Basic Sauteed Onions, A Kitchen Staple

As you know, in many of my recipes I write things like “2 tablespoons chopped sauteed onions” and I’ve mentioned in the past that I keep a stock of these prepared onions ready in my fridge or freezer to save an enormous amount of time when you cook. Each time I have to peel, chop and sautee onions, it slows down the prep in my kitchen drastically and obviously, speeds it up dramatically when I’ve got the prepped onions lurking merrily in the freezer to hand.

I decided to actually time it so that I wouldn’t give approximations of how long the process takes so that you will know how much time you should (definitely!!) invest in preparing these onions which I add to so very many dishes.

All told, it took me an hour and fifteen minutes to get my onions to medium brown. This should not be confused with caramelized or jammy onions, this is for regular chopped fried/sauteed onions that you will literally use almost daily if you have them available. How many times have you read a recipe and said to yourself, what a pain, I have to peel, chop and sautee an onion for this? Forget about it. The great part is that you only need to stir the onions, on low heat, every fifteen minutes. That means, your active “work” on the onions is stirring them five times throughout the cooking process. Not bad to have a big batch of prepped sauteed onions!

I find that they last me over a month – maybe even two months, since often you really only need two tablespoons to properly season a dish. Of course, that wouldn’t be true for onion soup 😉 . But for that go to my caramelized onions https://kosherfromjerusalem.com/2019/03/17/caramelized-onions-in-a-slow-cooker/

Sometimes I store the onions in ice cube trays which are approximately a heaping tablespoon (at least the ones I use are) and sometimes for a larger portion in disposable (I reuse them) muffin tins. I will show them below.

Start with 7-8 nice firm large (not ginormous, but yes, large) onions.

Chop of the “head” and ‘tail” and peel. Rinse and place on cutting board. Next, chop them into medium-ish pieces, not superfine or they tend to burn.

Take three to four tablespoon of mild vegetable oil like canola and toss with the onions until they are completely coated with the oil. This is very important since if the onions are not coated, they will not cook down properly.

Take a large pan with sides high enough to accommodate the large amounts of onion and put the whole lot into the pan. On medium low heat, start the cooking WITH THE LID ON! Don’t worry, despite the lid, the onions will brown. It will take quite a while but it works at minimal work to you.

As you can see, they are starting to turn yellow. Now I took pictures of the onions at the fifteen minute intervals, but decided to spare you and to cut to the chase.

You can call this color deeply yellow or light brown but basically they are cooked and yet they can be cooked for longer if you wish still a browner color without tasting bitter. I prefer to cook them to this point since then they can be added to other dishes without practically dissolving into the dish. You can see they are glistening with oil, that’s what you want, since the oil preserves them and then just double wrap in plastic wrap to keep fresh and freeze them. You can also put them in two layers in muffin tins (I use the disposable) if you want a larger amount at the ready.

Then I lay a layer of plastic wrap on them and put another layer of onions on it. To separate the layers, let defrost for a coupla minutes and carefully pry apart with a knife or fork.

There you go! Just pop into the freezer and remove the amount you want when you need it and see how amazingly this will streamline your cooking. Enjoy!!

Basic Sauteed Onions, A Kitchen Staple

7-8 large firm onions, peeled and chopped into medium pieces.

3-4 tablespoons of vegetable oil, I like canola

That’s the whole thing guys. Instructions are above in the body of the post and it pays to follow them precisely to save yourselves a lot of work and hassle.