Some advice on knives So my parents got a knive set from St. Moritz, and wanted to give them to me. I'm an hobby cook, who just likes cooking simple stuff. I have barely any knowledge about knives or treating them, so here I am. I just had some questions about the knives, since I'm not sure if these are legit.

Here's a picture of the knife set:

Whenever I google the knives, I only get shady sites and stories about people being scammed. Is this brand legit? The booklet that's included says the entire set is worth around 730 euros, but I can't find anything online.

And assuming the knives are legit, are there any tips on treating/using them? Can these be put in the dishwasher when cleaning, or should I refrain from that?

I have a magnetic bar on my wall to store knives, but is it bad to put 'good' knives on them?

They are kind of blunt at the moment, but I have barely any experience sharpening them, should I bring them to a special shop or something?

Thank you for your help! Just figuring out how to use these, if they're legit to begin with.

"San Moritz" is the name of a line of culinary knives by the well recognized brand Messermeister. HOWEVER, the knives shown differ notably in design from that line and are likely a cheaply made product trying to capitalize on the name of that line.

Knives that are actually sold aboveboard (and perfectly worth the money) at ~$100 and higher apiece will usually be of a well recognized brand (eg Herder, Zwilling, K Sabatier, Chroma, Global...), or small-batch/handmade pieces bearing the name of the artisan or responsible workshop leader (eg Heimo Roselli, Jürgen Schanz, Sirou Kamou...).

Often (with a legit expensive knife), the steel type used will be clearly named (either by an industry standard name like VG10, 1.4116, 420B, AUS-8A .... or by a manufacturer-specific product name that describes a combination of steel and proprietary heat treatment method, eg Global "Cromova" ), and sometimes the hardness range will also be specified (eg 60-62HRC would be typical for VG10, 55-56HRC for 1.4116). A steel type and hardness do not signify the quality of the steel alone, since the way the steel is processed makes significant differences. A cheap knife is likely going to be of 420B at 55-56HRC, which CAN be a decent steel but often is not.

Out of the box sharpness is a highly brand dependent matter in all price ranges, for different reasons - a very cheap brand might not bother to sharpen well since it is costly (good abrasives are not that cheap), a high end maker assumes that the user is knowledgeable and will either know sharpening it or know a trusted local professional, and have their own idea of HOW they want it sharpened (there are tradeoffs to be made in sharpness vs durability, and different edges are best for different applications). BTW, for culinary knives, cutting behaviour is a combination of actual edge sharpness and blade geometry.

Over priced. Hot drop forged from a single steel. A better not great knife. Check the fork first. Can it lift  ham with out bending? Forks are needed for lifting meat. The blades. All should know how to use a stone to sharpen. Takes practice but not hard to do. Start with a dull flat file about 6 inch's. Then your medium stone flat. Then your fine stone. Next you Onix stone to polish the blade. When you can dry shave the hairs off your arm perfect for use.


Is ground beef that was in the refrigerator for two weeks and has turned brown still usable? I bought some ground beef around 2 weeks ago and used half of it, putting the rest in a freezer bag in my fridge (not the freezer).  It has since turned brown (not red, as when I bought it).

Is it safe to use to make hamburgers?

First, do not eat that. Regardless what color the beef is, two weeks is entirely too long to refrigerate ground beef. It is unsafe and should be thrown out. Raw ground beef only keeps in the refrigerator for 1-2 days.

Ignoring storage time, regarding color, brown meat is as safe to eat as red meat. As others have indicated it is simply oxidation occurring. Many grocery stores, at least in the USA, [used to?] blast and wrap their meats with carbon monoxide which imparts a bright pink color that lasts well beyond the shelf life of the meat. If you freeze hamburger or steak for a few months there's a good chance it will come out much browner than when you put it in. This is because some oxidation still occurs in the freezer, unless you hermetically sealed it somehow. Similarly, as long as you're within the 3-4 month freezer period for ground beef, you're OK.

I just called the meat department about the same problem, except mine was only in the refrigerator for two days but had already turned brown. I was going to cook a large pot of soup but wanted to be safe. He said, do not use it. The expiration date is today, and it is the 3rd day since I bought it, but had turned brown before today. I would never risk food poisoning! Not worth it! I am taking it back for a refund. You can't even trust expiration dates either but have to look at the meat and don't use if it is brown.


What kind of equipment do I need to turn dried chilli flakes into powder? What kind of equipment do I Need to turn dried chilli flakes into powder?

You need a bladed spice grinder, also branded as bladed coffee grinders.

To have a consistent result, sift the result.

If you want to turn flakes to powder, you need this:

Electric Herbal Coffee Bean Grinder Machine Spices Cereals Crusher Dry Food Grinder Mill Kitchen Grinding


(How) can I keep cheddar in a car in summer for 2 weeks Is there a way I could prepare and store some cheddar cheese such that it would stay edible while being stored in a car in summer for about 12 days.

I am going on a road trip, and I am trying to figure out what sort of food I could bring with me.

I have read that aged cheeses can stay at room temperature*, but I am not sure what sort of preparatory steps I should take, especially since it will be staying at above room temperature slightly...

Can this be achieved?

*A good portion of the time will have AC on, or be at night, so I imagine in the end it would be somewhere near room temperature. Also I am trying to minimise effort. Last year I took a big plug in cooler, and I just want to see if I can down size and simplify by packing strategic food.

Maybe a small, six-pack sized cooler, refresh with ice every morning and periodically rotate in cold beverages as you use and replenish those during the day?

Or, possibly, get a lunch thermos, put the cheddar in a baggie, in the middle, and add ice around.  Thermoses insulate, so they keep your food hot, but will also keep cold food cold.

Amazon.com: Thermos 12.oz. food jar

Or, maybe, buy small quantities of cheddar on the road and eat them instead of trying to preserve a two-week supply?  I'm assuming you're talking a fairly standard cheddar, and not something that can't be picked up on the road.....

Hook's to release 20-year cheddar for $209/lb

(I've had their 15-year cheddar, at about $55/lb at the time.  Fantastic!)

Put it in a jar. Fill jar with salt water. Even in a cooler with ice cheese will age. & mold some. Unless dipped in bees wax. Or wax to seal. It will still age slow. This is normally for the better. Slice of as needed. Cover with wax paper. Or shrink wrap. Were cut.


What juicer is best for leafy greens and vegetables (like carrots)? There are many juicers out there and not any one juicer is best at juicing everything. I am specifically interested in juicing leafy greens and vegetables like carrots.

Hydraulic press juices such as the Norwalk first grind the produce into a pulp, then press the juice out of the pulp. The theory is that malic acid in green apple pulp can release more vitamins and minerals from the other vegetables and fruit. The hydraulic press action squeezes more juice out than other types of juicers. But you're looking at $2500 for a Norwalk.

Macerating juicers would be next, up around the $400+ mark. Gear crushing action, leafy vegetables no problem. Not as much juice extraction as the hydraulic press machines.

Then would come auger style juicers, they easily handle leafy vegetables and wheatgrass, but give a little less juice than the macerating juicers.

Finally the cheapest powered juicers, the centrifugal juicers. I've had trouble using them for leafy greens as there are not solid enough to be forced chopping blades. Usually more solid vegetables are required to follow them to force them through.

Here's a paragraph from the popular Breville centrifugal juicer seen in the movie Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead:

  "If you are juicing herbs, sprouts or leafy green
  vegetables either wrap then together to form a
  bundle or juice them in the middle of a combination
  of ingredients to obtain the best extraction.

  If juicing herbs or leafy green vegetables on their own, the juice
  yield will be low due to the nature of centrifugal juicing, it is
  advised to juice them as with a combination of other fruit and
  vegetables"

Carrots are fine in all the juicers.

I recommend masticating juicers for juicing such vegetables because of their slow juicing system they will extract most of the juice without loss of quality.


What's the most effective way to mix a jar of natural peanut butter? When you buy a jar of natural peanut butter, it typically has a layer of oil on top, which has separated:

Mixing it can be messy and time consuming.

Aside from slowly and patiently mixing it with a knife, are there any tips and tricks to make this job faster, and  without spilling?

I've done this with almond butter, and I imagine it would work for peanut butter as well. The secret is to buy it a month or so before you need it, and then store it upside down for a week, so the oil traverses all the way through the jar and its contents, then turn it right way up for another week, and repeat again in each direction. Each trip through the jar mixes the oil with the solids a little more, and it's fairly homogeneous after four turns.

a strong variable-speed powerdrill equipped with a drywall mud-mixer

done in seconds


How to save my almonds from moths I bought a large amount of almonds at a bargain price. While moving the almonds to jars, I spotted a white powder which was very reminiscent of the eggs of the pantry moth. In the past, such powder quickly became larvae that turned into moths.

I don't want to throw away all the almonds. Is there any way to clean them?

My personal choice would be to throw this away just because I'm too squeamish.

But people here use salty water to get rid of larvae from wild mushrooms. The idea is to soak the unprocessed mushrooms containing living insects, which will try to escape and eventually die outside the mushroom. You then rinse couple of times with fresh water and dry it to avoid mould development.

I've found this is used as a laboratory test here with fruit. They use 1/4 cup salt in 4 cups water, but they mash the fruit with a potato masher.

I have heard from several people etc that freezing food for 3 days will kill any eggs or bugs on it and prevent it from developing into anything.


what is the difference between butter spread and pure butter? first of all, basically what is the difference?

what are their uses and is there a big difference? for example is there a case where I should use pure butter for some things but never a spread or vice versa? When the recipe says butter which one should I use?

Usually things titled butter spread are actually made from largely vegetable oil.  They can be a replacement for butter in recipes where the fact that there is fat in the recipe is all that matters (quick breads, brownies, muffins, etc.).  In general if you have a recipe where melted butter joins the wet ingredients and those wet ingredients get mixed into the dry ingredients, you should be able to get by using butter spreads (at least the oil-based kinds).

On the other hand, butter spreads aren't going to work well in baking that requires the creaming method (where butter and sugar are creamed together) because the texture is "firm out of the refrigerator, softens quickly" (source) as one spread maker says.  The bubbles needed to make baked goods rise using the creaming method won't hold.

