How do I prevent smoked brisket from being chewy? Last night I smoked my first brisket. I used a charcoal smoker which was given to me. I followed the advice given to me by the previous owner coupled with some quick reading from the manual and internet. While my brisket was full of flavor it was a bit chewy, though not dried out. I'm wondering if it is the way I prepared the meat. Here's an outline of the process I used:

About 5 lbs. of brisket
No marinade on brisket
1 gallon of Apple juice in pan
Started smoking when about 1/3 of coals were white with ash
Added soaked alder chips wrapped in tin foil
Placed brisket on top rack of smoker
Kept temperature to the left of ideal (advice from previous owner)
Added more soaked alder chips and charcoal 2 1/2 hrs in
Cooked for a little over 4 hrs
Smoker was in sun for first hour

Photo to illustrate what I mean by left of ideal:

Which leads me to my questions:

Is brisket generally chewy when smoked?
Would a good marinade prevent chewiness?
Is there something else wrong in my preparation (cook time, temperature, etc.)?

Chewy means undercooked. Most of your standard "barbecue cuts" of meat contain a lot of connective tissue. This must be rendered to achieve tenderness. This goes for brisket, pork butt, and ribs, to name a few. If you are using the words "chewy" or "tough" to describe the texture of your meat, in nearly all cases it has not been cooked enough. Your time/temperature pretty much confirms it.

The best thing you can do is deemphasize time and temperature as your measure of "done." Rather, use a skewer to probe your meat when you think you are getting close. It should slide in and out of the brisket with VERY little resistance. Some people like to wrap in foil a few hours in. This will finish the brisket faster, as you will mitigate the evaporative cooling effect that causes your cooking process to stall. Plus, you can add some liquids and spices to the foil, which adds to the flavor profile of your meat. This is better known as the "Texas Crutch," and there is no shame in using it. Plenty of competitions have been won employing these tactics.

Brisket is a little intimidating because of the small window between "too chewy" and "dry and falling apart." But you should probably err more on the side of the latter, as that can be more easily compensated. The real takeaway here is have patience, and look to the meat itself for clues as to whether or not it is done, rather than using a timer and thermometer.

I sear both sides of the brisket, wrap it in foil, and allow to cook until done, occasionally spreading liquid runoff over the meat.


Dry milk in bread: purpose, and substitutions I've been looking for a good 100% whole grain bread recipe that I like, and came across one that looks promising in the book Home Grown Whole Grains (pp. 152):

  1 package active dry yeast
  1 tablespoon sugar
  ¼ cup warm water
  2 cups warm water
  3 tablespoons oil
  6 tablespoons honey
  1 teaspoon salt
  5 cups whole wheat flour
  ½ cup dry milk powder

  Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the ¼ cup water and allow to stand until the mixture begins to bubble. Add the 2 cups warm water, oil, honey, and salt and then begin beating in the flour. When you have about half of it worked in, beat in the dry milk, a little at a time, taking care to break up any lumps. Then beat in the rest of the flour....

What is the purpose of the dry milk?  And what guidelines can I follow to replace the powdered milk with something more "self sufficient"?  Perhaps normal milk, and a little less water?

Milk is added to bread for flavour, a tender crumb and well-coloured crust.

Dry milk is used because it easy to store and easy to use in bulk. Milk also contains an enzyme called glutathione which can weaken gluten and result in a poorer quality loaf - the drying process destroys this enzyme.

You can substitute regular milk in various proportions, but you may as well simply replace the 2 cups of water with it, which will give you a nice soft loaf. Opinion is divided whether you should scald the milk (by heating to 180°F/82°C according to How Baking Works, page 150) to destroy the glutathione, but in any case it's probably a good idea to warm it anyway, to help the rise.

I used 22ml oat milk instead of dried milk in a bread maker and added 15g extra white flour.
The whole wheat loaf looked a good colour, the texture difference was unnoticeable and the taste was just as good.


How to make fried chicken tender and juicy? I prepare fried chicken (imitating broasted chicken) at home. Normally to make it tender and juicy I will add baking soda (gives unpleasant flavor) or glutamate, but it doesn't make it that tender. How do I make it as tender and juicy as broasted chicken in restaurants?

The correct answer to any question following the template of "how do I get (some meat) to come out tender when I (some cooking method) it?" is: don't overcook it.

It's seriously not rocket science. Cooking meat dries it out as moisture evaporates.

The second, and perhaps dominant factor is that in overcooked meat—anything above about 165 F / 74 C, all of the proteins in the meat are fully coagulated.  They have squeezed into tight little balls, squeezing out liquid, and taking on a rubbery texture.  This effect cannot be reversed.

Overcooked meat is too dry, which gives it a tough and sinewy texture.

For other tips on making fried chicken more like what you've had in restaurants (very few of which are "broasting" it), see:

How to imitate commercial fried chicken?

Season and flash fry in butter or (olive) oil.

"Flash fry" means cook for a couple of minutes at med-high heat in a frying pan. This will "seal" the meat, which will help lock in the moisture during the cooking process. Do this before adding all your finger lickin' spices and batter.

"Sealing" applies to most meats, not just chicken. If you're going to roast beef / pork etc which have longer cooking times, wrap them in foil AFTER sealing them, but before you roast them.


What cut of beef is "fillet of beef"? I usually cook vegetarian dishes because it's easier for me although I'm a huge carnivore. I'm taking a stab at this steak sandwich recipe which calls for "fillet of beef". What does that mean? Which cut (chuck roast, london broil, etc...) can I get? Surely Ina Garten does not mean fillet mignon?

I believe it's another name for the tenderloin. http://www.recipes4us.co.uk/Beef%20Cuts.htm

Also, if you check out this other fillet of beef recipe from the same show:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/fillet-of-beef-recipe/index.html
You can see a much better picture of the meat. That one is clearly a tenderloin.

So The Fillet Mignon is part of that technically...

"Fillet" is any cut of boneless meat.

It may be spelled "filet" (single "l"), but this spelling varient may imply French cuisine or a specific cut of meat.

"Filet of beef" aka "filet mignon" is cut from the tenderloin.


How to cook Lo Mein? I just moved to China and I would like to cook some lo mein ( chinese noodles ), this is the easiest way to get some veg. food here :)

The lo mein I bought are not the fresh ones but the dry ones.

I'm Italian so at the first I have tried to cook them in the same way I usually cook spaghetti: boil them and then remove the water and then put them in the wook with the other, already stir-fried ingredients (oil, garlic, tomatoes etc ... ).

This does not look to be the proper way since the result is overcooked and the lo mein is sticky, so I guess I'm doing some big mistake.

Any hints?
(I'm attaching the image since I'm not 100% sure what kind of noodles I bought, probably they are made of rice since they are very white)

Update
I kept photo of other available noddles, maybe you can suggest me something better that my first choose.

UPDATE 2:
After spending 4 years in China I came to the conclusion all supermarket noodles are simply not very good quality or at least not good for my purpose ( I am used to italian dry pasta and the chinese equivalent are too different ).
The best noodles you can get are the fresh one in the local market, their quality is very much the same as the fresh pasta you can buy in italy as we copied it from Chinese long time ago :) )

OK I can read Chinese and let me tell you the answer: the noodles you bought are made by eggs. They're not made by rice. (FYI, there are TWO kinds noodles called "Rice Noodles", they are actually made by rice. The two kinds varies in thickness).

You can first make soup noodles to grasp the texture of the noodles you bought. Try undercook and overcook a bit, see if you can find the sweet spot you want.

Now, to go with other ingredients, here's how Chinese "fried noodles" are made:

Prepare a pot of boiled water (must be boiling at 100C, not just hot)
Add a bit of salt into the water. This helps taste and prevents the noodles absorbing too much water.
Add a bit of oil into the water. This prevents the noodles from sticking together later in the process
Put the noodles in and cook them for 30s to 1 min. Never (very important!) cook them for more than a min.
Take out the noodles. They should be undercooked now, which is good. Use a scissor to cut the noodles, otherwise you'll have very long noodles later in the process. There is no need to rinse them using cold water if you use this method.
You can turn off the heat to the water pot now. But don't throw it away.
Add oil to a hot pan, cook the spices (e.g. onion, green onion, whatever you use)
Cook the meat ingredients in the pan.
Add a slight amount water from the pot (which has salt and oil in it) to the pan. Also add sugar, soy-sauce, etc. for final adjustment of taste.
Now put the noodles into the pan. If done correctly, all the water (should look like soup by now) should be absorbed into the noodles right away.
Cook the noodles a bit.
When the noodles are around 80~90% done, add the vegetables.
When the vegetables are done the noodles should be done as well. Finish!

As for Lo Mein, it's not a kind of noodles, rather a style of cooking noodles. When making "Lo Mein", the noodles are only cooked by hot soup. A "Lo Mein" dish is where the noodles are cooked by a minimal amount of water. It's like serving soup noodles but without the soup. The procedures are largely same as above, except the noodles are put into the pan at a later stage and only briefly fried, or not fried at all. I personally consider "Lo Mein" a more difficult dish than "fried noodles" (aka "Chow Mein").

I know this post is old but I just wanted to advise you that any type of  Chinese noodles that are yellow in color, are always made with eggs. All white or clear noodles, are always made from rice. Contact me if you haven't been able to perfect the way you cook each kind


What's the proper way to dispose of used fats & oils? Down the drain? Does it depend on the type? With bacon fat, I usually let it solidify in a cup lined with foil, and then throw it out. With used canola oil, I'm not quite sure what to do because it doesn't solidify.

Never down the drain.  We've had a few incidents in my neighborhood where the sewer pipes were clogged with fat, and a few people's basements flooded with sewage as a result.

For fats that solidify, let them do so, then pitch them in your regular garbage. Chill grease in the fridge if you need to get it to harden up. For ones that don't solidify, pour them into a sealable (hopefully non-recyclable) bottle, and throw the whole container away with your regular garbage.

It's possible that your area might accept cooking fats & oils as part of a recycling effort. Ours does for motor oil (I live in Maryland).

For restaurants, some places (eg, the state of Maryland) require a system for catching grease that's been washed down the sink. It's my understanding that they're fairly expensive (a couple thousand dollars US), but the fines for not having one installed may be even more, and they won't let new restaurants open without one.

