Yum, onions

Last week I made two dishes that required deeply caramelized onions. At that point, the Boyfriend (who does not care for anything in which onion is the dominant flavor) was in California for an undetermined amount of time, so I figured I'd better jump on my opportunity to take down 5 lbs of onions in one fell swoop.

After thinly slicing an entire bag of onions and putting them in the biggest dutch oven I own, I added a stick of butter, turned the stove to low heat, and let the onions and butter do their thing. I cleaned the kitchen, then stirred the onions. Vacuumed the house. Stirred the onions. Read a few chapters of a book. Stirred the onions. Spaced out for a while. Stirred the onions. Basically, my entire afternoon was dedicated to killing time while the onions did their thing. It got pretty frustrating toward the end, because they smelled AMAZING.

By the time they were ready, it was time for me to get ready for dinner with The Boyfriend's family. Dinner was amazing, but that's a story for another time. So, the onions got scooped into a container so I could deal with them when I got home.

Back to the onions. Half stayed in the container, while the other half went to make French onion soup. So, back into the dutch oven they went, along with:

• 6 c. beef flavored broth*
  
• 2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 c. white wine**
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tsp. thyme

I let everything simmer for 30 minutes or so while I finished cleaning the kitchen, then put it in the fridge for lunch the following day. One of my co-workers joined me for lunch the next day. I didn't have any gruyere or swiss on hand, so we just ate it with hunks of bread and a salad. So tasty. While part of me thinks it's a pity The Boyfriend hates onions, I just remind myself that there's more leftovers for me.

* I used Better than Boullion's No-Beef base because that's how we roll at this spinster's house.
**White is what I had on hand. Next time I'll probably use red.

"So, what," you ask, "happened to the rest of those caramelized onions?"

Well, I'll tell you.

I made mujadara. It was so good that I think I've sworn off chicken and rice forever. Chicken and rice is my go-to dish when I'm sick, and although we've given up meat, chicken and rice is what I crave on days I feel lousy.

Mujadara is incredibly simple to make. You will need:

• caramelized onions
• 1 c. lentils
• 1 c. basmati rice

That's it. No, really. Cook the lentils and the rice, and mix everything together. It's mindbogglingly good. So simple. So delicious. My brother was in town for the evening and between the two of us, we took down almost the entire pot of mujadara. I had a little left over for lunch the next day, but that's because we went out to have a couple of beers. I'm pretty sure if we'd stayed in, there wouldn't have been any left.

Also, neat little trick I learned: caramelized onions can be frozen. Oh, and another quick note, both of these dishes can be made vegan by switching the butter for a spread like Earth Balance.