method #1 -- shorter cooking time, fewer onions

Start by peeling your onions and slicing them into good thick slices. (Thin slices frizzle and burn.) Separate the slices into rings.

Film the bottom of your frying pan with the appropriate oil. (Use olive oil for Mediterranean, North African, and Middle Eastern cooking; peanut oil for the cooking of Sub-Saharan Africa, the Subcontinent, and the Far East; and a neutral oil like canola for other kinds.)

Lay the rings in a single layer in the frying pan. It's OK to distort the rings, and it's also OK to put smaller rings inside of bigger ones. You're aiming for a sort of loopy mosaic. Don't crowd the rings, and don't lay down more than a single layer.

Put the pan over a medium flame and leave it alone. Don't fiddle with the onions; you're not stir-frying. When the delicious onion smell fills your kitchen, lower the heat and stand watch over the pan. You want the onions to go right to the edge of burning but not burn. Underbrowned is not a problem, underbrowned can be repaired with more browning. Burnt is forever.

I think a kitchen tongs is the best tool for flipping the caramelized rings, or a tongs plus a pancake turner.

Flip the rings as they get dark brown around the edges. The second-side arrangement is much easier to manage than the first because the onion rings have become all floppy. When you have flipped all the rings to their second sides, turn the heat up to finish off the job, stand vigilant over the pan, and as each ring browns on the second side, lift it out of the pan onto a plate you have waiting.

Margaret mentioned to me that she adds sugar to the pan to hasten the caramelization ‑‑ ingenious! I'll try it myself next time.

method #2 -- longer cooking time, more onions

If you have a whole lot of onions that need caramelizing at the same time, Paula Wolfert tells about starting them on the stovetop and then finishing them in the oven (Mediterranean Grains and Greens, HarperCollins, 1998, page 181).

Taking off from her method, I cook them entirely in the oven.

I slice the onions into thick slices, separate the rings, and then dump the rings (no careful layering) into an ovenproof pan, cover them with the appropriate oil, as above, and put the pan in a cold oven.

I set the oven heat to 325°F and when the oven reaches temperature, I set an alarm to ring in one hour.

After the hour is up, I keep lowering and lowering the oven temperature (fanning out the extra heat by opening and shutting the oven door) until the onions are a deep reddish mahogany color, after about another hour. The time will vary depending on your oven, the thickness of your onion slices, and your patience.

I have burned the whole pan of onions to cinders by being impatient. The impatient cook will turn up the heat. At first only a few degrees; then 10 degrees, then fifteen.

Don't give in to impatience. Take deep breaths. Walk around your kitchen smelling the glowing smell of the caramelizing onions. Sit down. Stand up again. Spell the word "patience" backwards: e c n e i t a p. Make anagrams: piece tan; tap niece; cape nite.

Lift the onions out of the pan with tongs and lay them on paper towels. The onion‑imbued oil -- l'essence d'oignon bruni -- is a precious ingredient for making salad dressing and drizzling onto bread, thick soups, and casseroles.