
Just say "Yes dear" and ignore the wife. :)
I'll pass on ignoring her, but I'll see if I can change her mind.
I suggest starting with this Cook's Illustrated brining article for more information on brining.
Much of what would be transferred into your turkey is liquid from the osmosis, but some salt, and sugar if you choose to use it, would be added as well.
If you purchase an "enhanced" turkey that has already been injected, you don't want to brine it. The injection has a similar effect. If you've made an enhanced turkey in the past, you've already eaten a bird with added sodium.
Harold McGee states that the turkey will gain 10% of its weight in a combination of water and sodium. Your brine comes out to about 3.9% salt, so your 12 lb turkey will gain ((12 lbs * .1) * .039) = .0486 lbs = 21 grams of salt from a 3.9% brine. Your average soda has 55 milligrams of salt per serving. The total amount of salt from your brine will be spread over the entire turkey, so divide that amount by the number of servings you expect that turkey to provide to get the number of additional milligrams of sodium per serving of turkey from brining.
If at the end of the day you don't want to brine, in that same article McGee also suggests a way to keep turkey moist without a brine.
EDIT: I did my math wrong above, and have corrected the formula and results.
I am interested in trying the sauced technique that Mr. McGee suggests but I'm concerned. Brining turkeys has produced the best turkeys I've ever had. Cooking the turkey until it is bone dry and then saucing doesn't sound as good. Have you had turkey this way? Is it good?
@Sobachatina - my favorite turkey ever was cooked in orange juice the entire time. However it was impossible to carve because all the meat simply fell off of the bone when we removed it. I have not tried this technique yet, but given the source I'd totally trust it.
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11574 | What features do I want in a Toaster Oven?
Our Toaster isn't doing well, planning to replace it with a toaster oven to get some more versatility on the counter top. What features are good? I've looked and there are ones ranging from simple $25 models to $250 with a laundry list of features. Just wonder what's useful and what's not, hope to find a good one that's $120 or less really, but I'm willing to pay extra if it's worth the money.
I actually debated asking a similar question last month, as I managed to set mine on fire the day after Christmas, and based on the new one I got, differences I've noticed (mostly features I miss from the old one; also a few things I've noticed at my neighbors and mom's house.
Insulated top; If you frequently run out of space in your kitchen, and need to keep stuff on top of the toaster oven, it comes in handy. (and some allow the top to open up so you can expose the top so it could be a bread or plate warmer)
Is the rack connected to the door so, when you open the door, the rack pushes out a couple of inches, so you don't have to reach in to extract things and risk burning yourself? (okay, I admit, there's a few drawbacks to this; it means the rack isn't easily removable to be cleaned or if you need to pull it all the way out because there's something that got pushed to the back, and the next item)
Multiple racks or rack heights. The different positions might be useful for the broiler, but the multiple racks really aren't that useful; things won't toast right when they're blocked by another level, and they don't tend to cook evenly when in oven mode, either. (maybe if it's a convection .... it's my neighbor's toaster oven, so I haven't played enough with it) If you leave both racks in there, then you've barely got any space in between to grab things out, so you're risking burning yourself. (and well, they don't have that last feature where the rack pops out when you open the door)
Location of the controls; some are on the side, some are on the bottom. Controls on the bottom are more prone to getting damaged by things getting pushed around on the counter, but I prefer it for a few reasons -- (1) the toaster oven's narrower, as there's no wasted space to the side; (2) the door opens higher up; this means you can have a large plate on the counter without it getting in the way when you want to open the toaster.
Convection ; some have it, some don't.
Broiler ; not all can do broil (top element) only.
Depth of the unit; some of them bump out so they can fit a round pizza; if they also have a little bracket so you don't accidentally push it up against the wall, there's hardly any space left on the counter.
How exposed the elements are; some of the newer ones have grills over the elements, I haven't had mine long enough to see if that'll protect it from melted cheese dripping on 'em, which I think was the cause of my toaster fire.
Turn-dial vs. brown-ness setting. I don't know how to explain this one. All of the toaster ovens in the stores I looked in have a dial, where you have to turn the dial past 10 min, then back to the little reference marks for the darkness that you like your toast; My old one just had a setting at the bottom, you set it to toast, and hit the button. If you wanted to shut it off, you opened the door. Of course, with this style, there wasn't a timer on the oven, either.
Turn-off-via opening the door : Some do, some stay on. I'm used to it, but of course, if that's the only way to shut it off, that also means you have to open the door to shut it off when there's a fire inside, which means better airflow. (or unplug it, but when the plug's on the other side of the toaster, that one's not a great option, either).
Electronic controls : I personally view it as something else to break, but they might be able to do something special; I've never bought one, myself.
Cord length ; only really a problem when you've got an old kitchen that doesn't have a plug every 12" or whatever the new standards seem to be; but you really don't want to plug a toaster into a power strip if you can help it, so if you know you're going to need to run it 3' down the counter, check the cord length. (and which side it attaches, just in case you're then going in the wrong direction with it)
Crumb tray. I hear other people use 'em. They're supposedly important so you don't catch the thing on fire.
Accessories. Some come with a little tray to use; some of them also have a little insert to turn it into a broiler pan (so you lift it out of the pan a little bit, so it won't stew in whatever drips off). And I understand that you need some air flow around the pan, but in my opinion, something's wrong when the tray that comes with the toaster is 1/2 the area of the rack; it's like they weren't even trying, they just tossed in a tray from some other oven. Others come with a little tool so you can pull the rack out so you don't burn yourself (which then gets lost or broken and thus sucks)
Size. If you tend to make toast for lots of people at a time, then some of the larger toasters might be worth it; If you're single, the 6 or 8 slices of bread at the same time (but not the size of bread you like; you can only fit two of those) toasters might be a bit overkill) And they now seem to measure themselves by 'size of a pizza I can fit', which makes no sense to me, as everyone knows the correct way to size toaster ovens by pizzas is how many halves of an english muffin you can fit in at one time (to make english muffin pizzas ... avoid the bagels, as sauce and cheese drip out the middle)
... so um ... those are just some of the features I've noticed. Some people might care about the 12" pizza thing, I personally don't. The timer vs. push button for the controls are likely a personal preference, as is the attached rack to the door vs. height adjustable/removable rack.) The only really must-have is the removable crumb tray which Allison mentioned. (even though you can go years without worry until there's a fire)
One feature you didn't mention is the "bing" or "toast notification sound". When I replaced a toaster oven I really missed the loss of this feature. We wanted a smaller one that took up less room because we mostly used it for toasting open face sandwiches or toast, not as a mini-oven. Having to stand around to pay attention to when the on-light went off and the toast button popped out was really annoying.
@Allison : they make ones that don't do that? I guess I'm lucky enough to not have run into one of those yet, as I agree, that'd really suck.
Those turn-the-timer dials are the invention of the devil. With our old toaster over, we set the darkness control to where we liked it, and left it there. The toast still wasn't totally consistent, because types of bread differ, the toaster behaves differently when cold than when warm, etc. etc., but you could at least safely forget about the toast until the toaster dinged. With the turn-and-pray style of controls, you need to stand there and watch, because one micrometer on the dial is the difference between toast and cinders.
If you don't care what your appliances look like, the primary feature to look for is the ability to get in there and clean the thing. Toaster ovens are flexible and convenient, but at the end of the day the worst feature to not have is a way to clean them.
I have found a removable "crumb tray" to be better than the kind that just has a hinge to open the bottom. Then you don't have to unplug it and carry it over to the sink to clean out.
Agreed, there's some designs where the bulb is protected from drippings in such a way as to make the shield uncleanable, whereafter they eventually become a dripping hazard.
Depending on what else you have available to you, I found that a counter top oven works very well for me. I have the ability to toast, but it also is an oven, a broiler and a convection oven. There have been several times when I needed to have several things cooking at the same time (American Thanksgiving) and I was able to do the yams in the countertop oven, or a pie, or even a roast chicken once when the trickier item was taking up the main oven. If you already have double ovens, that probably won't matter as much to you, but I have a small house and a single oven and the counter top model is a blessing when we're entertaining, or even when I want to heat the kitchen a bit less than the full oven.
For me, then, being large enough to take a casserole or a pie was important, and the convection feature I use all the time because smaller ovens tend to be less even for their heat.
It's worth noting that toaster ovens are way less efficient to actually use as an oven (the doors never seal that well amongst other things), so I wouldn't consider this as a major feature.
I intend to look at convection ovens too when our toaster oven goes (it's looking dodgy these days), as I think it would greatly improve its usefulness as an oven.
@Allison: My mother is disabled and can't use a proper oven due to insufficient strength to open the doors, so those doors that never seal properly are a top feature for her, and other elderly people I know. Means they can continue preparing oven-cook items.
Many of the other issues have been covered above, but allow me to suggest one more: Toast timing mechanism.
On some toaster ovens, there are separate timer controls for toasting and for the oven. The coaster control will be in terms of toast darkness (or maybe 1-10), while the oven timer will be in terms of minutes. This is in my opinion the superior way to do it.
On my crappy Euro-Pro toaster oven, there is one timer for both the oven and the toaster. I have no idea how long it takes to get toast to my desired doneness, and the timer doesn't quite have the precision to handle times like 2 minutes, whereas for an oven that sort or precision never seems necessary.
Okay, someone above did mention this I guess.
yep ... my main complaint about every toaster inthe stores I looked at. And it wasn't like I previously had some fancy European toaster ... it was a Black & Decker, but Sears, Target, and whatever other stores I tried just didn't have that toast-doneness dial, just a timer ... and the time is different for different bread.
One thing to consider is whether you want it for a toaster mostly or an oven mostly.
If you mostly want toast, think about how much air you're going to have to heat to get the bread toasted--a tall oven will work more slowly and be less efficient than one that's pretty close to the bread on both sides. This is also helpful if you think you'll be broiling in it.
Conversely, if you think you'll be putting larger things in it, you'll probably want more room.
My old work had a tall one (probably 8 inches inside clearance), and it took approximately one million years to make a piece of toast. I started toasting a bagel the day I left and four years later people are probably still waiting for it to brown.
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12027 | Gelpro Mats - do they work?
This might not be the right forum for this question, so feel free to remove this question if it is. We have super-hard tile floors in the kitchen, and after an hour or two of cooking my feet are KILLING me. I've been thinking about getting commercial-grade anti-fatigue mats, but they are so ugly.
Does anyone out there have the Gelpro mats, and do they actually do what they say they do? I've had many 'anti-fatigue' mats in the past that have done nothing to ease my aching feet.
I find a pair of basic Crocs to be very efficient as kitchen clogs. (As does Mr. Batali, though the orange color may be in questionable taste). They are well cushioned, reasonably priced, and easily cleaned. They won't provide a ton of protection against dropping something heavy, sharp or hot, though they do sell some upscale models that provide more.
If you really want a mat, these Wellness Mats are superbly cushioned.
thanks for the great answer...i've been threatened with being disowned if i ever purchase a pair of crocs but maybe its time to suck it up :p
@dani, I've gotten the same threat from my wife, but after reading Michael's answer I will certainly be buying a pair for my kitchen as well!
They are a fashion tragedy, but if you sell them as "only for the kitchen", you may get away with it :).
Shoes will always be more effective than a mat at supporting your body correctly. I definitely think that clogs of some sort are a better route to go.
I don't fully understand how Crocs beat out Burkenstocks in the kitchen. Burkenstocks provide fantastic arch support for the foot.
Birkenstock that is!
Screw Crocs, shoes designed for restaurant work are more functional and NOT fashion atrocities. I suggest either Dansko (expensive but phenomenal) or Shoes for Crews (cheap and not as durable, but get the job done). Both are nonslip, and specifically designed for restaurant staff on their feet 8 hours a day or more, running across hard, slippery surfaces.
FWIW, I tried Dansko and was marvelously uncomfortable, but that just goes to show you that every body and every foot is different. Bottom line, find what works for you!
In short - gel mats are GREAT!
My husband has foot problems and I just found my legs were tired when standing in the kitchen for long durations. We ordered one gelpro mat and then found we were sliding it from in front of the sink to in front of the stove (and fighting over it) so we ordered another. Yes, they are expensive, but I would suggest they are well worth it. They eased foot pain, definitely.
They do work. I stand on one at a computer desk all day. I tried it in the kitchen once, but didn't like having it in there. I keep a clean pair of $2 rubber flip flops for working in the kitchen.
If rubber mats didn't work in the past, consider consulting an orthopedic doctor. They may be able to help you with a solution such as arch support.
One article I found says yes, gel mats are worthwhile. For me, having worked standing up all day in times past, rubber mats worked well for me to reduce fatigue. I actually dreaded lengthy chores in areas that were at stations without such mats.
I have 3 gel pro mats, I spend most of my time in my kitchen. The mats drive me crazy!! Although they provide relief for legs, knees and feet, they slip and slide on my tile floor.GEL Pros resolution was some rug gripper tape which is a pain. Hard to peel, doesn't work even if I clean my tile with alcohol and they DO somehow get dirt on the back. I am at my wits end tired of the non slip back slipping and having to mop my floor and top and bottom of the darn mats!
My neighbor uses the rubber shelf liner that looks like it's made from a bunch of bubbles to keep her carpet from moving on her hardwood floors. (she just has it around the edges for the most part). It's possible it might work for you, too -- it comes up easily, and can be cleaned.
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7330 | How to thicken Thai curry
I made some Thai red curry a few days ago. It turned out pretty well. The only problem is that it was fairly runny. I thickened it up with a slurry which helped a bit. I doubt a roux would have any more thickening power. I'm sure there's got to be a better way. Thanks in advance!
This depends on the type of thai curry. Jungle Curry, for instance, thicken nicely with some rice flour. (I just grind up a bit of rice, works like a charm).
First, start your Thai coconut curry sauce in a separate pot (i.e. the coconut milk and later the seasonings; no meat , no vegetables, etc.). Make sure to shake the can of coconut milk before opening to ensure it is not separated. Add 1/2 the can to the pot. Bring to boil, reduce temperature and allow the mixture to reduce to almost a paste like texture. This will allow the coconut flavors to intensify, and give you a thicker starting point.
The key is to reduce some of your sauce before cooking everything else; if you attempt to reduce your entire sauce with the vegetables, they will overcook because the process takes too long. Once reduced, add the other 1/2 of the coconut mixture. You end up with a very silky, smooth coconut sauce. Afterwards add your curry paste, fish sauce, sugar, Thai basil etc.
I had to switch to this answer since it gives a lot of great detail. I'll have to try this next time. Thanks!
When you open a can of coconut milk, it usually has separated, with the thick stuff at the top, and more watery business at the bottom. Don't shake or stir it! Start your curry with just the thick stuff, and then thin it as needed with the remainder. I would definitely not add a starch-based thickener. That isn't traditional in Thai curries and will inevitably make them a little gloopy.
Isn't there alot of flavor in the water that has separated from the coconut?
Yes, and I'm not saying don't use it; I'm saying use just as much as you need to get the desired texture in your dish, rather than overdilute and then have to use a thickener.
Some things I might try:
Cornflour or Arrowroot - Normal thickening agents might help
Half and Half - Replacing half of the coconut milk with coconut cream.
Reducing it down more - this will have the bonus of concentrating the flavour even more.
Using less coconut milk overall?
Thanks for the suggestions :) I could use less coconut milk, but I found there was about the right amount of liquid, it was just too thin. I'll give this is a shot next time!
+1 for reducing it more, though that risks overcooking the veg-- you could turn off the heat on the main pot, use a ladle to scoop much of the sauce into a small saucepan, reduce the sauce in the small saucepan, and add it back in once it's thickened.
I find you have to be careful with reducing coconut milk; it can take on an unpleasantly gelatinous texture.
A runny curry means you haven't cooked it long enough and/or you have used coconut milk with a low percentage of solids. Authentic curries never contain any type of starch (flour).
So, buy coconut milk (or cream) with the highest percentage of solids that you can find. Next, use more paste. If you are happy with the spice level and you still need more paste you can add bell peppers to the paste. Match colours of course. This will make the paste a little more watery but it'll still work very well.
Last of all, use a better curry method to cook it.
I tend to use those solid blocks of dried coconut milk cream. You add warm water yourself to make a paste as thick as you like. It thickens as it cooks too so best to make it a touch runnier than you want it to end up. Unlike the tinned stuff it rarely separates.
Great tip! I've never seen that before, but I'll have to keep an eye out next time I hit the market.
http://www.thaifood.food-recipe-cooking.com/coconut-milk-how-to-make-th-vg-01.htm - Recipe III involves this stuff. I & II are also good.
Examples: http://www.spicesofindia.co.uk/acatalog/Indian-Food-Maggi-Coconut-Milk-Powder.html - British. This one: http://shop.waiyeehong.com/food-ingredients/tinned-foods/coconut-milk-cream/coconut-cream-1 is generally available in Chinese/Asian supermarkets worldwide.
I've only found this using low quality coconut milk. Trying a different brand or adding a thick coconut cream (or even coconut butter should fix it). There can be a massive difference in what you get quality wise so it's worth experimenting.
Thanks for the tip. I don't have a lot of experience using coconut milk so that's good to know :)
'Chef's Choice' is the best Coconut Milk brand I found so far that is itself thicker. That made my own curries as a whole thicker.
Best way to thicken is is to grate a potato or two in there. Potato is delicious in curries and adds creaminess naturally.
I also like to turn some dry coconut flakes to powder using a coffee grinder and add it in. It intensifies the coconut flavor and thickens at the same time.
Lastly, the mother of all coconut curry thickeners is coconut flour. You can find it in some grocery stores or on Amazon.
Rice flour does the trick too. Curry is eaten with rice so why not thicken it with rice flour?
Do you boil the potatoes first?
@Robert : no need, if the curry is simmering ... use a floury/baking potato, and it'll turn to mush almost instantly. I do it for stews all the time. But check out international grocery stores for coconut flour (or smaller packets marked 'coconut milk powder')
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909 | How do I prevent an egg cracking while hard boiling it?
Sometimes when I cook hard boiled eggs they will crack in the saucepan, and some of the egg will seep out into the water.
Am I boiling the water too vigorously, or can I add something to the water to prevent it?
I used the method here before with good success: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_make_perfect_hard_boiled_eggs/
Basically you start with the eggs in the pan with cold water and bring the water to temperature, right when it reaches boiling you pull the heat back and let the eggs cook for 10 minutes.
You don't need a full on boil to hard boil the eggs.
In my experience, steeping for 8 minutes is plenty and tends to reduce the greening of the yolks. That also gives you a buffer if it takes a bit of time to get back to the stove or fumble for a minute to prepare the water bath.
This above method is how I hard boil eggs. It does a few things. First, it lets you put the eggs in the pan carefully so they don't crack from that. Second, you are not shocking the eggshell nor causing sudden expansion off the inside of the eggs (IOW making the inside bigger than the outside). The cooking is more gentle so the egg is cooked more evenly. I bathe my freshly boiled eggs in ice water for an hour to halt cooking sooner. It helps keep the eggs from getting tough, and it also Aids in shelling the eggs because the sudden chill makes the egg white sluff off the membrane.
Now, if you are going to make tea eggs or iron eggs which is to start boiling the eggs a second time in a spiced tea of sorts, you want to do that mostly right away. If you refrigerate your eggs over night then use them for tea eggs, they tend to expand grotesquely.
Being a perfectionist this would drive me crazy, then I discovered this method and now, no more cracked hard boiled eggs!
Before you submerge the egg, prick the large end of the shell with a (clean!) thumb tack or safety pin. This will allow the trapped air bubbles - which are normally responsible for cracking - to escape during the boiling process.
Also take care to avoid any impacts:
Don't overcrowd the pot - the eggs should form a single sparse layer;
Use a tongs or spoon to lower the eggs into the boiling water - or start with cold water with the eggs already in the pot.
Make sure you use enough water - cover the eggs by at least an inch.
P.S. Even though the above should always prevent cracking, if you're still having problems, you can add some vinegar to the water. This will not help with cracking but it will make the eggs set quicker if they do crack and mitigate the nasty mess. I don't do this anymore, but something to remember if you're desperate (i.e. if the eggs are very old).
This method also helps skinning the egg when cooked :)
As eggs develop more air as they get older (which is why bad eggs float, fresh eggs sink,and old eggs stand up in water) you are more likely to get cracked eggs with older eggs, and if you plunge them in to hot water.
If you are doing it for hard boiling then you might be better using a technique like ManiacZX describes where you bring the eggs to the boil in cold water, then turn the heat off and leave them with a lid on for 10-12 mins.
I am going to add a caution for simple over-cooking. I'm a soft-boiled fan, myself, but generally I think the risk of cracking is greater the more the eggs rattle around in boiling water with their liquid steaming inside. Low and slow makes great eggs.
For the first time I used a special rack to suspend the egg in the water without it resting on the bottom of the saucepan and for the first time ever it didn't crack.
Any other time I have tried all the above and it didn't help.
I'm now sure it's because of the contact with the hot surface of the pan before the water has a chance to disperse the heat so that it doesn't rise dramatically above 100 deg c
There is an air bubble at the base of the egg as shown below. As you cook the egg the air bubble expands and cracks the shell. To prevent the shell from cracking, gently pierce the air bubble with a sharp, pointy knife. It allows the expanding air to escape.
You'll want to fill the pot that you are boiling your egg with to at least an inch higher than the egg layer. This will prevent the egg from bouncing around too much. I've been using the stuffs written here in boiling eggs: http://knowhowtoboileggs.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-hard-boil-eggs.html
I trained as a chef; the way to do this is as follows.
The egg cracks for a number of reasons which are mainly due to a change of pressure within the egg itself. You never want to put a hole in the shell, add salt to the water or frankly any of the other suggestions on this page above, and it's not due to eggs banging about in the pan (that one did make me laugh).
All you do is put the egg or eggs (I used to do this at work in a big pan 30 eggs in it).
Pour boiling water half way up the egg.
