Creamy Sweet Onions — The Kitchen Asks Only That You Begin

The kitchen is teaching me, again, what it taught me when Paul died: cook anyway. Eat anyway. Continue anyway. The kitchen is patient. The kitchen does not care that I am tired. The kitchen does not care that I am sad. The kitchen says: turn the stove on. Heat the oil. Chop the onion. Begin. The kitchen has always been the wisest member of this household. The new Sven (Sven the Second) is six months old now. He chewed through my favorite shoe. He jumped on the kitchen counter. He is the worst-behaved dog Duluth has ever produced. I love him completely. He has the energy of a small storm. He is the right thing for the kitchen right now. The first Sven was a steady ocean. This Sven is a storm. Both are necessary in their seasons. Sophie called. Her voice was thick. She said she was sorry about Mamma. She said she had been trying to type a text for an hour and could not. She called instead. We did not say much. We did not need to. Sophie has been to enough funerals at this point to know that the calls after are not for words but for the audible presence of a person on the other end of the line. The presence is the love. The presence is the bridge. Sven the First died this week. He was fourteen. The vet came to the house. I held him on his bed. He went peacefully — a long sigh, then nothing, his eyes closing slowly. The house is silent in a way I had forgotten existed. The dog has been the soundtrack of every room for fourteen years. The house without him has had to relearn its own acoustics. I cooked Wild rice soup this week. Wild rice from the Fond du Lac band, sold at the co-op in fifty-pound bags, harvested by hand. The rice simmers in chicken stock for forty minutes until the grains split and curl like commas. I add carrots, celery, onion, mushrooms, a sprig of thyme, then cream at the end and a fistful of parsley. The pot makes eight quarts. Half stays in the kitchen. Half goes to the freezer. The Damiano Center on Thursday: wild rice soup, fifty gallons. Gerald helped me ladle. He told me about a regular who got into a sober house this week — a man named Curtis, who has been coming for soup for eight years and who has been sober for forty-three days now. The soup did not get him sober. The soup was there when he was hungry. The soup is the door, again. The door is the chance. I read one of Paul's books in the evening. The Edmund Fitzgerald chapter. I have read it forty times now. The fortieth time is no less affecting than the first. The transmission still gives me a chill: "We are holding our own." Captain McSorley's last known words. The chapter ends with the wreck on the bottom of Lake Superior, and the men still inside, and the lake refusing to give up its dead. Paul read this chapter to me in 1989, on a winter evening, in the living room. I did not know then that he was reading me his own future. It is enough. Paul is not here. Mamma is not here. Pappa is not here. Erik is not here. They are all here in the kitchen, in the smell, in the taste, in the wooden spoon and the bread pans and the marble slab. The dead are not where the body went. The dead are in the kitchen. It is enough.

The soup was already in the freezer — half for here, half for the Damiano Center — and the house was still very quiet without Sven, and I needed something else to do with my hands. Creamy sweet onions are what the kitchen offered next. The onion is always where I begin, and beginning is the whole instruction. You caramelize them low and slow, which is its own kind of lesson: patience, heat, time, and they become something entirely different from what they were — softer, sweeter, more themselves. That felt right for the week.

Creamy Sweet Onions

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 40 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 3 large sweet onions (Vidalia or Walla Walla), halved and thinly sliced
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup chicken broth (or vegetable broth)
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 1/4 teaspoon white pepper
• 1 tablespoon fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped

Instructions

1. Slice the onions. Halve each onion through the root end, then slice crosswise into thin half-moons, about 1/4 inch thick. The thinner the slice, the more evenly they’ll cook down.
2. Melt the butter. In a wide, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-low heat, melt the butter until it foams and the foam begins to subside. Do not rush this step.
3. Cook the onions low and slow. Add all the sliced onions to the pan. They will seem like too many — they are not. Stir to coat in butter, then spread them out. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring every five minutes, for 20 to 25 minutes, until the onions are deeply softened, golden, and beginning to caramelize at the edges. Season with 1/2 teaspoon salt halfway through.
4. Deglaze with broth. Pour in the chicken broth and increase heat to medium. Stir, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Let the broth reduce by half, about 3 to 4 minutes.
5. Add cream and thyme. Pour in the heavy cream and add the thyme leaves. Stir to combine. Simmer gently for 4 to 5 minutes, until the cream thickens slightly and coats the onions. Taste and adjust salt and white pepper.
6. Finish and serve. Transfer to a warm serving bowl or serve directly from the skillet. Scatter the fresh parsley over the top. Serve alongside crusty bread, roasted chicken, or simply on its own with a spoon.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 215 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 18g | Carbs: 13g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 290mg