If you want to learn about the rewards of patience, try caramelizing onions. When you cook them quickly, the outsides take on a beautiful golden brown hue. They taste alright, in that “you can’t screw up an onion” kind of way. But cook them slowly, and you’ll get a deep brown, jammy mess that tastes of pure heaven. After reading about them here a couple days ago, I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied until I made a batch myself.
A little science explains the magic behind these beauties. Onions contain lots of sugars, and also a decent dose of glutamic acid that’s responsible for umami (savoriness). As onions cook, their sugars caramelize, but slower cooking lets you evaporate a lot of water before this happens, which concentrates the flavor immensely. The onions only begin to brown in the final stages of cooking. When they finally do, the complex sweetness of the caramelized sugar combined with the savoriness of glutamic acid is eye-rollingly delicious.
Just how long do these take to cook? It will depend heavily on your stovetop, but it took me 8 hours on the lowest heat on the smallest burner. So plan on this being an all day project (albeit one that doesn’t take much concentration), and be happy if it goes faster. Over that time, 5 pounds of onions reduce to about 1/16th of their original volume–from 2 gallons of tear-inducing harshness to 2 cups of exquisite joy.
Caramelized Onions
Makes about 2 cups
Ingredients
2 tablespoons oil
5 pounds yellow onions, peeled and cut into thin strips
Large pinch salt
Special Equipment
Large pot (8 quart capacity or greater)
Instructions
- Wipe away the tears caused by chopping 5 pounds of onions.
- Put oil, onions, and salt in a pot over the lowest possible heat. Cover and cook, stirring every 20 minutes for the first hour. The onions will soften significantly.
- Uncover the pot and continue to cook, stirring every 20 minutes or so until the onions just begin to brown, probably somewhere between 2 and 6 hours.
- At this point, continue to cook uncovered, stirring every 10 minutes until they reach a deep brown. If you notice anything really dark on the bottom of the pan, be sure to scrape it up with your spoon before it burns. Once the onions taste deliciously sweet and savory, they’re done! They’ll look ugly, but once you give them a taste I promise you won’t care.
- Spread over steak, use as a pizza topping, serve on crostini with goat cheese, mix into a dip, or just eat them straight while nobody’s looking.