project

Okay, guys, I'll try again: For two stalks of celery, if someone has a favorite dish they have done often and include two stalks of celery, then that will likely be fine. BUT here is the 'rub': If they want to write a recipe and publish it so that someone else, far away geographically and far in the future in time, can fairly accurately reproduce the dish, then the recipe will be greatly improved with the weight of the celery as used. Sure, can also mention that, with the celery the writer has and with the way they trim the stalks, the quantity is about two stalks. Moreover, once a reader understands the recipe, they may also cook it just by counting stalks. But stalks of celery today in New Zealand might be quite different in weight from stalks of celery in California ten years from now. Then the first-cut good solution to this potential problem is to give the weight and not just the count. The core issue is not the execution of the cooking itself but the COMMUNICATIONS. Or, seeing the weight of the celery and the remark that this weight is about two stalks, someone who wonders might weigh two stalks of their celery, as they trim it, or, for a more accurate weight given crude kitchen scales, weigh 10 such stalks and divide by 5, confirm that their celery is like that of the writer, and from then on just count the stalks and ignore the weight. Here's another advantage: Maybe a reader's celery supply is not the best. So, they have a lot of stalks which, however, need a lot of trimming. They can't get two good, full stalks, but they can get the equivalent weight. So, knowing the weight lets them use the trimmed pieces they do have. Here is another way to explain the advantage of giving the weight: A good recipe can get modified, greatly changed to another dish, translated to another culture, etc. Over time, with many such operations, a weight, a numerical quantity, in, say, grams, can be transmitted fine, without loss of accuracy due to the translation, while "two stalks" can become 1-4 depending on size and trimming, etc. Ten years from now, half way around the world, after five such translation operations, the difference could be significant. For some confirmation of the importance of giving weights, I was impressed that Escoffier was careful in giving weights of ingredients, even in stock making. Recently I have been doing some Italian red sauce casseroles and topping them with freshly grated Pecorino-Romano. I've been measuring the amount of grated cheese just by eye. But for the last dish, I weighed the grated cheese -- got 7 ounces. I wrote the 7 ounces in my notes. This means that two years from now I will know what I did and be able to do it again. I also get some help knowing how much cheese to buy when I need to restock! But, now that I have the weight recorded, in my daily cooking I will return to measuring by eye. Still, I want the weight recorded! Here's another potential benefit: On eG has been a long thread on how much acid and oil to use in vinaigrette. I've always used 3:1 by volume of oil to vinegar. Now, we could give a recipe for vinaigrette with broadly available brands of vinegar, oil, and prepared mustard. Then everyone could make a batch; call it the 'reference' batch. We could all taste this reference batch and, thus, all taste essentially the same level of 'sourness' in the vinaigrette. So, suppose now someone wants to use Balsamic vinegar and achieve about the same level of sourness. So, they could start with a small amount of this expensive vinegar, add small quantities, mix, taste, and compare with the reference batch and stop adding Balsamic when the two batches seemed to have about the same sourness. Similarly for using lemon juice (where lemons vary!) or lime juice in a vinaigrette! Similarly, a cookbook author could give recipes for reference batches for sweet, bitter, etc. Then, for a special vinaigrette with a different brand of mustard with its own vinegar and for half lemon juice and half lime juice, could still get the sourness at the reference level! The author could say, "Not TOO sour" and give a reference recipe that is the author's definition of "too sour". FG wrote: "So 15 ml is not necessarily a more reliable measure than 1 clove." Let's see: Let W be the weight of the garlic (in grams), let S be the strength of the garlic per gram, and let R be the resulting strength of the garlic in the dish. Then R = WS. We want the variance of R to be small. So, we also want the variance of ln® to be small where ln() is the natural logarithm. So, ln® = ln(W) + ln(S) so that Var(ln®) = Var(ln(W) + ln(S)) = Var(ln(W)) + Var(ln(S)) > Var(ln(S)). If we weigh the garlic, then we can get essentially Var(ln(W)) = 0, and if we just use one clove of garlic then we must have Var(ln(W)) > 0. So, even if the strength per gram of the garlic varies, we still necessarily get more accuracy in the strength of garlic in the dish if we weigh the garlic instead of just using a clove. cdh asked about scales: I intend to buy a good set of electronic scales! I don't have anything that could accurately weigh a few bay leaves, 1.7 g of tea, 1/4 C of minced chives, etc. Of course, back in college chemistry lab, I did! Or, could make a set of balance scales. For the standard weights, take a ream of paper, 500 sheets, weigh it, then take one sheet, divide by 500 to get the weight of the one sheet, and cut the sheet into 2, 4, 8, etc. equal pieces and also know their weights. Then could weigh an individual chive! I don't plan to do this! So, for bay leaves, I still just count them. For chives, I mince them and then use a volume measure, say, 1/4 C. For dried basil, oregano, rosemary, and parsley, I use volume measurements. For scales, I keep in the kitchen an old set of postal scales that have accuracy of about 1/2 ounce up to 16 ounces or so. And I have a set of kitchen scales that have accuracy of about 1 ounce up to 10 pounds. So, I can weigh 1 pound of coarsely diced yellow globe onion, 7 ounces of freshly grated Pecorino-Romano cheese, four skinless, boneless chicken breast pieces, etc. Will eagerly consider suggestions of good $10 kitchen scales!

