How can I keep from crying while chopping an onion?
How can I keep from crying while chopping an onion?
Is it possible to avoid crying when you're chopping an onion? Home remedies range from the unattractive (breathe through your mouth and put carrots up your nose) to the suggestive (light a votive and do it underwater). Most remedies aim to keep the sulfuric acid in onion juice from floating up into your eyes and triggering the tear ducts.
Some eyes are more sensitive to the acid than others. Dipping two halves of an onion in white vinegar will remove some of the sulfuric acid, but doing so may compromise the onion’s flavor. Goggles will keep onion acids out of your eyes and keep you from tearing up. However, goggles will also fog up in a steamy kitchen. (Plus, goggles in the kitchen? Really?)
At Cookthink, we believe it’s all right to cry. Crying means you’ve got a fresh, potent onion on your cutting board.
You might try opening a window or turning on an exhaust fan. Cutting the root end last also seems to cut down on the crying. Or just get in the habit of making onions the last ingredient you prep before cooking, so you don’t have to linger too long in the onion-infused space above your cutting board.
Vidalias and other sweet onions are less likely to make you cry, because they contain more water and less sulfuric acid. So mild that you can bite into one like an apple, the Supasweet onion might make crying while chopping a thing of the past.
What is the difference between stock and broth?
What is the difference between stock and broth?
The two terms are often used interchangeably but retain an aura of cloudiness like the unskimmed foam on a simmering pot of stock or broth.
Stock is the strained liquid that you get once you've cooked various meat, poultry, fish or seafood, vegetables, herbs and seasonings in water. Brown stock is made by browning bones and vegetables first in oil before adding water and/or wine to the pot.
Stock is the basis for many a soup, stew and features in many sauces, often reduced. White sauce is made from white stock made with chicken, veal or other poultry; brown sauces incorporate brown stock made from veal, beef or poultry meat and bones. A court-bouillon is also a stock. Vegetable stock is made with vegetables which may or may not have been first sautéed in oil or butter.
Broth is also the strained liquid that's left after you've cooked meat, poultry, fish or seafood, vegetables, herbs or seasonings in water. Broth is also called bouillon. Nevertheless, cubes of instant stock that is reconstituted with water as a cooking shortcut are called bouillon cubes. The liquid in a pot-au-feu is also called bouillon.
Like other tender leafy herbs (basil, parsley, cilantro), it's best to chop mint with a sharp knife and a clean cut. Too much pounding can discolor the delicate leaves. This matters most when sliced leaves are added in an uncooked dish, or just before serving. Some dishes call for the leaves to be left whole, or torn into smaller pieces, in which case you can avoid the knife altogether.To slice or mince the leaves, first stack them together in a pile.Next, roll them up into a cigar-like shape and hold them together with your fingers.Keeping the cigar in shape, slice it into strips as thick or thin as you like. Run the knife down onto the leaves, and across them at the same time. Moving in both directions at the same time makes for a cleaner cut. At this point, you can either leave the leaves in thin strips, or run the knife through the strips again to make a mince.
What can't you do with an egg? You can't grill it, but you can boil it, broil it, fry it, roast it, scramble it, simmer it, steam it or drop it from 10 meters in a balsam wood cage.
incredible The really amazing thing about the egg is the versatility of textures it can create. It can be as light as a meringue, and as dense as a pound cake. It all depends on how you rearrange an egg's proteins--break them apart and whip them full of air, or use them to bind together heavier ingredients like cream and sugar.
colorblind Some chickens produce white eggs, others brown. Some are even blue. Among the common grocery store offerings, there isn't too much difference, whatever the color.
put together An egg is made up of a couple of different components: a semi-permeable outer shell, a viscous "albumen" or white, and the center yolk, which is also made up of microscopic layers. Many recipes call for either the yolk or the white alone. Don't worry, separating them is is easy enough to do.
sinker As eggs age, they gradually lose moisture through the pores inthe shells. So an old egg will be much less dense than a new one. You can test an egg's relative freshness by putting it in a bowl of cold water; the fresher it is, the faster it sinks. And if it floats, toss it out.
no boil Don't let the name fool you. Actual boiling water is too violent for cooking eggs; the constant bubbling shifts them around, possibly cracking the shell and letting the white leak out. Eggs should be cooked in barely simmering water, 3-5 minutes for soft boiled or coddled eggs, 10-15 minutes for hard boiled.
what you need
A nonstick pan is almost essential for eggs. It lets you fry or scramble or make an omelet without using a lot of butter. Unless you want to, of course.
