Common Nonsense...

[tommy]

I wear contact lenses, and onions always make me tear up.

Sounds like one of those myths that just got debunked.

katherine claims it works for her. although i can help but think there's something else to that.

[Katherine]

I never cry when I'm wearing contacts, and always when I'm wearing glasses. I just assumed that the sensitive part of the eye is the cornea, which is protected from any onion mist. I think it was CI that I read this on a few years ago, too.

[afoodnut]

I've worn contact lenses for more than 40 years. When I'm wearing my lenses, sometimes I cry when I chop onions, sometimes I don't. On those few occasions that I'm wearing glasses and chopping onions, sometimes I cry, sometimes I don't. The variable seems to be the onions, not the lenses or glasses.

When I worked in my catering business, our motto was always "When you need to cry, volunteer to chop the onions."

Edit to add: I never chop onions wearing neither contacts nor glasses. If I did, I would cry because I chopped my fingers instead of the onions.

Edited December 21, 2003 by afoodnut (log)

[AzRaeL]

Sliced Bread is the Best thing.

I like to slice my bread myself, thickly sliced YUM

[AzRaeL]

Edit to add: I never chop onions wearing neither contacts nor glasses. If I did, I would cry because I chopped my fingers instead of the onions.

i find that if you chop in a well ventillated kitchen, and if you have a sharp enough knife and zip through it fast enough, you wont cry from chopping onions.

[Marlene]

I can't say wearing glasses or contact lenses makes any difference to me. I wear both (no, not at the same time ) and onions can make me cry either way.

[afoodnut]

Edit to add: I never chop onions wearing neither contacts nor glasses. If I did, I would cry because I chopped my fingers instead of the onions.

i find that if you chop in a well ventillated kitchen, and if you have a sharp enough knife and zip through it fast enough, you wont cry from chopping onions.

Not true, AzRaeL. No matter how well ventilated the kitchen is, no matter how sharp the knife is, and no matter how quickly I'm chopping, if I'm chopping my fingers, not the onions, because I can't see because I'm wearing neither glasses nor contact lenses, I'll be crying.

[Mudpuppie]

Um... I think we need to review the objective if this proceeds. When it comes to cooking vegetables there may be a different objective with the same veggie. For example, green beans. There is the "perfectly" cooked, bright green green bean and then there is the smothered and long cooked green bean (e.g. my recipe in RecipeGullet). They are entirely different dishes. Both great.

In other words:

Southern cooked vegetables = (Green vegetable x Time) x Time.

(My heritage allows me to say that without malice or prejudice. )

[Mudpuppie]

I wear contact lenses, and onions always make me tear up.

Sounds like one of those myths that just got debunked.

katherine claims it works for her. although i can help but think there's something else to that.

Perhaps we've just hit on the crux of the definition of "myth"?

Something works for (or is true for) one person. It seems reasonable that it is also true for everyone else. Other people assume it must be true for them too and accept it without question or experiment. Sometimes it is true for other people, so it is proven after the fact.

Bingo. A myth is born.

[Jonathan Day]

Um... I think we need to review the objective if this proceeds. When it comes to cooking vegetables there may be a different objective with the same veggie. For example, green beans. There is the "perfectly" cooked, bright green green bean and then there is the smothered and long cooked green bean (e.g. my recipe in RecipeGullet). They are entirely different dishes. Both great.

Great point, Linda.

I was referring to the classic bright green treatments of vegetables: bean, broccoli, whatever.

There are delicious preparations involving long-cooked vegetables, e.g. broccoli cooked in red wine for a long time, or cabbage, slowly cooked in butter for a good long time, or smothered green beans.

But for the "bright green" versions, there should be brilliant colour, an intense but not overpowering flavour, and just enough crunch. Not crudités, but not cooked to mush either.

[Katherine]

I wear contact lenses, and onions always make me tear up.

Sounds like one of those myths that just got debunked.

katherine claims it works for her. although i can help but think there's something else to that.

Perhaps we've just hit on the crux of the definition of "myth"?

Something works for (or is true for) one person. It seems reasonable that it is also true for everyone else. Other people assume it must be true for them too and accept it without question or experiment. Sometimes it is true for other people, so it is proven after the fact.

Bingo. A myth is born.

Actually, a "myth" is something that everybody believes, although it is untrue.

This works for me, and it works for my girlfriends, and we have tried it both ways. Even if there are people for whom it does not work, it still works for us, regardless of the fact that none of us here seems to understand the conditions under which it works and does not.

A "myth" would be the misconception that the ribs and seeds of a pepper are "hot", and the flesh is not. So you read that you should put the ribs (and seeds) in to make a spicy dish, and remove them carefully to make a dish which is not spicy. You read that hot paprika comes from dried peppers that have the seeds and ribs ground in them, although clearly you can see (from the color of the powder) that this has not happened.

Hot peppers make spicy dishes, and peppers with no heat make dishes that are not spicy. Scientific testing has shown that the spiciest part of a pepper is the placenta, the little mutant pepper sometimes found within, but even this part is only a little bit spicier.