To determine the difference we must first take in to account the ingredients found in them.

Butter - pure butter is made from buttermilk or cream. As a result it contains some saturated fats and cholesterol (30mg per serving).

Butter Spread - is a combination of oils (mostly vegetable oils) and buttermilk that taste like butter. They offer lower calorie count; some choices offer "Zero Cholesterol".


Can I eat a sauce that ruined my carbon steel pan seasoning I cooked a sauce of dry spices, coconut milk, ginger root and lemon grass in my steel carbon pan. I finnished the sauce of with the juice of one lime fruit.

I thought that the coconut milk would protect the seasoning by neutralizing the acidity of the lime juice, but when I cleaned out the pan, the seasoning in the bottom was destroyed -- down to the steel.

It is a deBuyer pan Mineral B type.

The seasoning is from flaxseed oil, Sheryll Canter style with six layers of oil polymerized on top of each other in a 250 degree Celsius oven etc.

My question is: is it safe to eat the dish with the corrosive sauce, in the sense that it contains the residue from the corroded seasoning?

Cheers
Mats

You have some misconceptions here.
First, coconut milk doesn't neutralize any acid, it is just fat in water, probably with a very mild acidic pH itself. For neutralizing an acid, you need a base (and it has nothing to do with the perception of diminished sourness coming from eating fat alongside the acid).
Second, it wasn't the acid that stripped away the seasoning. Bases strip seasoning, acids don't. And you need something a lot more corrosive than an edible sauce for that. The advice to not make highly acidic sauces in iron pans is connected to concerns about rusting the pan underneath the seasoning. Your seasoning probably went away because flaxseed tends to make nonrobust seasoning.
As for the safety, it is obviously safe in the strict sense, polymerized oil gets created in everyday cooking too and nobody has created a regulation forbidding us from serving food where that has happened. This means that you won't keel over from food poisoning tomorrow. If you are asking it in any other sense (e.g. whether it has long-term effects on your health), this is a topic which is explicitely excluded from discussion on our site.

Personally I would avoid eating that sauce for the following reason.
The seasoning on your pan is basically a bunch of polymers which were created when you heated the flax seed oil to a very high temperature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasoning_(cookware)
When you "disolved" your seasoning in your sauce those polymeres are what went in to the food. I would recommend not eating those for the same reason I would not recommend to eat food fried at a high temperature in low smoke point oil (such as flaxseed).


Why is "raw" honey thicker than the one you buy in regular super markets? I tried some honey I got at a farmer's market and noticed it was really thick compared to regular honey you buy at any supermarket.

The raw honey at your farmer's market is likely unfiltered.

  Usually raw, unfiltered raw honey can only be purchased directly from
  the bee farm. Characterised by fine textured crystals, it looks
  cloudier and contains particles and flecks made of bee pollen,
  honeycomb bits, propolis, and even broken bee wing fragments. Raw and
  unfiltered honey and has a high antioxidant level and will usually
  granulate and crystallize to a thick consistency after a few months.
  It is usually preferred as a spread on bread and waffles, or dissolved
  in hot coffee or tea. However, as most consumers are naturally
  attracted to buying and eating crystal clear and clean honey,
  unfiltered honey which looks cloudy and unappealing, is not
  commercially available on supermarket shelves.

Additionally, the pasteurization process helps keep the honey more liquid:

  A lot of honey found in the supermarket is not raw honey but
  "commercial" regular honey, some of which has been pasteurized (heated
  at 70 degrees Celsius or more, followed by rapid cooling) for easy
  filtering and bottling so that it looks cleaner and smoother, more
  appealing on the shelf, and easier to handle and package. ... Heating
  also slows down the speed of crystallization in liquid honey. ... you
  may also find raw honey that are unprocessed but slightly warmed to
  retard granulation for a short period of time and allow light
  straining and packing into containers for sale.

http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/raw-honey.html

Commercial honey is frequently adulterated. It's not the same consistency because it's not pure honey.


Molasses - dry vs. wet My gingerbread house dough recipe calls for 1 cup of molasses. I live in Europe and could only find a dry version (texture is similar to brown sugar, and is sticky). How do I substitute this dry ingredient when the recipe originally called for the syrupy-version of molasses?

The American English term 'molasses' translates to 'dark treacle' in British English. Dried molasses, at least that which I am familiar with, is sulphered blackstrap molasses (the darkest, most bitter variety) and typically used as animal feed or as a soil amendment.

If you can't find dark treacle and your recipe calls for white sugar substitute golden syrup (similar to a very light molasses) or honey for the molasses and substitute brown sugar (which is a mixture of white refined sugar and molasses) for white sugar to up the molasses flavor with dark brown sugar preferred as it has more molasses added. Pack the brown sugar and substitute 1:1 on a volumetric basis.


How can I separate the lid from a can that has a pull-tab/ring without flinging food everywhere? When I try to separate the lid from a can that has a pull-tab, the moment the lid separates from the can, the lid flings food everywhere. It's not always a lot, but it goes far because the lid has so much spring-tension.
I'd keep the last bit of the lid on the can, but sometimes I need the lid off to get everything out or to fully clean the can. (I don't want any remaining food in the can afterwards. My house pets will try to steal the can, and wild animals will try to steal the can from my recycling bin.
What methods can be used to avoid the mess and keep the kitchen clean?

(Image from self.com)

For most of the removal, leverage rather than brute force will give more control, so you don't accidentally pull the last bit off.
At the end while pulling gently on the ring, rock the lid from side to side, so you're only trying to open one side of the remaining seam.  It's much less likely to flick that way.  While my right hand does that, my left hold the can in such a way that it would probably be in the way of  anything flying, but it rarely needs to.
Another approach is to open the lid most of the way, remove most of the contents, then push the lid inwards to finish breaking it off (or in/out until the metal fatigues and it breaks easily).  This works well for things like beans or custard, that come out easily with a pour/scrape.

On the odd occasions when the ringpull has failed, I resort to the humble can opener. Never let me down yet ! But as far as your problem is concerned, you can resort to the same for the last part of the circumference. That gets the whole top off with no drama.


How can I use these new findings on tomatoes to my advantage? A new study appears to suggest that the characteristics that make a tomato most appealing when choosing one at the store also make it the least appealing when biting into it. Apparently, it is the very same gene that can either make a tomato uniform or tasty, depending on whether it is "switched on" or not.

It sounds promising, if the industry picks up the study's suggestions. But not that I, the consumer, have this information, is there anything I can do to get a better product? Do I just look for uglier tomatoes?

Picking a tomato which is individually ugly isn't going to help you.  It's still the same variety and grown, stored and shipped under the same conditions as the other tomatoes in the pile.

Try looking for a store (farmers' and ethnic markets are good for this) which has a whole bin of ugly tomatoes; those are a different variety and/or handled differently.  Heck, here in California, there's even a hybrid brand which is marketed under the name "Uglyripe", which is quite tasty.

Also, just "ugly" isn't a sufficient description.  What you're looking for is irregularities in color, shape and size.  Bruising, blemishes, wormholes and brown streaks don't indicate a better-tasting tomato, just one which has been abused.

Don't believe in studies you read about in the newspaper.

Here's how science/medical reporting goes:

Some researcher did some genetic research on tomatoes, that researcher wrote an academic paper in dense scientific language.
Some journalist who knows nothing about science found the paper and after reading the abstract decided there's something newsworthy there.
That journalist wrote an entire article based on a flawed understanding of what is essentially the first paragraph in a paper in a language he does not understand.
Usually the journalists doesn't even call the researcher before publishing, even if he does he only picks one or two sentences that support the article's claim from the interview (the journalists is on a deadline and has to produce an exact number of words, if the topic is complicated and requires explanation it isn't good, if it turns out to be not newsworthy it's even worse).
Once the findings are mis-published in one newspaper every other newspaper in the world quotes it like it's proven fact.

It's true that tomatoes from your local grocery store have a dull taste - but it's just as likely to happen because it has been picked prematurely days before they got to you and not due to genetic conditions.

You can run your own experiment - grow some kind of fruit or vegetable, pick one good looking fruit and eat it immediately and you get a very strong flavor, leave it in the refrigerator for 3 days and it tastes more like industrial food - pick it prematurely, store it for a week and drive it all across the country and you get the industrial taste.

Now, I'm not saying the newspaper article is wrong, what I'm saying is that science (and medical) coverage in newspaper is so bad and often wrong you should just ignore it.

if you want to see how bad it is this blog by a journalists who is actually a doctor covers bad medical news reports in UK - if you follow this blog for a while you will never believe any science related newspaper article again


Hot chocolate and cheese (Colombian Special) I recently visited Colombia in South America and I'm trying to recreate one of their traditional delicacies.

They give you a lovely thick cup of hot chocolate and together with a few slices of cheese. The idea is you break up the cheese and put it into your hot chocolate. The cheese melts partially and you can then eat it with a spoon.

It sounds quite strange, but actually tasted great.

My question is, that I'd like to try to find the same cheese to make it (in the UK). I've heard that mozzarella is the closest, but it doesn't melt in the same way.

The only Colombian cheese I have found is called Queso Compasigna, which means country/rustic cheese). I believe they have another type of cheese, specifically for dipping in hot chocolate. I'd like to know what cheese it is, possible where to buy it or if not how to make it?

Any ideas if its made with cows or goats milk or what sort of manufacturing process it uses?

Queso Blanco just means "White Cheese", which is kind of a catch-all term many locals use for simple cheeses. What is meant by Queso Blanco will likely change from region to region even within Columbia, and the chances of you being able to find it in the UK are pretty unlikely. Most imported Spanish cheeses tend to be the high-quality, specialist ones.

You haven't put what the cheese actually tastes like in your post, so I am assuming it was most likely pretty mild and it is the texture of it that really floated your boat. When I think soft, mild cheese I usually think cows milk, not sheep or goat, although there may be non-cheese alternatives as well in the following list:

Panir may work for you, it's soft and will get softer, also pretty mild flavor
Tofu: ok, not cheese but texture-wise a soft tofu may work great, and the flavor will work with chocolate pretty well.
UK white cheese: any major UK supermarket has a white cheese on sale, usually cheap, usually flavorless. Could be worth a try
Curd cheese: this is probably what would be called cottage cheese in the US. It's pretty liquid but if you drained it and compacted it you'd get a crumbly, easy-melting cheese

Let us know how you get on, I'm dying of curiosity!

