What are your thoughts on onions?

[merithyn]

I don't like onions. I have tried very hard to, but I just can't. I like some vegetables in the onion family - leeks, scallions, garlic - but I really can't stand yellow, red, or white onions, especially raw.

Because I don't like them, I notice them whenever a meal is cooked with them, and most restaurant/deli foods have tons of onions in them because they're a cheap and easy way to spice foods. Some foods need onions - liver and onions, French onion soup, etc - but I've managed to cook for 30+ years using onions very sparingly.

My question, for those who cook, however, is just how necessary are onions in your own cooking? Do you guy them by the bushel and put them in everything? Or do you only use them in the odd dish as needed?

[derspiess]

Hi, Meri

[Gups]

Pretty essential to my cooking which revolves around curry, pasta sauces and stews/casseroles. 

[merithyn]

Hi, Meri

Hi!

I went upstairs to the local Co-Op for soup, but each of the soups that they had in the pots had onions as the number one ingredient. I've noticed that to be the case most of the time, regardless of the kind of soups they have on tap. It's annoying, and made me wonder if that is the case across the board for people who like onions.

[Caliga]

I love onions, both cooked and raw, and always put as much in a recipe as it calls more, if not more.  When I was a kid I would sometimes eat a vidalia onion whole like an apple.

[Eddie Teach]

I put a little bit of onion anytime I use bell pepper, which is pretty much anything with sausage or ground beef /turkey.

[Barrister]

I'm hard pressed to think of an ingredient more ubiquitous in my cooking than onions.

Salt or vegetable oil are the only things I can think of.

And I have to admit - I'm silently judging meri for not liking onions.  And she calls herself a Mexican.

[merithyn]

I put a little bit of onion anytime I use bell pepper, which is pretty much anything with sausage or ground beef /turkey.

Yeah, I don't like bell peppers, either.

[Barrister]

I put a little bit of onion anytime I use bell pepper, which is pretty much anything with sausage or ground beef /turkey.

Yeah, I don't like bell peppers, either.

[merithyn]

I'm hard pressed to think of an ingredient more ubiquitous in my cooking than onions.

Salt or vegetable oil are the only things I can think of.

And I have to admit - I'm silently judging meri for not liking onions.  And she calls herself a Mexican.

I was a spoiled Mexican. My sisters and mom always scooped my portion out before they put the onions in, or cooked a separate dish for me.

[Malthus]

I used to hate onions. Then, I spent a summer working as a volunteer on an archeological dig in Israel. The breakfast (halfway through the day - you got up at 4 AM and worked until noon) was very primitive - basically, you got bread, hardboiled eggs, and raw onions. I developed a taste for raw onions ...

[Savonarola]

I've never harmed an onion, so why do they make me cry? 

[Caliga]

The only vegetable-type thing I don't like is zucchini, because it tastes like nothing to me and it's disturbing to me to eat something, but have it taste like nothing.  It's like chewing on a solid mass of air or something.

[derspiess]

Seems like my wife cooks with onions more often than not, yet I often have to cut them for her because they make her tear up (doesn't affect me one bit).  I like them raw, cooked, whatever, but in moderation.  Something that tastes too oniony is inedible.

[Caliga]

We usually buy pre-minced frozen onions from Kroger to avoid the whole tearing up thing, not to mention the tedium of cutting up onions.  In most dishes it doesn't make that much of a difference to not use fresh onion.