This Tennessee Onion Casserole Is Worth the Tears
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If you don’t like onions, you might want to go for a walk for a few minutes, or go check out one of our other lovely recipes. For everybody else, though, you should check out the magic that happens when this recipe has you cook a bunch of sweet onions in a big mess of butter and cheese. These “Tennessee onions” scream barbecue side dish, but if you really want to go crazy, try them as a burger topping. Or just eat them as a main course, because really, it’s just a vegetable casserole, but the only vegetable is onions.
Some recipes hide the onions and have you chop them so tiny you can barely see them, but not this recipe. Start by slicing two or three sweet Vidalia onions into 1/2-inch thick slices, then separate the rings. Don’t cut them in half or anything, just leave them as big O’s and layer them in the bottom of a baking dish. Sprinkle them with a bit of pepper and garlic salt, then lay pats of butter all over the top of the pile of onions.
Grocery stores tend to sell onions by the bag, which used to perplex me, because I only needed one onion, and suddenly I had 10, and no idea what to do with nine of them. If you have this recipe, you will never have to wonder how to use up a bunch of leftover onions again.
Cover everything in the dish with shredded cheddar and mozzarella, and the author advises getting good cheese for this, because it will really make a difference in the final flavor of the dish. Cover that cheese with more cheese — about a half a cup of grated Parmesan — and bake it, uncovered, for about half an hour. The cheese should be melted and bubbly and starting to brown on the top. Set it aside to cool for a few minute, because as tempting as that big, bubbling dish might look, hot cheese is a quick way to burn off all your tastebuds, and then you wouldn’t be able to taste the rest of the casserole. And that would be a shame, because if you pile on enough butter and cheese, you could make an onion-lover out of almost anybody.
Get the Recipe: Tennessee Onions from Loaves and Dishes