Queso DE papa in English it would be potato cheese


How does the "Suicide Sauce" from Hot Licks rate on the Scoville Scale I bought the so called "Suicide Hot-Sauce" from Hot Licks about a year ago when I visited California. I forgot to ask how this sauce rates on the Scoville Scale, because I usually don't care that much about those numbers as long as the taste is good.

The topic came up in a recent discussion and I tried to find this information on the Internet. Many supplier provide this information, but I could not find anything, not even a rough estimate, about the Suicide Sauce. From what I have read so far this sauce is one of the less hot ones.

Can anyone who knows this hot-sauce give a rough estimate how hot it is?

Update:
According to their website the Hot Licks "XXX" sauce is three times as hot as the suicide sauce. In case someone has information about this one, this would help as well.

Edit: Is there a way to rate sauces on the Scoville scale? Does an index exist for sauces? Is there a way to measure the hotness?

I am Adrienne Fay, Merchandise Manager for Hot Licks, Maker of Suicide and XXX.
I just discovered this post. Unfortunately even I can not give you the Scoville rating because we have never had our sauce rated on the Scoville scale for two reasons:

The rating system is intended for peppers and even two peppers on the same vine will have two different ratings.
Everyone's perception of hot is different. So for some people,even a drop of Suicide sauce will destroy them, where some customers buy the product by the case load.

Most companies will estimate the Scoville rating by ingredients we know, but frankly we just set out to make a sauce with capsaicin extract that had flavor.  Hopefully you find the taste and heat level to your liking.

If you have any further inquiries you can email me at adrienne@2hotlicks.com

I've had Frank's. I've had Tobasco. I can drink that junk. Suicide is much hotter. Like the top answerer mentioned, it's probably around 100,000 SHU. Franks is tomato sauce compared to Suicide. XXX is about 3 times hotter than even Suicide.


Is it safe to eat a pork loin that has been refrigerated for 6 days? I've accidentally left a pork tenderloin marinating in the fridge for the past six days. Is it still safe to cook and eat? I'm not sure how it will taste, but I'd hate to waste a good tenderloin. The marinade is really more of a brine made of apple juice, sugar, soy sauce, salt and some spices. It was in the back of refrigerator, so it remained quite well chilled.

Update!

As many folks mentioned, I used the power of The Sniff Test and everything smelled fine. We ate it and no one died or fell ill. In fact, it was quite tasty. I was afraid the taste would be off, but it was great!

I once left a whole New York strip in the walk in cooler for two weeks and it was great. Chances are that the salt and acid in the marinade preserved the pork well enough it would still be safe to eat after six days. I would check for slime and foul odor. There are several other factors involved such as how it was handled before put in the refrigerator. For example, a piece of pork that was at room temp for one hour with a semi sterile knife trimming it might not last three days. I always go with whether it has an off odor or not. I find that meat which has aged a little in the fridge will have a more robust defined flavor. If you run your finger across it and feel any type of slime just get rid of it.

This website doesn't specifically say loin, but it might be helpful.

http://www.clemson.edu/extension/hgic/food/food_safety/handling/hgic3511.html


Why is my chuck roast dry? Our chuck roast came out tender but dry. Why?

We used the Beef in Barolo recipe from Americas Test Kitchen:
 - 2 lbs chuck roast seasoned with salt and pepper
 - Cooked at 300*F for 3 hours in a full bottle of red wine and veggies
 - Pot was covered in foil and lid on top
 - Turned the meat every 45 minutes
 - Instructions were to cook until the meat fell apart easily with a fork

What did we do wrong?

Thanks!

The temp your meat reached was too high, and it forced the water out of the meat.

Further info here along with a handy chart of temps.

My suggestion would be to turn that oven down to 200-230 degrees if you've gotta cook for three hours, or start temping it earlier and get it out before it over cooks.

if most of the meat is covered with liquid you are in effect boiling the roast ... this is not what you want to do


How can I extract color from food ingredients that won't add flavor when making mocktails? I want to extract color from anything like flowers, fruits, powders, etc, to make a colorful mocktail to drink!

It's important that the produced color doesn't change the taste of the drink. (so less flavor is better).

My goal is to get colors like green and purple.

How can I do this?

It is basically impossible to do that in home conditions.

Assuming that you are starting with the whole vegetable (or fruit, or flower...), the closest you can do is to turn it to juice. Actual extraction is almost always futile - the solvents in the kitchen are limited to fat, water and alcohol. Fat is completely out of the equation, both because it won't extract much color and because it won't taste good in a cocktail, a water extract would be inferior to a juice (which is already water-based), and for alcohol extracts, look at traditional homemade liqueurs - besides getting a lot of taste along, you will also get colors in the brownish range. Pale pinks or yellows could be possible too.

The juice method will give you a decently colored liquid, but with the caveat that you won't be able to concentrate it or preserve it. So, if you want a green cocktail, you may have to mix it with equal parts spinach juice to get a good color. Also, you will face an unpleasant tradeoff between color and texture - the more you filter the juice, the paler your color. Also, expect a shelf life of minutes to hours before the juice starts browning.

If you are really OK with something industrially produced, such as the powders Megha mentioned, you can of course try them, but then again, you could just go for industrially extracted food coloring.

"natural" green food coloring is chlorophyll. Try putting some spinach into a blender, and letting the result drip through a coffee filter.

For purple, boil red cabbage in water, then strain and use the boiling liquid. Note that the precise color will be affected by the acidity of the drink.


How do I use tamarind powder? If a recipe calls for tamarind pulp/paste/concentrate, can I substitute powder? If so, how much tamarind powder should I use?

I would like to point out that the block, pulp, paste and powder each impart different properties to anything you cook or prepare.

The blocks of tamarind pulp are the tamarind fruit pods stripped of the outer husk and compressed tightly together. It is full of fibers and seeds.

The pulp is usually a processed version of the block and should be relative free of fibers and seeds.

The paste is further refined and has been sifted and strained to remove the fibers and seeds.

From what I understand the powder is the dehydrated juice made from the process of compressing the block.

To prepare a container of pulp from a block; break up as much as you need and reconstitute it by covering it with boiled water. 15-20 minutes is sufficient to allow it to soften. Push a bit at a time through a fine meshed strainer. We find that a spatula or small scraper is really helpful for this step. You're essentially rubbing the fibers (and seeds) against the strainer to separate the pulp from the fibers. The pulp falls through and the fibers stay behind.

In the end, you should have a bowl full of soft tamarind paste that is about the consistency of apple sauce. This is now ready to be used and can be stirred directly into your dish.

Save the water that was used to soak the tamarind. You can use it in your cooking in place of some of the water or broth.

How does this paste you made from the block compare with the powder... It doesn't... It seem in my opinion to be a completely different taste. I would not use the powder to prepare pad-thai or a Malaysian curry as it rarely imparts the same punch as freshly prepared pulp.

make a past out of the powder and use it. But always add half of what's called in recipe and later you can add to taste.

found this on a recipe - 1 teaspoon dried tamarind (or one-half inch fresh tamarind thinly sliced or diced)


What should one look for in the license terms of a crowdsourced recipe website? I'm looking into uploading my recipes to "the cloud" via a crowdsourced-website.  I have been trying to understand the ramifications of the licenses and terms of service.  As I do not currently have that many truly unique recipes (yet!) my question is somewhat about principle...I just have been increasingly skeptical of lock-in like with Facebook and wanting to "take back my data".  So despite wanting to share, I'm skeptical even of something as "innocuous" as a recipe site. (Not as skeptical.  But still skeptical.  :P)

My goal is mostly to help vet the information for other people who might be in the same situation, so they can understand what they're getting into.  So what I'm mainly interested in is making sure that any sites I join have fair licensing terms. Because websites are always being bought and sold, there is always the chance that I could put a bunch of recipes online and then they might disappear if the site changes hands. Or, I might have to pay to access my own recipes someday if the policy changes.

Are there any specific things one should be on the look out for in the terms of service?  Are there certain things that should be non-negotiable from a user standpoint?  Are there things that you cannot reasonably expect any site to have?  (I am sure no free site will guarantee they will not go out of business, and compensate you if their web server and your recipes stop being available.)

Sorry if this is more of a legal/software question than a cooking question.  But I thought there might be a fair amount of cooks on here who are also interested in geekery. :)

(Sidenote: My first try was uploading a few recipes to a site called Key Ingredient: e.g. Lizzie's baked breaded oysters, Howard's kickin' salsa.  The site works well and I like to share these recipes from friends with a broader audience than typing them into Microsoft Word.  But how do I make sure I don't lose them?  What else can go wrong?)

Quick Version

Good question
Read a few EULA, privacy policies and terms of service to get a full answer, but generally:

You are expected to have your own back up of anything you upload
Whether or not the site says you have the rights to the data, they cannot track whether or not users give you credit for what you have shared

Answer for yourself:

What kind of credit are you looking for?
What website features must be minimally available before you'll even bother checking whether or not their terms of service live up to your requirements?

Full Version

I think this is a great question and needs to be addressed in areas far more broad than just cooking and recipes.  "The cloud" is a unique and interesting place to store and share data, but brings up a whole host of issues like:

Who technically owns the rights to the uploaded data?
Who should be responsible for backing up that data?
How is the data accessed?
Who can access it?

And then there's the additional question of, do you want to crowd source feedback on your recipes, or just have them available for people to look at?  And probably a whole bunch more questions.

General Advice

A good rule of thumb when using any cloud service, is that you and you alone are responsible for backing up your data.  Even if a company has the financial resources to back up everything (and most of them do back it up), they're not going to guarantee something like that because all technology is fallible and there is usually someone with a fantastic lawyer around every corner, just waiting for a guarantee to fail.  Read a couple EULA (end-user license agreements) and/or privacy policies/terms of service and you'll get a clear picture of just how often they guarantee your access to your data.  Usually accessing your data isn't a problem (if it was, why would people use the cloud?) and as such, it's something you shouldn't worry about beyond having a copy of your recipes on a computer at home somewhere in addition to sharing them in the cloud.  (That being said, back up your home computer too.)

