Unit Conversion

Mexican rice’s small secret is getting the tomato paste just right, because it will determine if your rice is balanced or simply red. Add too little and the rice won’t stand out in the meal, add too much and the tomato takes over leaving a sharpness no salt can tame. How much do you need? … Read more

Until now, home cheesemaking was an exercise in guesswork, particularly if you were attempting to achieve just the right level of acidity with vinegar. If there’s not enough acid, your milk protein won’t form a stretchy curd; too much and you’ll have grainy, sour cheese. Enter the calculator up top, which will help you determine … Read more

But here’s where it gets confusing: Chili seasonings comes in packets; each one include not just chili powder but also onion, garlic, paprika, some cumin, salt, and a thickener. All of these thing together are already proportioned to flavor roughly a pound of meat and several cups of tomatoes (or beans). But if we’re going … Read more

Whether it’s creamy and sliceable or ends up dry at the edges or too soft in the middle, that’s all about the sour cream in corn casserole. Typically, recipes will begins from a starting point: One cup of sour cream for every couple of cans of corn. But then again, what if you change toppings? … Read more

Once you grasp how mechanics of sourdough change when using rye flour, it’s easy to predict effects (though not so much the math). Rye adds a moist crumb and an earthy flavor. However, because rye is so dense, dough doesn’t behave as you’d expect. It rise quicker, feels heavier, and slice differently. Much of that … Read more

Bread recipes often call for potato flour, which changes baked crumb’s texture, though there’s more then just your preference at play when deciding on the right amount. The amount affect the strength of the dough, the moisture level, and whether next-day slice cuts cleanly. Too little, and you get no advantage from using it; too … Read more

Using the correct level of bread improver for any particular flour quantity may seem trivial until your rolls is too dense or your loaves turn out flat. Typically, this means flour isn’t providing enough support, depending on how much whole grain and protein it contains. Once you know how the improver works, you stop asking … Read more

Crispy tofu tends to be finicky: one batch will come out golden brown and light; another, well, it’ll be gummy or it’ll fall apart when it hits the pan. It’s the texture of starch that sticks to its surface before cooking that makes difference. But amount varies depending on what type of tofu (weight), the … Read more

If you use low-protein flour instead of the type you intended to bake, you may find your dough is slack and crumb is pale. This is especially true for breads like sourdough boules, which you want to have an open crumb, or bagels, which should be chewy. How do you fix it? With vital wheat … Read more

Comfort food meets practical kitchen math in the form of cornmeal mash. Whether it’s a loose bowlful to be ladled or a slab to slice are up to you; mostly, it depends based off your choice of dry meal and its reaction with hot liquid like water, milk, or stock. Too little meal, and you’ve … Read more