Olive oil lid sealed properly? Is this olive oil lid sealed and safe to use even though the side looks bumpy? It looks sealed at the top but do tiny dents or slight bulges on the side of the lid matter? It was covered with plastic but I haven't opened the metal lid yet. (Above the 'R' and 'O' in POUR OUVRIR).

Olive oil bottles are not sealed for health reasons. I.e., olive oil is not processed through a sterile heat canning process.

The two primary reasons for sealing the bottles are to prevent leaks and to make them tamper proof.

The type of top in your picture is a 'Ropp Top'. It features a ring below the cap that will separate from the top when you open the bottle. This is a tamper-proof feature, as is the shrink-wrapped plastic applied over it. If the bottle had been tampered with, it would be evident and should not be purchased.

As long as your bottle has no leaks, it should be properly sealed and fine to use.

It is impossible to tell if the lid is sealed to food safe standards by looking at the pic. Why take a chance? Take the bottle back to where you bought it and request an exchange or refund.


Are hard anodized aluminum pans oven-safe? I have a full metal "hard anodized aluminum" pan which I'd like to use in the oven. I heard non-stick pans in the oven are unsafe.

This pan comes with: no "oven-safe" label, a metal handle on the pan, a glass lid with a plastic handle on it. Because of the glass lid with plastic handle, I assume it's not designed to go into an oven.

Can I still safely use this pan in the oven?

An anodized finish is chemically stable. It does not decompose. It is nontoxic. High heat levels will not damage the anodized finish. Anodized surfaces are heat-resistant to the melting point of aluminium (1,221°F).

Source: http://www.yourcookwarehelper.com/cookware-college/healthy-cookware-safe-cookware/is-anodized-aluminum-cookware-considered-safe-cookware/

The issue you will have is if the rest of the pan is safe, such as the handle.
more information on this can be found here.

https://foodal.com/kitchen/pots-pots-skillets-guides-reviews/bare-aluminum-and-nonstick-cookware/choosing-the-best/

Worth mentioning that any aluminum pans passed down through a family should be researched prior to using. I remember my father throwing away the only pan he would make fudge in because our local news featured a story about aluminum being unsafe for cooking. Newer pans would not have this issue. However, if you brought home Grandpa's Dutch Oven... double check with the manufacturer to make sure it's safe.

How Toxic is Aluminum Cookware


Safety with vacuum packed food I left a vacuum packed chicken casserole from Whole Food  out four hours.
Is it safe? The car ride from store is included in the time. Our house is not freezing nor too hot.

Yes, it is. The important part, for nearly any dish, is to heat it properly.

Meat is mainly spoiled by bacteria, worms and larvae. Proper heating solves these problems. Bacteria and mold digest proteins and might generate harmful molecules; while heating does not eliminate them, they are easy to smell, especially those in meat. You won't want to eat it way before it becomes a health risk. The other health risks are unhealthy proteins, like the mad cow disease, hormones and antibiotics. They are stable to heating - but they don't propagate, so if they are in there, then they are in there the moment you purchased them.

Note that fat oxidation/rancidity are not actually health risks, even though they will ruin the taste. But 4 hours is way too short to make any fat rancid.


What effect do different slash patterns have on bread oven spring? Slashes in bread loaves are designed to promote oven spring but there are many different patterns.  Some running the length of a loaf, some in a checkered pattern.  I've been told this is to promote oven spring in different directions.

What patterns lend themselves to spring in what directions?  For example, I know a checkered pattern, promotes expansion upward.

Slashing the skin of a loaf creates a weak area. When the oven spring occurs the dough will expand through that weak spot. Expansion will be limited in the stronger, unslashed areas.

Conceptually this is fairly simple. Leave the skin unslashed in the direction you don't want the bread to expand. In the case of a checker slash on the surface of a boule- the edge stays stronger than the entire center so the expansion is forced upwards.

In practice, with different loaves, it may be difficult to predict exactly how the physics will occur. You can start with traditional slash patterns that you see on professionally produced bread.
For example, on long loaves, such as baguettes, the slashes are short, at a slight angle to the length, and overlapping to promote lengthening of the loaf. Whereas on wider, football-shaped loaves the slash may run parallel to the loaf to widen it a little.

As a demonstration I baked two loaves this weekend. They were identically formed as small football-shaped loaves (batards). One I slashed at an angle, the other parallel with the length.

Slashes allow the carbon dioxide released from the yeast to escape at specific points in the bread, yielding an even shaped loaf.  They are used to stop the spring from tearing the bread randomly, which could create burned areas on the surface where it split or cracked.  There is no specific pattern that works better than others, and they all tend to promote expansion upward and outward.


Can you use just egg yolks when recipe asks for eggs? Having just made a batch of meringues,I am now left with lots of egg yolks, can I use them in recipes that ask for "eggs" i.e cakes and tray bakes. Is the white of the egg needed in the baking process ?

It really does depend on the recipe. Egg yolks have some protein but a lot of fat which adds flavor and makes baked goods more tender and moist.  Whites are just protein which adds structure and has a drying effect.

If the particular recipe is depending on the eggs for the binding power of their protein you may not get enough by substituting just yolks. Remember that the volume of the yolks is less than whole eggs so you may see better success substituting two whole eggs with three yolks.

Some cakes will handle the reduced protein. White and yellow cakes will be ok. Pound cakes will also be fine and in fact some recipes call for only yolks. Expect your cake to be a little denser, softer, and tastier. Any kind of sponge or angel food cake won't work because they rely wholly on the protein from the whites.

Soft, rich breads will also benefit from the added fat. The breads will derive their structure from the gluten in their flour. Cinnamon rolls and rich doughnuts come to mind. A local doughnut shop is famous for the yellow color which comes from using fresh yolks.

Yolks can be used in many recipes that call for whole eggs. Look for recipes that will benefit from all the added fat. Anything custard-like, where the eggs are mixed with milk, will work very well- even better than with whole eggs in fact. Examples are custard, flan, puddings, french toast, etc. Given the season you might consider a custard-based ice cream.

I have just made coconut macaroons which needed 2 egg whites so I just decided to use the 2 egg yolks and 1 whole egg ....with a 4oz flour and 4oz margarine and 4oz sugar mix and they turned out a bit moister than what I would normally make...so the kids will have a lovely treat for tomorrow for tea...:-) the mix has made lovely cakes...:-)


How to properly use a butter stick's wrapper? Rectangular sticks of butter usually come wrapped in a wax paper-esque wrapper that is folded over the stick.

How am I supposed to use the wrapper so that I can easily unwrap the stick, cut off a portion that I want to use, and then re-wrap the stick for preservation?

I inevitably end up tearing the wrapper, which makes poor seals for rewrapping and storage.

I would suggest one of:

1) Cut the butter with a sharp knife (if cold enough) and throw away paper on portion you use. Then take a small square of aluminum foil to cover the end (or cellophane).

2) Do the above but don't worry about the foil. Butter will keep fine in the fridge uncovered.

3) If you're not keeping your butter in the fridge then I'd suggest just getting a porcelain butter keeper for it and use what you need. I've tried the ones that you put into water and I ended up with a disgusting mold factory.

4) Use a butter keeper in the fridge. I clean mine with hot water and then dry with a towel and put a new stick of butter on it while it's still warm. The bottom of the butter melts slightly and then sticks to the porcelain so it's easier to cut off a piece when cold.

5) I've seen Gordon Ramsay use the aluminum butter wrapper to wrap a piece of veal that he then puts into the oven. Who knew?

My mother grew up during the Great Depression and made use of everything she could - she didn't waste a thing including the remnants of butter on the wrapper it came in.
I'm puzzled by your question mainly because we never saw a stick o
When you unwrap an opened stick of butter last long enough to "go bad" because it wasn't covered properly. :)
My suggestion to you is do like we did - just use the wrapper to cover the unused portion as best you can.  Here's the cool thing Mom did:
She saved the wrappers from butter and margarine sticks to grease muffin cups, cake pans, cookie sheets, etc.
If you don't do a lot of baking be sure to rotate out your old wrappers because the butter or margarine will eventually go rancid.


Substituting red beans for adzuki beans? I've recently gotten into making mochi and really wanted to try my hand at daifuku (red bean paste-filled mochi) and I'm finding that there is an upsetting lack of adzuki/azuki beans available in my area.

I've seen suggestions for using dark red kidney beans as a substitute, but I want to know if I could  possibly use the small red beans I have in my pantry already.

My experience is that adzuki have a very different taste and texture than red beans and I wouldn't substitute one for the other.  If you've really gotten into mochi, it will be worth the effort to find adzuki  - I've bought them in natural food stores, Whole Foods and on line  And I buy in bulk so I never run out.  Beans seem to last forever.

Yes, you can use them, and you can also use black beans. It won't be exactly the same but as long as you make it properly it will work.


Why do most belly pork recipes recommend cooking the pork at a high temperature at the beginning of cooking? Most belly pork recipes recommend cooking the meat at a high temperature at the beginning. And then lowering it for a number of hours.

However, I have found that when I do that, the skin rarely forms decent crackling. Presumably because the skin is still a bit wet and it takes time for it to get hot enough to crackle.

I have only had success when I turn the heat up at the end of cooking.

Why do all these recipes recommend the opposite of what is working for me?

As far as I've always believed there is 3 reasons for it.

I. Theory the high temperature shocks the skin helping the skin crisp up if you've ever put a chip in cold oil you'll notice it takes far longer to crisp up than one dropped into the same oil but once hot. Or a better description is probably ... Have you ever put a poppadum into cold oil? Notice how it never puffs up, just goes brown.
The high heat helps seal the meat I'm theory helping keep the moisture in, even though most of the 'moisture' in belly pork is actually the fat self basting itself.
The high temperature helps raise the interior temperature to above the 'danger zone' quicker.

Now I do agree with you, the initial blast does not make the skin crackle, especially since I cover my meat with foil after the first blast which essentially means the skin then steams for 5 hours. I did however try low from the start once and the end result was a thin crispy but a little chewy almost crackling layer even after half an hour at 230c at the end. So I do think high initial heat plays a crucial role to getting good crackling in the long run even if it doesn't seem like it to begin with.