Another good rule: don't ever expect something stored in the cloud to actually be secure.  Generally with recipes it's not an issue if your data is stolen (like it could be if you were storing tax returns), but all of the marketing around consumer electronics does a really good job of making people forget that even PayPal and the US federal government were hacked.  Cloud storage is not secure storage.  In fact, think of the Internet as the Wild West: we're still trying to figure out who is here and who has enough power to actually enforce laws.

Every EULA, privacy policy and terms of service document I have read states clearly somewhere deep in the pages of legalese that they have the right to modify or change their policies whenever they see fit.  Aka, no guarantee on anything, although this usually doesn't lead to the problems you mentioned.  The few times I have had data uploaded to a cloud and the policy was changing in a way to prevent me from accessing (or having to pay for) my data, I was informed of the change months before it ever started affecting me, with the whole purpose of giving me the chance to download any and all of my data onto my home computer, where I could access it whenever I wanted, even after the change in policy.

My Experience

I have uploaded a few recipes to a Dropbox account to share with a relatively small group of friends.  We all have access to upload, read and download, but there is no place to leave comments or feedback on any of the recipes.  It's also kind of a clunky method of sharing if I ever wanted to give the entire world access because it's just a link, not a webpage full of brightly colored photos that people can click on.  I believe that Dropbox's terms of service state that I am the legal owner of the data in my Dropbox account, but I'd have to double check that, and I have no idea how it works if a friend uploads a recipe to my account.  Whether or not my friends give credit if they re-post any of those recipes, is up to whoever does the re-posting; both Dropbox and the new site won't have a way to track if credit was given where credit was due.

I tend to find recipes on allrecipes.com, although I have yet to upload any of my own.  It's a great place to for people to share recipes, leave feedback, suggest modifications, upload pictures, etc.  I can't even remember if I read their EULA so I don't know if it claims the rights to the recipes, or if they belong to the original poster.  Either way, allrecipes.com can't give credit if a user copies and pastes your recipe onto another site; the only way to give credit is if a user posts a link back to your recipe on allrecipes.com.

Credit vs. Copyright

Credit and copyright are not the same thing.  Credit would be me saying "I got the idea write this answer because of a question that mmcghan posted."  While that is nice and generally what people are looking for when they post stuff intended for sharing, it's not going to hold up in court.  If copyright protection is what you're after, you probably don't want to post your recipe on a crowd sourcing site, but you would definitely want to read the EULA, terms of service and the privacy policy (and likely involve a lawyer who specializes in this) before posting or uploading anything you want to protect.

For that matter, "credit" could be all sorts of things, although I am by no means an expert of how recipes can be legally protected.  In the open source world (think Linux if you aren't very technical) there are actually several different kinds of licenses, which do hold up in court, unlike generic "credit."  I'm not deeply familiar with a lot of them, but here are a couple examples of the differences:

You can use and modify anything, but you cannot make a profit off of any of it
You can use and modify anything, but you have to share your modifications with the world and credit the original writer(s)

What's Next?

It's great that you are thinking about all the legal junk behind sharing recipes (or anything really) because we don't do it nearly enough.  But you'll also want to think about what you mean when you want to "share" your recipes.

Do you want to share them with just friends, or the whole world?
Do you want feedback or comments on your recipes?
Would you like to upload pictures, tips, etc.?  Or just the recipe itself?
Do you want to be able to upload a bunch of Word files you already have written?  Or would you rather have to type each of them into the website by hand?
What kind of credit do you want for your recipes? How enforceable does this credit need to be?

Being able to answer these questions will help you greatly in your end goal.

The thing about recipes is that they don't seem eligible for copyright, and unless you can demonstrate to a Patent Examiner that your recipe is so unique and not obvious or otherwise derivable by conventional cooking, you probably can't patent it either. That is, you can't really own your recipe, and the food industry flourishes because of it, but a website can own all its content.

For help searching through a TOS for content ownership in general, ask an attorney, not here.


Why does Jacques Pepin's souffle work? I just saw a video (there are numerous all over the place, but this is one) of Jacques Pepin making his mother's cheese souffle. In the recipe, he does not separate the eggs or beat them to peaks. He just scrambles them and whisks them into the bechemel.

Yet the souffle rises.

I've made many a souffle in the past, and this flies in the face of all the souffle techniques I've learned.

Why does this work? (what is the science behind it)

And, does it work as well as a souffle made with separated eggs?

I'm going to have to disagree with FuzzyChef's answer a bit.  I don't understand the statement that FuzzyChef's wife's recipe matches The Spruce Eats (separating egg recipe) proportionally, but Pepin's supposedly uses more eggs.  Yet The Spruce Eats recipe uses 2 eggs with 1/2 cup milk and 1 1/2 tablespoons each of butter and flour.  Pepin uses 5 extra large eggs (or about 6 large eggs) with 2 cups of milk and and 6 tablespoons each of butter and flour.  That is, Pepin's recipe is scaled up 4 times in most ingredients from The Spruce Eats, but only about 3 times in eggs.  Pepin is thus proportionally using less eggs than The Spruce Eats recipe.

And while I agree that Pepin does beat the eggs in a manner that incorporates some air, that's clearly not what's causing the batter to rise, as he then follows up by noting that one can prepare this souffle batter hours or even days ahead.  Most of the small amount of air incorporated by beating the whole eggs will almost immediately dissipate and will mostly be gone within minutes, let alone hours or days.  Whole eggs, unlike egg whites, do not hold their foaminess for long.  The beating is helpful, but clearly not the essential process to the rise.

Instead, the science behind this is quite simple and truly basic: the souffle rises because of steam.

The reason this technique works is the same reason that popovers and Yorkshire pudding rise (to a huge extent, often much more than classic French souffles), with no egg separation and no fancy preparation.  But the bubbles created by the steam in popovers and Yorkshire pudding are generally large, creating a more "rustic" texture, rather than the refined souffle.  Pepin's dish has a less extreme rise and more consistent texture because he puts a large quantity in a wide thicker pan, rather than, say, popovers, which are placed in relatively small narrow pans that heat the batter very quickly (and thus produce incredible oven spring from the steam).

Once the steam begins to rise, the eggs begin to coagulate and trap it, leading to the light and airy texture.  The flour also helps provide more structure to hold up the finished product.  Essentially, it's the same steam that makes light and "fluffy" scrambled eggs, just increased by more moisture and trapped with the help of flour to provide additional structure.  Popovers and Yorkshire pudding proportionally contain a lot more flour, which allows them to rise much higher and have a more "bread-like" texture, rather than the smooth texture of a souffle.  But they're both using the power of steam primarily.

The classic French souffle technique with egg separation isn't necessary to create a rise -- steam can do that all by itself.  (Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking notes that the air bubbles from the egg-white foam only contribute about 25% of the air to a souffle: about 75% of the air comes from the steam produced during baking.)  The French souffle with the egg white beating, etc. is about creating a very consistent fine-grained interior texture (with small bubbles), all produced by a relatively slow and consistent rise in the oven.  In Pepin's case (and in most standard souffles), cooking the flour and adding cheese help to thicken the batter, so less flour is needed to start trapping air compared to things like popovers.  And Pepin's reduced egg quantity also contributes to a slightly thicker batter that won't rise as high, but is also less fragile and less likely to fall.  The longer bake time in a wider mass contributes to a more slow, even rise, where the top layers gradually coagulate and help trap air in the interior.

Jacques is the man!  Great video. He speaks to your point a bit in the video, though not the science...just that "it works," and it is not the classic technique  (Turns out mom's right again). I'm not sure the science is any different, though.  Egg white traps air.  Heat expands the trapped air.  The protein network in the egg provides strength and structure. Does it work "as well?"   I don't know, but his final result looked pretty good. What different result would you be looking for?


Is this tenderloin safe to use? I have a vacuum sealed 8 lb. beef tenderloin that was in my refrigerator.  The door was not closed completely and the refrigerator warmed to 42 degrees just at the beginning of the danger zone.  The refrigerator could have been at that temp for 6 to 8 hours.  The tenderloin was in the middle back of a bottom shelf.  Is this safe to use?

This is a really, really tough case.  From a strict interpretation of our canonical answer for such food-storage questions, the answer is unfortunately: no. This cannot be considered safe according to the guidelines used by the FDA and other food safety agencies. It's impossible to know exactly what temperature the beef reached and for how long, so this must be considered suspect.

From context I'm guessing that you're cooking this at home, but you cannot and should not serve this in a commercial setting, period.

Now, here's where we get into strictly my opinion. You must evaluate your own consideration of the risks involved.

If you are certain that the refrigerator reached no more than 42 degrees F then I think that the risk presented is relatively low.  8 pounds of beef has a decent amount of thermal mass, and assuming that it started closer to 35 degrees F and was properly vaccuum-sealed I think there's a good chance that it never crossed into the danger zone, and most likely wasn't there for long if it did.  FDA guidelines are famously conservative (for good reason, as they're designed to reduce risk for everyone!) and to me that's a rather expensive cut of beef to just throw away.

I wouldn't feel comfortable serving this to children, the elderly, the pregnant, or anybody else with a potentially compromised immune system. Remember that food poisoning is no joke and can be fatal, especially for such at-risk people. You may want to reconsider cooking this for the holidays and serving it to your family. But I'd probably be comfortable eating it myself if I was certain of the conditions that you describe. You may justifiably be less comfortable, and the FDA would back you up. If you decide to cook and serve this, you must do so with an awareness of the risk presented.

6-8 hours is not long enough to cause any issues. The beef itself probably didn't get up to 42 degrees given it's placement and area in your fridge. The USDA recommends cooking beef to 145°F and holding for 3 minutes.


Save meat from chicken broth? I made a chicken stock/broth with chicken parts including two chicken legs.  After cooking the broth for three hours, is the meat in the pot considered edible?

Should you save it and use it for something like chicken salad?  Or is it considered lacking in all flavor and nutrients after being cooked for three hours?

Edible? Absolutely yes.

