I accidentally put aluminum foil in my microwave, how can I clean the scorch marks? I have a microwave/grill combo and I accidentally had aluminum foil inside when starting the microwave function. By the time I realized it was already sparking and left brown scorch marks on the inside.

The inside walls of my microwave look to be stainless steel or some type of metal. I tried scrubbing these with some soap but it didn't do much. Is there any remedy to this situation?

Check your microwave's owner's manual for a cleaning procedure and follow it.

If there isn't one, I'd try the procedure recommended by Samsung which I've summarized below:

Sprinkle baking soda over the interior of the oven and rub the entire thing with a damp cloth. Wipe clean with damp cloths.
Make a 1 : 8 vinegar to water solution by volume (at least 130 mL of this stuff) and microwave until its boiling rapidly. Leave in oven for 15 minutes then wipe down with damp cloths.
Use acetone (in many nail polish removers) on a cloth to remove scorch marks. Wipe clean with damp cloths.
Put some instant coffee powder in some water and microwave it until your microwave doesn't have an acetone smell.

You may have to repeat step 4 a few times; basically, just make something that smells pleasant a few times so the scent of acetone goes away.

100% pure tea tree oil just removed my burn stains with no problem


I had ripe bananas so I peeled them, put them in Rubbermaid cont and in the fridge. Are they still ok to use? They are darkish in color but not black. Still ok for bread?

The fridge is  the best method to store ripe bananas, and should be fine for 5 to 7 days. Refrigeration will make the skin of the banana black, but the flesh will remain unharmed.


Does brown rice or white rice expand more when cooked? Which expands more when cooked: brown rice or white rice?

I'd say the answer will depend a lot on the exact type of rice, as well as cooking method, and how much you might "fluff" it afterward.  I've seen internet sources that claim brown rice expands more, and other internet sources that say white rice expands more.

For a more precise measurement, I went to the USDA food composition database.  There you can find measurements of nutrients by volume for cooked and raw rice.  Although volume measurements are difficult for things like cooked rice, I figure if there's any resource that attempted consistency in measurement, it's probably something like this.

Anyhow, what I did was compare the calories listed for 1 cup raw vs. 1 cup cooked rice in various instances from the USDA nutrient list.  I assume there aren't a lot of calories randomly lost during cooking (or at least any minimal loss is at similar rates).  Note that the standard USDA preparation seems to be to cook until all water is absorbed (for example, in data sheet here), rather than methods like boiling in excess water and draining, which could result in more nutrient loss.

So, by comparing the calories per cup in raw vs. cooked, we can get a sense of the relative expansion of each variety of rice.  Here's the data for calories per 1 cup portions, along with my calculated expansion ratio.

Brown rice

Long-grain: raw 679, cooked 248 = ratio 2.74
Medium-grain: raw 688, cooked 218 = ratio 3.16

White rice

Long-grain: raw 675, cooked 205 = ratio 3.29
Medium-grain: raw 702, cooked 242 = ratio 2.90
Short-grain: raw 716, cooked 266 = ratio 2.69
Glutinous: raw 684, cooked 169 = ratio 4.05

Bottom line is that the shape and type of rice grain seems to matter just as much as whether it's brown vs. white.  Again, there are bound to be inaccuracies here, so I'd only take these figures as estimates.  But there doesn't seem to be a significant trend that brown rice always expands more or less than white.

My instinctive answer is that brown rice expands more than white.  Because my family made rice a lot while I was growing up, and I'm really sure I remember that brown rice is made with a lot more water per cup than white (half to a full cup more water per cup of rice), and the grains after cooking are plumper and fluffier - that is, there's more volume in cooked brown rice, and the grains look more similar before cooking than after so it isn't just a question of different starting points.

So I would guess there's extra water being absorbed by each grain, even if some extra is also being lost to evaporation, and more water being absorbed by the rice means more volume where the extra water is, in brown rice rather than white.


Non-beet alternatives to standard red food dye I'd like to make a red colored cake for my red-head daughter's first birthday, and I would like a non-beet alternative way to dye it red. I've made red velvet cake before and the bug-based food coloring I used tasted and smelled awful. Plus I hear it can cause allergic reactions in young children.

I like beets, but I don't want a beet flavored cake so that alternative is out. Are there any other alternatives for a UK based amateur baker?

Red Velvet cake originally was a reddish brown from the natural processed cocoa (not Dutched) reacting with the baking soda.  You can still make red velvet cake this way, but it will not have the glowing hue that dyes create.

You have to be sure not to use Dutch-processed cocoa powder as this has been pH neutralized and it is the acidity of natural cocoa powder that helps it retain its red color (which is caused by anthocyanins in the cocoa).  Using buttermilk as the liquid in the recipe will help keep the environment acidic enough to be hospitable for the red coloring.

Hershey's and Nestle both sell natural cocoa powder.

Order plant-based, non-petroleum liquid colors online from Chocolate Craft, Seelect, India Tree, or Maggie's Naturals.


What type of yogurt is most similar to the yogurt used in authentic Middle-Eastern cuisine? While looking at different recipes to make "yogurt sauce" commonly found in Middle Eastern cuisine, I noticed a descrepancy between the type of yogurt the recipe calls for. Some recipe calls for plain low fat yogurt, others calls for plain Greek yogurt, and then in this recipe, it calls for strained plain yogurt: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/tzatziki-sauce-yogurt-and-cucumber-dip/.

What type of yogurt should be used to make the most authentic yogurt sauce? Is there a specific type of yogurt or specific brand that most closely resemble the yogurt used in the Middle East?

Greek yogurt is simply strained yogurt. It was only fairly recently that Greek yogurt was widely available in the United States, so prior to wide availability, a simple substitute was to strain normal yogurt.

The type of sauce you are trying to make would definitely use a strained yogurt. Whether you wanted to strain your own or buy strained yogurt (aka Greek yogurt) is really up to you. In Greece, sheep's milk was traditionally used for yogurt, but now there's a lot more cow's milk too, so either would be authentic. I would think that full fat would be the most authentic, but not the healthiest, as I doubt low fat varieties were used traditionally (if they even existed).

The American use of the term Greek yogurt is really just one of branding. Many other areas in the middle east use the same style of strained yogurt. The Greeks also have plenty of normal (unstrained) yogurt.

Greek or greek style is the best, if you can't find that look at plain natural yoghurt.


Unambiguously referring to "spiciness" Anyone who likes (or hates) spicy food has been in the situation: You're at a restaurant, your mother-in-law is preparing dinner, or you're preparing dinner for your best friend, and the question comes up:

  How spicy do you want it?

But how can one answer (or ask) this question unambiguously?

I'm aware of the Scoville scale, but that applies to a specific (dry) ingredient in a recipe, and not the finished dish (which will typically dilute even the spiciest of peppers).

Restaurants often rank dishes from 1-5 "stars", "peppers", or other units of spiciness, but even this rating system varies greatly by country, region, or even the specific restaurant. What is "5 star spicy" in the Netherlands, might be "2 star spicy" in the midwest USA, for instance.

Is there any unambiguous way to discuss the spiciness of a dish?

I don't mind if I need to take 5 minutes to explain this method to my mother next time I cook for her, or to the waitress next time I order a Phad Thai. The key is that it must be (mostly) unambiguous in communicating one's preferred level of spice/hotness in a dish.

Does such a thing exist?

As an analogy, one might describe a beverage's or dessert's sweetness in relation to a commonly-known item, such as table sugar, honey, or even a Coca-Cola.  "I want a sweetened iced tea, but only half as sweet as a Coke."  While not precise, this is (basically) an unambiguous request. A similar, common point of reference to use when discussing spiciness would satisfy me.

Spiciness is a taste perception, and as such, it is simply subjective. There is no way to create an objective scale for rating it.

I read your comment about "objective spiciness", but it is not something that can exist. It is based on the erroneous assumption that the spiciness you perceive is a 1:1 measurement of some quality of the food. This is not true. Even foods with the same amount of capsaicin will taste differently spicy to the same person, or the same food can taste differently spicy to the same person in two separate meals. So no, all scales will be subjective, with all the usual consequences of subjective rating scales.

While 'hotness' is somewhat subjective, most people who cook with spices understand the concept of adjusting the heat level according to the palate of others. Simply saying "mild", medium, spicy, or slap your mama my face is on fire! The other thing to do is to just take the ride and eat it the way it is prepared. One proven way to cool the heat is with dairy try so have some milk on hand if you know you're going to be eating spicy food.


Jar lids popping several times I've canned my whole life (54 years old), I started when I was young helping my Mom, and I've never run into this before.

I've never canned just plain pork stock before, but wanted to try. I had 4 pints and put it in the pressure cooker at 10lbs for 25 minutes. The book called for 11 lbs for 20 minutes.

When I took them out they started popping right away...but they kept popping several times.
In and out of seal. Now they have settled on sealed "popped down".

Has anyone else ever had this happen, do they know what the issue was and they should be ok, shouldn't they, as long as they are sealed?

It sounds to me like the seal on the lids may be very slightly compromised. For example:

lids start down with a good seal
pressure can't escape and starts building up like usual
imperfection in lid seal gives way a vents out pressure/heat, lid pops up
jar/contents starts to cool, constricting, again like usual - this is what seals the jars in a normal procdure
Lather, rinse, repeat

Edit

A thought occurs: it's equally as likely, if not more so, that the opposite of what I described above is happening: i.e., the stock is cooling down and contracting, which creates a negative pressure on the jar, sealing it. However, in a similar fashion to the above, a slight imperfection in the seal holds to a certain level of pressure but gives way past that threshold, allowing the pressure to equalize (which causes the top to pop up).

If they settled in the lid-down position after they completely cooled, they are probably okay (note the probably). What causes a lid to 'pop' after it cools is usually due to bacteria being sealed inside the can and/or compromising that can afterwards. Bacteria starts to eat the food, produces gas which expands and POP goes the lid, and your delicious canned food is no longer safe to eat. So if the lids stay down until you open the jar and the stock still smells okay, you're probably safe.