Ms. Churchill, As a professional writer of published recipes, maybe you would like to know how some potential readers view the importance of measurements in your writing. You wrote: "Most people can happily manage quantities like 2 celery sticks, 1 large onion, 3 medium tomatoes. I mean who wants to weigh out 60g diced onion? For things like butter, I use grams. Who wants to try to measure out 1/2 cup butter?" You and I are not on the same page or in the same book, library, ballpark, or city. When I see a recipe with any of "2 celery sticks, 1 large onion, 3 medium tomatoes", I instantly conclude that the recipe is yet another case of what nearly all published recipes are, just vicarious escapist fantasy emotional experience entertainment, rational nonsense, and an invitation to waste time and money. So, I quit reading, click away from the Web site, toss the book in the trash, click to another channel on TV, as appropriate. Absolutely, positively I will NOT pay any serious attention at all to any published recipe from anyone with the lack of precision of anything like "2 celery sticks, 1 large onion, 3 medium tomatoes". Period. With this lack of precision, the recipe writer just has not done work that is useful to me. Would you buy tomatoes advertised as "Two large tomatoes per dollar" with no indication of weight? Would you buy gasoline advertised as "two measures of gasoline for one measure of money!" with no definitions of "measure"? Would you buy an oven with temperature indications of only "low, medium, high"? How about a car with a speedometer with only indications of "low, medium, high"? How about bathroom scales? The 20th century solidly proved that measurements are just crucial. For your "I mean who wants to weigh out 60g diced onion?" I do; I do, want to, and insist on it. As in a post of mine above, "By the way, the tomato sauce recipe has 1 pound of coarsely diced yellow globe onions sauteed in 1/3 C of virgin olive oil -- most definitely I DO measure the onion, after dicing, and the olive oil." Moreover, if a published recipe says "onion", then I quit reading, click away from the Web site, toss the book in the trash, click to another channel on TV, as appropriate. "Onion" is too unspecific: If a writer of a published recipe means yellow globe onion, then to get serious attention from me they need to SAY SO. Else they could be talking about sweet white onions, Bermuda onions, Vidalia onions, etc. You wrote: "Who wants to try to measure out 1/2 cup butter?" I do: In the US, 1/2 C of butter is 1 stick of butter. Don't have to "measure out" the butter; it is enough just to unwrap it. You wrote: "And let's face it - if a recipe calls for 220g carrots, are you going to weigh individual carrots until you get a couple that exactly weight 220g?" Yes; definitely let us do "face it": A recipe that calls for 220g of carrots likely wants the carrots peeled and then sliced and/or diced before being weighed. Then getting 220g within a few percent is easy. When I make stock, I use onions, carrots, and celery in the proportions by weight of 2:1:1, and I DO weigh each of these. This stuff about measurements in cooking is SERIOUS. If published recipes are to communicate information about cooking that has a hope of being useful to the readers for COOKING, then measurements are just CRUCIAL. Sure, a lot of cookbooks are written as a form of bound wallpaper decorations, but they are poor communications of useful information about COOKING.

maurdel, You explained: "I was reacting in my response to some of the other comments which implied that one could duplicate a dish time and again by simply measuring everything accurately." Right. My greatest interest in measurements is in aiding communications from one cook to me or from me to myself some months from now. In addition, when I post a recipe on eG, I include measurements to help others. For my father's mother and pies, my mother learned, after years of tears, really only from my father. He started with a standard recipe of 1:3 by volume of fat to flour, some salt (I forget the salt proportion), and enough ice water to get the 'right' dough feel. For the feel, my father did learn that well from his mother, and my mother, and I, learned it from my father. But it would have saved years of tears if my father's mother had been able to convert what she did by eye to measurements and various other notes. Suppose we have cooked a dish, liked the results, and want to cook the dish again. We are home cooks and cook the dish not 100 times a day as in a restaurant kitchen but maybe only once a month. Then we have identified essentially three cases: (1) Start with measurements. Also consider "coat the back of a spoon" as a measurement of viscosity, etc. In making pie crust, consider the feel of the dough to judge how much more water to add. In doing a saute intended to result in a pan sauce, consider the color of the fond. Then consider the variability of the ingredients to be used and adjust the measurements. E.g., for lemon juice in a white fish sauce, add 1 t at a time, whip, and taste. (2) Just use the measurements and ignore the variability of the ingredients. (3) Say that because the ingredients are variable, measurements alone do not reduce all the variability and, thus, don't bother to consider measurements and just throw the dish together. My view is that the most promising for the dish is (1) and the least promising is (3); (3) has two sources of variability, the ingredients and the quantities. These sources of variability will add essentially as in the Pythagorean theorem. I'm torqued at TV cooking shows because nearly all of them, including several with really expert cooks, seem to have writers, directors, producers, and business executives trembling with insecurity with their feet solidly stuck in the concrete of Hollywood style vicarious escapist fantasy emotional experience entertainment with an absolute phobia about anything instructional or informative. So, they are determined to minimize or even eliminate measurements. Major exceptions are 'America's Test Kitchen' and Alton Brown's 'Good Eats'. Yes, usually recipes with measurements are available at corresponding Web sites; good -- I do go there. Then there is the mismatch with the TV show: The cook poured the wine to deglaze the fond, "glub, glub, glub", and the recipe says that it was 2 T of wine! Only a wino would call that 2 T! Now what? Since some of the TV cooks really do have a LOT of good expertise, especially Pepin and Lagasse, I do watch hoping to learn, and slowly I'm starting to get some value. E.g., from TV cooks I got the ideas of lightly browning the tomato paste used in the tomato sauce (so far I have noticed no effect) and, for the chicken dish I'm working on, adding green peppers, crushed red pepper flakes, capers, or olives. The green peppers helped a lot, and I have yet to try the rest. A big point is, sure, Pepin and Lagasse can cook by eye, and, indeed, in a restaurant kitchen would rarely take the time to measure with cups or scales, but in communicating to me so that I can have a chance of doing the dish in my own kitchen, the lack of careful attention to measurements is devastating and turns the hope of instructional content of the presentation into a bad joke. On the one hand, apparently a lot of money is being made with TV shows with cooks who are not careful with measurements. On the other hand, I understand that 'America's Test Kitchen', with its fairly careful attention to measurements, is "public television's most watched cooking show".