Flavorful?  ....you should taste it and tell us.  Seriously, don't serve a meal to anyone, yourself included, until you've tasted it and it tastes at least decent.  (Not trying to be snarky here, that's literally the best cooking tip I was ever given)

Nutritious?  Probably somewhat--that chicken muscle is primarily protein after all.

Generally, soups are made with bones because bones can't be used for anything else, so it's more economical to get soup-flavor from bones (making the stock), then use meat for texture and to add variety to the liquid.  I was taught to put meat into soups in the last hour of cooking.  Many recipes I've seen call for taking out the whole pieces of meat and shredding it or pulling it before serving it in the soup.

The meat is definitely worth saving. It will probably be a little more bland in flavor, but it's still perfectly good to eat. In case you're interested, I have a recipe for a super flavorful chicken salad on my blog: http://whatsinseasonwithdes.com/crispy-chicken-salad-sandwich/. Best of luck with your chicken!


Cake without baking soda I have this delicious recipe for flourless almond cake:

  1 1/2 cups whole almonds, toasted
  4 large eggs, at room temperature, separated
  1/2 cup honey
  1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  1/2 teaspoon salt

  Process whole almonds in a food processor or blender until finely ground (you will have about 13/4 cups ground). Beat 4 egg yolks, 1/2
  cup honey, vanilla, baking soda and salt in a large mixing bowl with
  an electric mixer (or use a paddle attachment on a stand mixer) on
  medium speed until well combined. Add the ground almonds and beat on
  low until combined.
  Beat 4 egg whites in another large bowl with the electric mixer (use clean beaters on a hand-held mixer or the whisk attachment on a
  stand mixer) on medium speed until very foamy, white and doubled in
  volume, but not stiff enough to hold peaks, 1 to 2 minutes (depending
  on the type of mixer). Using a rubber spatula, gently fold the egg
  whites into the nut mixture until just combined. Scrape the batter
  into the prepared pan.
  Bake the cake until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, about 28 minutes.

I know a friend who is allergic to baking soda and baking powder. What will happen if this recipe is made without baking soda?  Will it collapse although I had beaten the egg whites? Aren't they responsible for making the cake rise?

Honey is acidic with a pH of 3.9- that's more acidic than some oranges. There is also quite a lot of honey in this recipe that will give the acid the baking soda needs to react.

In this recipe, both the egg whites and the baking soda are going to provide some leavening.
Without the soda the cake will undoubtedly be a little more dense.

Additionally, even when not contributing to leavening, raising the pH will promote browning of baked goods. I think the ground almonds will give nice color but the recipe may be a little paler without the soda.

There is no soda in angel food cake and I expect this cake will also be just fine without it.

You can try using the brewer's yeast. It's natural and not chemical like baking soda.There is a commercial liquid version used for instantaneous usage (your case, or more generally for desserts like cakes), so i think you just need to know where to find it.


Questions on frying Chicken breasts Is the oil temperature limited to 350 or 375.
How do I Dry Brine chicken?
Is there a rule of thumb for how much seasoning is used?
Do I use more seasoning in the marinade than in the flour mixture?

Brining chicken doesn't take more than an hour.Just make sure it is well dried before frying.  I use 1 pint of water with 1/8 cup of salt and the breast (which can be very dry when just fried) comes out juicy,  Hope this helps.
Seasoning should be coated with seasoning but be careful of the salt.  Brining adds some water to the breast but also some salt.


Difference between Spumante & Champagne When winter holidays come, I always find with my parents and the whole family. Sometimes we use Spumante, some other times Champagne, both to accompain with some sweet at the end of the meal, or during the meal.

In any case, I always wondered which is the difference between Champagne and SPumante (apart the fact that they come from different countries).

Are they the same?
Is one more precious than the other?
When do you use one or the other?

Champagne is sparkling wine that is produced in the Champagne region of France. The grapes used in champagne are usually Pinot noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier. I think that there are a few sparkling wines that are grown outside of Champagne, France, that are allowed to be labeled as champagne but for a purist, they aren't actually champagne. The politics are complicated, and you can get an overview of the idea at the champagne wikipedia page.

Spumante, on the other hand, is a sparkling white wine from the Piedmont region of Italy. (It is also called asti or asti spumante.) It's made from the Moscato Bianco grape. More information can be found on the spumante wikipedia page.

I find spumante wines to be very sweet, whereas you can purchase champagnes that are brut (dry), demi-sec (half-dry) and doux (sweet). Most champagnes are pretty dry. Champagnes are also typically sold at a premium, whereas you can find bottles of spumante for about $5.

I think it's a matter of taste for when you want to drink champagne vs. spumante. If the cost is an issue, then champagne should be saved for special occasions. Spumante is good for a meal or occasion that calls for a sweeter sparkling wine. If I want a dry sparkling wine and don't want to shell out for champagne, there is always Prosecco, Cava, or other generic sparkling wines.

this information is wrong , spumante is exactly the sdame as champagne as regards levels of sweetness and dryness. It constantly beats champagne in blind tastings, recently a 22 pound bottle of spumante called Kraal from theAlto adige beat Crystal and randolph churchill in blind tasting . Bothe champagnes cost 170 pounds per bottle


How to use a bottom concave ebelskiver (Æbleskiver) pan on a glass cook-top stove? I've recently come in to a lovely cast iron ebelskiver pan (pictured below) and would like to try to make some  ebelskivers.

The problem is I don't have a gas range and I'm rather sure that my glass-top stove won't be able to adequately or evenly heat the pan due to its concave underbelly. The bottom of the wells aren't even level with the skirting rim of the pan.
Is there anything I can do short of replacing my range top or starting a fire in my backyard to use this pan to make some stuffed pancakes?

You could consider heating it up, while empty, in an oven (I would go for, say, 200C/390F). Keep it there for at least 30 minutes: the transfer of heat from the air to the cast iron is not very efficient! Then take it out quickly, pour the batter in, and return it to the oven until done (and then make the next batch, if you're making multiple).

An issue with this could be that the Æbleskiver might cook too quickly from the top. You might need to experiment with the target temperature you leave the oven at.

Why don't you just buy a single gas or butane burner to use for your Aebleskiver pan?  They also work well for tableside dishes such as Crepe Suzette, Steak Diane, ad infinitum (depending on the style you choose).  You can use them outdoors too - at home or away.


What is a good substitute for oyster sauce (for someone with a shellfish allergy)? I've recently developed a shellfish allergy, and I'm not sure what the best substitute for oyster sauce would be. I've read that the flavor of it is not really easily substitutable.

What is the best way to substitute the flavor without inducing an allergic reaction?

The most widely-accepted substitute seems to be various sauces made from mushrooms. I don't want to say "mushroom sauce" because most products don't have that exact name. For example:

Here you have "Vegetarian Mushroom Flavored Stir-Fry Sauce" on the left, and "Premium Shitake Mushroom Flavored Soy Sauce" on the right. I'm actually not familiar with the one in the middle and not sure what the whole label says - it might be the same as the first.

If you go to a specialty Asian food store, you might actually find a product called "vegetarian oyster sauce", which is pretty much the same thing.

Failing that, you can always substitute soy sauce, or hoisin sauce if you want a less watery texture. They won't be exactly the same, but it's the same general idea (dark, fermented, salty sauce rich in glutamates).

"Fish sauce" will be very close to oyster sauce in taste, but may still contain shellfish, so be careful.

Made a great Asian beef and broccoli dish tonight and it was really, really good! I substituted black bean sauce for the oyster sauce and my sauce was delicious. The recipe I followed called for reduced salt soy so I just mixed some dark (full salt) soy with the low salt soy to make up the amount the recipe called for. Maybe 1/4 dark soy to 3/4 reduced salt. The black bean sauce worked well as a substitute.


Where can I buy kosher salt in London? I make a point of taking a few minutes to look around for the stuff whenever I go to a new supermarket / farmers market / ete etc and I haven't been able to find a source here. At the same time, I'm not wanting to import anything from the States, because it defeats the purpose of having a cheap supply of a goood salt.

Surely there is a place one can obtain Kosher salt in London, no?

You could try Maldon Sea Salt, or similar supermarket sea salts. While not identical to kosher salt, they can be used in a similar way. Maldon is also is much cheaper in the UK than it is in the US (where it's an import).

It's not a product I can recall seeing in many UK stores.

Although it is likely true that so-called Kosher Salt got its name from Koshering meats (absorbing the blood of kosher slaughtered animals), outside of Jewish meanings, it currently means the salt has no Iodine-based additives. These additives were introduced into many countries to solve an old health issue (from Iodine deficiencies). The UK simply never did this (https://www.ukiodine.org/iodine-in-the-uk/), as a result, all salt in the UK is 'Kosher Salt'. The other connotation of the term Kosher Salt is that the salt crystals are large, i.e. 'rock salt' as us Brits call it. So far from needing to scour specialists, or ask for any particular brand of salt, just go to ANY supermarket in the UK and buy their cheapest rock salt (look on the bottom of the shelves where they keep the biggest and cheapest packets). All of our 'salt' in the UK is simply Sodium-Chloride, which, in eating terms for the consumer is simply pure 'salt'. If it says something else, like 'Lo-Salt' for example, THEN it's something else (Potassium-Chloride is mixed into Lo-Salt).

This is why there's no 'Kosher Salt' in the UK, we never messed with salt in the first place, and Kosher Salt is simply pure salt, so all salt in the UK would be considered 'Kosher Salt' in the US.


Where did I go wrong with this pie? I baked this pie at 400F (200C) for 25 minutes on the bottom rack, then reduced temperature to 375F (190C) and moved pie to middle rack for 35 more minutes.

The crust doesn't look like CRUST, so to speak.  It looks wet or doughy. Like it'll be chewy.

Any thoughts?

This is the recipe I followed: 2 1/2 cups All-purpose flour, 1 tsp kosher salt, 1 TBSP granulated sugar, 2 sticks cold unsalted butter, and cold water mixed with a little cider vinegar and ice in it. Mixed dry ingredients together then added the butter pieces. I used a pastry blender to cut the biter in. I then adds 1-2 TBSP at a time of the cold water mixture until the dough came together. Split the dough in half, shaped into discs, wrapped in plastic and put in the fridge overnight.

Simple: it's undercooked.

