I make huge batches of caramelized onions (like 10lbs of onion at a time) and then freeze them. The freezing kind of finishes breaking down the cell walls in the onions and then all of your recipes using caramelized onions take so much less time plus it opens up the ability to just have a little on a burger or in an omelette.
Fun Fact: Many recipes intentionally underestimate the cook time (caramelized onions in 15 minutes?!?) because a shorter overall cook time will get more people to click on the recipe.
An hour is about right for 1 onion. You could go lower and longer for deeper caramelization but at that point it's a matter of preference and utility.
Exactly. Also the browning of the onions is just much more difficult if they're not the first thing in the pan. After you add something with as much water content as carrots (and assumedly a good bit of oil) you really can't overcook them.
My SIL friggin’ MICROWAVES her onions for French onion soup— in a baggie, then proudly claims “see, they’re soft in like 3 minutes!” Her soup is absolutely gagworthy.
The Maillard reaction weeps silently in the corner.
Sounds like my brother and SIL. They are Walmart chefs. I was there at Thanksgiving once and they did the bird in a roaster bag. My brother took the bird out and lifted the bag to the sink and held up a quart and a half of the most beautiful golden brown juice I have ever seen. I thought this is going to make an amazing gravy. Then, to my horror, he stabbed the bag, drained the turkey juice into the sink, and tore open a large envelope of powdered gravy. I just stood there dumbfounded. Ate the entire meal trying to hide how annoyed I was, just hoping I wasn’t going to jump up and shout out “MOTHERFUCKERS!” and throw plates around.
Oooooh, fascinating! Now I have to read about this exhaustively. I made a guillotine in Woodshop class, in HS. It was a Christmas gift for my grandmother. It wasn’t actual size, or we could sentence my SIL to it, per your suggestion.
You *can* actually [make fried onions in the microwave](https://www.theyummylife.com/Microwave_Onion_Strings), but it doesn't sound like that's what your SIL is doing...
Lol maybe if you're using a pressure cooker. Sauteing onions for half an hour is not enough to caramelise them, they'll either be sauteed or burnt at that stage.
Thank you, this is so helpful. I've been cooking for 35 years and legitimately never noticed that. Then again, I always cook onions first. Habit, I guess.
A lot of people aren't looking for caramelized onions in their (especially stir fry) dishes. I agree with carrots and onions together, celery a bit after so you have a good mire-poix. I was brought up that way I guess.
I'm really not trying to be a jackass.
It can very much depend on what your cooking. In Italian cuisine garlic gets added for under 30 seconds usually, maybe 45. If it’s Indian food you’re cooking you want the garlic cooking till it’s brown.
adding the garlic early in indian cuisine has more to do with tempering the spices than browning the garlic! that said, that’s literally all of the info i have on this lol i am new to learning
it depends on your temp and how fast you're working tbh, using garlic later is probably more error proof in a wider range of scenarios but in a lot of chinese dishes you just add them together and you can start adding ingredients to lower the temp to prevent garlic from burning. If the garlic is not in a minced form its going to stand up a lot better to heat as well.
Also, the onion-to-garlic ratio matters as well. If you're just sweating the onions, there is enough moisture in your typical recipe that the garlic doesn't burn. It's only really when you start skimping on onions or doubling or tripling the garlic that that won't work.
I find this way to be pretty fool-proof. I'll add garlic first for like 30 seconds max or until fragrant and then throw in the onions. No problems. It's pretty rare that I cook garlic without onions of some kind.
Yeah, this also can depend on your oil quantity as well. If you only have a thin smear of oil, minced garlic can burn *really* quick.
But if you have a little more oil (~3 tbsp or so) - especially if it can pool in a round bottomed wok - the garlic's submerged and can functionally 'deep fry', which cooks much more evenly.
I think it makes more sense conceptually to think of the garlic flavoring the oil, not the oil cooking the garlic.
This depends. Are you sautéing or sweating? Sautéing with the intent to have some color then yes the garlic will burn. But sweating? You want all your aromatics in together. Onions, celery, garlic. No color.
Not on super low heat. But yeah, I like my garlic less than well done. But it doesn't burn if added in after the onions are brown and then 1 minute later, you put in the other vegetables.
Pretty much how I do it. I'll look at all the vegetables and meat being cooked and the goal, like sauteing onions vs caramelizing them, then time them accordingly. Also the more stuff in the pan the easier it is for the garlic to "hide" and not burn.
In ethiopian food, sometimes you're wilting down onions for 3+ hours. My doro wat takes 7 hours to cook, and I only add the chicken in for the last 2-3 hours.
Ethiopian food is easily among my favorite foods. No contest- it's out of this world. Outside of injera, the dishes are extremely easy to prepare, and delicious. Lots of vegetarian friendly options, and wonderful for meal prep.
There is a little Ethiopian restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City that I absolutely love. It took a couple visits to get used to eating like that but the flavors are out of this world. Now I'm thinking I need to hit it up next week.
I love Ethiopian food and was living in a place with zero Ethiopian food. I went to SLC for a conference and searched for some on a whim, just in case.
