How long do eggs last outside the refrigerator and out of the shell? How long would eggs last out of the refrigerator and out of the shell?

This may be a strange question, but I'm planning on baking them afterwards. And I'll leave them out only around 6 hours at room temperature.

The thought makes me shiver; but would you reckon this to be fine?

Eggs in their shell, uncracked

One day on the counter at room temperature is approximately equivalent to a week in the refrigerator.  When I used eggs at a rapid rate, baking every day, I always kept them on the counter, since they would not have to be brought to room temperature to beat easily to the ribbon or whatever.

They should be good in the refrigerator for several weeks past their sell by date, or on the counter for several days.

6 hours is fine, (but thats in shell, not cracked)

Eggs OUT of their shell

Out of the shell, eggs are highly perishable--what the health codes call a "potentially hazardous" food.  Don't hold them for any length of time at room temperature.  I would say no more than 30 minutes to an hour, less if you can.

Lots of egg facts, but they do insist that the eggs are refrigerated.

I eat eggs only raw and never refrigerate them (organic, local, grass fed). I have done it for many years it is extremely safe and healthy. In Europe (not just Germany) they are not refrigerated in the stores and people do not usually refrigerate them. American are bacteria phobic. When not cooled the eggs are more pre-digested and easier to assimilate.

But, when already out of the shell, I do not know how long they last on the counter. No one answered that main question. Guessing is nice but I would say if you want to know, you leave some on the counter and check their smell and colors every half hour and publish your conclusion.


How much juice can you get from an orange? I wanted to make fresh orange juice using a squeezer and wanted to know how many oranges it takes to make an 8oz glass of juice?

you know better than I do, it depends on the orange and type of orange. My mom, an executive chef, used to say that you'd allow 1-2 lb of oranges for 1 drinkable cup of orange juice.

I really think, that it's highly dependent on the type of orange. I know naval and blood oranges are the juiciest compared to other varieties.

This will depend upon various factors and some of them I will list here:

The freshness of the orange
The size of the orange
The type of the orange
The type of the juicer

When it comes to freshness the main problem here is that oranges lose a certain percentage of their juices if they stay for too long. Basically, they dry like everything else.. No brainer really..

The size of the orange is the obvious one.

Now when it comes to the juicer type there are really many if them out there but you should be looking for the citrus juicer. Citrus juicers are designed to extract the most out of citrus fruit such as oranges. Usually most of them will do the work but I recommend the one I linked. You can also take a look at masticating juicers because they are known for their ability to extract the juice with no loss in quality. Besides masticating juicer can squeeze every drop out of the orange, but you will have to peel it. Still this can be profitable because if you buy 5 oranges you will want to drink as much juice as possible and leave little to none to waste.


Can Nutmeg be substituted in for Mace? This may depend on recipe, however since Mace is the outer coating of nutmeg seeds, I was wondering if nutmeg can be substituted in for mace in recipes. Specifically, there is this recipe for hot dogs that I want to try from about.com:

Ingredients:

3 feet sheep or small (1-1/2-inch diameter) hog casings
1 pound lean pork, cubed
3/4 pound lean beef, cubed
1/4 pound pork fat, cubed
1/4 cup very finely minced onion
1 small clove garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon finely ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/4 teaspoon ground mace
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard seed
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon freshly fine ground white pepper
1 egg white
1-1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1/4 cup milk

I have nutmeg in powdered form, is that an acceptable substitution and if so do I need to make any adjustments to the recipe? Would prefer the answer generalized a ratio of nutmeg for needed mace for other recipes.

The flavors are very similar (they are different parts of the fruit of the same tree, nutmeg being the nut itself, and mace being a covering that grows around the shell), although nutmeg tends to be slightly stronger and more forward.

in a complicated hot dog recipe, I imagine that the substitution should work well, although you might choose to try your first batch with 3/4 the amount.

Try "Apple Pie Spice" mixes. From the smell of these, I believe they usually contain mace. Otherwise, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, cloves, coriander, cardamom, or a some combination of these can all be substituted for mace. In butternut squash, I recommend a mild curry powder. However, none of these will give the same flavor as mace. Nutmeg, mace's fraternal twin, will only taste like a distant relative. I have noticed that, in recent years, mace has been getting harder to find. I don't know why. Mace is my favorite spice, and I use it in most of my holiday desserts. I recommend doing whatever it takes to get mace.


Why did my grandfather-in-law salt his beer? My grandfather-in-law was born in England in the 1920s and fought in World War II. Somewhere along the line he acquired the habit of salting his beer before drinking it, which persisted for the rest of his life. I'm as curious about the cultural genesis of the practice as the food science of it – was there perhaps something about wartime beer that made it unpalatable without salt? I know there were other wartime food customs like bread and scrape so it doesn't seem implausible, but the "why" of this one isn't so obvious.

I can think of several reasons why you might salt beer:

Salt is a natural flavor enhancer, so you'd be able to taste the hops and malt more
Salt reduces perceived bitterness, so overly hopped beer would taste less bitter
The salt crystals may nucleate bubble formation, giving the beer more head (briefly)

I've heard of it being done before, but never with good beer, only low quality swill.  But then, since there were more quality problems with cheap brews at the time, this was probably a lot more common.

I thought it might have had something to do with making your stomach right. Baking soda is used in water to put out the fire from time to time and it is a sodium base. Maybe people did it when they had hot pipes.


Why is spicy food less spicy when it's allowed to cool? I've noticed over the years that when my food, which was initially very spicy, has cooled down, it doesn't seem as spicy anymore.

Why is that?

Capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers spicy, activates a sensory receptor which can also be activated by heat. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin#Mechanism_of_action)

That means that when a food is spicy and hot, you feel both types of heat using the same sense! When the food has cooled and you're not feeling the heat (temperature) any more, it no longer adds to the feeling of spicyness.

Allowing things to cool below body-temperature will reduce your perception of spiciness.


I lose the flavor of basil when I make pesto sauce Okay, I am writing this question as a result of a long experience in trying to make pesto at home :p I like pesto sauce alot and that is why I have decided that I should make this at home. But for some reason when I make the pesto sauce I almost completely lose the flavor of the basil. It tastes more like oil. And yes I have tried varying amounts of oil and basil and still it tastes atmost like oil with grass in it. Here are more details:

1- I stay in UK at the moment so my basils are nearby and they seems to be grown in Wessex if what is written on them is true. When eaten as a leaf they have quite alot of flavor.

2- I have tried using a blender, mortar and pestle and also manual chopping to create the basil paste. After the chopping is complete, I tried tasting the basil paste before mixing it with oil and other ingredients and it tastes like grass more or less, with very little flavor left. I wash the basil leaves before making the pesto as the package itself says so. I use the mediterennian type basil.

3- It tastes slightly better when it is cooked a little bit or left in oil for some weeks but I have seen instances where freshly made uncooked pesto also tastes great, so I must be doing something wrong.

4- I have never grown the basil myself however to increase freshness I have tried buying already grown basil plants in pots.

Since I have exhausted all possible methods of pesto making it seems to me that either:

a- Since its quite rainy and not so sunny in UK the basil leaves from here have too much water content and to little plant oil content and they need to be dried for some time before being chopped. This might be supported by the observation that when I chop them on wooden board I get quite a lot of wetness marks on the board. And when I use fresh basil from the pot they are usually well watered.

b- UK basil is not good for pesto?

c- I am somehow mistreating the basil, I should put much less pressure when using a blade or mortar.

Any suggestions is most welcome :)

I don't have a definite answer, but here are a few thoughts on things that might help.

First, are you drying the basil after washing it?  Shake out the extra water, and pat it dry, maybe let it sit for a bit to evaporate.  The extra water will dilute the pesto a bit, and not be good for the flavor - and if you think the problem might be too much water in the basil, no need to make it worse with extra water on the surface.

Also, are you adding basil stems?  Depending on your variety of plant and the steps you take in your recipe, the soft stems or tips might have more flavor that you're loosing by leaving out, or more plant matter to dilute your basil paste if you leave them in.  Taste the stems, and check your process, and consider if it would help to take the stems out/leave them in once and see if that helps.

Also, it might help to check your salt content.  Some pesto recipes use salt, others use salty cheese, I don't know what your recipe calls for - but salt brings flavors out, and one symptom of under-salting is "watery" flavor, so you might just need a bit more.  Adding salt might help your basil paste taste like "basil" instead of "grass".

I was wondering, given your comment on seeing a lot of water on the cutting board from the basil, if you might be losing flavor from the basil juice when cutting.  Preparing the basil on the cutting board seems the method most likely to have this problem, but even if using the mortar, if you crush ingredients separately then mix in a different container, you might be losing some of the flavor in juices.  On the other hand, most blender recipes (and some mortar and pestle ones) make the pesto in one container, which means the flavor should still be in the mix and not lost- so that might not be the problem, or at least not the only problem.

If the basil is just too mild for your tastes, or has a higher water/flavor oil concentration than you'd like, you might be able to address this by letting the basil dry a little, maybe till wilting, before making pesto to concentrate the flavor a bit.  You might also consider adding some dried basil to strengthen the flavor - I would think completely dried basil would not give the right consistency, but a mix of fresh paste and dried flakes might give the flavor profile you're looking for.

If the basil tastes like the basil you expect when you take a leaf and taste, and grass after it's made into paste, then the flavor must lost somewhere along the way - then you can look at your process and guess where the flavor is going (like sap left on the cutting board, or whatever).  If you taste the leaf and find it doesn't taste basil-y enough to begin with, then it might just be you prefer a stronger basil or a different variety, and doctoring your basil paste with flakes (or even other herbs/spices) might be the only way to get the pesto you want if no other basil varieties are available to you locally.

I prepared basil three ways, dried in a microwave for a short time, chopped and frozen in zip lock bags and they tasted fine on a tomato salad....but the third time I used a blender with olive oil...it yielded a very fine paste with a grassy flavor...I think the pureeing breaks down the cell wall structure and releases chlorophyll and other components that give an off taste....I think brief pulses in food processor and not liquefying the basil as the blender does would give a better taste.


