The caramelized onion trick

I have had far too many onions that were just soft(ish) when they should have been caramelized, or burnt beyond any recognition of tastiness. So let me splain something.

There's some kind of magical chemistry that happens with caramelization that my mother could explain because she went to culinary arts school. For my money, the thing is that the onions spend about 15 or 20 minutes being 'soft' before they quickly start to get golden and very soft--this is what's called 'browned.'

At that point, they will begin to burn very quickly unless you are stirring them constantly (before that, frequently is fine), and even then will burn if your heat is too high. So watch very carefully when they really start to turn gold.

(If you're going all the way and you want garlic in there, the point at which they start to brown is when you want to throw your garlic in, because garlic does all this same stuff, but ten times faster.)

Very quickly after turning gold, they will start to turn brown. Now you're reaching the sweet spot, and it's up to you to decide how far you want to go with this. If you really caramelize the bejesus out of them, you might actually feel that they have become too sweet and too insubstantial.

But everything progresses with extraordinary speed from the gold stage on up, so be diligent and keep your eye on the onions. You'll get exactly what you want if you do.