Caramelizing Onions

Now this isn’t a recipe per se, but this will be created as a reference point for my other recipes, as I tend to do this a lot in my own cooking. It’s one of my favorite parts of a recipe and once it’s done, I can honestly just eat this by itself because it’s just so sweet and buttery and absolutely delicious.
I had learned this art from my dad, who always made his onions low and slow whenever he cooked, usually with various meats and even as a side dish. When most people caramelize onions, they add sugar to the recipe, but honestly if you’re patient enough, you can get the same exact result without the added sugar. A lot of recipes have you stop when the onions become translucent, but that’s just the START of when they become sweet, and I don’t mean just those “sweet” onions you can get at the store, I’m including red onions in this mix, too.

What You’ll Need:

I’m not going to list a particular type of onion on this recipe, so I’ll leave it up to you for whichever recipe you’re using this for. But start by cutting off the top of the onion, leaving the base intact so that the onion stays together. This will allow you to peel the first layer off of the onion with the rest of it still intact. Aim for the first layer of what looks super thin by the top, while it’ll look like a regular onion layer towards the bottom, I can assure you you can still peel that and not worry about a stringy part of it later.

Next, put the flat side of the onion down onto the counter (or cutting board) and slice it in half. Take half of the onion, lay it flat side down, and if you’re only going to use slivers of onion and not dicing it, you can slice it down to the root here. If you’re dicing your onion, there’s an extra step but I promise it’ll make your life a lot easier. Take the edge of your knife and point it towards the root, while the rest is perpendicular to the flat edge from cutting off the top, and slice downward, making 4-5 slices like this across the onion through the layers. Then you can slice across the onion so that each piece comes out already diced, like below.

Get a pan ready on the stove, it doesn’t need to be super hot before you add oil into it, for this we’re going to start off on a medium temperature and then cook on medium-low for the remainder of this process. Use a low-heat oil (like olive oil) to give a light coating to the pan and add in your onions. Next you need to salt those onions… No, salt them some more. Salt it like the ocean. You know how putting salt on meats and fish can help draw out moisture so it can start the curing process? Same deal, we’re going to draw out moisture and the sweetness. If you’ve ever put salt on fruit (or salty additives like tajin) then you know what I mean by bringing out the natural sweetness.

The goal is to occasionally stir this pan as the onions begin to brown and cook down. Once they show a little bit of browning, turn the heat down and just let the heat do its job. I typically put a cover on the pan because for starters, your house is going to smell like delicious onions for a while and it’ll make everyone hungry, and second, that evaporating moisture can go back into the pan. If you ever pop by and see that your pan looks a little dry, add in a small sliver of butter and stir it in. I use probably a couple tablespoons every time I make this because it takes sometimes 45min to an hour to make properly. You’ll know the onions are done when they’re dark in color and completely soft.