Split (1)

train · 60.1k rows

instruction stringlengths 2 23k	output stringlengths 3 23.1k ⌀
Sealed whey protein container past its use by date - is it still usable? I've had an accident that made me stop training for quite some time and I ended up with a sealed - never used nor opened - whey protein pot that expired Oct/2015. Considering it's a powder and the package was closed and sealed, I opened and it ...	You didn't say where your product was packaged, but according to the USDA, "Use by" dates refer to best quality, and are not safety dates. This is especially true when foods are handled well...in your case, factory sealed. Additionally, I can't see how the proteins would go anywhere. Given the reportedly good flavor...
Does a pressure cooker really cook food evenly? My mother uses a 5 liter pressure cooker to cook chicken pieces. She heats it for 10 minutes, switches off the stove and waits for the steam pressure to go down before opening the lid. Even though this is done, some chicken pieces, although seemingly cooked; when you...	As a couple of commenters already mentioned, the base of the pressure cooker gets hotter than the rest, and chicken is no homogeneous size. I would like to add that besides the size difference between pieces of chicken, there is also a difference in tenderness. Breast meat is more tender so it will pressure cook fas...
Bread from the machine always too soft, can't be buttered My bread machine (Panasonic SD-2501) makes good bread. The loaves rise every time and it has a great golden crust. However, the bread is always too soft. The recipe: 1 tsp dry yeast 440gm baker's flour. I have also tried 00 pizza flour and 50/50 white/spelt bl...	I would leave out the bread improver, the olive oil, and the milk (use water) and see what happens. Both the bread improver and the fat make softer bread. If this is not sufficient and/or you really insist on resilient bread, the next steps are look at the gluten content of your flour and use a higher gluten content...
Bakers percentage for cookies I am aware of the bakers percentage used in bread, and I have used it successfully. I am baking cookies at home as a hobby. I have collected few recipes from blogs, and they work great. As I am now aware of the ingredients used for cookies, is there any bakers percentage which we need to...	Not in the same sense as in bread, no. First, in bread, there is one main ratio: liquid to flour. You can conveniently express any "additions" such as fat etc. as a percentage of the flour too, but they are additions, as in principle, you can make bread with water+flour only. The effects of these ingredients exhibit m...
White bristles on carrots I've had carrots in a plastic bag in the fridge for a few weeks and when I went to use them today, I noticed there are what I can best describe as white bristles or whiskers coming out of them. I've never seen this before. What are they and have the carrots spoiled ?	They're just roots. Don't forget that carrots are a taproot and this one seems to be trying to grow. The carrots are still fine to eat, though they use the internal sugars to grow the roots, so they may not taste as sweet. They'll also get soft really quickly, so if you're going to eat them, do it soon. Related questi...
At what step is the difference made between a quesadilla and burrito? My quesadillas keep turning into burritos. This happens because I fold the tortilla in half but it doesn't stay so I tuck it in and roll it up by then it becomes a burrito (full and round). What's the difference? How do I make my quesadillas come ou...	Quesadilla comes from queso, cheese, and that is mostly what goes in there. Maybe some jalapeños or onions, but that's really it. In a burrito you'd add much more, both volume and variety, for example meat, rice, avocado, cream, cheese, chiles, and beans. As far as I know the quesadilla goes in the pan on heat, whereas...
How do we keep our roasted cashews from smelling bad eventually? We are from a small manufacturing unit and do roasting and packing of cashews. After roasting we pack them in polypropylene pouches with nitrogen flushing. But after 2-3 months cashews are smelling bad when packets are opened. Kindly help us learn how to...	Presumably you are experiencing rancidity, due to oxygen. While you have nitrogen flushed the bags at filling time, the bags are not impervious to oxygen diffusion. A different type of bag (an "oxygen barrier" bag material) or package (glass jar, or metal can) and, in addition, (based on other packaging I have seen) ox...
Can I use tomato paste in dal? My current method for making an Indian dal include using whole peeled tomatoes, almost always canned. Would substituting Tomato Paste, the thick stuff from cans, change the taste, and if so, how? I don't mind the change in texture	Tomato paste is far more concentrated, and it's produced by actually cooking down the tomatoes a couple times. Since tomatoes contain a lot of sugar, this will actually caramelize those somewhat and produce a richer, sweeter flavor. Even canned tomatoes will taste more acidic and less sweet. So your finished dish will...
Weird russet potato? I'm supposed to be boiling it, but this russet potato has this one smooth spot on it. It's not like the rest of the potato's texture, it's almost as smooth as my phone screen. Not oddly colored. Is this okay to eat? (Click to enlarge)	I would guess it might just have leaned against a stone as it grew, the texture difference would be from the skin reacting to something pressing on it if so. Or it might be a scar that's healed over. I've seen lots of garden-grown potatoes with imperfections, they're usually not a problem. It is probably safe to eat ...
What can I do with super runny icing? So I was making the icing from a boxed cake, but screwed up a lot. I mistook the icing mix for the cake mix. So I added 2 eggs, I took out the yolk of one of them. I also vastly put in way too much milk. The icing mix needed 15ml of milk. I put in 250ml. I've been trying to fix it...	I'm going to ignore the actual icing ingredients for a moment here as I suspect they will be mostly icing sugar and a few neglible other things. So you now have roughly 1 cup / 250 ml milk 1.5 eggs 6 tblsp / 60g starch and flour a lot of icing sugar -> The egg means you need a heating step to get that mixture safe. ...
Unambiguously referring to "spiciness" Anyone who likes (or hates) spicy food has been in the situation: You're at a restaurant, your mother-in-law is preparing dinner, or you're preparing dinner for your best friend, and the question comes up: How spicy do you want it? But how can one answer (or ask) this question ...	Spiciness is a taste perception, and as such, it is simply subjective. There is no way to create an objective scale for rating it. I read your comment about "objective spiciness", but it is not something that can exist. It is based on the erroneous assumption that the spiciness you perceive is a 1:1 measurement of som...
How to form cookie dough into rolls? I see Pillsbury pre-made dough rolled in tubes. This makes it easier to open it at one end and chop off slices as needed. In my case, I force freshly made cookie dough into containers and just slice them up later -- very difficult and tough. I tried preparing them into rolled parc...	A sausage stuffer, perhaps? Your standard food mill attachment type more typically seen in a home kitchen: Unless you're seeing some product I've never met, I would not call that stuff "rolled in tubes" - I'd call it a tube (or log) of dough, and I expect the filling process is VERY like a (large, automated) sausage ...
