Melted Onions Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

Melted Onions Recipe on Food52? ›

Heat your oven to 425°F with a rack in the top position. Place the onion halves cut-side up in the cups of a 12-cup muffin tin. Sprinkle the onions with the salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes, until the onions have softened slightly and sunk into the cups.

Then you just have to wait long enough for the vinegar to do its job, rinsing away the harsh sulfurous compounds, softening the onion, and giving it a pleasantly tart pop of flavor. If you use red wine vinegar, my personal favorite, the onions also turn an amazing hot-pink color.

You can caramelize any kind of onion, but yellow or Spanish onions tend to offer the most balanced-sweet-savory flavor profile and are the most versatile for different dishes. Sweet onions, such as Vidalia or Walla Walla work too, but keep in mind that their flavor will become even sweeter once caramelized.

Our Test Kitchen likes to use butter when caramelizing onions, as it offers the richest flavor. If you avoid dairy or don't have butter, you can caramelize onions in other fat such as margarine or olive oil. Add the onion slices. It's okay if they overlap a bit here because they'll shrink as they cook down.

Caramelize the onions: Heat about 1 tablespoon of canola oil in a large skillet or dutch oven over medium-low heat. Once hot, add the onions and stir to coat. Let cook, stirring every 5-10 minutes, until deeply caramelized, about 1 ½ - 2 hours.

Baking soda makes the onions more alkaline, which speeds up the browning reactions necessary for properly caramelized onions. But it also weakens the pectin that holds the onion's cells together, turning what should be soft but distinct pieces of browned onion into a nauseating stew of pea-green mush.

If the onions stick to the bottom of the pan, deglaze with a tablespoon of red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, or wine. I usually stick with balsamic vinegar because the flavor complements the onions perfectly. Not only will deglazing pull up tasty sticky bits, it will add even more flavor to your caramelized onions.

Onions - soaking in cold water to soften the flavor

When preparing raw onions, soak in cold water before hand to remove some of the pungency and soften the flavor. However since soaking too long will dilute the flavor, soaking in cold water for 5 to 10 minutes is recommended. Squeeze out excess water before using.

Should you cover onions when caramelizing? ›

Cover the pot with a lid, and then turn the burner on to medium-low heat. Cook covered until the onions have mostly broken down and are a pale brown sludge (about 45-60 minutes). Be sure to stir the pot periodically, checking to make sure the onions aren't burning.

For most of the cooking process, the heat should be low or medium-low to prevent the onions from burning before they have a chance to soften and caramelize.

(It's the same principle as when you're roasting vegetables: Pile them on a baking sheet and they'll steam in their own moisture; spread them out and they'll char and brown.) Second, cover the pan for the first 15 minutes of cooking, during which the onions will soften in their own moisture.

Sautéing vs caramelizing

Sautéing is about softening and lightly flavoring the onions, while caramelizing is about developing a rich, sweet complexity. Unfortunately, you can't swap one out for the other without changing the flavor profile of your dish.

After 10 minutes, sprinkle some salt over the onions, and if you want, you can add some sugar to help with the caramelization process. (I add only about a teaspoon of sugar for 5 onions, you can add more.) One trick to keeping the onions from drying out as they cook is to add a little water to the pan.

The trick is to leave them alone enough to brown (if you stir them too often, they won't brown), but not so long so that they burn. After the first 20 to 30 minutes you may want to lower the stove temperature a little, and add a little more oil, if you find the onions are verging on burning.

Once the water is boiling or close to it, put a lid on the pan so the onions can steam. This essentially massively speeds up the process of wilting the onions, which can be the first 15-20 minutes of the sautéing process.

It's possible that you aren't adding enough fat to the pan at first, and that your onions are sticking. That could be a problem, too. If you're way overly cautious and the flame is very, very low, it could also take a lot longer than 90 minutes, though the flavor will probably also be terrific.

If you need to caramelize onions quickly, adding sugar or a pinch of baking soda (to raise the pH level and help them brown quicker) can help to speed up the caramelization process but truly they aren't a dish that cooks up quickly. If using baking soda I'd suggest about 1/4 tsp per pound of raw onions.