Aunt Betty’s Comfort Kitchen · Vegetables

Prize Vidalia
Onion Casserole

Name: Prize Vidalia Onion Casserole
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients: 4 Vidalia onions; 12 saltine crackers; 113 g butter; 2 eggs; 1 can cream of mushroom soup; 160 ml milk; 115 g sharp cheddar

Four sweet Vidalia onions cooked down soft, layered with mushroom soup over a cracker crust, set with an egg-and-milk custard and baked under cheese. Humble, rich, and prize-worthy.

~50 min total 20 min prep 20–30 min bake

Effort ●●○○ Time ●●○○ Some Doing

Vegetarian

Servingsamounts scale to match

Units

Ingredients

Cook the onions down first — that's the whole dish. Sautéing the Vidalias until soft and sweet (not browned) is what turns four onions into something rich and mellow; raw, they'd stay sharp and weep liquid. And use real Vidalias or another sweet onion — a regular yellow onion is too pungent for a dish that's mostly onion.

Easier, if you like

A bag of pre-sliced onions — or the food processor's slicing blade — saves the knife work on four onions.
Pre-crushed cracker crumbs skip the crushing.

Method

Cook's notes

Real Vidalias matter — the sweetness is the point. Out of season, any sweet onion (Walla Walla, Maui, or a sweet yellow) stands in; skip a sharp cooking onion.

Sauté the onions only until soft and translucent, not browned — you want them sweet and silky, not caramelized.

It's built like a humble gratin: a cracker crust, sweet onions and soup, then an egg-and-milk custard that sets it, finished with cheese and crumbs.

Margarine is Betty's; unsalted butter works just as well.

Make it gluten-free (it's already vegetarian)

Gluten-free: use gluten-free crackers (or crushed gluten-free cornflakes) for the crust and topping, and a gluten-free condensed mushroom soup. Everything else is naturally gluten-free.