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)

#591

Post by jandrese » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:15 PM UTC

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…

As usual there is a relevant XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/2767/

I've also been surprised at how often the times listed in a recipe are outright fiction. There seems to be little reason for it except in cases where they want something in a "30 minute meals" type category that it really has no business being in. Or maybe the meal only takes 30 minutes if you have your personal sous chef do all of the chopping, prep, and oven preheat for you ahead of time.

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

#592

Post by samstave » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:17 PM UTC

carabiner wrote: post #398

zamalek wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I tried a TikTok recipe, feta with tomatoes pasta, and it was delicious. Will try the salmon rice bowl at some point too.

If you like salmon, and have a costco membership, one of the best, easiest, fastest and affordable meals:

Get the salmon with the (3) butter-herb balls on top of it. (They used to be ~$19 on avg but now they are closer to $29 due to inflation)

Get a Ceasar Salad Kit from the walk-in fridge. ~$7.99 (these used to be $5.99)

Cook the salmon in the oven at 425 for 27 minutes.

Make the salad kit.

Get a bowl and serve salad in an individual bowl and put a piece of the salmon on top. Serves 4. SUPER good. But the salad doesnt do well as left overs, so if you're not going to finish it that night - make the salad in individual portions to avoid a wilted mess the next day.

Also, if you have wimpy-limpy veggies (such as celery) put into an ice bath in a bowl in the fridge for a while (an hour or two) and it will become crisp again.

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

#593

Post by adriancoliba » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

There is a great hack that makes caramelizing onions a breeze and cuts down the cooking time significantly. The secret would be adding a small amount of water* at the beginning of the caramelization process. Not only does it reduce the overall cooking time, but it also ensures that the onions caramelize evenly without the risk of burning.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzL07v6w8AA

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

#594

Post by Marsymars » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

dgroshev wrote: post #371

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…

Yes. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. I do have a few heuristics for pure recipe books: 1) the recipes have short lists of ingredients. There is a tendency to include obscure or hard to get ingredients for the sake of it, even if it's impossible to taste in the final product, I guess as a source of pride for home cooks. 2) the recipes discuss possible failures and ways around them. Especially w…

> The best example I've seen so far were David Lebovitz's recipes.

Nice to see a +1 for Lebovitz - not really familiar with him, but have been getting into home-made ice cream and just ordered The Perfect Scoop last night as my first/only ice cream recipe book.

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

#595

Post by Eisenstein » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

quadrifoliate wrote: post #569

giraffe_lady wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are there any specific markers you for books that can be trusted? All these comments are making me think that I should never trust any proportions in a cookbook again. I guess that leaves experimentation and keeping notes, which I already do -- but curious if there are existing published recipes tested in home kitchens that I can rely upon a little more.

America's Test Kitchen tests all their recipes, multiple times with different variations, so I tend to trust them.

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

#596

Post by samstave » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:20 PM UTC

debaserab2 wrote: post #147

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…

I have the exact same problem/frustration and yet my wife consistently cooks the entire meal near or at the estimated cook time. Clearly I'm not as efficient as I think I am!

Yeah, but you have done a good job of delegating that responsibility!

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

#597

Post by Marsymars » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #251

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is different. If you learn enough about Linux, you can install Arch in 15-20minutes no problem. Especially since learning about Linux means reinstalling your OS many times until you finally learn how to keep it clean and rescue it from any situation. 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…

> They're lying to make it seem easier and to get more clicks on their recipes. Doesn't make sense to me. I certainly don't choose a recipe based on the estimated time-to-complete. In fact I generally click through a bunch of recipes, and pick and choose the ideas that sound as if they'll work. Felicity Cloake does this, in her "How to cook the perfect..." series. She consults a bunch of top cookbooks, tries several…

Not familiar with Felicity Cloake, but as a non-professional home-cooking enthusiast, mash-ups are my go-to when I'm trying new recipes that I'm pulling from online. Results are usually pretty good! Did a Greek pasta salad a couple nights ago that turned out really nicely.

