Fw: [Sca-cooks] Re: Still not getting through

[Phlip]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Diamond Randall" <ringofkings at mindspring.com>
To: "Phlip" <phlip at 99main.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 2:43 AM
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Still not getting through


> Thanks Dear Heart,
>
> Here is one
> RE: Onions
> >Don't try to do more than 5 pounds at a time. In my experience, they
> >just don't cook. Also, the sweeter the onion the better the
> >caramelization, since what you're doing is browning the sugars.
>
> That is just plain useless to use sweeter onions in caramelization.
> You should use the cheapest storage onions for this.  The reason for this
> is that "sweet" onions do not have a higher sugar content than common
> everyday ones; they have a lower level of the chemicals that cause an
> onion to taste hot and strong.  In fact, you should not waste sweet onions
> like vidalias by cooking them at all.  It's akin to using a fine $1000
> bottle
> of Pommard wine for cooking.  You buy the sweet onion and the fine wine
> for the subtlety of flavor that genetics (in the case of the onion) or
time
> (in
> the case of fine wine) has produced.  Heating very quickly destroys this
> desirable quantity that you paid extra for.
> Stored in the onion bulb are vacuoles of chemicals which are separated
> from each other.  The intact onion does not cause tears nor does it have
> any particularly strong smells.  When it is sliced or crushed however the
> separated chemicals stored combine and recombine in what is described
> as a cascade chemical reaction which produces the harsh "hotness" and the
> sulfurous gases that cause our nasal linings to be irritated and our eyes
> to tear.
> These chemicals are produced in the 4th or 5th chemical recombinings in
the
> reaction .  That is why the it also fades.  The gases dissipate, but the
> chemicals
> are destroyed also in progressive reactions.
> Even a low temperature cooking gets rid of these chemicals as they are
> very volatile leaving the sugars behind.  Also left behind are the
chemical
> compounds that produce the wonderful flavor of onions in cooking.
> "Sweet" onions are genetically selected for having very much reduced
> amounts of the chemicals that produce in the cascade reaction, the
> undesirable
> characteristics of cheaper onions.  They also have less strong onion
flavor
> as a result.  Therefore, they are superior for any of the raw uses.  They
> are terrible for cooking as heat destroys so much they are rather insipid
> cooked.
> They are particularly bad for caramelizing too as they are lower in sugars
> as well.  In their case, "sweet" is the relative absence of the chemicals
> that
> cause hot, strong and acrid tastes, not sugar content.
> IMO, the long cooking time of caramelizing an onion causes such
destruction
> of the chemistry of an onion  that you must start with the cheapest,
> harshest
> onion you can find to have any onion flavor left at all at the end of the
> cooking.  If this is done with sweet onions to begin with, you might as
well
> add half a cup of sugar and a spoon of onion powder; otherwise you end up
> with a vaguely sweet brown mush.
>
> Akim
>
>
> Hey Phlip, could my viruschecker be running my outgoing posts through my
> spamfilter?  I can't imagine it doing that as I don't have any keywords
> that would activate it.  What is strange is that my Sent file gets the
> messages as actually sent and the % counter on the bar below says it was
> completed and sent.  Do you think maybe having Gunther remove me from the
> list and re-enter me might help?
> Thanks Phlip,
> Akim
>
>
>
>
>