How should I choose my next step as a cook? I'm a reasonably competent home cook: I can roast a chicken, bake bread, improvise a dinner with what's in the fridge, etc, but I'm looking to step up my game a bit. How do I look at a recipe and decide if it's a good next step in learning to cook?

I would like to make good use of my time and energy; for example some things might be too ambitious, or some things might not teach me much.

In my view this is pretty simple: make things you want to eat.

As long as you cast your net wide enough as you look for recipe ideas, there will always be new things that you'd love to eat and will learn something from making. And as long as you want to eat the food, you'll be motivated enough to actually follow through and do it.

Most of the time, this will mean making things where you're mostly comfortable with the recipe, but there are some new parts you haven't tried before. It might be new combinations of ingredients and flavors, which will broaden the creative side of your cooking. It might be new techniques, which will enable you to make more things in the future. To oversimplify, when you look at a recipe, if practically every step sounds new or difficult, maybe save it for later; if most of it gives you an "I can do this" feeling, go for it!

It's fine to take on bigger projects too, of course, as long as you go into it with the understanding that you might want to try parts of it by themselves first (or that things might fail the first time).

Either way, be sure to cast a wide net: skim cookbooks, read food blogs, browse recipe database sites or food photography sites, and so on. There's always a lot out there that you'll surely want to try and just don't know it yet.

But above all, just seek out things that look good to you (or your friends/family). The rest will follow.

There is another possible scenario that hasn't been addressed: Everyone's abilities are different. Others may shine in areas you do not, and vice versa, so you should consider the possibility that the level of cooking expertise you have already attained may be your "pinnacle" in the cooking realm, and if so, no matter how hard you try, you will NEVER get any better, and accordingly, for all practical purposes your life as a cook is as good as over and rather than slog through your remaining years living a life of misery in a total depressed funk, you should probably entertain the possibility that there is little left to do other than to KILL YOURSELF NOW!!! :)  :)  :) Actually, that's my solution if you can't find your glasses... or car keys...or whatever...  ;)


How do you keep turkey from getting too dry? It's Thanksgiving up here in Canada, and I'm wondering what can be done to keep the breast meat on a turkey from being too dry?

I suggest using a brine. Lots of brining details can be found in the answers to this question:

  What are the basics of brining meat?

Alton Brown has a really great recipe for brined roasted turkey. You can watch the Good Eats excerpt on YouTube in which he covers brining turkey.

I also suggest reading The Basics of Brining (PDF) from Cook's Illustrated.

See my answer here: Does brining a chicken/turkey before roasting really make a difference?


Could rice or pasta be cooked without hot water? I moved in a brand new house. I have no stove, microwaves or hot water for a week or two.

I'm vegetarian and I've already prepared fresh veggies wrap, salad, hummus, sandwichs, .. but I'm wondering if you could cook any kind of pasta or rice without hot water.

A long time ago I read pasta could be softened in cold water before boiling it to cook it quicker.

Wetted starch is not the same thing as cooked starch. If you want to see the difference in a simple experiment, make two starch slurries, boil one into a pudding, and leave the other one cold. Starch only gelates at high temperatures (I think it starts around 70°C, but needs even more to complete the process).

When you have a grain of rice, you have the problem that the starch is very closely packed together, and water can't penetrate into the center of the grain too well - the outside layers soak all the water they come in contact with, and so water only seeps into the center of the rice after the outer part has been hydrated. It is similar for pasta. In the worst case, when you cook rice, the time needed for cooking will be enough to heat the whole grain to the gelating temperature, but not enough for the water to hydrate the innermost part of the corn. This is fine if you want hardish-cooked rice, but if you want soft, mushy rice, you should presoak it so the inside is already hydrated when you start cooking it. I suppose you can do the same with pasta. This is the reason why some sources will advice you to presoak.

But, as I said, this is not the same as cooking. Yes, the rice or pasta will get soft, so you won't break your teeth if you try to eat it. But it will still be raw starch. I don't know if it is unhealthy to eat raw starch (my mother certainly told me so, but it could have been a myth; I asked a question about that and got no conclusive answers). But it will probably taste unpleasant, similar to raw potatoes or raw flour. I would try to get other sources of food for this time period. Or, as @justkt's comment suggests, it is easy to get an electric kettle in a brand new house before the kitchen is installed. You can use it to pour cooking water over "instant" versions of pasta and rice. These have been pregelated and then dehydrated, so don't need a prologned cooking. They are usually available as instant hot soup or rice meals in sachets and cardboard boxes, I haven't seen them as pure ingredients.

Rice is made to be hot. The chemical reaction happens through enough energy to allow the water in, otherwise, you get stale rice.


What ingredients can be added to pasta to give a different color? I've experimented with fresh pasta, using the following ingredients to color it:

Beetroot puree
Carrot puree
Cocoa powder

The first two were successful, the cocoa poweder resulted in a very visually appealing but rather disgusting pasta.

Any other suggestions for stuff you can put in the dough, other than the banal versions using spinach or dried tomatoes, to make for interesting colors?

We use spinach to color and flavour fresh pasta.

Have you tried blueberry, cranberry and currant?

P.S. I have no clue if it will be eatable :)


Oat Flour for pasta not rolling well? I experimented by substituting all purpose flour with oat flour that I ground up myself from organic oatmeal for pasta intended for ravioli.

I used roughly 3 cups of oat flour : 4 eggs ratio,
Kneeded it into dough, let it rest for 30 minutes before attempting to roll it in my pasta roller.

The problem is I couldn't get the texture right, plus the oat flour kept absorbing all the moisture and became dry, brittle and unrollable.

Adding more water made it too moist and sticky that I know it would get stuck in my pasta roller. Kneeding water or more flour into the dough made it eventually dry and brittle again.

The oat flour dough is like a weird sponge! I can't get the texture right.

What am I doing wrong?

I've made pasta from all purpose flour before and have not had this problem.

EDIT: Just experimenting because I had extra Oatmeal on hand. I don't have Gluten sensitivity.

Pasta relies on gluten development for its strength and structure.  Only wheat and its close relatives have the necessary precursor proteins, glutenin and gliadin, from which gluten is formed.

You simply will not be able to make pasta from 100% oat flour using a recipe designed for wheat flour, as oats do not contain gluten (well, technically, its precursors).

If you desire a gluten free pasta, you should search for recipes specifically for that purpose.  They are often bound together with xantham gum or other hydrocolloids.

If you are just looking for an interesting pasta as an alternative to the more traditional ones, you need to make sure you have enough gluten available to support the structure (and overcome the weakening that will come from using oat flour, which will physically interrupt the gluten strands).  I would suggest making sure you are using high protein wheat flour (such as bread flour), and only substituting a portion (no more than say 25%, and you might want to start with smaller amounts to see how it works) with oat flour.  I haven't tried this, so you will need to experiment to find a good balance between oat flavor, and the ability for the pasta to hold its shape and structure.

I second SAJ14SAJ but have my disagreement on oat flour vs all purpose.

Oats do have gluten and in fact 14% gluten so unless you are using a gluten free oat flour you should use similar amounts as you would whole wheat flour because of similar percentages.


Colouring oil - chocolate look alike Does anyone have experience with colouring vegetable/olive oil? My goal is to end up with a brown-chocolate colour so that the result would be a chocolate look-alike.

If you really want to color oil, then oil-based food coloring would probably be the most straightforward thing. You should be able to get enough colors to mix to get the brown you want.

That said, I'm not sure how oil is ever going to be a chocolate look-alike. It might be the same color, but even melted chocolate is way thicker than oil; they aren't really going to look the same even if you get the color right.

I do agree don't think a oil based product like sunflower or olive oil is the ideal liquid to mix but rather water with soy sauce or just chocolate sauce itself if you want it a bit less runny.


Preparing Brown Rice I have a rice cooker with brown rice setting. I struggle getting the brown rice cooked properly. I get it either too soft or too dry once it is done cooking. I usually put in 3-4 cups of water with the brown rice. My question is, what is the ideal way to prepare brown rice? Is it better to boil it in a pot?

It is good to see people going towards brown rice.
When buying brown rice you could choose out of two types based on its production method.

Par-boiled (not as same as boiled in a bag)
Raw

Former takes shorter time to cook while latter takes longer. If you are using Raw type, you need to wash and pre-soak it for an hour or so (depend on the amount). Once you soak it, the water required for cooking brown rice can be as same as white rice of same weight.

Lets take 1 kg of raw brown rice.
Assuming you have not soaked, you may add extra 2 cups of water than to what's indicated in your rice cooker for 1kg.

Certain brown rice from Europe, Thailand or Vietnam can be pretty corase and absorbed high volume of water. Where as Brown Rice from countries like Sri Lanka tends to be tender. Country to country the grain differs in shape, taste, nutrition since soil, water, weather climate, organic, non organic and the type of seed used for agriculturing. Thus leaving us with a bit of search to be done when cooking these rice. If you are experienced you will know immediately how to meddle with each type.

As for the boiled in a bag, I don't recommend that method. Mainly because it doesn't allow sufficient room for rice to settle and expand. (I hope you are not referring to a very specific rice item condumed in certain Asian countries as it indeed meant to be cooked in the compressed bag and eaten in compressed form.)

PS: My family has been harvesting paddies with different types of rice in tropicals for generations. Personally and most people seem to prefer par-boiled rice. It is much tastier but requires more sweat compared to producing raw.

In your case, you don't even need a rice cooker. We use a pot when it comes to any rice but specifically for brown. A deep enough saucepan/pot for the amount of rice + water) can be used. However in this method you have to be careful about "managing" fire and following:

Wash and soak the rice
Add the water
Get strong fire on the lid open pot to avoid overflowing
You will see bubbling rice in sometime
When water is starting to be a little above the rice (as almost as rice surface) lower the fire to a blue minimum and close the lid
I suggest you to be around the kitchen till you get a hold of the timing :-) you could prepare other dishes...
Switch off and stir using a fork (wooden if your pot is nonstick...)

Bon appetit!

Assuming you are getting the results of being either too soft or too dry using the same amount of water in each run, I would say you are doing two things wrong.

