Related: Daniel Gritzer of Serious Eats explored different ways to mince garlic, finding that some methods significantly increased garlic’s pungency/strength (and also that long cooking methods negate much of this difference)
None of those are “finely sliced rings”, though…
Yeah every single cut here will fill your mouth with red onion gas like a WW1 trench fight. The bottom right is possibly acceptable depending on what it’s going in. Top left could work in some salsas. Rest are just “chunks of onion.”
Some people love it, but if you want to turn a first-timer away from fresh red onions for life, give them large ass chunks that overwhelm the rest of the dish.
Then OP must die.
Sorry, OP, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. RIP.
…
yeah?
is this actually news to anyone?
“I ALREADY KNEW THIS! HEY EVERYONE! DID YOU KNOW I ALREADY KNEW THIS?!?”
yes.
I’m not saying that leeks are onions (though they are alliums, i.e. of the same family). To me, whilst they do taste quite different to onions, there is still a flavour that I would describe as onion-y
I want to argue you, but I can’t.
It’s true though.
As I say to the onion-haters, “They’re in almost all the food you enjoy: you just don’t know it.”
It really is just a texture thing for me. Hate onions, love onion powder.
Edit: or a homemade onion slurry is also fine
So is plastic, apparently, but nobody is insisting that if I would only eat it prepared differently that I would love it.
I didn’t even know “onion-haters” exist
Disagree, one of the reasons I’m an onion hater is precisely because they’re in flipping everything. Anything savoury is likely to have that pervasive thickness that chases any other flavour out.
I’m curious about how far your onion dislike goes. For example, I recently cooked lohiketto, a Finnish salmon soup. It feels like a rare meal that doesn’t use onions (it’s basically leek, carrot, potatoes, cream, salmon and dill), but the leek sort of fills the role that onions usually would, albeit more delicately.
I don’t mind onions when they’re used as a real ingredient. French onion soup, stir-fry, onion rings, all good. Onions also make decent filler in soup and curry, but I think the only soup I’ve had without onion is cheese & broccoli. Every ground meat I’ve seen uses onions as filler, so every burger, nearly every taco, most sausages, every lasagna, every spring roll, all have that onion taste.
If leeks were used like this, I’d probably hate them too.
TIL: In Finland, leeks are like onions.
In Sweden we call them purjolök (lök means onion)
Y’all must have some crazy strong-flavored marsh weed. The common leeks in the US (store bought or homegrown) tend to be milder than late-season scallions with a fibrous structure akin to artichoke leaves. That’s genuinely interesting!
You’re not wrong. I love onions, but I will freely admit that they are a powerful flavor and they are basically in everything.
I will note that if you’re in this camp, that if you soak your onions in water for a couple minutes after slicing they are significantly less pungent, and will allow you to taste the other stuff better without sacrificing the texture they add
And, if you instead soak them in a thinned, high-fat dairy of your choice (ie. buttermilk, diluted crème fraîche, etc.), the onions’ allinases are even more delicate and allow for the subtle notes of your chosen cultivar to be enjoyed in their place. FWIW, this is a key step in fried onion rings.
“deflaming”
Cooked onions. Only people who can’t cook serve them raw.
There are a number of uses for raw or very lightly cooked onion. In my experience people with rigid rules around how ingredients can be used or prepared often can’t cook well
I think that applies in life more generally tbh. People who tend toward extremes don’t handle nuance very well. Most of life is nuance
In general, maybe so. But I love a burger with the fresh crunch of a slice of red onion
So… You? 🤷🏽♂️
Nah a good raw red onion is exactly what some salsas and guacs want. Ooh and the occasional salad that could use a bit of bite. And of course sandwiches.
Salad isn’t generally “cooking”, TBF. Hell, it’s one of the reasons why garde manger is the next rung up from commis/chaos goblin. 👩🏼🍳
The more you cut, the more you break cell walls, and the more pungent the onion becomes.
If you keep your knife properly sharp, you’ll do better in pretty much every cooking project.
A dull knife crushes more than it cuts, squeezing out the allinases and misting the air with them.
Yup. The only real exception is trimming connective tissue from meat. A slightly dull knife can perfectly peel it away without wasting much meat, a nice sharp knife will cut straight through it and make way more work for yourself
Um… No. Don’t blame your tools. Improve your technique. A knife is only as sharp as the mind wielding it. 👩🏼🍳
I’ve trimmed literally tons of meat. You don’t know what you’re talking about, slightly dull is better.
Uh hunh. 30+ years in culinary across several countries and dozens of cultures, and you’re the expert. Oh, sweetie.
Uh huh. How much meat have you trimmed? Tons? Slightly dull is sharp enough to separate meat from silverskin, but not chop into the meat or silverskin. It’s faster, more efficient, less wasteful. If you’re using a sharp knife, you’re either not being thorough, you’re being wasteful, or you’re taking longer than you need to. Full stop. A slightly dull blade is the technique.
Finally. ty.
Huge stretch here, but did you watch the ultimate onion guide on YouTube?
Maybe? I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos. I spent several years working in a kitchen, which is where that knowledge comes from.
The finer you cut, the less you bite, which would also break cell walls, maybe more over a sharp knife?
Kidding kinda
Pungency is volatile. The first cuts either need to happen right before as garnish, or go into something before all the good stuff evaporates.
Especially when cooked
Especially after you factor in cooking. How fast. How hot. What method.
What’s wrong babe? You haven’t even touched your onion plate
Kathy Bates has entered the chat
Dear community: do we downvote to disagree here? Because OP is wrong bite me…
This makes me want to cry
Put your head in the freezer
Snort
Where’s the cheese and apple?
It’s about the texture, the consistency and how much onion you get with your bite.
Exactly. Putting rings of onion in, say, a pot of chili would make it have a weird texture, as would dicing them finely for a French onion soup.
it’s like different shapes of pasta all over again
I had a roommate that was obsessed with replicating the McDonald’s dollar menu hamburger. He said the finely chopped onions made all the difference.
They absolutely do. He is correct.
They are actually dehydrated to ship then rehydrated in the store also
Just shovel them into my mouth. 👀
God I hate imagining you eating all the red onions 😭
I too love red onions.
I’d eat an onion like an apple.
Don’t let your dreams be dreams
I bit into a whole onion once. I peeled the skin first though, which tells you there must have been some insane part of me that expected to enjoy the experience. “Hang on, get that paper off first or it’ll taste bad”? What was I thinking.
If it were a sweet onion, I think I could survive it. A red onion… I think I’d toss it to the lad next to me and try to deck him when he went to catch it. Run out the door while he’s down and have a friend yell after me that I could have politely said no thanks
For the 3 on the right side, it matters quite a bit whether you slice in direction from root to stem or cross, root to stem is much better.