maurdel, anna n, Ah, come on! You seem to be misinterpreting to set up a straw man to knock it down! Measuring weights, volumes, times, and temperatures do a lot to reduce variability. This far into the 21st century, where civilization made such spectacular progress from physical science, engineering, medical science, and technology, all based heavily on careful measurements, e.g., microprocessor line widths of 45 nm, about 450 times the diameter of a hydrogen atom, to question the importance of measurements seems like something from the Middle Ages. Right: Measuring does not solve all the problems in the known universe! Granted! You are saying that just because we cannot reduce all the variability, there is no point in reducing some of the variability? Ah, come on! Right: I know; I know. There is a cherished, romantic ideal of 'creative freedom' of just throw in this and that, of 'inspired improvisation', and for this measurements can be seen as 'constraining creativity'. On TV cooking shows as entertainment, measurements can also be seen as diluting the attractiveness of the vicarious escapist fantasy emotional experience (VEFEE) of easy success. Whenever I start just throwing in this and that, the bugs in my septic tank start looking forward to what they regard as some especially good input when I flush the results. I know that if I just throw it together, then likely I will also just throw it out. Sure, my father's mother, maybe 60 miles south of Buffalo, NY, baked a pie a day, usually apple or cheery, for decades. She had a special work area just for the pies. Did she use measuring cups or scales? Heck no! Did she 'measure'? Of COURSE she did. Make a pie a day for a few decades and will have great ability to measure just by eye, feel, etc. She knew about variability from acid and water levels in fruit, humidity in the kitchen and water level in the flour, etc. and how to compensate. BUT, for communicating to my mother how to bake a pie, "the right amount of this, just enough of that, not too much of the other thing, then continue just until it feels right" and the lack of measurements in terms of weight and volume were disastrous. Years of tears! And, for me, for communicating just to myself, once I get a dish right, six months later I'm glad for the measurements in terms of weights, volumes, times, temperatures, etc. Similarly, work at a stir fry station in a Chinese restaurant for five years cooking a few hundred dishes a day, then will be able to 'measure' by sight, sound, texture, etc. But, for communicating how to cook the dishes to someone else, accurate measurements of weights and volumes will be crucial information. Your remarks about variable ingredients are fully appropriate. In home cooking where we cook the same dish maybe only once a month, if we don't measure and, instead, just pour, "glub, glub", put in a "handful" of this or that, go by some intuitive visual memory, etc., then we are introducing a big additional source of variability. No question about it: Two sources of variability are worse than one. Using measurements to reduce two sources of variability down to one reduces variability and improves the quality of the results even if some variability remains. Or, just because we can't reduce all the variability doesn't mean we shouldn't work to reduce some of it. So, even with variable ingredients, the measurements reduce the variability. My favorite tomato sauce recipe calls for 1/4 C of finely minced fresh garlic. If get some garlic that has no more umph than a sweet, mild onion, then I'll use more. If get some garlic that, when sliced, immediately causes dogs to bark, cats to screech, birds to fall out of the sky, and neighbors three streets over to run from their houses screaming, then I'll use a little less! But the 1/4 C is still crucial as a starting point. And if I am using the same source of garlic as usual, then the 1/4 C will be fine. Recently on TV I saw J. Pepin cook a dish with some garlic. He used enough garlic that looked right to him. Although I didn't get to taste the results, and although I have been disappointed with the recipes of his that I have tried, maybe what he cooked was good. Maybe. But, good or not, without measurements, he was a big, fat zero at communicating to me how to cook anything even approximately the same. I've been there; done that; wasted the time and money; and thrown the results away far too often: When he doesn't give me careful measurements, I have to regard his 'instructions' as invitations to waste time and money and, at best, as a research project where I will have to do about a dozen trials even to guess if the dish has any potential. Net, to me, without measurements, his stuff is just worthless. In reducing the variability, it also helps to include in the notes the brand names of the ingredients used. And measurements in terms of volumes, weights, times, and temperatures are not all the 'measurements' that are important to reduce variability: It would also be good to have pH of lemon juice, water content of tomatoes, fat content of cream, protein content of flour, and, for sauces, viscosity, reflectivity, and color! Working on those! Photographs and video clips can also be a great help. With variability reduced, we can come closer to getting what we got and liked before. When that's the goal, that's good. Or, if we didn't like it before, have careful measurements, and want to try an adjustment, then we can do much better seeing the effect of the change. But some people want it different: My wife and I used to go to restaurants several times a week. If a restaurant was bad, then she didn't want to go back. If a restaurant was good, then she wanted to try another restaurant hoping that it would also be good! I.e., good or bad, she still didn't want to go back. Some people just like change! But if want the change also to be good, then it's helpful to start with something predictable, based on careful measurements, that is good and to add variations from there. E.g., for the chicken dish I'm working on, I may add crushed red pepper flakes, chicken stock demi-glace, capers, or olives. Maybe. If it does come out better, then I'll carefully document, with measurements, what I did so that six months from now I'll be able to do it again!

