Important: While this facial scrub is made with largely natural ingredients, allergic reactions are always possible. Facial skin, especially around the eyes, is sensitive.

• Test a small area of skin in a less sensitive area, such as your arm, before applying it to your face.
• Avoid direct contact with the eyes or the mouth
• Those with nut allergies should use extra caution, as coconut oil is a primary ingredient

We originally used this scrub occasionally to treat irritated, very dry skin, serving as both an exfoliant and a moisturizer. Over time, one of us began using it daily with great results. Because coconut oil is the base, it can help or worsen acne depending on skin type and use. We do include castor oil and honey to help balance it. As with most skincare, results depend on context, since skin is highly personal. Let your skin’s response guide how often you use this scrub.

Let’s get to the ingredients

Here is what you will need:

• Dark Brown Sugar – 1 cup
• Coconut Oil – ½ cup
• Sea Salt – 1 tbsp
• Castor Oil -1 tbsp
• Vitamin E oil -1 tsp
• Arrowroot Powder – ½ tsp
• Dried Comfrey – ½ cup
• Honey – 1 tbsp
• Essential Oils – 30 drops +/-

The Why Breakdown

Each ingredient in this scrub serves a specific purpose. Some benefits are supported by research, others by long-standing traditional use. For us, the deciding factor is simple: it works.

Dark brown sugar provides gentle exfoliation, helping remove dead skin without being overly abrasive.

Sea salt adds exfoliating grit and helps reduce spoilage due to its natural preservative properties.

Coconut oil moisturizes and helps restore the skin barrier, making it especially useful for dry, irritated skin.

Castor oil balances coconut oil, offering anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties.

Vitamin E oil helps prevent moisture loss, softens skin, and supports skin repair.

Honey helps draw moisture into the skin and offers anti-inflammatory and antibacterial benefits.

Comfrey helps soothe and soften skin and supports hydration.

Arrowroot powder reduces the greasy feel of the scrub and helps improve overall texture.

Essential oils add scent and provide aromatherapy benefits, depending on the oils selected.

We recommend using organic and all-natural sources to ensure they maintain their full strength. The reality is, though, that it can get cost-prohibitive for some. We have written a couple of articles about what organic means and what it doesn’t. If you need to cut costs, do so; we have at times as well and haven’t noticed a significant difference.

Essential Oils

Essential oils let you customize this scrub for your intended use. For a morning scrub, brighter scents like eucalyptus, lemongrass, and tea tree work well. For evening use, softer options such as chamomile, rose, and lavender are more calming.

Use caution when selecting oils. Some essential oils, including cinnamon, clove, and peppermint, can irritate sensitive skin and are unsafe if they come into contact with the eyes. If you are unsure about an oil, check a reliable reference before adding it to the mix.

The how

So, how do you make this? It is easy

1. Gather up all ingredients, including the essential oils
2. Place in a food processor
3. Pulse for 30 seconds
4. Scrape down sides
5. Pulse again for 30 seconds.

At this point, check it. It is very easy to overblend. To ensure this works correctly, keep blending to a minimum to preserve the grit of the sugar and salt. It should feel gritty like coarse sand. You may need to repeat steps 4 and 5 a couple more times.

Place this in a jar or other sealable container. Since brown sugar, honey, and salt are hygroscopic, they degrade by absorbing moisture from the air. You know what air in a bathroom has in it? Water! Keep it sealed to extend its shelf life.

Using it

When you want to use it, open the container, take out a teaspoonful, and use it as you would any other facial scrub. It is that simple.

A Side Note

If you are concerned about coconut oil, you could substitute an alternative oil, such as olive oil. In that case, we would recommend adding more arrowroot to the mix. Why is this needed? Coconut oil is firm enough at room temperature to retain its shape, whereas olive oil does not. Additional arrowroot or other thickener would be needed to solidify the mixture and prevent separation. We have not tried this ourselves but it would be a good experiment to try.

Wrapping Up

You know how to create your own facial scrub and tune it to your needs. While the ‘green goo’ isn’t the prettiest, it is highly effective and made with ingredients that are generally low-cost and have known health benefits. In addition, it is easy to make, smells good, and can make a decent homemade gift.

The post How To Make A Great Facial Scrub first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Why Make It?

People post recipes that usually lead with claims like lower cost, more natural ingredients, fewer preservatives, or other health perks. We’re skipping that because our focus lies elsewhere. What we wanted was to be able to create things from scratch and tailor them to what we liked. As a result, like our bread recipe, we wanted a place to put the instructions so we could find them. That is what this blog post is. 

Our Peanut Butter Can Be Any Nut Butter

We may be talking about peanut butter, but technically, you can make your version with different nuts. It is the same process. We don’t only use peanuts in ours because we want a different depth of flavor. As an aside, the US does have standards for when to call something a spread or a butter. The tl;dr is here, and the more extended version is here. After making and eating a lot of nut butters, I am not a fan of these categorizations. 

Why aren’t we fans? Because we break nut butters into three types that don’t come from factories.

• First, you’ll find the basic grind at many local supermarkets. It’s usually just nuts, coarse, and in our experience, nearly impossible to spread.
• Then there’s the ultra-smooth kind—more like a sauce or jelly—that comes from high-oil nuts (or added oil) and long processing times.
• We want something in between: butter that spreads easily but still holds some firmness and texture—not as firm or creamy as Jif or Skippy. We appreciate those for what they are, but they lack the depth of flavor and homemade texture we’re after.

 It’s About the Oil Content

The final texture of nut butters comes down to how long you process them and how much oil the nuts contain. Raw ingredients aren’t always consistent—peanuts, for example, vary greatly. There are several types of peanuts and different methods for roasting them. Since peanuts are a crop, their characteristics depend on where and how they grow. That means oil content and texture can differ from batch to batch.

Our recipe uses a standard roasted, non-salted supermarket bulk peanut. We also add a bit of pecans to add depth of flavor. Want less oil? Use a dry-roasted peanut with no salt added for your peanut butter. Want to roast your own? Maybe try Alton Brown’s idea in his recipe.  

The important thing is that familiarity creates success. Once you have tried something and found something you like, realize that changing the nuts can impact how oily the peanut butter is, impacting the final consistency. 