For the true egg devotee, try any of the recipes in The Good Egg: More than 200 Fresh Approaches from Breakfast to Dessert. Make sure to pick up a few dozen eggs first.
If you're a stickler for perfectly round fried eggs (it can't overlap your English muffin, after all), try an egg form.
what you do
The lightest of desserts, this Apple Snow will look graceful on any table.
Try your eggs Passover- style with Matzo Brie. Think of it as Jewish French toast.
When scrambled eggs grow up, they become quiche. And what little scramble wouldn't want to be an elegant Quiche Lorraine?
These Spicy Baked Eggs with Tofu are great for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or that late-night craving.
featured recipe
This springy Pasta with Leeks, Asparagus, Mushrooms, And Fried Eggs is the featured recipe of this week's Root Source Challenge. We loved the creaminess of the cheese combined with the yolk of the egg. Congratulations to Amy and Jonny of We Are Never Full.
Chopping is probably the most common way to prep an onion. Chopped onions show up in anything that needs the basic, earthy pungent flavor that onions give. Chop them larger for longer-cooking dishes like stews and rustic soups, and smaller (call it a dice if you like) for anything from salsas to sauces to ragouts.
To start, cut the onion in half through the root. The root itself will help keep the onion together for chopping
Rotate the onion 90 degrees and cut off the papery end (not the root end). This will make the skin easy to peel away and discard.
Peel back the onion's papery skin. It's often easiest to peel away the first layer of the onion along with the skin.
Make a series of diagonal cuts (roughly 45 degrees) into the side of the onion. Keep more space between the slices for a large chop. Make the cuts closer together for a small chop or a dice.
Now make a series of horizontal cuts to finish shaping the chop or dice.
Finally, rotate the onion again and slice crosswise against the checkerboard pattern you made in the onion. The chopped pieces will fall away from the onion.
Vinegar is basically fermented wine. You know how that forgotten bottle of red takes on a thin, shrill quality when you neglect to drink it in a timely fashion? It's on its way to becoming vinegar. (The French word for vinegar, vinaigre, literally means "sour wine.")
Made since the Gallo-Roman era, vinegar gots its official stamp of approval when vinegarmaking was declared an official occupation in 1580 by Henri IV. It's a pretty simple process: vinegar is made using a bacterial process in which naturally fermented wine is converted into a weak acetic acid that lends vinegar its sour taste.
Vinegar quality depends on the quality of the ingredients from which it is made. There are many types of vinegar, which can be made from wine, spirits, Champagne, rice or honey. It can be infused with tarragon, raspberry and even rose petals.
Reference: The Vinegar Institute's FAQ
Recipe: Quick Pickled Cucumbers and Sweet Onions
Recipe: Balsamic Vinegar Sauce
Biting into a raw jalapeño will probably create quite a sting, but on the pepper scale of heat (the Scoville Scale), jalapeños are not really that hot. If you seed and core the pepper, you may not get any heat at all out of a jalapeño.
Some jalapeños are hotter than others. Mature peppers that are dark green and a little wrinkled will be hotter than younger ones. The hottest jalapeños are grown in the hot, dry climates of New Mexico or Arizona.
If you don't know where a jalapeño was grown, you may have to taste it yourself to measure the heat. Don't rely on someone else to tell you whether or not a pepper is too hot. Some people are more sensitive to capsaicin (the chemical that makes hot peppers hot) than others. In junior high, I watched a guy drink a bottle of Tabasco on a dare. He didn't even dab his forehead. If you want to try that at home, you can build up your tolerance to capsaicin by eating more chile peppers and hot sauce.
My father-in-law, Billy, eats raw jalapeños whole from tip to stem. He tells me they are good for his health, and the American Dietetic Association agrees. Peppers are rich in phytochemicals that appear to provide anti-inflammatory benefits. Medical studies show that capsaicin may act as a blood thinner. Spicing dishes with cayenne or pepper flakes also reduces the need for extra salt. Hot sauce, which is actually more salt than pepper, is another story. - Elizabeth Hughey
