Swap Garlic With Another Bold Vegetable For Luxurious Confit

Confit (pronounced "kon-fee") is the name for a traditional French method of preservation. Typically this is done by cooking vegetables or meats slowly and at a low temperature while completely submerged in fat, though you can also confit fruits in sugar syrup. Duck and goose were the traditional meats that were cooked this way in the southwestern regions of France, but on a global scale, garlic confit may be even more popular.

While garlic cooked in pools of golden, bubbling olive oil is indeed delicious, there is another vegetable that might be just as tasty — onions. Just like with garlic, the end result will be luxuriously smooth. Alliums like garlic do well in confit because it tames the sharpness of their flavors and brings out the natural sugars present in them to make for a uniquely unctuous taste. The bite present in raw onions also does similarly well for this reason in a confit.

Once the onion confit is finished, it can be mixed with softened butter to make a fabulous spread for toast, but the onions are soft enough that you can smear them on bread alone. So if you are looking for a new twist on garlic confit, bake up some onions instead.

To make onion confit, all you need is a baking dish with high sides, onions, and a boatload of oil. Okay, maybe not a full boatload, but you need enough to fully submerge your onions.

Now, the low and slow method is the only way here — you'll want to heat your oven to about 250 degrees Fahrenheit. You can use quartered or sliced white, red, or yellow onions, but this method works particularly well with smaller cipollini or pearl onions. Place the onions in your baking dish and fill it with enough oil to completely cover them — anything from vegetable oil to olive oil will work here. Bake them in the oven for up to about two hours or until tender, making sure they don't take on anything more than a golden color. Browning would indicate the oil is too hot, and it can fry or burn the onions if left for too long.

After cooling, you are left with soft and sweet onions that can be used similarly to garlic confit as a topping for sandwiches, salads, dips, steaks, baked chicken, and more. Mash the onions into homemade condiments, use them to season roasted vegetables, or make a sweeter riff on this golden garlic toum. You will also have a bunch of richly flavored onion oil that you can use to saute with or even mix into salad dressings. Although confit was historically used as a method of preservation without refrigeration, it is safest to store your onion confit in the fridge, where it will keep for about two weeks.