Barbequeing with a charcoal grill

Question

Today I headed to a nearby camp ground which had some charcoal barbecue stands. I put in around 2 pounds of charcoal and put a thin slice of pork meat on the grill. After 40 mins, it was well...lukewarm. Also after around 10 min of burning, the charcoal had a layer of ash deposited on the surface and after that it hardly gave off any heat. My question is : To cook 1 or 2 pieces of pork or steak how much charcoal should I put? Also what can I do to make the flames rise a bit like in a campfire so that the flames actually touch the grill.

Asked by Kaushik

Answer

You should first set fire to your coals.
When they are really hot (red/white), but the flam is out, put the meat on top on the grill. Really, you should avoid flames in a barbecue to prepare the meat.

The amount of coals isn't that important. Just make sure the ground is well covered. The more coals, the longer you'll have heat. Since you only want to grill a few pieces, your two pounds was certainly enough.

Answered by Mien

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How can you cook multiple omelets without burning them?

Question

Over the weekend, I was making omelets for 5 people in a single frying pan. The first few came out fine, but by the time I got to the fifth one...well, I'm glad that one was mine. The pan had gotten so hot that the eggs burned almost immediately, and while it was still edible, it certainly wasn't good.

How can I prevent the pan from overheating when cooking for multiple people? I've had this problem before with some other foods as well (e.g., quesadillas), but the problem is most pronounced with eggs, at least for me.

Asked by VolcanoLotus

Answer

I have had the same issue when cooking lots of quesadillas, and have found the following combination of techniques to work quite well.

The obvious answer has been hit upon already, lower the heat. But I think that's missing an important aspect of the issue. What's happening is most likely that you are turning on the heat and then cooking your first omelet before the pan has actually reached temperature. Depending on the type of pan, it can take up to 5 mins for the pan to reach temperature. So, as you continue to cook, the pan is getting closer to temperature. Of course, each time you add more cold egg, the temp decreases again. So your heat is too hot, but it doesn't really become apparent until the last omelet. Rather than just starting at a lower temperature though, start at the same temp you tried and then turn down the temperature as you continue to cook.

The pan can also heat rapidly between omelets. Take the pan off the heat, swirl your butter or oil through it, add the egg, and then put it back on the heat. If it seems really hot when you add the egg, you can cook it for a second with just the radiant heat of the pan before returning to the burner. This will stop the pan from getting too hot between omelets.

Answered by yossarian

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Is raffinose broken down into its component sugars when cooked?

Question

Raffinose is a sugar found in legumes that is indigestible by humans. Which is great, because I'm looking for a sweetener that 1) won't raise blood sugar and 2) doesn't have a bitter aftertaste and isn't carcinogenic or whatever else. The question I have is: Does raffinose break down during cooking? If heat can decompose it into other sugars then it's useless for my purposes.

Answer

In most cooked foods, it will break down.

Raffinose has a melting point of 80°C and decomposes at 118°C. So if you keep the food below 118°C, you will be OK. You can sweeten your tea with it, or use it in a custard (the big sugar molecules will interfere somewhat with the setting of the custard, but I can't predict if the effect will be noticeable at all). Applications involving simmering water should be safe, if the solution consists of water mostly. However, if you use large amounts of raffinose (e.g. you are trying to make a jam), the boiling point of the solution can be much higher than the boiling point of water.

As for baking, the raffinose will definitely decompose in the outer layers of the baked good, but this could be a very small part of the whole. The core of a properly baked cake should stay much lower than 118°C. Small items like cookies will be more problematic.

When making a substitution, you have to consider that in some recipes, sugar is more than just a sweetener. For example, I don't know if you can cream butter with raffinose the way you can do it with table sugar, and without creaming, you can't make proper cookies. Another example would be pectin: high methoxyl pectin (the one used for jams) requires high sugar concentration for gelling, so you probably can't substitute raffinose there (unless you heat it enough, because one of its decomposition products is sucrose).

Another thing to consider before eating lots of raffinose is that it is indigestible for humans and gets degraded by gut bacteria in the intestines, producing large amounts of gas - it has the same effect as eating lots of beans, for exactly the same reason.

The source for the boiling and decomposition point of raffinose is the material safety data sheet for raffinose.

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Is pyrex safe to use on a gas burner?

Question

There seems to be conflicting views on whether a pyrex dish can be used on a gas burner. Can anybody here provide a definitive answer?

Answer

Where do you live? European Pyrex is made from borosilicate glass, the same as in lab equipment. American Pyrex is made from common soda-lime glass.

