Cracked egg leaves egg white residue. Should I worry about the other eggs? I had an egg crack in the carton and cover the other eggs with egg white. I consider the cracked egg a lost cause, but what about the splash damage? Are the eggs that have received an inadvertent egg white wash safe to eat?  Particularly, for someone who may be very vulnerable to infection?

If the egg actually exploded as in the title, then no, that egg is probably highly contaminated.  Not only is it bad, but nothing its contents have touched can be considered safe to use and should be discarded.

I assume however that you actually have an egg that was broken in handling.  In that case, only the broken egg is a loss.  Other answers and comments have addressed that, choice by location and your own personal sense of safe for you.  I hate wasting food, but eggs today are a relatively inexpensive commodity for most of us, so if you feel uneasy, error on the side of safety.

When an egg is only partially cracked, but the membrane is intact, that egg is normally safe for use for several days.  You have lost some protection, but not the immediate integrity of the egg.  One issue though is you do not know when it was cracked.  In your possession can be safe, my personal rule being about a week.  But if it already was cracked, I do not know if it happened before washing (in the US) or after.  If before, the egg is compromised.  Now, this is one spot that the EU with non-washed eggs are at a slight, very slight, disadvantage.  IMO, unwashed, a cracked egg is compromised even if the membrane is intact.  That paragraph is not exactly your question, but could be for people searching that find their way here.

I am new to your site so I may not understand how to view all the answers or the entire discussion, but I did not see the solution my mother taught me. You can use the same "trick" to test for freshness that you can use to test for potential contamination in your egg, so I will give the answers to both. (I noticed some people do not like you deviating from the original question but, hey, I'm old. I figure it is NEVER too late to learn something that may come in handy some day.)

Place your egg in a cup or bowl of cold water - cold tap water, not cold as in refrigerated.

Make sure there is enough water that the egg can stand up on end in the container and still be covered with water.

If the submerged egg lies flat along the bottom, the egg is very fresh. ENJOY! If it doesn't but was sold as fresh, you might want to mention that to the vendor.

If the egg stands up on one end it is not so fresh, up to maybe a few weeks, but still good to eat.

If the egg floats, it contains air and should be tossed. It is not only old, but air can contain contaminants and air is how contaminants get into your egg.

Believe it or not, I have had eggs that have been in the refrigerator for months that stand on end in water and are just fine. But remember ALL pre-washed eggs can contain air and contaminants that can cause Salmonella-and-such so always thoroughly cook your eggs. If you must drop a raw egg in a drink, you might want to make sure it lays flat on the bottom of a glass of water first.


Water in the microwave to reheat pizza better I've seen this claim various times on the Internet; for example at http://imgur.com/vlh4M

  Put a small amount of water in a glass when you microwave your pizza to keep the crust from getting chewy

Does this really work? If so, could anyone explain why?

I just tested 3 individual slices on the pizza setting. That setting basically just turns the heat on and off so the food heats more evenly.

I tried:

A small shot glass of cool water
A mug of cold water
A mug of warm water

They were all the same. The only thing I noticed was that the pizza was cold where the shot glass was touching it. The #2 and #3 were done with the mug underneath the plate.

Stomach satisfied, but myth busted.

You're all wrong in fact. The microwave heats water particles. The exact reason you can cover a heating meal with a paper towel without it igniting. The glass of water is meant to alleviate the intensity of microwaves heating the pizza and crust, thus avoiding an overcooked, chewy crust. No myth needing to be busted.. Best way to solve it all, stop ordering a whole pizza for your lonely ass & share. No leftovers = no reheating


What is inside the Prawn Cocktail crisps flavour? I'm looking to make something close-enough at home for a friend. I'm suspecting it doesn't actually have Prawns in it.

Assuming you're talking about Walker's brand, we can see the following ingredients list from Tesco.co.uk (should match what's on your bag):

Prawn Cocktail Seasoning contains: Flavouring, Sugar, Glucose, Salt, Citric Acid, Potassium Chloride, Dried Yeast, Dried Onion, Vale of Evesham Tomato Extract, Colour (Paprika Extract), Sweetener (Sucralose)

Nutritional yeast (which is what I assume the 'dried yeast' is) is often used in vegan recipes to simulate a cheesy flavor, so it's probably not that. You can imagine what sugar, glucose, salt, citric acid, tomato extract, and dried onion taste like. Potassium Chloride is commonly used as a salt replacement to lower the salt content of food without losing that salty flavor.
I suspect it's that first ingredient, 'flavoring'. You're probably talking about a product like this: http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/prawn-Flavor-O5557-used-in-puffed_1699947706.html?s=p

prawn Flavor O5557 used in puffed foods

Professional and mature R&D team, Application team.
Manufacturer of flavor

Origin: Jining city, Shandong Province, China.

Prawn cocktail is in fact made of orange zest, salmon and chicken stock.


When to season popcorn? I enjoy snacking on popcorn, and i recently found out you can pop it without losing flavour in the microwave.

I have always seasoned my popcorn after popping, but i am not really sure what is best with the microwave. Would it be to salt and pepper my snack before, after, or both?

I worked three years in a movie theater in my early twenties.  The butter is tricky.  We would microwave it then separate the water from it.  If the water is still in the butter and put on the popcorn the water will make the popped corn soggy and give off an unappealing smell.  We would usually pour it off to separate them but that works best when a large amount is used.  A small amount could be warmed in a pan long enough to evaporate the water.  then alas put it on the finished popped corn.  Time it so both the corn and butter are warm at the same time.  Don't cover the popped corn with the idea of keeping it warm; There is still a little moisture in the popped corn and will make your treat less crispy.
If dried spices are the idea then try infusing the spice with the butter after the water is removed.  Don't get the mixture any warmer than warm.  You don't want the spices getting browned.  If the spices were put in the kettle while popping the corn they would be too toasted.

After, because then the surface is big enough to absorb the taste.

May I also suggest using organically grown corn, have a look at this article why:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/


Where to order whole-wheat flour(NOT ATTA) in India? Many people are deceived that maida(7.5% gluten) is ALL PURPOSE FLOUR and atta is WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR((10-12%)gluten but starch is lost due to chakki milling) so there is actually a lot of difference and simply one can't be substituted for another. I'm writing this so that many people don't think that I do not have access to atta. So if a bread recipe calls for whole-wheat flour, where can I buy it or order it in non metro cities like Chandigarh at "reasonable prices".
KAF is simply too high in terms of Indian money and the same is with Bob's red mill or Pillsbury, Gold Medal whole-wheat flour.
Out of them Gold Medal brand is the cheapest 626 rupees for 5lbs

We buy wheat grains and get it milled at a local flour mill. This way we can ensure the texture that we desire and also the quality. Time consuming but worth it. Not to mention the reduced cost.


How to make thick Asian sauces? Is there a common ingredient, or cooking technique, that gives sauces such as Teriyaki, General Tsos, Orange Chicken; their thick/syrupy texture?

We sometimes make dishes in a crock pot; we have a recipe for a teriyaki chicken, and another for a honey sesame chicken, but the liquid we end up with is always very watery/liquidy. What can we do to thicken the sauce; so that it gets the texture that I am used to on Asian chicken?

Note that this does not necessarily only apply to Asian cuisine; sauces such as A-1 steak sauce or even BBQ sauce seem similar; though it's quite possible that their thickness is due to completely different reasons.

Thickening agents

To thicken, you would mix in an agent designed to do so. There are many options, but here are some that are directly applicable to Asian cooking:

Corn starch - Works well in small quantities, though I find it has a tendency to turn sauces into jello in the fridge. If you have too much liquid in your sauce and use a relatively large amount of cornstarch, you can have unusual effects when trying to reheat the leftovers. Specifically, cornstarch solutions can suffer from shear thickening making it hard to return a gelatinized corn starch sauce to liquid form. However, this is 'authentic' in the sense that it is probably what is in your neighborhood General Tso's purveyor's recipe.
Xanthan gum - Works well in very small quantities; it doesn't take much to thicken a sauce. I don't think there is anything very Asian about this ingredient, it's more of an 'industrial' food additive. Still, it is flavorless so won't impact the taste of your sauce. Xanthan gum has the opposite effect of cornstarch, namely shear thinning. I don't find the shear thinning to be an undesirable trait.
Potato or Tapioca starch - These are my personal preference. These starches act more like flour, in my opinion, and since I have more of a cooking background with gravies and roux, I like these options. To a certain extend, you will have the same shear thickining effect that you will get from corn starch, but I've never gelatinized a sauce with either of these ingredients, so that drives my personal preference.

The above listed don't need more than a few minutes at heat to achieve their thickening effect. Be sure to stir in completely and be patient; if you add thickening agents in haste you can easily end up with too much (again, I find this to be a big problem with cornstarch). Also, for all of them, be sure you don't have too much liquid in the first place; a sea of sticky sauce can often be overpowering.

There are plenty of other thickening agents in common use (flour/roux, egg whites, pectin, gelatin). You could give any of these a try, but I wouldn't consider them "Asian" in any way, so I don't feel like these answer the question.

The Red Lotus sweet rice flour is a great sauce thickener. It's may need to be smoothed with a mixer. It tastes sweet and even most sauces well.

It's gluten free and you don't get the wheat taste, that's a big plus!


Why must the oven be preheated for a Pyrex glass pan? This Pyrex glass safety label says "Always preheat oven".  Any idea why?

While an oven preheats, the heating element or gas burner will be running at full output. For an electric oven in particular, this will generate a great deal of radiant heat. Radiant heat increases the temperature of the objects it shines on, without directly changing the air temperature.

So, if you place a pyrex dish in a cold oven and then turn it on, some surfaces of the dish will be exposed to this intense radiant heat for a long period of time as the oven heats up, while the air temperature in the oven the rest of the dish is exposed to will still be much cooler.

