Bernie

Well @Duvelmy experience suggests water does in fact alter the perceived flavor, even more so in the higher strength whiskeys. I would suggest that part of the taste sensation is the very strong alcoholic nose and the volatile compounds associated with the base flavors is the whole flavor profile. One could eat a strong curry and tame it down by adding taming ingredients such as cream or yogurt but if it was not mandated by the chef, then the flavor profile is no longer what it was. If you need to, I guess you could put whiskey in the fridge in a sealed glass but the whiskey maker might object because he expects some of the volatile compounds and alcohol to "boil off" in the glass while it is being consumed. Even putting in the freezer for a week will definitely tame the strong alcohol and the other very strong volatile flavors and it will drink like a fine liqueur but then perhaps its like the curry it no longer has the original taste profile. On a similar note most red wine drinkers say to drink wine at "room temperature", but here in Queensland the average room temperature is probably 6~10C higher than in places like Europe. Even in a closed restaurant the air conditioning may be set to 24C because most people dress lightly for the general climate, and a lower temperature may actually feel uncomfortably cold because the air conditioning also removes the humidity. (the current temperature right now 9am is 28C and humidity is 63% and although it feels "warm" it does not feel overly hot. Lowest overnight was 23.5C at ~4:30am but the humidity was much lower) . The sweeter wines can taste slightly "cloying" and the red wines taste a lot better if they are on the dry side. People sometimes add ice to red wine to cool it, but unless you drink really fast the ice will melt and you end up with watered wine. By all means if you prefer or wish to drink spirits, beer or wine watered down go for it! Here is a test. Open a bottle of say a 12 year old Glenfiddich and have a couple of drinks (not too much). Seal the bottle and wait 24 hours repeat the 2 drinks. Almost certainly you will find the taste to be different. Whether the original maker expected you to consume without letting it "breathe" a little we cant tell. If you water down both drinks each night then I suppose the taste will become closer, but I have never done that. The very fact that I perceive a change sort of almost requires my consumption to avoid the the change. (more importantly you could argue that you need to open various whiskeys to confirm your findings...)

Many years ago we were members of a true Scottish club. Bagpipes, kilts the lot. The Burns dinners were spectacular. Piping in of the haggis, burns poetry in Gaelic the lot. (Gaelic is such a melodious language). One very sensible thing that was always served was whiskey as part of the starter. Very civilized, because quite a few of the ladies didn't care for whiskey so I always came to the rescue (always the gentleman 😁) and had their tots too. Then the meal was finished off with more whiskey. One thing I do like is that @rotutsdoesn't have ice. I can never understand why people add ice to whiskey, the glass has hopefully been washed in water and that should be as close to whiskey as water comes! If you want cold whiskey, put it in the freezer for a week. It will thicken up but not freeze, and can be sipped like liqueur. But it is very moreish and is likely you will drink more than you intend (never really sure if that's a bad thing...)😀

I vaguely remember that to make charcoal for smelting iron/steel centuries ago, dried hardwood was used. The wood like pine had too much resin and when dried and then processed to make charcoal (which is basically heating it/burning it in the absence of oxygen) the softwoods like pine was so reduced and the return was so low it was avoided. Many of the hardwoods have relatively small amounts of these resins and even used green the volatiles would quickly evaporate into the surrounding earth (it was usually processed in an earthen oven). "Proper"charcoal should burn with very little smoke. All that is left is a very fine ash, if any at all. It was important in smelting iron/steel that there were no byproducts to contaminate the iron. It was initially smelted in full contact with the charcoal to produce "pig iron" (which had charcoal contaminates (ash?)) that was then further refined to get iron. Charcoal was fairly hard to get started to burn, it usually was added to an already hot fire and as started to burn and produced high heat it actually burned away the original fuel completely. But that was well before modern methods of charcoal production. I think some modern charcoal is probably not as fully "burned" so it is easier to get started. I suspect that is why there are various grades (& prices) of charcoal available. It just means that it needs to burn for a while to get to high heat and burn off all the impurities (the smoke is the impurities burning off). I guess if you are making your own then it probably matters what wood you use because you want the best return (the most amount of charcoal) for the time and energy you used heating it. Not sure it matters in the final use as there should be no volatiles left to flavor what you are cooking.

