Onions come in almost as many varieties as there are countries in which they grow. Onions come in white, red, purple, yellow and brown, from tiny buds to baseball-sized globes. Onions grow, either wild or domesticated in nearly all climates. Flavors run from spicy hot to sweet.
Before refrigeration, onions were an important part of essential winter-storage vegetables. Old American recipes sometimes began “try”�not fry�”an onion” as the first step. Sauteing a chopped onion was a cook’s best test of her wood-stove’s heat; if the onion cooked without burning, she could proceed with the rest of her recipe.
Old-fashioned cooks save onion peels to wrap around Easter eggs; boiled together in vinegar and water, they streak eggs with mosaics of brown, yellow, and red.
What to Look For:
1. Dry, crisp outer peelings, tightly wrapped around bulb;
2. Firm bulbs, with no damp, dark or soft spots.
3. Heavy weight for size.
4. No sprouting.
Onion Storage and Preparation Tips:
1. Store onions at room temperature or in dry section of refrigerator, loosely wrapped in paper or plastic bag.
2. Peel onions only when ready to use.
3. Discard peels, root and stem ends.
4. Slice or chop onions only when ready to use. Extra sliced or chopped onion can be plastic-bagged and frozen but will cook up limp because of released juices.
Cooking with Onions:
Onions enhance cuisines worldwide. They can be fried, “tried,” saut�ed, braised, and baked in their skins. Cooks from many cultures regard onions as the essential base for soups and stews. Exposed to heat, the sugars in onions caramelize, lending a sweet as well as spicy element to a dish. Well-known dishes that depend on onions for their character range from Chinese stir-fries to Mexican salsa to French onion soup, in which caramelization is encouraged with a pinch of sugar.
Onion Nutrition Highlights:
Onions are a good source of vitamin C, fiber, manganese and chromium. While exact mechanisms are not yet completely clear, chromium enhances the actions of insulin, along with other possible roles in metabolism of fats, proteins and sugars. Small amounts of chromium occur in many foods, among them fruits and vegetables, turkey, and whole wheat.
While clinical testing has not yet completely established the medical benefits of onions, they occupy a treasured place in folk medicine, especially as a cough-medicine and decongestant. A wide variety of health-food blogs perpetuate the recipe: grated or sliced raw onion marinated in honey for several hours. Others swear by a raw onion sandwich to relieve symptoms of a heavy cold. (While we may classify these remedies as “old wives’ tales,” there may be folk-medicine reasons that old wives live to be old!)