1 hour ago, Anna N said:Rather than drag any other topic off-topic I thought I would revive this one.
Elsewhere we have been discussing methods of caramelizing onions. I expressed my opinion that the onions I attempted to caramelize in the slow cooker years ago did not measure up to my expectations.
Today I decided to test out the method for caramelized onions in a pressure cooker following the directions from Serious Eats. Of course I used my Instant Pot.
The hardest part of this recipe is peeling and slicing 3 pounds of onions which were each smaller than a racquetball! Should I decide to attempt this again I will look for much larger onions.
Even after almost 30 minutes of cooking off the excess liquid using the sauté function on the Instant Pot these onions were a far cry from what I expect when I do the same thing on top of the stove. They were mushy, lacked the colour I expect and tasted overly sweet.
I will not let them go to waste but next time I need caramelized onions in quantity I will revert to the old-fashioned way of doing them on the stove top.
I believe this is very much a matter of personal taste and I have no wish to find fault with those who are happy with the results they get using other methods.
I also tried that recipe for caramelized onions. I think I posted about it over in the Instant Pot topic but never added it here. I ended up with a large amount of liquid after the pressure cooking step and it took such a long period of stirring on the Sauté function (almost 40 minutes) that the onions had pretty much turned into a paste.
I was disappointed as I'd been expecting onions, not onion purée and the claim of "caramelized onions in 30 minutes" turned out to be bogus in my hands. However, I froze it in ice cube trays and it was handy to thaw out a cube or two and get that great caramelized flavor in an instant. Smeared on a flatbread, sprinkled with grated cheese and broiled - yum! But it was an onion purée, not caramelized onions.
I went back to my usual oven method for making actual caramelized onions.