First when it turns out too soft, I will assume that you are stirring the rice in the cooker at some point. When you stir the rice, it releases the starch that is present in the rice. The more you stir it, the softer it will become to the point of becoming soupy. It is important to not stir the rice while it is cooking.

Second, Since it comes out too dry sometimes, I will guess those are the times that you are not stiring it. Brown rice is a little different than white rice in the amount of water that it takes to cook. With white rice you generally need 2 cups of water to every 1 cup of rice. On the other hand, brown rice, you will generally need 2 and 1/4 to 2 and 1/2 cups of water per cup of rice. You will have to play around with the amount of water needed. I would suggest that even if the packaging on the rice has a recomended water to rice ratio start with the 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 range and work from there. Each batch can be different even in rice from the same company and their instructions are a generalized guess.


roasted garlic vs. raw Without giving it much thought, I've always roasted garlic for use in cooked preparations (hummus, spaghetti sauce, garlic bread, etc.), and used it raw for uncooked preparations (salad dressings, tzatziki sauce, etc.).

Cooking with friends recently, one said all that matters is how much or little garlic pungency you want in that dish; another said the acidity of the other ingredients in the recipe dictate which form tastes best (raw with tart or acidic flavors; roasted with more salty and savory flavors).

Of course, personal taste preferences will nearly always trump cooking traditions and rules of thumb, but is there science or logic behind choosing which form for a particular dish?
Other than roasted garlic being milder and sweeter than raw, does either go with a particular cooking method or set of ingredients better than the other?

As covered on wikipedia, raw garlic has a number of sulfur-containing compounds, among them allicin, which are responsible for the burning feeling raw garlic imparts to a dish. When cooked into food, these flavors mellow and the compounds are boiled off or denatured. Other enzymatic and non-enzymatic transformative and browning processes also take place as garlic is cooked.

Roasting garlic produces these changes in garlic before-hand, and in a more controlled way. As the garlic heats up and starts browning, the raw garlic character is lost, while sweetness from melanoidin (a product of the reaction of amino acids with sugar, per the Maillard reaction) and savoryness (from the denaturing, concentrating amino acid content) are gained. The extreme example of this is Black Garlic (discussed at some length on my blog), in which the sweet and savory content of the garlic has been processed and concentrated over the course of a month, with the flavor resembling non-sour Balsamic vinegar.

With that said, the inclusion of raw or pre-processed garlic will depend on the proportions of the two above-noted sets of flavors that are desired in a dish. If added raw to uncooked food, it will add very little savory or sweet, and plenty of aroma and burn. If added roasted to that same food, it will add mostly savory and sweet, with very little of the burn. Any further cooking that takes place after garlic's addition to a recipe will further discourage the raw flavors and aromas.

Science? No Logic? Yes -what sort of flavor do I want/need? does it go? how much?. I play with garlic many different ways (shaved, chopped, minced and whole) and it does seem to find its way into most of my dinners. Rarely, however, do I roast it. If I do, it is usually for a stew, an herbed butter, or some sort of cheese board or orderves.


How do you cook quinoa? How do you cook quinoa? I mean what equipment do you use (electric cooker, pressure cooker, stove top)? Do you add spices or vegetables to it while cooking it?

Quinoa naturally contains a bitter compound on the outside of the seed.  Usually you have to rinse the quinoa to remove the bitterness but most commercial quinoa seems to have already been rinsed.  So, I no longer rinse my quinoa.  If you have time, it's nice to heat a pan and add the quinoa and toast it a little (for a nutty flavor and fluffier texture), then add water and salt.  I typically bring the water to a boil (2 cups water to 1 cup quinoa plus 1/4 tsp salt), cover and reduce the heat to a simmer for 10-20 minutes (or until the little tails release).  Lately I've found that using a rice cooker is a no-fuss way to prepare quinoa.  I usually just do quinoa, water and sea salt but you can add spices while cooking it if you want to enhance the flavor.  I would add vegetables afterwards. Quinoa is so quick-cooking I wouldn't see the need for a pressure cooker.

Good question, Surya. It's interesting to know what kinds of questions others have about quinoa.

Our family cooks quinoa in a plain stainless steel pot. No fancy equipment needed.

We usually throw in some spices while it's cooking. The best for us are garlic, onion, basil, and oregano.

Then when it's done cooking we'll usually sprinkle some olive oil (extra-virgin, cold-pressed) and salt on it.

Finally we serve it with broccoli and peas and sometimes lentil beans.

We give some more details about cooking quinoa on our page if you're interested -- How to Cook Quinoa.

Hope this helps.


Why do people smash garlic? It seems a lot of people say to smash or crush a clove of garlic before they cut it up. Why is this?

I've cut up garlic both ways, and I could see crushed being potentially a little easier to handle since it's flatter and doesn't roll as much.

Contrary to what several folks have said, garlic is not crushed primarily to help peel the skin. For example, garlic can be peeled easily with the clove intact, by cutting the small hard circular bottom of the clove (the part that's attached to the base, opposite to the pointy end). This will help loosen the skin, which should then come off very easily or will separate if you gently slide the blade of your knife in and loosen it.
While it certainly is true that crushing helps separate the skin, making it easier to peel (perhaps some folks might do it for that reason at home), that isn't the reason why professional cooks do it or the reason why recipes suggest it.
Why crush garlic?
Garlic is primarily crushed to release its oils, which in turn infuses subtly different flavours to the dish than if you didn't crush. Joe's comment above explains the chemical reaction:

... within the garlic cells are alliin and alliinase, which when combined, form allicin, which is the 'strong' flavor ...

You might also find this article from the Washington Post, where the author talks about the art of cooking with crushed garlic in Italian restaurants, a really good read. Specifically, the author addresses some of these key points which are very relevant here.
1. Crushed vs. Minced
From basic physics, something that is broken up into several tiny bits has a much larger total surface area than the whole intact piece. Since the oils extrude from the cut surface, it stands to reason that minced garlic will release them sooner and readily, often leading to a more pungent taste than desired.
In addition, minced garlic can be quite temperamental and you might often end up over cooking/burning.  As the author notes:

In its customary minced or chopped form, garlic can impart a pungent flavor that is difficult to harness. Add it too early to a sauté or stew and garlic burns and becomes acrid. Add it in the latter stages of cooking and the garlic steams or boils, leaving it raw-tasting and unpleasant.

On the other hand, slightly crushed garlic is more versatile and heat tolerant.

Left whole and partially smashed (just enough to release its powerful oils), garlic adapts to a range of high-heat techniques, cooking steadily and lending a mellow richness to a dish.

2. Usage in dishes
Crushed garlic is pretty standard in several Italian dishes. The advantage of having one or two large crushed pieces (in addition to those mentioned above) is that you can easily remove them from the dish once you're satisfied with the aroma/taste of the dish. This can be extremely annoying to do with minced garlic.
Some of the dishes that are enhanced by using crushed garlic are:

In [roasts, stews, quick meals and stir-fries], smashed garlic cloves are remarkably flexible, absorbing high heat and in turn giving off subtle but substantial flavor.

What happens when you crush?
To answer why crushing garlic works, let me quote a bit from a good answer to the very popular question on chopping onions (since we all understand onions better):

The enzymes and amino acids involved in producing the Onion Lachrymatory Factor (seriously!) are normally contained in the cells, and only become a problem when released in volume. Using a sharper knife will avoid mangling cell walls, creating more clean separations between layers, and reducing the amount of enzymes released.

Garlic, along with onions, shallots and leeks belong to the group of plants (genus) called Allium and being very closely related, the above is more or less true.
Indeed, it makes sense that if you want large volumes of oils/enzymes, you'd do exactly the opposite of the above advice, which is to crush it and break all the cell walls! This also aids in the mixing of the chemicals per Joe's comment above. Note that although a large volume is "released" or ready to be released due to the crushed cell walls, they make their way to the dish slowly because of the smaller surface area.

Although the mentioned-above statements are true, crushing garlic also releases a certain natural chemical compound that makes it basically a super anti-fungal,bacterial and viral destroyer. Garlic will pretty much rid the body of any bacteria, virus, fungas or parasite. It kills worms in your body and in animals. I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure the compound is called amicillin or something like that but I was always told, when you catch a cold, crush garlic and let it sit for about 5 minutes before chopping and injesting.


What is Molecular Gastronomy? There is a lot of material on TV, magazines and on the web recently about molecular gastronomy. Techniques like sous-vide and spherification seem to be popular. But what makes a cooking style "molecular gastronomy" and not "regular cooking"?

Is there a list of techiques or ingredients are a hallmark of molecular gastronomy?

Or maybe it's a philosophical distinction.

Regardless, how do I know if I'm serving "modernist cuisine"?

First of all, the term "molecular gastronomy" is almost universally derided by those who practice it and "Modernist cuisine" seems to have become the accepted nomenclature. The book Modernist Cuisine has what I regard as an excellent introduction to the movement and drawing the analogy with other Modernist movements in other artforms. The Modernist movement was about rejecting the lineage of everything that had come before and re-examining basic questions such  as "what is perception". Similarly, we can trace a direct lineage from Escoffier to Nouvelle Cuisine and Modernist cuisine seeks to break that lineage.

The best way I've come up with to describe the Modernist philosophy is "the use of technology to gain direct, precise control over temperature, humidity, pressure and texture".

When you're poaching fish in a simmering stock, you want to bring the fish up to 45C by putting it in 80C stock that's heated by a 600C flame. You control point in this scenario is the knob of the stove which is the second derivative of the temperature of this fish. What's more, your feedback loop is entirely perceptual and based on human sensing and control. Modernist cuisine starts with the goal of bringing a fish up to 45C and determines the optimal way of accomplishing that goal which is sous vide. With Sous Vide, you are directly controlling the temperature of the fish and you're doing it precisely because you replace humans with automated feedback loops.

Another example might be reducing a sauce. In this case, you manipulate the vapor pressure of the liquid through the indirect application of heat. What you really want is to drive water off but you end up causing many inadvertent changes as well. With Modernist cuisine, you use a rotovap to control pressure directly and vacuum evaporate liquids without heating.

Same with using a roux or cornstarch to thicken a gravy. Instead of indirectly controlling the texture of a sauce by picking from one of the dozen common, natural thickeners, Modernist cuisine starts from asking exactly what textural qualities you want from a sauce and then figuring out the right combination of starches, hydrocolloids and proteins that accomplish that task.