How can I prevent simple syrup from crystallizing? When I store it in the refrigerator, my simple syrup always seems to crystallize.  How can I prevent this?  How long should I expect simple syrup to keep?

There are a couple of things you can do to prevent sugar crystallising. You can add some glucose syrup, or you can 'invert' the sugar by adding some acid, namely cream of tartar. Both should be readily available, online if not at your supermarket. Cream of tartar is also useful when making meringue.

If you're adding sugar and water together, don't bring it up to a boil. Gently simmer it for a longer period of time until the sugar is completely dissolved. Also, the higher the sugar ratio, the higher the likelihood of crystals forming. From my experience, bringing it to a boil is what causes the crystallization, for whatever reason.


How to make pancakes/crepes without eggs nor any liquids besides water? I am looking for a way to make pancakes/crepes (the very thin ones), with the following limitations:

no eggs
no liquid ingredients besides water
cheap ingredients only

I've been trying something like:

360 g wheat flour
40 g corn flour
850 g water

But the problem is that they turn out non-baked inside and too crispy on the outside, besides being too thick. I've been trying on lower heat, but then it takes like over 5 minutes for each pancake, and the inside is still not baked. I read that it should take 1 minute to bake 1 pancake.

Any changes to the ingredient list, or tips for baking procedure? What might be the problem that it takes so long, and the inside gets not-baked? I try to pour the batter on the pan as thin as I can, swiping the pan with a sponge made of toilet paper dipped in rapeseed oil before each pancakes, and its a thin-edge pancake Teflon-coated pan.

OK, maybe some clarifications: I am not vegan and have no allergies.
The motivation is completely different: life on the road and for extended periods away from any sources of anything other then tap water.

The motivation is decreasing the weight and volume of stuff I need to take with me. Liquids are not good because they are heavy. Unless I need really little of them. But even then once I open the carton I probably need to use it up quick, because no fridge available.

So I am looking for ways of making pancakes out of ingredients which take up little volume and weight, and added to water can improve my pancakes. Powders are good, provided I have to add little of them. Also it has to be as low-budget as possible. Corn flour is cheap, baking powder is cheap, things like soy milk are not cheap.

Given your updated criteria, what about using powdered milk for crepes and pancakes?  Powdered milk tends to be very inexpensive.  You can usually find in in the baking aisle at groceries in the U. S.  The powdered milk will last you for a long time.

You can also get powdered eggs.  Just google for them.

As Martha astutely commented below, look for recipes for pancake mixes that require adding only water and pack those.

I make both vegan pancakes and crepes using:

-water
-vegetable oil
-white flour
-baking powder
-Sometimes I add flax seed

and I blend it before cooking them. The difference for the pancake and the crepe is how much I spread out the batter.


My cheese congealed and I don’t know why? I mixed up a salad in a glass container I added dressing and goat cheese crumbles and shook it up. The next day when I went to eat it all the cheese ended up in a big congealed lump in the bottom of the container.  Did I do something wrong?

I can't comment to ask a question yet, so I'll try to phrase it as an answer. IF you used a vinaigrette, it could be possible that the vinegar broke down the cheese and/or the oil congealed in the fridge, like someone else mentioned.

I imagine the cheese just "melted" in the presence of all the liquid in the vegetable and dressing.

You should try not prepare you salad a day before; or at least do not shake all the ingredients until you are ready to eat so that the more fragile ingredients do not wilter in the contact of the dressing, or don't add the dressing at that time, have a small container that you can use for the dressing.

If you are short on time, just have all the separate ingredients in different containers and assemble in the morning (or as close as possible to when you will eat it).

For example, have a look at this:

https://hurrythefoodup.com/how-to-pack-a-salad-in-a-jar/


Why did butternut squash make my fingers dry and yellow? Last weekend I made butternut squash soup. In an experiment to get more of the squash browned I peeled two medium squash and cut them into 2 inch chunks, rather than just halving it, before roasting in the oven. (Result of the experiment was OK, but the extra exposed area also allows more moisture to escape, so I wouldn't recommend this method.)

Halfway through peeling the 2nd squash I noticed that the fingers on my left hand (I'm right-handed) were getting yellow and that the skin was drying, cracking, and tightening up. The yellow I can understand as transfer since I was using that hand to hold the squash while peeling. But I've peeled butternut plenty of times for various recipes and this hasn't happened before. Washing my hands didn't help. The problem went away after a couple of days.

Does anyone want to venture an explanation? Did my fingers O.D. on carotene or potassium?

It's definitely a very real reaction. I'm not sure exactly what in the squash it is that causes it, but since different people react differently - some people have strong reactions like you, some people have mild ones, and some have no problem at all - it seems to be some sort of mild allergic reaction. It's often called contact dermatitis, but that's a very generic term and doesn't really mean anything you don't already know. I'm not sure exactly what component of the squash it is that causes it, but I don't think it's carotene or potassium. It's likely some more complex molecule that tends to be present in various winter squashes.

Images from http://foodworld-eva.blogspot.com/2010/01/squash-reaction-on-skin.html.

You can avoid it by completely wearing gloves while working with the squash, or if you're lucky, you have someone else with you who can handle the squash without problems. For many purposes, like soup, you can also simply cut the squash in half, roast it, then scoop out the good stuff. But if you do really need to peel it and cut into chunks, your best hope is just to try to avoid touching it too much. You'll also want to wash your hands immediately after, or even a few times while you're cutting if it takes a while.

If you do end up with this despite your best efforts, cortisone cream can help relieve the reaction afterward.

(And as for your soup, there's nothing wrong with letting more moisture escape in exchange for browning. You can always just add more water or stock back into the soup. This can even be a good thing, since it lets you replace water with a more flavorful liquid.)

I think its the wax. I took a box cutter and scraped most of it off.  It felt horrible


Which foods are high in umami? Which foods are high in umami ("savoriness") and how can I cook them to maximize the umami taste?

Umami comes from a very specific source: Glutamates and glutamic acid. MSG is a glutamate, so it is one of the best ways to add a bit of umami.

Meat, Kombu seaweed (used to make Dashi, and hence Dashi), mushrooms, onions, cheeses, soy and other beans, most high-protein foods.

Here is a quick list. Most are prepared foods, but it should give you an idea.


How did people make bread before sugar was 'discovered' Modern recipes (as far as I know) for bread includes sugar.  Sugar gives the yeast a food source, which supports it growth and allows yeast to give bread many of its qualities.  It hit me the other day that sugar (produced from sugar cane) is a relatively new commodity.  People did not have this kind of sugar 1000 years ago in Europe, the middle east, etc.  How did they manage to make bread without it?

Making bread without sugar is nothing strange - I do so several times a week! The wheat flour (or whatever you're using) contains enzymes which, when you blend it with water, breaks down starch to sugars which fermenting agents such as yeast or lactobacilli can feed off. The Wikipedia page on sourdough has more info.

Perhaps they made unleavened bread, like chapatis,  tortillas and pitas?


Best knives that don't need regular sharpening I'm looking for a knife that doesn't need to be regularly sharpened. The knife is for someone who has damaged wrists, and they find it difficult to have to continuously sharpen their knife.

Ceramic knives will hold their edge 'forever', but are brittle. As long as they don't fall, they should be fine.

I googled "ergonomic ceramic knife" and a number of items popped up.

For more than 30 years I have made forged stainless steel knives that hold an edge far longer than other stainless knives and will out-cut carbon steel knives forged or otherwise, and sharpen easily. Of course knife manufacturers and knife makers have tried to keep this information hidden, gee I wonder why? They're not cheap, not made in china. But in the words of many o my customers, "Worth every penny." I have published my edge testing results on my website- seanmcwilliamsforge.com and yes, I do make kitchen knives.


How do I make my bread/buns super soft? I have recently started making bread (up to my sixth batch). All I am trying to do is make super soft, plain, white bread/buns.

I have tried a different recipe each time, but none of them have even come close to the softness that I want.

Am I missing something, or have I just not found the right recipe?

I hand kneed every batch (as I do not have a mixer).

This recipe is my current attempt:

http://dinner-inspiration.blogspot.co.nz/2008/11/super-soft-white-bread.html

Soft bread is soft because CO2 produced by yeast and water that gets turned to steam by the baking process gets trapped into pockets by a mesh of gluten, causing the dough to expand. The dough then solidifies, keeping its shape. If your bread is not soft then it hasn't expanded enough for one or more reasons:

Dough too dry: as much as the yeast, water is responsible for getting a good rise in your bread. Gluten requires moisture to relax and stretch, forming the structure that traps the air that causes a rise, dough that is too dry won't form good gluten. Also, dough that is too dry won't have the elasticity to rise. Yeast needs water to do its work, dough that is too dry will inhibit the yeast. Also, the expansion of water into steam is as important for a good rise as yeast. If there's one mistake many bakers make (including myself for years) it is making dough too dry.
Yeast inactive or inhibited: if your yeast is old, came into contact with salt, or doesn't have enough water to work then your yeast won't work well for you. Yeast does several things for you: it converts sugar into CO2 causing a rise, it improves the structure of your dough, and it adds flavor. Put the salt on the opposite side of the bowl from the yeast to avoid inhibiting it. Also, adding the yeast to sugary water doesn't work well, especially with more modern yeasts. Just get quick acting yeast and add it to the flour bowl, then add water to that.
The dough is not worked (kneaded) enough: Kneading improves the structure of your dough by stretching gluten molecules and getting them to link together, making your dough stretchy and pliable, and forming a structure that will trap air for a rise. Under-worked dough won't have enough structure
the dough has been worked too much: as a home baker using hands this is unlikely, but still possible. Once you have the structure of the dough you need, stop and let it rise as any further working will form too much of a structure, making it too strong to expand
Dough under-risen: the times in baking recipes are just guidelines, you need to go for a result rather than a time. I've had books say 45 minutes but it takes 3 hours, especially if my yeast was old
Dough over-risen: if your dough rises too long the yeast will exhaust the sugars in the dough and die out, leading to the loss of all the air. This will make the dough dense.