You will hear a hissing sound as the pressure in the egg changes.
When it stops (after about 15 to 30 seconds) put the pan on heat and cook as normal.
Occasionally an egg will crack anyway due to having an uneven thickness of shell but there isn't much you can do about it. It's best to take the eggs out of the fridge (if that’s where you keep them, but that’s about all you can do).
"occasionally an egg will crack anyway...but there isn't much you can do about it" sure there is: take some of the advice in the answers you dismissed. For example, the accepted answer (bring to a boil then let cook without heat) definitely works well.
I disagree with comments from Jefromi, for one. Everything should have a logical explanation and root causes. The procedure for boiling up to 30 eggs looks interesting. Similar is the process by Jeff Bullas...
My assessment - It is the pressure buildup inside the shell that causes cracks. If I boil eggs slowly I can see tiny bubbles coming out from the shell at several places, this is the process of relieving the pressure naturally.
My own experience: If I boil cold eggs straight from the frig and raise the temperature of water on high flame very quickly it almost always cracks. If I boil slow after warming up the eggs at 40 deg C, results are much better. Pin hole at the bubble end also helps but may be termed un-hygienic? Now-a-days I warm up the egg to ~40 deg C in warmed water, then put eggs in another pan, pour boiling water halfway, wait 30 sec, pour in more of the same water till submerged, cook for 3 minutes on low flame, switch off, and eggs are ready in another 12 minutes (may be lower time is possible, not checked. Results are quite good, almost no cracks over many attempts.
My comment had nothing to do with whether there are logical explanations or root causes. If anything, it was the opposite - someone said there was nothing you could do about it, and I disagreed, pointing to answers that suggested things you could do about it. Maybe you disagreed with the answer I was commenting on, written by user30924?
Most of the time it's the result of extreme temperature changes ie fridge to boiling water or worse boiling water + salt (higher temperature). Take eggs from fridge and warm them under hot tap. Submerge eggs at least 1 inch below in non salted boiling water. Viola no cracks.
Pre warm chilled eggs in a bowl of hot tap water for 5 mins and put them straight into boiling water. Never crack!
I agree with the pricking eggs at the rounded end, and also leave the top of the pot off. I never have cracked eggs.
I'm sorry, but I strongly disagree with the air bubble theory. I have had too many eggs crack from the bottom
Of the shell (small end). MY theory on that is... the eggs have imperfections from the laying process which causes a lot of cracks.
The best method I have found for keeping eggs from cracking is to slowly bring them to a boil, boil SLOWLY for about 10 minutes, then turn off the fire, cover the pan with a fitted top, then let the water cool naturally.
By the time you can handle the eggs comfortably, they should be done, no green on the yolks and few to no cracked eggs. Drain the water, then bounce the eggs in the pan (top on if cooking a large amount of eggs) to crack the shells. The cooler the water is, the easier they will peel.
Good luck!
Add salt before your water gets hot
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28747 | Is there a definitive way to know if a tin can is lined with BPA?
Many tin cans are lined with BPA which has been connected with various health issues in various studies.
Is there a way to determine whether a can of food contains BPA lining?
Can the place of manufacture/packaging give an indication?
Is there something obvious from the appearance of the inside of the can?
Probably not. Cans are generally marked at point of filling, not at point of manufacturing
The plastic liner looks plastic'y in all cases, it's very hard to tell. Epoxy is harder than other plastics, but there are epoxies that are BPA free anyway
Aluminium cans are more likely have a epoxy liner that will give off a trace of BPA
Many steel cans do not use epoxy or other BPA plastics
Having said that the tested BPA release from a can is 100's of times lower than the recommended maximum daily dose. So in theory there is nothing to really worry about
The common sense answer is, if epoxy dissolved into the cans contents they wouldn't use it would they. The whole reason it's there is to stop the contents 'eating' the can
This'll work, but you'll need access to a lab: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed1006053
The common sense answer is most likely correct, but it is a bit of a gloss. It's within the realm of possibility that the dissolution happens slowly enough that the metal is unaffected over the can's expected lifetime, while still producing undesirable reactions with the contents.
Best way lately is check through the manufacturer's web site or facebook.
A few examples:
Bumble Bee foods:
https://www.facebook.com/BumbleBeeFoods/posts/10150693120743417
Starkist:
https://www.facebook.com/starkist/posts/420498509974
Seneca foods:
www.senecafoods.com/press-release/seneca-foods-goes-bpa-non-intent
Lastly, where the can is manufactured doesn't determine whether it has or doesn't have BPA. There's plenty of epoxy coated cans manufactured in Italy.
All American produced tuna cans for Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea and Starkist (and American Samoa) have been in non BPA cans for many years. Imported cans, usually from south east asia, are epoxy lined. Check the label for fill location when deciding where to buy.
All sardine cans produced in Canada in aluminum cans do not contain BPA.
Many suppliers, like Seneca Foods and Campbells soup are in the process of converting to non BPA lined cans.
All infant formula cans do not contain BPA.
Overall, much of the food industry is changed or changing. The soda and beer industries are lagging behind.
Very cool information. Do you have any sources you could share with us?
I read a few years ago that Kroger (they own a lot of different grocery store chains) stopped using cans that contain BPA in their store brand products (such as Private Selection.)
If you are lookin for the source to tell if there is bpa, if they are from the eu you can only be assured they are bpa free if the food is meant for infants.
https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2018/02/15/European-Commission-tightens-rules-on-BPA-in-FCMs
I have heard it is banned from all products sold in the European Union.
Hello, and welcome to the site! We are a strictly cooking site, and only allow health considerations in the rare case where they don't become part of the discussion. This is one such case: the OP noted that his concern is related to health, but only asked about a specific technical problem - how to detect a certain type of material in food - which does not require anybody to further comment on the healthy-or-not aspect. This is why the question was permitted. But adding answers which discuss health aspects is not. The only line in your answer which actually has something to do with
the original question is the first line, so this is the only thing I can leave in the answer after an edit. The rest is lecturing on what stuff might cause health problems - please don't do that, there are health professionals for it.
You've heard? Is this actually true? I searched for "eu bpa" and immediately found this EFSA page which says it's approved for use in food contact materials.
Yes - look for foods canned in Italy.
So... canned goods from Italy never have BPA? Or always do?
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2545 | If I make a big batch of blueberry buttermilk pancakes and freeze them, how long will they stay fresh for before getting freezer-burnt?
I love buttermilk pancakes. Being able to make them on the weekends for breakfast at a later date is just a bonus (like Eggo without the preservatives). I'm just not sure how long they last for in the freezer, as in, if they will ever get freezer-burn like meat does. I store them in individual ziploc bags for easy retrieval.
Eventually they do get freezer burn, but I've never tried timing it exactly. Most of the time they are eaten long, long before that.
How big a batch of pancakes are you talking about?
About 20? I average eating about 2-3 pancakes a month.
Its going to depend on the type of packaging and also the freezer.
Lightly wrapped in plastic wrap (or worse, paper) will freezer burn fairly quickly. Vacuum-sealed will last much longer.
A self-defrost freezer with wide temperature swings will burn quicker. A manual defrost chest freezer much slower.
Worst case is probably around a month or less (not really sealed, freezer with wide temperature swings), best case (vacuum sealed in stable temperature chest freezer) over a year.
I've stored pancakes in the freezer for over two month and not had any freezer burn.
I'm not sure what the "limit" is.
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52121 | Chow Mein: What is the starchy sauce called and how can I cook it?
This is a two part question, both relating to Chow Mein:
When ordering Vegetable Chow Mein from various Chinese restaurants in New York and New Jersey, I find that the dish is prepared with two different sauces depending on the restaurant. One sauce seems like its a typical Chinese "brown sauce," but the other is pretty much uncolored, is starchy, and not oily at all. I'll call this second sauce "Sauce X."
What is the correct name for "Sauce X," and how can I specify it when ordering Chow Mein at a Chinese restaurant?
How can I cook this sauce for use in homemade chow mein?
Authentic Chow mein is usually prepared with a variety of sauces. These sauces could be prepared fresh by the restaurant or they might be using the bottled versions of these sauces prepared by various manufacturers. So as such its difficult to decode your sauce X. But depending on the options we have from this must-have Chinese sauce list, we can interpret whats your sauce!
Soy Sauce : Made by pressing fermented soy beans soaked in brine. Usually dark in color and could have variations like with pepper or other condiments.
Vinegar: Plain Acetic Acid and water. It is transparent usually. Has variations - Chilli Vinegar, Viniagrette etc. This gives tang to the noodles.
Chilli Sauce: As the name says. Could be Red to Green in color.
Chilli-Garlic Sauce: As the name suggests.
Schezwan Sauce: Consists of spices and condiments and chilli garlic paste basically.
May be this list could help you in figuring out your X.
All the best and Happy New Year! :)
The x sauce you refer to is just plain corn starch added to stock for thickening it does contain salt ,pepper, ajinomoto, you may have come across this more in indian chinese restaurants in New Jersey. Just enriched stock .chicken, veg or shrimp whatever reason the chow mein.
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15712 | What is a good way to cook a pork tenderloin without searing?
I realise there are a couple of similar questions hereabouts, but this is a specific case.
I currently have sitting in the fridge a pork tenderloin (fillet) coated in a paste rub of ancho and chipotle chillis, garlic, cumin and oil. With an 'unrubbed' tenderloin I'd normally sear each side in a hot pan and roast for 25 minutes or so at about 180C/350F (my wife refuses to eat slightly pink pork).
However, what with the garlic and spices on this particular pork, I want to avoid searing and thus very likely burning them. So, am I better off just roasting for longer at 180/350 or should I crank up the heat to say 200-220/390-430 and keeping it at 25 mins? Or perhaps an initial blast then lower the temp and cover with foil?
A normal domestic oven never heats strong enough to produce a crisp crust. This is why pan searing is usually done: the direct heat transfer causes the maillard reaction which is impossible in the oven. As no setting in the oven will give you that, you are better off using lower temperature. It takes longer, but makes for a more even heating, which results in a better roast with a smaller heat-gradient-overdried part.
If you want your browned surface, you will have to give it a good heat blast before/during/after the cooking. I agree that a pan sear will probably ruin the seasoning. If your oven has a grill, you can use it. It shouldn't matter if you start with the grilling and then roast to the end after the skin is good, or first roast it almoast ready and then grill it until the crust is OK. Any way, counting the time spent under heat will probably not be acurate enough with this technique. You can try it, but the error probability without an oven thermometer is quite high.
The other possibility are open flames. A kitchen butan burner seems to be the tool of choice for sous-videers, who of course never get a crust in the cooker. But it will probably char the spices even more than the pan searing method. You could get creative and finish the outside of the meat on a charcoal grill. The reason nobody makes thick steaks and roasts on it is that they don't cook through. With a preroasted meat, this won't be a problem.
If all this sounds like too much trouble to go through for a simple roast, you can just roast it slowly and eat crustless. Just because a crust is traditional, it doesn't mean it has to be there every time.
I'm not all that bothered about a crust per se; I'd rather have no crust and a nice moist tenderloin. I'm also considering wrapping it in foil, roasting for 20 mins, then opening for the final 10, to dry out and colour the outside just a little. I have done this with chicken cordon bleu and chicken balmoral before now and both worked out well.
In that case, the slowest and most even heat will give you the best (mositest?) result. Foil sounds like a very good idea, the meat will be steamed/stewed on the outside and roasted on the inside, so you won't have a dried out surface.
I cooked it at about 200C for 30 mins, 20 mins covered in foil, last ten open, and it came out perfectly.
I'm going to have to disagree with a couple of things in this answer. First, the maillard reaction occurs at temperatures under 350 degrees F, and any standard oven will easily be able to reach that. Secondly, any standard oven will also be able to produce a crisp crust on meat. It's a simple matter of time and moisture. Patting the meat dry and rubbing it will oil will speed things up. Put it under the top element and turn the oven to broiler and I guarantee you can get browning to nearly match a hot skillet.
Think "Beef Wellington" and substitute the pork tenderloin. Roll the tenderloin in puff pastry and bake. See Alton Brown's Pork Wellington recipe for some ideas. Obviously you already have a rub on, but AB's recipe's cooking instructions should still apply.
Unfortunately it's for tonight and I have no puff pastry. Also I'm not sure it would go with the Tex-Mex feel of the rub - perhaps a tortilla or two would be better :)
wrap it in a couple of tortillas and bake... sounds like a perfect solution.
Unfortunately I don't have any tortillas either! :D
@ElendilTheTall: Perhaps a pate a choux dough? http://ruhlman.com/2009/12/pate-a-choux-video/
Do you have a grocery store? ;oD
Not within walking distance!
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35196 | What is the liquid ingredient in a korma?
I recently saw a pseudo-recipe for an authentic Lucknow korma on TV. After infusing whole spices in ghee, adding an onion puree, chilli powder and chicken, the cook added a creamy looking mixture of what he said was desiccated coconut, cashew nuts and poppy seeds.
This mixture looked too liquid to be made up of just those ingredients. What would be the liquid base? I am thinking it is either cream, yoghurt or coconut milk, but I don't know, and each of those has a distinct flavour.
Also, in what proportion would the dry ingredients be?
Authenticity is often in question when it comes to curry.
Korma covers a fairly broad range of South/Central Asian curries, their common feature being their creaminess.
The creaminess can come from cream, coconut cream, yoghurt, or ground nuts - or a mixture of these.
In the case of ground nuts, water might be added to add liquidity, although you may be surprised at how much liquid nuts contain. Just think how gloopy peanut butter can be.
Peanut butter is actually extremely dry, which is why it is shelf stable. The "goopiness" is oil.
Oil is a liquid. And (in real peanut butter) it's peanut oil from the nuts themselves. It's true that in the US a lot of peanut butter has the peanut oil swapped out for palm oil.
It is not true that the oils are swapped in the US. The USDA standards of identity say, IIRC, that peanut butter must consist of 98% (at least) peanuts, the rest being salt, flavors, emulsifiers mainly. And sorry, you did say 'liquid', not 'wet' or 'moist'.
Sorry, I was wrong, its 90%. http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=164.150&SearchTerm=peanut%20butter
Just to add, some kormas also include nut or coconut milk. For instance, Navratan korma can include nut milks, yogurt, or coconut milk to add to sweetness.
Having got the book from the library, I can confirm that the coconut paste is made from coconut flesh, cashew nuts, poppy seeds and water.
Most of the gravy based dishes use cream, yogurt, nuts or coconut shreddings/milk as thickening agents or to provide texture. Their usage for flavor is limited cause most of the times the spices overpower the dish with their unique taste.
Nuts are usually soaked in a liquid like milk (incase of cashews, almonds) or water (in case of peanuts) and then grounded to convert them into paste before adding them to the gravy.
Since the chef used desiccated coconut in the mixture, using coconut milk as base would be redundant. I would think the base liquid used was milk or cream. Yogurt is used as a base for marination.
Generally, the proportions would be cup of nuts and coconut and a teaspoon of poppy seeds.
Thanks for your answer. I have found that the recipe is in the book accompanying the TV series, so I will try and look at it to nail down the answer in this case.
I watched this same program and have been ordering up ingredients to make it as it sounded like a fantastic recipe. The program was rick stein in India, he posts recipes on the program onto the bbc food website, I checked for this recipe but alas it's not there.
I've found a very similar recipe online maybe you could try this one?
In this case they soak the cashews in water and add to yoghurt.
http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=2529574
I have been using this recipe since I watched the programme.
It was cream that was added to the poppy seeds and cashews. I use just over a half carton of elmlea. For my wife and I.
what size is the carton of elmlea ? (it's not available in all areas, so I have no idea if they have more than one size, or if only one, what size that might be)
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40048 | Can I dry-brine a turkey crown while it's defrosting?
At the suggestion of certain knowledgeable parties, I plan on dry-brining my turkey crown for Christmas dinner this year. However, I will most likely be buying a frozen crown, so I'm wondering what the timing should be like.
I've heard that you can dry-brine while defrosting, but I can't find any details. I'm thinking that I should let it partially defrost before salting, letting the outer part of the turkey soften a bit. The joint will be about 2.5kg (5.5lbs), so will take about 10 hours to defrost in a cold room (boy does my kitchen fit this description). I'm thinking perhaps salting 3 hours into defrosting, letting it fully defrost, then placing it in the fridge overnight - I know dry brining should usually be longer, but this is a relatively small joint and I'd rather not give my guests massive food poisoning as a Christmas gift.
In summary, yes, you can dry-brine while thawing.
The effect will proceed no faster than the turkey thaws, as the diffusion of the salt cannot proceed into frozen meat.
I cannot recommend thawing at room temperature, which is not one of the four safe thawing methods.
Instead, you should place your turkey crown on a rack over a tray, and salt it liberally, including any other herbs or spices you choose (although these flavors will remain at the surface). Then place it into the refrigerator for 24 hours or more. You don't really need three days as indicated in the recipe linked in the question, although it will do no harm to let the turkey sit longer. The amount of salt you apply is finite, so you are not going to "overbrine".
Don't cover it or uncover it for the last 24 hours of resting time; the open air circulation will encourage some drying of the skin and giving you a crispier result.
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10612 | Should I peel and devein whole shrimps?
I bought some precooked whole shrimp. Do I need to peel and devein them before eating or is it possible to leave this step out? I intend to saute them in garlic butter.
If they were not pre-cooked and you cooked them without deveining and peeling, would you eat them like that?
I disagree with Daniel, you can absolutely eat the "vein" in a shrimp. Whole un-peeled shrimp are called peel-and-eat and that's exactly what you can do. Basically, when you are first cooking the shrimp you get the make the shells on/shells off decision and if you go with shells off, you should de-vein, otherwise you just serve as is.
As for preparing already cooked shrimp, you can heat the butter then toss the shrimp in that off the heat. You won't get them hot, but you can knock the chill off while at the same time adding the flavors you want to the party.
I agree that already cooked shrimp is inferior to raw, but you can still make it taste amazing.
The fact that the intestine contains waste matter is a non-issue to your digestive tract, de-veining is mainly a presentation decision and not a health one.
I thought it's mainly because the intestine would spoil the flavor of the dish...
The intestine doesn't taste that much, the biggest problem you run into is the texture change. It really doesn't become an issue until the shrimp get to a larger size as there is never enough in any one bite to be detectable. However once you start talking twelve-fifteens you really do need to devein as it possible to get a bite that is a higher ratio of intestine to shrimp, which can be off putting.
You can leave both steps out if you wish, although personally I would always devein my shrimp before using. While consuming the 'vein' is harmless, I don't like the idea of eating it.
It is fairly easy to deshell the shrimp before or after cooking, so that is up to preference and cooking application may have a factor. If your shrimp are going to be fairly dry after cooking (which is not true in this case) then its easy to peel them after the fact. Because the shrimp are going to be cooked in a sauce it will be messier to peel after cooking; but if you don't want to touch raw shrimp/don't care then peel after. As Sarge said, cooking in the shell is more flavorful.
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37365 | Should tamarind pulp go into Pad Thai sauce?
I'm making my own Pad Thai sauce and I'm not sure if I should strain out the tamarind pulp or if it can stay in the sauce. Or is there some type of prepared tamarind which dissolves into the sauce so there's nothing to strain?
It's essential to get all the debris(seeds, large fibrous bits, skins etc) out of the pulp. I normally add a little hot water in a bowl with the block of pulp, be careful not to add too much or it'll end up watery - better to add more as you go, wash your hands thoroughly and break the pulp up by hand. Then strain out the seeds etc and it's ready to use.
You can buy ready to use Tamarind puree in shops but it's normally not a good.
There's more info on working with Tamarind pulp in the footnotes here(as well as a good Pad Thai recipe) http://chezpim.com/cook/pad_thai_for_beginners
The pulp is what you're actually trying to obtain from tamarind. What you should be trying to strain out is any seeds or any chunks too fibrous to be considered pulp. It is sometimes possible to add liquid and smash the tamarind several times to extract more and more (progressively diluted) pulp each time.
Well I got what looks like a sticky block of fiber (sort of resembles tobacco using in hookah :-). What I would do is simmer it with palm sugar to obtain my final sauce. From what you're saying it seems I've been doing it right, correct? :-)
So from this I understand that the seeds and any tougher fibrous parts shoud be thrown off; correct?
@nav yeah, I'd remove the seeds for sure; as for the fibrous parts, just depends on how much patience you have for smashing through the sieve.
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7789 | How do I make vanilla sauce without air bubbles?
Yesterday I made vanilla sauce to go with an apple pie. I used about 2 dl milk, 3 egg yolks and some sugar. I whisked it in a double boiler maybe too vigourously, because there were tiny bubbles of air in the finished sauce. It reached to correct consistency and otherwise was completely fine, but I would think vanilla sauce should have a relatively thick, rich consistency without any bubbles in it.
How can I do it better next time? Would heavy cream help? Should I not use a whisk and just stir with a spoon? How big of a risk is it that my sauce will curdle if I don't use a whisk?
You could fold with a heat-safe silicone spatula, that will let you reach the whole surface of the pan so you don't get scorching, without introducing so many bubbles.
Or if you happen to have a vacuum machine, put your sauce in a bag after you make it and vacuum out all of the air. Voila, bubbles gone.
I thought that most vacuum packers die if you expose them to liquids?
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6294 | How do I get the best possible texture when making vegetable cream soups?
Many recipes call for straining the almost finished soup to get rid of any extra chunky bits and get the best mouthfeel. But I am really confused, because with any reasonably fine sieve I filter out almost all of the vegetable matter and end up with a very thin soup.
Not mentioning it's hard to actually finish the filtering process, because the sieve gets all cluttered. The same goes for certain sauces such as Bechamel. Not sure how I can strain the sauce, because it's so thick and doesn't go through the sieve very easily.
What's the best way to achieve really smooth soups and sauces? What kind of sieve should be used?