Modernist cuisine may seem complicated on the surface because so much of it is new and unfamiliar but I find it actually to be radically more simple than traditional cooking once you understand this ethos. Rather than a hodgepodge of tradition built up over millennia, Modernist cooking is simply about starting first from your desired goals of flavor, temperature, pressure & texture and then figuring out the appropriate use of technology to accomplish that goal.

Modernist Cuisine rejects or re-interprets traditional techniques and cuisines in favor of using new techniques to create entirely new combinations of flavor and texture, or to re-interpret dishes in a new way that would not be possible using traditional techniques. As part of the Modernist movement, traditional techniques steeped in Enlightenment-era thinking are deemed to be obsolete, limiting, or even false, and thus must be re-worked or rejected entirely in order to move forward creatively.

Molecular Gastronomy is the use of food science, chemistry, and techniques/equipment/ingredients used in industrial food production and scientific laboratories in the home or restaurant kitchen. This is where many of the techniques used in Modernist Cuisine come from.


Tenderness of sous-vide pork chops I made some sous vide pork chops this week that didn't turn out as tender as I expected.  They were about as tender as when I grill them; maybe a little bit worse.

I had marinated them overnight in a Vietnamese soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, lemon grass, etc., marinate and them cooked them at 132 degrees in the marinade for about eight hours.

What could I try to do differently?  Longer cooking?  Brining?

The actual minimum temperature which kills the roundworm Trichinella spiralis is 137F.

Therefore it is recommended that you sous-vide pork at a temperature of 138F or higher.  If you do not have a high quality immersion circulator with precise temperature control and your water bath temperature can vary by a few degrees, it is recommended to use at least 140F.

I use an industrial polyscience immersion circulator and I have found that cooking pork at 141F yields extremely tender meat that is both medium rare and safe.  I had whole marinated pork tenderloins that I cooked for 6 hours this way and they came out tender enough to cut with a fork.

I also put a quick sear on the pork with a hot cast iron pan immediately after taking it out of the bath for additional flavor from the Maillard reaction.

FWIW, marinating meat in a salty sauce (fish sauce / soy sauce) will draw water out of the muscle fibers and make the meat tougher -- this is especially true for thin cuts like your 1cm thick chops.

Try marinating in the spices and seasonings with a bit of oil minus the salt or salty sauces (at the very least, reduce the amount of salt in the marinade). If you have a chamber vacuum, you can marinate in the sous vide packaging under vacuum which will lead to more intense flavor using a lot less marinade. After sous vide cooking, apply a small amount of your salt or salty sauces when serving the pork.

Try 140F for 1 hour. 8 hours is too long for a relatively tender cut like pork chops. Give it a quick 20 seconds post sear afterwards to finish.

Try brining instead of marinade that contains such a high concentration of salt. That partly contributed to the dry/tougher texture too.


Why add salt to potato water? I add salt to pasta water in order to reduce the stickiness caused by starch. However, I've never seen potatoes stick together. Why add salt?

Salting the water in which you cook starches (pasta, rice, potato) is an effective way of enhancing the flavour of the finished product - boiling starches absorb salt well (which is why adding chunks of potato to an overall salty stew will lessen the apparent saltiness of the dish.

But salt does other things. When I am making roasted potatoes, I parboil them for 5 minutes before drying and roasting them in oil. if you divide them into two batches and boil one half in unsalted water and the other half in well salted water (1tbsp/2 quarts water), the salted potatoes will brown and crisp much better than the unsalted ones. I'm not sure why this is, but I would encourage you to try it because it's amazing to see.

Salt also lowers the boiling temp of the water, so you can use less energy to cook.


How do I flavor fish en papillote? I cleaned and gutted a whole fish then stuffed with
rosemary and garlic. Wrapped it foil and cooked it on
charcoal grill. After it was done cooking, the fish lacked
the flavor of the herbs.

How much rosemary and garlic did you stuff into the fish? A sprig of rosemary and a clove of garlic in a 4 lb fish isn't going to do much, but too much would overpower the fish.

I personally like making a rub for the outside of the fish of whatever I am stuffing it with. In this case, take a few rosemary leaves and a few cloves of garlic and make a light paste , then rub it on the outside of the fish. Then, stuff the fish with rosemary sprigs and garlic cloves (sliced or mashed if possible to extract more flavor). Whenever I stuff a fish, I also tend to add 1 tablespoon of butter and spread it on the inside of the fish to act as a conduit for the flavor.

Rosemary in my opinion would overwhelm fish dishes try using more delicate herbs chopped and mixed with a little garlic and butter,the oil in the butter will help diffuse the flavours through the fish.


How do you cook calamari / squid and avoid making it tough? I am having a hard time with this seemly simple 'snack'.

The calamari and squid is usually given to me by my neighbor who is a seafood monger.  It's frozen and a mix of baby octopus and squid rings, no label.

I've tried both boiling and frying them. I've also tried boiling followed by frying. The taste is always good, but the texture is not tender and kind of gummy.

It is possible that this type of squid is tougher (e.g. Moroccan octopus is more tender than Thai), and a reason why neighbor says: "arr, I can't cook these right... here... you try".

Is there a trick to getting them spot on?

Calamari or squid is of course famous for being difficult to cook, because it gets tough or rubbery.

As Harold McGee explains in On Food and Cooking, octopus and squid meat are very rich in collagen:

  They are chewy when lightly cooked, tough when cooked to the
  denaturing temperatures of their collagen, around 120 - 130 F / 50 -
  55 C, and become tender with long, slow cooking.

The trick then is to either:

Cook them minimally, so they do not begin to toughen.  This Serious Eats recipe for fried calamari recommends no more than one minute.

My own interpretation of this is that it will keep the temperature of the squid below the 120 F threshold, at the risk of being below the pathogen kill point, so it should be done only with squid from a trustworthy purveyor.
Cook them for a long time, slowly, as in a braise, so they move through the tough phase to tender again.  This Food Network recipe  for stuffed squid by Ann Burrell is an example.  The total squid cooking time is 20 to 25 minutes.

Soak them in water and baking powder for about an hour before you fry them, they turn just sooooooooo tender.


How do I keep my enchiladas from getting soggy when they cook? I love enchiladas. I almost always order them at a Mexican restaurant. I've made them at home a few times with a recipe that's delicious, but it's not the same as what I'm getting at a restaurant. The main difference seems to be that the recipes I've seen call for putting some sauce in a casserole pan, adding the enchiladas, and then adding more sauce and cheese before baking. This always comes out soggy. It's still good, but it's not the same as I'm getting in a restaurant (or on my recent trip to Mexico), which seems more like they just broil the enchiladas for long enough to melt the cheese.

I guess the question(s) fall a couple of different ways:
Is this the right way to be making enchiladas?
What are the restaurants doing that is different?
Are there different styles of this dish that explain the discrepancy?

Two things:
(1) Pass the tortillas through hot oil first, for just a few seconds. That will soften them and also "waterproof" them. It is the traditional technique.
(2) Consider making them on a griddle instead of in the oven; preheat the sauce and the filling, soften the tortilla, fill, heat for just a few more seconds, place on top of the sauce on a preheated plate.

Tejano here.

My top recommendation is that you get a masa mix from the local super market and try making your own corn tortillas from scratch. The final result is incomparable.

My second recommendation is that you try Sonoran style enchiladas. I grew up on the rolled style of enchiladas, and I have to say that I personally feel the Sonoran style is superior.


Are the flames too high in my oven? We just bought this oven and I haven't cooked in it yet. When we turn it on, the flame comes up about 3 inches above the vents inside the oven.
Is this normal  or too high? If it's too high, what can I do?

Flames should not come out of the vents inside the oven. This should not be happening. It could indicate an incorrect or faulty regulator, or ventilation problems. In addition to fire, you may also be at risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Your oven is not safe to use. Don't use it until you can get it fixed. Since you just bought it, contact the manufacturer/reseller/installer. Hopefully those are all the same entity, in which case there will be no way they can shift the blame onto each other. Expect whoever made the mistake to leap at the opportunity fix the problem, and feel extremely lucky that they aren't being sued by your next-of-kin. (That's not to say that they actually will do that; just that you should expect it of them, and communicate that you expect it of them.) If you had it installed by an unqualified handyman, find someone more qualified to inspect and repair it.
If you installed this yourself, and/or are planning to fix it yourself, DIY Stackexchange would be a good place to look for advice.
This issue can happen if a natural gas stove is converted for use with propane, the oven wasn't adjusted to compensate for the change.

Note: AMtwo, Sneftel, mroll and Joe pretty much answered the question in the comments section, so I just summarized their comments here.

Flames regular in shape means it is not smthg broken inside or they tend to spread in one direction and that could be an indication of a damaged part or something.


Are chillies hotter when they're ripe? This answer might vary between types of chillies, but I'm curious to know when they're hottest.

McGee writes: "Capsaicin appears to accumulate in the fruit concurrently with the pigment during ripening". (On Food and Cooking, p.212)

So yes, chilis get hotter as they ripen (that is, as they turn from green to red). Many chili varieties are picked and sold in stores while still unripe and green (e.g. jalapeño, serrano, poblano), but you will occasionally see ripe, red ones in stores.

All of the dried chilis I've seen in stores have been completely ripened before drying (e.g. chipotles, which are smoked, dried red jalapeños and anchos, which are dried, red poblano peppers).

I've personally observed this effect with padron peppers, which are usually picked green and mild, but can ripen to red, hot peppers if left on the plant.

Regardless of color, the amount of time on the vine or bush is what matters. Many items start losing flavor or appeal when left on too long. A pepper becomes hotter the longer it is left on. Peppers in the stores are just at the beginning of being ripe. Farmers harvest as soon as they become ripe to make way for the next harvest and to get to the store before bugs and other pests can get to them. We have been growing a wide variety of peppers for years now. At the end of the season, if we have not kept up with picking, we end up wearing gloves. We have had jalapenos that can burn our skin from the touch because the capsaicin starts leeching out the stem.