[tommy]

Actually, a "myth" is something that everybody believes, although it is untrue.

everybody? nah.

[Katherine]

Actually, a "myth" is something that everybody believes, although it is untrue.

everybody? nah.

OK, actually (for you, Tommy) I should have typed "everybody".

How many times have you heard someone tell you that something "must" be done a certain way, although neither they nor the person who they got the information from has ever tried to see what actually happens?

For instance, a while back I worked on a "scrambled egg project", where I tested many of the variables that I had heard "had to" be done to make scrambled eggs. Clearly, most of these were incompatible.

Water, milk, half-and-half, heavy cream, or no liquid?

Best mixing method?

How much liquid?

Best cooking method?

I was able to determine that many of these variables are a matter of taste, while others are just plain irrelevent.

One recipe said to break the egg directly into the hot buttered pan, then stir until cooked. I found this, and the beaten egg version with no liquid added, to be too "eggy" for me. [Just last month this popped up in Saveur as "the" way to cook scrambled eggs. I don't know personally anyone who does it this way, so clearly they are disseminating "personal taste" as the "one and only" method.]

The more liquid you can add, the softer and more custardy the end product. You can add a lot more heavy cream than any of the others, but I also found that the maximum quantity of heavy cream is more fat than my digestive system can handle. On the other hand, if you add more liquid than the eggs can hold, they weep unattractively, and form a puddle of water on the plate.

Since I had heard that eggs must never be whisked, I decided to test this. I always whisked eggs, being lazy, and did three batches: fork mixing, whisking, and blending in the blender, for the maximal overwhisking possible. I was surprised to find that the best eggs (the tenderest and smoothest ones) were the blended ones. The fork-mixed ones were not as tender, and had an unacceptable quantity of tough and stretchy egg white strings.

I tried whisking or stirring the eggs in a double boiler situation, as well as cooking in butter in a pan. I definitely did not like the half-cooked eggs that come from whisking over water until "creamy", but the ones that I stirred into large curds were good. Pan-fried scrambled eggs are hard to cook evenly, especially when you're making a breakfast with a large number of dishes.

I was also going to test some more variables, such as: How much butter in the pan?, but by this time I was sooo tired of eggs, that I stopped the project.

So I now have switched to blending the maximum amount of half-and-half into my eggs before cooking, and stirring them in a nonstick pan set over a pot of simmering water.

Was it a myth that (unstated) dire things will happen if you whisk your eggs before cooking? I think so, but I suppose that, for people who like egg-white snot strings in their eggs, maybe it's a matter of taste.

[JAZ]

I never cry when I'm wearing contacts, and always when I'm wearing glasses. I just assumed that the sensitive part of the eye is the cornea, which is protected from any onion mist. I think it was CI that I read this on a few years ago, too.

My experience parallels yours. Contact lenses in, no tears. Contact lenses out, tears. Glasses, fewer tears, but tears nonetheless.

Incidentally, I'd like to get to the bottom of this, because I've been telling my students that wearing contact lenses while chopping onions stops one from crying. If it's not universally true, I don't want to mislead them.

I wear the disposable kind -- is that what everyone else wears? I can't remember what used to happen when I wore the old hard gas permeable ones.

[Katherine]

I currently wear the disposable ones. I have in the past worn extended wear lenses, both as intended and as daily wear lenses. In the distant past I wore hard contact lenses, but I don't remember whether there was this effect back then.

It's possible there is an effect from the quality/quantity of an individual's natural tears (dilution).

Perhaps you can continue to suggest this, as it works for many people, and poll your students to see how many it really works for. Right now our data's pretty thin.

[stevea]

I always thought that wearing glasses made the "onion effect" worse, because the glasses "trapped" the sulfer compounds in that area between the glass and the eye. I usually whip off my glasses to try to relieve the symptoms. However, this could be my own myth as to why I seem to tear up more when chopping onions than others I know (I wear glasses and don't have contacts, so I can't test myself in both situations).

[Dave the Cook]

I hit the books to get to the bottom of the green veg thing. All of this is in McGee's On Food and Cooking, if you want more detail.

1. There are two types of chlorophyll. Type A is blue-green; type B is olive. Chlorophyll is contained in cells called chloroplasts, which normally are surrounded by gas pockets that diffuse light reflected off the chloroplasts.

2. The chlorophyll molecule is a ring (four nitrogen atoms surrounding a central magnesium atom) plus a tail of hydrocarbons. It is interesting but irrelevant to note that if you disregard the tail and replace the magnesium with iron, you get a heme molecule, the essential component in animal blood. It is of more import that (a) the hydrocarbon tail is easily severed from the ring; and (b) the central Mg atom gives up the ghost as soon as things start to heat up.

3. When you drop the veg into hot water, the chloroplasts expand almost immediately, and squeeze out the gas pockets. This eliminates the diffusive effect, and the vegetable appears to be much greener.