In my area (Vancouver, Wa), the recyclers will take used engine oil, but NOT used cooking oils!  If I'm desperately trying to do the perfectly right thing, a couple of the local restaurants will let me dispose of my oil in their collection containers, but that's a pain in the A**    So for the past 20+ years, I've simply mixed a couple of tbsp of dish detergent (that's enough for 1/2 gal of oil) into the oil and then slowly drizzled it down the drain w/plenty of Hot water. There has Never been an incident with the sewers in my neighborhood!


How long does cooked garlic keep in fridge? I was wondering how long cooked garlic (in this case with pasta and a tiny bit of olive oil) keeps in the fridge. I always wonder about garlic (or onion) with oil but it was only a little oil. Still Tasty says that cooked onions last 3-5 days but nothing for cooked garlic. Would they be the same?  http://stilltasty.com/fooditems/index/17825 Thank you.

In general the FDA recommends that you consume leftovers within 3-5 days (See their website for specific foods). In this case, I don't think the garlic is what's holding you back.

While garlic and herb infused oils do present some botulism risk, I think what they are getting at is the can of preserved garlic you've had in the fridge for 9 months.

Alright, so, for our culture and our cuisine, we fry garlic ALL THE TIME and store it in the refrigerator either drained from the oil or with the oil. So in our case, we would have a jar of fried garlic and another jar of the oil that the garlic was fried in (garlic oil), or we store the garlic with the oil, depending on what you want to use them for. And we keep it all in the fridge and it lasts about a month for us. I've grown up doing it like this, and so have my grandparents, no one is dead yet sooo...just saying, I think if its cooked garlic stored in oil, it shouldnt be a problem UNLESS its raw garlic thats being stored, then thats something to worry about.


Is there a substitute for aluminum foil? Is there a replacement that can be used for aluminum foil in the oven?

I don't want to foil in my kitchen. Is there an alternative which can be used in the same way as aluminum foil, but has no risk of transferring aluminum to the food?

For example, what can I use to cover a meatloaf when baking it in the oven? Or in a slow cooker?

The reason you put aluminum foil on something you bake is to block some of the heat. More specifically, you want to block the heat transfer by radiation. This is, you only want some kind of infrared-opaque shield between the heating elements and the food. Of course, it has to be also non-flammable at oven temperatures and either washable or environmentally friendly and cheap, making it one-use.

The best solution is to bake like generations of people did before there was freshly milled aluminum foil available in the supermarket: Get a clay bräter, or a tagine, or a dutch oven. Anything with a lid that is big enough to fit in your oven. Bake your food in it. It is slower, but gives you a much better taste due to slower, more even heating.

The second best solution would be to get some other stuff intended for baking, and use it as a cover. The problem is that baking paper as per Rikon's suggestion is probably not opaque enough in the infrared range - at least it is translucent in the visible spectrum. Maybe two layers of it will do, but it will get hard to work with, because it doesn't hold shape as well as aluminum foil. You could try it if you think it will help. I think that a silicone mat is more promising. It is preferable to use a  light colored one of the light glossy platinum silicone - I have a black matte one which is great for rolling dough, but it will probably absorb and re-radiate too much heat.

Both solutions can't beat aluminum in one application: targeted charring protection. For a cake baked in an oven which overheats one corner there is still a chance - if your mat can be cut, you can cover half the cake with the piece (some mats shouldn't be cut because they are internally reinforced with something which shouldn't come into contact with food - if in doubt, contact the manufacturer). But if you are baking a whole bird and the protruding wings are getting overcooked, I don't see a good way to pack them in silicone or baking paper and get it to stay on them while the rest of the bird cooks. There, you will probably have to pack them in bread dough and then just break off the dough when the bird is ready.

I have never made meatloaf in a slow cooker - I didn't even know that you can bake in one - so I won't comment on that part.

Just use a Carbon steel or stainless cookie sheet it works great, if you need to wrap the food in the oven then you can get the parchment paper as well.


What is the difference between these tableware flatware and cutlery? 1) May i know specifically in words what the difference(s) are, if any, between
a fish knife
a master butter knife (butter serving knife) and
a fruit knife?

I have googled sufficiently and found plenty of images of the first two but kind of found no clearly differentiating issues betwen the two

2) Also I'd like to know more about the clasical fruit knife

3) While we are at it what is a salad knife and  afruit fork that pair with salad fork and fruit knife respectively?

4) Finally, how does one use fish server knife and fork pair (which i assume looks like a jumbo version of the regular fish knife and fork) to serve fish especially if it is in a sauce?  Any advantage of this serviceware compared to athe conventional service spoona nd fork?

Replacements.com Will provide you with all the discriptions you are asking.  There are so many, it would be easier for you to go to the link yourself.

A butter knife has a slight bend in the tip, other than that they're the same as far as i can tell.
A fruit knife has a real blade whilst a fish knife and butter knife are blunt. Think of it as a table paring knife.
Salad knife = plastic knife that will react less with veg than steel. I've never heard of a fruit fork, the only source I can find on Google is far from credible; apparently it's a long handled fork with fewer prongs. However considering how few results it turns up it seems more like something dreamt up by a marketing department to sell someone an extra set of forks.
You'd have to spoon the sauce separately. Fish slice + a deep knife (a fish knife is a broad knife but a standard chefs knife/Santoku or Chinese cleaver will get the job done) is the way I'd go.


How can non-hydrogenated shortening exist? I'm having a hard time looking up this question, but I have some palm oil shortening and I see some coconut oil shortening that are both non-hydrogenated. I thought the oils would be more liquid than solid at room temperature, if they aren't hydrogenated.

Am I confused?

Most vegetable oils are predominantly some type of unsaturated fatty acid - that is, monounsaturated or polyunsaturated. This type of fatty acid is a liquid at room temperature ("oil"). On the other hand, saturated fat is a solid at room temperature, which is easily demonstrated with butter or animal fat (lard) - which are primarily what vegetable shortening is supposed to substitute for.

Wikipedia has a breakdown of the various types of oils and the proportions of fat types. What's important to note is that while the majority of oils have little to no saturated fat, palm oil in particular is approximately on par with butter, and coconut oil is actually higher than margarine (the most common hydrogenated vegetable oil product).

In fact I've actually never heard of "coconut [oil] shortening" - the idea baffles me because coconut oil is already quite solid at room temperature. It doesn't need to be processed any further to be used as a substitute for butter or vegetable shortening. It's not quite so simple with palm oil though, and there is a "palm shortening" which is different from palm oil.

Hydrogenation is, in a nutshell, converting unsaturated fat to saturated fat by adding hydrogen. Most of the time the hydrogenation is not 100% complete which also leaves trans fats. Palm oil isn't quite as solid as coconut oil so it does need processing in order to be used as a shortening, but hydrogenation is not required; all that needs to be done is to separate the saturated (solid / stearin) fats from the unsaturated (liquid / olein) fats. This is done through crystallization, which is completely different from hydrogenation.

Some companies may indeed also put the coconut or palm oil products through an emulsification process to add volume or make it easier to work with, but that is entirely incidental; these products are made solid due to the very high amount of pre-existing saturated fat and the removal of all or most of the unsaturated fat.

To sum it all up, it's not hydrogenation that makes fat solid at room temperature, it's saturation (of hydrogen atoms), and hydrogenation just happens to be one way to achieve saturation. For products already containing plenty of saturated fat, hydrogenation would be redundant.

Apparently at least one company uses nitrogen and whipping to make the oil have a shortening consistency instead of hydrogenation.


Pasteurized milk that has gone sour I have 1/2 gallon of milk (not raw) that turned sour in fridge (not curdled). Hate to throw it away. Can I safely use it to make cottage cheese or put into a chocolate cake?

Is half a gallon of milk that you may not need to throw out worth getting food poisoning over? If I had to choose between possible bloody diarrhea, vomiting, severe pain, seizures and possibly even death and spending a few more dollars, I certainly would spend a few more dollars.

Throw the stuff away. If it's gone sour, you have a lively colony of bacteria in there.

They may or may not be harmful, but I cannot stress enough that it's simply too dangerous to try.

You can cook with it in place of buttermilk.  If it is NOT curdled and went sour in the fridge there is absolutely nothing wrong with making biscuits, panckes, cornbread etc with it.  Honestly there's nothing to be afraid of, make sure whatever you make is cooked through completely and don't use it if it's already separated into curds and whey.


How can I keep my freshly baked loaf fresh until the next morning if I bake it at night? I wwould like my bread to be fresh the next day when I bake it at night but I know you shouldn't cover your freshly baked bread as it will soften it. Can I leave it on the counter uncovered overnight? Will it still be fresh?

It may be a matter of how you are defining 'Fresh', but my experience has been that 'fresh' isn't that hard to maintain, as long as I'm making a loaf with a significant crust; just don't cut it.  I tend to leave the bread on the rack in my oven overnight to cool down, with no loss of freshness, as long as it hasn't been cut into.  Once it's cut into, things change, but the crust itself isn't terribly vulnerable to getting stale quickly, and protects the rest of the bread.

Roll it in a damp cloth, it might help you to keep it fresh.


Cranberries taste bitter Today I bought a small bag of cranberries. I ate some but they tasted bitter. I was wondering if they can be eaten directly?

Cranberries are just about always sweetened. In their natural state, they are extremely tart. They're safe unsweetened, just not pleasant.

In West Bengal we call it Karonja the plant is of  lemon-plant height and thorny. The fruit is green or  with reddish-stripe but when ripes it becomes blackish as congealed blood. The taste of the fruit is so sour that one has to make a sound with his tounge with closed eyes. Funny is that when it ripes become sweet and sour. This is my personal experience. I have tasted it plucking from the Plant. So, I can't agree with the view that the fruit is of bitter taste. Ofcourse, if it is the same fruit you have talked about.I am sure the fruit is same because I have seen the whole Fruit and parted fruit.


What is the purpose of sugar in baking plain bread? My recipe says 1 tablespoon of sugar per loaf.

This seems like too small an amount for flavor.

The recipe is as follows:

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons active-dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons oil
1 cup water
knead, wait 1 hr, knead again, wait 1.25 hr, bake for 30min @ 350

Is this for flavor, or is there another purpose?

