Home › Vegetables › Onions with Grated Cheese
Onions with Grated Cheese
Wash and peel 3 or 4 large sound onions, cut them into slices fully half an inch thick, and place them side by side in a single layer in a well-buttered baking-dish. Sprinkle a little pepper and salt over them, place them in a quick oven, and let them remain until tender; strew each piece of onion thickly with grated cheese, and return the dish again to the oven for a few minutes until the cheese has dissolved. Lift the slices carefully upon a hot dish, and serve immediately. A little mustard should be eaten with them. Time, half an hour to bake. A German recipe.
A simple baked onion dish that depends entirely on getting the slices fully tender before the cheese goes on. The original half hour is optimistic for half-inch slices in a dry dish.
- "Quick oven"Read this as roughly 400-450F. At that heat the onions will colour at the edges as they soften.
- Bake timeHalf-inch slices of a large onion rarely go tender in thirty minutes at that heat without help. Expect 40-50 minutes, and test with a knife tip through the centre rings before adding cheese.
- Keep them from dryingThe original relies on butter alone. Covering the dish for the first two thirds of the baking, then uncovering, gives reliably tender onions without scorched outer rings.
- Choice of onion"Large sound onions" most likely indicates firm yellow cooking onions, the ordinary storage kind. Sweet varieties such as Vidalia collapse and weep more; they work but give a softer, wetter result.
- The cheeseThe recipe does not say which cheese. A firm, dry grating cheese works best: Emmental or another hard Swiss-style cheese, or cheddar. Anything very fresh or high-moisture will slacken rather than "dissolve".
- Melting stageFive to eight minutes is enough once the cheese is on. Under a hot broiler it is faster still, but watch it, as grated cheese over onion browns suddenly.
- Lifting them outUse a wide, thin spatula and slide it right under each slice. Baked onion rings separate readily, and the dish is meant to reach the table as intact rounds.
- Yield and the mustardThree or four onions serve four as a side dish. The mustard is not optional decoration -- a sharp prepared mustard cuts the sweetness of the onion and the fat of the cheese, and a German table mustard or a Dijon suits it.