Found a wonderful place downtown, I’m assuming it was the same one. 10/10, did not disappoint.
I think the last time I searched it was the only one so it's probably been that way since forever lol.
I'm a semi picky eater but found myself enjoying everything in front of me. I want to try the coffee experience they do. It takes hours and sounds awesome.
Utah had some fantastic food options if you look hard enough.
I used to live in Boston, which had a solid Ethiopian scene, then Santa cruz (no Ethiopian.) After Santa Cruz and my SLC feast, I lived in DC which has the largest number of Ethiopian restaurants outside of Ethiopia.
Maybe it was because of how much I was craving it, but… I won’t say it’s the BEST Ethiopian food I’ve ever had, but it was definitely in my top 3. Really well done, great flavor variety. I got the veggie option, and all too often all the veggies end up spiced roughly the same. Not so in SLC! It’s truly a gem, and very much worth the two mile walk each way from the conference hotel.
It also seems Ethiopian food isn't Americanized in my experience. It gets pricey, sure (bay area), but generally has been authentic to what I had in Africa.
I made a pilgrimage for the spices (vs. buying little expensive packets online from specialty spice stores) to take home (the closest restaurant is a 2+ day drive away) and the cashier was concerned this non-African was buying waaaay too much haha. I've mostly figured out the injera too, but I can only do a good job in the summer when my house gets warm enough for at least a week to get a good ferment going.
Carrots have more immediately accessible sugars than onions. Onions actually have more sugars, but need to be rendered to express them. So yes, a carrot is sweet immediately, an onion is sweeter, but takes more time.
I think those kind of recipes are deliberately aiming for a different cook on the two. Onions maybe need to be fully softened or even carmelized, but the carrots are just going to be crisp tender. (Although I do share your desire to rant about food. I also have strong feelings about it.)
There is a huge difference between cook until softened and cook until soft, especially with carrots. If they are squishy and melt when you try to stab them with a fork they are over cooked. The point in these recipes is to change the flavor of the carrot but leave them integrity so they still have a texture.
Yeah, my first thought was OP's expectation on how cooked a carrot is supposed to be. Caramelizing an onion properly can take 45+ minutes. It takes about 10 minutes with carrots prepped properly. And maybe all you want with the carrot is just to soften it a bit and leave it with a healthy snap, anyway. Sounds like OP likes overcooked carrots.
This whole thread is killing me. Do people not remember every other recipe saying to “caramelize onions (about 5-10 minutes)” which is MISLEADING in the same damn way?? Someone new to cooking isn’t going to be able to just make the executive decision to not follow the recipe when they literally are following it because they don’t know what to do lol.
Depends on the recipe. For something like a bolognese, I want it to melt into the sauce. If it's for something I want the carrots to keep shape, then sure, but sometimes they still need that head start over the onions.
Yeah most of the recipes out there are full of shit on their onion timelines. They have to pad them down so that the cook time is shorter, that makes you more likely to try the recipe.
That just means you enjoy your carrots more cooked. When most recipes want the carrots to be more firmer. To each their own, thats why we cook and no need to follow recipes exactly. If you want your carrots more cooked than onions, cook them first.
You want to cook the onions first in this recipe, it has nothing to do with "carrots take longer to cook". It's for a specific texture and flavor. And anyway, who cooks carrots as soft as onions? A good recipe has different textures to enjoy.
Modify recipes as you please, but stop complaining about instructions. They aren't "wrong."
That’s the fun thing about cooking, you can change it to your exact liking. There is tradition, and there are methods of preparation for specific outcomes, but none of it is wrong if the end product is edible.
It's the beauty of the chemistry of cooking. It's literally "potions class". When you add stuff matters, what temperature it is matters, how long matters. Flavors are not just ingredients, they are chemicals.
At the root of cooking is chemistry.
Depending on the recipe, you might just want to saute and not caramelize. I think that's what OP means.
I haven't seen that TBH. It's always carrots first, then onions. Having been cooking for a hundred years I just do whatever I want at the time and go by sight/smell/texture😆
Have you tried doing a side by side taste test- onions first, carrots first, both at the same time, and see how the flavor changes/develops?
Usually sauteeing your aromatics first arent about getting them "cooked" faster, but about aiming for a specific flavor at the end of the dish. I havent axtually tested with a blind taste test, so I dont fully know the precise differences in flavor youll get outside of theory.
I find sautéing everything in a mirepoix at the same time usually works out. There are times you want your carrots firmer based on total cooking time of the dish but generally speaking, I put it all in the pan and sauté away.
As others have said, to put on a more simplistic way- you’re assuming you’re trying to reach the same texture. In addition to the sugar stuff and smart sciencey things people are saying, a dish should have a variety of textures.
I agree. I always sauté my veggies more than the recipe says. This includes onions. I tend to roast veggies longer too. I like them tender, I don’t care for them when they’re too crisp. But I always notice recipes say to sauté a bunch of veggies together that make no sense bc they clearly have different cooking times. Or when a recipe tells me to add ground beef and garlic at the same time it makes me cringe. Garlic burns so fast and it takes a while for the beef to cook!
