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71346 | Can I microwave cooked and peeled prawns?
I brought these marinated cooked and peeled prawns from Tesco for my lunch at work. Can I heat these up in the microwave so I can enjoy them warm/hot, and if so how long will they take to heat?
My best method for reheating frozen prawns is to cover them with hot liquid. Broth is good, but water works. I even just use hot tap water. In a few minutes they are ready to eat. Even if I am adding them to a dish, I thaw them in warm water and add after I have taken the pot off the flame. Frozen shrimp just get rubbery too easily.
If they are marinated, I would heat them slowly in butter (and personally add plenty of garlic).
Defrosting prawns in a microwave is an accepted technique if power is on the lowest defrost setting, but warming prawns with a microwave makes them chewy and hard. If necessary you could warm them on defrost and just go by touch to see if they are up to temperature.
If you are concerned about longevity,
microwaving prawns won't prolong their shelf life particularly, unless you absolutely nuke them, and they become chewy at least as fast as they become warm.
If they have been stored somewhere hot all day, ignore the above and destroy them.
I think the question was asking how long to heat them, not how long they'll stay good for (edited to clarify).
Yes, but my advice is don't. Defrosting frozen prawns on the lowest setting does work, but never microwave prawns to heat them above freezing
The first sentence makes it sound like it's a recommendation about how (not) to affect shelf life, not how you should heat them to eat, and the second sounds like you're suggesting microwaving to heat them after all, just in a specific way. Kind of hard to reconcile that with your comment - maybe consider editing?
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64714 | Does it matter if I make waffles in a frying pan?
I have some waffle batter ready (here is the recipe) but I don't have a waffle iron. Is it okay if I make it the way I make pancakes, by pouring batter in a frying pan?
Did you end up trying them in the frying pan? How'd they come out?
Sounds like your question is actually whether you can make pancakes with waffle batter. You can certainly give it a try, especially since you already made the batter. Not sure exactly how the texture will turn out, but the ratios are pretty similar to pancake batter so they'll probably be good enough you'll be happy eating them.
They won't be waffles, though. Waffles are defined by their shape, which allows them to cook from both sides at once, getting all the surfaces nice and brown, with plenty of extra surface area from all the holes. If you don't have a waffle iron, you're not going to be able to make them.
This is a good answer, since it seems the OP is just going to make pancakes with waffle batter (and that question has been asked before). I'd just add that the recipe listed is really a waffle recipe, with extra oil/butter compared to pancakes. Pancakes made with it will be richer and taste more "fried" than usual. This batter may also be a bit thinner. It likely won't make thick, fluffy pancakes, but something between a pancake and a rich "fried crepe" in taste/texture.
@Athanasius Thanks, somehow I missed the oil when I was looking at the rough ratios. I guess with a waffle iron that'd help prevent sticking and make them even more nicely brown and crispy, but in a pan you wouldn't get the full benefit. Perhaps being sure to cook on the hot side would help.
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73710 | Will different kinds of sugar or coffee affect coffee syrup flavor?
This coffee syrup is basically a 2 to 1 ratio of sugar to coffee, and you boil it to a thick syrup. A person who tasted the final dish said it tasted like espresso!
What kind of effects would it get from different kinds of sugar? Would brown sugar give it a molasses taste, for example?
Would different coffees have any effect on the coffee syrup?
Could you please try to provide a link, or just add in the actual recipe since I'm sure it's just a few ingredients? We're happy to edit and make things pretty, but there are a bunch of coffee syrup recipes on food.com and it's hard to tell which kind you're talking about.
Look under my name for my coffee syrup, my member name is Abraham r
Coffee syrup, like anything else cooked, will taste of the ingredients used. If you use brown sugar it will syrupy and have a molasses flavor, if you use floral honey it will taste of it. If you use a richer coffee bean it will have a richer coffee taste.
Also, how you treat the sugars during syrup making matters - eg if acid is added, you get more inversion and a more honey-like taste.
what kinds of sugar/coffee would you recommend then @rackandboneman?
That's a matter of taste @AbrahamRay, completely subjective and it depends on what you want.
ok. thanks @GdD feel free to make sugestions on how to improve my other recipes if you want on food.com. my member name is Abraham r
I would recommend to start with plain sugar and experiment with some of the inversion and caramelization effects you can get by using different cooking methods :)
thanks for the advice @rackandboneman it's just that I don't usually drink coffee myself.
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21907 | How should I wash the potatoes before baking them?
I bake Russet potatoes. I just washed them a little with cold water and then place them in a baking pan after I put foil on the bottom of the pan. I do not peel them. Is this a good method or should I wait until they dry?
What do you mean by " then added them on the foil in the oven."?
@TFD I edited it
For baking potatoes
Don't just wash them, scrub them. Otherwise you're eating dirt. No, that's not a joke. Potatoes grow in dirt, and are usually sold coated with dirt. Yes, really.
Either salt them and wrap them in tin-foil, or simply bake them on a
bed of salt. Dessication of the skin is important.
You'll probably want to bake them longer and higher than most
recipes say. I find 425F for 1 1/2 hours is optimal (and 2
hours is fine). That results in skin which is dry, crispy, and slightly caramelized, while this inside still is fluffy (albeit, according to some, overcooked).
Another way to get crispy skins is to rub a tiny bit of oil around the surface.
What's wrong with eating dirt if you don't mind the taste or texture? Plus, isn't eating a bit of dirt here & there actually healthy for you? Why do I need to wash them at all? Isn't just the heat of the oven enough to sanitize them? Not washing them saves time & effort.
If the sweet potatoes are grown organically then the dirt is probably good for you. For example, dirt contains vitamin B12 due to all the bacteria living there.
You can just bake them on an oven rack or tray, Nothing special required
Drying them wont make much difference after an hour or so in the oven
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21041 | How can I substitute for unsweetened chocolate in a frosting?
I've found a recipe for cupcakes that I want to try. The ingredient list of the frosting is this:
3 ounces (90 grams) unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup (120 grams) confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
However, where I live, unsweetened chocolate isn't available. I do have dark chocolate (cacao percentage is about 40, but I don't know how much sugar is in them).
I believe the frosting would be too sweet (even for a frosting) if I would use my chocolate. A simple solution seems to put in less sugar, but I think I'm going to end up with a different consistency.
So, how can I make the frosting so that it comes close to the original?
I'm willing to experiment (if for instance there would be a way to split the sugar from the chocolate).
Note: I have cacao powder at home, but I rather not use it for the frosting. The cupcakes themselves contain it and the combination of the two types of chocolate seem nice to me.
The dark chocolate that you have: is it in solid form, similar to how unsweetened chocolate would be?
If you don't want something that is too sweet, maybe a double chocolate cupcake isn't the thing for you :P
@djangodude it's just a block, like http://www.chocolats.nl/uploadedfiles/168-Tablet%20puur.jpg
@Jay, you have a point. But I have no idea how sweet the cupcakes will be :) And I guess the frosting would be sweet enough with unsweetened chocolate.
I would halve the amount of icing sugar and substitute in cocoa powder. As long as you sift the cocoa powder well you should still have a smooth icing at the end. Provided your chocolate isn't milk chocolate you should still have a 'proper' chocolate flavour as well.
It's not milk chocolate :)
Adding half the icing sugar will only result in a stiff frosting with a 'butter like' texture, ie hard and unpleasant, that's why it has double the amount of icing sugar to butter .
blending the cocoa powder into the sugar first will also help get rid of any potential clumps.
The reason this frosting uses unsweetened chocolate is because with all the sugar and sweetened chocolate (even dark, ie 70%) it would become cloyingly sweet. It needs to have double the amount of icing sugar to butter as this produces a smooth texture. If you don't have enough icing sugar it won't have a smooth texture and will have a hard texture almost like the state of the butter to begin with. So there are 2 ways of getting around this:
This is the easiest method. You can use the original recipe substituting unsweetened chocolate for dark chocolate (preferably with minimum cocoa solids of 65% to keep the chocolatey flavour) and add a quarter of a cup of cocoa powder to balance out the sweetness. To equate for the stiffness it brings slowly add 3 or 4 tbs's of milk so it has a smooth frosting-like texture.
Make an meringue frosting. This is appropriate because the meringue keeps the buttercream smooth and light without adding huge amounts of sugar, so you can then use your chosen chocolate and not have it too sweet. To do this you have to make an Italian meringue which is hot sugar syrup whipped into a meringue (or a Swiss meringue but this uses a different method which involves whipping sugar and egg whites until hot in bowl over a pan of water) then once cool whipping in soft chunks of butter. Then you can add your melted cooled chocolate. Here are some recipes for Italian meringue buttercream (US measurements), Italian meringue buttercream (metric measurements), Swiss meringue buttercream (US measurements) and finally Swiss meringue buttercream (metric measurements).
Hope this helps!
I would also use cocoa powder (not sweetened chocolate powder) in place of some of the icing sugar. It would help you maintain the consistency you are after, though the exact quantities you would want to use would need to be adjusted to suit the chocolate you are using. The bitterness of the cocoa powder will help balance the sweetness of the sugar and the chocolate.
Dark chocolate should be unsweetened chocolate plus sugar - those ingredients will account for most of the mass. Your 40% cacao bar is therefore 40g chocolate to 60g sugar (stabilizers or emulsifiers like soy lecithin should be negligible in volume, just a trace amount percentage wise).
So, if you had 200g of the dark chocolate, that would be 80g of unsweetened chocolate, and 120g of sugar... within reasonable reach of your recipe. Maybe add a few extra grams since the chocolate is slightly less, and the sugar won't have cornstarch added like powdered sugar usually does (3% by weight, I think). Since the unsweetened chocolate is chopped, I'm assuming it gets melted in the process of making the frosting - so it might not change the texture too much if the icing was going to be mixed with hot chocolate anyway.
In any case, to make the icing you would be melting the chocolate and when it's cool enough (the texture will change if the butter melts), mixing it with the room temperature butter to make a thick chocolate sauce - kinda comparable to ganache, but no cream. You won't be able to cream the butter with the sugar, but you can probably beat the whole chocolate/butter mixture (with the vanilla) until it's fluffier. Or beat a bit of cocoa powder in with the butter (texturally, it should help, and balance the slightly less chocolate).
Of course, the flavor profile will be eerily similar to your chocolate bar - just a bit more buttery and with a dash of vanilla flavor, so only take this route if you're happy with that bar's flavor.
Alternately, you could try using half as much dark chocolate, and using a combination of powdered sugar and cocoa powder for the other half of what the recipe calls for. So, 100g dark chocolate with 60g sugar and 50g cocoa powder. This will let you cream the butter and sugar for texture, and the extra solids in the cocoa powder should be balanced with the extra cocoa butter from the melted dark chocolate so it doesn't make it too stiff. This might get you something closer to your original recipe, working with the ingredients you have.
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21378 | After you bake eggplant, is it fine to not drain the water?
An eggplant can be baked or grilled; then you peel it. I read that you have to drain it then (e.g. in a colander), even overnight. What if you don't drain the water-does the taste change considerably? Can you still make spread out of it?
I changed "salad" to "spread" in your question; the recipe you're looking at would not be called a salad in English.
This is really about water content, not flavor. Eggplant contains a lot of water, and there can be plenty left after baking or grilling. If you then make a mashed/pureed spread like this, that water could make it a lot more liquid than you want.
That said, if you really thoroughly roast or grill the eggplant, you can get enough of the water out of it that you don't really need to drain it. If you prick a couple small holes in it, and bake for something like 45 minutes to an hour at 400-450°F (200-230°C), or similarly grill until it's well-charred, it'll probably be dry enough.
The exact details depend on the size of the eggplant, and what you're trying to make out of it.
Draining the water also helps getting rid of a somewhat bitter taste eggplants may have, especially if they are overripe. If you start with a fresh, young eggplant which is relatively light to its size (that's the best way to pick eggplants), then there's no need to bother with draining. The heavier eggplants may need draining, depending on their type and condition.
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25190 | Is it worth roasting my own red peppers?
I recently realized roasted red peppers make so many of my dishes pop, but it's a pretty pricey ingredient. A small jar costs three bucks and a big jar is seven. At my local grocer I can get red peppers for two dollars a pound. Does anyone have experience roasting their own and, if so, do you save cost and how do I store them?
I roast them "fresh" as I need them, but my method scales up easily.
I use a gas grill and turn it to high. Set the whole peppers on the grill, and turn them when the skin is black on the hot side. When they're black all over (after maybe 2-3 minutes per side for all 4 sides of the typical ones in my local supermarket), I put them into a large disposable plastic container with a tight fitting lid and let them cool in it. The skin peels off quite easily, and they can be seeded and de-stemmed quite easily.
If I were going to preserve them, I'd probably chuck them into a plastic container or zip-top bag and freeze them.
I also recommend your method, as my family uses it for many years. Besides using a grill, you can put directly the peppers on the stove (works for gas stoves) or on a piece of metal sheet (for cooking purposes).
In my culture we make so called ajvar (and it is usable for the whole winter). It is usually made in late summer when red peppers come to season (and are cheapest too). We prefer it home made rather than buying it ready. It is not all about the money :) And we do it big scale operation (whole day or weekend event). This is the recipe with notes:
buy "thick" pointed red peppers (they have more "meat") - not "bell" ones
make small cut on tips (on pointed side - for later processing)
preferably do grilling, peeling and cooking outdoors - the process is messy and stinky
I advise to grill them on high until skin is black (makes them easier to peel)
prepare enough dishes - do not use plastic dishes as they tend to leave red stains
when grilled leave them to cool down a bit, then peel while warm (you may like to use gloves because your fingers will also catch hard to wash stains)
place then in dish, point down, to drain from inside and cool down (that's why cut on the point tip) - there will be a lot of water coming out from the inside
remove stems and seeds, wash them with cold water, drain them
cut into convenient pieces (of your preference) some folks here also mince them, I prefer "strips"
when done with all grilling, peeling, draining, cleaning and cutting, place them in large pot, then cook them with a little oil until there is no "water" at the bottom of the pot (will dry them and pasteurize them a bit further)
when almost done, mix in salt and essence (concentrated vinegar) - these are preservatives (essence very stinky - do outdoors)(salt to taste)
you may add garlic (for taste) - I don't (you can always add garlic later if needed).
pour in jars while still hot (important!)
top it with oil (olive or vegetable oil) - this is another preservative
put a lid or cover with double plastic wrap while everything is still warm.
when cooled down, jars will "vacuumize" (a plastic wrap can be better as to see which jars are not as air-tight later
store in a cool place, e.g. the basement (does not need to be fridge or freezer) - e.g. next to wine :)
important - once you open one jar, use it fairly quickly (2-3 days) and keep opened jars in the fridge (always top with oil) - tip - use smaller jars rather than large, also use jars that are not as air-tight first!
In Bulgaria, they make "ljutenica" which is similar to this, but they also add grilled eggplant and in some cases tomato paste (makes amazing taste).
Some folks here like "ajvar" to be hot, so they add hot chili peppers to mix, or buy hot red peppers.
Amounts: 10kg of peppers will make 1-3 1kg jars, but, it is worth the works, the most important thing is that you exactly know what is in that jar! Calculate the number of jars you will consume during winter, and you may actually save money on the amount. And do an experiment - compare what you have made, and what you can buy, as this makes the point where money is not everything :)
Ajvar can be used as is, also it can be roasted, toasted or cooked additionally - examples:
- as "winter salad" (on its own) e.g. accompanied by pickles (decorative too: red ajvar and green or white pickles),
- can be used as spread on bread, with some good cheese, or prosciutto, also try all of this toasted!
- can be added to pastas or mixed/cooked in pasta sauce with tomatoes or other ingredients
- also it makes even better and tastier pizza spread than tomatoes
- can be added to soups and stews
Kick your imagination off - it is a versatile ingredient! Enjoy!
I halve them, smear with oil and roast them cut side down for about 30 - 40 mins at 200 deg, then cover with foil (or put in a plastic bag) to cool. Peel off skin, usually easy, then use straight away or freeze
Once you roast your own you will never go back!
Mine keep for around 1 month in the fridge. That is not conclusive however! Cost depends on season (when peppers are cheap, it is worth it. When they are out of season, maybe not), and the quality of the olive oil you use.
Method - slice them into large, fairly flat pieces - about 4 per pepper. Lay them flat on an oven-proof tray, skin side up. Grill them for about 10 minutes on fairly high heat, or until the skins are blistered and dark. This will depend on your oven. Put the pieces (while hot) into a plastic or paper bag and let them sit in there for about 10 minutes until they are cool enough to handle. This allows them to sweat a little to make it easier to remove the skin.
Remove the skin with your fingers. It should lift off easily. The bits around the cut edges will be more difficult. This is why I try to minimise the number of pieces from each pepper.
Slice the pieces and pack into a jar. Cover with olive oil. Personally, I like to add garlic slivers, 1 clove per small jar, but that is up to you.
The peppers should be covered with oil at all times, otherwise the bits sticking out may go mouldy.
FWIW,
I generally buy/cook organic, and my local co-op sells roasted red peppers in the bulk section. Per pound, the roasted peppers are half the price of the fresh red peppers.
Yes, by the jar they're crazy expensive, but if you can get it in the bulk section you'll save money.
And, of course, freshly roasted is very yummy, so if that's what you want, there's no comparison.
Comparing prices by weight before and after cooking doesn't seem useful - water cooks out.
@Jefromi You are correct that water cooks out, and BECAUSE of that the roasted peppers are even more of a deal (if the price/pound were the same, after roasting the fresh you'd end up with less product).
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20843 | Is it okay for cork to look a bit "moldy"?
I just opened a bottle of "white red wine" (a Blanc de Noirs) from 2010. I must confess, I really don't know much about wine.
The cork looks weird to me, as if it was "moldy". It's a bit blueish-green around the edges. The wine smells pretty good, and the cork doesn't smell bad as well.
Is there anything to worry about?
The cork looks like this – click to enlarge:
Not relevant, but do you mean rosé instead of 'white red wine'?
@Mien No, it's not a rosé, it's a Blanc de Noirs :)
I agree with Bruce, the cork looks pretty good. If it doesn't smell like cork, the wine should be good.
The cork is normal. Over time, some of the pigment chemicals will embed themselves in the surface of the cork, starting by the edges. To my eye, the resulting zone has a bluish brown color. For a full red, the cork will turn a brown-purple, and eventually black. All of this should have no relationship to whether the wine is still good.
Some things to look for that will signal a bad bottle:
A change in color of the wine (e.g., pale yellow turning deep gold)
Indications that air entered the bottle or wine leaked out
The smell or taste of wet cardboard in the wine
An ammonia-like smell from the wine
A vinegar taste
Hopefully none of these applied to your wine.
It actually tasted quite good! I will try and pay more attention to the smell and see if I can make out differences. Thanks for the bullet list.
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3417 | How is long-lasting whipped cream made?
Cakes made of whipped-cream by professionals last for a long time in a consistent, white state. However, from what I know, whipped cream tends to become yellow and return to a more liquid state in a few hours. I prepare whipped cream with just the cream and an electric mixer, so I assume there's some magic ingredient or process to keep the thing stable. Where's the trick ?
There are two levels to this question. If you are using modern whipping cream as a starting point, then the trick for a longer lasting whipped cream is stabilization. If this is some farm bought milk you are skimming the cream from, then you have the additional problem that your cream is not fatty enough. Modern creams are concentrated with a centrifuge.
To get good whipped cream, whip it cold until it doubles in volume and you get firm peaks. Stabilize the whipped cream by hanging it in a cheese cloth in the refrigerator or by adding gelatin.To use the gelatin, dissolve 2 teaspoons of unflavored gelatin into 2 tablespoons of cold water. Work out the lumps. After the gelatin expands, mix in a quarter cup of cream and heat the mixture to dissolve the gelatin. Cool over ice and mix a bit. Complete 2 cups of cream and proceed as you would to finish your whipped cream.
by 'Complete 2 cups of cream' do you mean make up the quarter cup of cream with the gelatin in to 2 cups in total?
I meant add an extra one and three quarter cups of cream into the bowl with the cream and gelatin mixture. Thanks.
There's a few things that you can add: agar-agar, cornstarch, powdered sugar (which has cornstarch), gelatin (requires blooming in water first), powdered milk, etc.
Search online and you should find the proper ratios of each one to use so you don't overdo it.
For stable frosting, I whip heavy cream and cream cheese together (start by whipping the cream cheese, add twice as much cream to it, slowly). Lasts days in refrigeration. Slight tangy taste though; whether that's good or bad is up to you...
Real cream with a high fat content + a hardening agent. You can buy it in any supermarket. Just mix it with the cream before whipping.
What is a "hardening agent"? I've never heard of this.
@Catija it may be a language issue, in Germany there is a product called "cream stiffener" when translated literally. It is simply a bit of modified starch, maybe with some dextrose for better solubility.
@rumtscho thanks for the explanation... I've never looked for a product like this but I've never been aware of it existing. Some additional background in the answer would be a welcome addition to explain it. As per usual, a two-line answer really doesn't have enough information.
Idk, here it's 'utrjevalec za smetano'. But it's a small bag off powder usually somewhere near things like cake toppings, puddings, food colors, almost premade muffins, vanilla sugar,....
bloom some geletin (flavorless! do not just grab a packet of jell-o) and add it to the cream.
for 1 cup of cream 1/2tsp of geletin in 1Tbls of water.
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14265 | How to cook sausage?
I never cooked "real" sausages before. Now I have several kinds of sausages: chorizo, merguez, and chicken. I have only a couple of each and a big electric pan.
How do I cook them? Should I add water? How long?
Related: Types of Chorizo, Casing, more.
I know this has been here forever, but as long as there was a fresh answer, I figured I'd edit it. The focus of the question seems to be simply cooking sausage; there's nothing specific to chorizo here, and it was only one of three.
@Jefromi, fair enough... Tnx.
I'd recommend seeing the answers at https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/14434/67
Sausages are pretty forgiving. As long as you don't burn them or leave the center raw, they should come out OK. Since they're pretty fatty (at least the good ones are) there's little chance of drying them out, so when in doubt, cook them a little longer. They'll feel firm, not squishy, when they're done.
The easiest way to cook raw sausages is in the oven (at 350-375°F, 180-190°C or so). If you're doing it on the stove, I'd brown them first in a little (very little) oil, then add some water, or beer, or wine, or whatever you happen to have (not much - just enough to cover the bottom), cover, reduce the heat, and simmer until done. Feel free to cook some vegetables in the pan along with the sausage.
That is too hot, you will risk spiting the casings
Are they loose or in a casing?
If they are loose then you should be able to cook them just like you would ground beef. Sausage is generally fairly fatty so you shouldn't need to add any oil or anything. I'm more familiar with chorizo which tends to be quite fatty, but if the others seem a bit dry you could always add a touch of oil to help them along.
If they are in casings then you could either remove them from their casing and cook them as above, or just cook them directly in their casing. A little bit of oil or butter in this instance might help, depending on how well they are sealed up, but again this is probably unnecessary for most sausage.
So no water needed? What hit should I use and for how long?
Yeah, I've never used water to just cook sausage. Time and temperature will vary based on thickness but you definitely want it cooked all the way through.
Use your oven and bake at 150°C (300°F) for about 50 to 60 minutes. They should be crisp skinned, fully cooked (for taste and food safety), but still soft to the bite
If you run the oven any hotter they may split or explode
Section the sausages and lay them out evenly on an oven tray (with some edge or 'lip'). You can pack in as many as you can fit into one layer. No oil needed. Place in the middle of the oven and relax
For very fatty sausages you may wish to drain the fat off one or two times during cooking
Using a frying pan is fine but it usually causes uneven cooking and burnt spots
To be super safe, boil them covered in water for 15 mins, then sear in a lightly oiled very hot pan.
I like to cook mine on the grill for 40 minutes or so, 20 minutes per side. Crisp and tasty!
Welcome to the site! I've gone ahead and edited your answer - please feel free to edit it again if you feel I haven't preserved the meaning. (Also, really, 40 minutes? That seems incredibly long for grilling.)
For the types of "real" sausage you mention I'd be tempted to make a risotto and add diced sausage after about 5 minutes.
The flavour would soak out into the rice quite well, and for Chorizo - so would the colour.
These kind of sausages are cured so I'm not personally that bothered about cooking for an extra long time as they are already edible, although you might not be that happy with the taste.
i'm in the long and slow camp when time allows. i like to fry them in a little butter over a low heat which can result in a nice sticky outside. often i'll throw some sliced onions in there to soften in the sausage fat. Mmmm...
like the others have said the thing to watch out for is to make sure they are cooked through. And please, don't prick them. that just lets the fat out and risks drying out your sausage.
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10730 | Substitute Cayenne Pepper for Black Pepper
My recipe calls for Black Pepper. I have Cayenne Pepper.
What ratio should I use to substitute to get approximatively the same "heat"?
I realize that the result won't be quite the same. I am fine with that.
This is not a solid answer, but thinking back over general recipes, I often see about 1/8 tsp. of cayenne in many and about 1 tsp. of black pepper. This is for things like soup or skillet stovetop meals. They are going to be significantly different, though. Grains of Paradise is a substitute for black pepper from medieval cooking if by some odd chance you happen to have it. I've also seen allspice suggested, although only in spice blends.
Regarding the amount of "heat" in the recipe, I'd agree with @justkt that you'd want to go with 1/8 to 1/4 (at most) of the specified amount of black pepper if substituting cayenne. I like spicy food and go through a lot of cayenne (and other) chile pepper preparations, and they can vary a lot in terms of strength even within the same variety. So, I'd start on the light end and add more to taste if it's not spicy enough for you.
My wholly unscientific opinion is that when a recipe calls for black pepper in any significant quantity it's for the flavor as much or more than the spicy heat. If you have any ground cardamom on hand you might could toss a pinch of that in as well to replace some of the resinous flavor that black pepper has and cayenne lacks.
Props to Magnus for his excellent and botanically accurate answer.
I am accepting this one, because it is the one I used. it's hard to say, but I think the heat was about right.
You can't really substitute cayenne pepper for black pepper. They're completely different, not even in the same botanical order. Cayenne pepper is a powdered chile. Black pepper is tiny drupe. The heat in cayenne pepper comes from capsaisin, and the pepperyness in black pepper from piperine.
Closer substitutes would be white peppercorns (in moderation!), green peppercorns, red peppercorns or grains of paradise.
Of course, you still could use cayenne, but the taste would be as different as if you were to substitute it with allspice, or cumin, or some other spice. If you were to substitute it with cayenne, there's not really any ratio that is applicable, you would have to add it to taste.
This is also correct, And I was well aware of this when I asked. I am of the opinion that any thing that is hot should list it's Scoville heat units, so people can know what they are getting in to.
Scoville heat units only measure heat from capsaisin. Black pepper contains no capsaisin, and would thus be 0 scoville.
There are scoville (equivalent) numbers for piperine....
They're not the same.
The amount of "heat" experienced is also different based on a number of factors.
E.g. When did you add the pepper?
How much fat is there in the dish to carry more of the heat (think chili oil).
Whats the serving temperature
Are there any milk prouducts in the dish( tempers the heat)
You really have to taste and adjust.
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36221 | Should "Magic Mousse" be grainy?
For a treat for my lunch, having bought a bunch of Jell-o brand instant flavored gelatin mixes, my husband decided to follow a recipe for "magic mousse", as printed here, involving "Cool-whip" whipped topping and Jell-o mix (gelatin, not a pudding mix). The final product came out fairly grainy, however, a texture I found somewhat offputting. Is this expected due to the ingredients in the recipe (clearly chosen for convenience rather than quality), or is this some problem with his technique?
Its probably an artifact of the pudding, as I recall from my childhood, but I don't remember what causes it. Come to chat and we can talk about simple, wonderful mousses with just two ingedients: real whipped cream and chocolate.
It could just be that it wasn't mixed thoroughly - little droplets of dissolved gelatin intermingled with the cool whip would certainly give you a grainy texture. Whisking thoroughly, or even using a hand mixer, could avoid some of this.
But failing that, it's possible that it's simply prone to separation. Cool whip is a sort of fake cream, emulsified fats and water, and the dissolved jello is pretty much water. They might tend to separate a little before the gelatin makes it all set up. If that's the case, you probably have to work a little harder for your mousse; if the gelatin is added straight to the creamy/custardy base, there's no water-gelatin mixture to separate out.
The grainy texture you tasted could be one of two things:
The Gelatin pack wasn't stirred thoroughly enough.
The Gelatin pack was old and didn't have all of it's dissolving properties.
Either way it's easy to fix.
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33847 | What's the difference between green, white, and red onions?
Being a north Indian, the only onions that I have used and seen others using are red onions. These are used in all Indian traditional dishes.
I have seen green onions and white onions in the market sometimes (haven't noticed anyone purchasing them though).
How are the green and white ones different from the red onions I'm used to? Are there specific times I should use them instead of red onions, or things I should try them in to be able to tell the difference?
I think this a perfectly reasonable question. The original title made it sound really iffy (and I suspect this explains the close votes) but I've edited it to try to ask what you're really after, and the two existing answers still fit it, so I'm quite happy to have it stay around.
The difference for green onions will be most noticable if you don't cook them. Instead, slice them up and use them for a garnish over the dish.
The white portion of the green onion will still be oniony, but not quite as strong as a raw red onion. Slice them thinly and use for garnish if you really want to bring out the onion qualities of them. If you don't want it too strong, then add them when you're cooking. (and you might not want to slice them as thin).
The green portion gives a more mild onion taste but also some of the grassy quality that you might get from chives. I treat them like a fresh herb, chop them up, and add in them in the last minute of cooking or I don't cook them at all.
As for substitution ... I'd only plan to do it if you were cooking for someone who didn't like onions, as they're milder and come in smaller portions than bulb onions, so it's easier to control amounts without any waste. ... and I'd do it if I had them on hand but didn't have bulb onions around.
If you're just looking for a good way to feature the green onions -- grill them. Trim the ends off, clean off any dirt, give them a coat of oil, then toss them on a hot pan or grill. They make a great side dish.
Other good uses are to add them into scrambled eggs, green onion pancakes, or press them into naan before cooking it.
...
For the white onions, the opposite is true -- they're generally stronger than red onions. Most people don't serve it as a raw garnish unless it's very thinly sliced and used in small amounts. It's still used raw, but it tends to be blended into other things such as pico de gallo, or guacamole, where the pungency of the onion helps to balance out the sweetness of the tomatoes or richness of the avocado.
I'm having difficulty thinking of a dish where the qualities of the white onion would stand out, though. My only idea is french onion soup, because it just comes out lacking if you make it with sweeter red or yellow onions ... but unless you made them side by side and compared them, I don't know that you'd see the difference.
You might try cooking them slowly over medium heat until they caramelize ... it'd let you feature the onions without them being overwhelming, and it brings out some of their more interesting qualities.
The most significant difference is between green onions, and other onions. As you probably know, green onions are the stalks that grow from the bulbs of regular onions. They have a grassy, vegetal flavor with a hint of pungency, but do not taste anything like the bulbs. Green onions are often harvested from smaller varieties of onion than are cultivated for the bulbs, but can be from any variety.
Any recipe expecting green onions is going to specifically indicate this, and in that case, you should use them. In this sense, green onions are a completely different item than "onions" which implies the root bulb. This is much like the fact that coriander roots and leaves are very different, despite coming from the same plant, and are not generally substituted for one another.
Green onions are extremely popular in Asian cuisines, but are also used in many western recipes.
There are many varieties of culinary alliums, including garlic, scallions, leeks, shallots; red, white, yellow onions; and even the sweet onion varieties like Videlia. Each of these varieties brings a subtle nuance or flavor.
Some recipes are traditionally made with a particular type of allium (such as leek and potato soup) and will call for that variety.
When just "onion" is specified, you can freely use red, white, or yellow, depending on what is plentiful in your region. Where I live, all three colors of onion are readily available, but yellow are the most popular and least expensive. As an overall generalization (and it depends on where the onion was grown, and what variety it is, so there is considerable variation and many exceptions):
Yellow onions are the basic, generic onion of Western European and North American style cooking (although in many French dishes, shallots are popular). They tend to have the most "crying" factor, and the strongest aroma. For onions that will be sweated, cooked down, or caramelized, this is often the onion of choice.
White onions tend to have a less sulfurous bite than yellow, and often have a somewhat milder flavor. This is the traditional onion of Mexican cuisine, and performs very well in raw applications, and in salsas. White onions tend to have the firmest, smoothest texture.
Red onions tend to have the most mild flavor, a slightly rougher texture, and are often used in raw or pickled applications, where their attractive red color stands out.
You will find that even different authors present different descriptions of the various onion varieties, which probably reflects more on what they have in their region, and the great variation than it does anything else. For example: National Onion Association, The Kitchn, The Cooking Dish.
To a great extent, the type of onion used in a given recipe may be freely substituted; rarely, will you have a huge difference in flavor or outcome. Most often, the choice is determined by your local market conditions—here in the Eastern US, yellow onions are the least expensive, so that is what we use the most of.
The best answer I can give to your question is:
Use green onions where they are called for specifically, otherwise use a regular onion. Think of them as a different vegetable than plain "onions."
If you are cooking a North American or Western European recipe, and the preferred variety of "onion" is not specified, yellow is the default choice, but use what you have available to you at a reasonable price and there will be only minor difference in outcome.
There is no application I am aware of where you absolutely must use a specific onion or the recipe will fail.
Use green onions where they are called for specifically That is obvious. Indian recipes do NOT call for green onions. And I don't which "kind" of western dishes would use green onions. I wanted to know for example - green onions are used in "soups", "pizza" etc ?. so, when I prepare a soup, I'll use green instead of red.
There is no single answer to what "kind" of recipe green onions are used in. They are used in soups, salads, savory dishes, just like any other vegetable; but so are bulb onions.
@AnishaKaul, your question is almost like asking "in what types of recipes should I use cauliflower instead of cabbage?"
Being an Indian, I have seen my mom (and her mom and her mom too) using white onion to make dry spices. During summer, she used to slice the white onion and sun-dry it. When it loses all the moisture, it can be stored for the whole year to be used in other seasons. It can also be fried till brown and stored to be used in dishes like Biryani or any non veg dish.
In the season, fresh white onions are used for spicy curries - mostly non-vegerial but also brown vegetarian curries based on besan pakodas for e.g.
Red onion for vegetarian and green as explained by Joe
Happy Cooking
I have seen my mom (and her mom and her mom too) using white onion to make dry spices. What sort of dry spices would be?
Goda Masala - thats a Maharashtrian spice made once a year and used for the rest of the year.
and in what dishes is that used?
There are ample. This masala is also called Kala masala and used in day-to-day meal preparations. You can use it for all non-veg + baingan bharwa, gwar phali, sprouted bean curries and many more. Just google for goda masala and you can get many recipes. You will get recipes for goda masala too - with or without dry cononut & onions. The one that I use has dry coconut and white onions.
Red and white onions are very closely related (they are in fact different varieties of the same species of plant). In U.S. cooking (certainly in my experience), red onions are more often served raw as a cold sandwich topping, salad ingredient, etc, due to their slightly milder flavor and their color. The red color can give them a slightly bitter note, similar to the skins of radishes and red cabbage.
White onions typically have the most intense onion flavor and aroma; the smaller the onion, the bolder the flavor; these are a general purpose onion commonly used diced or sliced in Mexican food and as hamburger toppings, as well as in sauces for other cuisines like Italian. Also available are yellow onions; these are typically bigger, and much milder than white or red, with a sweet overtone. These are prized (in the South at least) for almost anything besides a salad that you'd use onions in, such as hamburger toppings, sauces, soups, and most importantly, onion rings.
