Microblog Memes

I saw somewhere there exists a saying along the lines of 'start sauteing onion, add some garlic, then you figure out what you are going to cook.' When my wife and I have time to actually cook, this is basically what we do. everything is better with garlic and onions, from German to Korean. The rest is just details.

I usually start my meals by sauteing onions and without fail whoever is in the house will say "Ooo, that smells good what is it?"

Literally just onions

Best way to stop a small argument? Saute onions in olive oil then add some garlic. Guarantee a head will poke around a door frame and all arguments melt away.

So how do you do it?

I'm asking because I learned not a long time ago to somewhat heavily salt the onions beforehand (in olive oil ofc) and it's great. Burst for some minute or three, keep hot while stirring til done (hard, melted, ...).

I don't put garlic in it though, I'd put that in the rest of the food if I do.

45 minus to fully caramelize.

If you don't want them that dark you don't have to cook them that long.

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.

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.

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!)

Little Anon Starting Early

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.

Might work with pork chops.

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

The sugar in the onion is caramelising

It's just a process of slowly cooking them on a low heat, they'll naturally go quite sweet after a while without having to add sugar.

It's just slowly cooking chopped onions in a pan until they are a deep brown and very soft and sweet. If you've ever had french onion soup, that's basically just caramelized onions in broth.

Caramelization is the process of sugars browning due to high heat. The actual reactions that are happening is a combination of sugars and their chains breaking down into smaller compounds and those smaller compounds recombining into other compounds, all these new compounds gives caramelized foods their distinctive colour and taste.

When making caramel the sugar liquification happens often in high enough temperatures for caramelization to occur. The process of sauteeing/high temperature cooking onions long enough involves the same exact reactions. In onions the bit longer chain sugars that dont taste sweet are broken down into simple sugars thus producing the sweet taste of caramelized onions and the further reactions produce the caramel colour and taste.

Tldr: caramelization is a group of chemical reactions and 'caramel' is basically a taste and colour that results from it