For a nice soft sandwich bread I start with a really sticky dough. I then use it's stickiness to stretch the dough, smearing it all over the countertop and using a pastry scraper to bring it back together. This is a really quick way to build some gluten. Then I knead in flour bit by bit, kneading for at least 1 minute between adding flour until I have a soft dough that still sticks a bit to the counter. That stickiness means that there's enough moisture in the dough. I'll add a bit more flour to that and then stop adding flour to avoid drying the dough. If I want to knead it more I'll knead with a bit of vegetable oil instead to keep it from sticking.

It's consistency you're looking for, not time. Time is relative depending on your strength and kneading technique, 5 minutes for a skilled and strong baker may translate to 15 minutes for normal humans, so knead until you have the consistency you want. When you start kneading the dough it will pull into pieces easily, and have a rough texture. As you knead that roughness disappears and it will stretch longer without breaking. For a sandwich loaf I'll knead until I can stretch the dough from the middle of my torso to my knee without it breaking.

Next, rising your dough may take much longer than recipes say as it all depends on the ambient temperature of the room, humidity, the activity of the yeast, and other factors. Again, make this results driven, not time driven. A good sandwich bread dough should rise a lot, not the "doubled" many recipes say. For me tripled is more like it. Make sure you put it in a big enough bowl! This advice goes for the initial as well as the secondary rise in the pans. Let it rise enough in the pans until it looks like the recipe picture, that's about right. Ideally your oven will have been pre-heating for 30 minutes by now.

Now, slash your loaves the long way with a razor blade like a carpet knife, about 1/2 an inch down. Do it quick and avoid punching down the dough. Slashing will split the top skin and allow the dough to rise efficiently after you put it into the oven. Once you put it in the oven it's going to rise a lot as the yeast goes crazy before the heat kills it, and the moisture in the dough is going to vaporize into steam. If you don't slash you won't get as good a rise.

None of the above responses are correct.

The correct response is to add oil.


My sauerkraut has mold covering the surface, is it ok? I had a batch of sauerkraut fermenting in the basement.  During the fermentation I had to leave for over a week and left my roommates with the basic instructions to check it a couple times and skim off any mold that might form.  They forgot about it, and when I returned I found the brine level was down to the weights (but not exposing the cabbage), and that there was a full cover of dark greenish/grayish mold on the brine surface.

I've removed the mold carefully and found the submerged cabbage smelled and appeared ok, with the exception of some being slightly darker where the weights were not directly on top of it.  This kraut was removed and thrown out, and only totaled about 1 cup.  The mold did not contact the kraut, and the kraut itself seems to have remain submerged.

Overall I'm leaning towards it being ok, and might try small samples in cooked dishes--is this reasonable, or should I just toss it and start a fresh batch to play it safe?

Per NC State's Extension's article on pickles and sauerkraut (some emphasis added):

  Pickles or sauerkraut mold during fermentation.

  Answer:

  Unsafe—microorganisms are growing  improperly.

  Possible reasons

  Fermentation temperature was above 75°F.
  Too much salt was used,
  not allowing adequate lactic acid production.
  The cloth on top of
  the kraut was not kept clean during fermentation (may need to be
  replaced after skimming).

Per Penn State Extension's Saurkraut Guide (emphasis added):

  Do not taste it if you see mold on the surface, feel a slimy texture, or smell a bad odor.

Their PDF on Saurkraut says:

  To avoid surface mold  growth, keep the cabbage submerged at  all
  times by covering it with a plate just  small enough to ft inside the
  fermentation container or with two or three clean  quart jars filled
  with water. An acceptable alternative is to fill a large, sealed,
  food-grade plastic bag containing 4½ tablespoons of  salt and 3
  quarts of  water.

Again, no indication of acceptable types of mold.

I cannot endorse the existing answers which indicate that mold  is an acceptable part of the saurkraut making process, unless credible science based evidence is presented, from reputable sources such as University Extension Centers or, better yet, peer reviewed journal sources.

Mold on kraut is normal and a part of the process.  White, blue, green are normal.  Just scoop it off and add salty distilled water to compensate for the water loss in the mold removal.
If the mold is black or pink, dump it.  Those colors are deadly. kraut cannot be made without mold.  If you  ferment the cabbage for a couple of weeks and do not see mold you have probably killed the bacteria & enzymes in the mix by using iodized salt in the primary mix.  Then you need to start over and use just plan sea salt.  Remember blue, green or white your alright, pink or black you are dead Jack!


What is the difference between quick bread and cake? Quick breads, like banana or zucchini breads, seem to be assembled in an identical method and with similar ingredients as cake. Many recipes have comparable quantities of fat and sugar.

So what is the difference and how can you tell whether a baked good should be called a quick bread or a cake?

This question has become blown out of proportion. I was just curious- then I started getting answers that quickbreads and cake are the same thing- which they "obviously" aren't. So I started doing my own research.

Wikipedia says that the term quickbread was probably invented in the US after the discovery of chemical leavening. The Wikipedia references and some dictionaries corroborate this definition. Basically anything leavened with soda is quickbread.

This doesn't work. There are a great many things leavened with soda that can't be called quickbread. A good example is plain old white cake. Obviously this is a semantic issue but one that needed solving.

Two American cookbooks that I consider canonical recipe resources, The Joy of Cooking, and the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, both have a separate quickbread section. In it are a variety of fruit breads as well as some biscuits and scones.

On Food and Cooking muddied the water a bit by differentiating between quick breads such as biscuits and batter breads such as banana bread. These were grouped together, however, and contrasted against cakes. This book says that cakes are higher in fat and sugar and have a more delicate texture.

Ratio, as linked in this answer, confused the terms a bit more also including a term "quick cake" but it differentiated between the different products with distinct ratios for the flour, fat, and sugar.

With several competing definitions I decided to take an unscientific poll. I called 6 friends in Washington, Utah, Georgia, and Texas. I tried to find a variety of American cultures. Obviously it is biased by the fact that I know all of them.
When asked "What is quickbread to you?" without exception all of them replied "banana bread"
When I followed up with: "What is the difference between that and cake" I received the following answers:

"It is eaten at breakfast"
"It has less sugar"
"It is loaf shaped"
"It is more dense"
"It has a more open texture"

My conclusion is that the historical definition of "anything with soda" is no longer useful. In cookbooks it seems to now be applied to chemically risen baked goods that:

have as a rule of thumb a particular ratio of flour, fat, and sugar
have less sugar than cake
refers in particular to fruit breads, biscuits, and scones
generally has an irregular vs uniform texture

The popular definition (among my extremely limited, unrandom sampling) adds:

tends to be loaf shaped

And now I can sleep easily again.

This is nonsense which people who think they know what they are talking about created themselves. Quick breads have less sugar than cake? So what, if I like sweetness and add more sugar and bake it round, it turns into a cake?

There is no explanation, because there is no such a type as quick bread. We all have unexplainable ways with words.


Is seeding peppers a must when making hot sauce I'm trying my hand at a homemade hot sauce using some habaneros and every recipe I've seen calls for unseeding them. I'm not particularly worried about making the sauce too hot, so I'm wondering if I can keep the seeds and whether that would change the texture of the sauce any. Curious if folks have any thoughts there?

The seeds of all peppers are bitter, you won't notice this when you are using a single pepper in a large dish of food, but if you make hot sauce without removing the seeds you will have a noticeable, and possibly unpleasant bitterness. Grinding the seeds will add more off flavors, so it is worth the effort to get rid of them.

I always figure if you want the hot sauce hotter leave the seeds in, if you want just hot sauce and not killer hot sauce take them out.  I would take them out with habanero peppers.  I like the flavor of hot sauce with onion garlic and tomato.  I don't think it should be painful......good luck.


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

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

I'm wondering:

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

Unless you are getting your beef directly from a farm or butcher's truck, most blood will long have vacated the muscle. As the muscle enters rigor mortis and is (this is true for America and Europe, traditions and techniques are different in some parts of Asia and Africa) hung for the prescribed seven to ten days it loses almost all of its capillary blood.

Dry aged (not as common) beef has this effect even more, if you purchased a supermarket filet with a "sanitary pad" in the bottom, the moisture you see there is juices, water and some protein, from collapsing cells, not blood. The same is true for any beef not cooked to shoe-leather consistency, the reddish "juice" is intra-cellular and not from blood vessels.

As far as flavors go, soaking your meat for any period of time below, let's say, two days, has very little effect. It was traditionally done to apply some osmotic power to the cut in order to dilute and remove salt left over from the drying process (this was before cooling was widely available, still done in many countries outside of Europe and America), but isn't usually necessary for meat you get in the meat aisle or from your local butcher.

As far as tenderizing goes, no. Enzymatic tenderizing (that is the stuff that happens when you age beef) goes on, of course, but you won't be able to tell much of a difference between the time you bought the muscle and the time you consume it. Water itself does not tenderize. Minutes to hours do nothing.

I soak chicken, turkey or beef and pork I think need tenderizing in anything available, including water. It tenderizes UNBELIEVABLY!


Microwave-safe cups becoming less safe For a couple of years we have been using a microwave-safe cup to heat up milk. The milk is whipped until it's creamy, then we add coffee on top of it and we have a sort of cappuccino. Until recently this has worked well, but for the last few weeks we have found that the cup itself is heating up in the microwave. I burnt my fingers while taking out the mug by its handle this morning.
Is it possible that ceramic mugs take up more energy from microwaves over time? Or are there other explanations for our findings?

Whenever something gets hot in a microwave, it indicates the presence of water. If something that used to stay cool suddenly heats up, you have water present where previously there was none.

