Onion jam

Since I wrote about bread a little while ago, I might as well write about onion jam. Or onion relish, if you prefer to call it that.

I found a recipe in a Donna Hay magazine last year, and made up a small amount of it. The recipe calls for 2kg of sliced onions, but I found that I could only slice about half that before having to go outside and lie on the lawn. The relish was good, and it didn't last that long before it was all gone.

J has been at me for months to make some more, but I keep on forgetting to buy a reasonably sized bag of onions at the markets. I don't want to buy a 20 kilo bag, but a 2 kilo bag just ain't enough for both making relish and serving our normal weekly cooking needs.

Our problem was solved yesterday. A friend of ours regularly mans a BBQ at Bunnings in order to raise money for the school that his kids go to. After the BBQ, he had a leftover bag of sliced onions. The bag of onions had come from some sort of food supply company, and it must have weighed 20 kilos when full. I got the remaining 5 kilos.

We did make one small boo-boo with it - we left it in the kitchen overnight. It wasn't sealed that well. I had to get up at 4am and go to the kitchen, and by that point, the house stunk. The bag made a quick exit into the backyard at that point.

The recipe is pretty simple. You put 1/3 of a cup of olive oil in a big pot (I use a big Le Creusett pot) and heat it to medium/hot on the top of the stove. I have no idea what "medium/hot" means, so I just turn the dial to 6 (it goes up to 10).

When the oil has warmed up, add 2kg of onions, stir a bit and then put the lid on. You then cook them like that for 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so. The idea is that they caramelise and go dark brown, but not burn.

I think this only works if you use lots of onions - like 2kg worth. If you dick around with just a few onions, like when you are cooking onions to go on a steak, its really hard to get them to caramelise properly.

After 40 minutes, you take the lid off and pour in one cup of brown sugar and one cup of red wine vinegar, stir, and wait for it to thicken (10 more minutes of cooking). You also add salt and pepper to taste. I wish the recipe would say how much salt - I added two teaspoons, and I am not sure if that was enough.

I had so many onions, I did two batches. The first batch went really watery after I added the vinegar (possibly the result of them being cut and then left in a bag overnight), so I had to cook them for a good half an hour further than you normally do. The second batch didn't need that.

The first batch though is deliciously gooey, whilst the second is still a bit tough and stringy. That could also be because the onions that I used where all big white onions, when I think you are supposed to use small to medium brown onions. I might cook the second batch for another half an hour and see how it goes.

We now have two big, bit pots of relish, and we need to find some more pots to hold the second batch.

Easy, quick and tasty.