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

https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/05/how-to-cook-onions-why-recipe-writers-lie-and-lie-about-how-long-they-take-to-caramelize.html

by pmoriarty • 3 years ago

565 724 3 years ago

slate.com

cratermoon• 3 years ago

I read this article some time ago.

In truth, the best time to caramelize onions is yesterday

Yep. I took the article's suggestions to heart, and now when I have a recipe requiring caramelized onions I take the time needed, or prep them in advance. Now my mujadara is pretty darn good.

bombcar7• 3 years ago

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

duckmysick• 3 years ago

Do does (dry) brining meats.

On the other hand, recipes with eggs and soft vegetables are better freshly made.

qbasic_forever• 3 years ago

The butter 'trick' is just browning the butter (which happens faster than onions) to add deep color and extra flavor to sauteed onions. For some bizarre reason the author interpreted this as blasting onions and olive oil at high heat until they were a charred mess, and then goes on to blame recipe writers for why they can't seem to cook onions. What a strange article.

GeneralMayhem• 3 years ago

If it's just browning the butter, it's not really caramelizing the onions. I could get brown onions with any number of coloring agents, but it's not the same thing.

pierat• 3 years ago

When the butter solids brown (and blacken) that's burning the solids in butter.

Separating those from the clear golden liquid is how you make ghee.

Again, times given are stupid ridiculous.

kstenerud5• 3 years ago

The best way to carmelize onions is in a slow cooker. I used a cheapie one for years that I bought at a goodwill for $5.

Chop up enough onions to fill the vessel 1/2 to 2/3, leave it running overnight (8-10h), wake up next morning to perfectly carmelized onions.

Now drain the juice, portion them out and store them in the freezer (store the juice too for onion soup). Now any time you need carmelized onions, take a portion out of the freezer and thaw. Depending on the recipe you can use them as-is (soggy) or crisp them up in a pan.

wussboy2• 3 years ago

I would wake up with a ravenous hunger as the smell would have permeated the house! What a delightful problem to have!

xxs3• 3 years ago

...unless you have curtains or other fabrics that soak up the smell.

Larrikin6• 3 years ago

For the home cook, its usually a better strategy to spend money up front on quality, but ignore specialized tools, than try to cheap out. Alton Brown's advice about unitaskers is terrible, except for the first time you start cooking at home and don't know what you need.

Someone could spend days looking for the specific slow cooker you found and maybe your onions from it are good. The idea of saving 50 dollars by buying an unglazed piece of quarry from Lowe's for 5 bucks instead of a proper pizza stone is a popular myth. Anyone who has actually tried it, has probably wasted hours on the internet looking for it and when the idea came out was most likely wasting tons of gas going to multiple Lowe's.

Maybe you got lucky and your 5 dollar slow cooker really makes good caramelized onions. But my experience trying recipes over the years, there are a few good sources of free recipes from a few places on the internet, and nearly everyone, without a team of testers backing them, is at best mediocre and usually sucks. Published recipes in a proper cookbook tend to be of higher quality, but its not always a guarantee. You get lucky every once in a while and find a hidden gem, but its almost never worth the effort to try non-established recipes as a beginner cook that can't read a recipe and immediately find red flags.

I guess this is just a long winded way of saying that maybe your cheaply made onions are good, but after being a home cook for so long I think it is more likely the caramelized onions in my Le Creuset are going to be better. I don't think you're lying for clicks like many recipe blogs out there, but you might just not realize what you could be eating.

kstenerud5• 3 years ago

Folks, just ignore this rude fellow. A slow cooker is essentially a low temperature heating element and a ceramic cooking vessel. The ceramic dissipates the low heat evenly even on the cheaper ones, and you get a result within tolerance so long as the regulator isn't crap. Just don't scratch up the glaze.

Your optimal slow cooker will have decent insulation (saves on energy) and if you crave luxury, a timer so that you can set it to automatically turn off or switch to "keep warm" after x hours.

You're also in luck because most people never use their slow cookers and eventually donate them to the local thrift shop, so you can pick them up super cheap to try out and decide if a slow cooker is for you. Once you've gotten a taste for slow cooked foods, you can start looking around for what tools will best serve your future culinary ambitions.

And no, you don't need a Le Creuset; that's just for snobs who like to tell everyone that they have Le Creuset. It won't make better carmelized onions.

genocidicbunny4• 3 years ago

I guess this is just a long winded way of saying that maybe your cheaply made onions are good, but after being a home cook for so long I think it is more likely the caramelized onions in my Le Creuset are going to be better.

I can guarantee you that I can make caramelized onions that are better than pretty much anything you have ever had in your life, but it won't be because I have fancier tools. It will be because I'm using delicious homegrown onions that you can eat raw like apples, that you would be hard pressed to replicate.

What's my point with that anecdote? Don't really have one, much like yours.

nvy• 3 years ago

I have a le creuset and cook with it often. I also have lots of cheap kitchen stuff.

Specifically what aspect or quality of yours do you think makes better caramelized onions?

dumpster_fire• 3 years ago

Reads like someone who doesn't cook, but went too deep down the YouTube product minmax research hole with America's Test Kitchen.

lelanthran• 3 years ago

I guess this is just a long winded way of saying that maybe your cheaply made onions are good, but after being a home cook for so long I think it is more likely the caramelized onions in my Le Creuset are going to be better. I don't think you're lying for clicks like many recipe blogs out there, but you might just not realize what you could be eating.

From what you've said, I think you don't know the subject matter[1] well enough to talk authoritatively about it.

[1] How slow cookers work, or cooking in general.

tourmalinetaco9• 3 years ago

Did you seriously just call a slow cooker a “unitasker”?

And no, your Le Creuset caramelized onions will taste no different than slow cooker caramelized onions. This is what we call in science a placebo.

throwaway20375• 3 years ago

Can you share the make and model of your slow cooker? It might generate some interesting discussions. If anyone else uses this "one trick" (joke), please post your make and model here.

licebmi__at__2• 3 years ago

I have used 4 different makes and models, from a really old one on my grandma’s kitchen that only had a on/off switch, to my newest one, a programable hamilton beach. I would say everyone worked the same, at least for beans, rice and some stews.

I only did caramelized onions twice with the same one, but based on my experience, any brand/model should work. And I agree, crockpot is the best way to cook caramelized onions.

genocidicbunny4• 3 years ago

I've used this in the past with my instant pot, though it's been a while and I don't recall the exact recipe. I've actually taken to par-cooking my onions sous vide, draining them, and then caramelizing them on high heat on the stove.

kstenerud5• 3 years ago

I bought it over a decade ago, and have since left it behind when I moved to Europe. It was a Hamilton Beach brand but don't ask me what model. It had a shutoff timer, which was nice because I could set it to cook a roast while I was at work, and not have to worry about what time I got home (it would stay on "keep warm" after cooking).

ars3• 3 years ago

Don't drain that juice! Save it and put it in a soup, or concentrate it by cooking the onions uncovered on high.

phnofive• 3 years ago

(2012)

Top past discussion here from a couple years back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27632835

swayvil• 3 years ago

At some point the words become more powerful than what they're referring to. At that point, even if you know better, you're afraid to deviate.

I think they call it "post structuralism".

We see it in social media all the time.

wahern• 3 years ago

I dunno about 10 minutes, but in my very limited experience it's easier to crank the heat up when you have several pounds of onions. Otherwise, if you're just carmelizing one onion, stirring doesn't really allow you to temporarily remove the onion from the heat, whereas if you have a large amount of onions you're basically turning over the whole lot.

I've only made French onion soup once or twice, but I make Italian sausage, peppers, and onions regularly. I'm not shy about cranking the heat up, but with just 1 onion and 2 bell peppers some of the onions invariably end up a little burnt even before they've begun to carmelize; but in that dish that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I use the microwave to make a dark Cajun gumbo roux. I'm curious if the microwave would work well for carmelizing a small amount of onion. Though, using the microwave for a roux isn't much faster than using a pan; it's just more difficult to fsck-up.

dunham2• 3 years ago

I think you can make it happen with a small amount of onions, but you have to watch it like a hawk, stir constantly, and add a small amount of water whenever it starts to go too far.

throwawaaarrgh3• 3 years ago

If you crank up the heat you're not caramelizing, you're browning (burning). Caramelizing is a chemical process which requires lower heat and longer time.

graycat• 3 years ago

My theory about cookbooks: They are not designed for cooking or even cooks.

Instead, the books are fantasy, to let the reader imagine that they could, will, might cook delicious meals and get praise, affection, love, and approval from their family, friends, and dinner guests. And for the onions, part of the fantasy is how easy the cooking will be -- brown the onions in at most 10 minutes.

bombcar7• 3 years ago

You can tell because Goodwill is always filled with romance novels and cookbooks. They’re both very aspirational.

bb88• 3 years ago

It might be true of the more stylistic chefs out there for sure -- but I'll pull an America's Test Kitchen recipe rather than a random blog that shows up in google.

schwartzworld• 3 years ago

The phrase you're looking for is "food porn"

naet• 3 years ago

A good cookbook can be life changing, a bad cookbook can be near worthless (maybe this is true of any type of book). "12 Recipes" is a book a chef wrote for one of his kids to learn to cook and I loved it. Some soft cooking skills or other background information about what was actually important and what can be skipped really helped me learn to cook much better for myself.

I think the problem with some cookbooks is that cooking is a somewhat technical or scientific process. If the author is too technical, they can gloss over details that will trouble a home cook, like how tos for complex techniques that they are familiar with, how long things will take someone with less practice, how much prep / cleanup can add up at home compared with working at scale in a restaurant with dedicated prep cooks and dishwashers, etc. My partner was a professional chef for a catering company and the "recipes" they used internally had almost zero details besides ingredient ratios. I couldn't imagine trying to follow one without asking a ton of questions.

On the other hand, some people aren't technical enough and so they can't properly assess the details or break things down into a strong formula for someone else to replicate. They can be vague about measurements, timing, or technique, so even if you follow what's written your result is pretty far from whatever they had done in their own kitchen.

Then there are the "telephone" recipes that have been stolen back and forth from different blogs or articles without anyone making them and over time they've degraded into something just plain wrong.

MisterBastahrd3• 3 years ago

They lie about making a roux, too.

The key to making a dark roux, as is used in Cajun cooking, is stirring, scraping, and homogeneity. You can crank the heat on high and stir for about 10-15 minutes, or you can keep it over medium and stir for an hour. If you stir like you're supposed to, you can get the same roux in less than half the time. A good wooden spoon (soft enough to scrape the bottom of the pot) that can get into the corners of a pot and a little elbow grease is all you need.

So why do they tell you that you need to stir for so long? Because if you screw it up, you've gotta start over.

drekipus3• 3 years ago

I often screw up roux, sometimes I get it and sometimes I don't.

For the times I don't, there's Nutribullet.

MisterBastahrd3• 3 years ago

The funny thing is that the jarred stuff is just as good as the roux you make on your stove. It's also perfectly fine to make a giant batch of the stuff and freeze it, and there are numerous recipes for doing it in your oven or even your microwave with great results.

wheels• 3 years ago

I was curious how fast I could do a dark roux (notably, after burning my first one and needing to restart), and I actually managed one in under 8 minutes, and even took a photo to document such:

https://imgur.com/a/wDrMZrU

And yeah, the key really is stirring constantly, and riding the stove knob to keep the heat right.

My stupid thing that I do that sometimes burns it is stopping stirring when I turn off the heat when I'm done. Pan is still hot enough to burn it, if you don't get it out of there, or add vegetables quickly.

MisterBastahrd3• 3 years ago

Yeah, especially with a lot of quality cookware which has a really thick core at the bottom of the pan. Those things hold heat forever.

papandada• 3 years ago

Interesting to mention Madhur Jeffrey, who I had indeed felt betrayed by in her descriptions of browning onions by time, which never seemed to match my experience. Her book World Vegetarian otherwise taught me to cook 20 years ago. Or maybe, that following directions closely to a good recipe could make up for a serious lack of experience.

HarryHirsch• 3 years ago

Elsewhere she quotes herself instructing one of her students in one of her cooking classes: "Continue stirring, they won't burn!"

nonethewiser• 3 years ago

dont over follow recipes. Get the ingredients and the amounts if you care to and then use your judgment. I mean read it so you know what they do, but there are likely small details that are missing or that are included but not relevant. It also may just not be optimized for your preferences.

idontwantthis• 3 years ago

Similarly: Why do drum teachers and instructional videos lie about how to hold drumsticks? I was told for years to hold them at the balance point. This is wrong! You generally hold them a few inches lower than the balance point which allows you bounce the stick loosely in your hand so that it rotates in the air around the balance point.

kazinator2• 3 years ago

They probably do the same thing, and don't notice that it doesn't coincide with the static balance point.

vultour• 3 years ago

Do they? Most tutorials I've seen tell you to find the perfect "bounce" spot, which is the spot where the stick will give you the most bounces when released and left to freely pivot around your finger.

kazinator2• 3 years ago

In hot oil, small pieces of onion will turn into a crunch brown crisp in well under 5 minutes, and larger pieces can have the outside surfaces crisped.

I suspect the authors are not lying, but simply calling the above effects caramelization; not aware that what it means is for the onion to be evenly brown all the way through.

pbj1968• 3 years ago

Sifting flour.

Sautéing spices “to release the flavor” and then adding them to stew where they’ll simmer for an hour or more.

Pretending “restaurant quality” is anything besides twice as much butter and salt as you’d dare use at home.

“One tablespoon of olive oil” to brown absurd amounts of meat at high heat.

Once you start recognizing recipe BS, you see it everywhere.

drekipus3• 3 years ago

You actually don't want too much oil when cooking steaks, otherwise they splatter everywhere. That's something I'm glad to learn.

saaaaaam• 3 years ago

Pat them dry before you put them in the pan. No splatter.

wenc4• 3 years ago

You can cook steaks without adding any oil at all -- in fact, this is how to cook steak in an apartment without getting it all smokey.

According to America's Test Kitchen, do this: Pat dry. Start cold in nonstick/cast iron — no preheat, no oil. Flip every 2 mins. Start high, after few flips, turn heat down to medium. Keep flipping every 2 mins until done.