Measure? Heck, yes! I find measuring to be just crucial: Otherwise the quality of the resulting dish is way too variable. When I create a new dish, I work to develop a recipe with enough measurements to permit me to reproduce the dish months from now. I measure weight, volume, time, and temperature, at least, as appropriate. When I cook the dish some months later, I'm always glad for the detailed measurements. E.g., currently I'm working on a baked casserole dish with chicken, Mozzarella cheese, green pepper, mushrooms, tomato sauce, and grated cheese. I'm on about the sixth trial, and each of the trials gave unique results. I keep adjusting nearly all aspects of the dish. It's getting better but needs more work. The tomato sauce recipe has careful measurements now and is reliable. It's also good! I'm starting to settle on a certain Pyrex rectangular baking dish, four pieces of skinless, boneless, chicken breasts with total weight of about 20 ounces, 3 C of shredded, frozen Mozzarella cheese (about 14 ounces of weight), 3 C of my favorite tomato sauce, baked at 350 F to an internal temperature of 170 F. For the mushrooms and green pepper pieces, I'm still adjusting those. E.g., I discovered that have to cook the mushrooms a LOT and get them to release a lot of their water or the water will leak out during the baking and make loose water on the bottom of the baking dish, which doesn't look good. But I am also suspecting that some of the loose water can help make the chicken more tender! I've done this dish six times now, and each time the dish clearly needed improvement. When I settle on a reasonably good recipe, then, months from now, the dish that results, mostly just from following the measurements, will be MUCH better than I could ever hope to do just guessing at quantities. By the way, the tomato sauce recipe has 1 pound of coarsely diced yellow globe onions sauteed in 1/3 C of virgin olive oil -- most definitely I DO measure the onion, after dicing, and the olive oil.

Naw, for me, 3:1, by volume, measured, always, and I don't mess with it. So, 1 C virgin olive oil and 1/3 C red wine vinegar, e.g., Progresso. Then the good stuff starts! So, it's Dijon mustard, garlic, thyme, salt, pepper, at least. It may also be raw eggs, anchovies, packed in oil, with the oil, Worcestershire sauce, etc. Maybe it's some blue cheese. Lemon juice instead of vinegar? Too much trouble: Vinegar pours out easily and keeps forever in a bottle while lemons have to be rolled, cut, squeezed, strained, and discarded and go bad in a hurry. Extra virgin and Balsamic? Don't need these since what I have is good enough as it is. That 3:1 is a solution to a standard, old, long-lasting problem. Now that I've got that problem solved, I don't want to re-visit it, re-solve it, re-invent that wheel, etc. Instead, I want to make progress on things I very much want to know but do not: I WOULD like to know how to make stir-fry like my local inexpensive Chinese restaurants! I did 11 quarts of chicken soup, with a LOT of chicken, good chicken stock (DID learn how to make that), onions, carrots, celery, garlic, parsley, salt, pepper; I finally ate it all, but it wasn't very good. I'd like to know how to make it better.

My notes on how to cook long grain rice are in http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1367104

Of COURSE no one should make the esteemed, revered, mandated "horizontal cuts"! Of COURSE not! Of COURSE the onions are in layers and fall apart quite nicely just from the cuts perpendicular to the other two axes. And, OBVIOUSLY, the horizontal cuts are DANGEROUS. These specifications of the horizontal cuts CLEARLY (!) are inserted into the tutorials by plodding, pedestrian, pedantic, insecure, literary writers, editors, directors, and producers who never peeled a carrot and are looking for comforting "rules, boundaries, and limitations"! Whenever I see cooking information recommending the horizontal cuts, I immediately conclude that the source will provide just nonsense and give up on expecting anything of value, unless, of course, there is a great cleavage or bouncing blond ponytail involved! By the way, seven more points: First, for most 'globe' onions, one of the problems is many dry pieces of the root getting into the diced onions. So, first step is to grasp the root end with thumb and index finger of one hand and twist the onion on its vertical axis (that is, root toward the ground, stem end toward the sky) with the other hand and let the worst of the loose, dry root pieces abrade and fall away. Second, it's considerably simpler to peel a large globe onion if cut the globe into quarters instead of just halves. Third, it's good to have the weight of the onions actually used in a dish, but dicing first and weighing second is inefficient. However, if just quarter and peel, then weighting is much more efficient and can get weight usually useful enough. I weigh a dinner plate and put the quartered, peeled pieces on the plate and start weighing when I have about enough pieces. When I have weight enough in quartered pieces, maybe plus an ounce or two for the small root end pieces that will get discarded, then I start dicing. Fourth, for many uses, e.g., many stocks and stews and for caramelized onions, just cut in planes perpendicular to the vertical axis (all of us actually DID take high school solid geometry, didn't we?). That's plenty of cutting to let the heat, oil, water, etc. get to the onion material and get the cooking done. Cutting for onion rings is specialized but related. Fifth, for the dicing, I have my plastic cutting board at the corner of my sink and a bowl set in the sink in the same corner and under the cutting board. Then I push the diced onion pieces into the bowl. For this pushing, I use the back edge of my chef's knife. Sixth, actually, there are also some other useful ways to cut globe onions. One such way can make globe onion pieces look about the same 'size' and shape as, say, chunks of bell pepper. For this, regard the root end as the south pole, cut through the Arctic circle and the Antarctic circle, and discard the two pole pieces. Then cut through the equator. Then, take one piece and make a cut, about 1/16" deep, along one line of longitude -- the onion then peels easily. Then make cuts on more lines of longitude, each cut through a few layers of the onion, and, thus, get nearly square nearly flat pieces of onion. Seventh, usually not discussed in books or TV shows on cooking, after preparing three pounds of diced yellow globe onions, e.g., for 11 quarts of chicken soup, handling the 'refuse' is a problem that needs a solution. For the bag with the onions, put it with other stuff that will burn. For the peelings, put the filter in the sink drain and accumulate the peelings in the sink. Then, with a plastic dishpan pressed (with groin!) against the sink, use both hands to move the peelings over the front edge of the sink and into the dishpan. When the cutting and peeling are done, the sun is down, and the picky, fastidious, gossiping neighbors can't see, dump the pan contents onto the compost pile -- the one in the bushes in the woods out back! Even a compost pile that looks really small can take in seemingly huge quantities of kitchen onion, carrot, and celery refuse, not to mention mushrooms, shallots, and truffles!

