I KNEW IT. I knew that those SOBs in the cookbooks were lying to me about how long it takes to caramelize onions. Treacherous buggers.
Also, Slate?
In truth, the best time to caramelize onions is yesterday. Often enough, you need to have them ready before you can start on the rest of the dish. Thus the recipe-writers’ impulse to deceive. Browning onions is slow work, and it comes first. So get a pan going after dinner, and they’ll be ready when you need them. Or throw the onions in a crock pot and go to bed. In recipe time, that’s hours and hours. In your time, the time that matters, it’s less than five minutes.
This paragraph gets your site a free benefit-of-the-doubt from me. Use it wisely.