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How to keep frozen food soft like in the super market?
Whenever I am in the super market, I'm impressed about the fact that frozen foods are soft, because when I take them home and put them in the freezer they become rock solid hard. This happens with any food with any package, even the perfectly sealed ones.
My only guess is that it due to the ventilation of the freezers in the super market, but I'm not actually sure. What is the secret and can I achieve the same?
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If the meat you are buying is soft then it's not frozen. Most meat is sold refrigerated, so I suspect you aren't buying frozen meat. If you are buying meat from the freezer section and it's soft and pliable then their freezers aren't working properly as frozen meat should be solid as ice.
Frozen products that would be pliable in some way would be ice cream as the additives keep it scoopable when frozen, and foods like fries and peas which are in small pieces which can move around in the bag, giving the impression of softness when the individual pieces inside are frozen solid.
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In theory, is it possible to disinfect raw meat by washing it with soap?
Given:
After handling raw steak, one typically washes hands with soap and washes knives with dishwashing liquid and a sponge, which seems to be enough to remove bacteria,
The inside of a steak is sterile and the bacteria are only on the outside
Taste preferences for cooked meat aside: Could one theoretically just wash a raw steak with soap and water, and then not have to worry about foodborne illness?
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No, you can't. Your assumptions are both wrong.
The inside of a steak is sterile and the bacteria are only on the outside
This isn't true. Bacteria enjoy eating stuff wherever they find it. There are more of them on the surface, but the inside is certainly not sterile! They go in through microscopic lesions - after all, they are microscopic too.
After handling raw steak, one typically washes hands with soap and washes knives with dishwashing liquid and a sponge, which seems to be enough to remove bacteria
This is enough to remove the whole medium in which bacteria can thrive - that is, raw meat juices. After it, your knives can sit in the drawer at room temperature, and any leftover bacteria trying to start a colony will starve and dehydrate. The bacteria left on your hands will not be able to outcompete your own commensals. If you wash steak, you won't be able to remove the food for the bacteria, they eat the steak itself - and cling to it for dear life, so you won't be able to remove them all, just reduce them.
The "reduce them" part is what has lead people to start washing in the hope of cooking meat with less bacteria on it, but it turns out that in practice, it's counterproductive, because of the cross contamination risk.
Desinfecting meat is a thing, but it's done on a commercial scale, e.g. when producing hamburger patties, and not done with soap. They then have to continue treating the meat to remove the stink of the disinfectant. Also, it achieves a longer shelf-life in high-risk environments (such as when mixing the meat of thousands of cows in a single batch), but certainly doesn't make the meat safe for raw consumption.
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Pot de Crème too thick
I needed to increase the serving quantity of Food Wishes Pot de Crème (just cream, sugar and chocolate - no eggs) but I clearly got the ratios wrong and it has set rather too thick. It is edible, but the consistency is much harder than it should be.
With less than 4 hours until my guests arrive and no spare cream to thin it out, what are my options? Plan A is just to leave it out at room temperature and hopefully it will soften up a bit, but I have my sous vide bath currently running, so I could possibly gently reheat it in there then serve it warm. My partner is aghast at this, as they believe chocolate mousse type desserts should be served really cold. Plan C is to melt it down, and thin it out with milk but I risk it becoming grainy and I doubt if it will set in such a short time.
I'm going with plan A unless anyone has a better idea ....
https://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2011/02/valentines-day-chocolate-mocha-pot-de.html
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It would be fine to serve it warmer than room temperature, but it will soften significantly as it warms and the texture would likely be fine even below room temperature, as the milkfat will be much softer once it gets a bit above refrigerator temp.
Remember that it’s not a mousse; it’s a ganache. It’s not meant to be light or ethereal. It’s meant to be dense and decadent.
If you do decide to thin it, do so with cream, not milk.
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How to make syrup mix with milk/water when making drinks?
When I go to coffee shops, they flavour the drinks using these syrups eg: Choclate, hazlenut and so on. I found the same syrups and started using them to try and flavour my drinks in home cooking, but for some reason, the syrups never seem to dissolve.
What could I be doing wrong?
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These sugar-heavy syrups sink because they're denser than the drink you're mixing them with (am effect that's used for visual effect in some cocktails). However they should mix fairly easily. With hot drinks, a warm cup and adding the syrup first then the hot coffee, milk, or whatever should get a normal quantity mixed in but a higher concentration might need a stir. That's how the coffee shops do it.
In iced coffee drinks, the syrup is often mixed with the hot espresso and stirred before the chilled ingredients are added. If there are no hot ingredients at all, you might find it easier to use a small whisk or a fork, rather than a spoon, to stir vigorously into some of the water before adding the rest and any ice. Or a cocktail shaker works well, even if there is ice.
Much of this is because syrups are runnier warmer, and almost stiff if they're cold enough.
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Why is part baked wholemeal bread not readily available to the consumer?
In supermarkets in the UK, either in store or online, their are multiple types of bread, of which two are:
"Sliced" bread, eg. this. A large proportion of this bread on the shelves is wholemeal, I would estimate over 25%.
"Freshly baked" bread, eg. this. As I understand it this is supplied to the store part baked and finished in the store bakery. A large proportion of this bread on the shelves is wholemeal, I would estimate over 25%.
"Part Baked" bread, eg. this. This bread is almost exclusively white. You can get "brown" part baked baguettes but as I understand it this is just while flour that has had some of the bran added back in, it contains none of the germ of the seed which is supposed to be healthy. I have never seen wholemeal part baked bread for sale anywhere, though I have not looked much beyond supermarkets.
Why is the apparently popular wholemeal bread not available to the consumer as part baked loaves? It seems it cannot be a technological problem as the supermarkets manage it for "freshly baked" bread. It seems there would be the demand considering other bread styles are so commonly offered in wholemeal.
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Simply because there's not enough profit.
Wholemeal is a fairly small fraction of the market. Part-baked is an even smaller fraction. The intersection of the two is probably too small to be worth serving.
But if you look at what's typically sold as part-baked, it's bread that doesn't keep very well, isn't easy to make at home (certainly not just throwing everything in a bread machine), and is traditionally white - mini baguettes plus rolls made of the same dough. Most wholemeal bread keeps better than this, reducing the market from one end, and is easier to make at home, reducing it from the other. Look at bread mixes and you'll find a much more even balance.
I have seen some rather good part-baked wholemeal boules, sold frozen in a bakery/deli where I used to buy lunch.
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Steam table - preventing spagetti sauce from burning?
Having debate with friend ... we have spagetti sauce in steam table at 250 f -- with lid off the spagetti sauce evaporates and reduces and burns on side of the steam table pan during duration of the day
Placing the sauce on top of the table with a lid .. produces and retains steam and doesn't burn as much but concerned about temperature not being hot enough once served.
How do people keep spagetti sauce hot without it reducing/burning and evaporating in a hot steam table?
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250 Fahrenheit is 121 Celsius. This is well above the boiling point of water, thus you have extensive evaporation from the sauce and the sauce reduces to the point at which it can burn - this will be the point at which boiling no longer causes in effective mixing of the sauce due to thickness of the sauce and results in localized heating of the sauce to temperatures above that of the boiling point of water, at which point it can burn.
Leaving the lid on retains at least a portion of the steam and hence returns water to the container, meaning it is thin enough for boiling to prevent localized heating. This means that the temperature of the sauce can't get much above 100 C and no longer burns.
I don't know what temperature in a steam table relates to what temperature in the dish, but it is obvious to me that over time something retained at 250 F (121 C) should (in physics) eventually end up at 250 F (121 C) (though this would be after all the water has evaporated).
In terms of food safety, so long as the dish is above the temperatures recommended by your local food safety authority (e.g. FDA for the USA). For a sauce such as spaghetti sauce (Bolognese?), I would recommend that it is boiled for at least 5 min in the kitchen during preparation (or reheating if prepared prior), then maintained above 165 F (74 C) during serving - see this chart for safe minimum internal temperatures. You might consider Bolognese sauce either a casserole or a ground meat for that table.
You might have to experiment with your steam table to achieve a temperature which will maintain the food at or above this temperature, but a manual for it might well have temperatures to set for different food types to maintain food safety.
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Is NeoSoilon the right textile for a reusable tea bag?
Here's the premise of my question: I am on a mission to create a reusable tea bag that is easy to use on the go. I lead something of a nomadic lifestyle and it's important to me to have a system for brewing and enjoying quality tea while I'm away from home.
After trying out literally dozens of different tumbler designs, I settled for this one here, called the 'Tao tea tumbler': https://www.taotealeaf.com/tao-tea-tumbler-with-disassembly-set/
As you can see, the bottom cavity that holds the leaves is difficult to clean, especially when the leaves are small - hence the desire to have a tea bag. I would therefore like to use a textile that is non-toxic (for context: nylon releases microplastics when exposed to boiling water), is hydrophobic (so that it's easy to clean), is flexible, dries quickly, doesn't mold, lends itself to repeated use, doesn't impart any flavor onto boiling water, and has a high melting point.
And now to the actual question: I came across a new fabric developed by NASA (of all people) that appears to fit these criteria. Here's the link: https://www.teacoffeepackingmaterial.com/product/pla-mesh-neosoilon/ Is this material suitable for what I'd like to use it for? If so, where do I get it?
