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What most people don't get when it comes to food safety: Spoiled food has a chance of making you sick.
When food is visibly spoiled, it has large bacterial colonies growing in it. This means that it has been exposed to conditions which were promoting bacterial growth. Anything which was present on your food will have grown, unless outcompeted by something ...
55
A study conducted by the US Department of Agriculture’s Nutrient Data Laboratory calculated the percentage of alcohol remaining in a dish based on various cooking methods. The results are as follows:
Preparation Method and Percent of Alcohol Retained
alcohol added to boiling liquid & removed from heat: 85%
alcohol flamed: 75%
no heat, stored overnight:...
51
"Cooking" is often a chemical process. Denaturing proteins, gelatinization, causing chemical reactions like browning, or even causing state changes like evaporation.
In many cases for these reactions to happen, we need to overheat the food. (Cook it and let it rest to cool off back down to undo some of the changes that were made and/or bring it back down ...
50
Basically, the lye reacts with the CO₂ and moisture present during baking to form a non-toxic carbonate. This makes it safe to eat.
The reaction:
CO₂ (g) + H₂O (l) ⇄ H₂CO₃ (aq)
H₂CO₃ (aq) + 2 NaOH (aq) → Na₂CO₃ (aq) + 2 H₂O (l)
From here (MS doc)
[EDIT]
Spurred by the comments, I have searched further.
tl;dr There is much going on wrt ...
50
Baking powder contains starch, which is insoluble.
Baking soda is completely soluble
Take a small bowl, and put 1/8 tsp of the substance in the bottom.
Add water.
If the substance is bicarbonate of soda, the solution will be completely clear.
If it is baking powder, a cloudy/powdery residue will remain.
(You can also use excess vinegar which gives the ...
46
Short answer? Not a damn thing. The term is pretty much meaningless in the US; at best it only means that the product doesn't have added colors, artificial flavors or synthetic "stuff". From the FDA:
What is the meaning of 'natural' on the label of food?
From a food science perspective, it is difficult to define a food product that is 'natural' ...
39
As stated in another answer, Italian tradition is that all pasta is cooked in boiling water. A reasonable explanation for this usage is that it's easier to get the time right this way.
Pasta is very sensitive to cooking time, and will easily turn from 'al dente' to an overcooked mush if left on the fire a couple of minutes too much. By cooking it in ...
38
The purpose of dipping in lye (or other basic solution, like baking soda...or even baked, baking soda) is that it promotes coloring, as the solution reacts with the surface of the dough. It also promotes the Maillard reactions when the dough cooks. The result is even browning and that typical alkali flavor. If choosing lye, food grade is important, as ...
36
Essentially, the exterior crust and the interior evenness are both side effects of the distribution of water.
The Maillard Reaction - the chemical reaction responsible for the brown crust - happens at about 150° C. Generally you're baking at a much higher temperature than this - say 200° C.
The first question one might ask is, why is the crust only on the ...
33
reference: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/conductive-heat-transfer-d_428.html
Let's take a moment to look at the heat transfer equation. Looking at it, we can see the ways to get more efficient heat transfer
q / A = k dT / s
q / A = heat transfer per unit area (W/m2)
k = thermal conductivity (W/mK)
dT = temperature difference (oC)
s = wall thickness (...
32
For dried pasta it doesn’t really matter if you start with cold or hot water, as most of the time pasta spends in water is for hydration. And once the hydrated starches reach a certain temperature they gelatinize, thus cooking the pasta. When you start with cold water, you should use less water, which is actually a plus...
Note: I forgot to mention, you ...
30
The types of foods that reheat well are also quite suitable for being balanced in one main dish. Generally speaking, dishes with stuff in sauce freeze/chill and reheat well. So stew, curry, chilli, ratatouille etc. should work. Any of those can be made with plenty of veg, which is important if you're aiming for a balanced diet. An accompanying carbohydrate ...
29
Simple: it has no water.
Chocolate is a suspension of cocoa solids and sugar in cocoa butter. It is made from fat and carbohydrates only. Bacteria, as everything else, need water to live. They can't survive in something hygroscopic (like jam or honey) or something with no water at all (flour, chocolate, pure fat). Similar for molds. So, independent of ...
29
Reasons to wash your rice:
Reduce/Control Starch levels
Often when you're cooking rice you want distinct grains of rice and for your rice to have texture. In the case of Chinese fried rice for example, you specifically want your rice grains to not stick to one another. If you're talking white rice especially, there will be a lot more loose starch that will ...
29
The reason it is safe is three-fold.
First, the concentration is only 1% NaOH and the pretzels are only dipped for 10 seconds (see Snack Food Technology pages 180-182) which limits the amount of hydroxide per pretzel.
