Are there any sugar substitutes for preserving food? A quote from the Live Strong website

  Just like with salt, some forms of sugar can draw water out of food and tie up water within the food so it is not available for biochemical reactions. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, fructose and sucrose are very effective for preserving food while glucose is not. Sugar may also encourage the growth of healthy bacteria that prevent bacteria that will make you sick from growing. High concentrations of sugar also exert osmotic pressure that will draw water out of bacteria, preventing them from growing.

Are there any substitutes that will do the same? Bonus: without altering the taste :-)

It's hard to understand what you are asking about here.

If you mean a substitute as something you drop into an existing recipe instead of the required sugar, then no, there aren't any.

There are other methods for preserving food instead of sugar-based ones though. So, if you don't like pumpkin jam, you can make pickled pumpkin instead. If this is what you meant, then there are "substitutes".

There are no methods for food preservation which don't alter the taste. Freezing comes closest. It preserves flavor, but not texture.

One possibility may be honey.

As other answers mentioned, sugar substitutes or artificial sweeteners that do not act like sugar, chemically, won't have the same effect of substituted into a recipe.  They won't sweeten the same way, tie up water the same way, and will not preserve the same way - though some may have other preservative effects, as rackandboneman's answer suggests.

But, if the restriction is not about artificial sweeteners but simply not using refined sugar - then natural sweeteners like honey may fit the bill.  Honey is like sugar, hygroscopic, in that it tends to not go bad because there isn't enough water available for spoilage - and it also has mild antimicrobial properties, to help prevent spoilage another way.  As for the bonus, it will not alter the taste of a recipe very much, compared to using white sugar - especially if a mild, clear honey is used.  The flavor alterations should be subtle and might even be beneficial.

Other natural sweeteners like maple syrup, agave nectar, jaggery, or even molasses, corn syrup, or others - may also act like sugar both for sweetening and as a hygroscopic agent.  They may add more noticeable flavors, though, and may be be less of a straight substitute for a preservative then sugar or honey due to higher water content, inclusion of impurities, or more requirements for safe storage.


Can German Potato Balls be frozen? Can they be frozen, before being cooked, for a week? I'm making sauerbrauten & potato balls for 25 people, and thought if I could make them a week earlier and just cook them that day, it would be a lot easier.

Yes, you can freeze them: I have done it before, and it works just fine.

They key (in my experience, that is) is to freeze the balls quickly if uncooked, and put them into the boiling water still frozen when you actually do the cooking.

I have also been freezing cooked potato balls, and that works just fine as well -> In that case, warm them up in hot, but not boiling, water.

A note due to the comment below: The recipe I use calls for half cooked, and half raw potatoes, with the raw half being pressed almost totally try of water; and they DO fall apart if I do not take that part seriously. So, except for potato-flour added again, there is not that much raw potato starch left when I freeze them.

When I cook potato dumplings, I use cooked mashed potatoes, so cooking raw potatoes is not an issue. Also I normally freeze cooked potato dumplings on a tray in the freezer when they first rise to top of pan. Next I will try freezing uncooked potato dumplings--hoping they will rise to top as normal.


Is there a special way to dry bread out to make breadcrumbs? I have a recipe for making Italian Breadcrumbs. If I leave the bread out on the counter it molds before it dries enough. I thought making breadcrumbs would be a great way to use some of my homemade bread. I love making bread but unfortunately it dries out to fast for sandwiches, but not enough for breadcrumbs.  Is there a way to dry it out before it molds? I have tried all kinds of bread, some hydrated more than others.

You don't want to dry it on the counter... put slices or small pieces in the oven on low heat or grind it in a food processor and toast it in a skillet until it's crisp and brown.
Stale bread is not "dry"... it's stale and it's only on the surface. If you want truly dry bread, you need to toast it and really get rid of all of the moisture.
From Serious Eats, they discuss the difference and Kenji explains their preferred method (though this is for stuffing, the information is the same):

Drying involves the evaporation of moisture from within a piece of bread. The structure of the bread remains more or less the same, though it becomes less pliable because of the moisture loss. Dry but not stale bread will be crisp like a cracker and crumble into a fine powder.
Staling is the process by which moisture migrates out of swollen starch granules and into the spaces in the bread. The moisture-deprived starch molecules then recrystallize, forming tough structures within the bread. The moisture may remain trapped within the structure of the bread, giving you a loaf that's simultaneously moist but stale. It'll taste leathery and chewy, but not cracker-y or dry.
Staling occurs most readily at refrigerator temperatures, so it's best to store bread either on the counter or in the freezer (well wrapped, to prevent drying).
So, knowing this, we realized that despite all the recipes that call for stale bread for stuffing, what we're really after here is dry bread—bread that has had plenty of moisture driven out of it, giving it more room to absorb flavorful stock. Staling takes time. Luckily for us, drying is fast.
I dry my bread by toasting it in a low (275°F/135°C) oven for about 45 minutes, tossing it a couple of times halfway through. By drying the bread like this, you make enough room in two regular-sized loaves (about two and a half pounds of bread) to absorb a full four cups of chicken or turkey broth. It's so much broth that it almost tastes like you baked it in the bird, even if you decide to do it in a separate pan. I recommend starting it with foil on top to trap some moisture, before removing the foil and crisping up the top.

So, please don't waste your lovely home-made bread by leaving it out to go stale. Dry it using heat.
Also, I'm going to hazard to say, if your recipe doesn't already call for truly drying your bread, you might want to find a better one.
You can always make lots of it and freeze it... my dad's been freezing his breadcrumbs for decades and they work great.

The freezer is probably the gentlest way to dry out bread and quite a few other things. Cut the bread into slices or small chunks, wrap them in a paper or fabric towel (something permeable), and leave them in the freezer for a week or two. This is effectively freeze drying without a vacuum pump. This is the first step for my croutons and breadcrumbs. Obviously, if you just wanted to store bread in the freezer, you would not use a permeable wrapping.


Is it safe to eat freshwater fish raw? According to this question freshwater fish should not be used in Ceviche--why not?

You should never eat freshwater fish in raw preparations. Freshwater fish are far more likely to have nasty parasites such as the lung fluke, that can only be killed by cooking. There is a slew of other nasty beasts that can be harmful if not killed.

Unless you want to end up on an episode of Monsters Inside Me, stay away.

Freshwater fish as long as they are caught in clean water are totally fine to eat raw. Granted they may not be as tasty or have the mouthfeel of a fatty saltwater fish they are perfectly fine to eat.

To be honest I would much rather eat a wild fish caught in a clean lake over any farm raised 'ocean' fish that is fed garbage and has no nutrients.

If the freshwater fish you catch comes from a clean body of water and you want to eat it raw go for it. You will not get sick and will benefit from the high level of protein.


Sous Vide Interrupted I'm trying to cook beef short-ribs sous-vide at 140° for 72 hours.  Imagine my shock this morning when I went into the kitchen and found the machine had turned itself off!  It could not have been for long because the temp had only dropped to 80° so given the heat in my kitchen I'm guessing it was only off for an hour or two.

I've since set it back to 140° for at least another 36 hours of cooking...but any damage done from this drop?  I'm more worried about bacteria and the like than any effect it will have on the meat.

Yes, according to the common food-handling procedures, having food in the 'danger zone' for some time is bad ... however, you've likely pasteurized your meat, as you only need to hold it at 140°F for 12 minutes to pasteurize pork against its normal pathogens.

Mind you, it's more than 12 minutes to get the middle up to 140°F, so it's not simply 'it needs to be cooked for 12 minutes'.

As you had pasteurized it for 24+ hrs before it was in the 'danger zone', you would've had a significant reduction in microbes, and the vacuum seal would've prevented it from being re-contaminated.

The only problem might be botulism, as you have to hold it at 185°F to kill the spores and destroy the toxin:

... so if there's garlic in the bag, and it's not in an acidic environment, you're at an increased risk.

You might be able to 'test' the contamination by holding it the warmer sections of your fridge for a week, and if the bag doesn't puff up, assume it's not at risk of botulism.  Of course, if you hold it too cool the botulism won't give off enough gas to indicate that it's a problem, so I don't know if it's a 100% accurate test.

I'm not going to say that it is or isn't a problem, as everyone should make their own decision on risk.  I wouldn't recommend serving it to others, especially not without informing them of the situation.  You should be able to ensure safety by holding it at 185°F for 15-20 minutes, but that would likely defeat the purpose of your sous-vide cooking.

Well your in that so called "Danger Zone" for 1-2 hours, but IMO it comes down to whether or not your a germaphobe or not.  For me and pretty much everyone I know, that is nothing but for others they may be scheduling a doctors visit as we speak.

According to FDA standards and such, you should be mildly concerned.  According to real world standards I wouldn't worry about it.  It really just boils down to what your comfortable with.  If your nervous then don't risk it.  Nothing worse then putting all that effort into your meal and can't enjoy it because your worried.


Why does oil transfer heat to food more gradually than water? While working on the homework for week 2 of Harvardx's Edx course, SPU27x Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science, I came across this question:

  The difference in the specific heats for water and oil is important
  for cooking. For example, oil heats faster and you are less likely to
  overcook food if you cook it in oil than water. Briefly explain these
  observations, using the scientific ideas from this week.

We are asked to write a short response to it, and after submitting it, we are given a grading rubric and asked to do a self assessment. Here is my response:

  While it is true that oil heats faster than water due to its lower
  specific heat capacity, it is not true that food is less likely to be
  overcooked than water. The boiling point of oil is generally much
  higher than that of water (about 250-350 degrees Celsius compared to
  100 degrees Celsius). This means that when cooking food in oil, it is
  very likely that your food will reach temperatures much higher than if
  they were cooked in water. Knowing that a liquid's temperature stays
  constant at the boiling point, food cooked in water will never go
  beyond 100 degrees Celsius, so you are less likely to burn food in
  water than if you were to cook in oil, as the reactions that result in
  burns do not occur at that temperature, but do occur in the boiling
  point of oils.

and the rubric we are given states:

  A full answer contains at least two of the following ideas :

  Oil has a lower specific heat than water.
  Oil can be heated to high temperatures with relatively smaller input of energy than water.
  At a fixed temperature, oil transfers heat more gradually to food than water at the same temperature.
  In liquid form, oil can be heated to a higher temperature than water.

