Is the mixing order important when substituting white sugar + molasses for brown sugar? I bake cookies at a relatively large scale (16 qt batches) My recipe calls for both white & light brown sugars. In an effort to make production more efficient I would like to substitute the brown sugar with a combination of cane sugar and molasses.

My question is this: Must we premix the cane sugar with the molasses? Or may we just add the cane sugar and molasses into the mixer at the "creaming" stage? Or add the cane sugar at the creaming stage and the molasses in with the eggs? What would be the anticipated outcome of each scenario?

I am aware of the hydroscopic properties inherent in the brown sugar, but somewhat confounded by the question of whether separating the molasses from the cane sugar, then reuniting them in the dough, would impact this.

As you probably know, the creaming step is important.

Sugar crystals cut up the fat and make a lot of air pockets.

If liquid is added early then the sugars dissolve and creaming doesn't happen.
If there is too little sugar it is less effective.
If there is too much sugar the fat is reduced to a crumbly mass and is not fluffy.

Your recipe calls for a certain amount of white and brown sugar to be creamed and then more molasses to be added with the wet ingredients.

The safest method would be to thoroughly mix your white sugar and the white sugar + molasses to approximate the original recipe and then cream- adding the additional molasses later. Beyond this substitution you are creating your own recipe and it will require some experimentation.

Try adding all the molasses in the initial mix and see if that doesn't dissolve your sugar too much.
Try leaving all the molasses until after creaming.
In both cases- the creaming is successful if the butter is creamy and fluffy. Not a batter and not crumbly sugar.

Obviously I would do these experiments on a smaller portion and not risk a huge batch.

I doubt anyone could tell you exactly how this will turn out without experimenting. I've never seen a table that lists the water concentrations at which creaming is effective.

I made a dark treacle cake recently and it also calls for brown sugar and additional treacle. And instinct is telling me creaming the plain white sugar with butter before going on to mix in the molasses (amount required to convert white to brown sugar, as well as the extra the recipe calls for) along with the other liquids would work for your recipe like it did my dark treacle cake.


Risks of allergen cross-contamination (and how to avoid) Is there any evidence regarding the risks of allergen cross-contamination in a typical residential kitchen environment?

Specifically, I'm wondering about situations like:

1) If a seasoned cast-iron skillet comes into contact with an allergen (e.g. gluten, soy), does a risk of cross-contamination still exist after washing/rinsing it? (it seems like it would be unavoidable that some residue gets incorporated into the pan's seasoning layer?)

2) A typical dishwasher may only use a few gallons of water and only perform 2 rinses in a cycle. Is it possible that some low concentration of allergen get "distributed" onto all the dishes and remains after the cycle is complete?

3) For non-porous surfaces (stainless steel, plastic cutting boards), is there any risk of allergens still being present after soap/water cleaning?

4) What about for porous surfaces (wooden cutting boards, wooden stir spoons)?

Ultimately, I'm trying to decide if a food allergy requires that my kitchen be completely devoid of the allergens (or anything that has ever come into contact with them), or if methods like soap+water washing are known to be sufficient to reduce allergen concentration to a safe level.

If you do need indeed an allergen free kitchen, you have to ban the allergen in question from the kitchen. Cross contamination will happen in all situations you describe. Even for non-porous surfaces, your allergens will live on in your dishsponge and get redeposited. The other option beside outright banning is to keep a second set of utensils, dish sponges, towels, etc. which never come in contact with the allergen, and wipe down surfaces and so on before cooking for the allergic person - which is rarely practicable.

The other question is whether you actually need the kitchen to be allergen-free. In typical allergy cases, there is a tollerable daily intake which will not trigger the allergy. It differs by allergen - for example, if you live with a celiac patient, the tolerable bound is so low you will always exceed it if you don't keep the kitchen free of flour. In fact, the flour particles left in the air after baking are sufficient to trigger a celiac episode. But for many other allergens, the person can eat from a contaminated pan, and as long as they are not actively biting into the allergen, it won't cause a reaction.

So, speak to the person you need to protect, and ask what level of cleanliness is needed. You cannot rely on the average tolerable limits per allergen, since some patients react to smaller amounts. They are likely to have been in this situation before and can tell you whether the cross contamination from washed utensils matters to them or not.

Remember there is no zero-risk environment.

At home, use simple and well practice hygiene, hot water, soap, paper towels..

Something like this.

Most modern Dishwashers have a sanitize/sterilized mode, I don't know if it helps in regards to allergens.


Dissolving cocoa powder in milk I wanted to make a Stevia-sweetened chocolate milk so I tried mixing some unsweetened cocoa powder with the milk and stevia, but I found that the cocoa powder doesn't mix with the milk at all. It tends to float on top, and even with a lot of stirring and mixing back and forth between two glasses it was a lumpy mess.

Any techniques or natural additives I can use to help the powder dissolve more like Nestle Quick and the like?

Aw, you youngsters, spoiled with your Nestle Quick... :)

To mix cocoa powder with a liquid (or really, to mix any powder with a liquid - salt and granulated sugar aren't powders), you need to make a slurry by mixing a small part of the liquid into all of the powder. Then you can dilute the slurry with the rest of the liquid.

Note that if you're using sugar for sweetening, it helps to add it to the cocoa powder before you add any liquid, because the sugar helps the dissolving. However, since stevia is so much sweeter than sugar, you use too little of it to make any difference to the dissolving process. Thus, you can go ahead and add it afterward, so you can adjust the sweetness better.

If you've already screwed it up and have added the powder to a lot of liquid, just microwave it until it's warm/hot. The cocoa powder will magically dissolve and make a lovely hot cocoa. :) Enjoy.


How to make raspberry donut filling How do I duplicate the raspberry flavored jelly filling of Dunkin Donuts jelly donuts?

Emeril's Raspberry Filling uses a combination of fresh raspberries, simple syrup, and cornstarch. Seems almost foolproof and you could probably substitute frozen raspberries when fresh aren't available.


How does commercial whole grain bread stay fresh for so long? Every recipe for whole grain bread I have tried has the end result that the bread turns very hard within an hour of baking. I'd like something I could eat over the course of a couple days (breakfast toast and such). The 100% whole wheat bread from the store lasts two weeks - how do they do it?

Industrial breads use 'dough conditioners' that soften the dough and make working with it easier. You can buy such mixes online, here for instance, and I've seen them for sale in
natural food stores and the like. Other things that might work are adding a starch or a fat, or heat treating some of your flour in the microwave (a minute for a cup, don't do this to all the flour, it destroys some of the gluten). Guar gum or xanthan gum will help to keep things moist as well.

I've never used these techniques, so some experimentation might be necessary. Store bread in plastic bags as soon as it cools, and don't slice right away.

They use ground up bird feathers to make bread stay fresh for longer


What makes the 'Cat poo' coffee (Kopi Luwak) flavour worth drinking? I'm actually on the hunt for this coffee in Melbourne, being it's such a coffee-oriented city:
Where can I buy a cup of 'cat poo' coffee (Kopi Luwak) in Melbourne?, but while discussing it in the travel.SE chat room, we were wondering what it is that makes it worth drinking?

From Wiki and other sources there's some talk about cherries with some beans cause certain enzymes to be produced, but they seem to insist that this wouldn't happen with the same ingredients in another beast? So is it the beans + food, or the animal itself, and what is the resultant flavour - more bitter / sweet than regular coffee, or what?

I've never drunk it (can't stand coffee myself), but the general theory is:

A wet ferment.  Some coffee producers have attempted to duplicate some of the processes with enzymes, as you've mentioned.
More likely to be picked closer to peak ripeness.  The animals have the advantage that they're picking berries to eat, and will pass over unripe ones to eat later -- unlike human processing which might just look to strip the whole bush.

In talking to one of my co-workers (also not a coffee drinker), and she said that she's had coffee right after it's been processed, and it was dramatically different from the stuff that was available in Europe or North America ... which leads me think that freshness might be a more important quality than some of the other aspects of the highly expensive coffee.  (unless you're talking about psychological effects)

Suffering

'Nothing'.

Personally, I wasn't really attracted by the description, but when I was offered some (on somebody else's dishes, and the alternative was instant), I gave it a try.   My vote is squarely in the 'cachet' pile - that it's just something exotic and expensive for its own sake, or a 'placebo' kind of situation.   The stuff I had was fine, but really didn't taste special.   Would not pay extra for it.

But that's just IM-NS-HO.   I realize this is a subjective answer, but if you've already read up about it a bit ... the Wikipedia page lists the supposed pros and cons, so you're here mostly for opinions, right?   Or something beyond what's listed on Wiki?

Edit:  Removed 'joke answer', because SE is no place for jokes.   Also, it may have been offensive ... and not that funny.

Edit: Oh yeah  - as for specific characteristics, my impression was that it was low in acidity, and a little 'thin'.   At the time, I assumed that the latter was my fault / bad preparation - although I used the same method and apparatus for other coffees with good result, and tried a few times with the Luwak (or 'Luwak', as it may be)(trying to brew it a little stronger, etc).   I believe both are characteristics noted elsewhere (eg, Wiki).


How does dried cilantro relate to fresh? Is coriander dried cilantro seed?  Has anyone used dried cilantro, and if so how does it compare to fresh cilantro.  I assume fresh is better but please describe the difference (less pungent, etc...)

Coriander, the plant, is the one whose leaves are called cilantro in many regions - the Spanish name for the plant. Of course, in some regions, the leaves are called coriander (or coriander leaves) as well. Coriander, the spice, is indeed the dried fruit/seeds of the plant, commonly sold both whole and ground. The seeds have a very different flavor from the leaves.

As for dried cilantro, the leaves? They're going to be pretty much flavorless compared to fresh cilantro. Cilantro loses its aroma quickly when heated or dried. Obviously there's still something left, or you wouldn't be able to buy dried cilantro, but it's not going to be a striking addition to a dish. If you can get it fresh, it's worth it.

I have heard to use twice the dried if the substituting for fresh in a recipe.  Joy of Cooking has good substitutes listings including dried for fresh.


