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Comment by nommm-nommm | Hacker News Reader

The onions thing really bothers me too.

I mean, it takes 45+ minutes to caramelize onions. You can fry them for 10-20 minutes or so and get a pretty tasty result, but they aren't caramelized onions.

I have no idea why people say otherwise!

I watch a lot of cooking shows and the contestants (supposed to be professional chefs) will have 30 minutes to make a dish and they'll say "I will start out by caramelizing the onions." No you won't! You'd need more than your 30 minute cooking time to caramelize onions!

Onions can be caramelized in a slow cooker, as mentioned. They aren't as good as doing it on the stove properly but are good enough for the labor you save.

/rant

I do proper caramelized onions only about once a year because they are so tedious.

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A trick I learned from Seriouseats is that you can use a pressure cooker to carmelize onions in about half an hour. The normal stage of onion cooking where the liquid is still coming out of the onion limits the cooking temperature to about the boiling point of water; by using a pressure cooker, the boiling point of water is raised to the point where browning happens even before the water is gone. See: http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/the-food-lab-pressure-coo...

Wow, I've been meaning to try a pressure cooker lately, in theory, (sounds good) but this post might have put me over the edge.

Pressure cooker, here I come.

I've done this and the results product tastes great in dips/soups but for me (and it seems many commentors) the onions turn to complete mush (almost like a jam texture). Were you able to get your onions to maintain some texture?

It's because most people don't take 45+ minutes so they don't know the difference. In 10-20min you just have soft brown onions... but once you truly caramelize, you know it's totally different.

But hasn't anyone eaten caramelized onions in a restaurant before? Or even seen a picture?

I would assume professional chefs (who are the contestants on these cooking shows I watch) would know better.

I swear, it feels like an onion conspiracy.

In my experience, even most restaurant don't go real hard into caramelization. It's usually a quarter to half of what they could do, probably still because it takes so long.

I wouldn't have a problem with restaurants (or anyone) serving sweated onions, as they are actually yummy... Just not selling them as caramelized.

Call them what they are...

(To be honest, for many applications, I would slightly prefer sweated onions over caramelized onions.... I'd just like to know what I'm getting...)

... Unless there was an onion conspiracy...

Pro tip, you can throw a tiny bit of baking soda into the onions to make them caramelize faster.

That helps improve the rate of the Maillard reaction, but not the pyrolysis of sugars.

Rant maybe, but it's true. I've done them too in batches, usually enough for two large pans at once, anything less and it's a lot of waiting around doing nothing. And if you're inexperienced, pushing it on the heat will just burn them.

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