Vera

Counting to thirty felt absurd and worked five times out of five this week. I was going straight from the hob to the whisk.

Onion bed is my favourite version of this because you get a side dish out of it and the tray is easier to clean.

Matches my experience. Fine if the onions are disappearing into a soup, obvious if they are going on top of something.

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.

Falling apart and dry at the same time means overcooked, not underhydrated. Once the collagen has fully converted and the muscle fibres have squeezed out their water, more time only takes you further past where you wanted to be. Extra liquid does not go back into the meat — a braise is not a marinade.

Two changes. Drop the oven to 140-150C and start checking at two and a half hours: a skewer should slide in with slight resistance, not zero resistance. And let them cool in the braising liquid rather than pulling them out hot. They take up a surprising amount of moisture on the way down, which is why braises really are better the next day rather than that being something people just say.

Also a 12 inch carbon steel full of food is genuinely heavy at the end of a long handle. Matters more than it sounds.