Random Food Questions Thread - Page 222

sweet pea supernatant is perfect on its own in all its natural splendor.

Not exactly sure about the Parmigiano-DOP-rules, but are they allowed to apply natamycin to the cheese's rind? If so, I wouldn't throw it in a soup.

My dad is heading out to San Fran. Any foodstuffs I should ask him to bring back? doggie bag from a meal with iammatt?

i'm sure that was strictly accidental.
but i'd say, yeah, even without the broad category of asian soups. i do love parm rind in a lot of soups, but it does have a very distinctive flavor. basically, i'd use a parm rind in any soup i'd finish with grated parm. others, no.

Googled a little and hardly found any information about natamycin and parmigiano. Only result was an article stating that Swiss laboratories tested parmigiano and didn't find natamycin. They found traces at grana padano.
Here in Germany they have to write whether there's natamycin or not on the packaging - how about the US?

i don't think he meant MSG as in an added ingredient. what he was implying was much more along the lines of "umami". same thing with mushrooms, etc.

Who are you talking to?

I was under the impression that parm had naturally occurring MSG?

without doing any recent homework on it, it's my understanding that it contains naturally occurring proteins that resemble msg and have much the same umami effect. that said, it is my understanding (based on reporting many years ago now), that the so-called MSG effect is linked to artificially derived MSG, at least by those who claim there is an effect at all.

Ok, so this is definitely nerdy, but I figured this was the best place to ask it:

When cooking large amounts of meat in the oven - like 3-5lbs of chicken thighs for example, does the increase in volume effect the cooking time at all? For instance: say the package instructs 30 minutes at 400 degrees for one package of thighs (less than a pound), would this hold constant no matter how many thighs I cooked, or would I need to lengthen the time or increase the temperature to accomodate?

it affects the cooking time some, but not dramatically. in this case, maybe 5 minutes at most? keep checking though.

^^ Also depends on how crowded the tray, pan or whatever cooking vessel you're using is.

is that even true?

here is my understanding of how the oven works: it has a thermostat. when the temp falls below the preset level, the oven "lights the fire," so to speak. I presume that most ovens are two-state; that is, they are either on (fire is heating the oven) or off (fire is not heating the oven, temp is theoretically held even, though of course you are losing heat to the food and also to the outside environment). There isn't a "halfway on" or "hold temp" state.

Larger things take longer because the heat has to "soak in" to the middle to fully cook the center, but multiples of equal size, while requiring more heat, will just mean that the oven is "on" for more of the same time period?

Anyways, not trying to start a nit-picky e-fight - just trying to learn more. Obviously you are the expert, not me... but I like to understand not only what happens but why it happens - so that I can expand beyond just having a point fact, rather understanding the concept more deeply.

Edit: as Fang66 points out, what's more important than the quantity is how much that quantity resembles a single larger mass rather than individual ones.

Ya. Don't crowd. Or your chicken will boil, rather than crisp.