I assume you are using a glazed ceramic mug or jar, not one made of glass. Your glazing must have tiny cracks in it, that allow water to reach the clay underneath and collect there. Basically the wear and tear of long use. These cracks may be so tiny that, especially if no discoloration is present, they are virtually invisible. Each time you use the cup in the microwave again, the expanding water will actually aggravate the problem. The same is true for running the cup in a dishwasher, which in my experience allows for more water to seep through the cracks than a quick hand wash.

Time to get a new mug. Consider one made of glass or porcelain (china) this time.

I've noticed this same problem for years. Some mugs work fine and then start to heat up. The other thing I noticed is that if you continue to use them the problem will come and go over time. I agree with the other comments that is it likely water gets under the glaze and into the ceramic. The process that allows the water to get it is probably somewhat specific, such as a certain positioning in the dishwasher which is why the heating waxes and wanes over time. I've learned to quickly touch the handle of any mug I put in the microwave to see if it is hot before grabbing on.


With what can you maximise energy from an induction stove? This question concerns only an induction stove, which I abbreviate to IS (and not an electric oven with coiled elements).
I already know that the energy from a Chinese Wok Range exceeds, and so is impossible to reproduce, with an IS  at home, but can anything be done to maximise the energy of an IS? Please correct me if I erred in my terminology; I know no physics.
This states the impropriety of woks for IS, but does it imply that certain cookware can convey and realise more energy from IS? If so, which cookware?  This comment mentions 'cast iron skillet':

Throw out the wok. They are worthless with electric ranges. Even home gas ranges don't do a whole lot better. The gas burners in Chinese places are crazy!!! Get a big cast iron skillet and use that instead. Lots of heat, preheat for a while. Cook in batches.
If you velvet and cook at a higher heat you will get much closer.

An induction cooktop is already more efficient than a conventional electric range, but there are some "gotchas" due to the way it works. The way an induction heating element works is via magnetic induction (hence the name), which means it's causing electrical currents to flow within the pan itself, which heats the metal (but don't worry, there's no way these currents can shock you). This is a very efficient way to heat the pan, but it requires two things. First, the pan has to be made of a "ferromagnetic" material (which basically means iron or most steels), and second, that the pan bottom be VERY close to the cooktop surface. It's that last part that makes a wok, with its curved bottom, generally unusable with this sort of cooktop. And this also means that copper and aluminum cookware doesn't work well at all, unless you put a disc of iron or steel between the bottom of such cookware and the induction element surface (in which case, that intermediate disc is basically acting as a hot plate).

If you really want to use a wok - and there are certain lots of reasons to - you pretty much have to get a high-BTU gas burner.

Cast iron and seasoned steel pots and pans are the best candidates for efficiency because they have the greatest density of Ferrous iron (compared to stainless which does not react to
Magnetism).


Difference between freezer bag and storage bag We accidentally used Ziploc "storage bags" instead of "freezer bags" to package some meat for the freezer. We noticed this after the fact and it got me thinking: what is the difference? Marketing aside, they both appear to be resealable zipper-like air-tight and water-tight plastic bags.

Freezer bags are slightly thicker plastic, and more forgiving of sharp or pointy foods (like meat with protruding bones).

I know some freezer bags include a white place to write a label on, I don't remember if storage bags do as well.

The press-to-seal bags do a better job of not spilling if accidentally dropped compared to the zipper versions.

http://web.archive.org/web/20130105063349/http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2010/march/home-garden/storage-bags/overview/index.htm

Freezer bags are thicker and are supposed to slow down the freezing on the ouside so that you don't get so many ice crystals on the outside of the food.

If I run out of freezer bags, I use thin sandwich bags but wrap them in bubble wrap before putting them in the freezer. This also slows down the freezing and prevents ice crystals forming.


When making french fries, can I precut them before baking or frying them? We are going on a skiing trip & are staying in a Condo. Can I precut potatoes &/or sweet potatoes into 1/4-inch matchstick fries before our trip then bake them there?

Regarding potatoes, not sweet potatoes:
It's actually great to precut potatoes for French fries, it gives you an opportunity to soak them in water, which removes the starch and simple sugars from the outside of the fries and even from just below the surface. In fact, many if not most places that make fresh cut French fries do cut the fries in advance and leave them soaking in the refrigerator until fried to order.
You don't say how long your drive is going to be, but if it is less than six hours, you can just put the cut fries and ice water in a Tupperware container for the trip. Longer than six hours you should probably either replenish the ice during the trip or use a cooler. Of course, depending on the weather, the trunk may work as a fridge - but don't let them freeze!
Your soaking container should either be pretty close to at least half-again the volume of your cut fries, or you should rinse them well first and change the water at least once while the fries are soaking.
From Caroline Russock writing for Serious Eats:

Russets or baking potatoes are the best, whereas waxy potatoes (such as Red Bliss or new potatoes) simply won't do. Soaking is key—this removes the starch, keeps the potatoes from sticking together, and eliminates the sugars that prevent the potatoes from achieving maximum crispness.

America's Test Kitchen (Sorry, paywalled) says pretty much exactly the same thing:

Experts agree (just ask McDonald's or our test cooks) that russet potatoes are the best variety for frying—either in a vat of bubbling oil or on a baking sheet in the oven. Unlike other potato varieties, russets produce fries with light, ethereal centers. But they are not perfect.
Russets can produce excessively thick crusts and somewhat dry interiors. The thick crust is caused by the browning of simple sugars in the russet, and the best way to remove some of the surface sugar is to soak the potatoes in water. The water has an added benefit. Potato starches gelatinize completely during cooking. The water introduced during soaking improves the creaminess and smoothness by working its way between the strands of gelatin starch. The final result is a fry that has a good surface crunch married to a smooth interior.

From the recipe attached the Serious Eats article:

Put the fries in a large bowl of cold water and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 8 hours.

Be sure to dry them well before cooking!
Fresh cut French fries were a big part of the business in my café. It wasn't unusual for us to have French fries soaking for as long as two days, perhaps even three. I never noticed any quality problem from soaking too long, but the French fries were simply not good if we didn't have time to soak them for at least a half an hour.
Cook's Illustrated (also known as America's Test Kitchen) (Sorry, again paywalled) looked at oven fries. For that application, they soaked the cut potatoes in hot water. I suspect that starting at a higher temperature was beneficial for baking. To get the best of both worlds I might do a final soak in hot water. As I mentioned above, I haven't seen over-soaking as a problem.

For an easy, no-splatter oven fries recipe that would produce potatoes with a golden, crisp crust and a richly creamy interior, we followed this procedure: We soaked peeled russet potatoes, cut into wedges, in hot water for 10 minutes to remove starch. To prevent the potatoes from sticking, we poured oil, salt, and pepper on the baking sheet instead of on the potatoes. And to get the combination of creamy interior and crisp crust we wanted, we covered the potatoes with foil to steam them for the first five minutes of cooking for our oven fries recipe and then uncovered them and continued to bake until they were golden and crisp.

That doesn't sound like a good idea. A whole unpeeled potato or sweet potato requires no extra effort or care to keep it fresh and nice, but if you cut either of them up, you now need a container to keep the moisture in and the dirt out. Depending on how long before you cook it, you may even be entering into "food-safety" territory (especially if you ask the folks here). At the very least, the cut surfaces of the regular (non-sweet) potatoes will turn gray on the drive up to your condo.


How to infuse coconut flavor into nuts? While traveling abroad, I purchased a small bag of salted cashews at a convenience store.  I immediately noticed that they have a distinctively different taste from what I'm used to; slightly more sweet than salty.

I took a look at the back of the package and found the ingredients list; to my surprise, it ended with "coconut cream".  Thinking of all the coconut-flavored dishes that I've had at home, I immediately recognized that the distinctive taste was from the coconuts.

However, coconut dishes I've had at home usually consist of something cooked in a coconut-based broth.  Other than dried coconut chips, I can't think of any "dry" coconut flavor food I've eaten or cooked.

Starting with raw cashews or other nuts, how can I prepare a product of these nuts infused with coconut flavor?

I've done something similar, although not with coconut cream. I'd cook the nuts in whatever flavored mixture (with extra salt and sugar) for about 5 min, then leave them soaking for a few hours. After that I'd bake them in the oven with low heat, like 170 C (otherwise you'd burn them very easily). Check every 5 min and toss them around a bit to even up, and depends on how moist they are, take out when brown and crisp in the center.

This is really simple to do. Get a high quality coconut oil that is Hydrogenated. And pour 16oz of nuts into 1-2 tablespoons of oil. Mix around in bowl and let sit for a few hours in the refrigerator. Pour them onto a paper towel or clean cloth and let the excess oil be soaked up.


How to cook grass-fed, high-fat hamburger on electric stove? I've managed, through trial-and-error, to learn how to cook regular hamburgers on an electric stove. But recently, I've switched to grass-fed beef (with 25% fat, higher than regular hamburgers), with less-than-stellar results. So, given these conditions:

An Electric stove (Yes, although every cooking book I've seen, thinks you should be cooking with gas - my apartment has an electric stove, so that's what I use.)
U.S. Wellness Meats grass-fed, 75% lean burgers. These are pre-formed, and 25% fat, which is higher than the standard burgers I used to cook. I'm sure the fat content affects cooking - I'm just not sure how.
12" Calphalon non-stick skillet (although I'm wondering if I should replace it, that's a separate issue).
Infrared thermometer - very nice tool, I can't imagine not having one after using it.

What I want to know, is how, using only these resources, to cook a burger that is at least medium-well, if not well-done. So far, I've generally managed to get the outside too cooked, or the inside too pink.

I'd appreciate detailed, step-by-step instructions, if anyone has them. Even the so-called basic cookbooks seem to give just one-liners, for things like hamburgers.

For instance, one situation I don't know what to do about - after about a minute, the burger starts to bow up, so the underside isn't touching the skillet. It's obviously not getting cooked, so now what? I've seen posts saying you shouldn't press down grass-fed burgers. Most of the time, I'll flip it after a minute, so it's flatter. Is that a good method? I have no idea.

