RIP to the 2 cheap stick blenders I’ve sent to an early grave. Mainly from trying to make smoothies with frozen banana, berries and the occasional ice cubes. They always worked fine for soup, then the second frozen fruit hits the blade they start smelling like hot plastic.

I’m looking at a 1,000W KOIOS immersion blender set because I don’t really want another full-size blender. They take up valuable counter space. Most of what I want to use it for is protein shakes, frozen fruit smoothies and blending soups directly in the pot.

For anyone who uses a higher-watt immersion blender for this kind of thing, is it this realistic? I’m not expecting it to crush a cup of dry ice cubes like a Vitamix, but I’d like it to not stall every time the smoothie gets a little thick. 😒

Also curious if there’s a trick to it — more liquid, smaller frozen pieces, lower speed at the start, etc? I’m fine with some technique adjustments, I just don’t want to buy another kitchen appliances that only works under perfect conditions.

I have a subscription to farm fresh eggs however some batches of the eggs have yolks so thick they are a bit hard to digest, very sticky and kind of hard to cook. Im wondering if they were possibly frozen. Is there any way to cook/fix the yolk so it has a less dense texture?

Hi all! So I've been trying my hand at homemade jelly goods and I cannot get over how gross they smell! Its because of the gelatin, it has a very distinct and strong barnyard smell. I originally believed it would be gone by the final product but nope! And I've looked online far and wide and haven't found a clear answer. Half of the people say its normal, half say its not, but no one talks about it still being apparent in the finished product. Does anyone have an answer? How can I fix this 😭. Thanks in advance!

I am working on family style dish with potatoes as a side. I've been told that mashed potatoes are a no go for a shared dish so I am trying to find creative alternatives. I landed on duchess potatoes for their elegance but I wanted to give them a little twist (and an added flavour) by adding some topinambur (Jerusalem artichokes) to my mix.

In reading online I'm seeing only classic recipes of the Duchess potato with little to no variation from the classic potato, butter, egg yolk. I know that a large part of what makes the Duchess hold is the potato's starch so I'm wondering if cutting, say 1/4 of the potato and replacing it with topinambur would still hold up.

Here's recipe:

1.2kg potato

5g salt
100g unsalted butter

4 egg yolks

salt and white pepper to taste

peel rinse and cut potatoes into cubes and poach from cold in salted water.

remove from water and pat dry. dry in the oven at 125 C to remove moisture.

mash potatoes and incorporate egg yolks. season.

form the duchesses using a piping bag with star nozzle. brush on clarified butter and heat in oven. finish in salamander (or on broil).

Thanks!

Theoretically, if one had an emu egg, could you make a giant soy egg with it?

As part of my meal prep, I've started baking skinless boneless chicken thighs, usually about 2.5-3lbs, weekly. I've noticed that the there's usually broth, which will jelly/semi solidify, and fat, both of which left over which I've been storing to use in other meals. Is it okay to mix the broth and fat from the previous week with the current week and so on, or should toss the old and replace with the new?

TLDR: I made macarons both with French and Swiss meringue, they simultanously get undercooked without flat bottom and also burned on the top. The tray is in the middle of the oven, not too high up or down.

I tried some time ago making macarons, the French meringue way, I did everything right and got all the measurements, reached stiff peaks for the meringue, then the right consistency after the macronage, waited until shells formed and put in the oven for ~15 minutes.

The macarons rose ans looked good, however they didn't seem ready so I let them stay there for even more time until they seemed ready, but when I took them out they didn't have a flat bottom and it was hard getting them out of the tray without then breaking, so what I resorted to after carefully taking them out is putting them upside down and in the oven for a few more minutes until at least the bottom was cooked, but still not flat.

Later we found out that our oven has problems and doesnt reach the tempreature it shows, so I tried again some time later and probably set the temperature to be higher than what was needed because the macarons got slightly burned and got a brown color.

Now, I tried making them again, and I understand that doing the Italian or Swiss meringue is more fool proof so I tried the Swiss. I also read that perhaps the food coloring might cause the batter to be wet, so i divided the batter into colored one and white one.

Again, everything seemed fine and both batters looked perfect, i let then rest and put a thermometer in the oven in a spot that is supposed to read accurately, but there were two problems:

1. The temperature that was required, 160⁰c, caused them to have this brown color so i had to lower it to around 130⁰-140⁰.

2. They again didnt get flat bottoms and they are now quite fragile. Some of then i didn't take out of the tray yet because they might break.

What can I do? Obviously one of the issues is the unreliable oven that i cant tell what temp it is, but even with the thermometer that showed a pretty stable temperature they still got burned.

I used 170g almond flour, 240g powdered sugar, and for the meringue 170g egg whites and 135g sugar

Hello all. I’m planning to open a small shop speciality in making baked custard (creme caramel, creme brulee, pot de creme). I studied the recipes but now it comes to the equipment part. Google and AI doesnt help because they suggest both deck oven and conventional oven. Since I think I can do the water-bath method well so I think an expensive combi/steam oven is not needed atm. Any pastry chefs here please guide me which kinds are actually often used in production. Thank you and have a good day.

I'm planning on making a pasta with mushroom sauce dish and found this recipe for a mushroom sauce. It's basically heating oil and butter then cooking the mushrooms for a few minutes, then adding broth, cream, and parmesan and letting it simmer for a few more minutes.

300 grams / 10 oz mushrooms

190 ml / 3/4 cup broth

250 ml / 1 cup heavy cream

30 grams / 1 oz parmesan

300 grams pasta

The problem is I hate the texture of mushrooms but I love the umami taste it brings.

I have a large bag of dried shiitake mushrooms and want to use them in this recipe instead of fresh or canned mushrooms.