So first, if you are in America, don't bother trying it at all. Soda-lime glass is sensitive to thermal shock. Even though it's tempered for kitchenware, it is nowhere near good enough for the burner.

In Europe, you could take your chances if you have a bowl you don't mind risking. However, there is still a significant chance that it will break on the burner some day. While I think that they use the same raw material for both kitchen dishes and lab test tubes (which are obviously OK on a gas burner), kitchen stuff is much thicker. This makes it much more likely to break under thermal expansion.

If you decide to make the experiment with a borosilicate Pyrex, take care to warm it gradually, starting with a small flame, and don't pour cold ingredients into it. Proceed at your own risk. And ask yourself if you really have no pots better suited to the task.

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What is the hottest part of a chili/chilli/chile pepper?

Question

I often hear different points of view to this question - some say the hottest part of the chili is its seeds, yet I've heard some (arguably more believable) sources claim that the white part that holds the seeds to the flesh is the hottest.

What part of the chili fruit is the hottest?

Answer

The Wikipedia article on Capsicum reads, citing a FAQ on a page of the ollege of Agriculture and Home Economics of the New Mexico State University:

Capsaicin is present in large quantities in the placental tissue (which holds the seeds), the internal membranes and, to a lesser extent, the other fleshy parts of the fruits of plants in the genus Capsicum. Contrary to popular belief, the seeds themselves do not produce any capsaicin, although the highest concentration of capsaicin can be found in the white pith around the seeds.

Cisneros-Pineda et al. measured via gas chromatography the content of capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin in the pericarp, placenta, and seeds of seven cultivars of chili peppers and the results confirm this:

For dihydrocapsaicin, the difference is not so large, but the placenta still has a higher concentration.

In terms of concentration considering fresh mass the difference won't be as dramatic because while the seeds lose around half their mass by drying, the placenta will lose 90%.

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Is my pan too hot for brown sauce / gravy?

Question

I've tried to make the following sauce the last couple of days. The same pan is used for everything.

• Fry steak. Put steak on plate.
• Sauté onions.
• Melt butter and mix with flour.
• Add stock.
• Season.
• Let simmer for a couple of minutes

The taste and texture of the end result are fine. However, the high temperature of the pan (I like cancer with my meat) means that:

• The butter gets burnt. It's brown and half-molten long before I've time to add flour. Does this result in any undesired reactions?
• When the butter/flour mix is stable, the pan seems to be much hotter than 100 degrees. Adding the stock results in violent boiling. Could this damage my (teflon or cast iron) pan or affect the dish?

If the above poses problems, how should I solve them? (I imagine that) I like the taste imparted from the recently used pan.

Answer

You've got this all mixed up! Unless you're deglazing to do a pan sauce, the steak should be the LAST thing cooked. It's the centerpiece of the dish and the most expensive part, and shouldn't have a chance to get cold while you cook the other parts. Saving cleaning on a single saucepan is not worth eating cold steak.

You MUST use a stainless or cast-iron for this. As others touch on, teflon is not safe for searing, and fast temperature changes will wreck it.

Here's how to do things:

1. Julienne onions to saute, prepare and measure stock, trim fat from steak, cut or butterfly it if needed (this is your mise en place).
2. Start preheating saute pan for onions
3. Start butter melting in saucepan for roux
4. Prepare roux and saute onions at same time, then add stock to roux, whisk, and season
5. Transfer onions to bowl, cover to keep hot, and start to preheat pan for searing steak
6. Cook steak while finishing sauce as needed, then rest it appropriately
7. Plate steak, garnish, sauce, and serve

Alternately, here's another approach:

1. Mise en place (prep ingredients, optionally pre-measure them)
2. Prepare sauce in advance, set aside or keep hot. Or, even do it the day before and reheat it. It's a roux-based sauce; it won't go bad in the fridge, and will reheat beautifully.
3. Saute onions. Or, caramelize onions beforehand, and just reheat them briefly and add.
4. Cook steak
5. Plate, sauce, serve

And, finally the deglazed pan sauce way

1. Mise en place
2. Sautee onions. Set aside in bowl (or on a serving plate)
3. Cook steak
4. Throw heavy cream or red wine in to pan, and deglaze by scraping vigorously with a utensil and stirring as it boils vigorously
5. Quickly season this, and throw in the onions, a few pinches of parsley, pepper, salt, garlic, and paprika, plus optionally thyme
6. Congrats, you now have a pan sauce with onions to throw on your steak

In a professional kitchen, you'd have your onions pre-sauteed or sauteeing at the same time as the steak, and your sauce will be prepared in bulk, beforehand. You'd only have to cook the steak and briefly heat or season the other two parts.

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