R-Rated Onions

Real and true caramelized onions are onions don’t take 10 minutes to cook. To get them properly caramelized, you need to take them to the danger zone. Other caramelized onions are PG…these are rated R. It takes the better part of an hour to coax their sugars from blonde to nutty brown. That’s why you ought to make a big batch at once and save them to pull out when you want all that complex flavor without having spent all that time.  

Manipulated in the best kind of way by steam heat, then dry heat over a longer period of time than I’m typically keen to require in a multi-part recipe, caramelized onions are a leisurely labor of love that loves you back. Like a perfect stock or just the right amount of MSG, onions cooked low and slow until their sugars deepen and their flavor shape-shifts lend a hard-to-quantify but easy-to-appreciate dimension to food. In their most well-known role as the foundation for French onion soup, they define the rustic, unforgettable flavor of a broth that launched the soup sections of a thousand menus. And in less scene-stealing appearances, caramelized onions show us that a simple ingredient coddled a certain way can give a flimsy dish a sultry backbone, or make a one-note meal all grown-up.