Here are some steps that I have already taken:
I created a prototype of my design with a mix of silk and cotton. I tested it and concluded that it doesn't suit my needs. Finally, I adjusted my design for the next iteration.
I reached out to the manufacturers of the NeoSoilon fabric - they have yet to respond to my request.
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The link you've provided explains that NeoSoilon is produced from organic products and is biodegradable; the difference with its predecessor is that it is GMP free, and it is nowhere described as reusable. I would not expect it to be readily reusable the way a traditional fabric would be – I would assume it absorbs flavour from the tea and that it begins to degrade as soon as it gets wet.
It sounds to me like typical disposable teabag material, and I can't imagine taking a used teabag and recovering the material without significant processing (drying, washing, perhaps bleaching).
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Retarding Brine Pickle Fermentation
I sell jars of salt-brine pickles. Bulk fermentation typically happens August to October. By February, they've softened up considerably.
Is it possible to buy myself a couple extra months by brining and chilling (3C) the cukes immediately after harvest in September, then moving them to ferment temp (18C) weeks or months later to be sold from January onward?
I'm vaguely aware that lower ferment temps favour different organisms. Would this affect the quality of the pickles?
Is there a different way to extend the production cycle of fermented veggies?
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As you considered, lower temperature favors other organisms than lactic acid bacteria. If you slow the process of the LAB acidifying the brine, you’ll just get rotten cucumbers after waiting that long.
Calcium chloride is remarkably effective at keeping pickles - including lactofermented pickles - firm. If the thing you don’t like about long-fermented pickles is the texture, a bit (say, 1/8 tsp/qt) of calcium chloride in the brine may get you where you want to be.
And, of course, once your cucumbers have significantly fermented (say, a pH of 4) you can refrigerate them to retard further activity.
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Can an induction hob heat a wok as much as a gas burner?
I have often heard it said that it's essential to use a gas burner for cooking fried rice because you need to get the wok very hot, and only a gas burner has that kind of heat. (they're referring to those jet engine kind of burners)
However, I have an induction hob at home, and it has a "Power" setting, which can be used to get a pan of water boiling very quickly. The power of that setting is terrifying, but I don't know exactly how many Watts it's delivering.
I wonder if an induction hob shaped to match a wok, like this one, might actually have as much heating power as a gas burner:
My questions:
How much actual power (in Watts) is delivered by a wok gas burner? I.E. If I added 1 litre of water to the wok, how long would it take to raise the temperature of that water by 1 degree?
Does anyone know if these wok induction hobs are actually used in practice, cooking fried rice for the kinds of people who would notice if their rice wasn't fried properly?
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TL;DR: you can make this work, but it will require adaptation, and you need to get a high-powered burner
Despite not being Asian, I cook in my woks a lot. When I shopped for a new stove, I chose to get gas, and making wok cooking easy was one of the reasons. Several wok cooking techniques rely heavily on being able to move the wok while continuing to heat it, and only gas permits that.
However, there are folks who disagree, such as Jon Kung. In a video, he demonstrates that you can definitely make fried rice in a wok over induction. You'll notice that his technique is different, though; it's all spatula, and pretty much no shaking the wok. So clearly, it can be done, although I'll note that quality wok induction burners are quite expensive.
"How fast does water boil" is pretty much the exact wrong measure for whether a burner will work for a wok. One rarely, if ever, boils water in a wok. Instead, you need to know:
What's the maximum temperature that the burner supports? Wok-frying needs to go to at least 500F (260C), and many induction burners stop at 400F or 450F.
How quickly does the burner return the wok to temperature after ingredients cool it?
It's the latter part that makes conventional electric elements fail for woks; no matter how hot those resistance elements get, they take a long time to get there. Induction is much more promising.
As for heat equivalents: the coventional multiplier for converting electric watts to BTU is 3.41. Thus, the induction burner that Kung recommends would be about (1500 x 3.41) the equivalent of a 5000BTU gas burner, which would be pretty low. However, as you note, a lot of heat is lost by gas burners. Induction is around 90% efficient, whereas gas is as low as 40%.
So that 1500W burner would be equivalent to ( 1500 * 3.41 * (90/40) ) a 11500 BTU gas burner. Still pretty underpowered for stir-frying, though; notice that Kung gets around this by making very small batches. For comparison, I use a 25000BTU gas burner, and restaurant ones go up to 150000. So you're going to want an induction burner that's at least 2500W, which is more easily done in Europe than in the USA, where it would require special wiring in the kitchen.
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Why is refined oil cheaper than cold press oil?
Why is refined oil cheaper than cold press oil?
Most people know that cold press oil is far more nutritious than refined oil. Then why use refined oil in the first place?
If cold pressed oil costs X, refined oils should cost X+Y, due to additional steps requiring labour and chemicals. Then why is it cheaper?
Do people really just like to buy refined oils because they "look" better and cleaner? Or is there any other reason to choose refined oil despite its potentially lower nutritional value?
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Your assumption is unfortunately too simplified. There are a lot of factors at play that you haven't considered so far:
Let’s look at unrefined oils first:
For them to be marketable, they must be free of off-flavors and overall of a higher quality than what goes into the production of refined oils. The yield is typically lower and production processes (e.g. cold press) can be more complicated and thus more expensive. Their shelf life is significantly shorter, which is also a cost factor, as producers and resellers can store their stock for only a limited time.
Refined oils may be "less nutritious", but for many applications that’s irrelevant or even counter-indicative. Refined oils typically have a significantly higher smoke point (which is a use case where your "good" unrefined oils turn "bad" very quickly), so they are more suitable for high-heat uses like frying. While the refining is an extra step in the production process, you can make refined oils with a higher yield, faster processing and higher tolerance with regards to the input, which overall is typically cheaper. The resulting relatively neutral flavor makes refined oils way more versatile (your probably don’t want your fries to taste like coconut) for those applications where you need an oil, but not a prominent flavor.
In short, you want probably both kinds in your kitchen - the refined as the workhorse for frying and cooking, robust, cheap and heat-tolerant, the unrefined to add flavor to your dishes either during gentle cooking or added at the end, some oils are specifically used more like a flavor garnish, e.g. pumpkin seed oil.
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Putting "Curing Salt # 1" on a steak
Is it safe to include a small pinch of "curing salt # 1" to a steak, and leave it at room temperature for 15 - 120 minutes before searing?
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Here is the USDA full breakdown of how to use Nitrates. Nowhere does it say you can use curing salts as a finishing salt. I would always use Nitrates as directed by trusted recipes.
Maximum ingoing limits (In parts per million) for Poultry and Meat Products.
As a general rule of thumb you would use 1.13 grams of nitrates per pound of meat or 2.5 grams per KG of meat. With the addition of 1.59 grams per pound of meat or 3.5 grams of nitrates per KG for a brine.
If you just throw Curing salt on the Lord's mercy on food only God knows what will happen but probably nothing good. Curing salts are often coloured pink so that they are not mistaken for regular salt as using them like regular salt would be disasterous.
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Is it actually possible to make very smooth hazelnut spread without industrial machines? If so, how?
I just bought this amazing spread.
NOTE: Please somebody with good judgement reopen this question. The spread I described includes NON-soaked, but roasted, nuts. The answer linked talks about grinding soaked nuts, which is a totally different scenario. Also, that answer doesn't have clear, good answers -- some of them advise they can use a blender, some others mention the grinder. THIS is a GOOD question, with an AWESOME, precise answer. I hope somebody with good judgement understands that there is a LOT of merit in this question. I made an AMAZING spread following the advice here -- advice that members of the community are going to miss out on.
Please note: I have not trying to achieve "nut butter" using soaked nuts. I am trying to make a spread using dry nuts. So, this question (where the OP is trying to improve texture from soaked nuts) is NOT related to my question. I had found that question before/answer in my initial request, and discarded it as it is not relevant.
The ingredients are so simple, it's ridiculous:
Roasted hazelnutz (46%)
Raw and coconut sugar
Coconut milk powder
Sunflower oil
Cacao butter
Sunflower Lecithin
Salt
I tried so many times to replicate it... and I've never come close.
The biggest problem is the consistency. This product is smooth. Like really, really, really smooth. If you try and chew it, there is no texture, it's just a smooth adorable soft paste.
The second problem is the taste, that isn't quite right -- and this seems to be related to the consistency issue above
What I tried
In pretty much every attempt, I tried making the roasted hazelnut butter first. I used (tortured) my Thermomix to crunch the hazelnuts into a butter. I never manage to get them creamy without some sunflower oil. I tend to spin it really fast (maybe that's a mistake) and for a long time (that might also be a mistake, affecting the taste). I assume the more it spins, the smoother it gets (although I am doubting it).
So, the question:
What is the secret to this thing's smoothness?
Do they have industrial machines that magically make this creamy? If so, is any attempt to replicate this miraculous smoothness futile?
I just wasted $50 in roasted hazelnuts for my last attempt. I am ready to give up.
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You don’t need industrial equipment, but you do need something designed to grind things into a smooth paste, which a “thermomix” is not. You will not be able to do this with any sort of blade-based thing. As the particles get smaller, the blade loses its ability to further break them down.
The normal appliance one would use is a “wet grinder”.
