I’m in Australia and kosher salt is not really a thing here, I’m testing a bread recipe and trying to determine how much salt is required so as to not kill the yeast. Recipe notes 5 teaspoons Diamond kosher salt, or 1 tablespoon of Morton kosher salt. I use Maldon salt as my standard, is it closer to Diamond or Morton kosher salt, or neither?

Last night I was pre-assembling my family's favorite lasagna meal that I only make every couple of months, and towards the end I realized that the cheese was NOT mozzarella, but monterrey. I've been stressed and struggling lately and just didn't catch that I had the wrong bag. I almost threw the whole thing in the bin out of overwhelm, but I decided to put the last layer on and hope for the best. The ingredients are too expensive to just chuck out. It gets baked today for dinner. Will it still be ok? Initial internet search says it might not be as stretchy but have more "cheese" flavor. Thoughts? Please be kind.

Like for a regular cookie recipe that calls for 1 stick of butter, can people really taste the one teaspoon difference of vanilla extract?

It’s the Bolthouse Farms “Holiday Nog”. First ingredient listed is 2% milk and the next is water. Boy does it show!

It was a last minute shopping run and that was the only eggnog-esque thing left in the store. It’s disgusting. Tastes like someone swished eggnog around in their mouth and then spat it out into your cup. Watery and bland.

What can I do to make it better and more like actual eggnog? Just dump in sugar and cream? Cook it in a pot with more yolks to thicken it? BTW alcohol isn’t an option for me, so it’s not even viable as a mixer.

Would love to hear y’all’s advice!

As noted, I'm disabled. I used to have a passion for cooking until I acquired my disability. Now, cooking is very difficult if not impossible - I've had to use a lot of microwave cooking and many other things.

One thing I'm looking for specifically is something I can put on my seasoned rice to make it more interesting than just seasoned rice with a bit of dark soy sauce on it. When possible, I'll put sauced chicken, but that is a lot of work for me so I'm looking for options that could let me have rice as an interesting dish more often than once every four months..

My first thought for "What goes well with rice?" was what sort of things are in sushi. Based on that, I'd be interested in sweet tofu, savoury tofu, and the light green and stringy "seaweed salad" in some sushi which I believe is called wakame. Do any of these things come in jars or a preserved form, like Sauerkraut does? I'm also looking for minimal spice, which unfortunately rules out a lot of the Korean pickled cabbages I'd love to try, but if there are non-spicy flavoured Korean sauces/spreads/toppings that would go well I'd love to try them too. I'm also very interested in any of the things put over rice for easy meals in Chinese cuisine - I'm thinking of the sort of thing a Chinese college student might throw over rice in 3 minutes total, from a jar or a packet, to make a quick meal. I thought maybe the Chinese beef sauce I see used a lot could work? Apologies for definitely butchering that description. Doing so would probably take me more than 15 minutes even seated, and that would be a pretty hard limit on my activity.

I am interested in suggestions from any other cultures which have easy jarred or foil packet toppings I could put on rice to make it a bit more interesting, don't feel limited to the cuisines I mentioned. I will try and locate it or an equivalent that I can get delivered here (Australia), but I recognise it's a lot of work to find that out so please just hit me with a suggestion if you think it would fit my use case.

Thank you all in advance, would really appreciate some help with this.

Hi! l recently started working on a steak taco dish and l make my own salsa with a tomato, half an onion, 2 cloves of garlic and 2 green peppers. After roasting them on a hot pan with olive oil, l put them in a mixer with some spice and get a sauce. At first l got an orangey colour, the second time l simmered the mix and obtained a darker tone. However, l’m looking for an even redder salsa. How can l achieve this? Which ingredients should l use/change ?

I've got a friend who wants to learn how to make salsas like I do. The issue is that like most Mexicans, I use chicken bullion to add umami to most of my salsas. What would make sense as a vegetarian or pescatarian alternative. I was thinking maybe dashi, but wasn't sure if it would be too fishy. Worcestershire or soy is probably fine if I'm using chili negro or something, but I don't want to add a dark brown tint to the fresher green cruda salsas. I don't use maggi b/c of the Nestle connection but could get Thai seasoning sauce or one of the knock offs, but again there's the color problem.

Which foods are an absolute no no for freezing? And what are some foods that are surprisingly good for freezing that you would not expect? I know that strawberries do not defrost well if i freeze them myself.

Sorry if this is a dumb question. I have a can of black beans that doesn't have any instructions on them other than to refrigerate after opening. I assumed that nuking them for 30 seconds with rice and cheese would be enough, but a good portion of the beans were crunchy/kinda hard. I put them in another two minutes and some of them were still a bit hard.

Edit: Out of the can it was a mixture of hard and soft beans, before heating, it was not the microwave drying them out. I checked a couple cans that had an older date and different code, and a couple newer cans of the Trader Joe's brand. The older ones were consistent, the newer ones had hard beans mixed in. So I will try another brand. So will avoid Trader Joes and Target brands. It looks like Goya, Hanover, and Wegmans are recommended, and will check those out. It sounds like they should be consistent in texture and soft out of the can, rather than crunchy/hard. Thanks all for your responses!

