Carmelized onions are a real treat in many dishes and accompanying meats of all kinds. There are some tricks to doing it right, but it’s not too hard.

Different kinds of onions provide different flavours. Yellow onions are sweet enough to carmelize on their own quite well. Vidalias are superb onions for carmelizing. Red onions less so; they are usually better raw in salads and as flavour additions on sandwiches, burgers, etc.

Directions:

1. Peel the onion, and either chop it or cut it into slices. Cutting an onion can be an art in and of itself. The way I do it is to chop off each end of the onion, peel off the paper and tougher outer layer, slice the onion in half, then start the process for chopping or slicing.

To chop:

lay the onion half cut side down

make a cut horizontally most of the way across the onion from the top to the bottom (the bottom is where the stem was)

make vertical parallel cuts from the top end to not quite the bottom end

turn the onion and repeat the vertical parallel cuts in the opposite direction starting from the top to the bottom.

To slice:

lay the onion half cut side down

starting from the top, make thin slices going down to the bottom end of the onion

Mandoline:

A very cool kitchen gadget to have around is a mandoline. This lets you make very thin slices of things quickly. Just be very careful using it – always use the guard because it can be far too easy to slice a finger with these. You don’t have to cut the onion in half after to peel it; large round slices of onion are pretty nice.

Cooking:

Now that you have your onion prepared, prepare the pan: put the pan on medium heat and let it warm up

add a small amount of butter, olive oil or (what I usually do) a coating of cooking spray and let the oil warm up but not burn!

add the onions to the pan and start them going

sprinkle a tiny amount of brown sugar on the onions and mix in

stir the onions occasionally, not too often. If you stir too often, they won’t carmelize. The onions need to burn very slightly to carmelize