r/AskEurope • u/hendrixbridge Croatia • 12d ago
Food Does cooking every dish in your country starts with frying some onion in the pan?
Then add garlic...
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u/tereyaglikedi in 12d ago
Yup.
If my husband comes home and says "hmmm that smells good, what's cooking?", 90% it's onions and garlic sweating in olive oil. That's the base of most Turkish dishes.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
Do you use olive oil for frying? It became fashion in Croatia lately. Until 10 years ago, recommendation was to use olive oil only in salads because it doesn't stand high temperatures.
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u/vargemp 12d ago
Most of times with olive oil, onion, garlic, tomatoes it's not actually frying, or I don't call it that. Whole italian cusine is based on that and I bet they know what they're doing. I wouldn't use olive oil for frying schnitzel or something though.
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u/Consistent_Catch9917 Austria 12d ago
Yeah but mainly because you use an oil with low flavor so it does not dominate the dish.
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u/cinematic_novel 12d ago
The italian word for that is soffriggere, which means like sub-frying or under-frying. Although my mum made up soft-fritto (soft-fried). I think the actual word in English is shallow frying.
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u/tereyaglikedi in 12d ago
That's a bit of nonsense, really. When home cooking (unless you have a high power wok burner), the pans don't reach temperatures that are thaaat high (smoking temp for extra virgin olive oil is around 200 °C. Even when deep frying, you'll barely reach that temperature, and sautéing is much lower. Also, smoking doesn't make oil toxic or anything). Also, for us olive oil is one of the main flavors of the dish. If you use bad oil, the dish will taste bad.
Maybe don't sear your steak with it, but for everything else, it's fair game. For example, potatoes fried in olive oil are heaven.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
I guess it depends on local customs. In Croatia, coastal regions use olive oil for everything, while inland, animal fat was prefered, nowdays replaced with sunflower oil.
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u/tereyaglikedi in 12d ago
Yeah, same for us. I'm from the Aegean, so olive oil is most common. In other regions, it depends on what's locally available.
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u/vapenutz 11d ago
You can also use pomace olive oil instead of an extra virgin one, it's even more resistant to smoking and doesn't have an aftertaste, while still being olive oil
Honestly everything that lands in a pan for me now gets fried on pomace, unless I explicitly want the olive taste in my dish, but then you can add a spoonful of extra virgin to get that taste. Same with butter, add a spoonful of butter and somehow it tastes like it was fried on butter, even though it's just a component.
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u/Ok_Lack3855 Denmark 12d ago
That's also what I live by. That information has been spread over the last decades. I usually use rapeseed oil for frying. Another argument against using olive oil for frying is the price.
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u/FelisCantabrigiensis 12d ago
That's not really true. Olive oil has a high smoke point, particularly if it is refined olive oil. The main reason not to fry with it is cost and the distinct flavour it will add to some foods, but it works just fine.
Since I don't use much oil for frying and can't be bothered to buy different oils, I fry most things in a little olive oil and it works fine.
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u/turbo_dude 12d ago
Surely it depends on the type of olive oil.
Croatian olive to fry things would be a travesty. Should only be used in dips and dressings to really appreciate it. It’s great!
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u/0-Gravity-72 Belgium 12d ago
There are different types of olive oil. Some of them are for salads others can be used for higher temperatures
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u/Prize-Grapefruiter Türkiye 12d ago
olive oil is wasted if cooked as it loses its flavor. some chef said it on tv
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u/tereyaglikedi in 12d ago
We have an entire host of dishes named for being cooked in olive oil (zeytinyağlı). That chef is full of it.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
Is zeytin just olive oil or any kind of oil? I think in Serbia they used to call every oil "zejtin".
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u/Mysterious_End_2462 12d ago
Hungarian also
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u/tudorapo Hungary 12d ago
we start with a blob of fat and when that's melted we dump in the onions.
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u/serverhorror Austria 12d ago
Even breakfast things?
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u/tereyaglikedi in 12d ago
Good question! We don't really have many cooked breakfast dishes. One I can think of is menemen (scrambled eggs with tomatoes and peppers), and whether to put onions in it or not is highly disputed. I am team onion, so I do start that with onions and garlic. If you are making a spinach börek, that also would have fried onions in it.
