I was hoping that someone would post this! Lan Lam's recent youtube posts have radically improved my cooking (results or ease of execution) and I'd recommend that anyone who cooks frequently check them out.

Lan Lam is great! Be sure to check out her out content as well!

> adding water at the beginning and essentially steaming the onions

This is pretty ironic in a thread about the misuse of the term "caramelize".

It's not steaming if you put water into the food directly. It's simply ... cooking, or maybe simmering/stewing.