texts: Chemistry of different brands of baking powder

texts:
The Clabber Girl FAQs say:

  Rumford Baking Powder's reaction is approximately 70% with moisture (or in the bowl) and the rest when heat is applied. Clabber Girl's reaction is approximately 40% with moisture and the rest when heat is applied.

So Rumford and Clabber Girl aren't chemically the same.  My first question is,

  Can anyone say what the chemical difference between the two is?

I understand that a double-acting baking powder has a base, two acids, and filler.  The base will react with one of the acids at low temperature, creating carbon dioxide bubbles when I mix my batter.  It reacts with the other acid at high temperature, creating carbon dioxide bubbles when my batter is in the oven.  What I think the above FAQ is saying is that Rumford has a 70/30 split between acids that react at low temperatures and high temperatures, while Clabber Girl has a 40/60 split.  But I don't know what chemicals the two baking powders are formulated with, and I don't know how the split between the two acids is being measured (volume? weight?), so I don't know how much carbon dioxide they generate during each reaction.  That leads me to my second question,

  Is there a practical difference between different brands of baking powder, or are they all formulated so that they function the same?

It could be the case that the two baking powders are formulated so that Rumford and Clabber Girl release carbon dioxide in the same proportions in their first and second reactions.  This seems possible to me.

There's another possible way in which two baking powders could differ.  Most recipes specify volumes (like "1 tsp").  They assume it doesn't matter whether you're using Rumford or Clabber Girl or anything else.  But even if two baking powders release carbon dioxide in the same proportions in the two reactions, they may not release the same total amount of carbon dioxide.  A teaspoon of one might release more carbon dioxide than a teaspoon of the other.  A manufacturer can control how much carbon dioxide gets released per unit volume by adding filler, which leads me to my third question,

  Is one of the purposes of filler to make sure that the amount of carbon dioxide per unit of baking powder is the same between different brands of baking powder?


texts: What can I use to replace white cheese in a roasted red peppers pate?

texts:
So, there's something I usually prepare for myself. It's pretty straightforward (since I have 0 knowledge and skills in cooking). I add roasted red peppers (from a can), white cheese, onion, garlic & olive oil in a food processor and blend them to a smooth puree.

However I have a new friend who is vegan and I want them to try this, so I was wondering what can I use to replace the white cheese?

I suppose the cheese is kind of necessary & I cannot just skip it because it "softens the pepper's strong flavor".


texts: Vegan Alternative for Pecorino Romano in Pesto

texts:
Title says it all, I'm looking for vegan alternatives to pecorino romano for when I want to make pesto for vegan guests. Not striving for authenticity, and yes pesto is serviceable without the cheese, but it's missing a little something something. If it was just parmesan I could get by with liquid aminos or something, but it seems much harder to emulate sheep's milk cheese. And no, vegan cheeses don't work!

The most important part for me is the taste, as I get most of my texture from how I process the nuts and basil.


texts:
Every time I bake camembert in bread dough, I do a bad job of enveloping. Usually, I make a thin dough circle (like a pizza base) with diameter somewhat less than three times the camembert's diameter. I put the camembert in the middle and the herbs, nuts and spices evenly on top of the camembert. Then I gather the dough sides up and make a bundle. I roll the bundle between my hands until it is smooth. After a short time for a last rising, it goes into the oven.

What I don't like in the method above is that I end up with lots of doufgh atop the camembert. I'd like a uniformly thin(fnish) crust around the cheese. So for dinner today, I decided to improve.

I formed a camembert sized concave dough shell. I put the camembert into the shell, put the spices on top, then made a camembert sized dough circle and placed it on top. I pressed the seam to glue it shut, then gave it a smooth shape. Again some raising, and then I put it into the oven seam side up. Sadly, the seam must have opened in the oven, and most of the mildly expensive cheese has flown out. It is 11:40 pm and my dinner is ruined ;(

Does anybody know a practical way of enveloping the camembert so there is no risk of a seam opening, and the dough is evenly distributed?


texts: I have a bread machine and when i follow the recipe putting  boiling water, sugar, one packet of yeast, then let if foam for 15 minutes the yeast still isn't rising. What should do differently?


texts:
I smoked a whole chicken with the skin on it and it did not have a smoky taste.

My question is whether removing the skin will improve the depth of the smoke flavour the next time I smoke a whole chicken.


texts: Baking (pizza) stone and effects on puff pastry

texts:
My pizza stone basically "lives" in my oven and I will be baking on it tomorrow.

Also on tomorrow's kitchen agenda: small palmiers, sugared slices of puff pastry.

As the stone will be hot already, I'm wondering:

What would be the effect of baking the palmiers on the baking stone vs. baking on a classic cookie sheet?

(Assuming correct temperature settings and use of parchment to avoid burned in sugar in both cases.)


texts: Making a vegan potato-puree like course without whole potatoes

texts:
I live in Thailand in which potatoes in retail supermarkets can be a bit expensive because of a bit low demand due to low traditional usage in local cuisine. In my opinion in Thai bazaars the price is likely to be a bit lower though. Although, it would be hard for me to make these in my apartment as I don't have much tools in quite small kitchen, in which I have an electric stove with small pot and common sized pan.

I desire to make a vegan instant potato puree like course.
In Thailand, as in the rest of the world, instant Potato puree like courses are commonly sold ready to eat by "add hot water and heat" method in "convenience stores" and I consider to prepare something similar with potato starch by my own because I find these instant courses unhealthy (filled with synthetic materials with doubtful effects on human health and also expensive).

Using potato starch might be good for me because people use it to make non traditional cakes in this country and it is likely to be sold online in large quantities for small businesses (although I am a single buyer) and could be mixed with ingredients and cooked fast.

To clarify problem I'm trying to solve is making a vegan potato based or primarily potato based Potato puree; desirably without using whole potatoes (or with using a small amount).

Notes

I never found dried potato flakes in local stores in my area but online shopping might be a good alternative
Any other staple food (rice/corn/semolina, etc) doesn't necessarily do with the problem I am trying to solve

My question

I assume potato starch (which is of course just the starch and not the whole potato) would be a basic ingredient of a potato puree like course and if so, what else do I need besides potato starch, for making a vegan potato-puree like course without whole potatoes?


texts: How long does coconut curry last in the fridge?

texts:
I have three day old green coconut chicken curry in the fridge and am wondering if coconut milk goes bad very quickly. (This is complicated slightly by the power cut we had two days ago for 12 hours. I ate a bit of leftover pork after the power cut and it was fine and the milk was also fine. My house is not hot as it's fall and we are not using heat, the fridge seemed pretty cold but unfortunately I didn't have a thermometer).

My question is that seeing how some foods were fine, would coconut curry be more of a problem than say cooked meat or milk?

I have spent time in Indonesia where they keep cooked food overnight in a cupboard and don't get sick (generally) vs. the extreme-sounding food safety stuff has me confused. Thanks!


texts: Can I make buckwheat flour starting from toasted buckwheat?

texts:
My wife asked me to buy "buckwheat" and I did, but she meant buckwheat flour (for making bread) and I got toasted buckwheat instead.

I don't want to throw it out if I don't have to.  We have a mortar and pestle.  Can I just grind the heck out of the toasted buckwheat to make the flour or is buckwheat flour something else?

Thanks!


texts: What are the hallmarks of a traditional alfredo sauce?

texts: There are many recipes for alfredo sauce, using ingredients from pesto and soy milk to low-fat milk and cream cheese.  What is the gold standard for alfredo?  What properties indicate a traditional Italian-style alfredo sauce?  What type of pasta is it traditionally paired with?


texts: How do you safely bring ingredients normally stored cold to room temperature?

texts:
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?


texts: Would it be in any way possible to bake cookies using a blowtorch?

texts:
I was wondering, what if it was possible to bake cookies using blowtorches? It would be the ultimate in convenience. I do realise, though, that the surface would sooner char than bake through with a blowtorch, so perhaps its possible to achieve baking or similar results using extremely thin sheets of batter? It would become something like thins...

Suggestions for alternative foods I can try making with this line of thought would be appreciated as well.


texts:
I made some scallops last night sous vide and before I put them in the bag I rinsed each one carefully and didn't see anything on them. After cooking and searing I tried them and there was a little grit which for me ruins any scallop or clam dish.

What can I do to make sure I don't waste my time with gritty scallops?


texts: Pears caused uneven bake - how to stop this?

texts:
I baked a gingerbread cake following a recipe which seemed fairly typical for gingerbread. The instructions included slicing a pear and pinwheeling it across the top of the batter. I ended up over-baking it because the pears prevented the very top layer from baking and I couldn't see that the sides and bottom were plenty well done. Now I have a dry gingerbread that has a top layer of basically pears and batter.

Edit for details: Oven temp was 375, 9.5" glass pie dish (called for 9x9 glass dish, but I didn't have one). It is a very small, old oven that I'm not used to yet, though other things I've baked have so far turned out alright.

I assume the wet pears caused this, but it's not the first  recipe I've seen that you bake with fruit on top. How could I have prevented this uneven bake while still using fresh fruit?


texts:
I've begun cooking Asian food in the past year or so, and in many Korean and Chinese beef recipes, I see instructions to soak beef in water. Just plain water, not salt water or anything. And every recipe seems to have a different  time - from 5 minutes to like, multiple hours.

I inquired about this and was given various reasons for this step, including "to remove the blood (because it is simply undesirable", "To remove the blood, because it gives the meat a bad taste" or "To soften the beef".

I'm wondering:

Does soaking meat in water really remove that much blood?
How much of a flavor component is blood and why would it give it a bad taste (especially since i've never soaked beef before and I've like the taste just fine)?
What is the action of solute-free water on a piece of beef immersed in it? Can it really tenderise it to any degree, or is there any osmosis occurring or other such physical/chemical action?


texts:
We live in Hawaii and their are lots of larger (really big) land snails.  I don't know if I can eat one but I was wondering if it can be eaten.

If it can be eaten, how would it be best to prepare them, or what can I pair them with?


texts:
I'm particularly interested in how aged Gouda will melt compared to young Gouda, but I'm interested in what happens to its flavor as well.