Most cuts worth eating have some fat on them (filet mignons might not but they are very dry anyway -- to me they're not worth it). This fat is enough to brown and cook the steak on. It's completely unnecessary to add oil.

explaininjs6• 3 years ago

Spices in a stew will only ever possibly reach 212. When blasted on dry heat they can get higher.

The tablespoon of olive oil is to kickstart the process, after that enough fat will render out of the meat to keep it going.

yamtaddle3• 3 years ago

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.

dunham2• 3 years ago

I agree on the temperature thing, but also there are some flavor compounds that are fat soluble and not water soluble.

tuatoru• 3 years ago

The thing that makes spices spices is volatile light aromatic oils.

Blast them on high heat and you drive off most of them, and polymerize the rest to creosotes.

firstlink• 3 years ago

Spices in a stew will only ever possibly reach 212. When blasted on dry heat they can get higher.

Some claim that this is a thing when making rice too. I've tried toasting the grains for a few minutes before adding the water to boil, but I can't say I can tell the difference. Maybe that's a time issue like the onions, or maybe it just doesn't do anything...

onion2k2• 3 years ago

Temperatures expressed without a unit are in Kelvin, so 212 is really cold. It's -78.07°F.

throwaway81523• 3 years ago

Spices in a stew will only ever possibly reach 212.

I'm not any kind of cooking whiz but I always use an instant pot (electric pressure cooker) for stuff like that, so it gets up to 230 or so, I think.

jonstewart• 3 years ago

You can conceivably get a Maillard reaction with toasting some spices (e.g. cumin seed) where you wouldn’t just by throwing them in a stew. But I agree with your overall point. The 1-2 tbsp olive oil is -everywhere-. Also, better to use canola oil for browning meat.

treeman79• 3 years ago

Canola is more likely to cause inflammation. Olive oil and coconut oil are much better from that stand point.

notatoad• 3 years ago

1-2 tbsp of oil is enough to improve the thermal conductivity between the pan and the meat. you're not cooking the meat in that oil. then the meat starts releasing it's own oil (and water) and continues the process without needing additional oil.

if you don't put in a bit of oil, then you're searing one side in a dry pan, and the second side in an oiled pan. and if you're only putting a bit of oil in and it's all in contact with the meat there's really no reason to worry about smoke point, use whatever oil is handy.

wenc4• 3 years ago

Toasting spices can flavor your oil, but the Mailard reaction really only happens when amino acids react with reducing sugars, so nothing to do with spices at all.

dagw4• 3 years ago

Olive oil is fine for browning as long as it isn't extra virgin olive oil. Refined olive oil can actually have a higher smoke pointe than rapeseed/canola oil.

dflock• 3 years ago

Sifting flour is to get the weevils out ;)

mc32• 3 years ago

You’re right but that flour would have to be out (unsealed) for a while. Boy, weevils!

7speter6• 3 years ago

Nah, a cake with settled, minimally touched flour is dense and too… cakey. You take a fork and run the tines through settled flour thats been sitting for any length of time and you see you end up with much less fluffed up flour in a given volume. Now mix in cornstarch, for either cake or frying batter, and that helps prevent the gluten from forming when you mix in whatever liquid, keeping the texture of the cake or breaded whatever airy and light.

denton-scratch8• 3 years ago

I think it's supposed to be to incorporate air.

I only sift flour if I'm making scones, it seems to make a difference. I'm not a cakey person, I don't bake cakes. It's cake bakers that tend to care about sifting.

spoonjim• 3 years ago

Restaurant quality is real and it’s because high end restaurants usually buy the best produce at wholesale and pay for stuff a grocery store can’t. For example they get much better blackberries in top restaurants because they need to be handled extremely gently when ripe: a grocery store can’t put that stuff out on shelves or it would get destroyed.

pavlov• 3 years ago

At the very high end, restaurants also get a quality edge by creatively using excessive labor — in other words using ingredients that are very hard to source, and doing things to food that are so tedious or complicated that nobody would try them at home.

One of the world’s most celebrated restaurants, Noma in Copenhagen, is closing soon. Their menu costs about $800 per person, but even at that price the business barely turns a profit and runs largely on unpaid interns who put in the endless hours of manual labor so they could have the famous restaurant on their CV:

https://www.ft.com/content/6377b292-d825-4b3a-8527-04d147551...

roel_v• 3 years ago

Plus, restaurants can practice the same recipe again and again for months or years on end. It would be pretty damning if they wouldn't be better than home cooks after that much repetition.

7speter6• 3 years ago

Also salties (the ultra high heat broilers) and stoves that go from cold to the fires of hell in 3 seconds. Talk about caramelized anything…

jcrash• 3 years ago

Nah dude, sifting flour totally makes better pancakes. They rise so much easier. I'm sure it helps for other baked goods as well

paranoidrobot• 3 years ago

I'm going to bet that this one is going to depend in part on the particular product, and it's freshness/storage conditions, your location relative to the source mill, and ambient weather.

strken• 3 years ago

I use one to two teaspoons of oil, which is just barely enough to coat the pan if you swirl it, and it works fine if the heat is right. You're not trying to shallow fry the meat in a sea of grease, just stop it sticking and get better thermal conductivity.

quicklime• 3 years ago

“One tablespoon of olive oil” to brown absurd amounts of meat at high heat.

I love watching cooking videos where they say “a tablespoon of olive oil” and proceed to pour in half the bottle

guerrilla3• 3 years ago

If you need more than one tablespoon of oil then maybe you just don't know what you're doing. Meat contains fat and vegetables contain water. Consider learning patience (i.e. using lower heat) instead of criticizing people on the Internet for being better at cooking than you are.

arrow7000• 3 years ago

Calm down there bucko

misja1117• 3 years ago

Good luck trying to sear a steak on low heat.

Centigonal• 3 years ago

sauteing spices makes a noticeable difference, according to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsYzWK3cxOM&t=840

runnerup• 3 years ago

I can't respect any claim that toasting cumin seeds on the stove doesn't add new flavors to the cumin seed that did not exist before toasting.

carabiner2• 3 years ago

Wait 30 minutes for your steak to reach room temperature. *Measures with instant read thermometer* Wow it's 48 °F.

denton-scratch8• 3 years ago

I season before bringing the steak to room temperature; and after seasoning I leave it standing for a good hour.

The idea is that salt on the outside of the steak initially draws moisture out of the steak, making it dry. But given enough time, the salt penetrates deeper into the steak, and holds the moisture in.

ZiiS2• 3 years ago

Most other oils work better at high heat; some recipies are just bad.

xxs3• 3 years ago

The rituals are all bullshit, course.

Yet, "sifting flour" was a thing years back... not the one bought in the store but the one stored in large sacks, and ground in the local mill. The amount of lumps sifted out was non-trivial.

WouterSpaak• 3 years ago

"Lumps" being a nice euphemism for bugs.

omnicognate• 3 years ago

Don't underestimate the amount of butter and (Maldon sea) salt I'm willing to use at home.

ReptileMan3• 3 years ago

Sifting makes sense if you knead by hand - makes absorption easier. Toasting spices in a little oil - spices release flavor into the oil and your kitchen smells awesome. Meat also releases fat when browned. So it is kind of self sustaining.

denton-scratch8• 3 years ago

Toasting spices in a little oil

Whether you dry-roast or toast in oil depends on what you're trying to achieve; if you want flavoured oil for something like a tadka, then you use oil. Dry roasting to season e.g. a curry produces different flavours. It's also harder; different spices burn at different speeds, so for example add cumin first and turmeric last. burnt turmeric is very bitter.

minusf• 3 years ago

Pretending “restaurant quality” is anything besides twice as much butter and salt as you’d dare use at home.

until you read Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and start watching the epicurious yt channel.

the "4 levels" and "pro chef vs home cook" epicurious playlists are amazing eye openers, where they exactly highlight the actual difference in skills and knowledge.

but sure, anyone can cook well, even a rat.

jacobp100• 3 years ago

Sifting flour is absolutely essential if you’re adding it to a liquid. Sometimes you can get away without sifting if you mix a few dry ingredients first then add liquid on top. If you get it wrong, the flour clumps up tiny grains and never separates. You can end up with really grainy cheese cake

SamBam3• 3 years ago

Plenty of spices distribute their flavors better in oils/fats than in water.

Take some szechuan peppercorns and boil them in a soup and see if you feel the ma numbing sensation. Then saute them in oil for a few minutes and then add the soup, and notice the difference.

It's the same with lots of spices.

yamtaddle3• 3 years ago

Recipe writers routinely lie about how long a recipe takes, too. Most reporting a time requirement much under 30 minutes get there by ignoring how long it takes to process & prep the various ingredients. "15-minute meals" often take 10-15 minutes of prep before you can start them.

AmericanChopper2• 3 years ago

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’s quick, easy, or simple, that’s a huge red flag that the recipe is BS. Another one is if it’s a foreign dish and you can somehow find all of the ingredients in your local supermarket.

yamtaddle3• 3 years ago

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 that the writers of the English recipes were terrified of the amount of sour cream you need to make the real thing. It's a lot. I mean, I'm not Hungarian, but judging from what ~every Hungarian recipe I found said, the correct amount is at least 4x the sour cream per serving of what the English-language recipes suggested. Depending on the recipes one paired up from each language, some were more like 20x.

[1] "What's 'paprikash' in Hungarian, though?" that's what the Wikipedia "other languages" links are for! Find your recipe or ingredient or whatever there, then hit the dish's native language in the language bar. It doesn't even need to be in a script you can read. Works for just about any dish popular enough to have an English-language Wikipedia entry. More reliable (for this specific thing) than Google Translate.

sfink2• 3 years ago

Yes. My favorite is quickie salad recipes. Their times are correct, as long as you happen to have a refrigerator stuffed with containers of chopped vegetables for some reason.

I've seen youtube videos where they "make" such salads. It's really not far off from "cooking time: 10 minutes. 3 to pick from the menu, 2 to call for delivery, 5 for it to reach you."

diffeomorphism7• 3 years ago

That is exactly what "time" means for recipes and why ingredients list say things like "onions, finely chopped" and not just "onions".

Restaurants do have containers with chopped vegetables sitting around for this reason. You might not like this convention, but it is pretty universal.

So your complaint sounds like "3 minute angel hair pasta?!?! My water won't even have started boiling by then." Totally understandable misconception for someone who just started cooking, but you should learn pretty quickly what 3 minutes actually means.

diffeomorphism7• 3 years ago

No. "Time" for recipes by convention starts with all of this done. This is always the case and allows for easy comparability of recipes.

You might not like this convention, but nobody is lying. It is somewhat surprising that you genuinely thought "writers routinely lie" and never thought to stop and think whether your understanding might be wrong.

jamesliudotcc• 3 years ago

Thomas Keller does not lie about this. It takes 6 hours on the stove.

throwaway20375• 3 years ago

Jesus, that sounds so boring. Do they have robots (single devices) that can do it? I always thought having a pot that can gently stir itself would be helpful in a home kitchen.

crtified• 3 years ago

After looking at the recipes in question, I suspect that some of these writers are merely using the term Caramelized in a loose, informal (or, if you prefer, "technically-incorrect") sense.

When what they more-precisely meant is lightly softened, translucent - a state of onionhood used in no shortage of recipes as an intermediary step during the cooking process.

The writers are therefore perhaps guilty of casual syntax misuse, as opposed to deliberate or wilful mistruth.

sfink2• 3 years ago

I suspect this is correct.

I find softened onions preferably for a number of uses. Caramelized onions can be too sweet, and soggy/limp. I've even found that leaving a trace of crunch is better in many cases (eg beef bolognese).

But don't listen to me, I've never really figured out the difference between cooked yellow, white, and sweet onions, and just buy whatever is available and has the least mold and soft spots. Even red onions, once cooked, are pretty much the same to me.

harshalizee• 3 years ago

The best way to learn the importance of using the right onion is by making french onion soup with red onions.

You'll quickly realize that it belongs straight in the trash.

throwaway20375• 3 years ago

    I've never really figured out the difference between cooked yellow, white, and sweet onions

I agree for high-heat stir fried dishes.

paulddraper• 3 years ago

tl;dr When cooking, use yellow. They're cheaper and you need less.

---

Yellow onions have a stronger flavor, even after cooking. (Though cooking of course lessen it a lot.)

White and sweet are essentially the same, with the latter being slightly sweeter.

In the end they do taste similar cooked. Biggest difference is price. Yellow is usually 20% cheaper than white and 40% cheaper than sweet.

LegitShady• 3 years ago

they taste differently from each other. some are sweeter and some are less sweet, due to having less sugar. Some are sharper or more bitter than others.

GolDDranks• 3 years ago

You mean "semantic misuse", not syntax misuse, as syntax would misuse something like this be.

underratedbug3• 3 years ago

This is so clearly true I wonder if the author intentionally “misunderstood” the situation so they could rant. Bonus points for commenters years later making the same “mistake”.

No, they don’t really mean caramelization. No, no one else cares.

kuu• 3 years ago

There are almost 300 comments in this post, I would say someone else cares :)

JohnFen6• 3 years ago

It's not clear to everyone. Until I read that comment, I had exactly zero idea of that. When a recipe says "carmelized", I foolishly thought it meant "carmelized".

Falkon1313• 3 years ago

I'm just sad that they spoil perfectly good fresh, juicy, crunchy onions.

They call it 'caramelized' but don't even put any caramel in. Which is probably good because actual caramelized onions would be gross too. But why not just be honest and call them burnt onions? Or "onions with all the flavor and texture removed"?

Personally, I find those recipes quick enough because I simply opt not to ruin the onions. They don't need any cooking. Just chop 'em and drop 'em on the finished product for a zesty flavorful crunch that you'd be missing out on if you actually followed the recipe directions.

minsight2• 3 years ago

So caramelizing onions is the culinary equivalent of saying "begs the question".

jandrese2• 3 years ago

This is exactly it. We don't have a short snappy term for onion where you have fried it just enough to burn off the harsh chemicals, so recipe writers went for "caramelize" instead of a clunky construction like "lightly softened, translucent".

JohnFen6• 3 years ago

This means that when a recipe says "carmelized", I have to guess what it really means? That seems unhelpful.

ianburrell• 3 years ago

There is a term for cooking onions like that: it is "sautee". That specifies the method cooking bbut the "lightly softened, translucent" level is what everybody assumes.

