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11-04-2020 05:16 PM
I'm thinking about making a batch of caramelized onions for made from scratch holiday dips. Have you been successful in freezing them with good results?
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Frozen cooked onions are the key to quicker, tastier quarantine dinners.
You could also mix a bit into cream cheese or yogurt and spread on english muffins for breakfast. Pile them on a sandwich, a burger, or a tart. Toss a spoonful into a saucepan with beans from a can for the quickest flavor-packed lunch ever.
Or turn them into any of the 10 dinners Vivian Howard offers in This Will Make It Taste Good, such as eggs cooked in a deliciously oniony sloppy joe – style filling. Other highlights include a savory, Parmesan- and RCO-loaded take on monkey bread and a roast chicken recipe with caramelized onions puréed into a gravy-like sauce.
Having a stash of ready-cooked onions in the freezer is also, perhaps, a way to make quarantine cooking a little easier. “We have certainly relied on the Flavor Heroes [the term Howard coined for the core recipes of her book, including caramelized onions] more often over the past seven months than ever before.” says Howard.
“My husband has been doing a lot more cooking, and has leaned into using the caramelized onions as part of his repertoire.” It’s a weeknight flavor bomb that’ll make you grateful you spent a more leisurely afternoon stirring, and watching, and waiting; banking a cache of edible gold (or, more rightly, edible bronze) for the night when you need it most
Source: Epicurious
Real and true caramelized onions are onions don’t take 10 minutes to cook. To get them properly caramelized, you need to take them to the danger zone. Other caramelized onions are PG…these are rated R. It takes the better part of an hour to coax their sugars from blonde to nutty brown. That’s why you ought to make a big batch at once and save them to pull out when you want all that complex flavor without having spent all that time.
Manipulated in the best kind of way by steam heat, then dry heat over a longer period of time than I’m typically keen to require in a multi-part recipe, caramelized onions are a leisurely labor of love that loves you back. Like a perfect stock or just the right amount of MSG, onions cooked low and slow until their sugars deepen and their flavor shape-shifts lend a hard-to-quantify but easy-to-appreciate dimension to food.
In their most well-known role as the foundation for French Onion soup they define the rustic, unforgettable flavor of a broth that launched the soup sections of a thousand menus. And in less scene-stealing appearances, caramelized onions show us that a simple ingredient coddled a certain way can give a flimsy dish a sultry backbone, or make a one-note meal all grown-up.
11-04-2020 05:27 PM
I thought I was going to find a photo of an onion that had grown in the shape of an unmentionable body part. 😀
11-04-2020 06:15 PM
@santorini wrote:I thought I was going to find a photo of an onion that had grown in the shape of an unmentionable body part. 😀
@santorini - yep, the title of the article caught my interest
11-04-2020 06:51 PM
one of my favorite ingredients ever.yummy!
11-06-2020 09:53 AM - edited 11-06-2020 10:42 AM
That's a really long and involved description for preparing caramelized onions, which I do frequently in an easier way.
Simply cut up onions in chunks or slices (depending on how you like your onions in your recipes), put them either in a saucepan (preferably nonstick) on very low heat for an hour or two ....or in a small crockpot/slowcooker for a couple of hours.
No additional liquid needed in either type of pot when using low heat, because the onions create their own sauce.
I sometimes add a little butter and Worcestershire sauce to the onions while they're simmering and caramelizing.
Then I freeze in small quantities.
11-06-2020 01:30 PM
@novamc1 wrote:
That's a really long and involved description for preparing caramelized onions, which I do frequently in an easier way.
Simply cut up onions in chunks or slices (depending on how you like your onions in your recipes), put them either in a saucepan (preferably nonstick) on very low heat for an hour or two ....or in a small crockpot/slowcooker for a couple of hours.
No additional liquid needed in either type of pot when using low heat, because the onions create their own sauce.
I sometimes add a little butter and Worcestershire sauce to the onions while they're simmering and caramelizing.
Then I freeze in small quantities.
Thank you @novamc1 . The crockpot suggesion sounds good! The initial "steaming" of the onions seems essential. I read that freezing in ice cube trays is recommended, same as I do for leftover chicken stock
11-06-2020 02:32 PM
Ice cube trays would be a little too small for the onion portions that I want to freeze, but...
whatever works for you, go with it !
11-08-2020 08:11 AM - edited 11-08-2020 08:14 AM
Not sure what you meant when you wrote that "steaming the onions seems essential"?
Maybe I missed something or just don't know something, but I've never seen steaming as a specific technique for onions. They produce their own liquid as caramelization progresses.
I love onions fixed any kind of way and cook them down to a caramelized state often to add to various hamburger and other meat dishes. YUM!
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