Unsweetened or fruit sweetened ice cream - Replacement for sugar in ice cream? What is the best carb or protein to replace sugar in an ice cream recipe?

I would like to remove cane sugar, artificial sweeteners, honey, maple syrup, xylitol, stevia, erythritol, etc. from my ice cream recipe.

I read in another forum about unsweetened ice cream that sugar adds “bulk” to ice cream insinuating that it is necessary to make a pleasant textured dessert.

I’m thinking banana, tapioca flour, and/or sweet potato may work well because of their thicker consistencies and starch content. Before I attempt this, I would appreciate any advice or concerns.

Cheers!

Side note: I will use an ice cream maker. I will include egg(s) to the recipe. To prevent an icy texture, I will use some vanilla extract and/or another form of alcohol.

From a bulk perspective you don't have to replace sugar with anything, you certainly don't need want to add starch to compensate as that will not do favors for your consistency and mouth feel. Sugar helps the consistency of ice cream by reducing ice crystal formation,  protein does not, and starch does a bit but makes your ice cream, well, starchy rather than creamy if you add much. Vanilla extract doesn't inhibit ice crystal formation much as it's not enough alcohol unless you add way too much, straight alcohol like vodka is a better choice.

For me the solution isn't bulk, but to make up for the lack of sugar using a stabilizer like guar gum and/or carageenan. Locust bean gum is good for presenting ice crystal formation as well.

Regarding sweetness, fruit isn't a good source of sweetness because of concentration. Most of fruit is water, and to add enough sweetness and fruit flavor you have to add a lot, adding a lot of starch, cellulose and water to your ice cream which isn't good for consistency. When I add fruit for flavor I cook it down into a jam to reduce its water content, this works well for berries, but wouldn't work for starchy fruits like bananas, you might try banana chips instead. I think what without some sort of sweetener it's going to end up pretty bland though.

Two things:  To prevent ice crystals I use Light Corn Syrup.  In a recipe calling for wet ingredients of 2.5 cups heavy cream, 1 tsp pure vanilla extract, 1, 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk, and 2 tablespoons molasses I used 3 tsp light corn syrup.  I made it in the freezer without an ice cream maker and it was very smooth; no ice crystals anywhere.

It appears you are trying to avoid the sweeteners but I am simply trying to give you the proportions of the wet ingredients to the light corn syrup.

This was part of a recipe from Kate Merker and Taylor Murray (and it might have come from "America's Test Kitchen" but I don't remember for sure).


How to make uncooked onion digestable? I have a problem with uncooked, sliced onion making me and other people feel uncomfortable in the stomach, sometimes whole night. However, when I eat tacos out in restaurants that never happens. Is it due to the variety of onion or do they prepare them in a certain way?

Adding salt and lemon should do it, or at least help a lot.

What you want to do is to chop them up and rub in a little salt and a splash of lemon juice (vinegar should work too). Obviously you don't want to add so much of either that you won't want to eat the onion.
Leave to sit in the fridge overnight and enjoy.

Red onions are the best to use raw, and as I know a few people who get uncomfortable or upset stomachs when eating raw onion, even though others don't. I think it could be a particular allergy type thing. I'm not sure though so I will check that out. It could be good to store them in something though before serving (the onions not the people).


Is it ok to microwave veggies without water instead of blanching them in a pot of water? Whenever I see a recipe which requires me to blanch vegetables for a few minutes, I microwave them instead.  It's sometimes faster, I don't have to get a pot dirty, and I don't usually have to dry the vegetables afterwards.  The microwave seems to do a very good job of par-cooking any vegetable which is cut up into small, uniform-sized pieces.

However, I've never seen a mainstream cookbook recommend microwaving instead of blanching.  Is there a reason for this?  Am I losing flavor or texture I would get with blanching?  Or is this just one of those bits of propaganda one learns in Chef School, like how garlic presses are evil?

So, is microwaving vegetables to cook them a fine substitute for blanching them, or am I Doing Things Wrong?

My kitchen manager (fine dining restaurant) said that that the only thing a microwave should be used for in a professional kitchen is to heat water.

Microwaving tends to dry out the outside of vegetables, and hurts both texture and flavor.  Proper blanching takes about 5 minutes once you have water at a boil, and maintains both the crisp, fresh flavor and full texture.  Blanching also tends maintain color better, because the outside of the vegetables heats to the same extent as the inside, and this is doubly true if you use an ice bath to cool vegetables after blanching.

So yes, you are Doing Things Wrong.  That said, we all take shortcuts at times, and microwave ovens do work rather well for thawing frozen vegetables.  With frozen vegetables you've already lost a lot of the texture, so the microwaving doesn't do much further harm.

Wrong?? Not really for it's a shortcut and an easier way of doing things, however think about this the next time if you're planning to blanch or cook your vegetables in the microwave- do you know that the microwave works by radiating heat around the food and as you said it cooks from inside out, and once again radiation- thus this leads to an unhealthy life style.Besides that, if you manage to blanch the vegetables the right way you will enjoy them much more better as they still contain the vitamins and the minerals in them. Oh ya!! Another thing to remember is over cooking of vegetables is rather much more simpler to achieve by cooking in the microwave.


What counts as "hydration" when figuring Dough Hydration? I'm keen on the idea of baking using "Baker's Math"... but, what ingredients do we count when trying to figure out the hydration level of a dough? Do we count just water/liquid? Or, do we count things like sour cream, butter, milk, eggs?

The term is not really defined that way. In the strict sense, it only has meaning for lean doughs - made of only flour, water, yeast and salt, eventually preferments or later mixins like seeds.

You can extend it to enriched doughs (those that have fat, milk, eggs, tomato juice, etc.) but then it is no longer sharply defined. Calculating the exact content of water (e.g. adding to the calculation 17 g of water for every 100 g of butter) are pretty useless, because the water bound in an emulsion or other kind of colloid doesn't behave the same way as free water when making a dough. So, a dough with 100 g water and 100 g butter will be extremely different from a dough with 117 g of water, and still pretty different from one with 117 g of water and 83 g of oil. So, there is no real formula any more to create an actual percentage.

The concept still stays somewhat useful in this case, but you have to "play it by ear". When you are trying to judge how soft a given enriched dough will be, you can start by calculating all the liquid and fat ingredients as if they were "hydration", which gives you a rough guide to compare it to other doughs, and then you have to make it and gain a tactile understanding of how it actually behaves.

Dough hydration is the amount of water in the dough.  See: wikipedia

To calculate, you need to figure out the % water of each individual ingredient and then divide the total of all water in the recipe by the total weight.


Is it possible to cook a whole fish in a dishwasher? I heard that there is a way to cook a whole fish in a dishwasher - any techniques, tips??

Surely the authors of the previous (sublime!) answers will throw the "Sure it works in practice, but does it work in theory!?" at me, but this great SE question and its answers still lured me into creating an answer backed up by empirical evidence.

The Answer

YES! It's certainly possible. At least one successful attempt has been logged (see below).

The Experiment

The following equipment and ingredients were used in this experiment:

Two whole trouts (each 230 grams, 28 cm long, thickness 3 cm).
One salmon steak, cut in two equal pieces (90 grams each, thickest point 3 cm).
Herbs: rosemary and parsley.
Lemon slices (only on the trout, not on the salmon).
Sea salt.
Zip-lock bags.
Microwave foil (only on the salmon).
Dishwasher type: Bosch SGS55 (only sold in EU, it seems)

STEP 1 - Preparation

Salmon

Wrap tightly in microwave foil with salt, rosemary, parsley.
Put in zip-lock bag.
Push air out of bag, close it.

Trout

Salt, rosemary, parsley and lemon slices inside the fish.
Alas: the zip-lock bags were too small, I had to cut off the head and tail.
Put in zip-lock bag.
Push air out of bag, close it.

STEP 2 - Enter the Dishwasher

Rolled up the zip-lock bags a bit.
Put one salmon and one trout bag in the top rack, the other two in the bottom rack (to test the difference).

STEP 3 - Program

Here's the tricky bit. I read up on sous-vide before trying, noting fish (particularly salmon) would need around 50° Celsius at a constant temperature. However, my main concern was that the temperature would not be constant enough to cook the fish: I was more afraid of under cooking than of overcooking. So I decided to run my experiment at this program:

The highest program marked 70° Celsius
Run for the full 137 minutes
No detergent
No other equipment (plates, cutlery, etc)

THE WAIT

With the dishwasher empty, the first bit of the program made an awful lot of noise, with cold water hitting the inside of the empty dishwasher. After that it kind-of returned to normal.

STEP 4 - Results

After 136 minutes I was standing in front of the dishwasher eager like a little kid waiting to open his Christmas presents. The dishwasher felt really warm, even on the outside. When I opened the dishwasher I saw one of the bottom salmon bags had fallen to the bottom. This is what the bags looked like when I got 'em out:

Then, with hands shaking, I opened the bags. This is the result:

Victory! upon closer inspection it turned out the fish were all perfectly cooked! We put some extra salt on and enjoyed them very much.

Conclusion

The answer is then a wholehearted "Yes: this is possible!". Try this at home!

This is the recipe some friends of mine used. It worked out wonderfully and was certainly the topic of the party. They found the recipe here:
http://www.thesalmons.org/lynn/dishwasher.html

Needs:

salmon fillets
aluminum foil
a lemon
a few butter pats
electric dishwasher

Place the fish on two large sheets of aluminum foil. Squeeze on some lemon juice and place the pats of butter on the salmon fillets. Seal the fillets well in the foil, and place the foil packet in the top wire basket of your electric dishwasher. DO NOT ADD SOAP OR DETERGENT and NO RINSE AID. Close the dishwasher door, set the dishwasher on the hottest wash cycle, complete with drying cycle, and let it run through a full cycle. When the cycle is complete the fish will be cooked just right.


What can make a gluten free sponge light and fluffy? I've tried 5 recipes for gluten free lemon cake and all of them have a tight brick like texture.

What would make a cake fluffy if it is gluten-free? How do I recognize a recipe which produces a good cake?