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Split pea stew HELP!
I am attempting to make split pea stew. It has cooked for a long time. The bag of split peas is new and it is organic. I did put lemon juice on the beef to tenderize it before the water boiled. Is this the culprit? It taste wonderful. They are a bit crunchy and edible but not as tender as I would like. Any way to make them more tender? Thank you in advance!
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I suspect what's happened here is that the acid in the lemon juice has slowed the rate at which the split peas softened; you should be able to just continue simmering the stew (add more liquid if it's getting too thick) until the peas are properly softened.
For future reference, tenderising meat with an acid, like your lemon juice on your beef, is a practice that mostly makes sense for fast-cooking preaparations like steaks or chops done on the grill or in a frying pan; a slowly stewed piece of meat will get tender just by being stewed for long enough; any acid you want to add, e.g. just for flavour, you can add at the end after everything's already fully cooked and softened to your liking.
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Stockpot size required - formula to calculate
Is there a formula for working out the pot size required for specified bone weight and water volume?
For example, I would like to make beef stock using 5kg of bones and 5 litres of water, what pot size do I need?
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Bones are somewhat more dense than water, but you can just take the density as 1 kg/L as an approximation. That means 10 L of water+bones. It's easiest to avoid splashing if you only fill your pot to about 3/4 full, so that's about a 12 L pot required.
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How to freeze fresh ingredients without them freezing together
I am looking to freeze some cooking apple slices, but this question applies more broadly to any fresh ingredient with a non-trivial water content.
Just dumping them in a freezer bag/container and sticking them in the freezer inevitably results in the individual pieces frozen hard together. Is there a "home cooking" method to prevent or reduce this problem?
Things I've tried:
For finely chopped ingredients, I've found removing the container periodically -- while it's freezing -- and stirring or agitating the contents, to break things apart, works OK. (It doesn't work well for larger, or more fragile ingredients, such as apple slices.)
Separately laying out ingredients on a baking sheet, freezing that and then decanting the result into a container. This works, but it has practicality problems (it takes a lot of prep time and freezer space) and potentially hygiene problems (uncovered ingredients, run-off perhaps, etc.).
Is there some trick that works better?
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Your second method is the traditional solution, known as open freezing.
There shouldn't be any hygiene problems as the regular contents should be well-sealed, and you don't want things to be dripping wet when they go in. The big issue is freezer space compared to my preferred storage in boxes. Prep time for laying out the slices once cut isn't much more than tipping them into a bag, but with apple it's worth dipping them in dilute lemon juice first, as they'll brown while you're working. Finding some trays that stack helps with the space issue.
The link suggests putting each tray in a bag (presumably a large one) if you're not going to transfer the frozen fruit into a sealed container as soon as it's frozen. This would help if you're worried about contact with other freezer contents too.
Forward planning saves effort overall. I harvest (black/red/white) currants into boxes for freezing, because I know I'll defrost them all at the same time when I want to cook with them (jam or sorbet) once they're all ripe. I know I don't need them loose. But some other home grown stuff does get frozen open, so I can use small quantities as required.
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What would cause a temperature limit of 220 °C for a frying pan in the oven?
There is a frying pan advertised as "Oven safe to 220c". Teflon is safe to 260 °C, and if other surfaces are less temperature stable than teflon the fact is not well advertised. On the image there is no obvious non-metallic components, but there could be washers or something, much is obscured.
What is likely to be the limiting factor for oven use? Is it likely there is some component that will break down above 220 °C but below the temperature of the coating? Is the coating likely to break down above 220 °C? Or is it just that most recommended oven temperatures are 220 °C or below so they use this as the max value to ensure people that they can use it in a hot oven?
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Ovens aren’t as accurate as most people might assume. They will overshoot the temperature, then cool off until a bit below the goal temperature, then heat back up again.
As such, even a well-calibrated oven set to 220° will get hotter than 220°. The manufacturer has no idea how hot it will actually get, so they need to leave a bit of a safety margin and specify a temperature below where the teflon will start to have problems.
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What can I use for a binding agent in salmon patties other than eggs?
I tried flour and flour and corn meal and they still fell apart? Different combinations. I read flax seed can be good. Does anyone have any ideas what might work?
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I use a combination of mustard and bread crumb. However, first I take about 1/4 of the salmon and make a paste of it in the food processor. Then add mustard, breadcrumb, and seasonings, toss in the remaining cubed salmon, and pulse briefly so as to leave some texture. You may need to fully mix with a spoon or spatula. Form, then chill well before cooking.
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Will a premixed sauce made of corn starch, soy sauce, and sugar degrade in quality when stored in a fridge?
I’ve read this canonical question about food safety, so my question is explicitly not about the safety aspect. I was curious if there were quality implications of storage of the sauce, and what the expected storage lifetime would be in the fridge.
Specifically, I’m making a mixture of:
Quantity
Ingredient
2 Tbsp
Low-sodium soy sauce
2 tsp
Sesame Oil
1/4 cup
Water
2 Tbsp
Brown Sugar (packed)
2 tsp
Corn Starch
Based on the linked question I would expect it to be safe in the fridge for at least 3-5 days, but I was wondering if there’s any weird interactions to be aware of, such as between the sugar, soy sauce, and corn starch that would degrade the quality even if it’s still safe to eat.
This is a sauce for a stir fry that is intended to thicken after being heated, and I don’t know whether the corn starch will still be effective after a few days, for example. I was hoping to be able to make a somewhat larger amount and cook with it over the course of a week or so. I plan on mixing these ingredients but not actually heating them until I actually add the sauce to the dish.
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I would imagine your main enemy will be separation.
The oil will float to the top - which is easily if temporarily fixed by shaking it…
… but the corn starch will solidify at the bottom, which will require much more vigorous shaking, and may in fact resist all attempts short of disturbing it with a spoon/stirrer once it's fully settled. [It can do this in 20 minutes. I've never tried leaving it for much longer.]
As there seems to be some uncertainty as to whether you're going to cook it first… if cooked, the corn starch will gelatinise on cooling, which makes it rather intransigent afterwards.
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Buying Unpasteurized Egg Whites
I'm in Canada and I see pasteurized cartons of egg whites everywhere, but has anyone seen unpasteurized egg whites? I want to make meringues but I don't want to have to figure out what to do with the yolks.
Or, does cream of tartar + pasteurized egg whites whip like unpasteurized egg whites?
(Specifically I want to try making macarons this time around)
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In the US, at least, all egg products must be pasteurized
The term “egg products” refers to eggs that have been removed from their shells for processing at facilities called breaker plants. Egg products include whole eggs, whites, yolks and various blends with or without non-egg ingredients. They may be available in liquid, frozen, and dried forms (eggs inside their shell are NOT egg products.)
It would seem to be the same in Canada though that link is less explicit about the requirement. As such, I don’t think you’ll be able to find unpasteurized egg whites legally sold commercially.
As stated in an answer to the question I linked in a comment:
With a lot of whipping (and more cream of tartar or other stabilizers) pasteurized egg whites (whether from pasteurized eggs or from cartons) can make meringue though it most likely won't be as stiff as those from non-pasteurized eggs
But as this answer to a different question mentions, it can make life more difficult than unpasteurized egg whites due to the nature of how egg foams work & pasteurization works.
TL;DR
You are unlikely to be able to buy unpasteurized egg whites, and for best results will want to crack your own eggs, even if it means you have to figure out something to do with the yolks (pasta, perhaps?), but you should be able to get by with a bit of extra care and effort using pasteurized egg whites.
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How to prevent airlocks to get soaked out when vegetables soak up water
Fermenting the vegetables in 2,5L glases I always face the problem that the vegetables soak up a lot of water and then dispense a lot and then towards the end soak up even more.
The problem is, that the airlocks get soaked out when the volume in the glass diminishes. They are just too short. I use the standard one.
I consider airlock as important.
What I did so far is to wait 2-3 days until I fill in the water in the airlocks, but it didn't help a lot. Often the airlock breaks and it soaks in the water from it.
I wonder, whether there is a point in time, when it can't happen anymore, or anything else to know about the stages of fermentation?
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Use an S-shaped (aka one piece) airlock instead. Harder to clean, but doesn’t siphon out at negative pressure.
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Master Chef metal pot - I cannot find any details about if it is oven safe
I acquired a metal Master Chef pot many years ago and it cooks perfectly. However, I am worried about using it in the oven and do not even know what material it is made of so Is there an easy way to tell if a pan/pot is oven-safe? is not too helpful to me. I was wondering if anyone had ever seen this V150D Master Chef pot and lid before or are better at Google then me, most of my searches turn up sites selling new pots and pans. I would love either a manufacturer's guidance or assured advice please if possible.
This is what it looks like:
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First, some background. The "MasterChef" cookware you have is branded after the TV Show of the same name from 2010 to present. During the run of the show, producers the Gander Group has had a series of contractors manufacture branded cookware, with no consistency or continuity. This cookware is unrelated to the All-Clad Master Chef Line.
Since the pan you have is not the same materials, design, or likely factory as the cookware currently promoted by the show, we can find out nothing about it online. Fortunately, we don't have to.
From the photos, I can see that the pan is all-metal, and is either stainless steel or a combination of stainless and some other metal, most likely aluminum (3-ply cookware). Handles are spot-welded on. You should be able to tell if it's possibly 3-ply by checking the thickness and weight; does it seem likely that there's 3 layers of metal there?
