Onions That Don't Bite Back

By Andreas Viestad
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 16, 2008

It could happen to the best of us at the best of times. Instead it happened to me, on an ordinary Tuesday when I was in a hurry to feed my family. For the second time in just minutes, my eyes filled with tears. The chopped onions I had thrown into the pan at the last moment to accompany a main course that needed some support were just the opposite of what I wanted them to be. They were bitter and charred on the outside, still raw and sharp within.

It was a disaster of microscopic proportions, I admit. In my fridge I keep an arsenal of French pâtés and preserves that I turn to when all else fails. And even if I hadn't had backup, the worst that could have happened was that my wife and son would have had to suffer through a meal that just wasn't much fun. Still, I was upset. What made it so disturbing was the everydayness of the situation: that I had failed in the most basic of tasks, browning onions in the pan.

Onions are one of the most important building blocks of cooking. They are an essential part of salads and sauces, stews and savory pies. They give us depth of flavor, a hint of sweetness, a blast of pungency. But to most of us they are also a mystery. They are just there, quietly fulfilling the task we want them to. We don't notice or appreciate them until something goes wrong. Then we realize that we don't really know them at all. And that's just a crying shame.

Most recipes call for cooking onions slowly, and it was by doing no such thing that I went wrong. Even my grandmother could have told me that nothing good comes of rushing an onion. "It is done when it is done," she used to say, echoing Yogi Berra.

(Continued here.)