“Cook covered for eight minutes or until water evaporates.”
What does this mean? If eight minutes have gone by and the water hasn’t evaporated, does the instruction permit me to continue cooking til the water does evaporate? Or must I stop as soon as one or the other condition has obtained?
If the water evaporates before eight minutes, then it’s done. This is to keep you from cooking it without water, which may lead to the dish burning.
If the water does not evaporate, it’s done when it’s cooked for eight minutes.
IANAC, but I’ve always read that as:
I think it means, “whichever comes first.”
Probably the answer. Recipe writing doesn’t follow strict rules, so you never can tell, but your explanation seems to fit the wording.
Um, no. It means…“under the conditions we cooked this, it took eight minutes to get to the point that the water evaporated. We’re telling you “eight minutes” so that you have estimate of how long it should take until the water evaporates, but your mileage may vary. Might be less time, might be more, but you’ll know it’s ready for the next step when the water has evaporated.”
That’s how I always read it.
Missed the edit window…Otherwise, if you think about it, you may have food that is soupy and floating in liquid, or fairly liquid-free. Both can’t be the correct state of existence for whatever happens next. Stovetop temperatures vary greatly, so if you went by a strict eight minutes the food may be overcooked or undercooked depending on how high you had the heat set and how efficient your burners.
Annoying pedant/
Water won’t boil off in eight minutes in a *covered *pan. 
It’s not annoying. I missed that part. The instructions make no sense.
That’s the trouble with this thread (aside from the covered pan/evaporation problem), we don’t know what the recipe is for. That would tend to bear on how the instructions are interpreted.
Cookbook/culinary textbook copyeditor here. kittenblue has it right. The time given is a rough guideline. Consider “Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.” The stated time tells you when to start watching for the desired result.
I think the OP was just throwing it out as a (not particularly well thought out) example.
If you prefer:
“Simmer (uncovered) over med-high heat for 8 minutes or until reduced to half a cup.”
Well, which one? 8 minutes or until reduced to half a cup?
I agree with those who say the instruction is for the part after the “or”, and the part before the “or” is an estimation of how long it will take for this to happen. If 8 minutes go by and the part after the “or” hasn’t happened (the water hasn’t evaporated, the sauce hasn’t reduced to half a cup, etc.) then you need to keep going, but keep an eye on it, because it should be soon.
I also was wondering how water could boil off in eight minutes in a covered skillet, but I chalked this up to my own ignorance. Glad to hear from others that my instincts were right…
It’s gyoza a.k.a potstickers. Frozen from a bag.
No, what I typed is word for word what’s on the bag. But it seems typical of something I see a lot in cooking directions in prepackaged foods.
Curses! Trust you to have the one item for which those directions actually ARE accurate! :smack:
OK, here’s the deal: potstickers are steamed and fried, almost simultaneously. A very small amount (usually only a Tablespoon or two, occasionally as much as 1/4 cup if you’re using a large skillet) of water goes in, the lid goes on, and the water mostly disappears. Now, to return to the pedantry, only some of it evaporates; some of it is absorbed into the potstickers’ innards. But the upshot is that, about 8 minutes or so after you’ve put the water in and covered it, you’ll open it and there will be very little or no water in there.
It’s a lousy way to determine the doneness of potstickers, though. Instead, pick up a corner and look at the side on the pan. Is it pale? It’s not done. Is it black? It’s burnt. Is it golden brown and delicious? You’re done.
Exactly. The condition (in this case, water boiled off or absorbed by a starch or whatever) is usually what you’re looking for in a recipe, not the exact time. On your stove it may take 6 minutes. It may take 10 minutes. It may be spot-on at 8. Look for the physical cues that the dish is done. For the most part, timing in cooking is not an exact science. There is a lot of variation from stove to stove and from oven to oven, that cooking times are usually approximate, and you need to use a bit of judgement. That’s what the instruction following the timing is giving you–the cues to look out for to indicate that something is done. For example, many stew recipes will have an instruction: cook for 2 hours (or similar) or until fork-tender. With my oven and the cuts of meat I use, often that fork-tenderness doesn’t come until the 3 hour mark. Maybe my oven reads a bit low. Maybe the cuts of meat I use are cut a little thicker than the recipe. I don’t know or care, because I will just wait until the meat tells me that it’s done. It would be a mistake for me to stop cooking at the 2 hour mark, if my stew meat is still a bit chewy and gnarly, because it simply isn’t done.
ETA: I was typing this before seeing the last few responses, but WhyNot’s cues are also good. Or, simply do what I do. Taste a piece. Does it taste done? Then stop cooking it. Does it not taste done? Then keep cooking it.
I guess that’s the theory. But nothing resembling that actually happened. And also, they had me put an entire cup of water in the thing.
That’s pretty much how we always did it before, but this time we were cooking them from frozen (which is how the bag says to do it anyway) so to make sure I “knew what I was doing” I decided to follow the actual instructions…
We always make all three sides brown btw. Hopefully this isn’t sacrilege or something. We just like it this way better…
This. The goal is water evaporation, which usually takes about 8 minutes.