Either way, it will be fine in the oven as long as you don't heat or cool it too fast (e.g., don't put the hot pan down on a cold slab of granite or in a water bath). Even if it's not 3-ply, you won't want rapid temperature changes lest those spot-welds come apart (I know this from bitter personal experience). I'd also avoid putting it in extreme heat situations, like under a hot broiler, just because you don't know that much about the pan.
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BBQ chicken and burger patty too dry
I m not an expert at BBQ but last time I made them, 2 things happened. When they were looking juicy and cooked from outside, when checked from inside they were still raw but after cooking for a while, they were slightly black/burned and were dried.
I was using charcoal grill and I used 2 packets of BBQuick lumpwood and stainless steel
I started BBQing when they were almost red and white colour
What could I be doing wrong and how to make my BBQ juicy?
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I would suggest using a lower temperature/lower fire. It sounds like the outside overcooked before the inside was done. Plus, if you are using metal skewers (pictured) they will conduct heat to the inside fairly quickly. It wouldn't take long to go from under to overcooked over very hot coals.
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How to make Kraft Mac and Cheese Like Ihop
Ihop recently stopped serving their Kraft Mac and Cheese in my area. I have made Kraft Mac and Cheese myself from the box following the instructions, but it never takes as good as the mac and cheese from Ihop. I am wondering if someone knows what Ihop might be doing differently when they make their Mac and Cheese compared to just following the instructions.
Someone asked about making Mac and Cheese in this question and the suggestion was to simmer the butter separately. I can try that, but I want to make sure that it isn't because of something else.
Someone in this question suggested adding salt, mustard, or peppers, but I don't like the taste of mustard or peppers, and the Kraft Mac and Cheese powder already has a lot of salt. Unfortunately, I don't remember in what way Ihop Mac and Cheese tastes better than when it is traditionally cooked. I feel like the ones I make at home either have less of a taste.
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Based on the nutritional information provided by Kraft and iHop, a good place to start would be more salt and more butter. A standard Kraft recipe is 360 Calories with 12 grams of fat and 710 mg of sodium, the iHop version is 350 Calories with 20 grams of fat and 920mg sodium. The iHop version also has less carbs and half the sugar which is a bit of a surprise, it probably means there's less actual pasta and those calories are made up with the butter.
As I noted in my comment before I checked, this is generally the case with cheap restaurant food -- the reason it often tastes better than what you make at home is utterly absurd amounts of salt and fat and depending on the dish, cream and sugars.
Note: I'm just assuming they use butter. Part of the 'trick' may be they use a weird fat like margarine or reuse bacon/beef grease (but that's probably unlikely).
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Oven baking potatoes to make mashed potato/pomme puree - how to store the cooked skins
Whenever I make pomme puree or mashed potatoes (with warm milk/cream and softened butter depending), I always bake the potatoes after covering them in oil & salt and use the inside for mash/pomme puree. However, with most meals (like the lamb roast dinner I am making today), I do not particularly want to eat the potatoes skins there and then.
I tried Googling but most of it just comes up with how to store potatoes which is unhelpful. How can I store the cooked skins for the next day (loaded skins with tuna and mayonnaise for example)?
My first thought was just to let them cool and then fridge them before putting them back in the oven prior the next day but I am not sure if this is optimal or if they will go soggy etc.
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You can chill the unfilled potato skins, and then reheat them and fill them (or fill and heat, as appropriate for the filling)
I would recommend letting them cool some before packing up, and using waxed paper or similar between layers so they don’t stick together.
It’s possible that they might be a little more firm than freshly baked, so you want them to be more tender, may want to scoop the skins out to slightly thinner than you typically would. I usually don’t have an issue with this, but I suspect that it would be affected by potato variety.
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What do you call these long spoons?
In this video the cook uses a really nifty long spoon.
What would you call such a thing and where would be the best bet to purchase one? I'm pretty certain the spoon is long because you cannot get too close to the industrial burners used in that restaurant, but that is a nice piece of kit for the home cook as well.
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"Long handle spoons." ...just search the webstaurant store and you will find plenty.
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Is flouring meat necessary in stews (specifically ossobuco)?
I'm specifically wondering this in the context of ossobuco, but this probably goes for a range of stew recipes. Every ossobuco recipe I've come across tells you to dredge the meat in a (light) coating of flour before browning and subsequently stewing it. Now, I get that the flour has a role to play to thicken the stew, but for that purpose it seems like it would be far more convenient to add the flour to the pot separately, making sure of course to fry it some to get rid of the raw flour taste (and possibly even to brown it a little for extra flavor).
So, what if anything, is the point of putting the flour on the meat? Could it be to aid browning? But then I feel like I could brown my veal shanks perfectly well without flour, and that might actually lead to a nicer flavor as you'd be browning the actual meat instead of the flour (and you could even brown the flour separately to get the best of both worlds).
If it's to form a crust (just guessing here), then I don't really see how that gels with the thickening argument (unless that's totally wrong), and in any case my experience making ossobuco before (where I diligently followed the traditional method) was that the meat doesn't really hold a crust anyway being stewed for hours (nor does that seem particularly desirable).
Any ideas? Does anyone know the (putative) reason, or does anyone have experience trying it both ways?
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I'd say the reasoning is three-fold.
It cooks it first, in oil, so it's not going to go lumpy when liquid is added, same premise as a roux but one-pot.
It saves having to make up a slurry later, which wouldn't benefit from the bit of maillard you'd get with a pre-fry, so it's in all likelihood good for your flavour profile too.
And, historically, once it's all simmering in the pot, there's less reason to have to mess with it during the cook time; set & forget for busy cooks or traditionally housewives who had a myriad additional tasks to perform whilst dinner's cooking.
…and a late 4. It measures itself, flour to meat surface area is a constant. Presumably as any cook will usually be using approximately the same 'chunk' sizes, that gives consistency across multiple meals, even with differing overall meal/pot sizes.
Just to be clear - nothing in any traditional recipe is absolutely necessary. You can change what you like - but the result may no longer be as 'as intended' by the original recipe.
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What effect does fat and sugar have on homemade bread?
I have been experimenting lately with different bread making techniques, particularly sandwich bread or 'Pain de Mie'. This differs from the previous recipes that have yeast, water, sugar, fats and salt in that it contains a lot more sugar and oil/fat - often tablespoon measurements rather than teaspoon.
These loaves have turned out really well, very soft and light and they also keep longer than the equivalent bread recipes. The dough has been quite "energetic" when rising, often to the top of the bowl on first rise, something that is generally alien to me as I have very cool kitchen.
I understand that the higher sugar content will cause the dough to rise more, but what role does the increased fat content play in this outcome?
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Adding fat to bread dough makes it softer and makes it stay moist for longer. The first effect, a more tender crumb, is a result of fat coating gluten molecules and preventing them from forming long chains. The improved shelf life is a result of the fat not evaporating the way water does, so it stays and gives the impression of moistness. Small amounts (a few tbsp) of certain fats can also help bread dough rise more (specifically saturated fats and mono-unsaturated fats).
Sugar, of course, gives the yeast easy food to work with, which makes it more active quickly. However, larger amounts of sugar can reduce yeast activity and make it take longer for the dough to rise. Being hygroscopic, sugar can also help keep moisture inside of the bread and keep it fresh for longer.
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How do you clean mussel shells for serving appetizers at a wedding?
We collected a bunch of mussel shells at Venice beach we wanted to clean them and use them to serve appetizers at our wedding celebration.
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Mussel shells are robust. Hot water, soap and a brush will work fine. If you have a lot the dish-washer is an option as well.
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What does it mean for a burger to be "a little pink"?
I ate at Red Robin's recently. Usually, I order a well-done burger because I want my burgers cooked thoroughly. But the waiter suggested that I try "a little pink" burger, which is the cooking stage before well-done. It was the most delicious burger I've had. What is the specific name for "a little pink"? Medium rare? Medium well-done?
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There are images out there of steaks and burgers cooked to different temperatures so you can see the color that they become. Here’s one for burgers:
I’d personally say that you lose pink somewhere around ‘medium’, so your burger may have been cooked even less than ‘medium well’… but I’m also slightly color blind, so you may want to look at the image yourself to judge.
(And also note that color calibration on computer monitors isn’t always the same; Macintoshes are known to display images differently from Windows; you may want to see if the restaurant has a poster to show the difference the next time you’re there)
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Can I cook brown rice in broth?
Can I make brown rice substituting chicken broth for water? How much of the chicken flavor transfers to the rice?
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There is no problem doing this, some flavour transfers to the rice as you'd expect. Try to measure the amount you use so the rice doesn't need draining (or just have it with the remaining liquid). And be careful with additional seasoning like salt if the broth is already salted.
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Mnemonic tricks to remember all cooking steps correctly
I am looking for some advice on what some mnemonic tricks could be for remembering the following, when memorizing or preparing to cook a recipe by heart:
oven temperatures
procedures (remembering the right steps, in the right order)
all the ingredients, without omitting any
ingredient amounts (also, with the number of people to cater to, kept in mind)
Thank you very much.
Thanks.
