Roasted Red Onions with Butter and Thyme

A good side dish for roast meats and other foods is roasted onions because this type of cooking makes them sweet and tasty. Roasted red onions work really well with these dishes and when thyme and butter is added, add something a little luxurious to the dish. You can of course use other herb butters including sage or oregano. It’s your choice but thyme is a great friend to an onion.

White onions are thought to be too big for roasting although at a push they have worked but it’s still red that tops the list. JO thought a big white onion was probably too daunting on the plate with all the other veg. I’m not that fussy nowadays!

This is a great version from Jamie Oliver which I’ve used from his first book called ‘The Naked Chef‘. It was also his 2nd recipe from the 1st episode of that series. That was one of the first books that got me cooking about 30 years ago when it first came out. I think I also tried these with his roast leg of lamb too which is how these roast onions came about. Shallots also work as well but they do lend a different and more subtle flavour to the roasted meat.

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Serves 6; Preparation time: 10 minutes

Equipment:

• baking trays
• cooking knives
• earthenware pots
• ovens
• pestle and mortar

Ingredients:

• 6 red onions of a similar size, medium to large will do nicely
• 4 – 5 ounces of salted butter at room temperature
• sprigs of thyme – the leaves are either pounded in a pestle and mortar or chopped finely.

Preparation:

1. Prepare the onions by removing the papery first layer of skin.
2. Produce a flat base for the onion so that it stands upright by cutting off the base.
3. Make 2 cuts in the top of the onion like a cross. The cut goes half way down but must not fully cut it otherwise the onion is quartered. Jamie goes with a 1.5 cm from the bottom.
4. Take off the skin and possibly the first layer of flesh.
5. Take a pestle and mortar and smash up some fresh thyme with a good pinch of salt.
6. Put all the smashed up thyme into a medium sized glass bowl. You can apparently add a squeeze of lemon juice – may be left over from preparing the sage/rosemary mix for roast leg of lamb say.
7. Squelch the butter in your hand  and add to the pounded up thyme. Mix it well into the thyme.
8. Open up the onion with the fingers. Jamie advocates making sure the butter mix  is deep into this opening and down the cracks. Smear it all over the onion.  This always made sense because it does then infuse right into the onion’s flesh on cooking. Seal with a small amount of butter.
9. Heat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/gas 6
10. Cook the onions on a tray or better in an earthenware pot on a layer of sea salt if they are being cooked separately. They usually get placed around any roast meat such as a chicken or pork during the roasting process but only after I’ve checked how the meat is going. Any longer and they are burnt to a crisp so they need to go in when the roast ahs been going for awhile.   Cook for between 30 and 35 minutes. They should come out slightly dull red and be soft. Some of the outer layers can get blackened but these are scraped away if needs be.