Is it okay to use extra virgin olive oil to season a pan?- Mary I wouldn't recommend using extra virgin olive oil, simply because you are paying a premium for the extra virgin part. That said, pretty much any cooking oil can be used to season frying pans. I use regular olive oil to season my cast iron pans, but you have to be careful... Read more →

How do you convert solid coconut oil weight to fluid ounces? -Marleen In order to know how many fluid ounces there are for a given weight of coconut oil, or any other ingredient, the first thing you need is a conversion factor. It turns out that the USDA has a very helpful tool, called their Nutrient Database (http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/... Read more →

How do I clean a seasoned fry pan in which I've cooked chicken?-Diane I'm not really sure what this question is getting at, but I'll hazard a guess that since chicken is notorious for contamination from salmonella, enterococcus or E. coli (among others), what you are concerned about is cross-contamination of other foods by a pan in which... Read more →

It seemed like a good idea, the Chef Buddy Digital Detachable Measuring Cup Scale, a measuring cup with a built in digital scale so you can weigh as well as measure. Imagine a measuring cup with a digital scale built into the handle. Since I love making bread, the idea of a measuring cup that I could use to weigh liquids sounded like a... Read more →

When I was a kid, we used to make these wonderful bush pies. For those who don't know what a bush pie is, it is a sandwich made by compressing to pieces of bread, with filling in the middle, in a device which compresses the edges and which you then heat over a fire to toast the outside while heating the interior at the same time. My all... Read more →

In your post on Seasoning Stainless Steel, you say to "wash in warm water with a small amount of dish soap and dry immediately." I thought that soap would dissolve the fat, so you would damage the coating if you use it. - Comment* Seasoning in this sense involves heating oil in a frying pan, or other cooking surface, to form a non-stick... Read more →

I got a new quick read probe thermometer, but I'm not sure it is reading accurately. Is there an easy way to check it?-- Dan There are two temperatures that are very easy to check a thermometer for in the home kitchen -- the freezing point of water, and its boiling point. Water freezes at 32°F (0°C). If your thermometer will read... Read more →

Being an incurable foodie and techie, I of course have been grabbing cooking apps for my iPad. Some apps are little more than shameless money grabs or self promotions. Others are poorly constructed technically or have little quality content. The exception, far and away, is Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything application. This is... Read more →

What do people mean when they say that conventional butcher's steels don’t actually sharpen your knife. According to the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary, sharpen means to "make sharp or sharper." It seems to me that is why I use a steel, and the effect that it has. --Art OK, this is something that really bugs me too. It all boils... Read more →

The folks at Aroma Housewares Company kindly offered to send me an ARC-150SB rice cooker to try. Since I have always been a "stove-top rice cooking kinda guy", I saw this as a chance to see how well they work, and whether the technology could entice me from my old habits. Growing up, we cooked rice on the stovetop in a pot specially... Read more →