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

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

#551

Post by beedeebeedee » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:33 PM UTC

escapedmoose wrote: post #530

henrikschroder wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is why I use The Joy of Cooking and virtually no other recipe source. It’s a giant book because in each section it describes the mechanics behind whatever the section is based on; e.g. the poultry chapter starts with 10 or so pages describing how to select a chicken depending on how it’ll be cooked, how to cut it apart, what different poultry terminology means, etc. It teaches you what it means to “braise” or “b…

I also use the Joy of Cooking and love it (as well as Mastering the Art of French Cooking).

> On the other hand, I refuse to make recipes found on the internet. They work extremely rarely if you’re like me and don’t have a sense of “what the authors really mean when they say X.”

What I do is look at about half a dozen recipes online when I am trying something new. I compare them and make my own recipe based on that. Through practice I can usually glance at them and see pretty quickly what they are doing differently and similarly.

Most dishes come out really well because I can get a feel for the dish before it's made and I have the freedom to make changes based on what the different recipes say (and my intuition). I'd encourage everybody to take this approach and not follow just one recipe.

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

#552

Post by giraffe_lady » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #533

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…

> What is worse, she claims that virtually all recipe books are made like this. Books have a much higher production value than content farm material like your sister writes. They also rely heavily on reviews, which is incentive to invest the effort to do it right. Modern recipe books have photos of the dish, so obviously they made it at least once. It would be unreasonable for them to invest all of the effort into wr…

I have extensive cooking experience both professional and at home, and have written published recipes and also been a tester for published recipes.

I have very low trust in online recipes in general, and always evaluate the source of them first.

But books are not, overall, that much better! Whatever testing was done was often done ad hoc or in professional kitchens, or on a much larger batch that was arithmetically scaled down to home sizes. This often works fine but not always, and usually needs some tweaking. It tends to be especially true of cookbooks affiliated with a well known restaurant or chef, but certainly not limited to that.

Cookbook recipe testing is basically like fact checking in non-fiction. It's up to the author and not invested in or validated by the publisher, unless the publisher is specifically specialized in cookbooks. Usually this means some of the recipes were tested by the same handful of friends & family. The fact that there's a photo means very little, just that someone made that dish once. No cookbook has photos of every recipe.

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

#553

Post by bluGill » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

sublinear wrote: post #84

yamtaddle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tablespoon of olive oil is to kickstart the process, after that enough fat will render out of the meat to keep it going. Agreed on meat, but I consistently see way-too-small amounts of oil suggested for cooking veggies, too. It's like every recipe writer online got together and decided that 1) they must specify oil quantities for those steps, but 2) the quantity must never exceed one tablespoon.

Vegetables can release a lot of water. The amount and how much it affects the other ingredients varies significantly on which you put in, in what order, how much, and in what size of pan. If the pan is crowded, has high walls, or a lid, that can also affect how much water stays in the pan. I can't think of any situation where I would want more than a literal tablespoon of oil for cooking the first veggies thrown in (…

> I can't think of any situation where I would want more than a literal tablespoon of oil for cooking the first veggies thrown in

I've helped cook at a camp where 500 people were going to eat the meal. That requires very different thinking from large family cooking where at most 20 people are eating, and a small family is different as well.

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

#554

Post by com2kid » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:35 PM UTC

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #471

com2kid wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a fan of thick wooden cutting boards, and since my current cutting board ( https://www.frankfurter-brett.de/en/ ) costs an arm and a leg... Also my overpriced cutting board came with a cover for cutting meat. :) Anyway I found it quite useful. And again, I can just throw the cover in the dish washer, and not worry about trying to disinfect a wood cutting board.

What is the point of using a thick wooden board if you’re going to be cutting on the cover ?

Because 99% of the things I cut are fruits and veggies.

and heavier boards move around less!

