What is?

[Shayla]

1 US cup = 250ml
1 stick = 125ml
I usually convert at 1 stick = 125gm

Hope that helps - I used to live in USA and have converted many US recipes.

[agpest]

I thought we had a conversions thread somewhere - but couldn't find it, so I'm posting my question here (sorry).

I have a recipe for Brioche which I want to adapt to the TM.  It needs 1.5 cups of butter (3 sticks).  Does anyone have any idea how much a cup of butter (or, indeed, a stick) weighs?  Really, really hoping that one of my Australian or American cousins has already worked this one out!

½ cup of butter = 113g or 4 oz The butter I get has it all marked on the side of the wrapping. I have a widget on the dash board of my computer that I can plug conversions but you would have to know that 4 oz of butter is ½ cup because is 8 oz of liquid or more properly volume.

[AuntAnnie]

About the whole corn flour thing...

In the US there is actually corn flour. Here's the breakdown:

Cracked corn (corn that has been dried and milled to crush it).
Coarse corn meal (corn that has been dried and milled into a cereal consistency. This is what is used to make grits)
Fine corn meal (corn that has been dried and milled into a coarse flour. This is used to make corn bread, hush puppies, and as a coating for fried chicken and fish).
Corn flour (corn that has been dried and milled into a fine flour. It still has some crunch and the taste of corn but is much finer than corn meal).

Corn starch (made from boilng corn and evaporating the resulting water to leave only the starch of the corn and none of the protein).

Corn starch, wheat starch, and potato starch are all made in a similar fashion-- boiling and then taking the water with the starch and evaporating off the water. Obviously, if the process is good, there SHOULD be no gluten in ANY product that is a starch. Therefore, starches, even wheat starch, should be gluten free. However, most processes are not that exact and therefore wheat starch (particularly from the US) cannot be assumed to be gluten free.

Note that wheat starch is NOT wheat free, so an allergy to wheat is also an allergy to wheat starch.

Also note that potato starch and potato flour are not the same thing. Potato flour= dehydrated, ground up potatoes (think-- run instant potato flakes through the Thermomix) whereas potato starch= take th starchy water from boiling potatoes and evaporate off the water.

Hope this helps

[Thermomixer]

Thanks, that's very helpful.  Is nixtamalization used much with grits?

[AuntAnnie]

No, nixtamalization is used to make hominy but not grits or any of the products I listed. There is also available is some markets a Masa Harina corn meal which has been treated that way, dried, and ground into a corn meal. This is also commonly used to make tortillas.

Corn products in the US are generally very rough. Hence "Grits" because they are pretty gritty, even after being cooked. Usually served with "Red Eye Gravy" which is a whole other subject involving the treatment of ham.

[Thermomixer]

Thanks - never having been to America, I wondered about the hominy grits that seem to be a part of the food south and.... well ... the Beverley Hillbillies .

DO they get cooked in another way?

[CarolineW]

Thank you very much, Agpest and sjharrop!   

[AuntAnnie]

Oh, dear, Thermomixer...

Having grown up in the South, with YELLOW grits, I thought only white grits were hominy grits and therefore nixtamalized. White grits are often sold as "instant grits" as well. I always thought yellow grits were just the ground corn. So, after your questions, I looked it up in Wikipedia. Seems that there are 2 kinds of yellow grits-- the kind we called grits (ground up corn) and the ones made from ground hominy. And, there ARE yellow grits made from hominy.

So, if it says HOMINY grits, it is made from nitamalized corn. Otherwise, it is just ground up corn. Here's the link to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grits

As to the kind I grew up with, we cooked them. A long time. Like 20-30 minutes, Lots of stirring. Perfect thermomix job.

[Thermomixer]

Thanks - I recall something about nitamalized from university days - making some grains more nutritious.  Some of the pig food manufacturers were nixtamilizing grains and saying that it was easier to digest.  I recall they sold hominy corn - which was possibly left-over from removing another portion of the corn grain.

Too difficult.  It is like the different polentas and cornmeals from Italy.  I wondered why the first lot of polenta I made went to mush.  Then I found out it was "instant" and takes 1/8 the time.

[CreamPuff63]

What is  "ras el hanout" ??

[Amanda]

What is  "ras el hanout" ??

Hi CreamPuff, I replied to this under the Sweet Potato recipe thread!

[Thermomixer]

What is  "ras el hanout" ??

In case you have difficulty finding it - a bit like Moroccan garam masala - a spice mix - which in some cases had Spanish fly.

[faffa_70]

About to post a recipe for ras el hanout under spice mixes from the UK Thermomix site 

[Thermomixer]

What is OO flour?


Strong flour, bakers flour. 00 is doppio zero in Italian - just not ordinary plain cake flour.

[Green]

Okay I'm sure it's pretty obvious but just to make sure I'm doing it all correctly.  What does "closed lid" mean in a recipe?