Green onions (aka scallions) are related to bulb onions (same plant family), but much different than the "big bulb" onion species. These are also good raw. The taste changes as you move from the tops to the bulbs; the greens are typically milder, while the white bulb is very onion-like. Some dishes call only for the green part or only the white part, or prepare the two parts different ways. The white part of green onions can be used whenever you need onion taste without onion slices; if the recipe calls for minced or finely chopped onion as a sauce ingredient, you can get away with the white portion of a scallion (or a leek or shallot). The green part is almost always used as a topping or as a mix-in to a cold salad (including mayonnaise-based salads like egg, tuna, or chicken salad); it has a milder, more leafy flavor as you would expect, but retains some of the bite of the bulbs.
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22252 | Dry milk in bread: purpose, and substitutions
I've been looking for a good 100% whole grain bread recipe that I like, and came across one that looks promising in the book Home Grown Whole Grains (pp. 152):
1 package active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
¼ cup warm water
2 cups warm water
3 tablespoons oil
6 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon salt
5 cups whole wheat flour
½ cup dry milk powder
Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the ¼ cup water and allow to stand until the mixture begins to bubble. Add the 2 cups warm water, oil, honey, and salt and then begin beating in the flour. When you have about half of it worked in, beat in the dry milk, a little at a time, taking care to break up any lumps. Then beat in the rest of the flour....
What is the purpose of the dry milk? And what guidelines can I follow to replace the powdered milk with something more "self sufficient"? Perhaps normal milk, and a little less water?
Milk is added to bread for flavour, a tender crumb and well-coloured crust.
Dry milk is used because it easy to store and easy to use in bulk. Milk also contains an enzyme called glutathione which can weaken gluten and result in a poorer quality loaf - the drying process destroys this enzyme.
You can substitute regular milk in various proportions, but you may as well simply replace the 2 cups of water with it, which will give you a nice soft loaf. Opinion is divided whether you should scald the milk (by heating to 180°F/82°C according to How Baking Works, page 150) to destroy the glutathione, but in any case it's probably a good idea to warm it anyway, to help the rise.
+1 Note: Modern milk powder (at least from NZ) is not heated that much. It is evaporated at very low air pressure, and then spun dried. Both processes are designed to use the lowest heat possible to be more energy efficient. So it may not be that useful for this purpose?
Most dried milk is either low fat or non-fat in order to keep shelf life longer. Since the recipe already calls for fats in the form of oil, you may want to use skim or 1% milk instead of whole milk if you are trying to replicate the recipe as closely as possible.
Thank you for the substitution suggestion. I did as you suggested, and scalded some milk, and my bread loaf came out quite well.
According to the good folks at "King Arthur Flour" dry milk is added so that:
Your bread will be softer and more tender, and will stay fresher
longer when you use dry milk.
The most direct effect that I noticed is that it tends to make the crust softer. This has been the result in a "bread machine" where the only recipe difference was dry milk.
Is that dry milk vs no milk or dry milk vs wet milk?
I used 22ml oat milk instead of dried milk in a bread maker and added 15g extra white flour.
The whole wheat loaf looked a good colour, the texture difference was unnoticeable and the taste was just as good.
Welcome to SA, Stuart! You could improve your answer by addressing the asker's question directly ... how much dried milk did you replace? What kind of bread?
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92189 | What other English names are there for dried grapes?
In the US we refer to basically all dried grapes as raisins. In cooking shows in the UK I hear them refer to sultanas. I've also read that dried currants are really dried grapes, not actually the currant fruit that's been dried.
Are there any other names?
Background: I have a very important ulterior motive. My daughter is deathly allergic to grapes. She nearly died this summer while in Hungary after thoroughly checking the ingredients on a food. I'm trying to make sure we know all possible English terms she might encounter for grapes or raisins. Unfortunately she didn't save the wrapper of the food that nearly killed her but she says "sultana" wasn't on the list and didn't remember "currant" being on it but there was a light colored dried fruit she found after the reaction started.
I'm pretty sure the question is fine here. After all, we have this: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/784/translating-cooking-terms-between-us-uk-au-ca-nz
Let me pick my jaw up off the ground. That is an AMAZING post. Up voted, starred, bookmarked. That's a keeper. Thank you.
On English.se, believe it or not, it would be very close to a duplicate of Besides raisins, what other dried fruits and vegetables have their own names?. My own answer covers little more than your question does.
Actually I saw your answer, @ChrisH, when searching for info about this. Since I want targeted info about grapes and knew the terms you mentioned I thought I'd come here to post a question (after searching here for a duplicate).
Note that sultana is a variety of grape, it's not synonymous with raisin.
@Richard, while that's true, sultana applied to dried grapes doesn't necessarily mean that variety. It means any gold/yellow raisin.
One issue may be that as an uncommon allergy grapes aren't one of the foods that have to be (or are often) listed as "may contain traces of..." and other dried fruits are likely to be packed on the same production line. Cross contamination is quite likely when you get any other prepared fresh fruit. I don't know much about fruit allergies but I have come across people who are highly allergic to something specific and have less serious reactions to other fruits as well.
@ChrisH My research suggests only one variety is used, which goes by several names. In the UK at least, it's not used to refer to golden raisins, sultanas are generally light brown. Golden raisins in the UK are raisins whose colour has been preserved with sulphur dioxide.
@ChrisH True, since it isn't even close to one of the top 7 allergies they don't have to call it out separately. We have to be very careful because of that. We're not sure if cross contamination on a production line would be enough to be a problem for her but we do know that eating food that has been in direct contact with grapes, even just the skin, is a problem. One concern is that ingredients like "dried cranberries" might actually mean "dried cranberries sweetened with grape juice". Thankfully she can consume grape based vinegar, in fact, she loves balsamic.
Regarding currants, there's a false friend here. There's a type of grape called "zante currants". In the US I've seen these sold in the dried fruit section. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zante_currant As the Wikipedia article shows, these aren't related fruits.
Steve, do you need Latin transliteration for the Russian so you can ask too? (And thanks for the upvote and acceptance! Not many acceptances here)
The etymology of currant is interesting if you want to understand some of the confusing names. Corinth as a variety of grape -> currant. Small round unrelated fruits from the New World were then named the same (see also corn, sparrow...)
Reading your question and all of the comments (that include some valuable information that should be in your question ;-) ) answering what you really need as knowing the English words only will definitely not help you when in Hungary as I've seen many translation errors reading ingredients even in sophisticated multi-language countries like Switzerland and Belgium:
Languages re-ordered by alphabet as I got a few additional ones:
Dutch / Flemish / Afrikaans: druif/druiven, rozijn(en), krent(en)
English: grape(s), raisin(s), sultana(s), currant(s) (except black/red/whitecurrant)
French: Raisin(s)
German: Traube(n), Rosine(n), Sultanine(n), Korinthen
Hebrew: צימוק
Hindi: किशमिश
Hungarian: szőlő, mazsola
Italian: Uvetta, Uva, Sultanina
Russian: виноград, изюм, кишмиш, султанша
Sanskrit: शुष्कद्राक्षा
Spanish: uva, pasa
There's a pending edit so I can add this above: Hungarian: szőlő is grape and mazsola is raisin.
Don't forget redcurrants and whitecurrants aren't grape-related, even though some whitecurrant varieties are named like white grapes.
@ChrisH: could you elaborate on that?
Like blackcurrants, redcurrants (Ribes rubrum) are related to gooseberries and not to grapes. Whitecurrants are the same species as redcurrants but whiter and sweeter. I use redcurrants to make a jelly with red wine and a little sage infused in it, to serve with cold meats or cheese; my whitecurrants are used for making a jelly-like jam, or for a whitecurrant drizzle cake. One cultivar of whitecurrant is called "white grape"; another is called "white Versailles" (example grape cultivar: Chardonnay)
Ah, got it! Updating! @ChrisH
Could we please stop editing this to add translations in languages there's no indication are necessary? The question doesn't ask for it, and if it did, it'd be too broad.
Yes, no issue. Above is as much as I got anyway... Can I edit and remove the notification to add more languages? >:-) ;-) @Cascabel (already done by the time you read this) 0:-)
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30378 | Substituting almond milk for regular milk in coffee without bitterness
I've tasted my local coffee shop's specialty coffee in which they substitute homemade almond milk for regular milk, and it tastes creamy and smooth. No bitterness.
When I try to recreate this with Starbucks coffee beans ground and put into a moka maker, and then adding sugar and microwaved Silk almond milk (bought from the store, and frothed a bit with a milk frother), it tastes slightly tangy and kinda bitter. The taste is kinda strange. I don't taste it from the coffee or the almond milk alone, but when combined, it forms.
Does anyone have any ideas what could be happening and what I could do to remedy it?
I would like to avoid too much sugar.
Are you using the vanilla, unsweetened, original, etc. Silk (I tend to prefer Almond Dream)?
I've tried both the original and the vanilla. They both produce the same bitterness.
I don't have a confident answer as to why it's happening. My wife uses Almond Milk and drinks it with her coffee. She's never noticed any bitterness. My first suggestion would be the coffee itself, rather than the almond milk. The way you make coffee (in a moka pot) will produce different results than at Starbucks or any other coffee shop themselves. That said, if I understand you correctly the local coffee shop you're drinking at isn't Starbucks. Personally I find many of their beans to be bitter... Despite you not being able being able to identify the bitterness in the coffee when drank black, I'd suggest that those beans are your problem. Perhaps the Almond milk is highlighting out some unpleasant flavours in those beans.
Things to try (Starting with what I'd guess as being the most likely to solve this...):
Buy beans from your local coffee shop, preferably the same ones they serve. Ideally this coffee shop can tell you when the beans were roasted, and preferably this date is recent-ish. But, if not, that's fine, Just try a different bean first.
Add a bit of salt. See this related question
Change the way you make coffee (drip, moka, etc...) for a day and see if the harsh tones are still present when you add your Almond Milk
Do you use your moka pot regularly, if you hadn't used it in a while, perhaps there are some harsh flavours that have gone stale? (Kinda stretching here).
Try a different Almond Milk?
The last thing I would do is add sugar... That usually doesn't cover up the bitterness.
I second getting the beans from the coffee that makes the drink. I'd also suggest just asking them if there's a trick to it. If you flatter the baristas a bit and tip well, they'd probably be happy to talk coffee with you.
Actually, almond milk in coffee always tastes bitter to me, even when the black coffee is wonderful without a trace of bitterness. I believe there is a chemical change in the mixture. However, since not many people sense this, I wonder if it is also individual taste perception. I have only tried commercial almond milk, so I am going to try making it and see if it is any different.
"buyer", I assume you mean "bitter"?
@talon8 I smell autocorrect at 2-3 places in this answer. I corrected them.
I think this post can be considered an answer, albeit a somewhat hidden one: I read in it the opinion that, at least when using store bought almond milk, it is impossible to avoid the bitterness. I have no idea if it is true, but at least it seems to cover the criteria for being an answer.
I've read that the almond milk can taste bitter if it is burned. If you microwave the milk, you should do so on a low setting. See https://www.quora.com/Could-almond-milk-be-boiled
Have a fancy coffee maker at home...The brand of coffee makes a big difference, if I get at bitter cup a little honey removes the bitter bite. Should work with almond milk instead of regular as well, just make sure your almond milk is not pre sweetened.
I use a French Press and no matter what kind of coffee I use, I've never had a bitterness problem, as long as it isn't a really cheap brand. I, too, prefer to use almond milk but the one with coconut milk or cream in it comes out much richer. Yes, it does have some fat, but at least it's not dairy.I agree about using a picnh of salt. Mt Dad swore by that.
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16848 | How to clean dill?
I have some fresh dill. How can the 'leaves' be easily separated from the 'stalks'? Should they be separated (I think so, but what do I know)?
Let's assume you just want a little flavor added to a potato salad without too much texture.
After swirling the stalks under water and shaking off excess drops, pat with kitchen paper or cloth (doesn't bruise easily).
Pluck off small clumps of the hairy leaves from the tougher stalk; this is completely subjective as to how much stalk needs to be eliminated.
Chop. The more stalk is removed, the courser/longer the chopping in general is—up to a cm long.
Also, the more dill is added to recipe, the finer it should be chopped (avoid the feeling of eating grass).
if a good deal is used, then stir into the mayonnaise first; if it is just of a garnish quantity, then sprinkle on top of mixed pot salad.
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22956 | How do I get the filling inside pâte à choux?
How do I get the filling inside a pâte à choux (cream puff)? Do I have to cut a hole in the baked pastry form?
Also, is there a way to get the filling inside without a pastry bag? Using a pastry bag is always really messy!
They are a little hard to find, but if you can find a "Bismarck" pastry tip, they have an elongated tip that is perfect for poking into your cream puff to fill. And, on a side note, a couple ways to keep your pastry tube from getting so messy... Put it inside a drinking glass and fold it down over the sides to fill it. This holds it open and you're less likely to spill all over the edges. Then, once you gather the open end, use a rubber band to tightly hold it closed. This reduces the mess dramatically.
You can either use a piping bag with a metal nozzle to push through the base of the puff and inject it with filling, or you can cut them in half and fill with a spoon.
The first way is trickier but obviously gives a neater finished product, whereas the second way is easier but not as 'perfect'. You can also sit on the fence, cut the puff in half, then use a star nozzle to pipe nice neat whorls of filling onto one half.
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13443 | What effect does rinsing have on blueberries?
If I rinse fresh blueberries before I eat them, does that wash off the antioxidants? Why would washing blueberries before freezing them cause tougher-skinned berries?
The antioxidants in blueberries lie in the berries themselves, not in the pesticides residing on their skin.
Washing them before freezing means that water freezes on the outside. The water crystals puncture the skins of the berries, changing the texture.
I don't think pesticides are the only reason we wash fruits and vegetables - or even the primary one, as you seem to be implying.
It's a major one, though. We do, however, wash some fruits because they have a natural wax on them, and vegetables (for instance, leeks) to get dirt off.
...and bacteria, which is possibly the most important one. You can actually get immediately, definitely sick if you get really unlucky.
If you want to avoid the skin puncturing, just leave the berries outside to dry for a while and then freeze them..
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34060 | What can I do to prevent the gaseous side effect of sunchokes?
I'd love to eat sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes or topinambour) more frequently, but the side effects (gas, abdominal discomfort) are a bummer. In a home kitchen, how can I prepare the sunchokes to prevent this side effect?
Would Beano or something similar work? I recently had a delicious sunchoke puree, with no noticeable side effects.
The ogliosacharrides in beans are a different class than the inulin in sunchoke (galactose based versus fructose based), and evidently Beano is not effective on them.
While this isn't a solution, it may help a little: Addition of cumin to any dish, while not reducing the volume of gas, removes the worst of odor, making the flatulence mostly scentless.
@SF. That sounds more than a little suspect. Is there some evidence for that claim, or at least an explanation of how it's supposed to work?
@Aaronut: Honestly, if you're looking for scientific proofs I'm quite helpless. It's a part of the "kitchen folklore wisdom", a thing I learned from my mother, and which she learned from her mother.
Have you tried epazote? It seems to work for more than beans to me, but more tested is in order. Never tried it with sunroots.
In On Food and Cooking (2004 edition), page 307, Harold McGee indicates that the... erm... flatulent effects of sun chokes (also called Jerusalem artichokes) are due to complex fructose-based carbohydrates that are not digestible by humans.
Long, slow cooking allows enzymes present in the fresh of the tuber will convert these fructose over time. McGee recommends 12-24 hours at 200 F / 93 C.
He indicates that the result will be soft and sweet, akin to a vegetable aspic.
Note that the ogliosacharrides in beans are a different class than the inulin in sunchoke (galactose based versus fructose based, respectively), and evidently Beano is not effective sunchoke.
Short of this extreme measure, your best defense against wind may be smaller portions of the vegetable.
Most hydrolases (enzymes, e.g. amylase) will be inactivated at 200°F. The breakdown of the polysacharide is likely due to simple, nonenzymatic acid hydrolysis. See prep of glucose syrup from corn starch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose_syrup#Hydrolysis
Harold McGee addresses this subject in his excellent book, The Curious Cook (1990). He explains the Jerusalem artichoke in great detail in the chapter titled, "Taking the Wind out of the Sunroot." His conclusions are (a) the quantities of the responsible carbohydrate are somewhat dissipated during cold storage of a month or more, (b)"about half of the remaining indigestibles can be removed by boiling in a large volume of water for 15 minutes, and finally (c) "A larger proportion can be broken down into fructose by cooking for 24 hours." This final conclusion has made me consider using a water bath (sous vide), but I have not gotten around to the experiment.
By the way, for those of you considering a planting...once you plant them, you are stuck with them. The multiply like crazy and are difficult to eradicate. Your best bet is a contained raised bed.
They do spread, but the easiest way to control them is by cutting the stalks where you don't want them. -> Lack of nutrition kills the tuber underneath.
Any time I have heard a plant is best contained in either a raised bed or specialized growing environment, I take heed of it because once an invasive plant takes a territory, it can be hell to get it back. Better safe and contained than sorry.
To plant them, simply acquire a sunchoke, cut it into smaller pieced and bury. While @Stephie is correct, one should realize, that when harvesting, any small piece of the tuber left in the ground (frequently, I will hit one with a shovel, slicing a large chunk off) will likely sprout a new stalk the following spring, that makes them difficult to control.
Our Topinambour grows in the flower bed, not in the vegetable garden, so no need to dig all of them up. We harvest as much as we need for one meal during winter and leave the rest in place. Last harvest is in late winter/early spring, just before the tubers start sprouting again. Looks pretty in summer when flowering, too.
As we haven't noticed any nasty side effects (yet?), I'm led to believe that harvesting them during winter when dormant is equivalent to 6 weeks of cold storage.
We found the taste improved by having frozen in the ground, and never ate them until after they had. I also recall no nasty side-effects, so...
I asked a similar question to this (missed it while searching because I was not aware of the nameSunchokes) and the answers I received have been merged into this one. I was asked to provide the information from my original question as an answer here. Since some of the answers might look out of place in reference to the original quetion I will try to provide the context they were given in.
The gaseous effects of Sunchokes are caused by the high content of a carbohydrate called Inulin. Our digestive system is not able to digest this carb, while the bacteria in our colons absolutly thrive on it.
As one of the other answers outlines: the most accepted remedy is cold storage or late harvesting. When left in the groud during the winter, the tubers transform the inulin, thus enabling us to effectively digest the Sunchokes. This means that if you are growing your own, you can just harvest the tubers on the day you eat them, provided you do so late in the season.
If you grow your own and find that you need to harvest them all at once it is best to leave the soil on them, wrap them in a cloth and leave them in a cool and dark environment for 4 to 6 weeks. If you buy them from a store and you are unsure about how long they were stored before going on sale, that makes it quite hard to be sure and I also do not know if the tubers will keep for weeks once cleaned.
Regardless of the storage method, there will always be a amount of Inulin left in the tubers, which brings us to the question from the OP: how to cook them to minimise the effect.
I have played around with cooking methods a bit. My conclusions:
A long cook, while getting rid of much of the Inulin does not do it for me. Sunchokes are best when they retain a crunchiness and I find their texture dissapointing when overcooked, kind of like when you cook sweet potatoes for a minute too much. Obviously this effect is negated when used in a blended soup, which is why we use them for this dish quite a lot.
Stir frying at really high temperature does have a positive effect. While I am not certain about which chemical transformation takes place, the caramelisation due to the high heat levels seems to change the chmical composition of the product sufficiently to take care of most of the problem.
According to the article linked below, boiling in an acidic liquid (lemon juice or vinegar is suggested) for 15 minutes will convert enough inulin to make them digestible but leave enough to give you the probiotic benefits.
There is a pickling recipe in the same article that should have the same inulin decreasing effect.
https://modernfarmer.com/2018/02/jerusalem-artichoke-sunchoke-recipe-prevents-gas/
The idea has been presented that if you lactoferment sunchokes, the fermentation process converts most of the inulin into simpler carbohydrates that don't cause the gas. The idea is to let the microbes have their way with the sunchokes -before- they enter your digestive system.
There's tons of info on youtube and the web about lectofermenting veggies, which provides other health benefits (besides preventing super gas) like improving the the gut bacteria, which aids your immune system.
Last fall, I was given a large number of sunchokes. I blanched them and then fermented them with some garlic and hot peppers, in a 5% brine. I served them in small slices with either rice or bread. They didn't seem to give anyone gas at least not eaten in moderate quantities. Maybe the fermentation helped. They were delicious in any case.
Some recipes suggest adding caraway and/or asafoetida (hing), and these spices are there for a reason - they are known for reducing gas.
I use the artichokes in soup, which I then puree. The first few soups all caused major gas problems and I could only put it down to the artichokes. My next lot if soup had a lit less artichokes and I found the gas was vastly reduced. As well, something else that may also have an impact on reducing wind is that after I scrubbed the artichokes I have left them in a bucket of cold water so I use them as I need them.
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15468 | How to remove the fuzzy innards from an artichoke?
What is the best way to remove the fuzzy inner threads from on top of the artichoke heart, without losing too much delicious heart?
Is it easiest to cut out the choke (the fuzzy stuff) before or after steaming the artichoke?
Does anything work better than a spoon?
Is there any way to remove the choke without cutting out pieces of heart?
What's wrong with just using a spoon?
Even fine dining restaurant in the world does it the same way - with a tea spoon.
I believe, madam, that zanlok has the right of it-- a spoon.
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4050 | How to drain zucchini and eggplant
I am making a dish that involves roasted vegetables and couscous. I have often found, though, that the zucchini and eggplant are unpalatably watery after roasting them. I have read that if you salt and/or press zucchini and eggplant, you can reduce the amount of water left in them and give them a better texture when cooked. What is the best procedure to rid the zucchini and eggplant of their water before roasting them?
Update:
I sliced the zucchini and eggplant and placed them on a baking sheet, filling one layer of a large sheet. I salted them with about 1/4 cup kosher salt. Then I placed a cutting board that just fit inside the edges over the sheet and put my stand mixer on top. I let it sit for 20 minutes, then wiped off all the salt and water that had drained out. This resulted in a much better product.
However, I don't really know if I used a good amount of salt (too much? too little?) and if I left them to drain for a good length of time (too long? too short?) to get the best results. It worked pretty well—not too salty, veggie texture nice and chewy—but could I get even better results by using a more precise procedure?
Yeah they just kind of fall apart into undifferentiated mush compared to the onions and bell peppers I roast with them.
The way I've seen it at a show on TV:
Put zucchini/eggplant slices on a cooling rack
Salt one side, wait a while for the moisture to come out, then turn and salt the other side
Squeeze carefully and wash off excess salt
This way you should get much better results after roasting/frying.
Shouldn't really need to squeeze them if you've let them sit salted long enough - the excess moisture should be visible on the surface, just rinse and pat dry. Also, use kosher salt - this is pretty much what it's made for.
I think your problem will disappear with proper technique. Zucchini and eggplant are indeed full of water. You have to both salt them well, to draw out the water, and cook them long enough for the liquid to evaporate.
It sounds like you are both under-salting and under-cooking. Try roasting for longer and/or at a higher temperature. My personal favorite way to do them is on the grill, where the direct heat and lack of a 'pan' allows lots of evaporation and also delicious browning.
Can't do without it.
BBQ on high heat with no lubrication
I have never had this problem and I never salt either. This might also relate to the water quantity in the vegetable. Plants from some places oten have a much high water content than others. It might be worth trying out vegetables from different sources to see if you get any improvements. In my experience one of the benefits of organic vegetables is that they do have a signficantly higher dry matter content than most other vegetables so if you can source them and afford them you could try organic.
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5873 | What types of cooking are pressure cookers most useful for?
We were just clearing out our kitchen and stared at this brand new, unused pressure cooker we got for our wedding over 10 years ago! We've never felt the need to use it before. I know it's supposed to be able to cook things really fast, but is this really an essential appliance? We're debating if we should give it to someone else. Before I do that though, I think I want to try it a few times. What kinds of things would best demonstrate its usefulness?
Titles with the word "best" generally imply a subjective question or poll. Converted to Community Wiki.
I've edited this to attempt to salvage it - I think "what's it good for?" "things that take forever to boil" is a reasonable bit of information. A lot of the existing answers captured this even with the original vague phrasing.
For me, the best use is making beans. I find that home cooked beans have a much better taste and texture than from cans. The pressure cooker can make them in just about an hour from the moment you pour them in the pot to perfectly tender, and no presoaking is required, so I don't have to plan a day in advance.
+1 Another advantage over canned is that you control the ingredients (salt, msg, etc.)
No worries about EDTA too.
It's a convenience and a time saver. The high pressure simply raises the boiling point of water which raises the cooking temperature. Anything you need to boil (but not evaporate) for a long time will go much faster using it. Of course without the lid it is also a nice heavy pot.
Canning requires the higher temperature to kill botulism spores but most recipes that call for a pressure cooker will simply take longer.
If you haven't used it in 10 years you are probably fine getting rid of it. You could send it to me for example. :)
Just some notes on canning with a pressure cooker... Unless you've checked with the manufacturer, it's not generally recommended to can with a pressure cooker (as opposed to a pressure canner). If you do try, 1) check that it holds at least 4 quart jars. If the pot is not at least this big, you probably should not use it for canning. 2) check with the manuf. for changes in process times & pressure from the original recipe. http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/nchfp/factsheets/pressurecookers.html
Thanks for the clarification. Mine is a canner that I use as a cooker.
a) Send it to me :)
b) Pressure cookers are good for cooking something like lamb shanks (or other tough meats), which would normally take several hours of braising before becoming tender. In a pressure cooker, you could probably do it in less than an hour.
I laughed when I saw that your first impression was "send it to me" as well.
I like to use mine as a high pressure steamer. Pour a 1cm layer of water into the pressure cooker, put a small rack in (came with my pressure cooker) and heat the cooker until the water boils, put your veggies on the rack, close the cooker and cook for two minutes or so on the highest pressure. Never tasted broccoli that was so fresh.
You could use a steam oven to get the same mode of preparation with more convenience, but it's very pricey.
Pressure cookers use higher pressure to raise the boiling point of water, which means that you can cook at a higher temperature. That leads to shorter cooking times. It is especially useful for making braises, stews and stocks.
My personal favorite recipe to make in a pressure cooker is Alton Brown's Pressure Cooker Chili. I've made the recipe without a pressure cooker and it takes 3-4 for the meat to become nice and tender while the pressure cooker can do it in 25 minutes.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/pressure-cooker-chili-recipe/index.html
There's also the added benefit of stocks not coming out as cloudy as the more normal ways of making stock.
You can make vegetables soup in minutes.
Steel cut oatmeal, very fast too.
Basically anything that would stovetop cook for hours can be done in 20-35minutes mostly. We did oxtail soup for dinner just last night in an hour, start to eating.
And vegetables can be steamed to perfection in just a few minutes, with some danger of overcooking.
You can use it to make a version of risotto that doesn't take any stirring.
Just mix the ingredients in and you are good to go? Really? This would taste the same?
@Wil - there's apparently some trickery involved in the settings and letting steam out.
I've never tried risotto a la pressure cooker but daniel's claim that stirring is necessary is another myth that should be dispelled. See Bittman in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/dining/02mini.html?ref=asparagus
Pressure cookers generally are ideal for food items that require moist cooking methods that take a long time. Generally, the can be employed in lieu of:
Long boiling or simmering, as with beans or brown rice
Stews and other braises
Long steaming
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3955 | How to wash lettuce
What's the best way to wash lettuce while keeping it crisp? I've been soaking the lettuce head in water and then trying to shake the water off the leaves afterwards, but it doesn't work very well.
Invest in a salad spinner. Soak, spin, store. It increases the shelf life of lettuce and other leafy greens.
For Iceberg lettuce I usually core it first (smash it stem end down on the counter and the core will pull right out) and then turn over under a stream of cool water and let the water run into the head. Turn it core side down and let it drain in a colander or the sink before you then break up/tear apart.
For Leaf lettuce, break the leaves apart and place in a large bowl of sink of cool water and gently swish around OR if it's not muddy or dirty, then leave the head whole and give a good rinse under a gentle stream of cool water. Remove the lettuce leaves from water and drain in a colander or tear apart and drain on absorbent towels, patting gently.
If storing lettuce in plastic bags, spin in a salad spinner and then put in a plastic bag that's lined with a paper towel to absorb excess moisture.
THE BEST method that I have found is to use a "Salad Sac" (no "k" in the name) which is a terry cloth drawstring bag. Wash your lettuce, vegetables, herbs and then simply put in the bag, pull the drawstring tight, shake lightly to help the water bounce off the vegetables and be absorbed into the bag, then place in your vegetable crisper drawer. The bag absorbs the moisture to help maintain the turgor pressure in the vegetables but still allows air to flow and keep them from getting slimy. Earlier this spring I wrote a post on reviving wilted greens and included a picture of the Salad Sac. If you're good at sewing it would be easy enough to make one out of a terry cloth towel.
Ooh never heard of a Salad Sac. I'll get one and try it out. Thanks for the tip Darin!
@hobodave: I carry a small variety of retail items in the cooking school and I was a bit hesistant to carry them until I finally broke down and decided to try it just over a year ago. Rather than storing my herbs in cups of water I now put them in a salad sac, wrapping each bunch in a paper towel if I have a lot of different types at once. If the bag is starting to dry out, instead of washing everything again, I simply take it to the sink and fling some cold water on both sides before returning to the fridge. I've kept herbs in crisp condition for 7-10 days.
@cinque: Microfiber cloth? Probably as long as it is water absorbent and large enough to hold things when formed into a bag.
For your dressing to stick to your leaves they need to be dry. When I buy organic Romaine lettuce (cos in Europe), I break the head apart and clean each leaf with a paper towel. Some dirtier ones may need rinsing and then drying. Most of the time the leafs are clean and it takes no time to do a whole head.
Lettuce is crunchy water, so when the leaves look a bit lifeless, soak them in cold water. Osmosis will bring back to a lively and crispy state. Just dry them well.
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23546 | Is there an alternative wrapping for tamales?
I'd like to have a go at making tamales, but the corn husk wrappers are hard to come by here. Is there anything I can use as a substitute wrapper?
I guess it's also hard to get fresh corn? It's just about the right time of year for that, depending where you are.
Not hard, but most fresh corn is usually trimmed and portioned so I can't get the husks from them.
I've had the same problem once. The first substitute is banana leaves. But they're not easy to find either.
The second one is using big leaves of chard. Tamales will be done in the same time and you could eat the leaf if you want. I've tried it once and it came out great.
Here it's a recipe for tamales from Michoacan made with chard. Here it is a graphic step by step recipe for tamales with chard. They are written in Spanish, let me know if you need a translator ;)
PS. My mexican mother in law used to do it with chard.
Banana leaves do work well and taste good. They are often obtainable, frozen, at Asian markets as well as Latin ones.
Yes, I can get hold of banana leaves.
My mom (from Guadalajara) used to often wrap them in parchment paper, since it can withstand being heated/steamed. I don't know why she started doing it - probably because it annoyed her that the delicious filling often oozed out of the tamales during the steaming. Anyway, Just to make sure, I would use double sheets the first time you try the parchment to replace the corn husks. There really wont be any difference in flavor.
You could use banana leaves or avocado leaves, though I'm not sure those would be easier to come by. If you can't get a hold of any of those I would try wrapping them in parchment.
You can also get grape leaves in a jar. Bonus: They're edible.
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6667 | The secret to hash browns / home fries / breakfast potatoes
I have never been successful in making pan-fried potatoes àla the American diner.
It seems like such a simple concept, but they never turn out right! Usually undercooked & oily, with some parts getting burned...
Ideally, I'd like to produce potatoes that are crispy and golden brown on the outside, fully cooked and soft on the inside, and not excessively oily. What are the important factors to ensure this?
Some variables I've considered:
Type of Potato
Shape of cut (grated, thinly sliced, cubed, etc.)
Cooking technique (parboil first, or straight in the pan? How much oil, what temp, etc.)
Type of oil
I have yet to find a combination of values for these variables that produces proper hash browns... What are your guidelines for making breakfast potatoes? Which of the above variables are important? Are there any other keys that I am missing?
It seems so simple when diners do it; I can't figure out where I am going wrong...
Edit: I was afraid this would happen... terminology clarification: apparently I'm looking more for "home fries" or something to that effect. I do not want a solid potato pancake àla McDonald's hash brown; I am looking for pan fried potatoes; the pieces should be seperate (although they may stick together a bit in places). Some pictures I've found that seem to be more in line with my thoughts:
NOT:
At least where I come from, hashbrowns are by definition grated; anything else is homefries, and the technique is different.
Thanks for the comment; I was afraid of that; edited to include more specifications and pictures....
I prefer grated hashbrowns over any other type. One key is to rinse after grating really well (supposedly this gets rid of starches and from my experience, helps so that the final result isn't mushy). After rinsing, it's important to dry. One technique that works well for me is using a salad spinner. Then oil in the pan, make a relatively thin layer, and never use a lid. Turn out well for me every time.
It sounds to me like the issue may be that you're crowding the pan.
Basically, to get everything nice and brown and crispy, you need enough space for all of the steam to escape. That picture you showed has potatoes stacked on top of each other -- that means as the bottom items cook, they're going to end up steaming the items above them.
At a diner, they have a large griddle to work with -- they can really spread things out. You're not typically that lucky in a regular kitchen, as you don't have as much space, and you have a lip on the pans that'll hold the steam in.
So, either work in smaller batches, or consider recipes that use an oven -- using sheet pans instead of a pan on the stove solves much of the problem.
One other trick is that most diners don't start from raw potatoes -- maybe with hash browns, but not for home fries, you're not going to get the nice soft interior in a reasonable amount of time unless you start with a potato that's already been baked or boiled. (If you're doing things in the oven, you might be able to, but not in a pan)
Just for reference ... I have a 14" cast iron skillet that I use for home fries ... and it's about the right size for cooking a single large potato, which might be two servings, maybe three for kids. (I tend to cook carb-heavy meals).
update : I probably should've stated this directly -- you want the chunks of potato to form a single layer in the pan, with space in between them.
Great point on not crowding the pan, I went to edit that into my answer after re-reading it, came back and yours was much more thorough :) Also, +1 from me for the oven idea. That works great.
I suspect that may be my problem... I know I usually have a couple layers, and try to stir; I should've known that was the culprit!
Thanks!
With respect to starting from raw - you can really help yourself out by pre-cooking in the microwave before you brown in the pan.
@Jefromi : I tried that once. The results weren't so good : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/5337/potato-in-the-microwave/5358#5358
Ahhh! You cube them up first! Don't put them in whole! Cut them, put them in a bowl with a little bit of extra water and some butter, cover it so they don't dry out. I've never had any problems at all. (Though if you didn't have a turntable it might not work as well.)
I generally use Russet potatoes, because they're always on hand at our house. I've tried Yukon Gold as well, and red potatoes, both with success. Sweet potatoes can be a nice treat if you want to mix it up a bit.
Cubed seems to work better than slices if you parboil, though you can get a similar result if you increase the temp when you fry them a little.