If the dish is placed in the oven after it has preheated, it will still be exposed to the radiant heat as the oven cycles on and off to maintain the temperature, but it will be for shorter periods of time and the ambient temperature the rest of the dish is exposed to will not have such a large differential, resulting in less thermal stress on the glass.

I think the always-preheat instruction is there so that the cooking time is similar to that of metal pans, rather than for safety.

Glass conducts heat poorly compared to metals; preheating the oven fully is one way to make the cooking time stay similar to that of the same dish, in a metal pan.


Are strawberries really dyed? I stopped by a farm stand last weekend, and found the strawberries were rather pale looking. I commented on this, and the farmer assured me that this was no worry, and that furthermore I should be wary of bright red strawberries. His claim was that bright red strawberries at the supermarket are in fact dyed that color.

Is it common practice to dye berries? Is it even legal? Is this something one would normally expect to find at a grocery store, or is a technique used elsewhere (say, commercially, or in restaurants?) Or is this guy just trying to convince me to buy his product?

Strawberries turn a natural red color in their ripening process. This is usually a very strong, ruby-red color. Rest assured, strawberries in the US are not dyed. FDA clearly lists all adulteration done to fruits (oranges can be dyed), but strawberries only has a regulation of when the product is considered moldy, etc. Note that even though dyed strawberries may not be sold in US, they may be exported in countries that permit it ( fruit intended for export is exempt).

Rest of the world is a different story. It wouldn't be uncommon for you to  find strawberries that are picked too early in the process, or are just grown in poor conditions that are dyed red to give it the luscious red appearance. There have been anecdotal reports of this in China - this color comes right off when washed, showing a white strawberry. Strawberries do leech a red fluid when washed, but that shouldn't result in a white strawberry.

For personal reasons, I have to wash carefully with baking soda fruits and vegetables for more than 10 minutes, in immersion. So, it is a bad experience every time I deal with strawberries: they are dyed for sure, revealing -after my treatment- all the imperfections hidden with a layer of color.


Protein networks in vegan cakes I have read that one important role of eggs in cakes is to add proteins that denature with heat and then link together giving the cake structure.  Given that proteins are so varied and abundant in nature, I was wondering whether there are vegan sources of protein that can perform the same function.  Has anyone experimented systematically with this?

EDIT: This is distinct from the question of whether there are vegan egg substitutes that can be used in cakes.  Since eggs do multiple things to cakes and since these roles are emphasized more or less depending on the cake, there is not going to be a single answer to "what is a good egg substitute for cakes?".  I asked this question to try to learn specifically about whether there are ways to mimic the protein network that eggs create in cakes using vegan proteins.

Legume flours (eg soy, chickpea, lentil flour) match that role well - they are used in traditional (eg indian) eggless recipes as texture-enhancing binders, or even on their own - pakora and cheela batters are made with a lot of chickpea flour for that purpose.

You could substitute the egg with apple sauce. I have tried that before and it worked well. They say you should substitute each egg in a cake recipe with 1/3 cup of applesauce. For me this is always trail and error but you could use it as a rule of thumb.
But make sure that you strain most of the excess liquid of the apple sauce before you ad it, otherwise you will have too much liquid in your dough.


Are carrots dyed orange? I was in the supermarket and I noticed that one brand of "organic" carrots was a very pale orange, but another brand of carrots was bright orange.

Is this color difference because the carrots are being dyed?

Probably not.

Carrots naturally (or due to selective breeding) come in an extremely wide variety of colors from white to yellow to orange to red/pink to purple. It's likely that you were simply looking at two different varieties, one of which was more pale than the other.

click image for source

Even the color being only "skin deep" isn't necessarily a sign of it being a dye as many carrots have white cores, or at least cores that are more white than their surrounding flesh. Which you can see an example of below:

Carrots are dyed, they contain lots of different dyes!  However they dye themselves as part of the gowning process.   This has been increased by plant breeders over the years.      So all carrots have been genetically modified, but by farmers in muddy boots, not by "evil" people in labs....


Lunch meat is slimy on outside? Sometimes when I buy lunch meat cuts, from the supermarket, they quickly get slimy on the outside. Regardless of the date which is indicated by the sticker.

I perform taste, smell, and visual checks for discoloration, but the cuts of meat seem to pass all those criteria.

Is this a sign that it's about to expire? Also, why does it get slimy?

FYI: This happens on Dietz BBQ chicken, and this other chicken cut I get from Costco.

The rate of slime of a piece of food has to do with amount of surface area it has. At each point a food's surface is an entry point for bacteria. Since there is always bacteria on any cutting utensil or machine every cut piece of meat has been seeded with a bacteria culture. Although it might not kill you or make you visibly sick, the slime is coming from microbes which will stress your immune system that might be fighting other things instead. Unless it's Nato beans or oysters slime on food is no good. If the cold cuts are sliming quickly it might be because the grocer is not cleaning the machine properly or somebody's refrigeration is not cold enough, 5 to 10 degree f too warm.

If your lunch meat has white slime on it, throw it out! The white slime is Listeria, a bacteria that can be deadly, especially dangerous to pregnant women.


How do I ask for eggs, sunny-side-up, but with the top cooked more thoroughly? If I ask for eggs, sunny-side-up, they will have yellow barely cooked yolks.  At home I avoid this by placing a lid and creating hot air or steam that cooks the top more thoroughly.  How do I ask for this style at a restaurant?  What term do I use?

You can ask for eggs over easy.
This is when the cook flips the egg over once it's ready and allows the wolk to cook a bit on the hot surface of the pan.
The phrase is an American one, if I'm not mistaken, but is probably understood anywhere.

There are two different techniques possible here – obviously, simply frying for a longer time will cook the yolk more thouroghly. You might order this as “sunny-side up, well done”.
However, what you achieve by cooking with a lid isn't really considered just frying, but Basting, so what you want to ask for is probably a basted egg.


Tempering chocolate without a thermometer Is it possible to successfully temper the chocolate without a thermometer? I'm sure it's quite important but since it's so difficult to find one in my country and since I don't make chocolate so often I would know if there's a way to temper without it.

Your best bet is to start with a good quality tempered chocolate and melt it just to the point of melting, which is to say keep it 88° - 91°F (if you ever do end up getting a thermometer). Most suggest using a microwave for this in short bursts to keep the chocolate from getting too hot.  If you use a double boiler, use a low heat and go slow.  Pull the bowl off the heat often and stir.  It may not seem like all the chocolate is going to melt, but keep stirring and add small amounts of heat.  Or you can follow Alton Brown and sandwich a heating pad between two bowls and adjust the heat.

The theory behind this is there are 4 different types of crystals in chocolate.  The good ones we want are Beta crystals, which do not melt until 91° - 94°F.  As long as you don't  melt the beta crystals, the chocolate should set back up to a proper temper.

Use a grater to make nice even bits, melt the chocolate 2/3 of the way and then remove from the heat.  Stir off the heat until the rest melts, or add heat in very short bits, 5-10 seconds at a time.  Don't let it harden either, it's harder to remelt if it's hardens up slighty as it then becomes one big solid mass to melt.

Once you break the temper, there is no going back, you have to start over and there is no real easy way to do that without years of experience as bobobobo said, or a thermometer.  You can find inexpensive thermometers online, just have to make sure to get one that handles the lower range of temperatures.  I use my chocolate thermometer to also measure the temperature of water when making bread.  It seems more accurate at the lower temeratures.

Use you're lower lip as thermometer, little sting 115- 120 f. little cool on the crest of lower lip about 90 f. Darker chocolate requires higher heat index than semi or milk chocolate to temper.
120 for Dark chocolate 115 for semisweet
 or milk chocolate.
Just call me Coco B-)    You're welcome...


Donvier Ice Cream Maker - why stirring only every 2 minutes? This weekend I picked up a hand-cranked ice cream maker for a very low price. However some of the instructions don't make much sense. For this maker, they say to crank the handcrank 2-3 times every 2-3 minutes, for a total of 20-30 minutes.

However, every ice cream maker I have ever used requires you to constantly crank the handle to help keep ice crystals from forming. Likewise, all of the electric makers will spin a beater arm nonstop through the process. Why is does this ice cream maker say to only stir sporadically? Does stirring more cause an issue with this ice cream maker?

The ice cream maker is the same design as this one, but about 20 years old:
http://www.amazon.com/Donvier-837409W-1-Quart-Cream-Maker/dp/B00006484E/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

This is what the beater arm/dasher looks like.

I have had that icecream maker for decades. I never had a problem with ice crystals following their directives. Since you don't need to churn it continuously, they tell you there's no need to. The mix needs some time in contact with the walls to get cold.

If you have kids, it will get stirred more often than the instructions say. But that tends to work out ok too. It's pretty forgiving all around.

The more air you stir in the more crystals. This is more like Gelato.


Keeping meat juices to make gravy My gravy making technique is hit-and-miss to say the least.  I tend to get the best results when roasting beef because it's rare.  That is, it's just roasts enough to cause the juice to come out.  What I find with other meats, especially chicken and pork (which need to be cooked for much longer) is that the potatoes and other veg that I roast seem to absorb the juices (which I see as a good thing), but then I have no juice left.

So, my question is this: how can I roast my potatoes and veg with the meat, but keep enough for gravy?  I really don't want to start roasting the veg in a separate pan.

I'm in the UK.  I mention this because I have visited America once, and the gravy seems to be far thicker there (more like a sauce than a gravy).

It sounds like you are trying to maximize the amount of pan juices, sometimes referred to be the French word jus.

Any piece of meat is only going to express so much jus; if you have potatoes or other absorbent vegetables in the roasting pan, they are going to absorb it and it won't be available for another purpose such as gravy.

What you still will almost always have is fond, the brown roasty bits at the bottom of the pan.  Many cooks deglaze the fond with a small amount of stock or wine to create the basis for a sauce or gravy, as the fond has a very rich and complex flavor—and its flavor may actually be enhanced by aromatic vegetables in the pan.