So what was the specific variable that caused this outcome? Who knows. Maybe 400 on your oven isn't the same as 400 on the oven of the person who wrote the recipe, or your pie started out with colder ingredients, or you opened the oven door too many times, or any number of other factors which could affect how long something takes to cook in an oven.

More important than where you went wrong, is how you can avoid doing this again in the future. As I sit here typing, I can hear my pastry instructor in school yelling "Put that back in the oven! Golden brown means brown, not gold!"

You should always cook a pie to the correct color/doneness, not to a specified time. In most cases in cooking, time is the least reliable indicator for doneness. To someone with experience, even smell by itself is more accurate than time.

Good luck with your future pie baking!

your butter probably has a higher water content. try shortening, there's zero water in shortening. you've steamed your crust with the high amount of moisture.


What is the best way to store uncooked homemade beef patties? I'm planning to grind my own beef patties, but I don't plan to use them until the next day, or perhaps the day after. What is the best way to store them until the day of? Would sticking them in the fridge do, or do I have to put them in the freezer?

Store them as you would the unground beef. If it will be still be in date after a few days, store it in the fridge, otherwise, freeze them (separating the patties with a sheet of greaseproof paper).

A good answer is said to provide sufficient academic reference. I am not providing much references, but providing what my experiences have been. Experience you would have to take with a pinch of salt (pun intended).

I guess your utmost concerns are

preservation of the meat
conservation of taste/flavour/texture
prevent the raw meat from contaminating other foods.

To me, it seems strange that you would not consider marinating them first and exploit the preservative features of the marinate.

The reasons I would marinate it first are

preserve/conserve the taste of the meat
defrosting after freezing exposes meat to a duration of meat deterioration
perhaps it is better not to freeze it if it is just a day
rainy days - your plan for the meat may be abrogated, and you would have to store/freeze the meat for a few more days, in which case having them marinated with preservation mixture would help a lot.

Frozen meat would take about eight hours to thaw in the refrigerator. Therefore I find it helpful to freeze my meat for two hours to four hours and then remember to place it into the refrigerator non-freezer compartment no later than 10 hours before I actually would use it.

I buy icecream by the gallon, which comes in cuboid plastic boxes, with a sufficiently tight cover. I use those boxes (after the icecream is finished) to store my veggies and thaw my meat in the refrigerator. That prevents contamination of food by uncooked meat.

Preservation

I read that sesame oil is an effective preservative. By my experience it has proven to be true.

Have you tried marinating with a mix of salt, spices and sesame oil?

Oregano is a known bacteria inhibitor.

Here is a web page on using spices to prevent bacterial deterioration of meat:
http://www.hccfl.edu/media/44231/1025_lab_10_spices_and_food_preservation.pdf, which lists
vinegar, salt, garlic, cinnamon, cloves, oregano in the first section.

Sugar is also said to be a preservative. Most people say it is because it dehydrates the food and sucks away water content to prevent bacterial action. What most people do not mention is the oxidating action of sugar. An oxidizing reaction obviously kills bacteria.

But somehow I have not found sugar to be effective, which in fact made it worse. I guess sugar is usable only when you want to soak the food (normally fruits) completely in saturated sugar solution.

Otherwise than that, I found that the sugar provides fermentation material for bacteria, which actually creates the preserving vinegar. Therefore leave out the sugar - just use the vinegar. Because, I found that I did not like the taste of meat on which fermentation of sugar had occurred. That's just me, perhaps other people may like the taste I find strange and yucky.

Effects on taste

These are my experience, but taste is highly subjective effect.

Sesame oil provides a strong pleasant aroma. But I've had people tell me they find its scent too pungent.

Vinegar with Garlic if not overly abundant, provides that luscious Chinese food scent, when food is cooked with them.

Ground nutmeg is meant to enhance/balance the taste of the food being laced with preservative spices. I found that I should not use too much nutmeg. It has a strong biting taste. To me, nutmeg seems to mask and compensate the flavour of spices. I have a suspicion that it has been used in excess to mask the taste of slightly spoiled meat. I don't think it is an effective preservative.

I find the mixture of cinnamon, garlic, cloves, anise, oregano and a little bit of cumin powder provides a pleasant scent and taste to meat.

A little tint of lemongrass oil might also enhance flavour. However, I find the effects of lemongrass similar to nutmeg - a strong biting taste and smell when used too much. I use lemongrass oil as insecticide, but I don't know if it kills bacteria as well as it does insects. Perhaps having lemongrass oil on your raw meat might prevent it from attracting flies and rodents, but then you would have to have sufficient amount, an amount that might affect the taste of the meat too much. If you don't mind Thai curry scent, you wouldn't mind too much lemongrass. If you google "cooking with lemongrass" you would find a lot of people loving its scent I find excessive.


How much difference is there between brands of flour? How much real difference is there between flours (specifically all-purpose) such as King Arthur, Gold Medal at a considerable savings and a store brand which is even less expensive?

There is a difference beyond just the price.

All-Purpose flours are not the same:

Southerners tend to make more quick breads, pies, cakes, etc. where tenderness is the primary quality factor.

Southern brands of all-purpose flour such as White Lily, Martha White, Red Band, Adluh and others are typically milled from wheat that naturally has a lower gluten percentage.  They also blend it to achieve an overall lower percentage.  In addition, southern all-purpose flour is usually bleached, often with chlorine gas which weakens the gluten structure of the gluten in it and creates an acidic nature in the dough.  Gluten doesn't develop as easily in an acidic environment.

On average, people living in the northeast/midwest tend to bake a lot more yeast-based products (dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, pumpernickel bread, rye, wheat, white, french bread, etc.) which benefit from a higher gluten percentage.

Northern/Midwest brands such as King Arthur, Hecker's etc. tend to use wheat that has a higher gluten content for the milling of their flour and they typically leave it unbleached which allows the gluten to better develop during mixing/kneading.

National brands such as Gold Medal and Pillsbury are being distributed across the country so they blend their flour to fall within the mid-range of gluten content.

As for store brands, those that are national (such as Kroger/safeway) are probably being milled by the national flour mills and should probably perform about the same.  If it's a regional store brand (such as Piggly Wiggly here in the south or Wegman's in the Northeast) I'd be willing to bet that it probably falls within the scope of those regional types of milling practices.

For a chart showing the range of gluten content for various types of flour from cake flour to bread flour (including the all-purpose brands mentioned above) see Flour Power.

My hunch is that the biggest difference you'll find with flour is freshness.  If you could find grain milled yesterday (or today!), I bet it would have a much better taste, even if it was from the least expensive brand.  So, possibly outside the scope of your question, but, an airtight container for flour is definitely a good idea, as is testing out a grain mill or finding a bakery that has fresh flour, if you're really interested in the secrets of wheat.


What is the difference between pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce? Pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce are both tomato-based, have roughly the same seasoning (Italian) and look a like. However, I (and a friendly user here) think there is a difference between the two. So what is it? Or isn't there one and you can interchange the two without a weird feeling or taste?

Red pizza sauce is often (but not always) two things:

Thicker.  Thinner sauce will tend to run in the oven and also steam the pizza crust as it cooks - if loaded with toppings, otherwise thin is fine.  Depending on the crust, the heat of the oven, the toppings above sauce, and how watery it is, this may not be needed.  If you've just got some crushed tomatoes and a few bits of cheese in a super hot oven - the sauce should be fine without reducing beforehand.  If you've loaded up a bucket of sauce and a pound of cheese, precook and reduce the sauce.
It's often simpler.  Many pasta dishes like spaghetti highlight the sauce and hours of simmering happen for the sauce to bring it to perfection.  They're all about the sauce.  Pizza is really about the crust and what highlights it.  Many of the best pizzas are simply topped.  Crushed san marzano tomatoes (sometimes) reduced with a hint of salt is often all I do, and franky, it's enough. I'm not talking about the jarred varieties here, but what you might cook at home.  Jars in the store, the main difference is just how thick it is.

I use my own sauce for both and flavor for my tastes.. Canned store bought pizza sauce does seem to be thicker..  Bottom line is,  if you and yours love it, do it your way... There are no rules in this day and age.


Callebaut callets vs. block? So I know that one should never substitute chocolate chips for chocolate in a recipe, but I'm new to the game and don't really know what the deal with these callets is. Are they essentially the same as chocolate chips, or can I buy a massive bag of them and use interchangeable with chocolate chips as well as bar chocolate?

Sorry if this is a rookie question.

Low quality chocolate chips often have additives in them that help them keep shape and shelf life, that's why they're not recommended.  Callebaut callets are pure 100% chocolate according to Callebaut.  I'd use them anywhere for bar or chips with great results.  They might not come out of the oven looking exactly like a traditional chocolate chip cookie (for example) but they should taste fantastic!

Cooking chocolate has additives (such as vegetable fats) designed to make the chocolate more "chocolate" like AFTER baking

Regular chocolate tend to go dull, and stay soft and even sticky after baking, so may not be ideal depending on what you are making

Most people can't taste the difference once baked inside a product e.g. chocolate chip cookie

Save your good chocolate for eating straight!


Does this picture accurately describe different kind of coffee? In many place like blogs, facebook I have seen the following picture describing different types of coffee. Is it accurate?

Also one thing I do don't understand is how espresso is coming on top of steamed milk (Latte Macchiato) and in another place it is coming below steamed milk (Caffe Breve)

It's the order of pouring, not how the drink looks. The espresso is a shot, like a measure for fully automatic machines like the ones they have in Starbucks. In fact, I think I have seen the very poster in some coffee chain shop.

For the first ten; The picture describes not different coffees, but different hot drinks based on coffee (which is espresso in this case), in other words it describes coffee- based(espresso) hot drinks.

On the other hand they are accurate by description/ingredients.


Items in freezer, including ice cubes, taste freezer burnt. Possible causes? Items placed in my freezer take on an awful flavor that tastes a lot like freezer burn, even ice cubes.  If I put items in the freezer over-night and it isn't tightly covered, this problem occurs.

With the ice cubes I can rinse them off to eliminate the bad flavor, but I'd prefer to find the root cause and fix it.

Any ideas/suggestions are quite welcome.

Freezer burn occurs when water molecules in food gather in a colder location in your freezer—whether that be the sides of your freezer or even other foods.