I've had good success with parboiling the potatoes first. 10-12 minutes max, you don't want to overcook them. You can parboil them the night before, which is very convenient. I've also been told that helps them dry up a little bit, though I don't find the difference in frying to be noticeable. However, patting them dry right after parboiling does seem to help. Temp when you fry them should be pretty high, I have an electric range and use 7 out of 10 or so, so make sure you choose an oil that can take it. These are meant to be fried, think about the classic deep fried food you've had and how the outside was crispy but the inside was soft. Based on that, I use a little more fat than is probably necessary - this also ensures the temperature doesn't drop much when I throw the potatoes in. I'd estimate I go 1/2 way up the sides of the cubed potatoes. If your potatoes are burning, you can turn the heat down to medium and cook them a little longer - as long as you parboiled them, you don't have to fry them over a high heat, I just prefer it. Make sure not to do too many at a time, you can always keep batches warm in the oven while you finish the rest if you're cooking a lot of them.
For best results I find that bacon fat is king, and butter runs a close second, but I've done it in olive oil and grape seed oil (both much healthier!) with success as well. The most important thing is that you get a screaming hot pan, and a fat that can stand up to it. If you find you're burning your butter off too fast, go with a 50/50 mix of butter and a high smoke point oil.
Oh, and you want to use cast iron here if you have it!
So, in summary:
Russet works fine for me, but I think you could use just about anything as long as you parboil.
I've had best results with cubed, but good results with slices as well.
Parboiling is definitely the way to go, about 8-12 minutes. You can do this the night before. The single most important factor in the process is a nice hot pan for frying.
Bacon fat is preferred, then butter, otherwise any high smoke point oil should do well.
In addition:
After parboiling and cubing, you want the heat in the pan to be at least medium high, if not high. While this isn't absolutely crucial, and can be adjusted if your potatoes are burning, it definitely helps.
If you're finding there's too much oil on the potatoes after cooking, you can drain them on a paper towel and/or pat them dry. You might lose a little seasoning, so be prepared to add some to taste right before serving if desired.
This is very similar to the recipe I followed the first time I had great results. The only thing I've changed through trial and error is that I increased the heat and cooked them faster than this recipe recommends.
How do you pull off slice potatoes? I always assume that diners cheated and deep fried 'em. I just can't pull off crispy with sliced potatoes unless I've got enough oil to shallow fry 'em. (or cut 'em thick, so they're basically the thickness of any cubes I'd have made, but then you lose out on some crispy exterior)
Thanks for a great, thorough answer! I wish I could accept more than one... I think the key is a combination of having a hot pan and small batch size...
Also, I suspect that I will have boiling potatoes on my stovetop at dinnertime more and more often now, in preparation for the next morning... :-)
@Joe: I slice them a little thicker than the picture in the question (not much, though), use a little more oil, a higher temp, and less at a time. Technically it could probably be considered cheating and deep frying - while I don't completely cover the slices with oil, I do use quite a bit. So yeah, like you were saying, it's basically a shallow fry :)
@TJ Ellis: No problem, good luck! If you're already gonna have some potatoes on the stove, consider throwing some twice-baked potatoes in the mix. They're really easy and freeze well. Bake, halve, scoop, mash, mix with milk/butter/sour cream/cheese/bacon/etc, put back in skins, bake again, wrap, freeze!
@Joe - for sliced potatoes, I usually flip and shuffle a lot to give slices access to the bottom of the pan, and also periodically let them lie for a while so that bottom layer browns and crisps - it can make for some very long cooking times to get everything browned, but it is really good. It helps to start with little oil in the pan, and add the rest in drizzles over the cooking time, since that coats the potatoes, not just the pan. More flipping makes slices more likely to break, but that's a bonus - the crispy little scruff is the best, especially when the crisping sticks them together.
Diners have a different set of constraints than you: they want to dump a big pile of potatoes on the griddle at 5am and keep serving from the same pile until 10. Their "recipe" is optimized for a griddle in continuous use. The tastiness comes from all the bacon fat they keep scraping over from the bacon area to the potatoes area.
Do you have to fry them? Oven roasted potatoes may be a lot closer to what you're looking for.
I like doing this with the little red potatoes. Cut them into 1/8ths, toss with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little bit of rosemary, put them on a cookie sheet or in a glass 9x11 pan, and roast at 350°F for half an hour. About halfway through, you can stir them around a little bit.
There's a picture on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/culinaryfool/2377635811/
Don't discount the "cook before crisping" idea though. Classic Belgian 'Pomme Frites" are first blanched in oil, then the temp is turned up and then they are crisped. This is also how McD gets crisp outside and soft in the middle texture for their fries.
Other foods use this technique too. Roast in a normal oven at 350F then crank it up to 500F to crisp the outside (roasts, turkey)
But for classic hashbrowns / homefries the easiest way, if you have the space, is not crowding the pan and remove excess water as quickly as possible.
I experimented with Hashbrowns (I assume this is what you are talking about) for a while having much the same problems you did, and found the best technique involves grating into a clean tea towel, then wrapping tightly to squeeze the water out and then adding grated onion.
Parboiling doesnt seem to help this - its removing the water that helps.
Season the squeezed potatos well - they can take alont. I dont use an addional egg to bind, but depending on what type of potato I may use a little flour, usually on the outsides - seems to help build a crust to keep it together.
Once formed into patties I shallow fry them on a medium/medium high (depending on thickness) and they usually seem to come out well - crispy but nice in the middle.
Thanks for your answer, though I was looking more for loose fried potatoes, not potatoe patties/pancakes. I've updated the question to include the clarification (and pictures!). (Though I have had similar problems with making potato pancakes too, so thanks for the advice!)
Sounds like most recipes for latkes -- a traditional Hannukah food.
I have pretty good luck with home fries by using a spray oil in a non-stick skillet. It helps if the potatoes are dry and not wet. I will blot them with a paper towel, and even toss a small bit of potato starch on them (I'm sure corn starch would work well too).
I used a small dice when using raw potatoes and starch. If I happen to have pre-cooked potatoes (usually leftovers from previous dinner) when I will make large cubes.
I put home fries through the grating blade of my food processor or through the julienne setting of my mandolin. Then, I squeeze out the water by putting the processed potatoes through a potato ricer. Gets all the water out quickly. then it's just a matter of dumping the potatoes in a large area pan on the stove with some olive oil (not extra virgin) and some chopped onions and fry on medium heat, turning when one side is crisp until it's toasty brown and just before serving clump it up a bit for a few more minutes.
This sounds like it would make good "hash browns" (shredded potatoes), but the OP seems more interested in "home fries" (chunks of potatoes).
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1584 | How do you make Ketchup Doritos?
I have been craving these for years, and I can't find a recipe.
Frito-Lay made Ketchup flavored Doritos a few years ago. Unfortunately they didn't sell very well and were discontinued not to long after being introduced. Me and a few friends were obsessed with them. I won't admit to how many bags I ate, but it consumed most of my snack budget :)
I've called Frito-Lay many times, and talked to a few of their delivery staffers about their lack of Ketchup Doritos, and the response was not good. The chance of them ever coming back is very bad.
So I turn to my last hope: Making them myself! Do you have a recipe for them? Even if it isn't the actual recipe, if it's your own proprietary blend I'm willing to give it a shot.
Since the powers that be don't want this site turning into a recipe swap, you're probably not going to get many answers. However, I did get some decent hits on Google when I worded the query like this: http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+make+ketchup+chips (BTW: I'm not being a smartass. It took me a while to get Google to stop showing me homemade recipes of xyz with ketchup as an ingredient or condiment.)
This question is so wistful, it breaks my heart.
@dinah this isn't a run of the mill "GIMME TEH RECIPEZZ!" question, though, is it? This one is interesting, specific, and unique.
I know this question is getting old, but Frito-Lay does make Ketchup Lays chips. Not the same as Doritos but the "flavor" may be similar.
Canada sells ketchup chips all the time. You could buy some there if you're close to the border. Otherwise you could buy ketchup powder and sprinkle those on regular potato chips, or buy some at ebay/amazon.
do you have ketchup corn chips? (doritos are corn, not potato, but +1 for the ketchup powder suggestion ... might have to make your own ... tomato, garlic & onion powders, a little sugar, afix with vinegar)
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6402 | How do I make a fried egg with completely cooked white but completely runny yolk?
I like a fried egg with all the white cooked, yet all the yolk runny.
I normally do this by separating the yolk and white, and putting the yolk in halfway through.
Anybody know an easier way?
wow, never heard of separating the white and the yolk. That's some effort to go to to get a perfect fried egg.
See also: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/40270/whats-the-best-approach-to-get-runny-yolk-sunny-side-up-fried-eggs
Tips for perfect fried egg:
Temperature of your pan is the key. (low - medium)
Do not flip the egg (this will cook the top too fast and bye bye to runny golden yolk)
Halfway through the cooking take a lid for the pan put a small bit of water in it and close the lid on it for a few minutes. (Too much water and your eggs are wet when you pull them, too little and the effect is not noticed.)
The end result, if you do it right is the white cooked, the outer yellow cooked but inside runny golden and good. If you do it too short the white will not cook through, too long and you over cook but I have been doing it this way for awhile.
so is that a low, medium or high heat? Never thought to use a lid / water when frying an egg! Interesting.
+1 for the lid and low heat. Although it should be reiterated that this will cook a little of the top of the yellow usually.
+1 I use the lid method also for sunny side ups. To me the ideal result should have the yoke cooked just enough so that if you poke it with your toast, all the yoke oozes out.
Medium heat + lid on from the beginning. No extra water, and don't flip the egg.
@Nick yes this is low-medium depending on how busy you are while you are cooking. I find myself sometimes go with low heat toss the lid on early and get ready for work while my eggs cook real slow.
I find that the low heat method is less forgiving than the high heat method. but that's just me
@dassouki what do you mean by "less forviging"?
@Chris - Don't get me wrong, I agree with your answer and a +1 on it; however, I find with my personal experience that when i'm cooking eggs at med-high temperature, I tend to be glued to the pan. When i cover it up on low-med heat, I forget about it, and boom you have over cooked non-runny eggs
I like my eggs over-medium (cooked white with a TINY bit of brown, runny yolk), and this is the method I've settled on after much trial and error. Everyone has different motivations, but for me, I like this method because it's:
fast (the length of these instructions are a bit deceptive)
uses minimal equipment
repeatable
uses minimal fat
cons:
takes some practice
need a good(relatively new) nonstick skillet(s)
occasionally lose an egg
Technique:
as previously stated, stove temperature is key. you have to spend
some time learning your stove. You want a temp that is high enough
to cook the white but not too high that the yolk is cooked as well.
(modify this temp according to your desired results...runnier yolk =
higher heat)
another key is a SLICK non-stick skillet. I use the cheap $10 8"
from a supply shop for one person's serving(up to 3 eggs
comfortably). I have 2 on hand, so that I can cook for my wife and
myself at the same time. With more people I cook in shifts, still
using one skillet per person. These are dedicated egg pans...I use
them for NOTHING else. When the egg no longer releases perfectly,
they go into regular duty and I get another(hence the $10 version).
No all-clad or calphalon here(the cheap one's are better non-stick
anyway).
heat pan to your known temp(see step 1)
crack the eggs for one person's serving into a small work bowl
swipe the pan with a very quick pass of a stick of butter(for the
very slightly browning more than anything else)
pour eggs into hot pan
let cook until whites are ~3/4 cooked from bottom to top. this is
where the temp is critical. if you have it right, the bottoms of
the white will be at your desired level of doneness, and the top
side will still be slightly uncooked.
this is where the practice is important(and the slick pan). FLIP
the egg. Everyone has their favorite technique for this, and if you
don't I recommend practicing it. For me I move the pan away from me
slightly to give the food some momentum, then pull back towards
myself sharply just enough for the food to hit the sloped side away
from me and become airborn. Lastly, bring the pan back under the
food, and move it downward slightly to try and cushion the landing,
so that the food lands nice and softly back in the pan. After some
practice, you'll be able to do this with a pretty high success rate.
let the egg cook for another 5-10 seconds. this will finish off the
remaining uncooked white, including that surrounding the yolk. I
usually do this on my way to the plate. Carryover heat will
continue to firm the egg up, but if you got step 7 right, it won't
overcook the yolk.
I realize this is a necro post, but just wanted to add this technique to the collective, and I love stack exchange :).
One way to achieve this effect is to fry it in plenty of butter or oil, and baste the top of the white with the hot fat.
Better yet, bacon grease. YUM!
A good way of performing this is by frying the egg in a cast iron skillet (or any other non non-stick coated pan) and splashing the (bacon yes!) grease up on the top of the egg thus cooking the white on both sides at the same time without over cooking the egg. We called these grease eggs, but basically it sounds like an over medium recipe would be what you're after.
grease eggs? Sounds like a monthly treat :)
there are a few ways to doing this, it depends on the type of fried egg you want. The easiest way by far, is to:
Crack the egg on top of a hot pan + oil.
season lightly with S & P
Flip the egg after about a minute or so for about 30 seconds.
If you want sunny side up eggs,
crack the egg on top of a hot pan + oil
season your egg
put a lid on for about a minute
take the egg immediately off the heat
it'll take about 20 to 30 eggs to master the process, but one you got'er you'll do blind folded
I make myself a breakfast of bacon and eggs every Saturday morning. I feel I have perfected my egg cooking, and I will attempt to tell you how to replicate it.
Preparation
Materials:
One Cast Iron Skillet, 12 inches diameter
A wooden spatula with a rounded corner on one side
A wide pancake flipper
One Gas Stove (electric is less ideal but do-able)
A package of bacon
Three eggs
A bowl to hold the eggs before cooking
A plate for serving
Put the three eggs in the bowl and cover with warm to hot tap water, let these sit while the bacon cooks.
Put four full slices of bacon in the skillet (or more) and use a wide flame about medium-low to cook them. The fat in the bacon should render down to a golden brown and the grease from it should liquify in the bottom of the pan (hereafter optionally referred to as "oil" though that may not be as precise, it is more descriptive). Carefully remove the bacon and place on the serving plate, attempting to leave as much of the bacon grease in the pan as possible.
(Now's a good time to put bread in a toaster if you have both, not necessary to these directions, but how I prefer to do it. Wait until you're at the last egg to toast it.)
If you leave the oil on a medium-low flame while you do this, it may begin to smoke, and you don't want that, the heat will plasticize the egg whites, so turn it down a bit to almost completely low (remember, stove behavior varies so you'll want to carefully experiment until you learn your stove).
The Eggs
Now, carefully take an egg out of the warm water, dry it, and crack it into the pan. I prefer to firmly grip the egg between the ends and rotate it, knocking it softly against a smooth hard surface until I've fractured it all around its equator. If you're afraid you'll get shell in the pan, you can crack it into a ramekin first so you can inspect it.
When you crack it into the pan, it should smooth out much more quickly than a cold egg normally would, and you also want to puncture the inner whites' membrane with the rounded spatula as soon as you can to further smooth out the whites. When the top of the whites are firm enough to stay in place, tilt the pan slightly, allowing the oil to come to one side of the pan. Holding the pan tilted in place with your non-dominant hand, use your dominant hand to flip the oil onto the yolk with an almost whisking motion. I usually count 60 or so oil flips before the whites on the top of the yolk are congealed, but if the oil cools too much, it may take more.
Use the pancake flipper to carefully remove the finished egg from the pan, and try to drip as much of the oil back into the pan as possible for easier cooking of the remaining eggs.
Repeat the process for the remaining eggs. When you're done, you can filter and store the remaining oil (it will solidify back into a grease when fully cool, so filter it while it's hot) in a jar for future cooking, or if it's relatively clean (no food left in it to spoil), leave it in the pan for another set of eggs tomorrow.
You should now have a plate full of bacon and perfect eggs. Enjoy.
Hm, you cook the eggs one at a time? Don't you end up with the first one a bit cold by the time you're done with the last one?
They cook very quickly because they're already warm, and I cover one with the other, so they retain the heat fairly well. If they didn't, I could heat a stoneware plate as well.
Although this is not a method I would use, I gave you a +1 for the clear instructions and attention to detail.
I have a new way -
plop the whole egg or eggs in a pan like normal people, wait a bit then use a blowtorch to set that last bit of white which is around the yolk.
The blowtorch approach works great for omelettes too - so I can set the top and flip (if the mood takes me).
+1 for "like normal people" (or rather, for what it implies about the rest of your method.) :)
I use a technique from Cooks Illustrated. Add very little oil (1-2 Tspoons), add the egg (preferably egg is at room temperature - ok if it is not), cover and cook at really low temp until the white sets. You might also try swirling the pan (the lid must be on) so that the little oil can cover the top of the white and cook it faster - however you also cook the yolk at the same time. The trick is really low heat, covered pan.
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46904 | Making baking powder substitute with baking soda and powdered citric acid
I have no baking powder, but I do have baking soda and powdered citric acid. Can these be combined to substitute for 1 teaspoon of baking powder? If so, how much of each would I use?
I'm sure you know the difference between single and double action baking powder, but I just want to be sure that you know this substitution will approximate single action baking powder.
Yes, I have found several sources that say that citric acid is about 4 times the strength of cream of tartar. So, mix 1 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon of citric acid and use a 1/2 teaspoon of the mixture.
That should work. Let us know!
EDIT: Oops, I should have mentioned this before the OP accepted. Hopefully, he'll realize, or see this. That substitution will approximate single action baking powder, so don't dilly-dally before cooking! (Difference Between Double and Single Action Baking Powder)
2nd EDIT: Just to be extra confident, I compared the reaction (according to the method of David Lebovitz) of 1/4 tsp of my recommended mixture with boiling water and 1/2 tsp of new Rumford Baking Powder with boiling water. The results seemed identical.
3rd EDIT: I actually found this question pretty intriguing. While I could find plenty of evidence that it should work (including my own little water experiment), I couldn't find anything definitive that said it does work.
Well, it just so happens that I had some cream in the fridge, and I have been meaning to try America's Test Kitchen's cream biscuits. With nothing in them but flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cream; they should be perfect for comparing real baking powder with the substitution.
SO:
I made biscuits.
They taste as identical as they look. (pretty yummy too)
I can now say with authority, the substitution works. 1 tsp fresh Rumford Brand Baking Powder = 1/2 tsp of a mixture of 1 tsp baking soda and 1/2 tsp citric acid.
Thank you for your thorough answer. I can also report that it worked for me. Thank you for pointing out single-acting vs double-acting. I made sure not to spend too much time mixing and got my item into the oven quickly so as to not miss the window for single-acting baking powder.
It shouldn't, the biscuits tasted exactly the same with the substitution and with baking powder.
It won't make them taste funny. The citric acid is used up by the reaction with the baking soda.
What an excellent answer! Can you confirm whether this is shelf stable? Or how long until it is no longer shelf stable?
Mixing 2 part of baking soda with 1 part citric acid is a great substitute for baking powder. I tested it on a biscotti recipe and the taste was excellent!
This doesn’t add anything that isn’t already in JoleneAlaska’s excellent answer.
From separate containers of baking soda and citric acid, add baking soda at 1/3 the amount of baking powder required then citric acid at 1/2 of the amount of baking soda already added.
This is quantitatively the same as above but avoids the reactivity problems of pre mixing baking soda with citric acid.
I use the substitution because I prefer to avoid the aluminum that is in baking powder. As already mentioned, just start baking immediately after mixing in this substitution since it is single action versus the double action of baking powder. It always works for me.
What reactivity problems are you concerned with? Are you in a very humid environment?
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8674 | Better ways to drain tofu in a hurry?
So far the best way I've found to make tofu taste good is to exchange as much of the water in it for liquid carrying flavor. In order to do that of course you need to get the water OUT. The age old wrap it in tea towels and let it set with some weight on it just doesn't seem compatible with our kitchen (very small, with little counter space) or our family (has a active toddler that gets into everything).
The best way I've found to date is:
freeze the tofu (in it's container) until it's rock hard. (at least 2 nights)
Let the tofu thaw in the fridge until it's completely thawed through. (at least 2 days)
slit the package open along one long side, poke a hole on the opposite side for air to get in and and allow the block to drain into the sink.
compress the package (over the sink) with your hands (if it's the soft plastic vacuum packed kind)
take the block of tofu out of the package and slice it on my cutting board into slices 1/2" thick (or whatever size I need for the dish in question if they're smaller)
place the slices on an upside down plate, place another plate upside down atop it (bottom to bottom - our plates have a flat, sealed bottom so they're food safe.)
hold the plate and tofu sandwich above the sink and lightly squeeze with a hand on both sides until liquid stops coming out.
The problems with this are:
have to plan ahead, if I didn't take the block of tofu out of the freeze two days ago, we're not eating it for dinner tonight.
there's a seriously noticeable texture change, which in and of itself isn't bad, it's just not something you want with every dish.
So what other methods are folks using for draining blocks of tofu in a hurry?
EDIT: the main thing I'm looking for here is speed... this is for those "oh crud, we forgot to plan ahead for diner tonight!" moments.
Wow, that sounds like a huge hassle!
no way I would put that much effort into tofu
sound's like you're pressed for space...
My time pressed tofu draining method is the microwave.
You slice it into the size pieces you wan then there are two different ways I have used:
1) Microwave it for about two minutes. Water leaks out onto the plate, which you drain then microwave it for a couple more minutes. Keep doing this until it stops leaking out water.
2) Microwave once for three minutes then place over a colander to rain.
The multiple time method works slightly better (more through draining) but once plus draining is easier.
I second the microwaving - works for me every time.
Repeated microwaving doesn't change the texture of the tofu in any fundamental way?
I'm not really sure I understand your space constraints. We do what you initially suggested with a minor modification. We take the tofu and wrap in paper towels and then weight it down (we use our in kitchen compost bin, but a pot would work fine). Every 5 mins, we unwrap the tofu, squeeze out the kitchen towels, re-wrap, and then re-weight. It takes about 15-20 minutes to get quite dry, and we prep other things while we're doing this.
This takes very little kitchen space (in our case, we're using a weight that was already on the kitchen counter so it takes no additional kitchen space). You could probably also do this on a cutting board on top of the fridge or some other space in the kitchen. And how big is your toddler that they can get to the back of your counters?
Seems to me, you should give this method another shot, as it's easy, effective, and doesn't require pre-planning.
Personally, I just try to find fresher tofu, because good tofu tastes good with very little more than a little soy sauce, ginger and scallions, served cold as "hiyayakko."
However, what you're describing is basically a homemade equivalent to Koyadoufu, the Japanese name for a freeze-dried tofu. You can buy koyadoufu in Japanese markets in the US, and just add boiling water to it to rehydrate it before incorporating into your dish. Alternatively, you can add boiling water to the frozen tofu you have stored (I remove the water from the container first, and freeze it). After adding the boiling water, let sit a few minutes, pour off the water, then squeeze the tofu to remove the last bit of water. I just use my hands for this, but you'll want to let it cool first. This is best done with pre-sliced or cubed tofu, as the whole block won't thaw very easily with boiling water.
Koyadoufu is often simmered with dashijiru (Japanese-style soup stock, typically dried kelp and bonito or small dried fish, sometimes dried kelp and mushrooms), salt, soy sauce, sugar, and mirin (sweetened shochu or sweetened rice wine) and some other vegetables or shiitake for color contrast. But I've also used koyadoufu for less mainstream purposes, including tacos, and it works really nicely with a mole poblano.
Regular tofu should be almost creamy texture and a mild but pleasant soybeany flavor. In a lot of supermarkets, tofu expiration dates are marked very generously, and some off taste and acidity has already developed. Usually even the well-packaged stuff I've seen in Japan has an expiration date not more than about 2-3 weeks after manufacture, tops; in the US, I've seen some that had a date months in the future, and yes, that was reliably an overestimation, as I've often discovered upon opening the package.
Fresh tofu is not meant to absorb other flavors; it's not all that porous unless it's freeze-dried (or frozen). It's meant to complement other flavors, and bring its own texture and aroma to a dish. If you find yourself having to cover up the flavor of tofu, the tofu you are buying is just not that good quality, or it's simply past its prime. You may want to see if there are local tofu-makers that have fresher stuff available. In Seattle there are three small scale places that I know of.
We generally drain in the sink, using the wrap-in-towels-and-press technique. Usually cut into slabs (half or fourths of the block) to get more surface area and make it dry quicker, and then put the towel-wrapped tofu between two baking sheets or cutting boards, with a couple cans of spaghetti sauce or beans on top for weight. Sometimes, when pressed for space (i.e. sink full), we keep it on the counter and use the top cutting board for cutting...
That said, I've pressed tofu in a college dorm room which had very very little room and essentially no kitchen; I think I wrapped it in a towel and put a textbook on top. Only took as much space as a block of tofu and a textbook. Doesn't even necessarily need to be in your kitchen for the pressing...
prepare to have your world rocked. after two decades pressing and draining tofu more or less the way you've been doing it, i found this this past summer:
http://www.tofuxpress.com/
your tofu-pressing will never be the same. also works on frozen spinach, etc. : )
Mmmm, daddy likey
Microwave the whole block of tofu for like 10-15,,, maybe even 20 minutes. Firms up a treat. The water just boils out and the tofu never burns.
Ideal.
I find the common method works well enough:
Drain tofu
Press by hand in some towels
Add weight (a big pot works nicely) and new towels
Press by hand again (in new towels)
Takes 10-20 minutes (only a few minutes of real effort), most of which it's under the weight.
Here's what I figured out, since I hate wasting all those paper towels, and don't have storage space for another gadget:
Required items
One clean empty plastic tofu container
One plastic tofu container containing tofu, cover removed, original water drained
One tourniquet
Someplace to put the result to drain the liquid
Process
Place container containing tofu on counter
Place empty container on top of fresh tofu (open side up)
Wrap tofu tower with tourniquet
Place tofu tower with open side down in drainage area
Tighten tourniquet every once in awhile until sufficiently drained
Enjoy!
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34487 | How can I make this wine and bacon sauce into a thick liquid?
I followed this recipe for a red wine and bacon steak sauce.
The sauce didn't thicken at all, the result was mostly boiled in red wine bacon, which wasn't bad, but wouldn't spread on my steak at all. How can I make this into a thicker sauce? I figure that I can add some cornstarch but is there another method?
I've edited your question to incorporate what you said in the comments; please edit further if I've misunderstood!
It sounds like you cooked it too long, and additionally, the recipe may just be bad. If you managed to cook away all the liquid and end up with just wine-infused bacon, there was probably a point before then with a reasonable amount of liquid. Sometimes what people are going for with wine reduction sauces is really to have a lot of the wine flavor concentrated into some minced ingredients, with enough thickened liquid to hold it together a bit. If you crumble the bacon finely enough, and don't reduce away all the liquid, you might find you like it like that.
But it sounds like you're looking for more of a liquid sauce, and at the point when enough liquid remained, it was too thin. I'd might suggest just finding a more detailed, trustworthy recipe for a wine reduction sauce, and just adding in bacon (and maybe taking out some other ingredients).
Short of that, if I were going to try to do this without many extra ingredients, I'd:
Save the fat that cooks out of the bacon.
Crumble the bacon very finely.
Keep plenty of liquid when reducing.
Whisk together equal parts bacon fat and flour and cook until the flour turns a bit golden. (Basically, make roux with bacon fat.)
Whisk the sauce into the roux and cook for a bit longer.
This is again a very fuzzy recipe. With the amount of fat bacon releases, you can definitly make more than enough roux to thicken plenty of sauce - depending on how much you reduce the wine and how thick you want the sauce, I'm guessing you'd only need a tablespoon or two of roux. If you feel you've lost too much of the bacon flavor, see SAJ14SAJ's answer for how to incorporate more of the fat without the sauce separating.
(In general, you have to be careful with vague recipes like the one you found - they'll tend to assume you know some things, so if you can't fill in the gaps yourself, it may be best to find a more specific one! And sometimes they're just bad recipes. That one tells you to fry bacon in olive oil, which is really suspicious - you don't need extra oil to fry bacon.)
"Goop" is a little harsh :-)
yes, I reduced the red wine until it was gone, but there wasn't much of a sauce left, only what looked like some bacon fat. The liquid left could barely cover my steak
@Eric Well, you said in your question that it didn't thicken.
Well I felt that I had poured some water in a hot pan and waited for it to "reduce". At the end there was nothing left of substance, that's why I called for help =)
@Eric Okay, I completely rewrote this to address my newfound understanding of your problem!
This "recipe" doesn't promise a thick, spreadable sauce. It says "reduce until it's a runny sauce consistence".
In addition to Jefromi's comments, I believe that this is not a quality recipe you are following. It is more of an outline of a technique, which is simply a very strong reduction of wine with bacon and bacon fat.
Reducing the wine sufficiently will make it essentially thick and syrupy, but will not help it emulsify with the bacon fat.
If you wish to use this technique, you might find that finishing it by whisking in some cold butter will help create an emulsion and thicken the sauce. This is the technique the French call beurre monté.
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1497 | Avoiding grittiness with sichuan pepper
I've got a big bag of Sichuan pepper but I've often found that when I cook with them it's difficult to avoid grittiness from the outer kernel. I don't have this problem when I visit Sichuan Chinese restaurants and the pepper was bought from a big Asian supermarket.
What do I need to do to prepare them to avoid the grittiness? Is it really as fiddly as picking out the peppercorn from each kernel or is there something simpler that I need to do?
Grind your peppercorns in a spice grinder, then put them in a large, fine meshed sieve and tap them over a large bowl. The spice will fall through and the husks will stay in the sieve. Should take about 5 minutes max.
Alternatively, buy them pre-ground.
Yes. The grittiness is completely due to the peppercorn. Remove it. Usually only the husk is used.
Sigh. Fiddly work. I guess I'll buy a paste or other preparation next time!
hmmmm. @TrebleKicker you seem to suggest in your question that you think it is the husks that are causing the grittiness, and you are going to remove the husks and just use the kernel, but this answer suggests that what you want to do is the opposite, ie, ditch the kernels and eat only the husks...
From wikipedia apparently: "Sichuan pepper has a unique aroma and flavour that is not hot or pungent like black or white pepper, or chili peppers, but has slight lemony overtones and creates a tingly numbness in the mouth (caused by its 3% of hydroxy-alpha-sanshool) that sets the stage for these hot spices. Recipes often suggest lightly toasting and then crushing the tiny seedpods before adding them to food. Only the husks are used; the shiny black seeds are discarded or ignored as they have a very gritty sand-like texture. It is generally added at the last moment."
Either way it's fiddly work and probably worth buying something other than the raw peppercorns ;)
Yeah, the big container of Szechuan peppercorns I got in Chinatown have only the husks, no seeds at all.
Fry whole peppercorns in oil, discard the peppercorns and use the oil. Saves for a few days in fridge with diminished quality.
If you do not want to prepare the oil in a larger batch in advance: Just submerge the peppercorns in your hot cooking oil in a sieve before adding other aromatics. You can also buy szichuan pepper oil in bottles (sometimes called prickly oil), but these will introduce additional ingredients usually.
Unfortunately for you, it looks as if you bought one of the cheaper made products that does not remove the seed from the husk.
I agree that removing them one by one by hand could be fiddly work! There are three suggestions to fix this though.
You can leave them in the sun for an afternoon and the pods will open up nicely and usually will drop the black fruit by themselves than you can you a properly sized mesh strainer to sieve them and get your leftover husks quite easily!
Leave them as-is and simply bundle them in a bit of cheese-cloth then add them to your dish. When finished cooking simply remove the bundle and their essence will be imparted in the dish (however, the fun of eating the husk and it's inherent tingling/numbing sensation might be lost, but the flavor should remain!
Source them more carefully next time. I suggest buying from an online spice dealer to maximize the quality and freshness that you want.
Yup, just checked the berry, hull is flavorful and grinds easy but the black center is pure shiny grit. Learned this the hard way after an otherwise great dish.
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13433 | Do lentils need to be soaked?
Everything I have read says that you do not need to soak lentils like you would beans. Unfortunately the last several times I have cooked lentils they have seemed a little chalky.
Should I be soaking my lentils before I cook them?
Have you tried rinsing your lentils before cooking? I don't know if that would help, but I have certainly read recipes that recommend it.
No, it's not necessary. You can do it, and if you'd soak them for about an hour, the cooking time will diminish strongly (half).
I'm not sure if this would affect the chalky taste.
Which kind of lentils do you use?
I agree, we need to know what sort of lentils they are
You should probably be soaking your lentils, but it depends on what type. Soaking expands and softens the lentils, which may be the effect if you're going for something like dal (yellow lentils).
Lentils are high in phytates, which is an anti-nutritional - it's undigestible, and makes certain important minerals unabsorbable, like zinc, iron, calcium, and magnesium. Soaking (and throwing away the water!) helps to remove many of these phytates.
If you're getting a chalky taste, perhaps you haven't cooked them for long enough? They can be rather chalky or bitter if undercooked.
I would suggest that you try getting puy lentils. They are a French green lentil that have a great taste and texture like a bean . You do have to soak them and they will increase in size .They don't turn to mush like the split pea lentil.
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17449 | What should I look for in an electric steamer for use to make tamales
I don't know a whole lot about what makes an electric steamer a good steamer. I'm looking for recommendations for one where I'm hoping to make tamales with. The plan is to make large batches so capacity is definitely a concern. Would the multi-level steamers work?
Any specific recommendations would be great. Any suggestions on what features to look for would also be appreciated.
I have never cooked tamales before, but when looking for something that needs to get hot (griddle, waffle iron, steamer)
Get something made out of metal. Plastic will not get as hot and will warp over time.
Avoid Low/Med/High dials, get something that will tell you the actual temperature.
Even heat distribution is key. Make sure the element/steam is not lopsided.
Some things that I would go for would be a glass top, a digital dial, and a safety power cord that detaches from the unit if yanked.
Ended up getting this one (http://www.amazon.com/Secura-Stainless-Electric-technology-S-324/dp/B004MKG8H8/ref=sr_1_10?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1340236175&sr=1-10&keywords=steamer). It's worked out nice.
Here are some tips which I found on Consumer Mentor:
High-gauge aluminum and stainless steel both provide a robust, lightweight, and easy to clean material for tamale steamers
Riveted handles are a good feature as they don't get too hot
A glass lid can be good as it allows you to see inside the pot without releasing the steam
As far as size is concerned each quart will fit around 3 tamales, so you should calculate your required size based on that.
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2175 | Culinarily Flexible Pepper
I'm planning next years garden, and want to know what the most culinary flexible pepper to plant would be.
I plan on using peppers for canning & chili.
Questions is subjective: this depends on what you like to cook.
I noted for canning and chili.
A very flexible pepper that is also good for canning is the hungarian pepper. It allows for a good usage in fresh, uncooked dishes. Additionally it sautes well, goes great in salsas, bakes well, is great roasted, or just eaten on its own (ok, that may be a bit much for most people). For canning my mother-in-law does it in different varieties with sweeter peppers, hotter peppers, a dill blend, and a savory blend and it's also a terrific relish once brought out of the canning.
Growing peppers of the proper heat level I think will be the most important.
If you like a lot of spice and grow Jalapeno peppers, then everything is going to taste like Jalapeno because you have to use a lot to get your desired heat level.
If you have the appropriate heat level pepper, then a little goes a long way in a dish and you will feel it much more than you taste it.
Here is a page with a nice list of peppers with ratings from the Scoville Scale (also explained on the page) http://ushotstuff.com/Heat.Scale.htm
Unless you're really space limited, why not grow several varieties of peppers? I've never regretted having access to more options.
Some areas have plant exchanges -- there's one in Brandywine, MD each year -- you bring what you've sprouted, and take home what you'd like from what other people have brought ... so you can get an opportunity to try lots of different things. Check around with gardening collectives and such in your area -- you might find something similar. Oh -- and my step father grows peppers in large flower pots ... they line the side of his driveway, as he probably has a dozen or more, so just because you don't have soil to grow in doesn't mean you don't have space.