I would suggest not fixating on any time frame for the initial blast. Keep your oven on full wack until the skin bubbles up, if I can be bothered (it's a bit messy and risks major burns every time) I pour 300c oil over the top of my pork half way into my first blast which really helps the skin blister and results in perfect light crispy skin at the end.

All of the above AND because high temperature will kill any tapeworm eggs present on the skin.


Why did my attempt at pan-searing beef filets fail miserably? Background: I am very much an amateur cook; I would consider myself a novice at best, so pardon my ignorance!

I decided to try to cook a nice dinner for my family recently. Part of that dinner included some small (~6-7 oz., 1.5-2" thick) beef tenderloin steaks. After doing some Internet research I decided on a preparation method that included pan-searing them for a few minutes on each side (with the goal of getting the steaks to the approximately "rare" stage), followed by a stint in the oven to finish them off. This seemed straightforward to me, so I decided to give it a try.

As a novice cook, the only skillet that I had on hand that was suitable for use in the oven was an old cast-iron one, so I used that. Following the recipe that I had found, I added 1.5 tablespoons of olive oil and ~1 stick of butter [*] to the pan and put it on high heat. After the foam subsided from the butter, I placed the steaks in the pan. The Internet consensus seemed to indicate 3-4 minutes of searing on each side would get the steaks to rare, so I waited patiently.

Unfortunately, after 3 to 3.5 minutes, it became apparent that something had gone wrong: the kitchen began to fill with smoke, and when I turned the steaks, the side that had been seared was burned horribly. I had to abort cooking them at that point to mitigate the smoke; I later found that the steaks had cooked through much more than I would have expected by that point.

While my result was discouraging, I'm trying to do some post-mortem analysis to try to determine what went wrong so that if I get up the nerve to try this again, I won't ruin another meal of expensive meat! Some possibilities that came to mind:

Was cast iron a bad choice as my cookware in this case?
Should I have lubricated the pan differently?
Is there some other detail that I missed that could have changed the outcome?

[*] "A stick of butter" is a US measurement, it denotes 113.5 g of butter

Butter is a very bad choice for frying at high heat, as it burns extremely easily. Cast iron is the ideal pan material though, so you are halfway there.

Take a flavourless oil like sunflower and brush it
directly on the steaks - don't put the oil in the pan.
Preheat the pan until it is ridiculously hot.
Preheat the oven if that's the
method you're going to use
Season the steaks generously with salt and
pepper
Sear the steaks and cook in the oven until desired level of
doneness is reached.
Rest the steak on a wire rack (or failing that, a plate) for 5 minutes so it doesn't leak juice all over the plate.

Personally I would omit the oven stage and just cook the steaks in the pan, turning frequently. Add a knob of butter near the end and baste it over the steaks with a spoon.

A probe thermometer is a great investment to make if you plan on cooking meat properly. You cannot rely on rules of thumb like pressing the steak or just timing it. There is a good chart here for the temperatures at each level of 'doneness'.

Sorry about your steaks.

I am a middle aged woman who has been cooking meat for a , long long time.

I have never successfully mastered pan frying  a  chop or steak. They always turn out overcooked.

If you have an oven, most likley there is a broiler which allows the meat direct exposure to the heat source.

Try broiling your steaks. Experiment with how close to the flame/electric coil it should be.

I agree that the meat should be brought to room temperature and the surface dried. That said, the aunt who taught me to cook had done so for the USO during WWII and  gave me the instructions on how to  a  frozen steak. (This was  long before microwave defrosting). Room temp is optimal though. Drying the surface  is very important

I have a gas stove. I place the meat about 2" from the flame . I raise the meat slightly off the bottom of the pan and add    enough water to cover the bottom of the pan. This keeps down smoke and avoids grease fires and flares. When I don't have a rack to raise the meat, I have used stainless steel forks, tines down as an improvised rack under the meat.. The curve at the base of the tines is sufficient to raise the meat off the bottom heated surface, avoid contact cooking on the bottom side and allow the water underneath for grease control

Don't salt the meat until after cooking. Salt draws out the  water and decreases juiciness. ( Brining is a completely different process, by the way. That gets salt into the meat to make it juicy)

Pre-heat your broiler for a few minutes..

I cook 1 1/2- 2"  boneless rib eye steaks  and occasionally sirloins for 6 minutes on the first side and 5 on the flip side. This is long enough to get a Maillard reaction brown on the  fat without the bitterness of  a char . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction .

You can slice to check for doneness or use the thumb test. Use your finger to poke the uncooked meat so you have a sense of how it  feels.

Holding your hand open press the fleshy part at the base of the thumb. That is how a raw steak feels when pressed.

Touch the tip of your thumb to the tip of your index finger. ( don't press them, just touch.) Now press the fleshy part of the base of that thumb. That is how rare feels.

Touching thumb to middle finger gets you a medium rare touch, thumb to ring finger  gets a  medium   feel and thumb to pinky gets well done feel . Here is a link with pictures. http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/the_finger_test_to_check_the_doneness_of_meat/

You can always put the meat back under the broiler  for  1-2 minutes if it is not done the way you want it.

Sometimes I want the bitterness of a char. At those  times I put the meat back in the freezer for about half an hour, dry the surface and broil for roughly eh same time.

This technique  can ( and has ) been done with most any type of pan or aluminum foil. I don't  use  iron because 1) I don't have to and 2) it is too heavy to pull out of the broiler quickly and easily.

My husband is from Nebraska. He likes butter on his steak. I add a pat after the steak is cooked to melt on top. That gives him teh flavor and avoids the  problems you encountered.


What is the difference between crepes and Swedish pancakes? We just made the Swedish recipe this morning, and it seems like crepes...

Looking at individual recipes, there is a great deal of overlap between Crêpes and Swedish pancakes. If, however, you compare hundreds of recipes, some clear differences emerge. There are also differences between the English interpretations of these recipes and those written in French or Swedish.

In the chart above, each cohort consists of at least 100 distinct recipe ratios, except for Ruhlman's Crêpes ratio which is provided for comparison.

A taste test of the Swedish recipe Pannkakor with French recipe Crêpes revealed the following differences:

Batter: The increased liquid content of the Swedish pancakes made the batter much thinner than the Crêpes batter. Swedish pancakes are made in a pan with a raised lip around the edge. This allows the thin batter to be sloshed around, evenly coating the pan surface without running over the edge.

Crêpes, on the other hand, are made on a Crêpe maker. The batter must be thick enough that it will not run over the edge. A T-shaped spreader is used to evenly coat the crêpe maker surface in a perfect disk shape.

Frying: Crêpes fried up extremely easily, unsticking themselves from the skillet (I had neither a pancake pan, nor a crêpe maker available at the time) making it possible to toss the Crêpes instead of flipping with a spatula. Swedish pancakes, on the other hand, require a bit of fiddling with a spatula to flip them.

Crêpes had a slight tendency to curl up at the sides after flipping so they cooked less evenly than the pancakes which stayed perfectly flat after flipping.

 Flip side of a Crêpe (French recipe)

 Flip side of a Swedish pancake (Swedish recipe)

I also tested Michael Ruhlman's Crêpes ratio. These curled up to a much greater extent than French recipe Crêpes after flipping and were, consequently, quite unevenly browned on one side.

 Flip side of a Ruhlman's Crêpe

Taste and consistency: Both French recipe Crêpes and Swedish recipe pancakes hit caramel and butterscotch notes. In short, they both tasted great. The Crêpe consistency was a little tough together with traditional Swedish accompaniments (Whipped cream and Strawberry jam) whereas the Swedish pancakes were light and fluffy; this worked perfectly with the filling. I tested again with lemon juice and sugar and this time the Crêpes won through, holding up well to the additional liquid while the Swedish pancakes became a bit soggy. Ruhlman's Crêpe recipe didn't perform nearly as well. The caramel flavour was much less pronounced, they had a dry mouth-feel and they were tougher than French recipe Crêpes.

For anyone who wants to form their own opinion, here are the ratios and ingredients I used in the tests:

Swedish Pancakes (based on 200 Swedish recipes with distinct ingredient proportions)

Ingredient weight ratios: 1:3.5:1:0.16 (all purpose flour:milk:medium egg:butter)

79g or 150ml all purpose flour
278g or 278ml milk
80g, 68ml or 2 medium egg(s) where each medium egg is 53g
13g or 13ml butter
1/4 tsp salt

Crêpes (based on 119 French recipes with distinct ingredient proportions)

Ingredient weight ratios: 1:1.97:0.75:0.17 (all purpose flour:milk:medium egg:butter)

116g or 219ml all purpose flour
228g or 228ml milk
86g, 73ml or 2 medium egg(s) where each medium egg is 53g
20g or 20ml unsalted butter
1/4 tsp salt

Update:

Joe's comment prompted me to chart the ingredient proportions as a Baker's Percentage.

I do not think there is any difference. From what I know, crepe translates to the swedish "Pannkaka".


What is this leaf vegetable? It tastes like cress but looks different My girlfriend got this at a Turkish supermarket in Berlin. It's quite spicy and tastes like garden cress or a bit like radish. I looked up cress varieties but couldn't find this particular leaf shape.

I think you have Baby Argula or Rocket.  Check out this site for Turkish greens.
http://www.turkish-cuisine.org/ingredients-7/ingredients-used-in-turkish-cuisine-66/vegetables-69.html

This is coriander, watercress grows on a longer stalk.


How can I replicate authentic German potato dumplings? I lived in Southern Germany (Bavaria) for 5 years and while over there, my family fell in love with potato dumplings.  I’m talking about the ones that are the size of a baseball.  Here is a picture I found by searching for “Hofbrau potato dumplings” from Munich.

Since moving back to the US, I have not been able to find, nor make a dumpling that is remotely close.  Here is what I have tried so far:

100% raw potatoes, shredded, with flour and egg
50% raw, shredded, and cooked, chilled, then put through a ricer, with flour and egg.
100% cooked, chilled, then riced, with flour and egg.

Both tried with russet and yukon gold potatoes.

The results are:

100% raw = these things are like eating marbles and stick in your belly forever.
50/50 = these boiled apart, and the flavor tastes more like flour than potato.
100% cooked = these boiled apart and the flavor tasted more like flour than potato.

Additionally, I have tried using farina to help bind them - still boil apart and don’t really taste very good.