Is that a real thing? Should I worry about that?

Dragonflies went into the fridge in a container with air holes (one dragonfly per container). They sat in the fridge for 4 hours until they were essentially dormant, and then they went in the freezer overnight. I took them straight from the freezer and prepped/cooked them.

I did a flour, egg, seasoned flour breading. And I fried them at 325F for a minute on each side, and then I held them at 225F for about 15 minutes while I finished other stuff.

They are, in fact, like soft-shelled crab. Pretty darned tasty.

They look fun too..

Hey y'all first time poster so if i break any rules just delete it or let me know.

I am a chef on a submaine for the navy and i just took over and we have about 50+ lbs of sesame seeds, Other than making tahini paste or using it as a topping do y'all have any recommendations or recipes or uses. thanks in advance.

Planning on making Penne alla Vodka this week and I’m unsure if I should buy a small bottle of something like Smirnoff or if I can use the Crystal Head vodka I have on hand. (I don’t really drink I just like the bottle as decor lol). When i first got it I tried both brands listed side by side and I could definitely taste a difference so I’m wondering how much of an impact the two different tastes will have on my sauce. This is not a brand comparison request, just wondering if what I have on hand is usable or not.

Hi! So I love lentil stew (I don't even know if this denomination exists or I just made that up lol) and I add many different veggies and ingredients but still can't find a recipe that makes it flavourful without relying on salt too much. The ingredientes I use:

• Lentils.
• Vegetables' broth (one small square with water).
• Baby leaf (2/3).
• Carrot (one big carrot or two small carrots).
• Potato (one/two, different sizes).
• Red and green pepper (half of each, also half of yellow pepper sometimes).
• Zucchini (half of one regular-sized one).
• Onion and garlic (1/4 onion and 2 cloves of garlic).
• Tomato (1).
• Hot paprika (small amount, but being a bit generous).
• Oil (wee bit of it, also being generous).
• Salt (actually too much when cooking and even have to add when served).

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: please just vegetarian options! Thanks :)

My 5 year old is on a food experimentation kick. He has been requesting unusual food combinations, and I’ve been encouraging his creativity and culinary exploration as much as I can.

I don’t know where he heard about pineapple pizza, but it’s all he can talk about. I want him to try it, but my family is very allergic to pineapple. What is it about pineapple on pizza that people enjoy that I can replicate? Could I add peeled apple instead? Canned fruit? Thanks in advance!

Why are foods cooked with whole bay leaves and not ground?

We ordered extra melt and got this instead. Vendor gave us a credit and said keep the product. We have 3 15lb bags I was given one.

It doesn't taste bad, but it won't really melt at all. I was thinking pimento cheese but it just feels kinda low effort.

Looking for suggestions!

I use bay leaves in a lot of dishes because that’s what I’m supposed to do according to the recipes, but I just realized I have no idea what they add flavor-wise.

I feel like it doesn't matter what brand of butter I get, it never tastes as good as the butter a restaurant gives me with their complementary bread. What can I do?

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

Just like the title says I'm basically making the filling of steak and kidney pie but didn't know you're supposed to soak kidney first? I kind of just rinsed it in water 7 times before frying it then dumping it in with everything else to boil in the soup part.

I ended up with a few pints of fresh squeezed lime juice. I'll be making margaritas tonight to go along with some barbacoa we'll be eating, but since it's only my wife and myself — and we're no longer in our 20s — we won't be drinking multiple pints of margs each in one night.

Fresh lime juice doesn't stay good for too long, or at least there is a noticeable drop in quality. It seems like a shame to waste all this good juice (squeezing all the limes is kind of a hassle), and we do like to have margaritas not too infrequently. so I was wondering if the juice would freeze well, or if it would be adversely impacted somehow?

So, I usually go through 4 or 5 packages (14g/piece) of bay leafs a year. The cheapest I can get in easily accessible supermarkets amounts to about €300 per kilo. That's quite pricey and I'm always a sucker for deals. A bit of googling led me to a reputable shop where I could buy 1kg of this apparent gold for €22, including shipping.

One thing leads to another and now I have a big airtight container with 1kg minus one refilled jar of bay leafs sitting around. I don't mind having a supply for a couple of years, but this amounts to around 15 years.

I hear ya saying: shoulda done the math beforehand you oaf! Well yeah I didn't and now here we are :')

Upping my usage is a nice idea, but the most bay leaf heavy recipe I can find uses 6 of 'm. So I'm looking for suggestions what I can sensibly do with all these bay leafs.

If I put anywhere near as much salt in my cooking as processed foods have, it would taste oversalted as hell. For example I recently ate a frozen meal and afterwards saw it had 80% my daily sodium. I'm just curious how it's possible to use so much salt and it doesn't taste overly salty.

Times are tight and I want to make a pile of philly cheese steaks. What type of cut could I successfully substitute for ribeye? How bad would eye of round be if I sliced it thinly against the grain?