Texture is About Time

This will sound like a Captain Obvious comment, but the longer you process the peanuts, the smoother the result. What is not so obvious is that you raise the heat level as you process. If you want silky, you can process the peanuts until they release their oil and become liquified. 

When you process under 10 minutes, you will not usually see the separation. Processing means pulsing your food processor for 1 minute, then letting it rest for 1 minute. Why do this? It’s about heat. You are slowly raising the temperature of the peanuts through friction. Based on our empirical evidence, once you hit 12-14 minutes of processing, your mix will liquify. For us, that isn’t simply about time; it happens at around 120℉-130℉.  

Here is the progression over time of the peanut butter as it goes from thick to a creamy sauce.

Chunky as it first comes together.

Blended similar to buying fresh ground in a store.

Creamy as the nuts release their fat.

Why is that important? If you want thick peanut butter at room temperature, you may not want to process it as long. If you want it to be thin and spreadable, you may need to keep it in the fridge to firm up. In the latter case, you don’t want to add more than a teaspoon of oil until you have completed processing to dial in the right consistency for your needs.

Hedging Your Bets

In terms of having it get too thin once it separates, you can hedge your bets and take out some insurance using a stabilizer like guar gum. Many people have issues with an additive that stabilizes or alters food chemically. Hear us out on this one first before saying ‘t’ain’t natural to be using that’

Guar gum, made from guar beans, is a natural thickener like corn starch or arrowroot powder. The key difference is that it thickens without heat, which makes it ideal for recipes that don’t involve cooking, like peanut butter or fermented hot sauces. You can read more about it here.

Some individuals are sensitive to guar gum just like those sensitive to soy, nuts, milk, whey, or other food intolerances. However, guar gum is also a common ingredient in the food world, so you are probably already consuming it if you have had something as familiar as a pint of Ben & Jerry’s (or others) Ice Cream. We aren’t picking on them, but we use them to show how common the usage is.

Storage

Our recipe creates an easily spreadable peanut butter. The oil (fat) is drawn out of the nuts into a suspension to make it spreadable, which makes it a bit unstable. Depending on your kitchen, at room temperature, it may be too thin for you, and due to the instability, it may allow the oil to separate. We recommend storing it in the fridge after making it to allow it to thicken and solidify. This may take up to 12 hours. We would rather keep it in the refrigerator than add any shelf stabilizer to it.

Print

Smooth Peanut Butter

A recipe for a smooth Peanut or an 'Any' nut butter.

Keyword Bread, Condiment, Sandwich, Sauce, Side

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Processing Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 30 minutes minutes

Equipment

• 1 Food Processor
• 1 Spatula

Ingredients

• 12 oz Roasted Peanuts
• 2 oz Roasted Pecans You can use all peanuts but this will create a different depth of flavor.
• 2 tsp Kosher Salt Use more or less to your liking.
• 1 tsp Peanut Oil You may need more based on the oil content of your nuts.
• 3 tbsp Honey Use more or less to your liking.
• 1/2 tsp Guar Gum Optional

Instructions

• Gather all ingredients before you start.
• Place all dry ingredients in a Food Processor
• Process for 1 minute, let rest for 1 minute. We are using this to process / rest interval to control how we raise the temperature.
• Process for 1 minute as you drizzle in the oil and honey mix, then rest for 1 minute.
• Sample flavor and adjust salt and honey to taste.
• Continue to process for 1 minute / rest 1 minute 8-10 more times.
• The temperature should slowly come up to 120-130 Fahrenheit.
• At this point, you should have a major consistency change as the fats liquify. If not, continue to pulse/rest a few more times until you see it seperate.
• Add oil to adjust the consistency to liking.
• Place in jar and set in fridge to firm up. It may take up to 12 hours to fully solidify.

Wrapping Up

This post provides the basics for making a simple homemade creamy peanut or nut recipe. You can experiment with nuts, sweeteners, and consistency to tailor the recipe to your liking. For example, walnuts and maple syrup create a great nut butter with a different flavor profile to spread on apple slices in the fall.

The post How To Make Peanut Butter first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

A Tale of Two Leavenings

What makes bread rise is pretty simple. It is a mix of expanding gases and how much structure, traditionally gluten, has been developed in the bread. Not enough gases or gluten, and bread doesn’t rise. Oddly enough, too much gas may allow the bread to rise, but more like a balloon than having a great crumb. This is how Choux pastry works, which is a terrible dough for bread. On the other hand, too much gluten and the air can’t create enough pressure to lift the dough.

 Leavened bread is any bread that rises via a leavening agent. In an over-simplification, we will say there are two types of leavening that produce the proper gases to help the dough rise; chemical and yeast. We use the term gases to cover everything from steam to carbon dioxide. Let’s take this one definition further. Chemically leavened breads are generally classified as quick breads. Examples of quick breads are pancakes, muffins, and banana bread. 

Yeast breads are those that are leavened by way of critters and a byproduct of their binge eating. Yeast consumes sugar and turns starch into sugar to consume it next. The byproduct of their consumption is alcohol, carbon dioxide, and organic acids. That yeast may come in several forms, but it is all basically critters having a big ol’ party that makes your bread rise. 

But Chemicals Are Bad!

Ok, yes, we know, the word chemical scares people. The word chemical, in our context here, is not some crazy concoction made by some multinational conglomerate bent on world destruction by way of your GI tract. Chemical leavening is the natural reaction of things like acids and bases that create expanding gases in the same way a school science project volcano does. If you use baking soda and baking powder, you are making a chemical leavened bread. 

When Chemical Leavening Goes Wrong

Quick breads and other chemically leavened items generally are a bit more foolproof than getting yeast breads to rise. If you are following a known good recipe, and things don’t work out, it is probably something simple that went wrong. Since this is not a post on how to create a recipe using these two, for brevity, we will focus on what usually goes wrong.

• Old ingredients that have degraded. Baking powder and baking soda have a shelf life and can break down over time. To test them:
  • Place a small amount of baking soda in a bowl and add vinegar. If it fizzes, it is good, otherwise replace it.
  • Put hot water in a small bowl and add baking powder to it. If it fizzes, it is good, otherwise replace it. 
• Improper mixing, especially over mixing of can cause quick breads to not rise. When mixed too much, gluten forms and keeps the gases from creating lift. Pancakes are notorious for having this problem so leave some small lumps please. 
• You added or substituted something that threw off the chemical balance. Remember chemical leavening has to be a balance of acid and base to work right. If you use buttermilk over whole milk, you have changed the chemical composition of the recipe.