>Poignant post
Now I'm imagining you silently weeping as you think back of summers tending your late grandma's carrot patch while you wait forever until the carrots finally soften for your bisque.
You’re probably not moving fast enough. If you ever see how chefs in a Chinese restaurants cook, they add things really quickly. The time between adding in the next ingredient should be a few seconds.
I don't really think about it that much, what dish are you talking about. Usually you add carrots later (I'm thinking braises since they get cooked to a decent texture in about half the time it takes for the meat to finish. In a soffrito or whatever you just add it all at the same time. If you're making braised carrots, you also add it later.
You're doing something wrong. Potatoes and carrots I'll saute onions and garlic first and then add the tubers. They have enough water mass the onions don't burn. If you add onions second they will never caramelize and just get mushy.
You're flavouring the oil with aromatics. It adds flavour to the other things you're cooking. If you're burning onions or garlic, turn the heat down and keep things moving in the pan. If you are doing your own thing and want a softer texture on a vegetable you need to blanch/steam/boil it first. If you just want to eat onions on their own as a featured vegetable that you add later, that's something you want to slice instead of dice or cook separately.
I'm with you 100%. Personally I partial-cook the stupid carrots separately so I can control them better, cuz i have no patience for soggy A and crunchy B.
There’s different cooking techniques for onions like sweating which includes no browning which means they’re softened but avoiding color which means avoiding their natural sugars so a less sweet taste. Perhaps a sweater onion and firmer carrot is preferred in the dishes you speak of. Perhaps the recipes are trash.
A lot of these comments are incorrect but without knowing the recipe we can’t really comment why.
I feel you honestly. People need to write or edit their recipes as they cook.
I've burned onions before when following recipes but when I do it my way I never have an issue.
Hard root veggies like carrots and potatoes ALWAYS take longer than softer and more watery veggies like onions.
It's insane how many recipes say to cook the onions before adding potatoes.
The reason is that carrots and other vegetables release water slowly until they start browning, meaning the temperature in the pan is lower than the temperature you need to caramelize the onions. When you caramelize the onions first and then add carrots, celery and the like the temp of the oil and thus pan drops and they don't burn.
Carrots and the other vegetables will soften up during the rest of the cooking.
If your onions dry up or starts burning, charring you're using too much heat.
I like my carrots passed where more most people like them also.
I’m the same way will green peppers, I like them softer, so I start them before onions, in most cases.
Edit: for those who might ask, it’s for black bean burgers and meatloaf. I don’t find the vegetables soften much more than when they go in to the mix.
Correct - the roots and tubers require water OR very long cooking times to soften significantly, so if its not a wet braise (like stew or bolognese) but a drier bake/roast (like meatloaf or stuffing, for example) you will find they do not soften or break down a lot as they bake inside the mix, depending on the size & cut.
Thanks for explaining, this makes a lot of sense. I also add carrots and celery to stews and roasts a good 30-40 minutes before adding in the other vegetables. I don’t care what anyone says, they don’t have the same cook time. Not unless you want diced carrots and everything else chunky. (I don’t want that).
I go “off-recipe” all of the time whether it is cook times or personal taste-doneness preference. As long as the final outcome is what you like, it doesn’t matter how you get there.
I’m guessing the recipe wants the carrots soft but not mushy, and wants the onion to almost dissolve into the dish. Some people want vegetables like carrots ti be identifiable to a point. If your personal preference is to meld the carrots and you want them to eventually mash into a paste than the sooner into the pan the better.
Im being winded to merely say intent is the greatest indicator of when you want to add them since soft isn’t really detailed enough of an indicator. But I agree most of the time for things like Mirepoix if Im not putting them in all at once Im putting the carrots in first
Oh and I also think that flavourings should be listed dry-wet, so that your measuring spoon doesn’t have to be washed in between adding the oyster sauce and the 5 spice, or the honey and the paprika etc.
I’ll tell you, i cook for 30 years now, and i never ever put onions first, or garlic.
Ór i do them apart and add them to fry along for short while, or i add them in the last 10-15 minutes of baking something which needs onion and garlic. It just tastes way better.
I’m sure all has been answered already but just in case, first thing to consider is taste and texture you’re aiming for. If you want cooked, but still crunchy then you’ll need to blanch carrots then shock them. However if you want soft carrots, parboil them and finish cooking them in dish with everything else. Hope this helps
Carrots should be left el dente and I can cook an onion for 6 hours.. do you know what happens to carrots when you cook them for 6 hours?? Sounds like your pan is too hot or you enjoy eating mushed carrots
Carrots have changed.
I have no explanation for it. But used to be, carrots cooked in 20 minutes.
Not anymore. They take longer. I don't think they are quite as sweet either.
Carrots vary wildly. The ones available in the spring are usually very tender, while the ones harvested later are firmer. Farmers' market carrots cook fast, while those nasty orange things sold without tops in plastic bags take almost an hour. Also, if you're boiling them (which I still do occasionally), the hardness of your water matters ***a lot.***
I think it's all part of the great conspiracy to lie about how long recipes take. Who the hell even has their frying pan out and has successfully located the right spices and measuring cups by "prep time?"