I have no trouble making lovely light lemon cake gluten free, and many other gluten free cakes too, I make them for a living.  There is a substitute for gluten and it's called Xanthan Gum. You can buy this separately to add to your flour (about a teaspoonful for every 250g), or in a ready mixed flour blend, at least you can in the UK.  A mixture of flours such as rice, potato starch, tapioca and maize/cornstarch works much better than a single flour when substituting for wheat flour. Each flour has its own unique characteristics and brings different properties to the cake. The combination of these, if got right, makes a light, moist and tasty cake, often better than wheat flour ones - this is feedback from my customers who are not coeliac!

There are recipes to be found on the web for making one's own flour blends if needed, but look for a recipe that contains Xanthan Gum and it will not turn out like a brick.  And there's no need to cream the fat with the sugar and whisk the eggs separately etc. I just use an all-in-one everything in the mixer bowl and mix.

Gluten is what traps the air bubbles during baking thus making a cake "fluffy". I don't really think there's a substitute...the best way I can think of is to mix some sort of lighter flour (cake flour, tapioca flour) in with the current recipe to decrease the density of the cake.

What sort of flour are you using currently?


How do you season and cook to palates and preferences different than yours? Often times the dishes I am the most disappointed with end up being a hit with my family. It is almost as if our tastes contrast each other.

Given that, how can I cook something that appeases a palate which is not my own, and especially one that appreciates flavors and textures I do not like? A major part of cooking is adjusting things along the way according to a preference, and it is hard when whatever preference you are working with (your own) is not relevant (when cooking for others).

I have (nearly) no sense of taste and smell, and what sense I do have is heavily distorted. As a result, my senses are non-indicative of dish quality. Nearly every meal I cook is shared with at least one person, though, so I've had to adapt.

I iterate over the same recipe over and over varying the spice mixtures and ratios, and ask for comment every time. I write down said comments with the recipe, and then adjust from there. Usually my recipes stop evolving by the time I've written iteration #4-5 (less for newer recipes, as I can now "play" the flavors by ear).

When I'm cooking for people I don't see often, I use my well-rehearsed recipes. I also select foods where the cooking is more of a science, where it's hard to mess up the flavor, or where people take a self-seasoning approach (e.g. baking bread, grilling steak, baking potatoes).

Edit: Here's some simple spice trends from my personal recipes. These have been calibrated almost exclusively on Southern U.S. guests:

Mild Spanish Paprika (Pimentón) is great for grilling and pan-frying pork (along with the usual suspects like salt and pepper).
Add 1/person dried bay leaves (whole ones, not chopped or ground) and 1/person garlic cloves to your rice when cooking it. Remove them after cooking. Do the same for stews, and really anything that cooks in water (other than pasta and potatoes).
Add some granulated garlic (which is basically powdered garlic without the dust issues) to nearly everything. It's quick, mess-free, and I think most people (at least near me) harbor a terrible addiction for garlic. Use actual garlic when doing stews, sauces, or you just have the extra time to peel it.
Substitute bacon fat for butter when cooking things other than bread and pork. Only thing people are more addicted to than garlic would be bacon. Use both garlic and bacon fat when making mashed potatoes, watch them cry happy tears while they ask for additional helpings.
Instead of plain vegetable/frying oil, get a bottle of non-virgin olive oil and a bottle of peanut oil. After cooking with them a few times you'll get a feel for which is right for each dish (rule of thumb: higher temperatures means peanut).
I have yet to find a dish that wasn't improved by sprinkling some parsley on top at the very end. It adds color (specially to anything that doesn't have green otherwise), and everyone either loves it or is neutral to it.

Let's not get too complicated here.  If you want to cook for others, this is about knowing your audience, not your own preferences.  Knowledge of a wide array of ingredients and flavors is necessary for you to do this.  Unless you are cooking for yourself, your own flavor preferences matter little.


Is soy milk in America similar to the type in East Asia? Finding soy milk in the States isn't very difficult - it's generally stocked in supermarkets and used as an alternative to dairy. However, I'm not sure if the flavour of typical American soy milk (even the "unsweetened" variety) is sufficiently similar in taste to the soy milk I've had in East Asia.

As an example - in Hong Kong, if I remember correctly, Vitasoy sells unsweetened soy milk with the ingredients listed as:

  Water, soy beans

Comparatively, the Silk brand that sells non-dairy alternatives lists additional ingredients on their soy milk (even the "original" variety or the "unsweetened" one), such as additional vitamins and sea salt.

Is the soy milk commonly sold in supermarkets in the US (outside of places such as Asian supermarkets) similar in taste to the type found in East Asia? I've heard that there might be some differences, but I don't have enough "experience" with this to judge if those accounts are correct.

East Asian soy milk and American soy milk taste very different, and not just because of added ingredients like sugar and emulsifiers.

Soy beans contain an enzyme called lipoxidase, which breaks down unsaturated fatty acids into shorter chain lipids. For American markets, manufacturers presoak the beans in solvents such as calcium hydroxide in order to destroy this enzyme. After the enzyme is gone, the solvent is deactivated with an acid to form a neutral pH product. In East Asian markets, no one bothers with this added step, and just leave the lipoxidase in there.

Why the difference? Taste, mostly. Remember The shorter chain lipids mentioned before? They taste, well, bean-y. Soy milk manufacturers like Silk found through trial and error that Americans want their soybean milk to taste more like milk, and less like soybean, so this bean taste must be neutralized.

For East Asian people who grew up drinking soybean milk, soybean milk needs to taste like, well, soybean.

Typically most (American) Unsweeteneded Soy Milk probably taste different because it contains very little soy beans and have other ingredients added where as (Asian) Unsweetened Soy Milk bought from the Asian supermarkets simply have soy beans and water.  It's a thicker, beanier(that is not a word) flavor.  I think it tastes more natural.


Stock Pot vs. Dutch Oven / Sauce Pot I currently have this on order and plan on using it for stocks, broths, and boiling grains/vegetables.

My question is: what are the advantages of a dutch oven / sauce pot over this when it comes to most other types of cooking? Rather than the advantages of cast-iron vs. stainless steel I'm more interested in the general question of why a stock pot isn't ideal for braising, sauteing, or stew/chili, especially when the one I ordered has a clad bottom and is oven-safe. Does it just come down to the tall, narrow shape and clunky size?

If it really does make sense to also have a dutch oven / sauce pot on hand, would I be wiser to start with stainless steel or enameled cast iron?

The answer is that both can be used just fine for the same purposes, however stock pots tend to have much thinner walls than the bottom and thinner than those found on Dutch ovens. The thinner walls mean that they retain less heat and so are less efficient at cooking on the stove top (e.g. soups), and more likely to burn or stick around the walls if placed in the oven - because of the faster heat transfer on these thin surfaces.

Stainless steel is more prone to sticking for some items too (e.g. eggs, meats), and is relatively difficult to season (it's generally not done to stainless), whereas cast-iron can be seasoned very easily, it's more or less mandatory for this material and essentially makes it more or less non-stick.

Enameled/ceramic-coated cast-iron pots such as the Le-Creuset ones are generally non-stick from the shop and have the same benefits as cast-iron.

Having said that I use an oven-safe stock pot for making things like pasta-bake, where it is in the oven for relatively short periods of time (~40 min - 1h), and don't generally have any problems.

This article by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (from Serious Eats and author of The Food Lab) may be helpful:

I am fortunate to have a Le Creuset Dutch oven that I received as a gift from my wife. In my opinion, it beats anything else out there. I seem to recall reading (America's Test Kitchen?) that the Tramontina brand ranked second to Le Creuset and is considerably less expensive, but have not personally compared them.

Though costly, I use it for a lot of different things (i.e., pot roast; chili; braised short-ribs; etc.) and have no complaints.


Microwave oven first time use — "10 minutes with water"? My Samsung ME731K microwave oven just arrived. There is this instruction (in less than perfect English) and I'm not sure how to interpret it.

  Before using the your oven first time, oven should be operated with the water during 10 minute and then used.

Does it mean I should put a bowl of water inside and let the oven run for 10 minutes?

The directions are in fact asking you to place a bowl of water in the Microwave Oven and run it for 10mins.

The reason is, it allows things to "break-in" and assures that you don't have any direct issues with the device and that all nasty solvents are given proper time to "burn off." This is so you don't end up with nasty plastic smells and flavors in your first meal.

For safety reasons, I would recommend placing a wooden spoon in the bowl. This provides plenty of nucleations sites and will prevent "super-heating" of the water.

Always use microwave appropriate containers, and allow the bowl to come to reasonable (warm to room temp) prior to handling.

New microwave oven Just ask you to boil a cup of water. 4-5mins

I try that for 4:30min and the water is bubbling boil. I guess they ask you to so that for seasoning the nachine so that it run smoothly and cleaner when you use it. maybe to smoothen out the oil or motor, belt, pulley but that just my opinions


Why do scrambled/fried eggs stick less when cooked with butter instead of oil? Whenever I'm doing scrambled or fried eggs, I use butter and a regular frying pan (aluminium I think) without any special non-stick coating. They never stick to the pan, it's as if they're floating on top of the butter within the pan.

My wife usually uses oil, and whatever she does, the eggs always stick in the pan, and it's a pain to get them out, and fried eggs usually become a broken mess.

So, why would cooking eggs with oil make them stick to the pan, and doing it with butter wouldn't?

Technique is the key here. If she is using oil expect she is adding the eggs before the oil is hot, she is probably also rushing her attempt to turn/flip/scramble/move them. One of the hardest things to learn when frying eggs is to walk away immediately after adding the eggs to the hot pan.
I notice you are in Germany, I don't know what your access to the USA's "Food Network" is but this episode of a Alton Brown's "Good Eats" can show your wife "eggsellent" technique.
(pardon the pun, couldn't resist...)
New Links:
Good Eats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx8up7UJv2s
Alton Brown on CBS Morning Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD3QeyK4bJY

I think it has to do with the density of the egg, the oil and butter. Eggs have a density of around 1.03 g/cc, butter is around .96 g/cc and oil is around .91 g/cc. as you heat the butter or the oil the density drops even more and as butter contains water which has a density of 1 it is very close to the egg and should stratify with the solids at the bottom then the water and finally the fat. When the egg is dropped into the butter it sinks more slowly given the egg time to flash cook and make a layer less likely to stick. The oil lets the egg drop straight to the bottom much faster and the egg pushes the oil out of the way making contact with the pan and it sticks.