Yeast, The Beast

You can write a lot about yeast. Many of our most loved foods come from their digestive antics. Yeast are what create leavened bread and alcohol. This is a post about fixing things, not the yeast themselves. To do that, we need to understand a little but not a lot about them. 

Ask someone how many types of yeast there are and you will get mixed answers because they are used in so many different ways and some have brand-specific names.  To keep it simple, we will try and limit it to those used in making dough. Each type of yeast has specific qualities, which you can read about from people who know more than us. Starters such as sourdough or Bittman, are also created by yeast. They are a living, breathing, set of active critters that can be called up to help bread rise. 

Unless they are dead, or asleep, or…, or…, and yes, that is the challenge with yeast. They are somewhat temperamental and need to be alive and active or they are of no use. They also need to be treated right, or they won’t produce well like any other people who work for you. Most of the time bread doesn’t rise, it is because our little bubble makers have been done wrong. We will get to why that can happen without you knowing you did anything wrong.

The Primary Reasons Breads Fall Flat

We won’t try and give every reason bread can fail to rise, but we can cover the major reasons for it. We will explain why, and how to avoid it the next time. Here are some likely culprits.

• The yeast you used is not active or dead.
• There isn’t enough or there is too much gluten or structure in the dough.
• You didn’t let it rise long enough.
• As with yeast problems, the starter isn’t ready even though it bubbles.

These are all the core issues for bread not rising. Let’s examine each one.

In Active or Dead Yeast

This is probably the number one reason bread doesn’t rise. Yeast are a bit finicky. They may need to be woken up to work, which is known as proofing the yeast. You need to know which type of yeast you are using to know if they must be woken up first before use. Once you know that, you can look at the type and application and do a quick Google search. 

Regardless, we always proof our yeast or at least check some of it if it has been sitting, no matter which type we use. It is easy to check it is alive by putting a ¼ of a teaspoon of it in warm water to make sure it creates bubbles after a 2-3 minutes or so. Warm water brings us to the other finicky side of yeast, temperatures, and chemicals. 

What is warm water? Warm is a subjective term. Warm water means any range from 95℉ to 115℉ depending on yeast type. At 120F yeast starts dying. Think about that for a minute. Our bodies are roughly 98.6F. The difference between what is ‘warm’ to us and dead yeast is not very big. This is why we use a thermometer to check our water temps. 

Also remember that in certain areas of the world, the water supply has chemicals such as chlorine specifically designed to kill all bugs, not just bad ones. If you are having continuing problems, it may be time to look at that as a possibility. This can be fixed, usually, by using distilled or filtered water. We make bread with tap water all the time, but others aren’t always so lucky. 

Gluten and Dough Structure

Bread requires structure, which is generally formed by gluten, to trap air bubbles to allow it to rise. If not enough gluten is present, the dough won’t have enough structure to rise. If too much gluten is present, the dough also can’t rise since the air and gas pressure can’t push or pull the structure around. 

Let’s face it, most recipes also use all sorts of strange things for a definition of how bread dough should feel. It makes it hard for people new to bread making to understand when enough is enough when kneading bread. To fix this, for many breads, you can use what is known as a window pane test to get an idea of where you’re at. While this doesn’t work for all bread types, it is a good gauge to use as you teach yourself how much is enough. 

 It Didn’t Rise Enough

Yes, yeast is fickle. We have established that. It turns out they have their own schedule. Many bread recipes will tell you to allow it to rise for some stated time or until it doubles in size, or a combination of both. Time, in recipes, is a guideline not a reality. Even the idea of the bread doubling in size is technically a suggestion. 

 How much rise you can have and how fast it can happen are directly related to how active your yeast is and how much gas they can produce. That is directly related to how much food is available to them, and the temperature they are at. Simply put, yeast work faster the warmer they are up until a point. That doesn’t mean you want them going all out either. The best range for a dough rise is generally 75℉-78℉.

To improve your odds of success, it is best to do a poke test on the dough rather than simply wait and hope. When you do a poke test, you get a realistic idea of just how much rise has happened and how much the yeast has inflated the dough. This is the same way we may test a bike tire or beach ball for how inflated it is. 

Starter Didn’t Start It

A challenge that arises when using a starter is that you also have to know when that starter is ready. Just because a starter is producing bubbles doesn’t mean it is a gung ho colony of yeast ready for a mission. We realized this as we started doing sourdough. Our first loaf was dense enough to be hardtack. 

When you are just starting with some of these new items, you may not understand how bubbly that bubbly should be. Of course, again, most recipes will tell you ‘doubled in size’ for both starter and bread. That is a hard lesson to learn in both the amount of time and the ingredients wasted. 

A helpful solution for this is what is called a float test. A float test is placing a small bit of a starter into water to see if it floats. This test gives you some assurance that the starter is not only mature enough, but is at peak production before it falls back onto itself. 

Wrapping Up

Many things can go wrong in creating bread. In this post we have addressed many of the big ones. Even if these are not 100% full proof for every situation, they give you some tools to start digging into the problem. If you use them, they can help you methodically eliminate much of the noise from “What did I do wrong?”. For each item you know works with certainty, you can feel more secure in your abilities. All of this can also help reduce the wasted time and ingredients you have spent precious time and money on. 

The post It’s Easy To Fix Problems With Bread first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Background

Many of us have heard the story of the Earl of Sandwich and his gambling that spawned the sandwich. It was bread and beef, but that is what it is today? What about the submarine, grinder, hot dog, or burrito? It turns out both the FDA and USDA  govern the definition of sandwich. Not only do they govern it, some states have their take on it. Stranger still, or maybe not, it varies from country to country with groups like the British Sandwich Association or BSA. 

All of this seems more of something to keep lawyers busy than anything to do with food. That makes it an interesting sidebar but not something that helps us. Let’s use this information to set context that we will be considering only a case of a closed sandwich rather than anything else.  What is a closed sandwich? We will call it two or more pieces of bread that contain filling between them.

