Author Notes: This recipe is very simple and so delicious. You will never go back to pre-made onion dip after you have this. I prefer to eat this with potato chips, but would be great with veggies as well. It is amazing how much sweetness is created through the natural caramelization of the onions. - ADRIENE —ADRIENE
Food52 Review: Patience pays off here—take your time caramelizing the onions. First, the onions will give off a lakeful of liquid. Let it boil off slowly, and by the time the onions begin to caramelize— it took ours at least an hour—they'll be as soft as pudding and deeply concentrated in flavor. Their sweetness infuses the entire dip, and while the rest of the ingredients are the classic onion dip foundation—sour cream, cream cheese, and chives—this one will be better than any you've had before. Note: We halved the recipe and had plenty for 6-8 (not ravenous) dip eaters. - A&M —The Editors
Serves: 6-8
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 1 hrs
Ingredients
-
5
pounds Spanish onions
-
8
ounces cream cheese
-
16
ounces sour cream
-
1
lemon, juiced and zested
-
1
bunch chives
-
4
tablespoons olive oil
-
1
pinch salt & pepper, to taste
Directions
- Peel and cut the onions in a small dice. Get a large pot on the stove with the olive oil and throw in the diced onions. Cook on medium to low heat until they are caramelized (a nice golden brown color). This should take somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour. Cool to room temperature.
- Put the cooked onions, cream cheese, sour cream, lemon juice and zest (if your lemon is large, you may want to start with half of each and add to taste) in a food processor. Blend until combined well. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
- Mince the chives, fold the chives into the dip and sprinkle some on top to garnish.
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60 Reviews
not much sweetness. My wife loves roasted veggies. This past weekend we did roasted
veggies and I cut 1 onion into "1/16's. Separated it into pieces and roasted them on a
cookie sheet, with parchment paper, at 400 degrees. They have a very different taste with lots of "onioniness," and not much sweetness! You have to watch them really carefully, they get brown/black quite quickly! (Lots of great onion flavor though.) I'm thinking of experimenting with using "some" onions from each technique?
& if you are into experimenting, just a thought, maybe you might try one or all three of
these for your onion dip?
INDONESIAN FRIED SHALLOTS CRISP / BAWANG GORENG (UPDATED)
https://whattocooktoday.com/how-to-make-fried-shallots-crisp.html
PAN-FRIED COD FISH WITH CRISPY GINGER
https://whattocooktoday.com/pan-fried-cod-fish-crispy-ginger.html
5 Tips for How to Make Crispy Fried Garlic Topping
http://www.thai-foodie.com/thaifood/5-tips-for-how-to-make-crispy-fried-garlic-topping/
(the shallots, ginger or garlic in the dip, that is as a granish or main ingredient???)
Chris
Put back in blender. Add and blend:
a garlic clove, crushed
all the green onions that you already folded in (oops)
additional lemon juice, salt and pepper
It's criminally delicious!!!
I used 5 lbs of onions and began caramelizing them by keeping them in one covered pot on a very low flame til they were utterly limp. I removed the cover and raised the flame to cook off the liquid the onions released. As they began to take on color, I raised the heat til the onions turned mahogany. All in all, the process took probably over a hour, but you'll get no complaints out of me!!!!!!
While I realize that water content of onions can vary greatly, and the degree to which cooks utilizing this recipe fully extract this water in the caramelization process may likewise vary, I am reminded of a wonderful onion tart recipe I've used for years that calls for 3# of onions and an hour to cook them down (rather like risotto, adding liquid -- white wine -- just as the liquid is cooked off from the onions). The result of 3# of onions being more than enough for a tart should have given me pause, but I was multi-tasking and just went with it.
Another problem with 5# of onions is that it's simply too much for one large pot. The diced onions made a layer that was 5-6" deep initially, so the time for proper caramelization was actually closer to 2 hours. If you're caramelizing that many onions, you'd need two pots to more effectively caramelize the onions (or you would need to do them in batches).
A good idea, with caveats. Not sure this was worth my time, but it was fun to try out!