Caramelised Onions for Dummies

Me 🫱🏾‍🫲🏽 Any kind of onion

Onions and I have had a love hate relationship. For a long time, I never knew the limitless potential they hold. You can eat them raw, as a garnish, pickle them, caramelise them, use them in sauces and so much more.

Caramelising onions is a slow cooking method that draws out all the sweetness naturally found in onions. Some chefs like adding brown sugar to their onions to get them going, but i've found that step to be slightly redundant. With a bit of love and a lot of patience, you can also prep this versatile spread.

Ingredients

• 1/2 kg onions, preferably white but red works too

• 2 Tbsp butter, unsalted

• 2 tsp oil

• Pinch of salt

• 1 cup or more of water

Method

Cut your onions in even sized pieces, it doesn't matter how thick they are, but try to get the surface area even for the best shot at even caramelisation

Once cut, add to a cold pan and add a small splash of oil and start cooking the onions.

After the onions start to sizzle in the pan, use a spatula to break them up slightly. Find a cooking utensil of choice for this. It will smell like onion after so be mindful you're not using a utensil you use for other things.

Once the rings start warming up, they will start to unfurl a bit like this. Keep it moving every 2 minutes to make sure nothing is sticking or cooking too fast.

The next step is to watch out for translucent onion skin. When the onions are broken up and the purple parts start to get lighter and transparent, you can start the deglazing process. If there is brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan, do not worry we'll deal with that next.

At this point, the onions are shiny, translucent and starting to look jammy. Once you see this dark fond at the bottom of the pan, you can deglaze. We deglaze the bottom of the pan because we don't want to lose that onion caramelisation in the pan. So start with about 2 tbsp of water. You don't need much. As soon as the water hits the pan, you'll be able to easily release the brown fond. Use your spatula or wooden spoon to gently scrape off the bottom browned bits and mix them into your onions.

Sooner or later, the onions will start to take on a brown hue. It may not be very obvious at first but after 2-3 rounds of deglazing you should be able to see the difference in color.

Try to keep the onions as dry as possible. Meaning, only add water when things start getting too dark at the bottom. Onions can't caramelise when water lodged, so get the moisture out to continue getting color.

At this point, you have lightly caramelised onions. You can totally stop here, but i like to take mine further to a deeper, richer brown color.

If you want to pull it off, do so now, add your salt and butter. Mix for a few more minutes to finish.

If you want to get the most flavour out of these onions, keep deglazing and moving.

The fond will start to get darker as the onions get sweeter. Do not worry! Its normal just deglaze as you have been above, 2-3tbsp water.

After about 50-55 minutes total, I have this dark rich color in the onions.

This is usually the consistency I like them at, mostly broken down, deeply caramelised and looks almost like jam. You can go longer, upto 2 hours total cook time.

Pull the pan off the heat and use the residual heat to melt in your butter. Add a pinch or two of salt, not too much but just enough to season.

And that’s about it!

It is not a hard recipe but it is a long process. This makes a decent amount for 2-3 weeks of sandwiches. Maybe only a few days if you really like onions like me.

Let the onions cool to room temp, then store them in your fridge until you want to use them. Due to the butter, it will be more like a paste which in my opinion is great for sandwich spreads and mixing in with stuff like cream cheese.

So to recap, there are only a few key things to remember:

• Start in a cold pan so everything cooks at the same pace

• Keep the onions moving but also allow them to stick slightly to the fond at the bottom. This produces color + flavour

• Deglaze when you think things are moving too quickly. More water is better than burnt bits.

• Do NOT burn them, even one burnt onion can change the flavour of the entire spread

• Do not fear the fond, make it fear you