On an electric stove, does the smaller burner produce fewer BTUs than the larger burner? I have a US electric oven/stove combination with four stove burners, two smaller and two larger.  I feel the stove is already a bit anemic so I want to make sure I am getting the maximum energy out of the stove, but I also like using smaller pans on the smaller burner.  Do typical US electric stoves put the same amount of total energy (i.e., the same amount of BTUs) through the smaller burners as through the larger burners, or are the smaller burners also lower energy?

Electric stove elements have a different KW rating depending on construction and size

A typical spiral element of 200 mm (8") diameter will be 2 KW, a 150 mm (6") diameter element will be 1.3 KW

Different stove makes and models have different ratings. But not many go above 2 KW, except in USA where they go up to 3 KW

Stove makers usually publish exact specifications on their web sites

1 W is approximately 3.4 BTU

it depends upon the wattage of an electric stove and also that it is proportional to the diameter of the hot plate or the the heating coil. Smaller diameters are perfect for small pots thereby consuming less electricity. Larger diameters are perfect for big pots thus consuming more electricity. Bigger pot means bigger btu's. Bigger btu's means means bigger hot plate/heating coil. Bigger hot plates means higher wattage...


Salad packaged with raw meat: is it safe? Sometimes I see in supermarkets (in Italy) packages in which rocket salad is sold together with raw beef, like in this picture:

This is clearly meant to be prepared in the form of tagliata con rucola, an Italian dish made with beefsteak cut in stripes and rocket:

As you can see, the salad is normally served raw with tagliata. The supermarkets seem OK with that, but this practice triggers my food safety alert: is it safe to consume salad that has been in contact with raw meat? Should I worry about eating it?
EDIT: further information:

these packages are found in the refrigerator aisle.
the bottom label says (among other things) "store at 0--4 degrees Celsius [32-39 Fahrenheit] -- cook before eating". It is not clear from the wording if this warning applies to the salad as well.
the label in the top right says "20% discount -- the marked price already includes discount". It doesn't specify if it is discounted for quick sale or for other reasons. In any case, I have also seen regular packages without the discount tag, and with the current day marked as packaging date.
It is not customary here to put salad or other edible items as decoration -- I have never seen this done with other fresh food on sale.
upon request, full translation of the white sticker. The notes in brackets are mine.

Il gigante [supermarket name] - the fresh food specialists. Corso Marche [address of the supermarket]
Net Wt 0.354 kg   price 4.43 EUR
tare 0.032        EUR/Kg 12.50
prepackaged on: 04 August 2014
Tagliata con rucola [name of the dish, see picture above]
Meat preparation NC16 [not 100% sure about the code, it's blurry. No idea what it means, I assume it's some bureaucratic category for the meat]
Ingredients: bovine meat, rucola, sunflower oil, salt
Store at 0-4 degrees [32-39F]. To be consumed after cooking. Cooking suggestions: in pan, 3 minutes each side. In oven 175 degrees [350F] for 30 minutes. Produced and prepackaged for immediate sale by "Il gigante", Turin.

Note that I did not take this picture myself; this one comes from the internet. I can take a similar one the next time I visit my local supermarket, but it's probably going to be 7-10 days from now.

What you're looking at is called (in the US) "cross contamination". You have a food generally considered "unsafe" (beef) that is coming into contact with a food generally considered "safe" (salad greens).

This contact makes the greens "unsafe" to consume raw.

  Cross-contamination is the transfer of harmful bacteria to food from other foods, cutting boards, utensils, etc., if they are not handled properly. This is especially true when handling raw meat, poultry, and seafood, so keep these foods and their juices away from already cooked or ready-to-eat foods and fresh produce.

The rule in the US is to always keep these products away from each other so that the "safe" foods stay safe.

The only way to make the greens safe to eat is to cook them, thereby killing off the bacteria that may have been transferred to them in the juices of the meat.

The other answers seem to focus on the cross-contamination issue, with the raw beef being unsafe.  Let me point out that beef cuts are often served rare, as it is in your illustration of the dish, and that is considered fine. So I really don't think there is much of an issue here. (Raw ground meat, from a factory setting, and undercooked pork are far more unsafe than rare beef, of course.)


How to counteract excessive saltiness in dried fish? My wife comes from a culture where preparation and eating of dried fish is very common (as long as one takes the proper measures to deal with the smell).  She prepared for me recently a serving of dried mackerel, but it was sooooo salty that I could only bear to eat one or two bites.  Can anyone recommend some sort of preparation method to counteract this excessive salty flavor?

The standard way to cook salt cod for dishes where you want to really remove the saltiness, such as brandade, is to soak it (for hours) in a couple of changes of water, and then simmer it in milk for half an hour to an hour.  This might work with the mackerel.  Not sure what you'd use it for after that, though.

The best way to extract salt from mackerel is to soak overnight in sea water and then was in plain water. The chemical composition of the processed salt in the mackerel and the sea water are different and therefore neutralizes each other.


Beef and veggies in crock pot turn out hard and tough I have a Hamilton Beach 6 qt Set 'N Forget Programmable slow cooker, and I keep having the same problem-- when I try to make beef stew, the beef comes out almost inedibly tough, and the veggies don't soften. I can't for the life of me figure out what's wrong!

My cooking method:

  Put in 1.5ish lbs stew beef-- the stuff that comes from the store
  already cut up into pieces.

  Add carrots and celery, chopped about 1/2 - 1 inch long.

  Add splash worsterchire sauce and cajun spices.

  Add enough water to fill the crock pot halfway (I did this because
  last time I didn't use as much and thought that might be the source of
  the problem-- but apparently not.)

  Set crock pot on low until it reaches 160* (within about an hour and a half), and then leave on warm through the rest of the night (it maintained the temperature at 160*),
  for a total of 11 hours.

I've read that acidic ingredients can prevent vegetables from getting soft, but that wouldn't explain the beef. Anyone have an idea what the problem might be?

And on that note... does anyone have any suggestions for what to do with a couple pounds of tough, cooked beef, hard carrots, and celery?

Thanks!

Try cooking on low instead of warm (or at a higher temperature, maybe 185-195F, with your fancy crock pot), and make sure you really got good stew meat.

I would expect the beef to have been reasonably tender after that long if it were the right kind of cut - certainly not inedibly tough, even if it weren't all the way done due to the lower temperature. But it's unfortunately possible that the beef for stew that you got isn't actually good for this purpose; sometimes stores will sell things under that label expecting (I guess) that people will cook them briefly in their stew. Make sure that what you buy has a lot of connective tissue that will break down as it cooks. See also What is the best cut of beef to use for stews?

If you did have a good cut of beef for long slow cooking, it's possible that 160F is still just too low (or that 11 hours isn't long enough) for the meat you got. See What is the lowest possible temperature for stewing meat? - apparently the collagen -> gelatin breakdown can happen even down to 130F, but it's much faster at higher temperatures.

It's likely that one way or another the low temperatures also messed with your vegetables. I'm not sure if that's actually hot enough to soften them. And for some vegetables, cooking them at a lower temperature for a while will cause them to stay firm even if they're subsequently cooked at a higher temperature!

There's a blurb about this in On Food and Cooking, which I'll find and add into my answer when I can. In the meantime, I found this in a Serious Eats article about carrots:

  Unlike meat proteins which are fully cooked anywhere between 140 and 165°F or so, vegetables contain pectin—a kind of glue that holds its cells together and keeps it firm. Pectin doesn't break down until 183°F, which means that no matter what vegetable you cook sous-vide, you have to set your water oven to at least 183°F if you would like the end results to be tender ...

Beef is generally a pretty hard meat to break down compared to other meats. Takes longer to chew, longer to digest, and requires more heat to make it tender during the cooking process. So while a crock pot is fine for most of the operation, you'll meet with the desired success if you'll instead braise your cut of beef in a covered pot (not a pan) on the stove top.

Make sure your pot is of the stainless steel variety, as you'll be going at it pretty aggressively with your metal spatula. And absolutely make sure it has a heavy bottom. Invariably they're a separate piece welded on to the lining of the pot. The bottom of the pot really needs to be able to hold and evenly distribute heat, which is simply not true for pots which by definition are bowl-shaped pieces of sheet metal. Remember, part of what the term "evenly distribute" means is that a balance is struck between the burner and the bottom of the pan. If that bottom is almost non-existent then there's no back-and-forth between the two. The heat just leaps straight from burner to food surface and makes it impossible to do much more than sauté or stir fry.

Add to the pot a thin layer of olive oil, thin meaning just a bit more than one sixteenth of an inch. Set the burner up in the range of medium high to high. (Not high, not medium high, but squarely in between those two.) Just before the oil reaches its smoke point drop in your piece of beef. Your goal is to sear the beef on that side, which will take about 80 seconds. (Do not apply additional pressure to the meat.) Even at that short of a time span it will want to stick to the bottom of the pan. You want to separate the two, but not at the expense of tearing the meat. (Otherwise there's no sense in searing it.) So flip your spatula over (underside facing the ceiling), slide it under an available lip, and then rock it from side to side while gradually pushing it further and further underneath the cut of beef. This means that the flat edge of the spatula retains contact with the bottom of the pot the whole time. Rocking, here, does not mean  teetering.

Once the beef is loose, grab a pair of kitchen tongs and stand it up on one side (whichever side is most convenient). You're now going to sear that side. In fact, you're goal is to sear each side of the cut of meat. Generally that would be six sides: two broad, two narrow, and two ends. But trust me, this will make all the difference in outcome. The searing creates much more of a "closed system*, by which the cut of meat is able to stew from the inside out rather, that is, than from the outside in. Stewing from the outside in is synonymous with boiling. Boiling beef draws all the moisture out and leaves behind a mass of tissue. So that's never what you want to do. You want to force the moisture to  stay in the beef while it's cooking, at least as much as humanly possible. Searing makes that possible.

Now the meat needs to be braised. It's beef. It needs to be braised. You can accomplish this one of two ways. You can leave it in the pot you started with on your stove top. Or you can transfer it to your crock pot. If you do the latter though, it's imperative that you bring it's temperature way up first. Just add about a quarter cup of water (or beef stock) to it and bring that to a roiling boil. Yes, a quarter cup (not a misprint). Not only is this all you'll need, this is one of those situations where more is literally less. So if you're going to add Worcestershire sauce, make sure that's part of this quarter cup of liquid. Also, when you add the beef you'll want to make sure and include all of the oil (flavors) produced in the first step.

