My husband shared a Martha Stewart recipe on Facebook for grilled Gruyère sammiches with onion jam and, well, I was in!
Martha had a preferred source for her onion jam, but, well, I had onions in the house after all, and an afternoon with not much else going on, so I went, quicklikeabunny, to da google…
and found an assortment of recipes and methods, from kinda basic to wicked involved and fussy, so…
I took a bit from here, combined it with some stuff from there, and then moved it all around to suit my tastes and pantry; and…
we were both well pleased with the result.
This was frikkin’ amazing in our grilled cheese sammiches, but, go ahead and try it with salmon or lamb or roasts or mebbe even just on a cracker with some cheese.
INGREDIENTS
•1/4 cup canola oil
•1/2 cup sugar
•4 cups diced red onion (about two onions)
•1/2 tsp dried parsley
•1 bay leaf
•1/4 tsp dried rosemary
•1/4 tsp Seasoned Salt
•1/4 tsp black pepper
•1/2 cup sherry vinegar
Note: if you don’t already have one, I would strongly suggest getting a good non-stick pan before making this. It will make caramelizing the sugar (and later clean-up) a lot more pleasant.
Warm the canola oil over medium-low heat for a couple of minutes, then add the sugar, stirring more or less constantly until the sugar has melted into the oil and turned a lovely golden brown.
If you have some clumps of solid sugar in the mix, don’t worry too much, they will dissolve into the jam later on in the process.
Add the onion, parsley, bay leaf, rosemary, Seasoned Salt, and black pepper to the pan and continue to cook over medium-low, stirring often, until the onions are tender and most of those sugar pieces have dissolved into the mixture.
Remove the bay leaf and stir in the vinegar.
Note: if you don’t have sherry vinegar, feel free to substitute red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar.
Cover the pot and continue to cook for another 30 minutes or so, stirring every now and then, until the contents have reduced and thickened into a nice jam consistency.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool before transferring to a jar and stashing in the fridge for up to one week.
I got a little under two cups of jam.