Remove the juice as you cook. Pour it out into a cup every 20 mins or so.


Any secondary uses for taffy? My sister got married recently and had a candy buffet at the wedding.  Their colors were yellow and gray, and we now have a lot of leftover banana taffy.  We're never going to eat it all at the rate that we're going, and Halloween is still a long way off.  Are there any secondary uses for taffy?  I've searched for recipes containing taffy (as an ingredient) but haven't been able to find any.  Are there any candies that have a taffy-like stage on the way to something else?

This is going to sound odd, but taffy is actually a great ingredient in sweeter coffee drinks like mochas.  It melts into the drink adding sugar and flavor.  I'm a fan of banana for this purpose.

In a similar vein, you could also use the taffy as a chip in cookies.  Chop it up and use it wherever you think banana flavor would taste good.  I could imagine the banana taffy going well in with macadamia nuts.  You might want to consider the taffy as a substitute for butterscotch or white chocolate chips in recipes requiring them.

Ever tried a "banoffee" pie or cheesecake?

They can benefit from some smashed up toffee (I'm English, we call it toffee) in the mix and certainly on the top.

Another alternative is just to let it go stale, it just becomes fudge like usually after a considerable time and is perfectly pleasant.


How do I maximize the shelf life of my homemade hot sauce? I am planning on putting this year's crop of hot peppers to use by trying my hand at making my own hot sauces.

I've never tried this before, but I've found a number of recipes on the Internet.  However, I'm concerned about shelf life, and the variations in preparation methods that I'm seeing in the recipes are a bit confusing.

Some of the recipes simply call for mixing the peppers, some other vegetables (typically carrots, onions or bell peppers), seasoning (such as sugar or garlic) and vinegar.  The mixture is then blended in a food processor, and is "ready to eat" with no cooking.

Others call for simmering the ingredients in vinegar prior to putting them in the food processor.

Yet others actually detail month-long fermentation processes.

Some of the recipes say the resulting sauce will last at least for a year.  Others say a month or two.

Since the sauces will be too hot for anyone in the house but myself to use, I would prefer to extend the shelf life as long as possible.  If it goes bad in a month, I'll wind up throwing away a ton.

What is the basic method I should use to maximize the shelf life of a combination of hot peppers (bhut jolokia or ghost peppers, if that matters), carrots, garlic, and possibly bell peppers, apples, or grapes (all alternative ingredients I am interested in experimenting with)?

What is the best way to store the results?

What is a reasonable expectation for a safe shelf life for the resulting hot sauce?

Vinegar and sugar make good preservatives. Provided you use sterilised containers - place them in boiling water for twenty minutes, add the sauce, seal, then boil again for ten minutes - you should be fine. Store the bottles/jars in a cool place out of direct sunlight.

Avoid using oil during preparation, as you run the risk of introducing Botulinium into the mix. This would probably be neutralised by the vinegar, but it really isn't worth the risk.

As always, if the sauce smells or looks suspect when you come to use it, throw it out. Again, it's not worth the risk of food poisoning.

Raise the acidity and reduce the water.

Garlic is antifungal. Rosemary and other herbs are preservatives.

Some microorganisms are friendly: research kim chee, miso, sauerkraut, and sourdough bread.


How long can I store Cooked Turkey in Refrig before Freezing? How long can I store Cooked Turkey in Refrig before Freezing?  I bought an Organic Turkey early for Thanksgiving and cooked it.  It's been in my Refrig for a week and I'd like to trim and freeze parts and also make a soup.  Is my timing on this acceptable?

I'm going to say no.

We chill food in the freezer or refrigerator to slow bacterial growth. In general, the refrigerator will slow the growth enough that cooked meat can be kept safely for 3-5 days, and the freezer enough that cooked meat can be stored for 2-3 months. If you've already kept the meat in the fridge for a week, it is already unsafe to eat. Freezing it now will not reverse that.

In general, if you want to freeze food you should do so ASAP after cooking to maximize the amount of time it will keep in the freezer. After it's already unsafe is too late.

if it's not bad, it's still good...unless you have it tightly wrapped, turkey meat will dry out before any deterioration will take hold...i've used turkey that's been on the bone in the fridge lightly covered for up to 2 months (you may have to heat it with a few drops of water)  on the other hand, if you wrap it in plastic & seal out the air, the moisture will cause it to go bad in less than two weeks..


How can I fix a hollandaise sauce after it has split? I made a hollandaise sauce on the weekend and it split so I threw it out and started again but I was wondering if there is anything you can do to save it once it splits?

You can rescue it by starting the process again, with an egg yolk in a bowl over a bain-marie which you whisk until it starts to thicken a little.  then incorporate a little warm melted butter into the egg yolk.  Once this is incorporated you can slowly start to add the split hollandaise and this should then incorporate into the new base, unsplit.

There is a video here

One simple, kind of cheating but effective way to save a split hollandaise is to use a commercial product. I've used Knorr Hollandaise a number of times either when I run out during service, or if my hollandaise splits. I still like to make my own, but I've used this in emergencies, and nobody has ever complained!


Why do you  slice whole ducks in half when roasting but not for other poultry? Last time I made a roast, I used a recipe from BBC good food. Since I have had luck with those recipes, I decided to go for their roast duck recipe.

That recipe involves cutting the whole duck in half and roasting the halves with the skin pointing up. I have never roasted a bird like that before, and I am wondering why someone would do it. Does it have to do with the flavor of the meat? Proportion of fat? I don't think I'd ever do that to a chicken because I'd be afraid the meat would go dry. But obviously the flavor of duck is different, and maybe if I know why people do that, I can use it intelligently in my cooking.

I agree with Jay's answer that one of the reasons is because of keeping the skin crispy, but I don't agree about the difference with other types of poultry and have a bit more background info.

The root difference between duck and other poultry is that duck is much fattier, and most of that fat is stored under the skin. If you don't do anything about the fat, you'll get a bird that will be too greasy to enjoy; and also the skin won't crisp as nicely as, say, chicken skin would with similar preparation, because the skin will be soggy with the fat that's rendering underneath. There are more ways than one to get rid of the fat; a popular one is to steam the duck before you roast it, usually after sticking a fork into the skin a few times so that the rendered fat can get out easily. This seems to be a different solution to the same problem: if you cut the duck in half and put the cut side down (which is the same as putting the skin side up), the fat will have a much easier way out than if you cooked the duck whole.

Duck is reasonably high in fat. Cutting it in half will allow more of the fat to drip out.

Another possible reason would be that certain kinds of fat will drip out more than others; I found this study does showing such an effect in beef.


What is the shelf life of unground coffee beans? I love coffee, in many of its forms, and have recently started playing around with grinding my own, brewing it and so on. When I grind beans, I usually use a specific amount by weight, and go from there.

The beans that are not ground are kept in the bag in which they came, which is kept sealed, with as much air squeezed out as possible. How long should the beans last?

Coffee beans will retain their essential oils and flavor compounds longest if stored in a dry, dark, airtight container.  Refrigeration and freezing are therefore not desirable options since they will almost always cause moisture to form on the surface of the beans.

Note that for the first couple weeks after the coffee has been roasted it will naturally release a lot of carbon dioxide, so the airtight container must have some sort of one-way vent valve to let the gas out.  Therefore, the pre-sealed coffee bags that are now ubiquitous in stores are ideal since they have a built-in one-way valve.  There are also some vacuum container devices specifically designed for storing coffee beans that have a small pump to pump out the air once or twice a day.

Once the beans are roasted, their essential flavor compounds immediately start to degrade.  Therefore, do not buy beans unless you know their roasting date.  If stored in ideal conditions, the beans should remain in peak condition for at most one month.

My sense is that if kept in optimal conditions it can be indefinite(not eternal). Optimal would be cool dry and well sealed.

Here are some guidelines, however I am not sure what they are basing this on:
http://www.eatbydate.com/drinks/coffee-tea-shelf-life/coffee-shelf-life-expiration-date/

another interesting resource for any information on coffee:
http://www.ncausa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=1


How to make this shawarma hot sauce? I'm not sure how to ask this question so bear with me. This shawarma place nearby has this amazing hot sauce but I have no clue whats in it! I want to re-create it if possible. I talked to the clerk and he said that it may be BBQ sauce and hot sauce. I originally thought it tasted like ketchup and hot sauce.

Having said that any ideas of the recipe for this sauce?

Harissa Sauce is likely what you want, the sauce has found different names, it's origin includes Lebanon.
I found one of many recipes at:
https://toriavey.com/toris-kitchen/harissa/

There are different ways of making hot sauce. First you need to be clear, was it salty or sweet?

1) Salty hot sauce: hot sauce, ketchup, cumin power, coriander powder, ginger/garlic paste,salt, pepper. (But your sauce doesn't look so spicy or thick)

2) Sweet hot sauce: hot sauce, bbq sauce, very little ranch, mustard sauce.


Why do recipes have the instruction to fry in olive oil? Can someone please tell me, why do cooking instructions have you frying in olive oil? That doesn't make any sense as olive oil has a very low smoking point.

I would suggest three reasons:

The smoke point of olive oil, while lower than many oils, is higher than most items you would deep fry (375 - 490 F or 190 - 255C, depending on the olive oil).
Tradition - if it is the oil that is most plentiful, it is the oil that is used.
Flavor - olive oil imparts a distinct flavor (as other oils do).

There are two reasons that come to mind. First, as Chris said, very refined olive oils have a higher smoke point than say extra virgin olive oil and can be used to sweat onions and similar things.

Since you don't specify which recipe, it's also relevant to point out that many recipes are not that good. There is no qualification needed to post recipes on a blog or videos on Instagram or Pintrest. Whoever wrote the recipe might simply not know any better. After all, many popular recipe blogs are run by enthusiastic home cooks, not professional chefs.  With the way social media works, styling mediocre food and taking good pictures of it is rewarded more than a good but not photogenic recipe.