  You may use different words to express these concepts, so judge
  your response based on the meaning of your answer, rather than
  expecting your wording to match this exactly.

So it looks like my response is quite different from the suggested answer. In particular, I am confused that the provided answer does not explicitly address whether it is true that food is less likely to overcook in oil. I am also unsure why oil transfers heat more gradually to food than does water.

I would really appreciate it if anyone could clarify my questions, and also give me some feedback on my response.

First, I don't think the question you are asking about is written well (your question about this question is better). We don't have the benefit of the course's context, but alone this question seems poor. The phrase "you are less likely to overcook food" is problematic because the techniques for cooking with oil and water are quite different, as would be expected based on the specific heats and boiling points. Although oil may transfer less heat over a fixed time period at the same temperature as water, it is unlikely you would have the oil and water at the same temperature. You simply don't cook with oil and water in the same way.

In the original question and answer, the term overcook seems to refer to the core temperature of the food. Your answer considers overcooking as burning, which is not the same thing. Perhaps they are thinking of the case where your steak will not get well done (overcooked) before you notice the outside is unpleasantly charred when pan frying in oil, but boiling the steak may result in a past-well done product without visual indication.

Im not an expert chemist so Im taking a wild guess here: Could it be about "oil and water don't mix", a.k.a solubility, and waters ability to better penetrate the surface of the food we want to cook? I would guess most food contains a substantial amount of water as compared to the amount of oil/grease/fat and that the oil cooks the food only at the surface while the water cooks the food all the way through?


Is it true cooked food cannot be left in room temperature for longer than 4 hours? I have only recently discovered that cooked food shouldn't be left in room temperature for longer than 2/4 hours.

I lived in a tropical country which is warm and humid and I have been growing up eating left over cooked food(meat, rice, bread, dairy products and left in 30C for longer than 6 hours) with no issues. In fact it's very normal to the people in my country.

So my question is the 2/4 hours only a strict guide for commercial food seller? How come people in my country do not have issues with leftover food? Is this habit a silence killer which only breaks out when we grow old?

The food safety guidelines are based on scientific & mathematical calculations along the lines of:

Given an initial bacteria count of X they will under the given conditions mulitply to a number of Y amd have produced Z [unit] of toxins.

Now what to do with these values?

We use them like seat belts or helmets. Not wearing a seat belt will not automatically kill you, only if you are involved in an accident you are much more likely to suffer severe injury or death without it. Still, nobody could responsibly recommend ignoring a seatbelt, knowing that accidents do happen. But with food safety, many are willing to skip their seat belt, so to speak.

One very common misconception is that contaminated food can be detected by smell, looks or taste. Yes, some kind of spoilage is obvious, but many, especially the more dangerous ones, are not "visible". One very prominent example is Salmonella. Note that many toxins are not destroyed by cooking, more details in our canonical post.

I can guarantee that people in your country have issues with cases of foodborne illnesses - all countries do. You need to keep in mind that

Foodborne illnesses need not become apparent immediately or shortly after a meal. The symptoms of Salmonellae, for example, might start as late as 72 hours after infection. It is likely that the connection between a sudden bout of sickness and a meal eaten three days prior is simply overlooked.
In healthy adults infections may pass unnoticed or cause only mild sympotms like indigestion. The human body can handle a certain amount of bacteria or toxins, the individual levels of tolerance vary, though. So children, elderly people or those with a compromised imune system are more likely to suffer and have a higher chance of severe complications or death. The given safety guidelines are calculated to protect these groups as well. Also note that often the side-effects are as dangerous as the pathogens themselves, diarrhea being a classic example.
There is no way of determining the amount of bacteria present in a specific dish, piece of meat or other food prone to spoiling - unless you get a lab involved. The values used to calculate safe thesholds contain a certain safety margin. Your dish could contain fewer bacteria to start with or if any were present, they might not have multiplied that much. (But they might as well have, we can't safely know.) The two/four hours rule simply means that the food will remain in the safe range, not that it will be spoiled afterwards.

So what now?

It is entirely up to you to whether you choose to drive with or without seatbelt or helmet. Make an informed devision and consider the welfare of those weaker than you. What you as a healthy adult can stomach (pun intended), might be fatal to a young child or weak elderly person.

Only a few days ago the WHO published a news release on foodborne diseases:

  First ever estimates of the global burden of foodborne diseases show almost 1 in 10 people fall ill every year from eating contaminated food and 420 000 die as a result
  Children under 5 years of age are at particularly high risk, with 125 000 children dying from foodborne diseases every year
  WHO African and South-East Asia Regions have the highest burden of foodborne diseases

(Source)

As long as your immune is strong you don't need to bother about temperature of the food storage and time. Because I saw the poor young and old people and dogs sharing their food from the wastebin but not get sick. God gives them special immunity to sustain this. But the more hygienic people get sick easily with foods.


How to avoid cinnamon sludge in a beverage? When you grind up cinnamon (say in a coffee grinder) and use it in a drink, it ends up producing this thick sludge.

You can only prevent the sludge from forming if you leave it very course.  Why does it turn to sludge?  I swear I once had a container of cinnamon that did not produce sludge.  Am I buying the wrong cinnamon?

The cinnamon "sludge" is fiber. The fiber that came from the cinnamon is soluble in water.

10 grams of cinnamon is about 8 grams of fiber (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon).
It is safe to eat / drink (fiber!) in moderate amount (Chinese cinnamon or cassia is not safe in high dose because of its toxic component called coumarin).
Of course, cinnamon sticks won't produce so much sludge.
If you use a hot drink, stir it so it doesn't sit at the bottom.

Ceylon cinnamon ("true" cinnamon) is different from Chinese cinnamon ("cassia") and may have different properties with regard to solubility and water. Check out your container that doesn't sludge, and compare with what you have been using in your grinder.

I recently bought a bottle of powdered cinnamon form Target (their brand) and it sludges for me when I mix it in water. This is not normal! Before I had bought cinnamon from Trader Joe's forever and it never sludges, and mixes in to drinks so nicely! I recommended getting your cinnamon from Trader Joe's because it never sludges!


How to make extra crispy and crunchy breading like KFC? I'm wondering how I would go about making extra crispy chicken breading like they do at many places like KFC and the like. Is there a certain ingredient that makes the breading like that?

Any assistance would be very much appreciated, and feel free to share any of your own recipes for crispy chicken breading if you have them. I'll be sure to put them to good use!

Thanks!

First, use self-rising flour or use 1 teaspoon of baking powder added to each cup of all-purpose flour that you're using for the dredging and coating mixture.  The carbon dioxide produced during frying will cause the coating to expand and become more flaky.

If you want more tender and flavorful chicken, first brine the pieces in buttermilk that has been mixed with several tablespoons of salt, some black pepper and whatever other seasonings you like.  Otherwise just dip the chiken in buttermilk seasoned with salt and pepper.

Before dredging the chicken, sprinkle a little milk or water over your seasoned flour mixture.   Shake the flour mixture around so that it asborbs the liquid, this will help create small crunch bits that will later adhere when you dredge the chicken.  Dredge the chicken and then return to the milk and then dredge again to get a thicker coating of flour.  Deep fry in enough oil to submerge, or pan-fry in enough oil to come about 2/3 up the chicken and turn a couple times to promote even browning.  Alternatively, after pan frying until evenly brown all around, remove from oil and place on a baking rack on a sheet pan and finish cooking in the oven until the chicken is done.

You only need to add your favorite seasonings to a bowl of rice flour. Then you coat the chicken with the rice flour, fry and eat it.


Can you make your own black garlic? I've seen black garlic--fermented garlic with a complex flavor--used a number of times on TV cooking shows, but I've never tried it.  The description of the flavor is intriguing.  Is it possible to ferment garlic and make your own black garlic?  What is the process?

You can absolutely make your own black garlic. All that is required is to have the garlic in a vaguely air-tight container (preferably individual wrapped or contained) for 30 days at 140°-155°F.  My method, covered at my blog, is to put the garlic in mason jars in my light bulb heated black garlic oven, which can be made for about $30 and can ferment 12 bulbs easily for about $4 of electricity over 40 days. With the cost of garlic, glue, aluminum foil and the mason jars, the oven with one recipe is less expensive than an equivalent order would be online.

The first 30 days, the jars are kept sealed in the mason jars, to allow the garlic to ferment properly. After 30 days, the lids are removed and the heat in the box dehydrates the garlic, leaving a dried out head with shriveled black cloves inside of it. The flavor is reminiscent of balsamic vinegar and soy sauce, but without the sourness of vinegar or the saltiness of soy sauce. The oven design is easily doable for anyone of any DIY skill level with access to a hardware store and an Academy (where they sell the Huskee cooler I use for $25).

I've never tried this, but here's one internet reference: http://www.ehow.com/how_5902625_make-black-garlic.html

If that's accurate, it doesn't seem practical to make at home.  You have to keep it at 140F for 40 days.


I am unable to eat tomatoes. What can I use instead, especially in soups? My digestion doesn't like tomatoes, and all the soup recipes I like call for them.  Is there anything I could substitute?

There is an alternate product available that does not contain tomatoes. It is called  Nomato .
It is described on the home page as:

Nomato sauces are a delicious natural alternative to traditional tomato based products.

Additional info:

Nomato may be substituted in any recipe using tomato sauce, barbecue sauce, ketchup or salsa.
Nomato is made from vegetables and seasonings. It contains no soy, dairy, wheat, gluten, nuts and of course no tomatoes!

I am not promoting this product and, quite frankly, have not tried it. However, I did read several great reviews about it.

If you can’t eat tomatoes, stay away from all nightshades including peppers and potatoes. Your digestion will thank you. I use nomato sauce and don’t give up if the first version doesn’t turn out perfectly, when done right it’s almost a perfect match.


How do I stop my steak from leaking juice? I panfry the steak by searing on high both sides, then cook it at a low-medium temperature until medium rare. Then I let the steak rest for ~10 minutes before cutting it. During that time a lot of juice leaks out. What am I doing wrong?

A lot of people had good questions in the comments. The best being Kenji's article from serious eats .com. Read that.

