Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)
There just isn't a culture around  cooking (non-professional setting anyway) of doing experiments to validate your claims so myths, inaccuracies and just-so stories are rampant, even when experiments are very cheap and practical to do.<p>I'm not sure how you change this. I find it really grating how much contradictory cooking advice there is and how complex some recipes are without   justifying   the extra steps make any difference.<p>If you're making bread for example, some recipes will say don't add the salt with the yeast because it will make it rise slower and some recipes say it won't make a difference - it should be simple to confirm this with an experiment in a day to settle it for good and move on but for whatever reason this doesn't happen.<p>Is there a good reason why you couldn't settle how to caramelise onions with a few experiments?