Braised Onion Pasta Sauce | Recipe

There is literally no better quarantine/self-isolation meal than this one.

All it takes is some basic ingredients, and TIME. What do we have more than enough of for the foreseeable future? Time over the stove.

I could go on and on about the state of the country, but I’m a little burned out by sharing my thoughts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The blog gets the leftovers for now, and right now my focus is on delicious distraction dishes.

I didn’t want to post two pasta dishes in a row, but honestly, we all need this right now.

This dish is a Food52 recipe I originally made with my friend Debbie years and years (and years) ago, when we also tried our hand at homemade pasta. Both of those things are great ideas, but it’s a little easier to do one at a time. Still delicious, even if our pasta looked kind of wonky!

…I used dried pappardelle this time, so the pasta looks way more profesh.

Ingredients:

Onions. Lots of ‘em. The recipe calls for 1.5 lbs but I use 5-6 medium sized onions which I think is closer to 2.5 pounds (or… more?) However, I don’t want my sauce to be mostly butter so I think 5-6 small/medium onions is just enough.
Pasta! Again, the recipe calls for 3/4 of a pound, but if you’re cooking for a whole family I would beef that up. In these photos I used 8oz of pappardelle and it was actually a great sauce to pasta ratio, so increase the onions if you’re cooking with a whole pound of pasta.
1/4 cup Medeira wine. If you don’t have it, cooking sherry will do in a pinch, but you should be able to find one of those options at your local grocery store.
BUTTAH. The recipe calls for 10tblsp which is more than enough, but don’t scrimp. Just don’t go overboard because if you eat all the sauce yourself, that’s 10 tablespoons of butter. Lolz.
Salt/pepper/sugar/parmesan.

The onions don’t need to be, and in fact shouldn’t be, diced small. You want long luxurious strands of caramelized onion wrapping around the pasta. I find the most manageable way is to slice the ends off the onion, slice it in half, and then slice 1/4” slices from each half.

Melt the butter in a wide, high-edge saucepan over medium high heat. Make sure there will be enough room for the onions when they are raw. They’ll cook down soon enough.

Plop in the onions and stir to coat well.

Cook the onions with just the butter until they are translucent. Once they are, add the 1 tablespoon sugar (I used turbinado raw sugar), and stir to combine the sugar.

Once the sugar has melted and combined, turn the heat to low and cook slowly, stirring occasionally, until the onions are jammy and dark brown.

It will take… a long, long time.

The recipe says an hour. That is a dirty lie, it will take at least two. This is the perfect Sunday afternoon dish. I don’t recommend starting it after 7pm on a weeknight, like I did when I took these pictures. You will be eating pasta at 10pm.

Once the onions have gotten to the aforementioned jammy state, add the 1/4 cup of Madeira (if you’re being classy) or cooking sherry (if you want to feel like a brit, that’s a thing they use, right?) and stir to combine well. Cook another couple of minutes.

Add the cooked pasta to the pan. I like to save about 1/2 cup of the pasta water before draining just in case I need to loosen up the sauce a bit, but it should be buttery and silky enough to coat the pasta on its own. You don’t want to water it down unless you absolutely have to, or if you cooked too much pasta by accident and need to make the sauce go farther.