Melted Onions Recipe

Onions as a side dish? Yes, especially when they’re deeply caramelized, soft and sweet. That’s the case for these melted onions from Lindsay Maitland Hunt’s cookbook, Help Yourself. They’ve been a surprise hit for PureWow since they debuted in 2020, owing to the fact that they’re simple and eye-catching, and require only four ingredients (including salt and pepper).

“I love how onions become meltingly tender and sweet after a long roast in the oven,” she writes, “but it’s not such an elegant look to plop roasted onions on a platter. Here, the petals stay together in a pretty rosette, thanks to a muffin pan. If you don’t have one, use a small, rimmed baking sheet or an oven-proof dish and pack the onions tightly together.”

PureWow food editor Taryn Pire tried the recipe at home and can attest that everyone at the table will swoon at first bite. “The onions taste super sweet and jammy and make a tasty foil for sharp black pepper, rich butter and a touch of salt,” she says. “I started with the smallest yellow onions I could find in hopes that they’d fit in my muffin tin. Most were too big to fit snugly at the start, but they shrunk significantly in the oven anyway.” You can read more details in the photo carousel, too.

Pair them with steak, roasted potatoes, burgers, dressed greens, Italian sausage or charcuterie.

^{Excerpted from Help Yourself © 2020 by Lindsay Maitland Hunt. Photography © 2020 by Linda Pugliese. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.}