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.

We love caramelized onions for their deep, savory-sweet flavor. Try them atop sandwiches, tossed into salads, baked in tarts, and more in these recipes.

You'll see some people add sugar to the recipe, which is done to speed it up. Doing this is caramelising the sugar, not the onion. The onions get plenty sweet enough on their own if you take your time with it. From a health perspective it's much better not to add extra sugar.

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.

Okay, it's counter intuitive, but you need to add water. Cook on high with the pan covered. The additional water generates steam, that in turn transfers much more heat to the onions than otherwise.

The key to quicker caramelized onions is the ingredient we least expected: water.

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.

Tip: the vinegar serves to deglaze the pan, adds acidity, and brings this recipe together by boosting the tangy and savory flavors of the caramelized onions. If the onions stick to the pan, that's fine.

Still, the time is totally worth it. Packed with irresistible umami flavor, caramelized onions add complexity to all sorts of savory dishes. If you like cooking, knowing how to caramelize onions is a must.

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.

Do you cook caramelized onions covered or uncovered? ›

The first phase of the process is softening the onions so that they collapse into a tender mass while releasing a good deal of their liquid. If you cover the pan, you'll trap steam, which will speed up their softening, heat them more quickly, and help release their liquid more quickly.

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 leave them alone enough to brown (if you stir them too often, they won't brown), but not so long so that they burn.

While you can start the cooking process at medium heat, low and slow is the name of the game when it comes to caramelizing onions. Once your onions begin to soften and take on a golden hue, you'll want to reduce the heat from medium to medium-low or even low for the remainder of the cooking process.

You're not sautéing your onions—you're trying to slowly coax flavor out of them. It takes time, probably a solid 45 minutes, for the onions' sugars to caramelize. If your heat is too high, the onions will burn. Heat your pan over medium-low, then add your onions.

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.

No-sweat sweated onions

Instead of spending 15 minutes trying to soften onions in a pan (only to scorch them!), try this microwave method. Pop chopped or sliced onions in a bowl, add a spoonful of water, cover with a plate and microwave on high for 3-4min. Carefully remove (the bowl will be very hot) and uncover.