If you love caramelized onions, but not the hours of constant stirring, these Instant Pot caramelized onions are the shortcut you need. Ready in less than 30 minutes, they’re soft, jammy, deeply golden, and a magic ingredient to have in your fridge.
Table of Contents
- Quick Look: Instant Pot Caramelized Onions
- The Easiest Way to Make Caramelized Onions
- Ingredients You’ll Need
- How to Make Caramelized Onions in the Instant Pot
- Kate’s Top Tip
- Six Ways to Use Caramelized Onions
- Instant Pot Caramelized Onions FAQs
- Like this recipe? Try these simple guides next
- Fast, Instant Pot Caramelized Onions Recipe
Quick Look: Instant Pot Caramelized Onions
⏱️ Prep Time: 10 minutes
🍳 Cook Time: 20 minutes
⏳ Total Time: 30 minutes
🍴 Yield: 1 ½ cups
🛒 Key Ingredients: Onions, olive oil, balsamic vinegar
👩🍳 Method: Pressure cook, then quick sauté
🥘 Equipment: Instant Pot or any other electric pressure cooker
💪 Skill Level: Very easy
💃 Perfect For: Adding instant flavor to anything and everything.
The Easiest Way to Make Caramelized Onions
If you’re looking for a new way to use your Instant Pot, these very speedy, incredibly easy caramelized onions will be right up your street.
Caramelized onions are one of those magical ingredients that instantly make everything better. I love having a batch in my fridge to throw into sauces, sandwiches, salads, pasta, or to pile onto flatbreads and pizza.
But caramelized onions traditionally take time. At least an hour, but usually longer, and you need to watch and stir them during that time.
This fabulous Instant Pot technique cuts that time right down. It softens the onions quickly and brings out their natural sweetness, so all that’s left to do at the end is a quick sauté to get them gorgeously sticky and golden.
The whole process takes less than 30 minutes, and the Instant Pot does all the hard work for you:
- Just toss your sliced onions with a little seasoning.
- Pressure cook for five minutes.
- Quick release, then sauté for five or so minutes, until deeply sticky and golden.
It’s one of my favorite low-effort, high-reward kitchen hacks, and honestly, once you try it, I don’t know why you’d go back to the regular stove top version 👀
Ingredients You’ll Need
- Onions. You can use yellow, brown, white, or red onions for caramelized onions.
- Balsamic vinegar. I love this for a quick boost of deep, sweet, savory flavor, but you could skip it if you like.
- Olive oil. You can also use butter or a different oil (like avocado or vegetable oil).
How to Make Caramelized Onions in the Instant Pot
This is a step-by-step photo overview of how to make caramelized onions – the full recipe with ingredient quantities is at the bottom of the page for you.
- Slice your onions thinly, then add them to the bowl of your Instant Pot, along with the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.
- Mix the seasoning through the sliced onions. Place the lid on, and cook at high pressure for five minutes.
- Quickly release the pressure after the time elapses, then set your Instant Pot to sauté mode.
- Stir your onions until they’re deeply sticky and golden brown.
- And that’s it! Use your caramelized onions however you’d like.
Kate’s Top Tip
I always recommend making a big batch of caramelized onions – they’re INCREDIBLY useful to have in your fridge – and freeze beautifully too.
I love replacing regular diced onions in other recipes with these caramelized onions for an instant flavor boost.
Six Ways to Use Caramelized Onions
- Make these loaded cheeseburger bowls, or high-protein cheeseburger meatballs.
- Use them in these lovely caramelized onion and Gruyere phyllo cups for easy entertaining.
- Make cheeseburger smash tacos, or BBQ bacon cheeseburger smash tacos.
- Use them as a pizza topping – I like pairing them with Boursin cheese and bacon.
- Throw them into sauces – I love throwing them into tomato or meat sauces – they’re great in this cheesy bolognese rice bake.
- They make a brilliant topper for dips – try them piled onto creamy whipped feta, chicken Caesar dip, or use them in a loaded bread dipping oil.
Instant Pot Caramelized Onions FAQs
This method is A LOT quicker than the traditional stovetop version.
– Pressure cook for five minutes on high (plus the time it takes to come up to pressure).
– Sauté for five to ten minutes to finish.
So the actual cook time is roughly 20 minutes, compared to at least an hour on the stovetop.
You don’t! The process of caramelizing onions makes them sweet enough without adding sugar.
Baking soda is sometimes added when caramelizing onions to speed up the process, but I find it affects the texture and flavor, so skip it.
You sure can! I always recommend making a big batch because they are brilliant to have on hand and keep well:
– Store them in the fridge for up to one week.
– Freeze them for up to 3 months. I love freezing them in small portions, so they’re easy to throw into things – storing them in ice cube molds is a great way to do this.
Like this recipe? Try these simple guides next
If you make this recipe, I’d love to hear from you! You can leave a recipe rating and a comment below. And remember to tag @DishedByKate on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok if you’ve made one of my recipes. Seeing your recreations really makes my day 😊.
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Fast, Instant Pot Caramelized Onions
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 1 ½ cups 1x
- Diet: Vegetarian
Description
If you love caramelized onions, but not the hours of constant stirring, these Instant Pot caramelized onions are the shortcut you need. Ready in less than 30 minutes, they’re soft, jammy, deeply golden, and a magic ingredient to have in your fridge.
Ingredients
- 1 lb (500g) onions (yellow, brown, white, or red onions)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- Black pepper
Instructions
- Prep the onions. Peel and thinly slice the onions. I like to cut them in half, peel them, then slice them. You want them roughly 3mm thick.
- Add the onions to your Instant Pot. Add your sliced onions to your Instant Pot, along with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, 1 teaspoon of salt, and a very good grind of black pepper. Toss very well to combine and coat the onions in the seasoning.
- Pressure cook the onions. Secure the lid on your Instant Pot and set the valve to ‘sealing’. Cook on high pressure for five minutes.
- Release the pressure. After five minutes, carefully quick-release the pressure, then take the lid off. The onions should look super soft and lightly browned.
- Sauté the onions. Set your Instant Pot to sauté mode, then cook the onions, stirring occasionally, for about five minutes.
- Deglaze and finish caramelizing the onions. Pour about ⅓ cup of water into the Instant Pot, then use a wooden spoon to scrape any browned bits from the bottom of the pot (this is flavor!) Continue cooking for another five minutes, until the water evaporates and your onions are deeply golden, sticky, and jammy.
- Store your caramelized onions. Use the onions right away, or store them for later.
Notes
INGREDIENT NOTES: Use any onions here – yellow, brown, red, or white onions all work well. You could use butter instead of olive oil if you prefer.
STORAGE INSTRUCTIONS: The caramelized onions will keep for one week in the fridge, and you can freeze them for up to 3 months. I like freezing them in smaller portions so they’re easy to defrost, and you can throw them straight into sauces. Freezing them in an ice cube mold is great for this.
- Prep Time: 10
- Cook Time: 20
- Category: instant pot
- Method: pressure cook
- Cuisine: american
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 2 tablespoons
- Calories: 33
- Sugar: 2.4g
- Sodium: 233mg
- Fat: 1.4g
- Saturated Fat: 0.2g
- Unsaturated Fat: 1.2g
- Trans Fat: 0g
- Carbohydrates: 4.9g
- Fiber: 0.9g
- Protein: 0.6g
- Cholesterol: 0mg