Second, the dough itself, for example protein of the dough, has acidic groups, such as amino acid side chains of lysine and tyrosine, ...
27
There has been thorough scientific research done on this question. The main problem with Alton Brown's recommendation is that his room temperature "rest" is not long enough, since the scientific literature recommends 24-72 hours at room temperature, depending on acid concentration.
The most common acids used in mayonnaise recipes are acetic acid (vinegar)...
27
There is almost no food which is guaranteed to be safe. If it has nutritional value for a human, it has nutritional value for many microorganisms too, some of which are human pathogens.
So, out of the FATTOM rule, you can already throw out F: you cannot remove the food. A is also not a good candidate - no food is naturally acidic enough, and while there ...
24
Short answer: tomato sauce is a non-Newtonian fluid. Another interesting link can be found here.
Tomato sauce is an interesting creature. Think about ketchup. You try to shake some out and nothing happens. So you tap the bottle a little bit, still nothing. Tap it a little harder, and a little harder, and suddenly boom: a flood of ketchup. The "jumpiness" of ...
24
You are doing precisely the opposite of 'normal' procedure, which is to put the lid on the pan until the water starts boiling, then remove the lid (either partially or completely) to prevent boiling over. A reduction in the hob temperature will also probably be necessary, and is in any case desirable - mercilessly boiling any vegetable is rarely a good thing....
23
While Erlenmeyer flasks and graduated cylinders and food-science may not be able to save your leftovers, adding some cooked rice with fried egg (basically any fried rice recipe) will likely crowd out the saltiness of the base dish as well as extend your leftovers.
23
Lick your finger
Dip it in the jar
Lick finger again.
If it tastes of:
Soap: Soda
Very faintly of soap and faintly of starch and slightly fizzes in your mouth: Baking powder
22
To expand on Jolene's answer, there is not only no official definition, but the only definition which fits its common usage is A food which a certain group of persons is not afraid to eat.
Philosophically, "natural" is the opposite of "artificial" or "man-made", but philosophy doesn't give us a limit of interaction under which something stays "natural. ...
21
Bacteria need a friendly environment to live. They can't survive without mosture. Mold tolerates more, but it needs moisture for life too.
Bread is too dry a food, so it doesn't catch bacteria. This is why it can be stored outside the fridge. But if you live in a moderately humid climate, it can still be moist enough for mold to grow, especially if stored ...
21
My knowledge about the phenomenon itself is limited but I did see it mentioned in "Modernist Cuisine" (Nathan Myhrvold, p. 147)
Many recipes for foie gras, liver, sweetbreads, and other offal include a soaking step before cooking. For kidneys,
this step serves a very simple purpose: to remove any trace of the animal's bodily fluids. Recipes often call ...
20
Marshmallows expand so much because the water in them becomes steam, and gas takes up a LOT more volume than liquid. Specifically, 1 mL of water becomes ~1.36 LITERS of vapor, before it gets heated further. That's 1000-fold expansion, before you add additional expansion as the gas is heated.
Marshmallows don't have all that much water content, but when ...
18
It's to prevent caking. See, for example, the second FAQ on Domino Sugar's website:
It is not recommended to substitute confectioners sugar for granulated
sugar. Since confectioners sugar has a much finer texture, and it
contains a small percentage of cornstarch to prevent caking,
substituting can give you unexpected results.
Many shredded cheeses ...
17
Three factors influence how well cheese melts:
The amount of moisture,
The amount of fat,
How it was set.
The meltiest cheeses have a lot of moisture and fat and were set with rennet and not acid.
Both moisture and fat leave space between the casein proteins that allows them to move. Otherwise they are packed together and don't flow as well.
Aged cheeses ...
17
In most cases, curdling occurs because proteins in the sauce are denatured and bind up with each other forming clumps.
In cooking, proteins are denatured by excessive heat, acid, salt, or enzymes.
Heat and acid are the usual culprits for me. For example, when making a hollandaise sauce- the egg yolks are slowly cooked to allow them to set. In most recipes ...
17
It definitely sounds like you had some water on whatever you stirred the oil with. When water droplets get in the oil, they sink since oil is lighter than water. Then the water droplets turn to steam because the boiling point of water is much below the boiling point of oil. At this point, the steam rapidly rises out of the oil and escapes with a noise and a ...
16
The most obvious thing is nothing to do with heat/temperature. The rapid boil agitates the food a lot, to the point that if the food is soft, it can pretty much tear it apart. You probably don't really want disintegrated food, but smaller pieces do cook faster, so I suppose you can look at this as a rapid boil cooking faster from a certain perspective. It ...
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