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Onion paste

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Onion paste

Overview
I think we need to find a cool name for this. “Onion bomb” is probably not a good choice… I’ll work on it. This creation has come from my mastery of French Onion soup. We discovered that it worked REALLY well as a base for sauces – awesome cooked with onion, mushroom and a bit of butter and cream. So, necessity being the mother of invention, here I present my onion paste – designed to be stored in the freezer in individual portions and used as needed!

Change it around, mix things up. Second time around I added more onions, fresh sprigs of thyme after the wine, a lot more stock (I had fresh stuff) and a generous splash of cognac.

Use as a flavour base for things like my creamy onion pasta Alfredo! I should come up with better naming conventions for my food…

Makes 1.4 L of paste – fits 7 200 ml jars perfectly!

Time
3-4 hours to caramelise the onions, plus another 30-40 minutes.

Ingredients
2kg brown onions, sliced (4-6mm slices, don’t be too fussy)
200g butter
10 cloves of garlic, smashed then roughly chopped
3-4 bay leaves
½ ts cracked pepper
½ ts umami salt
100ml (or a generous splash) of white wine
500 ml beef stock (I used Maggie Beer, but would use home made for a soup)

Equipment
Thermomix or immersion blender

Method
1 – Melt the butter in a 5-6 litre pot

2 – Add the onions, sprinkle with cracked pepper and salt. Cook over a medium-low heat for 2-4 hours, stirring infrequently to encourage caramelisation.

3 – When caramelised, deglaze with the wine before adding the beef stock and bay leaves. Simmer for 30 minutes.

4 –  Blitz the onion mixture in the Thermomix, speed 10 for 50 seconds. Spoon into plastic jars, containers or giant ice cube trays for freezer storage.

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