The Five-Ingredient Fake

Had the Food Network running as background noise while I worked on some kitchen project. Comes a re-run of Clair Robinson’s show, “Five Ingredient Fix.”

Of all the shucks in the celebrity cooking world, that has to be the biggest. For awhile, the five-ingredient thing was all the rage. TV shows and specials, several books, live-action chefs performing like dancing bears, blogs and U-Tube videos galore.

The whole concept is silly at best. Lowering the number of ingredients does not automatically make for a simpler dish. More to the point, in order to fit the five-ingredient rubric, they invent rules of the game that make no sense. For starters, basic ingredients (such as salt, pepper, water, and cooking oil) are absolved from the count. And if that isn’t enough to force the count, they use convenience products, which themselves might contain anywhere from five to a dozen ingredients, as single ingredients.

On this episode Claire made cornbread as one of her dishes. By my honest count, there were seven ingredients. One of hers was self-rising flour. So that would really be eight ingredients if we were making it from scratch.

What I don’t understand is this: If you’re going to use convenience products, why not go whole hog and use a commercial cornbread mix? That would only count as one ingredient, and, with the amendment she added (bacon) it would be a total of three.

Another of her choices was canned creamed corn, which she accompanied by a speech about if you want to make your own creamed corn you could find her recipe on line at the FN site.

I haven’t looked it up. But, if typical, the creamed corn alone has five ingredients (by her count), and maybe as many as eight or ten real ones.

Proponents of the five-ingredient concept go on and on about why it makes sense. It makes for simpler recipes, they claim. Easier to prepare meals. And just as tasty and high quality, if not more so, than the complex dishes using multiple ingredients.

None of which is true. As we’ve seen, they start by not counting ingredients, or double dipping (for instance, citrus zest and citrus juice, by any rational count, are two ingredients, not one). Very often the way they combine ingredients leads to more complexity. I mean, when I dirty up more pots, pans, and dishes than the number of ingredients in the dish, there’s definitely something wrong with the idea of “simple.”.

IMHO, complexity has little to do with the number of ingredients. Rather, it has to do with the diversity of techniques necessary to complete the dish, and the degree to which the cook is involved. Basically, a cheese omelet is a very complex dish to prepare correctly. Yet its ingredient count fits the five-ingredient rubric.

Perhaps the ultimate example would be my seafood lollipops, the most complex dish I prepare. It involves separating eggs, making a seafood mousse, poaching, batter dipping, and deep frying. There are 17 ingredients, which, if I counted the way the five-ingredient proponents do, would drop to nine.

On the other hand, I used to enjoy a salad made at an upscale café in Boston. Essentially, asparagus, shrimp, olives, and hard cooked eggs were arranged artistically on a bed of greens, with the whole thing tied together with Louis dressing. It’s a great summer luncheon, and I serve it at home from time to time, Very simple to prepare and execute. And, yet, the number of ingredients is far outside the five-ingredient rubric. Oh, wait. That’s not right. Not if we use bottled Louis dressing (thus, only one ingredient), not count the water used to boil the eggs, asparagus, and shrimp, and leave out the salt cuz that’s not an ingredient. Knowing how the five-ingredient proponents think, they’d probably declare the greens to be a garnish, so wouldn’t count them either.

Not to beat a dead horse, but can you think of anything simpler to prepare than a basic stew? You ever count the ingredients? If you’re being honest, there are at least ten, and possibly twice that number. But there’s nothing complex about a stew.

What I’m saying is that it isn’t the number of ingredients that make a dish complex. It’s how you manipulate them.

What say the rest of you?

I'm not sure what you're trying to say about tomatillos, Drinks.

Sure, they're related to tomatoes. But only in that they are both nightshades. So, at best, they are distant cousins.

The nearest relative to the tomatillo is the cape gooseberry. They both belong to the genus Physalis, with their species name reflecting their origins (Brazil for the tomatillo, Peru for the cape gooseberry). Ground cherries are another in that group.

Tomatoes belong to the genus Lycopersicon, so aren't related to tomatillos on that level. You have to go one stage up the tree, to family, to find any relationship. At that level they are all Solanaecea.

Perhaps the confusion comes from the common name? Tomatillos are often called "husk tomatoes."

that food professionals would not bother to research....

Of course they do research, Drinks. They just don't do it very well. It is the Food Network after all. As far as Alton Brown is concerned, unless confirmed by other sources, I don't believe a word he says.

Have you heard the commercials for their "ingredience intelligence" section of the website? One of them deals with squash, and tells us how there are almost 150 varieties.

Point of fact: There are four species of domesticated squashes. One of them, alone (C. pepo), has more than 150 varieties.

My favorite, though, has to do with heirlooms. They jumped on that bandwagon a few years ago. But there are a couple of problems. The first being that, if you listen to FN celebrities, you'd get the impression that "heirloom" only applies to tomatoes. And, even worse, that "heirloom" is the name of a specific variety; as in "these good heirloom tomatoes" as an ingredient.

I've given up on FN. It's become nothing but one reality show after another.

    Perhaps we should have a five ingredient challenge....wait, scratch that 

Reading this thread made me think of bread baking. Basic bread. Four ingredients: water, flour, yeast, salt. Endless variations. Is three or four days start to finish complexity enough? I like to make a Pugliese loaf (Bread Makers Bible) but I can seldom schedule and arrange the time to do it.

HistoricFoodie wrote: You also raise an interesting secondary issue: Does time contribute to complexity? Does an otherwise simple process (i.e., bread making) become complex just because of the time involved making a preferment, mixing the dough, kneading, retarding, shaping, etc? A good question.