I'm only planting them as companions for other plants, and figure I should be able to use them. Jalapenos seem to show up in tons of recipes so I'll just grow those.
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30088 | Is a whole chicken still safe after 5 days marinating in the fridge?
I marinated a whole chicken and put it in the fridge for 5 days--can I still cook and eat it?
Safety is borderline, assuming your refrigerator is at a properly cool temperature. However, after 5 days of sitting in a marinade, the meat will almost certainly be mush.
"can"? Sure. "Should"?.. And by the way, what is in your marinade? If it is strongly acidic or, for example, 96% rectified alcohol with some herbs, answer might be a bit closer to "yes".
The marination is largely irrelevant. The food safety rules in the question I linked say that you shouldn't be leaving chicken in your fridge for more than 2 days at all.
Five refrigerated days is pushing well past the recommended boundaries--MeatSafety.org and FoodSafety.gov both recommend no more than 1-2 days.
The marinade would make no significant difference in the overall shelf life of the chicken. This applies even to acid or enzyme based marinades since the concentration and application is not uniformly controlled.
Generally 5 days is too long, however it depends on the sell-by date of the chicken. If it was very fresh when you bought it any you marinaded it right away then it may be within its sell-by date in which case it may be safe to cook and eat. Make sure it passes the smell test after you wash it very thoroughly if you decide to give it a go.
Personally, I'd chuck it and get another one as I'd find it hard to enjoy a chicken that I suspected could potentially make my future short and painful.
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30816 | Substitute for ground crayfish?
I love crayfish flavor, and love to add ground crayfish to most sauces and stews. However I now live in an area where this condiment is scarce to unavailable. What other seasoning or condiment can I use for a crayfish-like flavor?
Welcome to the site! I edited your title to make it more clear that you're asking about ground crayfish, which I think a lot of people won't have seen before.
Are you looking for the shellfish flavor or something more funky like you'd find in dried seafood? If the latter is your choice I'd suggest something like Thai fish sauce or even taking shrimp shells and roasting them in the oven and grinding them in a coffee grinder into a powder.
You might give shrimp-based things a shot. If you have any kind of Asian grocery store around, you can probably find dried shrimp, shrimp paste, or even shrimp powder or bullion. You might find some of these things in Mexican grocery stores too, and shrimp broth-related stuff is sometimes sold in Western grocery stores too.
You could also try other seafood-based condiments. For example, furikake comes in a lot of varieties, including some with shrimp (ebi) or fish (bonito). There are likely to be some Asian liquid sauces that you'd like too, though I'm not sure what to specifically recommend there.
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33143 | Does it take more energy to maintain a higher cooking temperature?
This is just the curious cat in me. When heating water on a stove top in a covered pot, once the desired temperature is reached, does it take more energy to maintain the temp if it is higher (say 200F) vs if it is lower (say 150F)?
I'm impressed if you're boiling water at 150-200F!
@Jefromi I live in the international space station :)
I was trying to point out that your use of "boiling" was confusing. You've now gotten an answer assuming you're really talking about boiling, not varying cooking temperatures, so I went ahead and edited.
The limiting case would be a pot that is only emitting energy via thermal radiation, because it is (in the imagination) perfectly insulated and so not losing heat into the air via escaping vapor through the lid, or conducting heat through the pot material into the air.
In that case, the energy loss from the pot is only that of the black body radiation, which is a function strictly of temperature. Energy radiates away at a faster rate at higher temperatures.
Even if you relax these stringent imaginary conditions, all heat engines are based on a temperature difference. All of the heat loss mechanisms on the pot (such as losing heat to vaporization, or conduction through the surface of the pot into the air) are also driven by temperature difference between the contents of the pot and the surrounding air. The larger the difference, the faster the transfer on an absolute basis.
So yes, maintaining a higher temperature in equilibrium requires more energy per unit time than a lower one. But you would need someone far better at physics than me to give you the absolute mathematical models.
Generally the heat transfer that really matters is from pot to air; it's much less efficient than the conduction through the pot walls. But yes, roughly, you can approximate all the heat transfer (and therefore the input heat) as proportional to the temperature difference.
Agreed. I was pretty much ignoring the pot due to its high conductivity.
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32223 | Why won't my cream biscuits rise?
I am trying to make these "cream biscuits". However, they just will not rise (tried 4 times) and end up looking very flat.
I thought my problem was that I work the dough too much, but I tried it again and didn't touch the dough much but it still doesn't rise. I am using newly bought baking powder.
I am thinking the problem might be one of these reasons:
I used double cream instead of heavy cream because I am in
the UK and we have single/double but not "heavy cream". (I just
found out heavy cream is whipping cream in the UK)
The first batch was made with the full recipe and none of them
rose, so I experimented by cutting everything by 1/4 and made 2
biscuits at a time.
Why won't my biscuits rise? Are there any other possibilities?
You need to make sure you use the right measurements when translating recipes from the US to the UK as the UK uses imperial measurements which are different from US measurements. There are also differences in cream fat content and egg sizes. Teaspoons and tablespoons are the same, so don't worry about them.
First, pint measurements, as the UK doesn't use cup measurements. The UK pint is 20% bigger than the US pint, so if you are using UK pints to measure you may be getting ratios wrong. Use Milliliters instead when translating. 1 US Cup is 237ml (I round up to 240). If you use UK pints as a measure instead of US you won't have enough baking powder in the ratio. In fact, I find UK baking powder and bicarb a bit weaker than US powders, so I increase those measurements a bit anyway.
What works for me is the first time I make a US recipe in the UK I weigh the dry ingredients and use weights every time I make the recipe after that, I can fine-tune it that way.
US light cream is between 10-30% butter fat, and heavy cream is about 36-40%. UK single cream is between 10-30% fat, whipping cream is about 36%, and double cream is 50% fat. So if you are right that US heavy cream is UK whipping cream, but mixing 2 parts UK double and 1 part single works just as well as many places don't stock whipping cream.
I doubt that your results come from the cream you are using though, the fat contents aren't that different. One thing that could be different is the flour you use. US and UK flours aren't completely the same. For my biscuits in the UK I buy 00 or purpose milled pastry flour, which is finer and better for pastry than the bog standard stuff. If you can't find it pick the flour with the lowest protein content you can find.
Hope this helps, let the forum know your results if you can.
Thanks for the lengthy explanation. The flour I used was Sainsbury's Plain Flour, the ingredient list says Wheat Flour (100%) - could that be the problem?
Store brand plain flour is absolutely fine for most things, I make cakes and cookies with that very type often and there's nothing wrong with it. For pastry I would try and find 00 or pastry, which you should be able to find at any big supermarket chain.
Details about exact type of flour, exact oven temperature, and exact fat content of cream aren't the issue here. To make them not rise at all, you have to be doing something way off, like measurements wrong by a substantial factor.
Not necessarily @Jefromi, several small errors can add up to a big one. The wrong amounts of the wrong type of flour, the wrong type of cream, can add up to a recipe that doesn't work. It took me 4 attempts and a great deal of adjusting to make US style biscuits in the UK.
@Jefromi - That is a very good point. Thanks. Perhaps it is my measurements that are off! That recipe is in US units while I am using UK measuring instruments which are also not very accurate. Also, was it wrong to cut everything in the recipe by 1/4 to make 1/4 amount of biscuits?
My biscuits finally rose! The problem was that the recipe was in US cups and US spoons, and I wasn't translating them correctly. Using heavy cream (hard to find thicken/whipping cream in the UK), and carefully translating the US measurements to UK (e.g. measuring flour by weight instead of cups), my biscuits rose perfectly!
Great news, glad you got to the bottom of it. How did they taste?
@GdD - they are quite amazing! :D
The recipe is fine; if you follow it carefully it should work. Things you might mess up:
Baking powder isn't baking soda; make sure you have baking powder.
If you leave the dough alone for hours before baking, the baking powder will expend itself.
It's silly, but make sure you used a tablespoon of baking powder, not a teaspoon.
Working the dough longer won't help - if anything it'll make the biscuits tougher. And double cream is a bit more fat than heavy cream (see this question), but it shouldn't be a big deal.
Baking powder is still called baking powder in the UK. Baking soda is called bicarbonate of soda.
I checked that it is baking powder. I baked the dough immediately after mixing and cutting. I did use a tablespoon. I barely worked the dough. Thanks but I don't think any of these were the problem (i hope!). What about oven heat? I set it to 220 C which is roughly 425 F.
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33385 | Can I descale/decalcify my coffee machine without a special product?
I have a capsule espresso machine. The company sells a special decalcification kit. However, I think that it only contains a citric acid and nothing more, yet it is quite expensive.
The question is whether I can safely and efficiently use just a citric acid I buy in any shop for decalcification? Or is there something else readily available I could use?
Most coffee machine decalcification can be done with vinegar--acetic acid. This question is better addressed to your manufacture's customer service support line.
@SAJ14SAJ The support line will of course tell me to buy they expensive kit.
And maybe if he doesn't, he will void his warranty.
I've made your question a bit less specific - I'm sure you'd be just as happy with things that aren't citric acid. Feel free to roll back if I'm mistaken!
I checked the site, 5 GBP (about $8) for two packets, a year's worth... this doesn't seem like a lot of investment compared to say, feeding the machine coffee pods.
The manufacturers will tell you:
During decalcification with decalcifiers on citric acid basis, residue
can form and clog the fine lines and valves of your espresso machine.
Lime deposits can become sealed under an unremovable layer of residue
formed by the citric acid.
A similar reason goes for vinegar. And Citric acid (from what I'm told) is less problematic than vinegar.
The real expensive stuff like Durgol isn't actually citric acid and some other formula (unlike citric acid it tastes awful).
Here is their description (pdf)
While your machine's specific kit might be dosed for perfection, you're likely ok with any descaler for the size of the machine. A competition grade professional machine on the other hand, I'd recommend vicious service. If you only see what's under the shower screen of some of the machines out there in the wild.
A key point is that they claim their product is faster. So if you have time, and are willing to rinse a quite a few more times, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
The Cafiza powder from Urnex is really good at cleaning coffee grime, but does not de-scale/de-calcify. I would recommend it for cleaning coffee urns and the coffee stained parts of your machine.
Finally, you might wish to use softened water. It'll make the coffee taste better and reduce the build up.
We have a rather good water here. Still, one day you have to de-calcify the machine, and it's nice to see the background of it, thanks!
Apparently Durgol is Sulfamic acid: http://ask.metafilter.com/121942/Bad-coffee-brew Its calcium salts are somewhat more soluble than calcium citrate. I've used coop-bought citric acid for years without problems. Citric acid is a natural product of glucose metabolism. Sulfamic acid is not involved in normal metabolisim and belongs in toilet bowl cleaners, where it does an excellent job:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfamic_acid#Cleaning_agent
I have asked about this "citric acid seals limescale" claim on chemistry SE. It appears to be more of an advertisement technique than an actual warning based on science.
Descaler products for coffee machines contain sulfamic acid which is stronger than citric or acetic acid, plus corrosion inhibitors which prevent it from attacking metals. You don't have to buy a descaler from a coffee machine brand (which will indeed be more expensive), but there are generic products with sulfamic acid out there. One important point - sulfamic acid slowly hydrolyzes in water, so liquid products have limited shelf life. Prefer tabs if you want to buy in bulk.
You can use vinegar or citric acid if you don't mind a less effective product. Here, the number 1 mistake people make is not waiting long enough. You need to wait roughly 5 times longer with vinegar, compared to a descaler solution. If your coffee machine need to be descaled for 10 minutes, you'll need almost an hour with vinegar. This may be difficult to achieve if your coffee machine has an actual descaling program, you'd better buy a suitable descaler in this case.
I did with citric based solution and it worked for while but then the machine started leaking water from inside. It works but it can degrade the hoses and valves inside the machine. It is not worth the potential damage to a $750 and up machine. Just spend the money to buy the right product for descaling. Your machine will last longer. I learned the hard way.
If you're spending that much on a machine, you'd do well to consider reverse osmosis or distilled water. No dissolved calcium ions->no lime buildup.
This is a single event, not even a correlation, and even less of a proof of causation.
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58149 | Are can openers like the original Swing-A-Way sold under a different name now?
Swing-A-Way can openers used to be made in St. Louis, MO. After the family sold out they finally ended up being made in China. The quality went away. I thought I came across some info that the possibly former St. Louis factory/equipment was acquired by someone else and that a new company was making can openers with the same quality again but I can not document this now. Is that true? Is there another brand name selling them now?
And I guess the question is "Does anyone know where the equipment went?"...
Perhaps: http://www.ez-duz-it.com
St Louis, claims to be only one made in USA, Seems to fit time-wise.
per one of several catalog sites (http://www.sierravalleytrading.com/JOHN-J-STEUBY-CO_c_815.html)
John J Steuby Company
of Hazelwood, Missouri, has purchased the equipment used to manufacture the original,
MADE IN USA, SWING-A-WAY
can opener and now uses that equipment to manufacture the
EZ-DUZ-IT
can opener.
Seems like „this domain is for sale“ - with a load of Chinese text.
7 years later I don't find that terribly shocking...
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12500 | How do I keep soup from being bland?
I've been experimenting with soups recently and trying different recipes, and I've found that I often come out with a good soup that's a bit too bland in taste. And yes, salt and pepper makes a huge difference... but it needs something else. Beyond finding the right spice for the right soup, what are some general things that I can do that won't greatly change the flavor but will add some fullness to the flavor?
What type of soup? A chicken noodle is much different from a cream of mushroom or a gaspacho or pumpkin or a cantelope soup.
This doesn't answer your question directly, but spices are only a small part of the picture. Below are some techniques to get more flavor in your soup.
Longer Cooking
Depending on the type of soup you're making, you may just need more time. Some flavors just need more time to get out. This is especially true of meat and bones. It's possible to make a ham and pea soup in an hour, but simmer that ham for 3 hours and it's night and day.
Rest overnight
Many stews, chili, etc. seem taste "better" the next day. Give an overnight rest in the fridge a shot and see if the flavor improves.
Add volatile flavors later
There is a caveat to go along with longer cooking. Some items work over long cooking times, while others lose flavor. In addition to meat/bones, garlic, onion, bay leaves (and others) benefit. Many fresh herbs, pepper, vanilla, saffron (and others) lose their flavor from the heat. If you are cooking for a while, you might try adding some more volatile flavors later in the process.
Add salt early
Salt helps to extract flavors, so add it early on in the process. Do be judicious with it, however. Long cooking tends to concentrate flavors, so you can easily make it too salty.
Sweat vegetables / brown meat
Before getting any water involved, sweat your onions, celery, peppers, mushrooms, or whatever vegetables or playing in this game.
Likewise, brown your meat. The maillard reaction is necessary for developing great flavor from the meat.
I like to add less than half the anticipated amount of salt at the broth stage. I'll add the rest later when the flavours come together and I can properly judge how much is needed.
+1 for longer cooking! I just learned that myself and it's so true.
Soup making usually involves two steps:
Making the broth
Adding the particular ingredients that make it an XXX soup.
As far as I'm concerned, the first step is the critical one.
Here are my broth-making tips:
Ingredients:
Bones with a bit of meat on them.
1 carrot (peeled, whole)
1 Celery Stalk (whole)
1 Onion
1 clove garlic
1 Bay Leaf
Marjoram (optional). -- Thank you Polish Mother-in-law for adding this to my repetoire
Steps:
Brown the bones, particularly beef or
veal
Dice and Brown the onion in
butter.
Throw everything in the pot,
and cover with water.
Bring to a
boil, and reduce temp to a slow
simmer.
Simmer until it tastes good.
Remove veggies and bones. If desired,
strain broth to eliminate onions and
protein globules.
+1 yes! the stock/broth is, in many soups, where you are getting much of your flavor from. It is critical to pay attention to the broth. When I make chicken soup, I spend 95% of my effort on making great chicken stock, and 5% on throwing in some carrots, celery, chicken, etc. to turn it into a soup. Even if you are making a very texture-dependent soup like avgolemono or split pea, putting the effort into the stock is going to make a world of difference. (also you get a +1 for pointing out browning the bones and veg)
Lemon juice works well with a variety of soup flavours, when added just before serving. I also find that you need less salt when using lemon juice at the end.
interesting idea! i'm going to try this :)
I have several suggestions, also:
I feel that adding fried onions or garlic adds a lot to soup giving it spicelike taste addition.
I really like adding Za'atar to soups, especially fish soups.
+1 Very bold flavours. Za'atar is not so easily come by outside the middle east mind.
I had the same problem as you.
You could try adding a bouquet garni, which contains:
Parsley
Bay Leaves (Laurel)
Thyme
Celery
Rosemary
If you have them fresh, you can tie them together using kitchen rope and toss them in, and remove them after boiling. If you have them dried, you can (of course leave them in).
Romano cheese is really good on soup, especially with black pepper. Mmm.
If you're going for a savory taste, add bay leaves and some dill. Dill also works really well with cream of potato. Basil adds a little bit of taste, too, but it works best with something tomatoey - you can buy little cans of tomato sauce and put them in if you want to thicken your soup.
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23073 | Why does flatbread have to be microwaved / cooked / toasted?
I was eating at a Subway restaurant the other day and they asked if I would like my flatbread toasted... I responded with a "No thanks."
They said, "Well technically the flatbread still HAS to be toasted, so would you like the meat toasted ?"
In confusion, I asked, "Why? I would prefer it un-toasted."
They said, "We are required to toast all flatbread, as it releases some chemical... or something."
Can anyone clear up what they may be referring to? Does flatbread (non-homemade) HAVE to be toasted / cooked / microwaved ?
Edit:
Ingredients: Enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine
mononitrate (vitamin B1), riboflavin (vitamin B2), folic acid, malted
barley flour), water, soybean oil, yeast, contains 2% or less of
nonfat dry milk, salt, wheat gluten, sugar, dough conditioner (acacia
gum, guar gum, ascorbic acid, L- cysteine, enzymes), calcium
propionate, baking powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium
bicarbonate, corn starch, monocalcium phosphate), and sodium stearoyl
lactylate.
I just had a sandwich with the flatbread untoasted and it crumbled into a thousand little pieces.
If we're talking about the same sub making restaurant, their flatbread contains the following ingredients:
Enriched wheat flour (flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, malted barley flour, ascorbic acid), water, soybean oil, yeast; contains 2% or less of: nonfat dry milk, wheat gluten, salt, dough conditioners (guar gum, Arabic gum, sodium stearoyl lactylate, enzymes), sugar, baking powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, corn starch, monocalcium phosphate), calcium propionate.
I can see nothing in there that isn't in found in commercial soft white bread. It may well be a case of an overzealous legal department acting on the merest possibility of a hint of an idea that one ingredient may perhaps have the potential to maybe sometimes cause a problem if not cooked.
I believe we are speaking of the same place. Thank you for your answer!
Your original post indicates that meat was included as an ingredient. I do believe this chain requires toasting for certain proteins (chicken, bacon).
Most likely the flatbread is not very pliable when cold. I believe that Subway forces the heating of the flatbread to keep it from splitting when they fold it.
Consider the humble supermarket pita. The kind with the ridiculously long shelf life.
Straight from the packet, it's pretty miserable. It's chewy - not in a good way. It tastes of cardboard.
Toast it however, and it comes to life. The slight browning of the outside improves the flavour. The steaming of the inside softens the bread inside.
I'll bet the Subway flatbread has similar properties.
Now, if I ran a fast food chain that sold sandwiches based on a bread like this, I'd make sure my staff were trained to always toast it. Even if a customer asks for it untoasted, that would mean they'd go away with a sandwich that I know won't be very nice. I would rather take away the customer's choice, than sell them something that's not good. Subway does not want thousands of customers telling their friends the flatbread isn't nice.
The reason subway has to "heat" the flatbread is to make it soft. If you want it toasted you get it with the meat and cheese toasted under a hotter setting that actually toasts it. When subway released the flatbread they understood some people don't want there sub toasted so in order to comply with this request they have the option of just heating the flatbread without the meat and cheese on it under a heat setting in the toaster. It doesn't toast it just warms it up enough so it's soft and doesn't break apart or crumble when they fold it or while you eat it. I know most people aren't use to being told they "have" to order something a certain way but believe me if you don't heat the flatbread it's not edible. Unless you like dry crusty crumbly bread with stale taste.
Having just eaten an untoasted Subway flatbread sandwich, I noticed the bread tasted like flour and had an unpleasant texture. So they "have" to toast it to make it taste good, not for any weird reason about chemicals.
Some restaurants may prefer to toast fladbreads slightly in order to serve hot, but unfortunately the chef in question here seems to be either not too good at explaining things in English, or may have just tried to convince the customer that the toasting requirement was something serious.
The question is whether a cook working for a chain restaurant is a chef, given he is not authorized to adapt the recipe as he sees fit :)
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64012 | Temperature for dutch oven curry with venison
I'm making a slow cooked curry with venison in my dutch oven and I would like to know what temperature would be a good medium between what I need for a tender venison without overcooking the rest of the curry contents.
I've seen many higher temperature suggestions for the venison in recipes (375F-400F) but for curries much lower temperatures even to 225F. I plan on doing 300, would this suffice for a tender venison over 3-4 hours?
It would have to be a very slow heat. Venison is meat from wild animals they are not fed anything they have to forage for themselves and all the predators in the wild they have to escape all by themselves.
So in the end venison is a very lean meat. So you simply cannot cook it at high temperatures or it will give you the unwanted car tyres texture.
So in closing a slow long cook is required and do not be afraid to add some fat like bacon or something similar to the meat just to introduce some fat to a very lean cut of meat.
In Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's river cottage cookbook, he says -and I fully agree- that venison, along with most game, should be minimally marinated in acidic things like lemon or vinegar as it gets pickled, hence tougher. He then makes a case for game being better and softer when braised rather than marinated.
Scottish venison definitely works like above, unless you have a very prime cut or the liver which are better eaten bloody. I would either forget about the curry and eat the prime cut with minimal spices/processes or I would follow the mantra brown-deglaze-braise if I had a stewing cut. It sounds like your curry would be ideal for the latter so why not just do that? Brown the meat in small batches in your dutch oven over very high heat so as not to get the meat boiling - it will stick off the hot surface when it wants to be turned. Then use some neutral alcohol to deglaze (or experiment if you feel like it - I had a beef stew I deglazed with port and south Indian lemon rice worked incredibly well with it!).
Finish with your curry recipe in 120 Celcius for however long it takes for the venison to be melt-in-your-mouth tender (for small size chunks 3-4 hours should be OK).
liver being eaten bloody???
@NeilMeyer I was also squeamish of it at first. I come from Greece where you can't really mess with uncooked meat bits due to heat - especially offal. Then I tasted medium done (pink, really) venison liver here in Scotland and I was instantly converted. Here is a relevant article by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall!
Slow cook it at 225 F for 2.5 hours. The curry will lose some aromatics, but it will be delicious.
Make it a stew rather than a roast.
It did end up being more of a stew than a curry, but it was still good. I'll update the answer with what I did.
Next time you make it, try cooking the meat by itself for 2 hours first, then cut it up and finish it in the curry. I think you'll have better results.
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18813 | Using Fresh Masa with Tamales
I've always used the Masa Harina in the bag and made masa, but I don't have an electric mixer at the moment to make them fluffy. How do you use fresh masa when making tamales? Just add it to the corn husk and wrap? Thanks.
Can you be more specific with you problem, and the steps you take?
@TFD Thanks. I'm just making tamales and I need to use fresh masa. Do i have to do anything to it for adding it to the husk?
Yes, but there is no real standard other than oil/lard and stock/water. What recipe are you following?
I was following the recipe on the bag of Masa at the store. On the bag it tells you to make the Masa then the filling. To make the masa it says use a couple cups of the product, some water/broth, baking powder, etc. It then says to make it fluffy mix beat the lard and then add the masa. Do I do the same with fresh masa?
fresh rendered pork lard! very important to get a super flavorful tamale :)
You seem to be using the word "masa" to mean at least two different things interchangeably, and it's rather confusing. What's wrong with sticking to the words "flour" and "dough"?
It's going to depend on the Masa itself. If it is just the fresh ground corn, then you still need to mix in your other ingredients, lard, stock, baking powder, etc, whatever recipe you decide to use. Some places will sell fresh masa for tamalas already mixed up and ready to go, but it's typically labelled or sold as prepared masa. Whether you have fresh masa, or masa harina, you will still want to whip your lard and make a light and fluffy texture before mixing in your dough, so an electric mixer is always a good thing to have on hand, or Popeye arms.
Fresh masa goes bad pretty quick, so make sure to use within a few days or freeze.
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28172 | Sunken Moon Cakes
I made moon cakes for the first time at the weekend, but rather than the glazed apearance and firm texture they usually have, they sunk in the middle. Without building the dough equivalent of the great wall of china to help keep the filling in, is there another way I can 'reinforce' the walls to stop them sinking?
I used this recipe:
300g Low Protein flour
250g Golden syrup
70g Peanut oil
1/2tsp Alkaline water
1/8 Lemon juice from a whole lemon
Lotus paste
Pandan paste
Steamed Salted Egg Yolk (Steamed 10 mins under high heat)
Egg wash
- 2 egg yolk plus 1 whole egg (lightly beaten)
Method
Mix syrup, peanut oil and Alkaline water and lemon juice together, stir it well.
Slowly pour the sifted flour and knead into a fine dough.
Cover and rest it for 4-6 hours in the fridge. Better if you rest it overnight.
Mix the melon seed with the lotus paste. Weight the lotus paste 110g each and roll into a round ball.
If you intend to add 1 salted egg yolk, reduce the lotus paste to 80g each and wrapped the egg yolk in it.
Weight dough 55g each and roll into a ball.
Flatten the dough ball and place a lotus paste ball on top, wrap with it.
Dush some flour on the mooncake mould, knock out excess flour.
Place mooncake inside the mould, flatten dough to conform to shape of mould.
Knock the mooncake mould on solid surface and slowly remove the mooncake and place on a baking pan.
I apply egg wash twice on the moon cake, hence apply egg wash then bake it at pre-heated oven at 180c for 11 minutes.
Remove mooncake from oven and set aside to cool for at least 15mins.
Apply egg wash again and bake at preheated oven at 180c for 11mins.
Remove mooncake from oven, immediately transfer to wire rack to cool. Keep in air tight container and allow it to set. Serve after 1-2
days after the colour is uniform and the skin is soften and moist.
Providing the recipe and technique you used will get you better answers, it is hard to diagnose a problem without details.
Do you mean they're spreading (they stay closed, but the sides expand and naturally the middle sinks) or leaking? And I assume this is happening during baking?
The middle sunk and the sides spread out, like the dough lacked the strength to hold the filling.
Some tips:
Moon Cakes take lots of time. especially the dough for the shell. It's best if it sits in the fridge (wrapped, of course) for 24 - 36 hours before working, then is kneaded well to make it flexible before stretching. See these instructions from houseofannie.com. She's got it down. Note, in particular, the tips at the bottom for first-timers. Also note that her dough recipe is a little different from the one you used. It is possible that the recipe you used is fine, but these little cakes really benefit from practice with an experienced helper. Annie is a good substitute.
Instructions webpage here:
http://www.houseofannie.com/traditional-baked-mooncake-recipe/
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14993 | Pickling Peppers
I want to pickle the banana peppers, jalepenos and bell peppers from my garden. I have a small sandwich bag full of banana peppers so far, but no more than that. Is it okay to store them in the fridge until I have more ready to pickle or should I go ahead and do something with them? Can I freeze them while I wait?
It depends how long you will need to store them.
A couple days in the fridge won't effect them much. After three or four days they will start to go limp. In my experience, limp, un-fresh veggies make terrible pickles.
I wouldn't freeze them. In general freezing will keep them good for a long time but they will still be a little limp when they are thawed and the pickles won't be as good.
I have dealt with the problem of small yields by preparing a whole batch of pickling brine and putting it in a pitcher in the fridge (carefully labeled to prevent surprises). Then you can very easily make a 1 jar batch of pickles without losing much time. Do water bath processing in a smaller pot that will still contain the jar.
Similar to the response above, with a small amount of peppers you could just make refrigerator pickles and skip canning them. I do this often with onions/shallots - just throw in a jar with vinegar, salt and a bit of sugar (optional) and put it in the fridge. Wait a week and then enjoy. They'll last for weeks like this (haven't tested exactly how long b/c they always disappear before going bad), and are generally crisper than if they've been through a water bath.
this especially makes sense given the quantity. A bag vs ... bushels.
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66454 | Speeding up avocado ripening
Sometimes you want to buy an avocado, but all they have are hard on touch and you know they are not ready yet; they are rubbery and untasty.
One can buy them and wait couple days, they ripen sooner or later (hopefully before they get spoiled).
Are there any tricks and tips on how to speed up the ripening? Like special storage, some treatment to the avocado etc.
(I tried to go through the questions that speak about ripening or browning avocados, but they all seem to be about different problems. I hope I didn't miss anything; if so, please let me know.)
To me, http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/89/what-can-i-do-to-help-my-avocados-ripen?rq=1 looks like a duplicate. Could you please edit to make it clear what is the difference in your case?
@rumtscho You seem right (and I seem dumb), thanks. Should I delete this one?
You're not dumb! Questions can be hard to sift through, and duplicates are not always obvious. I hope you got what you needed from the other questions.
In general, but mostly in my experience, it's a bit like treating a cold, or a flue: It you don't do anything, it will take 7 days, but with medicine it might only take a week.
In general, there are no natural fast-forward methods for fruits to ripen, at least not to the level that makes it interesting: If the actual specimen of the fruit is willing to cooperate, you might get from X days to X - 1 days, maybe X - 2 in very happy circumstances.
You may be able to force the fruit (or vegetable, whatever) to get to the stage where it fits your needs for processing (heat tends to work nice in general for instance, that's why we cook and fry stuff ), but it won't be the same as ripening that fruit. It's not like the fruit realizes what's going on, and starts to make up for lost time.
I don't know about avocados specifically, but often you can actually speed up fruit ripening. See for example http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/21716/1672 and http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/109/1672 (for bananas but it affects some other fruit too).
Yes, lots of fruit can be sped up, and even made to rot much sooner than they would if left out and alone.
And by how much did it speed the process up? How ripe were they to begin with? Did they get the 6-days-before-ripe banana to ripen in 2 or 3 days, or in 4-6 days? In other words: Was it the fruit, or "The Process"?
Saw a kids show once where they gassed green bananas from the same (unripe) state with different amounts of ethylene - significant difference.
Because we all have an ethylene dispenser in our kitchen...
A bag of apples will do ^_^
Hehehe :)
It's not that I'm not believing the science, it's that I distrust the impact it has in the limited time in which it has to make a difference. From the duplicate referred to by rumtscho: "To ripen a California Avocado, place the fruit in a plain brown paper bag and store at room temperature 65-75° until ready to eat (usually two to five days)". Nice. So it takes 2 to 5 days. How do you determine by how much the apple or banana in the bag actually shortened the ripening process? It's 2 to 5 days, any moment within that timeframe is completely natural. Like a cold, or a flue.
Perhaps I will ask a separate question about it, it still seems unlikely to me.
An experiment may be in order! :)
@Jolenealaska would a bunch of green bananas count or are avocados mandatory?
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25043 | Is it okay to use aluminium foil instead of parchment paper while baking cookies?
I don't have access to parchment paper or even butter paper for that matter. I just read on a website that it'd be okay to use aluminium foil as long as I apply a coating of grease on it. And also since aluminium conducts heat faster, will I need to reduce the baking time?
I'll let others answer your direct questions; but different cookies have different "adherence" properties to their cooking surface, and you may experience more "bits of foil left on the bottom of the cookies" than you would with parchment paper. Depends on the cookies.
Yes, certainly you can. For that matter, you can simply grease the cookie sheet itself, although that means scrubbing after baking.
Cooking times would be the same as for parchment.
@UdayKanth From personal experience I find cookies on aluminum foil has a darker and crispier bottom compared to cookies baked on parchment paper.
This is somewhere between misleading and simply wrong. Parchment paper reduces sticking, and browning on the bottom (as Jay said). Greasing the foil makes up for the first, but aluminum foil will not reduce browning, meaning you can't use the same cooking time. Same goes for putting them straight on the pan.
Yeah, @BobMcGee answer below is better than mine. If the original asker is around, they should change accepted answers.
You CAN bake cookies on aluminum foil, but you should be aware that they will cook faster and the bottoms will brown more and get crispy. I would suggest using a slightly lower temperature and briefer baking time.
Coincidentally, King Arthur Flour just posted an image of cookies baked on a bare, dark-metal baking sheet (cookies on the LEFT), which will heat similarly to aluminum foil, vs. parchment on a lighter sheet (cookies on the right).
These cookies were cooked with exactly the same time and temperature.
Why does this happen?
With parchment, the bottoms of the cookies get heated less than if they're on metal, and more of the heat comes from hot air passing over the top. Aluminum and metal in general are excellent heat conductors, so they will pass a lot of heat to the bottoms of the cookies. Parchment is a reasonably effective insulator, so it will slow conduction of heat to the cookies' bottoms.
Has anyone actually tested this? I ask because I have baked many cookies on parchment and nonstick foil and I have found that the cookies actually take longer to cook on foil. Still, as you say, the bottoms cook faster than the tops. Sometimes this is desirable, sometimes not. I prefer it for thicker cookies like thumbprints, but not for chocolate chip just because they don't get crispy (which I prefer). If someone wants chewy cookies, I'd point them to the foil. It seems to wick moisture away from the bottoms less too. You can get crispy cookies from it, but they will be nearly burnt.
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32563 | Can I substitute dehydrated veggies for freeze dried in recipes?
I've been looking at pre-made mason-jar meals recently and notice a lot of recipes use freeze dried food. Namely, Cheff Tess' (presumably a spokesperson for Honeyville Foods) meal-in-a-jar mixes. I can dehydrate my own fruits, veggies and spices, and would rather add those to my stored meals than purchased freeze dried food. Are dehydrated foods equivalent to freeze dried when it comes to cooking? Will I need to modify anything to make this substitution?
I think the issue here is long term storage. If you are only going to keep the food for weeks to a couple of months, I think your home dehydrated products should be perfectly acceptable.
Depending on your application—and I make no value judgements here—if you need to store the food for considerably longer for whatever reason, then you want to be sure nearly all of the water has been removed, and commercially freeze-dried products are going to be more reliable.
Also, according to wikipedia:
Freeze-dried products can be rehydrated [sic] (reconstituted) much more
quickly and easily because the process leaves microscopic pores. The
pores are created by the ice crystals that sublimate, leaving gaps or
pores in their place.
For another perspective, the vendor Rainy Day Foods says:
When comparing freeze dried foods to dehydrated foods, there are
advantages to both. Some advantages of freeze dried foods are that
they are light in weight and reconstitute quickly and will have the
appearance of fresh foods when reconstituted. A disadvantage to freeze
dried foods is that they will take up more space for storage because
they are lighter and more space is needed to store the same amount (in
weight) as dehydrated foods. Advantages to dehydrated foods are less
space is needed to store a large amount of food and it is economical
to purchase. Freeze dried foods can be a great deal more expensive
than dehydrated foods.
So in answer to the ongoing question of whether freeze dried foods or
dehydrated foods are better – only the consumer can determine which is
best depending on his or her own personal needs and preferences.
