How do I avoid hot fudge turning my ice cream into a soupy mess?

Question

My pregnant wife's cravings have recently turned towards sweets, and this week it is banana splits, with a very specific formula: chocolate ice cream, banana, whipped cream, and hot fudge.

It's not such an extraordinary recipe, I suppose, but the hot fudge is simply not a topping we keep in our house or really have a lot of experience with. So after picking up a jar of hot fudge topping, and zapping it in the microwave, per the instructions, I experienced the obvious result that has presumably been experienced by millions before: hot fudge melts cold ice cream.

Rather quickly, the sundae disintegrated into a soupy mess at the bottom of the bowl, with a rapidly decreasing scoop of ice cream bathing in the pool, and banana bits swimming about. It was not a pretty sight.

What means could I take to mitigate the fudge's effect on the ice cream, or are my wife's hopes and expectations just a dream in the shadow of this bleak reality?

Asked by Ray

Answer

I think isolating the fudge could be a good way to fix this. It might complicate your dish, but it might add both to the presentation as well as to the texture of the ice cream.

Try getting hold of or make your own biscuit rolls (I don't know the name). Fill these up with hot fudge. The biscuit will act as isolation keep the texture of both the ice cream and the fudge. In this way the only time the two will get in contact with each other is when one breaks up the biscuit to eat it.

If biscuits doesn't cut it, chocolate tubes or similar could do the same trick.

Answered by daramarak

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Keeping food warm: does cast iron make a suitable potluck vessel?

Question

I'm making this hash recipe for a potluck at work tomorrow.

Tonight I did all my prep:

• Peeled, diced, roasted the sweet potatoes
• Diced the onion
• Diced the apples (stored in water w/lemon juice)
• Cut the bacon into lardons
• Sliced the green onions

So tomorrow morning should be a strait-forward "pluck from the fridge, heat it all up" affair. I was initially going to do this in a big saute pan but am now considering using my lidded cast-iron fryer. Basically when the hash is near done, I could just put the whole lot into a bag (w/proper heat protection, of course) and head to work.

My questions are:

• Will the reactive qualities of cast iron be undesirable for this type of "longer term" food storage/serving?
• Will the hash actually stay warm for the 2.5-3 hours I'll need it to?

If anybody has better tips for keeping a hash-like dish warm long enough for a lunchtime potluck, I'll take em!

Answer

All the cast iron pans I've got came with instructions that read along the lines of "suitable for serving, but not storage of food".

I'm not sure what would suffer most though, your pan, or the food, or both, depending on length of time. My guess is that the length of time you actually can store food in a cast iron pan/pot safely somewhat depends on the ingredients used. For example, a tomato sauce would be less good to store in a cast iron pan than fried potatoes.

Regarding the temperature, I'd say it depends on how well insulated your "bag" is. Cast iron distributes temperature very nicely, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will cool less quickly than another type of pan (of same size/thickness) when taken off the heat.

Regarding keeping food warm, I did see insulated pots similar to a thermos flask you'd use for hot coffee or tea, which are made to store food. They have a big enough opening to be filled, and to be eaten from.

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Serving a Whole Pig

Question

I ordered a roast whole pig from a local meat market. They've told me that when I pick it up, it'll be fully cooked and in a foil lined box. My concern is what do I do from there? Is there going to be a lot of butchering involved to get portions off for each guest or is it easy enough to grab a hunk of meat and slap it on your plate?

Answer

It really depends on your audience and setting.

With a Filipino Lechon, it's served communally and eaten as pulled pork, so it's expected that you'll just plunk it down on a side table, and people will crack through the crisp, almost hard, skin and pull servings for themselves with tongs or forks. And they'll go for the whole thing, skin, ears, jowls and all (most people I know don't eat the ears, but they may crunch the crispy skin off them).

A similar thing is done with a country-style hog roast. Those may be skinned before serving, but generally you're responsible for pulling or slicing what you want right off the hog (and usually throwing it on a cheapo burger bun).

In both of these settings there are almost always some people who don't want to dig right into the pig out of squeamishness or out of fear of getting some part that's not nice to eat. The good host will periodically pull some of the good stuff onto a platter for those folks.

If you're doing something more formal, I guess you'd want to section it like Foodrules suggests.

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