No more tears
By Jolene Thym
Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 11:36 am in All You Can Eat, Cooking Tips, Produce.
I hate onions!
Not me, personally, but I have to roll my eyes at those people who do. OK, if you’re allergic or food-intolerant, you are excused. But the rest of you, sorry.
Every time I start cooking dinner, say 10 minutes into the deal, invariably some onion-hating teen or other will saunter in the front door and comment about how great dinner smells. I say nothing. It DOES smell good. Onions are the single most important ingredient in most dinner dishes.
They are great in a burger. They are indispensible in a quiche, a casserole, a soup, a stock, a sandwich, anything beef or lamb, or let’s face it — EVERYTHING. And, after the first 2 minutes, they smell divine. In fact, if you’re just a little behind in your dinner-fixing, it’s a serious quick-fix. Chop it up, throw it in the pan with a little olive oil and in 3 minutes fast, anyone, and I mean anyone, will be convinced that you’ve spent at least 30 minutes, if not an hour, in the kitchen, preparing dinner.
What I especially love about onions is that you can cook them a little, until they are just soft, or A LOT, until they are nearly black, as Indian cooks prefer them. When your onions turn black, in case you don’t know, they are NOT burned. Taste one. They are perfectly delicious, carmelized slices of heaven, as it were.
I hate to be a bully, but I seriously believe that no one hates onions. Again, those who are allergic and intolerant are excused. But those who say they hate onions are simply confused, their taste-buds un-educated. I suggest that all who believe as such sit down to a series of onion samples. I will even prepare them if you like. The onions will range in color from white to black, and will range in flavor from sweet to caramel-salty-sweet. Then, and only then, would I give onion-haters permission to say WHICH onions they really do not like.
– Jolene Thym
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February 2nd, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Do you still roll your eyes if I say that I hate the taste of onions in all forms after having tried them all? I think they smell delicious when (and only when) they are being sauteed - hence the continual effort to try and like them in some form. I can *tolerate* the flavor in highly carmelized form, but I can’t say that I enjoy the flavor. Anything other than that has always made me wretch. I’ve had absolutely delicious dishes that taste like B.O. if I don’t request that it be made sans onions. When something has onion in it, that’s all I can taste. If they are too raw, they SMELL like B.O. to me. I don’t know if I have a weird sensitivity to them or what, but they’ve always tasted absolutely disgusting to me. I even used to munch on fresh green onions as a child, but it was mostly an imitation of my older sibling and I could never handle more than one.
For the record, I have other similar oddities - I can’t stand uncooked tomatos, but sauces and such are fine. I can’t repress gagging if there are too many mushrooms in a dish, especially when made into a mushroom sauce. My wife has the same reaction to onions, but she loves tomatos and mushrooms.
March 9th, 2007 at 9:39 am
i feel your pain. growing up, i would not eat an onion under any circumstance regardless of the onion variety or its preparation. as an adult, i now enjoy being more adventurous with trying new foods. in this spirit, i have tried to overcome my onion-phobia. what i have found is that i have no problems with cooked onion used as flavoring, but only if the onion flavor compliments the dish and the onion flavor is well-balanced with the other flavors in the dish. when onion is the predominant flavor in something, it still turns me off like nothing else. i also don’t enjoy just munching on a big chunk of cooked onion in a dish and i definitely pass on the whole raw onion thing. i really enjoy international food though- indian, italian, chinese, thai, latin, greek and more. these cultures, especially indian, use onion almost as a staple. in most cases though international cuisine offers up other complimentary flavors and its not just “welcome to onion city.” gross.
May 7th, 2007 at 7:59 am
I have to agree with the commenters. I also hate onion. Never ate them as a child and will only rarely nowadays. When i cook for my family I sometimes use them, but even when they’re sauteed or caramelized it does nothing for me. When they’re really brown they lose most of the sharp oniony smell and taste, but then you’re left with a mildly sweet slithery mass of slime which is unappealing for many other reasons. I understand the author really loves them and so probably do most people, but there will allways be my little group of oddballs who are missing whatever gene is necessary to enjoy this particular travesty of a vegetable.
July 10th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Rolling your eyes is a bit insensitive as our reaction to onions is physiological. It has to do with our extra sensitive taste buds, which is why so many people hate them as children yet can tolerate them as adults. You have no idea how a whole meal can be ruined for those with taste buds sensitive enough to find onions highly bitter in a most offensive way. Some believe that plugging your nose can make the taste go away, but I have not found that to be the case. I find it funny that at potlucks, the onion lovers always ask for my recipe for pasta salads and the like. I know it is because I don’t use onions. Many hostesses I have known have bragged on how I enjoyed this dish or that where they “secretly” added onions. But come on, who is going to tell the hostess that her concoction is NASTY and that I am only being polite. However as I get older, I am starting to let people know of my distaste in advance. Then if they ignore it because they don’t believe it can possibly be true, I avoid the special dish and will get fast food if they cannot be avoided.
August 24th, 2007 at 11:25 am
I personally believe it is a form of arrogance to assume that your likes and dislikes and/or experiences should define everyone else’s. I have tried all my life to acquire a taste for onions
and can say with a fair degree of certainty that I cannot eat them. The smell of onions gives me a headache and makes me nauseous, the taste makes me gag involuntarily. It is a well established fact that some people are very sensitive to certain chemicals and tastes, since
the two are closely related it most often means they are sensitive to both. The sense of taste
is genetic in origin and is very often determined by inheritance. I have been bullied all my life by people like you who might as well just call me a liar when I tell them I can’t eat onions.
It seems that a persons feelings are not as important as whether they agree with you that onions are God’s gift. I spent almost fifteen years as a Chef in one form or another, studied
at Johnson and Wales even, and I can assure you that for every person who loves onions there
there is one who could live without them.