Melted Onions Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

How do you melt onions? ›

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.

The key is to cook at a low heat for at least 20 minutes until the onions are really soft and form almost a thick stew of its own juices. Then turn up the heat and stir constantly for 20 more minutes until the onions are brown. If you try to heat the onions too quickly in the beginning, they will just burn.

Onions lose their bite and melt in your mouth when they're sliced and roasted with butter and fresh herbs and then tenderized further by braising in broth. Serve alongside roasted chicken or cook them in vegetable broth for an easy, elegant vegetarian side dish.

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.

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.

Simply put, caramelized onions aren't quick. It takes at least 45 minutes (and often over an hour) over low heat for the natural sugars in the onions to caramelize. Still, the time is totally worth it. Packed with irresistible umami flavor, caramelized onions add complexity to all sorts of savory dishes.

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.

Sautéing vs caramelizing

Sautéing is about softening and lightly flavoring the onions, while caramelizing is about developing a rich, sweet complexity. Unfortunately, you can't swap one out for the other without changing the flavor profile of your dish.

Why are my caramelized onions soggy? ›

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.

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. 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.

But the best shortcut to cook a large batch of onions and turn them into caramelized onions is to pressure cook them. With no added water, it doesn't do the conventional steam cooking but instead does an accelerated caramelization (which works much faster in a high pressure environment).

Yellow onions are the best. At least that is what I think. 😄 They aren't as one-noted in sweetness as other onions because they have a touch of bitterness that creates a depth of flavor. But really you can caramelize any type of onion and have a fantastic result.

To soften the taste of raw onions, slice them thinly or cut them into larger chunks and soak them in very cold water for about 15 minutes. This will soften the taste, making them ideally suited for a salad.

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.

Yes, you can cook onions in the microwave without any oil or butter. Onions naturally contain a high water content, so they will steam and cook in their own moisture. This method is a healthier option and can still yield deliciously cooked onions.

Use your microwave. Toss the chopped raw onion in a little oil and season with a little salt, cover and microwave for 2-4 minutes until soft, stirring after 60-90 seconds. The length of time this will take depends on your microwave and the amount of onion you are cooking, so keep an eye on it.