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See the improved answer here: What DOES Help?
Which acid works best to keep avocados from browning?
Answer: None (of the acids tested)
It's not that acid doesn't do much to help.
ALL OF THE ACIDS TESTED CAUSED AVOCADOS TO BECOME MORE BROWN AND TO BECOME BROWN FASTER THAN NO TREATMENT AT ALL
I am not kidding.
Method
For acid, I used freshly squeezed ...
65
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 ...
57
TL; DR
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) works to slow, even halt the browning of avocados, even in the face of salt, vinegar (in salsa), and lime juice, all of which have been shown (or will be shown) to speed browning. At a concentration of 100mg per 50 grams of avocado, it is also virtually tasteless.
You can buy pure ascorbic acid powder, which I did and then ...
56
Your egg whites were cooked by the alcohol in the extract. Cooked, in this case, means denaturing, which means unfolding the protein molecules. There are many ways to denature proteins. Acid, such as vinegar, will denature egg proteins, which is why some people suggest adding vinegar to the water to poach an egg (a practice I disagree with, but that's ...
54
"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 ...
52
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 ...
52
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 ...
51
Looking up Shreddies, I found this site. It lists, in the ingredients
Whole Grain Wheat (96%), Sugar, Invert Sugar Syrup, Barley Malt Extract, Salt, Molasses, Vitamins and Minerals (Niacin, Iron, Pantothenic Acid, Folic Acid, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin)
There is no percentage for the sugar in the ingredients list.
And the nutritional information says
...
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' ...
46
If you reduce filtered broth all the way, you get portable soup. It dries down into a solid that looks a bit like leather. Because of the gelatin from the bones, portable soup is bendy and flexible. It was used in the 18th century as a portable food item, eg by soldiers and people traveling through the American wilderness. There's an excellent video by ...
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 ...
38
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 ...
37
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/(m·K))
dT = temperature difference (°C)
s = wall thickness ...
37
I suspect that 96g of whole grain goes into the recipe for 100g, along with 13g of sugar and some salt, vitamins, and flavouring ingredients. At that point there's at least 109g. Then it's formed and cooked, driving off at least 9g of water, getting down to 100g.
I don't know in what form the whole wheat is added, but whole wheat flour has more than 20% ...
35
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 ...
34
Nice experiment. Oddly enough food scientists in Florida have looked into the same problem, and achieved results similar to yours:
THE RETARDATION OF ENZYMATIC BROWNING IN AVOCADO PUREE AND GUACAMOLE
Enzymatic browning in avocado puree and guacamole was evaluated by reflectance measurements for several varieties of avocado with varying amounts of ...
34
This link explains the science behind what is known as "the mother sauce", béchamel. Essentially, the steps of first creating a roux, then adding cold milk, are about manipulating the glucose chains in the flour. Done correctly, the sauce is smooth and flavorful. Done incorrectly and you have a grainy mixture that tastes of raw flour.
@David Richerby's ...
33
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 ...
32
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....
31
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, ...
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 ...
30
There's no need to force-feed the chickens.
Chicken Liver Mousse is just a posh word for a smooth paté, with sometimes a bit of extra aeration.
For every chicken, there's a chicken liver. The world eats a lot of chicken these days, so there's a lot of chicken liver to spare. All you need to add is butter for the extra fat content & resulting mouth-feel.
...
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 ...
25
Yes, kneading develops gluten. Specifically, the gliadin and glutenin proteins in flour form gluten when mixed together with water. It's common, but inaccurate (and confusing I think) to refer to gliadin and glutenin as gluten.
For more about the chemistry of how gluten develops see the paragraph on 'bread products' in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten.
24
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
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 ...
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. ...
22
From The Splendid Table:
Older eggs (which are still safe to eat) tend to be more alkaline, which encourages a green reaction similar to that green ring you can get around a hard-cooked egg yolk. The green is harmless, but pretty much inevitable in older eggs.
From Quora:
If the yolk is breaking easily then the eggs are either older eggs or lower grade ...
22
Popcorn should be considered one of "nature's little miracles" - & a way to make a huge profit out of air.
Yes, you can pop other dried grains/seeds, but don't expect anything quite so bag-filling as maize.
Quinoa, chia, sorghum & amaranth will all pop [in a dry pan, not sure about microwave]
See
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/...
19
Hydration (adding water) is the main reason for the gluten development.
Kneading on the other hand, not only helps hydration by effectively mixing the contents but also causes cross-links of gluten webs forming, thus giving the dough (and eventually the baked product) the chewy texture.
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