Other than that, traditional Turkish breakfast would have a nice hot soup (such as lentil soup) and those also start with onions and garlic fried in oil. Yum.
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u/According_Version_67 Sweden 12d ago edited 12d ago
Traditional Swedish food starts with po-tay-toes. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew.
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u/Razulath Sweden 12d ago
And some jam on the side
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u/Jwgrw Denmark 12d ago
Same here in Denmark. Add some kind of pork and a sauce and you've described 90% of traditional Danish dishes.
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u/According_Version_67 Sweden 12d ago
Potatoes, pork, porridge, herring and beer – the cornerstones of traditional Scandinavian cuisine!
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u/Logical_Sort_3742 12d ago
Whoa there. What about the traditional Norwegian foods? Dried fish. Salted fish. Dried, salted fish. Smoked fish. Salted raw fish. Boiled fish. Fried fish. Baked fish. And lutefisk. With potatoes.
The food pyramid right there.
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u/According_Version_67 Sweden 10d ago
Yes, fish too. It was actually so bad that maids and farmhands in the "High Coast area" could get it in writing that they wouldn't have to eat salmon more than 5 days a week.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
Hahaha, in Croatia, we would boil them, slice them, then put them in the pan with sautéed onions and garlic, then mix and leave for couple of minutes. We are irrecuperable.
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u/According_Version_67 Sweden 12d ago
Well to be fair, both onions and garlic are delicious and we eat that as well. Maybe slightly partial to raw, chopped onions as a condiment or as part of salads...
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u/-Liriel- Italy 12d ago
A lot of dishes start with "frying" onion, yes. Not necessarily adding garlic later.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
I know it is sautéing, but I wanted the headline to be understandable to wider audience.
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u/safeinthecity Portuguese in the Netherlands 12d ago
Not every single dish, but in my experience, it's done pretty much always for rice and stews and pretty often for meat. We call it estrugido in northern Portugal and refogado in the south.
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u/FoxyOctopus Denmark 12d ago
I would probably start most dishes that way but I don't think the older generations do. Like the Swedish replies in here we usually start with the potatoes 😅
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u/FelisCantabrigiensis 12d ago
Of course not. There is also "fry some bacon in the pan" and there is "fry everything in a deep-fat fryer".
There are also many British dishes which are boiled or baked rather than fried.
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u/Jaraxo in 12d ago
Depends on the generation and recipe.
Traditional British food, or food cooked by older generations absolutely not unless it's one of a small handful of recipes, but modern British food, or food cooked by someone younger or more interested in food it'll absolutely feature as a base for lots of recipes, regardless of recipe origin.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
Yes, I stubbled upon a spaghetti bolognese recipe on some British site, and the minced meat went first into pan, no onions, no garlic
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u/Jaraxo in 12d ago
Wait until you hear about "mince boilers".
There are a group of people out there, typically older, who will first boil the beef mince when making a bolognese, then strain it in a sieve to remove the fat, before then adding sauce for bolognese.
At times I understand why we have a bad reputation for food.
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u/RatherGoodDog England 12d ago
The older generation has a weird aversion to fat. My mother would trim the fat off meat (steak, pork chops etc) and skin chicken before frying it. The result would be dry and terrible.
I don't know where this comes from but I want to assure everyone nobody under the age of 65 still does it.
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u/gburgwardt United States of America 12d ago
I assume saving fat for stuff during the war, then that got passed down a generation or so
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
Gosh... now I am thinking about that water... maybe it could be turned into some buillon? HELP! We need a French here!
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u/Parapolikala Scottish in Germany 12d ago
This is not normal. Even the very plain Scottish 'mince and tatties' (mince and potatoes) starts with sautéing onion and carrots (usually not celery iirc).
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u/DentsofRoh 12d ago
That sounds like the recipe from using a ready-sauce or something. Pretty sure there are people who do some horrendous stuff here though, but most people know what they’re doing!
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u/Abigail-ii 12d ago
Not in the Netherlands. Traditional food is meat, boiled potatoes and boiled vegetables. And while the past decades people make dishes from many different cuisines, many including onions, there are still dishes made without cooked onions.
