Caramelized onions are julienned onions cooked in oil over low heat for about forty minutes. If you don’t have forty minutes to spare, don’t make caramelized onions. Additionally, if you want cooked onions on a pizza and you don’t have caramelized onions, don’t make pizza with cooked onions on it.
To caramelize something means to heat the sugars in a food until they reach an intermediate stage between cooked and burnt. The end result is a sweet, super rich flavor. Here are step-by-step instructions on how to caramelize onions:
(1) Julienne some onions. They can be red, yellow, white, purpose, chartreuse. It doesn’t matter. Just Julienne them correctly.
(2) Put them in a saucepan with some good olive oil. Don’t season them yet. Put them under low heat.
(3) Wait about five to ten minutes, then stir.
(4) Wait another five to ten minutes. Keep stirring. Stir’ it up, li’l darlin’.
(5) Once a lot of the liquid begins SEEPING from the onions, begin to watch them more carefully. Ideally you would just sit over them and stir constantly, but even I don’t have time for that. I’ll skip some photos, but you can cook them shorter or longer depending on your taste. The longer you cook them, the richer and more robust they will be. Lastly, you want to add a little liquid to deglaze the saucepan. It could even be water, but I use about a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Now you can season them with salt and pepper.
(6) Mop the sides of the saucepan with the onions and you’re done.
Put these on pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches, quesadillas, etc. Or like my friend Judy you can just eat them with raw mushrooms.
Marcos, Innkeeper at American Guest House, a Washington, DC Bed and Breakfast