I live in the US and have never actually tasted aged Gouda. The Gouda I know is young, soft, very smooth, and melts beautifully. It's almost like American "cheese" that way, but unlike American cheese, it actually has some flavor. I'm interested in a more intensely flavored cheese that is still very meltable.

As a bit of comparison, I use cheddar quite a bit. Young cheddar melts beautifully (in macaroni and cheese, for example) but it doesn't have intense flavor. I much prefer the taste of sharp (or aged) cheddar, but it doesn't melt smoothly. Using aged cheddar alone in mac and cheese doesn't work well; it's grainy and often separates even in a bechamel. I'll still happily put it on a burger though.

I'm about to buy some Beemster Aged Gouda that has been aged for 18-24 months and I want to use it to its best advantage. I'm interested too in 5 year aged Gouda, but with shipping it's very expensive. I'd happily read any comments about the value of long aged Gouda as well.


texts: Does "1 lime leaf" mean a pair of leaves, or half a pair?

texts:
I love lime leaves. In fact, I bought a lime tree so that I can have them all the time without making a grocery run. The leaves look like this:

I have some very nice recipes that call for them but even my French/Cambodian cookbook with the amazing illustrated ingredient encyclopedia does not clear up one thing:
Is that three leaves or six?
I'm in the middle of making a paste right now that calls for five "lime leaves" and so, according to my usual habit, I'm going to go and pluck 5 leaves off the tree... Which means, I'll have 10 leaf segments. Or will I have 10 leaves?
The taste is so nice that I've never had the feeling I was doubling the amount called for. Still, I'm curious—is there some widespread agreement, or even better, an authoritative source regarding what is "1 leaf?"

Note: It has come to my attention that one of the common names for the lime leaves common to Southeast Asian cuisine carries a strongly offensive connotation. For more information, I recommend reading this article on The Plate blog from National Geographic, which provides links to several other worthy articles on the subject. I have removed or replaced this terminology from the question and would recommend that users choose to do the same in their comments and answers.


texts: How do you make a smooth and creamy apple custard?

texts: I've been trying to figure out how to make a creamy custard ( like for a creme brulee) infused with apple (or any kind of fruit/berry) while keeping a creamy texture and avoiding chunks. Ive thought about cooking down the apples then heating the cream with the apples and then straining it into the eggs but im worried that the cream may become too thin from the water in the apples. Any ideas for how to accomplish this? I havn't had much luck looking online.


texts: How can I prevent bacon mayonnaise from splitting when above fridge temp?

texts:
I know how to fix a split mayonnaise made with olive or vegetable oil - that's not a problem.

I have made Kenji Lopez-Alt's recipe for animal fat mayonnaise (bacon fat, for putting on a burger). It emulsified beautifully, chilled wonderfully.. and then as soon as you put it on a burger it gets too warm and splits faster than a gymnast at the Olympics.

The recipe I used:

2 egg yolks
1.5tbsp Dijon
1tbsp white wine vinegar
salt and pepper
600mL bacon fat
800mL vegetable oil

Two egg yolks should be more than enough to emulsify this, and indeed were -- I had to add tons of vegetable oil just to get the right consistency. But as soon as the bacon mayonnaise gets above fridge temp, it splits immediately. It re-emulsified with agitation, but that's a bit tough to do when one is trying to serve a burger in a restaurant. Help?


texts: what can i add to wings that were frozen in a soy sauce to save them

texts: i was making stickey wings and the party was put off for a week, so I froze the wings in the soy sauce based maranade now im fixing them ans the salty taste is horrible, is there anything i can add to them or do to get ride of the high sodium taste


texts: Why does milk turn yellow in a silver glass?

texts:
I boiled some milk and started to poured it in a silver cup by mistake. There was just some drops in it. The glass was clean and nothing was added to it.

But after an hour, I found that the milk turned bright yellow. Never seen milk in that color. What happened? Is something wrong with the silver cup or milk?


texts: For Pizza cooking at home. What is the best alternative to the pizza stone?


texts:
Some recipes call for stiff mashed potatoes, e.g. to help well formed shapes as in this recipe:

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/crunch-swiss-and-ham-appetizers

Should I just boil the potatoes, mash way too much, and add no butter nor milk?


texts: Fissler frying pans. Are they worth the price?

texts: I just saw a good deal on frying pans from Fissler. The two pans included in the deal are the "crispy" and "protect" models. However, it is still a lot of money (169 €). Before I place an order I am looking for feedback from people who have used Fissler frying pans for a while. Are they worth the price?


texts: How long can I keep shrub syrup in the refrigerator

texts:
I just made shrub syrup, by cooking fruit in sugar water (~0.5-1 cup of water and ~0.5-1 cup of sugar), sieving it, and mixing vinegar into it (~3 tablespoons of 10% vinegar on 1 cup) and I'd like to know how long I can roughly keep it when storing it in the refrigerator after I filled it into clean (but used) screw cap bottles.

What I maybe should add is, that I don't intend to store the syrup for a very long duration without using it. I will open the bottles now and then to take some of it out.

I am aware of this canonical question, but since it is a mixture of various things and since I'm not that well-versed in the intricacies of food storage (or cooking in general actually), I wasn't too sure what to take from it and maybe there might be a more detailed question possible applying to this type of food.


texts: Is horseradish and Wasabi the same thing?

texts: Is horseradish and Wasabi the same thing or are they different, what are the differences in taste and texture, if there are indeed any?


texts: I would like to buy strawberry ice-cream for my friend, and most of the strawberry-flavored ice-cream is pink in color. However, I am thinking of serving the ice-cream green color instead. Is there any way to color the ice-cream as such? Thank you.


texts:
Light snow is in the forecast for Thanksgiving. I plan on deep frying the turkey.

I have deep fried turkey before. I know what to do and what not to do: I wear layers of clothing, goggles, lower/raise the turkey slowly, and have two people nearby to assist in case of emergency (at least one with a cell phone). I have a "little" deep fryer I use indoors as well. So I am not a newbie to frying. While writing up this question, Stackexchange recommended this question which I read:

How do I safely deep fry a turkey?

Still, I don't have a good answer to the question: how do I deep fry with a steady supply of frozen ice crystals slowly meandering down from the overhead clouds into my driveway? Sure, I can turn the burner off while I am lowering/raising the turkey. That removes some risk. But at some point the oil will be hot enough to flash boil water/snow while it is snowing.

Keep in mind this should be very light snow. It is not a blizzard. It is not a thunderstorm. Is the risk of flash boiling snow to the point of causing fire and injury too great? Is there a way to mitigate this risk?

One idea I had while brainstorming is to put up a collapsible gazebo over the fryer -- but that could be comically fatal for other reasons than snow.


texts: Mashed potato: start with hot water or cold water?

texts: I've always been told to start root vegetables in cold water to ensure that the dense structure heats evenly and you don't end up with a mushy exterior. With mashed potato I'm going to tear it apart anyway, so is it worth starting it from cold instead of using water from the kettle?


texts: How do I prevent my bread crust from drying out?

texts:
When I make bread pizza or toasted sandwiches in my oven, the outer crust dries out. Which elements should I use for baking to prevent it from drying out?
My oven is 35 liters with convection.


texts: Why is a head of cabbage green, yet it appears white when chopped for cole slaw?

texts: Cole slaw can be purchased as either a dry mix of chopped cabbage (and perhaps other veggies), or dressed and ready-to-eat.  In either form, the cabbage appears white.  Yet a full head of cabbage appears green.  Why is there a color difference?


texts: Which speed setting of a mixer-grinder should be used for which purpose?

texts:
Slow, fast, medium are the speed settings in those appliances, for example this mixer-grinder.

Why are there 3 settings, why not only fast? Which setting should be used in which case?


texts:
What is a good ratio to use when substituting dry milk with fresh milk?
When would it be inappropriate to use fresh milk instead of dry milk?


texts: Can microwave with convection replace an actual oven?

texts:
cross posted from diy -- people suggested I ask the question here.

I live in a townhouse with a small kitchen and I am wondering if something like this item: http://www.kitchenaid.com/shop/major-appliances-1/microwaves-2/microwaves-3/-[KMBP107ESS]-407653/KMBP107ESS/

implies that it can be used as a microwave and as a conventional oven where you would bake things.

I understand the space inside it is limited but as my kitchen is very small if it can serve both roles, that would be a life saver. I understand I wouldn't be cooking with ovens much, but could you do the basic things, like baking, etc...


texts:
What are the benefits of using egg white vs milk when glazing different kinds of pastry? - For example what should you use for Puff Pastry and Plain Pastry?

Does using either glaze give a different effect / taste?

Thanks in advance for your advice.


texts: Basic carrier sauce/syrup for different sweet flavors?

texts:
I have an application where I would like to have a half dozen different flavors (all sweet) that are in the form of a sauce or slightly viscous liquid.

Rather then 6 recipes I am hoping to find a sauce base that I can flavor with different flavors.
i.e. Peppermint, vanilla, ginger, cinnamon, dark chocolate, etc..

Mouth feel is important.

I was considering a stock syrup but am concerned that it might be to sweet or not have a good mouth feel and would like to thicken it somehow


texts:
I bought some avocados recently, and one of them was rock hard when I tried to cut it.  I left it out for a couple days hoping it would ripen, but it didn't help.

What can I do to help my avocados ripen?


texts: Is reusing bones for stock better than once cooking longer with more water?

texts:
I've heard about reusing bones for stock (eg. blog post even if the second time is a bit weaker flavor.

My question is, if there is some advantage to this. Consider the following to scenarios:

Fill pot of bones with N liters of water until just covered. Boil X hours. Strain broth. Refill as before. Boil X hours again. Repeat. Combine all three batches into one big soup.
Fill pot with 3N liters of water and boil for 3X hours.

The former seems much more labor intensive. Will the flavor extraction work better the first way for some reason? Perhaps the fresh water is better suited for extraction? Perhaps the lower water:bone ratio helps speed things up?


texts: Why and how does the egg white stick to its shell when cooked sous vide?

texts:
I've been cooking eggs sous vide and love the control over the consistency of the yolk; a perfectly jammy egg yolk is one reason the sous vide approach impresses me. However, there is one sticking point for me: the egg white sticks to the egg shell! I find it frustrating that whenever I cracked a sous vide egg, sometimes all that would come out was the yolk, and the egg white would be stuck to the inside of shell. Can someone explain what is going on?

