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This is the "it's a bug in the compiler" of cooking. If you think hundreds of years worth of collective professional experience is wrong and you're right, well,
by larsrc 5y ago
This is the "it's a bug in the compiler" of cooking. If you think hundreds of years worth of collective professional experience is wrong and you're right, well, maybe you're not.
My guess is the wrongness is either a lack of fat or overcrowding, or both. Fat (butter, margarine, oil, whatever, I prefer butter) acts as a flux to spread the heat. Use enough, plus use proper tools.
"Butter seemed a little risky at that temperature, so I went with olive oil, in a cheap, lightweight nonstick skillet. In five minutes, a few flecks of brown had appeared". Olive oil is good for many things, but not for frying things. The "few flecks of brown" sounds like there's not enough of it either, so the heat oil gets applied where the onions touch the skillet directly. Add more flux until the flux generators cannae take it any more, Cap'n!
Just to prove my point, here's a timelapse of half an onion done in butter, the way I usually do it. Quality skillet, induction stove set to my favorite level, 7 of 9. 5 minutes and they're good: https://photos.app.goo.gl/tpfAy5uqc6NRRFsB8 https://photos.app.goo.gl/tpfAy5uqc6NRRFsB8
If you want to be more careful, you can lower the heat - here's me cooking the other half onion at 2.5 out of 9, which is really very low (though done on a warm skillet, so it's a bit warmer): https://photos.app.goo.gl/QLaW7YkqijxF7K95A https://photos.app.goo.gl/QLaW7YkqijxF7K95A
- karolist 5y agoThe video shows fried onions, these are not caramelized. Maybe you like them that way and it's fine. For some eggs and bacon you don't need any more than that. For french onion soup it takes me about 30-40 minutes to fully caramelize a pan of onions, no way this can be done in 10 minutes.
- tompazourek 5y agoIt looks like different people (probably including recipe writers) mean different things by "caramelized onions", which could be the origin of the issue. I'm not saying one is wrong and the other is right, just that there's obviously disparity.
- rat9988 5y agoMany people confuse fried and caramelized onion. What the op showed is definitely not caramelized. Any recipe book in the market wouldn't confuse them.
- Eric_WVGG 5y agoI will tell you which is wrong and which is right. Caramelized onions are caramelized. It’s not a vague definition that varies across cultures, it’s right there in the name. Caramel, it’s deep walnut brown and almost candy sweet. Just look up any photo of French onion soup. This guy is frying onions, might as well prepare a bowl of Froot Loops and you’ll be just as close to caramelized onions.
- phonypc 5y agoExcept caramelized onions aren't caramelized. Or not meaningfully anyway. The color comes from Maillard browning. The sweetness comes from breaking down larger sugars into smaller, and concentration through evaporation of water. Caramelization products aren't sweet, they're primarily bitter. Sweetness in caramel products comes from residual sugar that hasn't been caramelized.
- mcphage 5y ago> different people (probably including recipe writers) mean different things by "caramelized onions" No, ‘caramelized onions’ is a standard term. The issue is not one of confusion.
- sokoloff 5y ago“Exponentially more”, “decimate”, and “increased by 200% [to mean doubled]” are also standard terms which are used in a variety of contexts, often (usually?) incorrectly as compared to their actual definition.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y agoAre those words used loosely, in cookery? No, because it's a field in which the technicalities matter.
- gorgoiler 5y agoTry cutting an onion into slices top to bottom (not across the stripes) and then cook it slowly for an hour in a tablespoon of sunflower oil at 4of9. You will end up with barely a teaspoon of completely broken down onion matter that looks like apple butter or quince paste. Your onions look delicious, but they are a different outcome to what the article describes.
- anfilt 5y agoThose don't look like caramelized onions to me, more like sauteed/fried.
- jamesrom 5y agoWould you mind doing this again, but for 30 minutes for comparison?
- bathory 5y agoCompare your result, with the end result seen here [1]. It is a completely different color as well as texture. [1] https://youtu.be/kEfJTmf9hDs https://youtu.be/kEfJTmf9hDs
- moksly 5y ago> If you think hundreds of years worth of collective professional experience is wrong and you're right, well, maybe you're not. Often, but that’s not what is happening here. Here you have real world cooks and the collective experience of them telling recipe writers that you can’t caramelise onions in 5-10 minutes. In your own video examples, the onions aren’t caramelised, they aren’t even cooked. You can tell because you can still see the green/white colour of the onions. This is what they should look like: http://rachel-cuisine.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ob_598def_67a317f403634e3a863338980a1d6e82-2.jpg http://rachel-cuisine.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ob_598de... What you’ve made is halfcooked onions that have been fried in butter and sugar. Which may taste perfectly fine, but also nothing like the real thing.
- lambdasquirrel 5y ago> Here you have real world cooks and the collective experience of them This. There's plenty of people backing this up.
