Show me a home cook, and I’ll show you someone who has shortcuts up their sleeves.
The “proper” way to make caramelised onion is to cook the onion very slowly for an hour or more with olive oil, maybe butter. I can’t remember a time when I haven’t cheated.
My favourite use of this style of cheats’ caramelised onion has been as finger food on a caramelised onion and goat’s cheese pizza. Along with a home-made rosemary oil on the base, it made an excellent non-tomato pizza. I have also used caramelised onion on this roasted vegetable tart, a version of this puff pastry tomato tart, and warmed and stirred through this quick pasta.
CYRANO (white, but smiling): Onions, brandy-cups!
-Cyrano’s defiant cry in Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano De Bergerac, Act II, Scene 8
Cheats’ Caramelised Onion
Sweet and Quick
Ingredients
- 1 large brown onion, sliced into thin rings
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- olive oil
Instructions
- Fry onion in a little olive oil until soft and translucent but not browned.
- Add balsamic. It will give off a pungent hint of vinegar, then add brown sugar and stir in well. By now that vinegar hint should be gone. Continue to cook at medium temperature until you reach desired colour, about 5 minutes.
- This is a highly adjustable recipe. You can always add in a splash more vinegar and a pinch more sugar if you wish, or add less the next time round, depending how you like it. The trick is the portion of vinegar to sugar should be about equal.
- Use the onions as a condiment, on pizza bases with some goats cheese, as a topping on savoury tarts.
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