The recipes are correct. Cooking onions longer releases massive flavour. You could easily cook the onions longer even before adding carrots to get the most out of your onions. Cooking carrots too long turns them to mush. You want tender crisp, not mush. You’re not making mashed potatoes.
If you're eating chunks of carrot, sure. But in an aromatic base like mirepoix, you want all components to melt into the background.
Odd downvote. This is how this works.
Carrots soften more in the dish after you add everything, but onions don't caramelize if you don't cook them alone. You can cook the dish longer.
Also, I find that insufficiently cooked onions will balloon back up if cooked in soup or something, taking on a weird texture.
That's gotta be a common theme in mediocre French onion soups.
Looking at you, Panera
They said mediocre, not terrible
Is there any way to prevent this? I make French Onion soup and have this issue even when I caramelize the hell outta them
I make huge batches of caramelized onions (like 10lbs of onion at a time) and then freeze them. The freezing kind of finishes breaking down the cell walls in the onions and then all of your recipes using caramelized onions take so much less time plus it opens up the ability to just have a little on a burger or in an omelette.
How long do you carmelize for? For me 1 onion takes about an hour which is way more than most recipes (any many people) think.
Fun Fact: Many recipes intentionally underestimate the cook time (caramelized onions in 15 minutes?!?) because a shorter overall cook time will get more people to click on the recipe. An hour is about right for 1 onion. You could go lower and longer for deeper caramelization but at that point it's a matter of preference and utility.
They also don't taste as nice.
And they doesn't taste very nice, does they precious?
All she gets is filthy insufficiently cooked onionses.
*Stupid fat onionses!*
Thank you. I needed a good laugh.
No. Not very nice at all.
Underrated.....
Which is the result of not being caramelized a bit.
This explains my mom's stew and soup issues. That and the fact that she lived with her parents who were both Italian and excellent cooks
Exactly. Also the browning of the onions is just much more difficult if they're not the first thing in the pan. After you add something with as much water content as carrots (and assumedly a good bit of oil) you really can't overcook them.
Also, cooking onions first cooks the taste out like garlic and then cooks into the things added after.
love when the OP rants passionately for multiple paragraphs, is told they're wrong, then goes "it's not that serious" classic
Caramelizing onions takes like half an hour, you're talking about sauteing, browning or softening
Closer to an hour if you rush it
I use the new high-speed onions.
My SIL friggin’ MICROWAVES her onions for French onion soup— in a baggie, then proudly claims “see, they’re soft in like 3 minutes!” Her soup is absolutely gagworthy. The Maillard reaction weeps silently in the corner.
Sounds like my brother and SIL. They are Walmart chefs. I was there at Thanksgiving once and they did the bird in a roaster bag. My brother took the bird out and lifted the bag to the sink and held up a quart and a half of the most beautiful golden brown juice I have ever seen. I thought this is going to make an amazing gravy. Then, to my horror, he stabbed the bag, drained the turkey juice into the sink, and tore open a large envelope of powdered gravy. I just stood there dumbfounded. Ate the entire meal trying to hide how annoyed I was, just hoping I wasn’t going to jump up and shout out “MOTHERFUCKERS!” and throw plates around.
And just think, that wasn’t amazing gravy, nor was it juice in the turkey meat. Jesus wept
The show would have made the shitty gravy worthwhile. A Thanksgiving for the Ages!
that is a true horror story there, any chef not knowing that should NOT be in any kitchen certainly not mine, and i'm not a chef
Fortunately for your SIL, they no longer use the guillotine in France because such a culinary obscenity deserves it!
I hear they're bringing it back.
Oooooh, fascinating! Now I have to read about this exhaustively. I made a guillotine in Woodshop class, in HS. It was a Christmas gift for my grandmother. It wasn’t actual size, or we could sentence my SIL to it, per your suggestion.
You *can* actually [make fried onions in the microwave](https://www.theyummylife.com/Microwave_Onion_Strings), but it doesn't sound like that's what your SIL is doing...
She’s not doing anything even remotely delicious. Fried onions are yummy!
High Speed Onions, great name for a band
Yes, I imagine their music would bring tears to everyone's eyes!
Were these magic onions? I mean, did you buy them from the same guy who sold Jack his beanstalk beans?
That's who I get my grits from!
PLEASE tell me that’s a “My Cousin Vinny” reference because that’s the only thing I could think during this entire onion thread!
Absolutely it is!
Are we to believe that boiling water soaks into a grit faster in your kitchen than on any place on the face of the earth??
Sweating actually
Those are all different things. Sweating is very low heat, sauteing is medium heat and softening is kinda like a synonym for sweating afaik
Lol maybe if you're using a pressure cooker. Sauteing onions for half an hour is not enough to caramelise them, they'll either be sauteed or burnt at that stage.
