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Brown and a bit crispy onions are nice and that's how I most of the time make them as well. They're just not caramelized onions.
(picking one random proper recipe online : https://www.loveandlemons.com/caramelized-onions/)
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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…
> .. littered with recipes I would never cook.
Me neither but that's exactly what I liked about it. I would have normally never tried them out, but because of this book I decided to try a few and was amazed how good they were.
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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.
> Light/refined olive oil has a smoke point of up to 470°F.
Where did you get that number? Any source I found gives olive oil a burning point of at most 410F. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Smoke_point_of_cookin...
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Cannot say for recipe books, but for illustrations for ads and/or for restaurant posters, the "traditional" way was to not use food at all, or use only partially actual food, the rest being artificial. Very likely this has changed but once there were specialized artists that made mock-ups (often using wax, but not only), besides the ready-made props (usually plastic). And then there is an endless list of non-food ing…
I'm inclined to give food photographers a pass on the "non-food ingredients" thing. Most of these fall into the category of "make something which looks like food but lasts longer" -- fake ice cream which doesn't melt, fake milk which doesn't soak into cereal, fake syrup which doesn't soak into pancakes, et cetera. It's not a matter of making something which looks better than real food -- it's just that photoshoots ha…
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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.
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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.
Fair enough. We have our opinions. For me the cooking time starts when I enter the kitchen and finishes when I serve the meal. It's the time I spent cooking the meal. Your thinking is what enabled a generation of '20 minute meal' recipe books that actually take closer to 40 mins.
My parents are an absoulte disaster for organising their kitchen, they have a fridge that is absolutely _rammed_ full with no order whatsoever, and a single pantry cupboard that contains cereals, vinegars, and everything else in one. On the contrary, my kitchen is organised very loosely by meal, while still structured and categorised. I can dice/slice veg for a full meal in the length of time it takes my partner to get the ingredients out of the fridge.
> Your thinking is what enabled a generation of '20 minute meal' recipe books that actually take closer to 40 mins.
Nah, that's just people lying about cooking times, like "caramelize the onions" in 3 minutes, and not measuring how long it actually took them to do the recipe.
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…
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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…
Not exactly a cookbook, but the manual for our weber gas grill has proved shockingly useful in cooking most meats to near perfection. Has tables for thickness, cuts, etc.