White chocolate ganache won't set The other day I attempted to make a white chocolate ganache, and while the flavor is perfect, it utterly refused to set. Instead what I ended up with was a sticky, somewhat runny blob. It never hit that really nice fudgy stage where I could take it out of the spring form and not have it run all over the place. Granted it wasn't horribly runny, but still enough not to be presentable.

I'm used to dark chocolate ganaches which will firm up into something not unlike a fudge, which is perfect for making tarts.

The basic recipe was this:

1 cup heavy cream, held at a low simmer for around 5 minutes with spices
Strain cream over 12 ounces of nestle white chocolate chips
Stir on low heat until fully melted and slightly reduced

Any ideas would be really helpful, I have high hopes for this recipe once I can get the ganache to set correctly.

White chocolate does not have starch, so it does not thicken the ganache, unlike dark chocolate.

The proper proportion for white chocolate ganache is 45 to 60 ml of cream to 12 ounces of chocolate. You used 240 ml, which made it too runny. Use less cream and you will get a good consistency.

I'm having rather the same problem and someone mentioned using starch but I wonder if powdered sugar might not have a similar thickening effect?


Eggnog to Spirit ratio? I know, I know, I should be making my own eggnog, but when I'm in a pinch and I don't have the time to make my own eggnog, I have to rely on the store bought stuff.

With that being said, can anyone tell me a standard ratio of eggnog to brandy/rum?

There is no standard, it all depends on how happy you want to get, and whether you just want the flavor of the booze, or the actual effect of the alcohol. Also a factor is the kind of alcohol you want to add. Light rums, for example, have less flavor than dark rums, so you'd want to use dark rum if you want booze flavor over alcohol.

As an estimate if you are going for flavor an ounce or two per liter (or quart, they're close enough for jazz) will do the trick, or up to 6 or 8 if you want very happy people.

Don't forget to grate a bit of fresh nutmeg on top before serving!

I bought some really good eggnog today and mixed it with a ratio of one third cup brandy to two thirds cup eggnog. No one got crazy and it was delicious.


Why doesn't a microwave heat the air around food, in addition to the food itself? I'm reading Harold McGee's "On Food And Cooking", and in the "Microwave Cooking" section he writes:

Since the air in the oven is not heated, microwave ovens can’t brown meat surfaces unless they’re assisted by special packaging or a broiling element. (An exception to this rule is cured meats like bacon, which get so dry when cooked that they can brown.)

My question is: if the radio waves generated by a microwave are passing through air in order to reach the food that is cooked, and since air is made of molecules just like food is, why don't the radio waves affect the air molecules the way they do the food molecules?

With all electromagnetic radiation, including visible light and microwaves, absorption depends on the molecules doing the absorption.  Air is mainly oxygen and nitrogen, and these don't absorb very well at the 2.4GHz frequency used in microwaves, while foods do.  A lot of this is down to the very efficient absorption by water, and almost all foodstuffs contain a fair amount of water.
Note that the air does warm up with heat from the food.  For short cooking times this isn't a big effect, but for things that cook longer it's significant

Buy an oven which combines a grill and microwave or even a full oven and microwave.
But remember that when you use the grill or oven settings you need containers that can take the heat while if you use the microwave settings you need containers that do not have metal.
So if you combine microwave and traditional over heat, you need a container that neither has metal nor will melt.
Or first use one setting, than move your meat to an other container and use the other setting.
In the microwave setting, the air will warm up a bit, as does the container, but not enough to brown the meat. That is how microwave ovens work, they heat the 'water' in the food, so will easily get it to boiling heat, but they do not heat the outside of the food.


Is it safe to put hot food in the fridge? I heard that putting really warm food in the fridge right after cooking it is not the right thing to do. It might cause bacterial growth? Is this true?

This is a myth left over from the days of iceboxes. Go to any official food safety resource online, like the USDA or FDA, and you will find that they are all in agreement: it's perfectly safe to put hot food in your refrigerator. In fact, unless you are using some more direct cooling method, like putting your food in an ice bath, waiting to refrigerate your food is often a health hazard.

For example, see

FDA — Despite what some people believe, putting hot food in the refrigerator doesn't harm the appliance.
FDA — A lot of people think it will harm their refrigerator to put hot food inside—it's not true. It won't harm your refrigerator and it will keep your food—and you—safe*. (Page not found)
USDA — Hot food can be placed directly in the refrigerator or it can be rapidly chilled in an ice or cold water bath before refrigerating
Washington State Department of Health — Fact: Hot food can be placed in the refrigerator.
Partnership for Food Safety Education — Fact: Hot foods can be placed directly in the refrigerator. (Page not found)
Alaska Food Safety and Sanitation Program — Myth #10 "I can't put hot food into the refrigerator. The food will spoil if I do." —
The food will spoil if it is not quickly cooled! The leading cause of foodborne illness in the United States is improper cooling, such as leaving cooked foods at room temperature … (Page not found)
Florida Department of Health — Hot food can be placed directly in the refrigerator if you divide large quantities into small, shallow containers. (Page not found)

These are just a few links I found in the first couple pages of a search; there are obviously many more. IMPORTANT NOTE: Particular precautions should be taken for large quantities of food; see below for details. But there are three common objections: (1) it will "overwork" the fridge, (2) it will heat up other food in the fridge to unsafe temperatures and cause it to spoil, and (3) somehow, the uneven cooling of the hot food in the container will cause it to spoil. Let's take these each in turn.

"It will overwork the fridge" — False in most cases

Lots of people worry about putting a quart or two of hot food in their fridge, but they wouldn't think anything of filling their fridges with multiple gallons of room temperature drinks to chill them, even if it might require the same amount of energy to cool.  Anything that is above the temperature of the fridge will require energy to cool.

Now if you plan on putting a very large amount of hot food into a small fridge all at the same time, it might strain the fridge. If you do it once in a while? Probably not an issue in a modern fridge, as long as it's not excessive. If you plan to do that on a regular basis, you should consider using ice baths or other cooling methods to pre-chill the food before putting it in the fridge.

It will cost more energy to cool hot foods in the fridge. If you are looking for the most energy-efficient method, it is probably to use a cold tap water bath, replacing the water a few times to bring down the temperature as fast as possible to room temperature. Then refrigerate.  Chilling with ice water is safer and faster, but it's not the most energy efficient, if that's your concern.

Also, in most cases it probably makes sense to wait until the food actually gets into the "Danger Zone" (below 140°F or so) before refrigerating; there's little safety benefit in putting a boiling pot directly into the fridge. Unless you're monitoring the temperature of your cooling food, though, it still is safest to move it to the fridge as soon as you can.

"It will heat up other food in the fridge to unsafe temperatures and cause it to spoil" — False in almost all cases.

This is the real myth that comes from the icebox theory. In an old icebox, you just had a block of ice, and no air circulation. If you put something hot in there, the ice would melt, the food wouldn't even get cool, and everything else would warm up and spoil.

That just doesn't happen in a modern fridge, as can be found out on reputable food safety websites, such as mentioned above. I've actually tested it myself. I once put a gallon of very hot soup in the fridge just to see what happened. I checked the fridge every 30 minutes or so by measuring surface temperatures of other foods with an infrared thermometer.  My fridge is generally around 35–36°F.  There was one item which was almost touching the metal pot that maybe reached 44°F or 45°F for a short time—above ideal refrigeration temperatures, but hardly enough to cause a lot of spoilage. All other items in the fridge—even many on the same shelf—stayed within a few degrees of the refrigerator temperature, 40°F at the most.

And this wasn't in some fancy fridge: it was actually at least 10 years old and a rather cheap model. The air circulation is enough to keep most other foods cool, unless you're actually touching them to the hot container. The radiative heat coming off the hot container will raise stuff around it by a couple degrees for a couple hours, but in a fridge kept at a proper low temperature, this should not be an issue at all.

If you have a very old fridge that doesn't work properly, or some weird new fridge that is super energy-efficient and doesn't cool properly, you might have an issue. But for anyone with a normal modern fridge, this is not an issue.

EDIT: Another question was posed in response to my comment here, and I documented there a more detailed experiment I carried out by placing a gallon of boiling water directly into my home refrigerator (admittedly a newer model than in the last experiment).  My results, in summary, were that even food items placed within a couple inches on the same shelf of the pot of boiling water were only heated by 3–4° for a few hours.  Other items in the fridge (on other shelves, etc.) barely changed temperature, moving maybe a degree or two at most.  These temperature fluctuations might be a minor concern around highly perishable foods like raw meats, but it is probably common sense to keep raw meat away from hot food and warm food in general.  Other items in a well-functioning modern refrigerator are unlikely to be negatively affected. If you don't believe me, here's another documented similar experiment with a large hot cheesecake put directly into the fridge from the oven.

"The uneven cooling of the hot food in the container will cause it to spoil" — Certainly false, compared to room temperature cooling.

In fact, leaving your container out on the counter at room temperature has a much, much, much higher probability of causing faster spoilage.  With some dishes, it is actually quite irresponsible.  There's a common belief that cooked food is "sterile," and by leaving it out with the lid on, it won't get contaminated.  But there are a lot of microbes that produce spores which can even survive boiling or near-boiling temperatures.  Many of them are kept at bay by competing with other microbes during the initial cooking phase, but after cooking, all that's usually left are nasty spores.

Rice, for example, is commonly infected with Bacillus cereus, which forms spores that aren't destroyed during normal rice cooking.  Leave a rice dish out on the counter for too long, and you'll start growing a lot of that stuff, which can produce persistent toxins that won't be destroyed during reheating.  This sort of thing is actually the cause of a lot of food poisoning from eating things like leftover Chinese food: if the rice was cooked earlier and not held above 140°F, and then was allowed to sit in a take-out container for many hours, it could grow a lot of toxins.  It's often more likely to get food poisoning from the leftover rice than from a lot of other dishes that might seem more "dangerous."