That just happened to me when I was canning chicken stock. It was like a symphony in my canner. I usually count the pops as they are popping. I only had 6 pints of stock and the all popped at least 4 times each. I could see the lids popping up and down. I noticed that the other people that replied to this question were also canning stock. It makes me think that canning only liquid may be the culprit. They have all sealed at this time, but I will keep a close watch on them for a few days.


How do you raise your dough in cold seasons? It is winter down here in Australia and I find it challenging to find a warm spot to raise my bread dough. What I have been doing is placing the dough in the oven (not switched on) with a pot of hot water, replacing it once or twice. The oven becomes a warm and moist environment for the yeast to do its magic.

What other alternative spots are there to raise the dough in cold seasons?

A non-exhaustive list of ways to get your bread to rise when it's cold includes:

Just let it rise slowly over a long period of time, which does give you good flavour but requires serious patience
Put it in the airing cupboard, assuming Australian houses have such things, but in the winter the hot water tank will keep it nice and warm
If it's still in the rising in the bowl phase rather than having been shaped, you can carefully put the bowl in a larger bowl of warm water (not too hot though or it'll go a bit mad)
Sometimes I can get away with putting the pan with the shaped bread ready for the oven over a large bowl or bucket of hot water
Put it in the oven with the pilot light on if your oven has a pilot light
Put it in the top oven with the door open while you're cooking something else in the bottom oven, if you have two ovens (careful though, this can get too hot depending on your oven)
Encourage the cat to sleep on it

How about  a  blow dryer? It has air and heat. I haven't tried it yet, but it probably works.


Factory canned grape juice Is grape juice ok to drink in an unopened can with the expiration date 5 years ago. It has also been refrigerated though unopened.

As long as the can is undamaged, and in good condition, it is safe.  Expiration dates are typically used to define a period of time when the product is of the best quality, rather than to define safety.  Since this was very likely a pasteurized product, it most certainly did not turn into wine or vinegar. It might not taste great, but if the can remained sealed it will not be unsafe either.

5 years is a long, long time.

At best it turned into wine (lol), at worse into vinegar!

I would discard it.


Non-sweet sugar replacement for French macaron I've been working pretty hard on my macaron game lately and have wanted to make a savory biscuit/shell, however I can't think of what I may be able to replace powdered and granulated sugar with, or if something of the sort even exists.

I imagine that the sugar helps with the texture and structure of the shell as much as it is for the sweetness, but I'm not aware of anything that would fit that bill. Is there anything in existence that I could use a savory replacement for powdered- and granulated sugar in my macaron shells?

While I haven't found a substitute for powdered sugar, there are powdered vegetables and other flavors that one can use to cut the sweetness and add flavor. Salt is also an important part, as well as having savory fillings and garnishes.

Another thing that may help is using the French method rather than the Italian, since the Italian method uses more sugar for the syrup that's needed

try replacing half of the flour with rice flour. I don't think you will be able to get away with a full replacement as the sugar helps with the structure of the cookie, not just sweetness.


Do you have to wash frozen vegetables? Do frozen vegetables have pesticides on them? Are you supposed to wash frozen vegetables before you cook them and eat them?

Unless you freeze them yourself and don't wash them first, no, you should not need to wash commercially processed frozen vegetables. Part of the process for freezing includes cleaning/trimming preparing the vegetables. Washing is unnecessary.
Info here:

The actual process of freezing a food item varies somewhat depending on what is to be frozen. Peas are the most common frozen vegetable, having virtually replaced fresh peas in the American supermarket. The pea process is typical for many vegetables. A typical process for a frozen entrée follows.
Picking and washing

2 The peas may be picked by hand or automatically. Then, a machine called a viner removes them from their shells. If the processing plant is adjacent to the fields, the peas are carted there. If truck transport is necessary, they are cooled with ice water and then packed in ice for transport. At the plant, the peas are dumped into beds and sprayed with water to remove dust and dirt.

Frozen produce is not washed. It has dirt, filth from pickers, potentially mold, and pesticides covering it. It is NOT washed on the farm. I work on a farm freezing veggies and berries. We do NOT wash them. Furthermore, as far as berries are concerned, the worst of the bunch gets frozen, while the best berries are packed fresh.


Is my pork Safe to eat after 3 hours sitting out?? So I put some pulled pork in the crock pot on low for about 5 hours when my boyfriend turned it off without me knowing.. Recipie said 7 hours total on low. So after about 3 hours of it being off we turned it on warm and left it on overnight.. In the morning I turned it back up to low and it cooked for about another 5 hours (I was told you can't really overcook pulled pork, just gets more tender) and I am wondering if it is safe to eat??

Short answer:  "warm" is not guaranteed to be a temperature where pathogens will not grow--it is just intended to keep food warm for a short period of time as you eat dinner or similar.   It may even be creating conditions that will incubate any pathogens present and help them to grow.

Additionally, you had this food in a completely uncontrolled temperature environment for at least three hours.

You should discard this pork.

See also:  How long can cooked food be safely stored at room/warm temperature?

Any meat that is not completely cooked has a risk of bacteria growing inside it.  Smell is the key to telling if it went bad. Also, you would look in the pot and see if there were any bubbles along side the meat.  If not and the broth was clear your probably in good shape.  Generally three hours is not enough time for the bacteria to  damage the quality of the meat.  If it was sitting in a crock pot for 5 hours it was probably cooked period.  That also depends on the size of the pot and how much you had in there.
Thing to remember.  Even if bacteria had started growing in the meat and you recooked the meat to reach the 172F in the center.  All of the growing bacteria would be killed and the meat would not be a risk to eat. It might not taste the same but it would not hurt you.  All meats have bacteria growing in them from the time they are processed.  Cooking the bacteria is what makes the meat safe to eat.
I have been a chef for 27 years without an incident.  Michael


Why do American supermarkets only carry lamb and not mutton? When I go to the supermarket I do not see much, if any, mutton, just a lot of lamb.

So, I have postulated some possible explanations:

mutton (the meat of a sheep) is being sold as "lamb",
mutton tastes weird to Americans so all of it is exported,
mutton tastes weird to Americans so it is turned into dog food,
all adult sheep are only used for wool and are then retired and put out to pasture where they live out their retirement years playing pinochle and shuffleboard.

What's the explanation, why is there is so little mutton and so much lamb meat?

It's not just American supermarkets that rarely carry mutton, this situation is similar across the Anglosphere, and I suspect most Western countries too (or at least those without a strong mutton culture). The reason is largely economic. Mutton is expensive and not as tasty as lamb.

First, the immediate reason is that nobody really eats mutton anymore. Yes, there are certain locales, cultures and movements still eating mutton or are trying to bring it back, but today, on aggregate, the demand for mutton is near zero. According to the USDA:

  The U.S. market for lamb and mutton has weakened throughout the decades. Since the 1960s, per capita consumption has dropped from nearly 5 pounds to just about 1 pound. This drop is due in part to declining acceptance of lamb from a growing segment of the population, as well as competition from other meats, such as poultry, pork, and beef. Most meat is sold as lamb and comes from animals under 14 months old.

Here's a per-capita consumption graph:

If nobody buys mutton, supermarkets don't sell them. The supply chain for meats is pretty complex; it's not something that a store manager can just decide one day to order a batch and shelve to see if it sells. Meat needs to be slaughtered and deboned in an abattoir, butchered either in store butcheries or at centres (unless you fancy buying an entire, 50kg cut), and displayed in refrigerated sections. If there's enough local demand for mutton then maybe individual supermarkets can carry them, just as meats like rabbit, duck or kangaroo is sometimes sold at a few supermarkets.
But why don't people eat mutton? People just don't like it. It is an inferior good.

  Mutton comes from older animals and is often less expensive but less desirable to consumers. (USDA)

.

  As can be seen, the average income elasticities across the studies are 0.77 for
  beef, 0.24 for lamb, -0.65 for mutton, 0.47 for chicken and 0.48 for pork.

(Negative income inelasticity = inferior good) That is, as incomes grow, as they have over this timeframe, people want to buy less of it.
Lamb is a superior substitute for mutton. Anecdotally, compared to lamb, mutton is gamier, tougher, and harder to cook. Economically, lamb and mutton have high cross-price elasticity - if one's price grows, demand shifts to the other, indicating that they are substitutes. And the real killer is...
Mutton prices have grown faster than lamb.

Mutton is still cheaper than lamb, but in relative terms it has become more economic to raise and sell lamb. There are multiple market forces at play: the cost of raising the sheep past lamb age, the efficiency of raising lambs (i.e. increased lamb weight), the growth of dairy leading to higher beef supply, the relative decline in wool reducing mutton supply and so on. You'll have to ask a farmer.

Source: Changing Pattern of Meat Consumption in Australia by Lucille Wong, E A Selvanathan and Saroja Selvanathan

Update: didn't notice that the graph was price indices and not actual prices

Mutton is the meat from GOAT and lamb is the meat from sheep. Lamb or sheep meat tends to be softer and easier to cook than mutton, which usually requires a pressure cooker to cook properly. Mutton is chewy meat and not so soft as lamb. Mutton is popular in India and the UK ( adopted from India) and usually served as curries. New zealand and Australia produce most of the lamb in the world but mutton is available almost everywhere. Just need to look for Goat meat!


Why tie a non-stuffed beef pot roast? Recipes for beef pot roasts often include the step of tying the roast with twine prior to cooking, even for roasts without stuffing.  Why?  What difference in outcome can I expect between a tied roast and an untied roast, all other things equal?

@aaronut is right that trussing will maintain the more cylindrical shape you want. However, I feel like he's a little misleading about surface area.

A cylindrical roast actually has LESS surface area relative to the mass of the roast than a flat one. A plate will have more surface area than a ceramic cylinder of the same mass. As a consequence, the cylindrical roast means that less of the meat's mass is exposed directly to heat than for a flat one.

A flat roast will cook faster in the same heat because the middle of the roast (where you're trying to hit a target temp) is closer to the outside (where the heat is). At what would be considered standard roasting temps, this means that your middle will be up to temperature before much nice crusty stuff is formed. The whole roast will be more uniform in temperature.