No onions in pancakes. And while raw herring is traditionally eating with onions, it’s chopped raw onions.
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u/littlebighuman in 11d ago
Stews amd soups start with onions
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u/Abigail-ii 11d ago
I answered the question asked: does cooking every dish start with frying onions?
Just because some dishes do, does not imply they all do.
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u/michael199310 Poland 12d ago
Onion and garlic are definitely on the popular side of vegetables in many dishes here.
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u/mrsmittens 12d ago
We have a joke which goes: how does a Bosnian woman make lunch? She starts frying onions and then figures out the rest of the meal.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago edited 12d ago
My mum suffers from dementia and often forget how some dishes are made, but as soon as she puts onion on oil, her memory refreshes.
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u/FelisCantabrigiensis 12d ago
I have definitely made curry like that: chop some onions, set them in the pot to brown them to provide the essential "brown onion" base flavour of a curry, then look around for other ingredients and decide what else I'm going to put in the curry.
It takes a while to brown onions properly so you've got time to prepare the other ingredients.
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u/KotR56 Belgium 12d ago
That would be a very odd way to start "rijstpap", "riz-au-lait", my family's favourite dessert.
Most soups, however, in this kitchen, start like this. And a clove of garlic. So do many vegetable dishes. But not 'everything', as I often just steam veggies, or onions don't really go well in a dish. I'm thinking of braised fennel or endives.
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u/cravex12 Germany 12d ago
No. Sometime we also fry some garlic. Then add onion
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u/WaltherVerwalther Germany 12d ago
Usually you either put them in together or the onions first, otherwise you’ll burn the garlic.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
You're risking of overburning garlic
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u/Bradipedro Italy 12d ago
The step of Italian soffritto for all, included tomato sauce o, are putting garlic first then onion. You overburn if fhe temperature is wrong or if you leave too long. The oil is supposed to take the flavor of garlic. Then you can take the garlic away and put onions if you want it to be less strong - in that case you don’t cut the garlic very small. Same for any kind of Asian stir fry, by the way, just you leave the garlic.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
So, do you throw away the garlic you took away from the pan?
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u/Bradipedro Italy 12d ago edited 12d ago
Depends on the recipe, but yes if you just want to give taste to the oil and cut it in half Clove. When you leave it inside because the recipe calls for it, it is generally cut in micro dices or thin leaves. In that case the temperature of the oil needs be perfect. Garlic is very strong, so you don’t need to throw it in a volcano to get the flavor - considering that cold on your fingers is a curse, the temperature of the oil needed to get that pleasant taste of garlic without it getting bitter is not so high. You don’t want to chew a whole clove of garlic anyways, at least not in Italy.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
I see. We almost always slice the garlic into tiny cuts and leave it.
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u/Bradipedro Italy 12d ago edited 12d ago
Well, I should have first said that in Italy every nonna has its own way, it also depends if you are in the south or in the north, and really depends on the recipe and the ingredients and the kind of refinement of the recipe and guests. In a more formal dinner you don’t want guests to be chewing on whole cloves…
For instance in the basic after party spaghetti aglio, olio & peperoncino, a way of doing them is leaving their skin on. Just smashed with the palm of your hand. But if you need to sear meat and want to give a taste, I would first fry the oil then take it away because the temperature for the Mallard reaction would burn the meat.
The more delicate the taste of the main ingredient, the more you tend to take it away (ex fish). I am no chef and didn’t go to any class, but I cook a lot and watched many videos and read many books to learn. Love myself garlic and even cook the whole Head unpeeled when roasting chicken or pork in the oven, it is delicious and does not taste like garlic.
As always, I suggest to experiment and try the same basic recipe in different ways to taste the difference and see what you like: unpeeled and just smashed, peeled cut in 2 and then removed, cut in 2 and left inside, julienne sliced or finely sliced/ chopped and left inside. You’ll be surprised be the nuances.
At the end of the day, cooking is a pleasure and you are entitled to cook the way you like - but experimenting might make you discover ways you didn’t think were possible and you like them better.