Now, if you're going with the standard stove top approach, while the heat's still up (as before) you just add that quarter cup of water and cover. You'll need a clear lid, because braising by definition entails just barely keeping things at a boil, in which case you'll be needing to see what's happening without changing what's happening. As steam rises and contacts the lid it eventually trickles back down and keeps the level the same. It's this equilibrium you're after. Meanwhile, as the meat slowly releases it's own juices, (emphasis on slowly), that added amount of liquid is sufficient to compensate for any incidental, low-level evaporation. Same thing with the crock pot. When you drop the meat in it'll temporarily stunt that roiling broil. Here's the time you should be cranking the dial down. Your goal, again, is to get it as low as possible without losing sight of slight movement in the water. And then your goal is to keep it that way.

There's no reason to expect this stage to take any less than a couple hours to accomplish, though closer to four is even better. Remember, the beef is being broken down. And I know from experience that patience at this stage reaps a huge dividend in tenderness. You won't have to cut the meat. Nor will anyone to whom you serve it. It'll simply pull right apart.

Now, the vegetables. Always add first the ones that take longest to cook. Remember, you're going to stay here with low temps (just enough to boil water). So  gauging what you add (meaning when) can be a bit nuanced compared, that is, to just throwing everything in together into a high heat environment. I always go with celery first. Then carrots and onions. Then potatoes. (You may find it more practical to lightly oil your pieces of potato and then salt and pepper them before adding them to the stew.) And remember, this is the diametric opposite of stir fry. Once the braising process commences, at no point ever will you be doing any stirring. You just add what needs to be added, cover, and allow the process to bring itself to completion. The vegetables will release all of their water. You won't have to add any more. (If you do favor a particularly soupy stew, adding preheated beef stock should suffice, but no sooner than a half hour before serve time.)

With a half hour's prep work and searing, three hours braising, and a final hour to hour-and-a-half for the vegetables to slow cook, your stew should take about six hours to make. But this is not the kind of thing you can crank up like a machine and then come home to after a day at the office. A good stew has to be fussed over in a very present and very hands-on sort of way. A crock pot can work. But it's really just one more step in an already ample repertoire.


Substitute baking containers I have a three-wheat batter bread recipe that calls for baking in four 16 oz cans. What size pan can I substitute?

Three small (but not mini) metal loaf pans (5"L x 3"W x 3"D) will do it. Check out vintage bakeware in thrift stores to find that odd size, or choose pans closest to that size.

Honestly, use whatever size pans you have available to you and just monitor the baking process. Get creative.


Is there a difference between US Worcestershire sauce and UK Worcestershire sauce? I recently bought a Worcestershire sauce from Costco called Lea & Perrins. They claim to be the authentic version of Worcestershire sauce. However I have read comments online that indicate that it is a knockoff or a fake version of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce from the UK.

Within the comments most people say that the difference between the two is that the US version uses distilled white vinegar as the main ingredient whereas the UK version uses distilled malt vinegar. Is there really a difference between the two?

There is some difference between the flavor, but seeing as there are so many other predominant flavors in Worcestershire sauce and that fact that you're (hopefully) not drinking it straight, it's fairly insignificant. It's very common for one product produced in different countries to have a range of manufacturing differences, sometimes arbitrary, sometimes to suit the local palate, and sometimes because of costs, hence people calling American Lea & Perrins a "knockoff."

I've had both, and can assure you that once you've mixed it into a casserole or marinade you won't really miss anything. If you're striving for needlessly authentic British flavor you could always add a little malt vinegar to whatever you're cooking!

Worchestershire sauce. Was invented by George Washington Carver. That basic recipe is still used.  It is sold as a dry powder today. Shipped in 1 ton box's. to the makers. World wide. Or made there in Country. Once they have it. They may add as they wish to improve the flavor. Still call it Worcherstershire sauce as that is the base. So some different types can be found. Fixed for local taste. But still labeled as such.


What is the difference between expensive wine and regular wine? It's fairly known at most supermarkets and stores you can get regular, cheap wine.  However, at some stores who dedicate themselves solely to liquor and spirits, they sell incredibly expensive wine, even up to $2k from where I've been.

As someone who has tried a bit of wine and not quite fond of the taste, I'm mainly curious if there really is any difference to expensive wine as opposed to store bought, "cheap" wine.  Is there a vast, noticable difference between the two? Is the only reason I would pay more for the age of the wine or how rare it is?

One of my relatives who drinks lots of wine told me that there's relatively no difference between expensive and regular; it's noticable after your first glass, but after subsequent glasses it starts to taste the same. Is this true?

There are several factors that increase price. Some are related to the objective quality of the wine, some indirectly linked, other are rather disconnected from quality (but not necessarily irrelevant, as we'll see).
It's also worth noting that being of high quality doesn't necessarily mean being appealing to the average consumer.

Apart from the stuff listed below, mass-market wines tend to be made in a non-challenging, easily accessible style. Lower tannin levels, less acidity and a generous amount of residual sugar (say 10-30g/l) makes for easy quaffing but little complexity or elegance. They can be very well-made, but the agriculture may not be very sustainable, and the fruit probably isn't of the highest quality. (If you visit a winery at harvest when they bring in the bulk wine fruit, the meaning of "quality" becomes rather apparent.)

Wines targeted at connoisseurs, wine snobs and wine geeks (such as yours truly) tend have more structure (tannins, acidity) and are more often completely dry (although there are of course high-quality off-dry, semi-sweet, and sweet wines).

There's a limit to how much a producer can spend to increase quality, a limit which varies with location (because of salaries for workers etc) but around $100 per bottle is probably in the right order of magnitude. This does not mean that all wines above this magical limit are equally good, though.

A dirt-cheap wine will also have a cost associated to it which will be payed for by someone else, like under-payed harvest workers, the environment around the vineyard, etc.

Below are some factors that have a more or less direct link to wine quality and/or character:

Yield per acre: Limiting the vineyard's yield per acre (which can be achieved by sparser planting, thinning/green harvest, old vines, etc) increases the quality of the fruit, but you will produce less wine with more or less the same amount of work, which means you'll have to adjust the price.

Number of harvesting tries: At harvest, you can pick all the fruit of one vineyard at the same time and be done with it. Unfortunately, not all bunches ripen at exactly the same time, so to avoid over- or under-ripe grapes, you can make multiple tries (French, pronounced "trees") over several days and pick each bunch at optimal ripeness. More tries inevitably means more work, and so, price increases.

Selection: When the harvest is brought in, you can throw all the fruit into the press, or you can select the best grapes to make your wine (and make brandy or a second wine of the discarded grapes, or sell them on to a bulk wine producer). Being picky reduces the amount of wine produced, and so, prices increase.

Drying: Some wines, like Amarone and straw wine, are made from partially dried grapes, and drying decreases the amount of wine you produce (apart from being extra work) which means - more expensive wine.

Sparkling: Sparkling wines made with the traditional method - like Champagne and Cava - need to be disgorged after bottle fermentation, which leads to a certain amount of waste (a Cava producer I talked to said that around 10% of the original wine is lost in disgorgement).

Oak aging: Many wines are fermented and/or aged in oak barrels, which greatly affects the character of the wine compared to other types of containers, like concrete or stainless steel vats. (More oak doesn't mean better wine, of course.) Oak barrels are horribly more expensive than the alternatives (and European oak is more expensive than American, and they impart different character), and so, the more oak you use, the more expensive the wine gets.

Aging in general: Most high-quality wine receive a bit of aging before consumption to let all components integrate; some designations of origin even require aging prior to selling. Rioja Gran Reserva, for example, must be aged at least three years, with at least one of those years being on oak, while vintage Champagne is mandated to rest three years on the lees, etc. Apart from time being money, you also need a suitable storage location (cool and humid but not too cool and humid, secure but accessible to yourself, etc) which is far from free. The price increases.

Other factors aren't causally linked to higher quality, but tend to be connected:

Reputation: If you're an unproven winemaker you will be able to charge more if you're operating in a district of high repute than if you're working in an area where no-one has made quality wine before. Conversely, a well-known, high-quality producer expanding their operations to a somewhat less proven district will likely be able to charge more than their new neighbours.

Brand: Marketing can take many forms, such as it advertising, tailoring wines to suit influential reviewers, and tends to push prices up. Wineries can even try increasing prices just to seem more exclusive. You can also be lucky and find some great, undiscovered producer (don't tell anyone! except me, that is) selling their wines at more-or-less cost price (which probably still won't be dirt cheap, though).

Land prices: Some spots are better for growing grapes. If you're in unexploited territory, you might find a great spot and pay next to nothing, but if you're in a region with an established wine industry, odds are all the good spots are taken... and it'll cost you to buy an existing vineyard.

Know-how: Making wine is hard. Unless you are good at it yourself (or a friend, or perhaps your nephew, or your sister-in-law, is), you can hire some hotshot consultant œnologist like Michel Rolland to help you make the most of the fruit you produce... but the consultants will cost you lots of $$$, and your customers will need to pay.

Vintage: Vintages vary in quality and quantity. If a vintage is high quality but low in quantity, we will see less supply and likely higher demand. Having said that, a good year isn't always a guarantee for a good wine (if the winemaker screws up the quality of the fruit doesn't matter), and in a hard year, auspicious microclimates and competent vintners can produce great wines anyway. Furthermore, some years can be very good but have an even better "sibling" year, and don't receive their due hype. For example, 1995 was a very, very good year in Champagne, but 1996 is perhaps one of the greatest vintages evur, so the 1995s can be something of a bargain compared to 1996s.

Some things might not increase quality at all but still have an effect on price (and some of these may still be worth the price!):

Use of pesticides: Using pesticides to counter disease, parasites, pests, etc can increase yield without affecting quality negatively, which lowers the price, but on the other hand you spew out poisons into nature and expose your vineyard workers to them. (The residues left in the finished wine tend to be negligible, though.)

Labour: Paying decent wages to your harvest workers means a costlier wine. Find some illegal immigrants you can pay less than minimum wage and the wine gets cheaper.