With a cylindrical roast, on the other hand, the outside will be cooked much longer (and get crustier) before the relatively well-protected center is up to the heat you want.  The roast will also have greater thermal mass, which means it will hold heat longer after coming out of the oven.

So is this good? It depends. Most people really like the great flavor that's imparted when the meat gets a nice, browned crust. To get that, you either need a lot of heat, or long exposure to heat.

If you are working with high heat, you're better off with a flatter roast so the outside isn't burned before the middle is ready. This works well with leaner cuts that would get tough or dry if cooked a long time, or where you want relatively more crust than middle. Steaks are nice with a lot of crust, for example.

If you are working with lower heat (which is much more forgiving, as the slower cooking means you don't have to be quite so exact getting the meat out of the heat), you want the more cylindrical roast. The low heat is going to take a while to get a crust on the outside, and the cylindrical shape extends the overall roasting time, giving plenty of time for the crust to form. This method works nicely for meats that benefit from longer slower cooking, and where you want the proportion of crust to middle to be low. A roast, where the nice pink inner part is the real draw, is ideal in this situation.

If you dont truss up it up into a nice round shape the thinner parts will be overdone by the time the thicker part is done.


Mold on salami, is it safe? I took a salami and removed the outer plastic packaging and hung it in my refrigerator to dry. After about a week it got white mold on it. Is this normal/safe? I know that real/fancy salami has molds rubbed on. This salami does not contain any bacteria or fungus (at least it’s not supposed to) ingredients are beef, water, salt, flavorings, sugar, potato starch, sodium phosphate, ascorbic acid, sodium nitrite

It's one thing to buy salami which comes with its own built-in mold, but to let one develop some possibly different mold spontaneously in the fridge?  If nothing else the fridge would not provide the ventilation which I understand is an essential part of the process (that's why you hang them and don't pile them up on a shelf).

Worse, I see a seam on the casing, which implies that it's a plastic casing and not a natural one.  I would not eat something which grew on plastic..

I have seen dozens of different size/shape sausages hanging in a gourmet deli at room temperature , all were mostly white with mold. However, I can't say I ate any.


What are some good substitutes for salt for those on low sodium diets? I try to keep my sodium intake fairly low to ensure that my blood pressure doesn't get too high.

Salt is such a common part of cooking, and it's especially difficult to cook Asian-style food without a lot of salt due to its reliance on salty sauces such as soy sauce, oyster sauce, etc.

I have tried salt substitutes such as potassium chloride but that can be particularly nasty on the palate, giving the food a chemical taste.

What are some good substitutes for salt in food?

There is no substitute for salt. Sorry. It has effects on the tastebuds and the body that cannot be replicated.

However! They can be approached to a degree that most people will find interchangeable. Acids can mimic the flavour-enhancing qualities of salt in a big way. The more acid you have in a dish, the less salt you will need. Beware of going too far, of course, as too much acid is just unpleasant and will need salt to counterbalance.

Heat--as in capsaicin, chili peppers--can produce much the same effect.

Echoing papin's information above; NA and K (sodium and potassium) exist in balance in the body. Too far in one direction and you have a heart attack (too much K), too much in the other and (if memory serves; I could be wrong) you essentially drown (or is it edema? I can't remember). If avoiding sodium is related to a health concern, please speak to your primary healthcare provider before adjusting your diet in this way.

We can also use curd and lemon to substitute salt nothing to do just add lemon juice to curd. All done when you're eating food, eat this lemon curd with our food  don't put salt in your food if make it without salt and will eat this lemon curd with your food in the place of salt you will not feel that in your food there is no salt.


How can I make my banana bread more moist? I've followed lots of standard recipes online, and the result is always more cake like: dark on the outside white and dryish in the middle.

When I go to the store and buy it it's always dark and moist in the middle.

What is the secret ingredient?!

Update: A lot better! Suggestions below helped a ton. But the perfect banana bread still eludes me.. Here's somes pointers I picked up:

Freezing bananas helps. It allows you to mix them in easier and gives it a more consistent texture. More bananas is better (try 4 small ones, or 3 big ones).
Try adding Sour Cream (instead of yoghurt). Maybe 1/4 cup for 1 loaf. I had much positive feedback after this experiment!
Molasses helps the color (be darker), but the flavour becomes a little too strong and maybe even bitter. Overall I don't recommend it.

Turn the oven down by about 25-50F. Quite often, ovens just blast the heck out of baked good, especially smaller apartment ovens. Larger, more expensive ovens tend to be better calibrated and will produce the proper 350F temperature usually required for banana bread. A cheap oven, which is still fine for banana bread, will overshoot the temperature and kill your banana bread. Turn the oven down a bit, and if necessary cook for longer. I have even turned my oven cooler AND cooked it for 15 minutes less time than the recipe required.
Check at 2/3 time. Don't let the bread run through the entire cooking time before checking it. Always check early. For some recipes, I take the banana bread out at 2/3 recommended time!
Don't over-beat the mixture. Despite being called banana "bread" it isn't a bread, it is a cake insomuch as it is made from a batter, not a long-kneaded dough. If you start mixing and it seems already too dry - STOP - and add a few tablespoons of milk to loosen the mixture up. If it's too dry in the initial stages, it will certainly be dry later, but a dry mixture also causes you to push harder, thereby causing the gluten to harden.
Don't cut down on butter/fat. This is really what prevents it drying out. Use creme fraiche, more butter, a bit less flour...

I find when I add  apples it makes my breads and  cakes very moist.


Is it normal for hot mustard oil to foam strongly when ingredients are added, and why does it? I noticed that my mustard oil (of indian brands, as bought outside india, from specialty grocers carrying indian ingredients) tends to foam/bloom much more than other strongly heated oils when adding dried spices, gram flour and similar ingredients.

Is this an innate behaviour of this oil or a sign of an adulterated oil? If it is innate, what is the scientific reason behind this behaviour?

This is because all the Indian brands I know use the cold press method. In that process, some moisture is left in the oil that makes foam while heating. It's absolutely normal, and it's good that it has no chemicals. Hope this will help.

Foam is caused because of the chemicals used.
When companies use solvent extraction to extract the last drop of oil from seed, it does leave a trace of chemical which is left behind even after refining to filter out those harmful chemicals.
Also they extract oil through high temperature mechanical extraction process prior to solvent extraction.
This means the final oil that comes out has a shorter shelf life, so companies use preservatives to increase the same.  This also plays a roll in forming those foams.


Baked eggplant is bitter - is there a way to fix it? Do I have to throw away bitter eggplant after I have baked it?  Can something be done or do I have to throw it away?

Some extra salt will help hide the bitterness, but obviously that only goes so far before it's too salty.

As already baked, I don't think so, it is possible to remove the bitterness. But you can make a curry (check some Indian recopies)  with baked eggplant. It may help.

To avoid this problem in future:
Cut the eggplant in a salty water. Then drain it and bake it. Salt water will reduce its bitterness.

[edited based on the comment. Thanks Stephie]


Is "sealing in the flavor" an actual thing? Someone mentioned searing food to "seal in the flavor". My response was that searing was a way to add a delicious crust, and nothing more or less. However, I recently noticed a frozen food mentioning their ground beef product is "flash frozen to seal in flavor".

These are really just buzz words, right? Even if you're talking about juices as opposed to "flavor", you can't seal them in, can you? When the product rests the juice will be redistributed, won't it?

Searing on a grill to "seal in juices" has largely been disproven.  Meat loses juice at roughly the same speed regardless of searing the meat first.  Searing does produce the Maillard reaction and caramelization which enhances flavor; however, searing first doesn't produce better results.  A test performed by Alton Brown in 2008 demonstrated that searing at the end of the cooking process loses less water than searing at the beginning.  For more information see this link.

For the Alton Brown results see this link (video).

True story: I love beef jerky.  The other day when I had a whole topside to play with, I made a batch of biltong on top of the three batches of jerky I had made.  Just for fun (and to see what would happen) I seared two of the fillets and treated the other three with vinegar as usual for biltong.  I then put all 5 into my dehydrater at 35C and waited for three days.  Much to my surprise, while the three vinegared fillets dried out and went firm (as usual), the two I had seared  remained as soft and squishy as when I pulled them off the hot-plate.

So, while it seems I didn't discover a tasty new "Charred Steak Biltong" flavour as I hoped, my little experiment may cast some doubt on the allegedly scientific "debunkings" of the "myth".


If one tomato had molded, is the rest of the pack safe to eat? Yesterday I bought a pack of cherry tomatoes and after arriving home I discovered that one of them had developed some impressive black mold (it was bigger than the tomato itself!). Of course, I tossed the offending tomato and the packaging, washed the remaining tomatoes and put them in a clean box. Now I'm hesitating though; are they safe to eat?

Yes - the mold is an indication that the spores have entered that tomato, but do not indicate any problems with others. Mold usually enters fruits like tomato through the stem site or damage to the skin. The bits you see outside the fruit are actually the fruiting bodies of the fungus (equivalent of the bit you eat on a mushroom - the rest is below the soil). These fruiting bodies produce tons of spores. You should use the others fairly quickly before any released spores have a chance to potentially start growing in them.
Edited to add:
The general advice would be to discard any fruit that are attached to the main one by the fungal body, wash the others well to remove any potential spores off them, dry well (wetness promotes fungal growth) and use within a short time frame.
The USDA has some good advice here (PDF) - with thanks to SnakeDoc for finding this one.

Were they packed in plastic? Plastic casings or bags can prevent them from drying out, but most plastic bags are also very damp, which encourages mold growth.
If they had any kind of skin damage, well, many molds like to grow on dead or dying plants and could have been started before they even appeared.
I am very picky about products and will not buy those that show any signs of damage if I can help. Anything that has a bruise or cut, I eat first, just in case, and I can cut off the damaged piece.