Chances are if a lot of juices are coming out of your steak, its because you are cooking it past medium. I like to think the proportion of 'grey' meat in a cooked steak indicates how much red juice has been 'squeezed' out of the meat fibrils and is now on the plate. If your steak is still medium or medium rare, there is lots of 'red' meat that has the capacity to hold the juice!
-Most important: Let rest ten minutes (longer for bigger cuts/roasts etc) after cooking. Seems like you're doing that.

Heres one link to a Serious Eats article by Kenji. This one explains some myths, including 'locking in juices'.

Serious Eats - Steak Old Wives Tales

Probably because temperature of the pan is too low when you place in it.
Steaks should have a high temperature shot at the beginning of cooking so the meat is slightly charred and seals inside the juice. The blood is clotted and the water keeps the meat tender.


Easiest way to bread chicken for frying? I usually toss the flour and chicken in a bag and shake it up. The problem is that pieces of chicken will often stick together and not get evenly coated. Is there an effective way to bread my chicken evenly without getting clumps of chicken?

One piece at a time? Into the bag, shake to coat, out of the bag, shake to remove excess flour, put aside for subsequent egg-washing and breading once all pieces are done.

Also helps to have one hand only touching dry ingredients, the other only wet.

It helps to sift the flour. I use a colander for breading. I just did this with pickles and then again with chunks of chicken and it works great, just make sure there is a pan under the colander when you are breading. Put whatever you are breading in plastic bag first, shake it up, don't use a lot of flour, dump into the colander, shake it up and bam, no mess no fuss.


Lime on Fish tastes Bitter I recently cooked tilapia in foil packets. I used Season All, and topped eached filet with guajillo salsa (flavored with lime) and lime slices.  I noticed a bitter aftertaste when I was eating the finished product.  It wasn't unbearable, but I didn't like it.  I'm thinking it was the lime slices.  I'm by no means a cooking pro, so I was wondering if anyone knows if lime slices add bitterness when cooked?  And if so, how to avoid?

My internet research didn't come up with anything definite.  (However, I discovered this website in the process!)

I'd be a little concerned about mixing aluminum foil with acid foods. Aluminum acetate has an astringent taste. I'm not finding it on the internet, but aluminum citrate (from citric acid in the lime juice) likely has a similar flavor.

Here's a recent, and seemingly reputable look at cooking acid foods in Aluminum foil (PDF file): Risk Assessment of Using Aluminum Foil in Food Preparation

Using parchment paper rather than aluminum foil would avoid the possibility of producing bad tasting metal salts.

it was the wrong preparation of the fish. you have to be very extra careful when removing the innards specially the bile.


What to do about beetle infestation of wheat products? How do we prevent reinfestation? Today my wife went to make some bread. She noticed some very small insects in the whole wheat and regular flour. Upon further inspection, many of our wheat based products were infested with these critters. The worst infestation was in some buckwheat noodles that looked like swiss cheese.

The bug looks like a dark, barely visible beetle. Maybe about half a centimeter in length. They seem to be depositing a powder everywhere. Maybe this is just flour they've carried around.

What are these guys? How do we get rid of them? How do we prevent them from coming back?

Link to picture:
http://web18.twitpic.com/img/146355240-133d33091a2b839fc9d4fb35402c0cea.4c686a68-scaled.jpg

Ugh, I feel for you!  Just based on the description, it's probably some type of flour beetle (normally either red flour beetle or confused flour beetle -- but check on wikipedia for pictures).  I'm no exterminator, but I've dealt with infestations of both in my pantry.

The only thing that I've found that works is to go through all food stored in the pantry (including that in sealed packages) and make sure that you throw out anything that is infested.  I'm not sure how you feel about chemicals, but at this point, I bug-bombed the house.

After you're sure that you no longer have an infested food, seal everything in plastic food storage containers.  In theory, that should contain any further infestations to a maximum of one container.

The other thing that I've done is to store as much of my dry goods as possible in the fridge/freezer... so stuff like flour is now stored in a sealed container in the back of the fridge.

My exterminator has said that a lot of times the beetles come in a package from the grocery store (a couple beetles in a box of pasta, for example) and they just overrun/overpopulate as much as they can.

try with uncrushed solid salt balls in grains . we want to preserve wheatfloor


Pulled pork substitute- How do I do it? I want to emulate pulled pork for my non-pork eating friend (semi-Jewish, read: no pigs, it doesn't have to be technically kosher).  What cut of beef would achieve a similar texture? The closest I've ever eaten was short ribs, but is there something better?  I'm not too worried about duplicating the method- I'm comfortable with a crock pot, a dutch oven, stove top cooking, whatever- just looking for a similar end result.

Depending on the dish, maybe duck confit.  It works really well in tacos. It has the nice unctuous fat and goes well with tomatillo and avocado.  But it'd probably be hard or expensive to get in large quantities.

Braised chicken breasts...moist and pull apart easily. They'll be good with virtually any sauce you'd be using with pork.


What's the difference between Greek and Bulgarian Feta Cheese I went to buy some feta cheese today and noticed that there was both Greek and Bulgarian feta. I was wondering what the differences are between the two and can they be suitably substituted for each other?

Having worked for some time as a cheesemonger, I found that Bulgarian Feta was generally saltier and more assertive than many Greek fetas.  I also found the texture to be a bit grainier with the Bulgarian feta and a bit more dense.  However, my experiences are limited in that while I sold five different Greek fetas, I only sold one Bulgarian Feta.  I'll also point out that while Feta is historically made with goat milk, it can also be made with sheep milk or cow milk as well, so one has to take the milk source into consideration also (for a quick overview, cow feta will generally be mellow and creamy, while sheep, and particularly goat feta will be more acidic.  But even then, the brine can completely counteract these generalizations!).

Being a great fan and quite familiar with both kinds - Greek Feta and Bulgarian White Sirene (spelled as " 'sireneh "), by eating them both with great pleasure for decades, I could say, that there are so many kinds of these cheeses, depending on the region, process/producer, season, breed/breeding, grass/grazing, etc., that sometimes even the best professional can't make the difference between the Bulgarian and the Greek version.

My opinion is that Feta and Sirene are just two names in different languages of two same things. Yes, Bulgarian sirene is a little more greasy and non-crumbly. And I prefer the taste of Bulgarian sheep white cheese Balkan than every Greek Feta. Cow's cheeses are almost the same.

I remember the times thirty years ago when white Bulgarian sheep sirene in tins and especially the more famous Bulgarian Yellow Cheese - the legendary Kashkaval, or in Greek - Kasheri, branded RODOPA - the single Bulgarian state producer at that time, was sold more or less legally on Bardari Market in Salonica and other markets and all Greeks used to search and buy them as the best quality cheeses at incredibly low price. Greek tourists in Sofia used to go back home oftenly with one or several blocks of kashkaval each. Now there are many Greek producers who managed to achieve the taste of these popular cheeses and to fill the market with high quality production, though at ~50% higher prices than the Bulgarian ones.

These two cheeses are the most popular on Bulgarian and Greek market, and also in all other Balkan countries, thousands of tons are been eaten, and the great Bulgarian Shopska Salad or Greek Horiatiki or Tirokafteri Salads are impossibly to be made without a goodly piece of white/feta cheese, seasoned with a cup of olive oil, though there are lots more great and expensive cheeses produced by diaries from both countries as types of Gruyer/Graviera, Mozarella, Parmigiano, Blue and Green Roquefort, Brie, Camembert, Gouda, Cheddar, Gorgonzolla, etc.

My beloved Greek friends  are very sensible, emotional and jelaous when they patriotically defend their confidence that the white cheese is invented by ancient Hellens, but the truth is that there are no certain evidences where exactly the first feta cheese has been  produced - on Greek, or Bulgarian or even on Turkish territory. Some evidences show Thracians and Slovians and even the Huns, as ancient producers of cheeses as well, so speaking without hard evidences in hand, is nonsense.

Let's just sit all together around the rich table near the beach of Kassandra and to meet the sunset with icy divine wines, wonderful cheeses and sweet talks.


Where in the US can I purchase Turkish Coffee/Cafe Botz/Mud Coffee When I visited Israel I became a big fan of something they called "cafe botz" or mud coffee. It tasted real good, and you sort of poured warm water over it, stirred and waited for all the coffee material to sediment, I gues that is why its called botz in herbrew. It was marketed in the shops as "Turkish Coffee". I havent been able to get it in the Unites States. Where can I get, preferably online, good quality of this Turkish coffe.

Turkish coffee is simply a very, very fine grind - basically ground into a powder - prepared by boiling it and subsequently waiting for sedimentation, more or less as you describe in the question.

There is no particular kind of coffee you need for it - any will do.

Just buy whole coffee beans in any coffee shop or bulk food store and ask for a very fine (Turkish) grind.  Most burr grinders can handle this; as Michael says, you can also buy your own burr grinder or use a specialized Turkish grinder.  Either one will tend to run you around $100.

(Note that you probably won't be able to get the right grind with the majority of blade grinders.  They're just too imprecise.)

Commenter Martha also points out that many coffees marketed as Turkish coffee will also contain a certain amount of cardamom or cloves, which is confirmed by several internet sources. If you try it with pure coffee and it doesn't taste right, try adding a small amount.

You can find it in Russian supermarkets. This is where I buy it all the time.


What are the difference between outside and inside skirt steak? Skirt steak comes in two cuts: outside and inside. While I am sure the difference in cut affects how the meat should be prepared and cooked I am not sure in what ways. A few things I've read about the outside skirt reference the need to trim the membrane, but I'm not sure what the posts are referring to. Leading to my questions about the cuts:

What are the differences between the inside and outside skirt steak cuts?
How do these differences affect preparation and cooking?
When should one cut be chosen over the other? Are the two cuts interchangeable in most recipes?

Per Kenji Alt's Food Lab article on fajitas:

  [T]here are really two distinct cuts from the diaphragm of the steer.

  The outside skirt steak is from the plate section, below the rib and
  between the brisket and flank, and usually comes with the membrane
  still attached, which needs to be trimmed before cooking.

  Inside skirt comes from the flank—it's narrower and thinner than the
  outside skirt, and comes with the membrane removed.