Here are a few recipes I have tried:

http://www.grouprecipes.com/70225/german--potato-dumplings.html
http://germanfood.about.com/od/potatoesandnoodles/r/kartoffkloesse.htm

Also tried the recipe from the Hofbrau haus cookbook - still, same problems.

Can someone(hopefully someone from Germany who knows what I am talking about) help me reproduce the authentic German potato dumplings I had in Germany?

I am German, let me try to help, I've made many dumplings:

There are four types of potato dumplings. They are called Klöße in northern Germany and Knödel in the south, both words mean the same.

-Rohe Klöße (Raw Dumplings). These are made from raw grated potatoes. They are the most difficult to make. The surface is shiny and a bit slimy and you have pieces of potatoes sticking out, which gives them a rough surface texture, see image below. The inside is chewy and you can just barely feel the individual slices of potatoes.
They are soft, when you cut them they flatten and the surface is gluey and sticks to the knife.
The basic recipe is to grate raw potatoes (1 kg) into a bowl filled with water. Then pour the mixture through a cheesecloth and press the cheesecloth in your hands till the mixture is very dry. Let the drained off water stand for a few minutes, the starch will collect at the bottom. Mix starch and potato mixture.

Boil some semolina (grieß), maybe 10% of the potato weight, in milk till it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot. Mix semolina with potatoes and one egg and form dumplings.

Some people use sulfur to give the dumplings a whiter color
What’s the sulfur in dumplings for?

-Gekochte Knödel (Cooked Dumplings). These are made from boiled potatoes that are mashed while hot. Add about 10% starch and one egg yolk per 500g. These are simple to make.

-Halb und Halb, Thüringer Klöße (Half and Half). Mixture of grated and mashed potatoes.
Do as for the raw knödel with half of the potatoes. The rest is boiled and mashed while still hot, I have something that looks like a huge garlic press for this

Mix the mashed potatoes and the dried grated potatoes and the starch. These dumplings don't use eggs or semolina, but you might want to add some extra starch if the dough is too sticky.

-Quark or Topfenknödel (Dumplings with fresh cheese (Quark))
Made from mashed potatoes with fresh white cheese. Tastes wonderful when filled with plums or apricots or with strawberry or rhubarb sauce.
Unfortunately Quark is extremely expensive in the U.S.

The picture you showed looks like Rohe Knödel or Thüringers.

*Many people buy a mixture that comes in perforated bags that you throw into boiling water.

 These are ok, but the ones you make yourself are more fun.

*In Germany potatoes come in three color coded varieties, firm, mostly firm and starchy. For all kinds use mehligkochende Kartoffeln (starchy). These often have irregular shapes and break apart when you boil them. It won't work with firm potatoes.

*Often Knödel are filled with roasted pieces of bread.

*You always have to prepare a Probekloß (Test Dumpling) first to check the composition and maybe add some flour.

*In general the dough has to be sticky, use wet hands

*Some use egg yolks and some entire eggs.

*I am to lazy to get the starch out of the water, I use regular bought starch.

Make sure that you are using the right potatoes (starchy). To me it sounds you are using too much flour and the wrong potatoes. Better use starch instead of flour.

The recipe on this Epicurean Table link is working well for me using russet potatoes.  I have had disasters in the past before finding this...fell apart, too mushy etc.

http://www.epicureantable.com/recipes/holrec/dumplings.htm


What are the possible substitutions for Cumin in Indian cuisine? I've always been interested in trying to make some type of dahl or other Indian cuisine but I'm severely allergic to Cumin. This typically strikes me out for recipes with curry or chili powder. Does anyone have some PRO tips on types of curry (green, yellow, etc) or Indian foods that would allow me to venture off into this culinary space?

P.S. I'm also gluten intolerant and allergic to nuts and shellfish.

You know, I don't think you need to overthink this too much. If you look at a typical Indian curry recipe, it might have 10 spices in it. Just leave out the cumin, and maybe bump up the other spices a little to compensate. It won't be exactly the same, but it will still be delicious. You are correct that you'll have to be careful to avoid pre-packaged spice mixtures unless the ingredients are spelled out. Here is my Chana Mushroom Masala, from which you can safely omit the cumin: http://www.herbivoracious.com/2009/09/quick-chana-mushroom-masala-chickpea-curry-recipe.html

In the past I used Chipotle as a cumin substitute and honestly its flavor is not too bad for me. But after a few test I catch that caraway will give the best experiment when use instead of cumin because it has almost similar appearance and flavor compare with cumin.


What can I do with an arm roast? I have not had good luck with this tough lean cut so far. I usually get it when I buy in on a grass-fed cow. Braising it they way I normally braise cuts of beef in wine makes a very dry unappetizing roast. Maybe try a heavier tenderizing marinade? Grind it? Jerky?

Even though this thread is old, it's the first thing that comes up when you search "arm roast" at the moment, so I thought I would comment with what I ended doing after googling arm roasts two days ago! I also had a totally grass fed 4 lb. arm roast and it turned out amazing. Most importantly, I cooked it very long and slow, about 5 hours at 300F.

Chop 1 carrot, 1 celery stalk, half an onion and a slice or two of bacon and saute them together in a large pot until lightly browned. Remove from pot.
Salt and pepper the arm roast and then brown it on both sides in that same pot. Remove.
Deglaze pan with red wine, I had the tail end of a bottle of super cheap stuff.
Then throw back in the veggies, the roast, a large can of tomatoes (I used San Marzano), and a few sprigs of fresh rosemary (I really recommend not skimping with dry on that part because it's the main flavor that gets infused). I also put marjoram in because I have that growing, but I don't think it's as important. The top of the roast will be sticking out of the tomato/wine concoction so I studded it with numerous garlic cloves so they would roast.
Put the pot in a 300 degree oven for as long as it takes for the meat to just be falling apart. It was like, 5 hours for me, and I turned the roast over about 2 hours in. Add more liquid if needed; I didn't. When it was done I took the roast out and pulled out the bone and picked off the fat and threw it back in--it was semi-shredded by then--and served it on egg noodles.

It was the best roast I've ever made!

Actually, go the other way around.  Go with less to no marinades at all.

Wine and other acidic marinades actually make the meat tougher (the acid makes the proteins curl tighter and squeeze juice out).  This effect is far greater than the old-school thinking of acid will slowly cook the meat. (from Jack Bishop and his crew at America's Test Kitchen and Cooks Illustrated).

Consider using a simple brine or sprinkling salt on it (rest for 12hrs) and cook to a internal temperature according to your desire.  An in oven digital temperature like this will take the time guessing out.

Also, grass-fed cows tend to have more room and they may actually use their muscles (heaven forbid).  They tend to be tougher (and leaner) for that reason.  It would take a little longer to cook which means you should reduce the temperature.  Here is the note from Cook's Illustrated:

  we transformed a bargain cut into a tender, juicy roast by salting the
  meat a full 24 hours before roasting and then cooking it at a very low
  temperature, which allowed the meat's enzymes to act as natural
  tenderizers, breaking down its tough connective tissue.

They (and I agree) recommend oven temperature of 225°F and roast until the center of the meat is 125°F, then turn off the oven (keep door closed) and let it coast until the center temperature is 130°F for medium-rare and 140°F for medium.

You can use your favourite delicious sauce to go with it.


Differences between cooking a whole duck vs chicken or turkey? I've cooked whole turkeys and chickens many times, but never a whole duck or any other "gamey" meat.  Is there a difference in what should be done or technique in general?  I've been told by others that duck is "more difficult", but never how or why.

With chicken and turkey, the most important "trick" to cooking it is to make sure the dark meat gets done before the white meat dries out, and to make sure the skin crisps up somewhat.

Duck is all dark meat, and has a thick layer of fat that must be rendered out. There is not a lot of danger in drying out the breast meat like with a chicken.

Like Martha said, it's best to make a few shallow cuts in the skin over the breast (don't go all the way through to the meat) to help the fat render out. A simple (western) roasted bird would be cooked at 350°F for about 1 hour 45 min, with the oven turned up to 500°F for another 15 minutes to crisp up the skin. There is a LOT of fat rendered out, so it's best to roast in a sturdy roasting pan, on a rack (so it doesn't sit in the fat), and drain the fat about an hour into cooking (save the fat, though; it's delicious).

Personally, I think duck is easier to cook, but it's definitely different from roasting a chicken.

Duck takes a long time to cook, like turkey but longer. You would cook chicken for a shorter time, maybe an hour.


Safe to cook with alcohol I want to cook with wine as the recipe I want to make calls for it. However I cannot have any alcohol in me because I have to drive and my country calls for a 0 BAC.
The recipe uses 750ml of wine, 1 cup of water and no other significant source of fluid. Most of the cooking time the dish is supposed to be covered tightly to reduce boil-off and around 250ml of the wine is only added 10 minutes before the end.
Will all of the alcohol evaporate in the 2 hours it simmers for? Or is there an alternative to using Chianti.
Recipe:
Ingredients

3 to 3 1/2 lbs boneless chuck roast, trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces
2 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 TB olive oil
1 bottle (750ml) Chianti
1 cup water
1 onion, thinly sliced
3 carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/2-inch thick rounds
3 stalks celery, sliced into 1/2-inch pieces
10 cloves garlic, chopped
4 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 bay leaves
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 TB unflavored gelatin powder (I use Knox brand)
1 TB tomato paste
1 tsp anchovy paste (don’t skip this)
2 tsp cornstarch

Steps

Pat dry cut-up beef well, using paper towels.Toss beef with salt in a bowl and let stand at room temp 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350F with rack on lower middle position.
In a large Dutch oven, heat oil over medium high heat until starts smoking. Add half of the beef in a single layer and cook until well browned on all sides, about 8 min total, reducing heat if it begins to burn.
Stir in 2 cups wine, water, onion, carrots, garlic, rosemary, bay leaves, pepper, gelatin powder, tomato paste, anchovy paste, and all remaining beef. Bring to a boil and immediately reduce to simmer. Cover tightly with foil, followed by lid (helps retain moisture.) Transfer to hot oven and cook until beef is tender, about 2 hours.
In a bowl, whisk the remaining wine with the cornstarch until dissolved. Add to the pot of braised beef. Place pot on stovetop and bring to a boil over medium high heat; immediately reduce to simmer. Simmer (low boil) uncovered, stirring,10 minutes. Should be somewhat thickened. Season with additional kosher salt and pepper to taste, if needed.
Serve with crusty bread, rice, noodles, or potatoes.