Why does the egg white stick to the shell when a egg is cooked sous vide?

For what it is worth, I've found a method that helps overcomes this limitation. The traditional boiled egg approach cooks the egg from the outside in, yet relying on a watch and a pot of boiling water can yield inconsistent results and runs the risk of overcooking the yolk. After cooking an egg in the sous vide to the desired yolk consistency perform the following:

Have an iced bath and pot of boiling water prepared.
Take the eggs out of the sous vide and cool them in the ice bath for a few minutes. This will cool the egg some and mitigate the additional cooking of the egg yolk in the following step.
Take the eggs out of the ice bath and place them in a pot of boiling water. Boil the eggs for 5 minutes.
Take the eggs out of the boiling water and place them back in the ice bath.

I have found that "shocking" the eggs after cooking them sous vide helps firm up the egg white a bit and release the egg white from the shell, making them easier to peel, yet the results still aren't where I'd like them. It's almost like inverting the timed-boil approach and cooking the egg from the inside out. Can anyone explain why this approach is working, but isn't quite enough?


texts:
Possibly, this is a rather trivial question, but I've not yet found any good explanation.

Whether I cook a steak for bacon, as long as it is red meat, the ground of the pan fills with a brown sediment, similar to this picture.

What's that? As for bacon, I heard that some people even collect the flavored grease.


texts:
I just bought green tea leaves in China. They were in a deep freezer when I bought them. They were then in my luggage for a few days on my way back home.

I bought a fair amount of them. Can I now re-freeze at home? Or, like food, is it dangerous to re-freeze green tea leaves?


texts: How to prevent scorching and sticking when boil soy milk

texts:
So long story short, I really like making tofu at home and I have done it a lot of times. I am pretty happy with my end results, but the boiling soy milk part always bothers me.
No matter how much I stir the soy milk while boiling it, the soy milk always sticks to the bottom of the pot and burns, leaving lots of mess. I also tried the microwave method, the sticking and burning is gone, but it is very time consuming (takes 15 mins to fully cook 2-3 litres of soy milk).
So just wondering if anyone has any great method to fully cook a few litres of soy milk? Perhaps steaming it? If steaming actually works, how long can I expect it to fully cook the soy milk.


texts: Cookie dough between batches - Refrigerate? Or no?

texts:
I'm making a bunch of cookies, but I only have one cookie sheet that I like and I'd just assume do it it one tray at a time anyway, so I'll be baking the cookies in several batches. They're just regular drop style cookies. recipe I know that I'll need to cool my cookie sheet between batches, but I'd like to know the best way to handle the dough as it will take probably about two hours to complete all of the baking. Should I refrigerate the dough between batches or leave it at room temperature?

EDIT: Since the issue of cooling the tray between batches has come up in answers, I'd like to point out one small thing. It ain't no thing. It's January. I live in Alaska.


texts: How do I know if escargot is fully cooked?

texts:
I recently had escargot the first time at at buffet. It wasn't piping hot but I was able to pull the meat out of the shell easily and it was chewy. There are bits of black
here and there on the meat.

Questions

1) How do I know if it's fully cooked?

2) What are the little black bits on the meat?

I asked the servers but they all said it was fully cooked and safe to eat. But how do I know?


texts: Salad onions -- any way to make them sweet but not soft?

texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  How do I tone down the intensity of raw onion?

I like the taste of caramelized onions (I think Ruhlman's book had mentioned it was removing or changing the sulfur), but they are sometimes too soft for salads. What are good ways at lessening the sharp taste of raw onions for salads? I've tried soaking them in water, but it didn't seem to make a large difference -- they were less sharp on the outside, but once you bite into them, they had the same "harsh" taste.

(Also, I've mostly been thinking of red or vidalia onions...)


texts: Why does KitchenAid recommend against using the Dough Hook on Speed 1?

texts: KitchenAid's manual for the stand mixer contains several warnings not to use the dough hook on any speed other than 2. While lots of websites explain how high speeds can overheat the dough, what can go wrong at low speeds?


texts: Using liquid nitrogen for tenderizing octopus?

texts: I recently had an idea to try and rapidly break down the "rubberizing" connective tissues in octopus using a different method than the tried and true boiling or hammering. It is well known that freezing will cause cell ruptures but ordinary home freezing probably would be too destructive for octopus, so I was thinking about liquid nitrogen since it creates smaller ice crystals due to the rapid temperature change. I have never worked with LN and I would hate to try this as my first experiment with it so I was hoping maybe someone who does use LN may have tried this (or would be willing to try this) to see if it makes the octopus more tender. I am thinking maybe the octopus should be well hydrated before the freeze, and then immediately cooked afterwards to force the cell ruptures.


texts:
I purchased eggs from the refrigerator in a local grocery store...When arriving home I missed and left them on the floor in my house in the plastic grocery bag still in the carton for 2 weeks! The temperature in my house stays on 76-78 degrees here in Florida.

Is there a test that I can do here at home to see if the eggs have spoiled or have salmonella, or should I just throw them away? When I found them here I put them in my refrigerator but have not used them.


texts: What is the correct French word for brisket?

texts: What word can I use to accurately describe brisket of beef in French? I usually go to the butcher with a chart of US beef cuts and point to it but it neer seems to correspond to the same piece. Does anyone know the definitive translation?


texts:
I've been revisiting frozen food due to COVID, including one of my old favorites, hot/lean pockets.

Years ago, I used to always make these in the toaster oven; they are much, much better that way than microwaved. I also tried to avoid lean pockets — couldn't exactly say why, maybe a notion that they are less flavorful or have more artificial ingredients¹ — but any more only it's hard to find vegetables (other than tomato); if you want green, you have to go lean pockets.

However, the cooking instructions are "not recommended for regular oven or toaster oven", and no (oven) directions are given. This makes me very sad!

Does anyone know why this is, and can I cook them in my toaster oven anyway? (If necessary, I'm willing to invest in a probe thermometer so that I can cook to temperature rather than having to guess at cooking time.)

p.s. I can't figure out what tags would be useful; help from folks that know the tags better would be appreciated!

(¹ Yes, I realize the likely idiocy of this. Please don't judge me .)


texts: What is the most energy efficient way to cook meat on an electric stove?

texts:
I have a reduced sense of taste and smell; so when I cook, things like preparation times, cost of ingredients, energy efficiency, healthiness and to a small extent novelty of the dish play a slightly more important role than taste or even texture (for taste I usually just add some bitter Marmite or some extra hot Chakalaka).  There is one taste that I do not like and that is the greasy taste.

Thus I sometimes find myself cooking some cheap cut of meat to put on bread.  So I am asking how do I make my cooking more energy efficient? Here are the constraints: it should not be mince (unless that answer can be easily tacked on), the precooking preparation time should be most 10 minutes (the actual cooking time does not matter), it should use a minimal amount of oil (if at all), the meat should be well done and I am cooking in a stainless steel pot on an electric stove.

Should I cook the meat quickly or slowly (higher temperatures lose more heat per second, but cook the meat faster)?  Should I cook it in water or fry it (for cooking in water, more heat is transferred to the meat, but energy is lost due to evaporation and it takes energy to heat the water)?  The only thing that I am certain of is that I must cook with the lid on.

I am also interested in the science behind it.


texts: How do I "cool" down very spicy tortilla soup?

texts: Thought the recipe asked for a full can of chipolte peppers, of course it was only one. was able to remove most but is still to spicy for company.


texts: I made a potato, parsnip (and 1 apple) soup.  I put in a "bunch of parsley tied in a packet."  The soup is too powerful.  I am not sure if it is the parsnip (since I do not typically eat these,) or the parsley.  Any suggestions to "soften" that strong flavor?


texts:
I have successfully made sushi rice or ketupat cakes with long grain basmati using the slow cooker. I see the advantage that I could use fragrant or any usual household rice rather than sticky rice.
It takes about 3 hours to get sticky basmati sushi rice, and about 4 hours to get ketupat rice. I have even made biryani ketupat embedded with shiitake slices.
The ketupat rice would need to stand for a couple of hours to fuse into a rice cake. Right now, I need to use a knife to cut up the single big block of ketupat rice cake. I am racking my brains what type of dividers, and how, I could put in to produce small blocks of ketupat. Because cutting and digging out the rice cake causes it to break apart.
I have been scouring the WWW to find if there are people of similar adventure to mine in using the slow cooker and non-sticky rice to make sushi rice or ketupat rice. They must be so extremely rare that I am unable to find them to learn from their experiences.
The incidence of burning the rice is very low since the slow cooker cooks very slowly. It did get burnt once when I had forgotten all about the pot for 24 hours.
As far as I could judge, the basmatic rice is just as sticky. In fact more sticky, while still retaining its individual rice granule shape.
Question:
I am asking these questions because I am concerned that the rarity of the practice might be due to the resultant quality.
Are there disadvantages in quality of resulting rice when using the slow cooker versus using a rice cooker, that I need to know? Otherwise, why aren't people using the slow cooker for this wonderful purpose?
Besides training myself for the right amount of water and avoiding burning of rice, what are the pitfalls I would need to avoid in my continuing this route.
Would slow-cooking destroy taste or scent quality of the rice.


texts: Why do some countries prefer UHT milk and cream?

texts:
My wife and I recently moved to Belgium.  We were absolutely shocked by the fact that UHT (long life) milk and cream dominate supermarket shelves compared to pasteurized - by a factor of at least 10 to 1.  The UHT products are sold in cardboard containers and taste poor compared to the refrigerated fresh stuff.

Considering Belgium is well known for it's rich tradition of dairy products, this struck us as rather odd.

I asked around and was told that France was also going UHT.

Anyone know how this came about? I can see how UHT makes sense when there is a poor distribution network, but surely it isn't by choice???


texts:
I recently lucked into about 4 lbs of a delicious Parmesan. Sadly it's already in 4 pieces, and so I'm pretty sure its going to be more prone to spoilage than a single large chunk. How does one go about setting up a block of dry, hard cheese for long term storage?