Sugar has a few effects in bread:

It helps make it soft and tender by absorbing some of the water and slowing down the formation of gluten strands.
It feeds the yeast, resulting in a faster rise.
Via caramelisation, it aids in the browning of the crust.
It acts as a preservative, keeping the bread fresher for longer (though 1tbsp probably doesn't make a lot of difference).
It does have some effect on the flavour.

Sugar is indeed a microbial like salt is but only for certain microbes. The use in bread is it keeps it moist by pulling humidity from the surrounding air. Honey is nature made sugar and a much better choice. If you want a more savory loaf then use 1 tsp. per cup of flour. For pastries then use more sugar or sprinkle it atop the pastry. If you really need food for the yeast then make a water roux by cooking up a portion of the flour and some water on a 1 to 5 ratio(1 part flour to 5 parts water) and keep stirring until the flour becomes really thick and sticky. Allow that to cool and incorporate into your dough. What happens is the starch in the flour is cooked up into carbohydrates which feeds the yeast instead of using sugar. Hope this helps...


How to make a Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread in time for breakfast The problem with Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread is that it almost takes 3 hours to complete.

So unless I get up very early in the morning, I cant make it in time for breakfast.

Is it possible to freeze the bread half baked? or make the bread the evening before and just heat it the next morning?

Other suggestions are welcome.

I have developed the following method for "no knead" bread, it works EVERY time and is scrumptious.

Mix 650gm strong white flour in a bowl, pinch of salt, slug of olive oil, 440 mls warm water and 5 (yes 5) teaspoons of dried yeast.
Mix with food mixer for 4 -5 minutes.
Place in oiled plastic bowl, and cover bowl with oiled clingfilm.
Fill a stainless sink with very warm water. Float the bowl with the dough in the water. Leave the bowl to proof for 1 hour (don't touch it).
The dough will have doubled in size. Remove the dough and place in a greased baking tin. Turn on the oven and pull out oven shelf as far as it will go. Place the baking tin with the dough inside on the extended shelf of oven for 30 minutes.
Place a metal pot of water in bottom of oven. Put bread now into a fairly warm fan-forced oven (220°-230° C).
Bake until you can smell aroma (approx 25 -30 mins). To test for being done, the loaf should sound hollow when knocked. You now have stunning "artisan type bread" and you haven't had to knead anything or get your hands dirty.

This works well during the summer and winter and can be made in time for breakfast, i.e. 2 hrs start to finish and needs no help from you.

I am a great fan of no knead bread, and i prepare the 400g of flour version for 2 people.

As it is hard to eat all in one time, the bread is usually eaten the next day too.

After the bread is cool i put it in a plastic bag and eat it next day. It is not the same thing as eating recently baked, but it is superior to the standard industrial bread.


Why does handling peeled chayote make your hands feel numb/rigid? When I peel chayotes and handle the raw flesh of the fruit, my fingers get sticky and a white solid "film" forms on my fingers. The film makes my skin feel restricted/tight. I washed my hands with soap but it doesn't go away. Is this normal? Is there a name for this chemical reaction?

This problem can occur with several foods including squashes, pumpkins, zucchini, and even cucumber. From what I’ve read, it is caused by a sort of sap that the fruit emits when it is cut, and it’s worse in fruits that aren’t fully ripe. (Fruit is used in the botanical sense.)
Remove by  simply soak your hands in warm soapy water for about 5 minutes. Then scrub them with the scrubby side of a sponge. Be sure to scrub any surface area that had the film on it. You can soak your hands longer and less scrubbing will be required.

It appears that the Chayote Squash may have inflammatory properties which may cause skin and even intestinal irritation. If you or someone you know have developed an allergic reaction to this and other fruit, please stop using it and consult a physician or allergist.


How to substitute canned Apricots with fresh when cooking My recipe calls for canned apricots, but I have fresh.  What do I need to co to make sure the recipe is successful.

If the apricots are just a topping or mix-in, you might actually like it better with fresh than with canned, no need to change anything. Won't be the same, but that's not a bad thing! If they were supposed to have been canned with syrup, you'd want to add sugar to compensate.

If it seems like it's important for them to be a little softened, then you could cook them briefly in water, to do basically what canning does to them. (There's no need to actually can them in order to get that effect.) Something like 30 seconds to a couple minutes in boiling water, depending how soft you want them, and you can always add sugar afterwards to get them to the sweetness you want.

As an in-between option, you could also macerate them: toss them with sugar and let them sit for a while. That'll soften them and draw a lot of the juices out.

Can the fresh apricots, then use the canned apricots.


Can I prepare instant noodles in the microwave? I want to prepare instant noodles in microwave. The instructions on the pack clearly mention a gas stove to be used, but I don't have access to one.

The instant noodles I am talking about are Nestle's maggy 2 minutes (that's how they brand it in India). Have a look at the the following Google image search link if it still doesn't ring a bell.

http://goo.gl/tBwF0

The Maggi noodles you link to are just average ramen noodles, so can be cooked in the microwave quite easily.

Boil a kettle of water
Place the noodles in a microwavable bowl. You may need to break the noodles into pieces, but if you're careful with the boiling water you can sometimes soften the noodles in the middle enough to fold the block to make it all fit without breaking
Pour the flavour sachet (and any other curry powder/herbs) onto the dry noodles
Pour the boiling water onto the noodles, enough to cover the noodles, and if desired, a bit more for a bit of a soup
Put into the microwave, you can cover with a loose lid if desired, and microwave for around 2 minutes
Stir the noodles, separating any stuck-together blocks of noodles
Put back into the microwave for another 2-3 minutes (depending on your microwave's power)

I usually cook these kind in the microwave, since if I'm eating them I'm not usually in the mood for a proper cooking session. They do (depending on the kind of noodle) sometimes turn out slightly different when done in the microwave, as compared to boiling on hob, but both are nice as a snack.

You have to put 2 cups of water (for 1 pack of noodles)in a microwave safe bowl add the seasonings and noodles....start the microwave on 2 minutes.. IT WORKS...


How to reduce the moisture when making tarte tatin I've tried making pear and apple tarte tatin a couple of times, using different recipes, and the result is always the same.

When I take the pan out of the oven and flip it over, the pastry is moist, and the thick caramel has turned very runny.

I've tried reducing the amount of butter used, and using different types of sugar, but nothing seems to have an effect...

Is there a way to keep everything "dry" ?

The reason, I think, that most recipes don't leave a thick caramel and it all goes 'runny' is that it's designed to go into a sort of caramel-y sauce when turned out.

Since in most conventional recipes you par-cook the fruit in the caramel then top with the pastry and bake, the fruit releases a lot of moisture into the caramel and making it runnier. Therefore, if you cook the apples separately (boiling them, say) then drain, add to the caramel and cover with pastry and bake, much less juice should leak out of them.

I would keep the caramel recipe the same as in the recipe but just follow the steps above. I don't think the type of sugar will make any difference other then flavor (although soft brown sugars do have more moisture in them).

Also, since everything except the pastry is cooked, try baking the pastry conventionally (in the oven) then grill it for a few minutes to increase the heat on the pastry directly to avoid it becoming soggy.

There are recipes that suggest you cook the apples with butter in the pan before adding the sugar.  That way the jui


Bottling cream-based salad dressing. Preservative advice? I would like to bottle my home made salad dressing that is mayo- and cream-based. I was wondering what kind of preservatives I could use to lengthen shelf life. Also, I am using garlic powder as an ingredient. Are there any problems using garlic powder with mayo?

Switch out the cream.
Mayo is stable, cream is not. Yogurt as a replacement may give you a slight extension (higher pH).

There's no issue using garlic powder.


Slow cooker lid gasket smell I bought a Hamilton Beach slow cooker a while ago. I never had success with it since all the stuff that I made didn't smell good. I finally figured out that it was the rubber gasket on the lid that smelled bad. I don't know if the smell was concentrated food aroma or burnt rubber. I soaked the lid in vinegar overnight and then rinsed it. The smell was gone. I then made some pinto beans in the slow cooker and the gasket again stinks, this time similar to a very very strong pinto bean smell. I am thinking of either giving up on slow cooking or buying a crock pot brand. My questions:

Is the extremely strong smell from the rubber gasket a common occurrence in slow cookers in general?
If not, I guess I should just go and buy a different brand/model and shouldn't have this problem.
If they are, are there any gasketless slow cookers or lids that would solve this problem?
Does overcooking tend to bring out different, or offensive smells from otherwise normal food and sauces?

Results: For those coming here with the same problem, I simply removed the gasket and everything was fine. Since the lid has a small hole to release pressure, there was no need for a gasket to make a seal in the first place.

Well first off, most slow cookers don't have a gasket.  So its not a problem for them.  Rubber can often times take on strong smell.
I would consider buying one without a gasket - I don't think its a majorly useful feature personally.  Or, consider buying the more versatile enameled Dutch oven (there are some very affordable, excellent ones) .
Yes, most don't have a rubber gasket.  And it would solve that problem.
Yes overcooking will lead to bad/different smells, even in good food otherwise.  It will often lead to bad tastes and textures as well.

The whole purpose of the gasket and hinges
is to make the crockpot portable to prevent spills.  Wash the lid in the dishwasher. The lids of crockpots are all DW safe.  No more problem.


Is the double boiling canning procedure really necessary? It seems the usual procedure is to sanitize cans and lids by immersing them in boiling water, to fill the cans, and then to cap them and boil for a few more minutes.

If I sanitize a can and then fill it with boiling jam, and cap it with a sanitized lid, then why bother with the extra boiling?   It seems like a totally redundant step.

Conversely, if you are going to immerse the filled cans in boiling water to process them, then why bother pre-sanitizing them?

This makes no sense!

These various boilings serve different purposes.

The jam mixture is boiled to reduce the liquid and bring the pectin to its gelling temperature.

The bottles and lids are boiled to sterilize them as you said.

The final water bath kills any bugs that were introduced while filling the jars. Additionally this boiling ensures a good seal on the bottles. In the time it takes to fill the bottles the jam will have cooled somewhat and you might not get a good seal.

Killing bugs with boiling is not an instantaneous process. It takes time at those high temperatures to kill a high percentage. If the bottles aren't pre-sterilized then you are putting yourself at a disadvantage as those bugs would be distributed through the hot, but no longer boiling, jam.