In general, we can assume that it will never boil off to zero. By a combination of reduction and dilution we can get to undetectable levels, less than in ripe fruit and some breads.  The "zero BAC" requirement has to be able to handle people eating normal foods, so tends to have some margin, just not enough to have a drink.
To do this you'd simmer the wine on its own until significantly reduced, top up with water to the original volume, then use. The amount of wine per portion in many dishes is low anyway - not in everything of course, but there's often more stock than wine, further diluting it.
If this doesn't go far enough, de-alcoholised wines vary with jurisdiction but are often 0.5% or even 0.05%, the latter being less than some fruit juices, and less than vinegar (link to a recent answer of mine, where I discuss a relevant scientific paper). The alcohol in those has been removed by a more effective process than simple simmering.

You are quite safe cooking with alcohol as long as you are not using ridiculous amounts and it goes in before you cook the food (simmer/boil/flambe etc.) and not after. The ethanol component of alcohol evaporates at 78°C (173°F), while simmering happens between 85°C and 96°C(ish) so the ethanol will have boiled off.
Edit for detail - The physics of cooking (and the rest of the universe) mean that the temperature of a mixture will not significantly exceed the state change temperature of one of the components of that mixture while sufficient quantities of that component exist in a state that can absorb the excess available energy. This is because the energy required to cause a state change is significantly higher than the energy required to raise temperature so all liquid alcohol at 78°C will become alcohol steam at 78°C before any water content can become 79°C.
This is just a complicated and long winded way of saying that if you have temperature of 85°C or greater in an unpressurized and ventilated environment, then you can be 100% certain that you have no liquid alcohol in that environment. The extra few degrees are to allow for localized variations in temperature and pressure. A thick gloppy tomato sauce is going to have higher pressures which increase the state change temperature then a thin white wine reduction. If your environment is partially sealed, then there is a risk that your steam may contain alcohol molecules which can condense back into your food (affecting its flavor). This is why it is normal after adding alcohol to return to a boil on the stove before putting a lid on and simmering gently. This means the steam in the pot is clear of alcohol.
Would a chemist be able to find alcohol molecules in your food? Probably yes, if they were careful.  Would a chemist or police officer be able to find alcohol molecules in the blood of someone who ate your food? No, not at levels above normal background in the human body.


What is a useful search term for the sensation of flavor progression in a spoonful? That's "progression" as in flavor changes happening over time (like the few seconds to chew). As a rough analogy, in music theory a chord is made up of different notes played simultaneously (and where the individual notes become difficult to isolate), but there is also chord progression, which has different chords played after the other, and the dynamic makes a tune that's different from simply playing all the notes in all the chords at the same time. I see in a lot of recipe discussion "melding" or flavors coming together, and here and there there's mention of specific ingredients or flavor combos popping out, but I want to focus specifically on the latter, and specifically on flavors being "phrasal", with individual "words" but also a "phrase" more than its sum parts.

I ask mainly because I once had a chili that did a great job at having a flavorful  base flavor, but with every spoonful, as I chewed, distinct flavors were "emerging" from the base one after the other (along with textural variation), and with a consistency per spoonful with how the flavors came out in order. I've also had stews with similarly stable bases, but distinct flavors "fell out" or "abruptly showed up" more in a raw way and/or with less consistent ordering. Then I've had stews that basically tasted like undifferentiated protein mush (it had a flavor, but each spoonful was as non-dynamic as the one before).

The thing is, as I try to look up tips on how to do this flavor progression, I don't seem to have a clear term to disambiguate from other aspects of cooking. This isn't a question about how to get flavor progression, but a question about a specific searchable term to assist my research.

I've tried to look up "preserving distinct flavors" as well, but I'm still getting nonspecific results. I guess similar concepts would be flavor highlights and isolation, as well as flavor contrasting. It'd be great to have an analogue to "chord progression" though.

Your music theory analogy is apropos, because one of the common terms for what it seems you're after is flavor "notes."

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of standardization in terminology for the temporal perception of flavor.  The most common term is of course aftertaste, which is sometimes also known as the "finish" of a beverage or food.  The link gives a bit more detail on temporal perception and flavor dynamics.

The succession of taste perceptions is more commonly discussed in beverage tasting (particularly alcoholic beverages, though I've occasionally seen it mentioned regarding coffee or tea).  The first part of perception often occurs before you even put the food or drink into your mouth, since volatile aromatic compounds are a large part of what we think of as "taste" (but which are actually smell).  Those components are sometimes referred to as "the nose" or "bouquet," again particularly in beverages, those I've sometimes heard of the term applied to foods with distinctive smell profiles like chocolate.

Once the food or drink is inside your mouth, you experience the immediate taste sensations on your tongue, but the volatile compounds also waft up through the back of your mouth into your nasal cavities.  There are various technical terms for these components of flavor, including "sapictive" for flavor notes sensed in the mouth, "olfactive" or "olfactory" for notes sensed in the nasal cavities, as well as other elements that influence taste perception like hot/cold sensations or texture/chewing sensations.  Most of these terms are not commonly encountered in food writing in general, but you sometimes see them in technical studies of flavor or food science.

In some cases, as you chew, other flavor components are released (by evaporation of more volatile compounds or breaking down of the food mechanically through chewing or chemically by saliva), which again may be sensed in the mouth or the nose.  The only term I've commonly heard for these in casual food writing is "middle notes," and I don't know that people consistently use that term to mean the same thing.  The process of changing flavors during this part of tasting can be referred to as flavor "structure," "depth," or "development," among other things.  There's not really a standard term that I know of.  Once the food is swallowed, as I've already mentioned, the terms "aftertaste" or "finish" are used to describe any further taste experiences.  In technical literature, the overall progression is sometimes referred to as a "temporal profile" of flavor sensations for a particular food.

I know that this answer probably isn't particular helpful or specific, but that's partly because your question is discussing a relatively new area of research in food science.  There are a few books published just in the past couple years that deal with flavor science and the psychology of flavor perception.  While some of them deal with the temporal succession of flavor perception (and the nerve pathways and sensations that create them), I don't think there are common terms yet that have emerged which you could search for, other than the somewhat imprecise and casual terminology I've mentioned here.

EDIT: I realized after reading the comments that you mentioned that you may be interested in more technical terminology from food science; when I originally read your question, I assumed you were looking for more casual terms that average culinary folk actually use.  In any case, there are a number of terms for specific analytical techniques that reference the order of sensations, some of which are relatively new:

Time-intensity flavor profiling (TI)
Progressive profiling
Temporal dominance of sensations (TDS)
Temporal order of sensations (TOS)
Multiple attribute time intensity (MATI)

These tend only to be mentioned in the technical food science literature, and each has a different "protocol" for evaluating the interaction of flavor sensations over time.  Most are, as I said, relatively new -- older literature will usually employ a more generic term like "flavor profile" or perhaps "temporal profile."  Anyhow, searching for any of these terms is likely to turn up more technical articles on the kind of information you're discussing.

Your musical chord analogy to the progression of taste resonates with me. As a cognitive scientist, I immediately thought of the term GESTALT. The correct famous phrase by Kurt Koffka is "The whole is OTHER than the sum of its parts" often mistranslated as "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

Gestalt psychologists stipulate that perceptions are the products of complex interactions among various stimuli. The whole is not merely an addition of its parts, but has an independent existence in and of itself.

This seems to be exactly what you are attempting to study. While it probably won't be useful as a search term now, you can make it your life's mission to make it so. Smile.

You have experienced perceptual Gestalt before. How about this image?

You perceive the Dalmatian not by seeing first the foot, then the ear, etc and then adding them together. The dog emerges as a whole. We still don't have an explanation as to why, but the experience is universal.

This is a long winded way of saying I get where you are coming from. I hope this at least helps you conceptualize where you are heading. Best of luck. This is an extremely interesting concept you raise.


Saffron and coloration - is there a way to know why it gave the wrong color? What would make saffron (or something) color pink, instead of the more usual yellows and oranges that saffron is known for?

I had, a while ago, picked up a container of saffron from an ethnic store.  On reflection, it didn't look like it was too high quality (the color was a bit pale and I could see a few yellow ends), and it smelled like saffron does when I checked, maybe a bit mild or weak.  I didn't mind too much because it was also relatively inexpensive, and I figured it would still be worth it to use up the container in some experimental recipes.

A couple days ago, I was making some rice, and randomly decided to season it with saffron - when I dropped the strands in the heating water, they looked like the color coming off them was a bit dark, reddish - but I wasn't sure, maybe it was the lighting.  By the time the rice was done, I was certain - the saffron had colored the rice pink, not yellow as I expected.  I have seen saffron color orange, in high concentrations, and of course it looks red still as threads - but I have never seen it color pink.  I didn't notice this when using the saffron previously, but then again I only used it once or twice, in complex dishes with many colors - the pink might not have showed up clearly, especially if I wasn't looking for it, while white rice doesn't have a lot of distractions.

So, my question is, is there any reasonable guess as to why the threads gave off a pink color? I'm thinking either they were dyed (or treated somehow) so that the color looked darker than it was, or else it wasn't saffron at all.  I am aware of safflower and its frequent confusion with saffron - this was not a mere labeling error - but even safflower gives a yellow color, from my understanding (if it can be substituted for color purposes at all, as I have read).

I  especially want to know what might have caused the color change because I want to know what I can do with what I've got left in the box - if it is the result of potentially toxic dyes, I would want to treat it rather differently than if it was some merely fraudulent but nontoxic treatment or substitution.

The first pic is the saffron that's been colored.  Second pic is some good saffron I had on hand, for comparison.

So, my question is, is there any reasonable guess as to why the threads gave off a pink color?

Yes. It's fake. I've had family bring over the exact same thing from Turkey a few years ago: entire bags of "saffron threads" that turned everything they touched pink. It's a known fake product in the Middle East region. The fact that you bought it in an ethnic store is worrying though: I'd expect to find unlabelled safflower there but not dyed threads.

  I want to know what I can do with what I've got left in the box

Throw it out. Even ignoring the possibility you raise that the dye used to create it isn't food-safe, fake saffron isn't useful for anything. In your case, I'd take it back to the shop and demand a refund.

