Caramelized Onion Dip

This is the best caramelized onion dip of all time. You will never need another onion dip recipe. I never make boasts like that on this website, but with this recipe there is no other way to put it. This is THE ONE. Usually the recipes on TFimB are ideas I am playing around with that I have made a couple times to make sure it works. This one is different. It has evolved for a long time.

I have been making caramelized onion dips for most parties for the past 5 or more years. Somehow I never posted one on here.  The past year or so it has gotten REALLY good to the point that everyone at the party is usually asking for the recipe. I finally decided to measure and take the time to transcribe it. There is nothing crazy about the ingredients here, it’s just all about dicing the onions right, cooking them long enough, and using more than double the onions than the average onion dip recipe.

Let’s start with the onions

Start with 4 large onions.  I like to do 3 yellow and one white but honestly I doubt it makes much of a difference in the end.  Dice them small. Cook in butter with a healthy pinch of salt for about 45 minutes to an hour. Stir often and raise or lower the heat as needed to avoid burning but get a perfect brown color.

The below picture is the same pan after an hour. All those onions that were overflowing in the pan are now caramelized down to less than one cup of onions and ready to add incredible flavor to the caramelized onion dip.

If you have never caramelized onions before, this post is really helpful.

The base for this caramelized onion dip

I see a lot of caramelized onion dips with cream cheese but I don’t like it in mine.  I think that mayo, sour cream, and yogurt combine to get just the right balance of creaminess and tanginess in this dip. This is also the combo I do for homemade ranch.

Mixing the caramelized onion dip

Chopping the onion into a perfect small dice at the beginning assures that they will be cooked equally. They almost melt into this dip! You can see in this photo, there is about 1 and 1/3 cups of creamy base to 1 cup of onions. It’s a great ratio! There is also lots of chives, and some grated garlic, gochugaru, salt and pepper, and lemon. Like I said, nothing crazy, just a lot more onions and chives than most people use. Plus a little tang from the yogurt and lemon.

Serving the caramelized onion dip

Pour the caramelized onion dip into a bowl and top with more chives and gochugaru. Serve with kettle chips! I also like ruffles but regular chips might be too fragile to hold the thick dip. This would also be good with bread, pita, or naan!

It doesn’t look like much, but it will be the most talked about thing next time you have people over. I have also added other herbs when I have them on hand, or pepper flakes and hot sauce. You can’t really go wrong at this point.

My friends devoured this whole batch within an hour at my last party.  I went to put more out when the second wave of people showed up, and the whole backup container in the fridge was already gone!

Twists on this recipe

I mentioned I have added other herbs to this caramelized onion dip recipe. Fresh oregano is one of my faves. Thyme works really well too and you can add it to the onions to cook for the last minute or two of cooking.

The reason I use gochugaru for this is because I love seeing the flecks of red. Paprika can kind of just dissolve into the dip and turn everything red. I prefer the distinct flakes. If you want to just use paprika or chili powder, go ahead. It won’t change the flavor a ton.

I also have made this caramelized onion dip vegan several times before and it came out great. There are great vegan butters, yogurts, sour creams, and mayos and it is easy to just replace them one to one in this recipe.

If you want more fun dip ideas, check out my mortadella pimento, or this jerk squash hummus!