According to the Houston Press, outside skirt stake is extremely rare in the US, as much of it gets exported to Japan due to a quick in the tariffs.  The outside cut is tougher, but extremely flavorful.  Both are used in similar applications, if you can get them.

Given that any skirt you buy is probably inside skirt, the difference is likely to be moot.  In making fajitas, Kenji Alt recommends grilling it over extremely high heat, to get browning flavors on the outside, and not overcook the center.  He recommends not cooking it over medium rare.

A couple of pictures:

the inside skirt needs a stronger marinate because it taste more like the insides (liver, kidney, etc). it is cheaper.


What's the numbering system for spaghetti and does it matter? When I lived in Italy some years ago I remember an Italian friend explaining the numbering system for spaghetti (perhaps also other long pasta). How spaghetti was sold in Italy with a number indicating its fineness.

She told me that different kinds of recipes called for specific numbered spaghetti, if you wanted to be precise.

Can anyone else explain the numbering system for spaghetti better than my vague recollection? Do people in Italy really worry about matching the right numbered spaghetti with a given dish, and has anyone outside Italy encountered a recipe calling for a specific number spaghetti?

Ok, here is the straight dope, directly from De Cecco customer service:

  With reference to your question we would like to inform you that the numbers you mention do not have a logical criteria but are just code numbers which we give our products each time we make a new shape.

EDIT: apparently, the answer below is a 'common misconception'. See the other answers to this question. Learn something new every day!

Yes, there is a spaghetti numbering system. The smaller the number, the smaller the radius of the spaghetti.

For puttanesca, I've seen a suggestion of using #12.

Whether italians worry about this kinda thing - I dunno, but I imagine it depends on the Italian. I haven't run across recipes specifying size yet, and I don't look at it in the store (not even when i was in Italy).

I also have a great illustration for you about number spaghetti. :)


what made the juice/water of the beans turned black I have 3 new pre-seasoned cast iron pots as gifts   I cleaned as instructed before using.  But when I tried simmering a nice pot of beans in one the broth turned really black.  I had to throw away everything   now I am afraid to use them   what can I do

It sounds you ended up with magnetite in your broth. That is the black stuff you want to use to season cast iron pans by binding it with fats. Sounds like that went wrong with your pans. If you really want to use them for boiling, you need to season them again, and test if that was successful...(water with a drop of lemon juice or two or three as a test). It is not poisonous.
If you don't know how to season a pan, this is the method I like to use: guide for seasoning a pan

It is best not to boil anything in a cast-iron pan or pot. The boiling water lifts the oil seasoning off the iron and exposes the raw metal again, leading to oxidation. Starchy foods, such as beans or potatoes, increase the reaction.


Can I freeze (raw) Brussels Sprouts to mimic the effects of frost? This year has been a very mild winter and all the Brussels Sprouts in the shops are quite bitter as they have not undergone any overnight frosts.

Can I mimic the effects of an overnight frost by leaving raw Brussels Sprouts in the freezer for some time? How long should I do this for?

I have access to both individual sprouts that have already been picked from their "tree" and also some "sprout trees" that are still intact but have just been sliced off above the ground.

All the answers that Google can find relate to freezing already-cooked Brussels Sprouts for later consumption, but I assume that once cooked it is too late to reduce the bitterness in this way - although I could be wrong about this.

I tried this recently. Washed & dried them and put them in a plastic bag in freezer for 30 mins only. It worked well for me - they were much tastier and a better texture.

There is a difference between frosting and freezing. When you get frost outside, the temps just hit freezing or a little below. A hard freeze is when everything above ground gets frozen solid.

That's what your freezer does. If you want to mimic a frost, then put your veg in the back of the fridge where the cold air falls down from the freezer.

I don't think it's going to help so much though, because those frosts affect how the plant as a whole behaves biologically. It however can't hurt, and I'd like to find out your results.


How to avoid getting the pizza all watery? When I cook pizza it gets all watery. There's literarily water formed on top of the dough. I believe it's released by the mozzarella, but I'm not totally sure.
Any ideas how to avoid this?

Some more information: I'm cooking at around 230C (according to the oven, who knows!) with an electric oven. No stone, just the metal tray. The pizza has exactly the same shape as the metal tray (which is a rectangle, just as the oven).

According to my last experiments, the source of the water is definitely the cheese. I'm cooking the dough, then adding the tomato sauce, then adding the cheese and the water doesn't appear until the cheese-phase. I tried all the possible mozzarellas that I can get at the supermarket with the same result.

There are a number of factors that can contribute to a watery pizza:

Cheese If you think the cheese is the culprit, you can try using a "low moisture" mozzarella (these are dry to the touch on the outside).  If you are using a "fresh" mozzarella (these usually are sold in a brine), e.g., classic mozzarella di bufala or mozzarella fior di latte, I recommend slicing the cheese as opposed to grating the cheese.  The idea is that slicing the cheese will produce less surface area, and thereby reduce the amount of water that leeches out.  Also, I recommend dabbing the cheese slices with a kitchen towel to remove any surface moisture.  If you use this method, it will also help to cut the cheese in very thin slices, since that will release more moisture before it touches the pizza and it will also reduce the amount of cooking time.
Tomato Sauce I recommend making the sauce yourself.  As opposed to simmering the tomatoes/sauce on the stove for a long time, I prefer making a light tomato sauce that actually cooks on the pizza itself.  I quickly purée the tomatoes (canned are fine) in a food processor and then let them strain in a fine mesh colander for 30 to 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.  That gets rid of a lot of water (the tomatoes lose about half of their volume).  Throw in some minced garlic, chopped basil, and season and it is ready to go on the pizza.
The Cooking Method Since my home oven doesn't get as hot as a traditional pizza oven, I always "blind" cook my pizza without the cheese.  In other words, I throw the dough, add the sauce, and then cook it with just the sauce for 4 or 5 minutes.  This allows any extra moisture in the sauce to cook off.  I then remove the pizza, add the cheese, and then broil it until the cheese is melted and browned.
The Dough If the dough ends up becoming soggy, you can always compensate by making it a bit thicker.

This is a very strange problem so first I would check that your oven's fan isn't blocked and has good air flow.

You could try putting oats or rice in the oven as a desiccant. I have tried it with chips.

I microwave mushrooms as this brings the juice out, and you can drain it off.
Drain, or if necessary sieve, all your wet ingredients like tinned tomatoes.
Cut out the insides of any whole tomatoes.

Add the cheese just before the pizza is finished cooking, cheese doesn't take long and prevent the lower level breathing.

Unsure of the chemistry but microwaving cheddar and butter causes the fat (I think) to come out of cheese and it leaves you with a spongey dry cheese that may be better suited for you.


Milk pasteurization in the bottle via water bath: fridge live? I am frequently buying raw milk in bottle, which needs to be boiled for pasteurization. So far I always poured it in a pot, boiled it, and transferred it to a clean bottle after.

Since my old supplier dried up I need to travel a bit to get it, so I am thinking about ways to preserve it a bit longer, preferably 2-4 weeks in the fridge.

Would it be a good idea to put the glass bottles as they are in a water bath and wait until the milk starts bubbling? This way I won't need to do all the transfers and there won't be any air contact, it would be basically water bath canned. Would it hold for 2-4 weeks this way in my 4C° fridge? Any downsides?

I was also considering pressure canning, but I think this would be over kill for what I am trying to achieve here, which is slightly longer fridge life.

You're in luck!

High-temperature short-time (HTST) pasteurisation for milk can be done at 71.5 °C (160.7 °F) for 15 seconds and extends milk's shelf life to about 2 weeks.  So if you can get a thermometer you don't need to wait for milk to bubble.

It's also possible to use a sous vide method; according to this guide 65°C for 30 minutes. Again, it's very important all the milk reaches this temperature and stays constant during the process. In this case the lower temperature is possible because the exposure time is longer. After 30 minutes, cool it as quickly as possible to 4°C.

To extend the shelf life to ~3 months you need ultra-high-temperature (UHT) pasteurisation (135 °C (275 °F) for 1–2 seconds) but that might be more difficult to control; you need to make sure that all the milk reached the temperature and stay there for that amount of time. I'm not sure this process is possible with home equipment.

Make sure to sterilise your containers prior to adding the milk, to avoid other contaminants.

No, you can't. There is no approved safe process for home canning any kind of dairy.

Sure, there are industrial ways to preserve milk and other dairy-containing food for that long, but they have different security regulations, and are able to follow different processes which you cannot ensure in a home kitchen.

As always with food safety, no matter what you do at home, you cannot prove that it is safe.


How can brown stains be removed from pots and pans? I haven't been cooking for long — recent college grad — so I'm doing a lot of experimentation and making a lot of rookie mistakes.  One of them is shown here for your viewing pleasure:

My mom gifted me this pan less than a year ago.  She used it for over 15 years and kept it spotless the entire time, so I'm more than a little embarassed.  I suspect that these stains were caused by stray drops of oil getting onto the bottom of the pan and getting burned on.  Is that right, or were they caused by something else?  I use an electric stove with resistive heating coils, if it makes a difference.  And more importantly, how can I get this pan clean again?

Bar Keeper's Friend in powdered form and some elbow grease will solve this problem. The first time you tackle it, it can be a real pain to get the pan cleaned up, but if you keep up with it regularly after that, it's not to bad. Great cleaning supply.

I had the same problem, and used comet powder and a stainless steel pad. After scrubbing for an hour I got 50% of it off.


Turkish delight: cornstarch or gelatine? I've never made Turkish Delight. I've been looking at recipes and I've seen some using cornstarch and others using gelatine. As these two ingredients are completely different binding agents, the question arises which to use?

On the one hand, gelatine is easier for me, on the other hand I think cornstarch is more authentic (not sure about that).

The reason gelatine is easier for me, is that the cornstarch recipes call for cream of tartar and that's a bit difficult to obtain in Spain. I'll try to find it in a drug-store.

If you want to make real Turkish delight, use cornstarch and only cornstarch. Nowhere on the Balkan have I seen a gelatine-thickened Turkish delight. No Turkish person will recognize a gelatine-thickened candy as lokum. I would go as far as to insist that aromatzied sugar syrup+gelatine = gummi bear, while aromatized sugar syrup+cornstarch = Turkish delight, although some people will feel that this is pedantic.

