I mean, you can really caramelize onions for as long as you want. You’ll just lose that fresh onion flavor in the final dish if you don’t add some more in at the end.
45min-1h is standard, but going longer for a French onion soup won’t really hurt.
You can reduce that time with baking soda.
https://www.onions-usa.org/onionista/faster-caramelized-onions-with-baking-soda/
I’ll remember that when I’m in a rush lol, I usually don’t mind because it gives me time to do other prep and chores. Caramelizing is great because it’s basically fire and forget
finance imperialist propaganda smh
This is an actual recipe though, my aunt made something like this. You basically make a ““soup”” by just cooking onions like this until they are completely broken down and mushy. You don’t even add broth or water or anything, just onion, seasoning, and maybe cheese. It was so gross. I tried my best to be polite and eat enough of it to not be rude, but I guess I did a bad job since my mom later made fun of me for how obvious it was that I was disgusted by it.
This is just classic internet “wisdom”. He definitely saw it on Reddit or something.
I think that’s just a more “amateur cook revelation” which, incidentally, also happens on reddit. If you get into cooking you just notice a few, very common bullshit things. Caramelizing onions taking about 15 minutes for example. Either they mean sauté and think it’s a fancy synonym or they’re acutally just lying to you, but it happens so often.
Same with like “quick 30 min meal” and it’s pasta. Man my stove used to take like 30 minutes just to boil a pot of water for pasta because it was shit, I’m not Jamie Oliver and I don’t have access to like 30,000 BTU burners. Sure, I don’t have to do much during it, but it’s also not like it’s a ricecooker and I can just forget all about it 'till I pop it open.
Baking times that are given as “30 minutes or until browned to desired point” or w/e are also very, very commonly so off base that you’ll do 60 mins until it even begins browning, even if you have a convection oven or whatever.
You ever try to get into kneaded bread? By god so many of the recipes fucking suck because they presuppose I have any fucking idea what “firm enough” or “until it’s pliable enough” or whatever means. Like I get there’s some experience involved, I’m not even being a STEM-Lord about it but give me like some pointers here
Either you have an extremely weak stove, or you are using way too much water to cook your pasta
Extremely weak stove, kitchen came with the appartement. I notified my landlord once about the inbuilt freezer door breaking off from his 20 year old piece of cheap shit fridge / freezer combo and wouldn’t you know it the fucker looked for a replacement freezer door for 3 months instead of spending like 300 eurodollars to update the fucking thing.
It had cast iron (no, really) hot plates with electrical coils to heat them so despite having a range of heats it did only have binary on/off switch for all purposes and if you have to heat a small cast iron pan to heat your actual pan that just takes a fucking while. also you have 0 temperature control. It’s hot, and that sticks, eventually, it may not be.
But similar stories as per landlord special kitchen appliances aren’t exactly uncommon.
Boiling water shouldn’t take that long, plus you can use an electric kettle to boil water faster than your stove then dump it in.
I wouldn’t really blame the recipe for not accounting for people with broken stoves not fixed by their landlord lol.
With baking stuff you gotta look up a video, it really is hard to be more descriptive than what they wrote with baking. I never get baked goods right without a video or good pictures, because you can both over and under mix a lot of recipes so you can’t err on either side really.
I wouldn’t really blame the recipe for not accounting for people with broken stoves not fixed by their landlord lol.
I would, actually. Much of the cookbook stuff, both professional and amateur, tries to sell itself as the healthier, cheaper, better, faster option. Which indubitably it will be, on some of those parts at least, but like half of it is aspirational bullshit. If you need a 30,000 BTU burner to make Jamie Olivers “I will fix the nation with my grand cooking” meal, that is not a solution, that is pandering to rich people to look down on poor people.
Now don’t get me wrong, I cooked, even before I even moved out from my parents place. My mom, who is cool as shit, forced me to learn it, and thank god for that. And that was pretty good equipment, and she was a phenomenal teacher, so I didn’t have to rely on bullshit as noted above. Which is why it irks me so much, I’d’a be fucked if I wasn’t born very privileged on both monetary and cool parents basis.
I don’t care if your coq-au-vin with truffle pan sauce assumes whoever is cooking it has access to nigh professional grade cooking equipment - it’ll probably be true. But all the “cheap quick super easy worknight meals you can make between your 18 simultaneous jobs” (excuse the hyperbole, I am quite mad) assuming I have access to the kind of kitchen whoever wrote the fucking book has does nothing but further the argument that home cooking is expensive, either in time, or ingredients, which I do believe is wrong, which just turns people off it.
Whatever leftist theory you ascribe to, I’m sure it doesn’t start with “be born privileged”, aye? You wanna write the “Healthy poor people meals for poor and or time poor people meals” - you best be fucking considering more than “they’re all just too fucking dumb” as a factor
Asking this because I don’t eat onion in my dishes - is “caramelising onions” just cooking them in a pan?
Mostly cooking them so the sugars in them turm brown and it makes them kinda sweet. They’re really delicious this way and have totally different flavors than onions do raw or lightly cooked. Caramelized onions take a while to make but not 90 minutes. Just do them on high for like 15 or until they’re all brown and mushy and they’ll be fine, people who think they need to take all day to make are just wasting their time.
15 minutes isn’t caramelizing them though, it’s browning them. It’s the same reason you can’t cook a cake at 450° for a shorter time when directions are 350°
You might bring them to the same end temperature, but there are reactions occurring which take time in both examples that higher heat will not make happen faster.
A French onion soup with 15 minute caramelized onions would not be good
This isnt correct lol. You’re browning them, which can be fine, but taste and texture are significantly different. With the amount of onions in the OP, and with the pan being too small, I could easily see it take a couple hours, on low.
Like what you’re describing is fine for stir fry, but not if it’s an onion forward dish like French onion soup
Sure, and this is why French cooking is fucking garbage. The only thing people can think that a hot 15-20 minute cook won’t work for is Highly Sophisticated French Cooking. I don’t make french onion soup because it’s a humongous pain in the ass, and for pretty much anything else that you want a nice sweet mush onion for this is more than good enough. French food isn’t meant to be cooked in a home kitchen by a home cook, it’s too much work. Making a good French onion soup requires a ton of other work too, it takes hours to do properly. Who is doing that with any regularity that it’s worth saying shit like ALL RECIPES THAT SAY IT TAKES LESS THAN 90 MINUTES TO CARAMILIZE AN ONION ARE WRONG
I make caramelised onions for work in a professional kitchen and trust me, if the owner of the establishment could reduce the cooking time (and man-hours) required for caramelizing onions down to 15 minutes, he’d force us. He’s read these internet articles and tried to get the chef’s to do that, and then tried to do it personally. We went back to the old method. This man has us pre-cook burger patties in preparation for lunch, and even he knows it takes longer than 15 mins to caramelise onions (well, now anyway). It tastes sweet and mildly onion-y.
We also prep browned onions, which similar to what you describe. Tastes different. It’s a different thing.
Like, risotto and paella are similar but you can’t just use them interchangeably.
Let him cook