However, they are addressing commercially dehydrated or freeze-dried products, not home prepared products.
Your home dehydrated foods will probably retain more moisture and have less even quality control than commercial processes. For this reason, they may not be as shelf stable.
For most uses, though, especially if you are making "meals in a jar" for convenience or short term emergency preparedness, not long term (years) of storage, your home dehydrated fruits and vegetables should be just fine.
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33460 | Low Salt Indian Food
Indian recipes tastes awful with reduced salt. Can anything be done to make them more palatable? Are there dishes that taste OK even with low salt?
Don't put salt in your food? Salt is not often a required ingredient
I'm sorry, but one of the few types of culinary questions we don't entertain here are recommendations/suggestions/ideas. See the [faq#dontask] and the meta question "What should i cook" type questions. As TFD says, just pick any recipe and don't add salt.
Don't put salt in your food? Salt is not often a required ingredient
The food then tastes awful. That was the reason for the question.
one of the few types of culinary questions we don't entertain here are recommendations/suggestions/ideas
I was looking for a solution to a major food problem for me (and not what should I cook).
As TFD says, just pick any recipe and don't add salt
The food then sucks.
One (helpfully, authentiacally Indian) practice that might prove useful to you is, cook the food with even more reduced salt, or no salt at all - then, when serving, add just the amount of salt you want to eat in the meal to your plate in a separate little heap. The practice is used to adjust the salt you need by taste, by dish, or even by bite (since it was easier than trying to salt food made in large quantities to everyone, everyone's taste).
In any case, having a few grains of salt sprinkled directly over the food as you take a bite (or nabbed by a damp finger or spoon edge and set on the tongue) can flavor the bite as boldly as a full pinch mixed into the same bite. It hits the tongue directly, it gets all the salt immediately available to your taste buds, instead of spreading the salt through the food so whatever surface hits the tongue has enough salt for the bite, and you may not miss the extra salt as you're chewing because your tongue is convinced there's enough salt already. Think about food where flakes of sea salt are sprinkled on top - because it is immediately available, it tastes much saltier than the same amount of salt mixed cleanly into the food (I'm thinking slated chocolates or caramels).
As a side note, you may miss the salt less in milder dishes, since you won't need the salt as much to balance out the heat and other flavors. But that's a question of personal taste.
Thanks for this advice, Megha. This (salt sprinkled on top being immediately available) does seem to make a difference. (Note: I only saw this comment a couple of days ago, i.e., a year late.)
Indian recipes taste fine with reduced salt, as long as you haven't trained your palate to enjoy salty food. This is no different to any other regional cuisine.
I personally cook curries with no added salt at all, a quarter-teaspoon of salt per portion of boiled rice, and minimal salt in breads.
Try reducing saltiness gradually, until your palate no longer demands it.
In the meantime you could use salt substitutes - there are products made with potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride which may be better for you than salt.
Indian dishes are about rich flavor and balance of sweet(jaggery /sugar), sour(tamarind),spicy(chilly) and salt. If u miss or reduce even one of these, you throw the balance off. If you are going to prepare an Indian dish add salt as much as the recipe calls for.
About indian food i couldn't say anything. But since you are asking here, I imagine that you can accept different suggests also.
generally the meat does not need salt (if using meat), because it contains enough
get your salade using soy sauce instead of salt
cook the vegetables using extract of meat or vegetables (with a bit of water) instead of salt
use many spices, especially Mediterranean herbs, in cooking, that being the tastiest require less salt or even they can do without.
use as a sauce for spaghetti or rice, tomato sauce with lots of basil, sauce "pesto", tuna and anchovies sauce, dry tomatowes sauce. Those sauces are very tasty, but precisely because of this, it's enough just a very short for season: with a couple of teaspoons you have a great dish
use "strong" vegetables in preparations, such as garlic, onion, celery
prepare many dishes complete, cereals and legumes, such as pasta and beans, rice and peas, pasta and chickpeas, always seasoned with many herbs.
Finally, think that you get used to everything. I know people who could not eat salt for years, and now they find inedible normally savory dishes.
Question is specific to indian food, which needs a certain (not: extreme) amount of salt exactly because there are large amounts of herbs, spices and vegetables - which makes for a highly-aromatic, high-bitterness, low to medium umami taste profile that is very dependent on some saltiness to balance that.
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32597 | What do I do about mold on my sourdough starter?
I started my mother yesterday at 6:00am. with 2 tsp salt and 2 tbsp honey, 4 cups potato water, 4 cups unbleached natural wheat flour. I was told to wait two to three days. Well, 24 hours later I lifted my wicker top and the thing was absolutely frothing. I told my wife 2 hours later to check it and she said there was some green mold on it, but it smelled okay. Reading some of the question responses, it looks like I can scrape it off and put the mother in the fridge overnight. Is that true?
You should be able to just scrape the mold (I suspect due to the honey in the recipe) off and continue as normal providing there was only a little bit of mold on the surface.
If there was quite a lot or you're unsure about it then you could discard most of it then use just a tablespoon or two of the mother to seed another starter. Then if after 1 or 2 'feedings' it smells yeasty and is frothing nicely then it should be perfectly fine to use.
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29832 | Making chili less oniony
I made chili last night and it is way too oniony. I know you can use potatoes to make things less salty; any advice on making already made food less oniony?
Can you describe what you mean by "oniony"? Did it taste too much onion? Was it a raw onion taste, a burnt onion taste or a cooked onion taste? How and when did you add the onions? Generally all flavours will mellow out with cooking.
I love oniony garlicky chilies.
Make another batch of chili with no or reduced onions, and combine them--freeze if needed, so you can use it all. This is the only reasonly guaranteed way to resolve the issue. Chili freezes and holds very well, so this might be practical even though somewhat extravagent with the ingredients.
I know that isn't what you want to hear, but it is the truth. BTW, the potato and salt reduction thing is a kitchen myth.
Since it is already made, simmer the chili at low heat for another hour or so allowing the onions to cook further and soften. They will slowly dissolve into the stew and the oniony flavour won't be as harsh.
Generally all flavours will mellow out with cooking. (@citizen)
Adding a bit of sugar or agave nectar may cut the oniony taste as a last ditch effort.
Furthermore, if you don't like the oniony flavour that onions do tend to impart on dishes, try caramelizing onions instead of a quick saute or slow sweat. Caramelized onions will add a much sweeter, milder onion depth-of-flavour without the harsh (sometimes bitter) kick of raw onions.
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68792 | At what step is the difference made between a quesadilla and burrito?
My quesadillas keep turning into burritos. This happens because I fold the tortilla in half but it doesn't stay so I tuck it in and roll it up by then it becomes a burrito (full and round). What's the difference? How do I make my quesadillas come out flat?
Normally melted cheese sticks the two sides of the folded over flour tortilla together in a quesadilla. Also, normally a quesadilla has no beans or rice at all inside it. They are so wildly different I suspect there are other things you are doing differently from a traditional quesadilla besides having trouble folding it. Pretty much they only ingredient they share is the large flour tortilla.
Hey y'all, pleeeeaase post answers as answers. It's okay if they're short. We want them to be in the right place and get voted on and all.
It sounds like you're making a quesarito.
@FakeName Are you sure it's not a burradilla?
Yep. Most of the burrito places around here (southern california) actually make them if you order one. Hell, Taco-Bell even has them on the menu now.
Quesadilla comes from queso, cheese, and that is mostly what goes in there. Maybe some jalapeños or onions, but that's really it.
In a burrito you'd add much more, both volume and variety, for example meat, rice, avocado, cream, cheese, chiles, and beans.
As far as I know the quesadilla goes in the pan on heat, whereas a burrito does not get heated after being wrapped up.
Oh really? I definitely add more corn and beans than cheese or onions.
I don’t know how traditional it is, but at several restaurants around the US I’ve had burritos that had been briefly pan-fried before serving, and it was delicious! And unquestionably still a burrito, not a quesadilla.
@PLL A deep-fried burrito would usually be a chimichanga, so a briefly pan-fried one is heading in that direction, but I suppose could still be called a burrito without confusing people.
@Celeritas, if you add corn and beans to a flour tortilla, then it's reasonable to say you're no longer making a quesadilla.
@ToddWilcox PLL is talking about grilled burritos. You can get them at a lot of places. Here's an example from Taco Bell: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/81/97/81/819781635396379165364ddd476349ef.jpg
@SnakeDoc I didn't realize the uncanny valley applies to food as well as people. There's something... off with that picture.
@Turch lol, ya it never looks quite like that picture when you get one. But the grilled burritos are very tasty. Other places besides fast food chains have them too.
I think the grilling of burritos is also to help the tortilla stiffen up a bit and resist tearing when you bite and squish the insides. It also helps it from unravelling when you set it down. I know the ones I make at home (which aren't grilled) have those problems vs grilled burritos at restaurants. The bit of crispy tortilla does also taste awesome and provide a bit of texture.
By far the easiest way to make flat quesadillas is just to use two tortillas, like a sandwich. No worries about folding things up that way.
If you want the folded in half or folded in thirds kind, the main things to keep in mind are that you want nice big flexible tortillas, and you don't want to overfill it. That should let you fold it fairly easily, and press it a little flatter with a spatula while it's in the pan without squeezing anything out. If your tortillas aren't terribly flexible, it may help to warm them a bit first. Otherwise they may break when you fold them, which isn't necessarily a problem, but doesn't look quite as nice.
I noticed in comments elsewhere that you mentioned not putting much cheese in either! That's important too - that's what makes it all stick together. Note that it won't stick until it's melted, though, so you still have to put it together right in the first place. You can still put a decent amount of other stuff in (meat, the corn and beans you like, whatever!) but you need enough cheese to balance it out.
Burritos, on the other hand, can take a lot more filling, and they're rolled up from the beginning. If you start out with that much filling, there's no way you're going to get it flat.
This is how I make quesadillas - two stacked with the filling in between. Less hassle, all the flavour.
When using a lot of filling I prefer folded in half tortillas. With two tortillas it's easier for filling to spill out the sides, but with a fold you can load extra filling towards the folded edge where it can't spill out.
The defining feature of a quesadilla, as the name implies, is cheese. If the primary filling isn't cheese, then what you're making isn't a quesadilla, no matter how close you come to a flat semicircle shape.
In other words, to answer the title question, the step where a quesadilla and a burrito diverge is step zero, when you decide what your fillings will be.
If it's mostly cheese, plus maybe a few things to flavor the cheese, then it'll be a quesadilla even if you totally mangle the folding-up step (or if you omit the folding-up step and use two tortillas). Heck, even if you omit the heating-after-filling step, if the filling is mostly cheese it'll still be a quesadilla, just maybe not a very good one.
If the filling involves primarily beans and corn, then your dish will almost certainly be considered a burrito, even if you don't manage to wrap the tortilla around the fillings very well, and even if you then heat the tortilla with the fillings. (It's not usual to heat a burrito after the fact like that, but it's been done.)
You're making a half quesadilla. Jefromi is right, the easiest way is to use two whole tortillas, which makes an entire quesadilla.
But if a whole queasdilla is more than you want... I find cutting the tortilla in half before adding the cheese, not folding during cooking, makes the flattest quesadilla.
You can use a knife or kitchen shears.
My quesadillas keep turning into burritos. This happens because I fold the tortilla in half but it doesn't stay so I tuck it in and roll it up by then it becomes a burrito (full and round).
How do I make my quesadillas come out flat?
I am not sure If I understood your problem, but if the tortilla is not "staying" (folded?) you can do a couple of things:
1) pre-heat the tortilla on both sides for a couple of seconds (the pan must already be hot before trying this)
2) wait for a reasonable time for the cheese to melt
3) now you can fold the tortilla and the melted cheese will help the tortilla to stay folded
It really doesn't take that much time in any of these steps, just make sure to pre-heat the pan
If you still have problems, it might be the case that the quality of the tortilla is not good enough. Some low-quality tortillas do not keep the heat for a long time, and start to break apart.
What's the difference?
Typically, a quesadilla is lighter: cheese only (pure quesadilla) or with a couple of fillings (for example you can add meat and make it a "quesataco").
A burrito, as you noted, will be tucked in and typically contain more fillings. Rice should never be one of them!
PS. The advice given by another answer to use two tortillas is incorrect. You do that when attempting to make a sincronizada (you would add ham too to do that).
Anyone who goes to a burrito place like Chipotle would tell you that of course burritos can include rice. I doubt there is really much limitation to what can be put in a burrito. When it comes to Tex-Mex, quesadilla can and often do include meat without becoming "quesatacos" which I've never heard of. Perhaps you should consider noting for which area your answer applies.
I am aware that many Tex-Mex chains such as Chipotle or Taco Bell sell burritos with rice inside. However, nowhere in Mexico will you ever find rice inside a burrito, hence my comment. The term quesataco is not widespread in Mexico, I regularly see it in Northwest Mexico. In other regions you will find many different names for tacos and/or quesadillas with different combinations of fillings (e.g. gringa, campechana, etc..).
If you're really interested in the folded-over sort (I prefer this style and quantity), just smash it down with a spatula along the folded edge. If is still unfolding itself, perhaps you are overstuffing the tortilla a little, but you can still force the situation by resting something flat and heavy on top until the shape holds. Usually when the cheese starts to melt, it will stick together by itself anyway.
You kind of know the difference already, but your issues are blurring the line slightly. In a way you're discovering the evolution of the Mexican food types.
Burritos are more cylindrical and have more stuff and less cheese (usually). Quesadillas are mostly cheese and are usually flat and grilled/pressed - like a Mexican grilled cheese or panini. The higher cheese content is supposed to basically glue the thing together. Burritos can use less cheese because their construction is what holds everything together.
I'm thinking the reason your quesadillas are turning into burritos is that you're putting too much stuff in them and maybe folding too late. They should be flat like a double crusted pizza not packed like a calzone. In addition to reducing the amount of stuff, you can try to cut your stuff smaller so that it doesn't create as much bulk and can be more evenly distributed on the cheese. Maybe even only putting it on one side, leaving the other to flip over cleanly.
The idea is to warm a tortilla slightly, then put on the cheese, then extras, then more cheese. You can fold it and press it at this point or put on another warm tortilla. Ideally, the tortilla should still be soft but plenty warm and the cheese only slightly melted[ing] at this point. You might also press it down to just help things stick together better. After it's all folded or covered up, put it back on the hotplate and keep grilling and flipping until both sides begin to brown and stiffen up and the cheese has melted between everything. Normally, I'd use 2 tortillas to avoid creating a burrito or soft taco by accident but if you can't flip it over like a pancake without all the stuff falling out, it's not really living up to the name.
Anyway, that's my 2c.
A small detail some people are missing, burritos are made usually with tortillas made of wheat, and quesadillas tortillas are made of corn.
(Of course you can make a quesadilla with wheat tortillas but traditionally they are made with corn at least that's more common in Mexico)
Thanks for pointing this out! That said, in the US, flour tortillas are very, very common for quesadillas. May not be authentic/traditional, but they're still very good. And generally it's much easier to get soft, flexible flour tortillas than soft, flexible corn tortillas in the US, and they crisp up very nicely, so flour is perhaps a better choice. A lot of the taquerias use flour tortillas too (ones that Mexican-Americans go to, too).
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28385 | Basic process for making lasagna
I'm 16 and I'm making lasagna for my family tomorrow. I have got mince, onion, white sauce, red sauce, lasagna sheets, tinned chopped tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, and grated cheese. Not looking to add anything else; how do I assemble that into a lasagna? Do I have to cook the lasagna noodles first?
You'd be best off with a recipe, which you could find using Google or by searching on a site like http://allrecipes.com. Unfortunately, recipe requests are off-topic here. I'll go ahead and answer with the basics, though.
P.S. I went ahead and edited your question to try to keep it from being closed as a recipe request. I think I left all the British English in, though!
Add a big bunch a fresh spinach in to one layer, and your Mum will be extra pleased. Steam it very lightly first to pack it in
Lasagne is like most baking -- you really should follow a recipe the first few times, as the proportion of liquid is rather important. Too much, and it's a sloppy, soupy mess and won't firm up after cooling. If you try one of the 'no boil' recipes and it's too dry, the noodles don't soften up.
The general process of making lasagna is:
Cook the other ingredients - brown the meat in a pan (maybe with seasonings); if you're using fresh tomatoes, cook them; if you're using canned tomatoes, drain the extra liquid out. The important thing is that everything is cooked, and there's not too much liquid left, since that'd make the lasagna messy at the end. This does mean it's faster with canned tomatoes, since you only have to drain them, not cook them.
Cook the noodles as you would any pasta. Be sure to stir, since big flat noodles stick together more easily than most. (There are also no-boil lasagna noodles, but you've already bought yours, and I doubt that's what you have.)
Layer the ingredients in the pan, starting with sauce on the bottom (otherwise the noodles will stick to the pan), then noodles, then alternate layers of the other ingredients and noodles and sauce until you run out or your lasagna dish is full.
Bake it until it's heated through (the ingredients are all already cooked).
Let it cool for a bit before serving; this helps keep it from falling apart when you cut into it.
When you go looking for recipes, though there are tons and tons of them, they'll pretty much all look generally like this. They'll just have variations in ingredient proportions, seasonings, order of layers, and so on. You shouldn't have trouble finding one that matches up with the ingredients you have, if you want a recipe to follow carefully. As long as it generally matches the steps I listed, it should be fine.
I'd recommend starting the meat cooking before the noodles -- if you have to hold the pasta, you risk them sticking together and being a real pain. And add the onion after draining most of the grease from the meat, but before you add the tomatoes -- the acid in the tomatoes will keep them from breaking down as easily. You can also hold some of the sauce (white or red) in reserve to put on top when serving.
@Joe Thanks; I swapped those two steps. I had the noodles first as a direct answer to the OP's question, but you are quite right.
A tip I'd add to this is to try and cook the meat sauce for a couple of hours at least. You not only get a tastier sauce with more tender meat, but the liquid will evaporate more leaving you with a nice thick sauce and thus a coherent lasagne. Also, let the lasagne sit for 5 minutes after baking so that it can 'solidify' a little.
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64108 | How to apply transglutaminase brand "Saprona TG F"
I have transglutaminase/activa powder branded "Saprona TG F". The ingredients are Salt, Gelatin, phosphate and transglutaminase. The dose is 1%. I'm making chicken roulade - should I apply it as a powder, a slurry or some other method?
Through trial and error I discovered that applying this brand as a powder is the best method.
To hydrate the gelatin you'd need to heat the slurry and I would certainly not recommend doing that.
Powder + passoire is your best bet.
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27957 | What chemical processes occur in tea that spoil it after some time?
What happens to the brewed hot tea when it is left in a cup for some time (up to several hours), that spoils the taste of the drink and change its color? What chemical processes lead to such unwanted results and what are the general methods to prevent tea from going bad too quickly?
If there is a significant difference in different tea types' brewing processes, I'd like to know that too.
Assume we make a cup of Earl Grey tea with a spoon of sugar and leave it for a day at room temperature.
I've seen a thin rainbowy layer appear after leaving tea for a few hours (up to a day). I often saw that in teas made from cheap bagged tea. Also the color of the drink becomes distinctively "stale".
To clarify, I'm interested in chemical processes, like maybe excessive oxygenation of some basic tea component (though I'm not sure if it would fit Cooking.SE). If there's too much air that makes tea go bad, I'd know I should try to keep it in a vacuum container.
I'd like to know how to store (and be able to drink) the tea so that it stays good for as long as possible. But mainly this question is about the processes that should be prevented from going on that ruin tea. I'm interested in the nature of such processes.
You mentioned in a comment below that you're trying to keep the tea for days, and seeing specific problems (not just bitterness). You might want to edit that into your question; people providing answers aren't going to read every last word down there. Also, are you refrigerating it? Are you leaving the tea leaves in it the entire time? Specific questions get better answers.
A friend suggested more questions: are you adding anything to the tea? What kind of tea are you using? (Does it have added flavors or other non-tea ingredients?) Can you describe this colored layer you're seeing?
A rainbowy layer is almost certainly oil. (This is called thin-film diffraction.) Earl Grey uses oil of bergamot for flavoring, and likely cheap teas you've used have oil-based flavorings as well. It's not surprising that the oil eventually separates, and there's not really any way to avoid that without significantly modifying the tea, or using tea that doesn't have quite so much oil.
I would definitely expect the flavor to be stale after it's left for a while - aromatic compounds are by nature volatile, and they'll slowly escape. You might be able to prevent some loss of flavor by putting the tea in something airtight (preferably a completely full container, so there's not even air on the surface) and chilling it, but it's going to be a losing battle. You said the color was stale as well; I don't know exactly what processes would cause that, but in general, the only way you're going to be able to slow down any chemical processes is by chilling the tea.
In the end, the real answer is simply that it's best to drink fresh tea. Your time would probably be better spent getting to where you can make it quickly - for example, get an electric kettle that can rapidly boil a single cup worth of water.
So no matter how good a container I pour my tea into to take with on a trip, it's still going to spoil as fast as if it was in a cup?
@user1306322 Like I said, it'll stay fresh better in an airtight container than in an open cup sitting on the counter. And I don't think it's spoiling, it's just losing some flavor. And finally, if your question was about taking tea when traveling, you should have said so. Please post complete information in your questions.
It's not about taking tea on a trip, the question is about the chemical processes that ruin its taste and I'm after the methods that prevent those processes. So far I only found out that oil-based flavoring separates from tea.
Please re-read my answer, then. I mentioned that the main problem is volatile aromatics escaping, which is preventable to some extent by chilling and by keeping in something completely sealed (so there's no air for them to escape into).
From a text published by the Royal Society of Chemistry on the matter [pdf], Dr Andrew Stapley writes that to brew for long periods
...introduces high molecular weight tannins which leave a bad
aftertaste.
The lighter weight tannins provide the colour and flavour of the drink, and require the higher temperatures to infuse properly, but the heavier weighted ones seem to provide the undesirable taste.
I believe this is why microwaving tea also leads to poor results.
I hope I understood the problem and question correctly:
As I got it you want to know why tea (in your example earl grey) turns dark, gets a skin on top and changes its taste after some time, is that right?
That's the same as brewed green tea turning brown after some time.
If so it has to do with oxidation of some stuff in the tea and can be prevented by adding something acidic like lemon juice, citric acid, Vitamin C powder or the like as antioxidant.
If you add that after brewing the tea you will see a lightening of its colour. After than your problem should not occur any more or at least in very reduced amount.
I have found that a back stir after stirring the tea, always eliminates the sour taste and my tea last longer. If you understand how brewing works, (swirling) it makes sense. It's silly, but it works.
My experience to get tea to last longer before you get either the stale or the awful sour taste that tea can get if left out at room temperature. High or low quality tea does not matter with this issue.
Once I have brewed the tea, it is at its best. If I make say 2 quarts of tea for the day, then you must 100% refrigerate the tea. For me, this is not an issue as I like iced tea. Refrigerating the tea slows the process of the tannin flavor going stale. Additionally, the sour taste of tea is actually, the tea in its first stage of spoiling. This happens more often with bag tea than loose tea. I suspect that Bag tea was deliberately a mix of things that is not the tea leaf. If anyone has opened a tea bag will notice, you often see other matter that is not from the tea leaf itself. call it tea litter filler. All the stems, and other items that were left over after loose tea leaves are separated for packaging. Tea bags basically is the bottom end catch all trash of the tea hierarchy. Does not matter brand or type of tea. All the companies do this.
The best way to keep tea fresh, is to refrigerate soon after brewing. If you prefer hot tea, then you have to keep the tea at temp to prevent it from going stale quick. This is why good thermos containers keep tea well for hours. For those that go camping, powdered/ instant tea is the preferred type of tea. Why? Does not go stale quick and can maintain flavor longer. When you are outside where temps are 70°F or 21°C or hotter, the instant tea will maintain its flavor over time and will be better tasting after just 1 hour. Just a truth and why southern parts of the US drink instant tea during the summer. It maintains flavor and you do not have that stale or sour flavor when you fill your glass 3 hours later. I use instant when camping. When at home, brewing is far superior. However, you have to refrigerate it if you are making large quantities. Otherwise, make single servings as you want tea. If that is your preferred type, invest in a countertop hot water dispenser that can heat water to 200°F or 93°C. There are plenty that will let you digitally set the temp to ideal 185°F brewing temp. Yeah, those countertop dispensers will run you anywhere from $70 to over $300. In truth, you can get a cheap $70 one that will deliver the perfect temp to brew tea. Some of them even have a tea adapter to steep the tea briefly before entering your cup.
That is the long and short! Best cup of tea is making sure your water temp is around 185°F and steep the tea for no more than 3 minutes. If you need stronger taste, add more TEA! Do not over steep as that can cause the tannin in the tea to breakdown and flavor to not be ideal.
I, too, have been looking for the answer to the OP's question, which was not answered here, btw. I think the process he is referring to is the eventual growth of bacteria in warm tea, but I have yet to find the definitive statement from an official source. I have noticed it in brewed tea that has been sitting too long in restaurants before serving. I do note that the authorities are now recommending that people not make sun tea, and cite the growth of bacteria as the reason. My experience says that refrigeration is the answer to keeping the tea from growing this bacteria.
Also, and this rather mystifies me, some people seem not to be able to recognize the taste of tea that has "gone bad." Others, like the OP and I, recognize it instantly. Sometimes the bad tea has a slightly foamy or fermented look to it.
Why would bacteria only grow in warm tea? What authorities? What experience? This answer makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims and the second paragraph does not seem to relate to the question.
Like I said in my answer, tea goes bad because the aromatic parts slowly escape. It's not a chemical process, but it's still the answer to the question. Bacterial growth will take a lot longer to happen significantly, and is not likely to affect the flavor as much as the fact that the flavor is simply disappearing into the air.
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34183 | How to make fried chicken tender and juicy?
I prepare fried chicken (imitating broasted chicken) at home. Normally to make it tender and juicy I will add baking soda (gives unpleasant flavor) or glutamate, but it doesn't make it that tender. How do I make it as tender and juicy as broasted chicken in restaurants?
Brine the chicken. Use 4 parts salt, 2 parts sugar, and 94 parts cold water. Mix mixture well until salt and sugar has dissolved. Put chicken and refrigerate. You can brine wings for 1-2 hours, whole chicken up to 24 hours. Rinse well, then cook.
The correct answer to any question following the template of "how do I get (some meat) to come out tender when I (some cooking method) it?" is: don't overcook it.
It's seriously not rocket science. Cooking meat dries it out as moisture evaporates.
The second, and perhaps dominant factor is that in overcooked meat—anything above about 165 F / 74 C, all of the proteins in the meat are fully coagulated. They have squeezed into tight little balls, squeezing out liquid, and taking on a rubbery texture. This effect cannot be reversed.
Overcooked meat is too dry, which gives it a tough and sinewy texture.
For other tips on making fried chicken more like what you've had in restaurants (very few of which are "broasting" it), see:
How to imitate commercial fried chicken?
This answer misses some key points. If we were talking about pure muscle meat, like a boneless skinless chicken breast, then this would be perfectly correct. But that's not typically what is referred to as "fried chicken"--usually we mean whole pieces of meat with bones and sinew intact. The collagen from the connective tissue is key to understanding what makes meat--fried chicken in particular--"juicy". Also, final temperature is not the only factor in moisture loss. As others have mentioned, salt can be used to alter the structure of the meat itself to reduce moisture loss.
Marinading the chicken before battering and frying has worked well for me. Some oil, lemon juice and spices is usually sufficient, but you can definitely get fancier and this has the added bonus of imparting flavor to the meat itself.
Another option, which I got from a Nigella Lawson recipe (it used to be online at cookstr.com but I can't find it anymore), is to marinade in whole milk for several hours, then boil the chicken in that milk (with some water for volume) until cooked through, and only then batter and fry the chicken. This sounds like it would fall into the overcooking trap, but it actually comes out very juicy and tender.
Finally, make sure you use a lot of very hot oil. A deep fryer is the best option. It seems a bit counter-intuitive, but lots of hot oil will actually help keep the chicken from coming out oily. Too little, or too cool, and the chicken seems to absorb the oil and taste unpleasantly greasy.
i agree with azula.. marinating the meat in lemon juice, vinegar, or papaya extract(or juice), tenderizes it.. and the meat it soft to eat!! for example cooking chicken in north indian dishes like chicken tikka..:)
nice answer! :)
I have found that putting the chicken in a brine (essentially like marinating) for up to a day ahead of time will infuse it with a lot of additional moisture. But use a simple brine like iced tea with salt (salty like the sea) or water. You can definitely use buttermilk or other liquids as well, but I've had the best luck with salty, watery brines.
Technically, Aaronut is correct on the overcooking. But beyond that, this is a great technique for increasing the tenderness.
My grandma had a Cajun style restaurant in Lousiana.
Her fried chicken recipe entailed brining the chicken for one night, then marinating it in buttermilk the next night.
Then a 'double dredge' with seasoned flour alternating with mayonnaise & beaten egg and into the boiling pot of lard on her enormous Wolf range
.
Tender, moist, juicy & perfectly seasoned- every time.
I believe the more 'commercial' fried chicken restaurants inject brine, broth & msg into their birds.
This article changed my poultry game:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/11/the-food-lab-the-truth-about-brining-turkey-thanksgiving.html
TLDR: Dry brining leads to more flavorful chicken as wet brining will "flush" flavor from the meat as liquid enters then exits the meat.
I have an answer for this question which is a solution I have worked on for some time now.
Here are the steps:
Brine chicken for 4 hours. Brine is 8 cups water, 1 tablespoon msg/accent, 1/4 cup table salt and 1 teaspoon sugar. This is 4 5 fillets of chicken breast. Brining will make the fillets plump and protect your meat from the hot oil.
Mix spices for breading.
Spices:
1 teaspoon black pepper, 1 1/2 teaspoons white pepper, 1 teaspoon coriander ground, 1 teaspoon ginger, 1 teaspoon garlic powder, 1 1/2 teaspoons paprika, 1/2 teaspoon cayene pepper/chilli flakes.
Herbs:
1 teaspoon oregano, 1 teaspoon thyme, 1 teaspoon of powdered sage
Additives/extras:
1 tablespoon salt,
1 teaspoon msg/accent.
Feel welcome to change up spice mix to suit preference. Extra chilli for a nice hot coating. Less or more salt to personal preference. Msg will enhance the taste of the spices. Hence my quantities are not tablespoons. You can drop the msg, but will not get the same aftertaste and intensity.
Add spices to 3 cups cake/low protein flour, 1 cup cornflour. Mix well. Let sit.
Take chicken from brine and wash excess salt off in water.
Let rest for 1/2 hour.
Add chicken to 3 cups milk and 1 pre beaten egg.
Let chicken soak it up for 15 mins or so.
Take out fillets, cut them in half and let drip. Then roll and press into flour/spice mixture.
Cooking method:
I use 6 quart pressure fryer. The brine allows the chicken to retain moisture.
Heat oil to 180c. Add pieces of chicken. Let brown with lid off for around a minute or inspect. You want a nice brown colour. Not burnt. Dont let the coating go dark.
Once you have browned chicken, slam the pressure cooker lid on and cook for 6 1/2 - 7 minutes. Once pressure cooker is whistling, lower heat to medium.
Vent excess steam from cooker take off heat and prop the safety valve to allow steam to escape. Once you get the lid off, remove chicken and let rest on a raised grid seated on an oven dish.
Put in oven at around 70 degrees to let drip. 20 mins later = fried goodness.
I must stress that you use an approved pressure fryer for this method. And make sure you keep the seals nice and plump and bendy. This can be dangerous if you are not very careful and do some research. I personally use a 6 quart chicken bucket everwear pressure fryer. Cost me $40 on ebay, never been used.
Do this right and you will get a tasty light brown skin and the juiciest chicken inside, steaming as you cut it open.
I like to add a garlic sauce made of yogurt, salt, diced cucumber and garlic. Cut up fillets and put inside a wrap with salad.
You won't get greasy chicken this way. It will be steaming fried goodness.
Options/tricks to enhance:
Make your spice mix the day before and let it blend well. A nice powder mixed will enhance the aroma and intensity.
Add sage to the brine. About a teaspoon or two.
Season and flash fry in butter or (olive) oil.
"Flash fry" means cook for a couple of minutes at med-high heat in a frying pan. This will "seal" the meat, which will help lock in the moisture during the cooking process. Do this before adding all your finger lickin' spices and batter.
"Sealing" applies to most meats, not just chicken. If you're going to roast beef / pork etc which have longer cooking times, wrap them in foil AFTER sealing them, but before you roast them.
Welcome to Seasoned advice! Unfortunately, the "sealing" of meat by heat and/or oil is a known urban legend. A high-heat sear may make sense aroma-wise, but it actually helps dry out the meat surface.
The concept of "sealing" may be inaccurate, but it is not "urban legend". It's simply not what the term means.
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32164 | How to keep thick puréed sauces from separating into solids and liquids?
Today I was making a version of spaghetti alla puttanesca and while the result of the dish itself was delicious the sauce didn't seem like a sauce; it was rather disjointed or unconnected. It seems like there are two separate components: solid "stuff" and watery liquid, unlike the sauces you'd buy already made.
For this particular sauce I used olive oil, garlic, capers, anchovies, parsley, olives and a can of tomato puree; but I've experienced this with many other sauces I tried to make, specially with tomato based ones but not limited to those.
So how do I get the ingredients to somehow link or bind, so that the liquid and solids don't separate? Does cooking time influence that?
Welcome to the site! This is a really great question; I went ahead and edited it to try and make it clearer. Feel free to edit again if you think I've messed anything up!
SAJ14SAJ has mentioned starch, but I wouldn't add any additional -- I'd just finish the pasta in the sauce.
Pull your pasta a minute or two early, let drain but do not rinse it, and add it to your sauce. The pasta will finish cooking in the sauce, absorbing some of the liquid. It will also release some of its starch into the liquid, helping to bind it.
If you can, reserve some of the pasta water to thin back out the sauce in case thickens too far. (A pyrex measuring cup works well for this, as you can just dip it into the hot water before you drain your pasta)
The core of this issue is: what makes a sauce seem integrated, as opposed to a bunch of liquid with stuff sitting in it.
While I am not sure there is any way to give a single scientific answer to what is essentially a question of perception, the common theme I find in all well integrated sauces is the viscosity of the liquid part of the sauce.
When the liquid phase is thick, it coats the solid chunks, and flows less freely, seeming to be a more integrated whole.
There are three common culinary methods that I can think of to create at thick, viscous liquid phase:
Reduce the sauce so that the natural solids and starches in the sauce make it thicker.
This is often used with tomato sauces, or in other sauces and stews where some of the vegetables or legumes are pureed into the liquid phase.
With this method, the cooking time helps reduce the liquids.
Thicken the sauce with colloidal binders, usually starch of some sort.
This technique is very prevalent in gravies (using a roux, a beurre mannier, a flour starch slurry), or with corn starch, arrow root, and so on. The so-called modernist methods also favor agar agar or xantham gum from time to time.
With this method, cooking time is also important. Each of the starch based binders (flour, cornstarch/cornflour, potato starch, arrow root) must be heated to a critical temperature in order to thicken fully, and to loose its raw taste. Continuing to cook for long periods will then begin to break down the starch, and the sauce will slowly thin, but this is not often observed in common cooking techniques.
Create an emulsion with fat that thickens the overall liquid.
This is done in many French-technique pan sauces, by stirring in cold butter to finish. It is also the core technique in mayonnaise, and the Hollandaise/Bernaise family of sauces, and in many salad dressing type sauces.