Why do people say that cooking in a cast-iron pan will build the seasoning, while also saying that you should never cook to the smoking point? A very common claim is that once you start cooking with a cast-iron pan, you never really need to season it again. As you cook, the seasoning just builds up. However, the way I understand it, seasoning only happens when you heat the oil so much that it starts to smoke. However, smoking oil has many carcinogens, and you're not supposed to eat it. So how does the seasoning build up if you never heat the pan enough (while cooking) for the seasoning process?

Yes, the two pieces of advice are contradictory. You have to choose which one you prefer to follow. If you decide to only use your pan below the smoke temperature of oil, the seasoning will not build up during cooking.
In typical use, people do heat their pans above the smoking point, and the seasoning does build up. This is how cooking has been done for centuries, with tasty results, while cooking without heating the oil up produces not-very-exciting results for certain foods. People can choose to use low-heat cooking methods and avoid the "smoke point" part too, but that is not what usually happens. There are many factors why more people use the "high heat that seasons" approach:

They have never heard the "smoking point" advice and use their cast iron pans the usual way
They are not aware that they are heating it above the smoke point
They know the "smoking point" advice and choose to disregard it and cook the usual way
They would like to follow the "smoking point" advice but it is physically very difficult  to do it with a cast iron pan
(Kinda combination of the last two) They are aware of the difficulties of remaining below the smoking point in a cast iron pan, and choose to use a different pan when they want to stay below the smoking point.

Because of the last one, I would suggest that, if you prefer to follow the "smoking point" advice, you switch to a different type of cookware.

Several strands to this question...

Carcinogens: I'm not a specialist but basically burnt carbon (charcoal) and free radicals (broken down oil) should be avoided in large quantities. You'll get both if you overheat oil in cast iron and then burn the protein you're cooking. Is it dangerous? I would read up more but it's not of my everyday worries...

Seasoning: when I got my first set of cast iron cookware I obsessed about seasoning, burning lots of oil in the process and spending hours trying to get to 'blackness'. It was all a bit of a waste of time: keep cooking in the same pan at normal (high) temperature and minimise washing. If you can wipe clean with a paper towel, that's your preferred approach. If it has some burnt elements, then soak in warm water without soap and scrub with scotch brite or an equivalent scourer. Then dry with a paper towel. You can use soap on the outside and the handle. The only thing to avoid at all is acidic food like tomatoes that will rapidly remove the seasoning build-up.


Making vegetables (those with leaf) more "crunchy" (bite/tear off easily) Are there any solution to make leafy vegetables more "crunchy"? (I usually boil my leafy vegetables in water but it seems that when I bite them, they usually does not tear off easily. They become quite "sticky" like pan pizza.)

Example of leafy vegetables: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O075MxiwT4U/TYNSsUyvxpI/AAAAAAAAAHo/ToW_w0Uel6I/s800/vegetable.jpg

Leafy greens generally tear quite nicely when they are raw.  If you apply any moist heat to them, they will wilt and no longer tear as nicely.  In fact, certain leafy greens can become downright tough if you cook them to long.

If you'd still like to cook your greens, but retain a little of their crunch, you can always grill them.

If you want to cook veggies without losing their crispiness, try to soak them in a cold water with ice cubes after boiling it. I've done this many times and it works wonders.


cooking vegetables for mashing Inspired by some of the answers and comments on a recent question on boiling potatoes whole or diced, I'm curious:

What's the best way to cook a combination of vegetables to be mashed? I'm thinking of a subset of potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, parsnips, carrots, and anything else that sounds good. Obviously if boiling, one wants to avoid waterlogged vegetables, but the cooking times of the various vegetables are different. Is there a reliable way to cook everything together (at least for some subsets)?

Edit: As mentioned in the comment below, I know that the best one can do may be starting with the longest-cooking vegetables and incrementally adding the rest. What I was wondering was things like if some or all were better baked, or if boiling is good, if some besides potatoes are better boiled whole...

After trying steaming a few times as renegade suggested, I've decided I prefer roasting:

As with steaming, everything stays in the vegetables, they're pretty easy to test, and they don't get waterlogged.
It gives some nice caramelization, contributing a little to the end flavor.
It leaves them drier than steaming, which I like because it gives me the freedom to add plenty of other liquids (e.g. milk).
It's easy to roast large quantities of whole vegetables (which wouldn't fit in anything I have to steam in), so I can make large batches. And cooking them whole means there's less to sort through when pulling out ones that got done faster.

To each their own, but this works for me!

root vegetables will all cook at nearly the same speed given assuming the size of the pieces are equal. Root vegetables can be tricky to cut into equal sizes because of their tapered and oblong nature. I find a batonnet cut to be the best for this.

roasting in the oven at a low temperature (200-300F) will impart more flavor as well, but might dry the surface out too much for a consistant mash.

http://culinaryarts.about.com/b/2008/03/14/how-to-make-a-batonnet-cut.htm


Homemade/DIY Frozen Vegetables: Can steaming be used instead of blanching? I want to try making my own frozen veg since they go bad fairly quickly in my fridge. I've got carrots, beans and some greens.

I've never blanched anything before, so I'm willing to try, and I understand that each veggie has their own respective cooking time.

However, I'd rather steam them.

Is this possible?  Or does the blanching process do magical things to preserving the veg that steaming won't?

The part about blanching that is important is that the vegetables are briefly cooked and then immediately doused in cold water to stop the cooking process. Processors use boiling water as it is easier to manage and you can put flavorings and other additives (preservatives, color enhancers, etc) to the water to get the effect desired. There's no reason you can't steam them instead as long as you dip them in ice water to arrest the cooking process. There's some things that steam blanching wouldn't be good for, like removing the skins from tomatoes, for that boiling water is the way to go, but for preparing vegetables for the freezer it will work fine.

Some considerations:

Industrialization of the process: it's easy to set up a line with a pot of boiling water and a bowl of ice water while using a basket to immerse. Steaming won't be as straightforward, and will be more time consuming. If you have a lot of vegetables you may want to consider boiling instead
Safety: You will need to be able to move the vegetables from your steamer to the ice water quickly without getting scalded, so think about your setup and tools

Frozen veg almost always has enough ice crystals to steam itself. You can jumpstart the process by poking holes in the top side of a bag of frozen veggies, then microwaving the whole bag 30 seconds at a time until done to taste. It works surprisingly well if you're in a hurry.

For "actual" steaming, the advantage over blanching is that the cooking process is a little gentler. Heat is transferred at a steady rate into the food, and very evenly throughout, meaning larger batches are easier to cook all at once to the same "doneness". There's no water motion attacking your veg, so you avoid wear and tear, which can be important as frozen veggies can be more fragile than fresh stuff (e.g. broccoli).

The only disadvantage would be that steaming is somewhat slower, which means with frozen veg the outer parts can be mush while the insides are still cold, common in thick-cut veggies like some kinds of frozen carrots, cauliflower, etc. You can get around this by microwaving as above, just until the veggies are almost (but not quite) thawed.

I've worked in restaurants whose frozen veg was done both ways. I've found the results better with steaming.


How long do you let a turkey rest after cooking? I have heard mixed advice on how long you should let a turkey rest after cooking.

Last year my wife and I watched a Thanksgiving cooking show with Gordon Ramsey and he said you should let the turkey rest for as long as you cooked it.  If you cook it 3 hours, it should rest for 3 hours.  That seems like an awful long time to me.

Everything else I've read looks like 30 minutes to an hour is fine.  Any suggestions?

The purpose- as with any cooked meat- is to let the meat firm up so it doesn't release juices when you cut into it.

In the case of a turkey it also helps to let it cool enough to not burn you when you are carving and eating it.

Both of these goals will be met in 30 minutes to an hour.

I don't know why that chef would recommend 3 hours. At that length of time the turkey would start to approach room temperature and would be less appealing to eat as well as start the clock on the danger zone.

I followed Gordon Ramsay's recipe and let the turkey sit for 3hrs numerous times and I've never been sick.  He went to culinary school, I'm positive he knows better than us home cooks.


homemade pizza - getting the dough crispy When I put my pizza in the hot oven, the top crust gets blackened, but the bottom crust doesn't really cook enough. I want the bottom crust, the part that is underneath the cheese and tomato sauce, I'd like that to cook well and the very bottom of the crust to be CRUSTY. It's always too limp for me and even a little raw, but if I keep it in the oven longer, the top gets black and is not good.

In general, getting a crispy bottom crust for home made pizza with typical home ovens can be very, very challenging, as home ovens do not generally get much hotter than 500-550 F (260-285 C).

In side the home oven, you have several options to improve your crust:

Use a pizza stone
Use a "pizza steel", essentially a slab of food grade steel used much the same way a pizza stone is used.  Kenji alt of Serious Eats rates this very highly.

In either case, you pre-heat your oven to its maximum temperature with the stone or steel in it, and then slide the pizza (from a peel) onto the preheated surface.  The absorbed heat in the stone or steel helps cook and crisp your bottom crust.

See also:  How to cook a thin crispy pizza on a pizza stone

If you have a grill, you can also make grilled pizza outside.

Taking it even further, you can buy accessories for some grills that turn them into improvised pizza ovens.

Lastly, there are other styles of pizza where you allow the crust to essentially fry in olive oil in the bottom of the pan, to crisp up.  This is a very different pizza experience, but can be hugely enjoyable.

The ONLY way is to use a pizza stone, the thicker the better. Let the oven heat up (as high as it will go)  with the stone in it and then wait another 30-60 min for the stone to fully absorb the heat around it. If you can find some, get something called Pizza Crisp (google it) Pull your stone out, toss some pizza crispy down on it and put your already made pizza on top of it. Put the stone back in the oven. The pizza crisp actually heats up and "explodes" leaving tiny pockets and raising the dough up a little which aids in the crisping process. You can achieve the same effect with some short grain rices. There will be tiny ashes left under your crust but they just fall away after you slice and grab your pieces of pizza. I've owned and operated a pizza place for over 15yrs, so I guess my answer should have been ….call a pizza place.