Rice and Bacillus cereus are just one example.  You really want to get food down to refrigerator temperatures as quickly as possible after cooking.  Don't just leave it on the counter.

If you have a large quantity of hot food, break it down into small containers, and then refrigerate. Not all stacked together though; let air circulate around them.  Or put your pot into an ice bath or cold water bath.  Stirring periodically in an ice bath will make it cool even faster.

It's true that in a large pot of chili or something, the temperature of the center of the food will go down much more slowly and potentially could allow bacterial growth compared to outer layers.  That's the reason that large pots of food should be broken down into small containers.  But note that leaving a pot of chili out on the counter will make this bacterial growth even worse than if it is refrigerated immediately.

Even if you don't do any of these things and leave all the hot food in one large pot, it's still a safer strategy to put it directly into the fridge rather than leave it out on the counter at room temperature.

Important Edit: For large quantities of hot food, I am NOT advocating the practice of placing a large container in the refrigerator.  It may take WAY too long for the large pot to cool completely, and the food in the large container may be unsafe to eat.  Either break it down into smaller containers or use an ice bath.  However, it's still unlikely to harm the food in the fridge or the fridge itself unless it's in direct contact with the hot container.  And it's still safer than leaving the food on the counter to cool.

Most people are not treating this issue scientifically, including FDA. A dangerous zone of temperatures is a dangerous zone when the food has been explored to open air. If the food is sealed in an air-tight container when it is cooked in high temperature and remain sealed after cooking, it is a different story. Just like jams in a sealed can.
Most western food were cooked in an open cookware or baked in open air. It needs to be ice bathed or put in a shallow container to be stored in a refrigerator. So it can be cooled down below 41 degree in one or two hours.
But, if it is chicken soup or beef stew, or other boiled oriented food (definitely not the stir-fried food), it cannot be easily transported into shallow containers and cannot be easily cooled down in one or two hours in a home refrigerator. The old grandma way to keep it air-tight and leave the entire pot in room temperature overnight will be a smart practice. During the entire preparation and cool down process keep the cookware air-tight until it can be stored in a home refrigerator and easily cooled down to below 41 degree in 1-2 hours. FDA has failed to mentioned that. Grandmothers and several thousand years of cooking experiences have testified it: to open the cover and put a hot pot of chicken soup into a home refrigerator immediately after cooking is as dangerous as open the cover and leave it on counter top over several hours. Our experiences told us if we have opened the cookware after cooking, and store it into a refrigerator, the chicken soup will be spoiled for sure. Because the bacterials enjoy the environment of the pot in a home refrigerator for many hours in the temperatures within dagerous zone. It could be as long as 8-10 hours, for there is no way to cool it down under 41 degree in a mere 1-2 hours for a hot pot of chicken soup or beef stew in a home refrigerator.
I suggest FDA revisit this issue, experiment it thoroughly, and give a solid scientific amendment to current guidelines.


Is it bad to cook frozen meat without thawing it? I wonder if it is bad to cook frozen meat (chicken, fish, beef,...) without waiting for it to thaw?

Sometimes, I realize I forget to take meat out of my freezer beforehand, when I am too hungry already.

It's really a question of taste.  It's not going to hurt you, but there will be some undesirable effects.  For example, to cook turkey properly, it must come to an internal temp. of 180. If the meat is frozen, it is going to take a lot longer for the internal temperature to rise that high, so the outside of the bird will be somewhat overcooked (compared to roasting a thawed bird). That meat will be much tougher than it would be otherwise.

If your question is querying as to whether it will cause ill health, then no, it will not. My mom does it all the time.  Her roasts are tough, though. I have done this, but only when I am braising the meat, or using a slow cooker, which will cause the meat to be tender either way.

I've just completed my yearly work, health and safety certificate, and under their guidelines it is an absolute NO to cook meat straight from the freezer - meat, poultry and fish must be thawed overnight in the cooler.  I'm not sure what the reason behind this manadate, but I've decided to adopt this practice in my home as well.


How do you freeze fresh pineapple? Can you? I cut the up a fresh pineapple and wanted to freeze a portion, will it last and retain flavor/consistency? Also: is there anything that can be done with the Core - the hard part in the middle?

I usually cut the pineapple into bite size pieces before freezing them.

IF i'm at my mom's restaurant, I usually put it in the super chiller, and then into the freezer.
At home, I usually drain it, for 20 -30 minutes in a sieve and then put them in air tight freezer bags.

I have also heard the core is the most beneficial as it is the part that contains bromelian.
After washing then cutting the leaves & the bottom off, I quarter from top to bottom. I then put through the juicer. My grandkids call them smoothies because they are thick & creamy. No one would guess the skin went right in with it also.


Best way to bottle peri peri sauce? I am looking to bottle my father-in-law's peri peri sauce and sell it at markets. The ingredients consist of fresh and dried herbs, garlic, salt, lemons and oil (sunflower, canola and olive).  This is the method I used with him in the past and make to make sure it's food safe to do so. The batch is brought to a boil and simmered for 5 mins. It's left to cool and then bottled.  The bottles are sterilized in hot boiling water for 5 minutes, left to dry (5-10 minutes) before adding the sauce. The caps (plastic) are also sterilized in hot water. Nothing else is done prior to storing them in the fridge, as they are perishable.

Is this a safe practice?

Sorry to rain on your parade, but unless you use an acid which you forgot to mention, this is a happy breeding ground for botulism bacteria (Clostridium botulinum).

You are creating anaerobic conditions with the oil, which means this specific bacteria are happy to multiply there.

Unfortunately, a simple boil, even for 20 minutes, won't make it safe. It will kill the live bacteria and even destroy the toxins they produced, but it will not kill the spores.

To kill the spores, you need commercial pressure canning with temperatures of 121 C / 250 F.

So you can keep the sauce for a limited time in a refrigerator (3 C or lower), but you must make sure your buyers realize that need, too.

To give you an idea of how poisonous the toxin is: 1kg is said to kill the entire human population, the lethal dose for an adult is about as much as a quarter grain of sand. And contaminated food can not be recognised by sight, smell or taste.

In general this sort of sauce is safe to bottle in sterilised containers and should keep for at least a few weeks,

Here the fat content form the oils, the salt and the acid from the lemons should act as natural preservatives and is no different from jam, chutney or any other traditional preserve.

It is best if you bottle it while still hot as this will minimise any potential bacterial growth before it is sealed and the vacuum created by sealing the contents hot will help to seal it.

This sort of bottling process has been used for centuries and so should be pretty reliable as long as you are careful with general kitchen hygiene and make sure that the sauce is refrigerated once it has been opened.


How to get rid of raw onion smell while doing Gojju when forgotten to fry the onions I forgot to fry the onions before grinding it. Now I have added the ground raw onions with masala to make semi liquid sambar(gojju), how do I get rid of raw smell? Should I keep heating the Bindi gojju?

In my experience, a combination of acid (lemon juice/tomatoes/tamarind paste) and heat(temperature) is used to cut the taste of raw onions. You will need to continue frying the raw onion and masala mixture until it separates from the oil, which is a good indicator of the doneness of the onions as well as the spices.
If you follow this route of cooking the onions after pureeing them, you would also not want to roast the spices before grinding them, and instead fry them all together at this stage.

Adding fried shallots or caramelized onion may help.


Corned Beef - From Scratch I want to make corned beef, completely from scratch. How do I:

Select the cut of beef to corn?
Corn that cut?

I'm well aware of how to prepare corned beef after that process, but I'd like to start from scratch.

Is this possible to do at home with basic equipment? If so, how?

You are about to enter the wonderful world of Charcuterie, the preserving and curing of meats.

The traditional cut of beef to turned into corned beef (or pastrami, which has a similar preparation) is a well-marbled brisket. I'd imagine that a flank steak or other similar long-and-moist cuts would work out too.

The curing process involves soaking the brisket in a brine of pickling spices (for flavor) and  Sodium Nitrite, which will preserve (cure) the meat and provide that wonderful pink color. You'll have to plan ahead, as the process takes about five days. I've used the recipe detailed in this forum post with fantastic results before. I think that it comes from this book, which you might think of picking up if you have future dreams of sausage, pastrami, and other feats of meat.

Well, you need a brisket. Then you need a set of pickling spices. Then you need a safe procedure for corning, which is essentially pickling.

Looks like basic materials are salt and saltpeter, and you can bag it up and stick it in the fridge for three weeks.

I've not done this, I just did a bit of googling for you.


Why is my avocado tough and rubbery? This is the second avocado from the same bag that is tough and rubbery. The pit won't come out without leaving a skin, and it won't peel out of it's skin without cutting the skin off. I made sure it was soft and was at room temperature before I cut it open. How can I de-rubberize them?

It's simply not ripe yet.

Don't buy avocados or any other fruit and vegetable in pre-packed bags, because you cannot tell what state they are in.

Buy from a local grocer whom you can trust, and therefore can get honest answers on the state of the produce.

Avocados are usually sold unripe for shipping reasons. Buy ahead of need, and let them ripen at room temperature (2 to 7 days). They will keep in the fridge if you need them later than that.

To recover a peeled unripe avocado, you can cube it, and then cook it in the microwave in short bursts to soften it. It's only good for salsa or sauce at that point though. One advantage of slightly cooking avocado is that the green colour becomes more intense; I suspect this explains the guacamole colour from many fast food vendors. :-)

If avocados that you buy at the store have been picked too soon by the grower and the avocado has less than eight percent fat it will never ripen. If avocados that you buy at the store do not ripen, return them, because it's not something you did, it's because they were picked incorrectly with less than 8% fat.
According to this video California law states that you cannot pick and sell avocados with less than 8% fat because they will never soften.


How do you protect a pizza peel? I got a pizza peel that feels like it is just plain wood. How can I protect it? I thought I heard somewhere to use some sort of oil.

I don't do anything for my peels.  I only wash them if they get sauce on them, and then only with hot water and a gentle sponging.  Never soak them with water.  If you want to add a bit of water resistance, you could use some cutting board oil (a.k.a. mineral oil) to add some protection.