Heat management is very important in some of these sauces, as mismanagement can break the emulsion, but I will not address that further here, as I don't think this class was at the core of the original question.
Secondarily, having smaller, well cooked solid ingredients (for example, diced sauteed celery instead of large chunks of crunchy raw celery) in the sauce probably contributes to the perception of cohesion. This is usually a side effect of the entire recipe, so I won't address it further.
It's probably not just perception - if a sauce isn't bound, you can spoon some onto pasta and the solid stuff will stay on top while some of the liquid separates and ends up on the bottom.
I use filler like corn or tapiaco starch for chili type sauces.
For gravy sauces, I find using mashed potatoes as filler effective too.
Maybe, I should try using sweet potatoes and/or yam too. I did once try mixing cottage cheese after the gravy was done. Which, I recall, was a disaster, both structurally and flavour-wise. O, maybe you could try apple-sauce?
I also find boiling egg plant/brinjal till the brinjal melts into the sauce helpful in holding the sauce/gravy together. I notice that many Indian gravies (aka curries) have mashed channa (chick pea gravy), melted brinjal and mashed potatoes as the "holding medium". Instead of pouring the sauce onto a naan/roti, I pour it onto my pasta.
But then, wouldn't people disdain me for contaminating an Italian concoction with Indian characteristics?
Chick pea gravies (aka hummus) basted with olive oil and garlic are also a very Mediterranean characteristic, which also seems to be a favourite component in both Arab and Israeli casual eating establishments. I don't know, but I think you have to add the vegetable sauce to the basted hummus rather than the other way round, to retain the characteristics of the hummus in a controllable manner - it's my hypothesis, because I've not seen any Israeli/Arab small-establishment chef/vendor (where they cook in front of you) dunking their medal-worthy hummus into vegetable sauce. But since none of them are looking, I am sure you could do it the other way round.
When I say basting, I recall they actually fry it on a pan/hot table-plate rather than basting in an oven.
I find solely using melted brinjal very helpful as a holding medium and does not alter the flavour of a gravy noticeably, except to contribute more towards its being a vegetable-based sauce. First, you need to acquire some familiarity with melting brinjals/egg plants into a gravy thro trial and error.
Oh BTW, that week-old precooked pot of cheap pasta (I bought 95ct a pack from Walmart) in the fridge, you could boil some with your sauce till the stale pasta melts into the sauce. Functions well as a binding agent - flavoour-wise, I don't know.
It's admirable that you tried to answer the more broad answer, but this seems a bit scattered, with a lot of tangential comments, and parts that seem to be more guessing ... and that suggestion to use something that's been in the fridge for a week (which most people wouldn't have) is a bit of a health risk; it's one thing to call out 'leftover', it's another to say 'week-old'.
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25863 | Can I use southeast asian fish sauce as a marinade?
I have been using Southeast Asian fish sauce ( its Vietnamese variant called "nước mắm" to be precise ) to marinade meat which I would then fry. From the narrow observation I made though the Vietnamese seem to use it solely to dip the food in it. Is my usage really that unusual?
Welcome! This site is about cooking, not health (see the [faq]), so I removed that part of your question. What remains seems like a pretty trivial question, so feel free to edit further if it's not all you meant to ask!
@Jefromi Hi. I understand the principle, but my question was more about if it is not the case that such frying would cause some chemical reaction that would make such practice a bad idea, not about classic concern - how healthy my dish would be. :)
Ah, I see. That didn't really occur to me, because in general, foods that are made out of normal ingredients (meat or plants) do not become unsafe when you cook them. I don't see why fish sauce would be an exception, but you're welcome to edit a food safety question back in if you're concerned!
My mother (vietnamese) used fish sauce on pretty much everything in the kitchen. It can sub in for salt in a lot of dishes and it works well as a marinade. I like to season my fried eggs with tons of it (with a bit of sugar to even it out).
No, it's not unusual at all. See this page from Vietnamese-American cooks for examples where nuoc-mam is used to marinate chicken, or just type
nuoc mam marinade
in Google :)
There are a lot of examples, including fish, chicken, beef, or even mango marinated (as well as dipped, of course) with nuoc-mam (and most of the time lemongrass), and a fair share of them are recipes by 'natives' from South-East Asia, not only fusion food addicts (even if you can be both!).
Some salads like goi tom or goi ga also involve nuoc mam marinade.
Thanks for the great answer! Especially for those great examples :)
You're welcome! I added a few links now that I am allowed post more than two. Enjoy!
Verb - marinate = to pickle in brine, sea water. Marine.
Noun - marinade = the liquid used as medium to marinate.
Wikipedia on "Fish Sauce":
Fish sauce is an amber-colored liquid extracted from the fermentation of fish with sea salt.
From the definition/etymology of the word of "marinate" - - -> of course, you can. It's your kitchen and your preferences for flavour.
I am sure that marinating only flavours the outer layers of meat and you should cut gashes into the meat to allow the marinade to penetrate.
Rather, your question should be,
how do I marinate with Vietnamese/Thai fish sauce?
I think, in fact, you could even ask the question,
How do I marinate meat with Australian Vegemite or British Marmite?
I think to preserve and complement the fishy fragrance (most people would prefer to call it fishy odour),
the marinade is retained to be part of the gravy.
you should have garlic powder and chopped scallions mixed in the marinade (the fish sauce).
little bit of black vinegar
I did try mixing in curry powder, cinnamon.
And then the marination graduates into a marinating/poaching process on the same pan by turning the temperature up. What I am describing is a form of poaching which I do at low temp grilling in an enclosed oven.
I marinate at 100F for a couple of hours and then turning up the temperature to poach at 200 F over another couple of hours using various appendices/apparatus to elevate the meat (chicken wings/quarters) to as close to the oven elements as possible without touching them. About an inch of clearance.
And finally turning the temperature up to 350F for 30 minutes to "attempt" to achieve the occasionally surprisingly crispy skin
Turning the meat over at opportune times. The slow grilling can produce pretty amazing crisp on the skin. (However, there was once when the salmon became dry and fibrous after leaving it in there for too long.)
I am sure there is a lot of room for improvement in my culinary timing skills. And I've only tried poaching poultry and salmon. I did destroy a few pretty herring by trying out the same process. And turkey wings/quarters wouldn't even get cooked or amenable to absorbing any marinade under the same process.
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110855 | Butter in baking
Butter has a ridiculously low smoke point (120 to 150 °C). Cooking in burnt oil is not cool. However, it seems difficult to find baked dishes targeted at below 150°C..
Is butter acceptable in the oven? When and when not?
I've removed the link to discussion of health; that's off-topic here. The question is fine, though, since "avoid burned butter" is a pretty objective criterion.
: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarified_butter
Butter is not only fine, but extremely common in baked goods. I think the piece you're missing here is that the oven temperature is not the same as the temperature of the baked goods.
The internal temperature of most baked goods never even goes above boiling, unsurprising since there's at least a bit of moisture in there. While the exterior does get hotter, it's generally just a thin layer that browns, if any - bread has crust, some cookies brown on the bottom, and so on. And this isn't any less desirable than, say, getting some browning when sauteeing vegetables in butter.
So sure, I don't think you want to deep fry donuts in butter. But it's an ubiquitous ingredient in baking, with absolutely no issues with the smoke point.
But it could be awesome to deep fry donuts in clarified butter!
Ah - uh.... Possibly! Lots of indian festival goodies are, though my mom swears by refined groundnut oil for the closest equivilent we have to it - the Badhusha :D
Even in a pan on the stove, water evaporation can keep the temperature low enough that butter doesn't burn, but you have to be gentle to avoid localised burning at hotspots without ingredients to give off water. Omelettes get a lovely flavour cooked in butter but you have to get it so close to the smoke point before adding the egg that it's too much trouble for me. Slowly softening onions until translucent or barely golden is a classic use
Let me make sure I read you correctly. Butter is zero trouble inside food. It will still burn if put down under, onto the tray (so that food doesn't stick) or, in some other way, be outside the food all the cooking time. Right?
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25136 | How to convert normal sponge to chocolate sponge
I have a recipe for a normal Victoria sponge. I also have a huge box of Swiss hot chocolate powder. (The kind you sprinkle onto hot milk to make drinking chocolate.)
Is drinking chocolate a good way to add chocolate flavour to a cake? Or is that likely to not work?
How would I go about using it? Can I just add it, or do I need to adjust the other ingredients? How much should I use?
Do you mean Swiss chocolate? I thought Swizz might be a brand, but I can't find any reference to it.
@Jefromi I mean it's chocolate that I bought in Switzerland. You know, the country?
So yes, you mean Swiss.
facepalm I had no idea I am this dumb...
Drinking chocolate isn't 'chocolatey' enough to make a chocolate cake. You need cocoa powder - replace 3 tablespoons of flour with it et voila, chocolate sponge.
Couldn't it work if you replace also some of the sugar in the recipe by more drinking chocolate powder?
@Mien Hot chocolate powder also usually has some kind of dry milk/creamer component, so it might not be that simple.
@Jefromi I meant the one you add to milk, not the one you add to water (since that last one contains milk powder). Or is there milk powder in both?
@Mien: Well, a lot of the main ones in the US say "add to milk or water" and have some milk powder, but yeah, I suppose there are some nicer ones that don't have milk in them.
This would be so much easier if my helpful room mate hadn't thrown the packet away. :-P Then I might be able to read the ingredients list to you...
@Mien: Yeah, probably cultural. Given that this did actually come from Switzerland, I'm guessing it's without milk, but with sugar, so yes, you could probably reduce the sugar in the recipe, and add enough (that's the tricky part) chocolate powder. But you might as well just buy plain cocoa powder to bake with, and save this for drinking.
@mien no, you can't add this powder and less sugar. You need the sugar in a cake for creaming. You can't cream with the powdered sugar (which is more often than not dextrose instead of sucrose) in the chocolate drink powder.
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19405 | Parmesan Crusted Steak - Replace olive oil with honey
I've recently been making a parmesan crust for my steaks, the recipe I'm using calls for olive oil on the steak itself, before cooking. It works well for the crust, but its hard on the grill, cause the oil starts an oil fire, which chars the steak quicker than I'd like, giving us tougher meat.
I'm thinking of substituting the olive oil with honey, still allowing the parmesan crust to stick, and add a little flavor, but avoiding that oil-based flame from charring my steaks.
Any suggestions to any other ingredients, or cautions against using honey?
This sounds strange. Olive oil doesn't help the crust to stick, it prevents sticking. And sugar (so likely honey too) burns at lower temperatures than oil (I am talking about ignition point here, not smoke point). I think that leaving it completely out is a better idea.
Olive oil is kind of a strange choice for using on the grill, too, given its low smoke point. Surely all the flavor in the oil will be destroyed, so you might as well have used a plainer oil?
Yeah I thought so too, but that's what the recipe called for.
Maybe the recipe meant refined olive oil, not EVOO, which has a much higher smoke point.
If you're trying to avoid char, then switching to honey or any sugar is probably in the wrong direction. Sugar burns...quick.
I'd recommend three things overall specific to this crust:
Use less oil. If your oil is dripping off in buckets and causing significant fires - you've got too much. Just try a light brushing on the meat.
Use a different oil. EVOO isn't recommended for grilling mostly because of it burning at lower temps. It turns black, kinda nasty, and loses all its good flavor if it goes too long, too high. You can try extra light olive oil or really just a more standard canola or peanut oil.
Use the lid on your grill. A real fire in your grill consumes oxygen fast. If you leave the lid off, it can burn for much longer. With the lid on, fires are much much shorter. I'm an avid fan of grilling with the lid on and I never knew why people complained of flair ups till I did something with the lid off, its a lot worse for flair ups.
A general steak tip, especially for something like this with a crust - make sure your steaks are at room temperature before they go on the grill. If you're starting with a cold steak, you're going to have to grill it longer and there's a much greater risk to burn the crust.
Also, consider a quick sear on each side over direct heat till your crust gets the color you want, and then move it off to indirect heat to finish.
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19796 | What ingredients do you add to your meat to help to reduce (bad) bacteria?
I've heard that adding lemon juice to your cooked meat can help to reduce bad bacteria. Is that true? What other ingredients that one can add to meat to reduce bacteria?
If you've got some specific health concern that you're trying to address, then please be more specific. Otherwise this is going to be closed as off-topic, as it evidently appears to be more about health than it does about cooking (not to mention sounding a whole lot like pseudoscience).
@Aaronut, actually, there is no specific health concern that I was trying to address. The reason for asking is that I saw a article (http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/12992/why-is-it-dangerous-to-eat-meat-which-has-been-left-out-and-then-cooked) which mention that heat will kill 99.999% of bacterias and so was wondering if the rest of the percentage of bacterias can be removed by adding special ingredient(s) to the meat to make it closer to 100%.
The only thing that will kill 100% of bacteria is sterilization (which practically, for food, means incineration). What I'm more concerned about here is "growing good bacteria in your digestive system" - what exactly is that supposed to mean?
@Aaronut: I'm not sure if it means incineration, doesn't canning accomplish sterilization? But agree this doesn't seem on-topic.
@derobert: That's true, normally it would take extremely high temperature but it can also be done with moderately high temperature and high pressure. It's pretty tough to do properly at home though, and IIRC most home canning guides tell you to refrigerate just in case and/or consume within a couple of months; so I'd be wary of saying that canning is a guaranteed sterilization procedure.
@Aaronut: you must have weird home canning guides in Canada. E.g., the USDA/NCHFP guide recommends 50–70°F and ones year or less for quality, and under 95°F for safety
@derobert I am quite surprise by the information regarding 95°F (35°C) is for food safety. Then those bacteria will still be roaming our digestive system.
Hi Derobert and Aaronut, I modify the header of the question to make it reduce misunderstanding.
@AndersonKaru: The 95°F for food safety has to do with the that the mason jars (or, rather, their lids) may fail, and once the seal is lost, bacteria can again invade. Its also important to remember that canning doesn't stop chemistry. Quality declines over time (including nutritional losses, e.g., vitamin C breaks down), and (generally speaking) the higher the temperature, the quicker it happens. Store a commercially-canned food at 100°F, and it'll probably still be safe. But taste-wise, you'll probably gladly hand the contents over to bacteria...
Since someone stuck a bounty on this (no idea why), I've fairly substantially edited it so that it admits more specific answers and doesn't encourage so much discussion.
Meats that have been properly stored (refrigerated for short-term storage of up to several days, frozen or canned for long-term storage) and cooked to safe internal temperatures should be free of harmful levels of bacteria, bacterial toxins, and parasites. From the USDA FS&IS "Is It Done Yet?" brochure:
Cook all raw beef, pork, lamb and veal steaks, chops, and roasts to a minimum internal temperature of 145 °F as measured with a food thermometer before removing meat from the heat source. For safety and quality, allow meat to rest for at least three minutes before carving or consuming. For reasons of personal preference, consumers may choose to cook meat to higher temperatures.
Cook all raw ground beef, pork, lamb, and veal to an internal temperature of 160 °F as measured with a food thermometer.
Cook all poultry to a safe minimum internal temperature of 165 °F as measured with a food thermometer.
The USDA site has a wealth of information on food safety, including proper storage and special considerations for at-risk populations (e.g., diabetes, cancer, HIIV/AIDS, organ transplant recipients).
Other concerns are probably best addressed with a health-care professional.
Some extra notes on this question:
Chemically treating meat to impede or eliminate bacterial growth is not the most effective way. While adding an acid such as lemon juice or vinegar typically helps in preventing growth some types of bacterium, it's not effective on all types and it toughens the meat.
For example, Helicobacter pylori (H.Pylori) even thrives in acidic environment. See this article from Argonne National Laboratory on bacteria growth in different pH levels.
Many meat processing plants add Nitrates and Nitrites such as Sodium Nitrite. Nitrates in this process end up turning into Nitrites which are reducing agents (as opposed to oxidization agents such as acids) and prevent bacteria growth, particularly botulism. However, nitrites can react with degradation products of amino acids in meats and form nitrosamines which are known carcinogens. Some 'natural' meats are treated with cultured celery root extract which naturally contain nitrites and mixed with meat pose the same threat (if not more since it's harder to control the dosage).
A note on botulism and canned meat. Botulism spores are activated in the absence of oxygen and it is the toxins produced by the bacteria (essentially botox) that is the threat. This means that they can grow in a can if the spores aren't killed. And the spores are harder to kill (requires higher temperature and more time).
Traditionally, horseradish (wasabi) was served with raw fish (sashimi/sushi) under the impression that it would kill microbes and bacteria in the fish. Again, this turns out not to be totally effective, even though it may help.
To summarize, it is difficult to treat meat with any ingredient or set of ingredients that would eliminate all types of bacteria and not impose risk on human health. Your best bet is to follow proper food safety procedures and get to know the source of your meat the best you can.
From what I've understood about H.Pylori, it tries escaping stomach acids by destroying stomach cells which produces alkalies and neutralizes the acids.
As cook (and student/teacher of it) and as a woman who doesn't wish to give bad food to the family.
when fresh meat is green or greenish, be thrown
when it changes smell without changing color, if the smell is not much, you can help by cooking with lemon, vinegar, wine, beer, garlic - these acidic ingredients help to disinfect
the addition of herbs can help to cover the smell, but it does not sanitize the meat (but we do not want to "cover", we also want an improved product)
by shopping
the flesh exposed to the air becomes dark red (it is normal), but must be red (light red) when cut
never buy meat that appears light red on the counter, because it has been treated with chemical additives and dyes
never buy meat that is dark to cut, because it is old (probably already entered into decomposition) (considering that the meat starts to decompose as soon as the animal dies)
never buy meat that, in the box or on the bench, releases water, because it is meat that has been frozen - the water comes from freezing, which separates the molecules of water and thaw for the first
never buy meat in the box, where below shows an absorbent, designed precisely to hide this freezing water
same is for fish
preservation
always buys meat very fresh, as explained above
fill yourself freezing, with the proper system of rapid freezing that now all freezers have
thaws (very slowly) only what you need for the next day, before going to the refrigerator
cook the meat to the maximum within 24 h after thawing
when the meat is well cooked, as soon as it is cold you can refreeze, with the same rules of frozen meat from fresh
if the meat is cooked "rare", with the inside red or pink, you can not refreeze - there are other ways to re-use quickly
if the freezer breaks down and you find yourself with half a ton of meat thawed quickly: you have to roll up their sleeves and cook everything in a flash, all that is not cooked within a few hours should be thrown away
canned
make canned meat (or under glass) home is very difficult, you have to have safe meat and jars disinfected with care, sterilization safe and carefully executed.
even if everything is done perfectly, it can happen a fermentation
The good cans of meat should do ("flushhhh") when you open it, because air enters
Never use food in cans that have swollen the lid = this means that there is fermentation with gas production: Throw everything without regret.
cooking
cook red meat with blood, if you like, but should be eaten within a few hours
well-done red meat should be eaten within 24 hours
cook the fish well but not too much otherwise it becomes hard
cook the white meat (veal) very well, but not too much otherwise it becomes hard
Cook the chicken very well to avoid viruses (H5N1, H7N9)
Cook the pork very, very well, to avoid the pork tapeworm (tenia solium)
It is obvious that a family mother can not live with the microscope in hand, on the other side she would not be able to use.
The above rules are not few but can be followed easily by anyone to avoid unnecessary risks.
Remember that most of bacteria are living in our body yet, so doesn't need to be too fearful.
(sorry for my english)
@violadprile che bella inglese, non scusarti.
Be careful with meat safety. There's some interesting thoughts in this answer, but also some that are decidedly risky. The part near the top seems especially ill-advised. Please read other food safety tips here on SA.SE or (better) from actual experts, before taking chances with your food.
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20343 | Why can't whole milk be substituted for cream in caramel sauce?
I learned to make caramel sauce pretty recently and for a while was on a serious sauce-making kick.
Anyway, the day after Christmas I went to make a batch and noticed I didn't have any cream. I did a quick Google search and a few sites said I could substitute whole milk for the heavy cream in my recipe. When I got to that stage and added the milk it very quickly became apparent that those sites were wrong. Instead of thickening and becoming creamy the melted sugar simply dissolved away and I was left with a really nasty smelling pot of sweet warm milk.
So obviously I can't use whole milk instead of cream, but I'd really like to know, for curiosity's sake, why it doesn't work.
Quite simply, it's the fat content.
Whole milk or "full-fat" milk is 3.25% fat by weight. Heavy cream is 36-40% fat by weight. These two products are at opposite ends of the fat spectrum, and there's very little difference between 1% and 3% when it comes to an item such as caramel sauce, for which the optimal ratio is about 50% fat. (A little butter can boost the fat content from 40% to 50%).
You might be able to substitute standard/single cream (18-20%) or maybe even coffee cream/half-and-half (10%), but any lower than that and you're just making sugary milk.
Other alternatives to (possibly) get it thicker:
Use (much) less milk; I'd advise not attempting a direct substitution, just find a recipe based on milk. Even the best milk-based caramel sauce will still be substantially runnier and/or grittier than a cream-based sauce.
Considering that butter is 80% fat and homo milk is 3.25%, you could use a mixture of (approximately) half milk and half butter that would emulate the fat content of heavy cream. I've never tried this personally, and I suspect that the flavour might be a little off, but at least it would be closer to the expected texture.
Try a reduction (simmer off the water in the milk). You'll be simmering a long time, and you'll have to watch it very carefully to make sure it doesn't burn, and you'll probably have a nasty stuck-on mess to clean up in the pan afterward, but it will thicken.
This is actually what I would've guessed! Thanks for the detail, though, very helpful.
@Aaronut, if you would use more milk than the amount of cream the recipe asks for (so you have about the same amount of fat in weight) and you would let it simmer for a long time (like dulce de leche), would you end up with a good caramel sauce? Or is this unlikely?
@Mien: See update, it seems like a waste of time and effort, but a reduction is a reduction, it should theoretically work.
I successfully used a mix of half butter and half sour cream (a store brand with an ingredient list a mile long.) I put the butter in first and stirred well but added the sour cream while a little butter remained. I made a salted caramel sauce and can't taste anything off; it's actually very good.
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58633 | Can I get 900F in a charcoal grill?
What is the secret to getting a charcoal grill very hot (900F)? Is it even possible? What is the highest temperature attainable in a charcoal grill and what type of wood will produce this? I want to be able to cook Neapolitan pizza.
I've never pushed much past 700F but I imagine it would be easy peasy. Lots of fuel. Lots of air. You can push in air with something like a blow dryer, leaf blower, or shop vac.
Thanks. So it is not the type of wood that would make a difference?
Regular charcoal briquettes may easily be used to melt aluminum 1,221°F: Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSoWxG30rb0 To get 900°F, use less air.
The type of wood does make a difference. Some woods burn hotter than others.
900°F is "Dull Red" (very hot). Insulate the outside of the grill, add extra air to increase burning fuel, have water + fire extinguisher close by. Keep clear of buildings trees power lines and all other flammables, including your cloths. Oven mitts will not help. Don't work alone in case of burns, someone needs to man the fire. Expect a metal grill to be destroyed/warped burned through. Consider a Kelm they are designed for high temps.
Air going through the charcoal heats things up; air going around the charcoal cools things down. So, make sure all the air going into the grill has to go through the burning charcoal.
Hey everyone, the comments are meant primarily for asking for information from the OP and suggesting improvements to the post. If you have an answer, please post it as an answer. If you want to brainstorm toward an answer, [chat] is much better.
To cook pizza "neapolitan" way, you also need a good dome on top of the pizza to cook it properly, not just heat from below.
As measured by a Thermoworks IR gun thermometer, I've reached the maximum range on the thermometer (approx. 1000f) on some areas of the cast-iron grates of my charcoal grill on several occasions. I used oak lump charcoal in fairly large quantities (a few layers, started with an electric coil, supplemental charcoal added after the coals were convincingly ignited).
It turns out this isn't a very useful temperature, of course, but I did get decent results on a dry-rubbed tri-tip steak (according to those who ate it; I'm basically vegetarian). I seared each side and then set it up on a higher rack or a cooler spot (can't remember exactly which approach I used) because it was too hot. It was still quite rare in the middle even after increasing the distance.
I just have a rather typical sheet metal grill with an adjustable shelf for the coals and a cast iron cooking surface.
You didn't have to do anything to get extra air to it, as everyone in the comments was suggesting? (Maybe your grill is well-designed?)
Not especially. I just let it rest with the top down and vents open for a while. Maybe 15-20 minutes. The amount of lump charcoal was probably more than necessary for a sensible 400-500f range. (I don't recall the reading on the built-in thermometer on the top of the grill, but certainly above 500f, the practical maximum of that mechanical thermometer).
I also don't think that you have to do something special. I've been to a crafts museum where the smith makes small pieces of cast iron decoration using a small charcoal fire. Admitted, he used bellows now and then, but his temp must have been way over 900F for the iron to get soft enough.
Yes, but he probably sticks the iron right into the coals, not cook it over a grate:)
I pointed my IR gun at the coals as well, but those numbers were obviously even more off-the-charts, so I cannot say how hot it got there.
The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, the folks who are responsible for certifying authentic Neapolitan pizza, say that "real Neapolitan pizza must be cooked in a wood-fired dome oven operating at a temperature of about 900 F." They do, however, say that it is possible to "produce a delicious pizza" in other types of ovens. Despite the fact that you aren't up for certification, you are on your quest for Neapolitan-style pizza, so it might be worth while to check out the requirements, even though it sounds like you are already familiar with some of them.
As far as getting high temperatures are concerned, I would recommend hardwoods. At these higher temperatures, you need to make sure you take appropriate safety precautions. While I have yet to get into making that type of pizza, I can say that I've successfully used wood to quickly boost temperatures of coals in fires and grills or smokers. I personally used chunks of Bradford pear that were no more than about 3 inches by 5 inches. More surface area means more air can touch your wood, allowing it to burn faster.
Pizza oven maker Forno Bravo has some good guidelines for selecting wood on their website. They recommend
hardwoods such as oak, maple, ash, beech and birch, or fruit and nut trees, including apple, almond, cherry, pear and pecan. Fruit woods not only burn well, they are also fragrant. Some of the best-known wood-fired pizzerias swear by apple. Hardwoods weigh almost three times as much as softwoods, like pines, fir, cedar and spruces, so they give off more heat (BTUs).
An instruction manual for a Cajun Injector brand smoker, as well as various sources on the web, agree with this wood advice.
I found some interesting products made by a company called "KettlePizza." You may not feel like shelling out the cash for one of these, but if you look at their website, you can see that the design of their product allows plenty of air to get to the fuel while absorbing heat and radiating it back at the pizza from above. They say that their product can "cook a Neapolitan-style gourmet pizza in less than four minutes," as opposed to the "time not exceeding the 90 seconds" required by the AVPN, which suggests that KettlePizza probably won't take you over 900.
As a final anecdote, when setting up an inexpensive charcoal smoker once, I managed to (unintentionally due to high winds and a lack of patience) push the temperature of an inexpensive smoker to the point where the paint bubbled and flaked off, but this may have been related to the smoker's previous exposure to the elements rather than just heat. I didn't think to check the temperature at the time because it was obviously way beyond what is appropriate for smoking.
Alton Brown made a tandoor out of his kettle grill and a terra-cotta pot in Good Eats season 13, episode 17 ("The Curious Case of Curry"). It could reach very high temperatures.
I obviously can't link to that video, but there are plenty of similar videos on YouTube.
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29210 | How to prevent burning when frying bread?
I have the following recipe:
1 teaspoon of milk
1/4 teaspoon of sugar
1 fresh egg
2 slices of bread
I cut the bread into some squares and throw it inside the mixture (milk + sugar + egg). Later, I put them in a wok and fry them.
However, I always get 25% to 30% of them burned, another 10% to 20% of them quite wet.
So, how do I prevent the 25% to 30% of them from getting burned? (I tried reducing the heat and using less oil but could not prevent them from either getting burned or soggy.)
This sounds like French toast, except cut into smaller pieces and with way less egg and milk; with that little, you'd likely end up with some of the bread soaked in the mixture, and some of it completely dry - and the dry ones would burn. Is this recipe from a source that you trust?
Given that the frying of a cube of bread is a test for oil temperature, I suspect one or both of two things are happening here -
1 The oil is not at the correct temperature when the cubes of bread are dropped in it; and
2 The oil temperature drops when you add too many cubes in at the same time so some get burnt and some end up soggy for the single time duration you're cooking them for.
Suggested solutions -
1 Ensure the oil is at the correct temperature for the level of browness you want the cubes of bread to be fried to.
2 Don't over-crowd the pan. Fry them in batches, ensuring the oil temperature rises back to the correct one before the next batch is fried.
Strange, how do you know that I over-crowd the pan?
Do you make sure the oil is heated all the way before putting the bread in? I would think that, as long as the oil is completely hot, and at a moderate temperature, you would get good results. The only other thing that comes to mind in terms of sogginess, is that the bread spends too long in the mixture. I would just pop the bread in and out of the mixture long enough for it to get covered, but not for the bread to absorb too much liquid. You might also try frying at a lower heat for a longer period.
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29201 | Greaseproof paper
Is there any kind of greaseproof paper that is 100% wood pulp? I do not like using plastic as the first wrapping when preparing iced cakes to be frozen. Is there freezer paper that's just paper, no wax or plastic?
What about parchment paper? It can be found alongside plastic wrap and aluminum foil in most grocery stores and large retailers.
P.S. Lining the bottom of cake pans with parchment before baking is perfect for removing the cake safely from the pan.
+1 for parchment but it is silicone impregnated paper. Is silicone ok for the OP or is does that sound too "chemically"? Perhaps if it were called "natural sand extract" instead of silicone?
@Sobachatina I'd never heard that parchment paper had silicone in it, and wikipedia doesn't say it does either: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchment_paper_(baking)
@Jefromi- look under the "Bakery release paper" heading in your wikipedia link. Thanks for the info though. I only knew about the silicone method not the sulfuric acid method.
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19882 | When do I freeze tamales?
I don't want to be ridiculous but I'm uncertain at what point I can freeze tamales. Do I steam them and then freeze or do I assemble and then freeze? I would like to make a large batch and freeze since they are time consuming. Also, when they come out of the freezer then what? Any help is greatly appreciated.
I would steam them, let them cool, then freeze them. If you buy them in large quantites from a vendor or from a fund raiser or something, they come already steamed.
As for prep, I would think the microwave is the best answer, as that ought to keep them nice and moist while they are cooking. Steaming them again would probably work, but might take a while. And while I haven't tried it, I suspect an oven might dry them out too much.
Steaming them again to thaw works quite well. However, you have to be careful not to over-steam them, or they'll disintegrate.
In response to when you should freeze your tamales; I have been making tamales with my family since I was a child. We assembly our tamales and put a dozen of them in a freezer bag. We freeze them before we cook them. We usually make them two or three weeks in advance. The morning that we cook them we set them on the kitchen counter to thaw. We place them on towels, as they thaw they drip water. We cook about 4 dozen at a time. We steam them in a big pot with a steamer at the bottom of the pot. I don't know what it is called, but it is a big disk with holes it in that fits in the bottom of the pot. We steam them for 2 - 3 hours. You know they are done when you take one out and let it set for about 5 minutes to cool. It is done when it pulls away from the corn husk easily and is firm. We have keep them in the freezer uncooked for up to a year! They usually don't last that long because we eat them! However, this year mom had some hiding in her freezer and we cooked them. They were great. To reheat after they are cooked, just steam them again for a little while.
The best way to reheat tamales either frozen or unfrozen is to wet a paper towel and wrap it around the tamale husk, making like a package. Mike for a minute if unfrozen. This way the masa stays nice and moist and never dries out. As far as freezing is concerned, I don't freeze them unsteamed because the whole process is kind of damp or wet and they could get freezer burn, I like to steam them first, thoroughly cool them and have them nice and dry, and then slip them into a Freezer Ziplock bag.
I would take the same tack as enchiladas; assemble then freeze. Use a solid bag and a heated water bath to warm filing, then steam to get tamales where you want them with respect to the shell.
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35529 | preserving hot peppers without damaging heat
How is this possible? My garden is starting to produce but I don't yet have enough to make into hot sauce. It would be easier to mske a large batch at the end of the season. Texture isn't important, just preserving flavor and heat since it will be sauced and canned. I am growing serrano, scotch bonnet, sweet hot cherries, habañero, and ghost peppers.
The heat in peppers (capsaicin) is quite stable. Any number of preservation options will work, as long as you include the hottest part of the peppers which are the ribs and membranes holding the seeds.
You can choose a method based on your goals and ambition:
Pressure canning
Dry them (follow guidelines from a reputable organization, for example links below)
Freezing
Pickling (and canning)
For your use case (storage for a few months prior to making hot sauce), freezing may be your best option.
See also:
UC Davis guide to preserving peppers
Penn State Guide
I froze my jalapenos whole and it works great.
I cut the stems off before freezing. There's less mess after thawing that way.
Perfect, that's exactly what I needed. I wasn't sure if the freezing process would damage capsaicin or not. They'll be getting frozen whole (save for the stems being cut off).
@Matthew You can generally assume freezing won't damage flavor. The problem is generally texture; flavor's mostly affected if you freeze something badly (exposed to air) or the change in texture changes how you perceive a flavor.
I strung mine up and let them dry. Heat and flavor seem to be just fine.
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41128 | What is distilled or freeze-concentrated mead called?
I brewed a 10 gallon batch of mead for my wedding/honeymoon last year. It's a sack mead, so it tends to be more on the sweet side, like a cordial. I've decided to freeze concentrate (as opposed to destill; one is legal, the other isn't) it to both fortify and up the flavor and alcohol levels.
However, for life of me I can't seem to find out what this type of beverage would be called. Freeze concentrated apfelwein/cider is called applejack. Destilled or freeze concentrated grape wine is brandy. Distilled or freeze concentrated beer makes whiskey or an eisbock depending on your technique. But I can't find what the proper term is for a mead. Any thoughts?
I'm not at all sure that freeze-distillation is legal (in the US). The wording of the law is ambiguous, IIRC. Of course, it's even less likely to get you arrested than regular distillation (which is not all that likely either, if you don't sell it and you don't start any fires). Of course, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
An answer was deleted (because of some offensive comments), but there was content in there: "It's called brandehonning when it's heat distilled, and frostmjød when its freeze-separated. "Honeyjack" is a marketing term, as is "applejack""
It's called honeyjack when freeze distilled. I haven't seen any specific name for steam distilled mead, so it's likely fine to use the same name for both products.
Mead can also be distilled to a brandy or liqueur strength. A version called "honey jack" can be made by partly freezing a quantity of mead and straining the ice out of the liquid (a process known as freeze distillation), in the same way that applejack is made from cider. Wikipedia: Mead: Varieties
Unfortunately there are a number of "honey brandies" and "honey liqueurs" that are simply other liquor bases with honey added for flavor and sweetness.
Also, see the discussion on Homebrewing Stack Exchange
note mead tastes completely unlike normal honey, so adding honey to spirits tricks no-one, not that honey-vodkas are bad, mind you, they are simply a completely different cup of tea than mead and mead products.
@SF. I agree with the flavor comment. I added that last part because those terms will confound search results.
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42627 | Should I wash my pre-washed greens?
This sounds so silly writing it out. I frequently buy Olivia's organic spring mix salad which says it's "triple washed." Out of habit, I guess, I wash / spin each serving before I eat it.
Should I wash my pre-washed greens, or is this step superfluous?
