Sweating, sautéing, browning

✅ The essentials

Almost every dish starts with an onion in a little fat, and there are three ways to cook it depending on what you want. Sweating is cooking it gently without any colour: it turns tender and translucent, and flavours a sauce or a soup with no grilled taste. Sautéing is a little hotter, until it is lightly golden. Browning is on high heat, for the brown colour and the grilled taste, on meat or vegetables. The difference is the heat and the time, not the move.

🍳 The method

1. Heat a tablespoon of oil, or a knob of butter, in the pan or the pot. The butter foams, the oil shimmers: it is ready.
2. To sweat: low to medium heat, the sliced onion, a pinch of salt that helps it release its water, and you stir now and then for five to seven minutes. It turns transparent and soft, with no colour. That is the start of a soup, a risotto, a white sauce.
3. To sauté: medium heat, seven to ten minutes, stirring now and then. It turns blond, golden on the edges, with a sweeter taste. That is the start of a bolognese, a stew, a stir-fry.
4. To brown: high heat, little fat, the pan not too full, and you leave it alone for a minute or two before stirring. That is the brown crust on meat, on mushrooms, on sautéed potatoes.
5. Garlic comes at the end, a minute before the next step: it burns faster than onion and turns bitter.

📏 The landmarks

• Sweat: five to seven minutes, low to medium heat, translucent.
• Sauté: seven to ten minutes, medium heat, golden blond.
• Brown: two to three minutes per side, high heat, brown.
• A pan that is too full never browns, it boils. Cook in two batches if needed.

⏱️ How long it takes

Five to ten minutes, during which you cut what comes next.

🩹 If it goes wrong

The onion took too much colour when you wanted to sweat it: add a spoon of water, lower the heat, it does not matter for a sauce. It went black: start again, it is one onion and two minutes, because the burnt taste will make the whole dish bitter. It does not brown at all: the heat is too low or there is too much in the pan.

🍽️ Make it tonight

The grandma-style bolognese sauce: onion, carrot and celery in small dice, sautéed before the meat.