How to Caramelize Onions
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Caramelizing onions, by slowly cooking them in a little olive oil until they are richly browned, is a wonderful way to pull flavor out of the simplest of ingredients. Onions are naturally sweet; and as caramel comes from the simple cooking of sugar, when you slowly cook onions over an extended period of time, the natural sugars in the onions caramelize, making the result intensely and wonderfully flavorful. You can use onions prepared this way on top of steak, or for onion soup, tarts, pizza, or onion dip. Or you can do what I did with this batch, eat it straight up. What are your favorite dishes to make that use caramelized onions? Please let us know in the comments.
By the way, I put together a time-lapse video of the caramelization process, which you can see at the end of this post. Enjoy!
How to Caramelize Onions
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Quantities depend on how much caramelized onions you wish to make. In this example, 5 large raw onions yielded about 2 cups caramelized onions.
Ingredients
- Several medium or large onions, yellow, white, or red
- Olive oil
- Butter (optional)
- Salt
- Sugar (optional)
Method
1 Slice off the root and top ends of the onions, peel the onions. Cut the onions in half. Lay them cut side down and slice the onions lengthwise to desired thickness. If you want, you can cut a little wedge in the tough rootball end of the onions and discard that part, but we haven't found this to be necessary, as this part of the onion softens and cooks with the rest over the long cooking time.
2 Use a wide, thick-bottomed sauté pan for maximum pan contact with the onions. Coat the bottom of the pan with olive oil, or a mixture of olive oil and butter (about 1 teaspoon per onion). Heat the pan on medium high heat until the oil is shimmering. Add the onion slices and stir to coat the onions with the oil. Spread the onions out evenly over the pan and let cook, stirring occasionally. 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.)
3 Let cook for 30 minutes to an hour more, stirring every few minutes. As soon as the onions start sticking to the pan, let them stick a little and brown, but then stir them before they burn. The trick is to let 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. A metal spatula will help you scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan as the caramelization proceeds. As the onions cook down, you may find you need to scrape the pan every minute, instead of every few minutes. Continue to cook and scrape, cook and scrape, until the onions are a rich, browned color. At the end of the cooking process you might want to add a little balsamic vinegar or wine to help deglaze the pan and bring some additional flavor to the onions.
Store refrigerated for several days in an air-tight container.
Here is a time-lapse video I made of the caramelization process, to show how the onions cook down and caramelize over the course of an hour:
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I can honestly eat them straight as well, but my favorite use is piled high on a medium-rare steak. Yum!