If this is real then there is no god.......😬

I find topping fish fillets with shredded cheese and baking (~170c) is a very good way of keeping the fish moist. The cheese needs to be fairly mild (cheddar?)so it does not overpower the fish itself If its baked till the cheese crisps up and forms a skin, it is usually a good indicator that the fish will be cooked. Ideally i would do it with butter but it just runs off. Combining butter with bread crumbs works ok bu it is a bit finicky to get the ratio right and even so it doesn't end up thick and hard in one spot and dry and crumbly. I have made a white sauce with lots of cheese to make a fish mornay, but again the cheese needs to be mild.

There are several good reasons to not produce eggs from caged birds (cage eggs). BUT there are also some good reasons for egg production in cages. Psittacosis & "Bird Flu" (both can be spread by wild birds) In cage situations, provided good sanitation and isolation practices (quarantine of new stock) are employed it is very uncommon for either of these diseases to have any impact. "Barn reared" or "barn fed" where there is no outside contact also mitigates against both diseases provided good sanitation practices are adhered to. In both cases, however, should either disease be detected, it will usually quickly infect the whole flock, usually resulting in complete culling. In fully free range or barn reared with some free range feeding, there is increased risk of infections, particularly if there are wild birds of any other species present. Depending on the housing method, infections may result in isolation and some or complete culling of the flock to prevent spread. I personally believe caged egg production should be phased out. What this will do though is increase the price of eggs (and poultry products) as caged egg production is generally the most cost effective way to produce volumes of eggs. So what I think is happening is that as consumers start to prefer "free range" eggs the volumes of cage eggs required falls so the cost of cage eggs increases. My guess that the base price of eggs is set by cage egg prices, so as that price rises so does every other category. Add to that the price and scarcity of oil (fertilizers for feed production) and the increase in transport costs all add up to increased production & distribution costs.

Where oh where is the groan button.. (Really love the whole topic though, and the way you are presenting it)

So is it a vegetable, fruit or concoction? Or is it (as I suspect) a brand of some concoction/sauce? Whilst I think there is at least 1 recipe, and one description of only using a very small amount at a time, would someone say what it generally tastes like (sour, sweet, savory, tart etc) and is it ONLY added to other ingredients or is it use like ketchup?

oops my bad 🙁 When I was referring to wraps I wasn't referring to Taco shells but this type of wrap https://helgas.com.au/products/traditional-wholemeal-wraps

I use whole meal wraps. (but I am a taco heretic) Pop in the oven just to warm them. They will go and break if you leave them too long

Why does just about every recipe for "cooking or browning onions to soft and translucent"almost always state a time of 3~5 minutes? In practice the real time is 20~25mins. Perhaps it is one of those great urban myths that seems destined to persist because even "experienced" cooks on the internet are afraid that no one will try their recipe if it takes an extra 20 minutes to prepare😀

We definitely need a groan emoji 👍

So you think you know wines? Well perhaps you do. https://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/wine-experts-and-wine-snobism-exposed-as-deceptive/ As a very young man I attended a "beer tasting" night at my local surf club. (you know waves, surfboards, bikini's, sun tans ...). YES A BEER TASTING! My mates and I were rather enamored of beer at that time so it was natural thing for us to do. It was a good excuse anyway. Very few women attended, it was a blokes thing. Well as the night wore on we had all tasted very well and as part of the night a group of men were selected (dragooned is probably the correct term) and presented on stage complete with blind folds. The object of the exercise was for them to identify what they were drinking. (I seem to remember there were 8 seated at a long trestle table) They were all seasoned beer drinkers. They had to identify 3 different drinks. Each was given 3 different drinks randomly so they could not confer with each other. The drinks were Beer Stout and Water, but they were all at the same temperature. Not one of them got all the drinks right! What I found remarkable that most could not tell the difference between beer & water. (and no Australian beer at that time almost without exception had alcohol levels of between 4.75% -5.2%.) It taught me a lot about taste. When I moved on to wine and started to seriously appreciate particularly red wines, i have always remembered that lesson. It is what tastes good to you AT THE TIME and that mood and ambience of your surroundings have a marked influence on taste.