Can I boil pasta in a pasta sauce? Is it ok to boil pasta in pan with a pasta sauce?

Is there any reason to boil pasta separately (and then add the sauce)?

For the best of both methods, cook the pasta most of the way in water, then strain and dump into the sauce to let it finish the last few minutes of cooking.

In context to the OP's question: There is only one correct way to prepare pasta.  You must have the proper amount of water and it must be salted. At least 6 quarts of water for a pound of pasta otherwise it gets gummy.  Salt the water when it begins to boil, use enough salt for it to taste like the ocean. Stirring it is also critical, stir constantly for the first 1 to 2 minutes and at frequent intervals there after. Boil until just Al dente,(about 9 minutes) drain your pasta, always reserve some water for adjusting the sauce.  do not rinse or add any oil or butter to your pasta. sauce and enjoy.


Roasting 6kg (13lb) Pork Leg I have a huge (for me) leg of pork that's 5.9kg/13lb. I'm thawing in the fridge for the next 4 days before cooking.

How do slow cook for tenderness/fall off the bone as well as great crackling?

Slow cooking and great crackling do not go hand in hand. Your best bet will be to remove the skin, score and salt it well, and grill/broil it separately.

For the leg itself, low and slow is the way to go. How long depends on how long you've got, but 5 or 6 hours in a low oven  will do the trick. Start off with the oven on as high as it will go, throw some garlic, onions and herbs in the pan with the pork, add a splash of water, and cover with foil, then put the meat in and lower it to 160C/320F and go read a book.

You want to make sure the meat reaches 70C/160F internally, incidentally.

6kg pork with no bones in it takes 7.5 hours at 180C (350F) and I get great crackling at the end of it.


How to compensate for the unavailability of Italian basil in authentic Italian pasta sauce? I'm making my own pasta sauce from fresh tomatoes but unfortunately Italian basil (ocimum basilicum pilosum) is not widely available in my country. Here are my options:

leave it out entirely (so the sauce will only contain garlic, onion, tomatoes, evoo and salt
replace with indian holy basil or tulsi (ocimum tenuiflorum) which is widely available - even have some in the garden
try to make up flavour with dried herbs (I only have oregano, sage, rosemary and thyme in my pantry) for this option can someone please recommended an appropriate flavour combination of these dried herbs for 2 pounds (1kg) of fresh tomatoes? E.g 1/2 tsp rosemary, 1/4 tsp thyme, 1/4 tsp sage, etc.  I'm not familiar with their flavours and don't know how to combine them properly
also have chilli flakes so could try making an arrabiatta (sp?) style sauce - does this require basil?

Okay so let me first say I'm a novice with Italian food. However I have faced the exact same issue.

Follow these steps that I've created:

Put a teaspoon of dried rosemary in a mug of water and microwave for two minutes. Pour the water into the sauce. Discard or re-dry the rosemary sticks.
Put a tspn of dried oregano straight into the sauce.
A pinch of sage OR thyme won't hurt but a tiny, tiny pinch.
Add the Tulsi - one handful of the leaves or more - it will be fine, trust me. Just make sure there's nothing sweet in the sauce as it'll make it taste a tad Thai.

And yes - lots of garlic!!
Always garlic

A typical, basic Italian tomato sauce is made with canned (preferably San Marzano) tomatoes. It is simply made.  Saute some onion, with some garlic (not a lot...one or two cloves, sliced, per 28oz can of tomatoes), half a grated carrot (to balance acidity of tomato), some herb (I prefer thyme, but oregano or marjoram are fine).  Don't let the onion and garlic brown too much.  A little on the edges is fine.  Then add hand crushed tomato and cook for 20 - 30 minutes.  This basic sauce then becomes the ingredient for a variety of Italian dishes.  From there it really depends on what kind of pasta (or other) dish you want to make. Basil, you see, is not even necessary.  Fresh tomatoes will work, but it will produce a slightly different tasting sauce, without the depth of tomato flavor and umami that you get from canned.  When fresh tomatoes are in season, most authentic Italian recipes use them raw...or tossed into something hot.


Rice Recipe for Instant Pot Lux 5 quart I have an older instant pot pressure cooker (ip-lux50 v3) and am looking for a recipe for cooking plain white rice. For reasons I don't understand, different pressure cookers cook rice differently and I haven't found a recipe that works very well for mine. Does anyone have experience with this model or a similar one that can suggest a good recipe?

It really depends of the amount of rice you are cooking and what type of grain it is (according to the recipes I find online), so try and figure it out yourself. Here are some tips I have when cooking rice.

Use the same amount of rice as the measurement of your water. Add a bit more if the rice is a bit dry.
Wash your rice at least 3 times to clean off any unnecessary starch or dirt (if you don't trust the rice all too much, hehe).
Choose the "Manual" program for your cooker to choose the time you'd think the rice would be cooked enough. Soon then, you could identify how long you need to cook the rice.

Check out this site I found for the basic tutorial of using a rice cooker.
Still didn't work? Just stick to using a metal pot and gas/electric stove to cook your rice, like I do.


Where can one find a food vacuum? It is a big pain to get soup out of a crockpot and put it into a ziploc bag. I am looking for a food vacuum which would basically just suck up the soup and put it in the bag. Does this exist?

You want "a quick, cheap, and easy solution" that moves food with vacuum:

I suppose the other one would be a very large ziplock, and you'd just put it over the whole top of the crockpot and quickly invert. Much wasted space, comparatively expensive bags.

Hmm... actually a small wet/dry vac can have the capability to do something like that. I would not recommend doing this, but there might not be any other quick cheap and easy options.

Take something like a small 1 gallon vac such as this http://amzn.to/2tfkgB0
Line the bucket with a gallon ziplock bag and you now have a means to vacuum soup into a ziplock bag or any other bag.


Vegetarian replacement for pork mince in Chinese style stir fry In Chinese cuisine it's very common to start a vegetable stir fry with a bit of minced meat, typically pork, to give the dish a deeper flavor. To make a vegetarian version I usually just leave this out, but I've been wondering if something else would give a similar effect taste-wise.

Typical meat replacements like tofu or seitan don't work here because they focus on providing the texture and protein of meat, but not so much the flavor.

It seems like you are primarily interested in reproducing the umami of the meat.  Tofu does in fact have glutamic acids that will add to the umami; just make sure to thoroughly dry the tofu (extracting as much liquid as possible) before use.  In addition, you can use minced mushrooms, as Stephie mentioned in the comments.  You can also experiment with adding Bragg's Liquid Aminos, since it has a lot of umami but has less than half the sodium of soy sauce.

Keep in mind, though, that the meat in the original recipe is also relied upon for its fat; tofu does have some fat, but not as much as meat, and it's unlikely to render out during the initial fry.  Therefore, I would suggest adding 7 grams of fat (e.g., vegetable oil) for every 100g of meat you are replacing.

You could try pressed bean curd. If you chop it up, it might have a similar texture, and it does provide protein. It comes in plain and seasoned kinds that you can try.


Why is my homemade pork sausage rubbery? We just made some pork sausage and fryed up a patty to check the spicing.  The taste is fine but the patty is rubbery in texture.  What did we do wrong or not add to the mix?

You may have ground your pork too fine (or over mixed it) -- you want to use a relatively coarse grind with a lot of fat when you are making pork sausage.

Part of the problem I've encountered with rubbery meat is the terrible quality you find at the stores such as Hy-Vee, Walmart, Target, Aldi, etc.  They are using pork that is mixed with 11% "added ingrdients".  Most of it is made by Hormel.  I hate the stuff.  It won't brown right, tastes salty, and has a nasty, overprocessed texture that is rubbery.

I now buy pork at the Fareway grocery store - they use only all natural meat and it cookes up a lot better. The local meat locker (where farmers have their animals processed) also has much better quality pork - not pumped full of salt water.  The texture and flavor is delicious.

I used Hormel ground pork last night and the results were horrible - it had the texture of a cheap turkey roast, rubbery and grainy.  I wrote to Hormel and told them how bad the product was.  They responded by telling me they're sending free coupons. Puke!


Can soured raw milk be used to make yogurt? I have a large quantity of raw milk at my disposal, and am trying to find creative ways to use it.

Various web sites (here, here, and many others) have suggested that raw milk, even (perhaps even especially) after it begins to sour, can be used to make yogurt.

I've also heard the claim that sour milk is too acidic for yogurt cultures to grow.

Which is it?

Please note this question is specifically about soured raw milk, not spoiled milk, which is not edible. And please assume that the sour raw milk being used is free from harmful bacteria and pathogens and is safe to consume.  I'm not asking about food safety here, I'm asking: Is it possible to make yogurt from sour raw milk?

Based on your edit to your question, and with some additional thought, I'm going to answer this differently.

Soured milk differs from what you called "spoiled" milk in only one way- what wild bacteria reproduced faster: bacteria with tasty waste products or bacteria with disgusting waste products. With that in mind the major potential problems with using this milk to make yogurt are:

If the wild bacteria crowd out the yogurt culture
If the yogurt culture is not able to work because the milk is too sour.

In making homemade yogurt neither of these should be a problem.

In making all yogurt- including yogurt made from raw milk in commercial settings- the milk is heated to 190F for some time to denature albumin proteins and to partially sterilize the milk so that the yogurt cultures will have the upper hand. This means that all yogurt has been pasteurized and the fact that the milk was purchased raw is a red herring. This will make problem #1 above unlikely. Not heating the milk will leave you with @rumtscho's answer- you can only guess what you might get by incubating it.

As for problem #2. Milk proteins begin to coagulate at a Ph of about 4.6. The target Ph for yogurt is usually 4.5. When making yogurt, Streptococcus thermophilus brings the milk down to about 5.0 and Lactobacillus Acidophilus takes over and brings it down to 4.5. Lactobacillus Acidophilus is active well below this Ph. Therefore, if your milk is not already thickened then it is, by definition, not too acidic for the yogurt culture to work.