Will cooking meat with the thermometer in affect the cooking time? Last night I cooked 3 pounds of chicken breast tenders using my preferred "set it and forget it" method:

Preheat the oven to ~350°F
Lay out tenders in an oiled baking dish & season as desired
Insert meat thermometer probe into side of thickest piece
Stick in the oven and set the meat thermometer to beep when internal temperature hits 165°F (15 minutes or so, depending on the size of the pieces)

I like this method, especially when I'm cooking for leftover purposes and not a meal, because it saves me the trouble of the "timer beeps > check temp > reset timer" song and dance. But last night I got to thinking: Does keeping the probe in the meat throughout the cooking process affect the cooking time of that piece? I imagine the probe would conduct more heat into the center of the meat, cooking that piece faster than the others around it.

If it does, the effect is negligible at short cooking times and relatively low temperatures like this. All of my chicken pieces come out perfectly done through this method. But I would imagine the effect could be much more pronounced at a longer cooking time, or with smaller cuts of meat.

There are "potato nails" marketed for speeding up cooking of baked potatoes by conducting heat into the center of the potato. This testing showed about a 10% reduction in cooking time. Cooks's Illustrated also tested potato nails, and showed a 7-minute reduction over a 75-minute control. They also tested a potato with five potato nails, which reduced cooking time by 11 minutes.

Obviously potatoes aren't meat, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to extrapolate.

I believe in the heat conduction theory.  How could it not be?  I will not probe until the last 1/3 of the cook for that reasoning.


What is this silvery spot at the bottom of my wok after first use? I just used my wok for the first time to make some chicken fried rice, usual ingredients. What is this silvery spot? I cleaned before using and everything, but this spot, whatever it is, won’t come out. Have I ruined my wok?

It looks very much like you've scraped off some of the non-stick coating.
Aside from the main peeled area there are other scratches that look like you were using metal utensils. You should be able to just feel the edges if that's the case, a very slight rise in the level between the 'silver' which looks to be aluminium & the 'dark' coating. It's very thin so may be hard to feel.
If indeed that's the case, it's time for a new wok.
I've blown up the photo to see a bit more clearly. The peeling could be from overheating, or just poor manufacturing. The scratches, however, are a separate issue, & look like heavy use of metal utensils, which 'old fashioned, regular teflon' just cannot take.
There are newer non-stick coatings which are much more scratch-, and indeed heat-resistant - but they tend to come at a price.
Late edit
As the subject of overheating teflon seems to always crop up in comments on this type of question, modern non-stick is quite often no longer described as 'teflon' or PTFE, but just as a rather secretive 'non-stick'.
My own wok is one of these - Masterclass - and has withstood all the heat I can throw at it for two years, without showing any sign of scratching, burning, evaporating or anything else detrimental to the surface. I treat it with little respect, though I only use wooden or plastic utensils for all my pans, & wash it in regular washing-up liquid (dish soap) with the same brush I use for everything else. The outside is scuffed & scratched, but the inside still looks as new.
And it only cost 30 quid [bucks/euros].

You scratched off what appears to be the anti stick coating off the pot.
Which is why you don't use them.
The best woks are made of high quality stainless


Need to refrigerate vinaigrette? I've made a red-wine vinaigrette dressing using olive oil (which makes up the majority of the dressing), red wine, garlic, and basil.

My problem is that whenever I take it out of the refrigerator, especially when it gets low, the olive-oil leaves it practically solid. I understand that this is normal for olive oil, but it is rather annoying having to get it out 30 minutes before I make a salad or a sandwich (as I don't normally have that kind of time).

My question is, since everything in there but the garlic doesn't need to be refrigerated, is it safe to leave it out of the fridge and let it stand at room temperature? Or is it like all other (store-bought) dressing where after opening (mixing) it requires refrigeration?

Yes, you should refrigerate it.

Once a commercially bottled dressing is exposed to the air it is contaminated. Your homemade dressing is no different, and is likely more contaminated to begin with. The bottom line is that your dressing is food -- for humans, bacteria, and mold. It might not be the most hospitable of environments, but something is bound to find a home there. This process is arrested by refrigeration. Additionally, the garlic and basil will be going through a decay process that would be delayed by refrigeration.

I'm not sure what kind of olive oil you used, but I've never had a vinaigrette turn solid in the refrigerator. If you're in a rush I'd suggest submerging, or running hot water over the bottle you store it in to quickly thaw it. You'll shorten the shelf life, but if you're using it frequently enough (used all in less than a month) that shouldn't matter.

Olive oil with any vinegar with only dry ingredients added is safe to leave on the counter. It's fresh made properties begin to deteriorate immediately. Pungent qualities and olive oil flavor will get stale flavor after a few weeks for sure.  I've tried it. Answer , make it fresh once a week.


How do I get something sticky like honey or Golden Syrup off measuring spoons or measuring cups? Is there a better way? When I put honey in a spoon or measuring cup, the residue stays and it’s hard to get all of it out. How do I make it all come out? Is there a way to measure honey without leaving honey on a spoon?

It's possible to get specialized equipment for this: a plunger measuring cup. The base is adjusted to the level you need to measure, the sticky honey or syrup is poured in, and then the cup is upended and as the base is pushed in, it scrapes the sides as it travels.

I'd only invest in this if you very frequently measure sticky ingredients -- it's not strictly necessary, but it can be a timesaver for some recipes. It's available from many different brands.

Line your measuring cup with a bit of Saran Wrap. It's thin enough that it won't mess up the volume/weight by any significant amount. When you're done measuring it you can just pull the Saran Wrap out of the measuring cup and scrape the honey that sticks off with a silicon spatula. Even better, when you're done you just throw the Saran Wrap away and your measuring cup never gets dirty!


Does adding salt when soaking dry beans toughen or soften the skin of the bean? I have heard opinions on both sides of this.  The the latest answer on this site, says salt softens bean skins quoted Cooks Illustrated (I can't see the article, but I trust CI), while another answer says salt hardens the beans' skins.

In case is varies by bean, I'm interested in:

Kidney Beans
Black Beans
Small Red Beans

So which is it?
Inquiring Minds want to know.

Soften.  Other things that typically are added with salt will tend to toughen the beans, but it isn't the fault of the salt.  For decades, chefs have circulated the oral tradition that adding salt hardens beans, but it's a myth.

Several scientific studies verify that adding salt to the soaking water for dried beans will reduce the cooking times.  The first and most cited article, originally published in 1977, can be found here.  As mentioned in the first answer you cited, the fine folks at Cooks Illustrated found in 2008 that 3 TBSP per gallon of water produces soft skins while not over-salting the interior of the beans.  Since you can't see the full article, here is the science according to CI:

"Why does soaking dried beans in salted water make them cook up with softer skins? It has to do with how the sodium ions in salt interact with the cells of the bean skins. As the beans soak, the sodium ions replace some of the calcium and magnesium ions in the skins. Because sodium ions are weaker than mineral ions, they allow more water to penetrate into the skins, leading to a softer texture. During soaking, the sodium ions will only filter partway into the beans, so their greatest effect is on the cells in the outermost part of the beans."

Harold McGee's NY Times blog (August 9, 2008) also notes that adding salt early enough will allow complete penetration of the bean, which improves flavor.

On the other hand, things typically added with salt -- particularly sugar and calcium-rich products -- tend to toughen beans (and the salt gets the blame).  This toughening effect is most notable in baked-bean recipes using things like ketchup, molasses, and BBQ sauce. You can bake these beans for days, yet the beans will stay whole and firm.  The actual mechanism for this effect is not clear; one hypothesis currently circulating seems to be that these products stabilize the cell-cell "glue" (e.g., Shirley Corriher says so on Good Eats "Pantry Raid III - Cool Beans", transcript online here), but I could not find any peer-reviewed study specifically verifying that hypothesis.

With fresh dried bean you can do nearly anything with them

But in most parts of the world the beans have been shipped by sea and stored for long lengths time, or have been heat treated. These take a much longer time soak and to cook, and you will find salt, and other additives causing problems

Heat treated beans can can take more than a day to soak, leaving the beans in salted water for a day or more will cause the bean core to absorb salt too


Why does cooking mushrooms longer alter the taste so much? When pan frying sliced regular white mushrooms, I prefer to cook them on high-heat with a generous amount of EVO until they shrivel up quite a bit and become golden brown in color.  This is opposed as opposed to cooking them with less heat for a shorter duration to the point where they do not change in size and only darken slightly, or not at all.

I find that mushrooms cooked to this lesser degree have a distinctive taste and smell (that some dislike very much), yet when raw or cooked to the degree in which I first described, they do not contain this smell or taste.

My question: What is the reason for this?  Perhaps there is some sort of chemical responsible for the change in taste (similar to the idea of raw garlic versus well cooked or roasted garlic).

I can't speak to specific chemicals/aromatics for mushrooms, but this kind of thing does happen with all kinds of food. The initial cooking is releasing aromatics that were previously bound up in the food somehow, so you quickly get some stronger flavors. But aromatic molecules are volatile (that's why you smell them!) and also generally more prone to breaking down, so as you cook longer, they escape, or are broken down into something else without so much flavor, leaving you with something milder.

Think about onion, for example. When you first start sauteeing it, there's a lot of really strong onion smell coming off, maybe even enough to make you cry if you're prone to it. If you eat it then, it'll still have plenty of sharp onion flavor. But as you cook longer, those flavors mellow out; going to the extreme, slowly caramelized onions have no sharpness and very little onion flavor.

I think the initial strengthening of flavor may be stronger with mushrooms because of their structure. They seem dry at first, with all the water bound up inside. But as you start to cook them, their structure breaks down and they quickly release a lot of water, and with it, those flavors.

Simple, the juices. When cooked in the EVO the juices will mix with the EVO longer and thus create a more bland flavoring then if you keep the mushrooms in for a shorter amount of time.


how often is cleaning done in a professional kitchen? Today I saw Gordon Ramsay Kitchen Nightmares. Regardless of the alleged nature of "reality", he said that fridges at his London restaurant are cleaned twice a day. Is that excessive or in line with standard hygiene guidelines ? What about the kitchen and storage rooms ?

