Fast Caramelized Onions Using Water from America's Test Kitchen

17 Replies to “Fast Caramelized Onions Using Water from America's Test Kitchen”

1. I do the same with bacon and pancetta

2. Great tips!! Going to use this method for sure. Will let you know how my pans hold up, Melaney from SoCal.

3. Reminder not to use enamel over highest heat – even for preheating or searing! Cracked my dutch oven browning cabbage

4. Steam sauté works very well for carrots……

5. For most veggies I use a stainless-steel saucepot with a stainless-steel steamer basket and then brown/ with my rounded sauté pan. Great texture every time. I'm going to stick with the old method with onions since I usually caramelize them while cooking rice in an instant pot. Love your short hair

6. I have be “steam sautéing” for some time, while I did not add water, I did salt and add a bit of sugar and cover to start the process….who knew!

7. As a noob who's had to add water to his onions to keep them from burning I can confirm you're not caramelizing the onions quicker. You are just suspending the matter stuck to your pan in a liquid that will coat the onions and give them a darker appearance. Taste, texture and appearance wise it's easy to make the difference between proper caramelized onions and ''dirty'' onions.

   Now I caramelize onions just like I do my roux, in the oven! 325 and stir every half hour for the deepest richest roux or onions with practically no risk of burning or going ''overboard''.

8. So… Microwaving your onions beforehand would be even faster! I wonder if we can brown and soften them even faster using a microwave with a browner and perhaps even without oil… ????

9. Will this method work with an enameled cast iron pan?

10. I don’t own Teflon coated pans so I’ll stick to stainless steel ????

11. Yay ! Lana made it to Rennie !

12. Wouldn't microwaving the onions wilt them as well to get the sugars out with the. Liquid?

13. I have religiously followed your caramelised onions recipe for many years. When I was new to cooking, I tried substituting the pan for nonstick and the oil for refined sunflower oil and had terrible results. So naturally, I'm always hesitant of the cooking hacks I see, especially regarding caramelising onions. What makes it worse is that most caramelised onion recipes seem to use very little fat and take a low and slow approach, which ends up looking like a pile of mush.

    When I saw the ATK video, I was skeptical, and I opted not to try it; however, at one point, when I was pressed for time, I added some water in the wilting stage (a few tablespoons) after the browning. My reasoning was that it would deglaze the pan, which would help make the onions more jammy, and would allow me to increase the heat (not too high) and therefore shorten the wilting time. This was in a stainless steel pan, but I didn't encounter any significant sticking

    The end result looked the same, but I felt it didn't match the sweetness in normal caramelised onions. Granted, this wasn't a very rigorous test, so take with a grain of salt.

    One other thing that your caramelised onion recipe has left me with is a technique: browning quickly in lots of oil and then cooking low and slow until your vegetable is done. While STB does not work for e.g. butternut, I have found that cutting the butternut into 1cm cubes and applying your caramelised onion method has led to a lot of good browning (way better than I get by cooking it in the oven), although the amount of sticking at the bottom of the pan seems to vary based on the butternut. I've tried with (peeled golden delicious) apples as well when I had a bunch of extra ones, and ended up with a jammy toffee-like topping that was sweet and slightly sour, which was quite tasty with sharp cheeses on crackers.

    Whatever I use the technique on, I always have a delicious additional byproduct: the delicious flavoured olive oil. Of course, if I make butternut soup, I just add it right in, but otherwise, I strain out the oil through a sieve and reuse it to cook (e.g. fry eggs) or in salad dressings. That's the big issue of STB: I want that oil!

14. I'm a retired Engineer…. you are speaking my language… THANKS

15. Every burger van…

16. A cast iron skillet works just fine for this method. The only thing I use my non-stick pan for now is tofu.

17. I have been doing this since college. I went to the CIA and graduated in 82. I just thought it was a lazy way of doing it. I really can't say how it effects my pan because I use whatever pan I need. Usually it is cast iron. I do not ever use Teflon as I have a parrot and Teflon releases a toxic fume that can kill a bird. I don't have any in my house.

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