I think that washing pre-washed greens is an issue of emotional security, if you don't trust the purveyor. As the FDA indicates:
Many pre-cut, bagged, or packaged produce items like lettuce are pre-washed and ready-to-eat. If so, it will be stated on the packaging. If the package indicates that the contents are pre-washed and ready-to-eat, you can use the produce without further washing.
It certainly does no harm, but you then have to also dry them for most uses, so it is more work, and kind of redundant: you have paid a premium price to buy the greens already washed. If you are going to wash them yourself, why not buy less expensive produce, and perhaps have more control over what goes into your mix?
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20373 | What does the refrigerator crisper compartment actually do?
In most refrigerators you will be able to find a compartment for your vegetables and fruits. This compartment is called the crisper and it is supposedly able to keep your vegetables and fruits fresh longer.
How do these crispers keep the vegetables fresh longer? I personally don't really notice much of a different between storing the vegetables in the crisper compared to the rest of the refrigerator.
Does the crisper provide a better environment for your vegetables to last longer? And if so what qualities of this environment is doing this?
I went ahead and removed the "crisper" tag - I think it's a little too specific to be useful. (It would've been removed automatically in a couple weeks anyway, if new users didn't keep using it in questions about crispy potato chips and such.)
The crisper provides a somewhat enclosed environment, which prevents moisture from escaping as rapidly. Vegetables keep best at a certain humidity, higher than that typically found in the rest of the fridge, but not so high that condensation starts accumulating on them. Vegetables kept in too-dry air in the rest of the fridge will tend to dry out and shrivel up faster; those kept in the crisper will retain their water and texture better, keeping them crisp.
Leafy vegetables are also much more prone to drying out, since they have much more surface area, while hardier vegetables with a decent skin on them (like bell peppers) don't dry out nearly as quickly. Fruits benefit somewhat from this as well, but don't generally need as high a humidity as vegetables.
Some crisper drawers have little sliders on them which vary the size of the opening to the rest of the fridge, letting you vary the amount of circulation and therefore the humidity; you can adjust this to suit what you tend to store in the drawer. If you have two crisper drawers, both adjustable, then it might be a good idea to put fruit and hardier vegetables in one, and more vulnerable vegetables in the other.
Hmm my crisper doesn't have an adjuster. I guess my frig is just older. Maybe the newer refrigerators' crispers do a better job than mine and that's why i don't notice the difference.
@Jay: Yeah, a lot of things vary fridge to fridge. It could be that your entire fridge is more humid than normal, or that your crisper doesn't partition too well, or that you eat your vegetables too fast to notice... If you do want to try to see the difference, lettuce tends to be pretty obvious. (This is why some people store lettuce in a bag with a damp paper towel.)
I guess i'll have to do a little experiment to see. Thanks for the suggestion.
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19413 | oil for cooking eggs
I want to cook eggs and I want to know the amount of oil that I have to add for 4 eggs.
The eggs' weight is about 75-80gr.
How are you cooking them? What kind of pan? Most people don't measure for something like this; usually it takes a thin coating, and if they stick, it wasn't enough. But it depends!
This question is meaningless without details; it's possible to cook eggs without any oil. Closing.
Where frying eggs is concerned, an important element, almost as essential as how much oil you use, is that the pan is heated and the oil is at the right temperature. Be sure to heat the pan and oil to a point where (1) the oil becomes very fluid and there is just a negligible amount on the bottom of the pan to swirl around freely and (2) the oil should spit if you flick some water in it.
I have a 12" anodyzed pan and it only needs about two teaspoons vegetable oil. If it's the kind of thing that concerns you, I find you can get away with less when you use peanut or sesame oil.
Assuming you are talking about fried eggs, use a non-stick pan, and use just enough fat to coat the pan. If you're using an oil, don't measure, just use a few drops, and make sure to spread it thinly on the pan. You could also use cooking spray. The key is having a really, really slick non-stick pan. No pan with any kind of texture will do.
For scrambled, the same is true, but I'd suggest using butter, and just a little more than you need. For 4 eggs, I'd use about a teaspoon of butter. Of course, I also add whipping cream to my scrambled, do it over a double-boiler, and often finish with a small amount of melted butter on top as it is. Here, you want to really keep the eggs moving to keep from sticking.
If you're talking about another cooking method, please be a little more specific.
if you are using olive oil, use little. Perhaps a half spoon, at any rate enough to grease all the bottom of the pan but not enough to make a puddle. If you use too much it will make bubbles at the edges of your eggs and spatter everywhere, but mostly on your hands and shirt.
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19531 | How to stop a sponge cake (chiffon cake) from deflating/sinking?
Beating of the whites is perfected.
When folding in the cake mixture and the egg whites is there a specific technique?
I place in about 1/3, fold, 1/3, fold, and the rest using a spatula, and turn the bowl to get it folded evenly.
Do I leave the cake to cool in the oven with the door open ajar? And for how long?
Or is there a specific way to cook it, e.g. high temp then low temp?
Aaronut's comment on the answer to your previous question suggests that cooling in the oven is indeed a good idea, and the answer itself suggests an amount of time. I don't think this is an exact duplicate, since you do also ask about other parts of the process, and that could be useful to others, but since you say your cakes look great until they cool, it sounds like your question might have already been answered?
Are you sure you are working from a good recipe? Too little flour or too many eggs can cause sponge cake to deflate. Also, are you putting the batter into the oven as soon as it's mixed?
Many sponge cake forms are made with removable bottoms and tabs that stick up on the sides.
The purpose of the removable bottom is obvious, run a knife around the side and push the cake out. However, the tabs allow for a marvoulous technique when cooling your sponge cake.
When your cake is done cooking and ready to let cool, you invert it without running your knife around the edge. The tabs keep the pan above the table/rack and allow for the air to circulate. Gravity helps to maintain the height of the cake because the cake is still stuck to the bottom and sides of the pan. As it cools, the little stretching action from gravity gives you a higher/fluffier product.
It doesn't completely solve your shrinkage issue but it helps out allot.
You are using a bundt or tube pan, yes? A chiffon cake will need the extra support in provides, and after taking it out of the oven it should be inverted until completely cool. A bottle can make a good cooling rack, just put the hole of the pan around the neck and put it somewhere it won't be knocked over. Cooling in the oven is good too.
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44749 | Why are my doughnuts raw in the middle?
I recently began making doughnuts. I did a few experiments.
The first time I followed the recipe exactly and they came out perfectly. Large, airy, and soft. But on day 2 they were too dry and lost some of their texture.
To address this problem I did 2 half batches as experiments. One I added too much butter and the other I used my sourdough starter instead of yeast.
None of the butter batch cooked properly. All had raw centres. Only 1/4 of the sourdough batch came out right. The rest were also raw in the centre.
I purposely weighed smaller amounts for my test batches. They were 10-15gr lighter than my first batch. They were also less airy. I fried them the same as far as I can tell.
Why are the smaller doughnuts coming out raw?
The answer is simple: your test batches were less airy, and more dense. The heat from the oil was likely unable to penetrate the dough as effectively and cook the interior.
If the recipe turned out properly the first time around, that's probably not the issue. If your concern is with storing the doughnuts (though how you would have any left is a mystery to me!) then you may want to check out more effective methods of storage. There may be some helpful guidelines in this thread.
I thought about this but was unsure about what cooks the doughnut. Air is usually a good insulator. So I suppose they fry on the outside but actually steam on the inside?
@Megasaur The function of the air bubbles are to reduce the density of the dough, allowing heat to penetrate. It's more like baking than steaming really. Denser mixtures take longer to cook through - sponge cakes cook through more quickly than pound cakes.
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45427 | What is the difference between a spring roll and an egg roll?
The final challenge for a recent "Master Chef" was to make spring rolls. It seemed to me that they were really making egg rolls, like I've seen at any restaurant I've ever been to -- Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, etc.
What is the difference between a spring roll and an egg roll?
Can't speak to definitions in Chinese cuisine, but the Vietnamese family I used to more or less live with explained the difference (from their perspective) as that egg rolls have meat, while spring rolls don't.
It's in the wrapper. They mostly looked like spring rolls to me (restaurants around here would call them that), but the contestants made their own dough, so it may have been heterogeneous.
春卷 (Chūnjuǎn, Spring rolls) are julienned vegetables, sometimes with a bit of noodles, sometimes with a bit of minced meat, wrapped with a flour dough skin and pan- or deep-fried. They are a filled roll.
You can see the different varieties by country here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_roll
Spring roll:
鸡蛋卷 (Jīdàn juǎn, Egg rolls) are many different things around the world. In Chinese communities, these typically refer to a sweet biscuit type roll, of hollow flaky egg pastry (not filled.) However, there is also another variety (common in American Chinese cuisine) where a flour dough wrap is filled with "pork, shrimp, or chicken, adding cabbage, carrots, bean sprouts and other vegetables, and then deep fried." In the American Chinese respect, I believe it is very similar to a Spring roll really, although the flour dough looks thicker and of a different composition than a typical Spring roll (the dough bubbles when deep-fried, with Spring roll skin it does not.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_roll
Sweet egg roll:
American Chinese egg roll:
If you're talking about American-"Chinese" cuisine, there may be a different distinction: Vietnamese spring rolls are always wrapped in rice paper, and are commonly sold as just plain "Spring Rolls", whereas "Egg Roll" is more common for the Chinese-style roll made with an egg-based batter (pictured in setek's answer).
While it would not be wrong to call an egg-batter-based roll a "spring roll" per se, it would definitely be wrong to call these types of rolls "egg rolls" since they do not contain eggs. These rolls also tend to be made vegetarian or with shrimp only, rather than having pork or chicken.
Vietnamese Gỏi cuốn ("Spring roll"):
Vietnamese Nem rán ("Fried Spring Roll") (Note that this uses the same kind of wrapper as the above, but fried):
Well, with regards to this post, the comments all note different things.
Being from a chinese/vietnamese family with traditional recipes passed through the generations, let me just say this:
Eggroll (savoury): has egg in the filling. In vietname culture, may be consume wrapped in lettuce and dipped in fish sauce. In chinese culture, these badboys are generally eaten as is.
Eggroll (sweet): mentioned in a previous post. No filling, jsut a roll that is sweet.
Springroll: no egg in the filling, may be vegetarian.
Fresh roll: rice paper filled with vermicelli rice noodles, lettuce and some sort of meat, porkskin and/or shrimp. A vietnamese style culinary roll often eaten with hoisin sauce
Chinese Egg Roll (US) - Similar to Chinese Spring Roll
A wheat flour roll, deep fried with or without batter.
Egg Roll - Simlar to Krum Kake, Wafer, Pizelle, Bricelet
A (usually sweet) waffle based batter that is usually wrapped into a cylinder.
Vietnamese Summer Roll
A rice paper roll that is filled and usually served cold.
Vietnamese Spring Roll
A rice paper roll, that is deep fried.
Heaven knows why anyone described a Chinese spring roll as an egg roll, but then again "Pants" definition in US versus UK English...
There's lots of different types of things that are called spring rolls in Asian cuisine. these can be fried or not fried, usually with some sort of rice flour based wrapper. Typically, egg rolls are always fried, larger and made with a wheat flour wrapper.
Many of my friends ask how they should refer to Vietnamese egg rolls and spring rolls, and how to differentiate between these two. As I read these comments and am confused by the various interpretations.
In my Vietnamese family Goi Cuon is a Spring roll, the transparent rice wrap with shrimp, noodles, and so on. Cha Goi is a traditional Viet egg roll. Yes, you can fry a Spring roll but the name would be different: from my perspective, Goi Cuon is the cold roll and Cha goi is the fried roll. They have different fillings and sauces, that's all.
And don't ask a Viet person about summer rolls; I had never heard this term until foreigners asked me about it; this term doesn't exist for me.
But what are Goi Con and Cha Goi? How are they prepared? What do they contain?
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29670 | Kitchenaid mixer dropping metal shavings
My fiance and I have been using our KitchenAid 600 series pro mixer almost daily for close to 7 months now with no issue.
Today I wanted to surprise my fiance with homemade whole wheat pasta, and followed the KitchenAid recipe exactly. First, the recipe was completely incorrect (needed triple the required water, and two tablespoons of olive oil to get the correct consistency). Using their specified recipe basically left me with sand.
After making the adjustments, I re-ran the dough with the paddle, and then again with the dough hook.
This time both parts occasionally had a hard time with the firmness of the dough. At all times the speed limit of 2 was obeyed from the manual. It DID finish the dough; I hand kneaded for a few minutes, and threw it in the fridge where it is currently sitting.
However, afterwards I noticed small bits of metal shavings on the counter around where the KitchenAid had been sitting. Has anyone encountered this? Do I need to get a replacement (if they'll even honor it since we bought it from the original buyer)? Do I need to get it serviced? I ran the mixer without the bowl for a few minutes just to see if more shavings would fall but none seem to be doing that. Could it be a one time fluke? I'm just trying to find out more about my situation.
I edited your question to remove a bit of the extra detail that caused confusion in the first answer here. I think it's a bit more concise and easier to read now, but feel free to edit further if you think I changed too much!
I'd contact KitchenAid and ask. Also, I'd worry that the metal wasn't just on the counter, but is in my dough as well...
The worm gear speed reducer on my KitchenAid has a plastic worm. For some reason they chose to use the weakest material for the most stressed part. The other gears look like pot metal, not great. If the worm gets distorted, it passes on some of its strain to the gears down the chain. That makes metal flakes. I replaced my worm gear, and everything works again. Don't use it much anymore, as I don't trust it. You'd think that by 2015 they could have replaced a old squirrel cage AC motor, with a high torque variable DC job. They didn't. KitchenAid appears to be living on past glory, like Sunbeam.
From the sounds of it, because you were using it for a rather dry dough, it might've had to work more than it usually does, and could have resulted in some grinding of gears.
Now, if the mixer completely bogs down, most Kitchenaid models have a sacrifical gear that's made of plastic that will get destroyed close to the motor (ie, up top, not near the planary action bits near the bowl), but it's possible for it to not be quite bogged down enough for that to get destroyed.
As for servicing them, they're actually pretty easy to work on, provided you keep track of the parts and have a set of lock-ring pliers. (and if you open up the gear box up top, some grease to re-pack it).
When I helped service a friend's 600, we found plenty of manuals online; but be aware that there's more than one model of 600. (mine had a different model number than hers).
I'd personally try to check the planetary gears, and check if there are more shavings in there -- if so, it's a problem and at the very least, you need to empty it out. If I recall correctly, you don't actually need to open up the main housing -- there's either a pin you can punch out, or a retaining clip at the top of the shaft that you attach tools to, and you can remove the cover without too much difficulty. (I think it's the newer models that use the retaining clip; see the manual I linked to for those that use a pin)
The other gearbox up above isn't going to throw shavings -- it's packed in grease within a sealed case, so if there are shavings, it's going to not get thrown free (instead, it'll continue damaging the gears)
Does doing this impact warrantied support? She's only had the unit for 7 months, so it's worth being careful.
Possibly ... but they weren't the original buyer, and warranty service is expensive, especially if you have to pay for shipping. You're best off if you can find an appliance repair place. (and I know of one near me that does sewing machines and vaccuums ... don't know if one that does mixers)
Aha. That information got edited out of the original post. You're probably right, then - I'd definitely start digging around inside at this point.
I'd say the fact, that you were using this machine without a hitch for several months and that you put a brand new item to use, indicates that it's the pasta roller, that is at fault. Kitchenaid has a very good customer support, so i would say they will honour it if it's really faulty. On the other hand, it's not really worrying if this only occurs on the first couple of uses. Mechanical objects tend to have small edges on the surface right after production and it's possible those were sheared off when you used it for the first time. I'd use it a few times more and see what happens. Don't worry, it should be fine.
The pasta roller was not attached at the time of making the dough :( Good idea though! I'll edit the description to be more clear.
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23621 | How to make caramel sauce that doesn't taste bitter?
Tonight I made a simple caramel sauce by using:
1 cup granulated sugar
6 tbsp butter
1/2 cup cream
I caramelized the sugar (without any water), stirring constantly. When it was fully melted and had no lumps in it, I put in my butter and stirred until it fully melted. Finally I took the mixture off the heat, slowly added cream, and whisked until the mixture was smooth.
At no point during the process did I smell burnt sugar, but when I tasted the caramel sauce, it tasted a lot more bitter than I was expecting.
Is there anything glaringly obviously wrong based on how I made my caramel sauce, or is there something else I can do to ensure my caramel sauce tastes less bitter?
Did you wait before adding the cream?
@Mien I waited like 10 seconds.
I would say there are 2 problems here: the lack of water, and the constant stirring. Try adding 1/4 cup of water to the sugar - this should stop it catching and burning.
You should avoid stirring caramelising sugar because you run the risk of flicking bits of it onto the side of the pan. These isolated bits cook faster and thus burn, then drop into the rest of the sugar. Result: bitter caramel. Stirring also promotes crystallisation, which is not what you want for a smooth sauce.
If you have to stir it, do it slowly, carefully, and infrequently - only as much as necessary to distribute the water evenly through the sugar.
I would also use a sugar or probe thermometer to ensure you're not over-cooking the sugar - get it to 350ºF, then take it off heat. This will take 6-8 minutes, and it will be a dark amber colour. Let it stand for 1 minute before whisking in your cream (I normally gently heat the cream beforehand by the way, and add a teaspoon of sea salt to it, because salted caramel is effing gorgeous).
Also, if there is sugar/caramel on the side of the pan, use a brush with water to rinse it off.
That's a good tip BaffledCook
.... For the record you should only have to worry about caramel burning on the edge of the pan if you're using a gas stove or a pot that's way too small for the burner (maybe). But a dry caramel is going to get darker and more bitter for sure. Starting with water will help prevent that.
I know this was a while ago but perhaps we shared the same problem.
The sugar was fine, the burnt taste was when adding the cream to super hot sugar. It was the cream that burned in my case.
I solved that somewhat by waiting for the sugar to cool and whisking vigorously madding all the cream at once.
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23278 | What determines whether a sherbet will set or not?
A couple nights ago I was watching the Food Network show Chopped and one of the contestants made sherbet. Because the contestants are limited to 30 minutes to prepare their desserts, the contestant who made the sherbet made a mistake and the sherbet did not set.
From what I can understand sherbet is very similar to ice cream but it usually contains much less dairy and is fruit flavored.
It is getting warm and I am very interested in making my own sherbet recipe using fresh fruit but before I can do that, I need to know what makes sherbet set. Is there a minimum fat ratio I need to meet(using milk/cream) or is there something else that determines whether the sherbet sets or not?
EDIT: By set I mean actually freeze and turn into the expected sherbet texture. I have seen other contestants make ice cream and sherbet in the past within 30 minutes. I guess my question really is what ingredients in sherbet inhibits it from freezing?
What exactly do you mean by "set"? Usually the problem with ice creams, sherbets, and sorbets is that they're too hard/icy, and there are questions about that already. (Limited to 30 minutes, it seems like the problem would be simply not having time to freeze it.)
@Jefromi, by set I mean actually freeze and turn into the expected sherbet texture. I have seen other contestants make ice cream and sherbet in the past within 30 minutes. I guess my question really is what ingredients in sherbet inhibits it from freezing?
The things that keep it from freezing are the same things that keep it from being rock-hard; your question is essentially equivalent to "how do I make my ice cream softer", which is a much more common question. A lot of this is covered in http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/12777/is-there-a-magic-ingredient-that-keeps-ice-cream-soft and http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/4394/what-is-the-secret-behind-always-soft-ice-cream, though those are asking about commercial ice cream.
Also related: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/20481/ice-cream-problems
There are several things that keep frozen desserts (ice cream and sorbet, not just sherbet) from freezing into a block of ice. They're essentially all the ingredients besides water. If you have too little of these things, you'll have very hard ice cream; if you have too much, it might never get firm enough to scoop in your freezer.
Fat - ice cream is the easiest to get soft, since it contains the most dairy, but this works on sherbet too. The more cream, the softer. But even butter freezes hard, so this isn't going to keep it from setting.
Sugar - this is pretty easy to vary in all frozen desserts. It'll have a noticeable effect on softness, but reasonable quantities won't make it too soft.
Alcohol - obviously you won't always want to use this, but the right alcohol often goes very nicely with sorbets. Enough alcohol would of course keep it from setting, but it takes a lot. A sorbet made from wine, sugar, and strawberries still sets, though it's quite soft.
Air - this gives the dessert a softer, fluffier texture, but of course won't ever stop it from freezing. Make sure to churn things long enough, though you can only ever do as well as your ice cream machine lets you.
Additives - gelatin is the main one that's common in kitchens; guar gum, and xantham gum are next up. There are also various stabilizers for keeping ice cream smooth.
I don't think I've ever seen a recipe for a frozen dessert that wouldn't set at all. It takes an awful lot of fat, sugar, or alcohol just to get it too soft. My best guess in the case of what you saw on TV is that she either went overboard with some kind of additive, or didn't manage to properly freeze it. Note that with home ice cream makers, things will be at least a bit too soft coming straight out of the machine - but they'll set much harder in the freezer.
In practice, if you're making your own, the problem you'll reliably have (especially with random recipes online) is that it's too hard. Storebought frozen desserts if anything tend to have more sugar and fat than you'd use at home, and often have additives to soften and stabilize on top of that. So most things you make at home will tend to be harder than what you buy in the store.
Credit where it's due: I learned some of this from the introduction to The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz; a lot of similar information is available in this post on the author's blog.
What might be at issue is the specific gravity of the mixture. That is to say the ratio of sugar to water in a sorbet but also similar in other frozen desserts.
If you have too much of one and not the other the mixture will either freeze rock hard or need a much lower temp to obtain the desired solidity.
I found a reference from a website about creating an easy hydrometer using an egg that will let you know about where you stand (it works quite well). It's very useful to test your mixture especially if making a sorbet that has alcohol in it as that really messes with the way it will turn out. Make sure the egg has been cleaned well. Alternatively go buy yourself a proper hydrometer.
Here’s an old-fashioned trick that will help you get the right balance of sugar to liquid: Float a washed, uncooked egg (still in its shell) in the liquid; if the part that shows above the surface is the size of a dime, the sugar concentration is right; if it’s larger than a dime, the sugar content is too high. In effect, you’ve got a homemade hydrometer, which measures the specific gravity of the liquid. This is very useful when making sorbets with fresh fruit, since there’s no easy way of knowing the fruit’s original sugar content.
Hope this helps.
This is reasonable, but specific gravity isn't really sufficient. Sugar softens it, and makes the mixture denser, but fat and alcohol soften it too, and make the mixture less dense. The best thing is really to find trustworthy recipes, until you get a sense of it.
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19609 | Looks curdled, but it wasn't - my bad alfredo
I made some alfredo sauce (evoo, heavy cream, homemade pesto, Parmesan cheese) and decided to throw in some chopped tomato. Instantly, it separated. Was it the acidity of the tomato or the extra water coming in from the tomato? How can I get tomato in my alfredo, is it at all possible?
Wouldn't that make it a rose, rather than an alfredo?
Ok Ok, it's not alfredo anymore... :-p
Yeah, I have added a homemade sauce as well before, which is why i was leaning more towards the water than the tomato acids...
how sour were the tomatoes? I wonder if you denatured some proteins with the acidity
Emulsions aren't necessarily all about oil vs. water. Alfredo sauce is actually an emulsion of cream and butter, both of which contain varying amounts of both water and fat, and in many cases, if you bought them from a supermarket rather than a farm, also a fair amount of emulsifiers.
Any emulsion is going to be temperamental and not respond well to sudden changes in dispersion. The most important thing to do with one is incorporate new ingredients slowly! If you just dump in a bunch of watery tomatoes, or anything else with enough liquid (water or fat), it's almost certainly going to separate.
Even if you incorporate very slowly and thoroughly, if you upset the balance too much, it might still break. There's no way to know the exact amount you can add without experimenting, unless somebody else has already documented it (not likely).
Sometimes, if your emulsion just creams (see my related answer about mayonnaise), you can restore it to its former glory with sufficient agitation. If it's actually broken then you're in trouble.
Anyway, my advice to you would be - if you want a rosé sauce, then make a rosé sauce, don't waste a lot of time and perfectly good Reggiano cheese trying to start from an Alfredo recipe. I've made a great many tomato and/or pesto cream sauces and the general rule with these (including Alfredo) is that you always start with any oil and vegetables (garlic, tomatoes/paste, etc.), then add your seasonings, then add the cream and slowly reduce it. You don't need or want butter at this point, its flavour will be completely overwhelmed by the other ingredients and it therefore just adds instability.
You might also want to consider using sun-dried tomatoes for a stabler and probably tastier result; they essentially classify as a solid as far as emulsions are concerned, so it's not much different from incorporating pepper or dried herbs. You could just make a regular pesto cream sauce and whisk in some sun-dried tomatoes near the end.
First of all, if you put olive oil, pesto and tomatoes in it, it's not Alfredo anymore.
I've cooked cream and tomato sauces before, and never had this problem. It might be the extra fat (the olive oil and the pesto) that causes the emulsion to break. Or maybe you reduced the cream too much.
hmmm... it was fine before i added tomatos, I'll try it again and maybe introduce the tomatos a little earlier, before i add the cheese?
You should add the cheese last (this rule applies to many other things, including risotto). So yeah, it might help. And adding the tomatoes at the start will help to incorporate them into the sauce, so that's a good idea too.
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23346 | What makes bread mold grow; light, air or both?
I'm building a breadbox that will hold multiple loaves of bread. I was wondering if it would be a good idea to put a gasket around the lid to reduce air infiltration but I don't know what is more important. So is the key to keep out light or air or both?
I edited your title slightly - it's a matter of what environments mold grows best in.
A tip for having fresh bread is to either freeze it or to buy/bake sourdough bread. Depending on size, you can keep it up to a week in a paperbag + kitchen towel. I've never had sourdough bread go moldy. You will either eat it up or it will go dry (make croutons!) before it starts to go bad.
Mold grows best in warm, moist conditions. It's a fungus, not a plant; light has nothing to do with it. Fresh air doesn't really make it grow either, but circulating air does help reduce condensation, depriving mold of moisture. So you really don't want to seal a breadbox - that'll just help create a nice moist environment for the mold to grow in.
Breadboxes are really just about keeping other pests away from your bread, while still being able to keep it at room temperature. (It goes stale faster in the fridge.) If you're worried about mold growth, you probably just want to freeze some of the bread.
Actually, you want to keep some moisture in a bread box; bread exposed to room air goes stale quicker. Even if you don't have a box, storage in a paper or cloth bag is preferable to naked storage. But yes, too high moisture will facilitate mold growth, so it shouldn't be kept in a sealed box or in plastic bags.
@rumtscho: I didn't mean to say you wanted to dry the bread out completely. But I think exposing it to room air makes it dry out, not go stale.
Worth noting that most simple home made bread goes stale but doesn't really grow mold easily, while shop-bought bread will grow mold easily. I guess this has something to do with the fats they add.
Isn't going stale the same as drying out?
@Rob That's a common belief but not quite true! http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staling
Well, that link says, "Stale bread is dry and leathery.", though I didn't read anything else there.
@Rob Well, there's your problem. The very first thing it says in the first subsection is "Staling is not, as is commonly believed, simply a drying-out process due to evaporation. Bread will stale even in a moist environment, and stales most rapidly at temperatures just above freezing." I did accidentally link to the mobile wikipedia; maybe the desktop version will make people more likely to read on? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staling
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26099 | Can regular sugar be substituted for maple sugar?
I found a cake recipe that wants maple sugar in it, but I don't have maple sugar. Can regular sugar be substituted?
Can rice wine be substituted with grape wine?
If maple is intended to be a significant flavor in the cake (i.e. you're making a maple cake, or a maple rum cake) it's not going to be the same without it. The best substitutions would be maple syrup, or white sugar plus maple extract, so that you still get that wonderful flavor.
As for quantities, looking around online, the common recommendations for replacing 1/2 cup of maple sugar seem to be:
3/4 cup white sugar and 1 teaspoon maple extract; or
1 cup maple syrup, and reducing other liquid in the recipe by 1/4 cup.
If you can do without the maple flavor, then you could just use the 3/4 cup white sugar, but I suspect it wasn't a superfluous ingredient!
In the case of this recipe, it looks like the maple is important, but there aren't liquids to reduce. That probably means that the easiest option is the maple extract, but you could also take the recommended amount of maple syrup, and boil it down until you've lost the right amount of water. (For example, for 1 cup of maple sugar, take 2 cups maple syrup and reduce it to 1.5 cups.)
I agree its very unlikely to be superfluous, maple sugar is much more expensive than refined cane or beat sugar. And it has a strong flavor.
The cake is a pomegranate vanilla cake. The other liquids in the cake are coconut oil and pomegranate juice.
@AtlasRN Well, if it's this one, sure looks like it's a pomegranate maple vanilla cake; a cup of maple sugar has some serious flavor.
That's the one. But I didn't really want to go buy maple sugar. I already have maple syrup. But I also feel that the other liquids are necessary and don't want to reduce those.
@AtlasRN You can't replace the coconut fat (which is solid at room temperatures, I don't know why they call it "oil"), fats in a cake have a different role than the liquids. You could consider using grenadine instead of the pomegranate juice (it is more concentrated), but I don't know the exact substitution amount.
@AtlasRN I edited the probable best methods into the answer.
This is an ancient post, but you got some terrible advice. Adding for the next person google sends here:
Maple sugar is mostly sucrose, same as white sugar. Substitute 1 to 1 or your sweetness will be off.
Maple syrup is maple sugar + water. The Water is 1/3 by weight, so if substituting adjust your proportions and liquids accordingly.
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52324 | Frozen sea squirts: any suggests on cleaning/preparing?
I bought a pack of frozen sea squirts from Korean market. They are quite small - 3-4 cm long creatures. I dug all possible recipes about sea squirts, but all of them are about either alive or dried sea squirts. Can you please recommend how to clean them and prepare for cooking?
My current idea is to unfreeze them, wash intensively, and ultimately cook (uncut) in a medium intensity sauce for 10 minutes.
Haha I found this, it's an amusing read :) http://oddfooddude.blogspot.com.au/2009/08/sea-squirt.html
still ) the unfrozen one have yellow/brown liquid... and smell is intense...
Small world, just defrosted my pack of 4cm ers. Peel skin, cut in half, cut out liver, rinse well in cold water, slather in your favorite hot sauce for your first one! Then be creative from there or throw the rest down the toilet, its a very acquired taste!
Meonggeboy
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22002 | Does washing kimchi with water reduce the sodium content much?
Does washing kimchi just before eating it reduce its sodium content much, or do I have to put it in water overnight or several days?
Why do you want to remove sodium from kimchi? Seems like that's part of the flavor ...
I heard that it's good to reduce sodium intake and kimchi is something I may eat everyday. If the carbonated taste can stay when gochugaru and salt are washed away, that's still good to me.
Answer depends on how the kim chi is made.
I make it using a variant on this recipe.
The protocol there is to treat the leaves with a salty brine for 4 hours, then rinse them extensively.
No further salt is added in the recipe, so any salt in the final product will have osmosed into the leaves. Most of that salt won't come back out except with a prolonged soak*.
I've seen other kim chi recipes that do involve adding back salt after the initial brining and rinse. The sodium content of those could be reduced with a quick rinse, but you'll likely lose flavor too.
Juices in with the kim chi are likely at euilibrium with sodium in the leaves, so simply pressing the stuff lightly to remove as much juice as possible might be the best way to limit sodium without sacrificing too much flavor.
Are you sure salt can enter into the leaves? I've just read about osmosis and it looks like osmosis would not work if salt can go in and out of the leave cells freely.
With that high a concentration of salt you'll get dehydration to the point of membrane breakdown. Plants have cell walls in addition to membranes, so you won't lose the cytoplasm, and the cell volume won't decrease, it'll just get salty.
Upon further caffeinated reflection, even without membrane rupture, the salt solution wil fill the space between the cell walls and the osmotically shrunken cytoplasmic membrane. That entrapped salt will take more than a quick rinse to remove.
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16812 | Is there a way to adjust hot spots in a horizontal smoker setup?
I have a combo gas/charcoal grill:
I have an offset firebox that attaches to the right side that I use to convert the charcoal grill to an offset horizontal smoker.
However, when using the offset to smoke, I have noticed that there is about a 10 degree differential between the right side of the grill, and the center. This is problematic with larger cuts of meat (boston butt, rib racks, etc.), and even with large trays (such as smoked almonds), as the side on the right cooks significantly faster.
Aside from rotating the food regularly, is there anything I can do to reduce the temperature differential created by the hot spot?
Basically, what you need to do is create a baffle that distributes the smoke further into the main chamber.
Checkout the mod #3 in this PDF for a CharGriller Smokin' Pro modification.
http://www.deejayssmokepit.net/Downloads_files/CharGrilleMods.pdf
You can do this same thing with tin foil if you're on the low budget plan.
Great find, George
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6344 | Can you substitute capers for green peppercorn?
Can you substitute capers for green peppercorn? I'm making a sauce for a roast.
Capers are generally very salty, and not what you want as a peppercorn substitute.
I think that black/white/red/madagascar peppercorn would be a fine substitute. The distinction between the different pepper flavours is very subtle, and not one to worry about much.
Capers that are keep under vinegar are not salty at all. Still, replacing green peppercorn with capers is not what I would do, nor would it have the desired effect.
Capers and peppercorns are completely different. I am not saying that you cannot substitute one for the other, it is just you won't get the same final result. Since it appears you are looking for "Green Peppercorns" they are very mild compared to Black ones. If you have white pepper or any other peppercorns other than black you would be OK. You can always just leave it out too.
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8372 | Green lettuce water?
Typically I chop up a head of romaine, swish it around in some cool water, then spin it dry. The swishing water ends up very green, however. I'm wondering if it's getting doused in some dye prior to purchase, or if I'm preparing it wrong and leeching out the nutrients?
It doesn't turn very green when I do that. Just slightly, which is to be expected, from chlorophyll leaching out of the cut cells.
When you say chop, what size do you chop? If it's caused by the number of cut cells, the smaller you chop, the greener the water...
@Juilio that would explain why it varies so much from head to head (since I chop larger for salads, smaller for tacos). Thanks guys!
I never heard of lettuce dye, I wouldn't panic with that. You are not loosing nutriments either, like Michael said it might be chlorophyll, wich would explain the green color, but you are not losing nutriments for sure. I often have green water too, it's really not a big deal, don't worry!
So maybe that lettuce water will be good for the plants. ;)
My homegrown lettuce does the same thing, and it's definitely not dyed. And yes, the lettuce water is excellent for plants. I keep a dish pan in the sink all summer to catch gray water to put on the garden, since we never get enough rain. N.B. I do not water plants I intend to eat with this gray water, just to be safe. But I have lots of flowers & ornamentals.
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69439 | What's the basic technique for long braising of pork?
I boiled 1kg chunk of pork 12 hours:
first boiling 45 min
8 h at low heat
45 min boiling
low heat now some hours
I am not sure if this was a good strategy.
I know there's no single "right" way, but what's the rough basic technique here? And what's the maximum time I can reasonably cook it?
I'm not sure what kind of answer you are expecting here. A recipe for boiling pork? Asking what is the max time you can leave the meat in the water?
@rumtscho Yes, max time and how it should be done. I am so newbie in cooking the pork
"How it should be done" is very close to a recipe request, it should be done the way your recipe tells you to do it. As for the max time, it is very close to http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/25850/what-is-the-lowest-and-slowest-way-i-can-bake-pork-ribs - that is a question about the oven, but there isn't really that much difference with these methods.
