OM-NOM-NONIONS

I mentioned recently that Pete is a big fan of onions. So when I happened upon this recipe for caramelized onion marmalade made in a slow cooker, I had to try it for him.

It’s a simple enough premise – you slice up a lot of onions, pack them into a slow cooker, add a stick of butter to the top and leave it running on low until they turn all yummy and caramelized. I mentioned it to Pete, and he was sold – picking up 9 large Spanish onions when we were next shopping.

I didn’t use all nine, in the end – they wouldn’t fit. I had the end of the giant onion to use up, and some of the small onions we grew in the garden this year. But the large onions made up the bulk of it.

My paternal grandmother was completely immune to the eye-watering effects of onions, and used to come and visit when it was time to make the pickled onions. Apparently it was not an inheritable characteristic, as they make my eyes water and chopping this many onions in one go is a bit of a labour of love.

As you can see from Pete’s picture, I used a whole pack of butter (it was an unsalted one that had been languishing in the fridge for a while). It was too much butter for the amount of onion, but it wasn’t that big a deal. On the Low setting it took a couple of hours to start melting.

The smell! The whole house reeks of onions to begin with, then cooking onions. It’s a lovely smell, but it makes you constantly hungry. And in the end the slow cooker was on for 24 hours or so until we were happy with the final result. I did turn it up to Medium for a while, but it needed watching on that setting, so most of the time it was on low.

The end result was a jar of buttery, caramelized onions that now sits in the fridge and is used as a condiment. Pete had some on his pasta last night, he loves it. I like them too (but am not as big a fan of onions as he is :) We also drained off the oniony butter liquid. Still trying to think of a use for that.

We now have the happy job of investigating whether these onions go with everything, but I think we will be making this recipe again as it is so easy and tasty!