Also how long can I expect my cheese to retain its flavor?


texts: Why do spring onions curl up when placed in cold water?

texts: Thinly sliced spring onions (aka green onions, scallions, etc.), usually sliced on a bias, curl up when placed in ice water, making them a rather photogenic garnish. Why does this happen? Does this have to do with how it is sliced?


texts:
I have a recipe that calls for barley miso. I don't find barley miso in the store but they do have about five other types. Can I substitute another one? which one?
thanks


texts: I just got a new cast-aluminum Bundt pan and I want to take care of it so my bundts don't stick. Does anyone have any helpful advise about how to season and clean the bundt pan?


texts:
What is the ratio between flour, sugar, fat, liquid, and egg for waffles?
I searched up "baking ratios" and "cooking ratios" but the closest thing that came up was for pancakes. Now, I know pancakes and waffles have different compositions.

I really want to make my own recipe for orange flavored waffles, and want to do so using the help of a golden ratio.


texts:
I'd always assumed that if you start with safe fish (appropriately stored/frozen), stay with "normal" fish (i.e. don't try to prepare poisonous puffer fish at home), and follow normal food hygiene practices, it was "safe".

And indeed, for years I've been going to the local Japanese market fish counter, and asking for "fish for sushi". The gentleman behind the counter then recommends some fish, optionally slices it for me,  wraps it up and I take it home and make various types of sushi.

Is this correct, or am I missing something? Is there some special technique that I need to follow at home to make safe-sushi?

To be clear, I'm not asking about the safety of the fish itself, I trust the Japanese market fish counter to sell me sushi-safe fish.


texts: How to get the effect of gluten in gluten free baking

texts:
I've been baking gluten-free cakes and in order to get something akin to a regular cake - light instead of heavy - I've been essentially making a sponge cake by making a light meringue and folding the batter into it. This has worked very well, but it does use a lot of eggs and, of course, it does not rise.

Is there anything I can do or use to get a more glutinous-style recipe with the rising (and lower egg count!) and all?

In short: Is there a method to get a GF cake to rise and not be heavy?


texts: What would happen if I add an extra egg yolk to some cookie dough?

texts: I'm making a batch of candied pecans which require the egg white from a single egg, well that leaves me with an extra yolk. I'm going to make some pecan sandie type cookies, and was wondering what would happen if I add the extra yolk? Will my cookies come out ok or will I botch my dough? I had to hand shell all these pecans so really don't want to waste them.


texts: I have a cupcake recipe that I've doubled successfully in the past.  I'd like to triple it for an upcoming party but I seem to recall reading that some ingredients don't work as well if tripled.  Is that true?  If so, what are they? Is there any time when tripling a cake or cupcake recipe would work?


texts: I've only attempted this once, and it was a complete disaster. Can anyone provide some tips for a beginner?


texts: Are products labeled Kosher or Halal generally of a better quality than those that aren't?

texts: I'm talking grocery store products here (including packaged meat), not Butcher Counter where I can grill the butcher about origin.


texts:
I tried making dashi for the first time today, but I think it wasn't very successful... I didn't have kombu so that might be a problem. I ended up adding a lot more bonito than recipes say to use. Still it tasted like water. So I fixed it up quickly with some nice soy sauce and squid sauce (I didn't want to use salt).

Any ideas on what would cause dashi to be tasteless, or is it just how it is? I've never had any in a japanese restaurant so it's hard for me to tell.


texts:
I boiled some chicken last week, and saved the stock for future use. But, as I don't have enough freezer space, I just put it in the fridge, so it has been liquid.

Since, it has been a week, is it still safe to use?

Thanks!


texts:
I have prepared strawberry sauce by cooking strawberry with sugar, squeezing juice of a lime. The mixture was cooked for 10 minutes and mashed. Chia seeds were added in the end and cooled.
Strawberry season is ending soon and I would like to make more of this if it can last for few months.
Since I have not cooked it long enough to turn into a jam am unsure of its shelf life.
How long can I store it in regular refrigerator and how long would I be able to store it in a chest freezer.
I plan to deep freeze it in a chest freezer and thaw/reheat it when required.


texts:
I have a recipe where I cut chicken breasts into 0.5" cubes and cook them on a medium low gas flame for 15-20 minutes in a stew. When I cook the chicken, it comes out a bit tough and chewy. So I was curious if people had tips on how to properly stew chicken. Specifically, how do you get your chicken cooked so it "falls apart" nicely and doesn't taste--to put it bluntly--rubbery.

Thanks.


texts: Additional Cooking Time When baking more than one loaf of quick bread

texts: How much time would I need to increase cooking banana quick bread if I am cooking three loaves together.  Time for one is 40 -45 minutes at 350 degrees. I am a baking novice.  Advice would be greatly appreciated.


texts: Ingestion of small piece of uncooked meat

texts:
I have a question about e coli. I ate a little bit of a very small piece of uncooked beefalo hamburger. I am under 18, and over 11. I know that there are bi-products of this, but what exactly are they? I was being an idiot, and ate it. The piece I bit off from was an inch at most, and I only bit off a bit, if I bit off any at all. I guess I wanted to taste it.

Thanks.


texts: Brown streaking in cooked idli, from white looking batter - what gives?

texts:
Batter was made from "double horse" idli mix (which by label only contains rice and urad dal), plus a few fenugreek seeds, ground in a blender as the package recommends, fermented 24h, in european summer climate, then stored in fridge for a day, looks fine though a bit lumpy raw. No strong off smells as far as I can judge.

When steamed (~20 min) in an idly steamer (which I am not yet very familiar with), the cooked result seems fine but has brown streaks throghout - as if someone swirled caramel or chocolate into the batter. Texture, taste, smell seem fine.

Pot with a whistle, but non-pressurizable. Did not run dry. Batter in raw form has no dark streaks. Equipment clean. Blender might have had traces(!) of cashews, limoncello, sugar, soymilk in it.

Is this a fermentation fault, or can using too much heat to drive the steamer cause some kind of burn/caramelization? Is this anything potentially unsafe happening?

Outside does look caramelized where there are streaks indeed, can the inside swirl be due to steam jets through the steamer holes?

Same mix (not sure if I added the fenugreek), same steamer, same time (not sure about same heat) worked before.


texts: Why is gnocchi a dumpling and not a noodle?

texts: I've recently been told that gnocchi is technically a dumpling, not a noodle. What about it causes gnocchi to fall under the dumpling category?


texts: Differences/Similarities between cinnamon and nutmeg

texts:
I read a while ago that nutmeg and cinnamon are really similar and you can easily substitute one for the other. Yet many recipes call for both cinnamon and nutmeg so it seems like there must be some kind of difference.

What are the specific differences between cinnamon and nutmeg? And are they significant enough to justify buying both cinnamon and nutmeg?


texts: Stainless steel in contact with molten plastics - useable after cleaning?

texts:
(Context:) Years ago, I borrowed a stainless steel pot to an acquaintance. When they returned it, they apologised and said they had accidentally molten significant parts of a plastic ladle in it. As far as I know, they used a common home gas cooker. I don't know what happened exactly, but the pot seemed to have been thoroughly cleaned as no plastic residue was visible in the pot. I have always assumed that steel is useable after cleaning even when plastic has molten on it, and that the cleaning process has been succesful when no residue can be spotted on the steel. Today I pulled out the same pot out of the cabinet and started wondering whether this is really true.
So my question is: After contact with molten plastics (at usual temps of a home cooker) and removal of any visible residue, is there any reason not to put stainless steel cookware back onto the stove?


texts: What are the bubbles on the surface of cooking bacon?

texts:
As you can see in the picture, this bacon is just about ready to be removed from the heat.

Just what are those bubbles/foam(?) on the surface of the bacon?
Note: this is fresh bacon from a butcher-- not processed or packaged-- if that makes a difference.


texts: Can I cream butter, sugar and eggs ahead of time

texts: I have my shortening, sugar and eggs in a bowl ready to cream. I realized I don’t have the extract I need. Can I cream them and let them sit until I drive over to the store for the extract?


texts:
I'm looking for a 100% rye pizza base recipe. The recipes I can find all combine the rye with other flours (typically wheat based). I know it is possible to create 100% rye based pizza bases as I know of one pizza place in town that sells them.

I understand that they had to do something special to keep the pizza base from falling apart. I don't mind experimenting a bit to find a recipe that works, but I could use some ideas on where to start - what sort of ingredients might bind the rye so that it doesn't crumble as a thin pizza base and maintains a low glycemic index for my diabetic wife.

The only dietary requirements would be that the various ingredients maintain a low glycemic index or a specific ingredient with a high glycemic index can be counteracted by some other ingredient. And only using rye flour.


texts:
I watched a restaurant documentary last night (Spinning Plates; pretty good!) which featured a modernist chef demonstrating their kitchen's anti-griddle: essentially a large metal plate chilled down to somewhere around -40 degrees (both F and C, oddly enough).  It's used to chill and freeze foods that can't be frozen at normal freezer temperatures like olive oil, a bit like dipping or dropping into liquid nitrogen.  I've never been much of a fan of molecular gastronomy, but I was absolutely fascinated by this idea, as I'd never seen anything like it before.  I'm compelled to give it a try.

The official, professional version of this machine runs about $1200 USD, so that's completely out.  These guys created one using a cast-iron skillet submerged in liquid nitrogen, but I'm not buying a massive container of that either.  This site suggests that similar results can be had at home by placing a sheet pan on top of a block of dry ice, which sounds more reasonable, at least from a financial perspective.  I obtained an estimate for a 10-inch x 10-inch x 2-inch slab of dry ice (about 10 lbs) for $15 USD.  EDIT: Responses to date also suggest using a bed of dry ice chips.  I'm checking to see if there's a significant price difference, as I'll probably be trying the cheapest method for my first go.

However, before I embark on what sounds like a chemistry lab demonstration in my kitchen, I thought it best to seek some advice.  Specifically:

Has anyone actually tried this at home with any success?  You'll get automatic bonus points for being braver than I.
Are there particular hazards that I need to be aware of during this exercise in applied insanity?  Let's assume that I can guess at some obvious ones like "Don't touch the dry ice with your hands" and "Let the frozen items warm up a little before you eat them".
Would a slab the size of the one described above last long enough to let me experiment a bit, or would it simply sublimate down to a useless size within a matter of minutes?
If anyone's actually worked with a professional-grade anti-griddle before, would a home hack like this produce similar results, or am I just fooling myself?