The solution to confusion might be contact everyone using "caramelize" to verify they mean that or sauteing.

chongli• 3 years ago

The trick to caramelizing onions (without leaving them overnight in a slow cooker) is to add a bunch of water to the pan and steam them until they’re completely wilted, then boil off the water and add oil. This will cause most of the onion cells to burst, releasing their water, allowing that water to quickly evaporate so that the oil can do its job raising the temperature of all the onions to the point at which the sugars begin to caramelize.

dopidopHN• 3 years ago

I did it for a living over a summer. Helper for a Syrian restorant in France.

My instruction : - long filament of oignons, all the same size

- large amount of olive oil

- when it start browning, start moving them. Stop when they are caramélisés.

- dump

- smoke a cig.

- repeat

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

no drink wine?

ars3• 3 years ago

I just add the some oil and a lot of salt (all the salt the dish will use) at the start and cook on high. Once they release their water lower to medium-low and let it cook.

occoder2• 3 years ago

add a bunch of water to the pan and steam them

This is pretty ironic in a thread about the misuse of the term "caramelize".

It's not steaming if you put water into the food directly. It's simply ... cooking, or maybe simmering/stewing.

dboreham• 3 years ago

I find that all recipes vastly underestimate prep and cook time for everything.

jrflowers• 3 years ago

If you add a little baking soda you can dramatically speed up caramelization.

zwieback2• 3 years ago

Has anyone here tried the baking soda trick? I've read about it but can't imagine the flavor would be any good

Semaphor• 3 years ago

You need very little to make it work with onions.

I regularly use it in cooking, both for caramelizing onions and meat, can’t taste any weird flavours with it.

imp0cat• 3 years ago

Yes, it works. Do not use too much of it.

If you don't mind the pureé-like consistency, you can further speed-up the whole process in a pressure cooker (Instant Pot). Follow the steps 1-3 from this recipe: https://www.pressurecookrecipes.com/pressure-cooker-beef-cur...

--- 1) Prepare Pressure Cooker: Heat up your pressure cooker (Instant Pot: press Sauté button) over medium heat. Ensure your pot is as hot as it can be (Instant Pot: wait until indicator says HOT). 2) Pressure Cook Caramelized Onion Purée: Melt 3 tbsp (45g) unsalted butter in pressure cooker. Add in sliced onions, shallots, ⅓ tsp (1.3g) baking soda. Sauté until moisture starts to come out of the onions (~5 mins). Close lid and pressure cook at High Pressure for 20 minutes, then Quick Release. Open lid. 3) Reduce until Caramelized (takes roughly 16 – 17 mins): There will be lots of moisture from the onions. Reduce until most moisture has evaporated over medium high heat (Instant Pot: press cancel, Sauté button and Adjust once to Sauté More function). Stir constantly with a silicone spatula. Once most moisture has evaporated, adjust to medium heat (Instant Pot: press cancel and Sauté). Stir until onions are deep golden brown and all moisture has evaporated. Season with kosher salt & ground black pepper to taste. Remove caramelized onion purée and set aside.

zwieback2• 3 years ago

thanks for the detail! I'll give it a shot. I do like my onions a bit firmer but sometimes an onion jam is a good thing

MandieD• 3 years ago

Pinch of baking soda thoroughly mixed with a teaspoon of sugar, then sprinkled over the chopped onions to make sure it gets evenly distributed.

GarlicToum• 3 years ago

In the modern age, SEO is partially to blame for inaccurate recipe cook times. At some point Google realized that folks would click on more recipes with shorter times, as people would use that as a metric when cooking. So they would promote quicker recipes.

What ended up happening is some recipe developers would try and actually reduce the amount of time their recipe took, and others would just "shorten" prep (or even cook) time down, to try and get the most clicks. I know Kenji talks about it in one of his POV videos, but I couldn't find it in a cursory search.

Since there isn't really a reliable way to know how long recipes would take for _you_ across different sites, it's almost not a useful metric, but it is what's been optimized for.

tourmalinetaco9• 3 years ago

I’ve seen recipes that completely exclude the prep time, especially when the actual cooking only takes 10-20min.

Yes, let’s just ignore the hour of prep that goes alongside that 10 minutes of cooking.

richk449• 3 years ago

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 20 minutes of work to me. Include cleanup (raw meat and garlic are both a pain), and it is easily a half hour of work.

Maybe 5 minutes is for an expert chef in a professional kitchen?

diffeomorphism7• 3 years ago

No, that is not the prep step. The prep step starts with all of these done and is mixing all of these together in a zip lock bag and putting it in the fridge. So 5 minutes seems even a bit high.

The time for recipes is always "with all ingredients washed, peeled, chopped and set ready to go in a bowl. Start!". Also note that step 2 is to put the onions into the pan (but no step says to cut onions) and that the ingredient list says "garlic, peeled, finely grated" and not "garlic" and "onions, sliced thinly".

You might not like that convention of "time" or would like "actual time" in addition, but it is a pretty universal convention. And it makes sense: the prep time can vary wildly (e.g. peeling and chopping veggies) making the "actual time" quite useless and in professional kitchens other people do this prep work.

So hard disagree from me. The time seems pretty spot on.

williamdclt2• 3 years ago

The "prep time" is _not_ the time for the "prep step"? Internet seems to agree with you, it's wild. Why is it not called "assembly time" or something?

Plus, it's not like that recipes on the internet (or books) are usually targeted at professional kitchens. Or like professional kitchens will take times at face value (and won't test it).

acjacobson2• 3 years ago

No, that is not the prep step.

Then they shouldn't label it prep.

And it makes sense: the prep time can vary wildly (e.g. peeling and chopping veggies) making the "actual time" quite useless and in professional kitchens other people do this prep work.

This is a recipe for home cooks not professional kitchens. Both cook time and prep time are always going to be estimates. Labeling a step as "prep" and excluding all of the actual prep tasks isn't useful for someone trying to plan their day. This 5 min step ads nothing of value to the recipe as far as I can see.

throwaway20375• 3 years ago

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 frequently to your ad-tech empire that provides lousy recipes.

To me, free recipes are no better than free media (online newspapers, YouTube TV, etc.). If you aren't paying, then you are the product.

I use online free recipes to get an idea of the ingredients and proportions. Sometimes, an YouTube video can give you ideas about technique if you are new to an style of cooking. I need to cook something a few times to find the right balance.

My latest recipe is trying to replicate the black vinegar semi-sweet thickened sauce used in Chinese fried eggplant recipes. The premade stuff has a huge list of ingredients -- too many "extracts". I'm am trying to reduce to the fewest number possible, but still tastes close to restaurant style. Each time I make it, I look at my cooking notes, then make small adjustments.

eps• 3 years ago

Dude, look up what SeriousEats is and its history, and save your grievances for another target.

yard2010• 3 years ago

While I agree with what you're saying, you got it wrong in this case - Kenji Lopez is doing anything but the things you talk about

huhtenberg3• 3 years ago

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.

deafpolygon• 3 years ago

A vast majority of recipes are just inaccurate when it comes to timing.

My favorite technique to caramelize onion is to do it in a convection oven. Just take a batch, add a tiny bit of oil (not olive) to coat it without dripping too much excess oil on the pan. It will just dry out otherwise)... Season it with some salt & pepper and stick it in the oven cold and turn the heat on... ~170C (if your oven runs cooler, you can turn this up to ~180C). Toss every ~20-25 minutes, and it should be nicely caramelized in about an hour and half, or a little longer - just pull it out when you're satisfied with the level of browning.

Bonus: add a touch of brown sugar (1/2-1 tsp / 2-3 medium-large onions) for an extra kick of sweetness about halfway through the cooking time (sometimes, this is cheating).

I like it because there's no open flame or hot stove to deal with, and it leaves me free to do other things.

WheelsAtLarge• 3 years ago

Saw a show the other day that added a bit of baking soda to caramelize them in a fraction of the time. I tried it a few days ago and it worked.

Here's a page about it: https://www.onions-usa.org/onionista/faster-caramelized-onio...

ars3• 3 years ago

Yah, but then they taste bad - I can taste even small amounts of baking soda, and I hate it.

ccsalvesen• 3 years ago

A splash of white wine vinager when they are done will neutralize left over baking soda and bring it back to normal pH. It makes all the difference.

They will still be mushy thou.

williamdclt2• 3 years ago

Makes onions mushy though: https://www.seriouseats.com/caramelized-onions

dang• 3 years ago

Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27632835 - June 2021 (299 comments)

Why Do Recipe Writers Lie and Lie About How Long It Takes to Caramelize Onions? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8262889 - Sept 2014 (4 comments)

bruckie2• 3 years ago

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 any data on how long it takes actual customers to cook them. I might be slower than many, but I'd be surprised if the median customer could complete the recipe in anywhere close to the listed time.

egman_ekki• 3 years ago

You should watch a couple of Iron Chef episodes if you want to feel extra slow :D

wjnc• 3 years ago

Do you prepare following the steps in the guide? I’ve found that it’s much quicker to prepare based on what hits the pan when. If you do that the first items hit the pan sooner and you are in a nice rush to keep up the cutting with the cooking. Massive efficiency gain. And do some YouTube based cutting training. But that was coming from total beginner level.

episteme• 3 years ago

I had the same problem with Hello Fresh. I dreaded doing all the prep. However, we tried one called Green Chef and found it much more realistic. The cost of any of these services is too high for me to stomach without some sort of discount but we actually enjoyed cooking the recipes with this one while it lasted.

brnt2• 3 years ago

Absolutely! I think I am especially slow at cutting veg, which is a compromise between my motorically undeveloped and untrained self not cutting my fingers (happens every few weeks) and speed. Multiplying by 1.5 is a safe lower limit for me.

I did learn a few things through it though (how to use vinager and not to be afraid of more than 5 ingredients), which is a great outcome. Apart from a bigger selection of recipes I know.

iddan• 3 years ago

I would highly recommend learning how to use a chef’s knife properly. There are techniques for cutting, cleaning etc that reduce the cooking time significantly. I had the luck to be taught how to use one in school and by my dad but I always notice most people don’t know how to use it and don’t take the time to learn it (which would save them a lot of time)

Aaargh203183• 3 years ago

I have the same experience with Marley Spoon. I always make sure I prepare everything in advance but the actual recipe wants you to do some of the cutting and dicing while stuff is already cooking and they often have impossible timing.

For example, they will have you fry the meat for 2-3 minutes, clean and chop a boatload of vegetables and add them after those 2-3 minutes pass. Sometimes they even do this during a step that requires constant attention, like browning minced meat.

I have no idea how they test these recipes. Maybe they are possible if you’re a professional chef in a fully equipped kitchen with plenty of space but they aren’t in my tiny kitchen where I have to spend half a minute digging the colander out from the back of the cupboard.

They also assume I have an infinite amount of cutting boards and knifes. For example, in step 1 they expect me to cut a chicken breast into bite size pieces, and then in step 2 or 3 I have to cut veggies for a salad. I can’t re-use the cutting board and knife I used for raw chicken for salad without giving it a thorough washing. So I cut everything in advance and do the chicken last.

sublinear4• 3 years ago

They also assume I have an infinite amount of cutting boards and knifes

A professional kitchen doesn't either. They wipe things down with sanitizer as they go. i.e. a damp rag from a bucket of water/steramine solution.

com2kid6• 3 years ago

Cutting board covers, a rubber mat that lays on top of your cutting board, cut all your meats first, toss it in the sink, swap knives, cut all your veggies.

Saves 5 minutes or so of prep time, well worth it IMHO. Also you can just throw it in the dishwasher and not worry about scrubbing a wood cutting board and possibly damaging it with moisture.

OJFord6• 3 years ago

So I cut everything in advance and do the chicken last.

To be honest that's better anyway - unless you have some long cooking times with nothing to do but clean up & prepare the next thing, a bit of planning & preparation - mise en place - ends up saving time and giving better results IMO. (Better results because you're not accidentally cooking something longer than you wanted, say, because you were trying to finish chopping the onions to add, and the onions aren't uneven because you didn't rush.)

astura4• 3 years ago

This makes perfect sense for a commercial kitchen- when I worked in one we had separate cutting boards exclusively used for raw meat.

debaserab2• 3 years ago

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!

eloisant• 3 years ago

The thing is Hello Fresh is for people who are not used to cooking. If you're used to cooking then you know enough recipes, you know what to buy and you don't need Hello Fresh.

Having cooking time from actual customers instead of veteran cooks would be helpful.

samstave5• 3 years ago

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

Sander_Marechal• 3 years ago

My wife and I use the Sorted Sidekick app from the Sorted Food youtube channel. It's the only recipes I tried where the stated cooking time pretty much matches how long it really takes us.

santialbo• 3 years ago

Prepping everything can take a lot of time if you are not experienced. Time for things like chopping an onion can vary from 1 minute to 5 very easily.

mindentropy2• 3 years ago

My experience is similar to yours. Prepping takes the longest time for me. I feel that cooking is all about prepping as the actual cooking on the stove takes a lot less time. Many recipes just mention the actual cooking time and some very vague prep time.

MrScruff• 3 years ago

I feel that the time quoted to cook the recipes is always based on an experienced chef, which is likely often not the case for things like Hello Fresh.

An experienced chef will have be far more efficient at chopping/food preparation - I'm reasonable fast at chopping but still probably end up focusing over details an experienced chef would know aren't going to matter for the final recipe.

Also they're probably better at managing the parallel threads of execution most recipes need, hence they always talk about boiling water for pasta far more early then I ever end up needing it.

marak8303• 3 years ago

You are spot on. Ex chef here(quite experienced), and without notice (while watching a tv show), I'm at least twice as fast as my wife at prep.

When I'm focused I'm even faster.

Even then I'm probably on par if not only a touch faster than these recipes XD

Lutger2• 3 years ago

This is it. I've volunteered in a kitchen with professional chefs, even between them there was a big difference: the most experienced chefs were that much faster than even decent home cooks, at least 4x. It is amazing to watch.

wonnage2• 3 years ago

It's tough to parallelize a recipe the first time you're cooking it - unless you have a photographic memory you're gonna have to keep checking back between steps and it's easy to miss something. Ends in getting really stressed out when you have something on the stove and realize you need to chop veg in 30 seconds.

