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“Who’s caramelizing onions? Probably someone who knows the secret to happiness—turning tears into sweetness, one slow stir at a time! Or maybe they’re just trying to make their kitchen smell like a five-star restaurant while secretly burning their grilled cheese.” 😄 — Bostock Electronics
no I don’t think you have to fuck them
Who up caramelizing they onions
I had someone arrive at a BBQ, saw me frying some onions, and ask “Are you going to caramelise those onions?”
Yes mate. The onions I’m frying for a few minutes while the burgers cook, gonna be nice and caramelised in seconds, just you watch.
Every time I do a Bunnings BBQ for the community centre, it’s women run, we get the onions on ASAP because they need time to cook, and we’ll have people buying a plain onion sandwich in addition to a snag, because caramelised onions are so good!
Every time I volunteer to help my partners football club run a sausage sizzle, I’m saying “put the onions on, they take longer” and I’m told by the guys “I’m a man, I know how to BBQ, go away little girl, go hold the sign and be pretty”
Then everyone buying a snag is complaining about crunchy raw onions, and the guys are saying “why did we buy so many onions?” (because you were supposed to cook them down so they shrink!)
These same men will unironically say “women belong in the kitchen” then won’t take cooking advice from a woman.
(also, the footy guys always giving me flak for deglazing the BBQ plate with water to help the onions cook down faster. They’ll just keep adding oil, once saw a Rotary Club use 1L of canola oil to half cook 5kg of onions, when we’ve never needed more than 200ml to fully cook onions, because onions need water to cook down!)
Ngl, you just taught me some thing, I thought I was cooking them down quick, frying them in my bacon fat, before adding eggs to them, I’ll have to try adding some water, maybe that will make them come out better.
30 minutes
https://youtu.be/Ovqhzil3wJw?feature=shared
We start our caramelized onions in a covered nonstick skillet over high heat with ¾ of cup water. The water and steam help the onions quickly soften. Then we remove the lid, lower the heat to medium-high, and press the softened onions into the bottom and sides of the skillet to allow for maximum contact with the hot pan. Instead of finishing with sugar or honey as many recipes call for, we add baking soda, which speeds up the reaction that converts flavorless inulin (a polysaccharide present in onions) to fructose.
My face smells like onions for 3 days straight after cooking something with onions for more than 20 minutes. It should be much more terrible to have just onions in the pan
That’s a non-starter then. Nothing is worth a 3 day onion facial.
What I wouldn’t give for one of those!
I’m sorry you feel that way.
5-8 hours. Slow cooker is the only way to go, imo.
Only way I’ve done em. I am basically incapable of standing in front of the same pot for 45 mins. Don’t get me wrong, I love cooking, but some of the really tedious styles, especially if also monotonous, I can’t do. I’d get distracted by something eventually.
Standing? Naw, low & slow simmers fine with just occasional wang’jangling. Although it helps being close enough to catch a wiff for the reminder.
Remember, it takes at least 45 minutes to caramelize an onion. If you’re doing it for less than 45 minutes, then you’re just cooking it.
I know it’s not exactly the same as a low temp for a while. But you can get pretty good results with a high temp, just need to deglaze more frequently, usually with water until they’re almost done. Then wine and/or balsamic is good.
I know you’re joking, but the only way I can see it taking that long is if you put whole onions into an oven set to 180° to 200° F.
In a frying pan, one can easily caramelize an entire large frying pan of onions in about 30 minutes, or even faster if you decide to use physics to your advantage, and add a small amount of water to your pan and caramelize your pan of onions within 14 minutes. This is an advanced technique that requires some experience to try to use. Much like making a Dark Roux in 15 minutes.
put whole onions into an oven set to 180° to 200° F.
Wait, would that work?
Might need it to be a bit higher than that, but I know one can caramelize onions slowly in an oven. Just not sure what temp is needed
45 minus to fully caramelize.
If you don’t want them that dark you don’t have to cook them that long.
Sure, you can use non-caramelized onions. You just won’t get that sweetness.
Just add more sugar.
What kind of hooligan adds sugar
… That explains a lot
You can caramelize onions in five minutes, but the onions won’t be very satisfied afterwards
Unless your cooking Italian. I had an Italian trek me once, it’s either garlic or onions but not both together
It’s weird, I watch a lot of Youtube videos about street food vendors in India and sometimes they brag about not using garlic or onions in their offerings. I don’t get how that could possibly be a selling point.
Indian food without garlic and onions is trying to be religiously inclusive. Jainism is a popular religion in India, which teaches nonviolence. Included in that belief is the idea that nothing should be harmed, even plants. As such, they seek to avoid eating any vegetables that are harvested by killing the plant. Onions and garlic both require that their plants be killed, so Jains try to avoid those. Instead, their food often contains hing, a smelly spice that hasn’t really caught on in the west. I haven’t tried it, but hose that have say that once cooked, hing somewhat resembles the taste of onions and garlic.