Did you brine this (even for an hour or so)? Trouble is it may add a slightly salty undertaste (is that even a word 🙁) but I started to do this with just about all pork because it seems to be fairly lean in the muscle itself. Perhaps shortening the time further may be a thing. I have noticed when doing long SV that the meat becomes more and more tender with time until it turns to mush but it also dries out more and more. Reducing the time becomes a tradeoff.

spam be like when i ask my friends what was the food like at a new eatery and they reply with " it was really cheap, we are going again" but what was the food like? "It was cheap and we are going again"🙄

Well in Australia, I have found Costco meats to be more expensive BUT the quality is high and very consistent. They do offer cryovac but only on full cuts and roasts. Once it is cut, it is packed in clingwrap type styrofoam trays. I take it home and decant into "meal packs" and vacuum seal (ready for SV) and freeze. It is the consistency I go for. I have used other butchers that cut and pack to my requirements is not as consistent as Costco. The specialist butcher near me that my friends rave about the quality but I found the quality is actually inconsistent and even the cut dimensions are variable. I don't think Costco here do any jacquard but that may be a regional or country thing. They do pork ribs (full ribs not already cut) that are cryovaced and I freeze as is or usually unpack, divide in 2 repack and freeze. These i usually brine and smoke. Individual pork bone in cutlets i brine and hang vertical (fat side up) and smoke, then sear to serve. As a general case i find pork needs to be brined otherwise it dries out, but I hot smoke (~80c) to speed up the process. I generally do ribs "plain" but finish them in foil with sweet baby rays BBQ sauce. Not a fan of smoked chicken as such but each his own. I have smoked fish but i catch my own and the quality is actually way too good to smoke. I have smoked some of of the lesser species and the results were excellent, so i don't buy Costco fish.

I found this https://buythermopro.com/knowledge/potato-internal-temperature/ What this basically says is that a potato is cooked when its internal temperature reaches 98C. But here is the kicker. How do you make a baked potato reach 98C? You put it in an oven at 98C and wait till it reaches that temperature in say 48hrs. But you would have a desiccated cardboard potato.☹️ So put it in water and boil it, but that is not roasting.🙄 So put it in an oven at 120C and wait for likely several hours for the internal temperature to reach 98c....leather skin? Put it in the oven at 180C and wait 45minutes, coat with oil sit in shallow dish of oil -roast potato!🙂 Put in the oven at 220c and wait 25min. (again with the oil). 🙂 BUT then the water in layers of potato closer to the surface will boil and explode because the outer skin has sealed and hardened and gone lovely and crispy so prick the potato so the steam escapes. But that steam that is escaping is drying the potato🙁 Perhaps use the microwave on low power to get the internal temperature up to 80C then hit the hot oven to do the finishing. You get the really crisp skin and it wont explode as the steam will escape before the outside goes crisp. What I do is boil it first for about 8~10 minutes then roast at 180C. If i want super crispy skin boil it for 12 minutes or till it is fully cooked then hit the oven. Note the 180C. If you use 160C it will crisp but it wont change to that lovely "browned" color. You can get it at 160C but the texture of the outside is tending to leather. (there is also an article somewhere about holding the spud at 50C for 45 minutes to do something to the proteins) One more thing. You can brine potatoes. It sort of firms them up so the end texture when cooked is firmer. (good for stews etc when you don't want them to break up) Choose your poison ! 😁

I for one will reuse plastics. There are some plastics that "impart" a plastic flavor to foods, Those are fewer and fewer between and are usually repurposed from other uses. Be a bit careful on what you believe from articles. If there is no evidence one way or the other then that is EXACTLY what the state of play is, it is unknown. Unknown is neither GOOD or BAD it is unknown 🙂 If a substance is "linked" or "may cause" or "linked in animal studies" it means the author DOES NOT KNOW but wants to be cautious or in the case of media wants to scare or alarm you to make a story. Without the "scare" or "caution" the story is worthless to publish. Here a little light reading that may change your view of the scientific method https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

Kitchen scales are your friend when "pre packaing portions" as apposed to just storing in bulk. 🙂 Also instead of round containers, use rectangle or square. They make better use of the freezer space Permanent marker is your friend. You can get them in many colors Store burgers in stacks with 2 pieces of parchment between so they are easy to separate while still frozen

Well instead of storing chilli and the like in hard plastic containers, vacuum pack them (after they are frozen) and return to the freezer. Then to thaw/heat them submerge the package in water and bring to the boil to heat. Serve from the vacuum pack. No mess no fuss. We were into camping traveling for a while and used to do this with chilli, stews, pasta sauce, mashed potatoes and frozen peas & beans (you need to add a little butter and/or mint to the peas as you repackage into meal size portions). The beauty is that you can have a full meal using just one large saucepan and water. The hot water can be used to wash your plates. You can cook dried pasta in the water with the vacuum packages if needed. The food does have to be fully cooked though since it is only being reheated.