Pressure cooked stock out overnight, still safe? I see a question here about stock out overnight, but in my case it's a bit different in that I used a pressure cooker. My question is, is there anything that could possibly have survived an hour of high pressure cooking? I've essentially gone far beyond what's done in ...	No, it is not safe. As soon as a pressure cooker loses pressure it is not hermetically sealed. Stock, in particular, is often used as a culture medium in petri dishes to GROW bacteria. They love the stuff. Pressure cooking or pressure cookers do not confer magical powers to food - once the pressure is gone all the re...
Detailed information about a 1st tooth cake design In the following image which is a 1st tooth cake, are the crowns and the tooth made of fondant? Where can I learn about such designs online?	Since you say that you know they're edible, I'd say that the tooth and crown are most likely made of gum paste, not fondant. The curves on the points of the crown would likely droop really badly if made of fondant because it never solidifies. Gum paste does. So, once you have it molded to the shape you want, you let it...
What are the four cheeses generally used in"four-cheese" pizzas? In common consumer pizza, microwave and bake-at-home pizzas are often advertised as four-cheese pizzas. What are these four cheeses, traditionally? Do different brands use different mixes, or does everyone stay about the same? How are these cheeses tradi...	They all seem to use different cheeses depending on the brand. The most consistent cheese is definitely mozzarella, which makes sense as it's the default cheese on most pizzas. Second to that is some sort of hard grating cheese like Parmesan or Asiago... which also makes sense as it's a traditional pizza condiment. ...
How to bind chopped pepperoni, salami, and bacon I have this sandwich I make that I think is pretty good, except that I have a problem with it falling apart. Basically I take sliced salami, sliced pepperoni, (precooked) bacon, and banana peppers and throw them into a food processor to grind it up fairly ground up but...	What I did to solve my problem was I made a thick cheese sauce with some of the pepperjack/sharp cheddar (grated some of it, coated in corn starch, melted in a little bit of milk), and mixed that into the meat mix, just enough cheese sauce to bind it, just enough to make the meat start sticking together (and I reduced ...
A spicy vegetable which stays in a sandwich? I make a vegetable sandwich which I find very good. It has tomato, red onion, avocado, and cucumber. However, it lacks spiciness. I want to avoid spreads and use a vegetable for mild heat. I tried an anaheim pepper. It has some kick but the texture does not work. It slides ...	My home pickled beans get spicy because there's a dried red pepper or two in the jar, along with a dill head and some garlic cloves. The beans are very nice in a sandwich. But you could pickle-and-spice anything at all and use it to jazz up the sandwich. The texture is that of a soft vegetable. Also, look into mustard ...
What can I make with corn flake that is no longer crispy? I left the cornflake bag open for too long that it is not crispy anymore. Still taste good, but I wonder what can I do with it.	You can crisp them up again in a hot oven for a few minutes (exact temperature not too important, spread them out thinly on a baking sheet and take them out before they burn). I'd then go on to make a normal cornflake cake recipe of your liking straight away, to avoid having the same problem again.
What's the difference between tangzhong and levain? I am going to start making sourdough bread but there are recipes using both tangzhong and starter (levain). Not sure why both needed and how it will achieve given results.	Tangzhong (water roux) and levain are two fundamentally different things. The roux does not contain any leavening element, it is simply a method to bind water, effectively increasing the amount of water that can be used in a dough and therefore making a light, soft, moist bread. A levain (sourdough) is the part that is...
Why doesn't oil burn and produce smoke at restaurants? At home when you want to deep-fry something, if you leave the heat on for a minute or two more than you should have, the oil starts to burn and produce smoke. Why doesn't this happen at restaurants and takeaways (UK)? Is it the specialised equipment they use? Or i...	Restaurants have massive fans. Commercial deep fryers have temperature control. Example temperature control unit: And massive heating elements (notice 4 temperature controls): Massive heating elements allows for even delivery of heat. When you drop frozen fish it has to kick out some heat but it is careful not to...
English name for cut of meat (Cacho de Paleta) I was given a cut of meat that I am unfamiliar with. I was told the Spanish name is Cacho de Paleta. I'm not sure how to prepare it, and was hoping to find some recipes and preparation tips online. To do that, I was hoping someone could tell me the English name for this c...	Cacho de paleta means "hunk of blade" as far as I can tell, however blade comes from the shoulder and that doesn't look the right shape for a shoulder cut. It looks more like leg to me, in the US that would be called shank and in the UK it would be shin if the front leg and leg if it's from the back leg. Whether it's ...
Greasy Pie Crust I tried making Emeril's quiche lorraine this evening. Made the dough using the ingredients specified (including 7 tablespoons of butter), but forgot to freeze the crust after putting it in the tart pan. It went straight to baking. My crust while baking became exceedingly greasy... downright inedible!...	I don't know what it is, but I can tell you it is neither the ratio nor the temperature. I needed dinner anyway, so I made a small experiment. I made half a batch of crust using the ratios from your recipe, and baked it in three small tartalette pans. I used butter so soft that I had to spoon it out, I couldn't cut it...
Is there any advantage of filleting a fish at home instead of buying a fillet? Is it 'fresher' and therefore maybe tastier to fillet a fish right before cooking, or is buying a fillet just as good? In other words; is there any difference in quality between a fillet that has been a fillet for a while (at the fish mark...	When you cut any food you expose the cut surface to oxygen, which causes chemical changes due to oxidation. You also expose the cut surface to microbes and organisms which break down food. Both of these will impact the quality of cut meat or fish, so yes a filet cut from a whole fish just before cooking would be freshe...
What is "pastry butter"? I was recently watching a television show where a reference was made to "pastry butter". This was in the context of making croissants saying that normal butter was incorrect type to use. After searching for some time I have been unable find any information about "pastry butter" being a specifi...	One job as an an apprentice baker in Germany was to prepare the butter for the next day's croissants by mixing in 10% flour by weight. This was to make it more pliable and less likely to break through the dough layers. that was our pastry butter at any rate
Butter melted then soften If butter is melted then refrigerated to soften consistency will it have the proper results if recipe calls for soften butter?	No, it will not. Butter which has melted once will never again be the same after it resolidifies, so recipes assume you use butter which has never been melted. Also, when you try to warm up cold butter or also cool down warm butter quickly, the result seldom do well in baking, you get some weird behaviors like butter w...