Callout, You do You

We are looking to learn how we can create a perfect sandwich, and what it means to us. We are not telling people to not go out and make the sloppiest sandwich known to humanity. The same goes for restaurants that serve sandwiches or burgers the size of someone’s head. It’s not our jam but we dig others may like it. You do you. This is also why we will leave the recipes for sandwiches to someone like Alton Brown and other chefs. It was his show that spawned the idea behind the post. We wanted to dig a bit further than he did. 

Why? Who Cares?

As usual, we are doing this as much as a thought experiment for us as much as we are for others to ponder. When I order a sandwich, I don’t want to receive something that I can’t eat without a bib or knife and fork. Worse still, when I bite into a sandwich I don’t want the fillings to be shot out of the other side. In both cases, if I have to use a fork and knife to eat it, it is not a sandwich. It just feels like bad craftsmanship and a waste of food. Ok, I will step down from my soapbox now.

Still, why does that matter to others? It is very simple to us. The entire point of a sandwich was to be able to carry on something while using a single hand to eat with. Whether you fish, play cards, read during lunch, or any of a myriad of other activities, the purpose of a sandwich was to only occupy a single clean hand to consume nutrition without utensils.   

Combine that thought with the want of good food and there is the reason for why. We’re good with a baloney and cheese sandwich sometimes. Other times, not so much. A grilled cheese sandwich can be sublime in the same way a tuna sandwich can be. Where things get more complicated is, say a chicken salad on wheat. 

What makes or breaks most meals is water content. A good cook knows how to manipulate the water content of food to create something more than just palatable but enjoyable. Here is why water, and manipulating it, is so important. 

Water boils at sea level at 212℉. If you want moisture in your food, you can’t raise the temperature over that number or the food will start to dry. When water is present in food, cooking it initially produces steam, which prevents creating a crust as you would for, say, toast.  As heat penetrates the food, the outer layers’ temperatures go up and caramelization or browning via the Maillard reaction starts. The real trick is to make everything from moist fried chicken to toast to a seared yet juicy burger is about balancing water evaporation as the food cooks.

This balance of wet and dry, soft and hard drives the mouthfeel of what we are eating. In fried chicken, you get the crunchy crust around the juicy meat. In a seared burger, you taste a bit of the char with the still moist meat. With toast, we end up with a crisp caramelized surface with, depending on slice thickness, a soft center. It is in that balance where basic nutrition becomes great food.

The Balance of Structure with Wet and Dry 

Sandwiches need the same manipulation of wet and dry as any other type of food. Additionally, sandwiches must provide a structure which makes them a little more complicated. It’s this relationship that can make or break a good sandwich. Let’s put down some axioms to help us form a sandwich construction rubric.

First Axiom: The harder the bread, the more pressure exerted on the contents when bitten, but the less moisture will impact it.

Second Axiom: The softer the bread, the easier it is to bite, but it’s much more susceptible to falling apart by getting soggy with wet ingredients. 

Third Axiom: For a sandwich to stay together, the layers must provide enough friction against each other to keep the sandwich from sliding apart.

Fourth Axiom: A sandwich is not a bread bowl or bowl of any type so it should not hold ingredients that need that level of containment.

Let’s dig in a bit more on all of these.

The Big 3 

Our first axiom is about dealing with hard bread and/or toasted bread. The harder the crust of a sandwich is, the more bite pressure it takes to get through it. That pressure is then transferred to the filling of the sandwich. That is great if we have a deli-meat and cheese sandwich, which creates a flat structure.

If we add avocado on that sandwich or use that bread to make a toasted tuna fish, the results won’t be great. In sandwiches, softer ingredients don’t always play well with harder ingredients and are usually ejected from the sandwich, onto you. We need to balance how much give is left in the bread to allow it to contain the ingredients when bitten.

In the second axiom, we know that when we add wet ingredients to soft bread, it can become, well, soup, not bread. By using a firmer crust or a light toasting, we create a barrier to that moisture destroying our bread. When we toast it too much, we may, however, run into our first axiom. This can be counteracted by a thicker slice of bread, which creates a cushion for the bite pressure. 

The third axiom is no different than building a house or a high rise. When we consider a building, each level higher we go, we must make sure it is structurally sound. That means hard and soft textures need to work together to create a cohesive structure, or things will eject from the sandwich. You have probably witnessed this in action if you have ever eaten a burger with lots of sauce and leaf lettuce. If the lettuce was shredded, it would hold in place rather than make a slip and slide.

The Big Bowl

At another time in our history, people used trenchers instead of more refined service items. Yes, your bread was your utensils, bowl, etc. That is great. In the modern world, we see that a deep dish pizza is not a sandwich. Sandwiches are a form of service ware to hold your fillings. Up to a point that is fine. Where it becomes problematic is in trying to make a sandwich with items that don’t belong. Thick salsas, cherry tomatoes, olives, etc. can destroy the structure of a sandwich quickly. 

Let’s talk about types of chicken sandwiches to make the point. If you are preparing a chicken salad sandwich with lovely big chunks of chicken in slippery mayo, it will be better in a bowl than between bread. Why? Unless the bread slice is thick enough and soft enough to deform into a bowl, the ingredients will fall out.  Let’s change that to pulled chicken in BBQ sauce. If it is piled high and heavily sauced, nothing will hold it. Fry that chicken breast and you will have no problem.

Cheese as Binding Container

When it comes to hot sandwiches, cheese can do you a structural favor. By placing the cheese over all the other ingredients and melting it, you in essence, create a shell around those ingredients. This results in a sandwich that will hold tougher despite some of the axioms we have discussed. 

Wrapping Up

We discussed aspects of sandwich making to set up a rubric for more success than failures. This thought experiment hopefully helps others think through how to make tweaks to how they look at sandwiches. We also discussed why they aren’t as simple as two slices of bread and some meat or vegetables. With a bit of thinking, a simple sandwich can be elevated to a one-hand buffet over just a midnight snack. 

The post A Guide To Better Sandwiches first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Limiting Scope

This post will kick off a series of other more specific posts. Unfortunately, we feel you could write an article per type of food on how to reheat it. That is problematic time-wise and doesn’t run the steel thread of understanding the processes so others can self-help. It also doesn’t take into account a person’s individual calorie budget and serving sizes. We will get to how those change the art of re-heating. 

The Basics

For brevity let’s limit our discussion to some simple ideas that we can expand on later. We would assert that most of our cooking falls into 2 main ways of transferring heat:

• Convection is the transfer of heat from the air to the food such as happens in an oven.
• Conduction is transferring heat to the food by direct contact between the heat source and the food.