Taxes: Some countries have different alcohol taxes for for different ABVs. For example, in Sweden (where I live) the tax is relatively lower for a 15% ABV wine than it is at 16% ABV (which isn't very common, but for example Zinfandels and Amarones can reach that amount). Furthermore, in some countries the alcohol tax depends on the alcohol content solely (which favours expensive wine, as alcohol tax will end up being rather negligible), in others it may be a percentage of the retail price (which favours cheap wine).

Price regulations: At least historically, some districts have regulated the minimum price (and sometimes also the maximum) price a farmer can charge for their fruit when selling it to a winemaker, which inevitably affects the end price.

Export/import: If you buy wine from far away countries, not only are you paying for the transport, but you may also be paying import/export tariffs.

Organic certification: Organic farming doesn't necessarily mean organic certification. The organizations issuing certifications charge a fee, which can be quite hefty for a small producer, so some organic producers aren't labelled as such since they can't afford the certification fees.

Adding gold: Yup, there are wines with actual gold added to them. I can't see that affecting quality in any way, but it'll surely affect the price!

So, to conclude - quality costs, but not all costs impart quality, and quality doesn't equate appeal.

A major difference is also the region from which the grapes originate, whose location, climate, and soil profoundly affect.

Grapes from Napa valley, for instance, are  inferior in taste to grapes from Southern France.

Include processes the casks and fermentation and the types of metals used, and the price for that bottle goes up.

You can't tell the difference if you compare them side by side.

Try this instead: for a few months, drink only $100 wine, say a Riesling. Then at the end of the four months switch to a $10 Riesling—I promise you that you'll notice the difference.


How to clean mushrooms? Some people say cleaning with water removes the taste from mushrooms.

But if I don't use water the mushrooms will carry a lot of dust.

Do you have any techniques for cleaning mushroom so I don't eat crap but don't spoil the mushroom?

I find that brushes and even paper towels are too rough on mushrooms. I use cold running water and gentle rubbing by hand.

I learned from the best this summer. Maximum a few hours after getting home I clean them using a brush. Then cut off a tiny piece by the foot, just to get rid of the soil.


What parameter is best to increase - time or temperature? I'm heating frozen eggplant parmesan in a toaster oven at 400 degrees for 40 minutes, as specified, but it's not coming out hot enough. Which parameter - time or temp - should I try to increase first to retain the most moistness? Or does it matter? Or should I try nudging both up?

When you reheat something, the heat from the oven is usually just penetrating the outside layers of the food. Conduction within the food is what carries the heat into the center. To demonstrate this, you can try putting something cold (not frozen), and thick in the microwave on high for about 30-45 seconds. Take it out, then cut it in half. The outside 1/4-1/2 inch will have warmed up while the core will remain very cold.

What this means is that in order to get the center hotter, usually you need more time, not more heat. While more heat will accomplish it (more heat conduction because of a greater heat gradient), it will also overcook the outer layers and leave them dry or burnt. Since you want to retain moisture, increase the time, not the temperature.

You could actually try decreasing the temperature and increasing the time. Trying it at 350 degrees for an hour may actually work better than 400 for 45-50 minutes. It will cook the outer layers more slowly, so you lose less moisture, AND give the heat more time to penetrate into the center of the dish.

This is going to be true for pretty much any frozen/chilled food, not just eggplant, and in any cooking method (oven, microwave, sous vide, etc.). Note that frozen food in the microwave presents its own challenge, because ice is not a good absorber of microwaves, but water is quite good, so you can end up with part of the dish being really hot and part of it being still frozen, depending on your microwave's hot spots.

Yes.

If it's a breaded cutlet not yet coated in sauce :

Start it on lower heat to make sure it's thawed completely and warmed up (so increase the time), then crank the temperature up to crisp up the coating.
Use a broiler for the second phase, if you have one, but make sure to keep an eye on it as things go from golden to burnt rather quickly under a broiler ... and you'll have to flip it to crisp both sides.  As it's a toaster oven specifically, you could also try toasting it once it's thawed.

If it's already sauced ... then it's like Aaronut said.  I'd probably favor a longer time over higher temperature, personally.

Also be aware that toaster ovens are much more likely to be inaccurate, and they're not particularly well insulated, so the ambient air greatly affects them.  (ie, if it's cold in the room, it's going to hold an average lower temperature than in a hot room)  If your toaster oven is chronicly slow, you might want to try checking it with an oven thermometer, or just turn it up a few degrees when using it.


What temperature and time do I need to bake a 35cm Madeira cake? I am cooking a very large wedding cake (35 cm or 14 inch) and can't get the cooking time right. Is there a specific temperature I should use?

It's very difficult to cook a cake that large without a heating core.

Basically, it's a metal cup that you put in the middle of your cake so that you can get some heat conduction in the middle of the cake, like you would with a bundt pan or other ring-shaped pan.  Unlike the ring pan, as it's a cup, you also fill it with batter so you have a plug to fill the hole that's created.

(and you generally need to fill the cup with either batter or something else heavy so that it doesn't float in the batter).

You also want to go with a lower temperature and bake it for longer -- this is not only because of the size of the cake, but you also want it to be more dense; if you're going to be stacking on top of it, you do not want it spongy, and you need to reduce the amount of open spring from a high temperature.  I'd highly recommend looking for recipes specifically intended for large stacked cakes.

As medeira cakes tend to be slow cooking to start with, you might be looking at 1.5 to 2hrs to get it fully baked through.

Modifying cake recipes for large sizes is fairly detailed; I recommend consulting recipes or formulas specifically for this purpose. The Cake Bible remains a fantastic source, but does not have a recipe for the particular Madeira cake you have mentioned.


How can I cool down cooking oil after using it in a deep fryer? I need to be able to cool down cooking oil quickly after using it in a countertop deep fryer- how can I do that safely?

You really can't. The best you can do is put some long stainless utensils in the oil to help dissipate heat, but it's still not going to be fast, just a little faster.

Turn the heat off and wait. There are no safe alternatives.


Can I make puff pastry with half the butter? I made puff pastry with Gouda cheese inside and it turned out really good. The only problem I had was the amount of butter and it was too buttery. I'd like to know if it is possible to reduce the amount of butter? Another question is, I have some leftover dough without butter (a combination of flour, salt and ice water) and I was wondering for 420 gr dough how much butter should I use?

The secret lies in the folding of the dough...You may uses half the butter but you would ultimately have to fold it more before cooking it. The more you fold the dough the more puffy it gets, of course your results will get better with more butter, but in that particular situation, go with the extra folding, you'll get a decent pastry this way.

Normally people use about the same amount of flour and butter, but you can without problem have the half amount in butter, but the puff pastry will be more dry.

This would lead to a recipe of approximately:

200g flour

100g butter at room temp

100g cold water

some salt


Secret to takeaway curry It's become something of a quest for me to find a curry recipe that tastes like the curry you get from an Indian Takeaway.  I'm getting close with the consistency, but can't get the taste right.

I won't list the various and numerous things that I've tried, but most of the variations that I've tried include:

tomatoes (I've tried fresh, tinned and purée), onion, yoghurt (although this doesn't seem to affect the flavour, so I stopped using it), cumin (tried seeds and ground), mustard seeds, coriander (fresh and ground), ginger (fresh and ground), fenugreek (fresh and ground), garam masala.

I'm pretty sure that I'm missing one or two ingredients that restaurants and takeaways use as a matter of course, but I haven't been able to find it.  Can anyone point me in the right direction?

EDIT:

I didn't realise that they differ, but I'm in the UK - so that's the takeaway I'm referring to.

I appreciate curry's vary in taste, but there seems to be an underlying taste to all the tomato based ones.  For the purpose of clarity, I'm trying to make a Rogan Josh.

Here's a sample of the sort of thing that I've been trying:

4 - 5 tomatoes, skinned and chopped
1 Onion chopped
1 lb Diced Lamb
2 - 3 Garlic cloves crushed and chopped
2 tablespoons of Garam Masalla
1 tablespoon turmeric
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 inch root ginger grated
Oil

Slowly heat the mustard and cumin seeds until the pop, then add the onions and garlic and fry gently until soft.
Add the meat and up the heat to cook.  After about 10 mins add the other ingredients and leave for an hour or until the tomatoes have turned into sauce.

Another thing that I've tried is puréeing the garlic, spices, tomatoes and ginger and adding that after the onions are cooked.  This helps with the consistency, but doesn't really affect the taste.

EDIT:

The best single answer that I had to this was cream.  However, cloves did also make a difference.  I still haven't managed to get the takeaway flavour, but thanks for all the suggestions.

Use double or triple that volume of spices, and gentle dry roast them first

Use ghee (clarified butter) instead of oil

Use loads of cream to finish the gravy

Some interesting answers here!

I've studied this for years trying to find the answer to that simple question 'how do you replicate that 'Indian restaurant flavour' at home?

Here are the two key answers -

1/ Use a base sauce or gravy.

All Indian restaurants use one or more 'base sauces or gravies' for the vast majority of their dishes.

2/ Use a very high temperature heat burner to cook your dishes on.

Look in an Indian Restaurant and look at the burners they use to cook their dishes on. They are fiercely high temperature burners and the dishes are cooked over a very high heat, a heat I may add that few home gas burners can replicate unless you're lucky enough to have a high temperature wok burner.


Cooked whole chicken has congealed blood around joints and bones, should I worry? So I just roasted a whole chicken and finished carving/cleaning the carcass today.  I discovered a great deal of congealed red matter surrounding many of the joints and bones.  Looks like congealed blood.  Normally, I wouldn't worry about it, except that there's a lot more of it than there usually is.  And it's a brighter red, as opposed to the dark reddish brown I'm used to.  Should I be worried?  Did I undercook the chicken?  Was this chicken just not as well drained as ones I've gotten previously?

This exact thing happened to me about a month ago - roast whole chicken, bright red leaky blood around the bones and joints.

I looked it up back then.  I didn't find a truly authoritative source like the USDA, but I did find several instances of people saying that this happened even with highly overcooked chicken.  I also found several links similar to this one:

Bloody Chicken

The author (a Ph.D according to that page) did a number of experiments where he cooked a chicken and checked the internal temperature everywhere, ensuring that it was in fact pasteurized and thus free of any bacteria, and parts of it were still bloody on the inside.