Is there a significant difference in flavour between real Mirin and Mirin-like products? I read everywhere that there are generally two types of the sweet cooking wine mirin: A) the real, hon mirin, a sweet rice wine with 14 % vol. alcohol B) the ersatz, or shin mirin / mirin fu, with less than 1 % vol. alcohol. I'd...	I used hon-mirin exclusively when I lived in Japan, simply because it tasted better. My Japanese neighbor was surprised that I could tell the difference, and confessed (somewhat embarrassedly) that she used aji-mirin since her family couldn't tell the difference. However, I cannot buy hon-mirin in the US (I'm not 21,...
GMS and CMC ratios in Ice Cream I was exploring a variety of online sources and I stumbled into the emulsifier Glycerol Monostearate (GMS). According to Wikipedia it is commonly used in ice cream to make its texture creamier. I also noticed that it's commonly used with Carboxylmethyl Cellulose (CMC). I have a Kitchen...	After some more research, I stumbled onto this post. The "standard ice cream" recipe linked from there uses 0.4% of a "stabilizer blend" (8g out of 1950g of ingredients). GMS and CMC would fall into the stabilizers and emulsifiers category. I used 7g of GMS and 1g of CMC, which seems to be a fairly common ratio in rec...
How do you make mustard water? I just found out the little bit of water that forms right above Dijon mustard tastes great when adding it on top of meat! Problem is that there is not much of that water in a Dijon mustard jar. Simply beating mustard with water doesn't quite do the trick. I know it sounds disgusting (by ...	Mustard is mostly vinegar, so instead of diluting mustard with water, try vinegar, or vinegar and water.
How do I minimize the risk of bacteria growth in bean sprouts? I have been experimenting with sprouts lately. Most recently I've been sprouting mung beans. Last week I had a salad with a larger than usual portion of bean sprouts. I spent the next day with a delicious case of food poisoning. I don't have any proof that...	Some of my local supermarkets stopped selling sprouts because bacterial contamination was so widespread, but that's probably more of a problem for big batches. I'm thinking that the best things you can do at home to prevent unwanted bacterial growth might be: Sanitize your jar before use. I think a hot water bath woul...
What kinds of corn can be nixtamalized? What kinds of corn are the standard for nixtamalization? I mean, do they use sweet corn, popcorn, dent corn, flour corn, flint corn, pod corn, something else, or some/all of the above? I'm guessing it would work with any corn, but some might be ideal for the purpose. Maybe it de...	Well, it looks like I found my answer: Field corn is used for creating masa de maíz (see this link for my source). Field corn includes a few types of corn (dent, flour, flint, waxy). I'm not sure if all types of field corn are used for masa de maíz, however. So, if anyone has a more specific answer, feel free to give i...
Fermenting pickles - sun or shade? I am fermenting pickles in a glass jar, using a brine of 1 TBS salt to a glass of water and a bit vinegar. Should I place the jar in a sunny location or in the shade?	In general, cooler temps mean slower fermentation, and, in my opinion, better flavor. I would go for a cool, dark place. Beyond that you'll want to make sure that you have the correct percentage of salt to pickle...3.5% by weight at least. Too low a concentration, and bad bacteria will survive. There are lots of in...
How do you avoid getting burnt by hot oil? I find myself getting hit too much by boiling oil. Even when I keep my face really far from the pan it hits me. Are there any general guidelines or best practices to avoid getting hit by boiling oil?	In a hot pan, the oil droplets jump off for three reasons usually: When you add oil to a hot pan that is not completely dry yet (i.e some water present in the pan). This residue water will boil, turn into steam and splatter oil. When you are adding wet food to the hot oil. The water turns into steam and splatters oil....
Is getting rid of the dough the only solution when it smells of yeast? I made pizza dough (it was ready to use, you just add the liquid ingredients -oil and milk in my case- and the rest is similar to the usual process of letting it rest and so on) the other day and left it in the fridge for about 48 hours, when I was...	Hmm. A yeast dough smelling of yeast. There's only one solution - bake it.
Warming refrigerated butter at a table in a restaurant I love to cook. One of my favorite ways to cook is to go to a restaurant, look at the menu, get ideas, and order creatively. It helps to tip well. For example, I've been successful creating diet ginger ale by ordering it cut with club soda and adding sugar subst...	Ask for a heated glass! Glasses freshly out of cleaning should be warm anyway, so chances are they have one. Putting the heated glass over your (opened) piece of butter unter the turned-over glass should have the desired effect.
Is it possible to know how much the cake weighs using a specific size of cake pan before baking? I have someone asking me for a wedding cake. She wants three separate round cakes. The cakes will serve 100-150 people and the point she emphasized was it being easy to slice and share. Would two 11x3 inch cakes weigh 4 kg...	It is a question of scaling. In chat you told us the given recipe was for a 23 cm pan. I'll ignore height for now, assuming the same height for all pan sizes, because that can be adjusted in a second step. The math: The cake batter for round cakes fills a cylinder. The volume of which is base circle area x height, i...
Identifying a white crispy garnish to a pork dish We went to an excellent restaurant last night and one of us was served pork with an unfamiliar, edible garnish; It was a crispy, long, white item which may have been a little salty and a little meaty, although I'm not sure. Can anyone identify the White item on this ...	I haven't got time to make a real answer but here's a recipe http://m.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/pork-rinds-chicharron.html The reason it's white is all to-do with light diffusion and the fact the brown 1mm thick crisp pork skin has just been stretched to over 1cm thick. Think... blowing up a balloon, it get lighter...
How to soft and hard boil eggs in the same pot so they are ready at the same time? The method I usually follow is to place the eggs in cold water, then take the pot off heat once the water starts boiling and let the eggs sit in the water for X minutes. I usually do 4-5 min for soft boiled and 10-12 min for hard boiled...	You can do that by using a different method which puts eggs in boiling water. Bring water to a boil in a large enough pot for all eggs. Add those eggs that are to be hard-boiled, start timer. Add the eggs that should be soft when the remaining time fits. Remove all eggs together. (Hope that you can tell soft and hardb...