  We would also add there are only two ways of applying heat to cook food.

• Dry methods where the cooking process does not rely on a large amount of liquid to transfer heat. These, in our definition, are methods such as sauteing or roasting.
• Wet methods where the primary transfer is based on liquid such as water or oil. This type of cooking is how boiling, frying, and microwaving work.

Mix and Match

Almost all the food you cook will be a mix of these elements. Most cooking is about water management and reaching a safe temperature for the food. Taking that ride from raw to done imparts flavors and textures that please us such as caramelization via the Maillard Reaction. We may concentrate flavors via reductions of water as well such as in, well, a reduction. This method also applies to items like chicken stock or jams.

Where the confusion arises is that most things we cook are hybrids of the four bullet points above. What we want to do is understand what the outcome from our methods produces to reheat it. Did our cooking create something that needs to be reheated vs a dry method or a wet method? This begs the question do we reheat it through convection or conduction?

Hybrid Examples 

Let’s examine two hybrids, lasagna, and fried fish, to understand what we are discussing in terms of methods vs outcomes. We found it easy to ruin both lasagna and fried fish if reheated incorrectly. When we think of lasagna we see it as a dry convection method. For fried fish, it is usually a wet conduction method. The output is a bit different though.

We would classify lasagna as a wet method like a stew. Why such a weird idea? Lasagna cooks by method provided by its water content even though the heat is powered by dry convection. It is the same process that happens when making a casserole or braising meat. Dry heat in an oven raises the temperature of the fluid in the lasagna to cook it through boiling and/or steaming. A microwave is a wet conduction method as it uses the water in the food to heat it. Practically speaking a microwave steams or boils food from the inside out. That makes lasagna a perfect candidate to reheat in a microwave. 

Have you ever tried to microwave fried fish or fries? They turn out pretty nasty in our opinion but why? They are both technically cooked as wet methods of conducting cooking. The outcome of frying food is to drive most of the moisture out of the exterior of the food and create a crust locking moisture in. If that moisture is then released as steam, you get soggy fries and fish. What does a microwave do, well, it produces steam. That is why those foods need dry convection heat to reheat them

Two Other Variables

There are two other variables in our reheating discussion. They are the concepts of thermal capacity and safety. Most of us want to reheat food to preserve its original quality. In concept our matrix of methods above accounts for most items. Thermal capacity and food safety get in the way of that at times so we will set up how to deal with them here. First, let’s identify them

• The USDA states that all leftovers should be reheated to 165℉ to be considered safe.
• The surface-to-mass ratio of the food dictates how much thermal capacity it has and how long heating it thoroughly will take.

The first thing you will notice is that 165℉ is above what some foods are initially cooked to. Let’s talk about that one a little more in-depth

Is It Done?

The USDA has to deal with a broad population which means groups like the very old very young and everyone in between. That means they must put out safety information that others may not suit all. They also must account for all different parts of the food chain from the field where the cow is raised to re-heating leftover roast. That is a lot of places for bad things to happen and bugs to grow.

To us, if a steak is over 135℉ it is overcooked. That is us, not others. We sometimes go as low as 125F for a roast. That is what you will find many people consider rare and is a common way of cooking it.  Personally, fish over 145℉-150℉, unless deep fried where we don’t notice, is overdone. Won’t reheating leftovers push it past the point we like it? That being our pre-packaged hamburger and chicken is getting pushed to 165℉ because we can’t trust it.

We take a ‘let’s be reasonable’ approach and use the USDA as guidelines. We buy food from known sources. When we prep and cook, we have a clean kitchen that gets cleaned regularly. We store food in the fridge or freezer properly. Nothing gets left in the zone for long unless it is intentional. Simply put, we don’t take a lot of chances so we can cook to whatever temperature we are comfortable with. You need to do you, but when you push the temps up, you aren’t re-heating, you are re-cooking. 

Mass to Surface Area

This is one of the most misunderstood variables and one of the most important in heating. Here are the two axioms to know

• The larger something is, the more time it takes to cook. 
• How fast it absorbs heat is directly related to its surface area where it contacts the heat. 

One caveat to that is the microwave but let’s stick to the general for now. Based on these two axioms, we want to reheat food up to temp as quickly as possible without re-cooking it. What isn’t obvious is that it creates conditions where we want to use the lowest heat possible so we don’t overcook the outer part of the food before the interior reaches temp. 

Important Temps to Know

One last piece of the reheating puzzle is two important temperatures. At sea level water boils and turns to steam at 212℉. The Maillard Reaction, or browning of food begins at anywhere from 280℉ to 330℉. Depending on what sugars are present, caramelization follows the Maillard reaction. Eventually, you end up in the burnt stage of Pyrolysis which, in short form, means burnt. 

Why are these temps important? They are important to know so we get what we want from reheating. Do we care about a crust? Then we don’t want to create steam via a wet method. What if we want to raise the temp of something without further browning? In that case, we want to stay under 280℉ 

Back to the Examples

Our serving size of lasagna has a high mass-to-surface ratio. To cook it without further caramelizing, we need to reheat it at a low temp. Because we don’t want to overcook the outside before the inside is warm, we want to take our time but we also want to eat. That is a perfect case for a slow-wet method of cooking so we boil it correct? No, but close.

A microwave, when used correctly, provides a wet method of cooking that steams the lasagna from the inside out. Oddly enough, as water is removed from tomato sauce it is capable of creating a temperature higher than the boiling point of water. Those temps can cause caramelization and overcooking to occur. Yes, we have burned lasagna and melted plastic in a microwave when not careful. For that reason, we want to slowly heat our food at 212℉. For our portion size of 4-6 oz, that usually means a microwave on half power for 10 minutes in a lightly sealed container to hold in the steam.

Our fish is the exact opposite as they are usually high surface-to-mass pieces. We add it to a preheated toaster oven that is running at 275℉ degrees for approximately 10 minutes. This low dry heat helps preserve the crust without causing more browning. The fish is small enough it heats quickly without being over cooked. 

Wrapping up

In this post, we have discussed some of the basic physics and chemistry involved in cooking. By recognizing how the food was created, and what it has become, you can decide how to reheat it. Truly, no one wants to eat leftovers that don’t feel close to the original food they were. If we can get them close, we can save ourselves time and energy in making one-off meals. We can also control how much we waste when we overcook.

