A quick reminder: if you're asking about a recipe you saw on-air, please don't forget to include the station and/or Web site in your e-mail. If you're asking about a Mr. Food recipe, it can most likely be found at www.mrfood.com.

Q:Why do pre-packaged and frozen foods have so much sodium? Is it the preservatives? Sherry W.

A: A century ago, the salt would have been there primarily as a preservative, but modern science has given us FAR more efficient and chemically indecipherable compounds to keep Mr. Mold from munching on our Twinkies.

The salt these days is there by and large in response to the public palate, which LIKES, or at least has been taught it likes, its green beans, peas and just about everything else with a few heaping spoonfuls of sodium chloride added.

Q:How do I get my sea salt unclumped? It is the fine grain. Thank you. I can't even fill my salt shaker because it only comes out in large chunks. Cindy G.

A: Once salt has clumped together, there's not much you can do other than run it through your spice grinder or use a mortar and pestle to bash it back into small bits. That will, of course, destroy the "flake" consistency so valued by sea salt aficionados, but it beats pitching the lot of it into the trash.

To keep your salt from clumping in future, use an old Texas trick: put a teaspoon of uncooked rice grains in your salt shaker. They'll act as a moisture absorber and keep your salt flowing freely. Change them every six months or so.

And while we're on the topic of sea salt: stop buying it, unless you're shelling out the big bucks for fleur de sel or the most exotic types. According to Robert Wolke, author of "What Einstein Told His Cook," most sea salt is no richer in minerals or different in taste than table salt. He does concede that some of the most expensive salts have a slight taste difference, but you'll end up paying upwards of $3.25 an ounce for them.

If you like the flake consistency, buy kosher salt. It's all I use in the kitchen for everything from baking to searing ribeyes.

Q:Every time I cook mushrooms, they have a lot of water in the dish. I even stuffed some mushrooms and baked them and the pan had a lot of water in it. How do you prevent this? --Shanon K.

A: That release of moisture when cooking is natural, but you can minimize it by limiting the amount of salt in your recipe, or adding the salt at a stage after the mushrooms are cooked. You can drain it off and continue cooking, and I'd recommend saving it for use in soups and vegetable stocks. That's good stuff there!

I recently downloaded some recipes off the Internet for pastys. One of the recipies is a bacon, egg and cheese pasty. It says to boil the bacon for 10 minutes, cut into small pieces and add to eggs and cheese. What about the eggs? Can't exactly pour raw eggs into a pasty shell? Do I boil them? Fry them? --Carrie

A: Good catch, Carrie! The sentence "I downloaded the recipe off the Internet" is frequently the epitaph for botched kitchen attempts, because the vast majority of the recipes available online are not entered by professional culinary writers.

Now, this BY NO MEANS is meant to warn you off all Internet recipes! There is a tremendous wealth of cooking knowledge, especially fantastic family recipes, to be had online, but you've got to keep your wits about you when reading the recipes.

Start off the way Carrie did: read the ingredients, then read the recipe. Are there any ingredients that aren't mentioned in the recipe? Are there any items in the recipe that aren't listed in the ingredients? Also be wary of terms like "a smidgen," "a little," and other such imprecise measurements. I'm 6'5", so my "pinch" of cayenne pepper is going to be a LOT more than most folks'.

Next look at the directions closely. Are times and temperatures given for everything? Does the cake "bake at 350 degrees," or "bake for one hour at 350 degrees?" That's an important distinction, unless you enjoy spending an hour sticking a toothpick into a semi-cooked baked good.

Basically, with some good common sense, you should be safe using Internet recipes. Just be sure and read EVERY WORD, top to bottom, before you so much as crack an egg. Make sure you understand everything and that it all makes sense before you embark.

Q: Back in December of 2002 my granddaughter's friend from Mexico was going home for the holidays and I asked her to ask him if he would please bring me some vanilla from Mexico. Well he did but it was powdered. Well I don't have the faintest idea how to use it can you help? --Hortensia E.

A: Powdered vanilla has a thousand uses in its powder form, without reconstitution. Add a little to your whipping cream, cake frostings, or baked goods batters. Mix some with your table sugar for vanilla sugar, the same effect you'd get from putting a vanilla bean in your sugar bowl.

It substitutes 1-to-1 for natural vanilla extract, so feel free to use it in all your recipes.

Got a question for Ask The Cook? Send it in and we'll get to work!