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The best 'trick' is to understand why a certain temperature, ingredient or quantity is used, which comes from reading good recipes, cooking with others who have more experience, and practice and experimentation.
The second 'trick' is to get used to what details are important or specific to one recipe. Once you realise that lots of different dishes are in fact very similar in construction, you stop thinking in terms of memorising specific instruction lists. Don't think "180°C", think "default oven temperature". Don't think "add 1.5 tsp salt to 1 litre simmering water", think "this needs boiling, so I need a pan of boiling water and that always needs salt". Instead of "50g chicken breast", "that looks about right for one meal for me".
In other words, when you see someone cooking without looking at a recipe, it's not that they are mentally consulting a memorized recipe and following its steps. They just combine their knowledge of cooking methods with what they have and what they are trying to make. An analogy might be someone travelling across a city they know well – they aren't following a memorized list of directions, they just know the general way to go and how to navigate each part along the way.
The place for mnemonics is in remembering specific baking recipes where it is more important to get the ratios of ingredients and temperatures precise, and there are some of these out there for classic cakes. But my recommendation would just be to cook with a recipe to hand; now that we have the internet and smartphones it's easy to get high quality recipes and you don't have to worry you've forgotten something.
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What are the best ways to dry seafood before cooking/searing on the pan?
I'll buy refrigerated or frozen shrimp, ahi tuna, mahi-mahi, scallops (especially important to dry), let them defrost a day before in the fridge, and seek to dry them off before laying kosher salt and cooking them . What's the best (and fastest) way to dry off the seafood? I find myself just using a paper towel to dry them off, but I'm wondering if there's a better solution out there. Any suggestions?
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Several layers of paper towel is, in fact, the best way.
Place the seafood on 2-3 layers of paper towel and press down on it with another 2-3 layers of paper towel from the top.
Alternatives do not work as well:
Using cloth towels means that you need to immediately wash those towels
Leaving the seafood exposed in the fridge so it dries out can result in both the fridge and the seafood picking up smells
Heat-based drying can cook the seafood or cause it to go bad
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Can I still use poolish which has quadrupled in volume?
I was making poolish for pizza dough but accidentally left it out too long. It quadrupled in height before I stuck it in the fridge. Can I still use it or can I salvage it in a different way?
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Give it a good sniff. If it smells yeasty, and maybe a little sour, you are good to go. After all, using a poolish (or any starter) at its peak activity is a good thing. The longer it ferments, the more alcohol is produced. Too much alcohol inhibits yeast and bacterial activity; and, therefore, oven spring later. So be on the lookout for alcoholic aromas or evidence that you are well past peak activity. There are no safety risks here, as long as it isn't moldy. An alternative, if it has gone well past peak activity, is to think of it as a starter. Punch or stir it down, remove a good portion, feed it fresh flour and water, and essentially start over.
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Garam masala in meat curries
In South Asia, Garam Masala means a mixture of cinnamon, clove, black peppercorn, and cardamom either in whole form or in powder form. This is an essential ingredient in meat (chicken, beef, lamb, goat, etc.) curries.
I observed that,
In some recipes, they first add oil to the pan and immediately add whole garam masala and fry them for a minute or two then add onion, and then add meat. In other recipes, they add powdered garam masala much later - after adding meat.
In some recipes, they use raw garam masala powder. In other recipes, they use roasted plus powdered garam masala.
What is the difference?
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Some prerequisite information first:
The recipe for garam masala varies across cultures, regions, cities, and chefs. It means "warming spice", so it always contains some cardamom and cinnamon, but the other spices (and the number of them) can vary.
It's used in a large variety of recipes, not just meat dishes.
In many recipes published for an English-speaking audience, garam masala is included as a substitute for other masalas (spice mixes) that would normally be used in the recipe's place of origin.*
With that background:
The reason for "the difference" is flavor. Fried spices taste different from dry-roasted spices and different from raw spices. Spices that you add at the beginning of cooking taste different in the dish than they do if you add them just before serving. So each recipe is getting a specific flavor out of the garam masala. This particularly makes sense if you consider that the garam masala may be a substitution for some other masala.
This isn't hard to understand if you consider garlic instead of garam masala. Sometimes garlic is added whole, or minced or crushed or pureed. Sometimes it's added at the beginning of cooking, sometimes in the middle, and sometimes at the end, raw for a fierce bite. I even have a pasta recipe that involves all three fried, grated and cooked, and raw slivered garlic.
(* when I lived in Kathmandu, our local masala seller had 22 different mixes he offered. Garam was not one of them.)
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What can I cook in Kamado Joe egg that I can't cook in Weber Master Touch Grill?
I BBQ weekly, and it's usually one or two thick steaks, spare ribs, or pork chops. I currently have a pretty old Weber Original Kettle 22-Inch Charcoal Grill, but it's time for me to replace it with something a bit better.
Recently, I saw a sale on the Weber Master Touch Charcoal Grill. On the other hand, I've always been interested in buying a Kamado Joe Classic Joe, but the price is rather prohibitive.
Adding to that, I've wanted to expand my cooking to things that cook for more than half-hour, but $800 for a grill is way above my budget.
That brings me to the question: what can I cook in a Kamado Joe that I absolutely cannot cook in a Weber Multi-Touch grill?
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I've used Weber kettle grills for a long, long time and switched to a Kamado Joe II as a lockdown buy. Overall there's almost nothing you can do on a Kamado style barbecue that you can't do on a kettle, but there are some things that you can do better and easier.
For standard grilling tasks like burgers, steaks and chicken you'll get the same result, in fact a good sized kettle will have a larger cooking area than a Joe classic. You'd have to have a Big Joe to get the same area, and those are very expensive. With less area you have to plan a bit more, it hasn't been an issue with me.
The two areas where the kamado excels are in very high heat applications like pizza making and low heat applications like smoking. I've made pizza on a weber and gotten decent but not outstanding results, where on the kamado I've made pizza as good as I've had in Naples as it can get ferociously hot. There are all sorts of expensive, specialized add-ons for that but I just put my pizza stone on the top rack and it works great.
I've smoked on a weber, and it's doable, but a lot of work for a long smoke. It's hard to keep it on a precise temperature, and you have to top off the charcoal for longer smoking times. When you add charcoal through the side slots in the weber (presuming you have them) it's too easy to get soot all over the food, I found I had to take the whole top rack off and put it aside to refill it, which is a pain to do, and then you have to fiddle with the air vents loads to get the temperature right again.
The kamado is easy to get to a precise temperature due to airflow control and it is very efficient due to the ceramic insulation so the charcoal lasts a whole day, I've never had to add any even when I'm doing a 16 hour smoke on large brisket. All the baffles and the flexible rack system the Joe comes with is very helpful in creating the indirect heating as well.
I know of people who have used firebrick to create some heat baffling in kettle grills, which helps control the fluctuations somewhat, it doesn't help with refilling though.
One major consideration is weight: the kamado is heavy, it takes 2 people to lift it as it's metal and ceramic. It rolls just fine on a flat surface, but if you needed to move it around a lot it's going to be tough. A weber is very transportable.
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Do you have to worry about parasites in fish bought in the UK?
I am aware of the issue with parasites in fish, such that fish products that as intended to be eaten raw must be frozen to make them safe to eat. These regulations does not obviously include fresh fish, such as "sustainably sourced sea bass or sea bream fillets".
Fish freezing requirements
Freezing requirements apply to all food businesses that place fish and fishery products on the market such as restaurants, fish suppliers and fish buyers. This is to protect consumers from any harmful effects that might be caused by parasites that are naturally present in the fish.
Under food hygiene legislation, certain fishery products intended to be eaten raw need to be frozen before use.
Any treated products where the processing treatment doesn’t kill the parasites must also be frozen before consumption.
On the Guardian Newspapers website yesterday was released a recipe for ceviche that uses sustainably sourced sea bass or sea bream fillets and makes no mention of any procedure to kill parasites. Both these species are farmed in the UK and are available fresh. I have always assumed these would not be treated for parasites, as they are sold to the end user with the expectation they will cook the fish.
What is the general situation with fresh fish and parasites in the UK? Can one generally assume they will have been frozen? Should the guardian have put more of a warning on this recipe?
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Parasites are extremely common in both wild and farmed fish worldwide, from Australia to France. Studies show that in some places, over 80% of fish can have some kind of parasite*. There is no reason to believe that the UK is any different in this regard, even if UK Fisheries has decided not to publish statistics. Ignorance is not bliss, here.
Further, both climate change and introduced species have been making parasite infection rates worse, so that fish that used to be safe to eat unfrozen and raw aren't necessarily safe today.
So: Yes, the Guardian should have had a warning, and yes you should deep-freeze any fish before following the recipe.
(* most fish parasites cannot be transmitted to humans. Enough can for it to be a problem, though)
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Does the fullness of a pressure cooker effect it's performance?
We make stock in our pressure cooker and it ends up being quite full. Will this affect the cooking in some way? Will a pressure cooker that is only 1/3 full cook things differently than if it was 2/3s full? Does it depend on what is being cooked? Naturally it will take longer to come up to pressure the more full it is, but besides that will anything else be different?
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No difference...however, the risk of overfilling is that something clogs one of the safety mechanisms. My Kuhn Rikon stove top pressure cooker has a max fill line (which I do slightly exceed from time to time) at about the 2/3 mark.