It's better the 2nd or 3rd time but I think with these meal plan services you're cooking something different every day, so it's hard to develop that familiarity. Ideally you'd follow their steps and take as long as you need the first time, and then go out and buy groceries and do it again, but that probably defeats the purpose of using such a service anyway

bruckie2• 3 years ago

That's exactly how I'm using the service: get ideas for new meals during the promo, then cancel and make the ones I liked myself with ingredients from the store. So I do have some hope that I'll get faster. :)

zamalek• 3 years ago

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.

carabiner2• 3 years ago

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

gustavorg• 3 years ago

Well, we know this is not true. At least Armando Scannone had a team of 4 cooks to make and rehearse each and every one of the recipes in his famous cookbook [1]. Armando Scannone has a famous Venezuelan cookbook, it is the obligatory reference for those who want to make Venezuelan dishes. I have personally tried many of the dishes and the recipes are correct and the result is just as the book indicates.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Armando-Scannone/dp/B011YUALZS

fastball• 3 years ago

Are you replying to the right comment? Armando Scannone's cookbook seems almost entirely unrelated to GC's point.

bombcar7• 3 years ago

Four skilled cooks will be able to complete recipes much faster than even a good home cook.

It's like watching an electrician wire a bathroom in two hours and assuming anyone can do it. They can; after years of experience and knowing what to do, what not to do, and what to avoid.

mberning• 3 years ago

I love the 5 minute prep ones. I always joke to my wife, 5 minutes of prep, for a michelin star. Call me chef Marco.

k8sToGo• 3 years ago

Hello Fresh is horrible. They keep spamming and calling after I cancelled my trial.

ridgered4• 3 years ago

I remember Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals usually featured her pulling some ingredients she'd already chopped up or soaked in something the night before out from the fridge. Apparently the time spend yesterday didn't count against the clock.

bombcar7• 3 years ago

There's something to be said for it, but you have to plan ahead; most people who are starting out trying to cook are very bad at planning ahead.

A cookbook that focused on "here's stuff you can pre-prep that can be used in multiple meals" would be nice.

tester89• 3 years ago

IME Hello Fresh and Gousto were always double their quoted time. 40 minutes was almost always 80 minutes. There is just one exception, namely that Gousto's 10 minute recipes are actually 30 minutes, but that's explained if you notice that they're often 15 minute recipes and they're lying and claiming they're 10 minutes (they have 5 minute, 10 minute and then 20 minute recipes, but no 15 minute recipes, which suggests that they round down for 15).

conductr4• 3 years ago

Mirrors my experience. Prep work is the most underestimated part. I think they start with everything out on the counter and unpackaged and with necessary tooling lined up and ready. But those things take time. For me, something like mincing garlic cloves takes a solid 5-10 minutes alone and is one of the things that consistently stands out as they must have started with minced garlic to get to this time estimate.

_fat_santa2• 3 years ago

I found that it really just comes down to how much experience you have. I started cooking a lot this year, mostly because it beats taking my girlfriend out to dinner every week. When I started I was very slow and dinners would take me in excess of an hour, mostly because I was just very unskilled in the basics of cooking.

As time has gone on I found that making dinners took me less and less time, part of it is knowing the right techniques for preparing certain foods, others are little ergonomic things like getting a knife magnet and ensuring all the tools you need are at your fingertips. It's also knowing how long food cooks for, what you have to keep an eye on and what you can just let cook. The first time I made smash burgers at home it took me in excess of an hour to prep and cook everything and yesterday I was able to do the same in about 20 minutes.

giraffe_lady7• 3 years ago

Nah that's a perfect example of how experience & technique can speed things up dramatically. Here watch ole JP do it in about 90 seconds even while slowing down to explain it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y5h1pDHhzs

balderdash3• 3 years ago

Don’t disagree that some of the recipe times are very optimistic, but watching friends cook gives me hives at how inefficient they are, handful of things to think about about that will massively speed up your cooking time:

1)read the recipe and spend a couple of min visualizing the steps, what you’ll need and writing out the timing and grouping chores.

2) do some mise en place[a] (buy $50 of small duralex glass bowls for this, they’re great). E.g. do all your dry good measuring, then wet measuring, vegetable chopping in groups.

3. Set up efficiently (mise en place above), watching someone go to the cupboard 15 times and then the fridge 8 times for things in their recipe is a huge waste. Use a trash bowl so you’re not running to the sink or garbage all the time.

4. Learn knife skills (a lot of cooking schools offer a stand alone class). The right way and the wrong way to dice an onion or Julianne a pepper are like 80%+ reductions in time spent on a task…

5. Clean while you cook.

You’ll be shocked at the time savings if you combine these elements.

A. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_place

savanaly• 3 years ago

Biggest thing for me is your #5. When I watch others cook I see a lot of downtime. 30 seconds here waiting for oil in pan to get hot, 30 seconds there chatting with me while their water boils, it adds up to minutes and minutes that could have been spent washing dishes and cleaning surfaces. For me the perfect cook is when the last thing comes off the heat it's the only dirty dish, I can plate it, wash the dish in the sink, then leave the kitchen with the food and the kitchen cleaner than when I went in.

ouid3• 3 years ago

mise en place is more efficient for restaurant kitchens, where you can get an assembly line rolling, but it is less efficient for home cooking.

Its a lot less stressful, but its clearly slower to not optimize your order of operations.

dkarl• 3 years ago

Each one of these things is worth adopting by itself, if adopting all of them at the same time is intimidating.

Item 5 can be interpreted in more than one way, though, so I think it's worth digging into. At a fundamental level, with virtually no tradeoffs, it's important not to be crowded by dirty dishes while you cook. If you're worried about your elbow bumping a water glass while you chop onions, or if you have to reach around a dirty mixing bowl to find the garlic, it's going to slow you down, both physically and mentally. Keeping your workspace tidy pays back every second many times over.

Taking "clean while you cook" even further, you can try to save time by scrubbing pans and bowls as you are finished with them. This is extremely appealing for busy people, but how feasible it is depends on what you're making, how much work and attention it requires, and how fast you are. It's a rare triumph for me if I can put three dishes on the table with no dirty dishes in the kitchen. I've done this, but much more often, I've messed up dishes when my attention got hijacked by scrubbing a pan that I could have left for later. If you feel rushed or stressed while cooking, you can give yourself breathing room by getting the dirty stuff out of the way in the easiest possible manner, even if that means stacking it to clean it later.

deprecative2• 3 years ago

Then you get people like me that fail at step one because we cannot "visualize" the steps. I logically understand what those words mean but I have no practical experience with actually doing anything approaching it.

The point is, don't think you are the baseline for everyone else. Nobody should give two shits about efficiency with cooking unless your job is to cook efficiently.

malfist• 3 years ago

Knife skills make such a difference. When my partner is helping me in the kitchen, I normally give him one vegetable to dice, and I dice everything else.

I can give him a bell pepper, and by the time he's finished with one bell pepper, I've diced two other bell peppers, the onions, the celery and the chicken.

Or if we're dicing and roasting potatoes, he'll dice one potato in the time it takes me to dice 3 or 4.

Most of the time he just cleans up after me or sets the table and we find that a better arrangement.

grvdrm• 3 years ago

I almost never look at recipe timing, but anecdotally, I know I'm slower.

That said, I spent time as a line chef in a kitchen, and it gave me some useful skills in kitchen: cooking lots of things at the same time. These days, I'll fire up my grill, have something on the, and maybe something in the oven, and have done it enough times to know when to start/stir/turn-off to make sure everything is done right around the same time. Very much like a restaurant.

Also, some things are just easier when you let the tool do the job for you. I never cook rice any other way than in an Instant Pot, for example.

jandrese2• 3 years ago

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.

Earw0rm• 3 years ago

Ditto "Jamie's 30 minute meals".

Something like this:

https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/summer-veg...

The last step - 14 - is in fact two steps of (unspecified, but looks like 5-10), and 8 minutes cooking time. Which means you've about 15 minutes to do the other 13 steps. Maybe theoretically possible if you've kitchen-professional chopping speed and know exactly what you're doing, but allowing for thinking time? Hell no.

And let's not talk about the amount of shopping time to get the 15 required ingredients. Most of which are fresh so you're not going to have them kicking around in a cupboard.

JustSomeNobody• 3 years ago

I never pay attention to the overall cook times. I read through the recipe and picture myself doing the steps to get a feel for how long it will really take.

bombcar7• 3 years ago

I love the advertising on some of the crock pot or instant pot packets you can find in the store. It'll say like "ten minute prep time!" (ignoring the 4-8 hour cook time) or the instant pot one will say "ready in 5 minutes" when that means the pressure cooker will cook at high pressure for 5 minutes, but it can take 5-10 minutes to heat up to that point.

Time is an illusion.

0xffff2• 3 years ago

"ten minute prep time!" (ignoring the 4-8 hour cook time)

That's literally what "prep time" means though?

Jtsummers• 3 years ago

The biggest issue with their recipes is that they, to an extent, tell you to do things in the wrong order. Picking a random recent one we had there was a step to season the meat and then heat some oil and then cook the meat. Well, heating the oil (to the point you'd want to add the meat) can take a few minutes and should have started before you even got the meat out of the package. What you actually have to do with the recipes is read the entire thing to find all the meat and produce and spice prep steps and all the measuring steps. Do all of those first while the oven is heating and maybe the pan with oil (though this can usually be delayed until you put something in the oven since the total stovetop time is usually 5-10 minutes less than the oven time). Then you start cooking, usually, with the recipes we've had, by putting a baking sheet of vegetables in to roast. Then start heating the oil (maybe a few minutes delay) and then start cooking the meat.

If you do that, the prep part takes 5-10 minutes depending on your knife skills and then the cooking takes as long as the longest cooking step (usually a vegetable roasting step). You cannot execute their recipes as written in the time they suggest, but you can definitely cook the meals in the time they suggest if you read the recipe and execute it in a proper order.

It would be nice, for people who aren't used to parallelizing work (most of us are engineers and programmers here, it's kind of what we do) if they laid it out differently, with a timeline or something.

----------

Prep: List all prep steps (chopping, dicing, measuring, seasoning, mixing sauces, etc.)

            1    1   2    2
  0123456789012345678012345
  |-----------------------|
  1  3         4    5   6 7
  2

1. Put baking sheet of vegetables into oven

2. Add oil to pan and set to medium-high heat

3. Add onions to heated pan (stirring, etc.)

4. After 10 minutes remove onions, add oil, wait a minute and add meat (the pan will be so hot the oil needs little time to heat up)

5. Flip meat after 5 minutes

6. Remove meat from heat (have description and target temperature so people can know it's actually done), plate and cover with onions and herb butter mix (described in prep steps)

7. Remove vegetables from oven (include description of how they should look so they aren't over/undercooked) and plate

----------

That's how essentially every recipe ends up executing from what I've seen. If you read and parse the recipe steps into the actual prep portion (which they mix throughout) and heating portions (which they often list after they should be started) and cooking portions, the prep and cook times (more the cook times, prep depends on skill and focus) are pretty spot on.

marssaxman• 3 years ago

This has been a long-standing gripe of mine when it comes to recipe syntax - by listing all the ingredients up front, recipes look like they should be parseable with a single pass, but in practice there are too many forward-references. I recently bought a cookbook for my child which has recipes written in a clear, procedural way, and the absence of gotchas is really refreshing: I wish this style would become standard.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Cookbook-Young-Chefs/dp/1492...

BiteCode_dev2• 3 years ago

For the same reason devs lie about installing arch linux without any problem.

When you are good at something, you don't realize how much you do anymore.

This article is unrelated, but has a good explananation of the problem in one section :

Why not tell people to simply use x

https://bitecode.substack.com/p/why-not-tell-people-to-simpl...

dj_mc_merlin5• 3 years ago

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 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.

Broken_Hippo2• 3 years ago

Exactly this.

You simply aren't going to speed up the chemical reactions that happen during cooking. Even if you do find a way, your result will often be different or the result of using ready-made ingredients at the store. (I can buy frozen caramelized onions, for example).

maccard5• 3 years ago

You are not going to be able to cook chicken in 3-4minutes per side like so many recipes claim.

Sure you are. meat thermometer, hot pan and a butterflied breast [0] will give you evenly cooked chicken in about 8 minutes.

[0] https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/how-butterfly-chicke...

BiteCode_dev2• 3 years ago

True, in this extreme version that goes clearly against the laws of physics.

But without going there, I can clearly hear my mother answering me that once again "it's very simple honey, 20 minutes top", when asked how she did the lunch.

She consistently does this, yet when I copy everything she does, I'm lucky to get 40 minutes.

eru8• 3 years ago

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.

Surely, you are dramatizing a bit here. Or are you assuming that everyone shares the same need to fiddle with everything?

denton-scratch8• 3 years ago

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 mash-ups, and feeds the results to a tasting panel. At least, that's what she says she does; I'm inclined to believe her.

chrsjxn2• 3 years ago

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 my stove doesn't have the same kind of heat output that a commercial stove would, let alone specialty equipment like pizza ovens or wok burners. And lots of home range hoods are awful for ventilation, which makes it even more impractical to cook at a high heat.

pkilgore2• 3 years ago

Just FYI you can easily cook a room temp chicken breast or thigh (or lots of them) 4 minutes a side directly below a broiler on a broiler pan, letting them rest covered for 5 afterwards.

Add a minute for the genetic freak 2+ inch thick ones.

You will need to pat the moisture off them first and brush with oil.

Gordonjcp3• 3 years ago

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.

People bother to do that?

Just wipe, reinstall, and run your postinst scripts to restore everything you need.

codeflo• 3 years ago

Python packaging is a special kind of dependency hell, you get the feeling that forward compatibility is an unknown idea and everything depends on the precise version of anything else. Last time I checked, some of the most popular packages hadn’t even been ported yet to a stable Python release that was six months old at the time, forcing me to downgrade. It’s essentially the most unpythonic aspect of working in Python: a zillion incompatible ways to do things, and nothing works out of the box.

bittercynic• 3 years ago

They might differ on what's a problem, too. I've installed arch a few times, and there were some things I had to do, but I wouldn't say I had problems. It was generally a pretty enjoyable experience.

mattlondon• 3 years ago

Hmm I dunno. Are people using a stone-cold pan or something?