Supposedly one of the nicest keys to a great pan sauce is about 2 T of red current jelly. Okay, via Google found a photograph of red currents -- they look a lot like sour cherries. So, what source of red current jelly is good? How can we use it to help make pan sauces? For more, supposedly other good keys to a great pan sauce are Marsala or Madeira. So, any more details on how to proceed? Recently I experimented making 'hamburger au poivre' with 1/4 C of crushed black peppercorns and 1 pound of hamburger and deglazed with dry red wine -- Cabernet-Merlot. I kept increasing the quantity of wine, finely up to 1 C, and reduced it. Taste from the reduced wine was not so interesting. With the pepper, wine, some brown stock, and some butter, once actually DID get a very good sauce. Garlic? Shallots? But, I'm missing the principles of how to select ingredients and proportions, how much to reduce, etc. There HAVE to be some good, basic ideas in common in here somewhere, but so far I don't understand them. Chives? We could use chives to help a pan sauce? Fresh chives, just cut? GREAT! HOW? Now I understand: Chives do well the SECOND year. That is, from all the water and fertilizer the first year the result is a pot of chive 'bulbs' that REALLY take off early in spring the NEXT year. So, already, 70 miles north of Wall Street, I've got a pot of really healthy chives just outside the kitchen door. Now, how to use these chives to make pan sauces?

One of the best vegetable dishes I ever ate was peas done in some provincial French style at the Rive Gauche restaurant long at the SW corner of Wisconsin and M streets in DC. Never have been able to recreate what they did, but from memory it had a lot of flavor and emphasized bacon, onion, and mushrooms. For all I know, maybe there was also white wine and stock. In my efforts, I start with 'baby' peas.

Timely thread! <br><br> As I type this, I've just finished making 11 1/2 quarts of chicken soup made with four whole chickens, total weight as purchased 21 pounds. Right, it's <i>meaty</i> soup! <br><br> I have the soup in a 12 quart, stainless steel, Vollrath stock pot. It's a heavy thing, with a thick aluminum plate on the outside of the bottom, and handles heavy enough to tow a car! <br><br> The soup temperature is now at 160 F, and I will warm it a little more to be sure of sterilization. <br><br> Then I will have to face the problem of this thread -- how to cool the pot! <br><br> I have two techniques: <blockquote> <LI> First, do not cover the pot, at least not until it is fully chilled in the refrigerator. The reason is, before the contents are fully chilled, there will be condensation on the underside of a cover, and that condensation will drip into the pot contents and maybe start bacteria growth. <LI> Second, do include some fat in the contents so that get a layer of fat above the water-based contents. Due to the heating, this layer of fat will have sterile contents under it, and the fat, I hope, will help protect the water-based contents from bacteria from the air. </blockquote> Once the pot is fully chilled, then I will lift off the fat layer and put a lid on the pot. <br><br> I don't have a microbiology lab to check if these techniques are working to keep down bacteria growth, but so far my own soups and stocks haven't made me sick! <br><br> When I made the soup, I started with <blockquote> <LI> 2 pounds of coarsely sliced, large, yellow globe onions (weighed just before adding to pot, that is, AFTER peeling and slicing) <LI> 1 pound of sliced carrots <LI> 1 pound of sliced celery <LI> 1/3 C minced, fresh, peeled garlic <LI> 6 dry bay leaves <LI> 1/4 C home grown Rosemary leaves </blockquote> Added water to cover and simmered to soften (and, thus, make room enough in the pot for two chickens). <br><br> Added first two chickens and water to cover. The 12 quart pot was nearly full. <br><br> Simmered the first two chickens until they were cooked then removed them and let them drain and cool. <br><br> Meanwhile, added the second two chickens to the pot, simmered them, removed them, let them drain and cool. <br><br> So, right, got a 'double' stock, and, yes, it will gel at room temperature. <br><br> Took the chickens apart and put the meat in bowls and put the scraps back into the stock pot. <br><br> Chilled the meat (in bowls, uncovered) and let the pot simmer overnight. <br><br> Strained the stock and discarded the solids. <br><br> Cleaned the stock pot and added <blockquote> <LI> 3 pounds of finely diced, large, yellow globe onions <LI> 1 1/2 pounds of sliced carrots <LI> 1 1/2 pounds of sliced celery <LI> the meat from the two chickens, diced <LI> stock to cover </blockquote> Brought to simmer. <br><br> Have about 1 1/2 quarts of stock, dark color, that will gel at room temperature, left over and can use for another purpose, e.g., doing something with chickens other than making soup! <br><br> My first candidate idea: <blockquote> Get two more chickens. Take apart. Use the scraps for a Chinese-style light chicken stock. Use the thigh and drumstick meat for a Chinese-style stir fry, using some of the Chinese style stock. <br><br> For the breast meat, flour it, brown it in chicken fat, place in a baking dish, add a sauce made with a white roux and some of the chicken stock, and bake uncovered until done. </blockquote> Now, when I take the chicken fat off the chilled chicken soup, I'm supposed to use the fat to make dumplings, right? <br><br> Suggestions for how to do that? <br><br> I did try one technique: Combine egg whites, milk, and chicken fat, mix, and warm, add flour, mix, and warm until thick, add egg yolks and mix, and drop by spoonfuls into boiling stock. <br><br> Mostly it didn't work: The dough, batter, or whatever it was, just came totally apart in the stock. Bummer. <br><br> So, I heated the remaining batter until it was really a paste, let it cool to a thicker paste, formed balls, and simmered those. It gave some crude dumplings and a thick layer of stuck batter on the bottom of the pot. Not good. <br><br> The dumplings didn't taste very good. Actually the recipe suggested adding chives to the batter and I should have since so far the only vegetables ready to eat in my back porch herb garden are the chives!