- notacoward 5y agoCosigned. Fried is not the same as fully cooked. This is important to me because my gut is just fine with fully cooked onions but ... well, let's just say "not" otherwise. Fully cooking onions to the proper transparency (with just the tiniest bit of color) is a 20-minute process, and actual caramelization takes twice that. I suspect that the reason most cooks lie is that they're not the ones doing it. To them, cooked onions are an ingredient that a spouse or assistant put in a bowl for them while they were still deciding which homey anecdote to fill out their "recipe" with. Peeling, chopping, and basic preparation are for the little people.
- SamBam 5y ago> Here you have real world cooks and the collective experience of them telling recipe writers that you can’t caramelise onions in 5-10 minutes. This is backwards. It's really the other way around here. What you have is real-world cooks and chefs, with all their collective experience, giving recipes correctly, but using the word "caramelized," and a bunch of people telling them that that isn't technically what "caramelized" means. The vast majority of recipes involve cooking onions for 10-20 minutes, not caramelizing them for 45. The "mistake" in all these thousands of recipes is simply the word, not that none of these people know how to cook, or are deliberately lying to you about how to caramelize am onion.
- dalbasal 5y ago>> hundreds of years worth of collective professional experience is wrong This isn't what the author thinks. He thinks recipe writers are lying, not wrong. If you learned face-to-face, they would teach you the proper way... 40m. When they cook the dish themselves, they do 40m onions. When they write the recipe, they say 5-10m. Your onions are great topping onions. Lovely on a burger, spuds, yum. Onion soup needs softer onions.
- jasode 5y ago>If you learned face-to-face, they would teach you the proper way... 40m. When they cook the dish themselves, they do 40m onions. When they write the recipe, they say 5-10m. Leaving aside French Onion soup and looking your other example of rogan josh, here are some deep links to videos mentioning "~10 minutes": - "7 to 10 minutes" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2GKfjaZQZE&t=2m15s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2GKfjaZQZE&t=2m15s - "caramelizing quicker [...] 5 to 7 minutes" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICT_oOoMf4w&t=2m40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICT_oOoMf4w&t=2m40s - "caramelize into light brown color [...] 10 to 15 minutes" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri3rSU1MkJY&t=0m57s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri3rSU1MkJY&t=0m57s So either 2 possibilities: - the different cooks actually cook the onions for 40+ minutes but hide the extra 30 minutes from the viewer and prefer to lie on camera and say "~10 minutes" ... or ... - those cooks are actually just browning the onions for ~10 minutes and calling _that_ quick process "caramelization" Doesn't Occam's Razor point more to the 2nd scenario?
- dalbasal 5y agoIDK how Brother Occam cooked his onions, put the author is not arguing semantics. The Author is calling out recipe writers on succumbing to something or other... and fibbing. Occam was a man of god and would have told the truth. I don't think deducing from pure logic in a court of first principles (I am being dramatic, obviously) is the way to go here. These are some pretty established recipe families and good cooks tend to cook them the slow cooked onion way. I suppose one can always argue that art is in the eye of the beholder, that French Onion Soup, Bunny Chow or Rogan Josh are whatever we decide they are, plurality, etc. but... well... these recipes are half onion. They're not quick fried onion recipes. The onions are soft and mix gently with the gelatinous liquid parts. There's no lost in translation here. They're saying and showing pictures that imply slow cooked onions. In their restaurants (and homes), they are certainly not serving soup that's a stock with crunchy onion rings floating around! They're making french onion soup that's french onion soup. They're using slow cooked onions and lying about it! Godammit HN! Sometimes things just are as sneaky as they seem. I've had it with these onion fibbin fraudsters. They've been lying to us this whole time!
- mnl 5y ago>Olive oil is good for many things, but not for frying things. You've just discarded like half of Spanish cuisine... For instance the first thing you do in a paella involves frying (well, sautéing really) meat, vegetables and then very precisely paprika with olive oil. It's widely used to fry everything here, including potato omelettes and fish. Of course it's good for frying things, there are cheaper and easier oils to cook with if you like them, but they make lousy substitutes for the dishes traditionally fried with olive oil.
- nwallin 5y agoThe videos you posted aren't of caramelized onions, they're sauteed/browned onions. It's a different chemical reaction. You are creating a Maillard reaction of the protein in the onion. Caramelization is a reaction of the sugar in the onion. I got a buddy who's from Texas, and he makes a mean brisket. He spends like 6 hours on it. I'm from California, and I make a pretty awesome tri-tip. I spend like 1 hour on it. They're both beef. They're both delicious. They look the same if you squint at it right. But they taste absolutely nothing like each other. And that's fine, as long as I don't call my tri-tip brisket and he doesn't call his brisket tri-tip. Cuz they ain't the same thing.
- phonypc 5y agoIt's all Maillard browning, just more extensive in the longer cooked onions. If there were significant caramelization happening, the onions would be long ago burnt and acrid.