You can brown (I presume this is what most recipes mean when they say "caramelise") onions brown fairly quickly in ~5 mins or so on a good induction hob and normal (i.e. not absurdly weighty) day-to-day saute pan. It was equally as fast on gas hobs when those used to be a thing too.

A non-induction electric hob of course is a total different matter as they are total utter garbage, so if they are using those then yeah it probably just takes 10 minutes to get to the right temperature to cook at all!

Maybe the onions you bet in Europe are easier to cook? Wouldn't surprise me if there is some different variety that is common here but not there etc.

wpm• 3 years ago

Sauteed onions are not the same as caramelized onions.

onion2k2• 3 years ago

You can turn onions brown fairly quickly in ~5 mins..

Caramelized onions are not the same as browned onions. Going from raw to brown takes 5 minutes, and going from brown to caramelized takes about another 25 to 45 minutes.

tourmalinetaco9• 3 years ago

looks at username

Now you, you I can trust on this topic.

peepee1982• 3 years ago

Heat is not the problem. I don't think you understand what browning onions well means. Which is understandable, because getting them "brown" in a few minutes is pretty easy, and that's the way it's explained in most recipes.

Browning usually means at least partial (noticeable in taste) caramelizing. That just won't happen in five minutes.

GrumpyNl• 3 years ago

Caramelize onions take between 45 and 60 minutes. First result on Google https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_caramelize_onio...

peter_retief• 3 years ago

I had to google because I forgot the term for sauteed onions, had the term braised in my head.

https://www.platingsandpairings.com/sauteed-onions/

The main difference between sauteed onions and caramelized onions is the cooking time. Caramelized onions are cooked at a lower temperature, for a longer period of time, resulting in super sweet, tender onions.

isaacfrond• 3 years ago

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 up a recipe. She is experienced and knowledgeable she it usually turns out ok. But if you make her recipe you may well be the first one to do it. What is worse, she claims that virtually all recipe books are made like this.

So if you cook from a recipe you'll have to adjust to realities and modify it were needed, because the recipe writer sure as hell didn't do it for you.

rutierut• 3 years ago

Maybe this is just my experience, but I've almost never seen a recipe book where the recipes are not accompanied by pictures of the result?

pbhjpbhj• 3 years ago

I think the thing here might be "of the results".

Here's my grandma's recipe for flapjacks ... accompanied by a picture of flapjacks ... the recipe I made up, the picture was from a stock photo site (best place to get pictures of gravy! /jk) ...

For me that revelation explains a lot.

OJFord6• 3 years ago

Even in Delia's course - she has a good reputation for testing & refining etc. over time, not a TV personality with questionable time/skill in kitchen - the photos & making of those dishes to photograph are credited to someone else.

(And sometimes they do clearly vary from the recipe - like clearly not the called-for cheese, or without the described scattering of something over the top or whatever. Which I think's mostly fine or even good, but occasionally I think 'what do you mean by x' and either can't tell from the photo, or have to remind myself that that's only someone else's interpretation anyway.)

LukeShu• 3 years ago

I've almost never seen a recipe book that didn't have at least one recipe where some aspect of the picture didn't blatantly contradict the recipe; i.e. it was just a stock photo.

ibz2• 3 years ago

AI generated photos would probably look good enough for the book to be successful.

jaclaz2• 3 years ago

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 ingredients that are used because they come out great in photography, example:

https://petapixel.com/2018/11/30/tricks-food-photographers-u...

iamacyborg2• 3 years ago

The Leith’s books don’t have many photos, great recipes though as you’d expect from a genuine cooking school.

topaz0• 3 years ago

That's a pretty modern development. Older cookbooks, including classics that are just as good or better than anything being written now, don't have photos, and rarely have illustrations.

plufz• 3 years ago

This is a little frustrating to hear. Since that is exactly the feeling I often have. Proportions and time seems incorrect and you question what you are going wrong. I have a few cookbooks like the ones from Yotam Ottolenghi where the recipe is actually correct. It is so much more fun to use. Nothing wrong with improvising in the kitchen, but trying to fix incorrect salt balance, being stressed over longer cooking time than expected, etc. is not much fun.

maccard5• 3 years ago

I'm a decent cook, and occasionally I've been in the middle of a recipe and noticed something is off.

It came with experience, but knowing whether 1 TSP or 1 tbsp of something per portion is the right rough ratio comes in handy significantly more often than you think

thaumasiotes• 3 years ago

that is exactly the feeling I often have. Proportions and time seems incorrect and you question what you are going wrong. I have a few cookbooks like the ones from Yotam Ottolenghi where the recipe is actually correct. It is so much more fun to use.

I wonder what you would think of Ethiopia: Recipes and Traditions from the Horn of Africa ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/1623719631/ )

The recipes are good. But the book rarely specifies an amount of anything, and sometimes when it does it's accompanied by a note saying "I toned this way down for an American audience". [1] Many recipes include the direction "add enough water to prevent scorching" one or more times.

I just take the philosophy that that book mostly expects you to know what you want and how to get there, and whenever you try making a new recipe from it you might be wildly off. But it's not a matter of the recipes being "incorrect" -- they're great! It's that they're underspecified.

I don't think the requirement for familiarity with a recipe can really be gotten rid of. Learning to make rice-a-roni from a box had its hiccups; over time I tended to get better results despite not consciously doing anything different. And if any recipe is going to be tested for reliability and ease of following by people who are barely able to cook, it will be the directions on a box of rice-a-roni.

[1] And he wasn't kidding about that. I had to use five times the amount of berbere indicated in that particular recipe to get it to taste right.

echelon• 3 years ago

[...] reasonable successful.

Maybe edit some details out? That might impact said person's career.

pickledshrimp• 3 years ago

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.

dragonwriter• 3 years ago

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

Food photography very often is staged for visual appeal, not prepared as directed (for a recipe illustration) or as actually prepared (for a restaurant illustration.)

voytec• 3 years ago

Surely that can’t be true (...) every modern recipe has pictures to show what the result should look like

You may be looking at glue used as milk, motor oil as sauce or mashed potatoes pretending to be ice cream [1].

(And don't call me Shirley)

[1] https://petapixel.com/2018/11/30/tricks-food-photographers-u...

geocar• 3 years ago

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..."

palotasb• 3 years ago

she claims that virtually all recipe books are made like this

Most recipe books have pictures, how are those created then?

kevsim• 3 years ago

Gotta say, not really looking forward to GPT generated recipes rendered by Stable Diffusion.

groestl4• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_photography

It's almost safe to say you can't actually eat the meal that gets photographed.

blowski• 3 years ago

I imagine this is like a senior dev who says all they do is copy code from StackOverflow. There’s some amount of good social skills, humility, and expertise that forgets how simple things for them are like rocket science to others.

groestl4• 3 years ago

she never actually tries her recipes.

Well, that makes two of us, her, and me buying too many recipe books ;)

the_af• 3 years ago

Haha I understand you. I have way too many cookbooks that are untried and untested. I like looking at the pretty photos and marvel at those kitchens and kitchenware. And the ingredients, so colorful!

Then I realize I don't know what half those ingredients are, wouldn't know where to source them, and in any case I don't have time to go shopping for nonstandard stuff.

henrikschroder2• 3 years ago

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 slice an onion, with examples of what it's good for. Here's how to cut a cow into pieces, here's what the pieces are called, here's how long each piece takes to cook and what it pairs well with.

Unfortunately, most people think they can cook something from a recipe collection without being proficient at the basics. "I'll just follow the recipe!", and then they wonder why it didn't work. A timer can never replace the knowledge of how something is supposed to look, feel, and smell when it's done or not.

And yet recipe collection regularly outsell cookbooks by a wide margin.

I guess they look good on a coffee table at least.

dmarchand90• 3 years ago

Could you recommend such a "proper" cookbook

than3• 3 years ago

No such book actually exists. There's a french book that covers basic/common procedures and a reader's digest book but those are about it; and they definitely are not beginner oriented.

lldb• 3 years ago

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.

fps_doug2• 3 years ago

I use recipe websites. When I want to try something new, I read a handful of recipes there, usually those with high user ratings. But what I really pay attention to is the writing style. If it's just a dry "do this then that then that", it might very well be some stuff someone made up on the spot. But if people go into detail, like "yes this seems like an awful lot of butter, but trust me, this is how the real thing is done at the restaurant where you don't see it", and little details that make me believe the person is actually writing from experience and dropping hints of what to watch out for, it's usually a really solid result for me.

heisenzombie• 3 years ago

Serious recommendation: Back in the day (like more than a decade ago) I learned to cook using rouxbe.com and it really set me up for a love of cooking. Can’t vouch for any changes since then, hopefully it’s still good.

Nonserious recommendation: Just drop >600USD on

https://modernistcuisine.com/books/modernist-cuisine/

… and end up spherising your breakfast or something, idk.

GuB-42• 3 years ago

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

I tend to disagree on that one, unless you are particularly experienced, or naturally gifted, measuring tools (timers, scales, thermometers,...) will give you the best results. At least for me, that's the case.

And if you can't follow a recipe to the letter, without knowledge of how things are supposed to feel, it is not a proper recipe. The entire point is to give you consistent results, if I had the intuition, I wouldn't need a recipe.

And even if you are an experienced cook, precise instructions and measurements will give you a better baseline from where you can improvise. Yes, I have an idea on how cook a potato, but unless the recipe tells me how to do it, how do I know how potatoes are supposed to be for that recipe in particular?

So yeah, no matter how good at cooking you are, if you "just follow" a recipe properly and it doesn't work, then the recipe is wrong or incomplete. It is like in programming, 99% of the time, where there is a problem, it comes from the software, not the computer running it. And successful developers don't ask users to fix their bugs, even on open source projects where users have the ability to do it, why should it be different for recipe writers?

kqr4• 3 years ago

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.

hef19898• 3 years ago

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

damontal• 3 years ago

Joy of Cooking has been my go to for 25 years. It’s part cookbook, part encyclopedia, and just very useful.

baxtr• 3 years ago

Actually… I can recommend ChatGPT. It’s pretty decent for recipes.

matwood2• 3 years ago

Agree completely. Let me add to, that tasting as you go is the quickest way to level up your cooking.

maurits• 3 years ago

Any cookbook recommendations?

linsomniac• 3 years ago

I have a very well worn copy of The Joy of Cooking and highly recommend it. I rarely use it these days, but I've also built up a lot of cooking instinct and I'll usually just look up 3-4 recipes and combine the parts I like from each.

ianai• 3 years ago

Alton Brown was really good for this.

safety1st• 3 years ago

Very amateur cook here and I never thought about this before, but I can see your point.

When I follow a recipe it may or may not turn out well. If the recipe is a bad one or there's a part of it which requires a technique I don't know, the end product won't be good.

When I learn a technique it opens up a variety of options for just creating delicious stuff. A good example was learning how to make a pan sauce. Suddenly a bunch of things lying around the kitchen became ingredients for whatever kind of delicious sauce I was in the mood for, accompanying pretty much any meat or vegetable I wanted to eat. Dozens of possibilities for making great meals all came from one technique.

When you learn the techniques you end up with tons of options for what you're going to cook and the end product turns out better because you understand why it works.

I'd be a lot more hesitant about adopting this approach to baking though!

escapedmoose2• 3 years ago

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 “broil” or “sauté,” etc.

For someone who didn’t learn to cook growing up, that book is a godsend.

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.”

jraph• 3 years ago

Ah ah, it's like an experienced developer committing code and releasing it without running / testing it first.

It would not happen. Right? Right?

JodieBenitez• 3 years ago

I do this, sometimes. And it's fine.

ReptileMan3• 3 years ago

Especially not on live ... it never happens man. It's urban legend.

june_twenty• 3 years ago

You're implying this does happen. Where does this happen? I've never experienced it.

Sakos• 3 years ago

It's more like deploying code to production without at the very least running it once. That would be really fucking dumb. Most people don't do that. The above comment is saying that most cookbooks are hot garbage and dont have recipes that have been used once.

wonnage2• 3 years ago

It could be the way you're interpreting, but I suspect what she means is that she didn't go through and verify the exact measurements and timings in the recipe. There are simply too many variables involved in (non-baking) recipes to produce an exactly reproducible result - your ingredients might be different sizes, your "medium" heat is probably not their medium heat, differences in produce might affect the amount of salt/sugar you need to add, etc. Also, when scaling a recipe up or down, you won't actually want to scale things linearly - it generally takes much longer to cook a large portion than it does a small one, or it feels silly to use 1/8th of an onion, etc. Most of these can be solved through measuring by weight, but that's annoying unless you're baking.

So the recipe is really just some rough proportions that have probably never been cooked exactly; you are expected to make adjustments. That's why I find video recipes super helpful - you can see how each step is supposed to look, so if the timings in the recipe are wrong you can still adjust on the fly. And tasting as you go is always a good idea too.

denton-scratch8• 3 years ago

virtually all recipe books are made like this

Not Delia Smith's.

eru8• 3 years ago

That sounds convincing enough. But how do they make the pictures that come with many recipes, then?

ibz2• 3 years ago

Stock photos. AI generated. There are options...

jterrys3• 3 years ago

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. But it takes time to cook. Sometimes a long time. And he's a professional chef. So he goes very fast. All in order to make videos shorter so the audience doesn't turn away. Even with prep time where everything is arranged before filming, it will take him something like 20-30 minutes to finish one recipe. But his cooking is consistent, you watch him caramelize onions, you watch him multitask. Once again, he's very fast, but still, it's just not that fast to cook.

Audiences want fast. "quick 10 minute recipes" are all the fad. Equivalent to bite size twitter feeds and tik tok videos even though cooking can take a long time. But that's what the audience wants, and that's what the audience gets.

atdrummond• 3 years ago

I’ve cooked with him a few times (he gave classes at our family’s cookery shop) and he’s the real deal. Colourful doesn’t begin to describe his actual background, though.

Agentlien• 3 years ago

I'm an amateur who enjoys cooking and does it once a day in order to feed my family.