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Making crispier waffles in the oven
I have a silicone waffle mold for use in the oven. I'm not expecting to get anything like what I'd get from a real waffle iron, but even with low expectations I've been quite disappointed: my oven waffles end up either limp and soggy or dried out and half-burned.
Any tips to make them crispier? The one useful tip I've found so far is to tip them out of the mold halfway through, which at least gets some color on the sides and top.
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You will never ever get crispy anything out of a silicone baking dish. Silicone conducts heat too poorly; it won’t be able to bring the surface of the food far above boiling temperature, which is necessary for a crispy crust (without completely desiccating the food).
Instead, cook at a relatively low heat. Once the waffle is done, remove it from the dish, increase the oven temperature to high, and convection cook it for a few minutes directly on the rack. That will crisp it up.
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Hash Brown Terminology
I'm not sure if terminology questions are on topic, but here goes:
If I order fried eggs for breakfast at a restaurant/diner, there's a pretty standard lexicon to communicate quickly how I want them done-- sunny side up, over easy, over well, etc. Even if I mess up and say "over hard" that's probably comprehensible.
Is there a similar lexicon for hash brown potatoes?
The preferred style here (United States) seems to be "crispy to the point of dried out or even burnt." I'd like to specifically know if there's a term for the opposite-- lightly crisp on the outside, but moist to the point of greasy on the inside-- but now that I'm really pondering it, I'd be curious to know if there's a consistent set of terms for hash browns in general.
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There is not.
There isn't even agreement on what constitutes "hashed browns". Sometimes it's heaps of shredded potatoes, sometimes sheets or rounds or patties, and sometimes it's fried chopped potatoes (which is what "hashed" means).
So, you'll just have to settle for asking for them "lightly fried" or "dark brown" or whatever you want. And good luck with that; usually in breakfast places, there's a pile of hashed browns on the back of the griddle and you get what you get.
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Do tealight holding dishes keep food at a safe temperature?
I have a couple of lidded ceramic dishes with an electric element that are designed for hot holding food. While they are very effective, the major downside is that I need to have a trailing power cable running to my dining table.
Professional chafing dishes seem like a good equivalent, but these are expensive to buy and the fuel canisters are an added cost.
These tealight food warmers seem an ideal compromise, but how effective are they? Will they keep food above 63C or are they just a sop towards hot holding best practice?
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In the context of serving things domestically, those candle-heated food warmers can be good. But they might not keep the temperature uniformly high enough for long enough.
It depends on too many things:
The size of dish (per tealight)
How insulating the walls of the dish are. Wrapping an oven cloth/tea towel around the sides only is a good idea not just to keep some heat in but to protect people's hands from the hot dish, especially if they might need to steady it.
Whether you leave a lid on
The start temperature
And of course the time
If you're worried, you'd need to stir every so often (even though taking the lid off to do so lets out heat) and use a probe thermometer to check. In catering situations even with many of their heated serving solutions, monitoring is also required.
Note that an electric chafing dish (of a similar size to a pan that would cover that 3-candle warmer) would draw a few hundred Watts - but that's a maximum and they have a thermostat. Tealights give around 40W of heat each.
There are a couple of downsides:
I've had trouble with localised burning over the candle.
While you shouldn't be keeping food hot for long enough to burn out a candle, if you do have to change them, it's a hassle dealing with them, finding somewhere else to put the hot dishes, etc.
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What is the basic difference between curry powder and garam masala?
I generally use garam masala for cooking chicken curry.
Recently I discovered that there is another thing called "Curry Powder" which is also used for cooking chicken curries.
What is the basic difference between curry powder and garam masala?
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Curry powder is used for spice, heat and flavour, whereas garam masala is used more for flavour and accent.
A general rule of thumb is curry powder is yellowish-brown whereas garam masala is greyish-brown. Curry powder will generally contain chilli and tumeric but not cardamom or cloves. Garam masala will generally contain the latter but not the former.
These spices are also used differently. Curry powder is generally fried with the onions and oil at the beginning of cooking, whereas the garam masala is added towards the end. Curry powder is much more "robust" than garam masala, while a good fry in oil will cause the flavours to bloom, the opposite would occur with garam masala as it is very delicate in flavour. If you cook garam masala for too long, the subtle flavours will disappear. This is not the case with curry powder.
Frequently, garam masala is added to milk and tea to make a gently spiced, flavourful drink. It would be unthinkable to use curry powder in this instance.
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What's the secret to well-seasoned pulled pork?
When I make pulled pork, the seasoning stays on the outside. I know it's possible to get the seasoning to permeate the whole piece of meat, but I don't know how. I follow this recipe, but cook for one hour in an Instant Pot. Am I supposed to shred the meat before cooking it?
Obviously I could apply a sauce after cooking, but I would like to stick to the ingredients in the aforementioned recipe.
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The rub in this, and similar recipes, is a surface treatment. The same is true for marinades...all surface treatments. As is mentioned in the comment above, the finishing step in your recipe is to return the shredded pork to the sauce that is also part of the recipe. Steps=rub,cook,shred,sauce.
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What is "chicken powder"?
What is "chicken powder"?
Is off-the-shelf chicken powder considered processed food?
If so, is it possible to make chicken powder at home?
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Chicken powder is dehydrated chicken bouillon. It is a processed food: if it were not, it would still be a chicken, not powder.
Chicken powder is not something you can make at home; and even if you could, it would still be a processed food. If you have homemade chicken stock (also a processed food) and the recipe calls for water, you can substitute chicken stock for chicken powder and reduce the water by that amount.
(Water is also a processed food.)
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Hard cookies with air inside - help with identification
I just, out of nowhere, remembered cookies I used to regularly make and I need help identifying what they were. I hope this is an actual memory and I'm not imagining things.
The cookies in question were definitely home-made, because I remember eating them still warm. They had a hard, crumbly shell and were completly hollow inside, but not so crumbly as to loose their shape when held in hand. They were circle shaped and puffed during the cooking process. They were served always with powdered sugar on top. I'm not sure about this, but they might've been fried, not baked. I think they tasted a bit like Faworki/Raderkuchen (I can't find an English word for it), but less fat. The recipe was definitely simple with just few ingredients, unless I'm misremembering me making this and it was someone in my family. Unfortunatelly, I don't have any contact with my family so I cannot ask.
Does anyone has any idea what those cookies might be called and how to make them?
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These might have been Grantham Gingerbread. This is one of England's oldest biscuit (Americans would call it a cookie) recipes, first recorded in the 1700's.
These are a plain sugar biscuit, usually flavoured with ginger, but you can leave this out and/or flavour with other spices. The biscuit/cookie that rises during cooking to produce a firm shell and hollow inside. They are usually not completely hollow, just mostly hollow with some pillars of batter supporting the roof.
A good recipe that I have been using is from the BBC, but pretty much all the recipes on-line are the same, with minor variations. They are made with only a few ingredients and are quite easy to make.
Edited to add: I've never seen them with powdered sugar on top and they are definitely baked and have a firm shell that doesn't crumble.
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Keep top of pot pie from burning while bottom cooks in the air fryer
How do you keep the top of the frozen pot pies from burning while letting the bottom cook?
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Often when I want to reduce browning, I turn to water, since 100/212 is too cold for browning.
Spray/mist the top of the pot pie before cooking, or after 10-20 min of cooking. This will keep the top's temp down for a while as the water evaporates. Don't water-log it enough to make them soggy, but a few good spritzes until it beads will buy you several degree-minutes of time/temp slope.
You'll have to experiment with the exact timing and amount to fit your food/cooker/pref, but it's simpler than radiation shielding in a convection situation, leaves no waste, and the added moisture helps the rest of the food cook faster w/o drying out.
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How to tell if pork-filled steamed buns are pre-cooked?
I recently bought some fresh "pork and Chinese-sausage filled" steamed buns from a supermarket. The supermarket also sells fresh, pre-cooked Taro and egg custard filled buns, which are kept next to the pork-filled buns in the refrigerated section and which I have bought before.
It didn't occur to me until I went to eat them today that the pork-filled buns may need to be cooked. While the dough part of the bun had the light and fluffy consistency of a bun that had already been steamed, the filling was a light pink color (not the darker color I see when I simply Google images of "pork-filled buns").
I'm currently out of state, and the supermarket doesn't appear to have a phone number. How can I tell if these are pre-cooked, or if they are meant to be cooked? I've never cooked buns, and don't really know what I'm doing here. I tried cooking one in the microwave (I don't currently have access to much more) according to some online instructions which suggested wrapping the bun in a moist paper towel and heating it for 6-8 minutes, however the result was rock-hard (and a darker center).
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The pork buns have been cooked already. By steaming them, hence the name “steamed buns”. The color of the meat is due to preservatives and/or food coloring.
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Old biscuit recipe question - "until the dough blisters"
I'm reading through some old (early 1900's) cookbooks and something that keeps coming up is beating dough "until it blisters" - here's an example.
VIRGINIA BEATEN BISCUIT.
One quart flour. One teaspoonful of salt. One tablespoon of lard. Work lard lightly into the flour and salt, mix with iced water and then beat dough with rolling pin until it
blisters. Cut into biscuits and bake in quick oven.