I look forward to any input that I can get, because I'm really excited by the novelty of this idea!  Feel free to completely dash my hopes.

EDIT: Great suggestions so far, thanks all!  I'm keeping this open for now since I haven't seen any definitive answers based on experience with this method, and I'll add my own answer once I can give it a try.


texts: How does your hand/stand mixer's speed effect the texture of your cookies?

texts:
I've read many recipes asking to mix sugar and butter at medium speed for about 5 minutes. Can I use slower speed and mix it a little bit longer? Will it make any different in the end?

One more thing, when mixing dry ingredients into wet ingredients, does it really make a difference if I use hand mixer instead of a spatula? In the videos, I've seen most of the bakers usually switching to spatula when they have to mix wet and dry ingredients together but some of them mix them in a stand mixer.


texts: Do fava beans need to cook longer than other kinds of beans?

texts: I typically cook my beans a total of 1:45h - 2h after soaking them overnight.  On a couple of occasions, I noticed that did not make fava beans as tender as others get after that much cooking.  Do fava beans need to cook longer than other kinds of beans to get them to be nice and tender or is there something done to them other than the length of cooking?


texts: Can I just rinse a shaker, solely used for immediate consumption of whey with milk?

texts:
...and wash it properly every 3rd or so day. Keeping the shaker inside of the freezer, to slow(/perhaps prevent?) the bacteria growth?
• By rinse, I mean to just shake it up with some water until all remnants are whisked away
• And by wash, I mean use a detergent with a sponge or a brush


texts: How to use meat thermometers with big needles for thinner meat pieces?

texts:
Naturally steaks will be thinner than 4 inches like thermometer needle, at least the one I have. So it will absorb less heat in total, and maybe show lesser values than what is actually inside the meat.

Problem two, meat is less cooked in the middle so how is that adjusted with thermometers? Will it still accurately show that it is medium rare for example?


texts: Does cornstarch affect the pH of what I'm cooking?

texts:
I'm considering canning some fruit compotes to use with yogurt, and the recipe I want to use (which was not designed with canning in mind, found here: http://www.simplebites.net/how-to-make-your-own-fruit-bottom-yogurt/ ) calls for cornstarch to be used to thicken everything up.

Now, I do not have a pressure cooker, so I would be doing this with a water bath canner, and I'd like to know if the cornstarch is going to lower the acidity of the fruit mixture, or if I should use some other thickening agent or method.

Thanks!


texts: Is it necessary to first remove the stems from fresh cilantro when chopping it for a recipe? If so, how much of the stem should be removed?


texts: How to make cake like almond squares into fudgy like Squares?

texts:
I made Almond Paste Squares that turned out delicious, but too cake like for what I wanted.  The recipe had these ingredients: 1 C butter, softened; 1 C flour; 2/3 C sugar; 1 tsp baking powder; 3 eggs. Then this 1 C almond paste; 2/3 C granulated sugar; 2 eggs; 1 tsp almond flavoring; Sliced almonds, Opt.  The two batters then mixed together.
What can I do to make these more fudgy like brownies?


texts: What can I use a tempered glass pot for?

texts:
I've recently been thinking about what I can get rid of in my kitchen, and I've been debating throwing out a tempered glass pot like this (without the lid):

It's a piece of Pyrex Visions that I've had since college, that I've mostly kept for sentimental reasons. I really only use my cast iron in the kitchen these days, with the occasional copper clad pot thrown in for good measure and I can't really think of a good use for this vintage pot! Except perhaps living in fear of it exploding while on the stove.

Is there a good use for a pot like this, or should I just trash/donate it?


texts: Possible to make sourdough starter quickly?

texts:
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?


texts:
I'm thinking of roasting some duck legs on a bed of plums, much like the recipe here does with breast. However, it suggests simply blending the bed of plums once the roasting is over - will legs produce too much additional fat to do this?

I was also thinking of adding in additional spices similar to this to the roasting dish, and reducing the resultant sauce down afterwards to make it nice thick and sticky. Will that work? What's the best way to keep the legs warm while I reduce the sauce down? I imagine it'll take a little while.


texts: What is the difference between expensive wine and regular wine?

texts:
It's fairly known at most supermarkets and stores you can get regular, cheap wine.  However, at some stores who dedicate themselves solely to liquor and spirits, they sell incredibly expensive wine, even up to $2k from where I've been.

As someone who has tried a bit of wine and not quite fond of the taste, I'm mainly curious if there really is any difference to expensive wine as opposed to store bought, "cheap" wine.  Is there a vast, noticable difference between the two? Is the only reason I would pay more for the age of the wine or how rare it is?

One of my relatives who drinks lots of wine told me that there's relatively no difference between expensive and regular; it's noticable after your first glass, but after subsequent glasses it starts to taste the same. Is this true?


texts: Why is Tsuyu sauce for cold Soba noodles served on the side?

texts: Why are they always served separately as a dipping sauce, instead of mixing it into the noodles like they do with soup?


texts:
I am trying to recreate a faroese dish of braised puffin stuffed with cake.

As I live in the UK, puffin is not a meat that is easily available (if at all).

To anyone who has tried puffin or knows anything about the meat's characteristics, what would you suggest as a reasonable substitute?

My first thought would be a wild duck such as teal or mallard, but these tend to be very lean meats and would not normally suit the 90 minute cooking time suggested in the puffin recipe, which makes me think puffin meat may be quite different to how I imagine it.


texts:
I've been experimenting with whole wheat sourdough bread for a few weeks now.
My starter uses T110 wheat flour at 100% hydration, and bubbles nicely.
I make the bread using:

1.5c T150 wheat flour, 1.5c T150 spelt flour
1/4c starter (also tried with 1/2c)
70% hydration (by mass) with bottled water
about a Tbsp of honey
about a Tbsp of olive oil
about a tsp of salt

(I don't really want to use whiter flour for health reasons.)
My goal is to have something as soft as a loaf of sliced bread from the store (it's just a goal, even if not really possible with what I'm using).

So far, all the loaves I've made have basically entailed mixing everything together at once, kneading, rising, then baking. The result is soft, but kind of dense, and a bit crumbly (in spite of my efforts to knead it more and more...). I suppose I'm overproofing it, too (I leave it sit out for about 10 hours, as it takes that long to finish rising, and when I put it in the oven I have to be gentle or it will deflate). I've read stuff saying that they let it rise 4 hours, but at that point I've only gained about 50% volume.

So, does anybody have any suggestions for how I can get my loaf to be softer, lighter, and less crumbly?


texts:
I recently purchased a cuisine art 5 in 1 griddle machine and cooked with it before noticing the instruction to wash it before the first time use.

Does this really make a difference? And is there any harm from not washing it the first time?


texts:
I baked this pie at 400F (200C) for 25 minutes on the bottom rack, then reduced temperature to 375F (190C) and moved pie to middle rack for 35 more minutes.

The crust doesn't look like CRUST, so to speak.  It looks wet or doughy. Like it'll be chewy.

Any thoughts?

This is the recipe I followed: 2 1/2 cups All-purpose flour, 1 tsp kosher salt, 1 TBSP granulated sugar, 2 sticks cold unsalted butter, and cold water mixed with a little cider vinegar and ice in it. Mixed dry ingredients together then added the butter pieces. I used a pastry blender to cut the biter in. I then adds 1-2 TBSP at a time of the cold water mixture until the dough came together. Split the dough in half, shaped into discs, wrapped in plastic and put in the fridge overnight.


texts:
I followed a recipe the other day that involved cooking "Onion Paste" till Golden Brown. There were no details on how to make it so I assumed it was just "Take the onions and make a puree".

I cooked it for like 10 minutes but it did not change color. I continued on with the recipe as I was afraid that if I cook it longer, it may turn bitter. Usually when I cook chopped onions, they become golden brown in 10 minutes.

I am wondering if I did something wrong? Please note that I also added some water in the mixer while making the puree.


texts: 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!


texts: Can anyone explain the meaning of 2x and 4x brie cheese?

texts: I have seen brie cheese labeled 2X and 4X and would like to know what that means.


texts:
I followed the recipe

overshooting for the duration (2 hours) to aim for medium-well, but dispensed from using my (too slow to rise) thermometer. I ended up with

which is less than very appealing.

I know "individual ovens vary", etc... but this is off by a mile. Can you suggest how this might have happened?

Update

Please comment on the use of 350F for roasting a leg of lamb. One might roast at 425F, and keep in the oven for 60-90 minutes. Alternatively, one might use 275F, and keep the roast overnight in the oven. But what kind of cooking would you be aiming for if you used 350F?

Update 2

Yes, yes, she's a goddess. We love her. She inspired and inspires us. Etc.

But I'm not looking for a defence of Julia's wisdom. Nor am I looking for variables in the recipe (after reading "individual oven varies" on a thousand recipes, it sinks in to take it with a grain of salt).

Would you care to critique the recipe? George M says to up the temperature. That's a good start. What else would you change to get a lot of flavor yet a perfectly tender roast?


texts: How to make ice cream base using evaporated milk easier to work with?

texts:
I sometimes try to make “chewy” ice cream using evaporated milk or dulce de leche made using the “boil a can of sweetened condensed milk” method in the base.
For the batch I’m wrangling now, I used a 14oz can of dulce de leche, 3 cups of heavy cream, a uhh... lot(?) of cocoa powder (I just added more until the dairy looked like it’s not getting darker anymore) and a 4oz bar of dark chocolate. (The dulce de leche adding around 220g of sugar.)
When chilled, this thickened into a puddingy paste that barely flows without coaxing, and my (cheap) ice cream machine started being unable to move it in about 10-15 minutes. (Although a thermometer registered the mixture as below freezing near the middle-ish.)
I usually just pry this out of the machine and into the freezer because what else am I going to do, and end up with fairly tough, albeit not icy icecream.
Is there anything that would make this base easier to work with without significantly changing the ingredients? Recipes for this style of ice cream usually have even more evaporated milk compared to the rest in them, sometimes even adding egg yolks which would likely thicken this even more. (Based on my experiences making chocolate+caramel icecream, replacing sugar in the recipe with caramel made out of it seems to make it so that using egg yolks is the difference between having the base churnable or not.)
I’ve been debating whipping the liquid up (or maybe just tossing it into a blender) before and after chilling to aerate it before it goes into the churn - after all it’s mostly cream and should be around 25% butterfat, but I have no idea if this would be helpful, and maybe there’s better tricks.


texts: Food container "not suitable for foods with a high fat or sugar content"

texts:
I'm considering getting some food containers, but I noticed most of them have this in the description:

  Not suitable for foods with a high fat or sugar content

Why is that ? What could happen if I stored some, say, chicken fat - or plain sugar - in one of those ? They're microwave and freezer safe, so how come they can't handle fat or sugar ?

