We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about how restaurants manage to get freshly cooked risotto on the table in way less time than you’d ever manage at home.
We’ve even shared how they achieve juicy, mouthwateringly soft chicken breasts every time.
But if you’ve ever wondered (as I have multiple times) how the pros get sticky, sweet caramelised onions into so many menu items without standing over a steaming hob for hours, we might have some answers.
While some establishments simply slow-cook the bulbs the old-fashioned way hours ahead of service, a chef at Fallow restaurant shared the clever way he speeds up the process via TikTok.
What’s the secret?
Well, it starts with how the onions are peeled ― while most of us only remove the papery-est layer of skin, the Farrow cook removed the entire outer layer of the allium.
After slicing the peeled and halved onion thick enough to maintain some texture, the chef made a “cartouche” out of baking paper.
A cartouche is a sort of paper lid that can be placed directly onto food rather than hovering above it.
Because it’s more permeable than a metal or glass lid, it won’t boil what’s underneath it; it traps enough steam to speed up the cooking process, but not so much that it makes the onions watery.
The chef makes his cartouche by placing a rectangle of baking paper over the pan and folding it in half, then in quarters, then in eighths “until you have a really nice triangle.”
“In order to get the right width, just measure the length of the pan to the middle and then just cut around the outside ― you can just nick off the centre” of the baking paper to form a perfectly fitting cartouche.
I always use the same pan for frying and stewing, so I’ve made a few of these at once so they’re ready to go.
How do you apply this to the onions?
He then plops the onions into the fat, starting on a high heat.
Once they’ve lost their moisture, “place the cartouche on top and just slowly, slowly caramelise them” until they’re golden.
Once they’ve reached the perfect hue, you can deglaze the pan with vinegar and add some salt.
If you’ve ever been advised to add water to caramelising onions to speed up the notoriously-long cooking process, only to find the less-flavourful (though still faster) result a little lacking, you might want to give the cartouche a try.