Cooking Tips: Caramelizing

I’ve had more than a few people compliment me on my food so far and I must say it’s really down to the little details with cooking. A lot of people say good cooking comes from the heart, and I do fully believe that, but what good is loving your food if you’re not doing nearly as much as you can to get it tasty?

So I thought I’d put together a series of cooking tips to help people really bring out all those wonderful flavors that so many of your ingredients have tucked away in them. First up: Caramelizing!

Credit for photos goes entirely to SimplyRecipes.

Step One: Peel your onions and slice them lengthwise. The thinner your slices the more the caramelizing process will affect it! Of course, too thin and you’ll have nothing left at the end.

Step Two: Take a wide saucepan, coat the bottom with Olive Oil / Butter (Olive Oil’s healthier!). Crank the heat high and wait for the oil to shimmer and shine. Then toss in the onions. Spread them out and let it cook. Stir from time to time (every 5 minutes is fine). Add sugar if you like for a thicker coating at the end.

Step Three: After you’ve spent about half an hour caramelizing them (they should be a rich brown now), you’ll find that you need to stir more often to prevent the onions sticking to the pan. Lower the heat and continue the process for 10 minutes longer, dunk in about 50ml of wine and 10ml of balsamic vinegar for some flavour. Don’t worry, you won’t get drunk, the alcohol will all evaporate! Lower the heat, done!

SOOOO, now you’ve spent all that time you’ll be wondering what to do with these fine onions. Here’s a list of possibilities of where they can be added:

Credit to ClosetCooking for the delightful photo of French Onion Soup below:

Really there’s no limit to where you can use these things; Pizzas and even curries love them. Next someone’ll tell me there’s a caramelized onion dessert. Actually, that sounds very possible!

Also if it isn’t too much trouble, I’d like to know what you guys think of posts like this one. Did it help you? Did you like it? Either way please leave a comment below or through the feedback form on the left and I’d be super grateful. Thank you!