Of course, all of these boilings will do some sterilization and are somewhat redundant. It's all about reducing risk. You can bottle with clean but unsterilized bottles and if you work quickly you can skip the hot water bath. Doing so will greatly increase the chances that one or two bottles might not seal or that some bug might survive and spoil your stuff. Reliable sources indicate that if bottles are not presterilized that the bottles should be processed longer in the water bath.

Anecdotally speaking- I have in the past skipped the water bath when my jam was very hot and acidic. I would usually have one or two bottles out of 20 that wouldn't seal. I no longer skip the water bath and I almost never have any bottles that fail to seal.

I have never had jams go bad but this is more luck than proof.

There is a canning method for jam which skips the second boiling. It's called the inversion method. Basically, you pour the hot jam mixture into your jars, add lids, then immediately invert the jars. The boiling-hot jam coats the headspace and inner surface of the lid, sterilizing them and the air bubble.

Edit: The inversion method is currently not recommended by the USDA (PDF).


Should I rest pancake batter? I read somewhere that pancake batter should rest. This confuses me.

On the one hand, mixing the wet ingredients with flour creates gluten. Resting lets the gluten relax, so that I don't get chewy pancakes.

On the other hand, my recipe uses leavening (baking powder). When that reacts with water, it forms bubbles. Letting it rest means those bubbles escape, which means less air in the pancakes (less fluffy).

Should I rest my pancake batter or not? If so, for how long?

Resting pancake batter improves texture. I think the rise is better and the pancakes less chewy.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baking_powder

  Double-acting baking powders work in two phases; once when cold, and once when hot

When you initially mix the baking powder, you will get bubbles, but this does not mean the baking powder is used up. You still get leavening from heat activation.

The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion suggests resting is about lumps, which you will have because of gentle handling:

  If you have time refrigerate the batter for an hour or so, which allows lumps of flour to slowly dissolve, and makes for a more fluffy flavorful batter.

In Keys for Good Cooking, Harold McGee suggests trying to have things both ways:

  Prepare most unyeasted griddle cake batters an hour or more before cooking, to give the flour time to absorb moisture and produce a velvety texture... Refrigerate for rests longer than 2 hours. Withhold baking soda or powder and/or beaten egg whites and add just before cooking to maximize their leavening power. Whisk powders with a little flour first to help incorporate them evenly.

(Anecdotical)

When I make pancakes,

I prepare the batter, then I let it rest while I set the table, start the coffee/tea, prepare the other food I will eat with the pancakes.

So, I let it rest for about 1/2 hour.

The almighty Google doesn't have a definitive experience, so you should ask your mom, she knows better (that is what I did).


Can you reuse marinade used with raw chicken? I marinated chicken a couple weeks ago, and stored the marinade afterwards in a jar. Can it be reused, or is that dangerous? I've been told conflicting stories here. The marinade is mostly teriyaki if that makes a difference.

Intended use of used marinade: Marinate chicken which will then be cooked in the oven. It will not be used with anything that won't be cooked (like a sauce).

Most reliable sources will warn you strongly against reusing marinades because they can continue to harbor bacteria. Even though the second batch of meat will be cooked, there'll be lots of time for the bacteria to multiply in the meantime. (And given the symptoms caused by foodborne illnesses caused by bacteria like salmonella, the risk isn't worth the few cents you'll save on marinade.)

If it touched raw meat, it is raw meat. Would you eat two week old raw chicken?


How do chefs know when to start cooking each dish in a restaurant? At a restaurant, you frequently order starters and main courses simultaneously.

In almost all restaurants I have visited, main courses come comfortably after you have finished your starter and had your table cleared.

How is this timing arranged? I appreciate it may vary slightly from establishment to establishment. My ideas so far are:

Servers use the pos system to mark when a starter is finished
– this would make sense, except if they are cooking a dish from scratch its impressive its ready so quickly.
They time it a set number of minutes after the starter – this would give them time to prepare everything, however a slower table would receive a cold main course.

Different restaurants use different methods. In some cases, they may rely on the server to pace your meal. In this case, the server enters the order all at once, but then returns to the POS system to hit a button to "fire" the next course after the appropriate delay, which sends it to the kitchen to be prepared. Presumably, some POS systems (particularly for major chains with extensive processes) would now be smart enough to handle that delay automatically--but I'm not specifically aware.

In other cases, the ticket comes into the kitchen all at once, and the kitchen is responsible for timing courses. The expeditor or "expo" is in charge of getting food out at the right time, and coordinating to make sure food coming from different cooks/stations in the kitchen all gets delivered to the same table, together (if necessary) or in the right order. In this model, Expo receives the ticket, reviews the items and calls out to fire items at the right time. In this case, Expo can introduce the appropriate delay between courses. Expo also doesn't have to do this alone. They generally work the window where food passes from kitchen to dining room staff to be run to the table. This allows Expo to coordinate with a tables server to adjust timing if a table is eating particularly fast/slow.

One note on this detail of your question:

  if they are cooking a dish from scratch its impressive its ready so quickly.

Commercial kitchens that cook from scratch don't do end-to-end cooking at the time you order food. Prep is integral in commercial cooking, and ensures food is cooked quickly. Earlier in the day, things are washed, chopped, sliced, etc. Individual components are created, and sometimes even pre-portioned. Things may even be par-cooked if they tolerate par-cooking and being held in the refrigerator (ex, certain noodles). When you order, it's often more of an assembly, often with just the primary protein being cooked at moment.

Consistent prep also helps make cooking time consistent. This allows for the whole restaurant to know exactly how long items take to get to your table--which gets to your original question of how they manage to pace courses from the kitchen so you get your entree at just the right time after your appetizer.

Mostly experience I guess and a proper uses of timers.

They know how long each courses takes to eat.

They know how long a dish takes to prepare; X minutes for fish, Y for pork, Z minutes for pastas...

They know how long between courses people will wait (10, 15 minutes...)

Remember that most part of one dish is already prepared in advance, all the sauces are done, all (most of) the vegetables are prepared in advance and only re-heated.

If you have the chance to dine at an open cuisine restaurant and can watch the cooks, it is very instructional.


Why would cooked spinach contain more iron than raw? I've been researching the nutrient content of various foods and I've found that cooked spinach appears to have more iron than raw spinach (3.57 mg / 100g vs 2.71 mg /100g).  Intuitively, I would have expected the opposite.

Is the data I'm looking at wrong?

Maybe, it is just that it is easier to aborb the iron from cooked spinach rather than raw.

Can anyone explain the difference?

Iron is simply an element, so it cannot be destroyed by cooking (or generally temperature changes), as vitamins and other organic structures potentially can.

Cooked spinach inevitably has a much lower water content, thus the relative density of all other components must increase. So gram for gram, it makes sense that cooked spinach should have a higher concentration of iron (and possibly some other things) than raw. However, the actual process of cooking does nothing to change the amount of iron.

Spinach contains oxalic acid which inhibits the absorption of iron. Cooking destroys the oxalic acid therefore more iron is absorbed from cooked spinach. We absorb other vitamins and minerals from spinach. We absorb different nutrients from cooked and raw spinach, so.it is good to eat it both raw and cooked. (nutritionist knowledge)


What kind of cheese does Pizza Hut or Domino's use? I have been experimenting with Pizza and cakes. I can easily purchase mozzarella in India and have been using it for pizza, but it doesn't come close to the cheese Pizza Hut or Domino's use. Do they use some special cheese? I would like to experiment with cheese. I normally sprinkle oregano on cheese but I think there could be more to it.

Pizza hut uses skim milk mozzarella on it's pizza, at least in the USA.  Not sure what they use in other countries, but I would imagine it is still the same.  Skim milk mozzarella is extremely stretchy, but loses a little on the flavor end.  More expensive pizzerias normally spring for the full fat mozzarella cheese.

Dominos uses a mix of cheese, made up of mozzarella, Pecarino, Parmesan, and asiago cheeses. I think in their most recent reboot they switched to part skim mozzarella but I am not one hundred percent on that.

Go ahead and use a full fat cheese if you want. It won't taste anything like the big pizza chains. They all use a low cost "pizza cheese" that retains its chewiness after heating. Using a better quality cheese will not give you the desired results because it will release all the oils and become too greasy.


Do fresh ramen noodles come in a curly form, or only instant? Put another way, if I am served curly ramen noodles in a restaurant or for take-out, does that mean they are necessarily instant noodles? If there are fresh noodles that are curly, can someone provide a reference?

Here's a picture of what I mean. I don't eat instant ramen often, but they look as curly as instant noodles that I have eaten. Has this place served up instant ramen?

Picture from Wikipedia of which I am referring to as 'fresh ramen', distinct from the fried dried stuff coming in packages, which I don't think would cook up the same way:

The short answer is yes, they can come in a curly form. There are several types of fresh noodle used in Rāmen, which can be classified mainly according to thickness and shape.

Noodles are classified in shape into the straight sutorēto-men (ストレート麺）, the curly chijire-men（縮れ面）, and the more rare flat hirauchi-men（平打ち麺） . With the exception of the flat type, these are further divided into several degrees of thickness: the extra thick gokubuto-men（極太麺）, the thick futo-men（太麺）, the middle thick chūbuto-men（中太麺）, the middle thin chūboso-men（中細麺）, the thin hoso-men（細麺）, and the extra thin gokuboso-men（極細麺）. The thin types are also further differentiated in the amount of water they have in their dough.

Which shape and thickness of noodle is used depends on the style of ramen and on the chef's preference. For example, hakata rāmen（博多ラーメン）, of the sorts served by Ippūdō in their Japanese stores, usually uses straight gokuboso type, but the same franchise uses chijire gokuboso type for their spicy rāmen and chijire gokubuto for their tsukemen. Likewise, yokohama tonkotsu-shōyu （横浜豚骨醤油）, also known as ie-kei（家系）, uses chijire-gokubuto.

The choice of noodle is related to many factors, but cooking time is an important one. In hakata rāmen, where the practice of topping up your noodles (kaedama／替え玉) is common, one has to be able to cook the noodle quickly, and hence the very thin noodle. Thicker types of noodle need longer cooking time (aprox. 10 min for gokubuto-men), and are only used by rāmen traditions that do not offer a noodle refill.

Another factor affecting the noodle type is the type of broth. Thicker broths ask for straight type of noodles, and thinner broths for curly noodles.