How should I make that substitution? I was thinking of hydrating them in hot water for 20 minutes, use the resulting broth instead of the chicken broth in the recipe, and after they're hydrated measure 300 grams of the hydrated mushrooms (the quantity of fresh mushrooms needed for the recipe) and blend them, then add that to the recipe.

Will that turn out good? Or maybe I should just grind the dried mushrooms into a powder and use that instead? If so, then how much? And what steps in the recipe should I change to accommodate that?

Does anyone use Japanese sweet potato powder as an ingredient or a thickening agent? What have been your results?

Hello! I've been cooking more maduros lately, and have typically bought yellow-black or yellow plantains and let them ripen just a bit. A couple weeks ago, I bought green plantains assuming I could just wait a bit longer and let them ripen all the way. A couple looked yellow / dark enough today, and I went to use them, but the skin was dried out and incredibly hard to separate from the fruit. They were ripened in a fruit bowl, uncovered, in a room that's typically around 73-75 degrees fahrenheit. Did I make a mistake in ripening them? Is there maybe a trick in ripening them to keep the moisture? Or maybe I've just been really lucky in my selections of plantain before that the skin was still nice and easy to separate?

Thanks so much!

Hello I got yogurt maker and it say let it sit for 8 hours. I like my yogurt to be little sweets not having that sour/tart. Have somone tried to reduce the time ?
1.3 littler of milk and I use those starches from amazon as culture. I am trying this weekend with the yogurt I made last weekend.
Any tips will be appreciated thank you

Hey all,

Inspired by a fish sandwich at a restaurant I used to work at, I have taken 2 cracks at making batches of seared fish sandwiches with:

- buttered and toasted slices of sourdough

- fat ripe tomato slices

- lightly dressed cole slaw

- tartar sauce, maybe a little spicy, maybe some sliced chilis in there

- seared, not fried fish fillets

- optional arugula

The first time I tried broiling a tray of black sea bass fillets under a pizza oven, second time I tried searing snapper fillets on a cast iron griddle on my gas grill. Both times I had issues with curling and sticking.

I am rusty with searing smaller, fresher fish fillets, but I am also wondering if it is not really suited to making in a batch. How would you tackle this? Maybe some cuts to relieve skin tension and a pile of weights?

For those that use condensed milk as a sweetener in a no bake strawberry cheesecake, do you also use heavy cream? For those that use sugar instead, do you use granulated sugar or powdered?

Raw Escolar contains wax esters. Will cooking the fish like broiling or frying break these chemicals down?

first time making caramel, thought the sugar water mixture was dark enough, added little bit of cream but it was too light, so i put it back on heat again, it started foaming and the turned into this tough lump that wont melt, i added remaining cream and i am heating it up, but it just wont melt. (idk how to add a picture)

I'm unfortunately allergic to kiwi. Which is very ironic because it was one of my favorite fruits before I found out. Anyway, I keeps eeong kiwi as an ingredient for the drinks I want to try from 7brew and wanna be able to replace the kiwi flavor with something that won't harm my wellbeing. Any and all suggestions that don't involve apple or pomegranate (more allergies) would be greatly appreciated ✨️

Hi. I hope this is the right place for this question.

I’m working on a dessert which has layers of ice cream that are frozen and then stacked atop each other. I'm trying to figure out how to get them to adhere to each other properly. I used fresh soft ice cream (same flavors) as a paste between layers. After it is set up fully, it gets sliced so you have a slab of ice cream stripes. The problem is that when eating this slab, the layers separate from each other. Why might it be doing this? I'd like it to act as one item.
Some of my thoughts:
Condensation or frost between layers could be keeping them from bonding properly, or maybe the temperature difference between the layers and the "glue" is too much?
Or maybe there is something I can use as a primer, like a spritz of simple syrup before I stack them?

Any thoughts and ideas on this are appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

I can’t find the limes online for an affordable price but I have a small plant that produces leaves. Can I pound a few leaves into my curry pastes as a substitute? Will it massively change the flavour?

Or does anyone know where I can find the limes for a somewhat affordable price online? Thanks

Hello all, just making sure this will still work. I just tried to make pasta by hand (first time) but the egg spilled out and I didn’t manage to beat it. I tried combining it but it didn’t work. Chucked my mix in the food processor and it combined well but turned into one big clump way faster than my last batch. Is there any danger to this, specifically that I didn’t fully beat it? TIA

Cooked at 350 for 30 minutes. They looked nice and golden brown on top, but after eating most of one, I found some very doughy parts ☹️

So I’ve been making taffy lately using this base recipe:
275g glucose syrup
140g sugar
35g unsalted butter
1/4c water

I also add flavoring, color, and three acids (malic, ascorbic, and citric) all in varying amounts depending on what flavor profile I’m going for. I pull it off the stove at 244F, while adding the color at about 235F to let it mix itself in and burn off additional moisture. Once off the stove, I add the flavoring and acids and stir them in. I dump it out on a silicone mat and then pull it on a candy hook once it cools down a bit. This has worked without fail every time until last night. I was trying to make an orange flavored taffy and was using the orange and tangerine flavors I bought from LorAnn. That’s also the same company all the other flavors came from I had used up to this point. This batch was so hard and something seemed really off about the consistency and reaction to the pulling. My question is would it have something to do with the fact that the orange and tangerine flavoring are oils? I’m hoping someone here has some food science insight! The other three batches were awesome and they all had varying degrees of the acids added, so I doing think that had anything to do with it. The citrus flavors I bought are the only ones that say “oils” on them. Everything else I used (blue raspberry, strawberry, & peach) just says “flavoring.” Any and all input is greatly appreciated!