I have worked in two professsional kitchens. The main kitchen itself (all the work tables, stoves, floors, refrigerator fronts and so on) is cleaned after each service, and very thoroughly each night with hot soapy water and sometime sterilizing solution. The insides of refrigerators and other storage areas don't need to be cleaned that often because everything in them is in sealed containers. They should normally be emptied and wiped out at least once a week, and of course immediately if there is any kind of spill.

I agree from all answers, its urgent to clean all equipment of kitchen twice a day, and all chiller and dry store should clean once time a week. All kitchen staff should have proper uniform and looks neat and clean. Floors, tiles, all thing should be neat and clean.


Why are there so many different pasta shapes? Do the different pasta shapes serve any purpose, or are they just for fun?  Some difference appear to be cultural (lo mein vs spaghetti), but there are so many different syles of Italian pasta, is there a reason for this?

Clearly there need to be differences for stuffed / not stuffed, but why do we have penne and ziti?

One answer to this is that Americans have a reversed understanding of the relationship of pasta to sauce compared to Italians. In Italy, the sauce is called the condimento, meaning literally it is a condiment to the noodles, which are intended to be the main source of enjoyment in the dish. When you begin to understand it that way, it makes sense that you would want to have a wide variety of sizes, shapes and textures. (What Taeraresh said is also true, there are functional differences in how the different shapes hold sauces.)

We were sitting at a table in the town square of Sienna, Italy having drinks. My wife and mother-in-law went off to do some shopping. I wandered off down a narrow street and came to a pasta shop. The interesting thing that might answer some of the question is found there, I think. The wall was covered with cubby holes similar to an old time post office ending in glass front drawers about waist high. Arranged vertically were compartments holding the largest diameter spaghetti (or macaroni as they say) down to Angel hair at the bottom. There were a variety of shapes all in descending diameters. The drawers held shapes, such as, stars, elbows, rotini, etc., in different sizes and thicknesses. It occurred to me that the people eat pasta so often, they use the different shapes and sizes to break the monotony of just spaghetti, let's say. Also, they could have a different sauce to go with each pasta shape or size.
Makes sense to me now and then.


Should a rare steak bleed? I very much like my steaks to ooze blood on the plate - especially fillet or sirloin.  However, I've recently (and only recently) noticed that when visiting restaurants and asking for rare steak, the steak that arrives is dry (or at least a lot dryer that I expect - even though it is rare).

I'm curious as to how this is achieved; my suspicion is that the steak is being "pre-cooked" to rare and then warmed up in a microwave, but I wondered if there was actually a method of cooking steak that would result in that.

You have mentioned in your comments that you don't rest steak. This is why it leaks the red liquid when you cut it. Any good restaurant will rest your steak, hence them being less leaky.

This Serious Eats article explains very well why you should rest steak (and any other meat). Essentially, as the meat cools, the shape of its fibers changes, allowing it to retain the liquid.

7-10 minutes is about the right length of time to rest a steak. Heston Blumenthal recommends resting on a wire rack rather than a plate to prevent one side steaming.

When the surface hits the heat the juices are forced to center of meat. Then you flip it and the same thing happens to that side causing the center to be over saturated with juices. By resting the steak for 10 minutes you give the juices time to spread back out to the edges. By not resting you are basically butting a ballon. The center can't handle all the juices so it burst out when you cut. The reason to rest is so that the steak retains those juices for every bite and keeps you from having to smear each bite in the juices on the plate.


How oil changes the taste of salads? Almost every salad recipes I've read needs some oil. What's its effect on vegetables? How does it change the flavor?

If oil is not used for the taste, why is it necessary for salads?

Here are a couple reasons why (for which I know) oil is used on salads:

Oil caries in fat soluble aromas (often we use aromatic oils like olive oil, pumpkin seed oil, walnut oil, and so on, that are all very aromatic) and balances out other components (like vinegar or lime juice or some strong tasting veggies).
it adheres to the surface of many leaves/vegetables better than water/vinegar (cause it breaks into the waxy leaf cuticle), so the dressing coating gets evenly distributed over the salad, you can use another thicker substance that clings to the leafs (like yoghurt) for this purpose instead.
in thicker vinaigrettes/dressings it serves as a thickener, as by mixing with vinegar it builds an emulsion (like in aioli the oil usually represents the continuous phase of the traditional vinaigrette - water-in-oil emulsion, where many modern vinaigrettes reverse the ratio - oil-in-water emulsion, or use some other fats rather than oil).

And as already noted, it is not necessary for salads, you can use just lime juice (like in some thai salads), boiled dressing (that is thickened with starch), stock reduction, fruit/vegetable purees, yoghurt dressings or something else that does not require oil (e.g. I have made slightly pickled japanese salads that only required some vinegar and brine and the main aromas came from the veggies).
Also, I found this to answer "What's its effect on vegetables?":

McGee, on Food&Cooking says:
Oil seeps through the waxy leaf cuticle and spreads into the leaf interior, where it displaces air and causes the leaf to darken and its structure to collapse.

All food needs some presence of fat in order to be have a desirable taste. Meats don't need any added fat but green leafy vegetables have almost no fat. Green vegetables are rich in vitamin A and K which are only soluble in fat. So it stands to reason that the combination of olive oil with lettuce would have a pleasant taste.


Why does broccoli turn brown when steaming? I steam my broccoli until it's 'al dente' and some buds turn brown. I've done a small search, but haven't found anything.

I'm thinking maybe the steam is too hot or I'm steaming too long. What do you think?

Per the transcript of Alton Brown's Good Eat's episode If It Ain't Broccoli, Don't Fix It:

  Inside broccoli, nice, bright green chlorophylls are kept separate
  from acidic elements by cell walls. But if you overcook the broccoli,
  the cell walls can collapse, and the acids can attack, turning our
  nice, bright green chlorophylls into a sad, dingy gray.

This would let other pigments reveal themselves, turning making the appearance of your broccoli yellowish or brownish.  Your picture shows that the individual florets seem to be most effected, which are the smallest and easiest parts to cook on the broccoli.

So it may simply be an issue of overcooking the little florets.

Later in the transcript, Brown recommends a hybrid method of cooking, giving different treatment to the stalks and florets to minimize this effect.

According to The Happy Scientist, raising the pH with baking soda will prevent the enzymes from effecting the chlorophyll, but this would be difficult to apply when steaming, and of course it also would have the unfortunate side effect of turning the broccoli mushy.

Personally, I prefer to roast broccoli rather than steam it.   It is a little slower, but can be very effective, and of course, a different type of browning is somewhat expected :-)

well the brown is from oxidation(just about anything can be oxidized) by the exposure to water.

Yellow on the other hand is most likely from the broccoli starting to have blossoms in the florets that eventually produce seeds.


Is it safe to store unopened metal cans in the refrigerator? A co-worker and I are having a disagreement on whether or not it's okay to put unopened cans of pizza sauce in a refrigerator. I say it's not, because the acidity in the tomatoes in the can will make someone extremely ill. He thinks as long as it is not opened, it will be fine. Who is correct?

There's nothing wrong with storing unopened metal cans in the refrigerator. But it's pointless in terms of food safety - the whole point of canning is to make the food safe to store at room temperature. Don't waste the fridge space unless you're actually trying to chill the contents of the cans.

Now, if the cans are open, sure, that's a problem. You should transfer the food to a sealed container for storage, whether it came from a can or a pot or anywhere else.

But none of this has anything to do with acidity. Acidity doesn't make you sick, and in fact, it can help keep bacteria from growing and keep food safer. That's why a lot of canned goods have a bit of acid added, and why we pickle foods.

It is bad health and safety to put tin in a fridge. It promotes the growth of bacteria.


Why does prepackaged deli meat taste better when you take each slice and "fluff" it? If you take a package of deli meat and remove the slab, place it on bread and add your condiments in never tastes as good as when you take the slab and "fluff" up each piece as you lay it on your sandwich.

This deli meat you speak of is generally made of small scraps of mechanically-separated meat that are essentially "glued" together into a solid mass by enzymes that partially break down the tissue. This processed "meat brick" doesn't really have the same texture as an intact muscle tissue, which has individual muscle fibers aligned along a "grain" that makes it pleasantly chewy. Folding/layering/rolling slices of processed meat gives it more of a texture and chew, and tricks you into thinking you're eating an actual piece of animal muscle instead of meat-flavored jelly.

To fold ingredients to expose them to more air is a well known technique in cooking to ENHANCE flavoring.

The more air that infuses each bite, the better. Oxidation to food is essential to good flavour. So yes! When you make a sandwich, fold the meat to create air channels, if you have or can slice your cheese very thinly, then do the same as well.

If you make a sandwich with three pieces of meat, do not just stack them one upon the other; this is "truck driver" mentality. instead, layer them to enhance the flavour value. This is a well known technique among chefs and gastronomes alike.


How to make flavoured rice like uncle ben's chinese rice? What can I add to my rice cooker to create a similar flavour? Also I find, rice comes out quite dry even when I put more water? There's a slight oily sheen to it. Will this help?

Thanks heaps!

The ingredients on Uncle Ben's Chinese Fried Rice are:

  LONG GRAIN PARBOILED RICE, SOY SAUCE (SOYBEAN, WHEAT, SALT), DEHYDRATED VEGETABLES (RED BELL PEPPER, CARROT, PARSLEY, ONION, GARLIC), MODIFIED CORN STARCH, GLUCOSE SOLIDS, HYDROLYZED PLANT PROTEIN (WHEAT, SOY), MALTODEXTRIN, AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, FLAVOUR, SPICES, HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (SOYBEAN, COTTONSEED), SILICON DIOXIDE, SALT, CARAMEL, VINEGAR SOLIDS.

First off, the rice: In a rice cooker, I wouldn't use parboiled. Just get regular long grain white rice, but be sure to rinse it pretty well. Extra starch left on the rice can cause it to come out sticky. When you complain about your rice being too dry, I'm not sure what you mean, so perhaps leaving a bit of starch in would help?

You can easily just add a bit of soy sauce to the water that you'll cook the rice in.