You could always blend before you strain. I find that when making soup of all kinds that a few minutes with my immersion blender does wonders for the final product. Not only does it puree all the solids into much smaller chunks, but it also makes sure that all the liquid is a homogeneous whole.
After blending, I also tend to strain just to get out anything that I might have missed. I use a fine mesh strainer and a spatula to force the liquid through quickly. I also own an old flour sifter that I have used quite a few times instead of the strainer, but it doesn't offer any real benefits over the other.
I love my imersion blender, it makes creamy veggie soups a breeze. If you don't have one you can use a normal blender, just be careful not too add too much liquid at a time.
There is actually a specialized tool for making sure that your blended soups are the right consistency: a food mill. I own one that's almost exactly the same as the one pictured, and it's incredibly useful for soups. Other versions have interchangeable bottoms to allow you to mill your food to the exact texture you want.
A piece of equipment you might really enjoy is a conical strainer (a chinois, pejoratively known as a china cap). They can be hard to find in a home kitchen store, but hit a restaurant supply and they will have them in several sizes of cone and hole. When you strain a soup or sauce through it, you can agitate it with a ladle to move the clogging stuff out of the way and let the goodness through. If you are straining it so thoroughly that it is now thin and unpalatable, you may want a slightly coarser strainer. (Or you can thicken the soup further by reduction or a starch after you strain).
I thought about getting one, though they're a bit expensive. Does it offer any real difference compared to your normal sieve? I tend to have the same problem straining my stocks - the sieve just gets blocked too easily.
In order to get a soup through a sieve, take a ladle and stir it in the sieve while touching the mesh. This works loads better than a spoon or spatula. I think the advantage is more contact with the sieve due to the shape. Instead of pushing liquids out of the way as with a spatula, you actually push it through the sieve. I was amazed how much more effective this is than using a wooden spoon or something flat-ish.
+1, I do this all the time, and because I'm usually serving the soup right after it means one less utensil to clean.
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10611 | Is it possible to use casserole dish to make no-knead bread?
I don't own a heavy enamel pot, which seems to be the best for no-knead bread. Is it possible to make good no-knead bread in a glass casserole dish?
I use the ceramic insert from a crockpot for no-knead bread. I don't think I pre-heat it. It has always come out fine.
i STRONGLY recommend against it. i can speak from experience that the sudden change in temperature can cause glass baking dishes (particularly when they go from as high of a heat required by no-knead bread to a cool room temp) to shatter and explode! i had a pyrex dish go supernova on me once, sending hot flying glass shards all over the kitchen. how i didn't get hit i'll never know, but it melted holes in our floor and left scorch marks!
more information from Consumer Reports: http://tinyurl.com/33dz9o5
you can pick up some heavy pots suitable for no-knead break baking at thrift stores and garage sales for a song. if you can find a cast-iron dutch oven, even better! i urge you to dig around a bit. the results are really worth it.
Also most casserole dishes are too flat for the size that the basic no-knead recipe expands to. I have made the recipe in a stainless steel soup pot without any problems, even though I was originally told stainless steel didn't hold heat as well as the recommended containers. I think the keys are 1. a lid, 2. the size (roughly as round and high as you want the bread to be), and 3. WON'T EXPLODE. :)
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6132 | Can I filter out vanilla bean seeds?
When I scrape out the seeds out of my vanilla beans and simmer them with milk or incorporate them into batter, they always leave little tell-tale black dots in the finished product. Is it possible to filter them out somehow and is it something commonly done in the professional kitchen? I don't think I remember seeing these dots in restaurant desserts. It's not critical, but I'd rather my panna cotta be pristine white :-).
All the restaurants I've been to leave the seeds in to show they've used real vanilla pods over essence or extract (so there is a perceived better quality)
Just use vanilla extract if you don't want specks of seeds showing. Straining of custards is to remove any coagulated egg particles, not to remove the seeds.
OR,
infuse the cream with the whole bean intact, do not split it. It will still infuse flavor, not as quickly or as much but that would be one way to use it without specks showing in your finished dessert.
A coffee filter should do the trick. I believe cheesecloth wouldn't be fine enough, but I'm not 100% sure.
This recipe for panna cotta calls for scraping seeds and using a fine mesh strainer on the final product, but as per @roux and @Darin's answers, it's not for getting the seeds out.
I'm not certain as to whether professional kitchens strain them out.
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47317 | How long does it take for potato dough to become thinner?
In recipes for potato gnocchi (potatoes, egg yolk, flour) it is commonly pointed out that you should work quickly, because with time the potatoes expel water and the dough becomes thinner. I'd like to know how fast this process is and if it should make me concerned when I can comfortably finish the handling in ~30 minutes. Or would it only be a problem if you left the dough on the counter for say more than an hour?
I've never heard of this advice for gnocchi specifically (and haven't made gnocchi much), but from my experience with other recipes, when it says "work quickly", it means to do the mixing within 2-3 minutes, not 30-60 minutes. If this had been the case, it would have said "don't rest it too long", not "work quickly".
Fair enough, I'm just trying to figure out how quickly is quickly :-)
If your potatoes are prepared correctly before adding the other ingredients, then excess water should not be a problem. After boiling your potatoes until tender and draining them, I recommend placing them on a sheet pan and drying them in a 300° F oven for 5 minutes or so before passing them through your food mill or potato ricer.
With properly prepared potatoes there should never be a problem with thinning. In fact, prepared gnocchi can be covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated until ready to boil without fear of disintegration. With most fresh pastas and dumplings, time delays in preparation usually pose the greater threat of allowing the dough to dry out.
The secret to delicate gnocchi is to use just enough flour for the dough to come together and to knead that dough only briefly. More flour and more kneading generates more gluten and that means tougher gnocchi.
Thanks! Does peeling the potatoes play a role? Would you dry them in the over before or after peeled? Should I wait for them to cool before mixing the dough?
For best results, use mealy potatoes like russets. Peel them first - then cut them into uniform chunks before boiling them in salted water (like 1" - 1 1/2" chunks). Drain and oven dry. Then process/rice immediately while still hot. Then allow the potato to cool until you can work with it comfortably - too hot and it will cook the egg yolk - don't cover with plastic for cooling or condensation will drip back into the potatoes. Many recipes call for a tiny bit of nutmeg to be mixed into the gnocchi. I like to make mine with Parmesan cheese in the dough. Non-standard? Yes. So...sue me.
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14016 | How to properly freeze cake
I have a cake project coming up and have to bake a few different cakes. I'm not much of a baker and was anticipating having to bake all of these at roughly the same time. I was thinking that I could save some time on the day I need to actually prepare the cake by baking the cakes ahead of time and freezing them so I don't have to prepare the batter, bake, cool, and then decorate all in the same day.
First off, what are the adverse affects of freezing a cake?
How should one go about preparing a cake in order to freeze it and minimize any damage?
When I say cake I am talking about unfrosted cake layers.
See also: Where should I store my cakes?
Most cakes will freeze and keep fine if prepared properly - obviously they will not have the same "fresh baked" attributes that a freshly baked cake would bring to the party, but it should still taste nicely.
Wait for the cake(s) to be completely cooled before preparing them to be frozen.
Use one of the following methods/materials to wrap the room temperature cake before placing in the freezer:
greaseproof paper (wax paper, for example), wrapped thoroughly around the cake and taped shut
aluminum foil with plastic wrap/greaseproof paper underneath it, thoroughly secured
vacuum seal bag (caution: too much pressure may cause the cake to loose it's shape)
To thaw: Unwrap the cake, place it on a wire rack in your kitchen and let it sit for about two hours (more/less time depending on size of the cake) at normal room temperature. It is important that you do not microwave or reheat a frozen cake in any way, or you will ruin it.
More details are available here: http://www.wikihow.com/Freeze-Cakes
wikihow is not a good source or information. They are scrapped (usually via slave wages) answers
Different cakes freeze better or worse than others, it completely depends on the cake. But freezing might be unnecessary altogether. Most cakes are better not frozen if it's only going to be frozen for shorter than the times below.
Heavy Fruit cakes with alcohol can be made well ahead of time, un-iced over 6 months, ice a week or so before serving! Lighter fruit cakes can be made 3-5 days in advance (the more fruit the longer on that scale but 3 is pretty safe) and can usually be stored iced. Bread cakes (like banana bread) will last 3 days. Sponge/cupcakes/pound cake are best within 2-3 days and iced as late as you have time to. Cream can only really be added on the day as cake isn't great in the refrigerator.
To store cakes for maximum freshness wrap in greaseproof paper un-iced and if storing fresh wrap in cling-film over this and keep in a cake tin or other air tight container. If you are freezing the cake put tinfoil or a freezer bag over the cling-film and ice while frozen or defrost still wrapped.
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9966 | What are the advantages of using a stove instead of an oven?
Are there any advantages to using a stove instead of oven? As a woman of science, this is a question that has been lingering in my noggin for a very long time.
The main points I'd like to see answers for are as follows:
Time
Heat Spread
If possible, provide facts and examples to prove any advantages claimed. I would prefer if answers are not provided as experiments that I can perform, because I have a very busy work schedule.
You are relying on very different forms of heat. Conduction vs Convection vs Radiation
Heat transfer, and the first law of thermodynamics
Principles of Cooking
Basic Cooking Methods
What happens when you heat something? A number of things.
Proteins Coagulate
Starches Gelatinize
Sugars Caramelize
Water Evaporates
Fats Melt
Depending on how you cook it, you're going to get different forms of each of those at different rates. On a stove, you can avoid too much moisture and fat from leaving your food by cooking it extremely quickly (in a stir-fry). . You can't sear something in an oven and you can't roast something on the stove. The two are simply not the same, because fundamentally the two are not the same, you are not going to get the same results. It's really as simple as that. You can't take two entirely methods and argue that you get the same results.
Stove tops:
Cook by conduction;
Send most of the heat to the surface of the food (good for searing, bad for thorough cooking);
Can be adjusted very quickly, unless they're glass-top;
Can cook food very quickly, because conduction is a very efficient method of heat transfer.
Conventional ovens:
Cook primarily by radiation, unless steaming or simmering in a covered vessel;
Penetrate the food much more readily (good for even cooking);
Take a relatively long time to adjust the temperature;
Tend to have much longer cooking times because the heat disperses so much.
So in general: Use the oven if you need slow, even cooking, or want to dry the food out. Use the stovetop for searing, quick cooking, or if you need precise control over the heat (i.e. caramelizing sugar, stir-frying, etc.).
Thanks for the informative post. My opinions on the oven may have been influenced a lot more by the amount of food I prepare for each meal. As you said, for large amounts of food, the oven often works wonders. I still would like to see some more direct comparisons, but I think I will mark your answer as correct.
@Naomi: You can cook large meals on the stove top - you just need a large pot! Ever seen one of those 100-quart stock pots?
I have tried it, but I prefer a large shallow baking pan. This way, the contents of the pan are spread out more and can cook faster. The pot usually has to fit within the confines of a 1 foot diameter grill, while the large shallow pan can be heated quickly in an oven.
Well, yeah, you usually do the 100-quart stock pot over a bonfire or something. But as long as everything actually fits in one layer on the pan (which it always should - bad idea crowding a skillet or sauce pan) then it'll cook faster than in the oven.
Active monitoring & maintenance:
Because it's in view and not hidden away in an oven (blocking sight/sound/smell), you can more easily monitor it, and occassionally stir, etc. Because of this, you can more safely put things under higher heat, as you're not just letting it sit, but can move things around so the stuff on the outside doesn't burn.
I've actually considered these points, and I feel as if in most cases the oven outperforms the stove in these areas. In both cases, the contents of the pan will be obscuring the view of the bottom and sides of the pan. In order to know if anything is burning, the pan would have to be checked with a utensil and most likely stirred. Also, from the experimentation I have done, the more even heat spread of the oven provides the ability to cook with less heat and get a more even and faster cooking time. I'm not sure if this is what others have experienced.
@Naomi : an even faster cook than a saute or stir-fry?
From the research I have done, the operating temperature of my home stove can be around 500 degrees. When I make my oven stir-fry, the vegetables get crunchy quickly because the top and the bottom are cooking. I first heat the oven to 450 degrees. I usually load up the pan with the sauce (which I also prepare in a sauce pan in the oven), meat, and vegetables, and flip on the broiler. I usually give it one quick stir halfway through and it comes out great. I would need more solid evidence to say one method is faster than the other, but thanks for the great ideas Joe.
@Naomi: The oven will never give you a faster cooking time. A stir-fry can be done in 5 minutes on the stove; even if you use the broiler in the oven, you have to preheat it, so there's about 10 minutes gone before you've even started. Your vegetables are probably getting crunchy quickly because you're drying them out, evaporating all the water in them; that's what ovens do. Cool if that's what you like, but most stir fries have the stated aim of getting tender vegetables.
I agree completely with @Aaronut. If you're getting the same results between the two methods and same cooking times... I would suggest you are not stir-frying (on the stove) correctly.
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10431 | Cooking food directly on oven rack
Is it common to cook food directly on the oven racks? I often do this (with a container for drippings) and was wondering if this is common or if there is a better solution. It has worked out fine for me, but sometimes replacing these racks can be costly. I do not replace them often, and they are not very hard to clean, but I would like to get some ideas on if I am doing this wrong.
Just out of curiosity, what types of food are you cooking directly on the racks? Something like roasts or something completely different? I have never cooked anything directly on the racks.
I've cooked bacon. I've also prepared many different recipes that say to use a grill.
Why not use a tray? I've never cooked directly on the racks either.
I have a convection oven and cook all i can on the racks, since air doesn't flow too well through solid trays. I think I get a better finish on all sides of roasts that way. I've never had to replace my racks I run the self-clean cycle with the rack in, and then use the dish-washer.
The only thing I cook directly on the rack is jacket/baked potatoes. Has to be pretty clean.
Presumably the reason you're cooking directly on the oven rack is to let the fat drip down. If so, do yourself a favour and get yourself a roasting rack. It's an inexpensive piece of equipment that you place in a baking pan or on a cookie sheet; the food cooks on the rack and the pan/sheet catches all the drippings. Way better than trying to replace an entire oven rack.
And if you really hate cleanup, you can line the pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil and just throw the rack in the dishwasher when you're done.
And if you're using the broiler part of your oven, consider using a broiler pan, made specifically for this kind of thing. The juices/fat can still drip away from the food, but it all stays contained and is very easy to clean up. It's a good bet that your oven originally came with a broiler pan, actually.
Does a broiling pan work well even when I'm not using the broiler? I was digging through the bottom drawer in my oven and found one of these. I am considering using it, but I was unsure if this was going to work well for everything that the oven racks are good for. I do like the oven rack idea. If there are significant advantages to using an oven rack over the broiler pan, I would consider purchasing one.
@Naomi: You can, although a broiling pan is almost the opposite of a roasting rack, it's got small openings in an otherwise solid pan. It's probably worth a try, but I don't find it works quite as well for evenly crisping up food over a long roasting period, and the bottom still ends up a little soggy sometimes. When you're broiling it's not really a big deal because you'd only be doing it for a few minutes at a time.
@Aaronut - If you're lining such a rack with foil or parchment, wouldn't that negate the spaces in the rack? That is, hold the drippings or whatever, to the food similar to how a pan would (or, well, a sloped pan, anyway), or even as much as lining the bare oven rack with foil or parchment?. Or am I visualizing this wrong?
I would suggest that the answer is that it isn't common. I would normally use sheet pans/trays and a rack on top of that. It's much easier to put food in and out of the oven that way.
This is what I do as well.
Before I got a pizza stone I'd put store bought pizzas straight onto the rack as it gave a better crust.
The only reason I can think of doing it is basically laziness - I'd do it with cheese on toast if the grill pan was too dirty to use.
I'd also sometimes do baked potatoes without a tray as Id cover them with tin foil.
If you want to continue to cook on the racks in this way there is no need to ever replace them. When mine get really dirty I use this oven cleaner you just put the racks in a bag with the cleaner and the next morning they look brand new. It's probably horrible for the environment but can't be worse than producing new racks just beacuse mine are dirty.
I would simply purchase a wire rack for cooling cookies (not coated) and place it on top of a cookie sheet. Alternatively, place it across a glass Lasagna pan for more air flow underneath and better drip catching.
A leg of lamb slow cooked directly on the rack is delicious and l would never cook lanb in a pan again. Line the pan underneath with foil and the clean up is easy.
I dont know if it's common, but I use my racks to grill pork chops and steak. I don't like the grilling outside taste so this works for me!
I have never heard of this until 5 minutes ago when I found a recipe for it.I don't thinkit's common and I've never done this but am considering doing it with an 8 lb bone in ribeye roast because I saw a recipe for it to be placed directly on the rack. Someone said it was lazy and many of you said to use a roasting pan, but you're missing the point: airflow. When you use a pan, you restrict airflow and when you combine a pan with a rack, you're still limiting airflow.
I t sounds like a brilliant idea If you want your meat crispy or crusty all over. I don't see why you'd have to replace your oven racks, just take them out and wash them. If you put a pan underneath,that should catch the fat. I have a roasting rack but I'm going to try this for Christmas tomorrow. I suspect my dinner guests will find it odd but I'm keeping fingers crossed dinner will
Be so delicious they'll overlook the cooking method
The top voted and accepted answer had a roasting rack with more than sufficient airflow. Simply place it over a flat pan that doesn't restrict air flow.
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47164 | Does Turkish Delight have to be this difficult?
At the weekend I made some Turkish Delight based on the recipe featured in a recent BBC series called "Sweets Made Simple". Simple maybe, but highly effortful. The recipe is here, but the brief summary is: make a sugar syrup, take it to the required temperature. Make a thick cornstarch paste. Add syrup to paste and stir and simmer for an hour until it's smooth and not lumpy.
Now maybe it's just me, but pouring a load of liquid into a cornstarch paste has always been the thing you're supposed to avoid if you don't want lumps. Maybe it's different with sugar syrup at this temperature and with a cornstarch paste this thick, but it seems to me that surely there must be an easier way to make it.
The end results here are good enough that I'm intending to do some experiments, but I wanted to consult the wisdom of this community beforehand in case there is already an easier way known. I've seen other recipes which say you only need to stir it every 8-10 minutes for an hour, but that to my mind isn't going to be enough at all, judging by how my mixture reacted to stirring. Of course, maybe there was some subtle difference earlier in the recipe which I haven't noticed.
I'm American, I'm not sure that I've ever actually seen Turkish Delight. The mention of it makes me think of The Chronicles of Narnia.
If I am not mistaken, Aplets and Cotlets are basically Turkish Delight (also known as Rahat Locoum). If you haven't heard of them, just look around your local chain store, especially around the holidays. (EDIT: I am American also, and did not know what TD actually was until I wiki-ed it a while back.)
Yes, Rahat Lokum is the Turkish word for Turkish delight. For some reason Western recipes incorrectly call for gelatine in Turkish delight, but if you can get a starch-and-sugar based product, then it is probably the real thing.
I've just had a go today. I only stirred until all the lumps of cornstarch lumps had gone, about 20 mins. It was getting very thick then! Note that the lemon juice with the sugar and the cream of tartar in the cornflour mix will convert some of the sugar to invert sugar, which is supposed to help reduce the growth and size of sugar crystals (I learnt about this whilst making fudge, which starts with the same sugar heated to softball stage, and marshmallows, which are like the Turkish delight mixture if made with gelatine, just whipped to incorporate a lot of air.) Overall the process is quite simple, as you say, it is time consuming. Good luck with future trials. Chris
Unless you cut some corners... no, it's that amount of time. Reason why I chose other deserts (or let other people do it for me xD). Try this one, it works is a slightly different way.
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5389 | Browning reheated food with only a microwave
I recently was given a Corningware Microwave Browner as a gift, which looks very cool and promising, but I have not tried it yet. It seems to me a special apparatus such as this would be necessary for browning in a microwave, because the default conditions inside one are quite far from what is needed for the Maillard reaction.
It got me to thinking: Are there any sure-fire ways to brown meats in a microwave? I don't necessarily need to know how to cook the meat from raw; I'm thinking more about the dry-rubbed steak I grilled last night becoming soggy when I try to reheat it at work. Techniques for raw, of course, are also encouraged if they exist.
We only have access to a microwave, and although I could probably bring in a Foreman grill or something, I have a feeling it would be frowned upon in this particular organization.
I was thinking along the lines of those special sheets of gray "paper" (for lack of knowing the correct term) that come with, say, a Lean Cuisine Panini. Any ideas?
Or, does anyone have any experience with the Corningware Browner (or a similar item) that can offer some tips?
The CorningWare browner works on a simple principle. It is lined with a material that can absorb microwave radiation (just like water does) and therefore become hot. Then when you add your food, the hot surface of the pan browns it. Seems like an effective solution in the situation you describe, where you really want to cook with a hot surface but can't use normal means in the enviroment you are in.
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32991 | Quiche filling sets like an Aero bar?
Last few times I've made quiche the filling has set more like an Aero bar than the thick dense custard you expect of a quiche. Additionally it's more rubbery than is desirable.
Because I'm using very fresh eggs, the colour and taste is good (and before cutting into it the surface looks fine, not sunken or anything) but the texture and visual appeal is wrong.
In case it matters the fillings I've mostly tried are bacon/pepper/mushrooms. As for the eggs, I'm just whisking them and pouring in.
What causes a rubbery aero bar quiche filling?
How long and at what temperature did you cook the quiche? If you cook it too fast, the top could overcook before the middle is set ... and you have to deal with more carry-over. You're generally best cooking it low and slow, like a cheesecake. If you want it browned, you can always put it under the broiler for a few seconds.
Those fresh eggs hold firmer as well. See SAJ14SAJ's answer and go gently with the whisk when making any custard.
You could let the custard mixture rest in the refrigerator for a while to let bubbles escape, much as one does with crepe batter.
Are you just using eggs for your filling? Most quiche fillings are a custard, with milk, cream, or other dairy as well as eggs, and often cheese as well.
