Heat
How to caramelize onions and sugar
Cook food until its natural sugars brown into deep, sweet, nutty flavor.
Step by step
- For onions: slice them evenly and cook in butter or oil over medium-low heat with a pinch of salt.
- Stir every few minutes, scraping up the browned layer from the pan.
- If the bottom starts to scorch, add a splash of water and scrape.
- Keep going until they are soft and amber, 35 to 50 minutes.
- For sugar, heat it in a heavy pan, swirling rather than stirring, until amber.
How you know it's done
Onions are jammy and deep golden brown; sugar is the color of a copper penny and smells like toffee.
Common mistakes
- Cranking the heat to rush it, which burns instead of caramelizing.
- Stopping when they are just golden.
Simmerbee recipes that use it (2)
In those recipes the word is underlined in the steps; tap it for the short version. In hands-free cook mode, ask “How do I caramelize?”