One of my biggest learnings is that no matter what I do it takes quite a while to cook a meal. Huge complex meals can take hours to prepare, but even a simple meal usually takes me half an hour - because that's just the time it takes to grab the ingredients, boil water for pasta/rice/potatoes/..., cook and present it. The time it takes to cook a meal is largely determined by the duration of the longest step. All the rest is done in parallel, with more complex recipes simply requiring more multitasking. So cooking a simpler meal often makes for a less stressful experience and simpler flavours, but often doesn't save much time.

krisoft• 3 years ago

He explains that long videos don't do well. But it takes time to cook.

This is not a mystery. People don't "cook along" with videos. People watch cooking videos for either to get inspired or for a vibe, most often for both.

A stew might take hours to be ready, but the core idea of it can be expressed succinctly in a few sentences. Totally made up example: "We brown beef, and then simmer it with potatoes low and slow with the bones in. It is ready when the meat falls off from the bones. Spice with a pinch of cinnamon." Those are long and sweaty hours in a kitchen to make it, but you can read the idea in seconds. Put the details and quantities in the description. Those few who want to cook it will find it there.

If there is some technique or twist, make a video about that specifically? It doesn't all have to be recipes. I have watched a video the other day where a person explained why they put a few drops of water in the pan when they are frying bacon. If they would have done it in the middle of a 20 minute video I might have missed it. Or what is even more likely would have been skeptical of the technique without the added explanation and test pieces where he has done it both ways to show the difference.

And videos you watch for vibes are not about cooking. They are about the personality of the presenter, that parasocial interaction. It doesn't matter how the food tastes. You won't eat it anyway. What matters are the feelings you experience while watching it.

huhtenberg3• 3 years ago

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.

PeterisP2• 3 years ago

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.

FinnKuhn• 3 years ago

I have seen a couple of TikTok creators do cooking videos in a very condensed way. They cut everything, but the important parts out of the video. For example no one wants to watch something in the oven for 20 Minutes, just say that it goes in the oven for 20 minutes and show the result after you took it out.

Lutger2• 3 years ago

This is probably why I often just browse the ingredients of a recipe for inspiration and sometimes even don't read the instructions. Most recipe books are not very good. Not trying your own recipes is, respectfully, just fraud and I would not call those books high quality.

Its like buying expensive things, a higher price doesn't always translate to higher quality. Sometimes it just looks like high quality, is marketed and priced as such, but it falls apart when used. Sometimes it does however, and it takes some experience to be able to discern between the two.

And there are actually high quality recipe books that are more than just inspiring, sometimes they are unpretentious and you know it because the recipes 'just work'.

senectus1• 3 years ago

This does not surprise me in the slightest.

Lately I've been hunting recipes online for FODMAP compatible meals. Some of the recipes are just weird/wrong or poorly written.

Last night I was following a recipe that listed 8 eggs in the ingredients but in the instructions only telling you to use 3...

So many other weird things as well... non standard measurements or putting things in the instructions that dont show up in the ingredients, or instructions with completely unrealistic timeframes (like the caramelized onions). Also.. the number of FODMAP recipes that have major no no foods in them like Garlic or Onion :-$

frereubu• 3 years ago

I remember a conversation in my 20s with a friend who said "Jamie Oliver's recipes all work" and I was nonplussed by it - I figured that all the recipes in recipe books had been tried and tested, but boy was I naïve. The ones I know which always work are: any Jamie Oliver, any Anna Jones, Ottolenghi's Simple, River Cafe Easy, and The Intolerant Gourmet (a great book of recipes even if you don't have food intolerances). Leith's Cookery Bible is also good - there's a particulaly good one for boned stuffed chicken - although some of the recipes are a little dated now.

eyko• 3 years ago

My favourite on Indian cuisine is the Dishoom cookbook: it comes with recipes for most of their most famous dishes from their restaurant. I've tried most and, whilst the recipes might need a little tweaking to match your kitchen equipment, they are generally spot on. In fact, as far as cookbooks go, it's one of my favourites because it actually gets you close enough that you can figure out what to tweak.

And on the topic of onions: it has a three page section on caramelising onions, which will take you anywhere from half an hour to over an hour, depending on the quantity. That book doesn't lie.

I also have cookbooks that have been gifted to me that belong in the trash. You can tell from just looking at the ratios, times, and method description that the dish isn't going to turn out as expected. Worst of all, my partner is the type that can only cook from a recipe book and this has brought on many arguments over a simple suggestion to deviate from the recipe.

iainmerrick• 3 years ago

Restaurant cookbooks are often very good, if they give you the actual recipes they use in the restaurant.

Except... a) they're ideally making big batches, enough for 10 or 20 servings, and b) their stuff is usually very modular, i.e. made out of other recipes. How do I make that great chicken with the yogurt dip? First make the marinade (recipe on page 42). Then make the spice mix for the yogurt (recipe on page 65). Then make blackened peppers (page 210). etc etc

jtc331• 3 years ago

This is why I find America’s Test Kitchen so helpful: they’ve tried everything repeatedly, and because of that it’s rare to find one of their recipes that doesn’t work.

scary-size• 3 years ago

I feel the same. That‘s a subscription that really pays off. Also one of the few newslettery messages I let in my inbox.

rightbyte3• 3 years ago

The 'shittification' is almost universal. I have suspected many internet recipes are never tried, but books too ...

If there are pictures, are those 'fake' too, as in the author did not care how it tastes? Atleast the dish was made once?

This is why you buy recipe books that was written in the 70s or prior. The base collection style of books.

r_hoods_ghost• 3 years ago

Except a lot of recipe books from the 1950s to 1970s involve tins of mushroom soup, condensed milk, and jelly rather than real ingredients.

inferiorhuman5• 3 years ago

To that end there's a Canadian guy on youtube that puts out cooking videos using vintage (typically early 20th century) cookbooks every Sunday.

astura4• 3 years ago

I picked up a cookbook from the 70s in a second hand shop. It's got okay content for the most part but some recipes are incredibly unappealing for modern tastes, stuff like savory jello.

otikik• 3 years ago

I only get recipes from YouTube, were I can see a person actually doing it. They can still “fake it” or lie but it’s less likely.

cout• 3 years ago

Most recipe blogs these days include pictures of the dish as it is being prepared. I think it would be hard to generate those pictures without actually cooking the dish (though as AI image generation improves that will change).

dgroshev• 3 years ago

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 with baking, there is inherent variability in ingredients, so you can tell the author prepared the dish many times before when they saw things going wrong and worked around that.

3) not always easy to find out, but the author being a professional working chef (not a celebrity chef) is a good sign. There is no time for unnecessary embellishments in a working kitchen, things must be robust and as simple as possible for the given final result.

The best example I've seen so far were David Lebovitz's recipes. Always stripped down to bare necessities, with multiple contingencies discussed, robust and simple. You can tell that's something that can be made dozens times a day with consistent results. Too bad it's so rare.

Marsymars2• 3 years ago

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.

mongol• 3 years ago

This is what I long have suspected to be the case. At least for cookbooks of the very common kind. Perhaps the most well known ones do it differently. But cookbooks are a dime a dozen, and probably most commonly bought as gifts. Quality is not a priority.

As for quality, I expect a bread recipe printed on a flour package to have better chances of having been verified.

Eumenes• 3 years ago

I notice this in alot of recipes. See very highly rated reviews, lots of reviews, scroll down to reviews, 'omg i can't wait to try this' = 5 stars ... hmm

kunley• 3 years ago

That's about reviews for anything.

People put a number of stars based on their mood, presumptions, willingness to support a buddy's business, but not so often based on the real experience with the product or service.

vishnugupta• 3 years ago

This is why I follow YouTube videos and not recipe books. They turn out just fine.

Chyzwar• 3 years ago

That why I like to watch youtube chiefs like Joshua Weissman or Guga. They try to test at least some recipies.

mgaunard• 3 years ago

That's why you should only follow recipes from reputable sources.

Some people break down the science of a particular dish and explain in all detail the purpose of every single ingredient and cooking technique. They run experiments and tell you the impact of every single decision and come up with an optimized blueprint.

sanitycheck6• 3 years ago

...and here's an example of someone whose job can be replaced with ChatGPT.

I realised long ago that most published recipes are not very good, but it's the first time I've heard that the writer doesn't even try them. "Turns out OK" is a terrible bar, if I make up something in my head it'll almost always turn out "OK", if I'm following a recipe it's because I want a better chance of it being better than OK.

jorvi• 3 years ago

YouTuber home cooks make it “live”, so I generally trust those. Same for Gordon Ramsey, Marco Pierre White, Heston Blumenthal etc.

As far as YouTubers go you have the holy trinity of Adam Ragusea, Ethan Chlenpwoski and Joshua Weissman, although I dislike the latter and would sub (haha) him out for Brian Lagerstrom.

All of those YouTubers hit a good balance between: scientific basis, concise clear steps and taking reasonable shortcuts.

donohoe2• 3 years ago

My wife is a professional recipe writer for magazines, books, restaurants, meal-kit services, and companies.

She absolutely tests the recipes. A huge part of her work is testing for other people in addition to writing them etc. Testing itself is a HUGE industry.

I don’t want to say anything bad about a family member, but please treat your comment as a reflection on her, and not of recipe writers in general.

tiems• 3 years ago

Just to echo this, recipe tester is a profession in and of itself. There are publishers where recipes are not tested, but more established and trusted ones absolutely do.

lr4444lr• 3 years ago

How do you get a gig like that?

femto• 3 years ago

The Australian Women's Weekly's recipe tagline is "Triple Tested", meaning their recipes are cooked at least three times in their test kitchen. The kitchen has been at it for around 100 years and their recipes are highly trusted and well known in Australia (for good reason).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Australian_Women%27s_Weekl...

Edit: byline -> tagline

yyyk• 3 years ago

...she never actually tries her recipes. When it's time to do a new piece, she sits down at her computer and makes up a recipe. She is experienced and knowledgeable she it usually turns out ok.

If she's experienced I guess that means she does (did?) cook something. So what does she cook when she does cook?

yellowstuff• 3 years ago

My wife has written cookbooks and worked as a recipe tester for cookbooks, blogs, and even the little recipes on the back of bags of flour and stuff. I’m sure not every published recipe was tested, but a lot of them were. Some by me, an inexperienced cook nervously testing recipes for my wife’s book as she watched me like a hawk. At least 2 people tested every recipe in her books.

vachina• 3 years ago

Ok so if they don’t try their own recipes, then how did they make the pictures that accompany the recipes?

ceejayoz2• 3 years ago

If it’s a fairly common dish, stock photos.

nunuvit• 3 years ago

Recipe writers are the original large language models, making up superfically plausible bullshit to waste our time on.

silverlake• 3 years ago

From what I’ve read and seen, many cookbook authors test their recipes repeatedly in home kitchens. Most have testers or volunteers to ensure they make sense and work. By contrast I have some books that are restaurant recipes they purposely did not modify for home use. They are ridiculously complex and interesting.

For example, here America’s Test Kitchen: https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/5237-join-our-c...

donohoe2• 3 years ago

Yes, most do! If you want a fortress of well-tested recipes I highly recommend Smitten Kitchen. Everything tested to great depths...

https://smittenkitchen.com/

hk13372• 3 years ago

I am convinced they add red and yellow bell peppers strictly because they think the dish needs more color.

I _hate_ bell peppers. I can tolerate them in big chunks where I can pick them out but if you dice them up and mix it in, I won't eat it.

_fat_santa2• 3 years ago

For what it's worth, I found the best way to make them is to cut them into very thin slices. My rule is bell peppers have to always be "bite sized" because of how tough they are. If you make the pieces to big, you will have to "bite into" the pepper rather than eating it whole and I think that's where they get a bad rap since they can be very tough to bite into.

zebraflask• 3 years ago

Aha, I've often vaguely suspected as much with certain well-known food columns. I wrote it off to incompetent cooks, but it makes more sense that they were just making it up as they went along.

One that sticks in my mind was a recipe that called for a dozen whole cloves, where really you'd just use one or two. If any.

A dozen whole cloves, used in the way the recipe called for, would make pretty much any dish painfully inedible.

pteraspidomorph• 3 years ago

My tricks:

- Don't just read one recipe. Read three, see what they have in common and what seems off in each of them.

- Keep a dossier of your hybrid or modified recipes. Annotate the recipe with any changes you made.

- If the end result isn't great, what went wrong? Annotate the recipe with any changes you think you should make next time you try it.

These become easier the more experienced you are, of course.

PragmaticPulp• 3 years ago

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 writing a book, typesetting it, creating photography to match, proofreading, and getting it published, but to not actually try the recipe inside.

I’m sorry, but your sister is projecting her behavior on to everyone else in order to justify it. She is writing content farm material, but that doesn’t mean the entire industry works that way. Especially not the paid material book industry that hinges on reviews, gifting, and referrals.

vidarh• 3 years ago

You seem to be projecting assumption here. The comment you replied to says she's written books they've seen in a book store.

Also, note that the average book sells very few copies. Even traditionally published books. Some books have higher production values that'd justify a lot of extra effort, but tends to be linked to name recognition for people with very established names. It's not at all a given that all that much money has gone into producing these books.

giraffe_lady7• 3 years ago

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.

devchix2• 3 years ago

I'm not disagreeing with you, but there's substance to what the sister-in-law is claiming. I've had a few (not many, but frequent enough) mistakes from very highly produced books, from high-profile celebrity chefs - case in point Thomas Keller. As I was measuring out the ingredients I thought no way this could be right, I'm an experienced home cook and baker. Went with the recipe against my instincts anyway and it turned out quite bad. Especially when the recipe is adapted from a pro kitchen, they make gargantuan portions of stuff, and when reduced for the home cook, the portion and ratio don't necessarily get tested. There are also egregious substitution advice blithely thrown in, for example the Bouchon Bakery cookbook tells you to heat river rocks (but not sedimentary rocks! lol wut?) in your oven and throw water on them to create steam. If you follow this advice you're likely to ruin your oven when one of these rocks explodes. The pros use steam-injected ovens, the test kitchen uses steel chains, but this "use river rock" thing was probably thrown in there by a non-baking intern and I can promise you they never tested this.