It sounds like you are over beating your egg or custard mixture, and inadvertently incorporating air.
In general you want minimum air in a quiche filling, so whisk or stir it briefly until it comes together, but not extra.
Its harder to tell from the description, but you may also be over baking the quiche. You want to cook it until the center just barely jiggles, about 180 F / 82 C.
Nice! You have it with the over whisking and too fast. It's important to avoid incorporating air to get a smooth velvety custard.
In my eyes, this is a very clear case of overbaking.
As SAJ14SAJ says, a quiche is basically a custard. The eggs in a custard work the same way no matter if you are making a quiche, a creme caramel, or a creme patisserie. They have lots of different proteins, which float free in the liquid part of the egg while the eggs are raw.
When you start heating the egg mixture, the proteins start to bind together, forming a three dimensional mesh. The more you heat it, the more dense the mesh becomes, because some of the proteins which did not form cross-connections at, say, 60 degrees Celsius, start forming them at 70. In the beginning, this means that your egg mixture goes from liquid to a dense liquid to a soft amorphous solid. Then, with more connections formed, the solid mesh grows stronger. The new cross-links also reduce the volume of the holes of your mesh.
At some point, you get the result you describe. The mesh is very strong, so that you perceive it as rubbery when you bite on it. It has also contracted considerably, expelling the more liquid/watery parts of the egg, while the proteins stay in the mesh and the fats cling to it. This expelled liquid also started cooking, creating bubbles large enough to see. This is where your "aero" description comes from. Depending on how you treat your quiche before cutting, and also whether there are ingredients present which can soak up this watery liquid, you can see the water flowing out of the bubbles after cutting it, forming a puddle on the bottom of the plate, or it may have disappeared (soaked up, flowed out, evaporated) before cutting.
The solution is to treat the quiche the same way you treat any other custard. Bake it on a low temperature, and take it out as early as possible. The best way to know for sure is to stick a thermometer into the middle and to remove it at around 85 degrees Celsius, but as quiches tend to give you some more leeway than other custards, you can also try learning to rely on a combination of cooking time and intuition, which works as long as you use the same oven and the same quiche pan. (The correct time will vary with differences in oven calibration, pan material and pan geometry). Covering the top with foil might be a good idea if you are afraid that the top layer gets heated too quickly, just remember to uncover it at the end for a golden crust. As a quiche has a nice isolating crust, the extreme measures needed for other quiches like a water bath shouldn't be necessary.
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6381 | Partially defrosting, then refreezing?
OK, so we shouldn't refreeze meat once it's been defrosted.
But if I've partially defrosted meat, then popped it back in the freezer, is that safe? Specifically I'm thinking of sausages or steaks or chops, which may be frozen in groups. You might want to pull them out of the freezer for 30 mins to 1 hr, so they thaw just enough to loosen up to separate them, then put half back. Is this safe?
My question is ... is there a clean cut off point with defrosting after which it becomes unsafe to refreeze, or does it just get progressively more dangerous?
If you're unthawing them in your refrigerator (below 40 F), then you should be just fine. Most beasties don't reproduce at any significant rate below 40 F.
There isn't a clean cut off point because it depends entirely on the existing level of contamination present in your meat.
You should be aware that repeated cycles of thaw/freeze will really damage the texture of your meat. The cells simply do not hold up to that.
While this doesn't directly answer your question, I wanted to jump in with a way to avoid this altogether. When you get home from the market, separate and portion your meats so they can be frozen individually. Wrap each with either freezer paper, or plastic wrap and aluminum foil. Then they're able to all be stored in one bag, but can be pulled out individually.
You can also freeze them on a cookie sheet, one layer deep, and then as soon as they're fully frozen package them together without wrapping (though you will lose the beneficial protection from moisture that wrapping provides). This is also how I freeze fruit so I can grab a handful of frozen blueberries or one peeled banana without having to defrost the entire bag.
As for safety, I defer to hobodave's excellent answer.
@stephenmcdonald - I do this and it is great.
yep, but ... grrrrrrr ... spouse has been known to forget this tip
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12618 | Any advice to help me form and shape stuff more uniformly?
I get frustrated by recipes which call for the cook to shape or form little balls out of a dough or cake or biscuit mix.
The recipe will say something like "form into little walnut sized balls ... should make about 16".
I always seem to end up with some larger than others. Individuals may look and taste good but it's a shame if they don't all look identical.
Anyone got any advice?
A hate the term walnut-sized ... do they mean shelled, or unshelled?
Use something that will help you measure the dough or mix uniformly. Some possible tools to co-opt for this task: Ice cream scoop, melon baller, measuring cups or spoons : all depending on size of course.
You should be able to get to where you can eyeball the size in relation to the tool you are using.
You can get dishers in varous sizes ... I have a range for different sized cookies, larger ones for filling muffin/cupcakes, etc.
Perfect answer, I don't know why I never thought of this. I normally envision the number of pieces I want, then divide the dough in two equal pieces, then each of them in two or three pieces, etc... but after reading your genailly simple answer, I'll never do it that way again!
melon baller! great idea. or even spoons. i don't know why it didn't occur to me either. seems obvious now.
If you have a dough that is dry enough (bread, cookies), the simplest method is to simply weigh your final dough, and then divide it into portions that weigh the same. You'll be exact every time.
If you have something wetter but kinda keeps it's shape, like some cake mixes, I like to put it in a piping bag and then eyeball the portions. It does not take too much practice to get even portions. Though I sometimes fail at getting the correct number of portions.
If it gets even wetter, use a measuring spoon.
I suppose if you really plan ahead, you could also weigh all your containers first, and then you could weigh out the wetter mixtures too.
thanks, but weighing/piping, wow, think of the work! i know, i know, i did ask for ideas! thanks for the answer
I try to make items in quantities of powers of two. Cut the batch in half. Cut the halves in half. And so on. It's not as perfect as using a measuring device, but on the other hand you'll never have that remainder with which to contend.
yes that's a good idea for simplicity
I know my limitations, so I try to keep it as simple as possible. Plus I hate having unnecessary dishes and/or utensils to clean. ^^
If your aim is truly for "identical", then the only real solution is practice.
Certainly dividing your dough or batter into the requisite number of pieces before you start forming can help since you can do so more evenly than by scooping each one individually. However, the main thing that allows people to get uniform results is less by technique and more by making the item over and over.
I just made a batch of cookies (Walnut size) using a melon baller. Recipe called for 48 cookies and that is exactly what I got. The baller was not heaping, pretty much just filled to the top. Makes nice round cookies.
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8206 | Tips for roasting sweet potato
Does anyone have any tips for roasting sweet potatoes? Since - seems to me - they cook and break down much faster than normal potatoes I skipped the parboiling stage and just stuck them (peeled) in the oven to roast for 45-60 minutes.
However they still came out a somewhat soft and squidgy result. Roast for shorter time or some other methodology?
I suppose I am looking for a crisp texture something like a normal roast potato but keeping the orange colour and distinctive sweet taste of the sweet potato itself.
Are you oiling them before roasting? Also, you mention peeling, but not cutting it up vs. roasting it whole.
I cut mine into chunks (maybe 1"/2.5cm), a toss in oil, and roast in a fairly hot oven (375 to 425F / 190 to 220C) to try to get the outside to get some browning.
The cells of the sweet potatoes (like all plants) are held together by pectin, which gets destroyed at high temperatures and makes the potato fall apart. To cook the potatoes one just needs to break down the tangles of starch, which starts to happens at 70°C/158°F. If you have a sous-vide machine you have probably heard of the magic 85°C/185°F for cooking vegetables, but you can get similar effects in a an oven set to that temperature.
I am a fan of parboiling.
cut into chunks of your favorite size
Start in cold, salted water
bring to a boil
let them boil for 3 minutes
strain
(extra work step: but on a pan in a 500F/250C oven for 5 mins to remove moisture)
coat in oil salt pepper
on sheet pan in preheated 500F/250C oven until brown on outside and give when pinched.
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32812 | What ingredients can be used to make fried rice slightly sweet?
I regularly buy fried rice from my local takeaway and I would like to recreate something similar. It is slightly redish in color (that's most likely chilli, but might not be, as it's not too hot) and tastes sweet and sour. I'm wondering what kind of ingredients they might be using to achieve this type of flavor, as the rice I make at home usually tasted pretty one dimensionally salty from the soy sauce. Could they be using something like tamarind juice, that's often used in Pad Thai recipes? What else can give fried rice a similar flavor profile?
Have you tried sweet soy sauce?
Often there's no secret sauce that restaurants use, but plain old bog-standard sugar. I know it's boring, but there you go. They also may be using bottled sweet and sour sauce, which is also boring, but readily available in many supermarkets.
All is not lost, however, as if you want some more authentic ingredients then there are plenty of options. In my kitchen (which isn't big enough to satisfy my capacity requirements for exotic ingredients otherwise this list would be bigger) I have several ingredients which impart sweetness to Asian dishes:
Palm sugar: more of a Thai than a Chinese ingredient, but I use it for many different cuisines. It imparts a slightly syrupy flavor. In the UK this can be found in any big grocery store in the Asian section.
Sweet soy syrup: Also can be found under the name Kecap Manis, this is an Indonesian ingredient. It is basically teriyaki concentrate, it's salty, very sweet, and has some spices in it. I use it in all sorts of Asian cooking (and I sometimes add it to gravy to darken and sweeten it), and it would be my choice for the dish you want to make. I would add it instead of soy sauce until I have the sweetness I'm looking for, then add regular soy to bring the saltiness to the right level. Adding a little bit of water helps loosen it up
Honey: not a purely Asian ingredient of course, but honey can be magic anyway. The floral notes may be just what you need
Now for the sour:
Tamarind: you mentioned tamarind in your post as something to sweeten, but tamarind is actually quite sour. I use paste at home, it lasts forever in the fridge
Lime or lemon juice: of the two I prefer lime juice when making Asian cooking sour. I can't quite say why.
Rice vinegar: This is a very commonly used souring agent, I use it most often in Chinese cooking, and it would be my choice for a fried rice dish
Also worth mentioning is Mirin - a reduced-alcohol Sake, usually with a bit of salt added. It's used widely in Japanese cuisine. I personally don't use it much, but it's worth having in the flavor arsenal.
I'd add Mirin and rice vinegar to that list, both have interesting sweet/sour flavor profiles.
Ah! Rice wine vinegar, I totally forgot! Edit time.
I would suspect they're using Shari, or "sushi rice". This is prepared with sugar (your sweet) and rice vinegar (your sour), and can easily be made at home. This beginner recipe on Just Hungry suggests the following ratio:
For the amount of rice we cooked in the first part (360cc, or 2 rice-cooker cups, or 1 3/4 U.S. cups) we will need:
3 tablespoons rice vinegar (45cc) (1 1/2 tablespoons per cup)
1 tablespoon fine sugar (1/2 tablespoon per cup) (I used sucanat; white granulated or superfine sugar is fine)
up to 1 teaspoon finely ground salt (1/2 teaspoon or less per cup) (I used sea salt)
This is added to the rice immediately after cooking; you pour it over the top, then sort of chop-and-fold with the rice paddle to distribute evenly. To avoid damage to rice-cooker bowls, Maki also suggests doing the mixing in a metal bowl (to help the rice cool faster).
When the rice is cooked, seasoned, and cooled, it can be fried with whatever ingredients you like.
You may well be right, as this is mainly a sushi place. I haven't thought of that, thanks!
Thicker soy sauces typically have molasses or other sugar added, which would result in a much sweeter result. (some are thickened with starches, though).
If you're making an Indonesean style fried rice (Nasi Goreng), you'd use Ketjap Manis instead of typical soy sauce, which is almost a cross between molasses and soy sauce (with ginger and other spices, as GdD mentioned)
For those times before I had a source of Ketjap Manis, I'd fold in a few shredded carrots to add extra sweetness ... and I still typically do, as I just like mine pretty vegetable-heavy.
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10101 | Do Pineapples Ripen After They Are Picked
Do pineapples ripen after they are picked? I had alway thought you could leave them on the counter to ripen, however, I recently heard they don't ripen after they are picked.
This answer (http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/109/why-does-a-brown-paper-bag-speed-ripening/1339#1339) should be helpful to you.
Pineapple softens, but not sweeten on shelf ripening.
Fruit ripening is usually due to exposure of unsaturated hydrocarbons e.g. ethylene. This phenomenon occurs in fruit known as "climacteric fruits". Well known examples are banana, avocado, tomato, apple, pear, kiwi, to name a few.
Pineapple is not a kind of climacteric fruit. However, ethylene exposure will activate chitinase (which is a type of enzyme that breaks down chitin, a structural material inside plants), and cause softening of the pineapple. To achieve this a simple method is to place a ripe banana with the pineapple which release ethylene.
According to Dole and Cooking for Engineers (which has an excellent article on a variety of fruits) pineapples do not ripen after picking but do change color. So it will be just as sweet when it is green and fresh as when it sat and turned yellow.
I tend to disagree with many of the opinions. I consider softness to be an important aspect of ripeness in the pineapple. While they claim it wont get sweeter, softer pineapples that are fragrant from the base (usually tend to have the leaves pluck off easy and show a little more yellow), are always sweeter and juicier to me than a green one with firm leaves. I actually dont like chewy hard pineapple, so allowing some shelf ripening for softness is critical to me.
I've ripened a pineapple at home after buying - turn upside down in a vase, works great!!
Turns from green to more of a yellow-greenish color - bottoms always ripen first. Don't ripen too long though.
Changing color does not mean the fruit actually changes, though.
I also agree that a green pineapple with no scent to it when you smell it is not a ripe pineapple. There are three ways to tell when a pineapple is ripe. If you wait a few days and it turns to a yellower color and if you sniff it and you can actually smell the pineapple and the leaves on top can be plucked without having to pull so hard, that's when a pineapple will be at its best. It is definitely definitely sweeter And juicier than green hard pineapples. Plus this way you don't get the nasty chewy stringy hardness that an all green, hard, non-smelling pineapple in a store would give you. Unless you buy it already nice and ripe , just be patient and in 2-4 days depending on the pineapple itself, you'll know what it is to eat a delicious ripe fresh pineapple.
Alot of Articles is Wrong
I bought green pineapples and left them of the counter when they had no smell and hard
And after 4 days the whole house smelled sweet and the pineapple was yellow
When i cut into it, it was very sweet
I've been doing it for years. Place in a small container with an inch of water and 2 dollops of honey. Leave it outdoors in Full Sun 3 days. Works like a champ.
Welcome to the site. First, this doesn't answer the question about ripening. Secondly, this sounds like it will create a breeding ground for bacteria.
And we do have a code of conduct, which I strongly recommend you read and follow in future posts.
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10261 | Tips To Make Pizza Dough Workable
I've used several recipes for making pizza dough, most recently one from Delfina Pizza. My issue is that regardless of the recipe I use it is very difficult to work the dough into the pizza crust. It is usually very sticky and it tears too easily. I'm working on how to make the dough easier to work with, any ideas?
It may help to visit a friendly pizzeria and ask if you can watch them make dough. Seeing and feeling it made properly (or any bread for that matter) helps immensely as it gives you an idea of how it should be. Cookbooks, articles, and TV don't give you that tactile info quite as well. Having worked in a number of pizza places in college, I've never used a recipe (I just remember how good dough feels, and what the basic method is). FWIW, this is a great way to learn any cooking method: donate your time to a local restaurant and see it live.
That's just a bad pizza base recipe.
My family recipe is totally different. Not sure if I can post recipes here, but anyway here's a link to something similar http://www.recipepizza.com/doughs/pizza_dough.htm
You can use sugar or honey, it's just food for the yeast. You can use 2 or 3 times more olive oil to make a smother dough
Some extra tips:
In my recipe each cup of flour makes one thin 30cm pizza base. Most people make the base to thick and it wont cook properly
Try not to roll the dough, pull or push it out by hand, if it wont do this you made the dough wrong or you have the wrong flour
Let the oiled dough rise in a warm place with just a cloth over it
After making the base on the tray, let it rise another ten minutes before putting toppings on it. Be quick from when you start adding toppings and getting it to the oven, otherwise it will go soggy
Use the hottest oven you can dial up, or a hard wood fired oven. A thin crust pizza should take no longer than eight minutes to cook
Sing bad Italian Opera while kneading. You will either get good at singing, or get fast at kneading
Nothing wrong with posting a recipe in an answer, but it would be more helpful if you could point out what you consider to be wrong with the original recipe.
The flour/water ratio in the recipe you quote seems off. The "normal" bread ratio, which includes pizza, is 5 to 3 by weight. Your recipe has less than 17 ounces of liquid so the flour should be 28 ounces or less...2 ounces may not seem like much but it can make a huge difference. And, of course, I don't know that you weighed it. If you went with 6 cups, well, who KNOWS how much flour you really used.
Ratios, particularly in bread making, are your friend. It makes it easy to scale the recipe (that's a LOT of pizza dough in that recipe), so you can throw together a pizza for a couple of people pretty quickly, just starting with a cup of water, and adding the 8 (oz) * 5/3 (oz) of flour or 13 1/3 ounces. Salt and yeast and you have a dough.
A couple of other thoughts. Good pizza dough IS sticky, at least a little bit. If it isn't, then it's too dry and will be heavy. And kneading the dough will make it less sticky as time goes on. If you kneaded it for the time mentioned in the recipe on a good machine, then it shouldn't have been sticky, but if you kneaded it for that long by hand, you probably didn't knead it long enough. There's a reason why I didn't start making a lot of bread or pizza until I got my Kitchenaid 600.
Make bread and pizza by weight until you get a good eye for how the dough should look. Once you recognize a finished dough, you can throw the right amount of water in your mixing bowl with salt, yeast and a bit less flour than you'll need, then just add flour until the dough looks right. But stay with the weight ratios until you know good dough when you see it.
I agree that the dough recipe for that pizza looks dodgy. You might be able to make it work out with a really soft flour, like Italian 00 style.
You also complain, though of general problems with any recipe. I'm going to take them in reverse order.
If it tears too easily, you need to knead it longer, or let it sit longer before you work it. Kneading builds gluten, which makes the dough stretch instead of tear. Letting it sit for a bit (15-20 minutes) before kneading lets the water get fully absorbed by the flour, which also helps the gluten, and can also reduce the amount of kneading required (this is why no-knead breads work at all).
And while pizza dough is usually somewhat sticky, if you're finding it REALLY sticky, you've got too much water, or haven't let it absorb.
Breads are tricky, and ultimately hard to do strictly from a recipe. You need to learn what the right consistency of dough is for what you're making, and how to get to that point. I use bread recipes as a starting point, then invariably wind up adjusting amounts to get the dough texture I need. Find a recipe that almost works for you, then use it over and over, adjusting hydration, kneading, rise times, etc. each time until you've got it working perfectly.
My attempts at pizza dough have been damp affairs used the farina 00 flour blah blah hold back on the water is what to try next! Every attempt has been eaten! Last one so sticky mashed and pulled play dough style onto tray even cooked it a little before toppings yum! So I guess if its sticky and extra flour isn't working, dry it out some with 5/6 mins and its not such a disappointment!
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8249 | Why should I boil pretzels in baking soda water before baking?
This weekend I made pretzels from Alton Brown's recipe.
This recipe, and others I've seen, call for dipping the pretzels one by one in boiling water with baking soda for 30 to 60 seconds.
I assume the boiling water will help the pretzels come up to temperature more quickly so they cook thoroughly, is this correct?
What benefit does the baking soda bring - is it important in forming a crust? If so, why?
Check out an excerpt from that particular episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70pRPAE3i54 (around 1:45 he begins explaining the whole pH thing).
the warmer the solution the more dilute you can go: if you don't fancy boilng water, go stronger and cooler. Can be brushed on too if you work over a sink
In addition to being browner, crisper crust, it also is a very thin crust. Nice contrast to chewy interior.
The pretzel originates in Germany, where it is called Laugenbrezel. It was originally prepared in a alkali solution, which is where the "Laugen" part of the word comes from; typically, lye was used, but baking soda gets you most of the way there without a trip to the pharmacy (a Mexican or Asian market may do the trick if you want culinary lye).
The alkali solution is what causes the crust to brown so deeply, and it's most of the difference between a pretzel and a bagel. A bagel would typically be boiled in a malted sugar solution instead. The flavor is also affected, but I don't know how to describe the difference; there's a very pronounced aroma difference if you skip this step. To me, you end up with nothing more than a pretty breadstick unless the dough gets that alkali bath.
If you do use culinary lye, use gloves and don't rush anything. Traditional Laugen aren't boiled, so you just need a cool 3% lye solution; no boiling step.
In Germany, the pretzel shape isn't the only option for Laugen. Little rolls calls Laugenbrötchen and longer, roughly baguette-width sticks called Laugenstangen are also popular. On my most recent trip last year, the Laugenstangen were frequently sold in the form of sandwiches, though I don't remember seeing many of those when I was first living there in the mid-90s.
ETA: Having done this a few more times since originally posting, I'd also add that the utensils you use in lye-based pretzels need to be wood, glass or plastic. Eye protection is important too. Metal will likely corrode or oxidize when it contacts food put in contact with lye, even if it's after the wash. I'd recommend setting the washed pretzels on a wooden surface after dipping if you want to minimize damage/discoloration on your baking sheet.
Mmm, Wegman's pretzel rolls...
A long time ago I read a George Fix (a chemist who wrote about home brewing back in the day) article about ordinary Red Devil lye for clearing drains. He found it to be pretty much 100% pure lye with no other gunk in there. He also said he'd never ever try cooking with it :)
It's there to increase the pH (make it more basic), which gelatinizes the crust. This in turn leads to a brown one, desirable in pretzels. If you hunt up the transcript for the episode ("Pretzel Logic", which can be found here: link, Scene 8) Alton goes into some detail about why this is, and why commercial makers get a browner crust than home bakers generally get. In short, they use more hazardous ingredients in the water.
dipping one by one in boiling water sounds hazardous enough to me. the base solution is only as strong but opposite end of scale as vinegar solution -why fret?
