this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (11 children)

Hey guys. I am no cook and I don't speak English natively. What the heck is caramelising onions?

I thought caramelising is when the sugar liquifies and you get caramel. So caramelising onions would be to cover them in lots of sugar and cooking them until they are covered in caramel.

But it sounds like you are just deep roasting them.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Caramelization is the process of sugars browning due to high heat. The actual reactions that are happening is a combination of sugars and their chains breaking down into smaller compounds and those smaller compounds recombining into other compounds, all these new compounds gives caramelized foods their distinctive colour and taste.

When making caramel the sugar liquification happens often in high enough temperatures for caramelization to occur. The process of sauteeing/high temperature cooking onions long enough involves the same exact reactions. In onions the bit longer chain sugars that dont taste sweet are broken down into simple sugars thus producing the sweet taste of caramelized onions and the further reactions produce the caramel colour and taste.

Tldr: caramelization is a group of chemical reactions and 'caramel' is basically a taste and colour that results from it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

caramelization is a group of chemical reactions

They're known as Maillard Reactions

[–] EmoDuck 8 points 1 month ago

The Maillard reaction is different from caramelization

Caramelization may sometimes cause browning in the same foods in which the Maillard reaction occurs, but the two processes are distinct. They are both promoted by heating, but the Maillard reaction involves amino acids, whereas caramelization is the pyrolysis of certain sugars.

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