Here’s another odd thing I miss since moving to Mexico: onions sold with their skins on. Seems to me the papery skin keeps them fresher; they look kind of naked and vulnerable without it.
But more often than not, that’s how they’re sold. I look at the stem ends and try to find ones that aren’t brown and dried out.
Old onions don’t have the pungent flavor we’re looking for. When I do find “whole” onions, I’m always a little thrilled.
Without getting into smaller varieties or shallots, the three most common onion types — yellow, red or purple and white — have subtle flavor differences.
Yellow onions are the sweetest and have been bred for even more sweetness (think Walla Walla and Vidalia) and are the best for caramelizing or everyday use. They’re what gives classic French Onion Soup its distinctive flavor.
White onions have an even milder flavor, with a more subtle sweetness. They’re what’s most commonly used in Mexican cooking and recipes, and while you can use any kind of onions in, say, salsa, white ones are traditional.
Red onions (my personal favorite), have a sharper flavor and more distinctive presence in recipes, whether cooked or raw. Plus, they have that distinctive purply-red color that I love!
In ancient Egypt, onions’ concentric rings and spherical shape symbolized eternal life, and traces of them have been found in burial tombs — and in the eye sockets of Ramesses IV.
We modern-day humans find a different, not quite as spiritual, effect on our eyes from onions, eh?
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