Can tempered chocolate be seeded with a different chocolate? I have unsweetened chocolate, which is stored in seized form (soft, grainy). I use it for chocolate sauces. Is it possible to temper this chocolate by: Sweetening it with white or brown sugar? Then seeding it with Some Callebaut 811 dark chocolate chips th...	You cannot use sugar unless you do not mind having crunchy sugar crystals. There is no way of sweetening chocolate by adding sugar, even powdered sugar, without a conche. I think if the cacao contents are not too dissimilar, you should be fine. I have got away with 70% seeding 85%, but I cannot tell you whether you cou...
40lb.round of opened grana padano cheese I bought a 80lb. round of Grano Padano cheese and had it opened horizontally to use 1/2 of it for wedding. We "chunked" out a good portion of the center so the guests could nibble on it while tasting wine. The other 1/2 we would like to save for another wedding that is 3 months...	I think your best bet might be to re-wax the cut surface with cheese wax, available from cheesemaking suppliers, and then store in the fridge, unless you have a cheese cave handy. In general a vertical halving will reduce storage loss by minimizing the cut surface - you could have had the same cheese availability by ve...
Why are eggs not stored in the fridge better in baking? I have always wondered why baking with refrigerated eggs VS room temperature eggs comes out much better. Can anyone explain why please?	This isn't at all exclusive to eggs, searing off a really cold (fresh, not frozen) steak will get you a tough steak. Unless the recipe depends on the behavior of a protein as refrigerated, proteins are better to work with at room temperature. Think of the egg yolk and white sort of like ice cream; the warmer it becomes...
Can I use short rib bones alone to make beef stock? I have almost 2 pounds of uncooked short rib bones (I cut them off short ribs then froze them). There is very little meat, if any, on the bones. Am I able to make beef stock using just these bones? Should I add one of the small marrow bones I have in the freezer (I ...	A lot of the flavor comes from the marrow of the bone. Rib bones will need companion soup bones to help them. Alone, the flavor will seem weak or watered down. Now, if you are willing to put in the time.... Bake them first at 325f for an hour, let them cool and hit them with a hammer to crack them. you might want to c...
Slicing bratwurst for quicker, more even grilling I am always surprised and little impatient with the time required to cook my brats all the way through on the grill. More heat typically means the outside finishes before the inside, and less heat means I'm waiting 30 minutes or more for fully cooked brats. A few years...	Boil or steam them using beer (for a traditional flavor combination) or water before grilling. Grill for flavor, not as the sole means of heating them. This is more about cooking faster (or more evenly, anyway) than slicing, though that step will also make them hold together better if sliced after boil/steam and befor...
What is in a Jamaican Chocolate Cheesecake? I'm interested in making a variation of this baked Jamaican Chocolate Cheesecake from the Cheesecake Shop. The description from the website is not terribly useful in identifying what the possible ingredients are: A smooth, baked chocolate cheesecake crowned with mouthwateri...	While I've never experienced this cheesecake personally and the photo doesn't show anything at all "Jamaican" about it, I'd hazard a guess that the recipe involves rum. The traditional go-to cake in Jamaica is a black fruit cake. It involves soaking dried fruit in rum for an extended period of time and making liberal...
Why meat gets tough after soaking it in vinegar solution for more than 24 hours? Vinegar is a marinade and i have tried marinating meat before too but if meat is soaked in vinegar solution for more than 24 hours then it gets tougher.Why?	Vinegar is acidic thanks to its concentration of acetic acid. It thus has a low pH, somewhere between 2.5 and 5 depending on the type of vinegar. Acidic substances can affect the delicate amino acids which form the proteins that make up the majority of your meat (along with other fats and connective tissues). The end r...
What do I have to worry about when using a cast iron skillet as opposed to nonstick? This was originally part of this question about usage of stainless steel and cast iron skillets, but I was advised to split it into two different questions. I've been using nonstick pans exclusively all my life. Most recently, after ...	Arm fatigue. They're heavy enough that you'll need to consider how you hold them as you're dumping food out of them. You'll often see chefs on cooking shows grabbing the handle in a strange way, where the grip is from underneath, and then they hold it with the handle at the top and the pan almost dangling below. Learn...
Fat free oil substitute for frying/sautéing and curries I want to reduce fat for health reasons. Can someone please tell me a fat free substitute for oil in cooking (not baking) that will not compromise the flavour of the dish? I am asking for a substitute in frying/sautéing vegetables and cooking curries. For example...	Debating health is off topic here, but I think I can answer some of your question. Since you mentioned Chow Mein. I would start by saying that technically speaking you can NOT cook Chow Mein without oil. Chow directly translates to "fried" and Mein translates to "noodle". As frying (even stir/wok/pan frying in this cas...
Freezing Indian chicken curry---how to retain texture and flavor? I am planning to cook an oil-rich, Indian style Chicken curry that will look something like this: or this: I am planning to cook a week ahead and freeze them, and my target is to keep the texture and flavor as close to the original as possible. Any f...	When freezing meat (or anything really), one of the main places where the texture will change is with freezer burn. This can be minimized by double wrapping and preventing exposure to air. An extra really great way to minimize freezer burn especially given that your dish has sauce, is to cover the food with the sauce a...
Are there food combinations that are dangerous? Is there a combination of ingredients that will chemically interact to create poison? I am interested in whether this possible with any common preparation method (e.g. via cooking, blending, whisking, microwaving) but not by burning the food or leaving the food out to b...	Basically everything at all normal is safe. There is a mushroom that gets toxic if combined with alcohol, but alcohol itself isn't 100% safe and if you're gathering wild mushrooms you need to be safety conscious, so it's not really something you could run into by accident or with storebought ingredients. Relevant parag...
Are hop leaves edible? I had to thin my hop plants and I have some hop leaves. I know people use hop shoots and hops for cooking but I was wondering if hop leaves are edible and, if so, how they are used.	I had to do some research1, but: yes, hop leaves are edible, e.g. as salad. You might be better off with tender young leaves, but there are no critical ingredients that should deter you from giving them a try. Commonly one would expect the leaves to be used in a salad, but for older leaves I'd be tempted to add a heati...
Can somebody identify this tea? I was eating at my local Denny's and when you ask for tea, they give you some hot water and two of the below tea bags. On the menu it says "Hot Tea / Herbal Tea" but the tea bags only say Lipton and don't say what kind. I am hoping to identify what type of Lipton tea this is. I know the...	The webadress "www.ufs.com" and the text "This unit not labeled for retail sale" tell you that this is the tea mix Unilever delivers to restaurants, senior homes etc. The rainforest alliance logo is used for coffee and black tea, so it's not herbal tea. (That the menu lists both, only means both are available, typicall...