Human skin seems to disappear quicker with alkali solutions than with acid solutions :-)
Lye is considerably stronger (in the base direction) than vinegar is (in the acid direction.)
corrosive chemicals tend to be MUCH quicker acting when they are considerably heated. And lye can hurt you when cold already.
when using baking soda for pretzel making it is optional to boil (hot method) the dough shortly in the solution or simply dip the dough in a non-boiling, warm (cold method) solution.
hot vs cold depends on the texture you want in the finished bread...
-HOT METHOD: when you boil the dough it creates/cooks a deeper outside layer w the solution which leads to a more dense and heavy "bagel like" consistency. it creates more chewiness throughout the bread.
COLD METHOD: when dipping cold the pretzel taste/effect is still achieved but leads to a lighter, less chewy, texture throughout the bread. the inside of the dough isn't penetrated as much and leads to a more "white bread like" consistency.
*****baking soda used for this is less reactive than using lye. lye creates a very chewy outside w a soft fluffy interior. the hot method creates a chewiness all through the bread. the cold method isn't as chewy but creates a more fluffy texture all through the bread.
In addition to the browning, there is a distinctive taste to pretzels that are treated in an alkaline solution prior to baking. If you can't get (or don't want to work with) food grade lye, there is another option. If you place baking soda in a low oven, you can convert sodium bicarbonate into sodium carbonate, thus increasing alkalinity.
Then, use that baked, baking soda in place of regular baking soda or lye to achieve good results.
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4734 | Using cast iron on a glass range
I currently rent, and the only problem I have with the house we're in is that it has a glass-top range. I absolutely love my cast iron cookware, and use it as often as possible.
I've heard a few reasons not to use cast iron on glass, including:
You can scratch the glass if you're
not careful
It's very easy to break the glass if
you drop it
You can melt the glass top
(mentioned in linked thread)
It can be hard to minimize hot spots
I'm not very concerned about (1) and (2), as I've already been using cast iron on glass for years with no problems (I'm very careful when I do use it).
While researching (4) I came across (3), something I had never heard before. So, I now have a few questions:
Is melting the glass really
plausible? This seems unlikely to
me, as a quick search revealed that
lowest melting point for common
glass types is 1500C or higher, a temperature I have no plans to reach - but
I'm not a physicist or a chemist, nor do I know what kind of glass is used to make a glass top stove.
Is a heat diffuser effective on a
glass range? I have experienced a
few hot spots on my large (12")
skillet, and obviously when
experimenting with my two-burner
griddle. Would a heat diffuser help, especially with the two-burner (which I've all but given up with on
glass for now because it's so
uneven).
Any suggestions for safely and
effectively using cast iron on a
glass-top range (short of being very, very careful when moving the pans)?
I couldn't decide whether this should be one question or multiple, but because they're all related I grouped them as one. Please let me know if I should have split them up!
They're all very closely related, there's no reason to have split them up. Good questions!
I also have a glass-top stove at home. So far, I really like it: the heat is very even and there is good heat transfer, provided the pan makes good contact with the surface (one skillet I have has a bit of a lip, which makes it heat more slowly).
I've slapped skillets and pots full of water around on mine, and have yet to break it. I'm probably more careful than I would be on a metal range, but it seems sturdy.
But to your points:
1) There is no way cast iron could melt the glass. Iron melts lower than does glass (1200*C vs. 1500*C), so before you manage to melt your stove, your pan will be a puddle. It may, however, be possible to deform the stove top if you let an empty pan heat for some time. I don't see why this would be more of an issue with cast iron than with any other piece of cookware.
2) A heat defuser will work fine. Don't get the kind that is designed for use with gas, but anything else should work fine.
3) The burners on my stove are smaller than my skillet, so I find I need to move the skillet around to heat the edges. Also, flat-bottomed pans and pots seem to be much more effective on the flat glass top, as conduction seems more effective than radiation here. I polish the bottoms of my pots to get better heat transfer, although this is just me being anal.
Also: cast iron can't scratch glass. Glass is much harder than iron (see this wikipedia article), glass having a 6-7 on the Mohs scale, iron having a 4.
Cast iron is not pure iron, it's an alloy, with other metals added to increase hardness. It can definitely scratch a glass cooktop if you're not careful with it.
It is true that cast iron is harder than iron, but I can't find any measurements of hardness. It can apparently vary significantly--I imagine cookware would be made from softer (less brittle) alloy. The hardness of glass can also vary: new iPhones have a very hard glass that is extremely difficult to scratch. I've never managed to scratch my glass, with extensive use. It probably would require some sort of sharp edge, if it is possible.
I saw a video of someone actively trying to scratch their Droid with a set of keys to no avail. I wonder how the hardness of a glass range compares to the new smartphone glass. Either way, I'll play it safe and not hulk smash...plus, lifting a 12" cast iron skillet to shake it gives me a nice mini working.
I think dirt/dust is the key to scratching glass. I've too taken very sharp objects to an old iPod Touch (1st gen) screen and could not scratch it. But my iPhone 5 has some very small scratches and I am very careful with it.
Regarding (3) melting glass top:
I have, unfortunately, successfully melted a glass top range to a piece of cookware.
However, it was not with cast iron; it was with a powder-coated iron teapot. I sat down to boil some water, walked away, and forgot about it. The teapot spout did not sound, and the water boiled out of the pot. It sat on there probably 30 minutes without my attendance. When I finally remembered, I turned off the burner and tried to remove the teapot. The teapot had fused its powder-coated ceramic layer to the rangetop. When I removed the teapot, a piece of the rangetop came with it. It was a piece of about 0.5" diameter.
Based on my experience with this, I doubt a cast iron would fuse to the rangetop. It's the glass-like coating that may fuse (but not melt)
Wow...great anecdote, I never considered that a pan's coating might fuse to a glass range under any circumstances. +1!
I found this thread, because my new range's manual suggests not using cast iron. It specifically mentions porcelain enamel might 'melt' onto the surface.
The idea that cast iron can somehow melt the glass range is just wrong. The cast iron can't get any hotter than the range surface itself can get. If the cast iron could melt the glass, then that means the range could melt itself.
I've only used a glass range at friend's houses, but they didn't seem particularly fragile. As long as you aren't hulk smashing your pans into the glass, it's pretty hard to break.
I have no experience with heat diffusers.
If it's an induction range, you can get the pan hotter than the range surface. I have no idea if that applies in stephen's case. My guess is that any surface meant to have pans heated on it would be able to handle any reasonable temperature range that would arise from using them.
@Tim: Sort of true. While the surface isn't heating the pan, the pan is still heating the surface, when in use the difference in temperature would be negligible I'd imagine. No? @roux: Are you sure? I was under the impression that anything magnetic works with induction, and that cast iron is specifically good for induction.
Wow - you guys are fast, even this late at night! This is just a normal glass-top range, no induction here. So far I've managed not to hulk smash anything - but now that I have that hilarious picture in my head, it's going to be hard not to do! Also, great, now I've got another research thread I have to explore - induction ranges. :)
@roux: http://theinductionsite.com/induction-cookware/Lodge/Lodge-cast-iron.shtml
@roux : induction cooking works through electromagnetism; so iron, being magnetic, is great for it. Glass cookware is where you're going to run into problems.
Glass is primarily sand, with some additives which reduce its melting point. If a piece of molten low-melting-point glass sits in contact with higher-melting point glass, additives from the molten glass can work their way into the higher-melting-point glass and reduce its melting point (and also affect the thermal coefficient of expansion (typically increasing it). Not good.
My neighbor has a glass topped stove (formerly mine, but given up as a replacement for when we almost accidentally burned down her house with a grease fire), and a few cast iron pans that she uses all the time with no problem.
I shake the pan on the glass, and haven't noticed any scratches in the about 2 years she's had it.
If you're paranoid, see the link to Lodge's website that hobodave gave in a comment --
in it, they mention that some people have reported that they've polished the bottom of their cast iron, so make them smoother, hoping it'll make them less likely to scratch.
update: my neighbors have been cooking on that stove for about 9 years, with their two main-line pans being cast iron (they have no storage place; they live on the stove) and no signs of scratching. But I also realized that if you have a properly seasoned cast iron pan (both front & back), you have seasoning touching the glass, not metal. So just make sure that you don't damage the seasoning on the bottom of the pan.
I think I shall coin a new cooking phrase in your honor. "If you can't take the heat, get the fire extinguisher."
@Tim : see my comment under Tree77's answer on putting out grease fires at http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/3747/how-do-you-put-out-a-grease-fire
I never even considered polishing the bottom, thanks!
As Auchtung said, the "melting" of a glass stove is actually when the coating of an enamel coated-pot/pan fuses to the stove top. The metal/iron does not appear to be able to do that.
It appears this enamel fusing happens when you overheat the cookware, or also can happen (no anecdotes found about this yet) if you put hot enamel-coated cookware onto the cold stovetop, say right out of the oven (according to our Sur La Table enamel-coated cast-iron cookware's instruction manual). (Sorry, can't find this manual online right now.)
Otherwise, we have used cast iron, Le Creuset (with rough metal bottom) and ceramic coated cookware on our glass stovetop (Magic Chef) for three years now without issue.
Since it's also a rental unit, the stove top was already 'scratched' - just on the rings over the burners - this looks like normal wear & tear to me, and I wouldn't consider the scratches even too unsightly. Our pots/pans are slid around the range routinely (to remove them from teh burner), and haven't caused any scratches that I can find. Having a large flat surface & repeatable control over temperature still makes me think I would install one of these instead of a Gas stove if I had the choice.
It's not like you end up with a giant scratch from one end of the surface to the other because of your cookware.
But it seems you should be careful with porcelain-coated cookware. If I do have to take porcelain-coated cookware out of the oven, I place it onto a metal baking sheet on the (flat) stovetop, just in case the hot-cookware on cold-glass-top warning has some truth.
I melted a small spot on the edge of.my glass ceramic stove. I had taken a cast-iron roasting dish from my oven and, being distracted by conversation with my guest, neglected to get a trivet to set it on. After sitting on the stove for about 15 minutes, a spot about the size of a nickel had melted on the edge. And, yes,it'seems possible to scratch the surface, my daughter did that one night while cooking.
It is not a matter of melting the glass cook top, it is a matter of scratching or digging up the surface or even cracking it. You can't bang the heavy pot onto the glass - that is common sense. But with possible deep scratches it can make the stove top unsightly and difficult to clean.
Welcome to Seasoned advice! We thank you for sharing your experience, but it was very unreadable the way you had presented it. Besides, writing in ALL CAPS is considered rude in many online communities. I re-wrote your answer using standard type and dividing it into sentences, and removed some personal opinions which were not relevant for the OP. If you are not sure what are the differences between a Q&A page and a discussion forum, please see our [faq].
Glass tops can break. My wife dropped a small corning ware lid on our 2 week old glass top from a height of less than a foot. The lid hit on the edge of the cook top and splintered off about 6 inches of one corner. The lid was fine. Not even a mark on it.
We now have a new glass top. Our "new" cook top is aluminum edged. (May not help, but it makes me feel a little safer!!!).
My wife just melted a teapot to the glass top. When she pulled it of, it looked like about a quarter sized piece of the enamel and some of the metal was left on the stove. I turned the exhaust fan on and the burn on high and tried to scrape it with wood as another article said to do for Aluminum. That not working, i went for a metal spatula but finally had to go for a chisel. As i teased/chipped small flakes off at a time, it finally all came of, but it looks like it pitted the glass top.
Is this relevant? Was it actually a cast-iron teapot?
I am a science teacher.And durig my subject matter discussed in between students i got that glasses are harder than iron.As far as i am concerned,yes glasses are harder than iron.It's another matter that glasses are brittle so they break when hammered and iron don't as because they are non brittle.But may be in real glasses are harder than iron.As glasses can produce dark scratches on iron but iron cannot do it exactly same on the glass.
The hardness of glass actually differs between types of glass. As a photographer, smartphone owner, glass-bowl-whipping cook and spectacle-wearer T can confirm that glass being scratched by metal objects is a frequent occurence. Even though these objects are seldom made from cast iron, I think that scratched ceran stovetops are a very real concern, no matter what a single experiment with an unknown type of glass produces.
I have had a glass cooktop for about 20 years and have used my cast iron cookware with great results all that time. I wipe the cooktop off after it cools every time I use it, which is super easy since it is smooth. I love the cooktop and have had no problems what so ever!
Another issue I have seen happen on a tv cooking show was the cook took a hot lid off of a skillet and sat it over a cool burner to turn what was in the skillet, and the burner that the lid was placed over exploded due to the temperature change...I cook on a glass top stove and since I saw that happen with my own eyes I make sure my lids are never sat anywhere on my glass top stove.
I'm not sure if this is an answer or not. Are you saying that cast iron pots shouldn't be used because the temperature difference can crack ("explode") the glass? If this was a common occurence, 1) why only cast iron, and 2) why isn't it better known? Ceran glass is specifically designed for thermal safety.
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21130 | How do I make my chocolate brownies 'fudgy'?
What are the key requirements, in terms of both ingredients and techniques, for baking chocolate brownies with a fudgy centre?
Let us know how your brownies come out! :)
My brownies always come out fudgy - this was more a question to fill out the SA library :)
Underbake. a little gooey left in the middle. I only would try this with a vegan recipe -salmonella risk.
Every time I make brownies, I always get compliments on how fudgy they are. There may be some variations based on the recipe you use, but the three things I've found to be most important in my experience are:
Don't even think about using a boxed/pre-made mix! Bake from scratch - it adds a whole 3-5 minutes of extra prep time for brownies, but the taste and texture would be worth it even if it added an hour.
Use fewer eggs. I use the King Arthur Flour "Grandmother's brownies" recipe; I can only find an online copy for the 200th Anniversary edition, but those instructions aren't the same as the older version my mom's cookbook has. The recipe calls for 2-4 eggs per batch (a batch is a 9x9" square pan), and instructs you to use more eggs for a cakier brownie, fewer for a fudgier one. I've found that 3 eggs works best for me.
Use brown sugar for at least some of the total sugar in the recipe. The King Arthur Flour recipe calls for 2 cups of sugar, either white or brown. I typically split 50/50; the brown sugar adds a nice flavor, and I think the moisture in it helps achieve that fudgy consistency, too.
There's another element to changing the consistency, too: cooking time. Most brownie recipes I've seen say to bake for 35-45 minutes; I almost never bake them for more than 30 because I find that the edges start to get really dried out. Undercooking slightly will keep the brownies moist and fudgy.
The ingredients from the old "Grandmother's Brownies" King Arthur Flour recipe: 4 ounces (squares) unsweetened chocolate [can substitute 1-ounce square = 3 tbs cocoa powder + 1 tbs butter); ½ cup (1 stick) butter; 2 cups sugar and/or brown sugar; 2 to 4 eggs; ½ teaspoon salt; 2 teaspoons vanilla; 1 cup flour
What are the ingredients for the "King Arthur Flour" brownies?
@BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft I don't have the recipe with me at the moment...I will update when I have a chance to find the copy in my apartment.
Shirley O. Corriher's Bakewise discusses fudgy vs. cakey brownies. The key is the proportion of fat and chocolate to flour.
Fudgy brownies will have less flour than normal; this will give the brownie less structure via gluten, and gooey middle. Cakey brownies will have more flour.
Shirley's fudgy brownie recipe can be found here:
http://www.projectfoodie.com/spotlights/cookbooks/shirley-o.-corriher---bakewise-the-hows-and-whys-of-successful-baking.html. She has thoughtfully measurements in ounces and grams in addition to volumetric measurements.
Add an egg or one more, if the recipe already calls for eggs.
You're getting downvoted because evidence is to the contrary of your statement. Are there specific examples of recipes or in your personal experience that back up the premise that more egg causes a fudgier brownie?
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17899 | Is "instant flour" worth bothering with?
I have not used "instant flour" before as it is not available in my home country, and I have never seen it on my travels
I have seen a few references to it in North American cooking though. Does this product have any real advantages over normal flour other than for quick and easy sauces and gravies?
If so, is there a simple way to make a substitute?
I currently have no problem cooking and emulsifying flour into sauces etc.
Instant flour has the advantage of speed and ease. You can pretty much always do without - but for home cooks in a hurry, it can be an easy solution. Its used for sauces, but sometimes recommended for pastry work because of the ultra low protein content.
Normally, when adding flour to a sauce you'll need to make it into a slurry or roux and mix in correctly to avoid lumps. Then you'll need to cook it for a bit to get rid of the 'flour taste'.
With instant flour, its just pour and stir - no clumps, no waiting. My understanding is that this is ultra low protein flour that as been flash hydrated, cooked (possibly with steam), dehydrated, and then finely ground. This means its pretty much 'ready' to use - it won't taste 'floury' since its already been cooked and the superfine particles are supposed to not clump. (It may also contain some malted barley flour as a dough conditioner).
You could try (this is just an idea) making it at home by basically repeating the above process - steam cake flour, dehydrate, grind...but I don't know why you would. If you going to do all that, just make a slurry or roux or use cake flour.
This site lays out a few interesting uses. Using it for crepes because it will hydrate quicker. Using it for pastry work when you can get pastry flour and you don't want the bleachness of cake flour.
There is some information on the internet regarding "instant flour". In the discussion I just read it is stated that "Wondra" instant flour is the leading USA brand for this and that it is a pregelatinized, low protein wheat flour to which some malted barley flour has been added. The article goes on to say that it is sometimes used for pie crust [probably due to the low gluten content], and that a reasonable replacement would be cake flour [which is low protein wheat flour with low or no gluten].
In my years of cooking, have not heard of this product before - so can't really advise on what you should do. I do know that I have made plenty of thickened sauces using plain old wheat flour with satisfying results for myself and my guests. I certainly never knew I was missing something.
If you search for "instant flour" in your favorite internet search application will yield a lot of information.
One other thing; from what I read, it sounds like this type of flour product would not lend itself to making a roux thickener.
There is no such thing as a wheat flour with no gluten.
In addition to what Marti says (cake flour is not low protein/gluten, it's just lower than AP) - this isn't a very helpful answer. Respectfully, if you don't know the answer and don't know where to obtain reliable information then please don't answer. Assume that the OP knows how to use a search engine.
This link might help you: http://www.food.com/library/flour-64.
The book "The Science of Food and Cooking" by Allan G. Cameron might provide an understanding of the types of wheat flour.
There are wheat flour products from which the gluten has been extracted; this is used to produce meat substitutes. Loma Linda foods is one producer. This process leaves behind the starch, and possibly some protein
Another link: http://www.ochef.com/21.htm.
Can't find a protein analysis of the wheat starch left after gluten extraction, the gluten is the source of at least most of the protein in wheat flour.
Of course cake flour is low gluten/low protein, as bread flour is high gluten/high protein. Clear flour, used by many bakers is gluten/protein fortified flour.
Wondra is widely available in the US. My mother always used it for gravies. I'm watching Martha Stewart use it for Sole Meuniere since the fish cooks so quickly.
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24854 | How do I cut out the vein/tendon from a chicken breast tendorloin?
I like to cook grilled chicken sometimes to go in salads. The problem I always have is that in the chicken breast tendorloins I buy, there is always a tendon or vein or something. It's white when uncooked and is extremely tough.
At first I tried not messing with it, but many bites of the chicken I had was basically not capable of being chewed up.
Now, I try to cut it out, but it's extremely difficult to cut out because it appears to run through the entire tenderloin. Last night I tried cutting it out and what I ended up with was basically tearing the chicken apart into lots of small chunks. In the end it still tasted good, but I'd really prefer an easier method.
What's the easiest method of cutting out that vein/tendon thing from the tenderloins?
Cooking For Engineers has a pretty good description. He writes it better than I can, so I'll just quote him. I've used the second method he describes, but after watching the video below, the other looks much easier...
The breast halves should each have a flap of meat called the chicken tenderloin (or chicken tenders or strips). Lifting the tenderloin should reveal a white tendon. I recommend two ways to trim off this tough tendon. The most popular method is to grab the tendon with your fingers and pull on it while scraping with your knife to release the tendon from the breast. Continue to lift and scrape until the tendon is completely removed. Alternatively, you can use a sharp boning knife and slice along both sides of the tendon (without slicing through the tendon). Then lift any part of the tendon that has been separated from the breast and use your boning knife the cut any parts where the tendon has not cleanly separated from the meat.
There's also a yotube video here.
This looks much easier than how I was doing it. I was initially trying something like the second way, but the first looks much easier
I cut around the small piece of the tendon that is already protruding out a little bit, just to get a little better grip on it. Then, slide that end of the tendon through a fork and pull it straight out as the fork holds the chicken in place. You might have to use a paper towel or pliers (yes, pliers LoL) to grip it otherwise your fingers slip right off. This way takes only a couple of seconds per tendon.
I use scissors, trim off all the fat, then cut the gristle vein off, no waste. Then I cut the chicken into whatever shapes or sizes I wish.
I use the same technique as the you tube video, however, since your not using the knife edge to cut I use the back side of the knife. This saves the cutting edge from unnecessary dulling.
Just hold the end of the tendon down with a knife and use a fork in the other hand to pull the tendon clean through. The tendon slides in between the fork prongs. It's very quick and works. That white tendon in tenderloins suck. Typically just get breasts now for that very reason.
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27989 | Is there some trick to vacuum sealing broccoli?
In Sous Vide for the Home Cook Douglas Baldwin gives a recipe for broccoli. In brief, blanch the broccoli, cool in an ice bath, then vacuum seal as a single layer in a bag with salt, pepper, and butter.
Except this does not work with an external (non-chamber) vacuum machine. Even after draining the broccoli for ten minutes, the vacuum machine sucks so much water out of the bag that it fills the entire water reservoir in the machine, and starts being sucked into the pump. Then you curse, cancel it, dump out the water, and try again, about ten times. And still, the bag refuses to seal, because it won't leave the heater on long enough to evaporate the water that's preventing the seal.