Unfortunately, as the commenter from your first link indicated, heat combined with acid will cause the milk to prematurely denature. If you milk is too sour already then heating it to 190F may cause the protein to precipitate out and you would have paneer (sort of). I looked but was unable to find at what Ph milk proteins will denature at 190F.

http://www.foodsci.uoguelph.ca/dairyedu/yogurt.html
http://food.oregonstate.edu/learn/milk.html

If you can strictly verify the handling of your raw milk to have confidence that it has not been contaminated with harmful bacteria, and if the milk has only slightly soured so that it can be heated without breaking, you should be able to successfully make yogurt out of it knowing that the texture might vary from that of your starter.

The answers here are kind of frustrating.  The sour milk is not bad.  But let's start with a history lesson.

Before pasteurization, raw milk was, obviously, the only option available. And without a refrigerator,  this was a far more perishable product that we're used to today. In this sort of context, it simply does not make sense to discard everything you can't drink while it's still fresh--you need to come up with ways to deal with milk that's turned. Possibly the simplest approach here is a product called "clabber" or "clabbered milk": leave raw milk alone, and hope for spontaneous fermentation. This will yield a product that is slightly tangier than most commercially available yogurt, and has a far wider variety of probiotics (and likely in greater number) than what you can find in the store.

And it's fermentation that you're looking for: once the milk picks up the right bacteria (primarily lactobacillus), it will grow wonderfully, crowding out and eventually killing off all the other nasties, and thickening itself in the process. The point here to recognize is that this is a food preservation process: allowing the milk ferment will grow one kind of bacteria (the good guys) and kill another (the bad guys).

The main difference between clabber and yogurt is that the former is spontaneously fermented by wild bacteria in the air, whereas yogurt is a cultured product, meaning that some of a previous successful batch of yogurt is added to the milk to provide a starter colony of bacteria to jumpstart the fermentation process. Along the way, someone found that this would improve their success rate and consistency of product, and it became standard practice.

So, no, soured milk is not necessarily harmful.  You could make yogurt out of soured raw milk.  The only potential problem would be the taste would be more sour.  Some people love that taste, and for others, it's acquired.

I have a gallon of raw milk that I did not get to and it has soured.  I poured off some of the cream (another thing that is impossible to do with homogenized milk) and will use it in a beef stroganoff recipe for dinner.  The milk still has some cream left, I was thinking about making yogurt actually, or trying ricotta cheese.  If I make ricotta cheese (another curds from whey thing), I will save the whey for bread making or similar.


Is there any difference between chopped and crushed garlic in cooking? Often recipes say to chop garlic, but I usually cheat and just crush it as it's quicker. Is there any difference in doing this? Will it have much of an effect on the flavour of the dish?

Chopped and crushed garlic have different flavors in dishes. The smaller the pieces the garlic is made into (with crushed being super small), the more pungent and bitter the flavors.  Several food bloggers have reported their experiments on testing the differences.

This sounds surprising, but members of the Allium genus (which includes garlic, onion, leek ...) are booby trapped: around the cells there is a liquid that when combined with a chemical from the cell's interior creates a series of nasty sulfur compounds.  The more the cells are damaged and exposed to oxygen by cutting or crushing, the more of these sulfur compounds are generated.

If the garlic is fried, the size of the pieces also determines how much of it browns.  For crushed garlic this can happen before one has a chance to add more liquid to the dish, essentially burning the garlic and imparting a bitter taste to the dish.

Same taste. And you keep your utensils clean ;-)


Are the leftovers from making stock good for anything? Having made stock and strained it, can the meat and vegetables boiled up in the stock be used for anything, or should they go in the bin?

The veggies aren't very palatable after such a long simmering (unless you like celery paste, I guess), but if you've thrown a whole chicken in the resulting meat is wonderfully tender and flavorful.

Made stock last night with chicken carcass and assorted vegetable and fruit peelings. Used an InstantPot for 2 hours at high pressure. Separated and saved the clear stock.
Looked at the remaining solids, and reached for the hand blender. Added water and pureed the lot, including the bones. Gave it another 15 minutes at high pressure in the InstantPot.
A thick, smooth, opaque, dark brown, strongly smelling paste came out. Picture a concentrated sauce, or a liquidy pate. Judging from the aroma, probably too much orange peel this time around :)


How much turkey should I plan per person? For the holidays, I plan to do a turkey, but I need to order in advance since the place I'm buying from is popular and usually sells out in pre-orders. Estimates of how much turkey to plan per person vary widely across the internet; does anyone have authoritative data on how much turkey to buy? There's clearly a difference between a small child and a hefty eater, for example, and I'd imagine the meat-to-bone ratio changes as the turkey gets larger or smaller. I also want to plan to have leftovers, since my family enjoys leftover turkey sandwiches. Does it matter how many sides I plan to make?

Note that this is for Americans at Thanksgiving, so portion sizes are intended to be larger than normal.

Unless you're feeding 20, chances are you want the smallest bird they have. It doesn't really matter if you should have 1 lb per person or 1.5 if you have 8 people and their smallest bird is 12 pounds - and I'm willing to bet that's the case.

That said, I generally allow 1 lb per person and don't count the smallest children (say, haven't started school yet.) I also tend to send a lot of leftovers home with other people. Our feasts are very veggie heavy, but as I mentioned above you may have less control over this than you think.

You should first know how many people you are inviting for the Thanksgiving, are they five or ten people, are there three or six children. Secondly how are you going to prepare the events; are you going to cook a variety of food such that your guest will have turkey, pumpkin, potatoes, bread, pie, drinks, dessert etc.
If you will prepare that many variety, then the guest will likely try all of them, meaning they will just eat enough of turkey, pumpkin, potatoes etc.
Turkey will probably be the special part of the Thanksgiving. Many people especially with their family and friends in mind, would normally prepares one full turkey. I suggest you buy one big turkey for this event also considering how many guest you will invite. Also cook it well enough so that people will be satisfied with the turkey even before they get to eat it.


Can white wine vinegar be used instead of white vinegar? Recipe calls for white vinegar

Can  I use white wine vinegar diluted to 5 %  acidity?

Generally, vinegars that aren't central to the application (e.g. Balsamic Vinegar in in a Balsamic Reduction) are interchangeable within the same acidity level. Every kind of vinegar has a different distinct flavor and color, so any substitutions will affect the final dish, but not necessarily negatively. Distilled (regular white) vinegar ranges from 5-8% acidity, is colorless and pretty flavorless. Since white wine vinegar has very little color and is mildly flavored, and your vinegar is 5% acidity, it should be a fine substitution.

No, because white vinegar is distilled with water and chemicals. White wine vinegar is a stronger substance and will damage the sterilizer. White vinegar has a strong and sour taste to it, while white wine vinegar is sour and used as a dressing for salads.


Chocolate: difference between "Cocoa Mass" and "Cacao"? There isn't much diary products in my country. So cheese, double/heavy cream, baking chocolate etc are hard to find.

Some shops that specialize in baking sells this relatively expensive "72% cocoa mass" chocolate. While the supermarket has cheaper, baking chocolate that has "100% cacao". I don't remember the brand but it is something like this one.

How do i compare "100% cacao" to "72% cocoa mass"? Are they the same, and hence the 100% one has higher cocoa/cacao content?

Yep, cocoa and cacao are the same thing.

The 72% has sugar making up the rest of the mass. The description on amazon actually mentions that it's 27% sugar and 43.5% cocoa butter. The rest is cocoa solids, the chocolate-y stuff. As you say, that particular brand is pretty expensive; it's also pretty popular and well-regarded. Since it has plenty of sugar in it, you can use it for pretty much anything, including things like coatings, or even just eat some.

The 100% is unsweetened (there's no room for any sugar in there) so it's really only usable for things like baking, where you'll add some sugar. It's unlikely to be pleasant to eat on its own.

For what it's worth, usually in English you'll hear cacao only when referring to the overall cacao seeds and their use as a component of chocolate. It's not common in non-culinary contexts. For example, we'll say "cocoa powder" not "cacao powder".

In my country cacao refers to the cold pressed stuff where cocoa means the beans have been roasted. But it's different all over.


A simple way to make crushed ice? For many of my favourite cold drinks I need crushed ice. That is, thousands of small pieces of ice, not 3 big ice cubes. Is there an easy way to make crushed ice without expensive equipment?

Put ice cubes in a clean tea towel and bash them with a rolling pin works for me.

Put the ice cubes in your hand or towel (whichever you prefer) and bash it with the back of a big or medium spoon.


Identify a round kitchen tool with perforated and hinged metal leaves My old roommate left this in my kitchen before moving out.  I can't remember what it is or used for.  Is this part of a grill?  Does it go in my sink to trap things that shouldn't go down the drain?  What is it used for?

It's a steamer basket.

If you pull the leaves apart it will look like this:

Then you put it into a saucepan like this:

You put water into the saucepan (the legs at the bottom keep the bottom of the basket clear of the water). Then you can use it for steaming vegetables, dumplings, etc. You put a lid onto the saucepan to keep the steam in.

It does look like a steamer basket as the other answers mentioned.

If the need comes to take it out from the pan/pot after the water is boiling, I'd personally suggest to use a tool with a hook, e.g. a soup ladle:

connect the hook to the center ring of the steamer basket;
lift it off a few centimeters over the water;
let it drain for a few seconds before attempting to move its contents to a new recipient/container (or taking it out completely).

If the steamer has no ring to attach the hook to, you may use the soup ladle and a spoon to scoop out its contents (to prevent overcooking), avoiding to push down the basket petals.

A couple of other possible usages:

rinse light food with water (similarly to a light strainer) if placed in a large pan/container as Nick depicted (the rinsing water can be saved for other purposes, e.g. for watering plants);
cook large pasta (e.g. fusilli or conchiglie) with it, i.e. similarly to a pasta cooker:


Fruit Tea- Tastes Sour? I've been trying to get into teas with more fruity flavors (pieces of fruit in the tea or tea based on fruit pieces) and I've noticed that a large majority of them have unpleasantly sour notes. Am I brewing incorrectly or is something else supposed to be added into the tea?