Wood for culinary uses should be oiled with food grade vegetable oil

The olive oil from you pizza dough should be enough to keep it fine for many years

When not being used, make sure it is stored some where dark, dry, and not too warm. Make sure it is 100% clean and dry before you put it away


Pre-cook liver before frying? If I am making fried liver tempura style should I pre-cook the liver? I think when you make an item like, say, shrimp tempura, the shrimp is cooked beforehand because the tempura frying is not sufficient to fully cook the shrimp. Is the same true of liver?

It's not exactly the same for liver, but there is some reason to roast it before frying:
Some people believe in roasting (grilling) before the cooking/frying in order to make the blood drip out of the liver. Can do on fire or in an oven; doesn't matter.
Personally I prefer to go directly to the pan and just fry so it gets less dry. It is definitely sufficient cooking for the liver.

Unlike a heart which would only include residual blood, other organs, especially digestive and some of the defecating body organs, often need extra steps to prepare (eg: kidneys--try cooking them without at least a presoak). Therefore, I would either cook the liver first, or at least marinate it in a vinegar based marinade.


Why have all of my quality pans started smoking at once? Okay, I have a situation here that is blowing my mind and hopefully someone here can help me. The other night, I attempted to cook a burger on the stove. Smoke was coming up (eventually pouring up) from the sides of the pan, but I initially ignored it because I just figured that was, um, normal. Within minutes, my smoke alarm went off. Once that situation was taken care of, I gave up on the burger, and attempted to bake some homemade granola in my oven. Soon enough, smoke was coming out of my oven. Nothing was ever on fire during either of these situations, just a lot of smoke.

During both occurrences, I was cooking/baking with coconut oil. I usually use coconut oil, but this time I had purchased a new brand I had never tried before. I originally blamed these two mishaps on the "cheap" oil I purchased. Also, another note: I am using Calphalon Contemporary pots and pans from Crate & Barrell and have been for the past year. I am using an electric stove.

Anyway, I have set the coconut oil aside with an intention to exchange it for my regular brand. So the next day, I go to boil some water for my tea. Smoke is pouring up the sides of my small sauce pan! This NEVER happens! I turn on my vent and halfway panic while I quickly call it quits and pour the simmered water over my loose tea. Steam is coming from my teapot which really isn't normal.

Later on, I try to scramble some eggs in a different pan. Same thing happens. Smoke pours up the sides.

At this point, I figure there must be some coconut oil residue covering my stove as it must be impossible for every Calphalon pot/pan to go bad at once. So, I clean and scrub my stove. I clean each pot/pan just to be sure. Now, with a pristine stove, I grabbed my one pot that I have literally used only ONCE in my life...there's no way there can be a problem now, right? I put some brown rice in this hardly used pot, and as the water starts to heat up, sure enough, lots of smoke starts coming up the sides!! HOW can this be?! My mother thinks my pots and pans are garbage and I should return them, but to me, it just seems impossible how every pot is all of a sudden "ruined". Is my stove ruined? What did I DO?!

I have never had a problem with my stove or my pans until I attempted to cook that burger. I am going crazy trying to figure out what all of a sudden happened. Tomorrow I am going to buy a new pan from Target just to test it out. Any insight is greatly appreciated as this is really bothering me! Thanks in advance!

**Edited to add: My oven is electric/glass top and the smoke is coming from the INSIDE of ALL my pans!

It is possible you have some soap or oil film from the washing process that has not been cleared off these pots and pans.  From what I read, all of them have been washed at least once.  I suggest the following steps:

Replace your dish washing sponge with a new one and wash the pans properly by hand and and rinse them thoroughly under running hot water.  If you see any suds anywhere, rinse more (dish soap is carcinogenic).  Don't place them in the dishwasher (at least for now).
If you're going to Target buy a new pan, buy a heavy bottom Stainless Steel one (they are better for cooking anyway).
Pour 1/2 inch of water in a pan or pot.  If you see a film or any funny color on the water surface, wash and rinse again.
Turn the heat to medium and wait for smoke (if any).  Oil smoke is usually thicker, and heavier whereas soap smoke seems (to me at least) lighter and ghosty.

I have calphalon brand stainless steel and my pans do this too. There is metalic/chemical smelling steam or smoke that emits from the pans no matter if low or high heat. Makes food tast a bit odd as well. I think it must be high amounts of nickel in the metal. These pans are garbage. They look high quality. I got them from a yard sale for a dollar each, but not even worth that. Garbage


Smoking pig butt: how to resume? I set out this morning to cook a pig butt. Found out that I was going too a birthday party at such a time that the butt would smoke for six hours and then I would need to pull it.

The shoulder was a seven pound boston butt, bone in, fat trimmed neat, no marinade period, rubbed with "glue" (1/2 cup mustard, 2 tbsp honey) salty rub with marinade injected. I cooked it for 6 hours, flipping every 60-90 minutes, adding chips, mopping and shaking rub on it. Unfortunately (?) the butt never got above 130'F, but it got 6 hours of cooking in. I pulled the meat off, let it cool down a bit, wrapped it in foil, and refrigerated.

So, how should I finish it off? I used plenty of wood chips and I am pretty confident that the flavor is good on it. It seems the two first-glance options are:

Start it up smoking again, and put it over more direct heat this time. This would be helpful in really crisping up the bark on the outside, but quite a bit more hassle than...
Throw it in the oven, maybe wrapped in foil with some orange juice, or coffee and jalapenos, or a little rub of oil. Cook it at ~325'F...

So which technique would yield the best results of just getting it done, but without sacrificing too much in the way of time or flavor? (Aside from using a meat thermometer to ensure it's over 145'F, probably 155-160'F,) How will I be able to tell if it is done or not (if any additional considerations)?

Sadly no mater what you do, you are going to come out with non-optimal results.  I would go with the oven method over the grill as you need to get the meat up, but you want to do it with out losing all the juice/fat you have already taken all the trouble to convert to gelatin.  The grill is going to raise the outside of the meat much quicker that the inside (mostly, you can use your grill as an oven but in this case I don't think it brings anything to the table that you regular oven doesn't).

The best way, and by best, I mean the one with the tastiest results, is going to be put the butt in a 200 to 250 degree oven and let it come up to temp.  This method is going to take the longest but will preserve the meat that come off the grill as close as you could.

Or, you can heat just like a roast and let the outside overcook a bit.

or, depending on how you are serving the finished product, you can slice cold and finish in a skillet to heat though... this would be great if you are doing sandwiches or pulled pork.

If you are feeling adventurous, 130 degrees plus smoke is a little on the rare side but it would still be delicious... not for this one as you let is cool on the counter top and fridged it but on the next one, I might just eat it then.

It has to hit 195ºF (90ºC) to pull apart. That is the way it is, not overcooked. Why would you take it out anyway at 130ºF (54ºC)? Doesn't make any sense.


Broiler Drawer vs Oven Broiler? I'm considering purchasing a new freestanding gas range and would like to hear pros and cons of people's experiences with a broiler drawer under the main oven or having the broiler element inside the top of the oven compartment.

I'm interested in efficiency, ease of use, consistency, safety, versatility, price, etc.

I've only ever used ovens that have a broiler drawer and thought in-oven broilers were reserved for electric or in-wall ovens. One thing I'm really curious about: the broiler burners are the main burners for the oven with broiler drawers. When using an in oven broiler, is the top broiler burner also the main burner for the oven? That would put the flame directly in the oven when baking. Or are there two burners? One underneath for baking and one on top for broiling?

I cannot speak to price; I haven't comparison-shopped with this feature in mind.  However, I have used various home gas ranges with either type of broiler.  I'll go ahead and sum it up:

tl;dr: I greatly prefer an in-oven broiler.

Here's why.

First, positioning.  Broiler drawers are typically located at the very bottom of the range, underneath the actual oven.  This means that in order to place food in or take it out, you've got to bend all the way down to the floor.  I hope the ergonomic challenge here is obvious, but I have safety concerns as well.  If you have never tried to cook 10 pounds of flank steak in a broiler drawer, then learn from my experience: it's less than optimal.  You will wind up bent over at the waist when pulling your finished steaks, end up tilting your pan and spilling meat juice on the way to the top of the range, and just barely manage to kick the drawer closed before your dog licks the exposed cooking tray.  An in-oven broiler presents no additional challenges than you'd have with regular oven use.

Second: flexibility.  Broiler drawers often seem to come equipped with an awkwardly-sized pan that's smaller than the oven itself.  Sometimes this has brackets or rails to hold it in place in the center of the drawer.  This is a stupid design that's difficult to clean, sometimes even difficult to remove, and limits your cooking space.  The pan also rarely has any ability to move up or down, limiting your vertical space too.  With an in-oven broiler, you can adjust the existing racks to get thick items underneath, and control how close your food gets to the heat source (and therefore how quickly it browns).  I frequently kick on the broiler at the end of cooking with things like au gratin potatoes, to get a nice brown crust on top at the very end.  I couldn't fit the pan I use into a broiler drawer, but with the in-oven version I don't even have to open the door.  An in-oven broiler will also accommodate any size pan that will fit in your oven.  Remember those flank steaks?

Regarding design, most gas ranges that I've seen with an in-oven broiler have two separate burners, a main version at the bottom that provides indirect heat to the oven box, and the broiler running along the top with a sort of heat shield to reflect its energy down into the oven.  Drawers often seem designed to take advantage of only a single burner at the bottom of the oven, which provides both indirect heat to the oven box and direct heat to the drawer.  This is mostly my assumption; I'm not an engineer.

This design could make drawers marginally cheaper (again, I haven't checked) but I think the advantages outweigh any price premium for the extra burner.  I'll be so bold as to say that you will be very pleased with the difference if all you've ever used is a drawer.

It is a bit awkward on my GE stove, but I am use to it now. I guess the safety issue of spilling hot pans is a valid complaint though if you are not too good on your balance or don't expect to be able to take the extra care to remove the pan slowly.  Broilers are not meant for thick cuts of meat so you don't need a lot of height in the broiler space.  I think there must be a price differential in some matchups between oven bake/broiler units and oven bake/broiler drawer units when there is an extra heating element.