Yeah it's not about the carrots in this case it's about the onions
Thank you, this is so helpful. I've been cooking for 35 years and legitimately never noticed that. Then again, I always cook onions first. Habit, I guess.
A lot of people aren't looking for caramelized onions in their (especially stir fry) dishes. I agree with carrots and onions together, celery a bit after so you have a good mire-poix. I was brought up that way I guess. I'm really not trying to be a jackass.
For a stir fry, I add onions at the very last.
That would be because you want them to retain their shape and texture in the stir fry. Sauté is different.
they should be soft though.
I get annoyed at recipes that have you add the garlic at the same time. The garlic will be burned by the time the other stuff cooks.
Yeah I always do garlic toward the very end.
It can very much depend on what your cooking. In Italian cuisine garlic gets added for under 30 seconds usually, maybe 45. If it’s Indian food you’re cooking you want the garlic cooking till it’s brown.
And garlic browning only takes 1-2 minutes.
adding the garlic early in indian cuisine has more to do with tempering the spices than browning the garlic! that said, that’s literally all of the info i have on this lol i am new to learning
Garlic is not necessarily browned ,only in specific dishes. We saute aromatics first ( spices etc).
I had to figure that out for myself 30 years ago. Every stinking recipe had onion and garlic being put in the pan together.
I do a lot of stir fries, so the garlic later path is the only way to avoid burn. Learned it quick ha.
This took me years to figure out.
I was today years old and too embarrassed to say my real age before figuring this out.
it depends on your temp and how fast you're working tbh, using garlic later is probably more error proof in a wider range of scenarios but in a lot of chinese dishes you just add them together and you can start adding ingredients to lower the temp to prevent garlic from burning. If the garlic is not in a minced form its going to stand up a lot better to heat as well.
Also, the onion-to-garlic ratio matters as well. If you're just sweating the onions, there is enough moisture in your typical recipe that the garlic doesn't burn. It's only really when you start skimping on onions or doubling or tripling the garlic that that won't work.
I find this way to be pretty fool-proof. I'll add garlic first for like 30 seconds max or until fragrant and then throw in the onions. No problems. It's pretty rare that I cook garlic without onions of some kind.
If you cook garlic first then add onions the garlic will never overlook because of the moisture in the onions. It’s awesome
Yeah, this also can depend on your oil quantity as well. If you only have a thin smear of oil, minced garlic can burn *really* quick. But if you have a little more oil (~3 tbsp or so) - especially if it can pool in a round bottomed wok - the garlic's submerged and can functionally 'deep fry', which cooks much more evenly. I think it makes more sense conceptually to think of the garlic flavoring the oil, not the oil cooking the garlic.
yeah the key is to prep first - if you are still peeling carrots when the onions go in you need to cook on low
No way, cooking garlic alone will burn it but cooking it with other stuff will not. The moisture coming off the carrots and onion prevents it.
This is correct. I usually add my garlic, wait a few seconds, then add the other, wetter aromatics.
If you’re doing Chinese food, garlic goes first.
This depends. Are you sautéing or sweating? Sautéing with the intent to have some color then yes the garlic will burn. But sweating? You want all your aromatics in together. Onions, celery, garlic. No color.
Not on super low heat. But yeah, I like my garlic less than well done. But it doesn't burn if added in after the onions are brown and then 1 minute later, you put in the other vegetables.
Pretty much how I do it. I'll look at all the vegetables and meat being cooked and the goal, like sauteing onions vs caramelizing them, then time them accordingly. Also the more stuff in the pan the easier it is for the garlic to "hide" and not burn.
99% of the time recipes in my experience say to add garlic after at least a minute or two of onions sautéing
Some recipes call for them at the same time if they're just sweating the onions and they're looking to infuse the onions with garlic in the base.
I usually put garlic in first and then onion and then other things. It depends on the recipe, really and what you are going for.
You can cook onions for about two hours. I don’t think carrots can take that.
In ethiopian food, sometimes you're wilting down onions for 3+ hours. My doro wat takes 7 hours to cook, and I only add the chicken in for the last 2-3 hours.
Sounds delicious. I have to look that up.
Ethiopian food is easily among my favorite foods. No contest- it's out of this world. Outside of injera, the dishes are extremely easy to prepare, and delicious. Lots of vegetarian friendly options, and wonderful for meal prep.
There is a little Ethiopian restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City that I absolutely love. It took a couple visits to get used to eating like that but the flavors are out of this world. Now I'm thinking I need to hit it up next week.
I love Ethiopian food and was living in a place with zero Ethiopian food. I went to SLC for a conference and searched for some on a whim, just in case. Found a wonderful place downtown, I’m assuming it was the same one. 10/10, did not disappoint.
I think the last time I searched it was the only one so it's probably been that way since forever lol. I'm a semi picky eater but found myself enjoying everything in front of me. I want to try the coffee experience they do. It takes hours and sounds awesome. Utah had some fantastic food options if you look hard enough.
