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Apparently, I presume far too much when talking food. My good friend Carrie G., who I have always counted on to illustrate how snot-faced and obnoxious I can be, mentioned that in a recipe for stuffed mushrooms (in fact, THE recipe for stuffed mushrooms--the one you will NEVER find on this website), I advised "sweating" onions, assuming that anyone would know what I meant. Apparently Carrie, who only got the recipe after years of begging, pleading and insults, had never heard the term before and had been |
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forced to look it up. I said, "So you looked it up and learned something new." She scowled at me, "If you had just explained it better, I wouldn't have had to waste my time." "But now you know," I said. "Well, yeah, NOW I do." she responded. I asked her, "So, what does it mean to sweat an onion?" According to Carrie, sweating is the process of cooking onions in oil at low heat for an extended period of time. She's sort of right. The purpose of sweating is to cook your onion (or garlic or shallot etc...) without frying it, thereby releasing all the natural juices locked within. Add your diced onion to a sautee pan of hot oil going gangbusters over a full flame and watch it turn into a charred mess of nearly inedible cripsy bits that smell like, well, burnt onions. Start off with a cold sautee pan, coated with the room temperature oil of your choice, add your onions, turn the burner to low, give 'em a good toss to coat with the fat and watch them go from opaque to transluscent in about five minutes, releasing all their fragrant aromas and natural flavors along the way. Whatever else you had planned on throwing into the pan will thank you. DAMN, that onion is fly! |
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