The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 358 - Caramelized Onions

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Pete.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: I had kind of a big aha moment today, about something I think is very, very worth us talking about.

Pete: My god, what an intro. What? Talk to me.

Jen: Yeah. It's deep. It's rich. It is intense.

Pete: Oh my god, what is it?

Jen: And it is carmelized onions.

Pete: This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So you said, carmelized onions? Is that right?

Jen: I did. And you're going to tell me it's pronounced differently.

Pete: No, no, no. I would say in Australia, it's caramelised onions, but we are talking about the same thing.

Jen: Yes. And in parts of America, it's also caramelized.

Pete: Oh, really?

Jen: And depending on how I'm feeling on any given day, I may change my pronunciation. It is one of those words that, it's like data / data.

Pete: Data / data, I was thinking the same thing.

Jen: Caramel / caramel.

Pete: Aluminum and aluminium.

Jen: Well, I never say aluminium. Never. Uh-uh.

Pete: I mean, and I never ever say aluminum.

Jen: So, there you go. Anyway, I made some caramelized onions today.

Pete: Alright, and the aha moment that ensued.

Jen: Okay. I'm going to explain for the listeners who have never made them before (and you're missing out by the way), how you make these.

Pete: Yeah. I'm curious if it's different, if you have a particular technique that makes it carmelized, as opposed to the technique that we use which will make it caramelised. Are they different?

Jen: Well, it's definitely a different technique than what would make it sauteed.

Pete: Okay. Tell me more.

Jen: Okay. You're going to take your onions. You're going to slice your onions thinly.

Pete: This is already my favorite episode ever.

Jen: Okay. For each onion, you're going to assign it one tablespoon of butter. You're going to take the butter. You're going to put the butter in a large pan, and melt it until it's frothy.

Pete: Oh my god, I'm getting hungry.

Jen: Then, you're going to take your onions and you're going to dump them in the pan. And they're going to be falling out of the pan, because they take up so much room. You're going to figure out some way to slam a lid on that for six minutes, taking it off every two minutes or so to stir. After six minutes, you're going to lower the heat, take the lid off, and let these onions cook for twenty-five to thirty minutes.

Pete: It's a long time.

Jen: Maybe you could get away with twenty, if you were feeling cheeky. But Pete, there's no way to do it faster.

Pete: Oh.

Jen: Like, there is no way to speed it up.

Pete: I see. Ah, yeah. You have to wait.

Jen: You've got to sit there with these onions that are looking like clear and slimy, and you're like, "At what point is anything going to happen?" You just keep coming over, and looking, and stirring, and you're like, "What is happening?" And then, all of a sudden, the color starts to change. And you have to wait. And then, you've got to stir. And then, you can pour a little water in. And you let that evaporate. And you stir again. And you keep going until you actually have caramelized your onions. And they're so delicious. And you could just eat them out of the pan. And even if you don't like onions, you will like these. But the point is, Pete, you can't rush a caramelized onion, if you really want it to be the most delicious thing you've ever tasted. And there are things in this life that, like caramelized onions, take time to get to the point where they can work their magic and become what they were always meant to be. But if you try to speed it up, you'll end up with burnt onions. You'll end up with sautéed onions. You'll end up with charred onions. But you will not end up with a caramelized onion.

Pete: Oh my god. Firstly, I think Chef Jen might be my favorite new Jen.

Jen: I love to cook.

Pete: Like talking us through how to cook, I feel like I need that, a video of you or audio of you describing recipes for me in my life. That's hilarious and amazing. And secondly, I see why this was an aha moment, this idea that certain things in life you can't rush. And that feels so counter to almost everything else in our lives. That we are...well, I'll speak for myself, often in pursuit of efficiencies and faster ways of getting things done or getting to a result. And my daily little funny version of this, depending on what I've got on and how much I'm feeling like I'm in a rush, is the boiling of the water in the kettle to make a coffee or a cup of tea. And some days, I'm like, "My god, that kettle has taken a long time. Why is the water not boiled yet?" But you can't speed up the boiling of the water. It is on its max setting. The kettle's on. It's going to take how long it's going to take to boil the water.

Jen: That's right.

Pete: And you certainly, certainly do not want...well, I do not want a cold or lukewarm cup of tea or cup of coffee. That's not what I'm after.

Jen: Absolutely not. No, I like my coffee to scald me.

Pete: Yeah. I want to burn the taste buds off my tongue.

Jen: Now, let's be clear about the onion.

Pete: Alright.

Jen: The onion can be appreciated in many forms.

Pete: Uh-huh.

Jen: It serves so many different purposes. Sometimes, you want it to bite you back. That's what you want from an onion. And there are times where you're going to make yourself something, and you're going to put a piece of raw onion on it because that's what you have time to do. And we shan't fool ourselves that it is anything but a raw onion. And I can equate this to a lot of creative processes that I find myself talking people through. Like as an example, I sometimes have forty-eight hours to get a client ready for a callback.

Pete: Yeah. Okay, not much time.

Jen: There's no way to caramelize those onions, honey. It's not happening.

Pete: That's not what we're doing.

Jen: It's not happening. What we're going to do is create the illusion. We're going to figure out some way to get enough work done that, to the person looking at it, it's dressed like a caramelized onion. But to the actor, they know that they haven't done all of the work yet. Then, when they book the job and they know they have several months before rehearsals start, we can take those onions the rest of the way. But then, once rehearsals start, it's almost like we've reversed time. Now, we're back to the raw onion. And now, they've got to go through this whole new process. And it just, it takes time. And it can be frustrating because we like results, but some results take time. I feel like I'm just basically repeating the same premise over and over and over again, but maybe I'm just trying to caramelize the premise.