Sure! I bought several bags of square, white, terry cloth, 100% cotton towels with a few dozen towels per bag. I keep a stack, flat, not folded, usually 1 to 2 feet high, on the stainless steel table I use for a kitchen island. Sure, whenever I need a towel, I take one from the top of the stack. When I eat a meal at my computer, I take two (messy eater!). If there is any doubt about how clean a towel is, then I toss it into the collection for washing. For washing, I start with about 16 ounces of chlorine bleach and about 8 ounces of Tide. After this first pass through the washing machine, I just start the machine again to get more thorough rinsing of all that bleach. My guess is that not many harmful microbes will live through all that bleach. Then I dump the damp mass into the dryer and let it get everything all nice and cuddly warm, dry, fluffy, and white! Then I stack them, flat, not folded, and add them to the pile on the stainless steel island. Nearly everything I get on the towels washes out amazingly well. I use paper towels only for really yucky stuff I wouldn't want on the terry towels. The terry towels are saving me a 'bundle' on cost of paper towels. Still, I buy paper towels in bundles of about 18 rolls each far too often. I can fit all of one bundle in a narrow under counter cubboard just wide enough for two rolls. Actually, I looked long and hard for some 'kitchen' towels, hopefully color-fast red and white terry (ah, in the seventh grade, Terry was blond and gorgeous -- actually her mother was tall, slender, blond, gorgeous, and smart -- she married a physician!). I used the Internet to explore all over the world; talked to some high end textile people; etc. I concluded that the situation on 'kitchen towels' was hopeless and settled for the square white terry cloth towels I did get -- at Sam's Club. Behind Terry lived Ann, and at her ninth grade party she wore a shear, pastel, florel print dress outlined and tied with satin ribbons. I've never been able to forget her in that dress. With Ann, I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life: In twelfth grade trigonometry, I had a big shoot out at the board with the best student in the school and won. Word traveled quickly through the halls, and Ann came up to me -- we had not spoken since the ninth grade -- and congratulated me on the victory. Mistake: I was too surprised and neglected to invite her for a cherry Coke at the pharmacy across from school and, then, walk her home! BIG mistake! Too bad I can't use all those Terry towels and all the food information on eG to cook something fantastic for Terry and Ann!

But, from the fragrant fat and the quarts of stock, a big, general question is, What to do with them? Above I outlined using the fat and stock to cook more chicken. Another use could be to coat chunks of potatoes and them roast them. But much better uses may also be possible. Ideas?

Torrilin, Thanks for your analysis of the events. Yes, in the first roasting effort, I just stuck the thermometer into the thigh of one of the two chickens upside down. It did occur to me later that I might have had the sensitive end of the thermometer on a bone or in air. But, with all the data in, now I believe that the thermometer was basically just in the meat and giving a 'valid' reading. I was so concerned about temperature because I didn't want to dry the breast meat to "chicken dust". I thought that asking that the lower leg bone twist easily in the knee joint would have the breast meat overdone; as events showed, with these chickens, the breast meat could still be moist. For cutting the chicken and looking at the color of the juices, I didn't try that. Again I was concerned about getting the breast meat overdone -- again, as events showed, I was too concerned. In the end, the thermometer did work well: In the second roasting, with the chicken on a V-rack, breast side up, I cooked to 183 F with the thermometer stuck in the breast. The big surprise was how much cooking the breast meat could take and still be moist: In the end, these chickens were amazingly moist throughout. In the second roasting, even when the dark meat was falling off the bones, leaving clean bones, the breast meat was still moist and could have used more cooking. Why was the breast meat so moist? Maybe the packer found a way to put some 'brine' effect in the liquid. Maybe the main issue was the exceptional thickness of the breast meat. Whatever the reason, these chickens seem to demand partly rewriting chicken cooking wisdom: Even roasting breast side up on a V-rack, the dark meat can be falling off the bone while the breast meat can use still more cooking. I did manage not to brown the vegetables by using the oven temperature of 275 F. The remarks in this thread make it clear that for roasting chicken a wide range of temperatures is okay. For the size of my stainless steel roasting pan, the top, inside dimensions are 15" long, 10 1/4" wide, and 2 1/4" deep. So, the 4 pounds of vegetables filled the pan, and the 1 C of oil was okay. I put the liquid from the roasting pan in a 4 C Pyrex measuring cup, let it stand to separate, and then set it in the refrigerator. Looking now, I got 3 C total where 1 C is fat, chicken and olive oil. The fat is VERY fragrant of the vegetables! Altogether, it's been a LOT of work: Everyday I've been pouring, straining, washing big pots and bowls, etc. But some of the results are okay: From the stock pot, I got 4 quarts of moderately dark chicken stock that will gel in the refrigerator. I've made one effort to let the fat separate and removed it getting 1 C of about half fat and half stock. I've strained the stock through cloth. The 4 quarts left have only trace amounts of fat on the surface, and I plan to remove that. Then plan to combine all the supplies of fat and freeze it for later and to combine all the supplies of stock, reduce it, freeze it as cubes, and store it for later. I also got a 2 quart casserole dish of chicken pieces masked with a rich yellow sauce that goes well with Chardonnay! So, stuff some of the chicken and sauce into a 300 ml Pyrex custard dish, top with a microwave proof lid, and warm gently, and can get a good, fast main dish. With the fat and stock, plan to get two more chickens and continue. One idea is to use some of the chicken fat and some butter to soften a finely diced mirepoix, add some flour and make a roux, add some of the chicken stock and some milk to make a sauce. Then, remove the breast meat, flour it, brown it in some of the chicken fat, pour over the gravy, and simmer it covered until done. Additional flavorings could be mushrooms, ham, cheese. With the rest of the chicken, use the thigh meat in some Chinese stir fry and use the rest for more chicken stock. You are correct about the specific heat of water -- it is comparatively high, about 1 calorie per gram per degree C from just above 0 C to just below 100 C. Note: 1000 of these calories is one Calorie as used in nutrition.

