Baked Onions

This cookbook is a recent addition to the hoard.  After a few weeks of finding nothing on my treasure hunting outings, I was ecstatic to see a vintage cookbook at a reasonable price.  When I opened the book and saw a recipe for sweet potato pone - which I had recently read is supposed to be pronounced as, "poon"-  I knew it was going home with me.

While thumbing through it, the recipe for baked onions caught my eye.  Farm Boy's mother used to make baked onions that were delicious (although I admit to being skeptical the first time she served me a whole onion...).  I hadn't thought about them in years, so when I came across this recipe, I decided it was time to bake onions again.

Alas, I didn't pay attention to the bit about cooking the onions first and then filling them.  I put the filling in and baked them with foil over the pan, then removed the foil for browning.  This resulted in a pan coated with really, really hard cooked cheese.  The onions were still delicious, but it required several soaks to get the pan clean.  The second time I made them, I buttered the dish first and added the cheese and bread crumbs only for the last 15 minutes of baking.  Much less mess!

It's nice to have baked onions back in our food rotation, especially when the locally grown sweet Noonday onions are available. Now I just have to not let them fall off my mental list again...

What's that on the bottom of the pan?  Oh, it's burned-on cheese.  Glad I'm not on the clean-up crew! 

Baked Onions (Printable recipe)

loosely interpreted from Crestview Culinary Collections Crestview Christian Church, Greenville, Texas (1962)

Ingredients

• 1 medium onion per serving
• Salt and pepper or seasoning mix of your choice (I have used both Greek and Cajun)
• grated cheese
• Panko bread crumbs tossed with melted butter

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375F.

Peel the onions.  Cut a small slice off the root ends, so that the onions will sit flat.  Cut the tops off and remove a cone-shaped piece from the inside of each onion.  Sprinkle the inside with the seasonings, then place the onion in a buttered oven-proof dish.  Place a top on the dish or cover with foil.  Bake for 30 minutes.

Remove the cover and fill each onion with grated cheese.  Top with buttered bread crumbs.  Bake, uncovered, for another 15 to 20 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and the bread crumbs are browned.