4. Enzymes, particularly chlorophyllase, are released by cell rupture, either from heat-induced collapse or from the simple act of chopping. Chlorophyllase cuts the hydrocarbon tail off the chlorophyll molecule. It (along with the other enzymes) is most active between 150 F and 170 F (66 C to 77 C), but is destroyed by boiling. When chlorophyll loses its tail, it becomes water soluble.

5. When you drop the veg into water, a lot of what happens depends on what's in the water:

a) If the water is acidic, a hydrogen atom jumps in to replace the magnesium. This effect is supplemented by the release of the plant's own acids, since heat ruptures cells indiscriminately, and more acid is released. Chlorophyll A turns gray-green; B turns yellow, or yellowish. The result is dull olive.

b) If the acidic water also contains copper or zinc (I remember my grandmother dropping a penny in the pot), the metals nudge the hydrogen atoms aside. This results in bright green.

c) If the water is alkaline, cell walls collapse and dissolve. The vegetable turns mushy and the cooking water turns green.

5. You shouldn't, despite my grandmother's advice, set your mind to adding copper to the pot. Copper is poisonous. (Maybe you could toss in one of those zinc-rich throat lozenges.)

6. Therefore, to maintain color (somewhat at the expense of vitamins):

- Use a lot of water. This dilutes the plant acids, and the most volatile of them are driven off.

- Leave the lid off for the first few minutes. Otherwise, water (containing these volatile acids) will condense on the lid and fall back into the cooking water.

- Another reason to use lots of water is to mitigate the effect of enzymes. If you have a lot of water, adding the vegetables will cause less of a temperature drop. The water will return to a boil more quickly, and the enzymes will be less effective. Note also that this is also a reason to have the water boiling before adding the food.

- Don't cook for longer than five to seven minutes. If necessary, cut the food into pieces small enough to cook in that time.

7. Vitamin C and B vitamins are water-soluble, as are minerals. This means that the longer you cook, the more vitamins you lose to the cooking water. It also means that when you cut into smaller pieces to reduce cooking time, you increase vitamin loss, because you expose more cells to heat. You can't win here; it is always a choice between nutrition and appearance. Moreover, Vitamin C is susceptible to oxygen. So you can recover the Bs by using the cooking water, but soon after it's exposed to air, the C is a goner. You can't win here; it is always a choice between nutrition and appearance.

[docsconz]

Great job, Dave!

Still no mention of salt in the water, although it is conceivable that salts containing minerals could act like copper as could harder water. This could be the origen of the "myth". If that is the case it might be that the addition of pure NaCl wouldn't do anything one way or the other, which may explain why it is not universally seen.

Your research also explains why lemon juice can give broccoli or other greens that olive color.

[Huevos del Toro]

The green veggie thing is explained in one or more of the usual suspects' (McGee, Wolke, Parsons, Corriher) books. It has to do with the release of acids as the chlorophyll breaks down. I don't remember the specifics, except that I think that if you leave the pot uncovered, the acids disperse with the steam. If you cover the pot, they condense on the underside of the lid and go back in the water. So leave the lid off, and your veggies will stay green. Maybe someone is close to an appropriate text and can check this out.

This, paraphrased, from Shirley Corriher’s “CookWise”, pg. 326-327:

Blanching vegetables quickly drives the intercellular air out. This natural air in the vegetable clouds the true colors. When forced out by blanching the natural colors become more vibrant. This is not cooking. The vegetables remain raw.

All green vegetables have two types of chlorophyll – chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b. Type A is a bright blue-green and type B is a yellow-green. Type A outnumbers type B three to one. When the magnesium in the cells is lost by heating the color changes.

Heating damages the cells and releases natural acids which then attack the chlorophyll, causing it to turn brownish-yellow-green.

To preserve color, cook no longer than 7 minutes. Cut smaller if you want to cook thoroughly but retain color. Use a large quantity of water to dilute the acids exuded from the vegetables. Keep the pot uncovered, allowing the acids to evaporate. Steaming and stirfrying also work to minimize color changes. Adding a pinch of soda to neutralize the acids works but it also breaks down cell walls and makes crisp vegetables mushy.

So, the trick, it seems, is to cook quickly in a large quantity of water, uncovered.

[KarenS]

I've always done this- now I'm wondering if anyone knows why. When cooking octopus, the Spanish and Italians always add a wine cork to the pot (I have been told to help tenderise). Does it do anything? Does Paula know?

[Pan]

Has anyone addressed that question of whether chlorophyll is nutritious to human beings?

[fifi]

So, the trick, it seems, is to cook quickly in a large quantity of water, uncovered.

Damn. That is what my grandma and great aunt did. But I will bet they didn't know why. I can stills ee the big pots of boiling water when it was time to put up the vegetables from the garden. They always blanched and froze. We were some of the first kids on the block with huge chest freezers in the early 50s.

KarenS, I have always wondered about that cork thing, too. Didn't someone, (McGee?, Steingarten?) test this?

[tommy]

That's right, tommy. Which is why it is best to put stalks and such at the bottom, tender leaves on top.

yeah, even in less-than-large batches.

Did you just take a poke at me, Tommy?

nope. i was agreeing with you. as far as i remember.