Cooking with The Onion
December 11, 2017 8:41 AM   Subscribe

Instructional cooking videos are all the rage these days, and the fine folks at The Onion are getting in on the action. Learn how to make a Perfect One-Pot, Six-Pan, 10-Wok, 25-Baking Sheet Dinner. Or How To Sharpen Your Knife With Your Sword. Here's one for How To Make Slow-Cooked Russet Potatoes That Fall Right Off The Bone. Too hard? Can You Hapless Fuckwits At Least Handle An Omelette?
posted by DirtyOldTown (61 comments total) 54 users marked this as a favorite
 
I hope they don't forget Salmon, the Ketchup of Cooking Shows!
posted by Smart Dalek at 8:48 AM on December 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


We're going to do an Iron Chef competition at our office in a few weeks to relieve the winter doldrums. (Can use anything found in the office kitchenette, bring equipment from home if needed, must incorporate as-yet-to-be-determined secret ingredient, you have the lunch hour to create.) (Inspired by someone bringing a microwave omelet maker last month and a few people getting WAY too into it.)

I really really hope it's like this.
posted by phunniemee at 8:48 AM on December 11, 2017 [11 favorites]


I'm at work and can't watch Can You Hapless Fuckwits At Least Handle An Omelette? but if that isn't the purest distillation of American reality TV producer's conceptualization of Gordon Ramsay's character, I don't know what is
posted by runt at 8:56 AM on December 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


Perfect One-Pot, Six-Pan, 10-Wok, 25-Baking Sheet Dinner

I do dishes when my wife cooks and I swear she could write a dissertation on this. When I cook I tend to clean as I go to save work later, not to mention the inevitable drying, sticking, and general exponential, ok ok non-linear at least, cleaning difficulty increase that comes with letting it ride. Perhaps more to the point she has no concept of, what I call I suppose, efficiency in utensils/cookware.

To each his/her own but damn a mighty honey, I love you so feel free to put the pasta back into the nice (pretty!) le creuset pot after you drain it and/or put it into the nice storage containers we have so that you don't dirty that extra bowl. Days (with 2 young kids) just seems too short of late...
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:58 AM on December 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


The bit in the knife sharpening video about where to get a sword ("Ask your son's weird friend!") made me laugh out loud at a volume that ruined a phone call for the person in the cubicle next to mine.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:00 AM on December 11, 2017 [12 favorites]


ok the fpp says cooking with the onion but how do i know if my onion is THE onion??? help pls
posted by J.K. Seazer at 9:26 AM on December 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


J.K. Seazer, if you have only half an onion it's not enough.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:37 AM on December 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


From the omelette video, the point where she says "there's no way yours looks like this" hits pretty close to home. Everything else is ha ha funny because I know how to crack eggs and mix things like a functioning adult! ...but there is, in fact, no way mine looks like that.
posted by allegedly at 9:42 AM on December 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


"How to Make Slow-Cooked Russett Potatoes that Fall Right Off the Bone" is Night Vale-worthy.
posted by allthinky at 9:50 AM on December 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


My family used to have a standing joke about how Cook's Illustrated could manage to dirty two pots just to boil water, but then it was ACTUALLY ONE OF THEIR PUBLISHED TIPS (boil water quicker!) and now all satire is dead
posted by echo target at 9:51 AM on December 11, 2017 [28 favorites]


This should time me over until season three of The Katering Show.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 9:55 AM on December 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


I liked all of these but then the omelette one happened and I swear to God I just heard my future with teaching my nieces how to cook.....

