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Snack & Appetizers

Sweet and Sour Cipollini Onions

Sweet and sour cipollini onions are a tasty appetizer made with honey and balsamic vinegar and scented with bay leaves, also great with drinks.
Recipe Sweet and Sour Cipollini Onions
  • Difficulty Easy
  • Preparation 10 minutes
  • Cooking 25 minutes
  • Servings for 2 people

Sweet and Sour Cipollini Onions are a very simple recipe from Piedmont for making a tasty appetizer quickly and easily. Tender, crisp little Borettane onions, flavored with the tangy, aromatic note of balsamic vinegar and the sweet, full-bodied one of honey. Bay leaves complete this sweet and sour onion recipe, perfuming the cooking juices with an unmistakable note of flavor.

Ideal as an easy appetizer course, these sweet and sour onions with balsamic vinegar can be made well ahead (even the day before), so they are ready when it is time to serve. Their real convenience is that they can be enjoyed in many different ways: at a get-together with friends, to nibble between one drink and the next, or as a side dish for meat such as roasts or braises. Nobody will be able to resist these Piedmont-style sweet and sour onions: you’ll see, they will disappear in no time.

If these skillet sweet and sour onions have made your mouth water, we have more onion recipes that might be just right for you: Onion Tarte Tatin, Tropea Onion and Balsamic Jam and Baked Giarratana Onions. If instead you are looking for more sweet and sour recipes, try making Sweet and Sour Chicken, Sweet and Sour Eggplant and Sweet and Sour Meatballs.

And now let’s put on our aprons and get cooking: today we are making tasty sweet and sour Borettane onions together.

Ingredients for 2 people

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Method

  1. To make the sweet and sour cipollini onions, first melt the butter over low heat in a skillet with the bay leaves. Add the Borettane onions, the honey and the water and cover with the lid.
  2. Cook the onions for about ten minutes over low heat, then remove the lid, add salt and let the cooking juices reduce until the onions are tender. Remove the bay leaves and transfer the sweet and sour onions to a serving dish to serve. Finally, remember to download our App with exclusive content and fewer ads!
    Sweet and sour Borettane onions

Variations and Alternatives

You can use any kind of honey for this recipe, bearing in mind that rhododendron honey, for example, has a more delicate flavor, while chestnut honey tastes stronger. If you like, you can use balsamic glaze instead of balsamic vinegar to make the cooking juices even thicker and creamier, or replace the honey with brown sugar.

Tips

The cooking time of the sweet and sour cipollini onions depends on the size of the onions, which should be soft but not falling apart. That’s why we recommend checking them during the last 10 minutes of cooking.

Storage

Sweet and sour cipollini onions keep in the fridge, in an airtight container, for 3-4 days.

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