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.
You can use yellow onions in pretty much anything, but they work really well in dishes that require long cooking times or as the base in stews, stocks and soups, and they're great in meat dishes.
Though you can use white onions, sweet onions, or red onions, we recommend using yellow ones because of their unique flavor profile. Yellow onions are a widely used onion type in the US and is great with meat dishes such as pot roast, roasted chicken, lamb rack, stew, and more.
Yellow onions are the most popular cooking onions because they add excellent flavor to most stews, soups, and meat dishes. In fact, typically when a cooked recipe calls for onion, yellow onion is a safe way to go. Yellow onions have a yellow-brown papery skin on the outside and a white flesh.
But sometimes, the onion makes all the difference. Here's our rule of thumb: use white onions raw, yellow onions for cooking and red onions for pickling or grilling.
White Onions
These onions are slightly sweeter, a bit milder in taste than yellow onions. They're a good choice for dicing and serving raw on sandwiches and salads or in fresh salsas.
Red onions are particularly good raw in many of the same places as their white cousins. Red onions work well in salads and guacamole, or on a juicy burger, in part because of their vivid color.
Red onions are full of sulfur compounds that protect the body from ulcers and various cancers. They can also fight bacteria in the urinary tract. The most important of these compounds is called quercetin - an antioxidant compound that could provide protection against cancer, heart disease and allergies.
Aware that filet mignon is probably off the cards for a weekly treat, the chefs in our survey opt largely for a rib-eye. The cut has excellent fat marbling, holds together well, and is especially life-affirming when thickly butchered.
The award-winning chef recommends using garlic, thyme, and rosemary to create a fragrant piece of beef. He also says that it is essential to melt a bit of butter in the pan before removing the steak. Baste the steak with the butter and allow it to caramelize into a melty masterpiece.
And while we prefer yellow for cooking, white for garnishing, and red for pickling, grilling, and everything in between, they're generally interchangeable: Switching between them won't ruin a dish, even if it slightly alters its flavor or appearance.
White Onions: A stronger, spicier, more pungent flavour than yellow onions. More oniony, for lack of a better term, than yellow onions.
When preparing raw onions, soak in cold water before hand to remove some of the pungency and soften the flavor. However since soaking too long will dilute the flavor, soaking in cold water for 5 to 10 minutes is recommended.
Garlic: Savoriness Supreme
The best steak seasoning requires it. Indeed, garlic evokes savory aspects even in low-protein foods, one reason it works so well with vegetables. Garlic can be combined with salt and pepper in any form, but garlic powder has a couple of convenient features.
It depends on the purpose you intend to use the onion for. For salads, salsas, and anything raw preparations, we recommend red onions because of their color and mild flavor. But if it's for cooking and adding flavor to dishes, yellow onion is the perfect choice because of its sweet flavor.
Brown onions are a great all-round versatile cooking onion with their strong flavour. Red onions are milder and sweeter and have a purplish skin and white flesh tinged with red. Red onions are often eaten raw in salads and sandwiches or lightly cooked with other foods.
While both can and may make you cry when chopped, between these onions, the red is the mildest of the two in flavor. Both are sweet and while the preferred onion for caramelizing is the white or yellow because it is easier to see the golden-brown color, the red onion also becomes sweet once cooked.
Eschalots. These small onions grow in clusters and have papery golden-brown skin and are sometimes called French shallots. Sweeter than brown, white or red onions, eschalots have a distinct well-balanced onion flavour.
Yellow onions are used the most as a general onion since they aren't as strong as white onions. They still have a sharp, astringent flavor, but they also have a bit of sweetness which isn't super strong so they can be used in very savory recipes.