Fake versus Real

Here are some general tips to follow when you're buying saffron:

only the threads matter: the yellow stamens are useless and only add bulk, which is a sign that something's wrong
the scent can't be faked and is unmistakable provided you've smelled real saffron before, however most people are fooled by vendors mixing in threads of the real stuff (adulteration)
it has a characteristic taste (that's highly individual), but will never be sweet
it's a deep yellow to orange hue: saffron should never create a pink colour, though the threads themselves are such a deep orange colour that they can appear red
said colour will appear in liquids but will not fade from the threads, putting a strand on a wet paper towel is an effective colour test
the threads will not dissolve but can (and should) be crushed into powder, they also have a distinct texture and feel
it's hideously expensive: even if you personally know a producer/trader or buy in bulk (i.e. tens of thousands of strands), the wholesale price is still incredibly high (more on this below)

Note that the checks mentioned can all be invalidated in different ways and most simply by the seller pulling a bait-and-switch. As a rule, don't buy saffron as a tourist unless you've done your homework on the seller and product.

A quick note on price. Saffron is famous for being more expensive than gold per weight (in retail quantities) and the reason for that is its incredibly costly production process. More than a hundred crocus flowers go into producing a measly gram and the threads need to be harvested by hand. This coupled with the consistent and high demand means that there is simply no incentive for anyone to sell below market value and that's especially true for retail quantities. The retail markup is significant though, especially given the high base price, and avoiding some of it by buying online or at specialty stores can indeed save you a lot, but your average cook or chef is never going to be buying this for 50% off.

Saffron versus Safflower

Safflower is often sold as "Turkish saffron" and some claim it's a substitute but that's just not the case. While safflower does add colour, turmeric does a better job of colouring food yellow without requiring you to filter out chewy threads later. Safflower adds no noticeable taste to food. Saffron simply cannot be substituted, largely because of the complexity of its aroma (which includes over a hundred compounds). There is no artificial or synthetic saffron for the same reason.

As a person who is in the business for Saffron, I could tell it is fake just by looking at it. It seems like real Saffron is mixed with something else, most probably colored corn threads (from what it looks like in the picture).

Please buy from a trusted store. Saffron is an expensive product, it cannot be cheap. if you find a store selling it cheap, that should be a red flag!


How can I avoid chocolate truffle mix curdling? We are trying to make chocolate truffles by heating cream and adding to chopped up chocolate but it keeps curdling. Are there any tips to avoid this happening?

I have made a lot of truffles, and even more ganache for other purposes, and I have never had this happen. My guess is that you are boiling the cream too hard and that is causing the curdling.

How to make ganache:
You will need by weight one part 35% cream to 2 parts chocolate of your choice.

Chop your chocolate (if it's in blocks or chunks), put into a heatproof bowl (stainless steel is best) away fro your heat.

In a saucepan or pot (depending on how much you're making), bring the cream up to a high simmer.

Pour the cream immediately over the chocolate and stir with a silicone spatula if you have one, a wooden spoon otherwise. The chocolate should completely melt within about two minutes; longer for very high percentage dark chocolates. At this point if you are making flavoured truffles, add your flavourings (unless your flavour compounds have been infused into the cream).

Chill until set, make into truffles.

Edited to add:

If you are using alcohol as a flavouring in your truffles, you will need to use either more chocolate or less cream. I have found that approximately for every fluid ounce of alcohol added, remove 3/4-1 fluid ounce of cream from the recipe. I prefer to infuse flavourings in the cream, and have had great success with beets, bacon (with a Guinness reduction added to the chocolate later), black truffle and pureed walnut, and honey. Be sure to strain, of course, before adding the hot cream to the chocolate.

I have also found that white chocolate will often need slightly less cream than a milk or dark.


Is “ghee” clarified butter or beurre noisette? Reading the Wikipedia pages on “Ghee,” “Clarified butter” and “Beurre noisette” has left me somewhat confused as to what ghee is. Some statements on the pages seem to suggest that it's always clarified butter, some that it's always beurre noisette, others that it can be either of the two depending on regional variations, and then it also might just be something in-between. Can someone clear up my confusion? Does it make (much) of a difference for cooking Indian recipes (I presume not, as ghee plays a less prominent role in a curry than beurre noisette does when it's used as a sauce).

Judging from those Wikipedia articles:

Clarified butter is rendered butter, which means that the solids are removed.
Beurre noisette is browned butter, which contains the solids.

Ghee is slightly-browned (it should have a golden color) butter that is rendered. So you melt the butter till it's golden. Then you remove the solids by pouring the top layer into a container. So you have a combination (if you like) of clarified and browned butter.

The only difference between buerre niosette, brown butter, and clarified butter is the milk solids are cooked longer... with clarified butter you stop the process before the milk solids get toasted (and sometimes remove the solids), brown butter they are toasted and black butter they are basically burnt. that's where the name comes from. Ghee is clarified butter traditionally boiled to clarify making it not brown or black... but technically all of them are ghee.


Baking soda as a substitute for baking powder I am making a pancake recipe that calls for 2 teaspoons of baking powder, which I do not have.

I was wondering if it would be ok to use baking soda as a substitute, and if so, how much would I need to use?

Baking powder contains baking soda, plus acidic ingredient(s).

If you have cream of tartar, you can make baking powder directly:

2 parts cream of tartar
1 part baking soda
1 part corn starch

Without cream of tartar, you can substitute baking soda for baking powder as long as you have an acid in your recipe, like buttermilk. If your recipe does not contain an acid, you should add one or the baking soda will remain inert. Based on the above proportions, you should be able to substitute 1/2 tsp baking soda + acid for 2 tsp baking powder.

For pancakes specifically, if you rest your batter, you should fold in the baking soda at the end so you do not lose all the leavening action.

It's basically the same thing. Baking powder produce more bubbles and make things more puff.
Use the same amount. If you want that extra puffines just add something acidic (vinegar, lemon) to the soda so it will start producing carbon dioxide and then add to flour and milk.


What is the best flour to use for pizza dough? I've been making pizza dough and the recipe says to use "good quality flour" but I'm not sure what it means? Are there differences in quality between different types of flour and how can I tell?

What do we look in a pizza dough?

There are many styles of pizza: Italian Vera Pizza Napoletana, Chicago style, ... All of them have something in common in their dough: it should be stretched without tearing, and shouldn't stretch back.

Also, some recipes call for long fermentation times: 6, 9 or more hours at room temperature. With this you get a more relaxed dough (it won't stretch back), and more flavour.

Which flour characteristics give us that dough?

Millers use a tool called Alveograph to check their flour's characteristics. One of the values given by Alveographs is the p/l value. l value is an index for extensibility: how much can the dough be stretched before breaking. p value shows how hard is to give the dough a shape. p/l gives an idea on how the dough holds the shape it's been given. Flours with p/l≈1 are said to give "equilibrate" doughs for bread, as they are easy enough to give a loaf shape, and they will keep that shape once given.

Pizza flours should have a p/l≈0.5, as it means the dough can be stretched to a big disc shape, it won't tear, and won't stretch back to a smaller disc.

For long fermentation time, a high W value is desireable: W=280, 300 or 320 are common values. W is not always related to p/l values, and it can be undesrtood (informally) as "how much gluten the flour has". As gluten in a dough gets degraded with time, a lot of it is desired initially in the dough to assure there will be enough at the end of fermentation, several hours (or days, if refrigerated) later.

Forget about those 00 in Italian flours. It really only means the finesse of grounding. For pizza making I try to use strong flours with a p/l value close to 0.5, albeit I've also used strong bread flour with good results.

How can I get flours with those characteristics?

There are some specific pizza flours. Some Italian makers (with no specific order) are:

Caputo
Spadoni

You can see how W value is related to their recomended fermentation time.
5 stagioni

If you check the p/l value you'll see it's 0.6: right for pizza stretching.

If you can't get specific pizza flour, you can also try with flour specific for croissants, as they will also be strong and stretchy.

I've never eaten nor seen Chicago style pizza, so I can't help with flours specific for them, but I guess the guidelines given above should help.

Just buy bread flour. For example Gold Medal or King Arthur flour.


power failure and a slow cooker I put a beef stew recipe in to my crock pot this morning at 7 am and set it for 8 hours on low. At 1 pm, the power went out for a few minutes. When power was restored, the slow cooker did not come back on.

Also, at 4 pm my wife noticed the crock pot was off and turned it on for an hour. It is now 6:40 pm. The middle of the stew is 155 degrees F, but close to the outside is 140.

Is it ruined? Unsafe? Can I just cook it for the remaining 2 hours?

The important temperature would be what temperature it was at when the power was turned back on.

The official recommendations are to keep high risk foods out of the 'danger zone' of 40°F to 140°F for longer than 2hrs (cumulative).  If portions of the pot were at 140°F after being heated for an hour, and there was the time for it to cool down.  (and the time for it to have heated up initially), from a health department perspective, it may not be safe.

Personally, if it were me, I'd have turned it up to high to try to get it back up to ~200°F (about where most crock pot's 'low' setting is), and then depending on how close it was to done, either switched it back to low, or left it on high so it might be ready in time for dinner.  (however, I've also been known to eat raw beef and things that have been in the fridge for longer than the health folks recommend)

~~

Isn't there still a movement afoot, longneck, which promotes the preparation of foods (including meats) at surprisingly low temperatures over longer periods of time instead of higher temperatures lickety-split? I think so. And I think it's got a pretty solid footing.

Room temperature seems to be the proverbial culprit, generally speaking. But the kind of circumstance you share is probably just fine. After all, beef is not uncommonly consumed rare. Pork and poultry are the ones we have to be so careful with, always cooking them all the way through.

Anyway, just for reference purposes, it doesn't sound like your stew ever made it back down to room temperature before your wife resuscitated the appliance. It's hard to be precise without knowing what the initial temperature was (the temperature the appliance was set for in the morning), but if in the past one and two-thirds hours the core has fallen to not below 155°F after only one hour's stewing, certainly after six hours' stewing a mere two hour lull couldn't be expected to yield results much different from the ones you were able to measure.

Gas rather than electric is normally the preferred mode for generating heat when it comes to preparing food. This is especially true on the stovetop where not only subtle but immediate (and visible) changes in temperature can be achieved. So too in the case of your crockpot I'd have to say that, yes, use of a gas appliance would have made it alternately possible for you to just yank that crock out of its base and shove it into the oven for the day. But I'm probably speaking out of line, as it's also preferable to have maid service and a hot towel with your shave.