Eventually, I figured out that hitting the vacuum button again, followed immediately by the seal button, would trick the machine into turning the heater back on, even though it hadn't cooled down yet, and finally got the bag sealed. (And, amazingly, it appears it may still work, despite having sucked water through the pump)
I suspect this isn't a problem at all with a chamber vac, but it doesn't seem like a book for the Home Cook should require a $1200 vacuum machine.
So, is there some trick to seal broccoli using a $40 external vacuum machine?
honestly, sous vide broccoli isn't worth it to me. it cooks very quickly the traditional way and is easier to do IMO. Especially because of the extra blanching step to prevent the outgassing effect.
I'm sorry that you're having problems with my book. I think the problem is that you're adding water to the pouch. In the recipe, step 4 asks you to:
Vacuum-seal the broccoli, butter, and a pinch of salt and pepper in a
large pouch so that the florets are in a single layer.
This will crush the tops a bit, but it will be much easier to seal. Sorry again.
I'm not adding water to the pouch... But maybe I need to drain it out of the broccoli better (they're quite full of water after blanching and putting in an ice bath, of course). I'll try putting them through a salad spinner.
Running them through your salad spinner is a great idea, I think!
Ah, okay. When I use a clamp-style vacuum sealer with wet food: I make sure there's at least two hand's widths between the food and the edge of the pouch; put the open end of the pouch into the sealer, lock it shut, and then hang the bag over the edge of the counter; then I begin sealing and press the seal/stop button as soon as the water being drawn towards the sealer is about an inch away. If the seal doesn't look very good, I usually do a second seal between the first seal and pouch's open end.
@DouglasBaldwin - Welcome to the site! You might be interested in the other questions we have about sous vide cooking: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/sous-vide
I tried again last night with the salad spinner (which got a lot of water out, I suggest mentioning it if there's ever a second edition) and hitting the 'seal' button the second I saw any water climb up, and it worked perfectly. Thank you.
Rather than using the sealer, use a ziplock bag:
Before closing it completely, submerge all but the opened part in water. This will force the air out. Seal the last portion while submerged.
tom, welcome to the site! Please note: Unlike in many other forums, we keep questions and answers "forever", therefore we strive to write to the best of our abilities. I've taken the liberty of editing your post, perhaps you could check my edits?
Your problem is to seal something with some water content left using a edge sealer.
On my sealer I have two buttons, one for vacuum sealing, it will start to suck and suck and suck all water and choke ....
I also have one button for only sealing, without vacuum, all it will do is start to seal.
I can press vacuum and seal just after each other, so in your situation I would have the bag hanging down, I would press the vacuum seal, then when almost all air (not all) is sucked out I would press the seal button, after a bit of practice you can get the machine to seal without much water leaking into the machine.
Could you cool the broccoli, drain, and then freeze it a bit until solid enough to avoid the liquid problem, then vacuum seal it as usual?
Possibly, though I'm not sure what that'd do to the texture. Freezing isn't generally kind to fresh vegetables.
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23551 | What can I use instead of amaranto?
Amaranto (amaranth grains) is a popular cereal used in Mexican cuisine, used in both savoury and sweet dishes. However, it's hard to come by here. What can I use instead? I'm not sure if it is a cous-cous style grain or more like rice.
In today's global economy why sub when you can get the real thing: http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Amaranth-Whole-Grain-680/dp/B0052OMOTY/ref=sr_1_1?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1336040022&sr=1-1
@CosCallis That's US Amazon, and I ain't in the US.
@ElendilTheTall: What about Amazon UK?
TBH I have no intention of using it anyway - I'm asking the question A) to improve the store of knowledge here on Seasoned Advice and B) to increase my chances of scoring some books :D
@ElendilTheTall, maybe if your profile told us more about you...like where you are. And just because you aren't in the US doesn't mean you can't shop from US Amazon. I have several friends who frequently buy from UK Amazon to get DVDs published for the UK as they are sometimes different from the US release. The wonderful thing about Amazon is they ship globally.
I don't think it is close to either cous-cous or rice. It is less starchy than both. Also, it has a unique mouthfeel when you chew on it, because the tiny grains (1 mm or less) pop under your teeth.
I would try getting the real thing in a whole food store or an organic store, or also online. If you can't find it, in these stores, but can get other exotic grains, you can try quinoa or millet.
If you really can't get anything uncommon, I would use durum semolina. Wash it before cooking and cook it with fat to reduce the starch. Also, I would maybe cook it in more water than needed and remove excess water after it has been cooked and cooled, so your semolina grains don't form a creamy pudding.
Maybe tapioca pearls of the extra-small variety can work too, I am not sure because I haven't tried using them and don't know what their final texture is.
You will notice that, when suggesting replacements, I am most worried about texture. The reason is that the flavor of amaranth is very faint and bland. It is best used as a base for other, strong flavors. So you can use anything with the right texture, the flavor in the dish should come from spices and other components.
Tiny grains that have a bit of a pop. Have you tried quinoa? That might be an acceptable substitution.
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20276 | Seville oranges for marmalade - how important is freshness?
We're currently (in January) in the brief season for seville oranges which means it's marmalade making time.
I acquired some sevilles as soon as they appeared in the shops here a week ago. However things have suddenly gone crazy at work and I'm not going to have time to have a marmalade making session now for a week or two.
How well will my sevilles last if I wait that time before making my marmalade?
Are greengrocers and supermarkets getting sevilles in pretty much daily? In which case I think I'll just go out again and buy more when I have a bit more time (so long as I do it before the season closes). Or does Spain just dump one giant load of the fruit on us at the beginning of the season?
I guess it's this latter part of the question which is most intriguing (since I know I can always freeze the sevilles I already have) since seville oranges are one of those very few products which are still truly seasonal. How does the supply chain work, and why are they so seasonal when so many other kinds of produce are nowadays available nearly all the year round?
Finally, what are the rough start and end dates for the seville orange season in the UK? I feel like it's the middle two weeks in January, but I haven't really checked up on that.
I'm presuming that your'e British because (a) You want to make marmalade (b) your nickname is 'tea drinker'. am i right?
Anyway, those bitter oranges are grown not only in Spain but in other parts of the Mediterranean as well, but their season i relatively short - so if i were you i would keep my eyes open for nice ripe ones and buy them - you can keep them cooled for at least a month in your fridge if they are in good condition in the time of their purchase.
Tip #1: try to buy oranges that weren't waxed.
Tip #2: if you can get Satsuma Citruses, they will do a good job as replacements. The result might be a little more sour though.
c) The question asks about the season in the UK. That's a pretty big hint ;)
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5554 | Is it easy to make my own Vanilla Sugar?
Some background: We had some visitors from Austria recently and they wanted to make a cake.
The cake called for a couple of ingredients not terribly easily obtainable locally and which I am not too familiar with. Quark and vanilla sugar. We understand from our friends these are pretty much staples in Austria. But we had to track them down.
We are experimenting with the left-over vanilla sugar in fruit crumbles and various other recipes where sugar is required.
Turns out vanilla sugar has a pleasant delicate sugary vanilla taste. But the product just seems to be caster sugar with a vanilla pod inserted.
When we run out can we carry on "making" more by just sticking a vanilla pod in 500g of sugar. Does it require a certain amount of time for the vanilla to infuse into the sugar? Is there anything more to it than that, or is it that simple?
P.S. The cake was called Topfengugelhupf, in case anyone is interested.
What was the quark?
@Sobachatina quark is a sort of yoghurty soft cheese. if we hadn't been able to find any we were going to use yoghurt
Actually, Austrians use the word "Topfen", Germans say "Quark".
Btw. Yoghurt will most likely not do the trick. The most similar things you'll find to quark are "fromage frais", curd cheese, cottage cheese (even though the texture is very different) or the Eastern European "twarog". Sometimes it's also labelled "baking cheese". As a German ex-pat, I have acquired quite a skill to track down quark in the UK for example (Can be found in any bigger ASDA/Tesco and about every Polish Shop). It's really healthy and very popular among athletes or body-builders as it offers very high amounts of protein with almost no fat.
Vanilla sugar is incredibly easy to make. Store a whole vanilla bean in a jar of sugar, shaking it up every so often, until the sugar is vanilla flavored. That's it. The time, I think, would depend on your bean and your taste.
The best advice I can give is to use Alton Brown's recipe to get your timeline.
Vanilla sugar is very easy to make, and I hesitate to answer with a link, but my advice would be the same thing as he wrote, because this is what I was taught.
Basically, you want to cut the pod in half, and scrape the beans from the seed into an airtight container. Then drop the scraped pods in the container, give it a shake, and let it sit for at least a week. AB recommends 1-2 weeks; I tend to just let it go indefinitely until I need it.
A lot of people don't scrape the pod but I find that it adds a lot more flavor if you do it that way.
I think it's a good idea to link and also provide an outline. It would be very frustrating in 3 years to come here and find an answer that was little more than a link that had been heavily upvoted and accepted only to find the link didn't work anymore.
@yossarian, great point. i will add a bit of a summary to my post!
While living in Hungary, vanilla sugar was regularly available. From my experiences, the sugar actually contains the seeds of the vanilla pod. To extract, slice the bean in half lengthwise, lay cut side up on a cutting board, and drag a knife across to separate the seeds from the pod. Mix the contents of a pod with a bag of sugar, and shove the pod in for some extra flavor.
For Quark, I've never seen it sold in the states, but you can make it at home:
http://rheology.tripod.com/QuarkMakingOfHenning.htm and http://www.germancorner.com/recipes/hints/quark.html have what looks like solid information.
It takes a couple of weeks. Some recipes say you should slice the beans in half, some don't.
Alton Brown's recipe calls for one to two weeks but other than that is really is that simple.
Couldn't you replicate the effects by just adding a teaspoon (or two) of vanilla extract, and possibly adjusting the liquids by that minimal amount?
yeah, i suppose i could. but grabbing a big jar of the vanilla sugar is handier than grabbing sugar then trying to find my little bottle of vanilla extract hidden in my cupboard, behind some half-used birthday cake candles and some cocktail sticks.
@Tea Just curious if there was something more complicated to vanilla sugar than, vanilla and sugar. Makes sense.
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92711 | Chinese cooking wine varieties
I have access to a lot of Asian and specifically Chinese grocery products where I live (Austin). However, a thing that's never been made clear to me by anything I've read or watched is whether the commonly-used "cooking wines" are really intended to be obtained as "cooking wine".
In Western cooking, "cooking wine" is generally considered unusable; if I'm making a European wine sauce I'll of course use "real" wine, like wine that I'd be willing to drink.
Is that the case for Chinese "cooking wine"? Should I look for drinkable wine, or are recipes designed around the "cooking" versions that generally have a lot of added salt?
Example recipes, please? I haven't seen Chinese recipes that require "cooking wine".
@FuzzyChef usually it's called "rice wine", "Shaoxin Wine". This blog suggests that the "cooking" variety is indeed awful, so that may be my answer.
Yeah, that's not a cooking wine. That's real wine; better grades of it are drinkable. Hmmm, you know, I think I have an answer for this.
That depends on the wine.
Generic "rice wine" usually means something like sake. Chinese recipes often use Shaoxing wine, which is a drinkable dark/sweet rice wine. If it's a Chinese recipe, and it calls for just "rice wine", you may need to guess at the flavor expected. If the sauce should dark & sweet, then Shaoxing, if it's supposed to be light or acidic, sake. Chinese, Japanese and Korean folks also cook with Plum Wine, which should be called for specifically.
All of these wines are drinking wines, and you'd no more substitute the cooking variety than you would with wine made from grapes. As with grape wine, "cooking" rice wines are really just poor quality wine that's been salted to make it undrinkable.
Except there is one cooking wine that you should use specifically: Mirin. Mirin is a sugary sake made for cooking, and recipes that call for it expect that sweetness. If you have to substitute regular sake, you'll need to add sugar to the recipe.
Yes I know about Mirin, thank you. This seems like exactly the story I was looking for, though as with choosing soy sauce it's still quite complicated.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I buy poor quality Shaoxing wine because I have no idea how to select it.
Huadiao wine
Shaoxing wine
Erwotou
Sorghum wine
rosolio （rose, sorghum, and sticky rice)
There are many more.
Yes thank you. And do you agree that I should not buy the "cooking" wine with added salt?
Depends, with salt , it is fine for cooking, not very tasty in terms of drinking. Shoaxing, it is a fantastic alcoholic beverage, some of them had been aged over 10years, usually serve warm and pair with crabs. Like any kind of alcoholic drinks, you can cook and drink it, depends on the grade and your purpose.
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29798 | Prebaking bread, which internal temperature would you go for?
I've made a batch of Dutch Stollen and I want to pre-bake them in the oven and keep them in the freezer. I was thinking of baking them to 70ºC internal temperature. The yeast should be dead by then, and I was wondering if the gluten would be set by then?
That should work, as 70C/158F is the gluten coagulation point. I'd probably go to 80C/176F because stollen's an enriched dough with many added ingredients (dried fruit, almond paste) and, as Athanasius says below, 75C/167F is where gluten is "completely set".
[I bake stollen to completion and then freeze them, but you probably have a reason why you want to parbake them. They dry out a lot in the freezer, so I'd love to know if parbaking them helps keep them moist. Can you let us know?
(Addendum. Mine dry out. That's probably because I use too much dried fruit (which absorbs water). (Addendum 2. Try dried Calimyrna figs in the stollen. They're not traditional, but they're wonderful in stollen and compliment the traditional orange zest/flavour and rum/brandy).
Source. http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14281/need-help-par-baking#comment-88647
He's quoting from Jeffery Hamelman, one of the most respected voices in bread.
There is a number of things (happenings) while bread bakes that you
need to consider. Since, you will only be keeping these a short time,
and your freezing them, some may be more important than others.
Overall, you want a stable product that won't change biologically,
structually, or chemically while its being frozen, during thawing, and
final baking, except for browning nicely.
That means you want to complete oven-rise, kill the yeast, coagulate
the gluten, gelatinize all the available starches and stop all
enzymatic activity.
I'm using Hamelman's Bread, page 24, as a reference for the necessary
internal temperature needed to achieve all the above. Yeast dies about
140°F (60ºC), gluten coagulates between 158°F (70ºC) and 176°F (80ºC), i.e., oven-spring
will cease, the dough will not collapse. Gelatinization and enzyme
active is finished at 194°F (90ºC).
To insure a stable par-baked loaf, I'd bake it covered for 15 minutes,
as you reasoned, but I'd rely on internal temperature to assure all
biological, chemical and structual changes in the dough were
complete.Finishing the par-bake covered or uncovered isn't critical. I
think reaching 194°F (90ºC) will assure stable par-baked loaves, and
relatively low or no crust coloration.
However, you may be able to get away with 9 or 10° less. An online
source, states the well-known and well-respected La Brea bakery
par-bakes bread to 185°F (85ºC), with satisfactory results.
The only thing I'd add is that Hamelman actually gives a more specific temperature where the gluten is completely set: "approximately 167F" (i.e., 75C). To err on the safe side, I otherwise agree and would probably go to a minimum of 80C. If you only get a reading of 70C, there could well be areas of weak structure in the loaf, which might not hold up well or form evenly in the final bake, particularly with added ingredients in stollen that could have pockets of cooler temps around them.
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23055 | How long should snails be cooked?
I used to love the French snails, straight out of the oven in a heavy garlic sauce. Simple question: how long should they be in the oven and at what temperature?
Anybody know what's in the garlic sauce?
French' cooking week
Traditionally, snails are removed from the shell and simmered for an hour or so in stock or bouillon. Then they are placed back in the shell with a little of the stock, and the shell is 'sealed' with butter, which is usually flavoured with garlic, parsley and shallots.
They are then roasted in a hot oven until the butter has just melted.
Open the can of snails. Rinse very well. Repeat. Pat dry and put them into an escargot baking dish or into the snail shells. Fill with herbed garlic butter and bake on a sheet pan for 8-10 minutes at 425F when the butter is bubbling and browned. Don't forget some thin sliced baguette spread with the same herb butter and toasted for about 2-3 minutes. Garnish with a lemon wedge. I like a a nice cold Pinot Gris from Oregon with this dish.
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3705 | Converting between Egg sizes
In the UK eggs are sized as, small, medium, large and extra large.
What weights/ratios do these correspond, so if a recipe calls for 1 large egg, how many small eggs could I use in its place?
I assume that other countries have similar sizing standards, so if we can aggregate non-UK information as well, that'd be a worthwhile addition to the site.
In the USA I see in stores Medium, Large and Jumbo, not sure if I've seen small or not. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't, we like to have medium sizes with no smalls.... I've seen places where their smallest size is a Large (Large, XL, Super, etc).
Europe
From http://www.egginfo.co.uk/page/eggsizes:
|-----------------------|
| Size | Weight |
|-------------|---------|
| Very large | >= 73g |
| Large | 63-73g |
| Medium | 53-63g |
| Small | <= 53g |
|-----------------------|
USA
From http://www.georgiaeggs.org/pages/sizeequivalents.html:
Size equivalents
US recipes using eggs, but not specifying size, are referring to large eggs. Here is a substitution table:
|------------------------------------------|
| Large | Jumbo | X-Large | Medium | Small |
|-------|-------|---------|--------|-------|
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| 4 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| 5 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 7 |
| 6 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 8 |
|------------------------------------------|
Here is a cup equivalency table as well:
|-----------------------------------|
| TO MAKE 1 CUP |
|-----------------------------------|
| Egg Size | Whole | Whites | Yolks |
|----------|-------|--------|-------|
| Jumbo | 4 | 5 | 11 |
| X-Large | 4 | 6 | 12 |
| Large | 5 | 7 | 14 |
| Medium | 5 | 8 | 16 |
| Small | 6 | 9 | 18 |
|-----------------------------------|
Wikipedia also has information about modern egg sizes for the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia (with additional information about egg sizes in Western Australia, New Zealand, and "traditional sizes") here: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_%28food%29#Chicken_egg_sizes".
I think those tables would be better as actual text/tables than images.
@hobodave, thanks for converting my tables to text!
The first row reports the American size, and the other one reports the European size.
|------------------------------------------------------|
| Jumbo --| X-Large | Large -| Medium | Small | Peewee |
|---------|---------|--------|--------|-------|--------|
| V. Large| Large --| Medium | Medium | Small | Small -|
|------------------------------------------------------|
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102740 | Can fermented hot peppers be used to make jam / jelly?
I've had a bountiful hot pepper harvest this year and am trying to find a variety of ways to preserve them. Much of my harvest has been lacto-fermented by puree'ing and brining the peppers with 2% by weight salt, and a little extra brine to be sure they're submerged. They're now effectively pickled, but a bit saltier and not quite as acidic as conventionally pickled veggies.
I've made several batches of hot pepper jelly from fresh peppers, but now am wondering if I could also use the fermented puree. So far I've been unable find a recipe, and am unsure if the salt would make them incompatible with the pectin or process. The intent would be to can and pasteurize the jelly for maximum shelf life.
Assuming the salt is ok (and ignoring the question of flavor), I assume I'd also need to use a lesser amount of puree than fresh peppers due to the density and lack of air. The recipe I use calls for 4 cups of finely diced peppers, would ~3 cups or a bit less be approximately correct?
And finally, the recipe I use for fresh peppers adds 2 cups of 5% vinegar. The puree is acidic from the lacto fermentation, and I'm not sure if I'd need to scale back the vinegar. My assumption is that too much acid is preferable to too little for the sake of preventing bacterial growth, but again am unsure if it might affect the pectin or other aspects.
So... Can brined peppers be used in a jelly recipe by substituting them for fresh peppers?
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121630 | Why remove blossom ends for canned tomatoes / marinara sauce?
I was looking at recipes for canning marinara sauce and the Ball jar's recipe notes to remove the blossom end from the tomatoes.
In trying to search for the rationale I couldn't find anything. The way I've been preparing tomatoes for canning is to skin them and trim just a bit of the stem/core (I've been growing paste varieties and they don't have much of a stem).
What difference would removing the blossom end from tomatoes being prepared for canning make?
I know in cucumbers there are enzymes associated with the blossom end that soften pickles. Not sure in tomatoes, might be something similar? Or something misapplied across methods by the recipe writer? I find several warnings against canning tomatoes with blossom end rot (at all, not just cut off the ends); not seeing "remove the blossom end" in other recipes.
Ultimately the only way you're going to find out is to write Ball and ask. The recipe is strange in several ways, and atypical of canned tomato sauce recipes in general. For example, most canned sauce recipes have you peel the tomatoes first before cooking them with the aromatics; filtering them after saucing them is highly unusual.
That said, I can think of two possible reasons for the instruction to remove the blossom end. One is that somehow it works better with the whole idiosyncratic make-sauce-then-sieve approach.
The other is preventing rot from getting into your sauce. Among the most popular tomatoes for sauce are romas, San Marzanos, and similar Italian "paste" tomatoes. These tomatoes are also prone to blossom end rot, where the bottom end of the tomato has black rot that may even be hidden by an intact tomato skin. So cutting off the blossom end could be a way of checking for rot.
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15077 | How does gelatin interact with grease (fat)?
I made an escalivada (eggplant, red pepper and onion in the oven, peel, cool) yesterday, and today I've added gelatin to make a nice presentation.
I used about 5gr of gelatin for 150ml heated 'escalivada juice (lots of olive oil)'.
The result was all right, but the top layer stayed liquid. The rest stayed together.
Any idea as to why the top layer stayed liquid? Does the olive oil affect the gelatin?
In what you describe, I would expect the stew juice to exist as visible oil droplets swimming in a watery phase, and the top layer of the gelled stew juice to contain all the oil droplets/be almost pure oil. Is it what happened, or is the liquid layer the same as the juice was before? Was the stew emulsified in any way?
