How to caramelize onions

french onion soup

 So, now that we have a Sam's club membership, I find myself saying "I could use 10 pounds of _____(enter obscure food item I could never possibly eat 10 pounds of here)" a lot. Sigh. Whats a girl to do.

My last little misadventure was thinking we could eat 10 pounds of red onions. They're such a good deal! I can think of all kinds of fancy things to do with them! Onions are so good for you! 

Somebody, please, shut me up.

Today I attempted to tackle the bag of onions that has, as you've probably already guessed, been sitting untouched under our kitchen counter. I decided to make french onion soup, but the cheap girl version (we didn't have the required wine on hand-I may have drank it all. Ahem.) The hardest part about french onion soup is caramelizing the onions.

Slice some onions, or in our case a LOT of them, and put them in a pot. Note: onions make you cry. A lot of onions make you cry, a lot. I cried like a little girl while doing this. I'm sure it was natures way of punishing me for buying so many onions.

Anyways, put them in a pot, drizzle them with some olive oil, set it on medium low, and walk the F away, please.


Come back every ten minutes or so and give the onions a stir, until they look like this:

 It took me about an hour to get them like this.  If you have trouble browning them, add a tsp of sugar and stir well. The sugar should caramelize them a little faster.