(but with less swears hopefully)
posted by Kitteh at 9:57 AM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


If you're boiling water, aren't you actually making the pots more clean?
posted by sacrifix at 10:00 AM on December 11, 2017 [14 favorites]


In all honesty, a dry rubbed BBQ sauce covered baked potato sounds damn good.
posted by ShawnString at 10:01 AM on December 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


My family used to have a standing joke about how Cook's Illustrated could manage to dirty two pots just to boil water, but then it was ACTUALLY ONE OF THEIR PUBLISHED TIPS (boil water quicker!) and now all satire is dead

If you consider a pot that has been used to boil water "dirty" than the problem might just lie with you
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:03 AM on December 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


If you're boiling water, aren't you actually making the pots more clean?
[puts on overthinking cap] Maybe the boiling could accelerate the deposit of various tapwater minerals at the bottom of the pot? So, not a question of sanitation but a question of tidiness.
posted by inconstant at 10:20 AM on December 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


[removes overthinking cap] Anyway, I understood the incongruity to be the point of the joke.
posted by inconstant at 10:21 AM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


In all honesty, a dry rubbed BBQ sauce covered baked potato sounds damn good.

That's what I was thinking, except I don't think a dry rub would do any good. You'd need some oil in it to get a crispy skin.
posted by quaking fajita at 10:22 AM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Your omlette will look like that so long as you (a) put some butter in that pan and (b) don't cook it on anything higher than medium-low.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:22 AM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


I do dishes when my wife cooks and I swear she could write a dissertation on this. When I cook I tend to clean as I go to save work later, not to mention the inevitable drying, sticking, and general exponential, ok ok non-linear at least, cleaning difficulty increase that comes with letting it ride. Perhaps more to the point she has no concept of, what I call I suppose, efficiency in utensils/cookware.

It appears that you are me. I at least got through on the "please don't put the knives in the sink" issue, and after about six or seven years of discussion, she will now in fact do a half-assed job of rinsing bowls about half the time. I even made small progress on the "you don't have to use a knife per ingredient, because is that what you're doing?" issue. Even money right now that there's an uncovered block of cheddar turning to leather on the counter, but I'm letting that one go because that appears to trigger an "OH YEAH, LET'S TALK ABOUT EMPTY SELTZER CANS" discussion.
posted by middleclasstool at 10:35 AM on December 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


SWORD NO FIT IN DISHWASHER, WUT DO?
posted by clawsoon at 10:45 AM on December 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


In all honesty, a dry rubbed BBQ sauce covered baked potato sounds damn good.

Yeahbut it won't ever be fall off the bone because potatoes are cartilaginous like their relative the sharks and rays.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:48 AM on December 11, 2017 [18 favorites]


This vegetarian would eat every single one of those potatoes.
posted by xthlc at 10:48 AM on December 11, 2017




I know this is humor and I'm about to complain about Blue Apron which isn't [supposed to be] but a friend of mine recently gave us two free meals (which translates into paying for at least one week of Blue Apron, since you would have to cancel before even trying the food to avoid it -- and by one week I mean two meals which cost half my weekly food budget) and we cooked them last week. Literally the recipe started with "boil a large pot of water" -- how large? Like, the one that's not the small pot or the one that we only use when cooking for a horde? And the second step was to rehydrate mushrooms with hot water: is that the hot water from the large pot? or a separate source of hot water? And 45 minutes later I thought I was done (on a weeknight! to make RAMEN!) when I discovered I still had sesame oil, creme fraiche, and three scallion halves left over and had to do back through the recipe to see where I missed them.

My ramen did mostly look like the picture though, so at least there's that. OK, back to satire recipes now.

/rant
posted by rabbitrabbit at 11:19 AM on December 11, 2017 [14 favorites]


when I discovered I still had sesame oil, creme fraiche, and three scallion halves left over and had to do back through the recipe to see where I missed them.
Blue Apron is the IKEA of cooking, it seems? Except it probably doesn't lead to a proliferating collection of tiny Allen wrenches in your toolbox.
posted by seyirci at 11:26 AM on December 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


I know this is humor and I'm about to complain about Blue Apron which isn't [supposed to be] but a friend of mine recently gave us two free meals

I got a free week for Christmas last year and I can say that I now have a nifty insulated bag, two reusable ice packs and some recipes that I was able to rework extensively to make some kind of sense.
posted by indubitable at 11:32 AM on December 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


That's one sad looking omelet. Yeah, my omelets look way better than that leathery lookin' catcher's mitt, you non-stick pan-huffer. A spatula!? Oh my God, what are you doing, put that away! What the fuck is this shit, cooking for people who couldn't hack it at Waffle House? Julia Childs is spinning in her grave like a sad supermarket rotisserie chicken right now.
posted by loquacious at 11:36 AM on December 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


rabbit rabbit, I used home chef for a while, which is quite similar to blue apron. in the first delivery it included an overall instruction sheet that defined what they meant by the various cookware terms, including the size of the pans. maybe that was in there somewhere?

