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Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)

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Re: Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)

#351

Post by rwmj »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #241
rutierut wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is just my experience, but I've almost never seen a recipe book where the recipes are not accompanied by pictures of the result?

I think the thing here might be "of the results". Here's my grandma's recipe for flapjacks ... accompanied by a picture of flapjacks ... the recipe I made up, the picture was from a stock photo site (best place to get pictures of gravy! /jk) ... For me that revelation explains a lot.

I know a food stylist and a food photographer (both work / have worked for major UK newspapers) and this is nonsense. They cook and photograph every recipe.

Re: Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)

#352

Post by cout »

isaacfrond wrote: post #131

My sister in law writes recipes. She has a recipe column in a newspaper and wrote a few high quality recipe books. I saw them in a bookstore. So she's reasonable successful. Her pieces are charming, her recipes inspiring. The thing is. At a birthday party when I was talking to her, she confessed to me that she never actually tries her recipes. When it's time to do a new piece, she sits down at her computer and makes…

Most recipe blogs these days include pictures of the dish as it is being prepared. I think it would be hard to generate those pictures without actually cooking the dish (though as AI image generation improves that will change).

Re: Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)

#353

Post by maccard »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #226
maccard wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are not going to be able to cook chicken in 3-4minutes per side like so many recipes claim. Sure you are. meat thermometer, hot pan and a butterflied breast [0] will give you evenly cooked chicken in about 8 minutes. [0] https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/how-butterfly-chicke...

OK, I'll admit butterflied chicken can be cooked that quickly. But basically all other forms of chicken take longer. For curry for example, even though I cut it into small pieces and it could be cooked only 8 minutes since you're going to cook it in the paste later, it's just not going to brown properly and the flavour is not going to be as good. Normal breasts or thighs take longer as well.

It's been a while since I made a meat-based curry (vegetarian now), but from when I was cooking with meat regularly there were a few things that helped hugely with that - hot pan (common theme, heh), and cooking in batches/not overcrowding the pan. You _definitely_ can't brown chicken for 6 portions of curry in one pan in 6-8 minutes, but you _can_ brown it in 2 (maybe 3) batches in 6 minutes per-batch.

Honestly though, by the time you're accurately gauging browning vs cooking meat, and eyeballing batch size vs pan size, you've moved well past the point of relying on cooking times from recipes.

Re: Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)

#354

Post by maccard »

walthamstow wrote: post #348
maccard wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are not going to be able to cook chicken in 3-4minutes per side like so many recipes claim. Sure you are. meat thermometer, hot pan and a butterflied breast [0] will give you evenly cooked chicken in about 8 minutes. [0] https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/how-butterfly-chicke...

Preheating the pan is part of the cooking time, IMO. In your recipe I would heat my pan for a good 3-4 mins to be sure the temp stays high after the chicken goes in.

I don't agree, in the same way that preheating an oven isn't considered part of the cooking time, or vegetable prep isn't considered part of the cooking time.

Re: Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)

#355

Post by krisoft »

jterrys wrote: post #246
isaacfrond wrote: post #131

My sister in law writes recipes. She has a recipe column in a newspaper and wrote a few high quality recipe books. I saw them in a bookstore. So she's reasonable successful. Her pieces are charming, her recipes inspiring. The thing is. At a birthday party when I was talking to her, she confessed to me that she never actually tries her recipes. When it's time to do a new piece, she sits down at her computer and makes…

I'm not really surprised. There's a youtube channel called Chef Jean Pierre. He is a retired Chef that used to run a restaurant since the 1970s, has cookbooks, was featured on PBS, etc. (Some say he has a more colorful past with his cooking school/restaurant business in Florida, but I don't know much). Either way. He's got the consistently longest cooking videos on youtube. He explains that long videos don't do well.…

> He explains that long videos don't do well. But it takes time to cook.

This is not a mystery. People don't "cook along" with videos. People watch cooking videos for either to get inspired or for a vibe, most often for both.

A stew might take hours to be ready, but the core idea of it can be expressed succinctly in a few sentences. Totally made up example: "We brown beef, and then simmer it with potatoes low and slow with the bones in. It is ready when the meat falls off from the bones. Spice with a pinch of cinnamon." Those are long and sweaty hours in a kitchen to make it, but you can read the idea in seconds. Put the details and quantities in the description. Those few who want to cook it will find it there.

If there is some technique or twist, make a video about that specifically? It doesn't all have to be recipes. I have watched a video the other day where a person explained why they put a few drops of water in the pan when they are frying bacon. If they would have done it in the middle of a 20 minute video I might have missed it. Or what is even more likely would have been skeptical of the technique without the added explanation and test pieces where he has done it both ways to show the difference.

And videos you watch for vibes are not about cooking. They are about the personality of the presenter, that parasocial interaction. It doesn't matter how the food tastes. You won't eat it anyway. What matters are the feelings you experience while watching it.

Re: Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)

#356

Post by bearmode »

misja111 wrote: post #164
treeman79 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canola is more likely to cause inflammation. Olive oil and coconut oil are much better from that stand point.

