How to Cook Onions (Birista)

Onions are foundational

In Indian cooking, the darker and more full-flavored the dish, the longer they are cooked at lower temperatures. Depending on what you are cooking, you will cook them to varying degrees of doneness. I find one of the toughest things about cooking onions, but also the most gratifying, is that it takes patience. I am impatient generally. They smell so good and bring such sweetness and depth of flavor to anything you are cooking.

Cutting and avoiding the burn

Since I always seem to be in a hurry, I prefer to mince my onions very fine. So if a sauce is typically pureed in a blender, I can often avoid this step. You get to decide how smooth a sauce you prefer, and for most recipes, an impeccably silky sauce is not important.

I am not a big raw onion fan. The exceptions are sweet onions (Vidalia for example), mild shallots, and scallions. To reduce the burn you can pickle diced or sliced onions for 15 minutes or more, in lemon juice or vinegar. Another trick is to blanch the cut onions in boiling water for a minute or two which will do the same thing. Treated this way the onions won't be quite as crisp, but depending on how you plan to use them, that may be just fine.

How to cook onions

Cooking onions can be one of the most time-consuming parts of a dish, besides marination. The darker, and heavier the protein, the longer, and darker you will want to cook the onions. Thus, in a vegetable, legume, or fish dish, you are most often required to cook the onions just until translucent, or to a pink color, when using red onions. This step takes about 6 minutes on medium-high, with frequent stirring.

For Chicken

When cooking a chicken dish, it may be suggested that you cook the onions to a more caramelized stage. This takes between 8 to 15 minutes over medium heat, with water added as needed to prevent sticking.

For Beef or Lamb

If you are making a lamb or beef masala, the recipe may require a full-on melty, caramelized state, which can take 35 to 45 minutes.

Wonderful Birista

Another onion preparation is called birista/beresta, which is frying very thinly sliced onions in oil, until dark brown and crispy. Birista is used in biryanis, kormas, and pulaos. One of my favorite Indian food blogs, Cubes N Juliennes, has a great post on using and making this onion preparation that gives flavor and texture to many Indian dishes.

The good news

If you do a lot of Indian cooking, you can make a big batch of caramelized onions or birista, and pop it in the freezer in 1/2 cup batches. Then pull out when needed. Birista is especially handy to add flavor to fried rice, pizza, hamburgers, and more. It is worth keeping in mind that the larger the batch of onions you make, the longer it will take to cook. Should you be so ambitious, four pounds of onions will take up to an hour to cook. This, along with making ginger garlic paste, is the perfect Saturday or Sunday, putter in the kitchen, kind of project that you can do while catching up on your favorite podcasts. 

Measurement Notes

I typically call for any kind of onions in my recipes, though occasionally, like in my korma, yellow or white onions are preferred to keep the masala pale in color. Onions are one of the underpinnings of Indian cooking. Red small onions are most frequently used, and they are much smaller than the onions we find here in the U.S. So, I have used cups and grams throughout, as a more precise way to express measurements than just use 2 onions. Every now and then, a recipe calls for shallots, and as with onions, Indian shallots are much smaller than the ones I find. My calculation is that 2 American shallots equal 10 Indian shallots. Here are more benchmarks:

Onions:

1 cup of thinly sliced onions equals about 100 grams = 3.5 ounces

1 large onion, peeled = 3 cups chopped = 368 grams = 13 ounces

1 medium onion, peeled = 1 cup chopped = 122 grams = 4.5 ounces

1 cup finely minced onions = 225 grams = 8 ounces

Shallots:

If you are following Indian cooks like I am, it is important to know that Indian shallots are much smaller than the ones found here in the U.S. I would use 2 to 3 U.S. shallots to about 10 Indian shallots.

1 large U.S. shallot, peeled = 1/2 cup chopped = 71 grams = 2.5 ounces

Happy cooking!

~ Alonna

See the Notes below before you cook.​

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