According to him (and a few other sources I found), it's because the chickens are very young and their bones have not hardened properly; when you cook them, the marrow seeps out and ends up looking as you describe.

If you're using a meat thermometer to test the chicken for doneness, and you are certain that it got hot enough, then don't worry about the blood.  It's not appetizing, but it's not harmful either.

FWIW, I ate the chicken when it happened to me, and did not get the slightest bit sick.

I cooked two chicken at once and indeed had some redness around the joints in the thighs drumsticks and the breast bone i am sure i cooked it thoughly since the juices where clear and the oven temp was at 350 for 3.5 hours they where about 8 pound birds this should be long enough. the meat was not pink its was just at the bones. tasted fine and i ate it not sick yet its been over 6 hours.After letting it cool i de-boned it at frist it seemed really red but after a bit it became redish brown so i am sure it safe to eat but at frist it dose seem a little unappatizing.


How to adjust an oven to accommodate two items with different cook times and temperatures? For dinner this evening we are cooking a roast beef and intend to serve a baked brie appetizer. Unfortunately, we only have one oven. To reach medium rare the roast needs 3 hours at 325° while the brie needs to be cooked at 400° for 20 minutes.

Is there a way to cook both of these items in the oven at the same time? Is it a matter of adjusting the length of time the brie needs to be in the oven?

I would cook the Brie at that same temperature for 30-35 minutes and it should be okay.

Alternatively, you could cook the roast fully, remove it from the oven, tent it with foil and then cook the Brie.  The meat can rest while the Brie is cooking and being eaten.  Prior to slicing the roast, heat up the pan drippings to a sizzling temp and baste to ensure a crispy crust.  But if the appetizer course happens to last for 20-30 minutes, then the roast will have been resting for 40-50 minutes and could lose too much internal heat.

use the following formula to compute:
time of one item * the temperature of that item = the "degree-minutes" for that item.
divide that large number by the other temperature to get the time for the other item.


Does garbage disposal horse power matter that much? I am in the last leg of a kitchen remodel and need to purchase a garbage disposal. And I am wondering how much of a difference horse power makes in the day to day operation of the kitchen?

Has anyone here experienced the pros and cons to disposal units with different horse power?

NOTE: I almost posted this question on the DIY site, but I feel it has more relevance here. Moderators, feel free to move it if you think it belongs there instead.

UPDATE: We decided to go with the Waste King L-8000 Legend Series 1 Horsepower. It is really smooth and quiet. It takes up a fair amount of space under the sink however.

I'd go for a more powerful one, in general, and I noticed that the higher powered disposals are sometimes quieter, which I really like.  I really learned that paying the extra for good plumbing parts (faucet, disposal) through our plumber was worth it, since they can be fixed, unlike cheaper big box store stuff, and that there was a real difference in the higher quality disposal.

Ray has raised very important point here, it depends on the materials it grinds, if hard materials it has to grind, horsepower is very important here.


Why is my cheese sauce sweet? I have made cheese sauce before and it has never been sweet. No problem with butter and flour and then I added milk like before. White sauce was fine. So I added cheese. Yes it was a package of shredded sharp cheddar cheese from Harris Teeters. I know fresh is better but it was what I had. The sauce itself was fine, smooth and creamy, but it was sweet. I used skim milk and I have used packed cheese before but it has been a while. Is it the cheese? Have they added something or is it the skim milk?

Carbs in some foods (mostly those that contain simple sugars and highly refined grains, such as white flour and white rice) are easily broken down once broken down they are literally a sugar.

Cooking at too high a temp, or for too long, causes the carbs in the white flour to break down. I think that may be why your sauce is tasting sweet.


vacuum sealed kielbasa in a hot car for 18 hours - is it still good? I bought vacuum sealed kielbasa yesterday about 6:30 pm. It must have fallen out of the bag in my very hot car and I didn't notice until about 11:45 the next day...Is it still good?

Sounds like you're going to need some new kielbasa.

Kielbasa isn't fermented, and needs to be refrigerated to stay good. Vacuum sealing reduces the oxygen in the package, slowing down oxidation and inhibiting the growth of some types of bacteria when combined with refrigeration, but that kielbasa won't stand a chance in a hot car.

Time to throw it out.

Even a salted, preserved, and sealed sausage will not survive. The bacteria will begin to multiply rapidly after 30 minutes of sitting out of the fridge.

Perishable food sitting out for longer than 30 minutes is a risk to eat, even when it was frozen. Some food might last 1 hour.

I completed a food safety course with exemplary scores I might add.


What is meant by "cook until the oil separates" in Indian curry recipes? A lot of Indian curry recipes have a step where you're told to cook an onion-tomato-spices mixture "until the oil separates". Despite having tried cooking such recipes a number of times already, I still haven't really figured out what is meant by this. I have several questions:

How can I tell that the oil is separating? I'm never quite sure whether I'm seeing oil or water coming out of the mixture while it's cooking.
How long on average do you need to cook the mixture until the oil separates?
What causes the oil to separate? Is it simply that all the water has been cooked out of the mixture?
Why do you need to let the oil separate?

Oil is separated in curries normally after you have cooked spices or sauces for ~10-15 mins. You can tell by seeing "bubbles" appearing and the oil by making a thin layer on top of your sauces/curry.
It varies, but normally after 10-15 mins the oil separates from your curry.
Normally after cooking for 10-15 mins most of the water dries up which causes the curry (mostly made of thick sauces) to separate from the oil.
It's always good to let the oil separate from your curry because of two things:

Extra water dries up
All spices and curry get cooked properly

The food tastes much better if spices and the curries are properly cooked.

In my experience most recipes call for too much water and therefore will take a very long time to evaporate. Just add enough water to make a creamy sauce (or barely cover the meat)and if the meat is not cooked add more water a little at a time, even if it is in a casserole pan with the lid on top, check it every 15 minutes. In a casserole with a lid on top it retains a lot of water but cooks the meat which I find with a kilo of meat it takes approx 2 hours at 140 degrees centigrade. You can finish it on the stove top on an open flame.
Regards ... Mike


How much CO2 does it take to carbonate water using a household Soda Siphon? A soda siphon seems to be the de facto device for carbonating water at home.

A search of reviews and comments on the consumption and cost of CO2 yields the following results:

70 cents or one charger per liter (Amazon Review)
20 cents per liter (see lotusmoss' blog comment)
50 cents per liter (see mbknight's blog comment)

The instructions for this popular iSi soda siphon seem consistent with an entire charger being required per liter of water, which works out to $0.90 per liter assuming you buy the recommended brand-name chargers.

So, the cost claimed seems to range from $0.20 to $0.90 per liter.  Since store-bought carbonated water typically costs somewhere in between, it's not obvious whether this device makes economical sense.  (I'm sure there are other advantages, but that's a different topic.)

My questions are as follows:

Does a charger like this really only yield 1 liter of carbonated water?
Is there a way use a single charger to yield more than 1 liter?
Is there an alternative to the iSi-style soda siphon that uses some other source of compressed CO2 that might be more economical?
Has anyone reproduced the $0.20 per liter figure claimed by lotusmoss?  If so, how was it acheived?

I own a 1-litre soda siphon like the iSi Siphon you pointed out. Some friends have a higher-capacity soda maker, I think from Sodastream.  To answer your questions:

Yes, the charger is single-use, and it carbonates only as much water as is in the bottle. My soda siphon holds about 1 litre of water. If I put in less water, then once the bottle runs dry I vent spare carbon dioxide uselessly into the air. If I put in more water, the carbon dioxide runs out and the remaining water won't leave the bottle.
Using the standard siphon product, there's no easy way to have a single charger yield more than one 1 litre. The charger is designed to deliver all its gas at one time; it doesn't reseal.
Consider the Sodastream product line if you want a step up from the 1-litre soda siphon with disposable chargers. Sodastream uses larger bottles of gas, which they describe as "60L". I think they mean that each bottle of gas carbonates 60 litres of water.
Sodastream's FAQ, What will it cost me to make a bottle of soda or seltzer? claims,

  After your initial purchase of a home soda maker package, you'll enjoy seltzer and sparkling water in reusable 1-liter PET bottle for just [Canadian]$.30 per litre and flavoured sodas for about $.88 per litre, before any applicable shipping charges....

From their wording, it's pretty clear to me that the $0.20-$0.30/litre claim is purely the marginal cost of carbonating water. It doesn't include amortising the purchase cost of the equipment, and likely is based on the cheapest way to refill the carbon dioxide bottles (exchanging filled bottles for empty by mail), and likely doesn't include shipping costs or taxes for the refills. It may be that one can drive the cost per litre down by adjusting the amount of water in the soda bottle, as well.

To reproduce the 20 cent per litre price you will have to buy CO2 cartridges in bulk!
And of course you don't need name brand bulbs, as there are close to no differences at all regarding quality. The CO2 is exactly alike, the only difference is the bulb itself, that can be extra safe.


How to peel, cut and prepare prickly pears without getting the thorns in your skin? Peeling the cactus pear fruit, or better in known in some grocery stores as the prickly pear (or Tuna, Indian fig) can be painful, because of thorns on it. The skin of the fruit is covered in tiny needles (called glochids). They’re so thin that you don’t even feel them when they enter your skin. The problem is that they sting like crazy when you touch that area of the skin and are nearly impossible to find and pick out. They are also invisible if they fall onto the floor, counter or dish towel, so you can uknowingly get stuck even if you’re nowhere near a prickly pear.

So what methods do you use to peel prickly pears without pain? And how do you prepare it, to make sure that prickly pear thorns won't be lodged in the throat?

There are many ways to do it, so it is personal choice. Here is a google search if you need to know more. Here is how I do it. You are going to need two forks and a knife.

STEP 1

Place the prickly pear on a cutting board or a plate using a fork by firmly pushing the fork lengthwise into the skin of the prickly pear

STEP 2

With a sharp edge knife, cut of the two end of the prickly pear.

STEP 3

Now, cut through the skin lengthwise. The skin is quite thick, so you need to make a deep cut.

STEP 4

With the second fork, pull away the skin on one side from the inside of the fruit as far as you can

STEP 5

Now, firmly hold the fruit with the second fork by inserting the second fork into flesh of the fruit.