Purpose of cooking oil What is the purpose of cooking oils in a recipe? What does it add to a dish? If we remove it from a dish, what does it detract. Is it creaminess, flavour or something else? What was used by people when there were no vegetable oils?	I'm going to only answer the bit about oils in cooking, rather than all the uses of oil in the kitchen. When frying or sautéing, oil acts in several capacities: First, and most critically, the oil in a pan conducts heat from the hot pan to the food being cooked. The oil greatly increases the surface are of the food in...
What is better for chilled cheesecake - pectin or gelatin? I am currently doing my food technology GCSE coursework and need a Lemon Cheesecake recipe for next week. I was planning on having an enriched shortcrust base, with a chilled lemon cheesecake filling. It will also have raspberry coulis and meringue peaks as a ...	Probably the jelly is something like the brand Oetker which comes clear or fruit-flavoured. It is indeed poured warm; cheesecake will survive if it's a cm or less layer. Alternatively, boil up some apricot jam (or strawberry), take off heat a few minutes and sieve through a tea strainer over cheesecake. Keep stirring ...
Should I throw away sesames with moths? I found pantry moths in my sesames, and their webs between the sesames on the top part. Should I throw them out? Are they still edible or useful in other ways? Thanks.	You should throw it out, and inspect everything else in your pantry to see if there is any sign of moths, including the cocoons and webbing, and throw that out too. As an alternative to throwing things away, you can remove whatever it takes to make you feel okay eating the food, then freeze it for a week to kill everyt...
Possible to thicken gravy without flour or cornstarch? I'm on a diet where I can't eat a number of things that I would typically use to make gravy, specifically corn and flour. I'm planning on roasting a chicken tonight and I was thinking it would be great to have some gravy to go along with it. Is there anything I...	Another thickener that is readily available is gelatin. This has the added advantage that its free of carbohydrate (if you are avoiding that).
How to eat coconut oil? More details inside! I'm having trouble eating coconut oil by the spoonful, I can't stand the oily fatty feeling in my mouth. It makes me gag. However, I do want to eat it for health benefits. I can eat ~5g of fructose (including that of sucrose) a day, so mixing it in with anything that contai...	Given the restrictions you've provided, as far as I can tell the only thing you eat that could possibly take on a decent amount of oil without being obviously greasy is mashed or pureed vegetables, either on their own or as part of a pureed soup. For example, any starchy vegetable (potatoes, winter squash, carrots, etc...
What kind of mussels are these? These are the mussels we bought: 3	I'm pretty sure those are Arc Clams. See this link, they look the same.
How can I make a "lighter" cheese sauce? I am looking to make some cheese-sauce filled choux pastry balls as an appetizer. I was considering making a classical mornay sauce for the filling. But when it goes cold, I find it tends to be quite heavy, and I want to avoid it becoming nausiating. Here is my Mornay sauce rec...	I see two options for you. The author of this Q How would I produce (stable) foamy bechamel sauce? reports success using gelatin. That Q is Bechamel sauce, which is the base of Mornay. or Use of an immersion blender to incorporate air into the sauce, making it a lighter texture. You can immersion blend at two points...
Can I Re-use Unfiltered Frying Oil From Night Before? I want to re-use some peanut oil I used to make wings the following morning. I don't have any cheesecloths for filtering. The used oil will be sitting out on the stove for less than twelve hours from the night before. Is this safe? Any advice on filtering witho...	As far as food safety goes, it should be safe to refry food with it (after all, you are heating this up to ~400 F again, bacteria stands no chance) The filtering helps on the flavor department. As food particles/breadings fall off, they burn and impart a burnt flavor. If you reuse oil with much burnt parts, the burnt f...
Cooking fishcakes for 1 year old---how to hold shape AND get soft juicy texture? I am making fishcakes/fish patties for a 1 year old with chopped salmon, chopped shrimp, breadcrumb, eggs and flavorings like onion etc. When I fry them, they become dry-ish, and kind-of crumbly. While still ok for an adult, my 1 year old...	In my experience cooking for small children I've found that just because they like a set of ingredients doesn't mean they will like them combined if the texture changes. I child who likes chicken and vegetables won't necessarily like chicken stew. A child who likes fish won't necessarily like a fishcake as the fishcake...
Salting Pork Chops I have this idea of how I want to make pork chops. I don't know if it is a good idea so I'm asking about it here. I want to take about two kg of pork chops, salt them with kosher salt for about two hours. Afterwards I want to get a vinegar bath and rinse all the excess salt of the meat. The last ste...	Alton Brown recommends brining pork chops in a salt water solution in one of his Good Eats episodes. I have been brining them before I cook them ever since I saw that and think it makes them juicier. I brine them for a couple hours at most and then just cook them. Never tried the drying in the refrigerator.
What can I change about this bread recipe to lower its glycemic index? I'm starting with a recipe from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads that uses an overnight autolyse of a soaker (whole wheat flour, your choice of other grains, salt, and water) and a refrigerated biga (whole wheat flour, a small bit of commercial...	My mother is the founder of the Glycemic Index Foundation of South Africa (http://www.gifoundation.com/), so let's see how well I've been listening to her! Stephie is right, legume flours do lower the GI. Beans contain slow release carbohydrates which lowers the GI. Chickpea flour is the best to use here. I find you ca...
Cuisinart frozen yogurt recipes confusing I just bought an ice cream maker (ICE 70) and it came with an instruction/recipe book, but the recipes for the frozen yogurt are confusing. One example is like this 2 cups whole milk, plain Greek yoghurt 1/4 cup granulated sugar 4 cups frozen mango pieces 1 teaspoon lime ...	I read that as 2 cups of Greek yogurt made from whole milk (ie not low- or non-fat yogurt). The comma does make it confusing, however.
Make a cheese sauce that doesn't go solid when cooled The way I normally go about making a cheese sauce for something like macaroni cheese, I start with a roux, slowly add milk, heat to thicken then add the cheese. This works just fine and is great if the food is being eaten immediately. Recently I've taken to batch c...	Your sauce is thickening up too much because it's losing moisture. After you cook your cheese sauce to perfection and mix it in with your pasta 2 things are happening: The sauce loses moisture due to evaporation. It's hot, and even with the lid on you will still lose moisture The pasta will soak up water from the sauc...
