I have a short question: 

   Is there such a thing as freezer marination? I ask because in a few days
I will be the proud owner of a dehydrator, and I am planning on making beef
jerky, which I love, but don't love paying 8 dollars a pound for. Anyhow,
I bought some nice chuck roast, and I tossed it in the freezer. I have some
marinade (powdered) that says can be prepared about an hour before cooking
and the meat will be fine. What I want to do is to make the marinade, thaw
the beef, and refreeze it in the marinade. I figure a few days in the freezer
and it'll taste heavenly. But is this worth it? Will the marinade actually
do any good? If it's a block of ice won't the molecules stop, and the
absorbtion of the marinade stop as well?

 thanks for your answers and comments

55 responses total.

I've never heard anyone ever mention such a technique so
I'm guessing here but I'd suspect it would not be the
kindest way to handle meat.  Every food product tends
to handle being frozed better if there is less moisture
involved.  Celery will turn to mush because of its
high water content.  Ham also doesn't freeze well for
the same reason.  Beef tolerates freezing pretty well
but if you have it soak up a bunch of marinade first
I'm not so sure it won't suffer some in terms of
texture when defrosted.  Just a guess.

I seem to remember that you're not posedta freeze things more than once,
especially meats.  I don't remember if the rule was because of sanitation,
food taste, or lost nutritional value.

  I think that I'd be better off not implemeting my idea. Freezing is 
sort of brutal, and upon further though this is idea was a little less than
half baked ;)

I'd be interested in hearing more about your dehydrating
experiences though, when you'd had some. ;-)
I've always been fond of dried cinnamon apple slices.

  I'm hoping to make my own raisins, and dehydrated watermelon, but that
might not work since I have a serious watermelon addiction, and I have
done nothing to curb it. ;)
  Of course I'll share my experiences, for this is what Grex is all about!

Dehydrated water melon?  What would be left??  (And don't say "melon!" :-)

Pink sugar? ;-)

  The first batch of jerky only took 18 hours to make. The book says 24-48,
but I suspect that it would've been really tough had I left it for 24.
I marinaded it in McCormick beef Mesquite marinade, for about an hour and
it's pretty flavorful, and hot. I'm probably going to make a teriyaki batch,
and a batch with some home made marinades. I'll keep you posted. Oh, the cost
wasn't that bad, either. The chuck roast only set me back 3 bux, and the
marinade was a buck, so for 4 bux, I got nearly 3 pounds of jerky.

This is going to be a beautiful thing

Did Santa come to your house early, Jim?  You must have
been a extremely good boy. ;-)

 I was good this year. Yes, Santa came on Thursday in the form of UPS. Only
sent the order off on the 3rd. ;(

  I'm about to embark on the second batch using top round. &^%$# 2.28 a pound.
but I was assured that this will be even better.

  That was a consummate flop. First, I had the beef cut way too thin, and thus
it dried too fast and like paper. Second, I used some crappy Oriental marinade
from McCormick.

  I just put the third batch in, and corrected some mistakes. This time I used
flank steak. I cut it to 1/4 inch, and marinaded it in the following:

  1/4 c soy sauce
  2tsps liquid smoke
  2tsps brown sugar 

  Hopefully this will be the charm. I'll keep you posted.

OK you chocolate fans.  I'm in search of the ultimate chocolate muffin recipe.
This is a debt of honor, so even though I've never *heard* of chocolate
muffins, I must learn to make them.  Help, help!

It's not a recipe, Catriona, but try Barry Bagel's chocolate/chocolate-chip
muffins.  ("Cupcakes" would be a better word for it, in this case.) 
Jonathan's restaurant on Jackson Ave. has also been known to serve
chocolate-chip muffins, much more clearly muffins-with-chocolate-chips than
Barry's things.

I once experimentally used chocolate chips instead of blueberries in my
favorite blueberry muffin recipe.  The combination with the lemon juice tasted
rather weird.  (Big help I am!)  :S

Olga's, at Briarwood, sells gigantic chocolate muffins.

I would think that if you mixed cocoa powder or melted baker's chocolate into
any old muffin recipe, you'd end up with chocolate muffins.  Hm.

