Caramelized Spring Onion Dip with Green Garlic & Dill

Caramelized spring onions and green garlic are blended with vegan mayo, lemon, and dill for a simple and flavorful dip. Enjoy this vegan and gluten free dip with spring crudité, crackers, chips, or as a spread on your favorite sandwich!

It’s very rare that I find myself with both local onions AND garlic! I brought home some beautiful bulb onions and green garlic from the farms I work with last week and knew I needed to recreate a dip I made a few weeks back. It’s sort of like the French onion dip that is popular here in the states but much simpler. It relies on the caramelized onions for the sweet and savory flavor base. Lemon juice lends a bit of tanginess to balance everything out. Dill adds a lovely herbal note, and vegan mayo makes it creamy and thick. Since I also brought home a rainbow of spring produce, I served mine up with crudité (i.e. raw veggies). But, this dip is also wonderful with chips, crackers, or as a sandwich spread!

What is Green Garlic?

You might have noticed that this recipe has “green garlic” in it. Green garlic is simply immature garlic. If you’re curious what it looks like, you can see it in the photos above! Since it’s immature, it hasn’t had a chance to fully develop the cloves and its papery skin. So, you can use the entire bulb and a good portion of the stalk without having to worry about peeling it! Green garlic is common in the spring while mature garlic is typically harvested in the warmer summer months. If you can’t find green garlic, you’ll simply use 2 cloves of regular garlic in its place in the recipe.

Spring Onions versus Regular Storage Onions

If you’ve been to a farmers market or well-stocked grocery store in the spring, you’ve probably seen a couple of different iterations of “spring onions”. Like green garlic, spring onions are simply immature bulb onions. They’re typically harvested as a way to thin out an onion crop as the bulbs begin to form and get bigger. Sometimes, spring onions will be sold in bunches with the greens attached when the bulbs are still pretty small. Other times, you might find them close in size to a standard storage onion but without the papery skin. In order for newly harvested onions to have a papery skin, they have to be cured after harvesting. You can use any type of onion here! Check out the recipe notes for substitutions.

Tips for Making Perfect Caramelized Onions

Since this recipe relies entirely upon caramelized onions, here are my tips for achieving the perfect ones every time:

• Be patient! Caramelizing onions, especially to a golden brown color takes time. The more onions in your pan, the longer it will take. Since we’re using two onions here, it will take between 40-50 minutes. I know it seems like a long time, but it’s so worth it for the flavor!
• I know it might seem more intuitive to dice your onions into small pieces in order to caramelize them faster, but that will make it a little easier for them to burn. Instead, cut your onion in half, then slice each of those halves into roughly 1/8-inch thick slices. Check out the photos above for reference.
• Stir the onions every 2-3 minutes to ensure they caramelize evenly.
• Use a splash of water to de-glaze the pan when there are darker brown bits stuck to it. Do this by adding a couple of tablespoons of water to the pan, then use a wooden spoon to scrape up those brown bits and stir them into the onions.
• No matter what you’ve been told, you DO NOT need to add sugar to the pan. Onions have plenty of naturally occurring sugars. Being patient and spending the time to caramelize them properly will yield sweet and savory onions.

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