How to chop/mince meat? How can I chop or mince meat more easily? Currently I just use a knife and chop it up. Meat grinders are no good. I am not trying to make sausage. I want to chop the meat up, not turn it into goo. Most meat grinders don't even have a hole big enough for a chicken breast or steak. Is there any k...	You could try using a vegetable dicer. This professional one specifically says it works for chicken breast. If you have a lot of chicken to dice it maybe worth it, but it won't be real quick to clean. If this is too much machine for what you want to accomplish, smaller home versions are made, something like this home ...
Why not mix meat or poultry with fish? I have just realized that I cannot recall ever seeing an item on any menu or in any cookbook that includes both fish and meat or fish and poultry together. (Meat and poultry I have seen.) Is there a reason for this? Is such a combination by its very nature distasteful? Is it diff...	You're wrong in your observation to begin with. There are tons of things with meat and seafood: Cajun food often combines sausage, chicken and seafood (e.g. gumbo and jambalaya) "Surf and turf" is a catchall term for red meat plus seafood in American-ish cuisine, and comes in all kinds of forms (each separately, one s...
What caused smooth homemade nutella to become grainy in refrigerator? I blended toasted hazelnuts in a vitamix until they were a butter, added melted chocolate, then added coconut oil to increase smoothness. Here are the amounts: 450 grams hazelnuts (unsalted, raw or roasted) 160 grams chocolate 50 grams coconut oil O...	You're right, it's the coconut oil. Notice how shiny the batch was fresh? That's the oil separating. It would need constant stirring while cooling to keep droplets from forming. Steady cooling - I got that graininess in ice cream once by freezing too quickly from room temp. Got an ice cream churner around to try with ...
substitute for dairy products? I am a cookery student. As a part of my course, I need to create dietary menus. I have chosen dairy free. Because I am allegy to dairy it can help me to understand how I can produce dairy free food. I have to ask questions to a proffesional advisor for reference. First of all, I am wonde...	The answer to Yoghurt preparation is Yes, yoghurt can be prepared via Soy milk. Soy yogurt can be prepared at home using the same method as dairy yogurt. One tablespoon of sugar per 1 liter of unsweetened soy milk may be added to promote bacterial fermentation. Soy milk on its own lacks the lactose (milk sugar) that is...
Ceramic made from alumina poisonous? I was searching for ceramic knife and learned they can be made from Zirconia or Alumina. Some cheap ones could be from the latter because material is cheaper. Isn't Aluminum Oxide poisonous to human body? I don't care much about the knife, but I do have a cheap manual cranking ce...	Aluminium oxide is used in toothpaste (as an abrasive) and tablets (as an inactive filler). You'll get much more from these sources than from food preparation. It's essentially insoluble in water as well, making it hard to absorb from food. Some other aluminium compounds are much more soluble especially given that the...
Pork Sirloin vs Chump I'm trying to become more proficient in my understanding of pork cuts. I've heard of the "chump" (mostly from Brits) and pork sirloin. They both seem to come from roughly the same place on the pig and I've heard their qualities described similarly. Are these two different names for the same pi...	Chump and loin are close together but they are very different cuts of meat. Chump is a working cut, so has much more connective tissue than loin, so a slower cooking process is recommended for it. It's not a bad cut at all, in fact it's delicious when prepared properly, you just need to adjust your method when using it...
How much brown sugar do I add to one third a cup to make half a cup of brown sugar How much brown sugar do I add to one third cup to make half cup brown sugar?	The math answer: 1/2 = 3/6 1/3 = 2/6 So (3/6) - (2/6) = 1/6 cups As 1 cup is 237 ml, 1/6 is about 40 ml. 40 ml is two tablespoons (15ml each) plus 2 teaspoons (5 ml each). To fill 1/3 to make 1/2 cup add 2 tblsp + 2 tsp. The lifehack answer: Dump the 1/3 of a cup into a 1/2 cup and fill it up.
How to keep savory biscotti crunchy? I've made several batches of this recipe for savory biscotti. They are a pleasant crunchy texture after baking and cooling. The next day, after being stored in an airtight container, they are no longer crunchy! They are made with eggs, whole milk, and butter, and I'm wondering if t...	I'll bet the rent that they weren't baked completely dry. Moisture made it to the crust overnight as happens with crunchy bread crust going leathery.
How to get heat high enough for stir fry? Considering that mounting a fighter jet afterburner in my kitchen (or anything, for that matter) isn't very convenient or realistic, what would be a realistic way to get the extreme heat output that stir frying requires? I have heard of people using small gas burners, while t...	I have never tried it but when I googled wok burners (thinking to find a standalone high-output gas hob), I found this article about a wok ring called the "WokMon" on Serious Eats and had to post it here: A couple months ago I was approached by Glen Lee, an inventor who claimed to have an ingenious new device for cook...
compound chocolate vs real chocolate I have recently bought a small coating pan which I am going to use to coat peanuts & raisins with chocolate, and then polish with capol. I am quite new to the whole chocolate thing. Especially establishing the quality of the chocolate. I have used only a basic chocolate bar bought ...	The quality of the result you get depends on the quality of the ingredients you use, plain and simple. If you want really good chocolate coated peanuts you have to use good chocolate, and there's no way to get around that. There's no harm in using compound chocolate - it will work - you just won't get a result that is ...
Letting wine reduce before braising I've seen recipes for braising (sorry no sources available) that instruct you to deglaze with wine then let it reduce by about half. After the wine has reduced, the next steps are to add in stock, more wine and aromatics, let it come to a simmer on the stove then pop it in the oven ...	Just a question of flavor layers. Reducing the wine after deglazing will create some deeper flavoring. It will remove some of the wine's acidity and concentrate the flavor that will complement the stock and wine that will be added later on in the recipe.
How long is wheat good for after harvest? I'm not sure if I am asking this in the right place. I am wondering, if winter wheat is harvested from mid-May to mid-July, and spring wheat is harvested from mid-August to mid-September, then how long is it good for before it gets milled?	I can give you the traditional aproach my local mill uses: Harvest season is just a few weeks per year. The mill will during that time buy the amount of grain they need for one year - from harvest to harvest. The grain gets sorted, tested, dried and cleaned if necessary, and is then put into storage. During the year, ...