I speak out of want more so than wont.

~~


What causes curding in this case: heating milk with large quantities of sugar Yesterday I decided to try to make dulce de leche or caramel. I did not follow a recipe: I was as curious to see what would happen as I was hungry for sweet, caramelised, milky sugar.

I mixed semi-skimmed milk with a large quantity of white sugar in a saucepan and heated gently. The ratio was roughly 1:1 by volume.

Within minutes (and long before the mixture was at all hot) smooth, silky shapes began to form in the mixture, which at this point was still roughly half milk and half undissolved sugar.

The silky shapes soon coagulated and grew harder and chewier over time. The milk had obviously curdled.

I haven't come across any other references to sugar curdling milk in this way. I have only seen it referenced as a 'stabiliser'.

I assume that the curdling was made more likely by my milk's low fat content. I was not stirring constantly. But I'm not looking for a fix, just for understanding. I didn't really want to get it 'right'.

So, could someone please explain what most likely happened here? Is it simply that milk heated with a high enough proportion of anything that dissolves in water will separate and curdle within minutes? Or is is something specifically to do with sugar?

Specifically, what was it about the sugar that I added that caused the milk to curdle (the amount? something else?), and what is the nature of the curdling process? (The second question has been answered elsewhere, but it may be relevant in answering the first, which has not been asked elsewhere).

Thank you for any advice. I know that next time, when I follow a recipe and want to get it absolutely right, I'll have a better understanding of what's going on, thanks to your answers.

P.S. In the end I strained the mixtures, reserving the very sweet solids, and continued to reduce the sugar/milk liquid mixture until I ended up with something very similar in taste, colour and consistency to condensed milk.

It's not the sugar that caused the milk to curdle, it's the milk itself. Dulce de leche and caramel are both usually made with either cream, condensed, or evaporated milk. The issue with regular milk (especially skim), is that it has such a high water content and low fat content. The fat in cream buffers the protein, helping to prevent curdling, and the canned milks have already had most of the water removed, making them less likely to curdle.

The sugar could also have a buffering effect on the milk protein, unfortunately you have a catch 22. In order to buffer the milk form curdling, the sugar would have to be dissolved in the milk. In order to dissolve sugar in the milk at a 1:1 ratio, the milk would have to be heated past the point where it would curdle.

You might be able to prevent this by using a double boiler until the milk has reduced a lot. Making a caramel requires almost all of the water to be cooked out of your syrup, so this will take a really long time and isn't advisable.

I own a restaurant and make tons of homemade chai with brown sugar. For the last 3 weeks we have had problems with the milk curdling (all of a sudden). After much experimentation, we discovered it was the brown sugar. More specifically, the molasses in the brown sugar. Any acid will cause milk to curdle. For example, cheese can be made by adding a few drops of lemon juice to milk. Bleach left over from washing can have the same effect.

In our case, we have used this same recipe for our chai for 15 years now. So why all of a sudden did it start to curdle, I wonder. So: 1. We have definitely pin-pointed it to the brown sugar. 2: In products like Domino's brown sugar, I BELIEVE the molasses is simply added back into refined granulates sugar. If this is the case, perhaps the added-back molasses has changed. 3: I know city water acidity changes. We triple-filter our water before using it for cooking/coffee etc, but perhaps it is more acid and then the added acidity of the molasses puts it over the top. In our case, should I switch to confectioners sugar for the chai, there was no curdling.


How to prevent sticking and get a nice searing on scallops When I am searing scallops, they often stick in the pan and most of the time, they are very hard to turn.

I use only a little oil 1-2 tablespoons.

Am I not using enough?

Most likely, you're not heating your pan enough before placing the scallops in.  Without knowing your exact method it's hard to say what's going wrong, but 1-2 tbsp of oil should be enough for a normal amount of scallops.

To learn about properly heating your pan, I recommend this link:

http://www.houseboateats.com/2009/12/on-properly-heating-your-pan.html

I use a non-stick pan, make it really hot, season the scallops and give them 30 secs - 1 min a side, only touching them to turn once. I find it gives a really good sear, but with a tender centre.


Is there a rule of thumb on vinegar's abilities as a preservative? To follow up on the storage of ketchup in particular, many items in cupboards and refrigerators have vinegar listed as a key ingredient. The first things that come to mind are hot sauce, mustard, ketchup. With respect to vinegar as a preservative, is there a rule of thumb in understanding the following:

how does vinegar work as a preservative; is it solely by virtue of its acidic content?
aside from the presence of sugars or artificial preservatives, is there a kind of ratio (or other metric) of foods containing, or whose base is, vinegar to know whether something needs to be refrigerated to keep from spoiling?
what components can act to counteract vinegar's ability to preserve food?
upon combination, can vinegar stabilize anything that otherwise would spoil? (If yes, you can answer generally, don't worry about a laundry list)

Note: This is asking not about specific jarring/pickling or other long term preservation methods, but rather to the on-use storage of food items in the kitchen and their ability to keep outside of refrigeration without spoiling.

is it solely by virtue of its acidic
  content?

Yes, not a lot of biochemistry is happy living at pH 2 - and the stuff that can live there is already happily living in your gut with a ph of 1

  is there a kind of ratio (or other metric) of vinegar to know whether something needs to be refrigerated to keep from spoiling?

You mean foods already packaged in vinegar? It would depend on how well they had been cooked/sterilized before packaging and how strong the vinegar is.
Industrially made pickles will be a lot cleaner than something you pickle at home, but store bought pickles are likely to use much cheaper, more dilute vinegar than your grandmother did.

  what components can act to counteract vinegar's ability to preserve food?

Anything too alkali will neutralise the vinegar's acidity

  can vinegar stabilize anything that otherwise would spoil?

Not necessarily, it has to be something where the vinegar can penetrate into the food - it's not going to preserve steaks as well as vegetables. And of course the vinegar taste is going to help if you are trying to preserve say strawberries!
Also fungal spores can probably survive dormant in vinegar (if not grow) - fungal spores can survive dormant pretty much anything.

If anybody does use vinegar solely as a preservative, the substantial matter ( pickle etc.)  Must be used ( refrigerated or otherwise) 'online'.


How do I wash farm-fresh eggs? My aunt recently gifted us a carton of eggs fresh from her chickens.
I've been rinsing them off thoroughly with each use, but I'm not really sure if this is enough to make sure they're sanitary for consumption.
What's the appropriate way to wash eggs when they come directly from a chicken, instead of being store-bought?
Note, I'm talking about just before using an egg, not washing all of my eggs at once.

(from what I can see on the internets)
Just continue what you are doing.
Just before using:
Softly brush off dirt and debris and rinse for a couple of seconds under running water.

My personal suggestion would be to immediately before the egg is used

Using a clean dry brush try to remove any obvious dirt in a ring around the egg where you are trying to break it open.
Next clean that area with a dilute bleach or milton solution.
In using the egg, you may then wish to comply with FDA safe handling instructions and cook the eggs until the yolk is firm.

Safer still: politely accept the eggs, bin them and substitute for retail eggs.

My Reasoning
Regulations and procedures may vary between countries, but the science and potential risks depend on the procedures used.
It seems to me your idea of trying to remove and sanitise the shell before cracking it open must be better than cracking an obviously contaminated shell as it is.
As far as I know in my country {England & no longer part of the EU} it is  not permitted to wash eggs that are to be made available to the public in their shells, but I can not seem to find evidence to support that conjecture other than this

National FSA advice  ...  Temperature changes can lead to condensation on the surface, which causes increased penetration of Salmonella from the outside of the shell into the egg. ....

That serves as a reminder that even pristine looking retail eggs are potentially dangerous, and risk contaminating food & if washed; or placed in a fridge; the egg within the shell.
And Ireland's regulations {A European country within the EU} say it is illegal to wash Grade A hens eggs.

https://www.fsai.ie/faq/egg_washing.html
... The egg marketing rules stipulate that grade A hen eggs may not be washed. Only grade B hen eggs may be washed and these cannot be sold at retail, ... Is washing of eggs recommended?

No, because washing may aid the transfer of harmful bacteria like Salmonella from the outside to the inside of the egg.

The priority in egg production is to produce clean eggs at the point of collection, rather than trying to clean them afterwards. The cleanliness of the egg should be assured by good management and hygiene of the poultry house, and by minimising the delay between egg laying and egg collection.

In Shell Pasturisation
Not common in my country. But it appears in the USA some of your retail eggs may be carefully washed, pasteurised in shell
{ See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurized_eggs#Pasteurized_shell_eggs }
Then after pasteurization, the eggs are coated with food-grade wax to maintain freshness and prevent environmental contamination and stamped with a blue or red "P" in a circle to distinguish them from unpasteurized eggs.
Wax coated eggs would presumably be fine rinsed under water, or stored in a fridge.


Why did my vinaigrette emulsify so quickly? When I make salad dressing, I usually don't expect my vinaigrette to emulsify particularly well. I don't do any of the steps described in this question about vinaigrette emulsification, such as drizzling the oil into the acid slowly with much stirring.

However, last week I decided to try to make a vinaigrette using some aged balsamic vinegar that I just bought. I've used aged balsamic in the past and had the same experience that I normally have with the vinaigrette -- that the mixture doesn't stay together -- I need to stir just before dressing the salad.

I poured olive oil into my bowl, added my new vinegar, and some salt, pepper, and herbs -- and almost immediately, the mixture turned into the texture of thin mayonnaise. No matter how much oil I added later to thin it down, it didn't break the emulsion. (I ended up saving it as a sauce for chicken, since I don't like thick salad dressing.)

Why did this emulsify so well? Could there have been something about that vinegar? (It's aged and thicker than most, but not so much that it compares unfavorably with other aged balsamic I've bought. It's just vinegar -- no added ingredients.)

You answered your own question here (emphasis mine):

(It's aged and thicker than most, but not so much that it compares unfavorably with other aged balsamic I've bought. It's just vinegar -- no added ingredients.)

