When a recipe calls for X cooked amount of something is that before or after it has been cooked?

Question

I think I know the answer to this and realize that it is similar to this question about nuts, but I wanted to verify my instinct. When a recipe calls for 1 ½ cups cooked X, is that recipe calling for that ingredient measured before or after cooking?

Asked by ahsteele

Answer

Recipe-speak is very particular about order.

• half a cup of butter, melted means you measure the solid butter (probably with a butter ruler) and then melt it
• half a cup of melted butter means you melt some larger amount of butter and then measure (probably with a liquid measure)

Obviously there's no difference between 3 carrots, roasted and 3 roasted carrots. Nor between 2 eggs, hardboiled and sliced and 2 hardboiled sliced eggs. And in many cases the volume of things isn't much affected by cooking. In some cases it is easier to measure before or afterwards, and the recipe-writer wants to point you in the easier way. But in some it really matters. Rice, for example. 1 cup of raw rice yields roughly 3 cups cooked, so recipe writers need to be super clear which you are measuring.

In your example, 1.5 cups cooked X, you cook it and then measure it.

Answered by Kate Gregory

Check more discussion of this question.

What is the difference between pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce?

Question

Pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce are both tomato-based, have roughly the same seasoning (Italian) and look a like. However, I (and a friendly user here) think there is a difference between the two. So what is it? Or isn't there one and you can interchange the two without a weird feeling or taste?

Asked by Mien

Answer

Red pizza sauce is often (but not always) two things:

1. Thicker. Thinner sauce will tend to run in the oven and also steam the pizza crust as it cooks. Depending on the crust, the heat of the oven, the toppings above sauce, and how watery it is, this may not be needed. If you've just got some crushed tomatoes and a few bits of cheese in a super hot oven - the sauce should be fine without reducing beforehand. If you've loaded up a bucket of sauce and a pound of cheese, precook and reduce the sauce.

2. It's often simpler. Many pasta dishes like spaghetti highlight the sauce and hours of simmering happen for the sauce to bring it to perfection. They're all about the sauce. Pizza is really about the crust and what highlights it. Many of the best pizzas are simply topped. Crushed san marzano tomatoes (sometimes) reduced with a hint of salt is often all I do, and franky, it's enough. I'm not talking about the jarred varieties here, but what you might cook at home. Jars in the store, the main difference is just how thick it is.

Answered by rfusca

Check more discussion of this question.

What should I cover bread dough with while it's rising?

Question

If you let (bread) dough rise, the recipe always asks to cover it. Years ago, I read to cover it with a wet towel. Nowadays, I see more and more recipes that ask for plastic wrap (aka saran or cling wrap).

The towel lets air through, the wrap does not. What is the difference between the two in the end result? What is best to use and why?

I'm taking about the first as well as the second (proofing) rise. If there is a difference between the phases, please inform me.

Asked by Mien

Answer

The goal is to keep the surface of the bread from drying out.

A wet towel works fine but plastic wrap is cheaper and easier than constantly cleaning wet towels.

I have used both methods and haven't noticed a difference in the bread produced. In very dry climates, when I made bread with multiple rises I sometimes had to redampen the towel which was an added inconvenience.

Lately I have been proofing large batches of bread in a large stock pot and just use the lid of the pot as the only cover.

Answered by Sobachatina

Check more discussion of this question.

Can you estimate how long it takes to reduce a liquid?

Question

In a lot of recipes, there is a step that includes reducing your liquid. In most sauces, this isn't a problem, since you just need to thicken it and that's something you can see and doesn't take a long time.

However, last week I was making a base for a sauce, that included water, vinegar and white wine. The recipe asked me to reduce it till it was about 1/3 of the original amount. I didn't think it would take as long as it did and as a result, everything was ready except the sauce.

Is there a way to calculate how fast something reduces? I can understand it would depend on the ingredients, on the surface area and on the temperature, but assume that I know these variables.

Asked by Mien

Answer

If you're boiling something rapidly, and it's not in a terribly deep, narrow pot, then essentially all of the heat output of the burner is going into turning water into steam. The latent heat of vaporization of water is 2260 kJ/kg, so if you want to reduce something by a volume V, and your stove has power P, the time required is:

t = V * (1 g/mL) * (2260 J/g) / P

If V happens to be in mL, and P is in W (J/s):

t (s) = V / P * 2260

This would be modified slightly if you're using a really tall, skinny pot, since the convection within the pot, from the bottom to the top of the liquid, would be less efficient, with more heat transferred to the sides of the pot and out into the air, but I doubt you're actually going to try to reduce something like that. The P here is the effective power; for example, a gas burner wastes a lot of heat out the sides, so the advertised power will be higher. See TFD's answer for approximate efficiencies.