Pete: Oh, yeah. Things are getting meta now. No, I think it's worth re-emphasizing: Quality takes time. The quality caramelized onion takes time. So maybe part of the question that we need to ponder when we're about to embark on something, a task, a project, whatever it is, a meeting, an idea, "Is this a caramelized onion, or is this a raw onion? Is this something that needs to take time in order to deliver the most effective, most delicious outcome? Or is this something that actually, no, efficiency here is valued and valid? And so, I can go for the raw onion because I have, in the example you used, forty-eight hours."

Jen: And the phenomenon of the moment...this is why I want every listener to stop listening right now and go buy an onion and do this at home. The phenomenon of the moment that the caramelization begins, it goes from looking like a slimy, clear mass of worms to, almost in an alarming way, changing color. When it finally reaches the point, just like when water goes from not boiling to boiling, when it finally reaches the point, it starts to go quickly. But it feels, for so long, like, "I must be doing something wrong. Nothing is happening here."

Pete: Yeah. That's so funny. Okay, this is a random parallel that it reminded me of: the myth of the overnight success. I could think of a bunch of examples that I have where I've read a book or discovered an author, for example, and I've thought, "Wow, that's amazing. This person wrote one book. And overnight, they became a success. And now, they're this global best-seller doing a tour around the world, helping people with the topic of this book." And what I don't see is the equivalent of the twenty minutes of it looking like a raw onion in the fry pan. What I haven't seen is, this person (I think almost without exception, but I'm sure there's the odd exception) hasn't just randomly sat down one day and written a best-seller. What they've done is, over time, written a bunch of crap, then edited, improved, iterated, and shared ideas. There's all this work under the book that I can't see, or there's all this time for the onion to turn into the onion that we want to eat that isn't always visually available to us. And so, I don't know, I'm almost looking at it from the point of, if I walked into the kitchen and you were at the twenty-five minute mark, I'd be like, "Oh, well, Jen just whipped up the most amazing caramelized onions ever. Just like that. She's a magician." And you'd be like, "You have no idea. I sat here for twenty-five minutes, like looking at this thing looking like a weird worm, and wondering if I was doing it properly. And now, all of a sudden, it's like magic. It's appeared, and here it is. And so, we can enjoy it together."

Jen: That's right. It's making me want to talk about the Instant Pot.

Pete: Okay, okay. We're really, really nailing down the cooking themes today. I like it.

Jen: Because, there are certain things you can speed up. Like, you can put a stew in the Instant Pot and pressure cook it. And thirty minutes later, you'll have something that tasted like it has been on the stove for eight hours. And so, sometimes maybe it's important to know that what you're working with is not an onion, and there is a way to speed certain things up.

Pete: Yeah, I love that.

Jen: This just goes back to: Know thyself, know what thy is working on.

Pete: "Thy." Yeah, be intentional. Can we be intentional about what it is we're trying to do with what ingredient?

Jen: Right.

Pete: Is this an onion? Is this a slow-cooked lamb? Is this a shitty first draft of a blog post that I need to just quickly get out? Is this actually a really polished quality thing that I want to write? Is this a podcast where we share ideas without having ever spoken about them before? Or is this a highly-scripted interview-style podcast with someone else, that requires time and effort and processing and practice? Not to say we don't have any of those things, but the intention of what we're trying to do matters.

Jen: Yes. And when you are honest with yourself about the ingredients that you're working with and what you're trying to make, you will be so much better equipped to set realistic expectations for how to measure success.

Pete: Yeah. It reminds me of some of the interactions I've had using AI.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Where, I will go to ChatGPT or Gemini...and I've shared before on this podcast that I'm trying to use these tools every day, just to get into the habit of seeing what I might discover. And sometimes, what I discover is that the response it gives back to me is unsatisfying or raw. And I realize that I'm trying to fast-track something that can't be fast-tracked. I realize that what I need to do myself is spend some more time with a whiteboard or a blank notepad and do some thinking and the equivalent of the twenty minutes of cooking the onion before I share it, serve it up to someone on a plate, and then get feedback on how to make it better.

Jen: Hmm.

Pete: This is not true of every single use case I have with AI. But sometimes, I'll give an example, like I was thinking about a workshop I need to run in a couple of weeks. And I didn't give enough context, because I hadn't done enough thinking on my own around, "How do I want to structure this workshop to make sure I deliver the most appropriate outcome?" I was just kind of like, "If you were delivering a workshop on having difficult conversations, what would it look like?" And it like came back with this perfectly okay reply. And I was like, "No, that's not what I need. I'm going for some caramelized onions here. I'm going for something that is super effective, super delicious...to use the three words you used at the start. I want to create a deep, rich, and intense conversation."

Jen: Right.

Pete: "I don't want to create a surface-level conversation." And so, it was, for me, this reminder that I need to spend the twenty minutes, the thirty minutes, the equivalent of that in the context of designing a workshop.

Jen: Hmm.

Pete: Are you getting hungry? Because I am. And so, while there is a time and a place for efficiency, I do kind of think that this idea of, "You can't rush a caramelized onion," is actually a pretty nice universal reminder for a lot of the things that we're doing in our day-to-day. I was sharing with you prior to this podcast that I am in a holding pattern, which you politely pointed out is a common theme in my year, is I'll end up in a holding pattern at some point. And I was struggling with the tension of wanting to speed up the holding pattern. And this idea that you can't rush, I just feel like has so much application in so many of the things that we're all doing, because we're all trying to do them faster, more efficiently, and to do more of them. So I just love this as like a philosophical reminder, maybe you just can't rush.

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.