Melted Onions Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

Can you melt an onion? ›

Melt the butter in the stockpot over medium-low heat. Add the sliced onions. Keep your eye on the onions and stir often at the beginning to allow all the slices to have contact with the bottom of the pot so they start to release their liquid. In about 45 minutes they should have released a good amount of liquid.

Cut the onions into long, 1/4-inch-thick strips for best results. These are also known as julienne slices. This is the best size to cut the onions for a final product that's tender and jammy like caramelized onions should be, but not complete mush, says Christine Hazel, recent winner of Food Network's Chopped.

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.

Place sliced onions in a 9x13-inch casserole dish. Add olive oil, salt and pepper, and toss to combine. Cover the pan with foil and bake for 1 hour. Remove the pan from the oven, lift the foil, and stir the onions.

Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions, cook and stir until lightly browned. Sprinkle in the sugar, and continue cooking until onions are deep golden brown, about 10 minutes. Stir in the chicken broth and vinegar and season with paprika.

When you cook onions they go through some obvious physical changes. First, they get hot and release moisture, at which point they become slightly translucent. Keep cooking them and they begin to brown and sweeten because their sugars caramelize.

You can use either oil or butter to caramelize onions — but ideally, you use a combination of both! I like to use olive oil, and this cooking fat tolerates heat particularly well. Meanwhile, butter adds a distinctly rich flavor to the caramelized onions.

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.

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.

Strictly speaking, caramelization is what happens to sugars when exposed to relatively high heat. When you're browning onions, no matter how you do it, you rarely reach the temperatures necessary for caramelization.

Do you caramelize onions on low or high heat? ›

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.

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.

Around 30 Minutes: Onions should be light blonde in color and starting to become jammy. More fond is starting to build up, but it should still be fairly easy to scrape it up with the evaporating liquid from the onions. Around 40 Minutes: Onions are golden and starting to smell very caramelized.

You may be cooking them on too high a heat, leading them to caramelize before all the liquid they release has evaporated. Try lowering the heat and giving them more time. Some onions are wetter than others, so you need to keep an eye on them and see how much liquid they release.

Gills Onions Make the Best Caramelized Onions

You start by sweating onions over medium-low heat, adding small amounts of water anytime the onions start to look dry or begin to brown very quickly. The water moistens the onions and helps dissolve sugars to prevent burning.

To get the melt-in-your-mouth texture, the onions need to be covered tightly and need a heaping helping of the secret ingredient: time. The combination of the long cook time and securely-wrapped onions will make them fall-apart tender and irresistible.

They can be eaten cooked or raw and are a staple food worldwide. In addition to their flavoring abilities, onions are a rich source of vitamins, minerals, and fiber and offer several health benefits. But these properties can sometimes change depending on whether you cook your onions or eat them raw.

Onions are almost always cooked in some kind of fat, although they can be softened in a small amount of liquid.

Your onions have gone bad if they have dark brown spots, are squishy to the touch, or are secreting moisture. Your onion may also be bad if it's sprouting. However, some people simply cut the sprouts off and eat the rest of the onion.