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.

Place the onions on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, season with salt, and roast it in the oven. Set a timer every 10-15 minutes to stir the onions so they don't burn and get evenly browned. This may take 45 minutes to an hour.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So using baking soda will speed up the process. But you have to be careful. If you add too much, it will impact the flavor. Different recipes recommend anywhere from ⅛ to ¼ teaspoon per pound of onions (aka about 3 large onions).

What color onion is the sweetest? ›

Sweetness is the red onion's greatest strength. The sharpness of its flavor and the intensity of its smell are slightly more potent than that of the white onion, but the sugar content is much higher.

Sweet Onions – Walla Walla and Vidalia are the most common kinds of sweet onions. These onions lack the sharp, astringent taste of other onions and really do taste sweet.

Submerge Them in Cold Water

Soak them for at least 15 minutes (longer is even more beneficial), properly drain, and eat away! Submerging them in cold water takes away that intense, sharp bite from the raw onion. The cold water helps the enzyme that causes onions to have their pungent flavor to leach out.

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.

Slice the onions to about ½ inch thick, try to make them the same size so they cook evenly. Melt 4 TBS butter in a pot over medium heat and add the sliced onions. Cover partially and let them simmer, soften, and reduce for about 25 minutes. Stir every few minutes and reduce heat if they start cooking too quickly.