EDIT: It's teas that already have fruit pieces in them, and doesn't appear to be a particular fruit of any sort. I just steep tea leaves in a glass for a few minutes, usually with near-boiling water, then drink.

Your question seems to assume that the sour flavor is not how it's supposed to be. But that may simply be how the tea you've bought always tastes. If it's really sour, maybe it's just not a good tea; it could also be that you simply don't prefer this kind of tea. You could try to cover it up with a bit of sugar. But failing that, I think this is just not the tea for you. There are tons and tons of fruit-flavored teas out there, so I'm sure you can find some different ones to try.

If the ingredients include rose hips,  it may be those.


Boiled Ribs left in water overnight, parents say its fine to eat So my dad boiled ribs this morning, and it was left on the counter for like 14 hours and I said its probably not safe to eat cause they say after 2 hours you shouldn't eat it, but they said cause it was in water and  not exposed outside of the water its still good and I find that to be hard to believe.

Well, your parents are largely right and also quite wrong on two different things.

Boiling is fairly effective at killing most of the bacteria and all the viruses that can cause "food poisoning", but will not denature some of the toxins produced by some bacteria that can cause illness after consuming. Clostridium species spores are not inactivated by boiling, but are not waterborne and only found in anaerobic conditions such as in the gut of animals. If your dad had spilled gut contents over the the meat before cooking, I would be a little worried, otherwise, not so much.

Assuming that the meat and other ingredients were not contaminated with these bacteria to a significant level before cooking, boiled stocks should be fine on the counter for a overnight after cooking if they are left undisturbed and covered. Depending on the volume in which they were boiled and the ambient temperature, I would be surprised if the boiled meats were below 60 C (generally considered the temperature at which waterborne enteric pathogens are killed) after 2 hours, and as such would be too hot to place in the fridge.

However, they are wrong about the air exposure bit - if the meat/water was exposed (i.e. not in a covered container) to the air overnight, there is a good chance that there will now be some bacteria and yeasts happily growing in the stock produced by boiling meat. Most of these bacteria will not cause illness, but many can cause "food poisoning" and should be treated with caution.


Can I cut up chicken and store it in the fridge until the use-by date? I often buy ~600g of chicken from the supermarket, then cut it all up in one go and use it in two different meals a few days apart. Half I'll cook immediately and the other half I'll put in an airtight container and store in the fridge (then use 2-4 ish days later). The best-before date on the packaging is usually 1-1.5 weeks from purchase, so I've always figured this was ok (and haven't gotten sick yet...). However, most advice online says to not keep raw poultry in the fridge longer than 1-2 days.

Is doing this unsafe? Does the best before date get invalidated when I remove it from the packaging and cut it up on the bench?

In general, assuming that the date on the package still applies after the package has been opened is not safe.

If an item is packaged under special conditions (sterile, low oxygen, the strange diaper thing, etc.), or treated after packaging (irradiated, pasteurized, etc.) then the time from when you break the seal on the package becomes more significant than the 'best by' date on the package.

As a comparison, we have bottled liquids like juice or various 'milk' (plant milks or UHT treated cow's milk) -- they might have a 'best by date' that's many months from packaging, but they'll often have a warning to use it within a given number of days from opening it.

If you buy cryovaced packages of meat, it will have some sort of a date (eg. 'sell by' or 'use or freeze by') on it that might be up to a month from when it was packaged ... but once you open the package, you should treat it like any other raw meat that hasn't been specially packaged.

Now, is there a bit of a safety factor built into the normal 1-2 day advice?  I would hope so ... to deal with the time that you're walking round the store with the chicken in your basket, time to get it home, etc.  So it's possible that it might be a little longer than the 1-2 days, so 2-4 days is likely acceptable provided that you've held at the proper temperature, you cook it thoroughly and it wasn't showing other problems signs (smells, slime, etc.) and you're not cooking for immune compromised people.

Much past that, and you're just compounding your risk.  Now, there might be extenuating circumstances (eg, you're trapped at home with no way to resupply because of mass quarantines) on why you'd be willing to take the risk, but in general, I wouldn't recommend consuming the chicken from a package that was opened a week ago, even if it was within the date on the original package.

Yes it is safe. Using proper handling and refrigeration, such things are done all the time.


How does the food industry know the expiration date? I always have this question in mind whenever I see the EXP date on different products.  I wonder how they can know a chocolate bar will spoil after 1 year or 6 months, and why they have such longer shelf life time compared to homemade chocolate bars, for example.

Just to clarify:

"Expiration dates" (or sometimes "Best if used by" dates) are the dates when a product may no longer be of high quality.  It is not a safety indicator.  It is a quality indicator, and it is just a guideline.

Companies determine expiration dates during storage studies or stability tests.  More detail can be found here.

The reason why manufactured food items often last longer than home-prepared items is that companies add ingredients to prolong shelf life.  This is simply for economic reasons.  You could add the same ingredients, but it is often not necessary because of the scale of home cooking.

I assume they are doing lot of laboratory analysis and testing and experiment whilst preparing the industrial recipes.

They will test the product a different dates to see how well it behaves,  check if there are molds, pathogens ... ie. if it is safe to eat.

Depending on what they want, they will either change the recipes to get a required expiration date ( I want my cookies to last 3 months) or change the expiration date (those cookies last 1 month)


Is it safe to thaw chicken to have it brined and then freeze again? I didn't realize that I thawed so much chicken to brine.  I don't need half of it so is it safe to freeze the half portion again?  It was thawed in salt water in room temperature for couple of hours and then put back into the fridge for one day for longer brining.

In this case I would err on the side of safety and advise against refreezing the chicken for one reason - it was thawed in water for a couple of hours. Had it been thawed in the refrigerator it would be perfectly safe to do so.
It is well documented that it is safe to refreeze both raw and cooked foods as long as they have been kept out of the danger zone. With some foods, however, there may be a loss in terms of taste and texture.
People refreeze food all the time without even realizing it. Here, in the US, 'fresh' meats are most often shipped to grocery stores in a frozen state and then thawed in the meat case or thawed before placing in the case. Chicken is most definitely one of those foods. Consumers buy it 'fresh" out of the case and take it home and (re)freeze it.
From  The New York Times :

The notion that you cannot refreeze thawed foods “is a myth,” said Tina Hanes, a registered dietitian with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. Any raw or cooked food that has been thawed can be refrozen as long as it was thawed properly — in the refrigerator, not on the counter — and hasn’t spoiled. That includes raw meat, poultry, fish and seafood, Ms. Hanes said.
“It’s one of the most popular questions we get on our hotline,” she said, “but it is safe to refreeze raw meat, as long as it’s not spoiled.”

In this case, I would suggest that you cook the extra chicken, cool it quickly, and then freeze it for later use.

Short answer is no because of something called cross contamination. Never ever re-freeze something that has been unfrozen.
Have a wonderful day.


How to tint powdered sugar (icing sugar)? I'm looking for a way to tint powdered sugar without wetting it.

I know that there are powdered food colors but I think that part of what activates the color is the fact that they get wet when you add them to an icing or batter.

I'm also afraid that they're so concentrated that, even if I get the color I want, I'll end up dyeing the mouths of the people who eat the cookies/cupcakes/whatever that I dust with the powdered sugar.

Is blending/processing colored sanding sugar and adding a bit of cornstarch an option? Will it ever mimic actual powdered sugar?

Edit: I've tried the above (sanding sugar with cornstarch) and it does not make a good solution.

From my experience coloring regular sugar with ordinary food coloring, drying it, and then crushing it in a mortar yields good results. Be careful to not use too much food coloring though, or it will never dry properly! I haven't tried to see if cornstarch might save it, but as long as you do the drying properly and don't overdo the amount of color it shouldn't be necessary.

As for the powdered food coloring option you suggested, I found a source that said they don't have to be wet to take effect, but it doesn't say anything about whether the eaters will be colored =)

Taken from Edible Glitter

To make colored sugar:

1/4 cup granulated sugar (not brown, not confectioners, castor sugar or superfine sugar is ok)
1/2 teaspoon of liquid food coloring

1: Mix the sugar and food coloering

2: spread out on parchment paper (I added this step)

3: bake at 350 F for 10 minutes.

4: store in air tight container

you can also do the same with Salt if you want to make colored salt. If you use castor sugar or superfine sugar, it won't have that same white background that confectioners provides as a backdrop for the coloring, but you could put confectioners down on your treat first, then put the colored sug


Can one be "taste blind" to the sweetness of stevia? I bought some stevia powder today and tried to make waffles with it, replacing the sugar. However, no matter how much stevia I poured into the dough (carefully adding tea spoon by tea spoon, tasting it each time), I couldn't really taste any sweetness.

Other family members said the dough was already very sweet.

Then I tried a pinch of stevia powder purely, and it tasted slightly bitter at first and minimally sweet after a few seconds.

From the description, stevia should be magnitudes sweeter than sugar though.

Is it possible that some people don't have the necessary taste receptors that would react on stevia and are therefore "taste blind" to its sweetness? If so, are there any numbers or guesses how many people are unable to taste it? I could not find any online resources about that, but it would be useful to know how likely e.g. a guest will not be able to taste it.

Additionally, might there be any "workarounds", like adding something to make the stevia sweetness available?

Update: I just checked the product I bought again, it's actually a mixture (proportions not mentioned in the ingredients list) of maltodextrin and steviol glycosides.

There's some variation in how people respond to Stevia:

From 2013: Multiple genes manage how people taste sweeteners

  another study recently published in the journal Chemosensory Perception, Allen had 122 participants taste two stevia extracts, RebA -- Rebaudioside A -- and RebD -- Rebaudioside D. Stevia is a South American plant that has served as a sweetener for centuries, according to the researchers. While the plant is becoming more popular as a natural non-nutritive sweetener, consumers have reported a variety of tastes from stevia-based sweeteners, including bitterness.