It took me like at least an hour the other night for french onion soup.
on a stick. caramel onion on a stick.
Y’all, pinch of baking soda and you’ll have caramelized onions in no time flat. It’s amazing.
That breaks down the onions too much and then reacts with the fats in the pan to make soap.
3/10 do not recommend.
I tried “velveting” some beef the other day (basically marinating the meat in baking soda) and the result was absolutely disgusting, both in terms of texture and flavor. I wonder if maybe I didn’t wash off the baking soda sufficiently and got soap, although that wouldn’t explain the texture issue. The texture was similar to Chinese takeout beef but somehow not as palatable.
I’ve never had it break them down too much, nor create anything remotely soapy in flavor. Perhaps it chemically does create soap, I don’t know. But the end result is delicious and I’m a fifth the time.
Wait now, what? I wish to know more.
Yep, it’s jump starting a process key to flavors we all like called the Maillard Reaction
Maillard browning is not caramelization. Maillard is an insanely complex mess of different chemical reactions involving proteins, while caramelization is just sugar and heat.
Alkalinity speeds up the Maillard reaction significantly. Baking soda. Magic.
I agree, but the comment above recommends using it to caramelize onions. Maillard reactions can happen to onions for sure but the result of that is not caramelized onions.
Not to say baking soda couldn’t help, I don’t know the exact chemistry behind this stuff, but I do know that onion + maillard reaction does not yield caramelized onions
Huh, I guess I’d never really looked into the chemistry behind the distinction (which is strange because i am a chemist that loves food), but Maillard reactions involve the proteins, while caramelization involves the sugars. Though both are examples of nonenzymatic browning.
The good news is that the wiki page for caramelization says that either acidic or basic conditions speed up the caramelization processes, so i think we’re good to go in either front!
On that note, try adding a little splash of balsamic vinegar to caramelized onions 👌👌
Oh shit. That is so cool! I knew lye was used in making pretzels, but i didn’t know it was to get the Maillard browning to happen faster. The wiki page says that one way to reduce the formation of acrylamide, a carcinogen, is by adding carbon dioxide, which is actually released when baking soda is dissolved in water… IDK for sure if it’s enough to really help, but I’m gonna just roll with it and say it is because delicious food is delicious.
Baking powder releases carbon dioxide. Baking soda just creates aqueous bicarb ions and a more basic solution (which is the key to a faster reaction).
Heating a solution of aqueous bicarbonate will release carbon dioxide, too. But since we have delicious onions and stuff in there too, let’s walk through my thought process: Baking powder is baking soda + weak acid + cornstarch (to prevent premature reaction). Since the speed-up for the Maillard reaction works by deprotonating amino groups to make them more nucleophilic, the acid-base reaction that releases CO2 when using baking powder will still occur with just baking soda + food (ie: the protiens in the food are acting as the acid). You’re probably right that using baking powder would produce more CO2, or at least produce it faster, but reducing carcinogenic side products for Maillard reactions via CO2 is a low-priority concern for me anyway. Just a fun curiousity that occured to me when reading the wiki page!
Sorry if my carbon dioxide subscripts don’t work. I don’t think my client supports all the fancy markdown, but i tried my best.
The only thing I get from that story is that adults and peer pressure sucks. Eat that candied onion and enjoy it as much as you want, fuck those those stupid “grown-ups”.
I have a 3 year old nephew and if you gave him a caramel onion like that I think he’d either eat it happily or ask for a plain onion instead. That kid loves himself some onions.
Little Anon Starting Early
Gonna hand out caramel onions for Halloween now.
Caramel roulette. 5 apples and an onion on the same plate.
They better be Spanish/yellow onions. Don’t go easy on them with any Vidalia/sweet onion!
:P
Nah, just like with caramel apples the best caramel onions are gonna be GREEN!
Kind of easy to tell a green onion from an apple though.
I’d go with white
🤣
🧅
Now I want to try some apples and onions with a caramel glaze.
Now I want to try thin sliced apples in with my onions when I caramelize them for added sweetness.
Dice the apples. That’s a common way to do it for curry meatballs (curry sauce with meatballs served with rice and various toppings).
The apples make the sauce more filling and offsets some of the potential sourness of the onions/curry. It is all about the balance. I like to taste the sauce to perfection using salt, pepper, curry, sugar or syrup before adding the meatballs, but having apples in the sauce definitely makes it easier to begin with.
I wouldn’t cook them as long though 👍.
I don’t know about caramel glaze, but you might want to try apple and or onion chutney.
Might work with pork chops.
It would absolutely work with pork chops. It’s even better with a walnut crust.
Who’s caramelizing pork chops?
Pork chop sandwiches!
Get the fuck out of here!
