28 Savory Onion Recipes

These simple, incredibly flavorful onions from chef Nancy Silverton are baked in the oven until they’re falling-apart tender. Fennel seeds punch up the crispy breadcrumb topping.

Hugue Dufour makes a pork broth for his French onion soup using bacon for smokiness and a pig's foot for richness. Omit the pig's foot for a lighter broth.

Look for small, young, tender organic fennel bulbs.

The secret to this salad is using big, juicy sweet onions like the Vidalias that Linton Hopkins favors, which get nicely charred on the grill.

At Harry's Pizzeria, Miami chef Michael Schwartz uses brown ale and whole-wheat flour to flavor his chewy crust. Toppings can range from potato and house-cured bacon to this pie, made with Pernod-braised fennel, caramelized onions and Trugole, a semisoft Italian cheese that melts beautifully.

This fresh-tasting soup can be prepared with scallions or green garlic (which is harvested before the cloves have matured and has a subtle garlic flavor). A swirl of buttermilk mixed with fresh goat cheese at the end adds a nice tang.

Rich-tasting caramelized onions combined with Madeira make a spectacular sauce for chicken livers. Serve with rice or over toast so you won't miss a single drop.

At Cavallo Point, school director Kelsie Kerr teaches the basics of preparing seasonal recipes. The buttery dough for her savory onion tart, for instance, is great with all kinds of fillings, like fruit.

The onion dip can be covered and refrigerated for up to 3 days. Serve with potato chips.

Fontina, Roquefort, and Parmesan form the sassy cheese trio here. Their piquant flavor blends delectably with the pimientos and sweet golden onions.

For their delectably crusty and chewy pizzas, Top Chef contestants Betty Fraser and Cliff Crooks adapted a bread recipe from star chef Jamie Oliver—a recipe Fraser had memorized—then covered it with slices of nutty Fontina cheese, prosciutto and sautéed onions.

"There's nothing better than a simple tempura of a primo vegetable," states Peter Hoffman. For this sensational version, he coats thick onion rings in an ultralight batter and quickly fries them.

Roast for about 30 minutes, until tender, tossing once.

One of Michel Bras's favorite garnishes is a sweet-savory combination of ground almonds, dehydrated olives and demerara sugar (a coarse, raw cane sugar with a subtle molasses flavor); the taste reminds him of licorice. Here it serves as a topping for buttery-soft, slow-roasted whole onions.

Chef Joshua Skenes of San Francisco's Saison employs a full-time forager to find ingredients like the wild onions Skenes pickles and serves alongside house-made rabbit terrine. The garnish: wild rosemary blossoms and fried foraged greens—chickweed, oxalis, miner's lettuce. The recipe here is a simplified version.

Inspired by the sliders at White Manna in Hackensack, New Jersey, Adam Fleischman creates beef patties by flattening balls of ground meat on the griddle.

This stunning recipe calls for a head of Boston lettuce per person, resulting in a soup with pure, intense flavors that is then poured over a delicate custard. It's a riff on petits pois à la française, the classic French dish of peas, lettuce and spring onions braised in butter and chicken stock.

This version of the soup calls for truffle-infused pecorino cheese (sold in any good cheese shop), which is melted to form a marvelously gooey topping for the oniony broth.

This recipe is as fun to eat as monkey bread (little balls of yeast dough that are baked in a pan together, then pulled apart at the table) but a lot less time-consuming to make. Grace Parisi spreads her buttery biscuit dough with a savory onion-Gruyère mixture, stacks layers of it sideways in a loaf pan, then bakes it until golden and fluffy.

Mike Price drizzles blood orange slices with a Greek olive oil called Iliada. Pressed from kalamata olives, the oil's gentle fruitiness and lack of bitter finish make it ideal for salads. If blood oranges aren't available, navel oranges or tangerines are excellent substitutes.

Called cipollini agrodólce in Italian for their sweet-and-sour vinegar glaze (agro means sour; dólce, sweet), these soft and tangy onions are a fantastic accompaniment to any rich roast meat.

Inspired by the pickled pearl onions that became a family tradition ("Mom just served them straight out of the jar and threw a toothpick at them"), chef Barbara Lynch bakes fresh pearl onions in a mixture of cream, garlic, shallots and bacon, then tops it all with a crispy panko crust.

F&W's Grace Parisi reinvents the classic grilled cheese.

This clever riff on the classic creamed peas and pearl onions combines onions with edamame (soy beans) and a topping of panko (Japanese bread crumbs). To make the crumb topping extra crispy, the dish is quickly toasted under the broiler before serving.

Chowchow is a sweet-and-sour relish. The chowchow here is studded with pieces of charred and crunchy onions, which have a smoky flavor that's delicious with grilled sausage. The chowchow is perfect with all types of grilled meat or poultry or as a hot dog relish.

Grilling guru Francis Mallmann is a master of efficiency. Here, he creates a delicious first course using only a cast-iron skillet, first toasting the bread in it, then quickly searing the mushroom, onion and garlic toppings right after.

In Fresh India, Meera Sodha uses sweet-and-sour tamarind paste to turn plain rice into a show-stealing side. The tamarind is essential here; find it at well-stocked grocery stores and Indian markets.

Chef Jim Christiansen likes grilling rich pork collar or blade chops because they stay nice and juicy. To make them sweet and sticky, he glazes the chops on the grill with a deeply flavored onion ash and barley malt syrup.