Beside authenticity, gelatine-containing recipes are prone to weeping, I have seen questions about that around here.

Bottom line: I would always make it with cornstarch. This doesn't mean that candy made with gelatine can't be tasty; it is just that if you want what you get in a Turkish shop, you can't do it with gelatine.

I checked out this site before eating some Turkish delight that a friend brought home from Istanbul for us but... I checked with the actual company that produces it and they said they contain gelatine. This is from a very well-known candy producer in the area and they also have non-gelatine, but I was very sad to have already eaten much of it before receiving their response and being sad about it. So for the record: even extremely authentic, traditional and well-appreciated Turkish delight can contain gelatine. Eater beware!


How do I stop my fire alarm from going off when I cook? My fire alarm always goes off when I cook, even when the food is not burning. Because of this, I have never been able to keep batteries in my fire alarms.  How can I stop this from happening?

Many modern smoke/fire detectors have the ability to temporarily disable or decrease the sensitivity of the alarm for a short period of time, usually 15 or 20 minutes. At the end of the time period it returns to full sensitivity.

You may want to look into replacing your smoke detector with one of these.

An apartment I lived in had detectors that went off while cooking. They put a light cloth filter cover that went over then secured it with a rubber band. According to them if the smoke built up in an actual fire it would penetrate and still set the alarm off. As an alternative to that, after I moved I would use a jay cloth and secure it with a rubber band. When I tested it with burning paper below it it still went off but it did eliminate the false cooking alarms. It's not really pretty but it worked, even if just put up temporarily put while cooking.


yeast substitutes and proper measurements I was wondering if I could get some advice as I have intolerances to yeast and have heard of a few substitutions from: baking soda, baking powder, lemon juice, milk and yogurt.
The question comes to how do I measure these into bread or baking to make whatever I am making rise? I have heard that in the middle east they rarely use yeast for bread baking and their bread still rises. I just don't know the proper measurements I would use, if a bread recipe calls for 1 or 2 packets of yeast and mixing them in water do you mix one tsp of baking soda and 1 tsp of lemon juice in together?

If you can give me any advice on this that would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

There are no substitutes for yeast. What you list are not substitutes, but alternative leaveners: either actual baking powder, or a combination of baking soda and lemon juice or yogurt. The milk does not contribute to leavening at all.

There is nothing you can do to mimic ordinary yeast or sourdough (which consists mostly of wild yeasts). If you were to use a chemical leavener in a bread recipe, everything would be wrong - the ingredients, the proportions, but most of all, the process. It will fail miserably.

There are two classes of baked goods which are used as bread and don't contain yeast, quickbreads and unleavened breads. Quickbreads are made with chemical leaveners. Nowadays, practically nobody bakes them for use as a bread, but rather as a kind of less elegant cake. So the recipes common today are for the sweet and fruity varieties like banana bread. But if you can find a source of WWII era recipes, you'll probably find plain quickbreads without sugar, intended to be used instead of yeast breads.

Unleavened breads don't rise, they are a class which contains things like flour tortillas and naan. They are indeed popular in the Middle East, but it is not true that "their bread still rises" - it doesn't, and it isn't intended to. You can get some amount of puffiness if you have a very hot oven, but this is impossible with electric appliances on 360 volts or below, it is done in wood ovens. And the pita still stays mostly flat, it is just somewhat airier, but it cannot be shaped as a loaf and still bake.

I am sorry to hear about your condition, but all you can do is to search for recipes for quickbreads and flatbreads. Yeast cannot be substituted.

There is a bit of explanation on leavening mechanisms in this question: Why are there no recipes combining both yeast and baking powder?.

As others have said, there is no true replacement for yeast. There are other alternatives and the one I have found works best it baking soda,water,and milk. Good luck!


What, other than popcorn, can be made in a popcorn maker? What can successfully be made using a popcorn maker, other than the various kinds of popping corn?

I've tried pumpkin seeds and, while they didn't pop, they did become toasted and actually quite nice.

Many popcorn makers can be used to roast coffee...you will likely destroy it as a popcorn popper over time, however.

I think about this aswell, i feel that a popcorn maker and cook many things. i personally feel that many things can be cooked in a popcorn maker. including potatoes, chocolate cake, chicken, chips, and a personal faveroute battered sausages


Muffins are fluffy, but crumbly I just made muffins, which turned out to have a great flavor and density, but are very crumbly.

I followed this recipe, and made the following substitutions:

1/2 cup of flour --> coffee flour
3/4 cup milk + 1/4 cup coffee --> 1/4 cup milk + 1 cup coffee

The recipe also calls for the butter to be melted before mixed. I'm currently thinking that both the small amount of fat (1 stick of butter), and consistency (melted as opposed to cold/room temp) is probably causing the crumble.

Are there any ways I can make the recipe less crumbly without increasing the amount of fat or oil? Or only doing so slightly?

It looks like you substituted fully a third of the total flour in the recipe with coffee flour. Admittedly I have never used (or even heard of) coffee flour before, but I bet it does not come out as sticky as regular all-purpose flour when mixed with water (or milk, coffee, etc.)

You can make paste (for sticking up posters and wallpaper) with wheat flour and water, so if your muffins came out crumbly and wouldn't stick together, I would suspect the coffee flour, or rather a lack of wheat flour. That novel ingredient does sound like an interesting idea, but one third of a critical component like flour might be too radical.

Both the milk and the coffee in the recipe are primarily water (at least for structural purposes), so I doubt if that substitution was your problem. As far as the butter, one stick sounds like a reasonable amount to me, and lack of fat doesn't usually cause crumbliness.

It would be a good experiment to make the muffins as specified once, just to see what they are supposed to be like, and then start substituting (conservatively at first) in the next batch.

Instead of asking a bunch of people, like me, who have never heard of Coffee Flour and have no clue what it is, I suggest you ask the company that makes and markets it - http://www.coffeeflour.com/

Go so far as to request a recipe instead of 'shotgunning' it like you appear to be attempting to.


How do I catch drippings on a charcoal grill? It's time for me to buy a charcoal grill. I am looking into the Weber 22.5 inch.

I hope I will be able to use it to get smokey flavor as well with Alton Brown's "wood chips in aluminum foil method".

However, I am worried about durability. Since the the shape of the grill is cylindrical, I suspect I am going to have a hard time catching drippings effectively. Most dripping catchers are rectangular.

How does one go about solving this? I am thinking of just using aluminum foil, but I am afraid that it might melt.

The melting temperature of aluminum is 660C/1220F. It's extremely unlikely your grill will ever achieve that temperature.

Although a rectangular pan doesn't fit a cylinder very well from a geometric perspective, in practice on a grill it fits just fine. Your food is rarely circular in shape either, after all. The Weber grills have a very good reputation as smoking/grilling devices. I wouldn't hesitate.

In our experience that particular grill is the best grill for anything less than the cost of Big Green Egg (the Egg beats it at slow cooking but it's also 16x the price and temperamental).

Durability:
Over the Six or Seven years I have put it through all kinds of punishment (1000+°F grilling, frying oil fires, etc) winters and summers and not a peep from the poor thing.
Drip Tray: The shape of the grill tends to help burn off most of the drippings (flavour).  The round tray that comes with it should do the rest along with charcoal ash.
Improvements:  The only modification we made to this grill was to add a $6 thermometer on the lid and stack two pizza stones for pizza.

Overall, I find myself using this one over the Green Egg.  I've only used real wood charcoal and sometimes even real cedar but never the briquettes.


How can I tell when chicken thighs are sufficiently cooked to eat? Last night I was grilling chicken thighs on a barbecue and I was told that if there was any pink inside them, they are not safe to eat. My question is twofold:

(a) Is this true?

(b) Is there a way to tell that doesn't involve cutting the thighs open to have a look at the colour?

Pink has to do with blood, which typically runs clear once it reaches a certain temperature.  This is not a great rule of thumb for making delicious food.

It's particularly problematic with thighs, because they contain a vein that can remain red or pink well through the cooking process.  This is less so if the chicken is washed or the veins cleaned.

The key is temperature, not color.  If you have a meat thermometer, aim for 165-170°F (74-77°C), keeping in mind that meat will continue cooking for 5-10°F (3-6°C) once it's pulled and allowed to rest for 5 minutes.  If you don't have a thermometer, aim for meat that is responsively tender but not too firm, opaque rather than transparent, and not slimy or gelatinous in texture.  Thighs are a little more tolerant than breasts when it comes to drying out because they have more fat, but nothing is sadder than overcooked meat (except maybe salmonella poisoning).

I have heard that you can stick a fork in and if it comes out with a light shake the thigh is done, if it is hard to shake the thigh off it needs more cooking.

For me I just time it, I know how long it takes for the different recipes I make.


How to make a brewed tea at work? The way I make tea at home is per the following:

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk (or sometimes 3/8 cup)
2 teaspoons of tea
3-4 spoons of sugar
Few inches of ginger
Mint (occasionally)

I put all of them in a pot until it brews to the top of the pot. (Small pot, could hold maybe 2-3 cups of water)

Anyway, my question is how can I make this at work where all I have is

Fridge
Microwave
Hot water dispenser
And K-Cup machine

I usually make tea at work per the following but it just doesn't taste that great:

1 bag of tea
3-4 spoons of sugar
Add milk until cup looks like the right color.
8 oz. water

ideally I would like it to taste just like the contents of this packet (without artificial milk) http://shop.khanapakana.com/wagh-bakri-instant-tea-premix-3-in-1-ginger-9-18-oz-260-grams/

Why not make it how you like it at home? Here's your best bet (and a very simple suggestion); buy a good thermos. You can get a 24 ounce one for about $30 which will work incredibly well, and last you a lifetime unlike most cooking appliances. When you properly prime a thermos with boiling water, it can keep beverages piping hot for upwards of 12 hours. This lets you avoid trying to come up with a complicated solution at work.

Boil water and put it in the thermos, and seal it. Leave it alone for a few minutes while you brew your tea exactly as you want it. When your tea is ready, dump out the boiling water and pour in the tea, and reseal.