In addition, are there any rules of thumb for determining which foods have a high fat or sugar content ? It's not always obvious. For example, a dish having 1/3 mince meat - would it be high on fat - and therefore unsuited for the container ?


texts: Graham Crust Cheesecake is so hard to cut?

texts: How come with I follow the instructions to the letter on the Nasbisco Graham box for the cheesecake recipe that my crust come out so hard to cut upon serving? I dont think I'm over cooking it and I alway chill it in the refrigerator overnite! Please help me!


texts: We've got a lemon tree and an overabundance of lemons at the moment. Aside from lemonade, what should I do with them?


texts: If I bought a pre~cooked ham from the store and sliced it and put 3 lbs in a glass dish how long and at what Temperature should I use, so it doesn't dry out?~


texts: how to cook orange lentils in the microwave?

texts:
How to cook orange lentils in the microwave?

I once tried and it ended up as a watery mash. What time, power, amount of water (any other things to take into account), should I use to avoid them being mushy?


texts: How can I compare heat levels from burners?

texts:
Recipes call for cooking food over varying amounts of heat on the stove burners - medium, medium-high, low, etc. How can I compare what the person who wrote the recipe calls "medium" with what (I think) is "medium" on my stove?

With baking, it's easy because 400F in your oven is the same as 400F in my oven. But medium on your burner may be different from medium on my burner (or my burner may be labeled 1-10, and 5 may be different than your medium). Even on my own stove, the four burners are all different sizes and the flame on one is a different size than the flame on the rest, even if the knobs are all turned to 5. How can I ensure I'm using the right amount of heat on the burners?


texts: What is special about pork that makes it so suitable for curing?

texts: No other meat has as many preparations as Pork - you have Bresaola out of beef, and I've seen the odd artisanal lamb and venison product, but why do you not get the range of hams, sausages, bacons etc out of other meats? I'm guessing something to do with the stability of the fat - but I'm not sure.


texts: breaking off chocolate from a block of chocolate

texts: We buy  a block of callebaut chocolate that is five Kg. We are not commercial. I'm looking for a easier way to break off the amount we need it's a block around 40 cm X 20 cm, thick around 5cm. There are indentations on the chocolate for pieces of 500g. If anyone can give an idea?


texts:
In the last two weeks I have made 5 almond pound cakes with varying levels of failure. The biggest problem I'm having is that 3 out of 5 of the cakes have over flowed. The 3 that over flowed used no baking powder or baking soda. Each time I made them I put less and less batter in the pan. I'm so frustrated, I'm ready to give up. What am I doing wrong?

The only variation I made to the recipe was a little extra almond extract.

If you have access to fresh eggs--they make it amazing.  The key is mixing it very well!

3 Cups Sugar
2 Sticks of Butter
1/2 Cup Crisco
6 Eggs
1 Cup Milk
3 Cups Plain Flour
1 tsp Vanilla
2 Tsp Almond Flavoring

Mix: 3 cups sugar, 2 sticks of butter (at room temp), 1/2 cup White Crisco (not the butter-flavored type)  Mix until very creamy.

Add eggs in one at a time, mixing well after each one.

Add half the milk and half the flour. Mix well. Add the rest of the flour and milk. Mix well.

Add the flavorings and mix well.

Cook in a Bundt Pan- I spray it well with Baker's Joy so it won't stick.
Bake at 325ºF for 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hr 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let rest out of the oven for 15 minutes and then remove from pan.


texts:
I live in Australia where smoked BBQ isn't really common. I asked the butcher what he'd recommend for smoking and he suggested a blade steak (I believe it was). It weighs about 1.5kg / 3.3 pounds.

I'd like to smoke it tomorrow at my parents. My brother has a cheap smoker, http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/products/master-forge-charcoal-smoker, that he bought from a hardware store. There are also hickory wood chips.

I've only smoked once before (some lamb shoulder, I think it was) and, given that I'm quite new to this, feel a bit overwhelmed from the info online.

How would you recommend that I proceed? Do I marinate the meat overnight? Use a dry rub? Should sauce and baste as I go? Do I need to create a foil tent? How long can I expect it to take? What temperature am I looking at?

Any advice will be appreciated. :)


texts: What oil is best for seasoning a cast-iron skillet

texts:
I just cleaned up a rusty cast-iron skillet and I would like to season it. The thing is that I don't have lard handy and I'm wondering whether any of my other oils and fats would do.

I have: canola, olive, sesame and almond oil.

Also, I've heard that appying the oil and reheating multiple times improves the seasoning. Is it true? How many times does it make sense to repeat the process?


texts:
How safe is steak tartare?

What can I do when preparing it make sure it is safe to eat?


texts: We are interested in a good quality year-round yeast so we don't have to switch brands or adjust too much according to season.


texts:
I have some Dorset Naga chilli peppers bought from the local supermarket.

Aren't they lovely?  :)

Well, unfortunately, my local supermarket (I think the only one in the UK that stocks them) doesn't always have them in stock, so when they do appear on the shelves, I quickly stock-up on them.

Storing them in the fridge, they'll last maybe a week or so before starting to deteriorate.

My question is, can these chili peppers be frozen and, if so, will freezing them have any "negative" effects ?

I buy these particular peppers for their heat (and also their great smoky flavour), so I'd hate for either the heat or the flavour to be negatively impacted if they were frozen.


texts: I've come across occasionally mentions of savoury meringues with flavours such as beetroot. How are these made? What is used as a substitute for the sugar?


texts: Are you supposed to eat the rind of Brie cheese?

texts: I've heard that it's OK to eat this, but I think it tastes gross. Are you really supposed to?


texts: What's an efficient way of removing seeds from citrus fruits?

texts:
My application is for juicing but I guess it would apply to fruit salads as well.

I have an auger-style crushing juicer and roughly remove seeds I see before ramming the orange/lemon/... pieces down the juicer chute. Unfortunately a few seeds escape detection and as I like to put the pulp back into the juice, I get a few crushed seeds in the juice. Not nice.

Are there any accepted utensils/techniques for removing the seeds beyond probing each piece?


texts: Homemade Coconut Yogurt Turned Yellow on Top Overnight

texts:
I'm making my first little foray into the wonderful world of cultured food making, and have been trying my hand at Coconut Yogurt (this is attempt #4). I have a crock pot that I fill with water, plug into a thermostat, put the probe in the water and set it to 110F. I put the yogurt in a mason jar in the crock pot, make sure the water is higher than the yogurt line, and leave it overnight.

Precursor: yesterday I made a batch, but neglected to sterilize my jar, so I grew both pink and yellow something (I assumed bacteria, rather than mold, because of the colors) overnight. I then learned that pink seems to be the first color your yogurt will start to turn generally when something wasn't quite sterilized properly.

This bring us to my most recent batch - I washed the jar with soap, water, and coarse salt. Shook it for ages, scrubbed with a brush, rinsed with hot water. Boiled twice in a stock pot (I was determined to get it right this time) as well as the lid. I brought my coconut milk to 180 degrees while stirring in 1tbsp of tapioca flour as a thickener, and 1tbsp of granular white sugar, to give the cultures a bit more food. Once I hit 180F and was almost simmering, I pulled it from the heat, and let it cool down to 110F. I opened a new store-bought coconut yogurt with live cultures, plain, unsweetened, and put a spoonful into my coconut milk mixture, stirred gently, then put the lid on and set it in the crock bath at 110F for about 12-14 hours.

This morning I pulled out the jar to take a look. About 1/8th to 1/10th of the top of my volume was a layer of watery liquid, I assume Coconut's equivalent to whey. This may be tinted slightly yellow, but looks relatively clear to me. When I look down from the top, though, there's a brighter shade of yellow that's formed in splotches on the surface. To me, it looks similar to the pink I saw yesterday, only yellow. I've never successful made a batch before and do know there should be some yellow tinting to you whey, at least when it's cow's milk. I'll attach the best picture I could take. My question is: how do I know if this yellow is okay or not okay? If it's grown some alien again today after boiling the jar twice, how can I keep things even more sanitary to prevent this?

Update - after an extra ~12 hours or so (24 hours total) at 110F, the yellow is now way more profound. Now it clearly looks off to me, but hoping someone can tell me what's up with it. Here's a picture of how it looks now:


texts: Does an avocado seed help guacamole stay green?

texts:
My friend was telling me about a habit in the Spanish culture (I'm not sure if it's done elsewhere as well) of leaving the avocado seed inside when making guacamole. The claim is that if you leave the seed inside the guacamole, something in the seed prevents the guacamole from browning.

I'm a little skeptical - I thought that the browning was due to oxidization. If that's the case, then I don't see how a seed could help in preventing oxidization. Am I missing something? Is this true, or just a myth?


texts:
I want to make unique and hopefully really awesome bacon cheeseburgers tonight.

If I had been thinking I would have purchased cuts of meat to grind myself, possibly with the cooked bacon, but what I have is a pound of grocery store ground chuck. I also have a pound of good, but typical American bacon.

I want to make the bacon a part of the burger patty instead of laying strips on top. I'm considering a couple of ways to do it. Obviously one way is just to cook, drain, cool and crumble the bacon and mix it with the beef when I make patties. If I do that, how much bacon can I get into the patty and still keep the patty intact while frying? I'd appreciate any good tips or caveats.