I've paused it after about 8 months because my girlfriend and I don't really cook more than a couple times a week and we wanted to do more of our own things, but it did produce a lot of really nice meals, and really helped her get over a general fear and insecurity about cooking. She's a lot more confident now and realized how many things she can make, with or without a recipe, which is great!

Also there has been significant progress on exactly the sorts of thing middleclasstool talked about, which I guess is likely to apply to one or the other half of a couple that shares a kitchen...
posted by flaterik at 11:51 AM on December 11, 2017


when I discovered I still had sesame oil, creme fraiche, and three scallion halves left over and had to do back through the recipe to see where I missed them.
Blue Apron is the IKEA of cooking, it seems? Except it probably doesn't lead to a proliferating collection of tiny Allen wrenches in your toolbox.
The collection of little bottles of vinegar and oil and bags of spices in my cupboard with Blue Apron labels, leftover from meals where the fresh ingredients go bad because I don't feel like cooking a couple days in a row would seem to contradict this?
posted by muchomas at 12:39 PM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Maybe the boiling could accelerate the deposit of various tapwater minerals at the bottom of the pot?

Boiling it until the water has completely evaporated, leaving behind only particulate matter, is not considered an optimal method.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:50 PM on December 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


I enjoyed that first cookware video. Just this weekend, I was in the mood for some potatoes for lunch, but I was out of onions for my usual recipe. So I thought it might be a good opportunity to try these roast potatoes from Serious Eats that I've had bookmarked for ages. But that was before I realized the recipe requires a large pot, a small saucepan, a strainer, a large bowl, a colander, a baking sheet, and a second large bowl--not to mention over an hour of cooking time! I'm sure those potatoes are fabulous, and I'm sure you could take shortcuts to make the recipe less ridiculous. But all I wanted was a warm starchy snack, not to blow my whole afternoon cooking and cleaning up after some goddamn potatoes.
posted by gueneverey at 1:16 PM on December 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


“Honey, we got all of this nice cook ware for our wedding, damn right I’m going to use it to make my famous [thing that I’m craving but my wife won’t touch because it violates one of her Byzantine food rules*]. Now here’s a glass of wine, why don’t you go relax in the living room?

...45 minutes later...

“Oh that was delicious. Ok, I cooked, your turn to wash dishes.”

*example: it’s mushy. I only eat mushy if it’s brown or white. That’s green.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 1:34 PM on December 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


She has a marvelous unblinking stare that makes these perfect. Like most Onion jokes, it's really the title/headline that is funny then it sort of goes down hill as it spells out the joke a few too many times, but it's still a pretty good sendup.
posted by latkes at 1:41 PM on December 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


microwave omelet maker

Gah.

Your omelette will look like that so long as you (a) put some butter in that pan and (b) don't cook it on anything higher than medium-low.

Yes. I'd even go as far as recommending that you should drop the gas down to its lowest flame and wait out the omelette, periodically checking it every seven minutes or so. You're basically teasing the ingredient mixture with a candle. I can guarantee a super golden-brown omelette each time I cook one now.

Whatever that was in the video wasn't no omelette.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 1:53 PM on December 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Seriously, low heat and patience are the key to perfect eggs.
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:57 PM on December 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


Maybe the boiling could accelerate the deposit of various tapwater minerals at the bottom of the pot?

Boiling it until the water has completely evaporated, leaving behind only particulate matter, is not considered an optimal method.