Well here is one out of left field You can actually make individual servings ready to be frozen. Say for instance you want to make a potato bake. What I do is take ramekins (small casserole dishes pie tins etc will do). Take parchment paper and screw it up (I just put the method reason in tips & trucs) and line the dishes. Slice a few cloves of garlic and place at the bottom. Use a mandolin and cookie cutter (the same size as the ramekin) to slice large potatoes to fill each dish. Any off cuts can be boiled to make mash potatoes which freezes OK. Add a little cream to each dish top with shredded cheese and bread crumbs. Bake to your satisfaction in an oven. Allow to cool. Put in the freezer,dish and all. When frozen, remove using the parchment (don't remove the parchment from the food) and vacuum seal in bags and freeze. When ready to use take the frozen food parchment and all and put it back in the original dish allow to thaw, heat gently, remove the food from the dish, remove the parchment carefully. If you use a tallish ramekin the finished product does look pretty impressive when plating. A slight variation is when making meatloaf is to vacuum seal before cooking SV for 1 or 2 hours, then remove vacuum packaging and bake. The original vacuum packaging compresses the meat nicely and the initial SV solidifies it and you can remove it from the dish to oven finish but you miss out on any jelly that forms. You can leave enough room to add gravy to the dish before finish baking.

Well here is one that few think of... Line ramekins/meatloaf tine/casserole/pie dishes with parchment to make removal easier and washing a breeze. But how you ask? Isn't it fiddly. Get a piece of parchment and screw it up tightly into a ball. Straighten it out and screw it up again! Now it will be easily be pushed into the corners of the dish. don't worry about overlaps. The wrinkles make it easy and don't show up because the wrinkles make it so flexible the food pushes the paper into the corners. You can trim the edges after the food is in the dish but leave enough for "handles" to remove the contents whole

I find things like honey & maple syrup work fairly well with root vegetables but the temperature has to be kept down a bit so it doesn't burn (and go bitter). It may well not crisp up like "normal" roasting. And surprisingly it does work for sweet potatoes and pumpkin, but you need other vegetables/protein to counterbalance the sweetness. You can cheat and boil/steam the vegetables then roast with honey or maple syrup to caramelize the outside coating (less is more 🙂) but they still wont be crisp as such. Actually some roasted root vegetables may not need to be crisp if they are roasted in flavored oil or drippings like the roast pork pan juices -(homer voice - hmmm warm pork fat)

We have moved a little from the topic but I would like to add just a little more about growing tomatoes....🙂 Nematodes Here in Queensland most of the soils are ideal for nematodes. In the case of tomato plants, the plant grows pretty well but the lower leaves may turn yellow then wilt. This "die back" proceeds up the plant until they are spindly and there are not enough leaves left to support the fruit. (in Queensland a cold winters day is 17C (62F) so the "cold" isn't enough to cull the nematodes) (by the way there are 2 basic types of tomato plants, a vine type and a bush type. Don't mistake spindly plants as sick, it may mean they are the vine type) Planting a crop of mustard and digging it in is one method to control. Marigolds do the same thing. If you have nematodes, just planting marigolds with then and cutting the leaves and leaving to break down regularly will help. The improvement in tomato health after one round of marigolds being dug in can be rather spectacular. Once you have nematodes, it is very hard to get rid of them. Many of my friends have abandoned Tomatoes altogether.

Tomatoes as they ripen produce a gas (ethylene?). The riper they get the more gas is produced the faster and ripening process and the more ripe the more gas.... This gas increases the ripening process and will ripen surrounding fruit. I seem to remember that refrigeration slows but does not stop the process. Greenhouse tomatoes are usually ripened artificially by "gassing" this way so they all ripen at the same time. But this process may be started before the fruit is ready to begin the ripening process and the sugar/moisture levels may well be lower. This is why commercial greenhouse tomatoes are usually nowhere near as sweet as naturally ripened fruit. So what has that got to do with this topic? Well to store them without allowing them to ripen to the point where they are mushy or even start to rot, refrigerate them separately if possible (not usually practical) or you use to be able to buy (plastic?) fruit bags that actually absorb the gases (lots of fruit use this chemical reaction in their ripening process).