These are not rules etched in stone, however, as rāmen itself is a sort of creole food born from a mix of Japanese and Chinese cuisines. Some would say that there is not right or wrong in rāmen, and that anything is possible. However, what I have described above is what is customary and what you will find if you go to rāmen shops in Japan.

By the way, not all rāmen dishes in Japan use fresh noodles. There is a type of rāmen that originates from Chiba prefecture and is called takeoka rāmen（竹岡ラーメン）, which was originally cooked by part-timer old ladies hired from the neighbourhood, and uses dried (what you would call instant) noodles because they are easier to cook.

Ramen are a pre-cooked noodle.  That is, they are usually deep fried (or less often, baked) before even being delivered to the home cook or restaurant that will serve them.  You can even eat them straight out of the package if you want.

While straight ramen noodles do exist, most are curly.

So I am not sure what "instant" ramen means--by their very nature ramen are instant in that they are precooked, and only need to boil or simmer long enough to get soft and hot.

I would not read anything in to the fact that your restaurant is serving you curly looking ramen.

On the other hand, if they were making their broth from a little powder packet, I would be upset.


How to make a New York cheesecake with a super creamy, silky texture? I've been baking New York cheesecake for a few years now and, with the help of various recipes and some experimentation, I've been able to get pretty close to the flavor and texture of the best New York cheesecakes I remember (or, at least think I remember!) from my childhood. However, one aspect of texture I'd like to improve is creaminess.

As much as I like the texture of the cheesecakes that I bake, whenever I compare them with cheesecakes from Studebaker, a local specialty baker in northern California, the Studebaker cheesecake has a more silky, smooth mouth feel.

Can anyone suggest ways to achieve a creamier, silkier, smoother cheesecake texture? If it would help, I'm happy to add details of how I make my cheesecakes. For now, I'll just say that it's pretty close to this recipe, but I do it without the cherry topping: smittenkitchen.com/2010/04/new-york-cheesecake/.

Okay, I undeleted my OP to this question (to be honest, not sure how similar the two are...., never checked that closely).  The most important thing to watch for in terms of the 'silkiness' would be the mixing and ingredient temp. When all ingredients are at room temp, they homogonize much quicker, and require far less mixing, therefore less air is incorporated, making for a denser product. I think this should help.

Short of that, it could be recipe. A perfect cheesecake recipe is hard to find (luckily, I have one). Can I post it here? I don't think it's allowed.....

Answer I typed yesterday (sorry if it is essentially a dupe)..... I' @ work, don't have time to check too closely...

I have made thousands of cheesecakes. My pastry chef taught me how a method that has always worked:

Always use room temperature ingredients. NEVER overmix,
incorporation of air is your enemy Set your oven to 300 F (sorry, in
Canada we are metric, but use Farenheit for baking).
Place your cheesecake in a water bath. Bake for 30 minutes.
Turn off the oven and open its door, allow the cheesecake to rest for 30 minutes, sitting in the oven in this state.
After the thirty minute rest, carefully close the door, and set the oven to 300 F again. Bake another 30 minutes (I have sometimes had to go to 40 minutes depending on oven).

And that's it. Works every time. I am so thankful he taught me this. As an added bonus, you will get a cake that is flat like a board, with no cracks.

You should lower the temp, allow more time, add more cream, and add more egg yolks.


Is there a typical ratio for Herbes de Provence? I know that Herbes de Provence generally contains savory, fennel, basil and thyme. Unfortunately, pre-packaged mixtures in the US usually also contain lavender. I hate lavender, it smells like my grandmother's underwear drawer. I need Herbes de Provence for a recipe I'm making soon, so I'll just make my own sans lavender. So, simple question: Typically is the mixture equal amounts of the other herbs, or should I use more or less of some of the herbs?

Wiki's cited entry on Herbes de Provence is interesting. The ready-made spice blend "Herbes de Provence" did not come into existence until the 1970's, as a product marketed by the French company Ducros. If there's a standard blend ratio, it would therefore be what's in the Ducros' product - though since it is a generic term rather than a trademarked one, other manufacturers and cooks have their own recipes and interpretations.

Ducros' own blend breaks down like this, according to the "My French Cuisine" blog (who also has the McCormick blend breakdown and a home-made alternative blend sourced from a French cookbook):

Rosemary (romarin) – 26%
Savory (sariette) – 26%
Oregano (origan) – 26%
Thyme (thym) – 19%
Basil (basilic) – 3%

There is no single standard ratio for herbs de Provence, but you can easily google many recipes for specific interpretations.


What can I use as an alternative sweetener for smoothies? I make fruit smoothies often, and started off adding sugar. I'm looking for a more "natural" sweetener though. I know I can use honey, but it adds a distinct taste that I'd like to avoid. I've tried using dates as well, and it's a workable alternative, but also changes the taste slightly (and makes the smoothie "stickier"). What are other natural sweeteners to try, preferably that don't make a big difference to taste?

You could try agave nectar -- but I'm not sure if it will be that much of an improvement over honey. A tiny pinch of salt might also help make the smoothie taste sweeter.

Usually though, if I want my smoothies to be sweeter I just add more juice or fruit (e.g. ripe berries, peaches etc).

Sweet potatoes add sweetness and creaminess quickly- use sparingly!


Will MSG improve taste of a food for someone who dislikes the food itself or will it make it worse? Let's consider a situation where someone dislikes a taste of, let's say, broccoli (or some other food), and MSG is added to that product during the cooking process to improve the taste. Will the taste actually become more pleasant for the person who dislikes broccoli, or will it make the taste even more unbearable (by making it more pronounced)?

MSG has a flavor itself; it tastes of "umami", the savory, meaty flavor. This is because it's made of glutemic acid (or glutamate), with a little sodium (less than salt). Glutamates are the compounds responsible for the basic umami taste, and they are found in high concentrations in kelp, cheeses, soy sauce, and oyster sauce.

To the best of my knowledge, it's not like salt, which is said to enhance existing flavors; this would be more like cooking broccoli in bacon grease to impart a bacony flavor to the broccoli. Therefore, it depends heavily on the existing flavor profile of the food in question and the taste preferences of the person involved. If the person likes broccoli dunked in soy sauce, it might be worth a try.

MSG, as a rule, will not make a vegetable like broccoli or some other food that someone does not like, make them like it magically. It marinates, tenderizes and helps give some depth to meat.


What would you call this spatula? It's my favorite but its getting a bit worn and I've been trying to order a replacement online. I've tried "spatula with scooped sides" and "spatula with angled sides" but nothing leads to what I want. Everything I look for just leads to a regular flat spatula, or sometimes a rubber spatula, an angled spatula or even a fish spatula.

It's a slotted spatula with slightly angled sides to help scoop up food.

It's an egg slice - like a fish slice but more curved & wider.
It's for flipping/serving fried eggs… though tbh I just use a fish slice for anything like that.

Your only problem with searching it is 'egg slice' brings up a million hits for slicing eggs, so 'egg slice spatula' or 'egg fish slice spatula' might hone it down a bit. Lots of manufacturers have many things that vary in shape between the two profiles, egg or fish.

I always think half the issue with this is that no-one else knows it's properly called an egg slice either - so searching gets pretty tough.
You might get a better set of hits with 'egg turner spatula' as it seems many people call them an egg turner.
It does also look a bit like a slotted chuan, but if you search chuan, you don't get holes.

I would call it "a fish slice with raised sides".


Is it OK to wash other things than dishes with the same sponge scrub? My friend does it and I argued with her that the dish sponge scrub should only be used for dishes and not the sink or the counter top because it will make the sponge too dirty for future uses for the dishes.

Yes, it's ok to wash other things with the sponge. You can easily use it for counter-tops, the sink, stove top, the floor - anything like that wthout a problem.

The sponge will become dirty, of course, as you clean with it, but the same is true of washing dirty dishes with it.  If you can clean a sponge well enough to keep using it on dishes until it's soft and thin, you can clean it well enough to also use it on counters, sinks, and so on, the cleaning process is just the same.  You will find the sponge is worn after fewer dishes, specifically - but the absolute amount of cleaning should be the same, just the extra wear and tear happened while cleaning other things.

While you can use the sponge to clean most things without issue, if you're using the sponge to wash dishes and food preparation surfaces you should be very careful if using it to clean messes that aren't people-safe, in case the sponge should become contaminated with enough non-food-safe substances to leave a residue.  The aforementioned sink, counters, stove, and kitchen floor and in fact most household areas should all be fine, they are surfaces that you come in contact with regularly and should not leave anything on the sponge that regular cleaning won't take care of.  But you might want a separate sponge if you're regularly using it for things like paints and solvents, mechanical lubricants, motor oil or adhesives, heavy chemicals, pesticides, or anything of that nature - that is, things you wouldn't allow in your living space without extra precautions.

To me that's disgusting I feel like you're just adding the bacteria from your countertops on to the sponge and then spreading it all over your dishes. I wouldn't want to add to the bacteria that's already in my sink. I use 3 brushes. One for dishes. One for inside toilet bowl or on the seat and a brush for everything else.i use brush to do my dishes with sometimes I have a dish washcloth just in case i need it. I wil use the dish wash clith to clean or get a new one too. I will always clean the kitchen first with brush and wash cloth then I'll do the bathroom with them and when I do the bathroom I do the sink then the tub/shower then I will use only the wash cloth to wipe down the toilet sometimes the cleaning brush if its on outside but the seat i use wash cloth or toilet scrubber and inside just the toulet scrubber. The wash cloth that was used i put it in wash...if i used the dish cloth i could not reuse that on my dishes... Im very particular about things.  If I can use a brush and not a washcloth or sponge then I will because it's a lot easier to clean a brush and to me it's a lot more sanitary.


Can I substitute agar-agar for gelatin in pudding? Can china grass (agar-agar) be substituted in place of gelatin when making pudding?
Or is there any other ingredient i could use as a substitute that could give me better results?

Agar is not a good choice for pudding because it makes a brittle gel and it won't melt in your mouth at body temperature. What you want for pudding is a starch based thickener. What we call pudding in the US at least is typically thickened with cornstarch. Modified starches like Ultra-Tex 3 can also work well. Are you thinking of something more along the lines of panna cotta, which does normally have gelatin in it? If so, you might try carageenan instead of agar. Here's a recipe that looks promising: http://irishherault.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/vegetarian-panna-cotta/

I agree to go with using agar agar for pudding but use it very little.. and pudding come so delicous..


