Holy crap, we have a lot of onions. Our wonderful CSA “Tomato Mountain Farm”:http://tomatomountain.com/ recently had several weeks of us getting several onions in the batch. While onions last awhile, I’m told that spring onions really don’t last as long. And I couldn’t use them up fast enough.

Enter my friends Mark & Susan. See, Mark & Susan also purchased a share of Tomato Mountain Farm’s CSA. So they’re in eggplants & onions up to their ears too.

Mark is, rumor has it, an awesome cook for himself & his lovely Susan. I’m always envious as Susan often talks about what good things Mark has made recently. And recently she mentioned goat-cheese eggplant rolls (I haven’t had a chance to try these) and slow-cooker caramelized onions. He was kind enough to share the links with me, and I’m pleased as punch to pass this one on to you. (I already shared it with “Jen”:http://antijenicdrift.blogspot.com/2011/08/caramelized-onions-crockpot-style.html and, though I cooked ’em first, she beat me to the posting punch.)

“Slow-cooker caramelized onions”:http://islandvittles.com/2011/02/17/crock-pot-caramelized-onions/ were awesome.

I chopped up probably more onions than it called for, tossed in the called for oil & butter, snipped some thyme off of my super-survivor of a thyme plant, and put the whole thing on low.

Now, in the link, she cooks her onions on high so she can use them more quickly. I chose to cook on low so I didn’t really have to pay much attention to them. I didn’t need the onions for anything quickly, I just wanted to find a way to cook them such that they would last longer.

They took about 18 h for me, but I don’t know that they needed to. They may have been done much earlier, but I had a hard time telling. Partially because of the liquid in the bottom (which I eventually realized was fat, not water), and partially because I didn’t know what I was looking for.

The onions looked awesome & smelled great. I stirred them a bit, from time to time, in the last four or so hours, just to get a feel for everything. I don’t think they needed it, but it was a good way to get a sense of how far they’d cooked down & how much liquid was below them.

I have only used them in one dish so far (but I’ve done so about three times). I made a mac & cheese recipe that I’ll share with you tomorrow (also found on the web), and that was fabulous. Part of my goal was also to see how well they froze for future use, since I was figuring on making a very large batch later.

They freeze beautifully. I didn’t notice any degradation in texture, which was my biggest concern. I suppose when you slow-cook onions for 18 h, the water is mostly cooked away.

Anyway, I recommend you go make these if you also have onions coming out your ears. Or if ever you need a pile of caramelized onions.