Nutritional Profiles to Recipes

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small

❝I like the recipes. Most don’t seem to include nutritional profile. would lilke to see that. Macro/micro world…. Thank you❞

We’re glad you’re enjoying them! There are a couple of reasons why we don’t, but the reasons can be aggregated into one (admittedly rare) concept: honesty

To even try to give you these figures, we’d first need to use the metric system (or at least, a strictly mass-based system) which would likely not go well with our largely American readership, because “half a bulb of garlic, or more if you like”, and “1 cucumber” or “1 cup chopped carrot” could easily way half or twice as much, depending on the sizes of the vegetables or the chopping involved, and in the case of chopped vegetables measured by the cup, even the shape of the cup (because of geometry and the spaces left; it’s like Tetris in there). We can say “4 cups low-sodium broth” but we can’t say how much sodium is in your broth. And so on.

And that’s without getting into the flexibility we offer with substitutions, often at a rate of several per recipe.

We’d also need to strictly regulate your portion sizes for you, because we (with few exceptions, such as when they are a given number of burger patties, or a dessert-in-a-glass, etc) give you a recipe for a meal and leave it to you how you divide it and whether there’s leftovers.

Same goes for things like “Extra virgin olive oil for frying”; a recipe could say to use “2 tbsp” but let’s face it, you’re going to use what you need to use, and that’s going to change based on the size of your pan, how quickly it’s absorbed into the specific ingredients that you got, which will change depending on how fresh they are, and things like that.

By the time we’ve factored in your different kitchen equipment, how big your vegetables are, the many factors effecting how much oil you need, substitutions per recipe per making something dairy-free, or gluten-free, or nut-free, etc, how big your portion size is (we all know that “serves 4” is meaningless in reality)… Even an estimated average would be wildly misleading.

So, in a sea of recipes saying “500 kcal per serving” from the same authors who say you can caramelize onions in 4–5 minutes “or until caramelized” and then use the 4–5 minutes figure for calculating the overall recipe time… We prefer to stay honest.

PS: for any wondering, caramelizing onions takes closer to 45 minutes than 4–5 minutes, and again will depend on many factors, including the onions, how finely you chopped them, the size and surface of your pan, the fat you’re using, whether you add sugar, what kind, how much you stir them, the mood of your hob, and the phase of the moon. Under very favorable circumstances, it could conceivably be rushed in 20 minutes or so, but it could also take 60. Slow-cooking them (i.e. in a crock pot) over 3–4 hours is a surprisingly viable “cheat” option, by the way. It’ll take longer, obviously, but provided you plan in advance, they’ll be ready when you need them, and perfectly done (the same claim cannot be made if you budgeted 4–5 minutes because you trusted a wicked and deceitful author who wants to poop your party).

Take care!