Is smell a bad way of determining whether meat is still good? I have always relied on my sense of smell to determine whether meat (most often chicken) is bad and I thought it was reliable. However, I have just heard that [1] smell is not always reliable, since some of the toxins produced by bacteria won't cause any smell whatsoever and you won't be able to notice that the meat is off until after you've eaten it.

Is this true? If yes, is this true for all meat or only for some? Is there a more reliable way of determining whether meat is still good.

[1] "Heard that" isn't very reliable; so that's why I'm asking the question here. :)

It is absolutely untrue and very dangerous to think that "if it looks OK, and smells OK, it must be OK." If that were the case, food poisoning would be very rare. Food that we can sense is spoiled rarely causes illness. For one thing what you don't eat can't hurt you, and people generally won't eat food that looks or smells spoiled. But less obviously, much of what causes spoilage that we can taste, see or smell is actually fairly harmless to humans. Spoilage and rancidity are terms that are often used interchangeably, but rancidity is actually a specific kind of spoilage, caused by the relatively harmless oxidation of fats which is unrelated to any kind of bacteria or other microorganism. It's just a function of time, temperature, oxygen, and light. Fancy dried cured meats get a fair amount of their special flavor from controlled rancidity. Molds and yeasts cause food to spoil, but are also used in controlled ways to create flavor. Dairy cultures are bacteria, and bacteria plays a major role in fermentation.
What causes illness and death are often things that we can't taste, see, or smell. Salmonella, E. coli and C. botulinum are usually undetectable by our senses. Mishandled food that has been heated to temperatures far hotter than is necessary to kill any and all dangerous organisms can still kill if those organisms have produced chemical toxins or deadly spores. We usually can't sense those either.
That's why the rules exist. You need to take care to keep food out of the dreaded "danger zone". Foods that are considered unsafe unless cooked to a specific temperature ARE unsafe unless cooked to that temperature (although government recommendations in that matter are often overly conservative, there is room there for assessing your own risk). Preserved foods must have appropriate acid, salinity, sugar or other tested preservatives. Stored foods must be kept at the proper temperature. Dried foods must be dried correctly. Canning procedures rules seem overly strict. They are not. Learn the rules, disobey them at your peril.
There is a lot of good information here under the food-safety tag. We are not making this stuff up. The CDC "estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases." That's just in the US where food handlers (home and professional) are mostly educated in basic food hygiene and just about everyone has access to a refrigerator. The worldwide figures are staggering.

Basically there is no right or wrong advice here, mainly because most people don't know, and have never learned to trust their senses. Long story short: After cooking or flavoring there is no halfway reliable way determining 'rotten' foodstuff.

Long story long:
We're the product of billions of years of evolution. Two centuries ago nobody knew about bacteria, microbes, their toxins and what really happens when food gets spoiled, no freshness dates and so on. But we wouldn't have lasted a decade without sensing spoiled food before eating a stack of rotten meat. So YES, we CAN detect rotten foodstuff. It's just not easy, involves quite a bit of trial and error, and overall depends on your cleverness not to eat something that tastes bad.

Let me give you an example: The botulinum toxin is produced by different specimen of clostridium botulinum. It is one of the most toxic substances mother nature is able to throw at us, and it's undetectable by any sense (unless it's too late). BUT: One must be a quite stupid fellow to get lethally intoxicated (by spoiled food, that is - not counting the Botox faces). So why is it that hard to die of this poison? Clostridium is a bacteria that loves meat (as almost all microorganisms do), but it hates oxygen. It won't grow colonies on the finest meat if exposed to air. To maintain the metabolism it can't just produce the quite complicated toxin, it has to digest something, like proteins, fat or sugar. During this digestion it produces massive amounts of substances we can detect, like butyric acid, acetic acid, acetone and other fine stuff nobody sane would eat. In fact most people will instantly feel a strong urge to gag or even puke if presented with the acid-sweet smell of botox meat in the morning. [ed. Please refer to the comments. I suggest the struck-out text is dangerous if understood to be the whole truth.]

The same is with almost all other food poisoning stuff - if your fish smells like it has had a quite long sunbath, it most probably isn't save to eat any longer. If your chicken feels like somebody oiled it with egg white, it has had some quite similar treatment by some small guys you dead sure don't like to eat.

So eat and drink as you fancy, but don't eat stuff that tastes awkward (and isn't supposed to do so - some people like funny tastes, and some tastes you have to get used to). Of course it will lead to wasting some food that still is good and proper, but it keeps you safe for a quite long time. It worked the last few billion years for a massive amount of species, why should it stop working now?

And, as others pointed out before: Microbes are no problem. LOADS of the wrong type present one. Some people can eat quite rotten stuff without any problems, for 1st-world citizens this won't work that good. You have to get used to the microbes you eat, and you will get a higher tolerance threshold for most toxins and microbes when eating/drinking mostly 'infected' foodstuff. That's why the average Indian can eat the ice cream on the market by the ton, while it will give you quite some friendship time with Mr. Toilette if just eating a small one.

By the way: Always being on the safe side is not that good either, because if you find yourself in front of the wrong plate one day, you will have the time of your life. Or not. Our immune system (and everything connected to it, like your gastro-intestinal system) is like a muscle - if you don't train it, it will always be weak and thus break down on every occasion. And most food poisoning problems (like salmonella) are breakdowns of your immune system and/or your gastro-intestinal flora.


What specifically makes microwavable frozen food taste so delicious? Update: Here is an objective and non-opinion based question.

I recently asked another question on how I could make a weeks worth of pasta on a Sunday night and have it still taste good throughought the week. I've been advised to store the sauce separately from the pasta and use hot water instead of the microwave to heat it up, in addition to cooking the pasta less al dente than normal.

However, when I buy frozen pasta, notably fettuccine Alfredo, I cannot believe how good it is. I'm referring to the boxed frozen food that you throw in a microwave as opposed to cooking on a stove or heating up with boiling water.

What precisely enables these cheap ($2.50 plus tax) frozen meals taste so good, and more importantly, how can I replicate it? I overdose my pasta with salt anyways, so that can't be it.

You were advised to not cook your pasta at once, because we assumed that you are going to keep it in the fridge. With liquid water, your pasta will grow mushy or dry, depending on how wet you store it. If you freeze it, these processes will not happen, and the pasta will not degrade.

The pasta in the supermarket frozen packages tastes good for other reasons beyond just not being mushy. It has exactly the right proportions of fat, flavoring agents and the like which will make it both cheap and tasty. Nobody can tell you the exact recipe, it is the company's secret. Their food technologists have created it after years of empirical research backed by theoretical knowledge and the availability of industrial ingredients and instruments. (If they list "modified starch", then something was done to the starch to ensure it has some characteristic; we never know what exactly was done, or what characteristic was created).

You can try to make it for yourself, by making a sauce you like, freezing it together with the pasta and see if you like the result when defrosted. If you like it well enough, you've won. If you don't, it depends on your skill of analysing food shortcomings whether you will be able to improve it substantially. You are welcome to ask us concrete questions about concrete faults once you've done the experiment.

Based on limited personal experience I suggest trying Crisco shortening (the diglycerides?) or vine ripe tomatoes with iodized salt.


Should I take the cake out of oven immediately after it is baked or leave it in oven for some time I follow all the recipe guidelines, but very often my cakes crumble and tend to be either moist of heavy inside although they appear nice brown and light outside and the tester comes out clean. I have a doubt that it is because I remove the cakes from the oven immediately as they are cooked.

Most cake recipes I have seen give an approximate baking time and also instructions for determining doneness by observation (the "toothpick comes out clean" sort of guideline). When the criteria for doneness are met, it is assumed you will take the cake out of the oven immediately.

Very often there are further instructions about cooling, removing from the cake pans, frosting, etc. But they don't expect you to leave the cake in the oven (whether turned "off" or "on") past when it is done. Leaving it in the oven while the oven is cooling down would just introduce too much variability as ovens would cool at different rates.

I agree with your speculation that cake problems must be from some other cause.

Yes, you should take the bread out as soon it is baked. Let it cool for 5 minutes and de-mould it. Keep it on a wired rack otherwise the base will become soggy.


Having trouble getting gluten free bread to rise I am new to gluten free baking and I am having much trouble getting my breads to rise. I have tried several recipes, with no luck. Can anybody give me some fool proof suggestions? I am desperate. Thank you

I imagine you have tried recipes already with an appropriate quantity of xanthum gum and starches... are you making any substitutions, or omitting ingredients?

Substitutions really change the game significantly, even unwitting substitutions like sweet rice flour vs white rice flour, potato flour vs potato starch. Substituting an alternative flour directly for wheat flour in non-GF recipes won't work (unless you find a GF flour blend that specifies so - for bread, I haven't).

And when I started GF baking I omitted some tiny amounts of ingredients as I didn't want to go out and buy a whole packet/bottle of something just to use a few grams. Turns out some of those little things were absolutely essential. Don't skimp on them. Also, if using yeast, you can take a little bit and proof it to make sure it's not the dud.

Try finding a specifically gluten-free bread recipe with many positive comments, so you are sure it's not the recipe that's the issue.

Personally, my first proper attempt with no subs or omissions at making bread (my first GF bread, and first bread loaf ever - so it had to be foolproof for me) was with this recipe and it rose nicely, much to my relief and delight. Maybe give it a try, and once you got the rising bit down, work on other recipes from there?

If they are not working even though you are following them to a T, perhaps temperature is your issue - is the water too cold or hot for the yeast? Are you leaving the bread in a cold spot? I have a cool kitchen, so when my oven is pre-heating while rising I place the loaf above the stove to rise, as it receives ambient warmth from the heated oven.

Quite honestly, I'd much rather buy Gluten free bread than try to make it myself. It's just not worth the trouble! Luckily, I've been able to find gluten free bread to my liking so it's all good.


Food safety with mixing raw meat Is it safe to place raw beef on the same surface that a full raw chicken has been on? I intend to roast the beef but I'm wondering if I should take any precautions?

In general, it is not a good idea to use the same surface for poultry and other foods; you would have to assume that cross-contamination has happened.