The post How To Better Reheat Leftover food first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

A Little History:

As with all things food, the flour tortilla’s origin is somewhat contested. While corn tortillas aren’t as disputed as corn originated in Mexico, flour and its uses are a little harder to trace. Some believe these came from Mexico, and some think of them as Tex-Mex. There is even some idea that they are by-products of Catholic, Jewish, and Moorish immigration in the Northern Mexico / SW US area. 

Do we care where it came from? Probably not but it’s fun to ruminate on its origin stories.  Even more interesting is that all of the above cultures and religions have some form of unleavened bread or flatbread. The tortilla is one of those breads that can be either or. What does that make it? That makes it a great stand-in for other breads!

The Calorie Budget Conscience And Consistent

We won’t argue that mass-produced tortillas are great. That said, we also won’t make the argument that mass-produced bread is great. Mass-produced tortillas are simply practical and predictable. There are times when that wins out over homemade especially when considering pantry staples.

For most of our items, we use Mission flour Fajita Tortillas because they are the best! Not exactly. We use them because they are ubiquitous, inexpensive, consistent, and have a decent shelf life. No matter the grocery store, we can generally find them.  They are 110 calories a piece. This is perfect for our calorie budget. By the time we get done adding toppings and or other ingredients, their meal comes in at around 200-250 calories per tortilla-based item. 

But What Can You Do With Them?

You could write an entire book on using tortillas other than in Tex-Mex and Mexican dishes. They can be substituted for just about any flat or unleavened bread. We use them for everything from our Doritos to pizzas. We don’t have time for a book so instead we will focus on cooking styles and examples. 

The Out Of Package

• Wraps of meats, cheese, and veggies.
• Folded sandwiches.
• A side for soups and chilis. 

The Baked Flat

• In impromptu personal pizza using pizza sauce, cheese, and other toppings.
• The above folded for a calzone.
• Covered with olive oil,  garlic, rosemary, and sea salt like Focaccia. 
• Covered with buttered, garlic and zaatar similar to Naan.
• Spiced with seasonings, cut into wedges, and baked like Dorritos.
• Spiced with sugar and cinnamon and butter like cinnamon toast. 

The Baked Or Microwaved Rolled

• Meat and cheese wraps to create melts.  
• Mini-calzones and pizza rolls. 
• Breakfast roll-ups with eggs, meat, and veggies.

A note on cooking methods. Baking and frying them will create a crispy tortilla. The higher the heat, the more likely it is to brown or burn. Microwaves will cook them but will create a chewier result. This is also why they are so versatile to have around. You can be creative with textures by simply changing the heating method.

And yes you can deep fry them, pan fry them, and even fill them with seafood. They are a blank slate. That is the point. If we keep frozen chicken, ham, cheddar, mozzarella, salami, pizza sauce, and some basic spices, we can easily make multiple combinations of food. They also give us more flexibility so we can easily use up leftovers creatively. And one more point, they freeze well if you put wax paper between them before freezing.

Here are the wins

• Save money by using one basic staple that is cheap in multiple ways.
• Always have a starch on hand for when you need something impromptu.
• Give them a purpose past Taco Tuesday where there are usually some left over. 
• Save time as many of the above take no time to make. 

What? No Recipes? 

No, we aren’t providing them because in many ways they already exist. Ok, maybe one for the Doritos. The goal of this post is really to call attention to how a single staple can create so many different meals. There are very talented people out there who I use the recipes of all the time. When it comes to the ingredient list, we may substitute a tortilla on hand for one of the recipe’s ingredients. That is why we focused on getting information on how to simplify things like meal planning and cooking. 

In this specific case, we also feel like each of the items discussed is a formula. The actual ingredients you use are based on your taste. If you like cheesy pesto pizzas tortillas instead of pepperoni and red sauce, you do you. And let’s face it, this is not a meal item that is going to be on the next Iron Chef America. This is a meal item to simplify making food within a calorie and time budget.

Wrapping Up

In this post, we discussed how useful the tortilla can be as a staple in the kitchen. By keeping these types of basic, blank canvas staples around, you give yourself meal flexibility. With that flexibility also comes calorie consistency and time savings. This simple example is how we started to recognize what we need to keep on hand and really, what we didn’t to avoid eating out more often.

The post Get More Out Of A Simple Tortilla first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Back to the Beginning

Going back in time, we ate out a lot. It was fun to try new things. Over time, we started to see patterns. It wasn’t just local food patterns. The more we traveled, the more we saw the same patterns repeated. It wasn’t just the food we ate out. If you stop by a country or farmers market, you see many of the same things as great ideas spread quickly even when those items are artisan-made.

As the internet has spread knowledge and people have moved around the US we assert cooking has become less regional. For example, we have had some great New England Clam Chowder in Newport, Oregon which is, was, and remains absolutely nowhere near New England. If we are going to eat the same everywhere, why not just make it ourselves? Ironically, this consistency was born out of the Fast Food Industry however that is another post.

Fries are Potatoes, That is all they Are.

Fried or baked potatoes are fries. Sure, fries vary by name and process but they are still just cooked potato starches. We jazz them up with names like steak, hand cut, double fried, or crinkle cut. The particular type of fry may or may not have some seasoning and is generally served with ketchup, fry sauce, or other condiments. Regardless of the process, spice, flavoring, or final textures, all fries are just cooked potatoes.

You don’t have to agree and maybe it is a huge generalization to say that. Why say it? Because in the most basic sense, it isn’t the fry itself that is where the flavor is. We started to look at this and recognized we ate a lot of basic fries when eating out. It was rarely the fry itself that stuck out as great. The real flavor of a fry came from how they were seasoned and what they were served with.

The A-Ha Moment

While deep frying can be problematic due to cleanup, crinkle, and steak fries became part of our new at-home cooking repertoire. It was also about calories. To fit our calorie budget and health goals we stuck to baked fries such as crinkle cut and steak. We were walking through our local grocery store and saw certain chicken restaurants’ versions of fry sauce in a bottle. I was about to grab it and then decided there was no way we would use 16 ounces (which is 24 servings) of fry sauce at 160 calories a serving. 

