If you have a slow cooker, some butter, and a bag of sweet onions, and some patience, you can make the easiest and best caramelized onions in your life. The slow cooker method ensures you don't have to watch your onions to make sure they're not burning. I've posted this a couple times but I'm gonna write the recipe down here.
This is so damn easy. It's also nearly impossible to fuck up. It also scales well.
A few notes on ingredients first:
You should use sweet onions or vidalia onions. These have a higher sugar content than yellow or white. You can also mix sweet/vidalia with red onions as well. Spanish onions can substitute sweet/vidalia.
This recipe presumes you're using sweet onions that are on the larger side, bigger than your fist. If your onions are smaller I'd say say three smalls equal two large.
I usually eyeball the ingredients, but you will be using roughly a teaspoon (5g) of butter per large onion.
What you need:
Slow cooker
6 large sweet onions
2 tablespoons (30g) of butter, plus more for adjustments
Salt as needed
Instructions:
Remove the onion skins and slice your onions as you want. I prefer to french my onions but you can cut them into half moons. Precision doesn't matter, but don't cut them too finely.
Turn on your slow cooker to high and set it for 8 hours. Cook time will vary.
Toss the butter and sliced onions into the slow cooker. Once the butter melts, mix it around to distribute the butter. If there's still onions that don't get buttered up after melting and mixing, add a bit more butter.
Salt as desired. I do two heavy pinches (approx 1 teaspoon) for 6 onions.
Put the lid on the slow cooker and let it cook undisturbed for 8 hours.
After the 8 hour cook:
Ok decision time. You can either go big here or not, up to you:
Check your onions. They should be reduced and a bit more golden brown now. If you wanna go big, reset your slow cooker to low and set the timer to cook overnight, like 12 hours. At the end of this sometimes it looks like your onions got a little burned on top, but they did not. It's fine.
If you want your onions today, or after they've cooked for another 12 hours, the next steps are the same:
Remove the lid and stir the onions. Set the slow cooker on high again for 1 hour and leave the lid off.
Let cook for at least another half hour, then stir and check for doneness. The onions will brown rapidly during this time but they won't burn as long as there's still liquid in there.
Keep checking every 5-10 minutes. Cook longer if necessary. Once you're satisfied with the consistency, you're done.
The caramelized onions can be kept in an airtight container for about a week in the fridge. Freeze the rest.
Note: if you get to the end and the onions are swimming in too much butter but they seem done, you can always skim some off. Then you have browned onion butter to put on anything you want to taste delicious.
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