Partially saved the roast chicken effort <A HREF="http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=26986&view=findpost&p=1379690"> above.</A> <br><br> So, made stock from the roasting pan vegetables and remains of the first chicken. <br><br> For the second chicken, placed on a V-shaped wire rack set in a roasting pan. Placed chicken on rack breast side up and set into 275 F oven. <br><br> Roasted until oven thermometer in breast meat read 183 F. <br><br> Then dark meat was falling off the bone but still juicy. White meat, from the very thick breast, actually could have used more cooking but was quite juicy. <br><br> Cut up chicken and put meat into a 2 quart Pyrex casserole dish and put skin and bones into stock pot. <br><br> To improve the flavor, made a sauce for the chicken: <blockquote> Ingredients <br><br> 2 C chicken stock directly from the stock pot <br> 2 C dry white wine <br> 8 T flour <br> 8 T butter <br> 1 1/2 C whole milk, simmering <br> 1 C whipping cream <br> 4 egg yolks <br> lemon juice <br> salt </blockquote> Placed stock and wine in a 2 quart pot and reduced to <blockquote> 1 1/2 C </blockquote> In a 2 quart pot, made a white roux of the flour and butter and added the simmering stock all at once and, off heat, whipped until smooth. <br><br> Added the milk, simmering, all at once. <br><br> In a bowl of about 1 quart, mixed egg yolks and cream. Warmed egg yolks gently by slowly adding, with whipping, about 1/3rd of the hot sauce and then added yolk mixture to sauce and whipped. Heated to 140 F and removed from heat. <br><br> Added salt and lemon juice to taste. <br><br> Sauce was nicely thick, glossy, and had a nice <i>custard</i> texture and an attractive yellow color. <br><br> Added cover to casserole dish and warmed in microwave. <br><br> For one serving, added some meat to a bowl and topped with some of the sauce. That serving with some toast and Chardonnay made an okay dinner. <br><br> The chicken flavor was not as good as it should be; roasting from 170 F to 183 F helped, but roasting to, say, 190 F should have helped some more. <br><br> Added the rest of the sauce to the casserole dish, covered, and refrigerated for dinners in the future.

Decided to roast some chicken. Got a package of two whole chickens with total weight <blockquote> 10.38 pounds </blockquote> Heart, gizzard, liver, neck, feet were missing. <br><br> In stainless steel roasting pan, put <blockquote> 2 pounds quartered, coarsely sliced yellow onions (large onions, about 1 pound each as purchased) <br> 1 pound peeled, sliced carrots <br> 1 pound rinsed, sliced celery <br> 5 ounces coarsely chopped, peeled, fresh Chinese garlic <br> 1 T black pepper corns <br> 1 T rosemary leafs <br> 6 bay leafs <br> 1 C virgin olive oil </blockquote> mixed in bowls to spread the oil and herbs, etc. These vegetables filled the roasting pan. <br><br> In cavity of chickens, placed total of <blockquote> 2 lemons, in wedges </blockquote> Placed chickens breast side down on the vegetables. <br><br> Placed on bottom rack of oven at 325 F. <br><br> After 20 minutes, some of the exposed vegetables were starting to burn. Lowered temperature to 275 F. Inserted meat thermometer into thigh. <br><br> Cooked at 275 F until meat thermometer read 170 F. <br><br> Roasting pan had level of liquid about half the depth of the pan. <br><br> <b>Results</b> <br><br> Disaster. <br><br> Breast meat was not quite done. Dark meat was very underdone -- inedible. Gagged trying to eat it. <br><br> The white meat tasted awful. The lemon gave a little flavor to a little of the white meat and otherwise no flavor at all. The vegetables gave no noticeable flavor to the meat. <br><br> <b>Really BIG</b> use of time, money, and effort to create little more than garbage. Disaster. <br><br> Will use the chicken partially eaten along with the vegetables to make chicken stock. <br><br> For the second chicken, will cook again on a rack, open, breast side up, until the thigh meat temperature is at least 185 F and the drumstick rotates easily.

Spent laying hens for eggs for humans may be a good source of chicken stock. Since they do not have much meat, stock may be about all they can be used for. They have to eat pretty well or the eggs wouldn't taste good; so, maybe the stock will also taste pretty good. In a local Chinese carry-out, I saw a huge wok, maybe three feet in diameter, full of chicken stock. Floating in there were a few thin whole chickens. They may have been such spent laying hens. Also spent laying hens for eggs for chickens for humans may be an even better source of stock since genetically these hens have to be the same as the chickens raised for meat for humans and, thus, have to have a lot of meat. Also, since their eggs have to be fertile, somewhere there will have to be some roosters, and the old roosters might also make good stock.

Wow! Thanks! eG rocks!

Okay, maybe wrap and bake instead of broil. What about: Suppose I make maybe 1 C of finely diced mirepoix, soften it in 1 T of butter or olive oil, add 1/2 C of dry white wine, reduce, spread over the fish, wrap, and bake?

Wow! Thanks! eG rocks!

As diet food, intend to roast some chicken and eat it as cold, skinless roast chicken. <br><br> But want to add some flavor, e.g., in the form of dipping sauces. <br><br> One candidate is my standard dipping sauce for Chinese steamed dumplings <blockquote> 2 T minced fresh strong garlic <br> 2 1/2 T Chinese Rice Vinegar <br> 4 T Chinese Pearl River Bridge Light Soy Sauce <br> 1 t Sesame oil <br> 1 t Chinese style hot oil </blockquote> But would like more options for dipping sauces. <br><br> Ideas? <br><br> Thanks!