Viscosity promotes emulsification by physically slowing down separation. This gives you (and your whisk!) a wider window in which to break the oil into very small droplets. Once established, the viscosity promotes stability. According to Cook's Illustrated, it's due to melanoidins in the vinegar:

These compounds, abundant in aged balsamic vinegar, are formed when sugars and proteins are heated and undergo the Maillard reaction, the chemical reaction that generates deep browning and flavor. Because the molecules of these compounds are extremely large, they increase the viscosity of emulsions so much that it becomes difficult for the oil droplets to move around and coalesce into larger droplets and eventually separate from the water; thus, the dressing is very slow to separate. (Melanoidins also happen to be responsible for the aged vinegar’s inky color.)

Umm... that's not actually possible. There's no emulsifying agent included. Either your vinegar has an undisclosed ingredient or you've forgotten to tell us what you used as an emulsifier.


Is Teflon dangerous? I've read that non-stick saucepans using Teflon are dangerous. Why do so many people still use them including all the professional chefs, and how do you personally feel about using them after reading this?

We are in the predicament at the moment where we have an induction stove and a titanium Woll pan which is non-stick but takes FOREVER to heat up. The only other non-stick pans are Teflon. What to do?

I had a quick look around pubmed, an aggregator of biological and medical literature, and found very little in the way of actual scientific evidence for teflon toxicity under 500C. In fact, teflon is still widely in use in surgery and can be left inside the body for tens of years.

This does not mean that improper operation (such as overheating to the point of thermolysis) cannot result in compounds you would rather not have in your food. It will also ruin the pan. Don't do it.

If you cover your floor in Teflon you are more likely to slip…

However I have never heard of any real risk of using Teflon as indented.


Does honey have a bitter component? I've heard Jeffrey Steingarten, on Iron Chef America, mention that he finds honey quite bitter. I've never noticed that myself. Maybe if I really try I can notice a slight bitter finish, but for me the sweetness and floral aroma dominates. Is honey actually bitter in some quantifiable sense? Are some particular varieties of honey better known for this characteristic?

It depends on what the bees had for lunch :) . Acacia honey is extremely sweet, with no bitter aftertaste. Chestnut honey (easy to find in Italy, don't know about elsewhere) is dark and has a strong bitter note. I personally love how the bittersweet goes with butter and bread, but some people hate it. Generic polyflower honey usually does not have a bitter note.

Honey is stored in honeycomb which contains wax like components. The taste of honey depends on how effectively these wax components are removed from honey


Can you assemble lasagna one day, and then bake it about 24 hrs later? I've always made it on the spot and cooked it then and there, but would like to make at home and take it to a large party the next day and cook it then - will it work?

Yes, and I find it taste better.  When I make lasagna I will not fully cook the pasta.  Instead, I keep a pot of boiling water and I dip the pasta into it to soften while I'm assembling the dish; the pasta is in the water for less than one minute.  The pasta seems to absorb more of the sauce, keeping the flavor but making a dish that does not fall apart as easily.

I find it actually tastes better when you just partially cook everything then let it sit in the fridge for a day and cook it.


Why can't this ice cream scoop go in the dishwasher? I have an ice cream scoop that is labeled with something like:

  Do not immerse in water hotter than 140 °F / 60 °C. Do not wash this item in the dishwasher.

What is the real reason for these warnings? I have found mentions of things like:

Hot water will "dry out" the chemicals inside. (What chemicals? Why are they there? How would temperature affect them exactly?)
The finish on the scoop may change appearance and may rub off during later use. (Is this due to the hot water? Detergent? Bleach?)

I have a scoop that has accidentally gone through the dishwasher a couple of times without apparent ill effect. Is there now something deficient about my scoop? Is it not being as effective as it was when it was new due to the lack of some mysterious chemicals? Is the finish now coming off into my ice cream even if I can't see it? Is there any health or safety risk due to this?

The scoop is metal. Probably aluminium. Looks like this but not so shiny (don't recall whether it ever was):

I've accidentally run my scoop, a Zeroll with conductive fluid inside the handle, through the dishwasher. I don't know this for a fact because I didn't cut mine open to check, but I believe what happened to mine (and what's happened to yours) is that the fluid is meant to work at normal body temperature and when it gets too hot, like in a dishwasher, it solidifies. That's the clunking sound, the now-solid conductive liquid. So while it still works as a scoop, the conductive fluid is no longer doing its job and scooping will be a little harder. I definitely noticed that after mine went through the dishwasher.

In 1983 I had my 1st job at Braum's in Bartlesville store # 13. They are numbered in the order they were built. Anyway I asked that same question back then and the assistant manager told me they have mercury in them and mercury when heated up sweals . I not to sure how true that is but it could explain the warning though . It's just way dangerous in my opion  . Mercury in the smallest amount in our bodies can kill US like super fast . Seems a little crazy to have mercury in it. I recently bought a scooper and asked the manager about it and he said he didn't know what was in there but felt like I did about it that they wouldn't needlessly endanger lives like that. I am curious to that's how I come apon this question that we both have. Will be looking further into it . Will let you know if I find out the big mystery.


What went wrong with this cake? This is an olive oil cake (with gluten free flour). It baked in this completely crazy way. The entire cake lifted up and there was a large bubble under the cake that shifted the batter to the sides before it cooked.

Here's how it cooked in the pan with half removed (we used a conventional oven, the toaster oven is just for scale):

Turned the cake up in this following photo -- you are looking at the bottom of the cake this time:

A couple of questions:

What happened?
How can we make sure this doesn't happen again?
Have you ever seen anything so crazy happen before?

I'd lower the temperature. You'll have to experiment. I think what happened is that the bottom quickly cooked and sealed. As your liquid ingredients turned to steam an air pocket was created, which would further slow the cooking of the middle.The still fluid batter would flow to the sides and provide more liquid, as the bottom rose.

Couple of reasons, either you kept it on a very high temperature, or the door of OTG was opened repeatedly during the baking time or your baking powder was expired. Anything above if true, the cake will sink.


Is anything made less safe by cooking? Reading this question: Emulsifier: is it safe to cook mayonnaise?

Is anything made less safe by cooking? (I'm not asking if cooking makes something worse-tasting, have bad texture, is culturally or religiously taboo, etc. just from a food safety perspective).

Please interpret cooking as loosely as you'd like. I would probably define cooking as "applying heat to raw food", but considering techniques like curing/pickling or freeze-drying, I'd be curious about those as well. What I'm not too curious about is failing to "cook" something adequately (not enough heat, time, salt, etc.), since the consequences of that are more straightforward.

There are a few cases were a closer look is warranted and which may be seen as "less safe after cooking":

Yes, if reduced shelf life counts as less safe.
If you take dried food - anything that has a nearly unlimited shelf life - and (re-)hydrate it, the shelf life goes down to mere days. The same goes for fruit and vegetables (from often weeks or even months, e. g. pumpkins, down to days).
If your definition of "cooking" doesn't require a heating step, food preparation can cause cross-contamination when germs from the outside/surface are transferred to the formerly safe inside. Example: cutting fruit that wasn't washed well enough.
A third case of "less safe" would be "cooking" with insufficient heat: there is a fine line between "kills pathogens over time" and "creates a cozy environment where pathogens thrive and multiply happily". Note that this is discussed in detail in our generic posts on the topic.
A border case in a "food safety" discussion would be creating byproducts that might have negative long-term effects like acrylamide or residue from char grilling. But that's pretty much a grey area with a lot of uncertainties in the equation. (And we don't discuss health here on the site partly because of that.)

In short, if cooking for you includes "bacteria-killing heat" and eating reasonably quickly after cooking and ignoring byproducts then no, cooking does not make food less safe. Within these parameters we typically use the cooking process to make food safer.

Cooking mostly makes food safer to consume. However, canning is a classic example of how "cooking" food can go wrong. That is why there are strict guidelines around the process.

Let's say you take some raw fruit, rich in sugar, wild yeasts and lactobacillus. Oh, and some naturally occurring botulism and ecoli for good measure. Let's say you macerate this fruit and place it in a couple of different jars.

Jar 1, raw: This jar gets capped and put in the fridge overnight. You have toast with preserves the next day and paint the walls brown because you didn't kill the ecoli by cooking it.

Jar 2, raw but fermented: This jar gets capped and placed in a warm window where over many months it ferments into a tart, alcoholic beverage. The sugar content, alcohol and acidity have effectively preserved the fruit and killed the small amount of botulism and ecoli present, making it safe to consume (note that fermentation has it's risks too, but that's not the point here).

Jar 3, "cooked" / canned: This jar gets capped and placed in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. From the perspective of immediate consumption, the ecoli is dead and the botulism hasn't been given enough time to form toxin. You eat this on toast two days later, and everybody is happy. Now let's imagine that you left this jar unopened on the shelf for two years. Your fruit preserves were not cooked long/hot/acidic enough to prevent the botulism spores from growing and forming botulism toxin. Now you have toast with jam and within a day you are laying paralyzed on the kitchen floor.


Is our oven at work powerful enough to bake pizza? Do all thick based pizzas require an oven temperature of at least 300°C (575°F) to cook better as per our reference manual?

Absolutely not. There are a lot of tricks to get good thick (or thin) pizza with oven temperatures under 300C (572F). The people at Serious Eats have researched the problem at great length and with excellent results. Few home ovens reach 300C. I made this pizza last weekend using the recipe in the above link, my oven's top temperature is 274C (525F):

Serious Eats has a lot of pizza recipes for the kind of oven most of us have. A lot of those recipes, like New York Pizza, take advantage of a pizza stone.

For my pizza, I used a 12 inch cast iron skillet which worked very well, but it can be done in two 10 inch cake pans - or in just about anything else. Read the comments, all types of pan sizes and types are discussed. The dough is a no-knead recipe that rises vigorously overnight, then it does the second rise in the pan. It's easy to shape for the second rise, and it holds up to an extraordinary volume of toppings (which is a generally a desirable trait for Pan Pizza). It would have been nice to have been able to reach the recommended temperature of 288C (550F), but the site addresses that issue too. The pizza came out of the oven with the bottom crust a bit blond, but two minutes on a burner brought it to perfect. Be sure to check out the sauce recipes too. I used this one. It was the best Pan Pizza I have ever had.

Serious Eats has hundreds of pages of very good information specifically about making world class pizza without a pizza oven. It's a great site, check it out.

We are also lucky to have a lot of very knowledgeable people here on Seasoned Advice that can help with any specific problems.

