Basic Technique: How to Cook Onions

Onions are definitely the cornerstone of our cooking. Minced, diced, or simply sliced into half-moons, they show up in almost every dish that we cook! How to cook them was one of the first techniques we learned when starting to cook. Here's how we do it...

Onions are one of the vegetables that takes the longest to cook, and they also hold up well over extended cooking. For this reason, onions are the first thing we start cooking whenever they appear in a recipe.

(Unless we're cooking meat. Then we sear the meat first, remove it from the pan, and then start cooking the onions and everything else.)

To cook them, we put a pan over high heat and add a dribble of olive oil. When the pan and oil are both hot, we turn the heat down to medium and add the onions. We stir them occasionally to make sure they cook evenly and aren't burning, but mostly leave them alone to do their thing.

After a few minutes, the onions will turn translucent and lose their crispness. A bit of browning is fine, but the heat should be low enough to cook the onions without giving them a lot of color. If we're cooking other vegetables, we add the next one now.

This is the technique we use most often when cooking onions. It creates a solid, non-assertive flavor base, and as we continue to cook, the onions literally melt into the dish.

If we're doing a stir-fry or something where we want a more assertive onion flavor, we cook the onions quickly over a higher heat. The onions will develop caramelized brown spots and a bit of translucence around the edges, but retain their crispness and a slight raw bite.

And of course, cooking onions over a very low heat gives us yet another flavor transformation. During the long cooking over low heat, the onions lose all of that astringent bite and become completely, deliciously caramelized. If you've never had caramelized onions, try cooking them this way at least once. You'll be amazed at how sweet and tender the onions become!

Is this how you also cook onions, or do you follow a different technique?

(Image: Flickr member Ben30 licensed under link to specific Creative Commons license">Creative Commons)

Comments (6)

also good - cut them into rings (really you just slice the onion then split apart the rings) and dredge them in beer batter and fry them. Yummy onion rings :-)

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I tend to use onions in everything too, and with some meats, I actually find that the taste improves when I cook the onions and meat together! Strange, but true. I also usually throw in some garlic cloves and a bit of of salt and pepper to begin with. After that, the meat takes care of itself.

I actually never cared much for onions (I know, awful) but always loved the flavor infusion. It's mostly a texture issue for me, I still cannot eat them raw. I have slowly but surely integrated more onions into my cooking (yellow, green, leeks) and I usually cook them in the same way. However, I heat up the pan first before adding the oil and turn it down to medium after adding the onions. I let them sweat out their flavor for a long time, ensuring they loose that crunchiness and bitter flavor I can't handle.

Like bfoot, when I am cooking onions, I nearly always throw in some garlic. I am also a fan of cutting a yellow onion in half and letting it fall apart in whatever I am cooking, that way they are easy to pick out :-)

Not sure if anyone does this but its somewhat of a Texas thing. at least I think it is. We put an onion with lots of butter wrap it in foil and throw it in the BBQ pit. Not sure on how long we leave it in there but when its done(super soft) we open it up add more butter, salt and lime or lemon juice. Its soooo good!! :)

Nicely written piece on the method of cooking onions.
Turning the heat down is key! High heat can cause onions to taste bitter.

To caramelize onions without fear of them scorching, I find it helpful to let them first cook a few minutes on medium-low heat, covered. This basically "sweats" the onions, or cooks them in the steam from their own juice, with little fear of burning. Once they are completely translucent, the cover can be removed, the heat increased slightly, and the onions will caramelize evenly.