Onions in soup or stew..........Do you precook them.....??

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Sourdough

"Eleutheromaniac"
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I just butchered (7) Seven onions for a stew of unknown proper title. Likely a bastardized Goulash. So, I have always slow fried them in abundant butter till slightly brown, yet slightly crisp.

What do you do with your butchered onions destine for stew pot.
 
I pretty much do the same thing. I like to sauté them in butter in the same pot I am going to cook in. I think it adds to the overall flavor of the soup or stew. Sometimes I will sauté half of them and add the second half later, especially if I want chunks of firmer onion.
 
For highly liquid dishes that are going to simmer/slow cook for a while - like stew - I put the onions in raw. When mixing them in with a solid dish - meat based or potato based usually - I brown them unless there's something in the recipe that specifically says not to. I generally use avocado oil to brown them in rather than butter, because it has a much higher smoke point.
 
What is this thing you call RECIPE.

It evolved from the Latin word that meant "to take" but it really means "to steal someone else's plan for a meal". Many of my recipes include "then throw in some" or "add until it looks kind of brownish". They are lacking precision but I only cook to taste. My taste.
 
Most of my recipes come from my daughter, who is an outstanding cook. She doesn't really have "recipes", she just knows instinctively what to mix together. I was just asking her a little bit ago, "What would you do if you had chicken breasts and rice?"

She came up with, "Chop the chicken breasts up, salt and pepper them, and cook in coconut milk. While that's cooking, saute onions and mushrooms and add salt, pepper, rosemary, oregano and paprika. Make rice in the rice cooker. Slice up some green cabbage really really thin (millimeters), and saute that for only a few moments until it's bright green and starts to wilt. Do not overcook! Just minutes is all you want. The flavor changes massively if you cook longer. Put cooked chicken on top of rice, cover with sauteed vege mix. Cabbage off to the side. Pour the coconut milk you cooked with over the top of the chicken if you want it like a curry, otherwise save the milk and use that to make fish soup or something else tomorrow. Add some spices that you like if it comes out needing something."

So this is what I'm going to do tonight! It sounds good. I have everything I need to make this already here, except for the cabbage. I'll go get that soon. She just makes things up to cook. Maybe she saw a recipe for something similar somewhere, and that may have given her some ideas, but she just does what she wants and it always comes out great IMHO. But she does leave me on my own to figure the amounts of each ingredient to add. She says that's part of my cooking training - experiment and learn. She gives me hints and pseudo-recipes like the above to get me started thinking. I know for sauteing that she typically uses either avocado oil or coconut oil depending on the heat she'll be sauteing at, so I'll use one of those. I'll probably go for the avocado oil and a higher temp saute on my first attempt at this. Part of my "experiment and learn" process.
 
I do use recipes when making bread however. And I follow those exactly. Bread making is more of a science experiment than cooking in my mind. You're not "salting to taste". You're adding a precise amount of salt to assist in some chemical reaction having to do with rising or texture or some other property of the loaf.
 
I do use recipes when making bread however. And I follow those exactly. Bread making is more of a science experiment than cooking in my mind. You're not "salting to taste". You're adding a precise amount of salt to assist in some chemical reaction having to do with rising or texture or some other property of the loaf.
ANY baking is more precise, guess that's why I don't bake much!!😉
 
Any kind of soup, stew, stir fry type mixture I put them in raw.. I like fried onion or baked on the grill in tin foil with lots of butter, black pepper, and a small pinch of sugar if the onion is strong..
 
So this is what I'm going to do tonight! It sounds good.
And it DID come out good! FWIW - to further answer the question initially asked in this thread - I indeed pre-cooked (sauteed) the onion and the mushrooms first (in butter!) Not exactly a stew though, because those onions and mushrooms were just a topping that was added to the chicken after it came out of the coconut milk boil. You can't really see the rice under the pile, but it's there. I poured some of the coconut milk from the chicken boil out of the frying pan onto the rice to add nice moisture and flavor. That chicken was so tender and moist. I have been avoiding chicken breast (using thighs instead) because it's so easy to dry out the breast meat when cooking it. Works great if you chop it into chunks and boil it in coconut milk though! I never would have thought to shred up some cabbage and throw it and some oil and salt into a frying pan. But that came out wonderful too. Cabbage goes really well with rice. I should have added some tomato wedges around the outside to give the presentation more color, and more vegetable nutrients (I know tomatoes are technically a fruit!) Or maybe throw in some red bell pepper slices into the mushroom/onion saute.

dinner.jpg
 
Not a big soup person. I put onions & mushrooms in most everything, also garlic.
If I want them well cooked, I add them first.
If I want them crisply, I add them last, sometimes I do a half & half cooked & raw.
All ways cooked with steak & always raw in cold salad.
 
Whenever we go down south we drive by a couple processing plants. Some days they are processing onions, onion rings maybe? And it really smells good. They grow a lot of onions down there too. A lot of onions fall out of the trucks on their way to be processed. There's no need to buy onions around here, just stop and pick up a few off the side of the road. I like the smell and flavor of onions, just can't eat them.
 

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