Countering the oven spring, on purpose In Maggie Gleer's Artisanal Baking, there is a recipe for a focaccia-style rosemary bread (ACME's herb slab).

The dough is fortified with oil, and spends a long time proofing. the recipe then goes out of its way to keep the bread flat. Firstly, the dough is stippled all over twice, and most important of all, five minutes after the bread goes into the oven, it's flipped over.

This basically means that it gets a solid crust on both sides that the force of the oven spring can't break, keeping the bread flat.

I've been wondering about the effect this has on the crumb, since normally, you do everything you can to get as much height as possible. My theory is that providing a counter force to the oven spring, what you're doing is increasing the pressure inside the bread. I'm imagining that this might cause the steam to superheat (or at least reach much higher temperatures). This would then heat the oil in the dough to much higher temperatures than it would reach if we let the bread spring normally. This, I imagine, would have some effect on the crumb that might be nice.

Is this hypothesis reasonable? Is this why you would want to flip the bread? Or is it just for the shape. And if so, could we provide even greater counter-force, keeping the dough almost the same size, and almost deep frying the crumb (and would this be desirable)?

The theory is unlikely.  The interior of dough rarely gets more than a few degrees above boiling, and it usually "stalls" for a significant amount of time in the 210-212F range.  The only way to go above that is to dry the dough out completely, resulting in a cracker-like consistency.

That's the reason why the crust has a different texture, color, etc. than the interior.  The crust is the portion of the bread which actually reaches temperatures significantly higher than boiling.  That allows other types of chemical (and thus flavor) reactions to happen, like the Maillard reaction and caramelization.

Another way to think about this is that 212F is boiling at sea level, and bread dough contains a lot of water, and the large interior "surface area" surrounding each bubble means there is a huge amount of surface area for water to evaporate.  So, if you heat water to 212F, it will evaporate, and it will leave all of those interior bubble surfaces at 212F.  Until the dough dries out enough to slow that moisture production significantly, the interior will maintain a temperature of roughly 212F.

Furthermore, even if you somehow did create pressure inside the dough to raise the temperature inside significantly above boiling, it would exert significant pressure on every surface of the loaf, and it would burst at any location.  Achieving even a few extra degrees of temperature would require significant extra pressure to be continuously exerted on the entire exterior of the loaf.  So, "deep frying the crumb" would be really difficult to achieve, and would you want that?  (Think of a hushpuppy or something that's deep fried dough -- would you really want the interior to be all crustlike and dried out?)

Regarding the flip -- I've never done it, but I assume it must just be for the shape and perhaps the coloring/crust consistency.  Dimpling on focaccia is done for similar reasons: on thin dough, if you have giant holes, it can create areas that might expand and become misshapen or burnt or mess up the consistency.  I've never dimpled to deliberately deflate the dough or decrease oven spring.  I do it to ensure a relatively consistent loaf during baking.

Focaccia can have enough oil on the surface so that it effectively does "fry" a bit, and if you have excess oil in the pan and flip it partway through the bake, you will effectively panfry the crust.  If your pan isn't that oily, I'm guessing it's only about the shape.  (I also don't know why you'd like to limit focaccia's oven spring -- I've gotten the most compliments on mine when I've accidentally let it rise a little too far, resulting in something that was thicker than typical but a truly amazing tender interior.)

But the interior?  You can only get the "fried" texture and flavor by raising the temperature significantly above boiling and getting rid of most of the moisture.  But then you end up with an interior that tastes like a cracker (i.e., all crust).  If you don't get rid of the moisture but raise the pressure, you end up with something that is sticky and bagel-like, not typical desired focaccia characteristics.  (Don't believe me?  Try baking bread in a pressure cooker -- which requires excess steam -- and see what happens.)

Yeast Dies at 140 Degrees f . Any internal temp past that and you are getting 0 oven spring. The dough you speak of is being punched down and spread out in a pan so the internal temp is going to heat past 140 way faster than a loaf of bread. And yes the solid crust that is formed right away due to lack of oven steam is going to counteract any oven spring.

I fought with oven spring for quite a while before i understood it fully.

Read this link i provide about temperatures. And you never want to cook your breads above 210 degrees. 205 is the sweet spot. This is common bread bakers knowledge.

Source http://www.classofoods.com/page2_3.html


What is the difference between ice cream, gelato, and sorbet? What is the difference between ice cream, gelato, and sorbet? They look different, but are they made differently?

First of all, the names vary a bit from country to country, or the ingredients do.
I'll explain the most common names/ingredients.

The main difference is in the ingredients used. Sorbet is basically water + sugar + fruit, while ice cream and gelato is milk/cream + sugar + fruit. So the last two are more 'creamy', while sorbet is more 'icy'.

You can say that ice cream is a type of gelato, but there still is a difference. More sugar in gelato, more butterfat (the percentage of fat in the milk/cream) in ice cream.

You can read quite a lot about ice cream on wikipedia.

Gelato is kind of Italian icecream, which has more sugar & Fat content .


Too much sugar in soup -- how to make it less cloying? I was making this recipe: Cabbage Borscht, which was from the old Lincoln Del, one of my mom's favourite places. I mistakenly doubled the sugar, putting in 1/2 a cup instead of a 1/4 of a cup. Given the 2/3 of a cup ketchup, which was Heinz, the soup turned out way, way too sweet.

Is there any way I can rescue this?

Removing dissolved sugar from a recipe, as in your soup, practically impossible.

You have two main choices:

Reduce the impact of the sweetness.  Increasing acidity (lemon juice or vinegar for example--since ketchup contains vinegar, vinegar or more ketchup may be most compatible with your specific recipe) may mitigate how sweet the soup seems.  This may or may not work--you would have to experiment, and it could make the soup taste worse worse (the risk being you would then still have to discard the soup.)
If you really like the borsht, and can eat (or freeze) it all:  make a second batch with considerable lower sugar, and combine them.  You will now have twice as much soup, but flavor balanced.

Too much salt or too much sugar, strain half the soup and add more broth or tomato sauce and seasonings. You will lose half the nutrients and the flavor of the soup, but the salt and sugar ratio will be right.  I agree lemon juice may help and sour cream definitely.  I used oysters in a soup and I did not realize they were sweet and 2 tablespoon of sugar ruined my soup.


Ground beef at home and food safety Is there any benefits to grinding meat at home regarding safety? From my understanding, the reason a cut of meat can be cooked rare is that the outside ,which may be contaminated, gets cooked fully. Whereas with ground meat, there is no "outside", so it is always recommended to cook to 160. I could pick the cut of meat to grind. Are certain beef cuts (maybe away from internal organs) considered lower risk with regards to E.Coli and other contamination?

I will disagree with the other answer for one simple reason -- the fewer steps taken en masse, the lower the risk.

Now of course, this assumes that you're correctly cleaning your grinder, but because you're only grinding one chunk, or maybe a few chunks of meat, you only have to worry if those chunks of meat had contamination.

For a larger operation, every piece of meat that came before it since the grinder was last thoroughly cleaned could possibly contaminate the ground meat that you've purchased.

This of course assumes that the large cut of meat hasn't already been infected because of the butchering or some other earlier processing step.  (such as if many butchers are then feeding into a single grinder).

Now, is the change in risk enough to worry about?  Probably not, but it exists, however slightly.  If you want to be really paranoid, sear the outside of a roast, then trim them off, then grind what's left.  But of course, if your grinder isn't sterile, you're just shooting yourself in the foot.

They eat chicken sashimi in Japan!
If you search for rare burgers in you will see that the food standards agency in the uk released guide for catering establishments Worthing to serve rate burgers.

The key is sourcing from a farm that specifically supplies meat for raw or rare consumption.
Such as stake tartar or beef carpaccio.

Your gut is absolutely teaming with e.coli so it’s unlikley that you will get sick from common strains. Strains like O157 / shiga like toxin that can cause kidney failure are another matter.
These can be tested for in cattle to help minimise the risk.


Do I need to wash the flax and sesame seeds before grinding them? I have a bag of flax seeds and a bag of sesame seeds from Food to Live at  Amazon. I want to grind them in a coffee grinder, and eat their powder.

For food safety and health consideration and best absorption,

are the seeds ready to eat from the bag?
Do I need to wash them before or after grinding them? If yes, how?
Do I need to cook them before or after grinding them? If yes, how?

Thanks.

Yes, they're all ready to eat.

Washing them is just going to get them wet, and it'll be difficult to impossible (especially for the flax) to get them dry enough to grind to a powder.

People do sometimes soak flax seeds, or mix ground flax seeds with water, in order to get something to use as a vegan egg substitute, but I don't think that's what you're going for.

Seed grinders can be emptied using a small paint brush to brush the seeds out.
Oatmeal can be ground in the grinder to clean it.


Why exactly is thawing via hot water bad? I read all over the internet and labels that you shouldn't thaw with hot water? However, tons of people leave meat to get to room temperature, so how is thawing with hot water bad?

For instance, when I buy some Pork Loin and it's kinda frozen, I run it under hot water for 5 minutes, it defrosts, then I start to cook it. I'm unsure of the danger in that? Yes It may "start" to cook running it under hot water, but I'm about to cook it anyways.

Or is this a case where they mean thawing with hot water and letting it sit there for hours?

Edit: I am using a Slow cooker however, I'm going to put it on high. (The only reason I even thawed it is because it was frozen "stiff" and was too long for the crock pot, once I thawed it could bend in).

But it seems like a Crock Pot for instance would keep things at a "below" cooked temperature for a little bit anyways as well....(at least on low) before it started to cook things. So why don't crock pots make us sick?

Thawing in hot water is unsafe for exactly the same reason that thawing on the counter is unsafe. You'd be very quickly raising the exterior temperature of the food to the danger zone (4-60° C), and allowing it to stay in that range for an extended period of time, in many cases more than the prescribed limit of 2 hours, and actually considerably less than 2 hours at "hot" temperatures.