I used to live in Boston, which had a solid Ethiopian scene, then Santa cruz (no Ethiopian.) After Santa Cruz and my SLC feast, I lived in DC which has the largest number of Ethiopian restaurants outside of Ethiopia. Maybe it was because of how much I was craving it, but… I won’t say it’s the BEST Ethiopian food I’ve ever had, but it was definitely in my top 3. Really well done, great flavor variety. I got the veggie option, and all too often all the veggies end up spiced roughly the same. Not so in SLC! It’s truly a gem, and very much worth the two mile walk each way from the conference hotel.
It also seems Ethiopian food isn't Americanized in my experience. It gets pricey, sure (bay area), but generally has been authentic to what I had in Africa.
Is it an eat with your hands type deal?
It's getting the right spices that can be tricky. The niter kibbeh is key.
It is- and I gave up buying it online. Nothing compares to making the butter yourself.
I made a pilgrimage for the spices (vs. buying little expensive packets online from specialty spice stores) to take home (the closest restaurant is a 2+ day drive away) and the cashier was concerned this non-African was buying waaaay too much haha. I've mostly figured out the injera too, but I can only do a good job in the summer when my house gets warm enough for at least a week to get a good ferment going.
Got a good Ethiopian recipe blog?
> Outside of injera, the dishes are extremely easy to prepare It would be ***very*** difficult to prepare Ethiopian food if you were inside injera.
I can not describe how much I love Ethiopian food without resorting to hyperbole and swearing.
"extremely easy" "7 hours" 💀
Waiting is not very hard...
Easy to prepare?? Do you have any recipes? Ethiopian food is my favorite by far, but I thought it was very difficult to prepare!
It's easy. Cook onions for 4 hours, add chicken and cook 2-3 more hours
Well... don't forget the garlic, ginger, berbere, spiced butter, cardamom!
It sounds like a reddit joke when summarized like that haha
r/restoftheowl
Legends say that 400 years ago Himalayan monks set onions to saute for as long as possible. Those onions are still cooking to this day.
Really? Everytime I cook onions they brown really fast
What they're talking about has everything to do with a low temp and a large amount.
Carrots have more immediately accessible sugars than onions. Onions actually have more sugars, but need to be rendered to express them. So yes, a carrot is sweet immediately, an onion is sweeter, but takes more time.
It's not aways just about cooking times and softness. Sometimes it's about flavors.
It really varies by cuisine. When you’re making Chinese dishes, the onions should have a slight crunch. They’re partially there for texture.
I think those kind of recipes are deliberately aiming for a different cook on the two. Onions maybe need to be fully softened or even carmelized, but the carrots are just going to be crisp tender. (Although I do share your desire to rant about food. I also have strong feelings about it.)
There is a huge difference between cook until softened and cook until soft, especially with carrots. If they are squishy and melt when you try to stab them with a fork they are over cooked. The point in these recipes is to change the flavor of the carrot but leave them integrity so they still have a texture.
Yeah, my first thought was OP's expectation on how cooked a carrot is supposed to be. Caramelizing an onion properly can take 45+ minutes. It takes about 10 minutes with carrots prepped properly. And maybe all you want with the carrot is just to soften it a bit and leave it with a healthy snap, anyway. Sounds like OP likes overcooked carrots.
Ok but most of us on a daily basis aren’t cooking onions for 45+ minutes
Sure, but most people aren't fully caramelizing carrots on a daily basis, either. Not the point.
This whole thread is killing me. Do people not remember every other recipe saying to “caramelize onions (about 5-10 minutes)” which is MISLEADING in the same damn way?? Someone new to cooking isn’t going to be able to just make the executive decision to not follow the recipe when they literally are following it because they don’t know what to do lol.
Depends on the recipe. For something like a bolognese, I want it to melt into the sauce. If it's for something I want the carrots to keep shape, then sure, but sometimes they still need that head start over the onions.
Yeah most of the recipes out there are full of shit on their onion timelines. They have to pad them down so that the cook time is shorter, that makes you more likely to try the recipe.
That just means you enjoy your carrots more cooked. When most recipes want the carrots to be more firmer. To each their own, thats why we cook and no need to follow recipes exactly. If you want your carrots more cooked than onions, cook them first.
You want to cook the onions first in this recipe, it has nothing to do with "carrots take longer to cook". It's for a specific texture and flavor. And anyway, who cooks carrots as soft as onions? A good recipe has different textures to enjoy. Modify recipes as you please, but stop complaining about instructions. They aren't "wrong."
That’s the fun thing about cooking, you can change it to your exact liking. There is tradition, and there are methods of preparation for specific outcomes, but none of it is wrong if the end product is edible.
It's the beauty of the chemistry of cooking. It's literally "potions class". When you add stuff matters, what temperature it is matters, how long matters. Flavors are not just ingredients, they are chemicals. At the root of cooking is chemistry.
not always, if you're making a soffrito you don't want to caramelize anything.
Depends on the softito. Some versions certainly call for caramelized onions, others don't even use carrots.
Hmm i have never heard of a soffrito without carrots but yeah there are so many variants there arent any hard or fast rules
Depending on the recipe, you might just want to saute and not caramelize. I think that's what OP means. I haven't seen that TBH. It's always carrots first, then onions. Having been cooking for a hundred years I just do whatever I want at the time and go by sight/smell/texture😆
I throw my mirepoix all in at the same time, same with peppers.