In this specific case, since you mention roasting, assuming it is a whole muscle cut, even if contaminated, the pathogens will not quickly penetrate to the interior—they will remain on the surface.   Don't cut slits in the meat (such as for inserting garlic, or the cross-hatching on a pork roast) which would allow penetration deeper into the roast.

Assuming you cook it so that the exterior reaches at least 155°F/68.5°C, then your roast should be fine.  Just make sure it is well browned which is a sure sign that the surface temperature has (well) exceeded 155 F.

No. Salmonella (common contaminant of raw chicken) has a much higher denature point that e-coli (common contaminant of beef). Your beef would need to be cooked to a much higher internal temperature which ruins the point of even having beef in the first place.


First time egg pickler, does pressure in jar mean they're spoiled? I hard boiled several fresh eggs, and pickled them with a chilli and garlic flavoured pickling vinegar which had been simmered for ~15 mins, storing them in jars that had been sterilised in the oven for half an hour or so and cooled. (I didn't follow a recipe as such, more a combination of different ones.) Everything had cooled when it was jarred.

They've since been stored in a dark cupboard at UK room temperature.

A couple of weeks later and the pop-up button on the lids is up under pressure.

Am I right to conclude that this effort has been a failure and the eggs are spoiled?

If so, where did I likely go wrong?

Updated to add:
This is one of the recipies I followed (since I used their pickling vinegar):
https://www.sarsons.co.uk/recipes/pickled-eggs

But having also looked at this one:
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/pickled-eggs

.. amongst others, I additionally boiled the vinegar and flavourings for about 15 minutes and sterilised the jars in the oven at 180C for about half an hour. (I underestimated the volume of vinegar needed so topped up with fresh unboiled pickling vinegar.)

As somebody who ferments things, unexpected ferments generally should not be trusted. Even I throw them out, even though I'm pretty sure they're safe, personally.

Based on these two recipes and others I Googled, it seems like fermentation is not expected or desired. It seems like the two recipes you link to assume that the acidity of the pickling brine will be enough to preserve the eggs at room temperature for some time. We store vinegar at room temperature all the time!

But there are a lot of variables that could affect this. How much sugar did you use? How much chili and garlic? were they fresh or dried? How big were your eggs, and how much vinegar did you use relative to everything else? How much water did you add to your brine mixture before simmering it? And how long did you let your brine cool?

Although sterilization is hugely important, so is the pH of the brine and salinity/sugar content of your additions. So if you're inventing recipes, make sure you take some time and really think through how your additions could be altering the pH of the overall solution. If you're lowering it, consider how that might change the method.

In order to keep this from happening again, I would recommend hot-packing your eggs, and consider looking into canning them. Hot-packing means take your jars out if the oven, put your eggs in them, pour in your hot brine, and close the lid. Then let them cool and transfer to the fridge.

Vinegar is acidic so it dissolves the carbonate of the eggshells producing co2 gas in the Prozess. Had the same happen to me, eggs were still good. foul semell would be bad


Too much lemon in beef stew help! I have a fruity beef stew with plums, carrots, beef, onion, beef stock and far too much lemon juice and lemon zest.
It tastes too lemony, what can I do to counteract it?

Try discarding one cup of liquid, and add one cup of water; reduce until desired. Taste the result, and if it is still too lemony, repeat the process until it is to your liking.

Some unsalted butter after the reduction may also help.

Let's get that awesome stew fixed and 'souped' up. Get it?

Now, although I've never tried these remedies you could:

Add 1-2 spoonfuls of sugar (depending on the quantity of stew)
Add some fat (yogurt, butter, sour cream, olive oil)

Good luck.


How can I make my Chocolate Mousse fluffier? I regularly make Chocolate Mousse with an egg yolk, sugar and dark chocolate base folded into whipped egg white or whipped cream (or both). It's tastes pretty good and has a nice mouth-feel. Now I want it to look good. What I have looks something like this:

Instead I want it to hold a form and have a delicate velvety texture like in the image below.

The recipe associated with this picture uses a lot of butter. I've seen other recipes include gelatin.

What are my best bets?

The dessert pictured above definitely, definitely has gelatin in it.  That will change the mouth feel on the mousse slightly, but it might be what you are going for and will provide some of the stability that you are looking for.  To have it hold a form like this you will need a recipe that requires gelatin; I would recommend gelatin sheets if you can find them at a local baking/cooking supply store or order them online.

The fluffiness will also be determined by several things.  How were the whites whipped (too much, too little) or how was the cream whipped (again too much, too little)?  There are recipes that call for both.  How you incorporate all of the ingredients into one another really matters and in what order, this is called tempering.  You want to fold until the mixtures are just combined; no more.

Temperature is of key importance for all of the ingredients - some you want very cold while others (ie chocolate) you want to be room temperature but not too cool or it will seize up the mixture and the mousse will taste grainy.

Also chocolate mousse texture can definitely be affected by the percentage and quality of chocolate you are using.  If is is of a higher percentage it can create a denser mousse and deflate the whites and cream more easily.

I have found that using a packet of instant chocolate pudding and mixing it with heavy whipping cream instead of milk...and instead of making the pudding and folding in whipped topping. You need a little more whipping cream than the milk that the directions call for or it is really thick. Its a very simple and very quick substitute!


What's the difference between gazpacho and normal soups? Gazpacho is (afaik) a tomato-based soup, eaten very cold. I was wondering if there is a difference between gazpacho and other soups, apart from the temperature eaten at.

Could you heat gazpacho and eat it like a normal soup?
Could you chill a normal tomato-based soup and call it gazpacho?
Are there ingredients that are mandatory when making gazpacho? Or things you certainly cannot add?

Gazpacho is possibly Spain's most famous chilled soup. The main difference aside form the temperature is that it's raw, meaning that the soup is not actually cooked it's just blended and chopped vegetables and occasionally bread. There is nothing inherently wrong with heating up gazpacho but it would lose its fresh texture and flavour which is why it's chilled and according to Wikipedia was popular with labourers who used it to:

  "cool off during the summer and to use available ingredients such as fresh vegetables and stale bread"

The main reason you couldn't just chill a normal soup and call it gazpacho is because gazpacho is made up of by no means just tomato. It contains tomatoes, a bit of garlic, cucumber, occasionally bread, some vinegar for tang and a drizzle of olive oil at the end.

If you wanted to make it your own (after all you're the chef!) you could add some Tabasco, bell peppers, spring onions or croutons at the end, basically anything you might find in a salsa dip. Use your common sense for what not to add but even in Spain they have variations that are not at all like what I would think of as gazpacho: in La Mancha they use it like a stew and add game (usually rabbit) and even wild mushrooms!

Hope this helps and gives you some inspiration, if you want a recipe a quick search on Google gives a multitude of results.

Gazpacho is made with ripe tomatoes, green pepper, onion, garlic, cucumber, olive oil and salt. You can even sometimes add bread and red pepper. Everything is crushed while raw, strained and allowed to cool in the fridge.

Almond gazpacho, or white gazpacho, (as mentioned in a previous answer) does not exist. What does exist is another cold soup called Ajoblanco, which consists of crushed raw peeled almonds, garlic, bread, oil, vinegar, water and salt.

Original Text:

El Gazpacho está hecho con tomates maduros, pimiento verde, cebolla, ajo, pepino, aceite de oliva y sal. En algunas ocasiones se le pone pan y pimiento rojo. Se tritura todo en crudo, se cuela y se deja enfriar en la nevera.

El gazpacho de almendras o gazpacho blanco (como dicen en una respuesta anterior) no existe. Lo que existe es otra crema fría llamada Ajoblanco que consiste en triturar almendras peladas crudas, ajo, pan, aceite, vinagre, agua y sal.


What's the secret to making good turkish bread? (pide) I mean the flat but thick bread you get at turkish restaurants.  I've tried it twice now, with two difference recipes, and each time it's come out hard and crunchy, more like a thick pizza crust.

Seriously, two separate recipes?  Obviously I'm doing something wrong but I don't know what.  Can someone who knows how to do this ask me some questions about what I did to try and help me find out what I did wrong?

Edit: I can't find the first recipe I tried, but this was the second:

http://mediterraneanturkishfoodpassion.blogspot.com/2009/05/turkish-flat-bread-pide-ekmegi.html

Also: I used unbleached enriched flour from the bulk section of the health food store, if that makes a difference.

Three reasons come to mind why your bread may have turned out too hard-

1- If you didn't let it rise enough.
Flat breads often don't have a proofing step. The dough should double in size on the first rise and then after you divide the dough let it rest to make rolling out easier.

2- Working the dough too much without resting.
When rolling or stretching the dough be gentle. You don't want to force all the air out. If you do think that you overworked it, letting it rest for a while will let the yeast work a little more.

3- Too low of oven temperature
Traditional flat breads are often baked in large, wood-fired, brick ovens. Your recipe calls for 475F and I would say that that would be a lower bound. Since flat breads are so thin they dry out quickly. In general the hotter you can bake them the better. Try throwing a couple loaves on a very hot grill but indirect heat. Expect this to take less baking time than your recipe. If you get some charring that is ok and even desirable. If you get charring that goes all the way through then you rolled the loaves a little too thin.

Personally- I am skeptical of the milk basting. This would keep the surface of the bread moist but it would cool down the oven which would be horrible for the bread. I never saw turkish bakers basting their flat bread but maybe it is a regional thing.

I'm making a batch right now, which consists of

*450 grams high protein bread flour

*175 grams warmish water

*8 grams dry active yeast

*2 tablespoons lebne (greek yogurt would work here)

*2 tablespoons olive oil

*1 tsp (aprox) salt

I mix, knead, rest until size is doubled, punch down, shape into two largish flat loaves (some people roll it, I prefer flipping it from hand to hand until it's about 1 -2" thick), rest for 30 minutes or until I have a chance to get back to it.  Preheat oven to 425F, oil a half sheet tray with a little olive oil, and slide the tray into the oven to get hot.

Place the loaves (one at a time) on a well floured bread board, brush the top of the loaves with an egg wash and add sesame seeds if desired. Using a bread board or other non-lipped tray, slide the loaves onto the hot tray.

Bake for about 20 minutes.


