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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)

#361

Post by kqr »

henrikschroder wrote: post #192
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…

As if I needed more fuel on the fire of my burning hatred for recipe collections. Everyone who is interested in cooking should do themselves a favour and buy a proper cookbook. Something that starts with the basics, and works itself up to full meals. It should have cheat-sheets for basic ways to cook all your staples, here's all the ways you can cook a potato, with times and temperature. Here's all the ways you can s…

I'm learning cooking as an adult (if I had to grade myself, I'd say "early-stage apprentice") and it's by far one of the most difficult things I've learned. One of the reasons is this:

> A timer can never replace the knowledge of how something is supposed to look, feel, and smell when it's done or not.

And it's not only that. If you just eat a lot, you'll know what things are supposed to look like when they are done. However, the difficult part is knowing what intermediate stages are supposed to look/smell/feel like! If you get it wrong at T=15 minutes, there might be no way to save the finished product at T=30 minutes, however hard you try.

And that intermediate stage you don't experience just by eating. That takes cooking and understanding.

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

#363

Post by Svarto »

This is why I built Yumee (https://yumee.recipes), a social recipe sharing app where you can only share recipes that you have yourself cooked (and you need to share a picture of your creation). Makes it very real and you can build your cookbook own cookbook mixed with recipes from your friends and family

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

#364

Post by rocketbop »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #260
dmarchand90 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you recommend such a "proper" cookbook

HelloFresh does a good job explaining how to cook their recipes. After a year of their subscription you will know the basics.

Having worked for a rival, I can confirm that all recipes for these mealbox companies do actually get made and tested in the test kitchens.

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

#365

Post by huhtenberg »

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.…

> Audiences want fast.

Audiences don't want long segments of monotonic action with predictable outcome. No need to show how to slice a kilo of onions. It doesn't sound like the chef videos you mentioned suffer from this, but your "want fast" generalization is off the mark.

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

#366

Post by chrsjxn »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #265
chrsjxn wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are not going to be able to cook chicken in 3-4minutes per side like so many recipes claim. It's just not possible to have a good outside temperature and a good inside temperature no matter how you cook it if you only have that amount of time. They're lying to make it seem easier and to get more clicks on their recipes. Some of this is probably a difference between home and commercial kitchen equipment. I know…

It's not just about the heat output, although that does make a difference (cooking edit: thin* steak on a weak electric stove is hell). There is no amount of heat that will penetrate the inner part of the chicken while not burning the outside cooking only 3-4 minutes per side (unless you reduce the thickness of the chicken via butterflying, as another commenter pointed out, but you don't want to always to do that).

I'm mostly thinking outside the scope of just this one example. Even good recipes have a lot of variability in cooking time. The differences between how hot people cook at home and how hot they cook in commercial spaces is one of the ones that's hardest to control for (unless you want to remodel your kitchen...)

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

#367

Post by geocar »

pickledshrimp wrote: post #168
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…

Surely that can’t be true. Even semi professional chefs need to figure out what flavour combinations need to go together, amounts of each item, etc. Plus every modern recipe has pictures to show what the result should look like. I just don’t believe she would get anything approximating a good result from this.

> Even semi professional chefs need to figure out what flavour combinations need to go together, amounts of each item, etc.

No they do not. Haven't you ever tasted something and said "this needs salt?"

Once you know what x+y tastes like and y+z tastes like, you can sometimes imagine what x+z would truly taste like; Any two things you think might taste good together probably do, for just as surely as you can imagine what something looks like, or sounds like, you can imagine what something tastes like.

The amounts generally remain the same orders of magnitude so even if they're not to your taste, the dish will probably "work", and if it doesn't, home cooks have priors:

Everyone has a crap oven, or high/low humidity or altitude or whatever, so there isn't a single recipe that would work for everyone, and I think most home-cooks know this! Hasn't a recipe ever turned out badly for you?

So if there are any issues they might have with a recipe, I could believe they would blame their skill and/or their kit, and/or adjust a few times before they ever blamed the recipe, because surely that can't be true!

> Plus every modern recipe has pictures to show what the result should look like. I

We have hi-resolution AI pictures all the time on this very site that people can't tell from fiction, and food surprises you?

C'mon! You can get pictures of just about anything from stock photography services. At newspaper-dpi nobody is going to notice!

> I just don’t believe she would get anything approximating a good result from this.

Well I guess it depends what exactly you mean by a "a good result..."

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

#368

Post by hef19898 »

henrikschroder wrote: post #192
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…

As if I needed more fuel on the fire of my burning hatred for recipe collections. Everyone who is interested in cooking should do themselves a favour and buy a proper cookbook. Something that starts with the basics, and works itself up to full meals. It should have cheat-sheets for basic ways to cook all your staples, here's all the ways you can cook a potato, with times and temperature. Here's all the ways you can s…

Jamie Oliver's books are pretty decent in that regard, the old ones that is.

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

#369

Post by planede »

yamtaddle wrote: post #56
AmericanChopper wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire recipe-industrial-complex is optimised primarily for convenience. Even a majority of the supposedly reputable cookbook authors are obsessed with “quick and easy” recipes. If you actually want to learn cooking a cuisine, most of the content you find via google or top selling cookbooks is going to be useless and filled with shortcuts and overly simplified ingredients lists. If you’re looking at a recipe that…

> Another one is if it’s a foreign dish and you can somehow find all of the ingredients in your local supermarket. Fun one I noticed: if you search for Hungarian (as in, written in Hungarian) recipes for paprikash, you'll get one dish[1]; if you search for it in English, practically every result would best be classified as some other dish—maybe also good, but not really the same thing. The key difference seemed to be…

Hungarian here. Yes, it needs a lot of sour cream. Having said that now living in the UK I rather use crème fraîche, which I find closer to what you can buy in Hungary.

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

#370

Post by huhtenberg »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #91
richk449 wrote: post #60

Recipes are terrible when it comes to time. I have this one open in a tab so I can try it soon: https://www.seriouseats.com/lamb-biryani The first step is the prep step, which it says takes 5 minutes. In that step, I have to: - trim the fat from, and cube (1in) 2 pounds of lamb - peel and chop 6 cloves of garlic - peel and grate 2 inches of ginger - mix with yogurt and salt in a zip lock bag That looks like at least…

This is a great post. Thank you to indulge us. I also like the domain name: SERIOUS Eats! Real question: I wonder if these recipe websites have done A/B testing on total amount of time in the recipe. In 2023, I could believe it. If recipes with shorter durations are shown, you get more hits. Same with the ridiculous suggestion that all recipes need 1 tablespoon of oil (or less!). People will also return more frequent…

> Thank you to indulge us.

Please try and not use "us" in online discussions. This has been considered to be poor manners since the BBS days.

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