This now became a search of what could I make if we had basic ingredients on hand. The basic sauces we bought or wanted were Honey Mustard, Sriracha-Ranch, Fry Sauce, Tartar, and Curry Ketchup. Our pantry had all the raw ingredients on hand because all of these were built out of basics. The basic condiments (Ketchup, Mayonnaise, Mustard),  and spices (Onion, Garlic, and Curry Powder) with a couple of other basic items we used all the time (Ranch Dressing, Honey,  and Sriracha). 

They also took all of 5 minutes to make, didn’t take up any more room in the kitchen, or produce any more waste. Buying them seemed counter-productive when we could make them ourselves in very little time with the ingredients we already had. Let’s shift to the hard ones, which aren’t easy and do take up time. 

If We Could Make Some, Could We Make All?

Making your own bread, hot sauce, crackers, pickles, candy, and even beer doesn’t make sense from a financial or time point of view for too many of us at first glance. That is to say, you can buy all of these items at a low price with no time investment other than driving to your local grocer. Why bother then? Most people will say it is to produce a higher quality item with fewer additives. That is part of the reasoning. For us, it was three simple things.

• It was a way to have hobbies that had outcomes that were things we needed.
• We knew exactly what went into what we made.
• We controlled our portion sizes and limited our waste.

The third bullet point is where the economies of scale kicked in for us. First, let’s talk about hobbies and knowing what we made. 

We Could But Why?

We wanted some of our hobbies, that we paid money to do, to produce value-added items to our life. It is fine to have hobbies that simply are fun to do. When writing out a budget, we took that into account. We realized we could offset some of our non-disposable income from groceries to fun money if the outcome from our hobbies helped produce the groceries we needed. This helped us justify some of our trips and hobbies such as fishing and gardening.   

While we did want to know what went into what we made, it wasn’t as key to us in making things ourselves. The reality for us is reading the back of the package, and the artificial ingredients in store-bought food were not scary. Why? Because to make some of the items we make we had to learn about them by doing our research. This took the fear out of many additives for us though we still did limit as much adulteration of food as we could. 

It’s About Both Reuse and Portion Size

The economies of scale are where things kicked off but not in the way we initially think of saving money. While some of the equipment was an investment, over time, it gets cheaper and cheaper to create the same items. You may need to buy a fermenter to make pickles or hot sauce. That is a one-time investment. After that, the same fermenter can be used over and over again. Same with a dehydrator for jerky which is another post.

What we found was that items lasted longer with less waste. By making our own we could tailor the size of the portions to our calorie budget needs. A store-bought item such as sliced bread has a pre-determined portion size. That is the same with bagels, crackers, cookies, candies, etc. If you want that portion size that is great. We didn’t which either led to wasted food and money or over-eating. It is in the customizable size for each item which makes it worth the time to make it ourselves.

Dollars and Sense

In complete honesty, whether or not it is cheaper to create items at home can be debated. Empirically we see a cost savings for us. The reality is that may not be the case for everyone. Just because the ingredients are cheaper, it doesn’t mean there aren’t additional hidden costs. Gas and power for cooking aren’t free. Your time isn’t free. We believe you will feel more rewarded and have better food and lower costs however, it may not be large financial savings. This is exactly why we consider it part of our hobbies and lifestyle choice over cost savings.

Where We Win

We get to eat the things most people can’t keep in their diet because we:

• Have control of the portion size to fit our budgets
• Know the ingredients so we can make it on a smaller budget.
• We re-use all the equipment we bought for multiple purposes.

After reading this post we hope you agree that learning to make many things yourself helps manage finances, waste, and calories. We assert we all buy convenience items that can be made cheaply and be of just as high or better quality. It also helps divert funds from things like eating out to creating better meals through your means. This frees up more budget for other pursuits and hobbies. 

The post Learn How To Make Versus Buy first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Food, Furniture, or Software, it’s still a Recipe

We spent many years in the software industry writing requirements for engineers to create systems, applications, and features. You would think that was easy. All you need to do is tell them I want a web page that displays a user’s items in a user’s checkout cart.  Can they change the items in the cart? How do they check out? What are the colors of the error messages? It gets to be a bit of a rat hole quickly. 

Why is it so problematic and how does that relate to recipes? TL;DR, the reality is while we may use the same terms those terms may be defined differently by two different individuals who never ask about the context they are being used in. What we are talking about is how one individual, who may never meet the other, gives that person their knowledge in a reproducible way. 

A Recipe Is an Instruction Set

Recipes are an instruction set or formula that has specific ingredients and processes in an order. To be reproducible they must include the ingredients and the process to make something. This makes them no different than putting together Ikea furniture or a DIY shed kit. Sounds complicated right? No one wants to sit down, go through every step, and maybe watch a video as well. You want dinner and you want it now but that is exactly where things go wrong. 

Details Matter and Lessons Learned

Mia Culpa I know this first hand. I love Baklava so I bought an old-school cookbook, followed the recipe, and threw it in the oven. The hours started to go by and I kept checking it from 7 pm until 10 pm before deciding something was wrong as it wasn’t turning brown. After re-reading the recipe about 10 times I had a face-palm moment. 

While the entire cookbook used standard measurements such as cups and teaspoons, it had cooking temperatures in Celsius. I set my oven to 180 Fahrenheit instead of 350 Fahrenheit because I didn’t pay attention to the notation. It was a simple mistake back before we were a more global society and had things like the internet. Luckily it was savable, but I still use that as an example of the importance of reading the fine print. 

Breaking it Down to Tips and Traps. 

Helpful Tips:

• Read the recipe end to end and make sure you aren’t surprised by a step. The writer may not tell you that you need to have something like an ice bath ready until they hit that step. 
• When you see a term you don’t know, search it. Terms such as sweat and saute are very specific forms of cooking.
• Measure as they measure and use the ingredients in the manner they use them. If it is two cups of diced carrots you will significantly alter the recipe by substituting sliced carrots due to the volume change.
• When possible use recipes with weights such as grams or ounces over volume units such as cups and teaspoons. Weight is considered more accurate than volume measurements.
• Read the comments on the recipe to see how many people made changes and why. 
• If you need half a cup of celery or onion, you will have leftover ingredients you have paid for. it would be good to be able to plan for their use before they end up wasted.
• Follow the steps of the recipe as precisely as you can. Many times the writer may not know they are doing something that has a specific name and outcome. I have read many recipes that don’t state clearly why you may be doing something like creaming or kneading. 