How do I make homemade Salsa thicker? I have been playing with homemade salsa for a few weeks now and I can't seem to figure out how to get that thicker tomato texture that a lot of southern Mexican restaurants have.

Right now I play with these ingredients:

Tomatoes
Onion
Jalapeño
Cilantro
Lime Juice
Garlic Salt/Cumin

This seems pretty basic stuff for salsa, but it has a pretty watered down feel no matter how I swing it. How do I get the tomato base that some of the classic salsas have in order for everything to hold on the chip a little better?

Update

I really wanted to accept two answers because I like both depending on what I am doing. For a fresh salsa (pico de gallo) straining the juice from the tomatoes seems to work really well. But for the thickness I was going for the key was experimenting with Tomato Paste/Cooking the salsa. I am able to get a much thicker salsa that I enjoy much more. I did learn how to create killer pico de gallo from this though.

Have you tried straining the salsa? Put it in a coffee filter or in some cheesecloth in a sieve sitting over a bowl. Let drain until the salsa's the texture you want.

people                                                                                If you want to make thick salsa all you have to do is cook in a pot like normal and then put in a frying pan and cook just the water out not the juice from the fruit!!!!    You can cook it down as thick as you want with out looseing any flavor.


Why is commercial sandwich bread so popular in the US and UK? Why is commercial, sliced, sandwich style bread so popular in the US and UK, as opposed to more traditional European loaves (like this Slovakian bread)?

To put it bluntly, convenience, price and availability. While more artisan or rustic breads are available in supermarkets (where the vast majority of westerners shop, especially the US and UK), they are generally more expensive, a less convenient shape and size for sandwiches, and don't keep as well.

Having said that, in recent years in the countries mentioned, there has been an increasing interest in home baking of all kinds, including bread.

It's worth pointing out that some western countries like France and Italy still have a strong tradition of buying fresh bread daily.

Firstly the shortage of flour after WWII had a major impact of the way bread was made in Europe. The introduction of the spiral dough mixer was the beginning of the demise of traditionally processes for making bread. The wheat quality changed as higher yielding varieties were required. New processes were devised to make bread. One being the Milton Keyens method. More junk was put into flour to exelerate aging, improve flour strength, a classic one being potassium bromate.(good stuff that) The art of bread making slowly died. Supermarket chains offered a cheap fix. And customers are now gladly paying and eating a toxic meal. It's called evolution.


How to make a cake less dense So I've just recently started baking and I've tried a bunch of cakes using the basic combination of the following ingredients:

225g unsalted butter , softened
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
225g self-raising flour

They're coming out ok but are not really "light and airy", a bit too "dense" compared to a cake made by a pro.  I've done some reading and I think I'm maybe not working the butter and sugar (eggs too?) for long enough and/or working the flour in too much.

Can anyone tell me how to make the perfect light and airy cake?

What you are making is a pound cake. Or maybe a sponge cake, depends on the order of mixing the ingredients. Of the two, the sponge cake is somewhat lighter, so if you have been making pound cake (cream butter and sugar, add eggs, then flour), you can switch to sponge (foam eggs and sugar, add flour and fat). But both are hearty homemade cakes, they are supposed to be dense.

The iced cakes you get in a bakery are much lighter, because they use a different type of layer. Most types of cake are lighter than pound and sponge cakes. Try making genoise, chiffon, or angel food cake layers, they are all light. And yes, using cake flour will help too, or replacing part of the flour in the recipe with pure starch (usually cornstarch or potato starch, you can also use wheat starch if you can get it. Tapioca or arrowroot aren't that well suited). For a real "pro" taste, also throw in some lecithine, it makes the mouthfeel softer and smoother - but if you don't feel like hunting around for lecithine, don't bother, a good homemade cake doesn't really need it, I only mentioned it because you asked about "cake made by a pro".

Duncan Hinez  or Betty Crocker cake mix makes light cakes.


Colored cake without food coloring? I'm wanting to make a layer cake for a birthday WITHOUT food coloring. Specifically, I'm wanting to make red and blue. Could I add raspberry juice or puree to a basic white cake recipe or would that turn out pink? For the blue, would blueberry work? How would the recipe need to be adjusted to accommodate the extra liquid?

As a note I'm answering this question based on avoiding artificial food dyes (Red #40, Yellow #5, etc) rather than all food coloring.

Raspberry puree will produce a pink result, and I have sucessfully done a very dark pink with ground freeze dried raspberries. Achieving the depth of color needed to provide a true red or blue would require not only several food sources to blend the color correctly but a large quantity of, for example reducing juice to make it more concentrated since what you are going for is a color concentrate.

Another option is to let someone else do the blending and extracting for you. Chocolate Craft Colors and a few other companies make plant derived food colorings, and I like the chocolate craft ones since they disclose all of the plant sources (cabbage in the blue, and beets with carrots for the red) and they sell liquid, paste, and powder so you can achieve the color you want without throwing off the balance of the recipe.

Caramelize the sugar. It will give you a reddish brown natural color.


How do I cook a frozen hamburger in the microwave? I bought some hamburgers (I mean the meat, not the full sandwich) in vacuum packing and I froze them in the freezer.

Can now I cook them in the microwave? If so, how and how long?

I don't endorse beef in the microwave, but that said, the best possible way to cook it is going to be on one of the microwave plates that raise your food off the plate. (the ones that look like the inside of a george foreman grill)  You are going to have to play with your power settings a bit to achieve a optimium patty.  In mine, it's 2:30 at 40 percent power and 1:30 at full power but depending on wattage, your particular times are going to vary.

The trick to having an edible patty come out of the microwave is use low power to achieve the desired temp and then hit it at full power to get the outside done.  It will always produce a slimy-er patty than cooking it on a stovetop or in an oven.  Make sure that you cover the patty during cooking as it is going to spatter like crazy.  You don't want to clean that mess up.

If you have access to a toaster oven, you can cook a patty in that in about 15 minutes and you will have a much closer to delicious product.

It depends on your microwave. I'd take it out of the packaging and put it on a plate so that the liquids don't go all over your microwave. You can select power 1, which is the lowest power, and microwave it for about 5 minutes. Then, if it is still frozen, do it again until it is thawed. If you notice that the meat is starting to cook in the microwave, stop it. You can brown ground beef that is "mostly" thawed. The heat of the pan will eventually cook that the little bit that might still be frozen.


What does this chart mean when it says "lbs per round" or "lbs per sqare/rectangle"? From http://howtocakeit.com/blogs/cakes/48185153-how-to-make-ice-and-decorate-yo-yo-s-chocolate-cake-like-a-pro:

What do the different columns mean?

It is a scalable recipe. First, you decide in which pan you want to bake the cake. You take your pan and measure it. Let's say you have a 9" round pan. You go into the column "lbs per round" and find out that your pan takes 3 1/2 lbs of batter. Then you go to the other table with ingredients measurements, multiply the column "6 lbs" by 7/12, and have your ingredient measurements. Alternatively, you can bake a slightly thinner cake, and divide the amounts in the 6 lbs cake by 2.

Alternatively, if you want the tall kind of cake shown in the pictures, first decide what amount you want to bake, then use the table to calculate how many pans you will need to get that amount of batter baked. For example, for a 8 lb cake with a square base, you could use 4 6" square pans.

When you have made your batter, the last column tells you how much time you should expect, roughly, for the cake to bake through. For the 9" round cake, it would be 1 hour 10 min. Don't forget that this is only an estimate, you should take the cake out when it is done, not when the timer goes off.

Just measure across the pan.  If the pan is round then use the round column.  If the pan is square then use the square column.  Baking time is exactly that.

If the pan is not square (and not round) then not perfect but use the average.  So for a 5 x 7 rectangle then use 6.


Does Arabic gum help keep frozen yogurt soft? I'm trying to make frozen yogurt manually (no machine), but I would like it to be soft-scoop. My first batches froze hard (tasty but hard), regardless of whether I stirred them every half-hour or not. I was advised to try Arabic gum, but that doesn't seem to make any difference. Am I trying the correct additive? If not, what should I be trying?

Basically you can't actually make soft-serve style yogurt in a regular freezer. It's just too cold.

However, you can make it softer by doing one or more of the following:

adding additional sugar. After a certain concentration, sugar prevents ice cream, sorbet and frozen yogurt from freezing as hard.
Adding some concentrated source of alcohol. I often use an ounce or two of spirits or liqueurs in my ice creams (usually a 5-6 cup batch), which prevents the mix from freezing as hard because of alcohol's very low freezing point.
Adjusting the fat ratio. I don't know the exact magic ratio of fat, though I'm sure someone else can find it for us. I've found that low fat and very high fat ice cream tends to freeze very hard.
Adjusting the amount of air in your batch. The churning process that an ice cream maker would buy you adds a fair amount of air between the crystals and results in a softer batch.

An ice cream machine can also produce a result that you can serve up quickly after making so that you never get to the "hardening" stage that American-style ice creams go through when you put them in the freezer after churning.

I don't use gums in my ice creams, but the advantage that they give you has more to do with stabilization of the ice crystals, not softening, as far as I understand. They primarily help cope with the conditions of transport, as you tend to slightly melt the ice cream/frozen yogurt when you take it home from the store and then you refreeze it.

Add vanilla extract which contains alcohol.  Most frozen yogurt/icecream recipes call for Vanilla flavoring anyways.


Exact difference between demi glace and bordelaise? This feels like a stupid question, but I've spend a fair bit of time reading about this without finding an answer...
I'm trying to understand the French mother sauces and their derived sauces. I am confused about the differences between demi glace and bordelaise, their place in the 'system', and whether roux is used in either.

Reading about espagnole here, I learn that espagnole

Starts with a brown roux, and
Can be used to make demi glace AND bordelaise.

This confuses me, because I've encountered recipes for either, which have not mentioned roux. For example, this demi glace recipe by ChefSteps makes no mention of flour or roux - only reduced wine and stock.

Similarly, this bordelaise recipe, for instance, is virtually identical (except for adding butter towards the end).

Hence, I'd be grateful if anyone could help me understand

Precisely what is the difference between demi glace and bordelaise?
Is roux used in either? If not, how can they be derived from sauce espagnole?

Demi glace is usually used as a base to make other sauces, it can also be used by itself.

Demi glace is used to make Bordelaise sauce.

Roux is not used in either cases.