It's clearly not referring to the kinds of blisters you get on sourdough or pizza after baking it, for example. This is during the beating process.
My thoughts are either this refers to the dough kind of ripping apart when you knead it (sign of adequate hydration?) or maybe something to do with the bits of shortening in it. Any thoughts?
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Per this historical post from Old Mill: “These [cold water biscuits] were made before leavening agents were available to make them rise. You would knead the dough until it was elastic, then beat it with a rolling pin, paddle, or large flat hammer. As you beat it, the dough would start to get pockets of air in it, which would look like blisters that would begin to pop and snap, and that’s when you knew the dough was ready.”
The author goes on to discuss their own attempts at this technique, and recommends folding the dough as it is beaten to facilitate the forming of air bubbles.
The specific recipe being referenced is from “A Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen”. Per the above blog post, this book is believed to be the first published cookbook authored by a Black woman in the United States and is dated 1866.
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How to tenderize/soften steamed octopus
I have got some steamed Spanish octopus in the freezer that I'm going to grill and serve as an appetizer. From testing with a pairing knife it seems quite chewy.
I've had success in the past with fresh octopus after boiling for 90 minutes or so. I've also tried grilling pre-cooked frozen octopus and it was chewy. Everything I've read at this point is about preparing fresh but I'm not sure how to apply this to the pre-steamed stuff I have.
I don't know if I should I cook it some more or if I should I tenderize it some how (is massaging it after steaming a thing?)
What can I do at this stage to serve tender octopus?
Thanks!
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I've never tried this myself, but everything I've read [from trustworthy sources] says the longer you cook it, the softer it gets, like braising steak etc. High collagen = long cook.
From that I'd extrapolate that if it's not tender enough after the pre-cook, then boiling it some more would help; before finally grilling it.
Serious eats [though they are discussing fresh not pre-cooked] say that no amount of hammering makes any difference. They also suggest chilling between boiling & searing.
If you've time, I'd test a bit first, see how much extra boiling it needs.
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How do professional bakers make pies that are safe to reheat?
I'm starting here from the conservative position both the UK food standards agency and the NHS take regarding reheating food. Both bodies state that food should only be reheated once.
So the filling is cooked and left to cool. The cold filling is then added to the pastry shell which is then partially or fully baked. The consumer then reheats this filling a third time when eating it after purchase.
Assuming everything is brought up to a sufficiently high temperature and refrigerated quickly, I cannot see any problem with this process other than the potential deterioration of the quality of the filling. The pies should still be safe to eat, however.
Are there any other techniques used commercially in the preparation of pies? If not, am I correct in assuming these food safety standards are over zealous in this instance?
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The answer to this lies in why food authorities don't recommend reheating food more than once.
Simply put, it's because of the amount of time the food can spend in the "danger zone" between 5C and 60C. Consider this sequence, for example:
Cook some food at 180C
Let the leftovers cool on the counter for 2 hours
Put them in the fridge
Reheat the leftovers to comfortable eating temperature, with them only around 40C in the center
Let them cool again before refrigerating the leftover leftovers
Heat them again to 40-50C
By the time you reach 6, your food has spent at least four hours in the danger zone, maybe up to ten hours depending on how effective your fridge is and how long they spent on the table, without ever reaching bacteria-killing temperatures. That's what you're being warned against.
Now, here's the sequence for a savory pie (fruit pies also have acidity to protect them):
Filling is cooked at 160C.
Filling is cooled for 1 hour
Filling is baked in the pie at 180-200C
Pie is cooled for 2 hours
Pie is chilled
You reheat the pie to 50C
In the case above, the pie filling has not spent more than three hours in the danger zone after being heated to over 160C. Further, the fact that the filling is "sealed" inside a crust provides some additional protection from spores and the like. Food authorities would, however, caution against reheating the pie multiple times.
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Which indoor grill — fire gas vs. electric ? Disregard cost
I believe in indoor grills! I shall install a grill in my new indoor kitchen. But which kind? What are the merits and demerits of electric — vs. fire gas — grill? Please compare? Rule out cost as a factor.
Indoor fire, gas grills (Bottom 2)
Electric grills (Top 2, Middle, Bottom 2)
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It has been my personal experience that electric grills do not, well, grill.
They don't produce enough heat, and the heat they do produce is radiant, instead of convection, resulting in not enough of the heat reaching the food. As a result, you end up with undercooked food that looks more like it went on a griddle than a grill.
This is why most electric "grilling" is done using grill pans and presses (this is how I grill in the winter). Other forms of electric grill rproduce, in my opinion, uninspiring results, particularly if you're limited to 110V as North Americans are.
So, if you want to have an "indoor grill", you're going to want gas. But there's another issue there, which is ventilation and cleanup. If you're going to have an indoor, restaurant-style gas grill and really cook things on it, you're going to need a restaurant-grade ventilation hood, or you'll fill your house with smoke. You'll also need to consider the effort of cleaning out the grill after use; you can't let it burn off the way you would with an outdoor grill.
This smoke and cleanup requirement doesn't go away with an electric grill, because most of the smoke comes from the burning juices from the food. Definitely do not get an electric grill with exposed elements, as it will be impossible to clean off burned food from those elements.
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Are there databases of source-ingredient-dish/food dependencies?
It's possible to envision a web/network/tree, or more formally a graph () in which there are three types of nodes: source, ingredient, dish.
A source is usually an animal, plant, fungi etc. species. eg. Cattle (species name is "Bos taurus")
An ingredient is a component etc. taken from a source. eg. Sirloin steak, a cut of beef from cattle
A dish is something that can be consumed directly. (Eg. Fresh milk, caviar, a cake, bread)
Many "ingredients" can also be a "dish", under this definition.
The edges (represented by "arrows") would then represent the "is used to make" relation.
So
Cattle -> Sirloin steak
Chicken -> Egg -> Cake (oversimplified.. as there are many kinds of cakes.. but you get the drift..)
By extension, the edges can even be labelled with certain processing, cooking etc. methods. Eg.
Pig -> Pork -(salt-cured)-> Bacon
Are there such databases / datasets in the public domain / on the internet?
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After a quick search, it seems like Sony AI and Korea University recently started developing an AI being able to predict the mixes between several flavors, FlavorGraph. I read the article and it looks quite powerful, even though it does not entirely fulfill your conditions and is more about "food pairing" (by chemical and molecular associations) than linking dishes to ingredients and/or sources.
However, it might be helpful to find some interesting associations between flavors, thus maybe invent dishes, who knows ?
I hope it helps, I will post down below some links related to this subject, so everyone can make an opinion and maybe correct my answer. :) Lovely day !
www.nature.com (EN) : https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-79422-8
www.lebigdata.fr (FR) : https://www.lebigdata.fr/sony-ai-presente-flavorgraph
ai.sony (EN) : https://ai.sony/blog/blog-004/
developer.nvidia.com (EN) : https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/flavorgraph-serves-up-food-pairings-with-ai-molecular-science/
Edit (2023/05/30, 03:51PM) : I also found a GitHub page providing a FlavorGraph-like code implementation (https://github.com/lamypark/FlavorGraph)
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Safe to wash fruits and vegetables with natural, toxin-free soap?
Washing produce with conventional soap is harmful, I agree! But what about fragrance-free, dye-free, preservative-free, hypo-allergic, non-toxic, eco-friendly, bio-degradable, ALL natural (even organic!) dish soap? These soaps look safe because they are free from
"any dyes or synthetic fragrances" or colorants.
"antibacterial ingredients from certain soaps because of evidence that they might harm long-term health".
toxins like 1,4-dioxane + phthalates + cocamidopropyl betaine.
To wit, don't the aforementioned dish soaps resemble Fruit & Vegetable washes? If so, why not utilize the aforementioned soaps to wash produce? If not, what distinguishes the aforementioned soaps from Fruit & Vegetable Washes?
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First and foremost, I believe you need to take a look at how regulatory bodies actually define and qualify terms such as "harm" and "safety". I'll go ahead and quote one of my own answers (source), just keep in mind this is a generalization that aims at brevity and ease of reading for the average layperson:
...First of all, a bit of the fundamentals and clarification on terminologies: what is "harm"? We define harm as any unintended, adverse health impact that results from the ingestion of foods containing hazards; and likewise, we define "hazards" as the unintended presence of potentially harmful elements or substances. These hazards are traditionally grouped into three major categories: physical, chemical, and biological (note: radiological and allergenic hazards have been consolidated under the chemical hazards category post-FSMA). The sciences and disciplines involved with the prevention, reduction, and control of such hazards as what is known as food safety, and just like any other branch of science, there are systematic, evidence-based methodologies deployed in the interest of mitigating aforementioned hazards. Of the existent systems, the USDA and FDA in particular enforce what is known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) — and in more recent years in light of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), we now incorporate the more robust Hazard Analysis and Risk-based Preventative Controls (HARPC). In short, the principles and practices in these sets of methodologies allow us to quantify health hazards, and once quantified, we are able to manage undesirable outcomes based upon principles of risk management. And what is "risk"? We define risk as the product of likelihood and severity [of potential harm]. Employing such principles, each and every individual processing step (and beyond) is analyzed and potential hazards are systematically addressed. This is enforced on the federal, local, and most of all, the retail spaces; surprising as it may seem, the driving force of food safety in the past few decades has in fact been the major retailers and international consortiums. Why? Because food recalls cost money, it's as simple as that...
