How to Caramelize Onions- Birista -Crisp Fried Onions for biryani ?

Caramelized onion is known as birista in hindi .Caramelizing onions is just cooking them so they brown deeply. It's easy to do and results in cooked onions with a dark, sweet, browned flavor. And no wonder, because you're really turning the sugars within the onion to caramel - hence the name.

Caramelizing onions, by slowly cooking them in a  oil until they are richly browned, is a wonderful way to pull flavor out of the simplest of ingredients. Onions are naturally sweet; and as caramel comes from the simple cooking of sugar, when you slowly cook onions over an extended period of time, the natural sugars in the onions caramelize, making the result intensely and wonderfully flavorful.

You can use onions prepared this way  for garnishing chicken biryani,  egg dum biryani ,  vegetable  biryani,dum ka murgh ,on top of steak, or for onion soup, tarts,meat patties, kebabs, cutlets or burgers, pizza, or onion dip.



WHAT IS CARAMELIZATION ? (Source - wiki)
Caramelization (British English: caramelisation) is the browning of sugar, a process used extensively in cooking for the resulting nutty flavor and brown color. As the process occurs, volatile chemicals are released, producing the characteristic caramel flavor.

Like the Maillard reaction, caramelization is a type of non-enzymatic browning. However, unlike the Maillard reaction, caramelization is pyrolysis, as opposed to reaction with amino acids.When caramelization involves the disaccharide sucrose, it is broken down into the monosaccharides fructose and glucose

Ingredients :
2 medium onion
2 tablespoons cooking oil
 a pinch of salt

METHOD:

1. Slice the top off of your onion. Cut the onion in half from top to bottom and peel it.

 

2.Place half of the onion, flat side down, on a clean, flat cutting surface. Slice the onion into half-rings.



3.Your onions should be sliced evenly lengthways (i.e. from top to bottom, as you would cut an apple).

4.Add ½ teaspoon salt (adding salt to the onions at this stage makes them caramelise better.Mix salt with onions.
5.Place a large skillet or saucepan on the stove and add a small amount of fat. Heat the oil to a medium-high temperature.

6.when oil is hot, add onions to frying pan .Fold onions into the oil so that they are thoroughly coated, reduce heat to medium.



7.Continue to stir the onions. After a minute or so, you will notice that they might have begun to stick to the bottom of the pan and turn dark in color. This is okay--in fact, it's what
should happen.


8.Leave the onions to cook, they will turn golden slowly about 3–5 minutes.



9 Onions start turning golden, keep an eye on them and keep folding so they don’t burn about 7–11 minutes.

10 Continue stirring and watch as the onions' color turns darker and darker.


11 If you feel that the onions are sticking to the bottom of the pan too much, add a very small amount of water, broth, or wine to the pan and stir vigorously; this is called "deglazing." The water will evaporate almost immediately while loosening the onion slices.

12.Onions are now perfectly caramelised and the oil starts to separate .

13.Gather caramelised onions away from the oil with a spoon  & drain the oil.

14 Place birista on a tissue paper so that excess oil gets absorbed . Now your Caramelized Onions /birista is ready to use .