Caramelized Onions

Caramelized onions are a great garnish for hamburgers or sandwiches. You can prepare this well ahead, keep it refridgerated to quite some while... or until it lasts (at least).

Caramelized onions is one kind of garnish that you usually miss when you do a BBQ. It gives a nice combination of sweet and sour to the sandwich or burger and once you do it, everybody will come back for more.

Use red onions

Basically you can use any kind of onion, white, yellow or red. I prefer the red ones for this since the red onions already have a natural sweetness to them.

Experiment with the alcohol

I change the recipe every time a bit. For the basic one I use red wine (not the most expensive one) and it turns out great. But I also made the onions using Cognac (again, no need to waste a Louis XIII), Whiskey or Sherry. The taste differs always a little and you can find your favourite kind.

Ingredients

500 g red onions

2-3 tablespoons rape seed oil (or other vegetable frying oil)

2 teaspoons sugar

2 teaspoons of honey

1 pinch of salt

some pepper

1 dl shot of red wine to deglaze

Preparation

Cut the onions into rings.

Heat the oil in a pan and add the onions. Sweat the onions over medium heat with salt and pepper, stirring occasionally, for about 4 minutes. Then pour the sugar and honey over the onions.

From now on let the onions caramelize while stirring occasionally. This can take another 10 minutes.

Finally, pour the red wine over the onions to deglaze and simmer for a couple of minutes until the wine is vaporized.

The onions are ready when they are nice and soft and have a brownish, even caramel colour.