Except for rare pockets, the state of Internet recipes is utter garbage. Get a good foundational cookbook, cook and learn from your experience, which no shortcut can substitute. The people who do test their recipes as far as I know, are Cooks' Illustrated and America's Test Kitchens (they're the same company I think).

nyjah• 3 years ago

This seems about right to me from watching Kenji cook on his YouTube channel. He was promoting his wok book and everything he cooked he would say, “I think it says to do it this other way in my book, but you can do it this way or your own way and it will be fine”.- which I appreciate. I’ve noticed the cooking channels I watch on YouTube are technique based more than specific recipes. So I’m wondering if some people read a recipe thinking “this is the exact way” and other look at it as just a rough template

nailer• 3 years ago

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.

isaacremuant• 3 years ago

Top comment of something that is probably a lie or a misrepresentation.

If this story is true, she absolutely cooks it once. She might not consider the right quantities and such but sounds off.

What is worse, she claims that virtually all recipe books are made like this.

This is demonstrably bullshit.

samstave5• 3 years ago

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. :-)

triggercut• 3 years ago

Purposeful strategic misrepresentation from those in power leaving others to succumb to sunk cost fallacy and perpetuate the myth of Hirschman's hiding hand...

Yum!

techwiz137• 3 years ago

There was a time I believed caramelizing meant adding sugar. So I went to caramelize some red peppers by adding sugar. By far the best thing I ever made.

joaomoreno• 3 years ago

Actually, J. Kenji López-Alt has a great recipe for 15 minute caramelized onions [0].

[0] https://www.seriouseats.com/quick-caramelized-onions-recipe

voxadam• 3 years ago

I respect the hell out of Kenji but if properly caramelized onions are central to the dish (e.g. French onion soup, caramelized onions for a burger, etc.) I tend to come down on the side of Daniel Gritzer (also of Serious Eats).[0]

[0] https://www.seriouseats.com/caramelized-onions

boo-ga-ga• 3 years ago

Was thinking exactly the same recently, but about all the recipes across the Internet. I need an "honest cooking time recipe" website where people will not tell about the whole meal in 20 minutes, but calculate the time honestly, and include all the preparation stages.

withinrafael• 3 years ago

Reminds me of recipes that still mention searing a steak to seal in the juices. [1][2][3]

[1] https://twitter.com/altonbrown/status/1349000588105756675

[2] https://www.seriouseats.com/old-wives-tales-about-cooking-st...

[3] https://www.thekitchn.com/does-searing-meat-really-seal-in-t...

ReptileMan3• 3 years ago

Make a huge batch of them and freeze the rest.

pazimzadeh• 3 years ago

Actually, my grandma can do it in ~20 minutes and her onion soup using one onion will still taste better than mine which uses four onions. Apparently the trick is to use enough oil for the amount of flour that you use. A lot of the golden color comes from that.

smcl2• 3 years ago

I talk about cooking and food a lot with my Czech teacher (not just because I like to cook, but if I'm low-energy it's such an easy topic) and I brought this idea up - something along the lines of "What do you think about all the recipes that say 'fry onions until caramelised - about 5-10 minutes'?". Her reply floored me - "ha! yeah, 10 minutes? They'd be burned by then!". I spent the next few minutes trying to explain exactly what I meant, thinking that I'd said something wrong or been misunderstood. Nope, no misunderstanding. She swore blind that onions caramelise at 5 minutes and burn after 10. I suspect she's cooking them on a volcano or something.

throwawaaarrgh3• 3 years ago

She's thinking of browning. Most people simply don't know what caramelization is.

smcl2• 3 years ago

I’m not sure five minutes is even enough for browning

teekert2• 3 years ago

I have Jamie Olivers 15 minute meals (or something). I put a 4 over the 1, because for me it's 45 minutes minimum.

Tepix2• 3 years ago

I thought it was me because i don't cook often and feel like i'm slow. I routinely need 45 minutes for 15 minute recipes.

The food tastes good, however.

teekert2• 3 years ago

It does taste good (omg that Turkish pizza), and I picked up some techniques and changed some ingredients here and there, left out some things.

I feel that 15 min is only feasible with everything ready within (fast moving) arms reach and all cutting done by a food processor...

alkonaut• 3 years ago

I think a) because adding a 20 minute step to a recipe makes it unappealing so calling it 10 makes the recipe more popular, but more importantly b) because what they mean is "make them transparent and possibly slightly brown" which you can sort of do in 10. No one cared that this isn't really caramelizing. Very few recipes really need caramelized onions. They're a sweet mess. Basically I think recipe writers just like to throw around terms too loosely to make their recipes sound fancy when what the 99% of recipes including fried onions needs is "lightly fried, transparent looking onions".

0wis• 3 years ago

What struck me in this piece is that the author tried to experiment but not to understand what he was trying to do. Chemically/Physically I mean.

I became a way better cook when I understood that the Maillard reaction happens starting at 140°C and caramelisation at 180°C (Wondered why this is the default setting of for oven cooking ? Now you know).[1]

The whole thing of cooking, apart from flavour mixing, is to bring your food (onions or anything else) to a high enough temperature to attain the desired reaction. And it is way complex than it seems with several parameters to play with : pan material for general heat conduction, stirring will allow homogeneous temperature conduction in the pan and will give time to the highest bits to cool down, fat helps for local heat conduction, adding water or wine will detach flavorous parts after "maillared" or caramelized (known as deglaced). And certainly many more that I still ignore.

So to come back to the point of caramelized onions, time can help but it is not the unique parameter. As suggested in other comments, you can slow-cook during the night and achieve easily a perfect result. You can also do it quite quickly (I have done it in 5 to 10 min I think) with a strong enough heat source and a lot of stirring to avoid pyrolysis.

In the end, it is no wonder that the famous post of Tim Urban is called "The cook and the chef [...]". [2] All of this makes me wanting to know more about "first principles" of cooking (mainly for flavour mixing, I still have a lot to learn on this point). Maybe receipe writers are making them up on the go, but most of the one I read have at least a bit of "chef" in them to be roughly good in their parameter estimates.

I am surprised no one else bring that up in HN. My main excuse to indulge in frequent visits of this site is that I think most people here try to be first principle thinkers when they comment. By the way, this is a way to long post for here, but I hope it will be useful for curious cooks.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction

[2]https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-s...

edit : formatting for readability

mns• 3 years ago

I would say also because people at home are afraid to use the proper heat needed, don't know exactly how to use the stovetop and balance the heat, most people don't have a gas stove (or induction), which could give you more control and people just don't have the proper pans and tools and experience.

ranting-moth• 3 years ago

Ah, recipes. One person's (unless otherwise stated) opinion on what method and mixture of ingredients are good, often written in a haphazard way.

I think the reason for many people can't (or think they can't) cook is that they tried a few times and failed. Or they're intimidated and don't know where to start.

And that's the thing with recipes, they are very often not a good place to start. Most recipes assume you have a lot of knowledge and can read between the lines.

kwhitefoot3• 3 years ago

Recipe collections are pointless anyway. The best cookery book I have is Process Cookery, a textbook for commercial cooks studying at vocational colleges in England. It tells exactly how to do things and has example recipes with flowcharts showing which parts of the process are unique and which parts are common to other recipes.

sandgiant• 3 years ago

Sounds interesting! Do you have a link? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

I've had decent success with "The Science of Good Cooking"[1].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Science-Good-Cooking-Illustrated-Cook...

kwhitefoot3• 3 years ago

I just knew someone would ask and I'm embarrassed to say that I misremembered the title.

It's Professional Cookery: The Process Approach by Daniel R. Stevenson

Here's a link https://www.amazon.co.uk/Professional-Cookery-Approach-Danie...

It doesn't go into a lot of theoretical detail about food chemistry but it is an eminently practical and down to earth textbook for people who will cook for a living. No frills, no pictures.

Polybia• 3 years ago

I worked with company that creates cook books and utensils in Switzerland in 2010, and they have a workshop kitchen on their premises. For every new recipe, they invite regular people to cook it at least twice. If the results are bad or inconsistent, they tweak the recipe and repeat.

I guess we don't have a kitchen of much global appeal, but at least it's consistent.

Karupan• 3 years ago

Most recipe sites are also misleading when it comes to the amount of fat required and the quantity of spices (at least for Indian cooking). I used to wonder why the special “restaurant” recipe was as just meh. Then after I got a little more experience cooking regularly, I just realised instinctively that the quantity and duration of cooking wasn’t accurate at all!

rightbyte3• 3 years ago

Spices are hard to specify the amount since the spice taste so differently according to freshness and exact species.

Tepix2• 3 years ago

Instead of sticking to recipes, for many it's a better approach to learn what is going on behind the scenes.

"Cooking for Geeks", published by O'Reilly is a book that focuses on explaining cooking.

https://www.cookingforgeeks.com/

PS No affiliation.

EarthLaunch• 3 years ago

The title edit saves characters but makes it less funny! Original title:

Why do recipe writers lie and lie and lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions?
lie and lie and lie

Those recipe writer propagandists!

Svarto• 3 years ago

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

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK• 3 years ago

》Or throw the onions in a crock pot and go to bed.

At what temperature??

baxuz• 3 years ago

I think that the author is mixing up "caramelized" and "frying until golden brown", intentionally or not.

Almost none of the examples that he gave never mentioned the term "caramelized"

Most recipes don't require caramelized onions. In fact, they can be overwhelming in most recipes.

hackernoteng• 3 years ago

Im a talented cook. I have no idea how long it takes to caramelize onions, lightly brown garlic, etc. I just do it by look, feel, smell, etc. So if asked to write down a recipe, it would just be rough guesses. Same with measuring, is it a tablespoon? I dont know, its "this much". A lot of cooking is just tacit knowledge and really hard to write down specifics. Its not like baking which is more of a chemistry experiment.

therealcamino2• 3 years ago

Recipe writing is a specific skill, for sure -- it's teaching rather than doing. But for anyone who isn't learning alongside an older relative, there has to be a way to develop that intuitive sense. A good recipe writer can call out those key areas where you have to develop a feel for something, and enable that kind of learning. Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is a great example of that.

aurizon• 3 years ago

Deep fry the onions, same with bacon. Cut so they are separate, but large enough to be removed with the metal grid deep fry pot. Watch as you first dip - the steam flashes off quickly at first. Have the oil under 350 - watch with care as they burn fast. Keep stirring to break clumps and when they reach the brown you want, remove and drain. Same with bacon - m break up clumps. This will give nice crisp bacon - too long and it gets hard - bacon bit stuff. I learned this in the Air Force kitchen when they have a surge and onion loving bacon eaters early in the AM, en masse...

dragosion• 3 years ago

My wife's recipes are ALL tested by me. Multiple times. I even used her recipes to cook myself (rare). Her cooking blog and vlog didn't get any attention other than lots of hate for the Borsch vs Borscht debate and others. Her blog: https://www.rednumberone.com/ Vlog: https://www.youtube.com/@rednumberone1

I really wish she made more of these so I can test interesting food - sacrifice man. Tell her to make more. All made real, all photos are made by her and the videos too.

It takes a lot longer to make a recipe for photos and video. Preparation for photos and video recording gives you a strong reason to make-up recipes 10 / day and hope they go well.

sanitycheck6• 3 years ago

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 it gets dry, add water and use it to deglaze the bottom of the pan to prevent burning. It's finished when the onions are a deep brown colour and their volume has reduced to about 1/6th of what it was to begin with. Store in fridge, enjoy with every meal in the following few days.

SamBam3• 3 years ago

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 cooked (and eaten) across Italy, I can say that there are nearly zero sauces where the onions are supposed to be caramelized. Yet people routinely use the word "caramelize" when describing cooking the onions for a pasta sauce.

The wrong reaction to reading that word would be to say "these damn recipe writers don't know how long that takes, dinner's going to be late kids, I guess it's going to be 45 minutes before I can add the next ingredient." The right reaction would be to cook the onions for the given time, until they are soft and translucent, and forget the word "caramelize."

sanitycheck6• 3 years ago

You're probably right, but it still results in people not knowing what caramelised onions are - which is (or should be) a crime, because they're lovely.

I don't recall seeing instructions to caramelise in pasta sauce recipes, that's usually "until starting to brown", same with curries.. "Until translucent" for risotto.

What I'm really talking about is... Let's have a look... First result for "caramelised onion quiche" says cook onions for 15 mins. Doesn't work!

mcv• 3 years ago

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.

Myrmornis• 3 years ago

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.

jacurtis• 3 years ago

The confusion comes in the color versus the process. I've seen some recipes call for "cook down onions until translucent and caramel in color". This is the most accurate definition of what most recipes want when asking for caramelized onions.

However the true use of the word "Caramelized Onions" are onions that have gone through the cooking process of caramelization. This process requires three things: sugar, heat, and time. Just like making candy caramels, you are performing the same process to onions. This makes true caramelized onions actually sweet, with savory notes throughout.

Most recipes bastardize the word "Caramelize". They tell you to caramelize onions, when in reality you don't actually want caramelized onions (which in many cases would actually ruin the recipe), instead they want softened onions with browned to a light caramel color, which is a completely different thing.

This is like a recipe needing turkey but asking for chicken. Like sure, it will probably work, but it is clearly different and not entirely substitute.

French Onion soup is the most common use of real caramelized onions, which is sweet and savory soup. It could not be made with browned onions, that would ruin it. Coq-a-vin is another popular recipe that uses caramelized onions, which complements the prominent wine flavors of the dish into a sweet, savory, gamey (usually made with game hens), and earthy delight of a meal. The caramelized onions are what pull that dish together and critical part of the recipe. This meal takes a long time to cook, similar to a gourmet version of American potroast.

ineedasername• 3 years ago

The real issue is simply a vague use of the word "caramelize,"

The linked article gives a few examples where there was no vagueness: The recipes described the visual state that the onion should be in when caramelized, and it corresponded to the ~45 minute process, not the ~10 minutes the recipe claimed it would take.

I've had this issue myself with a meal kit service that said caramelized and showed a picture of the ~45 minute result but the overall prep & cook time for the entire meal, as stated in the recipe, was only 30 minutes. (In general meal prep kits seem to drastically understate the amount of prep time. At best, it might correspond to the amount of time it would take a skilled chef to chop and slice and peel everything, not the average consumer who subscribed on the basis of easy 15-30-45 minute meals)

lqet• 3 years ago

Luckily, in German, there are three completely different words for preparing onions in a pan:

1.) Anschwitzen, literally "sweating up", means putting them in a pan on low heat for around 10 minutes until they are translucent ("glasig", literally "glassy"). This is how to get a starter for many sauces, and is the standard way to prepare onions for many, many meals and sauces (e.g. a standard tomato sauce). They should not turn brown, as this would for example ruin the color and flavor of white or light sauces - caramelized onions have a kind of "heavy" flavor.