Not sure why boiling is involved... Are you cooking in oven or slow cooker? You can just put the seasoned meat into the slow cooker and turn it on. Or if in oven are you cooking at 225F or 100C how long depends on what cut of meat. If one with lots of fat, like shoulder or ribs, it will hold up to long cooking. Eight hours isn't too long. I cook most organ meats like heart and tongue in slow cooker overnight. Please ask follow up questions and provide more details...
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54899 | When should I add cocoa powder to instant coffee?
I prepare Turkish coffee using pre-roasted coffee powder.
What is a good time to add cocoa powder to it - before heating, after heating or during heating? Does it matter?
If you're using plain cocoa powder, which doesn't really dissolve, I would mix it with the coffee powder before adding to the water, and as long as the coffee powder will tolerate it, add it all to the water before heating. Mixing the two powders should help avoid clumps in the cocoa powder, and adding it early will give it time to release flavor into the water. You'll still have to stir a bit to keep it from settling out, though!
If you're using instant cocoa mix, which is sweetened and processed to make it dissolve evenly, you can just add it at the end. There's no benefit from adding it earlier, and it'll be easiest to stir and dissolve it in already hot water.
as long as the coffee powder will tolerate it, What is the indirect meaning of this statement? And, why do you say that there is no benefit of adding instant cocoa to water/milk beforehand? Do you mean that adding raw cocoa to cold milk/water and then boiling it means more taste?
@TheIndependentAquarius There are certainly things that are meant to be just dissolved into hot water, and are best if they're not cooked for too long. There are also things that need some time to cook/steep to release their flavor. I don't know exactly what kind of coffee powder you're using, and I've probably never used it myself, but I'm sure you can figure out which way it's meant to be used.
The cocoa thing is pretty similar. If it's an instant mix that's designed to be just dissolved into hot water/milk, cooking it longer isn't going to do anything. It'll just... still be dissolved. So you might as well mix it in at the end, it's easier. On the other hand, if you're using straight-up cocoa powder (which doesn't dissolve at all), letting it cook/steep for a bit will let it release more flavor into the milk/water so yes, it'll taste better.
thanks for the detailed comments and I am sorry that I forgot to mention that I am using Hershey's natural cocoa. Also, please confirm milk with cocoa pure should be only heated or should be boiled too.
@TheIndependentAquarius You probably want to simmer, not boil. Boiling milk gets really messy really fast, and you'll be more prone to burning it on the bottom, so you have to babysit a lot. Simmering will work just as well, without all the trouble.
My vote would be to use whole cocoa beans mixed into the coffee. This could just be a personal preference but sometimes I add a touch of salt to cut the bitterness from fresh roasted coffee beans. So, with the addition of some whole cocoa beans, I would only assume it would be wonderful. I would only suggest this if you're aim is to a subtle flavor and not a flavor explosion.
Since the current application is cocoa power then you're effectively doing the exact same thing to scenario 1 and 2. Before heating, you're pouring hot coffee atop your cocoa power (which I would presume would be in your mug), after heating you're stirring the contents of the cocoa into the mug post pour, during heating is where you might get some different reaction from the sheer amount of time the cocoa is exposed to the heat. I see no difference in the amount of time being put into either, though I would think you might get some lingering powder if the coffee isn't hot enough from method 2. Where as the first and second could yield the same results, the third may in add a bit more flavor because you're essentially cooking the cocoa for a longer period of time (given this is a conventional coffee maker or french press). I hope this answers your question.
OP specified they are using pre-roasted powder, not whole beans, so adding the cocoa isn't going to work since it'd be whole beans in loose powder - unless that is what you intended.
As for the answer, I'm confused: you seem to be understanding "before heating" and "after heating" as "before pouring in hot coffee" and "after pouring in hot coffee". I think the OP meant what she said, that is, before heating means mixing cocoa powder into cold liquid and heating it up, so before and after heating aren't the same thing at all.
I mix 1 teaspoon of cocoa powder and 1 teaspoon of instant coffee in a coffee cup with 2 teaspoons of sugar and pour in a little bit of milk,stir till completely mixed,then add hot water from my kettle while stirring.
It works out great!
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56737 | How to unsalt roasted salted peanuts?
I bought roasted peanuts from the market and they have too much salt in them.
How should I reduce the salt in those peanuts as much as I can?
My intent is to make peanut butter.
You really can't un-ring that bell...you can, however, dilute the "extra salty" peanuts with other, unsalted, peanuts until the you get the desired saltiness in your peanut butter.
Putting them in water for a long time won't unsalt them?
Yes, but the peanuts would then be saturated with water and would be less desirable (IMHO). I don't believe the overall effect would be a benefit... However, you may wish to try it. Here is a recipe for Soaked - Then - Roasted Peanuts..
@TheIndependentAquarius, if you're not going to cook the peanuts after soaking you'll accelerate spoilage and wash away some of those lovely roasted flavors.
Yes, but if you're putting them in water anyways, why would you buy roasted peanuts in the first place...?
Depending on how much salt is on them, and how it's been applied, you might be able to knock some of it off, and effectively decant it:
Place the peanuts into a hard-sided container at least twice the volume of the peanuts that you can seal tightly.
Shake the peanuts. A lot. Not too hard, though, as the goal is to knock some of the salt off, not to smash the peanuts up.
Finish by shaking the peanuts side to side, or placing it on something that vibrates (like a washing machine)
Open the container, and scoop the peanuts out, being careful to leave the excess salt at the bottom.
You save yourself some effort, you might be able to do the whole work on top of your washing machine, or leave the container in the trunk of your car for a few trips. The larger the salt crystals, the easier this will be to remove. If it was applied as a wet spray or while the oils were on the surface of the peanuts, it's going to bind more to the peanuts, and be more difficult to remove.
Although the diluting trick will work, you can also use the peanuts in a recipe that would have otherwise called for salt and leave out the additional salt. You could also crush them up and use them as a topping for something that could use a little extra salt. (ice cream, Pad Thai, etc.)
Do this. Do not let your peanuts touch water or you'll be disappointed when your peanut butter spoils really fast.
Even better would be to come put the peanuts in a sieve or colander resting inside another container, with a lid over the whole thing. Then shake, keeping upright.
I have rinsed salted nuts well in water to remove the excessive salt and then dried in the oven. Since salted nuts are already roasted, they don't "roast again" very well at all (or in general behave like raw peanuts when cooked) but you can certainly rinse to remove excess salt and dry at low temperatures.
If you want to just eat them immediately you can just eat them damp, but to preserve the quality or to use for something like peanut butter, they need to be dried again.
Getting them unsalted in the first place is more desirable, but not always feasible due to oddities of pricing (where unsalted nuts may cost 2-3 times as much as the same things with salt.)
+1 Since salt is water-soluble and not fat-soluble, it is only on the surface of the nuts and easily rinsed off with water.
@HughAllen, if fat solubility effected salt's mobility in food as you say, brines would not work. And soaking would wash away some of the maillard compounds that are water soluble as well as potentially start a fermentation process.
@Ecnerwal, if you can't instantly dry them then some water will soak in. Especially since they are unnaturally dry in their roasted state. So, if you get them wet they will soak in water (and bacteria, fungal spores, etc.) until and unless you dry them again.
@Ecnerwal, I didn't say that it wouldn't work just that it's a very bad idea for this question. This question is not about immediate consumption it's about making peanut butter which should be shelf stable at room temp. That's why peanut butter is made from roasted nuts. Washing the nuts negates that benefit so you'd have to store the peanut butter in the refrigerator.
@jbarker2160 The answer did already say to dry them. I've edited to make that even clearer; I'm not entirely sure I see the issue you were trying to point out, or why you seem to be saying washing is a bad idea no matter what. If you want to try to explain further, go for it, just keep it civil.
@Jefromi, as soon as water touches a roasted peanut it will begin to absorb water since it is porous and in a really dry state. Drying will in no way take care of anything but surface moisture. There will still be a significant amount of internal moisture added by rinsing. Most likely this will become a food safety issue if someone uses this advice to make peanut butter unless they then re-roast the peanuts but that will have a very negative impact on flavor and no guarantee that the peanuts are dry enough. Do you have equipment to test peanut moisture in your kitchen?
@jbarker This comment is the first time you've said it's impossible to fully redry the peanuts - in fact in a previous one you said it'd be a problem "unless you dry them again", strongly suggesting you thought drying would work. Thanks for making your point more clear.
As for the actual debate, I'm surprised by the claim that you can't dry fully at low oven temperatures without re-roasting, but I've never tried, so I don't really have any idea which of you is right.
OT: Asian grocers will usually have shelled and unsalted, both roasted and unroasted, peanuts in big packs for reasonable prices.
Remove all surface salt by quickly rinsing them and thoroughly drying them as fast as possible.
Bring a saucepan of water to the boil, then add the peanuts and a small potato and simmer for half an hour. The salt will travel from the surface of the peanuts into the potato, which you can then discard. Since the peanuts are for peanut butter, boiling them shouldn't affect the final taste, though you can try a lower temperature if you're concerned, or if you want to preserve crunchiness.
I used to use this method when boiling super-salty gammon steaks. In this case, it should actually be more effective, since the salt is only on the surface of the peanuts, rather than begin suffused through them.
My granny used to to the exact same thing! ;-)
For eating in general,
I took around 400grams of salted mixed nuts, followed Ecnerwal's and Charles Moore's Idea (thank you), rinsed it a couple of times,
Preheat conventional oven at 350F,
I used an aluminum foil sheet, and spread these nuts on them,
Leave them for 3 mins, turned most of them with a couple of swipes with the hand,
Leave them again for 3 mins and turn off the oven,
Let it cool for 3-5 mins and take them to a plate and let it cool again, before you move them into an airtight container.
I prefer to do this few at a time, than the whole 2.5lb container.
Here are some pics.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bzj_F7fR53q6NnlfanpmUloyWlE
You could put them in an industrial sifter and use that to knock the salt off and separate the peanuts from the salt in one step, but that's probably overkill unless you have a lot of nuts. Instead knock the salt off first, either with the shaking method that Joe mentioned or by placing the nuts between two sheets of clean fabric or clean, food safe paper and rolling and gently scrubbing them. Then do the sifting step using a normal kitchen sifter/strainer.
Put similar types of these two bowls together and shake them vigorously above a sink or any receiver and after few minutes most of the salt will be removed
I found that a nylon mesh strainer isn't abrasive enough, hardly removed any salt. A metal one works very well so it's my "go to" tool. Not all the salt is removed but enough to make them edible and not overly challenging to my autoimmune situation until the too salty nuts are gone (too expensive to throw away) after which I won't buy salted nuts anymore. Also, I'd de-salted probably 2 pounds at a time, and will also try re-sieving smaller handfuls when I actually go to use them in a dish. And cashews are harder to desalt as thoroughly because of their inner curve, but are still greatly improved. Thanks for raising and addressing the problem.
Welcome to SA, Carla! Note that you're posting an answer on a question that is 7 years old and already has an accepted answer. Also, SA is a question-and-answer site, not a discussion site, so any answers you give in the future should address the original question, rather than addressing other answers. Welcome to the crew!
For roasted corn that is too salty, I find that the shaking method does remove lots of salt, but a quick rinse in water is best, and they don't soal up to much water if its quick. Wrapping in a cloth and shaking, then leaving to dry by a window, should be enough.
Wash, shake off excess water, put in baking pan, place in oven for 7 minutes at 350 degree, remove and let them set until cooled rebag and eat.
Now I want to know how much salt is retained in the nuts?
Use a large fine mesh strainer. Put a pot lid over it and shake back and forth/up and down until enough salt is removed. Works perfectly.
Isn't this the same method that was described in a previous answer?
If you have a food dehydrator:
rinse for about 10 seconds or less in tap water,
place in dehydrator for about 20 minutes on a low setting you would use for herbs and spices.
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16436 | How should I store 15h cooled and then 2h cooked at 65C white soybeans?
I cooked a litre of soybeans for two hours and cooled them for 15*. I should put them in the refrigerator, but in what solution? My intuition says that an acidic liquid would work. Should I use one teaspoon of citric acid to make them acidic?
*Note (Jefromi): the title said "15h cooled and then 2h cooked" soybeans. I tried not to change the meaning, but I suspect that the OP may have actually meant that the soybeans were soaked for 15 hours, then cooked.
I'm not really sure what you're asking here. Are you asking how to prolong the fridge life, how to prevent spoilage, or what's best for flavor and texture?
Generally, cooked beans keep best frozen, at least if you're keeping them for more than a day or two. As for what you'd refrigerate them in to save the to use tomorrow, I'd suggest either their own liquid (if you're going to use it in the recipe) or drained (but tightly covered). Alternatively, if they're going to go into some sauce, you could let them marinate in it.
A teaspoon of citric acid (assuming anhydrous, i.e., dry) is a fair bit, especially for 1L. That will be very sour. ⅛ tsp citric acid into 1L water is notably sour.
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84695 | Can raw honey look dark and runny?
I have purchased Safa raw honey.
They have written that their honey is:
100% Pure & Raw
Raw
Unheated
Unfiltered
This honey is runny and dark in colour (almost black). It has some residue in it.
This website shows raw honey that looks like a paste:
http://www.hibeautiful.net/directory/skin-benefits-of-raw-honey
Have I been fooled? Can raw honey look dark and runny?
For my geographic location, wildflower honey (vs clover) is very dark. Color is more related to the source of the nectar and pollen.
That seems normal.
All the "raw" means is that it was extracted from the honeycomb without significant heating. It's liquid to start with in the honeycomb, so it's normal for it to still be liquid when you get it. I don't know if I'd call it runny, it should still generally be a pretty thick, slow-flowing liquid, but it's not a paste.
The color is mostly just a function of what the bees were gathering. Dark is often more flavorful, probably a good thing, but depends on your tastes. Mass-produced honey is very often lighter, and wildflower honey (where the bees just get whatever they want) is very often darker.
I've definitely seen plenty of raw, unfiltered honey that looks liquid and roughly the darkness of the raw honey you bought, judging by the picture in the linked page. If anything, it's probably more common to find dark unfiltered honey, because the filtering can lighten it up a bit.
The "paste" you linked to looks like it's crystallized/creamed. There are a lot of tiny sugar crystals, making it thicker and opaque, which tends to make it look a bit lighter too. (It's not completely smooth, like "perfect" creamed honey, but it's a lot smoother than uncontrolled crystallization, so I think it's fair to call it creamed.) Raw, unfiltered honey does crystallize more easily, because it has more imperfections in it to jump-start crystallization, so it's not entirely surprising to see raw honey in that form. But raw honey certainly doesn't have to be that way.
Raw, unfiltered honey does crystallize more easily, because it has more imperfections in it to jump-start crystallization Thanks, Well this honey did NOT crystallize at all in last winter, whereas the normal pasturized honey did. Is there a way to make sure that this is raw honey?
@Aquarius_Girl "more easily" doesn't mean "will crystallize for sure". If you're lucky it still won't, especially if it doesn't go through a ton of temperature swings. There's a bit of luck involved. Also, if it actually is runny, not just liquid, as in a bit higher water content, maybe not fully saturated, that'd also make it less prone to crystallization. And, no there's no way to make absolutely sure at home that it's raw, but if it smells fragrant, that's a good sign. It also doesn't exactly matter, as long as you like the honey.
Thanks, but I just wanted to make sure that I was eating what I paid for.
@Aquarius_Girl - keep in mind, also, the "paste" that you referenced is being used for skin application, to it's likely that they took their original raw honey and left it open for additional evaporation to encourage crystallization, because that "paste" consistency is probably better for topical use. Crystallized <> raw. Theirs, for their application, just happens to be offered that way.
Honey can range from light to very dark; from what I have in stock at the moment
one may be able to see that the rightmost trends towards almost black. These samples are all from bees in the pacific northwest area.
It seems the further into the tropics you go the thinner honey gets. Dark honey normally has more pollen in it. So what flowers did it come from? But black honey I have not seen. Dark brown yes. If set does some bees wax form in the honey? Is there parts of bees in the honey? Unfiltered is not normal. Taste varies from week to week when fresh honey is bought. Or hive to hive in honey. Our honey they get a hive. Put it in a 5 gal. bucket. & the boys walk down the street selling it. You stick your finger in & taste it before buying. Bring your own jar. The comb is mashed &the honey filtered threw a cotton cloth into your jar. Some wax is seen in the honey. Light to dark brown in color. Not to many particals in it. Some wax. It almost sounds like you bought cooking honey. We normally use the dark honey in cooking.
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49945 | Can I freeze raw liver and meat?
I noticed that my friend freezes raw liver, raw red meat, and raw chicken.
I have the intuition that the fat goes bad (due to lipid peroxidation) even when frozen. However, I am not sure if this is bad for the food in terms of quality and safety.
So can I freeze these things raw?
I'm not sure I understand your question. What do you mean by intuition that the fat goes bad? As for the 2nd part of your question, are you referring to the quality of the meat or safety?
@DanielChui 1st lipid peroxidation occurs regardless of the temperature. I think temperature does not affect it so much. However, not completely sure. 2nd part - both, quality and safety.
The fat will go bad eventually. This is why freezing does not preserve food forever. Freezing does damage meat by bursting the cell walls as the water in them expands. You have to trade the loss of quality with the convenience of freezing.
@ElendilTheTall It will? Why? The bursting cell walls is an issue, yes, but it pretty much just happens when you initially freeze it, not over time. (It's more the drying out and taking on smells that you have to worry about.)
I'm puzzled how you can grow up around meat and freezers and not know that of course you can freeze raw meat.
@marti food safety rules are not obvious, and can be quite confusing sometimes. Also, not all households handle food in a safe way. It is very possible that the OP either grew up in a family which always used up fresh meat soon and only kept pre-frozen meat frozen (and he assumed that there might be an industrial process required before freezing, or a short time window), or that he observed his family freeze meat, but doesn't know if this is a safe practice. Besides, he mixes up safety and palatability in the question, sometimes people are not aware that there is a difference.
Of course you can freeze meat. If it would be unsafe, your local supermarked wouldn't be allowed to sell it.
What you have to keep in mind when freezing your own meat:
Storage time is limited, for guidelines see here or here.
Freezing does nor remove bacteria, mold and other "nasties", but stops them from multiplying. Rule of thumb: What's on the meat when it goes into the freezer comes out again. So follow the usual safety procedures for raw meat before and after freezing.
-----EDIT------
As the subject of fat going rancid has come up several times in comments: That's one of the reasons the recommended freezing time for bacon is 1-2 months only, for game meat up to 8-12 months. Rule of thumb: The fattier the shorter.
Even raw meat and liver too?
@masi of course raw meat is safe when frozen. That's the whole point of freezing it. The peroxidation you mention, more commonly known as going rancid, can still happen (I don't know in what timeframe it happens in the freezer, but slower than when warm), but it is not unsafe, just not tasty.
You certainly can freeze raw meat - but only if it has not already been frozen and thawed. That is dangerous because it will have developed more bacteria.
Actually, if you keep safe time spans in mind, (all times are cumulative, no "resetting" of the clock) the issues are mostly about texture and quality, not safety.
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42823 | Can coffee beans be roasted in an airfryer
Having recently invested in an airfryer, I was wondering if it would be suitable for roasting coffee beans?
The model I have is this one and goes up to 200C.
Has anyone attempted this with any success?
I think that device will not get hot enough. For a medium roast you need to get up to around 220 ºC, and darker roasts require higher temps. (Those are the internal temperature of the bean — presumably the device itself would need to be a little warmer.)
Even if you could, I'm not sure you'd want to. Roasting coffee has a pretty distinctive smell and will leave a residue on the inside of the device. Plus, you don't want your coffee tasting like fried potatoes or whatever else you've been cooking in the fryer.
If you want an inexpensive way to start roasting your coffee, I recommend getting an air popcorn popper. (Preferably one you can dedicate to roasting.)
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29073 | Finding a balanced cheese table
I am a newbie in this area and I know it is a challenging one.
The cheese table can have any type of cheeses. So I have been thinking about milk cheeses, blue cheeses and normal cheeses that can be eaten with some salty snacks and grapes.
However, a very good friend of mine said that to make a good cheese table is not only about money but how balanced it is to the given target group, but I will be serving a general audience, so I don't know how to plan well for them.
How would you make a balanced cheese table?
I have been thinking about Camembert as for a milk cheese, Roquefort as the blue cheese and some normal cheese. Does Camembert's creamy taste fit well with Roquefort's strong taste, as there are some salty snacks and grapes?
I tried to clean up your question a bit, but I'm not really sure how to handle the stuff about "balanced to the given target group" - telling us that it's a group of girls doesn't tell us anything about their tastes, and I bet you don't know anything either. So I think you're really trying to ask how to plan for a group of people with unknown preferences.
@Jefromi Yes, that is the problem. I need to plan a table for general audience that have probably little knowledge about cheeses, since they are students.
The way I learned to set a cheese board:
Something Old
Something New
Something Goat
Something Bleu
Something Old - Aged, firm cheese like Asiago or St. George
Something New - Softer, milder cheese, like a Brie or Gouda.
Something Goat (or sheep) - A counterpoint to cow's milk cheese, like Manchego or Chèvre.
Something Bleu - Brisk and tangy, Roquefort or Gorgonzola or Stilton.
What you complement the cheese with depends on the cheese varieties you've chosen - apple slices, grapes, quince jam, mustards of the sweet and whole-seed variety, etc. Google can be your friend, here. Place the condiment close to its intended cheese in the final arrangement.
One recommendation I have read--I cannot recall the source to cite it, but it may have been Alton Brown--is to select your cheeses from a particular region. So you might pick French cheeses, or Italian cheeses, or Wisconsin cheeses. You can usually find all types--runny, hard, blue, and so on in most of the regions.
This gives you a theme.
I am mot sure how the audience affects your cheese selection, unless it is US sports fans, in which case the melt-in-the-can fake nacho cheese is to be preferred. :-)
We may be up against regional terminology issues here, because I am not sure what a "milk cheese" is... all cheese is made from milk, although it might be cow's, goat's, or sheep's milk.
Truthfully, pleasing EVERYONE is always hard, so my rule is to pick something you know will be popular, like a mild to moderately sharp Vermont cheddar, or some real Parmesan, and then pick things that you like. That way, at least one person will be happy.
Also, not everyone can eat cheese for various reasons, so you might want to make sure your non-cheese snacks cover non-cheese eaters. Something like fruit and crackers usually will do it, and you may have it anyway. A little salumi is often a nice compliment to a cheese board as well, I think.
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72995 | Which speed setting of a mixer-grinder should be used for which purpose?
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?
When you say "grinder," do you mean a meat grinder, a coffee grinder, or something else?
Ok, sorry, I am talking about this: http://www.amazon.in/Morphy-Richards-Icon-Classique-750-Watt/dp/B008P7IJEE?tag=googinhydr18418-21&tag=googinkenshoo-21&ascsubtag=e39d63cf-618c-42f7-82e7-339604db5ded @Athanasius
Ah, I see - I thought you were talking about three different appliances originally.
This is for mixer.
At the low speed you have stir / mix. At the high speed you have whip.
You would stir eggs to make scrambled eggs. And you would whip cream to make whipped cream.
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77141 | When grinding flaxseeds in a coffee grinder, is it safe to add some water inside?
http://www.drdavidwilliams.com/how-to-relieve-constipation-naturally/ says
Flaxseed is inexpensive and you should be able to find it at your
local health food store. Keep in mind that if the seeds aren't
crushed, ground, or broken, they will pass through your system intact
and you'll lose the benefits. Except for decorating the outside of
bread loaves or muffins, I would recommend grinding the seeds in a
small food processor or a blender. Small, inexpensive coffee grinders
also work well for this purpose. (If you intend to use a blender,
adding a bit of water or liquid to the seeds will make the blending
process much easier.)
When using a coffee grinder to grind flaxseeds, is it also advised to add some water to the seeds? Or will adding some water cause danger and damage to the coffee grinder due to short circuit caused by water?
My coffee grinder is KRUPS F203 Electric Spice and Coffee Grinder with Stainless Steel Blades, 3-Ounce, Black:
I have what looks like the same grinder, and I’ve been grinding flax seeds in it for 15 years (to make an egg replacement for vegan cookies) and I’ve never had any problems grinding them dry. I just shake the whole thing while I’m grinding, and after a little bit the sound changes to tell me it’s done
Coffee grinders are designed for dry grinding, not wet grinding. The mention of water in your quote is for a blender, not a grinder. There are also wet-dry grinders, but that's not one.
So, I'm not sure if it's actually dangerous, but it's certainly not designed to have water in it. And either way, since it's not meant for wet grinding, it's not likely to grind wet things well.
Blenders, on the other hand, are designed for liquids, so it makes sense that blending a slurry might work better than something dry.
Thanks. Which tool grinds nuts and seeds better, blenders with added water, or grinders?
Seems like a separate question, maybe post it as one? But be clear about what you want: it's only really a choice if you're okay with both dry powder and wet paste or slurry.
Powder or paste doesn't matter. I can add water to powder and then have paste, right? what matters is which way can produce results better absorbed with better health benefits.
@Tim Well again, ask new questions as new questions... but we don't do health here, so you're going to have to find another way to define "better".
I did it. With exactly this grinder, if I recognize the picture. Worked. But I would not advise anyone to do it. It has seal, but it looks more like dust seal than water one. On the other hand, all you touch is plastic so the worst thing that could happen is blowing your fuses, or maybe some fire. Not big deal if you have a fire extinguisher nearby and know that doing what you're doing is essentially stupid ;)
I can't speak for yours directly but coffee grinders are usually sealed. The dust generated by grinding is bad for motors, and they have to be washed without large amounts of water being held in the mechanism to run down into the motor.
I have a small grinder of this type, like yours marketed for coffee and other things. Mine is in the form of a food processor attachment. It is properly sealed. You could use it as a blender so long as you put it together in the right order. The manual ought to be clear if you can't use liquids as they're marketing it as a spice grinder, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to grind sources with oil for a marinade (for example).
Having looked at the pictures in a bit more detail it seems like you shouldn't use a lot of liquid as there doesn't seem to be much of a seal where the top attaches.
I have roughly the same grinder, and with dry things it sprays all over inside, so if you put water in I imagine it'd not work very well as a blender - no vortex, just everywhere.
I ground peppermints in my grinder (the same type as shown above) and it did well but left peppermint stuck to the bottom. It was difficult to get out with a damp cloth, so the only way was to either melt the peppermint out with hot water or chip it out with a knife and I did not want to scratch up the inside.
I was wondering if water was safe to put in the grinder, which is how I came across this. I wanted to pour hot water out of my electric kettle with a little dish soap and then turn it on to spin around inside until the peppermint was gone.
I poured the water and dish soap inside, and luckily all I had to do was swish it around a little a few times and the grinder was cleaned perfectly. I did not turn the grinder on at all, and it was unplugged the entire process.
The part I wanted to mention was that around the edge, I am seeing where water seeped inside a little. I have no clue if it got to the motor at all, but I am leaving the grinder upside down to dry out before I use it again in case. The edge around the silver pan that holds the blades is where the water seeped in. I also noticed that when I poured water in, some bubbles came up from around the blades which tells me water was able to get through around them as well.
While I cannot 100% say that I know how safe this is or what will happen (because I cannot see where exactly the water seeped into) I would not recommend putting liquid into one of these and starting it as it can easily seep through.
I realize the question at hand was about a few drops of water into dry substance which is a bit different, so I’m not sure how that would work. But I can say that water is able to get through into the casing of the grinder, so keep in mind when trying these things. As mentioned above, a blender is a better option if you have one.
If you are using more than a few drops that is already soaked into something else and likely won’t drip much, I’d highly advise against it (at least based on my experience).
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67739 | What is the difference between wildflower honey and Acacia honey?
I've read that Acacia honey is the best. How should I know which one to purchase if both are being sold at the same price?
What are the differences between raw wildflower honey (apparently sometimes called wild honey) and raw Acacia honey?
I suspect that the actual term you're looking for is wildflower honey, not "wild honey". I know you managed to find one example that says "wild honey" on it, but that's not a common term I've seen, while wildflower honey is a pretty standard thing.
“read that Acacia honey is the best” –
I've read that too, but personally, I consider acacia honey rather boring. Its advantage is that it has a quite “focused” aroma and can be used as sweetening with only a distinct and subtle extra aroma. An aroma which some apparently consider particularly noble.
Wildflower honey can, as explained by the answers, vary a lot in taste, if you're lucky you may get a much more exciting mix than any single-flower honey. Or, you might find some part of the taste unpleasant. Hard to predict.
Different types of honey come from bees gathering nectar (and some incidental pollen) from different types of flowers. Acacia honey comes from acacia flowers, clover honey from clover. Wildflower honey comes from bees gathering from an unknown mix of flowers, when the supplier doesn't have control over or knowledge of what flowers contributed to the honey -- assume a variety of species local to wherever the honey comes from.
Truly "wild" honey comes from bees that are not kept in a hive, and is an unreliable source at best since you have to find a wild swarm; it's unusual to find that sold commercially.
Raw honey isn't heated or pasteurized.
Which one is "best" is really a matter of personal taste and preference. The different flowers result in different flavor profiles. (An amateur beekeeper friend of mine feeds his bees sugar water to help them live through the winter, and the "honey" resulting from that was extremely bland. The flowers are really key to get flavor.)
Tasting different varieties is the best way to see what you like!
Erica, I think the OP probably meant wildflower honey, not "wild honey" which doesn't really appear to be a thing. I'd certainly expect that commercial-looking honey like the "raw wild" one that she linked to are still taken from controlled hives, so they're probably wildflower (if they're anything special at all).
The subjective material not withstanding, because well opinions are fine and she's right about that. The only thing that's correct is the first sentence and a half. Yes varietal honey comes from single source flowers. Yes that comes from nectar being collected from those flowers. No, pollen is not part of the nectar or the honey except as incidental contamination. Wild flower honey has nothing to do with wild or managed beehives. Wild flower honey is simply due to laziness, or inability to identify or separate the honeys from one another. Continued in next comment.
Let us continue this discussion in chat. (deleted everything besides the comments that specifically address the answer)
Contintued....Raw honey is not heated, that's true, but nearly all honey is extracted by centrifuge whether that honey gets heat treated or not. The last paragraph is mostly correct being opinion on what's best. Feeding bees sugar water in winter means the beekeeper takes too much honey and doesn't leave them enough of their natural food, however the bees will not mix honey and sugar water together, just like with nectar, they'll keep it separate and it will remain water clear. And should never be processed as honey because it's not honey.
Erica, I made some edits to address some of Escoce's concerns; I'll let you address the rest.
So you have two kinds of honey. One is a varietal, one is either a blend of unknown sources, or of known sources but not able to be separated because different honeys have been stored in the same combs, making dividing the honey difficult and expensive at best.
During periods of high nectar output, the experienced beekeeper knows what kind of nectar is being collected. This is because bees are fairly predictable in this sense, and once a hive starts collecting a certain kind of nectar, it will continue to collect this same nectar until the source mostly dries up or another source of nectar becomes overwhelming available and the bees switch over to the new source.
By watching the blooms and the watching the bees themselves, we can determine when the bees are making the switch. Many of us go to our hives and start collecting supers (boxes of honey comb) of honey as fast as we can at this point to avoid having supers of honey of mixed sources.
On the other hand, nectar a from different sources also are visually different from one another so you can see a pretty distinct division between the two types because the bees will never put nectar from one source into the hive cell holding another source of honey. They assign a new empty space for new honey sources. In other words there is no graduation between them. It's a distinct line. One kind of honey on this side and another kind of honey on the side.
Now...wild flower honey is simply this and this alone. It means absolutely NOTHING else. Wildflower honey means the beekeeper doesn't know what kind of honey it is, or it's a blend of two or more honeys because the bees switched honey crops mid "box". The bees don't care about boxes, just the beekeeper. So wildflower honey means honey of unknown OR indistinct sources.
What makes honey raw, is whether it's been heat treated or not. Heat treating helps stabilize honey so it has less chance of crystallizing (also called creaming), but it also destroys some of the more delicate esters and enzymes that gives honey such a wonderful bouquet and healthfulness.
The bald claim of "healthfulness" is walking right out the "off-topic" plank.
Understood and I didn't go into detail, but there are some properties of honey that don't exist in say simple syrup.
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32207 | Grams to tablespoon conversion
Do different powders (for example cocoa powder, wheat flour, health drink powder, baking powder) measure different numbers of grams per tablespoon? If yes, why and how do I find out how many grams per tablespoon a given powder is?
Your profile says you're as software developer, so you can probably deal with these data files: http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=8964 ... that's probably your best single source of weight to volume conversions (and nutrition info, etc.)
I voted to close, because your examples indeed have a different density, and the list is endless. You can use online converters if you want to know something specific, or ask it on the site if you can't find it.
@Mien " or ask it on the site if you can't find it". What? The converter?
Some ingredients are so specific or local, that you can't find them in the online converters.
A tablespoon is not an exact measurement, and different in some cultures
@TFD A US tablespoon is a standard measure (two, possibly, but they're very close), so if you're looking at a reasonably modern US recipe, its going to be using either the 14.8 or 15 mL definition. Those can be considered the same for anything you'd reasonably measure with a tablespoon measure. If the recipe is old or from another country, it may mean something different...
@derobert OP not from USA
@TFD Indeed, but I figured OP wants to convert a foreign (probably US) recipe to weight (isn't that how everyone but the US does it now? By weight, and in metric?)
@derobert All good home cooks I know use volume measurements and classic recipes (mostly UK and European origin). The best ones do it mostly by eye. Practice makes perfect not accurate scales :-)
@TFD, oh, I'm a lousy home cook then :-(
@Mien Send me a few cakes to check, I am sure you are just fine! :-)
It varies by material. A tablespoon (or millilitre) is a unit of volume; a gram of weight. The ratio between the two is called the density, and that varies a lot.
So, you have to look it up, or weight it yourself. Or, if you're lucky, it's on the side of the package.
You can access some of the measurement conversions in the USDA NDB data files I posted a link to via the much-more-friendly web interface. Cocoa powder gives you weight per tablespoon, exactly what you want. Unbleached AP flour gives 125g/cup, and you can convert that to tbsp (since cup is also a measure of volume; Google will happily tell you there are 16 tbsp per cup. (In general, they try to give useful measurements. E.g., "small" and "large" for onions, "stick" for butter, etc.)
From just those two examples, you can see one is 5.4g/T and one is 7.8g/T, so you can't just use one number for all fine dry powders.
This question cannot be answered in general--each substance or powder has a different density.
For example, table salt is approximately 6 grams per teaspoon (18 grams per tablespoon); ground cumin is about 2.5 grams per teaspoon (7.5 grams per tablespoon).
Furthermore, for some powders, how tightly they are packed--this is especially important with flour--will make a large difference. Other powders, like health drink powder, are going to be proprietary to their manufacturer.
When you are interested in a particular ingredient conversion, googling something like "XXX grams to teaspoon" will usually find you answers very quickly.
You forgot moisture content. Home baking is done with volume because shelf stored products increase in moisture over time. Commercial made products use weight since bulk fresh product has known and standardised moisture levels
I didn't forget it, but I did leave it out, figuring it was not actionable in any case, even if we do measure by weight at home :-)
Found these websites useful for conversions of measurements:
http://www.foodinfo.us/Densities.aspx
http://www.onlineconversion.com/weight_volume_cooking.htm
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