Joy of cooking suggests replacing 1/4 cup flour with 1/4 cup cocoa in a quick
cake recipe.  I'm not sure how melted chocolate would change the chemical mix,
since they use baking powder leavening.  

I looked in my Williams-Sonoma Muffins and Quick Breads and
did indeed find a recipe for chocolate muffins.  In fact it's
called something like triple chocolate muffins and they are
described as brownie-like and call for some very rich ingredients.

If you are interested in this recipe I'll enter it.  But make
sure your will is up to date first - these look like death
by chocolate. ;-)

Do you think they will turn out more like cupcakes or like muffins?

Muffins.  Heavy muffins.

Ok, post the recipe, or email it and I'll give it a try.

Triple Chocolate Muffins  
************************

3 squares (3 oz.) unsweetened chocolate
3 squares (3 oz.) semi-sweet chocolate
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon instant coffee granules
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat an oven to 350 degrees.  Butter standard
muffin tins.  Combine the unsweetened and semi-sweet
chocolates and the butter in the top pan of a double
boiler and place over simmering water.  Stir frequently
until melted and smooth.  Set aside to cool slightly.

In a small bowl stir and toss together the flour, baking
powder and salt; set aside.  In another bowl combine the 
eggs, sugar, vanilla and coffee granules.  Beat until 
light and about double in volume.  Beat in the chocolate
mixture and then the combined dry ingredients just until
blended.  Stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts.
The mixture will be stiff, almost like dough.

Spoon into the prepared muffin tins, filling each cup
about 2/3 full.  Using moistened fingertips, smooth the
top of each muffin.  Bake until they look dry on top,
about 15 minutes.  Do not overbake; the centers should 
remain moist.  Cool in the tins for 10 minutes then
remove.

Makes 12 standard muffins.

From: _Muffins and Quick Breads_, Williams-Sonoma

At the coop replenishing my baking supplies I noticed they don't seem to carry
shortening.  Is there some better alternative, or else...?  I asked, but the
guy I asked didn't know.

I use butter whenever a recipe calls for shortening.  Things taste a tiny bit
different, and white frosting comes out yellow, but other than that it works
okay.  If I remember right, butter is higher in saturated fat than shortening,
but shortening has more of the evil trans fatty acids, so it really isn't any
better.

My impression is that there are some things that you can do with shortening
where butter won't work.  

I learned "shortening" as a word from my mother's recipe cards, and she told
me that it meant any kind of butter, margarine, oil, fat stuff; we used
usually margarine, sometimes lard.  Culturally these days it seems to mean 
thoroughly hydrogenated soybean oil.  I'm not much of a cook, but I use
liquid oil or chicken fat or occasionally margarine or very occasionally
butter.

I learned that "shortening" meant Crisco or some generic equivalent.
Dunno.

What is the difference between soy sauce, teriyaki sauce and
tamari sauce?  Is there something you can add to soy sauce
to make it an easy substitute for either of the others?

I think of "soy sauce" "tamari" and "shoyu" as interchangeable.  My impression
is that the terms aren't very clearly defined, but that the category called
"soy sauce" basically includes tamari, shoyu, and dark brown salty water. 
That is, tamari and shoyu tend to have more complex flavors, while soy sauce
can be the same or it can be as simple as glorified salt water.  I'm not sure
how teriyaki sauce fits into the picture.

I make my own teriyaki sauce (dunno where or how I got it) by mixing soy
sauce, a bit of honey, ground ginger and sometimes a drop of sherry.  I use
it to marinate stuff like chicken (although I am off chicken since hearing
the news about all the disgusting bacteria that comes with it).  It is
delicious on grilled salmon, steak and chicken (when I get over my disgust).

I found lots of info on soy sauces, including teriyaki, in The Book of Miso,
by William Shurtcleff and A. Aoyagi (1976, 1983), when I was researching
vegetarian sources of vitamin B12 last December.

Teriyaki sauces - a concoction used in Japan to baste broiled fish, consisting
of miso, sake (rice wine), oil, ginger, garlic, sugar.  I don't say that this
is what you find in the commercial products.