If you don't know the power of your stove, in all honesty, the easiest way to measure it would probably be to just see how long it takes to boil away a given volume of water, and work backwards. To get an accurate result, you should not boil a pot dry - once the water is a thin enough layer, the heat transfer might start working differently, with the pot itself heating up more, and water splattering. So you could, for example, put in a liter of water, boil away at the stove setting you intend to measure until it's substantially reduced in volume, record the time, then pour it out to measure how much you boiled away. At this point, knowing the power output might be overkill, though; you can really just measure the time per volume reduction, and use that, unless you care about the power for other reasons.

Trying to deduce the power of the stove from, say, the temperature of an empty pot or of the burner without a pot on it (assuming it's electric) would be difficult; you'd have to deal with the heat transfer between metal and air, and the convection in the air.

Dependence on ingredients shouldn't be significant - you're still just boiling water, unless there's a substantial amount of alcohol, in which case the latent heat of vaporization will be different. Pure alcohol has a latent heat of vaporization of 841 kJ/kg; I haven't found a good table for mixtures.

For solutions, as I noted in the comments, the latent heat of vaporization should be that of water, plus/minus the heat of solution of the solutes (I forget which direction that's measured in). The most common solutes are probably salt and sugar, which have heats of solution of 70 and 16 J/g, respectively. (I found this table, and converted.) The next most common thing I could think of that might be present in substantial concentrations is citric acid; this paper reports a heat of solution of -57 J/g. In all these cases it's small compared to the latent heat of vaporization of water, so pretending the liquid is water should be a good approximation. It's possible that things change if you're reducing really far: heat of solution does depend on concentration. That is, things are different thermodynamically (statistical mechanically?) in a nearly-saturated sugar syrup than in slightly sweet water.

Answered by Jefromi

Check more discussion of this question.

How careful do you have to be with adding flour for kneading?

Question

When you're working a dough (kneading or rolling out), instructions often say to flour the surface you're working on and your rolling pin or hands. This helps the dough to stick less. However, I always am very careful that I don't use too much flour, because I'm afraid this will change the recipe. Is this fear irrational or would I need to use a lot to have an effect on the result? Is there a certain percentage of original amount of flour that you can't surpass?

I'm particularly asking about bread dough, but I think this will also apply to other doughs. I guess it would have more rapidly an effect on wetter doughs in general, but I'm not sure. So feel free to include broader answers.

Asked by Mien

Answer

Don't worry too much about it.

Be careful that some doughs are wet (high hydration - look at my question here), so they tend to stick more and are harder to manage.

If a dough is hard to manage, just let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours. It will become tougher and easier to handle.

If you keep on adding flour, this will alter the bread formula (affecting the salt content and hydration), an additional percent or two flour won't make much of a difference.

Answered by BaffledCook

Check more discussion of this question.

Are Turkish Bay Leaves “Normal” Bay leaves?

Question

I recently saw a recipe that called for Turkish Bay Leaves. Is this any different than the kind I would find in a standard spice bottle labeled "Bay Leaves", or is this a form of exotic marketing? Are there even different types of Bay Leaves?

Asked by awithrow

Answer

Figured I'd check the site of the brand I use. Turns out they are Turkish:

The bay tree is native to the Mediterranean region and Asia Minor. The bay or laurel tree grows well in the subtropics and is cultivated today as a spice in the Far East as well as the Canary Islands, France, Belgium, Mexico, Central America and Turkey (where McCormick's bay leaves are grown).

Answered by awithrow

Check more discussion of this question.

What type of sherry is typically used when cooking?

Question

Not having used sherry before, what is the type used when a recipe just calls for "sherry"? I see cream sherry, dry sherry, and very dry sherry at my local grocery store. Does brand matter much?

Asked by hobodave

Answer

Cream sherry is very sweet - likely too sweet for most recipes that don't explicitly mention it.

If a recipe simply calls for "sherry", it usually means dry sherry, as that's the most common kind of available. In fact, I don't think I've ever even seen "very dry" around here. So I would definitely stick with the dry.

As for brand, I believe that sherry is the brand (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). If you see several different bottles all labeled sherry, I don't think it matters too much which one you pick - at least if you're using it for cooking and not drinking.

P.S. If you're using this as a substitute for rice wine, the commonly-accepted substitute is indeed dry sherry.

Answered by Aaronut

Check more discussion of this question.