The way I'd LIKE to do it (if it works as I envision), is to par-cook the bacon and press the cut to size and cooled strips onto both sides of the patties before frying. I've learned to handle and press the beef as little as possible to make good burgers, so what could I do to make the bacon "stick"? What I'd like to achieve is the bacon crisping and forming a kind of crust around the medium to medium rare burger.

I plan to cook the burgers in a cast-iron skillet, melting sharp cheddar on top.

EDIT: Joe's answer below got my mind whirring. I'm looking for the bacon cheeseburgers to be "unique and hopefully really awesome", and bacon lends itself to playfulness, so "off the wall" ideas are totally welcome.

Any advice?


texts: I left a non-stick pan on the stove for an hour

texts:
I was boiling something and I left them on the stove for about 1 hour. The pan was full and starting to boil at the start of the time, and when I got down and realised it was totally empty. The gas was on full heat, and since it's gas it does get really quite hot. There is still fumes 3hrs later - I don't think the brand was Teflon, but would it still have been using the same material? And basically, should I be worried, or is most of the internet stuff mostly scaremongering?
Hope this isn't too off-topic!


texts: Should you add some salt to flour when baking?

texts:
I was always taught to add a pinch of salt to flour when baking (mainly cakes / muffins and puddings).

I have recipes that specifically mention adding salt and others that don't.

Is there a scientific reason to add salt?


texts: How do I know if food left at room temperature is still safe to eat?

texts: If I left food out of the refrigerator for some period of time, is it still safe? If I left it out too long, can I salvage it by cooking it more?


texts: Can I safely run the microwave for an extended time with just a bowl of water?

texts:
I would like to leave a microwave running for several minutes (2-5, the longer the better) as part of a research project (I'm measuring the microwave emissions).

Is it safe to put a bowl of water in the microwave to prevent the magnetron from overheating? If not is there something else I could put in.

To answer the obvious question, I do not want to put food in the microwave because I intend to be running the microwave frequently, and it is not sustainable to buy a frozen pizza every time I want to run the microwave.


texts: How to know (without a thermometer) whether an egg is cooked when we put a lid on the top of it?

texts:
Last time I tried to cook sunny side up eggs on a metal skillet. I put butter on the skillet, allowed it to heat and then I cracked two eggs on it. Immediately I placed a glass lid with a hole on the eggs.

I found that the eggs did NOT turn "brown" from below (I kept on checking them periodically by lifting them up by a spoon).
After waiting for quite some time I saw the egg yolk wearing a white layer on them (from the top). I turned off the gas, and to my horror those were the most "hard" eggs I had ever eaten.

Without a thermometer what is the way to know that the "time's up"!

P.S. I DO want the salmonella to be killed.


texts: Should I taste-test food before serving it?

texts:
Do all chefs sample food before serving it?

I ask because I feel like there is a huge sanitary problem here. If the chef gets a taste of the food, doesn't he risk his saliva getting into the food itself?

When I cook at home, should I sample all food before serving it? Is it sanitary?

Some background: I watch a lot of cooking shows, and go to some food festivals, and more often than not, I see chefs taste whatever they're cooking with a small spoon, and later reuse that same spoon to taste again. I could understand that using one spoon for each taste is wasteful, but at the same time I feel like it could cause serious sanitary issues.


texts: How to cook rice & chicken simultaneously?

texts:
I've been eating a lot of brown rice + chicken breast lately, and they both seem to have the same process for cooking (heat for 25-30 minutes).

Therefore it seems I might be able to get away with putting them both in the same pot.  I remember my mother used to do something like this, where we'd get a pot of rice+chicken.

So how does it work?  Do I add everything together, or does the rice/chicken need to go in first?


texts: We just picked a bunch of peaches off our peach tree this morning. There is additional fruit left on the tree and we already have more than we can eat in the next few days. Is there a process I can use to store these peaches for a long time (freezing or otherwise)?


texts: Why are stone ware and dutch oven items exempt from bacteria?

texts:
As I am doing the dishes, I come upon my wife's stoneware "pans".  These pans, I am told, do not need soap.  "Just like a dutch oven".  In fact, soap will ruin them.

Now I did this with dutch ovens when I would go camping as a kid.  I loved it because cleanup was just that much easier (no soaping).

But it has always confused me how this works.  How does the seasoning on stone ware pans and a dutch oven combat bacteria?

Or is soap just overrated?  Can I really just give all my pots an pans a good scraping and then rinse under hot water?  (Bacteria bactsheria, like it will hurt me.)

Or, is my wife wrong?  When we cook off those pans next time, am I enjoying a smorgasbord of bacterial offerings?  (Mmmm, love eating that aged bacteria!)  NOTE: I have never gotten sick from my wife's cooking.


texts: How to tell the difference between stamped and forged knives

texts:
I know the difference between the process of making these knives, but if you saw two knives -- one stamped and one forged -- how do you tell the difference simply by looking at them?

I guess you could also look up the brand and the model, but shouldn't there be a visible difference between the two types?

I read that if the knife has a bolster, it's probably forged, but that doesn't seem to be a very good indicator if you still can't tell for sure using that one criterion.

Any tips?


texts: How can I dice vegetables on a small cutting board?

texts:
I have a fairly small cutting board - about 8.5" x 12.5" (22cm x 32cm), and I am finding it difficult to dice vegetables, especially the onions, without stuff going all over the place.

Is it my technique that's sloppy or should I just get a bigger cutting board?


texts: Best way to clean a countertop if you are preparing food on it

texts:
Just had my kitchen remodeled and this is the first time I've had a kitchen with enough counter space that it's big enough to roll dough etc on. Plus it's the first time it's not a tile countertop so clean up is much easier.

I've been cleaning the counter tops using soft scrub with bleach - and I'm guessing any residue from that will not taste good, or be good for your health :)

What would be the best solution for cleaning a countertop that will come into direct contact with food? Just dish soap and water?


texts:
When cooking scrambled eggs in the frypan I use a spatula to gather the egg together. To me this doesn't damage the pan, and avoids the egg forming 'nodules'. It also saves the time-consuming hassle of cleaning cooked egg off the egg whisk, and possibly saves the hygiene risk of not properly cleaning all of the egg off the egg whisk.
Now I could be completely wrong or have missed something. I know of people who are strongly in favour of using an egg whisk to cook scrambled eggs.
My question is: What are the reasons for using an egg whisk to cook scrambled eggs?


texts:
I was making turkey broth last night in the oven (turkey bones and leftover meat in a stockpot in a 170 F oven for 6+ hours). I read about this technique on a chef's blog, which I can find if needed.

Then I got to thinking. The broth certainly has bacteria in it from the turkey carcass. And all those bacteria are sitting in water, with plenty of proteins floating around in a nice toasty oven. Is all this bacteria + protein + water + heat safe? It seems like broth should be unsafe at the least. Is 170F enough to kill the bacteria that would be present here?

On the other hand, chefs have been doing this for quite a while and everyone seems fine.


texts: Is it possible (and easy) to dehydrate meat in oven?

texts:
I'm looking to buy a stovetop oven since I don't have a regular oven, but the temperature slider of most ovens seem to go from 100C to 230C while dehydrating meat should occur at 70C.
Is it viable to dehydrate meat in an oven by e.g. opening the door slightly as to lower the temperature? Is there another way using an oven?


texts: At which temperature and how long should I cook tilapia on the grill?

texts:
I have never done tilapia on the grill.
At which temperature, and how long should I cook it?


texts: Is cooking beans or any other food in metal cans safe?

texts:
Occasionally, I go camping and cook beans over a fire inside of the [what I am assuming is tin] can it comes packaged in (after opening the lid).   Does heating the metal can release any chemicals in the food?   Is it safe?

I usually have the top of the can open and stir it frequently.


texts:
I need to make banana bread tomorrow, and the bananas I recently purchased with this in mind to not appear to be ripening fast enough. Is there anyway to speed the ripening without spoiling the bananas altogether?

(I have looked at this answer and it refers to how the fridge will speed up "blackening". @Sarge_Smith describes it as a different process chemically, so I am unsure that blackening == ripening for the purpose of making banana bread.)


texts: Making bread dough in the bread maker and baking it in the oven

texts: I am in the process of making bread in the bread maker, but I want to try to bake it in the oven. I am just making white bread. What temp and how long would you recommend baking the bread?


texts: Can you use both melted and creamed butter for cookies?

texts: I've been reading up on cookie science, and read that melted butter makes a denser cookie, and creamed room temp butter makes a cakey cookie. I'm looking to make a cookie thats mostly thin and very crispy on the edges with a little chewiness on the inside. Would mixing butter be a bad idea/does anyone know what the outcome would be if i did a 50/50 melted/creamed butter mix?


texts: How long does it take to cook beans without soaking overnight?

texts: I want to ask that beans are cooked without soaking overnight.What temperature and time is required for perfectly cooked beans without soaking .


texts: What is the the best coffee-water ratio?

texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  What's the Ideal Coffee to Water Ratio for a French Press?

In terms of weight, what is a recommended relation between coffee and the water, when I'm making coffee in a French-press?

I think this also depends on the size of the grind, but let's suppose a standard one.

Which do you use and what's the strength? Thanks!


texts: Why was our garlic butter made in France, much nicer than garlic butter in England?

texts:
We're stumped so we thought we'd come and ask the experts.

Last weekend we were in Paris, and bought what we think was normal unsalted butter (from a marche franprix) and (again as far as we are aware) normal garlic.

We melted the butter on a low heat, cut up 2/3 cloves of garlic, put them in the butter, left it to simmer for 3/4 mins and out came lovely tasting Garlic butter with a strong (but not overpowering) Garlic flavour, almost slightly salty - very similar to Pizza Express Garlic butter if you have ever had that.

We fell in love with the stuff so as soon as we got home bought some garlic and unsalted butter from a UK supermarket. Worked through the same process and it was naff.

There's no strong garlic flavor, the butter looks very yellow and has a strong buttery flavour.

Does anyone know why there would be such a difference? A quick google shows no difference between French & English garlic or butter.