Yes, the oil droplets are visible. I don't know if the top is pure oil. The stew was not emulsified in any way. Just a shake of the pan to dissolve the gelatin.
Update: I whisked (by hand) the gelatin - escalivada juice mix and it turned out just fine. Thanks.
Gelatin works by creating a very fine mesh of proteins, between which the (hidrophilic) liquid gets trapped.
A mixture of fat and water isn't a liquid. It can be either a rough two-phase mixture, with visible fat droplets swimming around in the water, or it can be an emulsion, with invisibly small fat droplets dispersed through the water. Emulsions appear smooth, e.g. milk.
When you try to use gelatine on the mixture, two things can happen. In an emulsion, the fat droplets can be smaller than the protein mesh. Then they get trapped as well as the water, and the result is gelled emulsion, just like you'd expect.
But if you have big globules of fat, they can't be trapped between the proteins. So it looks like they got squeezed out of the mesh and bubbled up to the surface, if it hadn't been there all along. On the surface, gelatine molecules couldn't find each other between globules of fat to crosslink, or maybe the motion of the globules broke any nascent links in the small amount of water between them, so it couldn't gel. So the conclusion is: you can't set soup/stew with gelatine. (I know that concentrated stock hardens from its own gelatine, but it has the fat filtered out first).
On the practical side, if you want to have thick stew juice, you have to use something else than gelatine. It is probably simplest to create an olive oil based roux with the stew juice. Or you can gel with xanthan. Both will result in a "juice" which is creamy, instead of solid wobbly blocks of juice, with xanthan retaining the authentic taste and a roux-based sauce being a novel variation.
If it is real jelly you are after, you'll have to emulsify first and use gelatine after that. Xanthan itself should emulsify well, or you can probably use lecithine. AFAIK, there is no problem to use lecithine and gelatine together, but somebody with more experience in gelling agents should confirm that. In any case, emulsifying will lead to your liquid getting quite opaque. This is inavoidable, as it has to do with the way the collection of individual micro fat droplets break and reflect light rays.
Xanthan doesn't really gel, it just thickens, and is sort of an emulsifier. But if you're trying to gel an unstable emulsion that's heavy on fat, glycerin is probably the best choice, with lecithin being a distant second; emulsify with some glycerin flakes and you should have no trouble getting a uniform gel.
I don't have glycerin nor xanthan... but thanks for the explanation, I'll try emulsifying. And if I get my hands on glycerin... dynamite!
I meant that you emulsify by adding an actual emulsifier, li
ke lecithin or glycerin. Mechanical methods won't work in a home kitchen. I'm not even sure that there are industrial devices capable of achieving a lasting rmulsion by purely mechanical methods.
But it is possible that the nearest pharmacy sells food grade glycerin, so you should be able to test the emulsion easily.
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24341 | Lost in translation: Pluma ibérico
In Spain,there are three popular iberian pork cuts: Secreto (or Cruceta), Bola (or Presa or Abanico) and Pluma. I have a question about the 'pluma' that I can probably ask without referring to the specific cut, but I'd like to know if there is an accepted translation.
These cuts are extra tender and delicious because of the grease content. Butchers used to get rid of these cuts because of that. Some used to eat the meat themselves, it was the butcher's 'secret'. The 'pluma' is also called the butcher's steak(?).
There's a story in Spanish here.
As far as I can tell the "pluma" consists of the cervical and thoracic rhomboid muscles. Those muscles are not standard cuts in the US. It would likely remain attached to the whole loin or as part of blade end loin chops.
The article you linked to states that "the pluma should not be confused with the blade end of the loin or the 'butcher's filet' which is the caudal (tail-ward) cut of the loin."
There is a video on how the pluma is butchered available on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H_HNjStwsk
Welcome to the site, Drew. I look forward to seeing more answers of you.
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40237 | Will these mince pies still be good and/or safe to consume?
I've discovered some home made mince pies (frozen after production, un-cooked) which were made by following Delia's Traditional Mince Pie recipe this time last year (lard & butter based pastry and shop bought mincemeat). They've lived in the freezer at -20°C in an airtight container since production.
Will they have suffered any quality degradation / no longer be safe to eat?
They will certainly be safe assuming your freezer has operated properly throughout the last year.
Some quality degradation is possible, especially freezer burn on the outside if they were not wrapped extremely well. A buildup of visible frost inside the wrapping is a sign this is extremely likely, although it can happen even without the buildup.
Rancidity of the butter in the pie crust is also possible, but not terribly likely.
Still, since you have the pies, there is no harm in baking one and seeing how they turned out.
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18249 | Greasing a pan with butter vs. with shortening
Is there any reason one should prefer one over the other?
I've always used shortening (probably because that's what my mom always did), but my fiancee has always used butter.
There's no significant difference I can think of (for this application), but I thought I'd ask.
Both will do the job of greasing a pan but there are some differences. One of the big differences is that butter will add a very desirable flavor to whatever you are cooking—which especially complements sweet baked goods.
Shortening is pure fat whereas butter is only about 80% fat by weight. Butter may bring additional flavor to your recipe (even by greasing the pan) but it also adds some water which may not be wanted.
One final difference is that butter burns/browns more easily than shortening.
In what circumstances would the tiny amount of water in a thin coating of butter actually matter? Seems like a pretty rare concern.
You may get a slight amount of extra browning using butter due to the extra proteins, but it's normally such a small amount of butter being used I wouldn't think it would be very noticeable. The water in butter may also have an effect on very delicate items, but I don't think it would have a discernable effect on items like muffins, quickbreads, etc.
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18299 | Pink salt vs regular salt
What is the difference between pink salt and more typical coarse salt (e.g. sea salt)?
I know it is pink due to mineral deposits, but culinarily is it any different? e.g. does it taste different, is it used differently, etc.
Since there may be more than one kind of pink salt, I'm talking specifically about "Himalayan Pink Salt".
http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/09/salt-mining-are-specialty-sea-salts-worth-the-price.html
FWIW, the pink color is actually due to bacteria.
Definitely more than one kind of pink salt—the type I've heard of before contains sodium nitrate, and is used for curing meats. But that's not this type.
@FuzzyChef Really? Answer me this. Just how would a lowly pink bacterium hook up with a salt crystal?
The bacteria thrive in the salt brine which is a drying-up sea. When the sea dries up completely (and becomes salt rock), the bacteria die ... but their pink color is left behind.
Erm... The pink is trace amounts of iron oxide.
In my experience, the difference between various salts has little to do with flavor, once you've moved beyond iodized table salt and bulk kosher salt, and assuming we aren't talking about salts that are flavored by additions like herbs or smoke during processing.
So limiting the discussion to natural, high quality finishing salts, the differences are mainly texture and color. Some salts, like Maldon, are flaky, while others are large pyramids or cubes, and others tend to a small grain size and hold on to a bit of moisture. Each of these textures can bring something special to a finished dish. For example, flaky Maldon adds a delightful crunch, while another salt might adhere better to a French fry.
Color, like the pink salt you mention, is used pretty much for the visual interest. And there is nothing wrong with that. Simply save it for a dish where it will be noticeable. For example, those pink grains would look amazing on a chocolate truffle, or a savory meringue.
If anyone thinks they can actually taste the difference among unflavored finishing salts, I'd challenge them to do a triangle test with those salts dissolved in water (in equal amounts by weight) so that texture and color isn't confusing the issue.
I actually have to slightly disagree with you (though for the most part you are right). Most sea salts taste similar, but there are very slight differences. For instance, Himalayan pink salt tends to have an ever-so-slightly floral (similar to lavender) taste if you stick a small piece in your mouth. Hawaiian black sea salt has an earthier taste (probably due to the charcoal content). The differences are subtle at best, but definitely there if you do a horizontal tasting across several of them.
At 18g/kg, you might notice the magnesium in Himalayan salt. There's 15+grams of bicarbonate as well, which might also be tasteable: http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=115738 Naturally, analytic results differ: http://www.saltnews.com/chemical-analysis-natural-himalayan-pink-salt/
Sel de guerande (grey salt) definitely has a distinctive flavour due to the other minerals found in it; so no added flavours but not the same as table / kosher / pink salt.
In the Good Eats episode "The Ballad of Salty and Sweet" Alton Brown spends a few minutes, toward the end of the show, covering "Finishing Salts" (including "Pink Salt"). Other than trace minerals which give it coloring there is no 'real' difference.
In that episode he mentions that some of the finishing salts have different flavors. I'd think tasting different would qualify as a "real" difference.
@Fambida, I will make a point of going back and checking that.
Did you ever go back and see what he said about flavors?
It appears that "Good Eats" (as part of Scripps) has been asserting their copyright and most (if not all) of their videos have been pulled from YouTube and other forums except for FoodNetwork.com, where they have been chopped into segments, and the relevant segment has not been published. I do record the Good Eats episodes as they air, but don't have this in my personal collection yet.
If I remember correctly, you're both right. If used as a finishing salt, where the salt will hit your tongue directly, there are some slight but noticeable differences. If used during cooking or another way that the salt will dissolve, the differences disappear.
Here's a transcript of that episode: http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/season13/salty_desserts/salty_sweet_trans.htm Alton does in fact go into the various flavors of fancy salts from around the world, but he doesn't get into much about Himalayan pink salt other that it is mined.
From a culinary perspective "Himalayan Pink Salt" and Coarse Salt are about the same. Himalayan salt is mined from the himalyayan mountains, coarse salt is typically derived from evaporation, I believe. Coarser grains are better from marinating while the finer grains typically found in Himalayan salt make it better for finishing. There are some small trace mineral differences, but they are not very distinct taste wise.
Important note that "Pink Salt" can also refer to curing salt, which is something entirely different. It is sodium nitrate where table salt is sodium chloride.
Himalayan salt from Pakistan has a strong magnesium taste.
I just about destroyed a big pot of chicken noodle soup by using pink salt, Himalayan salt, from Pakistan. The magnesium is overwhelming. Will not make that mistake again.
Thanks, I added that specific statement info your post in case it clarifies it for anyone, but I agree, this is an answer.
Himalayan Pink Salt, I personally can taste an IMMENSE difference over table salt. I also have bought Hawaiian Red gold sea salt, which is flavored/colored with clay. This is one of the tastiest salts I have ever tried. I have also tried black salt ("black lava salt"), which is actually sea salt colored with activated charcoal. The world is full of hundreds of culinary options for salt. Experiment with them all and enjoy!
I've combined your two answers and substantially edited them, correcting the bits about where the salt comes from (red gold and black lava salt are just colored by additives; the salt is still sea salt), and removing the health claims - we're a food and cooking site.
Potential for confusion and bad surprises here: "Black Salt" can also mean Kala Namak, which is not colored by additives but has a strong to very strong aroma of its own, especially when raw, and would ruin most things that you could uninentionally use it in.
...even worse, it seems that there are pink varieties of kala namak around, though they seem far less intense than the off-white/black-ish stuff. Still, both are undesirable except where you want a sulfuric/eggy flavor :)
As it's typically much more expensive and (depending on your taste) more flavorful, pink salt is used as a garnish salt, not a "lets salt the french fries or season this big pot of mashed" kind of salt.
I personally think it's more flavorful, but I like spring water over distilled water for the same reason. A little bag of Himalayan salt should be a cheap enough ($4 or $5) experiment to see if you like it.
In my experience Himalayan pink salt has a bright sharp taste to it that regular table salt doesn't seem to have. However this could be due to the fact the pink salt I was eating comes from a container with a grinder on the top and the table salt comes from a regular salt shaker. It could be that texture plays a role.
I don't know if this would taste different if it was dissolved in liquid or not.
I just bought some Himalayan Sea Salt this weekend to give it a try. We used it tonight at dinner. I could tell a slight taste difference, which I liked. My husband couldn't taste any difference, but he did like the difference in texture from regular table salt.
I believe the taste difference is going to be different for each person. I notice more subtle taste than my husband does, while he notices texture differences more than I do.
Pink salt is not table salt with food coloring- pink salt is Himalayan salt which is a natural occurring substance. Beside sodium chloride, it contains minerals that are found in the human body.
Hello, and welcome to Seasoned advice! We do not discuss any purported or real health effects of food here, so I will remove the parts referring to that from your answer and leave the informative part.
I think it's less salty, but sharper tasting. To me, it seems like it has a spiciness, with I find is a positive thing.
Pink salt tastes noticeably different from regular salt. Anybody who claims to the contrary does not have access to good quality Himalayan salt. It has a hint of pungency which becomes less noticeable in foods which are very well cooked in terms of cooking time and temperature. This suggests that it has some volatile compounds as well. In traditional Indian cooking we call it as something in between the regular seasalt and the notoriously pungent black salt aka kala namak.
Also, Himalayan salt aka Sendha Namak is less salty than regular salt therefore it is added in greater quantities.
Take simple potates cooked with a little canola oil and then sprinkle each type of salt and you will notice the difference.
Curing salt
As mentioned at the end of the Answer by Manako, the term pink salt can mean a curing salt.
A curing salt is a combination of:
table salt (sodium chloride)
Sodium nitrite and/or sodium nitrate
Not to be confused with pink-colored table salts, such as Himalayan pink salt, which are plain sodium chloride laced with various minerals.
CAUTION There may be health concerns about nitrates/nitrites in food, so you certainly should not mistake a curing salt with a pink-colored table salt.
Use of the "pink salt" (curing salt) to make Corned Beef is shown in Cook's Illustrated magazine and the correlating episode of America's Test Kitchen TV show.
The pink color is due to trace elements of iron oxide (i.e. rust) in the salt deposits. Looks nice and generally regarded as safe.
Note that if you use pink salt for regular cooking, you're not getting the additional iodine which iodized salt provides, so you should make sure that you are getting enough iodine from other sources.
I started using Himalayan pink salt for health reasons, but now I prefer it on flavor alone. In a broth it adds a subtle depth and richness just plain salt doesn't seem to offer. I have also used it in a glass with water as a mouth wash. I have noted that there is a pink sediment in the bottom of the glass that seems to be rock dust.
Different types of rock dust are added to soil as a practice of organic gardening and help plants fight disease and just be stronger and healthier plants.
It is hard to separate food from health awareness.
I have just started using the Himalayan Pink Salt in the last five to six month sand find the taste is much better than any type of table salt I've used before. Most table salt I've used I find has a bitter aftertaste. The Himalayan Pink Salt has no such aftertaste whether in the food or tasting the salt directly on my tongue.
I've been using Himalayan Pink Rock Salt for a while now and I can definitely taste a HUGE difference, even between it (and its brothers in the naturally-refined-coloured-salt-gang, Red and black Hawaiian salts) and sea salt.
This appears to both make several health claims and actually be further questions rather than an answer...
I'm going to edit this down to the part that actually answers the question. If you want to ask a question, please post it as a question so that people can see it and answer it. You can find what I've edited out in the revision history of your post.
-1, as discussed on other answers, the red and black salts you're talking about are refined in the same way other salts are (i.e. they're not "naturally refined" in any meaningful way). They're just sea salt like everything else, with color added in.
Himalayan pink salt isn't your average table salt. Hand-harvested and minimally processed, it contains 84 minerals and trace elements including magnesium, calcium, copper, potassium and iron, according to the website The Greater Green.
Regular table salt is "actually full of many forms of chemicals and even sugar", according to natural health website Global Healing Center. This type of salt is difficult to digest and can lead to inflammation of the tissues, high blood pressure and bloating. Himalayan pink salt is easier for the body to process, requiring far less cellular water in order to neutralize the sodium chloride content in chemically-treated salt.
The OP stated: "I know it is pink due to mineral deposits, but culinarily is it any different? e.g. does it taste different, is it used differently". So he's basically asking how does it taste and is used.
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18300 | Using a large pot/pan on a smaller burner
My fiancée and I recently got a bunch of new (very nice) pots and pans for our wedding shower. The thing is, several of the pans are 12", and the burners on our stove are nowhere near that large! (maybe 10" at best)
Are these pots/pans useable on the smaller burners? Will they evenly distribute the heat so it won't be so much of a problem? Or should we take them back? They are nice, hard-anodized pans.
The pans will distribute the heat for you. No burner that I've ever seen covers a 12" pan, but quality pans will still give you pretty even heat distribution.
This is exactly what I was looking to confirm -- thank you!
The word "quality" is important here, because cheap pans may do a mediocre or downright inadequate job of distributing the heat.
@dmckee, the importance of heat distribution will depend on the application - if you're just trying to boil water I wouldn't think it matters much.
Used my first 12" pan today, on a burner that is somewhere in the neighborhood of 10" -- worked just fine, thanks!
If you're worried, you could always use a heat diffuser. (http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/gadgets/how-to-use-a-stove-top-heat-diffuser-020009 or see a sample one at http://www.amazon.com/NorPro-144-Norpro-Heat-Diffuser/dp/B0000X6ESO)
If it's copper bottom'ed cookware then it's particularly good at this. The copper holds the heat and protects against hot spots or heat fluctuations. The caveat is to be very careful with the pan when you're done, they will burn you or continue to heat the food for awhile after you've turned off the heat.
The quality of the pan matters even if it has a copper bottom. I have some older pans where the copper is so thin it might as well not be there at all.
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35616 | What are the crunchy bits on top of Thai mango with sticky rice?
My favorite Thai restaurant makes a fantastic mango and sticky rice dessert, and it seems like it'd be pretty simple to recreate at home. I've searched around the internet for mango and sticky rice recipes, and have found many, but none seem to have the crunchy bits that I find in my local restaurant's version.
Obviously, I can ask at the restaurant next time I'm there, but I'm curious if anybody here knows what these could be?
They are crunchy and about the size of grains of rice, which make me think they might be toasted grains of sticky rice? They could also be some kind of seed or nut...
Does anybody know of any crunchy bits that are traditional on Thai sticky rice with mango?
Aha! Found the answer myself!
This recipe includes the step "Garnish with toasted sesame seeds or fried salty mung beans." -- I googled "fried salty mung beans" and found the picture below, which is exactly what I was looking for:
TJ Ellis you're right. It's fried or roasted salty mung beans.
If you can't find it you can use the other kind of bean to add crispy topping.
What is the other kind of bean?
I just surveyed many sticky rice with mango recipes. The only topping that appears at all—crunchy or otherwise—is toasted sesame seeds. It appears in about 1/3 of the recipes.
yeah, I've seen that as well, but the bits at the restaurant are bigger than sesame seeds...
The little seeds are smaller than sesame, and they have a little hairlike projection on the end. They don't taste like sesame but have a mild flavor all their own.
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39494 | How to reheat a baked potato?
How should baked potatoes be reheated in order to most closely approximate fresh-from-the-oven quality?
Sadly, baked potatoes are one of those foods that are only truly at their peak when first baked. Either re-baking them or microwaving them will give the least bad results for reheating.
Your better bet, however, is to give them a new life, for example as potato pancakes, hash browns, as an ingredient in a hash, or similar application. While they won't have the same quality as a fresh baked potato, these can be very good dishes.
Although I agree that they're better off used in hash or some other application, if you really want them as a baked potato, you'll want to reheat them slowly to warm them fully through. You'll need to get them warm enough to re-geletanlize the starches.
I generally put them in an oven near 250°F, wrapped in foil to prevent the skins from drying out further. Exact time is dependant upon the size of the potatoes, but generally about 45min or longer. You can turn the heat up as it gets closer to finished.
I wouldn't suggest this for a dish in which the potato is the main focus, only a supporting player, such as when I'm putting chili or something else over top of it that has a fair bit of moisture and flavor.
An alternative to the accepted answer is to steam them. I worked in a grocery store kitchen that did catering, and we would re-use baked potatoes by steaming them to warm them and provide some additional moisture (they get dried out when reheated otherwise). If the skin is then too soggy for your liking, consider placing them in the oven on 400 for 10-15 minutes to crisp the skin.
I think this will give you the best results for getting close to the original quality, but you may still be better off re purposing them. I recently reused mashed potatoes for fried potato pancakes that were delicious, and I assume mashing leftover baked potatoes would provide an excellent result as well.
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45177 | Maintaining crispy fried potatoes while cooking with onions and peppers
I love fried potatoes, and I love them even more when there are some delicious vegetables mixed in, like onions and bell peppers.
The problem is that I can't figure out how to cook all these things so that I end up with crispy potatoes with the cooked onions and peppers.
I've tried a few methods:
Cook onions at the beginning, then add potatoes. Result: overcooked onions, mushy potatoes.
Cook the potatoes, get them about how I want them, then add onions&peppers and cook. Result, good peppers&onions, soggy potatoes.
Cook the potatoes, remove them from pan and set aside, cook onions and peppers, add cooked potatoes and toss. Result: almost what I want. this might be the best way to go, but still end up with slightly soggy potatoes.
Are there any factors I'm missing that could give me better results? I've had better results at restaurants before, so I know it's possible...
#3, but reverse the sequence. Cook the onions and peppers, set them aside. Wipe out the pan, cook the potatoes. Add back the peppers and onions just long enough to get them hot again.
Put that as an answer @DrRandy
@DrRandy Honestly didn't mean to steal your answer; just didn't read the comments.
I assume this is a followup to : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/6667/67
@Joe haha, yup, 4 years later and I'm still trying to master fried potatoes. I've gotten much better though! At least at cooking the potatoes alone...
You probably should keep #3, but use a much higher temperature for the vegetables.
Non-starchy vegetables contain lots of water. If you shallow fry them at a leisurly pace, their juices flow out and stay in the pan, making everything a bit soft. You also get a bit less grilled-like taste.
If you saute them instead, you'll end up with dry vegetables. Their juices will evaporate the moment they hit the pan. When you add the potatoes, they will stay crisp.
You'll have to use a non-nonstick pan for that, it needs temperatures which will destroy a PTFE coating.
You have a fourth option, to saute the onions and peppers first, remove them from the pan, fry the potatoes and then reintroduce the vegetables and toss just before serving.
The vegetables will continue to release water while they are waiting, so it might be an idea to sit them in a strainer placed over a bowl.
