You have much more self control than I do.
If there are leftovers (is that such a thing?), I just eat them by the spoonful.
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This 
And if my nephew is around, a bunch of the raw ones disappear first, and then most of the caramelized ones before they ever make it to whatever dish they were intended for 
(he is unapologetic: “you knew it was going to happen, so you should have accounted for it 
).
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They caramelize very nicely, but last time I used them exclusively in a French onion soup, I found it too sweet for my taste.
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I use them in place of yellow or white onions. I just prefer them. I just get “sweet onions” instead the others available (not always Vidalias in off season).
They make GREAT caramelized onions without having to add any sugar, as some recommend with yellow or white onions.
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OK, this is not how I caramelize onions! I just use a deep 12" sauté pan. How are they done in the oven? Just laid out on baking sheets?
There’s some info here
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i use a roasting pan. the oven temp remains even, no need to adjust the flame or worry about scorching. give a stir every hour or so until the onions release their liquid, making sure push down any pieces that cling to the sides of the pan. as the liquid evaporates, stir every 20 minutes. i let them go about 6 hours.
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All of the above sound good! Keep in mind that they might not keep as well as “storage” onions.
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A good overview of how to make caramelized onions, just for background info.
Not taking sides on which method is best (though I do have my opinion on it).
We make some sandwiches adding raw onions and prefer the sweet onions for them (not always Vidalia’s, as Linda Whit says) They’re milder, not as sharp…I’m not as picky when it comes to cooking with onions but probably keep sweet onions on hand more often than others unless I have a recipe that calls for more than one or two.
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Vidalia onion sammiches are the best. Just bread, mayo and onion.
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I switched almost exclusively to sweet onions for everything (well, except pickled red onions) long ago, back when Vidalia was the only game in town. Unfortunately the Vidalia season is short, and preserving them for any length of time is difficult – one had to use methods like hanging them in knotted pantyhose, and even then it was hard to keep them for long (my daughter to this day tells stories of how as a little girl she took her friends into my cellar where I kept them to see the bizarre goings-on). At least nowadays sweet onions are available year-round. Where I am that mostly means Peruvian imports, which is fine (big thank you to our friends in Peru). I very seldom see Walla-Wallas, and don’t recall ever coming across Mauis.
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I only saw Mauis maybe close to 30 years ago when Balducci’s briefly had a store in our non NY. Town. They were both small and expensive IIRC. Yes, I tried them.
I mostly eat sweet onions raw, unless I get a bag of them and then I will also cook with them.
My fil used to grow Mauis, they were very sweet. Whether they tasted like a Maui from Maui I don’t know, I don’t remember ever having one. I wonder if terroir is a factor. And yes I used to do the knotted panty hose thing for Walla Wallas.
A Chowhound classic: JoanN
As I said, I do them most often for Pissaladiere so I’m flavoring with that in mind. For six pounds of thinly sliced onions, I’ll put about a half stick of butter in the bottom of the roasting pan, melt it in the oven, and then layer the onions with about 6 sprigs each of fresh thyme and rosemary and a couple of bay leaves, and sprinkle with S&P. I’m sure you could eliminate the herbs and substitute EVOO for the butter if that would be more appropriate for the dish you’re preparing
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For the same reason, Serious Eats recommended regular yellow onions, not Vidalias, as the base for their Ultimate Onion Dip.
I’ve used a lot of Vidalias, but in this vein, my preference is for Walla Walla Sweets.
I’ve always got sweet on hand, along with regular yellow and white. The sweets are Vidalia when available or Walla Walla or some SouthAm sweets if not (Vidalia are sweeter than the other two, but they’re still good).
As lots of commenters above wrote, I use them pretty much anywhere I use onions, with one big exception and one minor.
Do not make French Onion Soup with them, unless you like the notion of a candied syrup beef broth. Several years ago I followed a Martha Stewart recipe that called for all sweet onions and… just no, don’t do it.
The other minor thing is if I caramelize them fully, there are some applications where that much sweetness is kind of off-putting. My son has asked me to use only regular yellow onions caramelized on pizzas, for example. (OTOH, I guess I could just use half as much, but if I’m putting caramelized onion on pizza, I want a lot of it)
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I always liked this Saveur discussion of onions, and first thought about the expression “know your onions”.
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I’ve read the admonition about onion soup. It’s been a long time since I’ve made any - I doubt I’d have used Vidalias, simply because they were pretty rare once upon a time (my dad used to order them from Georgia).
Thank you for reminding me of that article.
Now I need to find a non-walled link for the ATK discussion of different ways of slicing onions and how that changes their pungency (maybe it’s shared somewhere here already).