Hot water or even warm water is arguably much worse than defrosting on the counter, because the exterior will heat up much faster than the interior. This might be OK for something like a 1/2" steak or a single chicken breast (even though it's still contra-indicated by every food agency) if the defrosting time is very short; but if you only have a small portion and want it defrosted quickly, you're far better off using the microwave which will do it just as quickly but much more safety and evenly. And for something like a whole chicken or a leg of lamb, it's almost guaranteed that the interior will still be nearly frozen by the time the exterior is above room temperature.

The reason for using cold water is to keep the entire item either below or at the very edge of the danger zone, where it can be held safely for several hours without much risk of bacterial contamination.

The biggest "problem" with using hot water to thaw meat(s) is that hot water begins the cooking process. If your meat hasn't sufficiently thawed under refridgeration, place it inside a freezer style zipper bag and rest it in a sink of cold water. Flip it after 20-30 minutes to ensure that is is thawed all the way through.

While I will oftentimes toss a frozen steak into a hot cast iron skillet (which helps me acheive a more accurate medium-rare temp), be careful with your slow cooker. Never put frozen foods (i.e.; a solid chunk of meat) into a slow cooker. The slow cooker will not allow the meat to thaw out slowly. What happens is that the cooker heats up, but the food remains frozen - not a good thing when it comes to ceramic liners. They can easily shatter from "thermal shock". You will not have the same problem if you are adding, for example, a package of frozen corn, assuming you break the kernals up and there are other ingredients in the cooker.

The Big Thaw - Safe Defrosting Methods


What good substitutes for saffron exist? I am a big fan of paella, amongst other uses for saffron. However, it can be a very difficult and/or expensive spice to obtain.

What good substitutes exist?

As for flavor, there really isn't a substitute.

Infusing saffron strands in a warm acidic liquid such as white wine will help extract the maximum flavor.

Whole saffron while more expensive than ground is a better use of your money as you know you're getting only saffron.  Ground saffron, while not usually found in stores in the U.S. may be sold by mail order or overseas and is usually less expensive because it's being cut and blended with other spices such as turmeric but won't have the same flavor.

I made a lovely Paella tonight with Laotian sausage, paprika-and-salt dry-rubbed chicken drumsticks, and a 1/2 pound of shrimp (shrimp added to rice mid-simmer). Finely diced garlic, red onion, heirloom cherry tomatoes and a red bell pepper and jumbo carrot was used to make a sofrito in the meat drippings after deglazing with Marsala. I had some tomato and cream soup in the cooler, and used that and some water as liquid for 12oz. of long grain rice (start with 3 cups liquid total, add a little more to further soften the rice if needed). As I did not have any saffron on hand, I used SICHUAN OIL instead (one table spoon). The flavor profile of Sichuan is a hint of lemon zest, and a mouth feel of mild numbness combined with the perception of phantom saltiness which leads to a rounder, meatier flavor, much like Umami.

A few other flavors that are part of my typical bouquet came from some dashes of fish sauce, and leftover soy sauce and capsicum chili oil I had used to marinate raw tuna slices as a snack while cooking. Waste not, want not, and it made things even MORE delicious!

Try the Sichuan oil, available at many Asian stores and online. Dry berries are less effective, and fresh are not available Stateside. You will find yourself adding it to MANY things!


Vegan binder for chinese style dumpling fillings Common recipes for potsticker/wonton-style (thin wrapper) dumplings use egg as a binder for the filling, to make it easier to work with and to displace air. For comparison, if you make a filling with no binder, it will be hard to place without getting bits of it in the way of sealing the dumpling, and there tends to be too much air inside causing oil ingestion if fried, bad heat transfer if steamed, and bloating/water ingestion if boiled.

Legume flours, flaxseed and other binders good in baking have the issue that they need some cooking time to set - typically longer than you can cook a dumpling. Starch-thickened sauces would be a possibility but the result will be likely too much on the gloopy side.

What non-animal ingredient works well to fill this gap without weighing the filling down too much?

You can use any type of starch-paste. For example, flour paste (mix water with flour to form a thin-paste-like consistency) works good and is traditional in many parts of the world. similary, arrowroot paste, rice flour paste also works good.

Another option---boiled rice, the more glutenous the better (basmati, jasmine, any japanese rice). Boil them in extra water than directed, and then smash them with finger----excellent glue paste.

Glucomannan is a possibility. I'm only just learning to use it but I think I remember it thickens by stirring.


What to look for when purchasing a blender? I currently don't have a blender after purchasing my own home and am looking to get one for making smoothies primarily, but also for pureeing for soups, etc.

I had a smoothie maker that I won as a prize; it was very obviously a cheap unit. It barely handled frozen fruit and yogurt. Ice cream and frozen fruit burned up the motor.

I am aware of the extreme "Home Improvement"-style "Binford-3000" Blendtec blenders (also as proposed in this question) but they are extremely expensive and I don't plan on incorporating cell phones or garden rakes into my smoothies.

What should I look for to get a quality blender? I don't want to purchase an inexpensive one three or four times in the next few years. I'd prefer one that will last a long time and prove to be a good kitchen tool.

Edit:

In shopping for blenders, it seems that most seem to be between $30 and $150. Obviously there are some questionably cheap ones and many that exceed that range. So for the purposes of this question, assume that range to be the budget.

Look for a strong motor and thick blades. If the blades are thin, they're likely to warp over time. The motor needs to be able to spin those blades through the liquid.

Look for a thick glass container. The plastic ones are unlikely to deal with the heat of things like soups and sauces being dumped in.

Check the gasket between the glass container and the piece that attaches the blades. A thin, flimsy gasket is likely to start leaking before a thicker, softer gasket.

Look at the number of teeth on the connection from the motor to the blade. The more teeth, the greater the surface area being used to distribute the power to the blade mechanism and is less likely to wear out.

Overall, as with many things, one of the quickest ways to tell a good one is to weigh them both. The heavier item is better. No one pays for shipping extra weight unless it's there for a good reason.

(note that the "heavier" rule doesn't apply to electronics like cellphones/computers, etc. where the cost of making it small is actually higher)

Look for something well-made with a 5 prong blade.


Coconut milk in iced coffee I like using coconut milk in my coffee. However, during summer, I like putting ice in my coffee. Some part of the coconut milk clumps up around the ice. This is organic unsweetened, so only coconut and a gum. Is there any method to prevent the clumps yet have it cold? Store in fridge, freezer, blend, add some additional stabilizing ingredient?

This is a common problem with coconut milk in cooler drinks, most commonly coffee.  Coconut milk is approximately 25% fats (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_milk) which will coagulate in cooler temperatures or exposed to ice.  You're essentially cooling the coconut milk fats with ice past their solidification state which is causing the lumps.

You can try using coconut creamers that are specifically designed for coffee since in my experience they do not clump with iced coffee.  Or, there are other milks like almond that don't have as much fat content to solidify in cooler temperatures.

Another note, a lot of people seem to have this problem with iced coffee and coconut milk on forums and seem to swear by using a blender to blend the chunks away.  Supposedly, this will keep the chunks from returning.

Example of others with the same issue: https://forum.whole30.com/topic/36315-lumpy-coffee-with-coconut-milk/

A pinch of cornstarch will stop the protein from changing shape, leading to the curdled bits near the ice.


My sauerkraut brine seems slightly slimy but the batch otherwise seems normal--is it ok? Recently I started a batch of sauerkraut, the first after several years.  Unlike my previous batches this one is much smaller (half a head of cabbage, as opposed to several full heads), uses Morton's Kosher salt as opposed to sea salt, and fermentation was started in a large bowl as opposed to a crock.

Today I received a new crock, and transferred the batch from the bowl into the crock.  The sauerkraut is about 72 hours old, and seems to be progresssing and expected--however as I transferred the kraut I noticed that the brine appeared slimy as it dripped.  Aside from it's appearance when dripping it seems normal (I tasted a small amount, it smells like it should, and when the brine is standing still it appears normal.  I also ran some of the extra brine through my fingers and it didn't feel slimy).

I'm curious if this is normal--perhaps either because the the kraut is relatively young (at only 3 days), or perhaps because of using "plain" kosher salt which may have additives such as anti-caking agents.  Or perhaps it is perfectly normal and I've just never noticed it before, as I've never transferred a batch between vessels before.

In general, slimy brine is indicative of a fermentation problem. Your brine might be too weak (what concentration did you use?), it may be too warm, your brine might not cover the vegetables, there might be some air bubbles trapped in your ferment.

This article suggests that in the early days of sauerkraut fermentation, the concentration of slime forming bacteria - Leuconostoc - is relatively high and towards the end of fermentation it's too small to measure. It doesn't say anything about slimy brine, but it's possible that the brine is temporarily slimy in the early days of fermentation and as the acidity increases it dissipates. I've never checked a ferment this early, so I can't comment on it.

Personally, I would let it continue to ferment for a week or two and then see whether the perceived sliminess has dissipated or increased. It's possible that it's too early to tell. Slimy vegetables, without a doubt, should be discarded.

References

http://www.culturesforhealth.com/fermented-vegetables-troubleshooting-guide

This is a really tough call since there are so many posts out there that say NEVER eat slimy ferment. Most say nothing more, many say it's due to too little salt. I cannot believe the problem one comment mentioned by leaving the air lock open for merely a few hours was the problem. Air resides within the jar for many hours or days in every ferment, until at least enough CO2 is produced to dilute it or push the O2 through the airlock.

I recently made a 4 lb organic store bought green cabbage ferment, and the slime after one week (with some overflow through the air lock) is incredible. It pours but is nearly like Ghost Busters Slime. It tasted and measured VERY acidic (pH 3.9 or less), it also tasted very salty. The cabbage was kneaded for over five minutes so the salt was clearly spread throughout. Carrot slices were also added, as well as a bay leaf, some black tea and caraway seeds. The ferment was packed tighter than usual, and even more salt was added in the brine used to top it off.

Oh, did I not mention? I added a good 1/3 cup of pour-off from a commercial batch of Bubbies Pickles. Hee hee. Maybe THAT was the problem.

Anywho, I'm still alive, but haven't been feeling well, so I'm throwing the batch out. For me, however, not feeling well may have more to do with eating too much fermented matter, which seems to create a bad reaction no matter what the ferment is. A little more often and less is better for me. Too much may touch off an immune reaction and slight temperature.