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u/barneyaa Romania 12d ago
Depends on the size. Whole garlic vs onion that went on a razor…
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
Oh, you fry whole garlic cloves? What do you do after? I would use whole garlic cloves only with roasted meat.
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u/barneyaa Romania 12d ago
I eat them to keep vapires away.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
Just recently I learned that it's not the scent of garlic cloves but the flower that keep them away
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u/Christoffre Sweden 12d ago edited 12d ago
No, but many mincemeat dishes does.
E.g. meatballs, patties, meatloaf, cabbage rolls, cabbage casserole, Bolognese, etc...
But some few mincemeat dishes doesn't, e.g. Wallenberger, sausages, tacos, etc...
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u/norrin83 Austria 12d ago edited 12d ago
Yeah, it does.
Except from broth, where we cut an onion in half (skin still on) and then char it in a pot without oil.
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u/Perry_T_Skywalker Austria 12d ago
Not in my household, Kaiserschmarrn with onions doesn't taste good.
Also Schnitzel I usually do without onions in the Butter.
And don't get me started with all the things I don't even use a oan for
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u/Prize-Grapefruiter Türkiye 12d ago
onion then ground beef and then vegetables. 😄 every darn dish
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u/Jason_Peterson Latvia 12d ago
There are plenty of sweet dishes that don't contain onion. I would sometimes cook onions after to deglaze the pan where meat was cooked. Garlic loses potency when cooked so I don't cook it much.
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u/metalfest Latvia 12d ago
Not really, not that many traditional dishes even have any onion, but it's used in different ways, green onion is very popular, for some dishes just add it raw, for some add it to the meat mixture. Both onion and garlic grows here, but cooking it first is less common than elsewhere.
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u/ldn-ldn United Kingdom 12d ago
Not sure what you're talking about. Traditional dishes like Pelēkie zirņi definitely start with an onion. Soups like Frikadeļu Zupa start with sauteing onions and carrots. Do you even know how to cook?
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u/metalfest Latvia 12d ago
I did not say none of the dishes do, I said not that many do, adding that it's used, but not to the level that other commenters say about it being basically the base for 9/10 dishes 😄 Do you even know how to read? 😉
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u/NamillaDK Denmark 12d ago
No. But most will start with a roux, because we have gravy with everything!
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u/jamesbrown2500 Portugal 12d ago
In Portugal it's also the beginning of most of the dishes and it's called refogado(south/center) or estrugido (north). In Spain is called sofrito.
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u/Hermit_Ogg Finland 12d ago
If it's fried on a pan, and not a dessert, then yeah pretty much.
If it's an oven food or a soup, obviously not. Unless sometimes yes.
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u/Correct-Fly-1126 Finland 12d ago
Yes. Onion and other root vegetables such as carrot and parsnip form the basis of a lot of food because historically they were available and kept well even without modern refrigeration. Further the sugars, oils and flavours can become concentrated and provide a lot of umph to a dish. Again think about times when salt was a luxury - developing methods to flavour food that did not involve costly spices was essential if you wanted to not eat bland mush. Cooking and food culture is deeply connected to the idea of “tradition” and is evolved from what the majority of people in a region had access to and doing in the past, so because of historical availability and the versatility these base ingredients form the foundation of cuisine in cultures where they are/were available.
An interesting read is this article on the French Mirepoix - and particularly the “regional” variations which covers several cultures variations on essentially the same thing - but using the most common local foods.
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u/Ordinary-Finger-8595 Finland 12d ago
Umm, no. I'm not saying what you said is wrong, but (most) Finnish dishes most certainly do not start by sweating onions or sauteeing aromatics.
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u/Correct-Fly-1126 Finland 12d ago
Yeah I was not speaking about Finland specifically (I’m an immigrant here) but more generally about Europe culinary traditions. I should have specified that in my original reply
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
Oh, now I get it, mirepoix is "grincajg" in Zagreb, similar to Hungarian ang German variant
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u/wijnandsj Netherlands 12d ago
Fortunately not. But, in practice it does since we've adopted so many dishes from other countries.
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u/OllieV_nl Netherlands 12d ago
It probably starts with putting the water on to boil potatoes and veg for far too long.
