Making caramelized onions?

[dogmom327]

I'm going to make caramelized onions for the first time today. I have a bunch of walla walla onions. I need to cook them in as much fat as possible (I know that sounds weird). I have ghee, coconut oil and high quality/pastured lard on hand.

Any idea how much fat I can use (more is better in this case)? I have probably 6-7 lbs. of onions.

[tjsmama]

I JUST did this for the first time the other night. I used probably 2-3 tbsp for one medium onion. I'm not sure exactly how much it was, because I had cooked bacon first and just drained most of the grease out of the pan, leaving some to cook the onion in. I will say that depending on how you're going to use the onion, you probably don't want to use TOO much fat. I had a little leftover, and stored the onion in the fridge until the next day and saw that there was a good bit of solidified fat on the onion when i got it out.

[cristeen]

If you have 6-7 pounds of onions... I'd start with at least 1/2 a cup, and expect to add more after about 5 minutes. They'll act like little sponges and suck up all the fat, but you don't want to add too much at first or else they'll fry and not caramelize.

In fact, you may want to do it in batches - since that's a lot of onion to fit in one pan.