and today I am going to show you a basic cooking process with onions. A lot of recipes refer
to caramelization or caramelizing onions until they appear translucent. So I am going to
demonstrate this for you today just to show you what that definition really means. I've
got some diced onions here and they are actually yellow sweet onions for those of you that
are interested.
I've got a small pat of butter that I am going to put into my sautee pan
here which is already heating. Now the idea with sauteeing any item, vegetables especially,
is the pan and the fat product that you are using in this case butter, needs to be nice
and hot before the actual product is put into the pan. So we are going to get this all nice
and hot so immediately when the onions hit the pan, they are going to sizzle. As you
notice, this anodized aluminum conduct heat really well so my fire has that heated up
pretty fast.
I've got some nice bubbles on the butter so we should be good to go. I'll
go ahead and throw these onions in here. I'm going to throw just enough in there so that
I can give you guys a clear picture of what's happening. What you are doing with caramelizing
is that the natural sugars are coming out of the onion as well as water.
The sizzle
right off the bat is a good sign. What's going to happen is those natural sugars along with
the butter fat are going to cause these onions to become a little caramelly and it's going
to take that edge off of them so that it won't be as pungent. This is required in just numerous
recipes. At this point, we could throw in some garlic and some shallots if we wanted.
This whole process will work for a green bell peppers, red bell peppers as well.
So it's
not just limited to onions. I really just want to keep these guys moving around. I'm
going to crank the fire down just a tiny bit. Just keep them moving around so that one side
doesn't get any more done than the others.
You'll get better at flipping these and if
you need a kitchen utensil to just stir them around, that's okay. It's a little bit easier
to keep flipping with food items and keep them moving. As you cook along too, it will
start to emit a certain kind of smell which means they are actually breaking them down
a little bit which is what we are trying to do. Also at this point, with these vegetables
or any other you can actually add some salt and pepper to them at this point because as
they start to seep, the salt and the pepper actually kind of stick as they are caramelizing
and gives them a really nice flavor.
For today's and intents and purposes, I'm just trying
to show you what happens to these guys. We've got a little bit of steam coming off the pan
and so we know that the heat is not too high. I've got a few little flecks in there that
are kind of getting a little over done. I.
Kind of just pull those off to the side. We
won't taint the rest of it. Basically just keep turning and keep them moving. So as these
guys start to get a little bit of glassy appearance, you will also notice that there is some translucence
in the sense that you can actually start to see into the onion pieces and start to see
the veins so we are moving right along.
Different recipes will call for longer cooking time,
shorter cooking times based on what you are going to do with these once they are done.
So these are pretty much as far along as I. Use them for just about any other recipe or
sauce that I am making simply because you want to factor into the fact that you are
going to add more heat to these later in a different process in a different stage of
a recipe. So you really don't want to cook them further along than you need to here.
So we've got a little caramelized brown color, some translucence; they smell nice, they're
nice and soft, they're still a little moist & glassy. And that's how you caramelize onions..
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