As for the vegetables, if you can find dehydrated vegetables, great. Otherwise, I'd just saute fresh veggies and fold them in at the end.

Next we have some industrial ingredients that will be harder to replicate at home. The corn starch I'd skip. Glucose solids can be replaced with a pinch of sugar. Hydrolyzed plant protein and autolyzed yeast extract could be replaced with a bit of nutritional yeast or some liquid seasoning like Maggi or Kitchen Bouquet.

Flavour and Spices get a bit tricky. I'd guess a bit of black pepper and a dash of sesame oil, which can be thrown into the water at the beginning. You'll need to adjust those to taste, of course.

Hydrogenated vegetable oil can be replaced with whatever you saute the veggies in and the sesame oil you threw on the rice.

Silicon dioxide is just an anti-caking agent to keep it from clumping up in the package, so you can skip it.

Salt, caramel, and vinegar solids: Your liquid seasoning (Maggi, Kitchen Bouquet) should provide these. You should, of course, salt it to taste though.

I am an engineer by training; if I can't give you an exact answer, I give you the information you need to do functionally the same thing.  As such, this is not a perfect answer, but it will help you get rice cooked (and edible) and it will help you make the dish in question.

Cooking Rice

I avoid rice cookers.  Every time I use them, the rice is always too dry.  This doesn't seem to happen for multitudes of roommates I've had who use them though.

When I make white rice (any length, but not arborio rice) I usually use 1 part rice to 2 parts water.  Bring the water to a boil, add the rice, cover it with a lid and simmer for 20 minutes.  Do not open the lid until the 20 minutes are up; rice needs pressure to cook correctly.  If it comes out dry or crispy, turn down the heat, and it doesn't hurt to add a little extra water.

Brown and wild rices will cook differently.  If you use the above cooking method on them, you'll probably have to throw it away (it can be salvaged, but it takes some knowledge).

Making Fried Rice

As far as Uncle Ben's Chinese rice goes...I've never had it.  I've started learning how to cook various Asian dishes at home simply because I love Asian food enough that I want to know anything and everything about it.

That being said, making fried rice from scratch isn't too hard once you figure out the sauces/flavors you want in it.  Frequently, I will use sesame oil instead of olive oil (I never cook with vegetable oil, particularly in a wok where temperatures are higher, which breaks down vegetable oil relatively easily).  Not only is sesame oil safer with high temperatures, but it also adds a distinctly Asian flavor.  After I'm done with all the cooking, I like to add a little teriyaki sauce, Hoisin sauce or Five-spice powder (also known as Chinese five spices) depending on my mood.  I've even had roommates who will throw in a splash of rice wine while it's cooking.  (These are not necessarily authentic uses for these flavors; I am not even Asian by association.)

Take left over rice.  If it's cold from the fridge, even better, although not necessary.  Put 1-2 tablespoons of sesame oil in a large frying pan or wok and add some heat.  Before the oil gets way too hot, put the rice in and try to evenly coat it in the oil while heating it up.  Add bits of cooked meat, tofu, vegetables, or whatever else you'd like in your fried rice.  Once the rice is warm enough (you can even brown it a little if you'd like) and the vegetables are cooked to your liking, take it off the heat and add any additional sauces you'd like.  Be sparing with the sauces though; you don't want to over power the flavor of the food and a lot of sauces are potent and chalk full of sodium (even MSG depending on where you get it).  You can even sprinkle some green onions and/or sesame seeds on top.

Uncle Ben's website also has a handful of Asian recipes, although most of them look like normal rice with something prepared served on top.


Cooking over an open flame at home Is it doable to cook over the flame of a cooking gas stove at home. Is it dangerous? Couldn't it be even better as an open fire over coal or wood, since gas is cleaner?

It is similar to cooking over a propane grill. Gas grills often have stone or ceramic bricks in them to help retain heat, but it is the burning gas that provides it.  Cooking over a gas stove should be similar.

That said, I wouldn't grill meat or fish directly over the flame; it may work, but the cleanup may not be worth it.  If you want to char a pepper or some bread and get the 'grill' feel, that should work fine.  I see chefs do it all the time on TV, and it looks easy enough and doesn't make a mess.

Why do you think gas is "cleaner". It contains CO2, CO, and other petrochem processing leftovers

Good quality charcoal should produce the least other stuff, while producing similar CO2 and CO levels

Indoor cooking with charcoal is popular in many cultures, but any method is going to produce CO2 and CO, which need to be adequately ventilated


Does egg make the cookies rise(puffy)? I want to make chocolate chip cookies that are chewy and thin (spread out).

I followed the recipe here however I reduced everything by half.

The result was not impressive at all. It's nothing like what you see on the website - it's thick and has a dome-like shape, not thin and spread out and without cracks.

I added more milk in hopes it might help make the cookies spread more but it still didn't.

I tried to use only egg yolk instead of the whole egg but the problem still persist.

What did I do wrong??

These are my guesses:

Over-creaming process? but it's melted butter (and melted butter is supposed to spread, doesn't it?)
Egg? Do eggs leaven the cookies?
Baking soda? Does it make the cookies puffy?

Also, how do I make them flat and have cracks on the top?

The texture of cookies is a complex interaction of many factors, including the size of the cookie, the temperature of the oven, the amount of leavening, the way the fat is treated, and so on.

The flat, thin cookie with the cracks on top that you describe and desire is achieved by slightly under-baking the cookies, allowing them to rise, and then taking them out of the oven.  They then cool and deflate, causing the "cracks" and thinness.

The most likely culprit is that you are over-baking your cookies, and they are setting in the oven while fully domed up.  They would be fine cookies, but more of a crispy style.

A secondary, and related, contributing factor would be having the oven temperature too high.  If you don't already have one, an oven thermometer is an inexpensive and helpful investment to make sure you are baking at the desired temperature, as many ovens are off by a fair margin.

Note also that these are quite large cookies, baked with a "large" scoop, only six per tray.  That helps achieve the fallen state.  Don't make your cookies too small, if you are looking for this texture.

To answer your sub-questions:

Creaming cannot apply to a melted butter cookie, as it requires a solid but plastic fat to incorporate air into the cookie
The egg contributes structure (from protein), tenderness, and usually a fairly considerable proportion of the overall water in the cookie dough
In this recipe, the baking soda is primarily present to promote browning, as there is very little acid for it to react with other than from the molasses in the brown sugar (it will leaven a little).   Since these are "fallen" cookies, it is harder to get good browning and therefore flavor development.  The soda is to promote that.

I agree with the above comments.
My thoughts are that you will find halving cookie recipes give a less than desirable outcome on some recipes. So I avoid it per my trials and errors.
Another is that more than 2 eggs and adding yolks make cookies thick, puffy and cake-like, hense the reason why cakes have so many eggs in their recipes. Egg whites helps with crispiness.

Adding milk gave more moisture than the eggs already had and made them even more puffy.

Chilling the dough gives puffy cookies.

Baking soda  gives a rise and spread effect. Its needed in cookies. Baking powder causes puffy soft cookies and isn't needed unless you want that puffiness.

1/4 teaspoon per one cup of flour is the ratio.

Added sugars contribute to browning, not just baking soda.

Melted butter gives chewy cookies. However if not melted properly you will get puffy cookies. Google how to make "browned butter" for chocolate chip cookies and that should help. Otherwise, unwrap your sticks of butter, slice them, spread them out on a plate and leave them on the counter 30 minutes. That will give you room temp butter for cookie recipes. Also when creaming butter and sugars you should do so by going from grainy texture to creamy texture (no graininess).

After you add the eggs and vanilla to the butter and sugar mixture,  you mix until its light "in color" or pale yellow and its fluffy in texture. This shouldnt take long to achieve with a stand mixer. Next, only mix in the flour and chips 45 seconds to 1 minute on low speed to avoid gluten development causing puffy cookies. You can finish mixing with a spatula or clean hands depending on how much dough you have.
One last tip: using 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tarter to the dry ingredients will flatten your cookies, give a crackled look, crisp edge and chewy centers. Much like a snickerdoodle and it wont effect the taste. Good luck.


How to preserve spaghetti for a short amount of time? Let's say I make a spaghetti-and-meatball supper, and I made the spaghetti an hour or so before the meal. What's the best way to keep it fresh and warm until we're ready to eat?

The technique that many restaurants will use is to prepare the pasta ahead of time and store it in or on ice water. The chilled pasta may be then submerged briefly in boiling water and served.

You can slightly undercook the pasta beforehand and before serving finish cooking by adding it to the sauce.


How much salt should be used in dishes for the best flavor? Is there a way to determine how much salt per quantity of food is required?  For example if I use 1kg of ingredients then I need at most one tbsp of salt. Any such metrics?

The quantity of salt to be added to food is a major problem for many people just learning to cook.

There's a reason so many recipes say "salt to taste": there's no single answer. Most of the time, we use close to 0.5% salt by weight (so 1kg food has 5g or 1 teaspoon of salt), but "close to" leaves plenty of wiggle room about what exactly is best.

Different people have different tastes. What's perfectly salted for one person may be oversalted or undersalted for another.

Different dishes need different ratios too. Some things are supposed to taste a bit salty, while some just need a hint to amplify other flavors. Some ingredients need more salt to balance them than others.

Sure, you can get approximate starting points, e.g. bread might be around 1% salt by weight, cookie dough might be about 0.5%, soups and stews might be something like 0.5% (with tons of variation - that's a couple random recipes). So very roughly, 1kg of food often comes with 5 grams of salt (1 teaspoon) with exceptions ranging up to 10 grams (2 teaspoons).

But your best bet is always going to be to find a good recipe for the specific dish you're making, and possibly adjust it if you know your preferences lean one way or another. Failing that, when cooking something improvised or new, or using one of the many recipes that just says "salt to taste", letting you do what suits you, trust the instincts that you've developed for your own tastes.

If you're cooking for others, with possibly varying tastes, it gets trickier. For things where salt can be added after the fact, you can use less salt and let everyone individually salt to taste. For things you can't mix after cooking, you pretty much have to compromise somewhere in the middle and hope it works for everyone.