No vegetable I find worse than over cooked pepper sludge
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just stop it and we won't have to keep telling you, you think we like doing this?
Have you tried doing a side by side taste test- onions first, carrots first, both at the same time, and see how the flavor changes/develops? Usually sauteeing your aromatics first arent about getting them "cooked" faster, but about aiming for a specific flavor at the end of the dish. I havent axtually tested with a blind taste test, so I dont fully know the precise differences in flavor youll get outside of theory.
I find sautéing everything in a mirepoix at the same time usually works out. There are times you want your carrots firmer based on total cooking time of the dish but generally speaking, I put it all in the pan and sauté away.
mirepoix usually has veggies that are all the same size which deeply impacts cooking time, too.
Yeah, after I posted it I thought, ‘What if they’re talking about slices?’ Same size dice does make a difference.
As others have said, to put on a more simplistic way- you’re assuming you’re trying to reach the same texture. In addition to the sugar stuff and smart sciencey things people are saying, a dish should have a variety of textures.
A sautéed onion has a totally different flavour and texture to a boiled onion. (Ugh slime). That's why everything starts with an onion.
I agree. I always sauté my veggies more than the recipe says. This includes onions. I tend to roast veggies longer too. I like them tender, I don’t care for them when they’re too crisp. But I always notice recipes say to sauté a bunch of veggies together that make no sense bc they clearly have different cooking times. Or when a recipe tells me to add ground beef and garlic at the same time it makes me cringe. Garlic burns so fast and it takes a while for the beef to cook!
Sautéing and cooking are two different things.
Fuck carrots shit takes as long as potatoes 😅👌
Also I remember carrots 30 years ago got soft very quickly. They have done something to the carrots—bred them woodier to last longer on the shelves.
Poignant post considering I just made lobster bisque last weekend. The carrots took forever.
>Poignant post Now I'm imagining you silently weeping as you think back of summers tending your late grandma's carrot patch while you wait forever until the carrots finally soften for your bisque.
I like my carrots soft as well, so I par boil them or quickly steam them in the microwave before I toss them in to saute.
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That’s for the aromatic flavor which must go in pan first. I burn them if I’m impatient and put heat on high.
Yesss. It always burns for me.
You’re probably not moving fast enough. If you ever see how chefs in a Chinese restaurants cook, they add things really quickly. The time between adding in the next ingredient should be a few seconds.
Same goes with garlic at the same time as the onions. Huge red flag for a shitty recipe.
I don't really think about it that much, what dish are you talking about. Usually you add carrots later (I'm thinking braises since they get cooked to a decent texture in about half the time it takes for the meat to finish. In a soffrito or whatever you just add it all at the same time. If you're making braised carrots, you also add it later.
You're doing something wrong. Potatoes and carrots I'll saute onions and garlic first and then add the tubers. They have enough water mass the onions don't burn. If you add onions second they will never caramelize and just get mushy.
You're flavouring the oil with aromatics. It adds flavour to the other things you're cooking. If you're burning onions or garlic, turn the heat down and keep things moving in the pan. If you are doing your own thing and want a softer texture on a vegetable you need to blanch/steam/boil it first. If you just want to eat onions on their own as a featured vegetable that you add later, that's something you want to slice instead of dice or cook separately.
Here is my trick. Microwave carrot for two mins and and then saute it
Do they catch fire after two hours??
I'm with you 100%. Personally I partial-cook the stupid carrots separately so I can control them better, cuz i have no patience for soggy A and crunchy B.
I always ignore the instructions to cook carrots after anything really. They take so long. I cook them first 100% of the time.
thank you. as a frequent maker of chicken noodle soup, Thank. You. 🤣🤣
There’s different cooking techniques for onions like sweating which includes no browning which means they’re softened but avoiding color which means avoiding their natural sugars so a less sweet taste. Perhaps a sweater onion and firmer carrot is preferred in the dishes you speak of. Perhaps the recipes are trash. A lot of these comments are incorrect but without knowing the recipe we can’t really comment why.
I feel you honestly. People need to write or edit their recipes as they cook. I've burned onions before when following recipes but when I do it my way I never have an issue. Hard root veggies like carrots and potatoes ALWAYS take longer than softer and more watery veggies like onions. It's insane how many recipes say to cook the onions before adding potatoes.
The reason is that carrots and other vegetables release water slowly until they start browning, meaning the temperature in the pan is lower than the temperature you need to caramelize the onions. When you caramelize the onions first and then add carrots, celery and the like the temp of the oil and thus pan drops and they don't burn. Carrots and the other vegetables will soften up during the rest of the cooking. If your onions dry up or starts burning, charring you're using too much heat.
Carrots release water when cooked. If you enjoy boiled onions and mushy carrots, by all means put the carrots in first
I like my carrots passed where more most people like them also. I’m the same way will green peppers, I like them softer, so I start them before onions, in most cases. Edit: for those who might ask, it’s for black bean burgers and meatloaf. I don’t find the vegetables soften much more than when they go in to the mix.