Please don't make fun. I too live in an area with very hard water, so if I boil some water, I have a nice layer of scale inside the pot. It's nor dirty, per se, but if you wanna make a sauce or anything in that pot, it'll easily burn. So yes, that's a thing.
posted by ojemine at 2:01 PM on December 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


This is the grandfather of cooking videos: Heritage Loaf
From Groove Tube.
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 3:38 PM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Please don't make fun.

My response was so deliberately absurd that I was sure nobody would take it the least bit seriously. Guess I was wrong.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:44 PM on December 11, 2017


I also absolutely recommend getting a countertop or tap-mounted water filter (i.e. Brita, Pur, ZeroWater, etc.) to use for drinking and cooking water. Totally worth the price.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:47 PM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


I can guarantee a super golden-brown omelette each time I cook one now.

*cries in mental anguish*

No. Omelet. Easy, fast, quick. 30 seconds. Listen to Julia Childs. It's flat, and it's French!
posted by loquacious at 4:13 PM on December 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


I at least got through on the "please don't put the knives in the sink" issue

That's a straight up do not pass Go, OSHA level violation right there.
posted by RolandOfEld at 4:22 PM on December 11, 2017


You know guys, a lot of you have dishwashers, and not only is it not a sin to use them, but it’s more efficient AND hygienic. And while there are limits to what you can fit In a dishwasher, those limits are high.

Just don’t put your proper knives in - bad for the blade.
posted by wotsac at 4:24 PM on December 11, 2017


And any wooden handles.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:43 PM on December 11, 2017


I love me some dishwasher too but I took that whole "pre washing isn't necessary" to heart once and, let me tell you, it's bullshit. So all I'm referencing as good/proper is a quick scrape into the strainer and a rinse wipe for all the dishwasher friendly things.
posted by RolandOfEld at 4:44 PM on December 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh sure I have dishwashers...my husband and myself.
posted by gueneverey at 4:49 PM on December 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Julia Childs is spinning in her grave

Listen to Julia Childs.

Her name is Julia Child
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 5:21 PM on December 11, 2017


Listen to Julia, childses!
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:43 PM on December 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


My parents bought a fancy new dishwasher where pre-washing really isn't necessary, so after decades of being reminded to pre-wash I'm now told not to do that whenever I'm filling their dishwasher.

And when they visit me I have to remind them that my dishwasher is old and does need pre-washing.
posted by ckape at 6:09 PM on December 11, 2017


Blue Apron is the IKEA of cooking, it seems?

IKEA doesn't make you put together the meatballs.

Seriously, though, I go to IKEA because it's cheaper than traditional furniture. As far as I can tell Blue Apron is more expensive than traditional food.
posted by madcaptenor at 7:39 PM on December 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


SWORD NO FIT IN DISHWASHER, WUT DO?

Top rack hilt-first, dumbass. It will shrink as it heats.
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:32 PM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


When I was a 17 year old mechanic’s apprentice my boss told me the best way to clean a vw crankcase is put it in the dishwasher. Even back then he was divorced. I loved that job
posted by maniabug at 8:36 PM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Seriously, low heat and patience are the key to perfect eggs.

Sure, if you want a lame future plate of Later Eggs. I prefer Now Eggs. You cook them on medium high and you periodically remove from the heat. You also add more butter as you are not using enough butter.
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:43 PM on December 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


I can only assume that Bernard Black would approve.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 12:26 AM on December 12, 2017


Where can I find potato bones to make my own tubbery-rich stock?

What about potato marrow? Do you suck it out? Or give it to the dog?
posted by RhysPenbras at 7:32 AM on December 12, 2017


Her name is Julia Child

Mod hopes me.
posted by loquacious at 8:06 AM on December 12, 2017


*cries in mental anguish*

Looking at the wiki omelette page it looks like I've been making fritatas all along, but folding them like an omelette.

So, don't panic. I didn't besmirch your sacred omelet.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 11:25 AM on December 12, 2017


♪♫ Hakuna frittata, it means no more omelets... ♪♫
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:10 PM on December 12, 2017 [2 favorites]








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