Have been thinking about signing up for, or self-hosting some kind of recipe app to make managing it easier... as-is, I have a "recipes" bookmark folder, where each recipe gets a sub-folder with a bookmark for each referenced recipe. However, this approach suffers from linkrot, recipes are often poorly formatted, and it doesn't have anywhere for my notes to go.

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

#598

Post by PeterisP » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

jterrys wrote: post #479

PeterisP wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video editing is a thing. Something that takes 30 minutes to cook can (and should!) be cut down to 10 minutes of video. You cut five onions, you film how you cut one and edit out the rest. If you stir for 10 minutes watching for certain signs to note when it's done - put in a 30 second show&tell for when it's close to done but not yet; and a 30 second show&tell for when it is ready; and edit out the other 9 minutes.

Yeah but if you're a newbie you're not really seeing the whole thing. That's the problem in my opinion. You're told to stir until golden brown, wait till the jiggle is just right, etc. You edit out the boring bits because that's common TV etiquette but then it doesn't become a cooking video anymore, it's just entertainment. That's the fundamental divergence of cooking content: instructional cooking or cooking as ente…

Well, no, the whole point is that a well edited cooking video would help a newbie to understand it, by explicitly and intentionally showing what exactly does "stir until golden brown" mean instead of just filming the whole cooking process and expecting that they'll magically notice which moment they should pay attention to.

You don't need to show the initial 5 minutes of stirring which are unambiguously not golden brown, you do need to show the "it looks brownish but it's not yet golden brown" and the "this is done" steps - and if you cut out the unimportant parts which aren't relevant to any decision, then it helps focus the learner's attention where it's pedagogically most effective.

In an ideal world they would also show "this is how it looks when it's too much and you should have stopped earlier", but that requires cooking/wasting an extra batch.

And for onion cutting, instead of spending the valuable viewer's time on looking at how you cut 5 onions, instead show how you cut 1 onion but make sure that the camera angles make it clearly visible how exactly you do it while you explain it; then the other 4 onions then add no value and can be cut off-camera.

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

#599

Post by samstave » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:30 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…

My grandmother was friends with both Martin Yan and Julia Child.

One way I made time to spend with her in a meaningful way was to have her teach me recipes that she learned from them (she never traveled with Julia, but she did travel with Martin on several trips to asia (on one trip she then took the Orient Express)...

-

One thing that I learned from her was that recipes (not baking/pastries) were good guidlines - but every time I asked "how much" to put in of a certain spice/ingredient she would shrug her shoulders and wave her hand and say "whatever you feel is right"

-

My best girl-friend has been at the french laundry for years - and I learn a lot of information from her regarding ingredients, wine pairings etc.

But at the end of the day - worry about your own palette prefs - but follow a recipe, and as youre eating it, determine what you would change to make it more to you/your families/friends tastes and follow your gut. :-)

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

#600

Post by Myrmornis » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:30 PM UTC

SamBam wrote: post #514

sanitycheck wrote: post #421

I've had this conversation with people many times, a consequence is that some of them have no idea what caramelised onions actually are - they think it's the state you get to after 10 mins. Thinly slice 10 onions, dump them in a big pot with some oil on a medium heat for 10-15 minutes stirring frequently. Then turn the heat down to low and cook for a further 45-60 mins, check on it and stir every 10 mins or so. When…

The real issue is simply a vague use of the word "caramelize," not that they expect you to be at the stove a half-hour longer than they say. The vast majority of recipes that say "caramelize" simply mean "cook until softened and sweet." No, technically the onions won't be caramelized after 15 minutes, but very few recipes actually want you to caramelize the onions. Take an Italian pasta sauce. As an Italian who has c…

The article confused things by talking about "caramelizing" but as you say that's a rare instruction in recipes. However, the point remains: what recipes much more frequently call for is to cook until "translucent" or "golden brown" and those times are wildly underestimated in published recipes.