For diet food, want to broil some fish fillets. Will start with frozen, skinless, white fish, e.g., cod, flounder, etc. Will broil on aluminum foil on a baking sheet in a standard home electric oven with a good broiler element. But, for flavor? What can I do to get some decently good flavor? Sure, I can start with garlic, onion, pepper, lemon, soy sauce, vinegar, white wine, etc. but need more details! I'm willing to add some fat and/or some carbohydrates, but, since this is to be a diet dish, want to keep down, or at least known, the quantities of fat or carbohydrates. Ideas? Thanks!

For 'seasoning', that is presented as some obscure, delicate, mystical, quasi-religious nonsense -- just nonsense for short. Basically the 'seasoning' is just burned-on cooking grease. If the thing is really brand new, then maybe wipe it out with hot water and detergent and dry it, coat it with cooking oil or fat, heat it to smoking, and call it 'seasoned'. Then just cook on it. To avoid sticking, for the first few times, just use a little more oil or fat than you might otherwise. So, fry some hamburgers or bacon or make some hash browns or pancakes. Similarly for a stamped steel Chinese wok. Eventually the cooking surface will turn from gray to (the desirable, highly valued, revered, sought, coveted, cherished) nearly flat black. The only realistic way I know how to destroy a cast iron skillet or pot is to break it with thermal stress, e.g., getting it too hot or pouring cold water on one that's too hot. For lesser risks, do be aware that cast iron is really just iron so, with enough time and ordinary water, can develop a layer of bright red iron oxide (rust). You don't want that. So, after cleaning the thing, get it dry and keep it away from water. For 'cleaning' a 'seasoned' surface, sure, basically can do anything you want -- getting the burned-on grease off is so difficult that ordinary cleaning will do very little damage to the 'delicate, pure, 100% all-natural' 'seasoning'. One trick, though, it the useful fact that boiling water makes a fantastic solvent for nearly anything you might get on the cooking surface. So, to clean, just put some water in the thing, bring to a boil, get a wad of paper towels in one hand and a pot holder in the other, with the pot holder grab the handle of the skillet, dump nearly all the boiling water, and quickly wipe with the towels. Call it done. For the back side, f'get about it! The best cast iron skillets had the cooking surface machined. Now it appears that the skillets, from some cheap-o sources, are sold with the cooking surface just as it was from the sand casting. Bummer. Another nail in the coffin of the nonsense of the 'great advantages' of international trade. If all the academic economists and their world political engineering Foggy Bottom buddies were laid end to end, then it would be a good thing!

There could be a lot to <i>straining</i>. <br><br> I recall college chemistry lab where we would strain by putting a cone of filter paper in a funnel, stick the bottom tube of the funnel through a rubber stopper, put the stopper into a flask, and use a flow of water through a venturi to create a mild vacuum in the flask under the stopper. Such things would work in home kitchens, that is, once they get past, say, 1800! <br><br> One of the main points in straining is to do it in stages, coarse, medium, fine, etc. <br><br> So, given some <i>stuff</i> to be strained, can do some initial straining just by using a slotted spoon to lift out the larger solid pieces -- meat, bones, vegetables, fruits, whatever. Since these will still be wet and may want the liquid, can place the solid pieces in a colander set in a bowl. <br><br> Next, can pour the liquid and smaller pieces through a colander set in a bowl. <br><br> Next, get a wire mesh strainer. Preferably, these will be all stainless steel and plastic so that can soak them to aid in cleaning and won't have to worry about corrosion. I bought a collection at Wal-Mart. I believe that they were made in China, which seems to be eager to rush to be a leader in stainless steel. They must be working hard to get the required nickel and chromium. <br><br> Next, I have a collection of cotton and/or cotton and polyester handkerchiefs that I use for straining filters. So, to use one of these, I line one of the strainers, set the strainer over a bowl, and pour. When the cloth gets clogged, I pick it up by the four corners, twist to put the solids in an enclosed ball, and twist some more to get some liquid from the ball. Then I put the twisted handkerchief in a collection on the way to the washing machine. With the <i>stuff</i> I have strained, the cloth washes clean and white very easily: I wash first in cold water with chlorine bleach, in hot water with detergent, and then once more with just water for thorough rinsing. <br><br> After three such passes through cloth, usually the liquid is ready for a paper coffee filter. So, I have a Melita coffee maker <i>funnel</i> with their filters. A pass or two through a coffee filter does more. <br><br> Still more is possible: <br><br> One approach good for stocks that will gel is to let the liquid stand at room temperature for a few hours (if you are willing to accept the risk of bacteria growth) to let the fine solids settle to the bottom, chill the whole thing until it gels, and then remove the solids as sediment just by cutting or spooning them from the bottom of the gelled mass. <br><br> Another approach, common for stocks, is to use egg whites, etc. to <i>clarify</i> the liquid. See the eGCI lessons on stock making. <br><br> Or, for a simple explanation, starting with a few quarts of stock at room temperature, get a few egg whites, whip them to make them more liquid, whisk them thoroughly into the liquid, heat the liquid slowly and gently to a gentle simmer, and let the egg whites form a <i>raft</i> on the surface. Then strain, in steps, as above, through a colander, wire mesh strainer, cloth, and coffee filter paper. The result can be sparkling aspic! <br><br> That's about all I know about straining!

Some years ago, I ate beef eye of round for lunch nearly everyday. I put one in a Brown 'n Bag, set it in a roasting pan, inserted a meat thermometer, and roasted the thing. Got a bag with the meat and a lot of juice. Sliced thinly for sandwiches on rye with spicy mustard. I thought that the sandwiches were terrific. But even better is corned beef eye of round, which I bought sometimes, but the final price per pound was much higher. But corn it yourself! Then get some nice corned beef sandwiches.