Cookies are soft in the middle, even though the edges are browned So I followed the recipe posted here to get some pretty standard chocolate chip cookies: http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/ultimate-chocolate-chip-cookies/77c14e03-d8b0-4844-846d-f19304f61c57 But when I pulled it out of the oven, the edges were browne...	If the edges burn and the center is undone, it means the heat didn't have enough time to reach the relatively cool center before the edge was too hot. The temperature gradient depends on the amount of heat from your oven and the size of your cookie - and to some degree on the thermal properties of your cookie sheet. Y...
What is this double-serrated knife good for? I was recently given an unused knife from an elderly relative who downsized her home. It is stainless steel with a sort of "double serrated" edge. Out of curiosity I gave it a try and it more "shredded" than cut my meat and almost destroyed my plastic cutting board. It is...	You are not missing anything, that is a cheap serrated "no sharpening" knife from a set. The only possible advantage to it would be when cutting soft tomatoes, where having a bit of serration helps. For that I use a bread knife anyway, so I'd say you have no use for that knife at all in the kitchen.
Green broccoli rice I live in Brazil and around here is very common to make broccoli rice (rice, broccoli and sometimes garlic). I have eat it many times in restaurants, they are either white or green like the pictures below. When I do at home I only manage to make it white, how can I make it greenish like the secon...	Mashing/pureeing the broccoli is probably the best bet here, as folks guessed in comments. That second picture looks like it has really tiny pieces of broccoli, small enough that you end up with it coating the rice. This seems to be confirmed by recipes online that look relatively similar. For example this recipe says:...
Smoking time for 6 racks (18 lbs) of baby back ribs? I have a vertical propane smoker that has slots for 7 racks. I will be smoking 6 racks of baby back ribs. I have smoked 3 racks (9 pounds) at 200-210 in six hours. I know I will need additional time for the extra 3 racks -- but it can't be 6 extra hours (12 total)...	The extra cooking time would be negligible. Cooking time is predominantly a function of temperature of the cooker, and surface area and mass of what you are cooking.
How much dry cake mix, water, oil and eggs to use for two 4in round cakes? I have a 15.25oz Betty Crocker box mix. On the back it says to use it all with 1 cup of water, 1/2oil and 3 eggs and that makes two 8 in rounds or 24 cupcakes. I don't know how much I need, please help.	I'll assume you want your 4" round cakes to be the same height as the two 8" rounds the box would make. The area of two 8" rounds is 2pi4^2 = 32pi. The area of two 4" rounds is 8pi, or 1/4 as much area. So you only need 1/4 of the box, and 1/4 of the ingredients you'd add to it. So, if you have a scale, you could mea...
What kind of reaction is this? I have made elderflower 'champagne' a number of times, but I don't really understand it. I ferment other drinks and foods, and generally understand the process quite well, but I'm not sure about this. I'm wondering if it is- some sort of yeast off the elderflowers A kind of reaction si...	It is certainly a fermentation. A simple chemical neutralization wouldn't need that much time, and wouldn't produce lasting fizz. You can be certain that there are wild yeasts everywhere: in the air in your kitchen, on your elderflower, probably on your utensils, etc. It is impossible to say which ones prevailed in th...
What can I use in my own kitchen to fashion a panini press? First, I realize someone asked whether they can use a waffle iron. Great question, great idea. Alas, while I do have a waffle iron, it's not a very good one and won't fit sandwiches of substantial thickness. I do have two cast iron pans. But the smaller on...	Assuming that you don't mind the bottom of your smaller pan getting dirty, you could put the sandwich in a heated larger pan and place the pre-heated smaller pan on top. According to your question, you've got this this in own mental experiment. The next step would just require you to borrow from mechanical engineering...
Should shortbread cookies be lightly browned? I'm trying to make shortbread cookies the proper way. Should they be cooked through, but without any browning? Or, should they be lightly browned?	Either way is acceptable these days, but the classic version declines any browning. It's really a matter of personal taste. The classic Scottish recipe calls for shortbread to be set but pale. However, many people prefer a bit of light browning, as this tends to emphasize the taste of the salt, which in turn enhances t...
What should I do with my leftover bench flour? I make bread/pizza quite often, up to a few times per week. I work on a wooden surface for forming the dough and use a flour dredge to spread about 1 cup of flour per session on my surface. I would like to use more flour but don't like wasting the fairly expensive 00 flou...	The main problem I see is humidity - the bench flour can be lumpy, have bits of dough in it and will be partly moist. I would therefore not put it back in the main bag of flour. If you use it like flour, it might leave dry lumps, so it depends on your technique whether it will work or not. But there are techniques in ...
Can I steam-cook food in a distiller? I have a counter-top water distiller which I have been using to make distilled water, and it's been working fine for this purpose. Recently, my artichoke plant has produced artichokes ready for harvest, and I had the idea I could use the distiller to steam-cook them. The possible ...	I did it a few times and it worked great! My artichoke plant makes rather small artichokes, so I put one stem down in a teacup in the bottom of the distiller. I filled the distiller with 1-2 cups of water, estimating that would get me enough cooking time to cook that size artichoke. After it distilled that water and au...
What's are the benefits of different sourdough starter consistencies? Is there any real differences between keeping a sourdough starter at a thick dough like consistency compared to a more watery consistency? Aside from the general thoughts of thicker being easier to keep.	Since a starter is actually a symbiotic mixture of microorganisms, factors like hydration level can change the balance of bacteria and yeasts. Depending on which organisms are favored, it can change the flavor, gas production, etc. They're not necessarily "benefits", but different consistencies can definitely produce d...
What can I use instead of clam juice? I would like to make a "Thai beef with carrot-basil salad" recipe. The sauce for the ground beef includes the following ingredients: 2 tablespoons lime juice 2 teaspoons sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons minced garlic 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper 1/2 cup clam juice 2 tablesp...	Fish sauce! I think the clam juice is probably already a substitute for fish sauce anyway, so it should make a very good substitute. (If you look up recipes for Thai beef salad you'll find tons of things with fish sauce, and probably not much with clam juice.) You probably want to use less, though, maybe starting with ...
