Each person at least once in a life has tasted caramel candy, which is obtained by heating and toasting sugar. Using this process, you can get not only such a sweet treat. Due to the content of natural sugar in fruits and vegetables, most of them can be caramelized.
What is caramelization?
The process of sugar oxidation under the influence of high temperatures is called caramelization. Its crystals are destroyed when heated, the water evaporates, the texture becomes viscous, and the color becomes dark brown. Natural sugar, which is contained in vegetables, is released with increasing temperature, and with prolonged languishing they also acquire a similar color. Most often used in cooking caramelized onions. This is a gas station for soups and borschs familiar to everyone.
Features onion caramelization
Of vegetables, onions are most often caramelized. Despite the fact that it has a bitter taste, it contains natural sugar even more than in apples.
To get a truly sweet onion with a pleasant caramel flavor, it is best to choose large heads for its preparation. Especially a lot of sugar in shallots and red onions.
The pan should have a thick bottom. Ideally, if it is made of cast iron. But it is better to refuse to use the Teflon coating for caramelization of onions, otherwise the finished dish will have an unpleasant aftertaste.
In order to get caramelized onions, it takes time. It is impossible to cook this dish in 10 minutes, especially if you fry it over high heat. The average time required for caramelization is 30 minutes at low temperature conditions. The structure of the onion is soft, as when stewed, but drier and with a pronounced sweetish-nutty flavor.
Caramelized Onions: Recipe
Cooking caramelized onions is not difficult.
But you can achieve a good result only if you adhere to a certain technology.
How to caramelize onions:
- To begin with, a large onion must be cut into half rings.
- Heat a little vegetable oil in a pan. It is important to keep the proportion. If there is little oil, then the onion can burn out, if there is a lot, it will become cloyingly fat. Optimum ratio: for one onion, you need to take a tablespoon of oil.
- Pour chopped onions into a pan and mix gently with oil.
- Fry at low temperature, occasionally stirring with a wooden spatula so that the onion does not burn.
- The minimum cooking time is 20 minutes. If the onions begin to stick strongly to the bottom of the pan, you can add a couple of tablespoons of water.
- The finished caramelized onion has a dark brown color.
What dishes are used in? French onion soup
Caramelized onions have a universal taste. Due to this, it is added to vegetable and meat dishes, and is also used as a filling for pies. In general, caramelized onions are an indispensable component of any first dish. But often in order to save time, it is not brought to the desired state, which, of course, affects the taste of the culinary product.
French onion soup has such a deep rich taste due to properly caramelized onions.
How to cook it? For 2 liters of broth you will need 750 g of onion, a couple of tablespoons of butter, a clove of garlic, 150 g of cheese, your favorite herbs and spices. First, garlic is fried in butter, then onion chopped in half rings is added to it and vegetables continue to simmer over low heat for about an hour. When the onion becomes completely soft and acquires a caramel flavor, it is time to pour it with broth, add salt, Provence herbs, thyme and black pepper. Serve soup with crackers, and sprinkle with grated cheese on top. This is delicious! Enjoy your meal!