You can make great pizza without a pizza oven.

180°C are enough for everyone! At least with air circulation, without something around 200°C is okay, if you go higher the pizza will usually burn on the outside. Also it depends on how much fat is used.


I boiled dry my 18/10 ss pot, is it damaged and unsafe to cook with now I was boiling eggs and fell asleep. I think it was boiling dry for about an hour, would the pot be unsafe to cook with now?

It was clean inside but the outside is now slightly yellow tinged. Does stainless steel have any kind of coating in it that might of burnt off? I don't really want to throw the pot away as it is 18/10 and pretty expensive, but I don't want to risk my health.

Thanks

Stainless steel pots are pretty much indestructable and it should be safe to cook with. Just give it a good cleaning. Some hardwarevstores (lowes) have a ss cleaner that might get rid of the yellow tinge. Otherwise, it'll look like every other well used ss pot.

18/10 ss is 18% chromium, 10% nickel, and balance in iron and stable
to higher temperatures. If you didn't drop the hot pot in cold water, or the bottom is really thick, you shouldn't have warping issues either.

An egg timer might be handy next time ;)

I accidentally overheated one when it was empty and clean.  It copper tinted allover on the inside.  I expect the copper color is from copper melting/vaporizing out of the stainless steel alloy, and that this left some porosity in the inside surface.  Other metals may also have melted out.  Leaving an email message with a representative of the company that made the pan, which came in a set, resulted in no reply back.  So, I assume there is a potential hazard, even more.


What is the best method/product for cleaning pasta's starch residue from colander and cooking pot? After cooking pasta, I typically drain it in a colander.  I have found the starch residue in both the cooking pot and particularly the colander is difficult to clean without hand scrubbing it.  I am curious if anyone knows a solution - either a method or product that makes clean-up quicker and easier.  Thanks for any ideas you may have!

Soaking in water works for me. Put the colander in the pot, fill it with water - preferably before it dries out in the first place - and then leave it alone until you are ready to do the dishes, whether that's after dinner or (gasp!) in the morning. Either way the starch will slip off easily.

Make a bath of lye and soak items fully submerged.
Lye will dissolve anything organic, including mothers-in-law.

WARNING

Lye is very caustic and will burn skin and damage eyes.
Wear gloves and eye protection.
It's also not very good for septic systems.


What's the fastest way to seed grapes (e.g., Concordes)? I've got a bunch of grapes, with seeds. I need to seed them for a recipe. Cutting them in half and prying out the seeds with a paring knife makes me yearn for stringing beans. Any suggestions on how to get through this process faster?

If you just need the pulp (for pie, ice cream, jam, etc...) then cook them down and run them through a food strainer.

If you need them raw, or halved/skins on, then find a good audiobook...

As Fern said,  Squeeze grape and put pulp with seed in a pot.  Put Skin in another bowl.
Heat up the pulp, once heated seed will easily separate from the pulp.   Put through a strainer and add seedless pulp to the skins.
Proceed with recipe


Why wait for water to boil? I've always heard that you should wait for water to boil before adding pasta/perogies/vegetables/etc.  What is the reason for this? Is it because it reaches boiling point faster?  If so, why?

The primary reason is for accuracy and reliability in cooking times. Boiling water is guaranteed (not accounting for altitude) to be at 212 F (100 C). With a set temperature you can then say things like "boil X for 9 minutes" with a very high measure of confidence.

You certainly can cook things in the water as you go, but it's going to be a lot more hit-and-miss. Pasta, for example, will begin to cook before it reaches the boiling point. You would need to measure the temperature, and check the pasta regularly to determine when it was done. You can't give someone an accurate cooking time with this method either. The time it takes for water to boil will vary greatly with stove heat output, pot size & shape, and the amount of water.

You might as well put the pasta in from cold because you will achieve an overall shorter waiting time. If you wait for water to boil, then you will inevitably be waiting for longer to cook your food.

I've sat with a stop watch and timed two pots of pasta, one from cold and the other from boiling. Sure, boiling water cooks food faster but waiting for water to boil takes a while and you might as well be burning the candle at both ends by throwing the pasta in first (even cold water softens pasta eventually). You can save yourself around 10 to 15 mins.

The only reason cooking instructions state "from boiling" is for an accurate constant that can be replicated.


Difference between Maida and All purpose flour I'm baking tonight and I'm out of All purpose flour. I'm lazy to run out to the grocery store. Can I replace All purpose flour with Maida (Maida is better known to Asian Indians - we use it for making Naans and such)

Maida is wheat flour similar to what is sold in the US as cake flour. Like cake flour, maida is finely milled, and it has less protein than all purpose flour. You can use it for bread and cakes, as well as chapatis, parathas and puris.
To achieve a flour more like all purpose or other flour types, you can add gluten to maita. According to The Fresh Loaf, maida typically contains 7.5% gluten (if anyone can find a more authoritative source, please edit accordingly).
Cooking for Geeks has a good article about the gluten content of other flours:

High gluten flour and bread flour is produced from hard wheat. High gluten flour has a gluten percentage of about 12-14% while bread flour contains about 10-13% gluten. Both flours are almost completely made of hard wheat, but some high gluten flours are treated to reduce starch content, raising the gluten content to around 14%. These flours are generally used for making breads. High gluten flour is reserved for breads that are extra elastic such as bagels and pizza.
Cake flour is produced from soft wheat and is low in gluten content (8-10%). This flour is used for making delicate cakes. Baked goods made with cake flour has a tendency to crumble because of the low gluten content.
All purpose flour is made from a mixture of hard and soft wheats. The gluten content ranges from 9-12%. This is the most versatile flour because it can be used to make both cakes and breads. However, breads won't be as chewy and cakes won't be as tender as if you used bread or cake flour.
Pastry flour is also a mix of hard and soft wheat flours with an emphasis on soft. Generally, the gluten content is 9-10% and is often recommended for pie crusts.

So, again according to The Fresh Loaf:

Then if you're interested in the details of the math, start out with a formula like (100parts/100parts * 7.5%) + (Nparts/100parts * 75%) = 10.5% [or 9.5% or 12.5% or whatever your desired result is], then solve for N. Skipping intermediate steps, simplification gives N = ((end-percentage-goal * 100) - 750) / 75 (Even this math is actually an oversimplification that's not quite right. It takes the not-quite-correct shortcut of directly adding percentages without accounting for the total being more than 100 grams. Hopefully though it's "good enough" ...)
The bottom line is: for every 100 grams Maida, add somewhere between 2.6 and 6.6 grams GlutenPowder. Adding 2.6 grams GlutenPowder will give a result with about 9.5% gluten, adding 4 grams GlutenPowder will give a result with about 10.5% gluten, and adding 6.6 grams GlutenPowder will give a result with about 12.5% gluten.

According to the original author of this answer, "You might find that bread and cakes made with maida don't keep as well as the same things made with all-purpose flour, but home baking never stays around for more than a day in my experience."

Using all-purpose flour is better than using maida, in cakes.


How long does ceviche keep? We just made ceviche with ahi tuna, lots of lime juice, avocado, onion, cilantro and jalapeño. It's wonderful. Unfortunately we made too much. Now, I've never made it before and want to know about how long I should keep it in the fridge, if at all?

Note: this is not super high quality sashimi grade fish. Nor is it the freshest fish in the world.

Drain as much of the "cooking" solution (lime etc) off as possible, and store separately

Both parts will keep a day or two

After draining you can briefly rinse the fish to stop the "cooking" process, otherwise it may go a little mushy, but not unappetising


When left out in an open container, what % abv does vodka retain at room temperature? If I pour vodka (40% abv) into an open glass, and then leave it out overnight (or for some time), what percent ABV does it stabalize at? Or does all of its alcohol content evaporate (leaving just barley-water in its wake)?

Also, as a followup, does the same behavior apply to other alcohols, like whiskey? And finally, at what rate roughly does vodka lose ABV at room temperature?

As a chemist I'd say that the question is really impossible to answer as given.

The gist is that for a water/ethanol mixture both components will evaporate. So if the liquid is left out long enough, the liquid will evaporate completely.

The atmosphere contains essentially no ethanol so an equilibrium between the whole atmosphere and the ethanol in a glass can never be reached. There is water in the atmosphere (aka humidity) so the evaporation of water could be retarded, or prevented entirely if the "local" humidity is 100%. But unless the "local" humidity is already 100% then an equilibrium between the liquid and the atmospheric water won't be reached either.

Pure ethanol has a higher vapor pressure and thus evaporates faster than pure water (in 0% humidity). So the gist is that as liquid evaporates the water/ethanol composition of the liquid will change. Thus the relative rate of evaporation of water and ethanol changes too.

In terms of the rate of evaporation there are a number of unspecified parameters.

How much volume compared to the exposed surface area? So liquid will evaporate more slowly from a tall narrow glass than a short wide one.
Temperature? The higher the temperature the faster the evaporation.
Air currents? If you use a fan to blow air across the glass evaporation will occur much faster than if a fan isn't used.

No alcohol evaporates at room temperature, so 40% vodka will be 40% in the morning.

Alcohol evaporates at 174 degrees, only cooking can reduce the abv.


Is it necessary to keep vinaigrette in refrigerator? I made vinaigrette which is composed of red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, and sugar. Does this need to be refrigerated, or is it safe to leave it out of the fridge?

None of the listed ingredients require refrigeration so you are safe to leave the vinaigrette at room temperature as long as it's not fluctuating much. Leave it in a cool, somewhat shaded area (out of direct sunlight if possible). If you wanted, you could absolutely leave your vinaigrette in the fridge.


Counteracting a metallic taste in canned tomatoes? I used some canned tomatoes to make chili, which normally works fine, but today it has a really strong metallic flavor. From what I can tell, this is just because they're probably low-quality, so I won't be using this brand again.

Anyway, is there anything I can do to save this chili? I didn't notice the flavor until I added everything else.

Metallic taste is due to the tannins in the tomato pomace and skins. A pinch of baking soda will alleviate the problem.

If you are using tomato paste, you absolutely have to let it cook for about 3-5 minutes before or for forever after you add the liquid. Tomato paste will, no matter how fresh, have a tinny/metallic taste to it. You have to cook that taste out before you add broth, tomato sauce, or water to it. At least that is what Rachel Ray says.