We do this daily for my wife, since she is unable to brew tea at work. She just uses hot water, but it stays hot enough that she can actually drop in a teabag or two midway through the day and brew with no issues. Here is the one we use:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008FK9NIC

The trick I found to making iced drinks with a Keurig machine at work is to use separate cups for the hot liquid and cold liquid (or ice). Run the K-Cup through as normal, filling a hot cup. It works best to mix in sugar with the hot liquid. Pour the cold liquid (or ice) into a separate, larger, cup. I usually used big cups in the 32-42 oz range. Then you mix the hot into the cold.

It may take you a few tests to get the portions correct for your taste. If it's too cold for you at first, pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds or so to heat it up a little.

There are also chai K-cups available but I've heard from some chai fans that they weren't all that good. Maybe adding some sugar and milk would help them out. This certainly helps with the iced tea and coffee K-Cups.


Name for turning ingredients to powder / mush, and then molding back into their original shape Is there a name for the technique of turning an ingredient into a homogeneous mass, and then molding it back into its original shape, or the shape of a less-processed form of that ingredient? Examples:

Pringles are made by turning potatoes (and some wheat) into powder, and then molding them back into a shape of a potato that was sliced up and fried.

The McRib consists of homogeneous meat that's been shaped to resemble a more natural configuration of meat.

Harvest Snaps are peas that have been turned to powder and then pressed back into the shape of a fresh pea pod.

Bonus Question: All the examples I can think of are industrially processed food. Are there any traditional or home recipes that use a similar technique?

Reformed

This is most often used to describe meat products such as "reformed ham" or "reformed scampi". You can occasionally see onion rings made with chopped onion described as reformed, e.g. here.

Pringles could be described as "reformed potato snacks" for example. Pringles are less than half potato though, so that may not be entirely accurate.

As for doing this at home, it's common to bake a potato, scoop the potato from the skin, mash it up with some seasonings and then put it back in the skin, thereby reforming the potato.

"Extruded" is used to describe the end product in some cases. This is the process of forcing soft material through a nozzle to give it shape (whether that's hot aluminium or potato).

At home, piping is closest. Piping mashed potato is a bit fancy for me but could certainly be done. Making sausages is very similar, though of course they're forced into a casing. If you start with a steak, mince it and form it into a burger you're doing something quite similar, but extrude doesn't apply there.


What is the shelf-life for Homemade Jams? If I'm making Homemade Jams/Preserves, how long will they last?

All home-canned food should be used within a year. This assumes you follow the strict sterilization regimen required by jarring/canning at home. You should also store them in a cool, dark, dry place between 50-70°F.

Over time changes in color, flavor, and texture is inevitable. This will result in a degradation of quality in the product, but as long as the seal is in tact and there are no visible signs of mold or yeast the jam should be safe to eat.

Another thing to note is that lighter colored jams tend to darken faster than others and thus may not look appealing over the course of a full year. They are still "safe" though.

Source:

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/questions/FAQ_jellied.html#7

Home made Jam made with half Fruit and half Sugar will last almost indefinitely... it's additives that spoil food, placed into in a sterile jam jar it could be there many years and still as good as the one eaten in the first week, Ask your granny not a jobsworth! 50/50 nothing else!


How do I make my chocolate brownies 'fudgy'? What are the key requirements, in terms of both ingredients and techniques, for baking chocolate brownies with a fudgy centre?

Every time I make brownies, I always get compliments on how fudgy they are. There may be some variations based on the recipe you use, but the three things I've found to be most important in my experience are:

Don't even think about using a boxed/pre-made mix! Bake from scratch - it adds a whole 3-5 minutes of extra prep time for brownies, but the taste and texture would be worth it even if it added an hour.
Use fewer eggs. I use the King Arthur Flour "Grandmother's brownies" recipe; I can only find an online copy for the 200th Anniversary edition, but those instructions aren't the same as the older version my mom's cookbook has. The recipe calls for 2-4 eggs per batch (a batch is a 9x9" square pan), and instructs you to use more eggs for a cakier brownie, fewer for a fudgier one. I've found that 3 eggs works best for me.
Use brown sugar for at least some of the total sugar in the recipe. The King Arthur Flour recipe calls for 2 cups of sugar, either white or brown. I typically split 50/50; the brown sugar adds a nice flavor, and I think the moisture in it helps achieve that fudgy consistency, too.

There's another element to changing the consistency, too: cooking time. Most brownie recipes I've seen say to bake for 35-45 minutes; I almost never bake them for more than 30 because I find that the edges start to get really dried out. Undercooking slightly will keep the brownies moist and fudgy.

 The ingredients from the old "Grandmother's Brownies" King Arthur Flour recipe: 4 ounces (squares) unsweetened chocolate [can substitute 1-ounce square = 3 tbs cocoa powder + 1 tbs butter); ½ cup (1 stick) butter; 2 cups sugar and/or brown sugar; 2 to 4 eggs; ½ teaspoon salt; 2 teaspoons vanilla; 1 cup flour

Add an egg or one more, if the recipe already calls for eggs.


Why is my pumpkin soup sour? Whenever I make pumpkin soup I always find it to be way too sour and I end up adding a Tbsp of brown sugar to correct. Are Pumpkins naturally tart, or is there a reason why this is happening? Are there other methods to correct this aside from adding sugar?

My method is to roast the pumpkin and then add to chicken stock with variety of spices (cayenne, salt, pepper, turmeric, cumin, etc.), and add cream or coconut milk to thicken.

Hmm. I would say that pumpkins maybe have a slight bit of acidity, but I would never think of them as distinctly sour. I suppose it could be the variety you are using. Also, taste your stock by itself to make sure it isn't contributing an unwanted sour note. All of that said, it may just be one of those expectation things. We are used to pumpkin in a sweet context, and your brain wants that little bit of sugar there to match the template, so it seems sour without it.

If you really want to test this out further, try making a small batch of the same recipe with no spices and plain water to see if it is truly the pumpkin that seems sour to you.

Possibly because you are adding the cream and then leaving the soup out of the fridge, this cream will turn sour; causing soup to go sour.


How do you open a coconut? Without killing yourself or others?

The best way to open a brown hairy coconut, not a fresh green one (assuming you are right handed, I imagine that sinister people can reverse the instructions, but I've not tried it).

First image the coconut is a head, everything is related to this, so the visualization is important.  The three holes are the eyes and mouth of the face.  They naturally form an eyes/mouth thing.  you'll see that it only really looks like a eyes/mouth one way up.  stare into its eyes (this bit is not so important, but I like to do it).

Now hold it in your left palm, under its chin/where the neck would be, with the 3 holes in the coconut arranged like the eyes and mouth of a face looking out to the right, mouth below the eyes, with the hair pointing up.  There will be a slight 'seam' running between the eyes and back over the top of the head.

Then take a large, heavy knife and using the FLAT side of the knife (not the sharp edge), a meat cleaver works best, strike the coconut hard across the coconut's 'forehead', where its hair line would be, aiming to impact exactly on the 'seam'.  You might need a few goes to get the crack right open, but sometimes it can be done in a single strike.

Get this right and it will crack in a straight line from ear to ear along the hair line.  Works a treat.  And usually you can use the shell for something as you get a clean break.

Once you have the first crack you can either prise apart or rotate the coconut in your hand and hit it a couple more times on the uncracked parts, following the same line as the first crack, to completely separate the two pieces.

Alternatively you can stick it into the oven for 15 mins, @400F, after which the shell should have started to crack.  Then you can use the tool of choice to finish the cracking, rolling pin, hammer, wrench, flat of knife another coconut, whatever.  But where is the fun in that?

Since you didn't say you want to retain the coconut water, just use a big ol' axe!


what is the ingredient that makes my takeout lo mein smoky tasting? Have a great place for Chinese takeout.  Love their Lo Mein.  It has a great smoky taste.  Alas when reheating left overs, the smoky taste is gone.  Would like to replace/add to the Lo Mein, but not sure what the seasoning is.  Can it be toasted sesame or something else.  It really is a great enhancement to the dish.  When asked, the Chinese restaurant said they make their own Lo Mein sauce...no help to me.

If I'm understanding your question right, you might be referring to "wok hei," or the "breath of the wok." It's the flavor that restaurant food has because of the high heat of the woks in a professional cooking environment, and home stoves have a very hard time reproducing it. I found it covered in another Cooking Stack Exchange here:

What Is Wok Hai And How Do I Get It In My Food?

They might use Chinkiang black rice vinegar


Sushi in lunch box? Sushi rice preservation I want to make maki rolls for my 10 year old's lunch box.

As I will be making the sushi rice the evening before, I will be refrigerating it until the next morning when I will do the maki rolls with smoked salmon (it's for a 10 year old).

Obviously my primary concern is food safety over texture and I have come upon conflicting information on whether or not to refrigerate the sushi rice.

Any thoughts or ideas?

If your primary motivation is food safety, then you shouldn't keep rice at room temperature for extended periods of time.

There are some people who say that leftover rice shouldn't be kept at all, because there's a risk of Bacillus cereus multiplying between the time that you cooked the rice and got it chilled down.

As such, you should cook your rice, cool it down to make the sushi, and then either consume it, or refrigerate it immediately.

Also possibly of interest (although I don't know if it would work for sushi), scientists have found that adding coconut oil when cooking rice, then chilling it can convert sugars to a non-available form, if you're concerned about diabetes risk.

Sushi rice tends to harden up  if kept exposed in air and 0-5°C which is fridge temperature. Use cling film to wrap them up, then roll it with newspaper and keep them in your fridge. Vinegar in Sushi rice can keep rice safe to eat for up to 2 days.


Is there any way to store hollandaise sauce? I've just made hollandaise sauce following Alton Brown method. I used only about 4 tablespoons and I have about 1 cup left.

Using google I found that I shouldn't put it on the fridge, doesn't freeze well and shouldn't be more than 4 hours without use. That leaves little margin.

Is there anything I can do?

Not really. The sauce must be refrigerated but the butter will solidify when it cools. When you warm it up the sauce will break.

What I do is warm it very very gently in the microwave until it is liquid. Then reemulsify it into a single egg yolk. It costs an egg yolk but the sauce is good as new.