2.) Karamelisieren, "caramelize", which is the meaning described in this article.

3.) Rösten, "roast", which means frying the onions with a bit a flour until they are crispy.

engcoach• 3 years ago

That is called "sweating" the onions

downut3• 3 years ago

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 complimented me for my caramelized onions.

astura4• 3 years ago

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 that have been cooked until soft and very slightly caramelized.

onlyrealcuzzo2• 3 years ago

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...

samstave5• 3 years ago

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.

mtizim• 3 years ago

You can really speed up the process by adding water at the beginning and essentially steaming the onions.

https://youtu.be/rzL07v6w8AA?t=207

minsight2• 3 years ago

I was hoping that someone would post this! Lan Lam's recent youtube posts have radically improved my cooking (results or ease of execution) and I'd recommend that anyone who cooks frequently check them out.

regulation_d• 3 years ago

Lan Lam is great! Be sure to check out her out content as well!

occoder2• 3 years ago

adding water at the beginning and essentially steaming the onions

This is pretty ironic in a thread about the misuse of the term "caramelize".

It's not steaming if you put water into the food directly. It's simply ... cooking, or maybe simmering/stewing.

renewiltord• 3 years ago

Interesting. ChatGPT says that it takes 30 min to 1 hr. Looks like human recipe writers hallucinate at a much higher rate.

For what it's worth, though, many of the examples don't say "caramelize". They say "brown" and "golden brown". Both of which you can reach fast.

MagicMoonlight• 3 years ago

I don’t think I’ve ever had onions like this then

glennonymous• 3 years ago

Well, I followed this method and the onions took 3 hours to get to deep brown. This leads me to “Hofstader’s Law of Caramelized Onions:” Onions always take 3 times as long to caramelize as you think they’re going to take, even when you take Hostader’s Law into account.

sanitycheck6• 3 years ago

Interesting! I was inspired to make some yesterday to check my own timings and it was roughly right. Maybe you have bigger onions than I do.

Related, it turns out that caramelised onion, mushroom & goats cheese is a pretty good pizza topping.

lucidguppy• 3 years ago

Recipes have too many ingredients these days.

cabirum• 3 years ago

[Del]

jlengrand• 3 years ago

Well, the only thing is that brown and a bit crispy onions and not caramelized onions, that's it. The author is mostly complaining that the caramelized onions mentioned in the recipes simply aren't that.

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/)

helsinkiandrew• 3 years ago

I find it scary that I remember this came up 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27632835

dpcx• 3 years ago

I thought this seemed familiar, and generated a decent amount of discussion last time, too.

forinti• 3 years ago

I personally know a baker who publishes recipes that will fail along with a picture of what the end result should be.

This is an attempt at self-promotion: you fail; but I am marvelous and can make these wonderful things.

oldgradstudent• 3 years ago

This should be a capital crime.

radel• 3 years ago

Italian here, I googled "ricetta cipolle caramellate" (caramelized onions recipe) and they all range from 30 minutes to 1 hour in length

ghusbands2• 3 years ago

The article is about caramelized onions within other recipes, not caramelized onions as a recipe.

grumple3• 3 years ago

I ran into this issue when making french onion soup for the first time. I was so mad. The recipe said something like 45 minutes to cook the onions down. No. It took over 2 hours. Was it delicious at the end? Definitely. But I'd have started earlier and had it with the rest of my meal.

throwawaaarrgh3• 3 years ago

Lol, we're so pampered today.

Watch Tasting History with Max Miller (https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCsaGKqPZnGp_7N80hcHySGQ). Every old recipe used to leave out salt, not explain any technique, times, temps, types of ingredients, and barely had proportions. People who cooked recipes were usually professionals who just knew how to cook things. It was around the end of the 19th century that cookbooks for home cooks came out, and they too didn't explain much.

If you are really interested in cooking, either take a class, or buy a book that teaches you how to cook. La Technique and Mastering the Art of French Cooking are excellent instruction manuals. If you learn better from video, Jacques Pepín did a 3 hour video of cooking mostly everything in La Technique.

hahamrfunnyguy• 3 years ago

I disagree with the author's assessment. I think it depends on how caramelized you want your onions, but there's a quick way to cook them.

I cook mine in a stainless steel pan without oil. The sugars will start to caramelize in the bottom of the pan. At a point I add a small amount of water to the pan (less than a tablespoon) and then cover with a lid. If it's a 10" frying pan, I use a 4" lid. The steam cooks the onions quickly and the cooked onions absorb the browned sugars from the bottom of the pan.

People really make cooking a lot more difficult than it needs to be. If it tastes good and your technique works, who cares?

RenThraysk• 3 years ago

The trick is adding vinegar and bit of sugar. At least what is I do when making onions for hotdogs or burgers.

Nathanael_M• 3 years ago

There actually is a way to get deeply caramelized onions quickly. Ripping hot pan, start with a bit of water. Then it's just a pattern of sear, deglaze with water, sear, deglaze with water. Repeat until level of caramelization required is achieved. You won't get it in 10 minutes, but it's VASTLY quicker.

efields• 3 years ago

Hilarious that there's 500 comments on this, of all things.

You can safely say in a recipe book that caramelized onions take 10, 20, or 45 minutes or an hour. Chances are the writer has the best intentions and reasonable knowledge of the subject matter.

Nobody's going to sue you if you're wrong. So there's no single source of truth for how to caramelize onions. Life goes on.

FWIW, caramelization boggles scientists to this day. Last I heard/read, there are still unidentified sugars that occur there that don't occur elsewhere.

js2• 3 years ago

A NYT Cooking recipe for a French Onion Grilled Cheese sandwich admits 45 minutes to prepare, allocating 30 minutes to cooking the onions. I've made it a few times and I think that's about right. It's friggen delicious BTW:

https://archive.ph/2020.10.25-001920/https://cooking.nytimes...

alfor• 3 years ago

Pressure cooker for 5-10 min Then open it up and finish them.

superbiome• 3 years ago

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.

t067633• 3 years ago

My onions usually take about 25 minutes. I know because that's when the potatoes are done Yummmmmmmmm!! The big secret is plenty of oil.

indymike• 3 years ago

Mostly because writers think carmelized means sauté until brown.

kayo_20211030• 3 years ago

Wide pan with oil and onions. 350 degree oven. Stir every 10 minutes or so. Done in 60+. No stress. Perfect.

ilamont• 3 years ago

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).

fooblaster2• 3 years ago

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.

dekhn3• 3 years ago

The best way to cook poultry (which does take longer than most estimates, I agree) is with a probe thermometer.

The real problem is maintaining a balance between fully cooking thick thighs, compared to the mostly-surface-area breast, even after spatchcocking.

DigitalParacosm• 3 years ago

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.

adriancoliba• 3 years ago

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

mech987987• 3 years ago

I think the simple answer is that there is a disconnect between what caramelizing onions means for serious applications (i.e. french onion soup) and not-so-serious applications (your average philly cheesesteak or omelette). Just cook 'em down a bit on higher heat if your application is not so serious.

dekhn3• 3 years ago

I agree with the folks saying that caramelized is poorly defined in popular cooking. What I think most recipes really mean is "sweat the onions until soft". What many people end up with is "dried-out onions that are burnt in spots". While caramelize is definitely a slow process that has several phases.

I think the real point is- there's a lot of stuff where people are stirring things in a pan on a stove. Try the toaster oven- it's much more set-and-forget, has better heat control, and if you're lucky, it has a fan that recirculates the air, which greatly improves the results.

Properly caramelized onions are more like fruit jam than anything else.

lumb63• 3 years ago

Recipe writers in my experience lie about the duration it takes to accomplish anything. I have yet to follow a recipe and finish it in the prescribed amount of time. It’s very frustrating because it can ruin planning entirely. For example, in Stella Parks’ Bravetart, she says her cherry pie can be made in “45 minutes active time, 45 minute roast, 2 hour rest”. The instructions mention a two-hour refrigeration period, another 30 minute refrigeration period, a 75 minute bake, and a 4 hour rest. A 3.5 hour recipe, in no less than 8.5 hours, assuming the active time is correct.

o1y32• 3 years ago

For this exact reason I lost much of my interest in cooking. I know I am not a professional chef and I can't do things as efficiently as possible, but I almost always spend more than twice the amount of time finishing those recipes. Right, excluding the time for preparation or cleaning, just the cooking part. So a "20 minute quick meal" becomes one hour, and by the time I finish cooking I am already very hungry.

Another bad thing is that sometimes pictures that come with a recipe don't even use the same ingredients. You wonder why your dish appears different until you take a close look at the picture and realize that that's not even the same dish using the same ingredients or steps. That's just a scam.

LazyMans• 3 years ago

Baking soda will modify the Ph enough to speed the maillard reaction. A few pinches per onion should do it. Thank me later.

lucisferre• 3 years ago

A lot of people in the comments saying that it comes down to an over generalization of the word "caramelize". I would argue that this is instead representative of the very low quality of the vast majority of most recipes which are produced by rank amateurs at best (not to say there are not some pretty impressive amateurs).

There are many higher quality sources of recipes out there today. Serious Eats being one site that rarely fails to get the details correct (though I managed to find a dough recipe that had 1% salt instead of 2% which seems like an error). ATK/Cooks Illustrated rarely has glaring errors on times or quantities. NYT is also pretty reliable. Also many current YouTube chefs are quite diligent. Joshua Weismann is a regular go-to for me.

dangerboysteve• 3 years ago

I always use 2% kosher or sea salt for my sourdough.

uconnectlol• 3 years ago

the whole point of the internet is knowledge sharing. the web is the antithesis of knowledge sharing. the web is based around censorship[1] and monetization. you cannot know something as basic as how to caramelize onions because the natural way to spread this info would be to send each other an ebook on cooking or a quote from it, which would be copyright. blame the boomers who made it impossible to trade basic information because of the small downside that some company might lose some sales due to piracy. someone has to explain how to caramelize onions first. you could create an explanation from scratch, but it would be easier to just send a quote from whatever book you remember reading it in.

1. writers on the web who get paid to write know nothing about what they write about (was the same for magazines and such media before the web). they only get paid to get your attention, not to be correct. even when it comes down to being paid to be correct it only means being slightly more correct than the competitor, both of which were nothing near correct in the first place. it's literally a bunch of high school kids writing stuff they did 10 minutes of research on

2. recipe spammers want to make the most impressive recipes so you click them, but nobody will make them if they take actual work.

3. this is the reason why all recipes on the web are mostly garbage and deliver false promises.

3a. even the article in discussion is full of false promises if you enable ads:

""" Average Retirement Savings By Age: Are You Normal?SmartAsset| Sponsored Heart Surgeon Begs Americans: “Stop Doing This To Your Fruit”The top 3 common foods that you would have never guessed were the cause of your fatigue.Gundry MD| Sponsored Nicole Kidman's Must Have Beauty Serum For Mature Skin """

4. this is how magazines for morons worked in the 80s and 90s, the web is just an instantiation of that. it costs money to write and publish something on the web, due to the need to host it on an active server, which costs more as your website becomes more popular, so it makes sense that only money driven "advice" would appear more than anything terribly useful. (yes you can use some free blog site but your content will be removed for legal or "moral" reasons if it's actually useful)

5. the journalist will invoke plausible deniability, or try to weasel themselves back onto the high ground or change the subject when you hassle them on their knowledge / malpractice. as seen in the article: "I emailed Sam Sifton, the Times food critic turned national editor, to ask if the Recipe Writing Guild had some secret agreement to print false estimates of onion-cooking time. He wrote back: “I can reveal that onion caramelization takes longer than the Guild believes. But it need not take as long as you believe it to take! You can speed it up with butter, so long as you are careful not to burn.”"

6. you could just buy or download some good book on cooking, written 300 years ago, but you could not find such a book on the web because any discussion of this on the web is drowned out by corpo spam garbage. every recipe website is just a bunch of new things. you will not learn to cook from them, just to use the latest fad tool or ingredient

this is why stuff like napster and freenet should have become the norm 20 years ago, instead of this boomer dot com garbage. i still remember the day the web came out, it was just like when smart contracts came out - i could not imagine any real use case for it other than some boring commercial garbage like a fake journalist outlet.

1. because it naturally gets structured around large companies (due to the fact that the more readers something has the more money it costs to host) which are held accountable socially and legally for any slight misstep they take, as well as intentionally lying and censoring for their own benefit

victor106• 3 years ago

I just follow this

https://youtu.be/Ovqhzil3wJw

chriswait• 3 years ago

The author wrote a follow up in Gizmodo - apparently Google's answer boxes were also claiming that it took "about 5 minutes", and they were listing OPs article as the source. Incredible.

https://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-...

lcuff• 3 years ago

One of the main points of the article that I totally agree with is that recipe authors fudge times by massive amounts to make the total time for a recipe "acceptable". A favorite recipe from years ago in Cuisine magazine for a way-better-than-ordinary Spankopita called for washing and chopping the spinach. In 1982, fresh spinach was almost always very sandy, and needed multiple washings. The recipe allocated less than 5 minutes for the task that probably took me 20 minutes the first time. (Yay for the advent of pre-washed spinach!). Similarly for doing phyllo (aka filo) dough the first time. Very fussy, very time-consuming. A more truthful phraseology might be "after you get good at this, it can be done in as little as x minutes". We do get faster at repeated tasks ... The cynic in me sees at as part of a pattern where we're constantly lied to in advertising blurbs, headlines and summaries, but that's another rant ... :-)

Shorel• 3 years ago

What I want are recipes in metric measurements.

I literally don't understand anything about the recipes I can find online.

supertofu• 3 years ago

I learned to caramelize onions at age 14 from Julia Child's "Art of French Cooking". I learned to make her French Onion soup. Medium-low heat, lots of butter, onions, and a solid hour of stirring creates a jammy, sweet, milk-chocolate-brown onion paste which forms the base for extraordinary onion soup.

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

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