Slow Cooker

I'm not sure where I first read about using a slow cooker to bulk cook onions to a rich browned caramel for use in other dishes. It might have been on Veggie Venture or it could have been, well I don't know, it's pretty much available all over the web these days. I've had the idea bookmarked for a long while and with the prospect of needing to be able to cater for much larger numbers than usual it seemed an appropriate moment to give it a whirl.

Using about 750g of prepared sliced onions (a couple of pounds) it took nearly six hours to reach the stage in the picture above. It is an easy method but I'm not sure that having a slow cooker running for six to eight hours just for a preparatory step in a recipe is worth the hassle. I could have softened, browned and caramelised a similar amount of onions in not much more than an hour by conventional means and felt much more in control of the process at the same time.

Still, it's another option for multitasking and the end result, well cooked sweet soft onions using very little fat, a quality product.



I used half the yield to make French Onion soup which was very good. The cheese covered crouton garnish used Redwood's Soya Free Cheezly - this isn't a product I'll be searching out to use again, I much prefer their more traditional soya cheese substitute. I'd intended to make pissaladiere with the other half of caramelised onions but they quickly disappeared in other cooking so that practise will have to wait for another time.

I will be taking a couple of days break from VeganMoFo 2011, my brain is beginning to boil and I've had no time to look at other people's blogs at all. Should be back on Monday all being well. Ciao.