Every recipe says ten minutes and every comment section says that is a lie, but I am 40 minutes into three sliced onions on medium-low in a wide pan with oil and they are soft, translucent and barely golden. Not burnt, just not brown. Do I keep going, turn the heat up, or is there a step I am missing?
Three onions in a normal pan is also more crowded than you think — they release a lot of water and effectively steam for the first half. If you are spending an hour anyway, do six onions in the widest pan you own and freeze half in an ice cube tray. Same hour, twice the payoff.
This is the actual answer for anyone who cooks on weeknights. I do a big batch monthly and drop two cubes into whatever needs them.
Resist the urge to crank the heat now. At this stage the sugars are concentrated and the gap between brown and bitter is about ninety seconds. Medium-low and patience, stirring every few minutes rather than constantly.
Also, the ten minute recipes are not exactly lying about what they want, they just mean softened and sweet rather than caramelised. For a weeknight that is often fine. Save the hour version for when it is the point of the dish.
Small correction to the usual advice: a pinch of baking soda does speed browning dramatically, but it also turns them mushy and faintly soapy if you use more than a genuine pinch. I ran with it for a while and went back to time.
Matches my experience. Fine if the onions are disappearing into a soup, obvious if they are going on top of something.
@vac_seal_vera · 7mo ago · 3 replies
Keep going. Properly caramelised onions take 45 minutes to well over an hour and there is no shortcut that gives the same result, only shortcuts that give a decent different result.
What you are describing at 40 minutes is right on schedule. The sequence is roughly: ten minutes to soften, twenty to thirty more to go translucent and give up their water, then the browning happens surprisingly fast at the end once the pan is dry enough. That last phase is where you actually need to pay attention.
Two things that speed it up honestly: salt at the start to pull water out faster, and a wide pan so the water evaporates instead of pooling. And once they do start colouring, deglaze with a splash of water every few minutes and scrape — all the flavour is in the brown film on the pan and you want it back on the onions.
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@chainwax_chloe · 7mo ago
Went to 65 minutes total with the deglazing trick and they were genuinely jammy and dark. The last fifteen minutes did almost all the visible work.
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@soloseat_sana · 7mo ago
The deglaze-and-scrape step is what separates soft brown onions from the real thing. Two tablespoons of water, four or five times.
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