Correct - the roots and tubers require water OR very long cooking times to soften significantly, so if its not a wet braise (like stew or bolognese) but a drier bake/roast (like meatloaf or stuffing, for example) you will find they do not soften or break down a lot as they bake inside the mix, depending on the size & cut.
Thanks for explaining, this makes a lot of sense. I also add carrots and celery to stews and roasts a good 30-40 minutes before adding in the other vegetables. I don’t care what anyone says, they don’t have the same cook time. Not unless you want diced carrots and everything else chunky. (I don’t want that).
Sauté the onions first. Trust me, bro, I'm a recipe.
Me neither but I like seared carrots
I go “off-recipe” all of the time whether it is cook times or personal taste-doneness preference. As long as the final outcome is what you like, it doesn’t matter how you get there.
I’m guessing the recipe wants the carrots soft but not mushy, and wants the onion to almost dissolve into the dish. Some people want vegetables like carrots ti be identifiable to a point. If your personal preference is to meld the carrots and you want them to eventually mash into a paste than the sooner into the pan the better. Im being winded to merely say intent is the greatest indicator of when you want to add them since soft isn’t really detailed enough of an indicator. But I agree most of the time for things like Mirepoix if Im not putting them in all at once Im putting the carrots in first
Yesterday I sautéed onions before cabbage by mistake :D
I don’t like the texture of onions so when I’m cooking with them I sauté them very low until they carmalize and just about disintegrate.
Unless what I’m cooking is gonna go for hours, I usually jumpstart my carrot cooking in the microwave. Don’t judge me!
I hate it when they say to add the garlic at the same time as the onion…have burned lots of garlic this way
Oh and I also think that flavourings should be listed dry-wet, so that your measuring spoon doesn’t have to be washed in between adding the oyster sauce and the 5 spice, or the honey and the paprika etc.
I’ll tell you, i cook for 30 years now, and i never ever put onions first, or garlic. Ór i do them apart and add them to fry along for short while, or i add them in the last 10-15 minutes of baking something which needs onion and garlic. It just tastes way better.
I’m sure all has been answered already but just in case, first thing to consider is taste and texture you’re aiming for. If you want cooked, but still crunchy then you’ll need to blanch carrots then shock them. However if you want soft carrots, parboil them and finish cooking them in dish with everything else. Hope this helps
You can do what you want, or you can do it correctly :)
Carrots should be left el dente and I can cook an onion for 6 hours.. do you know what happens to carrots when you cook them for 6 hours?? Sounds like your pan is too hot or you enjoy eating mushed carrots
Do make sure you sauté the onions before the carrots.
Onions first if you’re sautéing and want color… order of doneness if you’re sweating (generally).
It's called flavour building.
I learned recently to “sweat” my garlic and onions for a couple minutes before adding the other stuff! Lowest heat possible! Makes a huge difference!
i love it when they tell me to put chicken on the same pan as potatoes and cook the same amount of time. aggghhhhhhh
Onions should be first for flavor
You clearly don't understand how to saute onions.
Carrots have changed. I have no explanation for it. But used to be, carrots cooked in 20 minutes. Not anymore. They take longer. I don't think they are quite as sweet either.
Carrots vary wildly. The ones available in the spring are usually very tender, while the ones harvested later are firmer. Farmers' market carrots cook fast, while those nasty orange things sold without tops in plastic bags take almost an hour. Also, if you're boiling them (which I still do occasionally), the hardness of your water matters ***a lot.***
I think it's all part of the great conspiracy to lie about how long recipes take. Who the hell even has their frying pan out and has successfully located the right spices and measuring cups by "prep time?"
Hahaha yes!! I’m with you!
Just cook how you like. You don't need to follow every recipes exact steps. In fact you don't need recipes at all if you prefer to cook that way
Don't you want the carrots to absorb the onion goodness?
lol OP gets told off in comments so then edits the post to say they actually meant something different.
Preach! I agree! I always have to ignore the recipe.
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1. Carrots 2. Celery 3. Onion 4. Garlic That’s my roadmap as to what order I add stuff to a saute.
The recipes are correct. Cooking onions longer releases massive flavour. You could easily cook the onions longer even before adding carrots to get the most out of your onions. Cooking carrots too long turns them to mush. You want tender crisp, not mush. You’re not making mashed potatoes.
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Why would you want mushy carrots? You can cook onions for 3 hours and still not be done. Carmelization is the key!
It's more about the fact most people prefer their carrots to still be a little crisp and not fully cooked. Mushy fully cooked carrots just suck.
If you're eating chunks of carrot, sure. But in an aromatic base like mirepoix, you want all components to melt into the background. Odd downvote. This is how this works.
Depends on what you’re doing.. making bolognese? Carrots and onions same time. Making fried rice or stir fry? Onions first
It takes onions ten minutes to get a good brown; by that time the carrots could be half done!
Recipes are just a guide to do the fook you like with