Grandmother's Onions: Creamed Onions for Thanksgiving

Every family has one dish that is not negotiable. At the Shipley farm, it is small, white and covered in peanuts.

Gray Shipley, who runs the farm, on the Thanksgiving table his grandmother used to set:

“One of my favorite, probably my favorite dish, we just call it Grandmother's onions. It's a baby pearl onion and a cheese sauce, as simple as it can be. She taught me to make it, that's one thing that I do try to make most of our Thanksgivings, and you cover it with peanuts. It doesn't sound like something that would be great, but it was amazing, and it just pairs wonderfully with everything else on the plate.”

Gray Shipley

It does not sound like much. That is rather the point. Old-fashioned creamed onions were a holiday side long before anybody wrote a casserole cookbook: small onions, a sauce made from what was already in the kitchen, and something crunchy on top. Gray's grandmother made hers with cheese in the sauce and peanuts on top, and he says it pairs with everything else on the plate.

Asked which dish would cause a riot if it went missing, he said:

“Well, beef, there would really be an issue if anything here went vegetarian. But I think Grandmother's onions is, for me, it's the stand out, the go-to, that it's really hard to think of Thanksgiving without it. Green bean casserole is a pretty good standard as well, but I would say Grandmother's onions.”

Gray Shipley

How to make creamed onions the old-fashioned way

Gray's grandmother never needed a written recipe, and the family's exact proportions are his to share. What follows is a straightforward way to make the dish the way he describes it: baby pearl onions, a cheese sauce and a peanut topping.

Serves 8 as a side. Time about 45 minutes.

• 2 pounds pearl onions, fresh, or frozen and thawed
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 cups whole milk, warmed
• 1 1/2 cups (6 ounces) sharp cheddar, grated
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, and a pinch of white pepper
• 3/4 cup salted roasted peanuts, roughly chopped

1. Peel fresh onions the easy way. Drop them into boiling water for 2 minutes, then into cold water. Trim the root end and squeeze: the onion pops out of its skin. Frozen pearl onions come peeled, which is what most busy cooks use.
2. Cook the onions. Simmer them in salted water until a knife slides in with a little resistance, 8 to 10 minutes for fresh, 3 or 4 for frozen. Drain well.
3. Make the cheese sauce. Melt the butter in a saucepan, whisk in the flour and cook for a minute without letting it brown. Whisk in the warm milk a little at a time and let it bubble gently for 4 or 5 minutes until it coats a spoon. Take it off the heat and stir in the cheese, salt and pepper.
4. Assemble. Fold the onions into the sauce and spread them in a buttered 2-quart baking dish.
5. Top and bake. Scatter the peanuts over the top and bake at 350°F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the edges are bubbling.

A creamed onion casserole you can make the day before

Assemble the dish through step 4, cool it, cover it and refrigerate it overnight. Add the peanuts just before it goes in the oven, so they stay crisp, and give it 10 extra minutes because it starts cold. That frees the oven on Thanksgiving morning for the roast.

Making things ahead was how his grandmother fed a full house for days at a time. Gray remembers:

“When Grandmother ran Thanksgiving it ran like clockwork, and I didn't appreciate until I got older how good she was and how much work she put into it.”

Gray Shipley

What to serve with cheesy pearl onions

Rich, sharp and crunchy, they want something big and plain beside them. A dry-aged standing rib roast is the classic partner, and how to cook a standing rib roast covers sizes and timing. If you would rather spend the day outside than in the kitchen, a dry-aged chuck roast on the smoker is the roast Gray himself would pick.

On his grandmother's Thanksgiving table the onions sat beside green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, apple butter and her sausage balls. If you want one more of her dishes on your table, here is a sausage balls recipe.