Tips to prevent freezer burn:

Don't put hot food directly into your freezer, let it cool first
Put your food in air-tight containers
The longer food is in the freezer the greater your chance of freezer burn

I'm going to go out on a limb though and guess that—at least with your ice cubes may just be acquiring a "freezer smell" from the other foods in your freezer. If I don't use the cubes in my freezer fast enough they end up tasting really unpleasant. Give your freezer a good cleaning and cover your ice cubes with saran wrap and this should help stop the funny smells/tastes.

I found out that the "freezer" taste comes from the free-on(?) used in frost-free freezer's.


What knife and cutting technique should I use for cubing bacon? I like to fry and cook cubed bacon for various dishes, but I sometimes have a hard time cutting through bacon, especially where the fat meets the meat. The bacon just tends to move around too much, and it gets trickier at the end of the slice (or chunk). I usually use a 6 inch serrated knife for this task. What knife would be best - serrated, chef's, or filet? Or something else? Is there some special technique I should be using?

Cutting bacon into cubes was a regular prep task for me when I was cooking professionally, so I got very fast at it.  Here are the tricks I found:

Fully cooked (baked) bacon cuts MUCH faster and cleaner, and you can make perfect cubes
Don't use a serrated knife.  It'll be easier to cut with, but it will shred and fray the bacon as you slice, eventually making a mess.
Use the sharpest knife you have, especially for uncooked bacon.  There's already a tendency for it to slip and slide around, and a sharp knife cuts with less back-and-forth motion.
You want a deep-bellied knife such as a santoku or Chinese cleaver, because you can slice through multiple stacks of bacon at once.
Stack slices of bacon so you can cut multiple pieces at once.
Try to work with 4" by 4" blocks of bacon, so the pieces aren't big enough to slip around as much.  With this size you're still able to do a lot at once, but it's fast
Organize your cutting board.  Pick one corner for whole chunks of bacon, then cut into strips and move to another spot, then finally into cubes which goes in another spot.

Now if I were a culinary school, you'd have paid a few hundred bucks to learn what I just told you.

I use a pair of scissors. This is clearly the most underrated kitchen utensil. I've written an article about my top five - scroll to the bottom to see the scissors.
One huge advantage is that you can do it straight onto the frying pan leaving only the scissors and your fingers for cleaning :-)


How much citric acid to use to preserve vegetarian jelly? I am making a vegetarian jelly using Carrageenan. I am hoping to make a batch to give out as samples to friends etc. (hoping to market it eventually).
Does anyone know what concentration of citric acid to use as a preservative. Also, some commercial products include sodium citrate. Is that always needed?

You will have to use the amount specified in the recipe you are using. It varies with each fruit or vegetable. Further, making up your own recipe is not wise because of possible bacteria that could set in. You will want to check out recipes from sites like http://www.freshpreserving.com/tools/faqs.

Citric acid is a natural preservative, 1tsp er quart of liquid to preserve the final product.  As to allergies listed very little http://www.ehow.com/how_6315775_use-citric-acid-preservative.html


Espresso machine has to warm up halfway through pulling a shot I've had my espresso machine for a little less than a year. It's a DeLonghi EC155. It heats up fine (I assume so - a green light that means "ready" turns on, and I've followed the instructions and let it sit for 30 minutes heating before using it), but when I pull a shot, it makes the sound of the water being pushed through the grounds, but the green light turns off halfway through the process. I stop pulling the shot, wait for the light to come on, and finish pulling the shot.

Usually when I dispose of the grounds, they're very watery. Is there a way to make the machine hold heat longer, or is it a defect with the machine?

EDIT: It should also be noted that the light turning off halfway through is a relatively new occurrence. Before about a month ago the "ready" light would stay on until after I had pulled my shot.

Why do you stop in the middle ? Is there a drop in pressure ? does the coffee continue dripping down in the cup?

Let it finish.

I assume, if it is working like my machine, that the water is being re-heated for a next shot.

1st thing I would do is to clean the machine with a "descaler"; it should help with the water heating system and the pressure.

If that does not help, have the machine looked at.

Home espresso machines in that price range are hopeless. Especially if you want to steam milk. They are not powerful enough. You've been sold a $200 lie. La Marzocco is making two home machines but are for the high end market at 20-40 times the price of your machine. Really high end. You're likely better off going the Italian home coffee way and buying a Moka Pot. Or better yet, try your local cafe.


Cooking slow-roasted pork to 190F? I got a recipe from America's Test Kitchen for "slow-roasted pork" using a bone-in pork shoulder.  They say to cook it at 325F until it's 190F internal temperature.

However: you normally need to cook pork only until 160F to kill microorganisms. Wouldn't cooking it until 190F dry it out? Why would they say to cook it until 190F if 160F is normally sufficient?

They say to cook until 190F because that's the temperature at which the stuff that actually makes your slow-roasted pork moist, the collagen, fat, etc. is breaking down and coating the meat.  Less than that and you'll have all those bits still intact in your shoulder, which you don't want.
ATK explains this in their footnote on the recipe:

LOW OVEN
Just like in a pot roast, cooking the pork low and slow (325 degrees for 5 to 6 hours) pushes the meat well beyond its “done” mark into the 190-degree range, encouraging intramuscular fat to melt, collagen to break down and tenderize the meat, and the fat cap to render and crisp.

ATK's foot and header notes have taught me a lot over the years and I highly recommend them.

Both are right. Chef Daryl's way is how I cook my roasts, just a tad different, but his way also presents the ability for the collagen to melt and the meat does not get dry. So you have moist meat with the broken down collagen.

I fry the roast on med/ med-high heat in my Dutch oven on the stove while my oven is warming up to a low broil temp. Once browned, I braise the liquid (I use beef stock because I prefer it to wine). Then I place it in the oven and lower the temp to 200 and cook for hours until I can see the collagen has melted.

I have also cooked it the other way (higher temp) and got the same result but the meat was, indeed, tougher every time.


Why is my mango not ripening correctly? I have always been good at being able to tell when a mango is ripe based on the firmness and smell. For the last several batches I have purchased, however, almost every one I cut open is simply not good, with taste nor color. Rather than the deep orange color, I keep getting a yellow hue with browning around the seed:

It seems as though they go bad even though they never quite ripen. Based on  this question, as well as other online content, I have tried to wrap them in newspapers, put them in a bag with a banana, or just let them sit at room temperature for several days. Nothing has seemed to work lately. I don't know if there is a correlation, but it seems like they ripen better in the summer rather than the winter (we are in New Mexico). We keep our house at around 72 F.

Do I keep getting a bad batch, or am I doing something wrong? I would love any advice anyone might have.

This happened to me a few weeks ago. Two mangoes just plain would not ripen.  I tried the window sill and paper bags. I bought two later and they ripened fine. So I took the first two back. The manager of the fruit department said the pallet is treated with ethylene to ripen the fruit, and sometimes the ethylene does not get to some spots.

Yellow?  Mexico has yellow mango's. Different type of mango than were I live. But mango's can be picked very green or unripe. Shipped then gassed before going to the store to be sold. To start to fast ripen  Overseas. Gassing could cause that problem.


Is there a difference in the ease of seasoning cast iron, forged iron, and carbon steel? I have a forged iron pan, and I used linseed oil to season it in the oven. The resulting seasoning peels in places. Also, it is not really non-stick, once food burns even a little, it is stuck to the seasoning irreversibly. I removed and renewed the seasoning 2-3 times, but it didn't get better.

Is forged iron harder to season than cast iron, or is it just bad seasoning technique? Also, is it easier or harder to season carbon steel when compared to cast iron or forged iron?

I can't speak authoritatively, but I do have all three types and have had good luck with my seasonings, so I'll share what I do.

For cast iron, I use solid vegetable fat exclusively (Crisco). I did the original seasoning by coating it in fat and baking in the oven. To clean it, I use salt, Crisco and a paper towel to get any food bits off. I then get the pan hot and wipe it down with a little more Crisco. It's not PTFE nonstick, but pretty good.

For my forged iron DeBuyer fry pan, I followed the manufacturer's recommendation for initial seasoning: put enough oil in the pan (I use canola) to coat the bottom. Heat to smoking. I swirled the hot oil around to coat the sides a bit. Let it cool, pour and wipe out the oil.

The thing I've found is it takes quite a bit of use to develop the seasoning. Here's a picture after about a month's use - note how dark the sides are getting (the bottom is less dark because I learned a green scrubby pad (Scotch-Brite) will remove the seasoning entirely. Oops!).

I did some scrambled eggs for the sake of science, without adding any extra oil to the pan. They behaved as nicely as any PTFE coated pan I've ever used.

Today the entire bottom of the pan is that rich mahogany color, and a fried egg slides around in it like one of those goofy AS SEEN ON TV ads.

EDIT: Used the pan for over easy eggs this morning and snapped a new picture. This is about 3 months after the last photo.

Normally I can just wipe it out with a paper towel. If I've been cooking bacon or something that left residue, I'll run water into the pan while it's still ripping hot, then wipe it out gently with a sponge.

After that I heat the pan up and add just a tiny bit of canola oil. I wipe the oil around with a paper towel and put the pan away.

For carbon steel--like my wok--I treat it exactly the same as the DeBuyer pan. Clean gently, after each use get the pan ripping hot and wipe it down with some oil.

My understanding is that you should always use an animal fat to cure iron pans.  I don't entirely understand the chemistry behind it, but using veggie oil will lead to a sticky cure that doesn't hold well.  Also, make sure you're heating up your pan a smidge before you add the lard/chicken fat/tallow/whatever.


Tasting food while cooking I cook quite regularly at home, but I have trouble tasting food while cooking. All I want to know is if I should adjust salt, pepper or sourness. On the rare occasions that I taste, I invariable mess up the ingredient that I tasted. For example, I might place a little quantity (enough to lick) on my palm, wait/ blow for it to cool down, taste and adjust for salt. Later when eating the meal, I discover that I have added too much salt.

Any tips?

If it matters - this is South Indian style vegetarian cooking - lentils, vegetables.