STEP 6

Remove the first fork and use that to peel away the rest of the skin from the flesh of the fruit.

STEP 7

The inside of the fruit is now free from the skin, so you can remove it. Place it on a clean plate

STEP 8

Discard the rests, and properly rinse all the utensils under running water before cleaning the next fruit

Other tips:

Wearing welding gloves also works well to handle the fruit To remove most of the thorns before hand, hold the fruit lengthwise between your fingers and gently rub the skin over loose sand. Rinse with water afterwards. Be careful when removing the gloves
A bottle brush or nail brush can also be used. Wearing gloves, hold the prickly pear in one hand while you scrubbing the skin of the fruit with the bottle brush/nail brush. Rinse under running water.

In both of the above cases, you still need to treat the fruit as you normally would as if it would still have thorns on.

How about burning the tiny thorns with fire? I imagine since they’re so tiny they’d burn quickly with a small blowtorch faster than you could burn or damage the fruit itself.


How to make pizza not stick on ceramic stone? I have a ceramic pizza stone that I believe is 16 inches in diameter.

It cooks pizza very well and I try and follow all of the instructions included with the stone, but I have yet to make one pizza that does not stick in a few places, usually about 2-3 inches from the edge.

Before anyone says "Put cornmeal on the stone," I already have, a lot. I put what I believe is enough down without creating a giant dusting of cornmeal on my pizza when it's done. If I add more I will just be getting a giant taste of cornmeal from the bottom of my pizza.

Here is a list of that come to mind:

Use flour, but heard it will burn
Use vegetable oil, but it can crack the stone (instructions)
Use tin foil, but does that not void the purpose of the stone and its seasoning applied overtime?

I always preheat the stone in the manner the instructions say and such, but it still sticks to the point I have to get a fork and scrape 3-4 pieces off in certain spots.

Does anybody have any unknown secrets to getting it not to stick without religiously applying cornmeal?

I'd use parchment paper. Foil might work, but it's not actually that great a nonstick baking material. Parchment paper is pretty much designed for that, though.

The purpose of the stone is to hold a lot of heat. Parchment doesn't "void" that purpose at all. I've baked plenty of pizza and bread on a stone with parchment, and it works great.

There's no need to worry about seasoning. It doesn't matter for the pizza. It's pretty much just an appearance thing; a well-used pizza stone won't be all pristine and clean like a new one.


Scientific results on which oils to use for pan-frying I am trying to find out which oils are suitable for pan-frying at high temperatures (when frying steaks or pancakes where smoke points are typically reached). Since there seems to be no agreement and a lot of false information about this in non-scientific sources, I want to consider scientific sources only.
I am more interested in home use, i.e., short pan-frying with little oil (no deep-frying) at higher temperatures (around 200 °C), so many papers researching commercial deep-frying applications (below 180 °C but heated/reheated for multiply hours) seem to be less relevant to me.
So far, I have found two sources that seem to be very relevant to me. Unfortunately, they come to very different conclusions.
In [1], different oils were slowly heated to 205 °C and then retained at this heat for another hour. They used Raman spectroscopy to analyze samples before, after, and at specific temperatures in between.
They concluded that sunflower and canola oils present high thermal stability and are therefore recommended for frying.
Coconut and olive oils showed significant degradation starting at 165-175 °C.
In [2] however, olive oil is recommended for frying because “when different oils were compared, olive oil was considered to be the most stable liquid fat” (p. 665). One source for this is another study of one of the authors [3] where sunflower and olive oils were heated to 180 °C for 5-10 hours. There, sunflower oil showed significantly greater degradation than olive oil (if I interpret the results correctly).
What is the current state of research on this topic? Is this a well researched topic and I just couldn't find the majority of relevant sources? If not, is there a proper conclusion summarizing these two studies? Is [2] less relevant to me because they don't use the high heat that occurs in pan-frying? Is the more recent study [1] more relevant because it uses modern techniques to analyze the oils?
Refs:

[1] Alvarenga, B.R., Xavier, F.A.N., Soares, F.L.F. et al. Thermal Stability Assessment of Vegetable Oils by Raman Spectroscopy and Chemometrics. Food Anal. Methods 11, 1969–1976 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-018-1160-y

[2] Velasco, Joaquín & Dobarganes, M.. (2002). Oxidative stability of virgin olive oil. European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology. 104. https://doi.org/10.1002/1438-9312(200210)104:9/10%3C661::AID-EJLT661%3E3.0.CO;2-D

[3] Dobarganes, M. C., Marquez-Ruiz, G., & Perez-Camino, M. C. (1993). Thermal stability and frying performance of genetically modified sunflower seed (Helianthus annuus L.) oils. Journal of agricultural and food chemistry, 41(4), 678-681 https://doi.org/10.1021/jf00028a033

I would also consider the health implications as there seems to have been quite a lot of medical research into the carcinogenic effects of repeatedly using oils. This may well run parallel to what you are looking for e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28925728/ etc.

Your first reference seems clear enough.
"...The stability of oils presented high correlation with their smoke points. As expected, the more evident spectral changes were observed in the oils that present lower smoke points. The refined oils, which in general present higher smoke points, presented better stability. ..."
The general consensus (see your first reference) is that you should use an oil (or fat) that has the highest smoking point possible for your application.
See Smoke Point wikipedia article. (bold by me)
"...
The smoke point of an oil correlates with its level of refinement.[7][8] Many cooking oils have smoke points above standard home cooking temperatures:[9]

Pan frying (sauté) on stove top heat: 120 °C (248 °F)
Deep frying: 160–180 °C (320–356 °F)
Oven baking: Average of 180 °C (356 °F)

..."
You are probably over thinking this.


Is canned or jarred minced garlic substantially different from fresh garlic? I am always in favor of fresh ingredients when possible. I recently discovered that minced (and crushed and chopped) garlic is available in very inexpensive jars in the produce section of the grocery store. I've always bought garlic and chopped it for a given meal, but I wonder if such jars of prepared garlic are worthwhile.

Would purchasing prepared garlic in a jar be a time saver in some situations, or is the quality reduced such that it is not recommended?

As a side question, does minced garlic in a jar keep for very long once opened?

Yes, it is different. Does it matter? It depends.

If you're going to use garlic in a stew or anything else that would 'dissolve' the regular garlic anyway, it doesn't really matter all that much in my opinion.

If you want to preserve the texture and/or create a more 'urgent' garlic flavour in short-cooked food, I'd go with fresh.

Sidenote: most of the prepared garlic comes with additives, consider if you want to have those as a part of your diet.

As for keeping time once opened: no worries really - bacteria really don't like garlic all that much, so refrigerated you should have no problems hitting 6+ months.

if you are going to use it where the garlic is cooked and disolved into a sauce, not that much differenT.  If you are using a lot of it and it will remain largely whole,  Go fresh (particularily if it is on pizza or something).  I can taste the difference.  Jarred garlic has a really off taste.  Like it has gone slightly bad.  It is a bad comparison, but I always think of the smell of a sewer when a pizza place uses it as their garlic.


Toasting spices with and without oil After heading to my trusty Indian market yesterday I was speaking with the owner about how awful fenugreek seeds are uncooked.  He suggested (with black mustard seeds and cumin seeds) to throw them in the pan with a little bit of oil.  I've read much about people extolling how good the dry heat is for the spices.  Personal experience tells me that adding oil to the pan works better.  Does cooking with oil change the flavor of a spice while toasting? Are there any spices that it is important to toast without oil?

Indian recipes seem to always call for oil.

Non Indian recipes seem to always call for dry (or don't toast at all- yuk).

In my personal experience (mostly mustard, cumin, fenugreek, coriander)- dry toasting calls for more of my attention. I have to have an appropriate temperature, agitate the seeds, and watch for the telltale aroma to know when they are done. If I don't pay enough attention to any of those then they will scorch and be horrible.

With oil I have more leeway. The seeds don't need to be agitated as much after they are coated with oil and they pop audibly when they are done. It may be my imagination but the oil itself seems to distribute the flavor of the seeds better as well.

I have scorched dry toasted seeds on occasion when I was distracted. I have never had oil toasted spices not turn out perfectly.

I think it is mostly preferential as you can toast either way. Using oil can be tricky though as there is a fine line between toasting with oil and frying your spices. An article I found boasts using no oil which I like. There is also a list of spices that benefit from Spice Toasting. I do believe toasting with oil can change or influence the flavor depending on the oil used.


Does spoiled milk make any ingredient? Bear with me here,

My roommate insist that she wants to keep her spoiled 2% milk in the fridge, it's been 1 month! That thing look disgusting. To my knowledge, you don't use rotten milk for anything/ingredients. So before I throw it out, is there something I don't know of that people use rotten milk for?

The only thing that is even remotely possible in my mind is to use it akin to buttermilk or sour cream (which are intentionally fermented products) in baking.

However, since the culture that fermented the milk was uncontrolled, I would not do so.  I recommend discarding.

As long as the milk isn't moldy or too foul smelling, sour milk is perfect for cheese making (as cheese is just spoiled or sour milk that is curdled. Curds make the cheese and the whey used in lots of other recipes). Simplest cheese to make is to slowly heat up the soured milk in a clean pot til it just starts to steam (not boiling). Then add about 1-2 tablespoons of distilled white vinegar (or lemon or lime juice), and a tablespoon of coarse salt to the drained curds. Put in a cheese cloth and gently wring out the whey and add salt to taste, herbs, or other seasonings. I used about 1/3 gallon of two month old whole milk (kept in colder than normal fridge the whole time), and made enough Ricotta style cheese to make a single serving of pretty tastey homemade ravioli. The whey I probably wouldn't save from milk that old unless I knew more about how to use whey.
Any form of milk with less milkfat than whole milk (2%, 1%, skim, nonfat) are in my mind useless for both cooking and drinking as it is mostly water and a tiny amount of milkfat.


Baking bread without yeast Can I make bread without yeast? Thanks!

You could look into making flatbread, which often (though not always) gets its name through being unleavened, and thus, flat (yes, I am oversimplifying here). Common examples are tortillas or roti.

You could also make
Smooth Bread
Which is apparently:

NO yeast NO flour