Traps to Avoid:

• When the recipe has ambiguous terms such as ‘until fragrant’ or ‘at a sizzle’ make sure you are aware of their intent. For example, when fragrant is the only indication of doneness, it is very easy to burn spices which only have about 10 seconds from ‘fragrant’ to charred.
• Read the number of steps and inactive prep time, not just the active minutes. Some recipes are way more involved than simply the time you are preparing them. Bread is notorious for having 12-14 distinct steps most of the time is for the dough to rise. 
• If you have special dietary needs, verify you can make the appropriate substitutions in the recipe. Simply changing from say buttermilk to skim milk can cause an acid imbalance that keeps proper leaving from occurring. 
• Follow the steps of the recipe as precisely as you can. Many times the writer may not know they are doing something that has a specific name and outcome. I have read many recipes that don’t state clearly why you may be doing something like creaming or kneading. 
• If you don’t have the pans types (manufacturers don’t matter) don’t make the dish unless you do some research. When cooking, some pan types, shapes, and materials they are made from imply specific methods of cooking. You can use one pan for many things but you have a better chance of success if you are keeping close to what the recipe calls for.

In Closing

Circling back around, a recipe is two things; ingredients and a process to create something with them. These sets of instructions are no different than doing DIY kits such as furniture. Once that is understood you can understand very quickly which will work and which won’t by reading them. It is really easy to fall into the trap of seeing a pretty picture on a site or book and not paying attention to the details. The details are what are important. Unlike furniture, you can’t simply unscrew something and flip it over once you see the mistakes. 

The post Be A Better Cook By Seeking Details first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

It’s All About Heat Transfer

What we learned was that it came down to a few things such as:

• Volume and surface area of the item we were cooking.
• The amount of BTUs or heat your cooktop can produce.
• The amount of cooling you could apply through methods like an ice bath.

Here is where the bullets above come from. Only certain things can be cooked in large quantities at home. We caveat that your tastes may be different but recreating some recipes in the large is just not easy. The volume and surface area of the food combined with the type of cooking method you can apply is the limiting factor. The size of the surface area is what makes temperature management problematic. These issues are due to the thermodynamics concept of specific heat capacity which you can take our word about for now or read more here, here, and one more here.  

A Couple Examples

Let’s talk about a couple of examples. This will be some nerd speak but is necessary to understand why some things do and don’t scale. 

It is easy to increase a roast in volume from 4 lbs. to 6 lbs. The cooking method or cooling doesn’t need to be modified to work. Roasting is a slower cooking method designed for high volume-to-surface area ratios. If you increase the roast by 2 lbs. from 4 to 6 the result will still be close enough no changes are needed other than a bit more time in the oven.

Rather fry up some extra chicken or fish? These items have the opposite volume-to-surface area ratios as a roast. Frying, searing, and sauteing all are high-heat, fast cooking methods. When you add too much volume, most home equipment can’t provide the required BTUs to cook the food. The cooking method has to be modified to allow for batches that require more time.

What Worked and What Didn’t

 Worked:

• Roasting meats, fish, and poultry scales well. It is just as easy to make ten pork chops as it is two. 
• One-dish items such as Lasagna, Meatloaf, Casseroles,  Stews, Sauces, Soups, and Chili all scale well with a caveat (see below, Didn’t Work)
• Vegetables, meats, and potatoes on the grill. 
• Instant pots, Slow Cookers, and Dutch ovens all work well to scale up portions without increasing labor. 
• Same-sized baked goods such as rolls, crackers, and granola bars were easy to scale up. 
• Items that could be cooked on a griddle like pancakes and toaster biscuits (aka English Muffins)

 Didn’t Work:

• Sauces and soups containing pasta or noodles.
• Rice other than minute rice.
• Increasing the size of baked goods like muffins or other quick breads.
• High-temperature dishes that require sauteing or searing. 
• Pan frying or deep fat frying due to having to work in batches.
• Items that take up a lot of cooking area such as tortillas and pancakes due to the need to work in batches. 

Why didn’t some of these work? The answer is that they either didn’t save time, had to be modified extensively or just plain didn’t turn out. Time savings was a large part of what didn’t work for some. Our premise in our other post is that for this to work effectively, it should save time. Some recipes are just too labor intensive when scaled up to be worth the time cost of extra portions.

Starches In Liquids Create Unique Problems

We also ran into some specifics with starches. Items like rice and soup with noodles are problematic enough to require a separate post. What confounded us was that some rice like Minute Rice or Basmati created completely different results than say Jasmine or Wild Rice. Here it is TL;DR; for now.

• Due to soups and sauces being mostly hot liquid, adding noodles to them will result in overcooking. This is because the larger the volume of soup or sauce, the harder it is to cool it to stop the cooking process
• Rice can be problematic at scale with standard pots and pans due to thermal transference. What ends up happening is part of the rice will undercook and part will overcook.

A Few Tips From Lessons Learned

Here are some tips to help when scaling up:

• Don’t increase the recipe yield by more than 4-6 extra servings.
• When possible, keep the same size baking dishes but use two to scale up. This keeps cooking times and methods consistent. 
• Portion soups and sauces immediately into separate containers.
• Meats will be easier to slice if cooled in the refrigerator. Serve what you need, and place the remaining in the refrigerator before portioning. 
• Before you make it, think about how it will be reheated. Microwaving soup will result in a good outcome but won’t be so great for fried fish.

Lastly, make sure it tastes ok, the recipe is ok and it will be ok after reheating before you scale up your portions. This was one of our hard lessons. If you make 20 portions of baked beans and the recipe doesn’t work, you are out all that labor. When you make 16 portions of something with a cream sauce, realize it may be a pain to keep it from separating when reheated. We will cover how we handle that in another post of sodium citrate. 

The Take Away

Creating additional portions of food is not always as simple as adding more ingredients. In this post, we have covered only part of some of what we learned. In this post, we have discussed what has worked, and what hasn’t, and some reasons behind each. We hope it helps you ask yourself some great questions before starting to do this. Our additional hope it will help cut down wasted food while providing a better time management tool for working with your calorie budget.

The post Tips To Easily Make Extra Portions first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.