The secret to cooking with onions

 Some of our most common vegetables are persistently underestimated. If you ever find yourself longing to cook a “good” vegetable, but there isn’t much in sight, get a deep pot and dig 8 to 10 plain, big, boring, dusty onions from your pantry, or the cold, dark onion bin at your nearest store. Then caramelise them.
                 

                 
 Cut off their tops, then cut them in half through their roots, then lengthwise into slices about a 5mm thick. Warm 3 tbsp butter and 3 tbsp olive oil in a big pot. When the butter is melted, add the mountain of onions, a small pinch of sugar, a big pinch of salt and a branch of fresh thyme, and stir it well. Cook the onions over a medium-low heat, stirring them occasionally.

 Add occasional sprinkles of water if the onions begin to stick. If they start to sizzle, lower the heat and cover the pot, then uncover it when the cooking has slowed.

 The cooking process will take around 45-60 minutes, and the whole mass will look soggy and unconvincing until right before the onions are done, at which point they melt completely into a golden jam and all of their sugars come out to toast.

 Now you have a perfect vegetable base for a series of dishes. If it’s cold out, make soup. Our expectations of onion soup are as dingy as our expectations of onions themselves, but there is no better varnishing of either than the fine and heady humbleness of a good recipe.

 In Nice, and all around the Ligurian sea, the same onions are spread on very flat pizzas, then sprinkled with fresh thyme, criss-crossed with anchovies, and dotted with tiny niçoise olives. The onions and anchovies get gloriously sweet and golden when the pies are baked. Or make omelettes and fill their centres with a spoonful of sour cream, caramelised onions and some toasted caraway seeds.