Clarified Butter for Hot Sauce? Would there be an advantage or disadvantage to using clarified butter to making hot sauce? Often, a recipe calls for butter to be mixed in with some pepper sauce. I'm wondering if clarified butter would give a richer taste?	Assuming you mean something like a wing-sauce when you say hot sauce (where butter is added to pepper sauce near the end of the recipe): It would make only a slight difference, and many tasters will find no flavor difference. A clarified butter is a butter with milk solids and water removed---it changes the richness t...
Absorb precipitates when heating water in a microwave? I boil filtered water. I notice much precipitates in the water after heating it up in microwave. I would like to remove them, and I am thinking the ways do it. Ways some absorbing stone etc ... some specific rough ceramic bowl to which those precipitates attach ...	I would simply filter them out. A coffee filter should take care of even the finest minerals. I doubt that you can effectively do it while boiling. Even if you give them sites to attach to, a lot will stay afloat.
Is there such a thing as pork stock? The other day I made this delicious recipe of Bacon Tea. I thought I could make some more with some Pork Stock. When I went to the store to buy stock I found: Beef Stock Veal Stock Chicken Stock Vegetable Stock (Interestingly enough - no lamb stock either.) I asked my wife about...	There certainly is such a thing as pork stock, it's made the same way as beef and chicken stock - by cooking down bones to extract the flavors. With beef you use beef bones, with pork you use pork bones. Supermarkets stock the products that make economic sense, they don't carry items which won't move - especially if t...
Flour Blend for Seoul Chicken? The chef in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD97u0OUbBo uses a blend of tapioca starch, potato starch, and rice flour for his dredge. Any ideas what ratio would be optimal for getting a crispy wing?	Honestly, all three of those will crisp up very quickly, and just about any ratio will produce a crispy end product. The blend may be for textural reasons; potato starch is typically very fine and produces a tempura-like shell, while rice flour can have little bits of individual rice grains which produces a "chunkier" ...
Which sugar for brining? I've come across various brining solutions that include sugars: white sugar, brown sugar, raw sugar, etc. Are these sugars interchangeable? Is one sugar more desirable for a certain kind of meat over the other?	For a brine, no it doesn't really matter, except that granulated sugar will dissolve more nicely than raw sugar. The sugar is for flavor more than anything else, though it does help the brine some. It also promotes browning of the meat. If you change one kind of sugar for another, I'd use a 1:1 swap by weight rather ...
Falafel vs onion baji What is the difference between the way a falafel is made and the way an onion baji is made? It seems both seem to be based on embedding some veggies in flour and frying it.	They're both fried, but they don't seem to be that similar in composition. Falafel isn't veggies in flour, it's pretty much just a seasoned chickpea (or fava bean) paste. That paste is pretty thick, so while it might have some extra flour to bind even better, or to make it easier to form into balls, it's not just a flo...
Difference between tzatziki and Indian mint dip (mint chutney?) What is the difference between a tzatziki dip and an Indian mint dip? Aren't both just yogurt and mint? Or o is the difference that tzatziki also has some cucumber in it? Also, while tzatziki looks predominantly white Indian mint dips are green throughout...	As far as I'm aware, the traditional Greek tzatziki doesn't generally include mint at all. It's a cucumber dip that is made of yogurt and sometimes includes dill or mint as a flavoring: Tzatziki (Anglicized: /tsɑːtˈsiːki/ }; Greek: τζατζίκι [dzaˈdzici] or [dʒaˈdʒici]) is a Greek sauce served with grilled meats or as a...
How to remove alcohol taste from vanilla extract? I bought Kirkland pure vanilla extract from Costco and it has a very strong taste of alcohol. I'd like to mix it into drinks, but it is really overpowering. Would boiling out the alcohol remove some of the vanilla flavour? I assume the alcohol is there to amplify the v...	If you have not tried mixing it into drinks yet then I'd encourage you give it a shot. Although the alcohol smell is strong in the bottle the vanilla flavor is much more concentrated, once you dilute it in something else the alcohol should be unnoticeable. There's no way to get the alcohol out of the extract without d...
How to store Curry Leaves for many days? I've used polythene bags and they remain good for at-least 3- 4 days. Then the leaves are becoming dark. How can I store them for at least one/two week(s)?	Put almost all your herbs and leaves in the freezer if you want to keep them for more than 2-3 days. Either in a tight sealed container or ziplock bags. Keep them dry (eg. between layers of kitchen paper as suggested in the comments) so it's easy to separate them when you want to take out some and leave the rest. Some ...
Skin on black bean soup Sometimes when I make black bean soup it forms a skin. Why is this? Ingredients are: beans, olive oil, salt pepper, garlic, cayenne pepper, and cumin.	Whenever beans are cooked, they release a good bit of starch into the cooking liquid. The longer you cook the beans, the more starch they release. Boiling, breaking or otherwise roughing up the beans will release more starch. Also, canned beans release a good bit of their starch into the water in the can. If you hav...
Can "Canning" be achieved with "vacuum sealed" bags? Upon reading the question If I vacuum seal a food product like beef stew then boil it in the bag, would it keep un-refrigerated? and the answer provided https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/69423/6279 I agree that 'normally' it would not result in making something sh...	(disclaimer: I've only heard of people doing this, not done it myself.) Yes, it can be done. You're looking for retort pouch canning. Various places will sell you the bags, and you can vacuum seal them with a chamber vac, though you may need an upgraded heat bar. Then you can process them in a pressure canner (or prefe...
Is rice supposed to be eaten with chopsticks? This question is about cultural norms and tradition. In Asian countries, is rice intended to be eaten with chopsticks? I heard this is a western misconception, as rice is too hard to pickup with chop sticks (though in my opinion if it's sticky rice it's manageable). Is ric...	The Chinese cultural norm is to eat rice with chopsticks. It would be very inconvenient to constantly switch back and forth between eating with chopsticks and a spoon depending upon whether you were eating rice or vegetables or meat. To get around the loose grain problem, you can use the shovel method. You pick up you...
Cooking pizza in tiny gas oven with pizza stone I currently have a tiny gas oven to cook with this summer and I like to cook a lot of pizzas, but I have always cooked them in standard electric home ovens. I have been doing some reading here and here, but I don't think I have enough information yet. Typically, I cook t...	I realize this is an old question, but here goes. FWIW, I used to bake pizza w/gas, but for the last 15 yrs, it's been electric. Lots of variables, such as thickness of dough and baking stone, etc. but experiment with some of these tips: Make sure baking stone is hot enough (I use an inexpensive laser remote thermomet...

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.