Today is an old favorite! As the title suggests, I'm going to teach you fine readers how to make my delicious, mouth-watering Caramelized Onion Dip. I've been making this dip for... 3-4 years? Yeah, that sounds about right. This is great for parties, Sunday football or, in my case, when you're family begs you to make it. Haha It's loaded with onions (no duh, Rach), Parmesan and cream cheese, and mayo because... we live in America. But seriously, if you wanna switch out healthy options, plain Greek yogurt is a perfect substitute. Adds a little "tang" too it. But I come from a family of indulgence. Haha
Let's get started shall we? Here's what you'll need:
4 med/large onions (sweet yellow)
1/2 cup cream cheese
1/2 cup mayo
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
2 tbsp butter
salt and pepper to taste
Optional: 1/4 cup white wine
Now I should say first and foremost that this recipe takes patience. Like, a lot of it. Onions take a while to caramelize and reduce down properly. Another thing I should mention is that I highly recommend using a cast iron skillet. They retain heat very well and will last you forever if you take care of them properly. It's life changing.
Ok! Ready to dice those onions?!?! You can take the easy way out and grab a food processor and pulse them a few times to get a medium sized dice. Or you can do it by hand! You want the pieces to be about as big as your thumb nail. Easy bite sized pieces.
After you're done chopping up your onions, you should check yourself in the mirror to see if you've aged at all. Haha Now grab your pan/skillet and heat it up to a low/med heat on the stove. We're slowly bringing our onions to caramelization. You do it too fast on a super high heat, you get uneven color, burnt pieces, and the onions aren't tender at all. Not good eats!
Toss in your diced onions, butter and salt/pepper. Mix around and let it be! I repeat, let it be. If you've got your heat low enough, you shouldn't have to worry about anything sticking to the bottom of the pan. Right now we're "sweating" our onions. Drawing the moisture out. This is where that patience of yours comes in handy! It's worth while in the end.
You should stir your mixture around every 5-10min or so. Once you start to see a translucence in your mix, turn up the heat a tiny bit. You're going to do this process a few times. Sweat it, stir it, turn up the heat. Remember that the hotter it gets, the more frequent your stirring should become! This is what mine looked like after about 25min:
Just a little bit of color peaking through but not nearly done yet. Haha
Pro tip: Once you've got some golden colors in your mix, you can add a sprinkling of sugar. It helps the caramelization process.
After about 40min, turn your heat up to med/high (like a 7/10) and keep a close eye on it. Stir every min or so, making sure to scrape the bottom of the pan and pick up those delicious bits. Should kinda sorta look like this:
Now would be the time to preheat your oven to 350°. If you've decided to add the white wine, do so! Splash it in and stir it around, scrapping up every bit from the bottom.
Pro tip: This is called "de-glazing" your pan.
Wine isn't necessary, but it elevates your cooking skills, adds great flavor, makes you look cool in front of your friends. Haha Once you've got your wine mixed in, turn off your heat and add your onions to your cheese mixture. But Rach! You never told us how to make the cheese mixture! Never fear...
Grab a big mixing bowl and combine your mayo, Parmesan cheese and cream cheese. It helps if your cream cheese is room temperature, makes it easier to mix. You can also add a little more pepper if you like. Mix those ingredients together. You wanna make sure everything is evenly incorporated because if you just add the onions and mayo/cheeses one at a time, mix it around a little and through it in the oven, each bite will be different. It's better to have everything pre-mixed so that when you stir in your onions, each bite has consistency/the same uniform taste. It should look like this:
Yes, that's a 9x13 pan. I probably should've mentioned that. Haha Pour your delicious mixture into your pan and spread it out evenly. Pop it into the oven for 30min or until the top is GBD. Golden, brown and delicious. You'll hear that term quite a lot from me.
Let it cool for 5-10min and dig in! It's savory and warm and gooey and I should probably check to see if I have any left. My family is a bunch of heathens. Haha
Happy cooking!
R.
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