Now, in regards to your question, here are some contradictions I believe we need to address in order to arrive to an objective answer:
How does one define "conventional soap"? If we are to narrow down the vernacular usage of "soap" here by application, I would presume one might be referring to "detergents" or "surfactants" intended and approved (when abiding by the validated labeling instructions and dilution/concentration ratios) for use on direct food contact surfaces. However, this still leaves a myriad of candidates, making the qualifying term "conventional" difficult to apply in any ubiquitous fashion. On the otherhand, the lack of an "umbrella" gating sieve is not actually too much of an issue; if the manufacturer is reputable and abides by industry and regulatory standards, then the label will have provided CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service) Registry Numbers where applicable, and an SDS (Safety Data Sheet) should be made available upon request (many corporations actually have them readily accessible on their website, or sometimes a standalone file server.
You question the safe use of the subject soap, but then you list the following supporting characteristics: fragrance-free, dye-free, preservative-free, hypo-allergic, non-toxic, eco-friendly, bio-degradable, ALL natural (even organic!). Of these, fragrance-free, dye-free, and preservative-free are redundant, as they are all covered under the product's hypo-allergenic labeling claim (there may be some exceptions where additives have been classified as, e.g., carcinogens, but for the most part they are GRAS but include sensitizing agents). The remainder of the claims, non-toxic (absurdly redundant), eco-friendly, bio-degradable, all natural and organic; none of these claims actually address the safety of the soap in question (besides the non-toxic I suppose, but I don't exactly see an abundances of toxic soaps on the shelves).
The article you reference regarding the antimicrobial claim having an adverse long-term impact on the end consumers does not include any citation or reference source. Unless supporting documentation is provided to support such a case, I would presume that they are referring to anti-microbial soap being used imroperly, i.e., without rotating out at validated frequency, thus causing microbial resistance to develope. They also might possibly be referring to the FDA ruling (backup) back in 2016 where several additives were disqualified from being utilized for an "anti-microbial" labeling claim due to lack of supporting evidence to validate it's efficacy or demonstrate that they are GRAS.
You may be confusing the standard sanitation process flow. The traditional validated procedural flow involves 1) clean water rinse, which removes a majority of soil, debris, particulates, etc., 2) use of a surfactant, which then removes a majority of toxins and pathogens that still remain, and then lastly 3) disinfectant, which achieves lethality for the majority of what pathogens potentially remain. This order is important because pathogens can cause illness via three distinct modes: 1) infection, 2) intoxication, and 3) infection-mediated intoxication. Achieving lethality only eliminates half of the hazards of concern, which is why the use of surfactants has become so ingrained and ubiquitous. Recent marketing callouts may be taking advantage of the general publics' fears, lack of knowledge/training, and demand for convenience.
In industry, each establishment contends with their own hazard analyses, risk assessments, draft plan, implementation, and the validation/annual revalidation, as a generalization for the decision-making process for what chemical additives (if any) are utilized in fresh produce or fruit wash. They take into consideration factors such as: will this product be ready-to-eat (RTE) or will it undergo further processing/lethality? What is the inherent quantified risk assignment associated with this material? Does the nature of the material reqire a distinct wash procedure or additional steps to be applied (e.g., dehydrated mushrooms, etc)?
As for the selection of the additive of choice, this is often based upon cost effectiveness, ease of handling/storage, efficacy, safe handling, etc. On the regulatory end, the chosen additive needs to meet the following requirements:
Regulatory status of sodium hypochlorite and other substances used to treat wash water in contact with fresh-cut leafy vegetables
Any substance that is reasonably expected to become a component of food because of its intended use in wash water used during the production of fresh-cut produce (e.g., by migrating from the wash water into food) must be lawful under sections 402(a)(2)(C) and 409 of the FD&C Act, e.g., because the substance:
Is covered by a regulation, listed in 21 CFR, that provides for its safe use;
Satisfies the criteria (in 21 CFR 170.30) for eligibility for classification as “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS);
Is the subject of a prior sanction issued by FDA or the U.S. Department of Agriculture prior to September 6, 1958 (section 201(s)(4) of the FD&C Act; see the definition of “prior sanction” in 21 CFR 170.3(l));
Is covered by a Threshold of Regulation (TOR) exemption in accordance with 21 CFR 170.39; or
Is covered by an effective Food Contact Substance Notification (FCN) (21 CFR part 170, subpart D).
Just for your reference, a very common industry choice is sodium hypochlorite 12.5% @ 200PPM ±15PPM and 6.5 pH ±0.5pH with contact time of 60 seconds and hourly verification via titration.
Additional Resources
Good ANDA
Submission Practices
Guidance for Industry (backup)
Guide to Minimize Food Safety Hazards of Fresh-cut Produce: Draft Guidance for Industry (backup)
Preventive Control Measures for Fresh & Fresh-Cut Produce
Guide to Washing Fresh Produce (Colorado State University)(backup)
CFR TITLE 21 CHAPTER I.B PART 173 SUBPART D - § 173.315 Chemicals used in washing or to assist in the peeling of fruits and vegetables(backup
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Infused oil from garlic *peels* - can this be done without making Clostridium growth medium?
Recently I found a book on reducing food waste that suggested making infused garlic oil from the cut-off ends and (inner, reddish) garlic peels rather than the cloves. The recipe doesn’t involve any heating steps, nor notes on refrigeration after initially infusing the oil in the fridge for a month, and it’s suggested to use the oil in making salad dressing and the like.
Now it seems to me this recipe is using the parts that are at the greatest risk for contamination with soil bacteria… can something like this in fact be done safely? Does the peels' lower moisture content make any difference? Is acidification a feasible approach or will this just end in a sad pile of wet peels and no taste in the oil?
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The approach you describe is practically a recipe for maximizing one's risk for death by botulism, while at the same time not producing particularly good garlic oil. Garlic peels/skin have very little or no flavor, may have dirt or sand on them, and the garlic "ends" are where botulism spores are most likely to be located.
While there are a number of ways you could attempt to make this more safe ... why bother? Why risk your life for low-quality garlic oil?
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What technique or tools should I use to make frosting in this particular shape?
I want to make dessert like in the screenshot. How can I make the white part to look the same in real life as in the screenshot (it could be not rounded corners, if it will be impossible)? The consistency is something like frosting. The brown is a dough almost like a muffin.
I can't just pour it on, because there will be drips. I also thought I could make the dough and dip it in the frosting, but then there would be peaks on top when it all dried out. Is there any other way to do it?
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I would wrap the lower part in something, plastic foil is probably best because it is slightly elastic and can be stuck together to be tight. You can try lightly oiling the inside of the plastic wrap, so that it might not stick to the cake itself too much and possibly rip off some of the surface. Make sure the cake has fully cooled first.
Then drop or spread the glaze on top, let it set, then cut it away using a knife or spatula, then remove the plastic. If the glaze is soft enough, you should be able to pull it off by simply removing the plastic. If the glaze is very gelatinous, be careful not to tear it during the removal.
If you don't want to have to pull anything off the cake, you could make a thick paper or thin cardboard 'collar', like a cat's medical collar preventing him from licking and biting himself. The narrow opening should be at the top just where you want the frosting to end, taped together there. Make sure is tight enough that no glaze could leak between cake and collar (although a tiny bit of leakage is probably fairly easy to clean up later).
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How to sanitize popsicle sticks
Is there any way of sanitizing the wooden sticks? I have the feeling they may become dirty once the package is opened and as this is will come into someone's mouth that's why I am asking.
BTW I purchased the ones saying food grade and came in a good sealed packaging.
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Dip them in a solution of sodium metabisulfite (beer bottle sterilizer), but really its overkill. Just don't open them all the way, take out what you're going to use and reseal the rest in a zip seal bag.
I don't think you will get ill from a popsicle stick unless it has been used before, or put somewhere that was dirty.
I do not think you need to worry if they are new and sealed but if you are concerned just clean them with the sanitizer as mentioned above and rinse it off
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Caffeine content in brewed tea
how can i calculate how much caffeine is in a brew of 3 teabags of green tea and 1 teabag of earl grey in 24 cups of water? I'm trying to reduce the caffeine content.
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You won't be able to directly measure the caffeine content without lab equipment. You can use estimates, but the caffeine content of tea varies between different varieties, and varies by the preparation method (time to steep, temperature).
For example, this BBC Good Food guide to your question says:
An average cup of black tea with milk contains around 47mg of
caffeine.
Green tea contains less caffeine than
black tea, with on average 33mg per cup.
This Twinings page about caffeine in green tea says:
Twinings green tea contains around 30-40mg of caffeine per cup, based on 200ml of water being used.
These are both British references, so will be based on a cup of tea made by steeping one teabag in a mug of near-boiling water for a few minutes. If you search online you will find caffeine ranges for other preparation methods.
If you are interested in reducing your caffeine consumption, the important fact for you is that green tea contains a little less than black (so drinking more green and less Earl Grey will reduce caffeine intake), and of course you can dilute the tea so that you are consuming less of it (but this will also dilute the flavour). The simplest thing to do would be to buy decaffeinated tea.
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