Caramelized onions make everything taste better. This P2 approved recipe doesn’t use any fat or sugar, but still has the robust, sweet, rich flavors of traditional caramelized onions. The trick to making the recipe a success is time. Don’t rush the caramelization process and your onions will turn out perfect!
Add these to any soup or sauce to add a depth of flavor out of this world. You can also freeze them in ice cube trays and pop one out whenever you need it.
Caramelized Onion (no fat or sugar added)
Recipe Type: Side
Cuisine: American
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 10
Super rich and delicious caramelized onions without the fat and sugar that make them so “bad” for you
Ingredients
- 3 Medium – Large Yellow Onions (sliced very thinly)
- 1 Tsp Dried Thyme
- 1 Bay Leaf
- Chicken Stock
- Water
- Salt
- Pepper
Instructions
- Julienne (thinly slice) all onions.
- Heat large non-stick skillet on high. Place onion in, sprinkle with salt and do not stir or touch for 5 minutes. This is the hardest part, but seriously don’t touch them! Note: Depending on your heat, you may need to turn the temp down to medium/medium-high heat. If your pan starts to smoke turn down the heat.
- After 5 minutes stir the onion making sure to move the onions that are starting to brown on the bottom to the top. Also make sure to scrape the brown bits on the bottom and sides of the pan. Let stand another 5 minutes and repeat. And repeat one more time (15 minutes).
- After the 3 stir it’s time to add some liquid and the rest of the seasoning. Add your Thyme, Bay Leaf and pepper. Then add 1/4 cup chicken stock/broth and really do a good job scraping up all the brown bits (bottom and side included). This will help to spread the caramelized color and flavor throughout the onion.
- Let stand another 5 minutes and repeat process (stirring only every 5 minutes) only now with regular water 2-3 more times. The reason we switch to water is so the onions don’t get too salty. If you use chicken stock that has salt in it, it will reduce into a salt lick!
- After 30-40 minutes your onions will be totally cooked and caramelized to perfection! On the last stir add in only a couple tablespoons of water and do a final scrape to get the yummy brown bits and transfer to storage container.
Serving size: 1/10 Recipe Calories: 14 Fat: 0 Carbohydrates: 3 Sugar: 1.3 Fiber: .7 Protein: .5
About The Author
Tara
Tara is the co-founder of Everyday HCG and the chef behind recipes. She uses her classical culinary training with her first-hand HCG protocal experience to create recipes that are delicious and HCG-approved.
3 Comments
Mine are more burnt than I anticipated…how did you cook that long on high without burning the onions. I’m scraping black pieces from the bottom and it’s not tasty at all. As soon as I added the chicken broth it was gone…bubbled up and gone. So I went right to water…the same thing. I had to turn the heat way down. I’d love to hear how you did it, because I just love caramelized onions and want mine to turn out perfecto! 😉
Hi Melissa. Glad you tried the recipe and sorry to hear it didn’t come out perfect. The culprit is likely:
1)Heat Source: Heat temperature and intensities can very widely depending on what type of stove you have. You want the pan to be hot the onions to sizzle, however you don’t want it to be smoking. Given the results you got I would turn down the temp to medium or medium high. If it starts to smoke, turn it down.
2) The Pan: When cooking without any fat it’s really important to use a high quality nonstick. Even though the onion will brown and stick to the bottom of the skillet a little bit, you should be able to scrap off the bits so they don’t continue to brown eventually turning into burnt onion.
We’re working on making some cooking videos as well and we’ll add this to the list of recipes we’ll do first.
Thanks for the comments and visiting the site! It’s always great to hear feedback on what we’re putting out
I’m making this now and can’t wait to use this week – I love the idea of French onion soup! However, I had to use goggles to slice up my onions…ha ha…my eyes were on fire!! Thanks for sharing!