Tasting while in progress is trial and error and a learned skill.  If a sauce needs to cook for an hour or more to meld favors together, it will not taste the same early in the process as the finished product.  Some ingredients mellow during the process, others concentrate.  Garlic as an example may taste strong to begin with, or be undetectable in other areas until it has melded with the other ingredients.  Salt will often become stronger as the product cooks towards completion.  The art is learning that at the half way mark knowing what the salt or other ingredient should taste like and how forward it should be to have it where you want in the finished product.  If you cannot taste it at all at the half way point, there almost certainly is not enough, but if it tastes like what you want at the end, then you may have too much and need to make other adjustments.

For me, this comes only with experience and you will get that only by consistently tasting and learning what it tasted like in progress when it turns out the way you want in the end.  You will definitely make mistakes, the key is remember and learn from those.  In the long term, you final results will tend to be better if you go by taste in many products than trying to go by one pinch in this dish, two dashes in this, and so on.  Meat is especially notorious for one piece taking more spice than another, but many vegetables are the same way, especially things like onions that can vary in strength, tomatoes that vary in acid, etc.

In learning on some dishes, like sauces, you can even consider dividing into two sauce pans.  One you spice a bit heavier than he other, taste side by side, and proceed.   Then compare the end product and see which was closer to what you wanted.  If both  are OK, but one better, you now have a better idea of what the mid point target was, combine them for serving so no loss and remember the lesson.

Always taste any sauce that you're cooking.  If it tastes 'bad' then do something about it.  If you're not sure do nothing.


How can I tell the difference between unmarked sugar and stevia? My wife just started back on her doctor-recommended ketogenic diet (due to a medical history of high blood pressure and Crohn's disease in her family). She's to have reduced carbohydrates and sugars, and to use artificial sweeteners for anything she would normally add sugar to.

While making our morning coffee, I found a clear plastic container with what looks like stevia stored away - a taste confirms that it has a slightly different taste than the sugar I have on hand.

But I want to be absolutely sure before I recommend she use it in her baking - is there any surefire way to tell if this is stevia and not sugar?

Note: It may also possibly be Truvia.

Don't throw it away.  Worst case you use up the mystery sweetener on yourself, and use a new pack of Stevia for your wife and anything you share. That's what I recommend if you're not convinced by my solution or don't have sensitive kitchen scales.

At room temperature, sucrose (normal sugar) is very soluble in water: about 200 g of sugar will dissolve in 100 g of water.

It's harder to get a figure for the solubility of Stevia as it's not a single compound but a mixture of related compounds.  However various patents claim "high solubility" stevia preparations of around 30 g per 100 g water, or around 1/7 as much.

This is enough of a difference to test: If (with plenty of stirring but no heat) the mystery sweetener will dissolve in an equal mass (weight) of water, it's sugar. If not it's stevia.  This only works if you weigh it.  You can't do this by volume.

You can always compare to known sugar; a comparison to know stevia is less useful unless it's identical, and brands evolve. The conclusion holds for fructose too (that's even more soluble), but glucose, which you're unlikely to have as pure powder at home, needs slightly more than its own weight of water to dissolve it.

Pure stevia is much sweeter than sugar, and when concentrated may have an aftertaste. It's also sold blended. When blended with other sweeteners the solubility test probably still applies (certainly in the case of erythritol, find in Truvia). Sometimes stevia is bulked out to make it a more direct substitute for sugar. The bulking agents may well be rather soluble and a source of carbohydrates (maltodextrin is sometimes used).

When I do keto, I can tell within a short period of time by the buzz, if something has sugar in it. So the easy solution is for you to do keto for a few days, then drink a cup of this stuff.

Edit:

Mark mentions that this is susceptible to psychological error. Firstly, this indicates to me that Mark hasn't ever done a long term keto diet. I've gotten steak at a steak house, assumed it was just steak, and got a huge buzz from the steak. I asked, and later I found out they added sugar to it.

Nevertheless, the way around this is to do this as a double blind study - get 32 people, give have them all do Keto for a few days, then give them unlabeled cups of Stevia vs sugar water, and ask whether they experienced a sugar buzz or not. This should result in a statistically significant measurement concerning which is sugar and which is Stevia.


Is a vacuum strictly necessary for sous-vide cooking? I'd always assumed that things cooked sous-vide (which translates as 'under vacuum'!) needed to be under a good vacuum for the most efficient heat transfer into the meat, since air is less convective than water. I also thought there might be a hygiene issue with having the meat exposed to the air in the bag.

However, in the video on this Kickstarter page (at around 1.00), she simply puts the steak in a sealed Ziploc bag and then into the water bath, without evacuating the bag. So, are my concerns unfounded?

Yep, Ziploc bags are fine although make sure you have ones that are appropriately heat sensitive for whatever temperatures you'll be cooking at. There's a good guide on the Cooking Issues blog:

http://www.cookingissues.com/primers/sous-vide/part-ii-low-temperature-cooking-without-a-vacuum/#sectionII3b1

  Fill a container with water deep enough to easily submerge your food and bag.
  Always add some sort of liquid to the bag –fat, stock, sauce, etc. The liquid is necessary to fill the gaps around your food and expel the air from the bag.
  Add your food item. A significant advantage of Ziplocs over vacuum bags is that the food can be added to the bag hot. All vacuum bagging procedures require your food to be cold (more on that in the upcoming vacuum section of the primer). If you are searing meat and adding it directly to the Ziploc bag make sure the surface of the meat is below 100˚C (212˚F) or the bag will melt. Be especially careful to not touch the bag with a hot set of tongs or spatula.
  Close the seal of the bag almost to the edge, leaving the last portion of the seal open –make sure you have correctly sealed the bag. Put your finger in the corner to make sure that part of the seal is open.
  Carefully immerse the bag in the water starting with the closed corner, not the open one. Make sure you do this step carefully, allowing air to escape up and out of the open corner.
  Just as the open part of the seal is about to go under the water, close it up.

The vacuum in the bag can only be reduced pressure, relative to atmosphere, as in a high vacuum, like outer space, all the liquids in the bag would 'boil' and the vapour produced have to be removed to maintain the high vacuum until only a dried husk remained. Therefore water bath pressure is a satisfactory method of expelling most of the free air from the bag.


Cooking an egg without oil or butter I like scrambled and fried eggs but the butter or oil probably add unnecessary calories. How can I fry an egg with no butter?  I tried in a Teflon pan but it was a mess.

Well, frying means to cook in oil, so technically you can't. Fat also is delicious, so you'll lose something in the process besides just calories.

If you are using teflon, ceramic, or some other non-stick, don't bring the heat up too much. Scrambling your eggs with milk will make them more fluffy, and I bet less likely to stick. Use (sigh) PAM or another aerosolized cooking spray. Or just 'wipe' the pan with an oiled paper towel. It would impart minimal calories.

It's sad, but microwaving eggs will cook them without adding calories (or anything else). You can also make absolutely delicious eggs by soft-boiling them, which adds nothing at all.

My more general advice is to learn to love a little fat and to consume a variety of fresh, unprocessed foods which taste great.  It's much healthier in the long run than just cutting away at a number.  Better to go for some walks/runs/lifts then sacrifice flavor.  And fat leads to fullness, which leads to less wasted calories on junk later in the day.

I just fried an egg and used a little spray butter on the pan...it is zero calorie and worked great and tasted good, too.


Are Chives and Green Onions the same thing? Is it OK to substitute one for the other?

They're not the same thing, as they're a different plant, but they're part of the same family. You might be able to substitute the tops of green onions (scallion, spring onion) in place of chives in small quanities.

Chives tend to be smaller and more tender, typically used raw, and only the green portion is used.  Green onions often use both the whites and the green part, has a more pronounced flavor, and is used both cooked and raw.

So, if you're going to substitute chives for green onion -- use the greens only, and reduce the amount.

If you're going to go the other way, you'll want to look to see what parts are being used.  If it's the whites of the green onion you need, use regular white onion, if it's the greens, then you can try chives, but add them as late as you can in the cooking process, and if it was to be used raw, you might need to increase the amount.

Simple they are coming from same plant. one of It's call spring onion(onion leaves) the others(chives) are call their flowers !.


Prevent scrambled eggs from sticking to stainless steel I'm having the hardest time preventing scrambled eggs from sticking to stainless steel cookware. I've tried bringing the eggs to room temperature before cooking, slowly heating the pan, loads of butter (tasted great, still stuck), adding milk to the eggs. How can I prevent scrambled eggs from sticking to stainless steel?

Raw protein sticks to hot stainless steel as soon as it comes into contact with it.  However, once the layer which is stuck to the pan cooks through, it releases from the pan. The trick is to heat the pan over a low heat before adding the eggs, then don't touch them until there is a layer of cooked egg on the bottom - about a minute or two. Then when you start stirring, the cooked egg will easily peel off the bottom and the pan will be sufficiently seasoned so that the rest of the egg doesn't stick to it.

Well, if you must use a stainless steel pan (you should ideally use a non-stick pan) the two things you must do is -

1/ Cook over the lowest heat you can get on your cooker hob and,

2/ Stir continuously, don't stop for a second.

It's a similar principle to making roux (fat and flour) cook over low heat and stir continuously otherwise it sticks and burns.

That's what's happening to your eggs, they're sticking and burning because they're cooking too fast (because the heat's too high) and sticking because you're not stirring enough or fast enough to stop them sticking.


Does brewing tea for longer result in higher caffeine content? The ISO standard for brewing tea says "6 minutes".  Of course different teas have vastly different properties, but...

For "average commodity black tea" and "average commodity green tea", will leaving the tea bag in longer (say 1 hour or 1 day) result in higher caffeine content in the cup?  How much?

I recently observed the effect of time of steeping on caffeine content in tea. We used High Pressure Liquid Chromatography to determine the levels of caffeine in Green Tea in samples that were steeped for 1, 2, 4, 10, 15, 30, 60, and 120 mins. The concentration of caffeine over time did not show any significant trends. Our results suggest that caffeine content does not depend on the steeping time and instead the caffeine dissolves in the hot water within a minutes of starting to steep the tea. Hope this helps.

As per my view of point, that caffeine will come out as soon as we sock in the water and if we keep more in the water, then tea will produce tannin and caffeine get reduce.