Or they say "cook on medium-high heat". Well, my electric stove doesn't have a medium-high setting, it has numbers 1-6. Give me a specific temperature (say, 350F), and I'll use the infrared thermometer to find it.

Update: yes, the hamburgers have thawed out in the refrigerator for a day, and I usually set them out while the stove is heating up. I also have an internal thermometer. As for using an oven - I'd prefer to use only the listed resources (with a skillet), rather than extra items (don't have a cast-iron skillet, don't want to cleanup a baking dish). If there is no other way to cook them well, I'd go with the oven, but I'd rather not.

Summary or "detailed" instructions: flip frequently, and if it's still cooking too fast on the outside and too slow on the inside, adjust the temperature down a little. Maybe you'll take two or three tries to get it perfect, but such is life.

Medium-high probably means somewhere between halfway and maximum on your stove. There's no temperature, don't worry about obsessing with a thermometer. Just try something 4-5, see how it goes, and adjust if necessary. (A thermometer doesn't really help, in any case, because what you care about in the end is the power output of the stove, not the temperature the pan is at.)

Flip as frequently as you want or need to. It'll make it cook more evenly, because you're effectively heating from both sides, instead of letting one side stay cool while the other side cooks. It will also reduce the total cooking time. Notably, Harold McGee has been advocating this for a while, and it really does work - see this blog for some nice plots and cross-sections from simulations, or this Food Lab post for a nice hands-on test with burgers. You can flip as often as every 15 seconds if you want to pay that much attention to it.

If you still have trouble with the outside being too cooked (or the inside not being cooked enough), simply reduce the heat. This is universal advice, not at all specific to burgers. Alternatively, for burgers, you could make them thinner.

Sear first on high heat to lock in juices, then reduce heat to complete the cooking. It works.


How should glasses/cups be oriented in storage? I believe that it's better to store glasses/cups right-side-up in the cupboard, but at work everyone stores them upside-down.

Which is safer/more sanitary?

If the glasses are at all damp, it may make sense to store them up-side-down. In bars and restaurants, you often see plastic mesh like this:

That webbing lines trays, shelves and the area beside the sink for drying dishes. The mesh keeps the dishes or glasses, which may still be damp, from actually touching the surface they're sitting on. In the case of glasses, it also keeps the glasses from forming a seal to the surface beneath. That mesh often gets cleaned, as does the surface under them. In that case, it makes sense to store glasses up-side-down.

Do you have mesh lining your cabinet? Are the cabinet shelves wiped down regularly?

If not, it is far more sanitary to store your glasses right-side-up, and to be sure that they are dry before they are put away.

Answer:  Rim side up, unless you frequently clean and thoroughly sanitize your cupboard, or you live in a dust bowl.

Period.

Less contact with non-airborne germs.  And, realistically, how many airborne germs are roaming any given cupboard?  Not many.


Only the seeds of the habaneros I bought are hot - low quality, or simply the nature of chili? I'm a newbie when it comes to any type of chili. I'm alright at eating food with chili, but don't really have any experience with using it.

I bought the one I used at a local supermarket. I first tried eating a small slice to measure its hotness, but couldn't really feel much heat at all. Pleasant flavor though.

Then I tried to eat a small slice with one (1) seed on it, and this time, it was pretty damn strong, I'll admit. But the "flesh" itself was not strong. The food I made (ground beef, crushed tomatoes, onion) was about ~1.5kg total and filled my pan, but when I added half the chopped habanero with ~6 seeds there was not noticeable hotness at all. I didn't notice this until I served since my tastebuds were giving me false readings from the first tasting I did.

So, this lack of hotness, is it because

That's how habaneros work (surprised me that I didn't get any hotness though)
The type I bought was not very strong.
I prepared it all wrong. Extract flavor using oil first?
My supermarket sells non-fresh / low quality habaneros?

Or something else?

I've experimented with growing different varieties of peppers over last decade and found by surrounding one with other types of peppers (sweet, medium or hot) and increasing or reducing water near harvest time you can completely change the heat and flavor of the peppers from that plant. If planted in a pot you can move it around your garden to get different tasting peppers from the same plant throughout the season.

I can't offer you an explanation but I can tell you this. Whenever I buy Habaneros I get a mixed bag of red and orange. The flesh of the orange ones are always mild with zero heat, but the flesh of the red ones are particularly hot. The seeds from both are always hot.


Why are my pomegranate seeds white? I just seeded a pomegranate, and instead of red / deep pink seeds, the seeds are pale pink / white. What does this mean? Are they ok to eat?

Some pomegranate varieties produce pink or white seeds so yours sounds perfectly normal. I have had white seeds and they are as delicious as the red ones. Go for it.

Thats normal it is that colour Pale Pink white... depends which place on the pomegranate that particular seed is from...they are totally fine to eat, you just need know that they are a different type of pomegranate.


How long do peanut butter sandwiches last at room temperature? We're going on a long flight with our family tonight. I prepared peanut butter sandwiches for the kids, and would like to pack it already to avoid the last minute rush (or forgetting them). We're not leaving for another 12 hours or so, and it will probably be eaten a few hours after that. (I'm not so concerned about mushy sandwiches because these are little kids, they won't mind.) Bread and peanut butter individually can be stored at room temperature for a significant amount of time... Can I leave my peanut butter sandwiches out for ~15-20 hours?

I've done it before without problems.  Even if they're peanut butter & jelly (something that's typically stored in the fridge), it has so much sugar in it that it's inhospitable to microbes.

If you want to play it extra safe, and the sandiwiches won't be easten shortly after you leave, you could place them in the freezer and then let them thaw in your bag.

... all that being said, if you're in the US, the TSA considers peanut butter to be a gel, so won't let you fly with a container of it.  I have no idea what their rules are in sandwich form.  (I've never tried it, as I typically fly w/ cold cut sandwiches, and just take them straight from the fridge before I go).

update from Erica : "I have flown with peanut butter sandwiches in our carryons. New TSA rules mean pulling it out of bags to send through the scanners, but they had no objections."

yes, why not? I've eat 1 -2 days old sandwiches of peanut butter and a lot of other things (ham, chiken, chocolate, cheese...) without problems ;) 15-20 hours is not too much. I think, only raw eeg could be unsafe.


Is it safe to add raw eggs to homemade coffee creamer? I've been looking for a decent dairy-free coffee creamer alternative. I stumbled upon a blog post for 'paleo coffee creamer' that has just 3 ingredients: a can of coconut milk, 2-3 eggs, and some vanilla extract.

In the blog comments, many posters said that there's no way they would include raw eggs in their homemade coffee creamer. I probably would've said the same thing, but the author mentioned something along the lines of 'the heat from the coffee tempers the eggs, making the creamer safe to consume.'

Is this true?

It depends on how hot the coffee-egg mixture is (and remember, adding it will cool the coffee), and how long it stays at that temperature.

Given that coffee does not benefit in flavor from being left around, you want a fast process, which means the mixture should be at 160 F (71 C) for several seconds at least... it can cool after that.

Since coffee optimally brews at about 195-205 F, this should be in the realm of possibility.

The incidence of bad things in raw eggs is very very low, so I wouldn't worry about consuming them. On the other hand, the line about them being "tempered" and therefore made safe by the coffee is completely incorrect. Unless it's nuclear hot McDonalds coffee, you're not going to be doing anything but moving the bacteria closer to their happy place.

I don't see anything wrong with adding raw eggs, but this would severely impair the shelf life of the resultant creamer (2-4 days is the limit for raw eggs out of the shell)


How to minimize the impact of unpopped kernels and kernel shards in popcorn? I've always had a fear of eating popcorn. The idea of breaking my tooth on a popcorn kernel is terrifying, the thought of getting a kernel shard lodged between my teeth or gums makes me squeamish, and I cringe at the possibility of chomping on a burnt piece. I suspect this all stems from some badly-made Jiffy Pop that my mom would serve up as a kid. It's not a debilitating fear or anything, I just avoid eating popcorn.

I don't really talk about my popcorn-phobia, so I can't really blame my brother-in-law for getting me a subscription to a "popcorn of the month" club for Christmas. But that said, I'll be soon stuck with bags and bags of popcorn. I could offload these to my co-workers, but instead I've decided to overcome my fear of popcorn as one of my New Year's resolutions.

It's been a solid few decades since I've tried popcorn, so I'm taking some baby steps and any tips would be appreciated. Specifically, my questions are:

How do you avoid breaking your teeth? Does shaking the bag force loose kernels to the bottom? Is there a type of popcorn that doesn't "shard" as bad?

Don't eat the popcorn straight from the bag. Put it into a nice large bowl. This will provide enough room for the unpopped kernels to fall to the bottom. As for hull shards between your teeth, dental floss or a toothpick will take care of that quickly and relatively neatly. Avoid burnt pieces by watching as you pour the popcorn into the bowl and as you take pieces to eat from the bowl.

Alternatively, set it all aside and serve it (in a nice bowl) when you have guests over. They are unlikely to notice you're not eating any.

It's very hard to resist the temptation of sweet, sweet, popcorn (drooool) especially when settling to watch a film. However packs should come with a cigarette packet style warning: 'May get lodged in between gums, causing an infection, leading to a sore throat and in turn, a massive ear ache.'

It does happens folks, just as I recently experienced, and it's not nice. Having recovered fully, I'm back to chomping down bags of the deliciously moreish snack. I had a eureka moment just this evening that will hopefully save many of us from such agony. Here it is;

Eat just a few corn pops (?!) at a time and at a leisurely pace!

Simple! By doing this you allow ample time for your mouth / tongue / saliva to do the necessary clear up before you reload... rather than forcing mouthfuls of shards and slivers into each and every nook and cranny of your huge gob until theres no where for them to to hide but in between you gums.

Boom! Genius... Spread the word people! We're safe. Free to live. No more will we be held captive.

