How to: caramelize onions
Caramelizing onions isn’t scary. You can do it. It will make your onion soup better, and your hamburger, and while we’re at it – a sandwich with hummus, arugula, and firm goat cheese too. And what about a grilled cheese?!
Honestly, there are few things that do an onion as much good as forty minutes over low heat in a pan full of butter. The natural sugars are released, and the result is a golden-brown, warm, savory sweetness that’s still a vegetable! As long as you stick to this:
Be patient
Seriously. That also means working over veeeery low heat. You may think that turning up the heat will simply make things go twice as fast, but what you want is for those sugars to be slowly coaxed out and for the onions to cook in them. Over higher heat, the moisture evaporates too quickly, and then you’re left with your hard brown onion.
No joke
We seriously mean those forty minutes. But then you’ll have something! An hour would be even better and, here’s the thing, you also need to stay nearby. If you take good care of your onion babies by stirring occasionally so they don’t burn, and by loosening any browned bits with a spatula and a small splash of water, you’ll soon have a pan full of perfection.
Get started
Cut 2 large onions (red ones work too) into very thin rings (you can halve them first). Take a frying pan about 24 cm in diameter and melt 3 tablespoons of butter in it over medium-high heat. Turn the heat down low, add the onions, and start caramelizing!
Also read:
- Why you should roast your vegetables slowly
- Recipe: baked sweet potato with tofu ‘goat cheese’
- The perfect hamburger, step by step