Properly made hollandaise sauce can be refrigerated fir 2 days , best way is warm up a portion in a glass ball over hot water , add a touch water and whisk gently until warm ...perfect good as new


Used Sweetened yoghurt in savoury dish - how to correct? While making lamb and spinach curry, by accident I used sweetened natural yoghurt, instead of unsweetened. How can I disguise the sweet taste? I have added more spices, and also lemon juice.

You cannot disguise or remove the sweetness, once it is in there it isn't going to go away. You can balance it out with acidity, however if it is very sweet then you will need to add a lot of acid, and then the dish will be intensely sweet and sour, which probably is not what you want.

You aren't going to be able to regain the character of the dish, but you might be able to produce something tasty. I would try to add some bitterness, like fenugreek if you have it, and see if that makes it work. There is a point of diminishing returns where you can spend more time and effort adding more and more ingredients to rescue a dish than it's worth, at that point it's better to start over or feed it to people and tell them it's your grandmother's recipe - nobody will ever tell you it's bad then.

Not entirely sure it works for sweetness, it should work for saltiness so it may help here, but add a whole peeled potato and let it cook in the sauce for a while but remove it before it gets so soft it starts to fall apart. It should hopefully absorb some of the sweetness (though you might need to rebalance other flavours as it will absorb saltiness and probably other flavours too).

Alternatively use acid to balance out the sweetness and then some butter to remove the bitterness or sourness (butter certainly works to fix bitter or sour gravy so I don't see why it shouldn't work for this)


Does an avocado seed help guacamole stay green? My friend was telling me about a habit in the Spanish culture (I'm not sure if it's done elsewhere as well) of leaving the avocado seed inside when making guacamole. The claim is that if you leave the seed inside the guacamole, something in the seed prevents the guacamole from browning.

I'm a little skeptical - I thought that the browning was due to oxidization. If that's the case, then I don't see how a seed could help in preventing oxidization. Am I missing something? Is this true, or just a myth?

You're correct - it's a myth, as is adding something acidic to it like lemon juice--see explanation here. As you said, what causes it to brown is the oxidation, and that's just exposure to the air. If you wrap a cut avocado (or guacamole) in plastic wrap so there's no air space between the wrap and the avocado, then it will stay green longer than areas where air is getting to it.

This is not an old wives tale. Everyone knows that oxygen turns the guacamole brown. I have read everywhere that some chef did an experiment with a light bulb and the guacamole did not turn brown around the light bulb thus he concluded that it worked the same way as the pit..Wrong! If people would actually tried the pit trick instead of reading some crackpot ideas they would see that the a couple pits in the bottom keep it from turning brown. Oxalic acid is in the pits and absorbs the oxygen which turns the guacamole brown.


Which oil is best for Zeppole? Which oil is best for frying Italian doughnuts?

I've made thousands of Zeppole throughout my career.

Don't use olive oil, you'll impart the wrong flavour profile.

Veg/Canola/Peanut, or any other neutrally flavoured high-temp oil suitable for frying will work.

PERSONALLY, I prefer Zeppole and other choux paste products baked on a parchment sheet, with a light mist of cooking spray.

I would expect Italians to use Olive oil.

I'd use whatever feels right for frying (peanut oil, canola...)


What is "pizza crust yeast"? Someone gave me a bunch of envelopes of pizza crust yeast, "specially formulated for pizza crust". The packets also say that no rise time or proofing is needed, and that it's "NOT recommended for bread baking." The ingredients are yeast, enzymes, sorbitan monostearate, l-cysteine, and ascorbic acid. It does provide a recipe for pizza crust, with just mixing and a bit of kneading.

What has actually been done to this yeast to make it work like this? (What are those enzymes?) And is there any way I can use it for other things, or is it really only good for things like pizza crust?

It sounds like you have Fleischman's Pizza Crust Yeast (or a no-doubt quite similar product if from another manufacturer).  The relevant phrase from the Fleischman marketing web site is:

  Pizza Crust Yeast is specially-formulated with dough relaxers that
  keep the dough from pulling or snapping back when shaping it.

It is intended to make it easier to stretch the pizza dough into shape.

The yeast itself is normal instant yeast, to the best of my knowledge—the additives in the packet are what make it "pizza crust yeast".

Researching the additional ingredients other than yeast:

Sorbitan monostearate—According to Sci Toys is an emulsifier with a polar and non-polar ends:

  Sorbitan monostearate is used as an emulsifying agent in cake mixes,
  icings, baked goods, puddings, imitation whipped cream, hemorrhoid
  creams, and creams to treat dry skin.

Cooking for Engineers mentions that this helps the dough absorb the water.
l-cysteine*—is an amino acid, which is naturally occurring, and often extracted from hair or feathers.  This article from LALLEMAND explains the science in bread dough, where it acts as a reducing agent:

  During mixing the gluten in the ﬂour is stretched and pulled apart so
  that it can be reformed during prooﬁng and baking to provide the
  needed strength and structure. Reducing agents act like mixing to
  reversibly break down gluten so that once they have been used up the
  gluten reforms. This mechanism is the opposite of oxidizing agents,
  which build up gluten. Reducing and oxidizing agent

ascorbic acid*—is of course Vitamin C, and a fairly strong acid.  According to Effect of Ascorbic Acid on the Rheological Properties
of Wheat Fermented Dough in Czeck Journal of Food Sciences, at concentrations under 0.6% it has little effect on wheat flour, so it is unlikely to have any practical effect in a full batch of pizza dough.  Its inclusion is probably (as mentioned in Cooking for Engineers) as an anti-oxidant and preservative in the packet, rather than as an active ingredient in the bread dough.
enzymes—no doubt the particular enzymes and their ratios are proprietary to the brand you have, but according to the Wikipedia article on flour treatment agents, they are used to increase transformation of starch into sugars to facilitate the action of the live yeast.  Common enzymes used include:

  Amylases break down the starch in flours into simple sugars, thereby
  letting yeast ferment quickly.
  Malt is a natural source of amylase.
  Proteases improve extensibility of the dough by degrading some of the
  gluten.
  Lipoxygenases oxidize the flour.

See also this Baker's Yeast article from Cooking for Engineers which discusses various commercially available forms of yeast.

My personal opinion is that I would not buy "pizza crust yeast," since recipes are not designed for the presence of its dough conditioners.  I would rather control my dough's ingredients myself.  However, since you have the product, why not try it using the vendor's recipe?  I would be fascinated to hear how it performs.

I used the pizza dough yeast on making bagels, and it worked fine.


What does cream of tartar do in baking recipes? I am making the following recipe for a birthday party: Pinata cookies!, and it calls for cream of tartar in the dough. This is the first time I've seen that in a cookie recipe and I can't figure out what the purpose of it is. Anyone know what cream of tartar does in baking recipes?

As @rumtscho said, it is an acid and in your recipe above it is for activating the soda.

However, in general, recipes almost never call for cream of tartar for this purpose. Modern recipes, if they need acid to activate the soda, will call for baking powder instead which has the cream of tartar already mixed in.

Almost every time I see cream of tartar called for in a recipe it is when making a meringue. The acid denatures some of the egg white proteins and makes the eggs froth up faster and makes a stiffer meringue. Cream of tartar is good for this as it is dry so it doesn't throw off the liquid content and it has little flavor of its own.

cream of tartar is a leavening agent, it makes my puff pastry puff.


Can I decrease salty flavor after brining a turkey? I brined my turkey but it came out tooooo salty. Any suggestions to save it?  It's really good, juicy and tasty.  I will cut it up and cook in turkey gravy, but is there something I can do to remove some of the salty taste?  I will not be using the turkey drippings from this bird. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

If you make good turkey gravy with little or no salt, and simmer and store the turkey in that, I think that's the best you can do. The hard part is making good gravy with low enough salt, since low salt turkey flavor is hard to find.

You might consider a bit of an odd idea. You can make milk gravy with ground turkey, much like what in the Army we called SOS. Use the bare minimum of salt.

Serving the turkey with that, perhaps in an open-faced sandwich, could be good. Consider that with slightly under-seasoned mashed potatoes.

Good Luck! Let us know what you end up doing and your results.

Not all brines are made equal. You may have added too much salt to your solution, or perhaps let your poultry brine for too long.

Brining is the technique of soaking meat in a dilute salt solution until the dissolved salt permeates the muscle tissue. You're shooting for a final concentration of about 0.5% salt throughout. The challenge with brining is getting the meat deep in the interior to be just as salty as the meat on the outside. Unfortunately, it's easy to end up with a steep gradient of saltiness.

The conventional approach of soaking meat in a strong salt solution requires you to pull it out at just the right moment — hard to do without the equivalent of a thermometer for measuring salinity. Resting the meat does allow the salt gradient to even out somewhat, but there's just no avoiding an oversalted exterior and an undersalted interior.

A modernist approach soaks the meat for long periods (up to 24 hours) in a solution having a salt concentration only slightly higher than that target of 0.5%. The risk of oversalting is eliminated. You'll need a brine injector, or a syringe.

This brine works well for poultry:

| Ingredient  | Weight | Volume          | Scaling |
|-------------|--------|-----------------|---------|
| Water       | 200g   | 200 mL / 2 cups | 10%     |
| Salt        | 12g    | 1 Tbsp          | 0.6%    |
|-------------|--------|-----------------|---------|
| Poultry     | 2kg    | 1 whole         | 100%    |

Procedure:

Stir water and salt together to make brine.
Inject the brine as evenly as possible throughout the meat. Place the needle into the neck and back cavities to avoid puncturing the skin.
Refrigerate the brined chicken for 24 hours, uncovered.

Note: Brine keeps indefinitely before use; Brined poultry keeps for up to 24 hours when refrigerated (so, cook between 24 - 48 hours after brining).

References:
Modernist Cuisine at Home: Page 133, 238


What are the benefits of using a dedicated rice cooker, rather than just cooking rice in a pot? For which reasons should I use a dedicated rice cooker, instead of cooking rice in a pot?

Yes there are benefits! This is one of my most used pieces of kitchen equipments. Here is a list of benefits for a quality rice cooker:

Never burns rice
No guess measurements for all kinds of rice
Scheduled cooking
Keep warm settings
Uniform cooking

When I cook rice on my stove, even at the lowest of heats, I get a thin layer of rice that has overcooked stuck to the bottom of the pot.