;) Lade


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

It's not that simple. Every culture cuts their beef differently (or not at all!) and therefore has different names for it

Around the Belgium, Dutch, French low lands they call what the US call brisket and flank, just flank. And what other parts of France might call brisket is not always cut separately, it is just part of the chuck

Confused, we are...

Many butchers in cities receive partially processed carcass parts, so parts like the chest (brisket) may have been removed for processed meat etc

So you need to take a cutting diagram to a butcher whom displays whole carcasses and you should be able to get what you want

As I understand it the brisket extends from in front on the fore legs, between the forelegs and a short way past them? When we have a beast killed most of that goes into the salamis, yum!

Edit: Some common words used are:

Flanchet
Plat de côte
Poitrine
Tendron

A popular brisket cut is a long thin (10mm) strip of the full width of the brisket (left to right). A serving is a single slice slowly grilled and topped with a chunky sauce

Look here, english french terms.

http://www.inspection.gc.ca/francais/fssa/labeti/mcmancv/beeboe1f.shtml


Ideal temperature and method to bake a deep dish pizza What is the ideal temperature to bake deep dish pizza, and for how long?

I want to bake a deep pan pizza with toppings of mushrooms, olives and mozzarella and cheddar cheese. I have an electric oven.

For genuine Neapolitan pizza (very thin dough, tomatoes, Buffalo mozzarella, olive oil) you would use a wood (oak) fired brick oven at 485°C (900°F)

It should be fully cooked in in less than 90 seconds

If you add other toppings, and use a thicker dough it will take a little longer

Cooking at lower temperatures gives you a nice "pie" or savoury flan, but not a pizza

To make a pizza pie (not a pizza), with a deep pan, with a thick dough layer, you should still use a very hot oven, use the maximum temperature your oven will go to. Some people even override the self clean system to go even hotter. Expect times around 5 to 8 minutes

If your crust starts burning on the edges, either accept it as part of the pizza style, or spread sauce right to the edges. Pre-baking the dough for a minute may reduce soggyness of finished product

Go for traditional pizza's for a generally much nicier experience. And if you have the room build your own wood fired pizza oven (plenty of kits on plans on the net)

The excellent book Cooking for Geeks recommends 750°F to 900°F. Basically, if you want pizzeria-style pizza, your home oven isn't going to get hot enough.

...unless you use their method for overclocking your oven by abusing the cleaning cycle. Warning: this will void your warranty.


Coconut milk ice cream — getting volume? I've made ice cream with full-fat coconut milk twice in my KitchenAid ice cream maker with OK results.

I've followed the instructions and have run the machine for the time suggested (about 20 minutes) and the ice cream mixture is ice cream like, but the volume has not increased by much.

My question is are my low-volume results because I'm using coconut milk, or can I run the machine longer and get more volume?

Thanks

Recipe:
1 can of full fat coconut milk (Aroy-D Coconut Milk)
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons cocoa power

Steps:

Mix ingredients together
Chill for 1 hour
Start ice cream machine (get it turning...)
Add mix to machine
Churn for 20 minutes
Serve

Try to decrease the fat percentage in the custard. Full fat coconut milk has a fat percentage of ~20%, hence the custard has about the same. Fat tends to make the ice-cream more heavy and "creamy". Ordinary ice-cream usually have a fat percentage around 10-16%, and even lower for gelato type ice-cream.

To decrease the fat percentage, add some liquid with low-fat.

You are simply freezing the coconut milk mixture.

First make a custard using the coconut milk; to do this scald the milk ie bring to just below boiling point whilst stirring constantly.

Meanwhile whisk 6 medium egg whites with 150g sugar until it becomes white and fluffy, then pour in the heated milk from the pan into the mixing bowl whilst whisking, this is to stop the eggs curdling.

Then poor the mix back into the pan and heat gently until the mix thickens, dont let it boil as this will curdle the custard.

After a while the mix will thicken and when it is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon take of the boil. Then mix in whatever ingredients you want and pour into ice cream maker or into a freezable container and stir every 3-4 hours until fully frozen.

When I made this I added dessicated coconut to give it some texture and a bit more flavour. I then added the zest of 2 limes and the juice of 1.


Is there something I can do to keep ice-cream soft? I have bought a electric ice-cream churner, I have tried so many different flavours, different recipes, used alcohols.
Have read previous questions and a don't believe that leaving ice-cream out to thaw -scoop then refreeze is the only answer.How do the commercial companies keep them soft.
I generally find the next day it is fairly reasonable to scoop, but day after day -the longer it stays the harder it becomes.

Yes, actually, there are two magic ingredients: Guar gum and Xanthan gum.

Guar gum is a thickener, but in small quantities can also prevent the growth of ice crystals which would cause the ice cream to harden into icicles.

Xanthan gum is a stabilizer which helps keep air (called overrun) in the mixture.  Air is generally churned into ice cream by ice cream machines, but it won't stay that way without the stabilizer.

Here's how commercial companies keep ice cream soft and keep ice crystals from forming:  They add propylene glycol (anti-freeze, yes anti-freeze)!

See: http://www.ehow.com/list_6962663_foods-drinks-propylene-glycol.html

See also: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/antifreeze-in-your-ice-cream-2/

I'd rather have the ice crystals.


What can I do with the meat and fat trimmed from the top of lamb ribs? I'm making rack of lamb tonight. I got the rack at a local farmer's market and it was a bit less butchered than I expected. I can (and did) trim it myself, but there seems to be a lot of meat embedded in the large amount of fat I trimmed off the top of the ribs. I'm not really sure what its proper name is ("rib meat"?), so here's a couple pictures to make it clear:

I'm talking about the large slab of fat and meat in my hand in the second picture. As far as I can tell, it's usually just discarded, but there seems to be a good deal of meat there, and it was expensive, so I'd hate to just toss it.  I'm fairly patient and good at separating the fat and meat on membranes, so I can probably isolate a good portion of the meat, if necessary.

Is there anything I can do/make to avoid throwing out so much good meat?

For the record, I got about 12 oz of usable meat out of this. Didn't weigh the fat, but probably 20-24 oz.

I always save all my scraps to make stock.  I'm not sure what you would do with lamb stock, but it would probably make a good sauce to use on lamb.  The fat that renders out is also useful for future cooking of whatever it came from (duck fat for duck confit, for example).

I just throw all the scraps into a slow cooker with celery, carrot, and onion (veggies are optional) and let it cook for a day (or two).  You can pick out the meat if you like (after a day it will be easy to separate) and use it for anything you might use shredded lamb for (pot pie, shepherd's pie, etc.).

I use rendered chicken or turkey fat instead of butter for making pot pie dough, to cook more chicken in, or for matzo balls, and beef fat instead of butter for making gravy, replacing the butter in a beurre manié (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beurre_mani%C3%A9).


White pepper vs. black pepper Other than color, what is the difference between white pepper and black pepper? I thought it was purely a color thing so that black pepper wouldn't ruin the color of, say, a white sauce. We tried white pepper in a few dishes and in all cases, they were wretched. (FWIW: one recipe was Alfredo sauce.) The only things I can come up with are:

There is a substantial difference between the 2 and we apparently do not like white pepper
There is not a substantial difference but we got a bad batch of white pepper
There may or may not be a difference, but the recipes we tried should not have included this spice

Which is correct?

They don't taste identical at all, and even more important, they don't smell the same. White pepper has a distinct "barnyard" odor. People do indeed use them when black flecks might be unpleasant, but in most cases I'd rather go pepperless or just live with the color.

Personally, I prefer the taste of white pepper on things like potato chips - and as a benefit, fine white pepper sticks better to the chips, where no matter how fine I grind my black pepper, they do not stick to the chips well enough.

On the flip side, grainy black pepper on top of a well-grilled steak... Just something to die for.

So, my comments address point 3 in your question, as well as the "to taste" element of some of the answers above.


How can I make my Hot chocolate thicker? I've been trying to make a thicker hot chocolate and I'm not sure what to add without taking away from the flavor of the chocolate. Usually what I do is boil the milk, and then I add chocolate baking powder and shaved chocolate.

Spanish hot chocolate and Italian cioccolata fiorentina both use cornstarch as a thickening agent. Both are used more for dipping or sipping (churros in the former case), however you could easily just use less cornstarch to make it more 'drinkable'.

Try a teaspoon of cornstarch, mixed with a little cold water, added to the milk when you boil it.

As Kate Gregory suggests, you could also use full-fat milk, or loads of shaved chocolate.

DONT USE THICKENERS. Yikes. If you make it on pure chocolate it will be thicker. Just choclate and milk. Full fat of course. If you want it even thicker cream and milk mix.


1 ltr Milk is not curdling even after squeezing 2 lemons; What could possibly wrong? I was trying to make Paneer (a type of cheese). So I boiled once then added 2 table spoons of lemon juice. Milk should be separated out instantly from water but it's been 20 minutes.. And milk is still unchanged.

Milk proteins will coagulate at particular temperatures and Phs. You wrote that you used 2 Tbs of lemon juice but you didn't say how much milk you added that to. If you used too much milk then the mixture will not be acidic enough. Follow a recipe.

You also wrote that you boiled the milk once. I don't know if it is a language barrier issue but it sounds like you boiled the milk in the past. The milk needs to be at near boiling temperatures when you add the acid. The combination of heat and acid will cause the milk proteins to unravel (denature) and tangle up with each other (coagulate) which will result in the curd you are looking for.

If the milk has been handled well, that is if you didn't leave it out overnight, then it has likely not spoiled and you can try again by either adding more acid or bringing to a boil as necessary.

I would imagine that either it's very diluted milk, or would try checking out what happens if the milk were a little hot/warm. That usually speeds up curdling. Otherwise, the milk should be fine, I don't see any reason for it to become unfit for consumption.


Boil an egg in the microwave Is it possible to boil an egg in the microwave?

Ideally without having to pierce the shell first

It's possible to blow open the door of your microwave if you try it on high for too long.
For best results, watch it from about a foot away.