If you're going to remove the potatoes from the pan, you need to be careful about how you store them.
If they're just thrown into a bowl and left there, they'll sit there and steam, possibly softening the crust that you worked to develop. You can avoid this by spreading them out on a baking sheet, or a wire rack, but you instead have the problem of them cooking off too much.
Personally, I go with something closer to your #2.
I start with par-cooked potatoes (I make extra baked potatoes, let them cool, then put 'em in the fridge), cut into slabs. and coated in oil.
When I have a good crust on one side, I flip the potatoes over, and get a crust on the second side, and add the onion (cut into thick rings) and peppers (cut into strips, laid on their cut side).
When the onions have good color, I flip them over.
When the peppers have good color, I flip them over.
When the potatoes have gotten a good crust, I use my metal spatula to cut them into chunks (directly in the pan).
When the onions and peppers have good color on both sides, I use my spatula to cut them into more bite-sized pieces.
I stir the whole things together, adjust seasoning, and let cook through for another minute or so.
Possibly significant points:
I use a griddle, so there's less chance of collecting stem. (it's a 12" round cast iron griddle, which is just right for 1 potato + 1/2 an onion + 1/2 a bell pepper)
I'm starting with a cold potato and a pre-heated griddle.
I've done this a lot, so I know how thick I need to cut my onions (into 4 slices for a medium), about 1/2" (1.25cm) for the peppers) for the doneness I like and the cooking time.**
Leaving things in slabs gives me less surface area on the food, but more hot spots on the pan (for better evaporation of any liquid)
Leaving the onion in a slab ensures better contact with the pan and faster cooking. (you also don't lose heat to evaporation)
** a note on the cooking times : I have absolutely no idea. Basically, my bedroom and bathroom are right next to the kitchen, so my process is :
start the pan pre-heating
start the shower heating
toss on the potatoes
take a shower
flip the potatoes, add onions & peppers
get dressed
flip the onions & peppers
shave or quickly check e-mail
cut everything up, (optional : scramble in a couple of eggs), season & finish cooking.
If u wanna roast the potatoes..... I will roast potatoes for 20 minutes on 375, then sweat onions and peppers, add to top of potatoes, and continue roasting for 15-20 minutes. This allows the flavors of the onions to enter the potatoes without making the potatoes soggy, or giving them a "boiled" taste. That's what u want to avoid....the "boiled" taste.
It's funny to see that 10 years later this question is still relevant.
Well, I might say, that I found a solution, and it's an easy one.
First, a bit of a background.
Potatoes need water in order to cook through, while onions HAVE water, and need to discharge it.
So,
cast iron pan on, medium heat, oil & fat (butter, tallow, etc), and sliced potatoes go in.
Season (I used salt and pepper) and toss (you don't want the potatoe slices to stick to each other).
sliced onions in, and season.
cook on medium heat, aiding the exchange of water between onions and potatoes.
once the onions have nicely wilted (not brown, yet) and potatoes have begun to soften (use a knife point to poke a slice), increase the heat to high and gently, using a fish slicer (metal slotted spatula), flip the potatoes and onions until both are browned.
Basically, it's the "reverse sear" approach, done in a pan.
Simple!
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45176 | How to evenly fry cubes?
I have long struggled with pan-frying cube-shaped foods to try to get them evenly browned on all sides.
I have this struggle with potatoes and tofu, and there are likely other foods it applies equally well too.
I typically start out frying on one side for a while, until it's starting to brown on that side and heated through, then toss and fry for a few minutes, toss and fry for a few minutes, etc. until either everything looks perfect (never happens) or I start to see some sides getting waaaaay overdone and burnt (at which point there are always others who haven't been browned at all).
Sometimes I hover and pick at individual cubes after tossing, manually flipping them so that the least-done side is at the bottom, but this is a huge pain.
Is there some technique I'm missing, or do I need to resign myself to a life of hovering over hot potato pans, burning the tips of my fingers flipping them one by one?
The only way to get it absolutely right is to flip them one-by-one. Tossing the pan will inevitably end with some pieces unturned. With tiny cubes, you may have to settle for not browning absolutely every surface. For larger cubes, use tongs.
I'm a tosser too, and then I'll flip those individual pieces that need it. Save your fingers, use chopsticks to flip the pieces.
Ham and spam always drive me crazy for this reason. They're the foods I'm most likely to be sauteing in a cubed form. I stir and flip often.
@MichaelE. - Excellent advice, but some people, like myself, are terrible with using chopsticks. Fortunately, wooden "helper chopsticks" are a thing: https://www.everythingchopsticks.com/wooden-tongs-japanese-helper-chopsticks-p-405.html
I'm going to assume you're not considering deep frying, which would generally be the easiest way to fry evenly on all sides (at once).
If you want something similar to pan frying, probably the simplest solution to get evenly browned cubes, assuming you have sufficient time, is to roast the food in the oven instead with a little oil or fat (which some people call "oven fried"). I'd particularly recommend this for "intermediate" sized cubes, which are too small and numerous to bother turning individually with tongs, but large enough that you care about all sides getting done.
Be sure the food is tossed well in your fat before putting in oven, space it out well in a single layer, and turn periodically. As long as you don't roast at a ridiculously high temperature, it's much harder to burn food this way, and the browning will be more even. It may take a little longer. But it's also lower maintenance, since you're less tempted to hover over the pan and can do other things without worrying about food burning.
If you have to do it in a pan (to achieve the texture you want or to do it faster), the most important thing is not to crowd the pan and have a single layer (but it sounds like you may already be doing that). The other general advice is to fry the first side the longest: it's always tempting to start turning early if you want to get it done fast, but it's important to get good color on the first side before starting the flipping. After the first toss, try your best to get most of the food with new sides down, and again wait a long enough time to get the second side cooked. After that, it's probably going to become much more difficult to always have a "new side" down, so decrease the time between subsequent tosses.
If you do the first two sides well, with small cubes this will often be enough to create the appearance of relative evenness (combined with the uneven later tosses). With larger cubes, you'll have to use tongs.
A few other factors may come into play which have to do with how easily and evenly the food will cook in general. For example, choose the right fat and the right pan temperature. If you're using only unclarified butter, the burning will start much earlier. It may be worthwhile either clarifying the butter and/or mixing butter with some fat that has a higher burning/smoke point (most oils, or bacon grease, etc.). Using an oil that is stable to higher temperatures will help to prevent burning. Pan type and surface can also play a role: a dark pan that food sticks to will burn more quickly, but it can also be helpful for cooking the first couple sides quickly, so it's a toss-up for quick cooking vs. higher maintenance.
Also, with some foods like potatoes, the way you prepare the cubes can make a difference in how easily they brown. For example, many recipes recommend blanching diced potatoes for a minute or so before cooking and then shocking with cold water before frying them in a preheated pan. This "precooking" will alter the starch characteristics on the exterior of the potatoes and make it easier to brown them faster (and more evenly).
Many good ideas (+1) but what's the rationale behind the fourth paragraph?
@Relaxed, it mostly has to do with balancing time to brown exterior vs. time for inside to cook and soften. If you don't get the exterior crisp fast enough, foods like diced potatoes and tofu will sometimes start to break apart in the pan as they soften. Not crowding the pan will ensure faster browning, and waiting to try to get two solid crisp sides will often firm up the cubes enough to avoid later problems. Also, allowing time to crisp will ensure a better release from a pan; starchy potatoes could otherwise stick and end up creating burned stuck bits which could make the situation worse.
@Relaxed - Just to be clear (having looked again at your answer): I'm not suggesting that you should get the first side "completely done" before flipping, only that it start getting color and crisp. And for (permanently) firm foods (e.g., diced ham), it's probably not necessary.
Tossing relatively frequently (maybe every minute or so) should in fact help and would seem the simplest, most traditional technique (here another video, with potatoes). If you leave the cubes for a long time on one side and only toss after the first side is completely done, any cube you fail to turn will burn.
But cubes remaining unturned are not a problem if you toss frequently. Some sides will occasionally stay face down a little longer but differences in cooking time should average out over time. That way you don't need to go to the trouble of flipping the cubes one-by-one.
When I cook small cubed food, I fry them in oil that is half way up the side of the cube, then when the bottom side is done, I turn them over one by one with chop sticks. This cooks all of the sides evenly, but does takes some extra time. For large cubes I brown each side individually, again turning with chopsticks. I'm a bit OCD though, so you may just want to take the toss and stir approach.
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46286 | How to keep celery crisp?
I like celery, but it seems to go limp very quickly when I buy it.
What's the best way to store it to keep it crisper longer?
how long would you like it to last?
@jim as long as possible :)
no problem, i get it :-) @Joe's answer is the right one
Trim the root end, then set the stalks upright in a tall glass, add a few inches of water, then stash in the fridge.
You'll want to change out the water every couple of days, or can get strange on you.
You can also cut it into shorter lengths, and store it completely submerged in water; this may be necessary to do with part of the stalks anyway, as most people don't have their fridge shelving adjusted to handle the full height of a bunch of celery.
Wouldn't storing in water will promote the growth of bacteria like Listeria. Yes I know the fridge is cold, but that just slows, not stops growth
@TFD : changing the water out is important ... I likely should have specified chlorinated tap water, so there's an anti-bacterial quality to the water. I've never tried this with ozonated water (which is treated, but doesn't have a long-term anti-microbial properties)
Trim the celery, place on a lightly dampened paper towel and wrap in aluminum foil. Store in the fridge veggie drawer. Keeps well for at least a couple of weeks.
Store in an mostly airtight container, even a basic plastic bag with the opening folded over will do
Feel free to chop a long celery bunch in half. The cut ends do deteriorate a little over time, but not that fast, and it's better than bending or squishing them into the fridge
Just don't let it sit in moving air as exists it most fridges
If you have time, you can do some mason jars with celery. You can act like it is shown in that tutorial: http://www.salad-in-a-jar.com/skinny-secrets/salad-in-a-jar - I know it's about lettuce, but I did analogous thing with celery and it was good. And if you want quick hack, just wrap your celery in aluminium foil: http://www.listonic.com/protips/get/mshkilezox .
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40152 | How do I separate two fish fillets that have been frozen together?
Sometimes when I get frozen fish, it comes with several pieces frozen together (specifically, Trader Joe's does this with all of their frozen fish).
Is there any good way of separating them without fully thawing?
This could also apply to other frozen things, but I'm mainly interested in fish.
I'd bitch, and loudly. That's a brainless, rookie maneuver.
Probably not if you want the pieces whole. I guess you could saw off a chunk, if you intend on cutting the fish into pieces.
I usually submerge them in cold water for about 5 - 10 minutes. This way you thaw enough the fish just to separate them.
If the pieces are only frozen together in a few places, you might want to try heating a butter knife up under hot water and then using that to pry them apart. This is similar to heating up an ice cream scoop. It won't work if they are really packed in together tightly though.
Pretty much no matter what you do, you will be damaging the product (either physically or otherwise) to some degree. The balance is, how much are you willing to damage the product vs. how much time and effort do you want to expend?
(Non)Individually Quick Frozen foods are a pain if you only intend to use one of the fillets at a time.
Quick and sloppy:
Pry the frozen fillets apart using a case knife or use a wedge of some sort to separate them physically without thawing.
Middle ground compromise:
A hack saw can be used to good effect. It's especially easy to make two "half fillets" by cutting across the fillets together instead of trying to separate them.
Easy does it:
Try thawing for a couple of moments in shallow cold water. Keep the fish you intend to "throw back" out of the water as much as you can to avoid thawing-refreezing-thawing damage for next time.
through them hard down on a concrete surface and they should shatter apart. Select the ones you want and put theh other back re-wrapped into the freezer. Aussie solutions are best.
Not sure why this was downvoted. It works fine.
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20458 | "Indian Spicy" vs. "Thai Spicy"
What ingredient(s) make the spiciness from Indian food distinct from the spiciness of, say, Thai food?
Indian good seems to have a longer, slower burn, rather than a "sharper" spiciness of Thai. I know spiciness in Thai food comes from Thai bird chilis; what's the corresponding ingredient(s) in Indian food? Most of the recipes I've seen call for "red pepper" -- none of the ground red pepper I've used comes anywhere near that sensation -- is there a special kind of red pepper used in Indian cooking? Or something else I'm missing?
The green chilli that is used in Southern parts of India is one of the hottest spices around.
Well, that depends on the individual Thai dish or Indian dish and how it was cooked, of course. But I understand what you're talking about. However, the difference in heat sensations is not due to the kind of pepper employed. It's all about fat, really.
Frequently Thai dishes are made with fresh peppers, and have a lot of acid and salt in them (from citrus, tamarind, and other flavors) but very little fat (comparatively). Because of this, many Thai dishes have an instant burst of intense hotness which goes away realtively quickly. The paragon of this is probably Thai salads, like larb or green mango salad, which are highly acidic and very very spicy.
On the other hand, most Anglo-Indian food (familiar to Americans and British) is in the form of "curries" which use a slow-cooked dairy base (butter, milk, and/or cheese), and are spiced with dried ground or whole chile peppers. As a result, when you first taste them the fat conceals the capsicum from your tongue, gradually revealing it as your saliva breaks it down. Hence the "slow burn". (I've tried to find a medical reference for this to link, but have not been able to yet).
Similarly, Thai coconut milk curries can build up heat slowly and that heat sticks with you -- because of the hot peppers cooked in the fat of the coconut milk.
Incidentally, there isn't one kind of chile pepper used by either culture. The Thai have dozens of varieties of hot pepper and Indians have hundreds (as well as a dozen different regional cuisines, a few of which are not spicy at all). In the USA, these tend to get narrowed down to a handful of different pepper varieties (and substitutions like jalapenos) because of limited availability. The spice you call "red pepper" could be any of a half-dozen different ground dried peppers of varying hotness.
Capsaicin, the "hot" stuff in chili peppers, is soluble in fat. So it is probably the fat that makes the difference. I don't think it's a matter of the fat being broken down by saliva, just that spiciness is cumulative in general.
Carmi, but that's my point. The capsicum in dairy and coconut milk curries dissolves into the fat. Then you digest the fat, and the capsicum is released for a "slow burn". As opposed to high-acid dishes with little fat, where the capsicum hits you all at once, but then you're done with it. Follow me?
The fat isn't digested by saliva. The capsaicin is just less active when it's in the fat. This is the same reason that eating some yoghurt makes the spiciness of Indian food go away, the "hot" is dissolved in the fat and taken to the stomach. Saliva doesn't break down fats, certainly not quickly enough to have this sort of effect.
Cami, interesting. So you're saying that the difference is that the fat lowers the amount of active capsaicin, so you eat more of it? Rather than it breaking down on the tongue?
I tend to agree largely with fuzzychef's answer, as a lot of Indian dishes are based on spices in oil (usually a mix of garlic, ginger, onion and the Indian five spices (according to my local contact) of cumin, mustard seed, red ground chilli, turmeric and ground coriander seeds.
The oil will absorb the capsaicin and other spicy compounds and spread them quite evenly trhough the dish, meaning that the "heat" gets delivered quite evenly and the fat makes it stick in your mouth for a while (resulting in an afterburn effect).
If you make a curry (Indian style with dairy like yoghurt or Thai style with coconut milk, that effect gets even bigger.
When you keep the ingredients seperated like in the case of fresh peppers in a salad, you will notic e a more immediate but shorter-lasting effect.
One Indian dish where that is clear (to give a counter-example) is papad massala, a simple fried pancake with onion, tomato, salt, red chilli powder and coriander leafs, which will burn immediately, more Thai-style :)
It depends on the particular dish -- many hot curries use red chili powder. Some dishes, like coconut chutney, use jalepeno or similar fresh hot peppers. I don't think there's a distinctive/unique spice as there is with Thai food; it's more in the combination of spices.
Is the Indian "red chili powder" the same thing as American red pepper (normally Cayenne powder)? What kind of peppers are typically used? (they are frustratingly always called "red chilis" in recipes -- there are dozens, if not hundreds of chili varieties that are red!
It's about like cayenne--just pure dried, ground red chilies. but any red chili would do depending on how spicy you want it! Unless the recipe calls for Kashmiri chili powder which is made from Kashmiri chilis. Here's a breakdown.
@sheepeeh It's generally a good idea to add additional answers in the body of your answer by editing it rather than putting it in the comment section. This way it can be easier for users to read the whole answer. You may append a short little header saying its additional information in response to a certain user's questions, etc.
In addition to the other answers, I've found that cumin gives that sort of slow, background burn while cayenne and Capsaicin give that sharper, (for me) painful heat.
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6768 | Should dry beans be washed before soaking?
When making dried beans, generally I wash the beans, then soak them, then drain&rinse, then cook. I realized today that I started my soak without the prior wash (by accident), and then realized it shouldn't matter; after all, I am going to drain&rinse them post-soaking anyway; that should take care of the wash step, shouldn't it?
tl;dr Do dry beans always need to be washed pre-soaking, or is post-soak ok too?
It's always a good idea to wash and "pick over" a bag of dried beans before soaking them. You never know what sort of grit or weirdness you might find. It's a lot more difficult to find the stuff-that-isn't-beans once it's all been soaking together for a long time.
very good point; picking over and picking out tiny rocks etc. is important. thanks!
Always. Mice, rats and insects love the silos these products are stored in before packaging. They're so grateful in fact, that they often leave behind little 'gifts' for us human consumers.
I don't think there is anything disastrous about doing it in that order. I suppose any impurities might penetrate the membrane of the bean, but the expected impurities (especially if the beans are organic) is just soil. I'd still rinse beans before soaking in general, but if I forgot once, I'd do what you said.
I always wash legumes and grains. This may be gross to consider, but in most elevators and plants dealing with legumes or grains, there is at least one rodent or there is one person using a contaminated shovel or other tool. You never know what is mixed with your cooking ingredient, so it pays to wash just in case.
Just for information's sake: rodent feces and bugs will both float to the top if you dump your grain or legumes into a pot of salt-water, and the salt will also kill most bugs. I always use the salt-water dump-and-skim before rinsing; most times it's not needed, but there have been times I was glad I did it. Additional info: The salt-water dump is also great for getting the bugs out of broccoli and cauliflower.
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13996 | Grilling long beans, and a substitute for cooking twine
I've been experimenting with "uncommon" vegetables (in the US) and have recently fallen in love with long beans, which I buy at my local Korean market. Because of their length, I'm able to grill them, and the taste is delicious.
I put them perpendicular to the grates (I have a typical three-burner propane grill), and the problem comes when I try to flip/rotate them so they char evenly on all sides. Turning them (by kind of pushing them with the tongs or spatula so they roll) isn't very effective unless I try to do them one or two at a time, and I cook in large batches. Flipping them by picking up with the tongs is also somewhat ineffective; because of their inconsistent length I often have some ends fall under the grate and burn as I try to lay them back onto the grate. I can correct this individually, but I'm looking for efficiency.
I realize I could probably pick up both ends at the same time with two sets of tongs, but I don't know that I have the dexterity needed to flip from that point. Also, this is only very effective if the beans are similar lengths, otherwise they'd fall from one end and I'd have the same problem as before.
One recipe I found suggested tying them in small bunches with cooking twine or scallions. This makes a lot of sense to me, but I have neither on hand right now. So, my questions:
If I were to use cooking twine, what would keep it from burning? Should I soak it? With direct flame like this I would expect the twine to catch on fire easily, is that an incorrect assumption?
What makes cooking twine special? Is it just because it frays less than normal twine, or is there something that makes it food-safe? Could I use, for example, braided nylon rope, or another type of string or rope that I might have in my garage? Why or why not?
Have you tried a vegetable grilling tray or basket? These are super convenient, make it much easier to manage/turn beans (or any veggies) on the grill, and keep them from falling into the BBQ.
As for your questions regarding cooking twine...
Do soak the twine in water before putting it on the grill. This will prevent the twine from burning.
"The string used for kitchen twine is almost always made from linen or cotton, never plastic or other synthetic material such as polyester or nylon. Kitchen twine must be a non-toxic food grade material, since it will be in such close contact with raw foods. Synthetic yarns and twines would either melt under the heat or leech dangerous chemicals into the food." (Source: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-kitchen-twine.htm)
Great suggestion - I do have a vegetable/fish grilling tray that has a top and bottom which you press together with the food between (so it can be flipped), but due to its poor design it's very tall - so when I flip it, the food is very, very far from the flame. If I had a properly designed (read: very thin) one this might be the best method for large batches. I may have to purchase one similar to the one you linked to so I can use daniel's turning method, but still not have to worry about any slipping into the grate.
You could always invest in some newfangled reusable silicone cooking twine (a set should cost you around $10). The silicone twine should hold up to temperatures well in excess of what your propane grill is capable of producing. There are even flame-proof metal versions designed specifically for grilling.
Why not just use a vegetable basket, or something similar? (for example: http://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/6434.html?mv_pc=fr&utm_source=google&utm_medium=base -- there are many options that are much cheaper than this) Then you can move your veggies around to your heart's content, without fear of losing any to the flame.
Even if you find some food-safe twine, that seems like an awful lot of prep work, especially when a $10-20 item will save you all of that effort.
Good point on the prep work/time, which is very important to me. I'm coming to realize it's just a matter of having the wrong tools for the job - my grill basket looks like this and I can't use it because of how tall it is, when I flip it the other side isn't close enough to my propane flame. The one you and EmJ linked to look much more like what I should be using and will probably solve my problem - thank you!
I picked up a smaller, nonstick vegetable grilling pan pretty cheaply at Lowe's, Home Depot, or Bed Bath & Beyond (can't remember which - one of the big box stores). I think it was only 10 bucks, and is about 9" in diameter. It also has a removable handle, which is handy for me, as I put it in my kettle grill, and I don't want to waste the space displaced by the handle. If I were at home I'd post a pic.
You could bundle them using some aluminum foil. Just tear off a strip, wrap it around them.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T13:24:59.784616 | 2011-04-12T17:28:31 | {
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