Fajita Salad

It's no secret that we have fajita salad about once a week. There are exactly 2 ingredients that make this salad amazing and without them, you should probably just order pizza. They are: HEB pre-marinated fajita meat (beef or chicken, both excellent) and caramelized onions. We started adding the onions last year in an effort to make our "fat girl salad" more healthy. The key ingredient used to be Tostitos Hint of Lime chips (and lots of them). So you can see how the healthiness of the salad quickly went south by adding tons and tons of tortilla chips.

Fajita Salad

HEB pre-marinated fajita meat
Salad bag (Romain or other crunchy lettuce, not baby lettuces)
1 recipe Caramelized Onions (below)
1 avocado
1 tomato
Mexi Cheese blend or Cotija if you're being fancy
1/2 c Pace salsa
1/4-1/2 c Ranch dressing

Everything is self-explanatory except the onions which are super important. So I'll add some additional notes on them.

Caramelized onions
1 tbsp canola oil (not EVO, it's too smoky)
1-2 onions, sliced thin
2 tsp granulated sugar

Heat oil on med high heat in a 10-12" skillet. Add onions and toss in oil to coat. Leave them alone for at least 5 minutes. The trick is to disturb them as little as possible so they get nice and brown rather than stir fried. When you start, they'll look like this:

ONce they get slightly browned, stir in sugar and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Don't stir again for another 5-10 minutes and they'll start to look like this:

These are almost done. I like mine cooked-the-crap-out-of because I don't like raw onion whatsoever. So at this point, you can sort of pile them together and let them keep warm so that their last little bit of rawness goes away. And yes, this pan did come clean. This was the first time I'd used my stainless pan and it actually gets clean easier than my anodized ones. All you need is to deglaze with some vinegar and if that doesn't work, make an abrasive paste with salt and baking soda.