Creamed Pearl Onions Recipe (2024)

Trending Videos

Pearl onions don't have quite the sweetness of their larger counterparts, or even of the candy-sweet cipollini or shallots, but they do have a similar bite. What does this mean for cooking them? It means that the best pearl onion recipes are ones that tame the bite while bringing out the natural flavor of the onions withoutrelying on them to provide much sweetness.

For me that means one of two methods: glazed or creamed. Both methods start out the same: by peeling pearl onions.

The easiest way to peel pearl onions is to not bother doing it at all and just pick 'em up peeled and frozen. In ourblind taste test, we found that tasters were pretty evenly split on fresh vs. frozen onions. If you've had them frozen in the past and enjoyed them, there's no reason to switch.

But if you do want to start with fresh ones (they tend to have a slightly firmer texture and milder flavor when cooked), you can peel them by first cutting off the tops and bottoms with a paring knife and scoring one cut side with a small X in order to help you peel off the skin later on. After that, it's a quick dunk in a hot pot of boiling water just to loosen the outer layers. About one minute will do you. After a shower under the cold tap, they should be easy to peel with your fingers. (A short video appears below which demonstrates this process.)

Creamed onions are all about slow, slow cooking to produce a rich, mellow flavor. Some folks like to add a flour-and-butter roux to thicken and stabilize their creamed onions. As with other avenues in life, I prefer my creamed onionsau natural, with nothing but heavy cream to coat them with (and ok, a bay leaf to flavor that cream).

Another option is glazing your onions, which is even simpler. But whether you cream or glaze your onions, chopped parsley is a perfect partner.

November 2013

(Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate.)