For the record I have the Zojirushi 5-1/2 cup induction rice cooker. Best thing ever.

Maybe I cook my pot rice the wrong way because contrary to everyone else, I never have issues with burnt burnt rice or rice not fully cooked. Maybe I use more water than everyone else? Or maybe it's because I use organic brown rice (mostly sprouted). By the way sprouted rice only takes about 20 minutes to cook in a pot.

Rule #1 is to use bottled water because if you wouldn't drink it, then don't eat it.

Rule #2 is to use quality shiny metal pots and not the black lined ones, as the black stuff slowly wears off into your food.


Homemade fermented coconut milk I made milk from a mature brown coconut by blending the flesh with water and straining through mesh. That was a week ago. I haven't used it all, and now I've discovered that it has soured. It's kind of slimy and has a tangy smell.

Does anyone know if it's safe to use? Is this probiotic-filled and healthy or is it just rotten?

I'd go with "certainly not safe" - and probably rotten.

Even for fermenting foods like yogurt or sauerkraut you need to follow a certain protocol to ensure the end product is safe. Yes, a pot of milk that was left out can turn into a delicious soured milk if the right bacteria grows in it. It can also turn into a nasty rotten mess.

If you want to ensure a specific product, you should add the appropriate bacteria, the traditional way would be a spoonful of an established product. Alternatively the bacteria can be obtained in liquid or dry form. This would give you a safe product.

While it is possible to ferment coconut milk with "yogurt bacteria", it's pretty unlikely that the "desired" bacteria mysteriously appeared in your milk. So no, your coconut milk is not safe. And if you write "slimy", I assume it's simply rotten.

Fresh coconut and its water is short lived, it may last overnight in a cold fridge, but only if it goes straight in without delay or in the morning you will smell it, if you lack the sense of smell you will spit it out for the taste, if you lack both you will vomit, if your guts are iron, you will get sick.
We took water straight from the shell into a bottle on a 4hr hike in Malaysia, it was delicious but had to be discarded well before we finished, I now understand the great waste in that the water is tipped on the ground.
Even the milk is short lived and must be used immediately, I now understand why canned coconut is used in curries where fresh is plentiful.
Some advocate the milk can be fermented with kefir grain, others claim they ferment the water with tibicos, I have even seen coconut yogurt in supermarket, I do not think that is possible as in a warm situation it will rot before it can nicely ferment.
I have ordered the three, kefir grain tibicos grain and a so called coconut yogurt culture, when I stipulated fresh water, the lady said bottled, concerning milk she could not comment, concerning yogurt she said canned.
I love coconut and soon I will be testing it for myself, my girlfriend buys the milk and the grate fresh for curries, I cringe at the waste, liters upon liters a day tipped on the ground.
Traditionally it not heard of, research on prolonging its life naturally has been futile, traditionally the water is drunk or discarded and the meat used immediately.
Hopefully this is because coconuts are abundant year round and the ancients had no need to preserve it or dry it. Today we hate waste and may find the way.


Will soaking chicken in milk hurt the chicken I'm trying a new recipe and I was told to soak my boneless skinless chicken thighs in milk with a little spices. Let them soak for a while then take them out of the milk and then drop them in seasoned bread crumbs. Cook for about 20 minutes with foil on and another 10 without foil. It sounded good so I am going to try it. Does this sound like it should work?

Soaking chicken in milk or buttermilk in the refrigerator overnight is a common practice when making Southern-style fried chicken.  This practice supposedly tenderizes the chicken through the actions of enzymes naturally present in the milk.  Yoghurt is used in a similar way in many Middle Eastern and southern Asian food ways.

The milk can be used alone, but is often seasoned with onions, garlic, or spices.

I can hear one lone salmonella on a piece of chicken shouting "yipee!" as the chicken lands in the milk marinade, which is pretty clever for something unicellular that doesn't have lungs.

There has to be more control than "a little while" in the milk.

Off the top of my head, I'd suggest no more than a half hour in milk, and then the dunk in breadcrumbs and cooking has to happen in the next few minutes.  If the overnight immersion is wanted, do that in the refrigerator so the temperature does not get over 4 degC .

I don't see anything bad about the procedure, and it might make a big difference to the final dish - but there is not a lot of point in making Southern fried bugs as a by-product.


Office (Loose Leaf) Tea Solution I am looking for a good system to make loose leaf tea at my workplace. The main requirements are that the tea tastes good and it is easy to clean in the toilet sink without much equipment. Bonus points if it's microwaveable, since I find that slightly more practical than an electric kettle.

I have considered:

cup with a ceramic or glass strainer. Doubts: is the mesh fine enough, or would it let the smaller leaves through?
steel strainers. Doubts: do they affect the water taste? Can they be closed tightly, or would they let the smaller leaves through? Is the steel mesh microwavreable?
cotton strainers. Doubts: do they dry in a reasonable time? Do they get dark and dirty after a few uses?
fillable disposable tea bags. Doubts: are they viable for a single person? They look quite expensive
French press, ingenuitea, or other similar contraptions. Doubts: they don't look easy to clean at all. Are they microwaveable?

What is your experience? Do you recommend (or suggest to avoid) one of these methods, or a new one?

Related questions: What's the best option for water for tea in the office?, Best Office Coffee Solution

I've been drinking loose-leaf tea at work for many years now, and have gone through most of these.

cup with a ceramic or glass strainer.

I've tried both the ceramic type with holes and the glass type with slots. The mesh is never fine enough for me. In addition the holes or slots invariably get packed with leaves and are a pain to clean.

steel strainers.

If you mean the tea-ball type, I can't comment. But a steel mesh strainer is my absolute favorite. I've been using the same one (pictured below) for years now and have never noticed any off flavors. Easy to clean: just dump out the leaves and give a good rinse, picking or sponging out the occasional stuck leaf.

Not microwaveable, but you don't want to microwave the leaves, anyway. Microwave the cup with water in it (put a stirrer in to avoid superheating the water. Yes, it can happen, and has happened to me), then put the strainer in when it's the right temperature.

cotton strainers.

I have never used one, so I can't comment authoritatively, but it seems like at the least they'd be harder to clean.

fillable disposable tea bags.

I hate disposable anything. I tried the type of bag pictured below and they were a pain. They tend to wick tea out of the cup and onto your table.

As for the other gizmos, I think for tea, simpler is better. The above are the only methods I've used, and I find the mesh basket is far and away the most convenient and best solution.

In terms of cost, I'd go for a tea ball (personally, I like them).  Otherwise, you can purchase tea pots (I got someone a really pretty Japanese one from theteatable.com, which also has a great assortment of herbal and caffeinated loose tea) with built-in infusers, which are nicer than tea balls.  You can also find microwaveable water heaters to use with traditional teapots at many major retailers.


How do I make candy apples not sticky? When I candy-coat apples and let them sit out, the candy coating becomes sticky. I live in the Southern U.S., so humidity is usually pretty high, but other people in my area make them as well.

You may not be getting your candy to the right temperature. If you go too low, the candy never hardens completely. Are you using a candy thermometer?

If they're fine at first, but turn sticky later, you could try storing them in a drier place (don't put them in the refrigerator, of course). You might also want to try rolling them on sugar (if the issue is with the entire coating) or setting them on a layer of sugar (if the issue is presentation), which can help reduce the stickiness (and doesn't look bad).

As soon as it cool wrap or put into a Ziploc bag until ready to wrap. From experience, it is best to put in packaging before storing. Also if you are working with art have it ready to go before making candy apples.


Can I freeze stock and can later? I have a lot of frozen stock and need to free up freezer space. Can I thaw and then can this stock in a pressure cooker?

If it was frozen immediately or quickly after coming off the heat, then it's not much different from "fresh" stock. Food keeps indefinitely in the freezer, safety-wise, and the quality isn't going to be impacted very much because it's mostly water to begin with.

Just don't can any meat products that have been exposed to room temperatures for more than 2 hours, and follow the same safe canning practices (i.e. pressure-canning) that you would for any low-acid product.

The Food and Safety Inspection Service division of the USDA has this to say about refreezing foods:

  Do not refreeze any foods left outside the refrigerator longer than 2 hours; 1 hour in temperatures above 90 °F.

I would apply the same rule of thumb to canning previously-frozen stocks, as the purpose of canning is largely the same as freezing--to preserve food for long periods of time.  The only difference is that freezing attempts to halt biological growth by suspending water molecules in a solid state, which prevents most biological life from reproducing.  Canning attempts to halt biological growth by removing/limiting the amount of oxygen available.


Cooked bacon too salty I Have already cooked in the slow cooker overnight the bacon and forgot to soak.  It is now really really salty and unfit to eat.  How can I solve now and get rid of the salt.

Thanks

Bernie

I'd cut it up into small pieces, wash it in cold water (partly to cool it, though this will get rid of some salt), dry it and freeze it in small portions. Then the bacon can be added to dishes which might get some salt anyway, such as pasta sauces and casseroles (chicken chasseur).

It should be labelled so you know to use less salt when cooking, or less stock, or a lower-salt stock (which is my default anyway).

If you it want to use it immediately I suggest slicing it (assuming you're starting with a bacon joint from the fact you're slow cooking it) and then boiling it in water for a few minutes.

You can put your bacon in a bowl and pour some boiled water until covering all bacon.
Stir it up and leave it for 2 minutes.

Repeat this again but leaving the bacon for a minute.
After that let it dry and cook it again.

It should remove excess salt.

source: http://www.kitchenbutterfly.com/how-to/de-salt-bacon/


What is the appearance of expired brown sugar? I have a bag of brown sugar that I never noticed in my cupboard, and I needed it for a cookie recipe that I decided to make today. The brown sugar has been there for about a year, and it looks really packed together. Is it safe to use?

Any package date would be a "best by" date, which would indicate quality, rather than safety. Really, the only risk is that the flavor has degraded.  If the sugar is hard, you can put it in a microwave-safe bowl with a damp paper towel.  Cover the bowl and microwave in short bursts (10 - 15 seconds), breaking up the hard lumps with a fork in between bursts.  Be careful not to melt the sugar. Then use as you wish.

My best guess that I am giving based on an experience from a normal sugar is that it should have melted or should feel like a sticky in hand