No mention of people not tasting the sweet at all, but it is a big gene pool.
In me, the stuff is a slow,tight binder. It takes a while for the sweet to come on once I've eaten the stevia, and it takes a minute or two for the sweet to wear off after I've had it.

I get no sweet taste from stevia at all. I get a repulsive bitterness i find the product has no sweetness. Food and drinks with it in are vile.


How does lentils' nutritional profile change in germinating lentils in water? By the term "terminating lentils in water" I mean a similar thing to sprouting thing such as alfalfa in water. The crux difference is that lentils do not really sprout, they germinate because their core is removed.

Wikipedia here states that:

  Dried lentils can also be sprouted by
  leaving in water for several days.
  This changes their nutrition profile.

so what does it mean? I am always looking for getting most out of bucks but sprouted beans taste good so trying with lentils. I like lentils due to their high protein content. I am unsure what happens to lentils in sprouting. Does sprouting just break some starch to smaller carbon chains if so what does it mean in terms of protein content? Some energy is surely lost in sprouting as the bad water is thrown away. But how do the nutritional values change?

[Update]

The word sprouting is misleading in discussing lentils. The core of lentils is removed so the process is substantially different to sprouting things such as alfalfa where they totally transform the form. The transformation of lentils is because the seeds react to water like after winter, bacteria breaks the long compressed chains of protein to more accessible forms such as amino acids which people would anyway break, saving energy for people in the breakdown process (similar thing in meat heating where long protein chains get shorter). The generated smelling stuff is bacterial junk due to the process. According to my friends, experts in the field, many questions considering taste, fermentation, sprouting and the protein breakdown are unsolved.

I cannot unfortunately access some current research papers on the issue, here, but there is a promising paper "Nutritional assessment of raw, heated, and germinated lentils" by G Urbano (1995). The technical jargon for this problem is apparently germinated lentils. I don't use the term sprouting to stress the uniqueness of the process, not having the core. So how is the nutritional profile different between raw lentils and germinated lentils in water?

I do not have any information on the change itself, but neither does that claim in Wikipedia.

However, I would refer you to the discussion page of lentil's and read over the community's discussion regarding the article's nutrition claims generally. They are not pleased with many of the claims, and have been active in moderating it. Also of note, the claim has no citation.

Upon my reading, I would not take for granted that the minor act of sprouting in water changes nutritional value substantially, especially as compared to deep-frying them or other processes.

That said, you might refer to the general sprouting article:

  These nutrients are essential for human health. To clarify, the nutritional changes upon germination & sprouting have been summarized below. Chavan and Kadam (1989) concluded that - “The desirable nutritional changes that occur during sprouting are mainly due to the breakdown of complex compounds into a more simple form, transformation into essential constituents and breakdown of nutritionally undesirable constituents.”

It goes on to explain that, according to studies done by Chavan & Kadam (1989), Cuddeford (1989) and Shippard (2005), changes during the sprouting process result in:

Increases in protein quality
Increases in crude fiber content
Increases in essential fatty acids
Increases in vitamin content

The article cites a claim from the Shipard (2005) study: "“When seeds are sprouted, minerals chelate or merge with protein, in a way that increases their function.”

I can speak from personal experience that I sprout ALL beans prior to eating them. I "germinate" lentils, too (LOL.) I do this precisely because of the article referenced above! In the process of bean germination, the chemical/sugar that causes most gas and bloating in humans disappears! This is a big deal to me.
Soak overnight until little bubbles appear on the surface of the water. Transfer to a colander and rinse well. Spread them along the sides of the colander and place on the counter. They will develop a pleasant, unusual smell. Rinse them twice a day until their "tails" form - time to eat them! Raw or cooked. If they develop an unpleasant smell, rinse very, VERY well until it is completely gone. If you can't get rid of it, do NOT eat them.


What should I use for old recipes that call for 'buttermilk'? Old-school buttermilk is the milk left after churning butter and is not today's 'cultured buttermilk'.

A recent answer to the question about what to use for 'sweet milk' mentions :

  Buttermilk was what was left after the soured milk had been churned and the butter removed. There were always small particles of butter left in it

For years I had assumed that skim milk was the best substitute (as it's milk with the fat removed), but this suggests that it's both soured and has a little bit of fat left (but not even close to homogenized).

Is there something roughly equivalent available today, or something that I can make to approximate old-school buttermilk without churning my own butter**?

** It also hints that today's 'sweet cream' butter is not the same as butter in the old days.  I don't know if 'cultured butter' might be closer, or a blend of cultured & sweet cream butters.

Clarification: I am not looking for a replacement for modern 'cultured buttermilk'.  I'm quite aware of the substitution for today's buttermilk when baking of using milk plus an acidic liquid, or of thinning yogurt.  It's possible that this is also a good substitute for historical buttermilk; if so, please acknowledge in your answer that you're aware that they're different.  If you've spent time on a dairy farm, please let us know if the dairy was using fresh or soured milk for their butter (because everything that I've found said that it was made with soured milk historically).

From The Settlement Cookbook (1945), in the discussion of dairy products (pp. 45-56):

  Cream is the fat that rises to the top of the milk if left standing.  For Whipping Cream, see page 498.
  Skim Milk is the milk left over after cream has been skimmed off.
  Buttermilk is the liquid left over after cream is churned into butter.
  ...
  Cultured Sour Cream and Buttermilk may be obtained from most milk dealers.

In this case, it doesn't specifically mention that soured milk is used, but I've seen other references from the late 1800s to early 1900s that said that butter was made from soured milk.  (and one of them would occasionally say 'new milk' instead of 'milk', suggesting that their use of 'milk' was sour milk or buttermilk.   I suspect that before refrigeration, it's quite possible that milk left to separate into cream would sour by the time it was finished.  They do mention in that same section:

  Sour Milk is valuable in cooking and may be obtained by keeping milk (preferably raw milk) undisturbed in a shallow covered pan at a temperature of 90° to 100°F. until it becomes thick and clabbered.  If it sours too slowly it becomes bitter.

Given the variabilities in "buttermilk" from place to place and time to time, you should get sufficiently equivalent results by substituting modern cultured buttermilk. That's the job it was designed to do.

Recipes from the early 19th century and before are notoriously vague. They were generally written more as reminders of something you already knew through experience, rather than detailed instructions for creating it from scratch. Quantities and temperatures were much harder to control, and so recipes basically assumed you'd recognize a dough with enough liquid or a sufficiently-roasted quail. (One of my favorite instructions from an 18th century cookbook: "Cook until it is enough".)

Given those wide margins, you should find that simply using cultured buttermilk will make the recipe work. It's true that it will lack the tiny bits of butter present in "true" buttermilk, but there isn't enough to have a radical effect on the result. The really important parts (dairy protein, water, acidity) are present, in about the same quantities they would be in true buttermilk.

You'd certainly notice the difference if you were to just drink it straight. If that's what you want, you're just going to have to find somebody who makes it, or do it yourself. I've found it's often available at the kinds of farmers markets that insist on local producers. Personally, I find it nasty, but YMMV.

So if you're trying to revive an old recipe, just start with commercial buttermilk. You're going to have to tweak it from there anyway. If it needs richness, add butter, but probably only a teaspoon per cup.

Buttermilk is usually up to 50% lactose, hence the sweet stickiness.
Any manufactured/packet equivalent is not really equivalent, so don't bother.
Try making butter from fresh unpasteurised grass-fed milk, it'll be genuine.
I worked for 9 years in a large dairy factory. Got sick of the smell of milk!


What spike is this? Identifying some utensils I moved into a new home and found these spikes left behind in different drawers in the kitchen. I assume they are for cooking, but they are not items that I have come across in my limited culinary experience. Can you help me identify them and maybe suggest a recipe that uses them?

In the background is a large spike-stand.

The foreground, is a bunch of six individual spikes with two 90 degree bends, and a sharp point on the long side.

They may have been supplied with the oven (gas stove, electric oven) or the combination microwave/grill, or maybe have nothing to do with them at all (or cooking in general) and may have nothing to do with each other.

I have a definitive answer. I found a manual to the combination microwave oven, which is a Samsung C108STBC or similar.
The accessories to this oven (which can grill and/or microwave) include:

a roasting spit (also referred to as "roasting stand") which is the larger spike.

The roasting spit is a convenient way of barbecuing a chicken, as the meat does not have to be turned over. It can be used for grill combination cooking.

the skewers that fit into a plastic "coupler" that I found in another cupboard drawer (it looks a little like a cotton reel and I would have never picked it as something to be put in an oven). Together, the skewers are mounted vertically in a circle to form a "multi-spit".

Using the multi-spit with 6 kebab skewers you can easily barbecue meat, poultry, fish, vegetables (like onions, peppers or courgettes) and fruit which have been cut into pieces.

This looks like a divider stands for your bowls inside the drawers.


Can a Toddler Eat Food Cooked With Honey in it? One of the recommendations for enabling a young child to pick up some of the more slippery foods is to coat them with bread crumbs or graham cracker crumbs.  While looking for graham crackers at the store, we found honey graham crackers.  Considering that exposure to honey can cause infant botulism, I was wondering if the honey graham crackers are safe for him to eat?

That bit of the Wikipedia article is unsourced, but Health Canada confirms and says that spores may be present even in pasteurized honey.  (I never would have thought that.)

I wouldn't expect the cooking of the crackers to damage the spores significantly more than the pasteurization.  I can't say for sure that there will be live spores in the crackers, but it's a definite possibility and if you're concerned about this then you should not risk it.

Since the toxin producing spores need a moist environment to germinate and cooking destroys any residual toxin that may have existed in the honey prior to processing, I would say honey graham crackers are safe for kids.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulism


How to get rid of plastic and residual weird taste from food stored in tupperware? When I store leftovers in plastic tupperware and eat them later, I sometimes taste plastic. I do have some glass pyrex containers and they don't leave this aftertaste, but I would like to be able to use my plastic tupperware since I have so much of it.

