Food and Cooking

6460 readers

72 users here now

All things culinary and cooking related. Share food! Share recipes! Share stuff about food, etc.

Subcommunity of Humanities.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Why do my onions lose their flavor when I steam them/saute them on water? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

They keep their flavor when I fry them, but I'd like to cut down on fried things.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

No, but you can boil/steam to extract flavor before frying. I do this when I make fried potatoes, and a lot of other things. I start the potatoes off in a bit of water with the alliums, butter, and spices added. I cover it loosely, and once the water boils off, the potatoes start frying.

This accomplishes a couple things. First, it keeps the potatoes from ending up hard (not raw, but hard), because the water draws some starch out and hydrates the potatoes. Second, it extracts the flavor from the allium (I favor shallots) and spices, mixing with the starch that ends up coating and browning. The starch being pulled out of the potatoes, but being left to coat them, also makes the end product more cohesive, with shallots clinging better to the potatoes.