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

#555

Post by sanitycheck » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:37 PM UTC

astura wrote: post #535

downut wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that works on my Viking stove with my competent pans, and is basically how I do it, but people with shitty stoves, i.e. the majority, have burners with hot spots and/or mismatched pan widths or even too thin pan bottoms. I suspect that's where the constant stirring/too short time business might originate. I never realized how widespread this was until I brought dishes to group meals (as in Slow Food) and people…

Oh please, just stop! This elitism around caramelized onions is just absurd. I've caramelized onions on the shittiest of shitty electric stoves using the cheapest of cheap pans Walmart sells. It's not difficult and doesn't take any special equipment or skills - just time. Most people don't want that though most of the time. In 99.9% of applications fully caramelized onions simply aren't nearly as pleasant as onions t…

Yeah, same here - I've used the cheapest pans it was possible to buy when I was a student, on the worst ceramic stove it was viable for my university accommodation to provide. For something like this where precise responsive heat control is unnecessary anything is OK.

(Making actual caramel, OTOH, that's far easier on gas or induction.)

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

#556

Post by nailer » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

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 dated an editor for a travel writer for a well known travel book company. He'd update his old books to include his 'visits' to new places, sourcing the content from other publications without actually going there.

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

#557

Post by bombcar » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

duckmysick wrote: post #145

bombcar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that many recipes benefit from being started a day or more early. I know bread does.

Do does (dry) brining meats. On the other hand, recipes with eggs and soft vegetables are better freshly made.

Yep - you don't want to just let the whole thing sit, but certain parts of a meal are better done over time (for example, I've heard the best pizza is where the dough is made the day before, but the pizza itself is made fresh).

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

#558

Post by wlesieutre » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

escapedmoose wrote: post #530

henrikschroder wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is why I use The Joy of Cooking and virtually no other recipe source. It’s a giant book because in each section it describes the mechanics behind whatever the section is based on; e.g. the poultry chapter starts with 10 or so pages describing how to select a chicken depending on how it’ll be cooked, how to cut it apart, what different poultry terminology means, etc. It teaches you what it means to “braise” or “b…

The internet does have well written and tested recipes, you just have to find the people who are writing them. Mostly word of mouth because search has been dominated by content farm SEO spam.

As an example, my first stop for instant pot recipes is Amy + Jacky and they’ve yet to steer me wrong: https://www.pressurecookrecipes.com/instant-pot-cheesecake-n...

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

#559

Post by naravara » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:39 PM UTC

giraffe_lady wrote: post #552

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is worse, she claims that virtually all recipe books are made like this. Books have a much higher production value than content farm material like your sister writes. They also rely heavily on reviews, which is incentive to invest the effort to do it right. Modern recipe books have photos of the dish, so obviously they made it at least once. It would be unreasonable for them to invest all of the effort into wr…

I have extensive cooking experience both professional and at home, and have written published recipes and also been a tester for published recipes. I have very low trust in online recipes in general, and always evaluate the source of them first. But books are not, overall, that much better! Whatever testing was done was often done ad hoc or in professional kitchens, or on a much larger batch that was arithmetically s…

> But books are not, overall, that much better! Whatever testing was done was often done ad hoc or in professional kitchens, or on a much larger batch that was arithmetically scaled down to home sizes. This often works fine but not always, and usually needs some tweaking. It tends to be especially true of cookbooks affiliated with a well known restaurant or chef, but certainly not limited to that.

When the pandemic lockdowns hit and the Bon Appetit test kitchen people all started filming from their home kitchens there was a marked shift in what they cooked and how over time. One of the things Carla Music noted was that having to do her own dishes completely changed her approach to designing recipes because she realized how much of a hassle it is to be pulling out all kinds of specialized pots and pans and multiple spoons and such.

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

#560

Post by superbiome » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

For me there’s never enough sauce, glaze, topper, what-have-you called out for the dish. I consistently have to 2-4x the volume just to serve the meal appropriately. Occasionally the recipe ratios are so off that the entree would burn without more liquid.