Is there a special way to clean plastic tupperware? I tried handwashing and after it's dried, putting newspaper in there to absorb stuff.

On another note, it seems like some of my plastic tupperware absorb some food material onto itself. Kind of like forming a seasoning on a cast iron pan, except this is a waxy-food-weird-tasting film on the insides of the tupperware. Anyway to get rid of that? Soaping doesn't seem to work. This film is way too waxy.

There are many different types of plastic, but it sounds like your tupperware is made of the porous kind, which will hold on to food particles and explains your note.  Heat will expedite the leaching of chemicals into your food, so you should use the containers only for storage, and heat up and eat food from an actual plate or bowl.  If you have to continue using them, you could always wrap your food in paper to minimize contact.

Here's some more info

You can buy Preseasoned Bowls from Dollartree. It helps with the taste. They preseason them for 3 full days before hand so you know what you will taste.


Does chlorine evaporate from water when cooking? Most municipal water supplies in the U.S. include noticeable levels of chlorine or chloramine added to kill microbes, and often adds an objectionable chemical smell.

Does chlorine evaporate when cooking?  If so, does it require boiling temperatures?  Does it become more concentrated if the water is boiled down? Does it matter when water is added as an ingredient, such as in bread dough?

Water treatment often uses chlorine or chloramine to kill germs or algae. If you are smelling it it's more likely to be Chloramine than Chlorine. Chlorine will dissipate from water over time naturally, but boiling for 20 minute will drive it out. Chloramine will also dissipate naturally, but in a much longer time frame, and would take over a day to boil out.

So boiling water will get rid of chlorine but not chloramine (at least not in a useful time frame), and boiling will concentrate other minerals in the water which is usually undesirable. It will also de-oxygenate the water, making it flat. Flat water isn't great for cooking - compare the flavor of a cup of tea or coffee brewed with flat water as opposed to fresh and you'll see what I mean.

Your best option for water treatment chemical removal at home is an activated charcoal filter unless you want to invest in a UV treatment system, which would seem to be a bit OTT. You could also use a reducing agent from a brewery supply company, but if all you want is some fresh tasting and smelling water then the filter is your best option.

Homebrewing SE has a thread on this which is worth reading.

You can use as ascorbic acid to remove chlorine and chloramine. The cheapest and most useful form is called Ball brand fruit fresh powder found in all canning supply aisles. It is a fantastic product to use as a substitute for citrus juice to prevent browning and is completely tasteless. Benefit is you get a megadose of vitamin C!


Will my results differ when using a sourdough starter vs poolish for pizza dough? I've read about differing techniques for getting the best flavor, texture, and chewiness in my pizza crust. One of the commonly suggested routes is to include a sourdough starter as part of the process, but I also find suggestions to use a poolish pre-ferment. From what I understand the main difference in technique is that a sourdough starter typically uses simply flour and water(introducting natural lactobacillus), where as poolish you would also include off the shelf bakers yeast. The sourdough starter also seems to be an ingredient that you build up over days, or even longer, where as the poolish you make in less than a day.

What I haven't been able to determine, is what if any differences will I find in my pizza dough using one product over the other?  Would the pizza crust taste different, look different, rise different, or exhibit other differing characteristics between the two processes? My ultimate goal is Neapolitan margherita pizza in a home oven).

Three things:

Most traditional Neapolitan pizza dough does not use a pre-ferment - poolish, biga, or sourdough starter.  Not to say it may not be good, but it wouldn't the way most are made.
Sourdough starters change their flavor profiles by age and by geographical region.  In general, I would expect a bit more of a 'tang' from the sourdough starter than from the poolish.
Sourdough starters usually don't rise as much - commercial yeast is just in general stronger than its wild counterparts.  So a dough made with a sourdough starter may not rise as well.

Between the two, I would prefer poolish over sourdough for a more traditional taste.  However, I'd be more likely to try something like a cold starter and super slow rise like a Pain à l'Ancienne in order to promote more natural sugars in the bread which would result in better browning.  The primary challenge with Neapolitan pizza dough is the lack of heat in a home oven.  Part of the thing that heat does is the browning - hence the recipe that promotes better browning but with traditional ingredients.

Sourdough sounds nice.  I use the cold rise and a blend of white, semolina, wheat flours and at least 8 hr cold rise.  The sour dough flavor increases over time in the fridge.  I do not mix oils or salt directly into the dough while it is in a cold rise. Instead it is kneaded into the dough afterward and the salt is allowed to diffuse from the outside in while in the fridge.

I use 500 degree F at top shelf in oven to get the reflection from the top of the oven while my cast iron pizza pan cooks on the bottom.  I get a thin 1mm crust, light inside, and gently brown/orange spotted whole milk mozzarella.

The Iron pan Lodge Mfg P14P3 Cast Iron Pizza Pan, 14 In


What is the authentic way to cook pierogi? I've been buying pre-packaged pierogi from Trader Joe's and local Polish delis. But I can't seem to get a straight or consistent answer on how you are supposed to cook them. Should you steam pierogi, boil them, or saute them with butter?

We have a Polish & Greek place by us (don't ask), and theirs are always boiled.  They are delicious that way (usually topped with bacon and sour cream)...

Personally I always grew up w/ them boiled then sauteed, which is my favorite.

This is how I make them!  This YouTube video is great, and easy to follow.  They taste amazing this way!

[Paraphrased Video] Saute first in butter, margarine or butter flavored spread as many as you can reasonably fit in the skillet on one layer. Add mushrooms, onions and seasonings as desired. Cover and steam for a few minutes at a time flipping as you check and stir. Brown gently and heat through, flipping every few minutes.


Unroasted coffee beans in the pantry, several years old: roast, toss, or other use? I just discovered a bag with about 100g of unroasted coffee beans in my pantry. I know they are at least four years old, and maybe 10 years. They've been in room temperature, dry storage the whole time. They look like beans, no mold, no ick.

I don't drink coffee any more. I want to get rid of these beans.

Should I give them to a coffee-drinking friend to roast?  Should I believe this question on whole coffee bean storage, that they are dead after a week, and throw them out? Is there another good use for coffee beans apart from making coffee?

After that long, the beans are almost certainly stale. While it's true that aged coffee is a thing, four to ten years is very long time to age coffee and the opinions on aged coffee seem to be mixed at best. I say toss 'em, although you could compost them or even use them for arts and crafts, I wouldn't recommend them for human consumption. It's doubtful that anyone would be harmed, seeing as caffeine is a natural pesticide and that would keep any 'ick' from developing, it probably wouldn't be a very enjoyable cup of coffee.

Coffee beans do not last longer than 10 days - personally, I would only use them within 5 days from opening the pack.

If you re-roast them, they will taste even more bitter than now. I would recommend avoid them for drinking or eating.

You can either grind them and use as compost or use it to create coffee scented candles (more information on eHow). Otherwise, toss them will be the best option!

Hope this helps.


Tricks to preserve chips (french fries)? Since I can remember I've always been crazy about chips (french fries for the Americans). As a result I always make too much when I make them for me. The problem I have and have always had is that they never seem to keep very well. The minute they cool off they become floury and stale. I find that this even happens with oven chips.

When I was a kid my mother used to reheat chips for me in the morning, melting some butter over it, which help rehydrate them somewhat and give them a bit of flavour, but this never really worked all too well.

What I'd like to know is if any of you know of some tricks to help preserve the chips? And also for interest's sake why this happens? This never seems to happen with baked potato or mash. They do lose some of their flavour sometimes, but not in the same way chips do.

Here is an excellent recipe by the guys over at Cooking Issues (and also a follow up report) with almost everything you'd ever want to know about chips.  That first recipe is supposedly good even after they've cooled off:

  Our standard fries are good even when cold.

Another option is to cook a lot of chips but stop after their first frying and freeze them; when you want to eat them, simply put the frozen chips into the fryer for the second frying.  This also has added benefits:

  Freezing acts like partial dehydration. When the frozen fries are finished, they liberate water freely, leading to rapid dehydration and good crust formation with a porous interior. Pre-frozen fries are crunchier than fresh and stay crisper longer after they are fried, but they tend toward hollow fry.

I think we should just eat them when they come out or heat them back up in water. You can just put them back in the chip pan or boil at a flame under them.


How do I clean off bread stuck to a non-flat / patterened cast iron pan? If this was a normal pan I'd be scraping it with a metal spatula right now, but it's a custom shaped pan (for making novelty shape bread/cupcakes). There are no flat spots, just a lot of grooves and curves. Should I be using a plastic or otherwise non-scratchy tool to scrape out one part at a time, or is there some other approach?

You should not use metal on cast iron or may damage the seasoning. It is best to clean it while still hot with a brush to get into the grooves and never use dish soap. Some coarse salt can help get rid of burnt on areas. Then reheat and coat with a bit of oil to protect the coating/seasoning. Patterned cast iron is difficult to season and may take more time developing a good seasoning.

Get it nice and hot, nearly red hot, the stuck things will seperate and then knock it a bit to loosen anything left. But for safety, use tongs and oven mits/kitchen towels to handle it while it's hot and make sure you have some place to put it when you take it off the burner, like the sink or ceramic/stone surface, that won't melt or scorch.
And as Jolene has mentioned, a short soak with a thorough drying and re-oiling should be fine for the finer grit.


Cooking thawed fish when it says cook from frozen? I have a pack of fish in the fridge that says cook from frozen, is it safe to cook now it has defrosted. I have had it for one day in the fridge

Yes it is safe.
You might have to adjust the cooking timing that is suggested though.

if only one day defrosting and kept in fridge it should be ok still to cook BUT any ODOUR emanating from it after rinsing it is a good guide. // Fresh fish Doesn't really smell "fishy"…