I got a request from one of the viewers to make a video about onion types. And I thought,
what a great idea. After salt and olive oil, my next favorite ingredient is an onion and
today we are going to learn to use them like a boss.
Ok, so just to clarify. This is not a video about how to cut onions. I already have a
gazillion videos about how to slice and dice onions. They are linked below. This video
is about which onions work best in which dishes. And you need to understand that this is very
subjective. Onion / food pairing is as subjective as wine / food pairing. I am not going to
present you any studies or data here. I will just tell you what I like. My onion tastes
aren’t that unusual. I am pretty vanilla about my onions, so you’ll see these patterns
over and over in European cooking.
Ok, let’s start with my most beloved onion. The yellow onion. If you don’t live in the
US, it might go by other names, but it’s the cheapest, most basic cooking onion that
has a brown skin and white or maybe slightly off-white inside. For pretty much all cooking
applications, this is my onion. If I am making mirepoix for a soup or I am caramelizing onions,
this is the onion I use. The most common mistake people make with caramelizing onions is not
using the right onion.
They try to help the onions caramelize by using onions whose names sound sweeter: sweet
onions, vidallia onions, spanish onions all somehow sound better to people than yellow
onions. Now, the name has nothing to do with how much sugar an onion has. Sure, yellow
onions are very pungent when served raw, but when you cook them, they turn from vicious
lions to sweet and gentle kiddie cats. They are insanely sweet when cooked and they produce
the best texture for caramelized onions. If your onions turn to apple sauce consistency,
you probably aren’t using yellow onions. Yellow onions turn very soft and jammy, but
they don’t turn into baby food.
But using yellow onion in a raw dish, like a salad, would be a mistake. They are just
too aggressive. That’s where the red onions comes in. They are way less pungent and work
great in salads. If you watch any of my salad videos, you’ll see me using a red onion,
but recently I changed my mind about them. Don’t get me wrong, I love red onions, the
problem is that they are big and if I am making a salad for 4 to 8 people, there is no way
that I could possibly need a whole onion. At most, I’ll need a quarter of it and then
the question is what do you do with the rest. I used to put it in a zip lock bag and put
in the fridge.
If you google for onion safety and read about the danger of storing raw onions after they
are cut, please rest assured that it’s complete BS. Somehow this ridiculous rumor that onions
become poisonous after they are cut spread like wildfire through misguided food blogs
and publications, but it was corrected by many reputable sources. Storing cut onions
in the fridge is completely safe. No they don’t grow bacteria like crazy, if anything,
alliums are quite resistant to bacterial growth. Some people even try to use them to cure colds,
but I don’t know of any data on the effectiveness of that. My problem with storing cut onions
is not safety, it’s the smell, and the taste. Ok, so first of all, I would never store onions
already sliced, or diced, because they stink up the whole fridge. What I was storing was…
say, like half an onion. But I’ve noticed that after sitting in the fridge for more
than a day or two, the onion would sometimes get too pungent and sometimes also bitter.
Of course, that’s very subjective and some onions lasted better than others, but they
were definitely less than ideal after storage.
To solve this problem, I simply switched to using shallots in my salads. Shallots are
small and most of the time, I can use the entire shallot in one salad and if I have
leftovers, it takes only one more salad instead of 5 to use them up.
One place where I still stick with red onions is pickling. I don’t mean like canning (I
don’t even know how to do that), I mean like pickles that are ready in a day or even
in a few hours. Pickled red onions are delicious on everything -- salads, burgers, poke bowls.
Luckily, they taste just fine after sitting in the fridge because all that vinegar, salt
and sugar preserve them.
Since we are on the topic of shallots, let’s talk about their cooking applications. Shallots
are probably the best onion to deep fry to a crisp. This technique is very common in
Thai and Vietnamese cooking. Here is a seriouseats article on how to do it. The link is below.
Fried shallots are to Asian cooking are what caramelized onions are to European cooking.
Basically, anything they touch turns to gold. So if you learn to make them, you automatically
become a great cook. Hmm, maybe I should make a video on how to make these addictive crispy
shallots.
I don’t usually use any onion in my pan sauces, but if you were to use one, it would
be shallots. Remember that your steak (or whatever meat) is already cooked and getting
cold and you don’t have a ton of time for that sauce. Shallots will get translucent
faster than onions, so if you just want to give that pan sauce a little aromatic boost,
cook some diced shallots in the pan drippings before adding your stock and wine.
I also like shallots in very delicate dishes, like corn risotto. Basically, I view them
as a more subtle and faster cooking substitution to yellow onion.
Now let’s move on to the green group of onions. When I want an onion that tastes more
herbal, more refreshing and spring like, I use leeks and scallions. Normally, leeks are
cooked and scallions are not. For example, I’d use leeks in a quiche and I’d cook
them before adding them to a custard, and I’d use scallions in a salad. Or as a garnish
to sprinkle on a finished dish.
Now that I’ve told you about the onions I love, I’ll tell you about the onion I
hate. I hate pearl onions. These tiny slippery annoying little suckers. They take forever
to peel and taste like boiled onions. No one ever chops them. If you wanted chopped onions,
you’d use 1 normal onion instead of 20 tiny onions. So usually they are left whole which
doesn’t really let them brown efficiently, so the flavor and texture are just blah and
on top of that they are slippery, so they fall off your fork when you try to scoop them
and slide from under your fork when you try to pierce them. I am sorry I am shaming poor
little onions. If you like them, just ignore me and keep using them. The bottom line is
that the onions you use should work for you.
Did I leave out your favorite onions? Let me know in the comments. I want to hear how
you like to use them.
Here are more thought provoking culinary videos for you to check out and if you are ever in
the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.