Put a microwave safe bowl in the microwave with just enough water to cover the eggs, but don't put the eggs in yet!  High setting for 1.5 minutes till it boils, Add about a tablespoon of vinegar and a tablespoon of salt. This will keep the eggs from cracking and will make them easier to peel.  Add the eggs and cover with a dish, but leave a slight gap for steam to escape.  Medium setting for 8 minutes (check after 5 minutes to see if there is still enough water covering the eggs, some microwaves are more powerful than others.  Take out the bowl and let it sit for another 5 minutes or so and you should be ready to peel and eat...


If I use a diffuser will I be able to use a pressure cooker to can food on my glass top stove? I have a glass top stove and just purchased an All American pressure cooker/canner. It's very heavy and will hold 7 quarts or 19 pints. If I use a diffuser will I be able to use my stove to can food?

Glass stove top manufacturers sometimes recommend not using pressure canners because the weight and heat distribution can be too much for them and the glass surface can crack.

A diffuser would probably not help with that problem. The diffuser is not likely to be so much bigger than the canner that it would distribute the weight. If it was that large then it would diffuse the heat too much.

Sometimes stove or canner manuals will place restrictions on the size of the canner vs the burner size. If the canner is too large it can transfer heat out of the burner area and damage the surface.

Another common problem mentioned is that some canners have concave bottoms. Obviously, only flat bottomed canners should be used otherwise the weight distribution will be bad for the burner and the canner might not heat properly.

You should check with the manufacturer of your range and see if your range can be used with a pressure canner. If they say it can can then you can can without the diffuser. If they say it can't then you may just be out of luck.

We use a camp stove and do a lot of our pressure canning outside- especially in the summer to save AC bills.

Anecdotally- My mother once, 20 years ago, had a glass surface crack while canning. I have been canning on a glass surface for two years without incident.

Not sure why you would use a diffuser to can food.  As far as a glass top stove, it is no different for canning than gas or a electric coil top burner.  As long as you have water in the pot (sufficient to water bath the jars, usually to the rim) and obtain an internal temperature of 180F. inside the jar, your there.  1/2 pint needs 45 minutes after starting to boil to reach the 180F.  1 pint needs 1 hour.  1 quart needs 1 1/2 hours after starting to boil to reach a 180F safe level.  Of course pressure cookers are a whole different animal and the pot should always come with the numbers.  Mike


How do I cook sticky rice/glutinous rice in my rice cooker? I would like to try and recreate the sticky rice (aka glutinous rice or sweet rice) as I often find served in a kratip at my local USA Thai restaurant. I already have a rice cooker - the Hamilton Beach Digital Simplicity Rice Cooker and Food Steamer (on Amazon). I've cooked quite a few different long grain white rices and also brown rice, but have not yet tried sticky rice.

For standard long grain basmati rice I would just pop it into my cooker pot with the appropriate amount of water and press the white rice button. I have some concerns about the sticky rice as I have read that it requires a presoak upwards of 6 hours and I've also read that some rice cookers (Zojirushi) have a specific mode just for sticky rice. I've also read reviews on simple steamers for sticky rice, so that leads me to believe that I would actually have to use the steamer basket vs the regular rice cooker pot, but I'm just guessing.

Since my rice cooker does not have a specific mode for sticky rice, is it possible with my rice cooker, and if so how?

Some related resources that didn't quite answer this question:

Making sticky rice without rice cooker
Do you need a rice cooker to cook sticky rice?
How can I make perfect sticky rice?

This lady is pleased with the results just using her one-setting cooker: Sticky Rice. Note, she says in the comments that she uses 2 cups (or slightly less) water to 1 cup of rice (which makes sense) not 3 cups rice to 2 cups water like it sounds like she is saying in the video. She rinses the rice well, but does not soak it.

EDIT: With things like this there are often "camps" of differing opinion. I doubt that Michelin Starred restaurants that include sticky rice on their menu ever use rice makers to make said rice. I am reminded of this: Turning regular noodles into no-boil noodles. Even though there are thousands of recipes online for making lasagna without boiling the noodles, I say pfftthhfft. Sure, you can do it, if you don't mind High School cafeteria food. (Remember the Church Lady? "Isn't that special?" Think like that.)

I am less of a connoisseur of rice than of baked pasta. That being the case, I'm not sure that I would notice the deficiencies of sticky rice made in a rice cooker. With that in mind, and assuming that you are not on a different stratosphere of connoisseur than I am, I recommend that you give it a shot and let us know how it goes.

Yet Another EDIT - I Tried  It

I used this brand of sweet (glutinous) rice:

I used 2 cups of rice, thoroughly rinsed, 1 tsp salt, 3 2/3 cups water, and the only setting my simple, old rice cooker has.

My lid is glass, and I could see that there was still quite a bit of water on the top of the rice after the cycle was complete (short, 30 minutes or less), so I waited 15 minutes before I lifted the lid.

Since you can't see the rice without opening the cooker, I recommend that you do the same, wait 15 minutes before opening.

After 15 minutes I checked it out:

It's absolutely fine. Is it as good as the the great Thai place down the street? No. But it's close. The only thing I would (and will) do differently next time is to only use 3 1/2 cups water to 2 cups rinsed rice and 1/2 TBS salt.

After it finished last night, I was suddenly too tired to mess with it anymore, so I just left the cooker on warm, and went to sleep. 5 hours later, if anything, it's improved.

It was fine without it, but I'm intrigued by @GdD's answer here. Later, I'm going to try making the rice again with the above measurements plus 1.5 TBS sugar, just to see (more just seems like too much). Making sticky rice without rice cooker

Final EDIT I Promise:

Yep, that worked. It does brown a bit at the bottom of the rice cooker, but I like that. I enjoyed that as much as sticky rice from the Thai joint. It's not the same, but it's really good.  So, there is my recommendation. Have fun!

The lady who made the video has responded to me on YouTube. She seems grateful and flattered. She had no corrections.

Please check out the Hot Thai Kitchen You Tube, Pai is showing how to cook Thai Sticky Rice in rice cooker and another method she called it "Steam the Bowl".  Her method is that you don't need to soak the sticky rice.  Please make sure you use the sticky rice from Thailand.
Quick-Fix, No-Soak Sticky Rice หุงข้าวเหนียวแบบไม่แช่ข้าว- HTK Tutorial  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMDwyqJy2r4

This is for the sticky rice that you can use in the recipe for sticky rice and mango.


Why would you place potatoes on salt when baking in the oven? Several of my recipe books call for baking potatoes on a layer of (rock) salt, e.g. I'm currently following one for gnocchi that has this very instruction.

Searching yields many recipes, but I can't really find the "why" of it, nor what it technically accomplishes. Our own cooking.se site yields no relevant results either.

I can't quite imagine either what it would accomplish, except for perhaps salt the potatoes a bit; but that seems rather inefficient (why not add some salt later to the gnocchi dough?). Or perhaps it's meant to draw all fluids?

Why would you bake potatoes on a layer of (rock) salt? What does that do to the potatoes?

This is what America's Test Kitchen (sorry, paywalled) has to say about it:

  Sometimes baked potatoes can use a flavor boost. And instead of light and fluffy, most often they are dense and crumbly. We found that baking the potatoes on a bed of salt remedied these problems. Moisture that escaped the potatoes during baking was trapped in the enclosed pan, absorbed by the salt, and eventually reabsorbed by the potatoes, making their skins tender and their flesh light and fluffy. All we needed to do was fine-tune the variables. Using a hot oven and uncovering the potatoes toward the end of cooking ensured dry, crisp skin. A 13 by 9-inch baking dish provided plenty of space so that we didn’t have to crowd the potatoes, and 2 1/2 cups of salt allowed us to thoroughly cover the bottom of the pan.

I have found that salt roasting potatoes makes the skin crispy, without it getting hard. Like the above says, the potato itself seems fluffier. The way the salt seasons the potato is particularly nice as well. Incidentally, you can reuse the salt over and over again, so it's not as wasteful as it might seem when you first consider the method. You'll want to keep separate salt for things like this, though, since it picks up potato flakes and discolors a bit.

EDIT The ATK method calls for covering the 9X13 baking dish (for 4 potatoes and 2 1/2 cups of salt) tightly with aluminum foil and roasting at 450F (232C) for 1 1/4 hours. Remove foil, brush potatoes with oil, raise oven temp to 500F (260C) and continue roasting for 10-20 minutes, until potatoes are tender when pierced with a knife and the skins are glossy.

Just my 2 cents: The salt does not create a salty taste at all to the potato. The salt is used to create a type of a dutch oven and cooks a fluffy inside and a crispy skin. Potatoes are cooked like this at Red Lobster. At one time this recipe was called "The Worlds Best Baked Potato" before the internet. If I remember right the temp you cook at is a little higher then 400, maybe 410 degrees or 425 for 1 hour and 15 minutes or something like that.


Saving seasoned flour used for dredging chicken I love to make (and eat) buttermilk fried chicken but I always get carried away with the amount of flour I use.  I am fully aware of contamination due to raw chicken, but is it safe to keep the excess seasoned flour used to coat the raw chickens in an airtight container and use it solely for this purpose?  Before storing the flour I sift out any larger pieces.

It is not a good idea.

You can certainly prepare your seasoned flour mixture and keep it in bulk.  Just transfer it as you need it to the container where you do the actual breading or dredging; then you don't need to discard the entire amount.

Bacteria need moisture to grow.  There is moisture as well as bacteria in the flour after use.  Storing as is after use   would be crazy.  But what if you allowed it to completely dry after use and then store?  Raw eggs are considered "contaminated"  but mix them with flour, make egg noodles, let them dry and you can store them forever!  For that matter you can do the same thing with meat itself (jerky).  So I don't think the safety experts have full answered the question.  My feeling is that the answer to the original question should be a qualified "yes."


Why does a brown paper bag speed ripening? I often see this technique suggested as a way to speed ripening. Why does it?

Also, is there any data available on how fast it ripens comparatively?

