Hi, and welcome to Susanality #52! It’s hard to believe I’ve been doing this for an entire year. Thanks for your patience while I figure out this video thing! I hope you’re enjoying it. There are certain techniques that are easier to show than to explain, and making caramelized onions is one of them!
When I did an Instagram story a few months ago for NYT Cooking on My One-Pot French Onion Soup with Porcini (paywalled), I had lots of requests to re-share the video. I couldn’t because it was a 24-hour Instagram story and it wasn't edited together as a video, but it made me realize that it might be useful to show you the tricky part (it’s actually not very tricky).
I love to make caramelized onions to have on hand and throw into almost anything. They keep for days in the fridge and can be frozen for even longer. Use small containers when you freeze them so you can pull out just what you need. These are “baby food” containers, but it’s the most-used size in my kitchen and they are perfect for storing small amounts of caramelized onions. Here’s another good container option.
Prepping a batch of caramelized onions also saves time since you can skip over the “chop an onion, sauté an onion” part of almost any recipe.
A few things I like to do with caramelized onions:
Throw them in omelets and frittatas
Use them for homemade onion dip (mix caramelized onions up with sour cream and Worcestershire to taste and top with chives—so simple!)
Use as a pizza topping (homemade or otherwise)
Make French onion burgers by topping the burgers (turkey, veggie, or beef) with some of the onions and gruyere cheese
Add to toasts, tartines, or bruschetta (stay tuned for a how-to on Friday)
Add to paninis (any hot grilled sandwich will be so much better with these onions tucked inside!)
Add to pasta dishes
Perfectly Caramelized Onions
Here is my go-to method for caramelizing onions. On Friday I’ll have two recipes for you to try using these onions, so get cooking!
Makes about 2 ½ cups