Beyond that, if you can't decide what the right amount of salt is, don't worry about it. There's surely a range that works for you, so if two different amounts both taste good, there you are. And if you find yourself disagreeing with someone about what amount of salt results in the best flavor, stop. You probably just have different tastes from the person you're arguing with.

This is a trick question. There is no way to add salt and pepper to taste before you cook. I have Never found a scale that says to start with use so much S-N-P per lbs of chicken. Every recipe is different. Some take more some take less. And it depends of your taste buds. You can always add more but your SOL if you add to much. Most of the time I have to cook something 2 or 3 times in order to get it right. Slow down think about what your doing and write down exactly what your doing. Then you can go back and add or cut back as needed. Think of it as a road map to get the taste you want.


What can you surmise about coffee beans that have oil on them at the time of purchase? I find myself favoring the purchase of coffee beans that have visible oil on them.  My inference was that this bean had some extra flavor or awesomeness.

Am I right, are beans 'better' if they are oily, or more simply, what does that mean about the flavor profile of the bean?

Coffee beans have a natural oil in them. Often beans that have been roasted longer will have more visible oil on the surface. Not really an indicator of quality, though, but a longer roast will be darker, have a stronger flavor, and (paradoxically to some) less caffeine.

(At least, this is what I learned when slinging Cappuccinos at a Canadian coffee chain during my college years a long time ago. Someone correct me if I'm mistaken.)

The oil you see is actually the caffeine. As the bean roasts the oil cooks out of the bean and is burnt off by the roaster (creating a very unpleasant smell).  The more "oily" the bean the less caffeine is actually contained within the bean - this also means that darker roasted beans have less caffeine in them.

As far as flavor profile is concerned,  many beans lose their distinctive regional profile after being roasted over 430 - 435 degrees.  This is not a bad thing as what distinguishes a beans regional flavors are usually not elements we enjoy in coffee (acidity,  bitterness etc).  "Oilier" beans mean beans that were roasted longer,  eliminating many of these unpleasant flavors.

Or at least that's what how i was taught when I learned how to roast.


How do eggs relate to the texture of the cake? But to answer your last question, eggs role in cakes isn't necessarily
  to contribute flavor, but more as a binding agent, which ultimately
  determines the texture of your cake (e.g. light and airy, or thick and
  dense).

http://www.chowhound.com/post/eggs-put-cake-700653?commentId=5538121

So, does lots of eggs mean light cake or dense cake? How does this work? What can happen if I put too many eggs in the cake?

I'll take a stab at this broad question, because I think it deserves at least an attempt at a general answer.

Eggs are very important to the texture of many cakes, but as noted in comments, the effects of changing the amount of eggs are really dependent on the type of cake.  To generalize:

For cakes that are intended to be light in texture already, the quantity of eggs is generally pretty well calibrated to maximize lightness -- adding or subtracting a significant amount of egg is unlikely to improve the texture.
For dense cakes, the exact amount of eggs is frequently more about richness and flavor than creating a precise texture.  However, shifting the number of eggs appreciably could change baking time and how the cake sets.

Unbeaten eggs are (as the question notes) mostly for binding, rather than lightness.  They also provide a richness to the flavor and can soften the texture.  Yolks alone (or using more yolks than whites) are also often used for richness, as in very dense or velvety cakes (like flourless chocolate cakes).  Whites even unbeaten will bulk up the cake a bit and can help support the cake's structure through earlier coagulation during baking.  However, having more unbeaten eggs doesn't necessarily mean a "lighter" or "denser" cake: that will depend more on the other proportions of ingredients and how high the cake rises before the eggs coagulate.

Beaten eggs are generally used to add lightness.  Beaten whites provide the most lift and lightness (as in angel food cakes).  Beaten whole eggs or beaten yolks can also contribute something to lightness, particularly when they are beaten together with something else to stabilize them (most commonly sugar) and/or heated gently until they become "ribbon-like" and thick (but not so hot as to coagulate).  Often whites and yolks are added separately, with the beaten whites sometimes folded in toward the end to add extra lightness.  In general, the foam from whole eggs is a lot less stable, so whole eggs are frequently beaten into recipes after the primary bubbles are created (e.g., through creaming butter with sugar, or other possible methods).

So, in general, it's not so much that "more eggs" means lighter or denser or whatever -- it really depends on the detailed mixing methods and how the eggs are used.

When eggs are used for lightness (for example, when whites are beaten separately and folded in), the addition of another egg or two may sometimes be useful for increasing lightness, while removing some egg will likely make the cake more dense (and somewhat less rich).  But again, this really depends on the exact composition of the cake already.  For most recipes, there is often a "sweet spot" where the right amount of eggs will stabilize the structure and keep the cake light, whereas less might result in a denser and drier texture with a tougher crumb (more like a sweet bread than a cake, or perhaps more crumbly given the low gluten content of many cakes), and more will provide no further benefit and will eventually begin to weigh the cake down (and will start to create a noticeable "eggy" flavor).

By adding even more eggs, eventually the cake texture will begin to change significantly as it becomes more dense.  Without sufficient flour to balance the eggs, eventually the cake will have a custard-like texture and flavor, first likely resembling "French toast" and then with a huge excess of eggs becoming essentially a custard OR developing curds and clumps of egg protein and becoming more of an odd "baked omelet" (depending on proportions of other ingredients).

A final factor is balancing other leaveners and moisture if adding or reducing eggs, since a final contribution of eggs is simply their liquid content.  Significantly reducing eggs will impact the moisture of the cake and in extreme cases could result in a heavy dry crumbly mass or a wet mess that won't set.  The thickness of the batter is also generally calibrated to the amount of leavening (e.g., baking powder).  Too much leavening in a thin batter, and the bubbles will be too big and will rise to the top of the batter and burst.  Too little leavening, and the cake will never rise.  Either way, you could end up with a dense final product if things are out of balance.

Many eggs is more material, egg is a dense material, so it becomes more dense.

Eggs are also not a stable material, so too many eggs makes the cake unstable, wobbly, and the texture becomes slimy.


Is it possible to make kataifi dough (by yourself or starting from filo dough)? I really like the thready structure in this dish. But when I look for recipes, they all ask for a box of kataifi dough. I haven't found this in regular supermarkets (I haven't been to greek stores), so I was thinking if I could make it myself.

Would it be best to buy filo dough (which is thinner than if you would make it yourself) and shred/cut it; or to make filo dough yourself (so you would have longer pieces than store-bought dough) and cut/shred it?

How do you shred it exactly? And how would can you replicate the correct form of kataifi (like a roll)?

I am afraid that it is quite hard to prepare it yourself. And you don't start from phylo dough.

Kataifi is not shredded, it is spun. You need a hot metal wheel for that. It is made from a batter which is thrown on the wheel, and because the wheel is spun, it bakes on the wheel in threads. You need not only the instruments (this wheel), but also quite a bit of experience to throw it in even threads. Kataifi makers are a popular attraction on middle-eastern markets. If you can't visit one, you have to visit an ethnic grocery store to buy the prepared kataifi noodles.

There are machines for this. You can buy a kadayif(kunefe) dessert pattern maker, it is available online. However, it is somewhat expensive, around 140 USD.


How much does fresh pasta yield when cooked? While I know the yield for dried pasta, I cannot find the yield for fresh pasta, which I know is different from dried.

(My goal here is actually to calculate calories for fresh pasta based on the weight after cooking.)

when making fresh pasta a classic ratio is 100g of flour + 1 egg per person; that roughly means 150g per person
When cooked fresh pasta yields roughly 1,5 times the weight of raw (while dry pasta yields between 2 and 2,5 times according to type)


Is gelatin vegetarian? I understand that vegetarians are against meat, and gelatin is derived from meat and bones. So the obvious answer is "no."

But I'm not entirely sure. What constitutes an ingredient as "vegetarian" or "vegan?"

Without further qualification, if someone refers to themselves as vegetarian (in America), the general assumption is that they are lacto-ovo vegetarian. That means they don't eat animal products that require killing the animal, but eggs and dairy are fine. Gelatin comes from a dead animal (unless they start harvesting it with arthroscopic probes :), so it is not a vegetarian ingredient. There are many other hydrocolloids, such as agar, that can be used to produce similar textures if needed.

I don't think gelatin is vegetarian unless specified. Gelatin is made from animal bones.


When should I pick elderberries? Having made lots of elderflower cordial from the bumper crop of elderflowers in the hedgerows near my home in June, I can now see that we are also in for a bumper crop of elderberries.

How can tell when they are ready to pick?  When I was small, my family made jam with them.  Any other ideas?

From Greenfootsteps' "Elderberry Recipes for a Healthy Winter Edinburgh":

  Pick elderberries when they are fully ripe in early autumn. The bunches should be starting to droop downwards with the weight of the fruit. Use a fork or your fingers to gently prise the fruit away from the stalks. This can be a bit fiddly but you don't have to be too perfect with it - a few bits of stalk will not matter.


How to increase the shelf life of Bechamel sauce? how to increase the shelf life of bechamel sauce and what is the actual shelf life of white sauce?

You cannot increase the shelf life of random food. There are databases with food lifetimes, if you can't find your food there, assume 3-5 days for any cooked, ready to eat dish - that applies to bechamel too.

You can try freezing it and see if it comes out well; there is a chance it will separate on thawing. If freezing does not work, there is nothing you can do. Adding random things like acids or salt will not increase shelf life. Conservation methods which rely on acid and salt require a certain concentration, which very much changes the taste of the food (think pickles), is not applicable to just any food, and each recipe requires extensive testing before it is declared safe. So you have to accept shelf lives as a fact of life, and work your schedule around them.

See also How long can I store a food in the pantry, refrigerator, or freezer? for a rough overview of shelf life of food types, and visit databases like STillTasty for exact shelf lives.

For the proper storage method, see answers to this question: Storing bechamel sauce.

To improve the shelf life, you can try adding some acid such as lemon. Not sure how long that will allow the flavor to hold together better.