Serious Eats has recipes for Pressure Cooker Caramelized Onions and onion soup, touting "Slow-cooked caramelized-onion flavor in half an hour." I tried the caramelized onions today. Not a fan. Maybe it was my onions, I know they are all different. I used 3 lbs total: 4 yellow, 2 sweet and 1 red. The flavor was good but hands on time was more than expected and total time was closer to 90 min, all in.
The recipe calls for slicing 3 lbs onions 1/8" thick, softening them in butter with 1/2 t baking soda, cooking at high pressure for 20 minutes, releasing pressure then reducing the remaining liquid for ~ 5 min.
After releasing pressure, there was a LOT of liquid in the pot. I switched to the Saute function (adjusted to "More") and it took 40 minutes of fairly regular stirring before the liquid was reduced. With all that stirring, the already thin slices were pretty much a paste, not much texture left. The yield was 2 cups as stated in the recipe. I'll stash this in the freezer for now and try the onion soup recipe sometime later.
The flavor is fine but it was way more hands-on for more time than I would prefer. I usually make caramelized onions using larger chunks in the oven and can get away with very intermittent stirring.
After topping with some grated parm and running under the broiler, this was actually quite tasty so I have no complaints in that department and while it took more like 90 min all in, that's still quicker than it would have been in the oven. Just more stirring than I expected.