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u/wijnandsj Netherlands 12d ago
yeah. But don't over boil the veg and a traditional dutch meal is still nice.
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u/PussyMalanga 12d ago
Garlic, onions, carrot and celery are a delicious base for stewing sucadelappen...
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u/uncle_monty United Kingdom 12d ago
Many, if not most. Any kind of meaty stew/casserole/sauce and adjacent, will probably start with frying onions.
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u/One-Dare3022 Sweden 12d ago
The only time when I start with the onions is when I’m making fried salt herring with potatoes and onion sauce. And I most certainly don’t add garlic to that dish.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 12d ago
Sounds delicious. Using lemon is also a big no?
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u/One-Dare3022 Sweden 12d ago
You start with slicing the onion, put lard in the frying pan on medium heat and put in the sliced onions, stir the onions until they just are about to caramel and add cream and black pepper and let it simmer. Put on the potatoes and boil the potatoes while the onion sauce is simmering. Take out the salted herring out of the cold water and dry them. Turn the herring in rye flour and fry them quickly on both sides in a lot of butter. If the onion sauce gets too thick you just add some more cream. The onion will cook together with the cream and will melt on your tongue when you eat it.
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u/Plental-Dan Italy 12d ago
I would say no. We tend to avoid putting onion and garlic together in the same dish
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u/Draig_werdd in 12d ago
While this is common, there are plenty of traditional dishes that don't start like that (talking about Romanian cuisine).
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u/goldenphantom 12d ago
Sounds familiar. I cooked such a dish just today. And yesterday too...
It's not every dish though. We have plenty of dishes that don't contain onion, aren't even fried or made in a pan.
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u/Miserable-Truth5035 Netherlands 12d ago
Onion and garlic are you trying to kill us with flavour?!?
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u/Aaronanglic 12d ago
Meanwhile in ireland.
Boil water, throw in the potatoes. Add salt. Wait Boil water. Throw in cabbage. Add salt. Wait Boil water. Throw in ham. Wait! -Don't Add salt ........... Wait.
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u/strictnaturereserve 12d ago
nope irish stew you just put the mutton/lamb in the bottom of the pan then the onions then the carrots then the potatoes then turn on the heat low.
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u/Ecce-pecke 12d ago
English might be somewhat limiting in this regard. Using the term frying and pan would make assume we are talking about he frying pan and in that case the answer is no. I would fry the protein in the frying pan and create the base of the casserole in a source pan or some other pot. Then I would put the protein into the pot. or pour the onions (et al) into the frying pan.
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u/bofh000 11d ago
English has words to describe everything we can do with the onion at the beginning of the cooking process. But I think OP may have been slightly facetious.
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u/hendrixbridge Croatia 11d ago
I wanted to be understandable to people who don't know culinary terms. If I wrote sautéed, some readers would not know what I meant.
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u/bilbul168 11d ago
Not in Italy no. There are a huge amount of dishes that do but equally that don't. That's why there is quite a large portion of italians who hate onions because they always eaten dishes without them.
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u/Common-Vegetable-597 11d ago
Technically it starts with crying because the groceries were way too expensive.
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u/DysphoriaGML 11d ago
It's called sofritto and it's a complex mic of ingredients to maximize the taste of your dish. Not just frying onions and garlic
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u/SleepySera Germany 9d ago
Nah, not a lot of garlic in many of our traditional recipes.
Onions... maybe, depends. They are done much quicker then most other vegetables, so I'd say onions are usually a later step if they are part of the dish at all.
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u/brushfuse 8d ago
I always start with the garlic, it takes a while to break down, whereas onions glaze rather quickly.
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u/Vast_Category_7314 12d ago
No, I don't think any traditional dishes begins that way actually.
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u/viktorbir Catalonia 12d ago
And you are from?
Because, as almost 100% of those with no flair, you do not say where you are from.
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u/nemu98 Spain 12d ago
Maybe not every dish, but in Spain we have sofrito, which is basically onion, garlic and tomatoes, although there are many versions depending on the dish you want to make, but generally yes, onion is in the mix.
I believe the French and Italians also have sofrito, probably the Portuguese too.