P.s. in Paris we repeated the process 3/4 times so it wasn't a one off fluke


texts: What baked good involves crushed digestives, peanut butter, and marbled chocolate?

texts:
Recently i found a recipe for something I was interested in baking, but I cannot remember the name of it and my computer isn't accessible for a few weeks.
Can someone help me identify the name of the item being baked, or even point me towards something similar.

The recipe was along the lines of:

Crush digestive finely
Mix with peanut butter
line baking tray

Then something was poured over the top and 'messed up' with a spoon to give  marble effect. (I assume chocolate)

Can anyone supply me with more details and suitable ways to find a recipe for this type of dessert?


texts: What's the science behind making German potato dumplings (Knödel) fluffy but not fall apart?

texts:
First off, I'm German, so you would think I know, but it seems traditional cuisine has not been passed down my family tree.

This question really consists of two parts:

What makes potatos dough (or I guess, starchy dough in general, there's all kinds of dumplings, there's pasta, etc) keep its shape when you boil it in water? This may extend to some degree to deep frying.
What properties make balls of dough "fluffy" or "textured", but not "tough", "rubber-like" etc.? I guess this will go somewhere along the lines of what structure the starch granules form with the water, how stable it is, and how dense.

There is about a million recipes online for cooked, raw, and 50-50 knödels. Some have egg, some don't, and just about everywhere there's people asking how to do them right. There's also a question to that here on this site.

However, it's hard to get some actual information on the key aspects (this is a problem I have with recipes in general). I'm pretty sure there ought to be no egg and not a lot of flour in the dumplings. I'm also certain that either all cooked, all raw or half-half are common and widespread varieties, but there it stops.

I would like to find some science based instructions, the kind of articles Kenji runs on The Food Lab. It looks like most recipes have some way of enriching the dough with starch above what's in the potatoes anyway, by draining water from the potatoes and adding starch powder. The father of a friend wraps the potatoes in cloths and puts them through the spin cycle of the washing machine, which (because of the preceding meticulous cleaning of the latter) is a tedious procedure that's only done for Christmas.

Millions of grandmas have reached the proper end result via various routes, using plain ingredients and unsophisticated equipment, so there should be some basic principle at work, which can be analyzed with science, very much like with roasting beef or frying potatoes.

Maybe, we could dig up something about related recipes, like gnocchi, which would be helpful.


texts: What is the trick to create 4 layer Chapati?

texts:
More layers' chapati tastes delicious and looks soft. What is the trick to create 4 layers' chapati?

What I have tried --

Before rolling the chapati, I have made 2 folds by putting few drops of
oil in between the folds.
I rolled in similar fashion at all over the edges and middle
portion.

Till the date, I could make 3 layers' chapati but not 4 layers. I have tried more folds also before rolling the chapati but it doesn't help.


texts: How do I pick a watermelon at the supermarket?

texts: Lately, every watermelon I bring home form the organic section of the supermarket has not been sweet.  Among the small, seedless varieties, I try to pick the densest. How do I know if it is ripe?  Can I ripen them at home?  Should I keep them in the fridge?


texts: Accidentally microwaved stainless steel travel coffee mug. Still safe to use?

texts: The image isn't my exact coffee cup, but it is similar. I didn't read the label and microwaved it until I smelled something strange (probably a minute and a half). Luckily, I when I took it out, only a small part of the plastic on the rim of the mouth was melted, but is it still safe to use for future use? I didn't see any damage done inside the mug.


texts: Why does chocolate tempering requires reaching temperatures where "bad" crystals can be formed

texts:
When tempering chocolates, we want that the chocolate will only contain beta crystals, for this, we melt the chocolate to a point where all crystals break, then cool it down to below the melting point of beta crystals, and then warm it back up to working temperature, which is just below the melting point of beta crystals. In many sources the lowers temperature to get to is 27°C, see for example this video by Callebaut Chocolate.

According to the Tempering section in the chocolate Wikipedia page, there are 6 types of crystals:

Crystal |   Melting temp. | Notes
--------+-----------------+-------------------------------------
I       | 17 °C (63 °F)   | Soft, crumbly, melts too easily
II      | 21 °C (70 °F)   | Soft, crumbly, melts too easily
III     | 26 °C (79 °F)   | Firm, poor snap, melts too easily
IV      | 28 °C (82 °F)   | Firm, good snap, melts too easily
V       | 34 °C (93 °F)   | Glossy, firm, best snap, melts near body temperature (37 °C)
VI      | 36 °C (97 °F)   | Hard, takes weeks to form

Where it's obvious that we want only crystals of type V, but lowering the temperature to 27 °C, just below the melting point of the type IV crystals, allows them to be formed, before they are broken in the reheating.

Why do we allow chocolate to go below 28°C and allow type IV crystals to form, and not stop the process at 29°C?


texts: Can cultured buttermilk powder contain live cultures?

texts:
I'm looking for some buttermilk starter, which I know I can buy online, but I wanted to shop locally first.  The two local health food stores don't carry it, so I checked one of the local supermarkets, and came across some Saco Cultured Buttermilk Blend, which is a dry powder.  I'm curious if this can possibly contain live cultures, though.  One forum post I found claims it does not:

  Because the SACO buttermilk is dried, it contains no live cultures and will not be a good buttermilk starter culture.

However, many other living organisms, (such as dry yeast, and the freeze-dried Kéfir starter I found in the store today) come in dry form, so I'm not convinced that a dried product cannot contain live cultures, but maybe dried buttermilk is different.  So is it true that this type of product does not contain live cultures, or will it work as a buttermilk starter culture?


texts: What N+ stands for in French and Dutch descriptions of a spread / cream cheese?

texts:
I have a Polish spread cheese that is also marketed for Dutch and French markets and thus has descriptions in three languages. Polish and French or Dutch names differs by number used in it.

Polish name's equivalent to English is "spread cheese 24.2% of fat". French and Dutch names are equivalent to English "cream cheese 60+".

What that "60+" stands for, what does it mean and how does it correlate to 24.2% of fat.

EDIT: Here are the photos of a cheese in question, box containing it photographed from both sides:

Dietary table (placed on back, not photographed) says that it contains exactly 23.5 grams of fat per each 100 grams of the product. Thus this cheese, by no mean, can contain 60% of fat and this number must stand for something else.

As you can see, to make things even more complicated there's a "V.G./M.G.: 70%" notice on the front (haven't noticed it before). So this gives us three numbers:

23.5 grams / 24.7% of fat,
60+,
V.G./M.G.: 70%.

Last two are unknown to me.


texts: Do all modern electric stoves have "binary" heating elements?

texts:
I've noticed that the burners of some or all of the newish-style electric stoves which have a flat top have a peculiar property.  They do not seem to be capable of running at a constant low temperature, instead periodically coming on high for brief-to-longer periods of time.  These stoves were not, as I understand it, discount priced.  They are not induction stoves, but seem to have an element embedded in the material which forms that part of the stove top.

Is this an across-the-board trend in new stoves?  Is it difficult to find electric stoves which work the "old way", supplying a constant temperature?  Is there an advantage to the way these newer stoves work?  It would seem to be difficult or impossible to cook a range of dishes on such appliances.


texts: Does anyone know what's in the topping that gets baked onto butter crunch French bread? I think that it is cheese but I'm not sure.


texts: how does the poaching eggs recipe scale for different sizes of egg?

texts:
The recipe for poaching regular chicken eggs states to leave the egg in a pot of simmering water for ~4 minutes (besides of messing with the liquid pH levels).

I was wondering how the temperature, pH and the time would change for eggs of different sizes, e.g. quail and ostrich ?


texts:
It is easy to make soda by adding sugar and yeast to a bottle of water and closing it tightly. However, checking different recipes, I did not get what is the best condition for this. I have a couple of tiny questions to find the optimum treatment.

I added 1/2 tsp instant yeast (baking yeast) and 1 tsp sugar to 2 l of water.

Should the bottle left untouched, or it is useful to shake it
occasionally?
To keep it warm, is it good to put it in sunshine, or
    a dark place is better for it?
Leaving air in the bottle or filling it completely?


texts: I regularly get an organic veg box, which occasionally contains items that I'm less familiar with, or are more challenging to make something delicious with. One that causes me a lot of trouble is Kohl Rabi, as it's not something I've come across, so don't know the best ways to prepare it. So, what is the best way to eat Kohl Rabi?


texts:
I've attempted to make creme brûlée several times using different recipes. The usually result is that the custard doesn't set, and gets up too runny. I've tried adjusting the ingredients, and the amount of time I let the finished product set in the fridge.

I'm wondering what is the cooking process or ingredient that determines the consistency? Time in the oven, level or water in the around the ramekins in the oven, amount of creme/milk compared to egg yoke?


texts: Seasoning refuses to stick to carbon steel pan. Tried various techniques

texts:
Please before you mark this as a dupe, I did refer to this stackexchange question.

I have a Matfer carbon steel that won't hold seasoning at all.

I first attempted the Cooks Illustrated flaxseed oil technique.

I was very careful to follow the instructions carefully.     I got a nice root-beer colored seasoning that looked tough but food stuck to it like there was no seasoning at all and it came right off.

I redid this several times, each time I:

made sure each coat was very very very thin, wiped all but the sheen off
baked the pan for a full hour each coat at 500F with full hour cool-down
ensured each coat was not tacky
applied 5 to 10 coats
used very fresh pure flaxseed oil
Completely cleaned the pan of seasoning between attempts with ovencleaner and scotchbrite

All very time consuming and ultimately ended in failure.

I also referred to this article and followed the tips there.

I additionally followed everything on this stackexchange article.

I just can't get this to work.   I also tried a traditional seasoning.   That doesn't stay either.

I use wooden utensils.   The food just sticks and pulls the seasoning right off. I don't ever wash the pan.

One other thing I've noticed - on subsequent seasonings, no matter how thin I have the flaxseed oil on the pan, at the end of a baking cycle, it appears to pull together into little droplets.   Even with the oil practically wiped off the pan with just a nanometer thick coating.   I'm wondering if the oven cleaner messed up the pan or something.  It didn't do this when I first had the pan (though the seasoning still was a failure)

Any ideas?   I'm about ready to send this pan to goodwill.

Note I have no problem keeping seasoning on a lodge cast iron pan.