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Tag: onions

  • How To Make Caramelized Onions in a Slow Cooker

    How To Make Caramelized Onions in a Slow Cooker

    I don’t know about you, but I love caramelized onions. What I don’t love is spending half an hour in front of my stove, stirring the onions and waiting for them to get to just the right degree of caramelized.

    Caramelized onions are a delicious addition to a wide variety of dishes, from soups to salads to pork chops and beyond. They can make a very simple, dressed-down seem like it’s straight out of a fancy French restaurant. Of course, the fancy part of it is probably due to the careful process of making caramelized onions, which many home cooks won’t feel they have the time for.

    This is why I was very thrilled recently to find this hack for making caramelized onions in a slow cook cooker.

    Not only does is this process a simple, hands-off way to make caramelized onions that doesn’t require constant stirring at the stove, but it can help you make a large batch of caramelized onions to keep in your fridge or freezer for many dishes to come. Not only can you add a lovely bit of gourmet class to each meal, you can do it with very little effort on your part!

    This is a great option for processing onions you find on sale, or a large harvest if you’re lucky enough to grow onions on your homestead.

    Here’s how:

    Ingredients

    1 large bag onions

    1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick typically)

    2 tsb salt

    4 tbs brown sugar

    Directions

    1. Slice your onions into thin rings, as best you can. They don’t have to be perfect.
    2. Place them in the slow cooker and cut the butter up into a few cubes, scattering them around the onions. Throw in the salt and brown sugar and give a good stir.
    3. Put your slow cooker on low.
    4. In about an hour, stir the onions again.
    5. Check the onions every now and then for about 8 hours, stirring when you can.
    6. Once they are brown and golden, you’ve got yourself easy caramelized onions! Let cool to room temperature and pack into bags and jars to refrigerate or freeze.

    How easy was that? I’m getting hungry just thinking of the delicious smell this will fill your kitchen with. Enjoy!

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  • Growing Onions from Onions

    Growing Onions from Onions

    If you are looking through a seed catalogue or a selection at your local gardening store, it is not at all unusual to see onion seeds.  That being said it is a little unusual for most people to be able to grow onions with any real rate of success from seeds.  The germination rate is not very high, thinning them can be difficult because of their shallow roots, and they grow so slow that it is hard to mulch them without smothering them and hard to keep them moist without mulch.  It is much easier to simply grow onions from onions.

     

    • If you get your onions from a large grocery store your onions might be from another country and not suitable to be grown in your area. Instead get some onions from a local farmer’s market.
    • Green onions are the easiest to propagate, you just cut the tops and then bury the bottoms just beneath the surface. Bulb onions require a little more but they aren’t difficult either.  Simply allow them to sit in a hanging basket with room between them for air flow so they don’t start to rot.  Wait until you see green starting to sprout out of the top.
    • Carefully peel away layers until you find fresh growing roots. You will likely have two or three sections of new growth within your old onion so carefully separate them without injuring their roots.  Don’t worry about the old dead roots on the outside.
    • Place the onions on the surface of the soil, burying only the roots and leaving the bulbs exposed.
    • With so much mass above the surface and small fresh roots they will be susceptible to falling over. Don’t support the bulb, as this is likely to cause rot, instead try providing support to the green growth.

     

    Using this technique you can easily grow twice as many onions than you purchased.  Don’t waste money on seeds and time waiting only to be disappointed, grow your onions from onions.

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