Soy sauce seems to include anything liquid made from soybeans.  I don't know
the Chinese word for it, but the Japanese shoyu means soysauce.

There is the fermented type and the chemical/synthetic type, which is never
called anything but soy sauce.  It is made by hydrolyzing (breaking apart)
defatted soybeans (what is left after you squeeze out the soy oil) with
hydrochloric acid, then adding stuff like corn syrup, caramel for brown color,
and preservatives like sodium benzoate or alcohol (to add a bit of smell).
Made in the US and Japan, where they also make nonfermented miso, I think.

The fermented type, or regular shoyu:

a) Natural shoyu, where the soybeans are fermented for 12-18 months at ambient
(natural) temperature, whole soybeans, natural (sea) salt, well water, roasted
cracked wheat, and a special mold Aspergillus oryzae (oryza - rice, maybe you
could use rice instead of wheat as you do in miso?).  Some of the natural
shoyu sold abroad by one Belgian compnay, since about 1960, is misleadingly
called tamari, which is a name supposed to be used for something else (see
below), but it is probably a guarantee of a natural soy product.

b) Regular (less natural) shoyu - made from defatted soybean meal, brewed
under control temperature and humidity (probably warmer to speed it up) for
4-6 months, less flavor.

c)  tamari shoyu - which is less wheat, 0-15% only, which makes for less
alcohol and affects the finished product - darker richer deeper flavor.
Very little was made (at least in 1976).

d) tamari without wheat, may have up to 15% roasted barley flour instead.
And may use the mold Aspergillus tamari.

The word tamari used to refer (since 1260) to the liquid drained off while
making miso (which also comes in many varieties, with many different
ingredients, as do rice wine and rice vinegar, which may have legumes in it;
the miso was made with soybeans and usually barley or rice - Coop carries two
types of it).

Chinese also make something like miso (soybean paste) and a soy sauce said
to be stronger and saltier than shoyu, natural or temp-controlled process.
There is also wine-fermented tofu, with its own microorganisms.  See The Book
of Tofu.  Als The Book of Tempeh, another mold-produced soy product.

None of these is a reliable source of B12, made by bacteria which may or may
not be present (and are certainly not found in the synthetic varieties).

Chinese soy sauce is available with mushrooms as an ingredient, and some
varieties have sugar added.  China Merchandise north of town has a huge
selection, the Thai and Lao store on Packard has Thai fermented tofu.  There
is also dried tofu, freeze-dried tofu, etc.  (Think of the number of ways
cheese is made or used in Western culture - soy products are a parallel).

Soy milk is easy to make, tofu is somewhat more work, tempeh is fussy.

Thanks for the tip, Audrey, and the info, Cynthia.

I cooked my first parsnip last night and although I found
the nutty banana-like flavor quite nice I'm sure there must be
a better way to present them then dry-roasted, which is the
route I took.

Any suggestions? 

Parsnips are great in soups and stews and they're wonderful simmered in 
a small amount of water with a little OJ and served with a touch of 
butter and nutmeg.

So there are treated much the same way as yams and carrots.
Thanks for the tip.  I'll do more next time around.

in borshch

I peel them, slice them, and fry them in a little oil with salt and pepper
to taste.  Frying's not the most healthy way to cook them, I suppose, but
it really brings out the natural sweetness.

I made some creamy parsnip soup a couple of days ago that
is very good.  The recipe is in the December issue of
Cooking Light, except it's for turnip soup and I made
the substitution.  

Very interesting nutty and sweet flavor.  Easy too.

Is there a good, economical, CONSISTENT brand of firm tofu available
in Ann Arbor?  It seem that every brand i try believes in random
labels - what's sold as "firm" or "extra firm" is actually anything
from "ultra soft" to "extra firm" - roll the dice each time you open
a package to see what you'll get.

I like Azumaya extra firm and have not noticed a 
difference in consistency from package to package.

I like the stuff in the bucket at the Coop.  It's pretty firm, and better than
the packaged stuff.

Cheaper, too. 

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