Are You Choosing the Right Onion for Your Recipe? (2024)

FAQs

How do you pick the right onion? ›

How to Pick and Store Onions. Choose firm onions with dry, papery skins. Avoid onions that have brown or soft spots or onions with any emerging sprouts. Store whole onions in a cool, dry spot that's out of the sun.

Their versatility allows them to add flavor and texture to soups, salsas, curries, and sauces. They can also act as toppers for entrees like chili, hot dogs, and red meat.

Yellow Onions: The general cooking onion. Usually relatively cheap and plentiful, they're the go-to onion when cooks get cooking. The flavour is strong but mild, with an onion flavour that isn't overpowering. They often have a bit of sweetness to them, they caramelize nicely and they hold up well when cooked.

Spoiled onions may develop dark spots, which will eventually begin to grow mold. You'll also want to avoid onions that have started sprouting, as this indicates they're beginning to go bad. You can also feel your onions to check how fresh they are. Onions with soft or mushy spots are starting to go bad.

Look for onions that are firm to the touch. If your onion is mushy or soft, it has a greater chance of being rotten inside. Avoid choosing onions with spots or blemishes. As with any fruit or veggie, be sure your onions don't have any unusual or bad odors.

Yellow onions are perfect for stews, soups, barbecues, roasts and sauces. Avoid eating them raw as they have a strong flavour.

Cooked onions give dishes a rich umami flavor and a subtle sweetness — you don't always know onions are there once the dish has been spiced and sauced, but you'd definitely miss them. Garlic is also important to these base flavors, and since it shares so many similarities to onions, we talk about them at the same time.

Onions add flavour to a dish, are nutrient packed and contain potent plant compounds that may promote digestive health, immune function and heart health. For the majority of people onions make a useful addition to a balanced diet, however, those diagnosed with IBS may need to exercise caution.

White onions are probably the strongest-tasting onion on this list. They're typically used in Asian and Mexican dishes, as well as potato and macaroni salads. You can also sauté them, making them ideal for French onion soup or any other food in which you want to add sweet or sour flavor.

Sweet onions are larger than yellow onions, with a light skin. As the name suggests, sweet onions have sweet flavor due to a high sugar content, making them great for sauteing and caramelizing. Sweet onion varieties include Walla Walla, Texas Sweets, Maui, and Vidalia.

What is the best onion to cook meat with? ›

Yellow Onions

This is one of the best onions to use when cooking almost anything. Use them when making meat dishes (roasted chicken, pot roast, rack of lamb etc.) or as a base for many sauces, stews and soups. Yellow onions are also higher in vitamin C as compared to other onion varieties.

You might sniff a peach or melon looking for its perfume, but an onion should have no scent. Finally, make sure it has an unblemished papery outer skin and a dry neck. If it's begun to sprout, put it back. Cut an onion and a fume of mild sulfuric acid can irritate your eyes.

Store in a Cool, Dry Place

For this reason, he says it's best to store onions in a cool, dry place like a cellar, pantry, or even a garage. While they can be stored whole in the fridge, Yee notes that this causes the onion to convert starch to sugar, and can result in soft or soggy onions.

Basically, if you're going to eat an onion raw, the white onion is what you want to reach for. And while they're pretty mild on their own, you can further tame their flame by slicing one thinly and giving it an hour-long soak in cold water—they'll be so sweet, you can practically eat them like a salad.

Since both are yellow, they're more similarly colored than red onions; they're more alike in size and shape to each other than with shallots or scallions. If you look closely, however, you'll see that sweet onions are larger than yellow onions, and have a lighter and more transparent skin.

As soon as you see an onion has flower buds, snip the buds to prevent the bulb from splitting, then harvest and eat those onions first, the sooner the better. Onions that have bolted don't store well. Onion bolting is a problem for even professional growers.