Placing fruit in a bag will help hasten the ripening for only a few fruits.  Most fruits will not ripen (ever) once they have been picked.  The only fruits that ripen once they're picked are bananas, avocados, pears, mango, and kiwifruit.  Ripeness in fruits is based on sugar content, not color, thus most tomatoes in grocery stores have no flavor because they were picked green and exposed to ethylene gas to induce color change.  Tomatoes are what are known as a "climacteric fruit" which means they'll change appearance based on climactic conditions but they don't ripen.  Yes, they continue to soften but that's simply the process of cell deterioration know as decomposition.

Some fruits such as peaches, plums, etc. will seem to develop more sweetness as they sit on the counter but that's because they're also losing moisture and the residual sugars are concentrating in the cell walls.

Placing fruit in a paper bag helps to concentrate the levels of ethylene gas which is what helps induce the ripening of the above mentioned fruits (bananas/avocados, etc.). In fact, avocados and pears must be picked in order to ripen.  Pears that are left on the tree will simply rot.   As mentioned previously...  brown paper bags used to be something everyone had around their house so it was a commmon item before the switch to plastic bags.

Have you ever noticed some people like red bell peppers and not green ones?  The reason is due to ripeness.

I've never heard this, but ripening is usually sped up by various airborne chemicals functioning as plant hormones. This is why one bad apple will cause others to go bad - it is signalling them. So I suspect it is either a matter of enclosing the airborne chemicals, or that paper bags release some such chemical.


How do I make a frappuccino less watery? I'm trying to recreate a Starbucks caramel coffee frappuccino, but it's coming out awfully watery. I've watched them make it and here is what they do, as far as I can tell:

half fill the blender container with ice
pour milk on up to half the level of the ice
add some (hard to see how much exactly) coffee from a tank labelled "frap", which I assume is just regular cooled coffee
add some squirts of caramel syrup
blend.

Yum, delicious. But when I do this, I get a very watery result which is not thick and creamy like theirs. How can I improve it?

Aha, the article and comments on this site:
 http://www.squawkfox.com/2011/06/16/frappuccino-recipe/
suggest using double-strength coffee and (the secret ingredient) adding a pinch of xanthan gum. I might have to see if I can get that anywhere!

I have made good frappes using vanilla ice cream for half of the milk. I add 3 tablespoons of Hershey's Dark Cocoa for the chocolate. A little maple syrup adds sweetness. Add coffee and ice and blend away! Chocolate ice cream might work as well. I use a Ninja 900 for the blender.


Whipping-cream will not stay hard or keep its peaks and gets runny My mother is confounded by whipping-cream. Some 20 years ago she started making cream-puffs which quickly became her pastry calling card. They always came out great and were always a hit. Some 15 years later, she cannot seem to make whipped-cream anymore.

She still uses the same bowl, same mixer, same whipping-cream (Nutriwhip whipping-cream) and does everything the same way as she used to, but no matter what, the cream stays soft and will not stiffen or form peaks. (The kitchen is not too hot.)

Some explanations that we have considered include:

Changes to the quality/ingredients of the cream (despite the box being the same)
Adding powdered sugar to the liquid cream before whipping (like she always used to do)
Refrigerator not cold enough (but then, freezer not cold enough either?)
Whipping for too long causes heat build-up due to friction, which melts it (doesn’t excessive beating turn it into butter?)

She tried using different bowl, a chilled bowl, a different mixer, (even made me try by hand once!) She has tried a different brands of cream (35% Beatrice and Lactancia whipping-creams), but gets the same results. One time, I tried adding the powdered sugar after whipping the cream, and it was much better than what she normally gets now, but still not as stiff as compared to the past. Using a whisk on the mixer in place of the normal beaters (which was what she always used before, as my and my sister’s tongues can attest to), seems to help, but even that is only temporary.

She has even tried putting the whipped cream in the freezer, and while it does harden, once it has thawed enough to pipe, it gets runny very quickly (in the past, she would be able to pipe the cream onto baked goods, leave them in the fridge for a day, then drive them to somewhere else without the cream’s edges softening).

She is baffled because she had made whipped-cream for various baked-goods countless times, but until a few years ago, she never had any problems, then suddenly, it never works anymore. I found a few related questions here, but they don’t quite apply (they talk about different bowls, different temperatures, etc., but like I said, it used to work).

What could be the problem? How can she get whipped-cream to stay hard like it used to?

Exact brands and variations used:

The brands that used to work may have changed their formulation in response to carageenan shortages. If they use less emulsifier, a lower quality product, or different emulsifiers such as guar gum, locust bean, or xanthan gum, the stability of the whipped cream may suffer.
If the cream you can get isn't stable enough, you can add unflavored gelatin to stabilize it.
Method is in 'Joy of Cooking', or here.

May2013: Looks like carrageenan is still on the USDA organic list Shortage has eased, but whipping problems could still be due to variations in quality of supply.

Buy pure whipping cream with no additives. It will work like the olden days, pure and simple. It won't weep an separate.
It took me a few years to figure out. I am allergic to all legumes ie: guar gum etc. and carrageenan.

Good luck.


Should I peel kiwifruit? What should I do with the kiwi peel?
I've got no problem with its taste and feel
and eat them whole when I'm by myself.
Is it in any way bad for my health?

It is perfectly safe to eat the peel in and of itself. You will need to make sure that you wash it properly, as it may be dirty. But beyond that, it's simply a matter of taste. A lot of people don't like the flavor / texture of the peel and so remove it.

From a site devoted to kiwis:

  Kiwi fruit skin is definitely edible,
  and there's a lot of different
  theories about eating it.

  Kiwi fruit skin contains high levels
  of flavonoids, insoluble fiber and
  antioxidants: these substances all
  have a beneficial effect on your
  body's metabolic functions (flavonoids
  and antioxidants) and on your
  digestive system and cardiovascular
  apparatus (insoluble fiber).

  Common sense, however, should be
  practiced in this respect: while raw
  kiwi fruit skin contains these
  beneficial substances, it also tends
  to contain more than 99,95% of of the
  pesticides in that particular fruit
  (if they have been used), which
  largely outweighs the benefits from
  flavonoids and antioxidants.

Up to now I have been eating golden skin after thorough washing with warm water. Although without skin the inner flesh is far tastier.


Too much water in box cake mix batter. Can it be fixed? I added too much water in my box cake mix and I already mixed the 2 together. What can I do to save the cake? Could I add another box of cake mix to the batter?

If you are only over by a small amount (¼ cup or less) just add half the volume of flour(±).  If you added a moderate amount of extra water(½ to 1 cup) add half the volume of flour and ½ tsp baking powder and sugar equal to ⅓ the flour. Cakes fixed this way will be slightly dry but serviceable, particularly given that you started with a boxed cake anyway.

Beyond that point just make a double recipe.

Yes, adding too much water into a cake batter can be fixed. What you have to do is

ADD: "Cake Flour" (not regular flour) so that it can have a thicker, fluffy and floppy texture. Test your texture by stirring it with a fork (in a vertical, circular motion).

Also, because Cake Flour does not have a flavor nor taste, you'd want to either add some POWDERED SUGAR for more taste or some WHITE SUGAR (not too much of either) because the it'll make your cake hard and crispy and it'll stop from properly rising as it should. It'll come out flat and firmer, especially around the edges if too much sugar is added. As for flavor, depending on the overall flavor of your cake, you can use ingredients like Vanilla Extract, Almond Extract, Lemon Extract, Cocoa Powder, etc. To make your cake come together and add fluffiness to it, add some baking soda to it and let it sit for about 5-10 minutes. Allow the Baking Soda to work it's magic. Baking Soda, after left sitting a while in the batter, makes your batter puffy and moussey. When it gets like that, your cake will have a wonderful texture. Then that's when you begin pouring your batter into your pan or pans. Sometimes you may not want to wait but you must wait for the baking soda it do what it needs to do in order to get the results your looking for. In reiteration, Yes, too much water in a box cake mix batter can be fixed.


Are there any situations where untempered chocolate is better than tempered? Every chocolate-based recipe I've seen either requires tempered chocolate or can use either tempered or untempered chocolate. Are there any recipes or techniques that specifically require untempered chocolate?

EDIT: I think the question might be a little unclear. To clarify, I have a block of tempered chocolate; I use this to make cordials (must be tempered) and ganache (doesn't matter). Are there any uses for it where I'd have to untemper the chocolate first?

Tempering is a process used to give solid chocolate a uniform appearance and texture, as well as to insure that those qualities are shelf-stable. Most commercially available chocolate is already tempered to some degree so that it has a pleasing appearance and texture for customers to enjoy right out of the box/bag.

Tempering is required when the final product will be made of solid chocolate or the chocolate is a component in an unadulterated state, especially in candies that will sit at room temperature. These would include molded and enrobed chocolates such as chocolate bars, bonbons, leafs, and nests.

Recipes that add chocolate to other ingredients such as dairy, flour, and sugar can be made with either tempered or untempered chocolate because the structure of the chocolate fat crystals is no longer the dominant source of structure and texture.  Examples of this include cookies, brownies, ganache, ice cream, and cakes.

There is no normal application where untempered chocolate is required and tempered chocolate could not be used.  The only application I have been able to think of where untempered chocolate would be desired/required is something made for the express purpose of training and/or testing chocolatiers or chocolate tasting professionals.

It sounds as if you may not understand exactly what "tempering" is.  You can't buy "tempered" chocolate.  Tempering is the processes that makes it workable.

Chocolate is made up of a whole bunch of different fats, each with its own melting temperature.  "Tempering" is, simply, raising the temperature so that they have all melted, bringing it back down to the point where some of the fats start to crystalize again, and, finally raising the temperature, carefully, to the point at which only the one "good" crystal forms.  Great description here

Clearly, this is utterly unnecessary for chocolate chip cookies, fudge, ganache, etc.  If you are going to make chocolate cigarettes, leaves, or nests, though, it is essential.