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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)

#581

Post by devchix »

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…

We share the same sentiments!

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

#582

Post by giraffe_lady »

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.

I don't usually consider a book trusted until I've cooked a few recipes from it. There are chefs & authors I know from experience or reputation that take home cooking of their recipes seriously but even then if they change publisher or go a while without a book I'll be cautious with recommending the new one.

The things I look for in recipes are unfortunately not things that are easy to share as advice to look for, mostly intuition based on long experience. I just sit down and mentally "cook" the recipe, visualizing each ingredient and step and seeing if it makes sense and the directions are realistic.

One simple thing you can definitely look for is count how many pans, bowls, measuring cups a recipe calls for. If it's several of each that recipe was certainly written for an environment with professional dishwashers and likely not tested for home cooking. Might not be a bad recipe either, but it's more likely to leave out some details because it was originally written for a professional audience where you could assume familiarity with the techniques.

Another thing to look for is check the measurements and see where they came from, especially now that metric measures are becoming more common. If all the metric measurements are too precise it probably wasn't written or tested in metric. No one is measuring 118ml that's a half cup that was converted on paper. Or like 75mg of egg isn't one egg or two eggs, so that recipe was scaled down from a much larger one and probably not tested at this volume. Again though a red flag not a condemnation.

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

#583

Post by samstave »

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…

Yup! I recently made some, and it had been a while since I had made them, and I had forgotten just how long it takes.

Also - if you like oninos, make sure to try 'creamed onions' (carmelized oninos in a creme sauce.

Also, if you like french onion soup - use a french onion soup mix packet as a rub on chicken and pork.

Finally, if youre anything like me - I typically never have to wear deoderant, unless I eat RED/PURPLE onions. If I eat these Ill have BO the following day.

Its also a good indicator when I eat something, if I have BO the next day its a signal that what I ate the previous day was made with red onions, even if it doesnt look like it. (Tikka masala is an example) -- I think its the sulfites in the red onions that cause this.

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

#585

Post by ilamont »

I have great respect for Mark Bittman and regularly turn to How to Cook Everything for its solid recipes, but sometimes he gets it spectacularly wrong. Case in point was his spatchcocked turkey recipe. Quoting the NYT Cooking App:

In 2002, Mark Bittman published this revolutionary approach to roasting the Thanksgiving turkey, which allows you to cut the cooking time of the average turkey by about 75 percent while still presenting an attractive bird. Simply cut out the backbone — or ask your butcher to do it for you — and spread the bird out flat before roasting, a technique known as spatchcocking that is commonly used with chickens. Roasted at 450 degrees, a 10-pound bird will be done in about 45 minutes.

I tried the recipe last Thanksgiving, following the video exactly and extending the time based on many reader comments, and it still came out underdone. It ended up taking 2 hours; we had Thanksgiving dinner at 9pm. A very experienced home cook and scientist I know believes that temperature and timing are thrown off by writers like Bittman who use professional ovens which have far better temperature regulation than the crappy decades-old ovens used by most home cooks.

As for unfailingly good and simple recipes, I can't recommend Jacques Pepin short "Cooking at Home" videos on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_PgxS3FkP7ATPveBQ1ya...) highly enough. He often takes whatever he has lying around to make some variation of a famous dish - canned tomatoes instead of fresh, a half-empty jar of olives, once even a hot dog to substitute for a sausage in his Sausage Cassoulet (https://youtu.be/Uuli3So6Oo4).

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

#586

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

downut wrote: post #529
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…

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…

Pretty much any induction stove is going to have less hot spots than a Viking, at a fraction of the price.

Pan quality is still going to matter.

But you don't need $50k in kitchen gadgets to properly caramelize onions...

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

#587

Post by DigitalParacosm »

I wonder if the author remembered to have their pan searing hot before throwing the onions in? They should sizzle from the pan heat and the water from the onion touching your oiled pan.

The author says his onions were still raw after 5 minutes in the pan, so there is no way he's using a hot sauté pan or even a fry pan with adequate heated oil.

Cooking and baking is like following a lab, you can't miss a single step! We don't blame chemistry when we can't re-create the lab, we retrace our steps. Since the author is a sports blogger gone pseudo-entertainment politics, I think we can safely assume the pan was cold.

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

#588

Post by mcv »

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…

Exactly. I'm no cook, I'm barely an amateur cook, and I have absolutely no idea what "caramelized onions" means. Turned into caramel? I'm pretty sure you can get onions brown in 10 minutes, though. It probably won't be caramelized, it might be burned, but it's brown. I remember brown, dry onions. I'm sure caramelized ones are better. In fact, I think my wife once did something with onions that made them very sweet. I guess that was caramelized? But that's not what most recipes need.

To be honest, there's a lot of these sort of words that are often used in recipes where I have no idea what they mean. A basic cook book to just explain these sort of things, would be fantastic. Just the different ways to properly cook onions, mushrooms, and other ingredients, and what those techniques are called. And warn for ways that those names might be misused: "If a recipe says to caramelize onions in 10 minutes, don't caramelize them, do this other thing instead." I think a book like that would be really helpful to a lot of people.

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

#589

Post by Broken_Hippo »

zamnos wrote: post #519
grumple wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have changed the color of the meat and killed off the bacteria to make it safe to eat, but you didn't make good chicken. It takes time and lower heat to cook through, create good flavor, and get good texture. Sure you can put any food in an incinerator for 2 minutes and it's "cooked", but not really.

How do your want to define cooked then? cooked != tasty it just means it's no longer pink and will kill you with salmonella inside. Doesn't mean it's not dry or bland or any other implications

Considering that we are talking about cooking from recipes, I' assume that "cooked" means "palatable" - or at least, an attempt as such.

It still might be dry or bland, mind you, but more than the minimum needed to make it safe to eat.

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

#590

Post by fooblaster »

ilamont wrote: post #585

I have great respect for Mark Bittman and regularly turn to How to Cook Everything for its solid recipes, but sometimes he gets it spectacularly wrong. Case in point was his spatchcocked turkey recipe. Quoting the NYT Cooking App: In 2002, Mark Bittman published this revolutionary approach to roasting the Thanksgiving turkey, which allows you to cut the cooking time of the average turkey by about 75 percent while sti…

The recipe writing team at the times has recently made a note of how each recipe is independently tested by other, non professional cooks with normal kitchen equipment. I'm skeptical that the recipe was never tried with a conventional oven.
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