Submitted 7 months ago by snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world to [deleted]
On the Food network they boil potatoes but they poach carrots. They poach turkey, but they boil eggs. They sauté’ onions, but they fry eggs in the same pan. Likewise, they fry hash browns but they sauté’ onions in the same pan before adding the potatoes.
I can go on for days,
Boiling and poaching are not the same. Frying and sautéing are not the same.
Why do you state this without making clear what the differences are?
I think it’s a pretty accurate answer. The OP asked why it’s sometimes calked poaching and sometimes boiling. The answer being that they aare different things.
As pointed out already, these terms have quite specific and different meanings but it’s worth being aware that they often get used interchangeably a lot too, and therefore possibly incorrectly. A lot of the specific terms will come from french cuisine (like saute) including all different names for exactly how you’ve sliced up your vegetables (julliene, brunoise etc). I believe this was so recipes could be written very precisely and therefore reproduced more acccurately.
It usually has to do with what chemical process happens to the food in question. Not all foods react the same to being dunked in boiling water. (Although I couldn’t tell you what the difference between potatoes in boiling water and carrots in boiling water.)
Sometimes it has to do with how long that cooking method is applied, since a different thing happens. For example, you can poach OR hard-boil an egg; same method, different amount of cooking time.
In short, with a few exceptions, it’s not about what process you’re applying to cook the food, but about the result that it achieves in the food item.
Poached and hard boiled eggs vary by more than just their boiling time. These names are much less about chemical processes and more about differences in technique. See other comments in this thread.
If I hand you an egg and tell you it’s a poached egg, you’re going to thinking about the consistency of the egg, not how I cooked it. Poached means the result, not the process.
It’s not based on the item. You can boil turkey and poach eggs as well. Here’s various definitions to get you started:
I have no answers, just pointing out that boiled carrots and poached eggs are also things.
Boiling, poaching and blanching all have to do with how long something is immersed in boiling water, for instance.
Boiling happens in boiling liquid, poaching happens at a lower temperature and you wouldnt boil turkey. Sauteing is frying but uses little fat, unlike deep frying for example.
Well now i am going to boil a turkey.
They’re slight variations in technique. Poaching is usually at a lower temperature than boiling, for instance.
There has to be a guide about this stuff somewhere on the web, right?
i think you lack cooking technique. all of these things are different.. ie;
Poaching refers to cooking in hot—not boiling—water
Sous Vide enters the room,
Well, until this post, I had never heard of poached carrots
We fry onions, you know “fried onions”. Boil vegetables like carrots, broccoli, potatoes.
Poach a turkey? Poaching is illegally hunting game, like pheasant. Turkeys and chickens and other meats are roasted, surely?
Sounds like Food Network wants to sound… Posh.
Poaching is also a cooking method lol
Turkey is not meat, it’s a country!
soren446@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Pisodeuorrior@kbin.social 7 months ago
All good but I'd just like to point something out.
When you boil pasta you're actually hydrating it, and it's a process that occurs above 80C, you don't need water to be boiling savagely.
In fact, it's preferable to let pasta simmer, as full boiling is a bit too "violent" and tends to damage most kinds of pasta.
You know, when some pieces are broken and torn like when it's overcooked? You can avoid that by keeping the temperature low.
Some people in Italy even turn the fire off after the water has started boiling ,as the water is hot enough to cook the pasta and keep it nice and firm.
evilgiraffe666@ttrpg.network 7 months ago
Interesting, I was taught you used a rolling boil for pasta so it wouldn’t stick together. Maybe there’s a halfway where it rolls for a few minutes then gets turned down as the pieces soften and become vulnerable to tearing.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
You’re correct but it begs the question, why the hell would they poach carrots? If any vegetable can stand up to boiling it’s a carrot. Blanching I could see, (that’s a 2 minute dunk in boiling water, OP, with a quick cooldown) if you wanted to pre-cook them so they wouldn’t be harder than everything else. Maybe they were just being poncy.
soren446@lemmy.world 7 months ago
RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Le sigh. Your answerI makes me really wish we could have the equivalent of r/askculinary here.
NPC@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’m a cook and just created !askculinary@lemmy.world for you. Feel free to direct any culinary question you have to it and I’ll do by best to answer them.
joel_feila@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Wait you dont boil potatoes?