White onions in a blue mesh bag. © Amanda Payne
‘They really know their onions’: it’s an old expression I’ve heard all my life, though I’ve never given it much thought. Really knowing your mushrooms, one would think, might make more sense, since knowing one’s mushrooms could be a matter of life or death. But when one thinks of it, there is a lot going on in the onion world — the world of alliums, if we want to use a little Latin. This plant family is a huge culinary gift to humans, containing garlic, leeks, chives, and onions used for salads and cooking. But we’ll talk about garlic and leeks another time. Let’s just focus on onions.
Green onions (also known as spring onions or scallions) are wonderful in: scrambled eggs, salads, or popped alongside a sandwich.
Red onions (oddly named, since they are very strikingly purple!) are great in omelettes and meat-based dishes, but I like them best finely chopped in a fresh green salad.
Sweet yellow onions (Vidalia) are good in curries and in sauces cooked slowly with other ingredients.
White onions are fantastic, cooked in butter on a medium heat with a lot of stirring, till they become golden and a bit browned. Wonderful in soups, pastas, stews. Or cut up raw and put in the cavity of a chicken before roasting.
Not only do onions do great things for the flavour of nearly any meal, but they are also nutritional powerhouses, with many therapeutic benefits. From this standpoint, cooked is good, less cooked is better, and raw is best. Also, as with citrus fruits, you get more nutritional benefit if you eat a variety of onions, rather than just one type. But any way you slice it, onions are irreplaceable!
White onions cooked with the method described above, in a large “stone-derived” nonstick aluminium pan.
COOKING WHITE ONIONS
Add your chopped onions to a pan with a lid, and toss in a tablespoon or two of water and a half teaspoon or more of olive oil, depending on how much onion you have. Let the onions steam on a medium-high heat with the lid on for a few minutes, then take the lid off so the liquid can evaporate. The aim is to soften the onions first, and then to brown them as they continue to cook. Keep stirring and watch that the onion doesn’t start burning: turn the heat down slightly if needed.