Olive oil is not the best choice for browning meat, because its burning point is too low. Once it burns, it will disintegrate into bitter byproducts, some of which are carcinogenic. Canola oil has a high burning point so is a better choice, but if you really want to avoid it, sunflower oil is a good choice as well.

Light/refined olive oil has a smoke point of up to 470°F. You can sear meat anywhere between 400°F and 500°F.

There is absolutely no reason you can't sear meat with olive oil. You just have to use the light/refined stuff, and not the virgin/extra virgin (which have smoke points closer to 410°F.

Worth noting that canola oil, in the best case scenario, has a smoke point of 450°F.

Re: Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)

#357

Post by zamalek »

bruckie wrote: post #110

Recipe writers are still lying about cooking time in 2023. I signed up for a Hello Fresh promo recently to get some new meal ideas, and it's making me feel like the slowest cook on the planet. I reliably exceed their stated prep and cooking times by 100-200%. Tonight's "40 minute" recipe took about 70 minutes, and that was with a family member helping out with some of the prep and cooking. I wonder if they collect an…

On the contrary, my wife grabs recipes from Instagram (usually the Whole 30 crowd, but not exclusively). We've found their 20 minute recipes incredibly successful and tasty, and rarely cook anything else. Off the top of my head, one we get a lot of our recipes from is "deliciously Ella."

I think it helps that each post has a picture of the meal, which suggests that the author has actually made it themselves.

Re: Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)

#358

Post by BlackLotus89 »

misja111 wrote: post #203
dmarchand90 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you recommend such a "proper" cookbook

I really enjoyed Cooking for Geeks: https://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Geeks-Science-Great-Hacks/dp/...

This was one of the worst cookbooks I ever bought and some things were borderline wrong.

I should have taken notes of what irked me so much about it, but there were multiple things about it that weren't for geeks. Any interview in it filled liked pure filler and because the book is black and white illustrating pictures loose nearly all meaning.

Most "illustrations" are more than unnecessary anyway and seem to be only there as a space filler. Don't get me wrong with 400 pages it is not a pamphlet or something and there ARE useful information in there, but most of the information wasn't useful, scattered through the book, interrupted by interviews with 0 value and littered with recipes I would never cook.

I personally rate "The Food Lab" from Kenji Lopez-Alt much higher than this and more helpful.

Re: Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)

#359

Post by thaumasiotes »

plufz wrote: post #154
isaacfrond wrote: post #131

My sister in law writes recipes. She has a recipe column in a newspaper and wrote a few high quality recipe books. I saw them in a bookstore. So she's reasonable successful. Her pieces are charming, her recipes inspiring. The thing is. At a birthday party when I was talking to her, she confessed to me that she never actually tries her recipes. When it's time to do a new piece, she sits down at her computer and makes…

This is a little frustrating to hear. Since that is exactly the feeling I often have. Proportions and time seems incorrect and you question what you are going wrong. I have a few cookbooks like the ones from Yotam Ottolenghi where the recipe is actually correct. It is so much more fun to use. Nothing wrong with improvising in the kitchen, but trying to fix incorrect salt balance, being stressed over longer cooking ti…

> that is exactly the feeling I often have. Proportions and time seems incorrect and you question what you are going wrong. I have a few cookbooks like the ones from Yotam Ottolenghi where the recipe is actually correct. It is so much more fun to use.

I wonder what you would think of Ethiopia: Recipes and Traditions from the Horn of Africa ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/1623719631/ )

The recipes are good. But the book rarely specifies an amount of anything, and sometimes when it does it's accompanied by a note saying "I toned this way down for an American audience". [1] Many recipes include the direction "add enough water to prevent scorching" one or more times.

I just take the philosophy that that book mostly expects you to know what you want and how to get there, and whenever you try making a new recipe from it you might be wildly off. But it's not a matter of the recipes being "incorrect" -- they're great! It's that they're underspecified.

I don't think the requirement for familiarity with a recipe can really be gotten rid of. Learning to make rice-a-roni from a box had its hiccups; over time I tended to get better results despite not consciously doing anything different. And if any recipe is going to be tested for reliability and ease of following by people who are barely able to cook, it will be the directions on a box of rice-a-roni.

[1] And he wasn't kidding about that. I had to use five times the amount of berbere indicated in that particular recipe to get it to taste right.

Re: Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)

#360

Post by dagw »

jonstewart wrote: post #26
pbj1968 wrote: post #20

Sifting flour. Sautéing spices “to release the flavor” and then adding them to stew where they’ll simmer for an hour or more. Pretending “restaurant quality” is anything besides twice as much butter and salt as you’d dare use at home. “One tablespoon of olive oil” to brown absurd amounts of meat at high heat. Once you start recognizing recipe BS, you see it everywhere.

You can conceivably get a Maillard reaction with toasting some spices (e.g. cumin seed) where you wouldn’t just by throwing them in a stew. But I agree with your overall point. The 1-2 tbsp olive oil is -everywhere-. Also, better to use canola oil for browning meat.

Olive oil is fine for browning as long as it isn't extra virgin olive oil. Refined olive oil can actually have a higher smoke pointe than rapeseed/canola oil.
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